this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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What's the coolest reflavoring of a spell/ability you've seen? (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by chetradley to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 96 points 10 months ago (2 children)

So wait, you're telling me I could just be walking down the street, minding my own business, when some jerkass wizard from another universe merges our realities or whatever to heal my doppelganger? I'm out 6 HP because of some guy who doesn't live in my universe and I don't even like got hurt?

I'm imagining as a consequence to doing this all the time, eventually the wizard is going to have a class action lawsuit against them from all the innocent bystanders they've hurt. And just imagine the legal complexity of serving all these suits across different universe' legal codes. This wizard's going to be bogged down for an eternity in the courts.

In all the multiverse, there's got to be someone who specializes in parallel-universe case law. A Parallelalegal, if you will.

[–] chetradley 63 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Damn, this gives me an idea for a PC: Raz is a novice dunamancer who believes he has the worst luck in the world until he realizes that his wealthy and successful alternate self has been manipulating fate to always be in HIS favor instead. Now the only thing Raz wants is to find and kill his other self and take back what fate owes him.

[–] baccaratrevivify 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

See the jet Li movie: The One

[–] ObsidianZed 7 points 9 months ago

Yesss, one of my favorite (ridiculous) hidden gems that I will forever keep on DVD.

[–] tpyo 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Did you have "parallelalegal" in mind before you wrote this or did it come to you after? It's brilliant and will be stuck in my head for a while

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

I was definitely trying to figure out how to work that in there

[–] [email protected] 64 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Hot take: I can't stand the word "dunamancy". I don't care for critical role, so maybe it's justified somehow (or maybe just if someone I liked said it a lot I'd learn to let it go), but as it is, it hate it. It's not duna/dyna- (physical force or potential energy) it's not a -mancy (a form of divination), and it sounds like a cringelord teenager's invented name for sand magic. Plus now that it's canonized, I have to argue with every group I run for that my setting doesn't subscribe to the many-worlds theory and that is not an acceptable flavour for their magic in my game.

Anyway to answer the question, I once saw a class entirely reflavoured from top to bottom as a Chronomancer. You probably think it was a wizard or a warlock or something, but no, it was the Battle Master Fighter.

Weapon/armour proficiency and extra ASIs were because they did extra training in a personal timeloop. Second Wind was a short personal rewind, Action Surge was a personal fast-forward. Most of their maneuvers were various manipulations of time; rewinding themself to parry, slowing the enemy for precision strike, looping themself for feinting strike, rewinding an ally for rally.

I don't remember all the flavour, but god dang it was cool.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Much as I'm generally not keen on CR stuff and will never not be salty about them accidentally turning D&D firbolgs into cow folk, the name "dunamancy" is actually a bit better than that. It's just based on another meaning of the Greek word that "dyna-" comes from. This version is better translated as "potentiality" or "possibility". Aristotle used it for a bunch of stuff, so it got brought into English with that meaning as "dunamis". The -mancy bit is definitely just because fantasy stuff uses it to mean any magic though

[–] chetradley 9 points 10 months ago

I honestly wasn't aware it was a Critical Role thing until I posted this.

Wow that fighter is awesome. I'll add it to the list of characters I would play if I wasn't a forever DM.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The weirdest thing they did was make the Pathfinder diety Sarenrae canon in 5e

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Good take.

Also that chrono legionare is super flavourful!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

That's actually really neat

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That Chronomancer was actually pretty close to the flavor I had for a 4e character that I only got to play for 3 sessions because our DM was a flake Q_Q

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Murderer.

[–] chetradley 31 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Ok, fine, I collapsed reality on an entire alternate universe ending them in the blink of an eye, but now Rog the barbarian is back to full health!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

It's actually kind of astonishing that what villains try to do for an entire campaign is done as collateral damage by you using a first level spell slot, and it only heals 6 hitpoints. Meanwhile, Sad Frank drinks two potions and does the same, but without billions of deaths. Score one for Sad Frank.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You know, this would actually be rad if the DM started using it as a plot point. Extra-dimensional police start hunting the PC for multiverse-level crimes, or some dunamancer in another reality kills an NPC in the PCs' reality to heal one of their friends, and the PCs have to do some dimension-hopping to hunt them down and get them to stop.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

In pursuit of known dunamancer Rick Sanchez

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Or, like, just reverse the localized time on the individual that got hurt to a point before they took the damage...

[–] chetradley 15 points 10 months ago

Ah, that's chronomancy and you do NOT want me messing with time. Not after what will happen next time.

[–] JoshuaSlowpoke777 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I haven’t actually seen this being used, but since Hypnotic Pattern in DND5E can require a stick of incense as a component if you’re using spell components, I imagined someone casting that by twirling a thurible (incense burner on a chain) above their head, and somehow physically throwing the scent into the targeted area, and then a (mostly) harmless explosion of colorful, sparkly gas charms any affected targets through sheer fascination.

[–] chetradley 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love spells like this. The Animal Friendship spell component is "a morsel of food." Like damn, I guess I'm a wizard.

[–] JoshuaSlowpoke777 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, you could easily reflavor component-requiring Animal Friendship as “just feeding the animal and somehow flawlessly avoiding harm”, just to make it ambiguous whether this is actually magic or just mundane.

[–] VindictiveJudge 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I wish artificers were this instead of true casters.

[–] chetradley 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Good news! The 5e Artificer is the perfect class for spell flavoring and it's actually written into their class description. From Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, page 11:

[–] VindictiveJudge 3 points 10 months ago

Yes, but you're still affected by antimagic and whatnot. No matter how you flavor it, you're a true caster under RAW. This is the kind of thing that the old spell-like abilities from 3e would have been useful for.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

"That's not incense."

[–] zakobjoa 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Our bard didn't cast "Dissonant Whispers", he'd just drunkely hurl insults so mean they do psychic damage.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Viciouser mockery

[–] zakobjoa 2 points 10 months ago

I forgot about Vicious Mockery, but that's probably where it started. I remember there being more spells that were just tirades of insults – I think Synaptic Static was among those as well.

[–] chetradley 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love the interpretation of bards that they don't actually cast magic, they just keep it so real that it borders on supernatural.

[–] zakobjoa 3 points 10 months ago

When keeping it real goes right.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Emotional damage.

[–] teft 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Over at /c/TenForward we call this "pulling a Harry Kim".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The downside is you're stuck below level 5 for the entire campaign

[–] teft 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Level 3. Harry can't even get that first feat.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

He wouldn't anyway because he took one level in Bard

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

I have a Reborn Necromancer that is a children's entertainer. Zombies? They just joined our Friendship Circle! Toll of the Dead? You said today's magic word! Cause fear? We're sharing our emotions in a safe space!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Typical T3feri behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

And because it's dunamancy, you do this via a magic mike style strip tease

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=50&v=32wA4zAf8DE&feature=youtu.be