TLDR: download spell PDF here: Dying Earth Spells for D&D.
John left a comment on my recent post about magic-users drawing my attention to a document he put together: Dying Earth Spells for D&D (original Scribd link). This is perhaps the best collection of spells I have seen. Here are some of the spells: The Howling Rune, The Manifold Effigies of Being, The Spell of Celeritous Relocalisation. There were enough entries that I assumed the document was just a list of spell names.
This free document contains 30 fantastically named spells per level (up to 6th, which God intended to be the highest level of magic-user spells). That is 180 spells, and every single one has a brief description.
Here’s one example:
| Evard’s Frictionless Field | |||
| R: 1″ | D: 3 rounds + 1/level | AoE: 1″ square | Save: Special |
| Save vs. spell or slip and fall. If cast on item then save or drop immediately. |
Even better, it is organized by level, not alphabet.
Thank you John for creating such a fantastic resource.
YES
Awesome! Thanks, John!
I ought to make it clear that not every spell name is my own work – asides from the ones copied directly from Jack Vance, there are a few from the Empire of the Petal Throne and other sources.
Thank you!
This is fantastic!
While awesome, I’m afraid that I would be unable to pronounce 1/2 of them.
Awesome list, John. If you ever revise the list, make sure to add a way of contacting you on the PDF. (Unless you wanted to stay anonymous/pseudonymous on purpose?)
This is great!
I was hoping to find Larodrm’s Leap Of Logic spell on the list. Sigh.
Thanks, everyone.
@Alex: I do use a pseudonym, but only from old habit because my real name is so unique. I’ve uploaded a revision with my email address and some typos fixed.
@Aaron: It wasn’t tagged with Dying Earth or Vance, so I never found it, or else it probably would be.
Feel free to use it, if you like. Great job on the list of spells by the way, they almost uniformly had a great Vancian vibe to them.
Amazing! This is an invaluable resource for an OD&D DM and I think I’ll be using this list exclusively in my games! Its got all the usual D&D spells (with much better names) plus a joyful truckload of evocative new options. I’m a huge Vance fan and this is just brilliant! Thank you!
It seems to have not picked up my id, but I’m CodexArcanum on RPGnet and most other places.
@John — I cannot express how excited I am to see this list. Wow! Thank you for sharing! This IS the spellbook for my new campaign. Well done!
I put together a level one spell list for Clerics, in case anyone using this finds their Clerics suddenly feel very strange…
http://www.infinitedragons.com/cleric-spells-for-a-dying-earth/