Knave-ifying 5E Spells

D&D 5E advocates a rulings-not-rules philosophy, rejecting 3.5E’s and 4E’s attempts to capture as much of the game as possible in formal rules. 5E is better at sticking to this philosophy in some places than others. One of the weakest areas is the spell list in the Player’s Handbook.

The 5E spell list takes up a full quarter of the total page count of the Player’s Handbook. Some descriptions are admirably succinct. Jump is 14 words long. Others are beasts. Symbol takes up more than half a page on its own.

What if all the descriptions were like the former? More specifically, what if they followed the logic of Knave's spell descriptions? 

What does it mean, mechanically, for time to move 10 times faster, or gravity to triple? 5E would work these details out with a dozen paragraphs explaining saving throws, special conditions to end the effect, interactions with ability checks, and combat implications. Knave simply assumes that the DM could reasonably adjudicate the effect based on common sense and the shared logic of the game world. 

So could we do it? Can we Knave-ify 5E spells? Let's try the first dozen spells in alphabetical order.

For this exercise, we won’t cover level, school, casting time, range, components, duration. Note that Knave uses “nearby” for range and common sense measures like “the size of an apple.” We’ll assume that anything not outright stated would be adjudicated at the table. As with Knave, there is no effort to balance these, and they are treated as basically level-less, or having effects that scale with level (denoted by “L” below).

Acid Splash: Conjure a goblet’s worth of weak acid, dealing Ld6 damage to a creature or destroying a fragile object.

5E has an abundance of spells that deal damage and do little else. 5E’s system for upcasting spells keys to tier rather than directly to level, which has a balance logic, but isn’t intuitive or easy to condense to a formula. If it were up to me, cantrips would be out of the game entirely, but that’s an entire post of its own. 

Aid: Temporarily increase L friendly creatures maximum HP by 5.

Note that Aid temporarily raises maximum hit points, but is different from temporary hit points, and a character could benefit from both simultaneously. Have I mentioned that I do not enjoy explaining the moon logic of this game design to new players? This effect is not even particularly interesting, and would be on the shortlist of spells that I would consider cutting entirely for its non-diegetic “numbers go up” implementation.

Alarm: An audible or silent alarm (your choice) triggers when an unfamiliar creature enters a warded space no larger than a 10xL cube.

Alter Self: Adapt the physical means of locomotion, survival, or predation – such as wings, gills, or talons – of a beast or monster you have seen before.

The last part is an underrated trick. 5E occasionally uses this conceit – the druid’s Wild Shape ability is limited to “a beast that you have seen before.” If a player wants to Wild Shape into a particular animal, the DM can ask them to make the case for their past encounter with such a creature, or even briefly flash back to their pre-adventuring days. This also gives 5E players a strong incentive to go out into the world and see new and dangerous creatures. More 5E spells and abilities that do things like summon creatures or create illusions should be predicated on the caster’s direct observation and interaction with such things.

Animal Friendship: Target beast must make a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed.

Animal Messenger: Target tiny beast reliably delivers a short message to a recipient, within L days travel, based on a general description of the recipient.

Animal Shapes: Target creatures transform into beasts with CR no greater than L/4.

There may be a more elegant way to cap the size of the beasts involved. Considering that Animal Shapes is an 8th-level spell, I’m not sure why 5E is so stingy about the strength of the assumed form. Or why this spell doesn’t simply re-use the logic of the Polymorph spell.

CR is also annoying because it is mostly a DM-facing stat (essentially, a rule for encounter balance and experience calculation) -- but, rarely, character abilities key off of it. When I homebrew beasts in 5E, I have to reverse engineer a CR after the fact, because the druid will ask me if they can Wild Shape into the fantastic animal they just encountered.

D&D 5E’s various transformation spells all include extensive language about what happens to equipment, what effects or conditions would return the subject to their normal form, and so forth. If this can’t be left to DM discretion, 5E should just have a universal rule for how transformations work.

Animate Dead: Raise L-2 skeletons or zombies capable of obeying simple orders for as long as you exert conscious control over them.

Animate Objects: Imbue a collection of objects the size of a person or smaller with temporary life; use a swarm stat block for many tiny or small objects, or a bear stat block for one big object.

Antilife Shell: Living things may not enter the 10’ radius shimmering dome that surrounds you.

Antimagic Field: Magic is blocked or suppressed within this invisible 10’ radius sphere.

Antipathy/Sympathy: All nearby creatures of a type of your choice must make a Wisdom save or be attracted or repelled (your choice) in your presence.

Note that in 5E’s rules, antipathy applies the frightened condition, but sympathy does not apply the charmed condition. I cannot think of a reason why this would be. GAME DESIGN.

We could repeat this exercise for the rest of the alphabet, but as with so many hacks, you have to stop and ask yourself if it would not make more sense to just design from the ground up, rather than painstakingly fixing the things you don’t like about the existing system.