Alustriel’s Spells

Homebrewing 5R Versions

There used to be a number of spells included in D&D that are credited to Alustriel.  I’ve become interested in them as I am setting up to run an Edge of Ruin campaign.  I’ll be using these spells as “name drop” opportunities for the pre-game that one of our players is running for us (I get to play, yea!).

I found homebrew versions of each of the below spells on DnDBeyond.  All but the first can be traced to 2e sources.  I don’t know where the first came from. The spells and sources for the most recent official versions I could find are:

Spell Name	Lvl	School	Edition
Alustriel's Electric Strike	C	Evocation	Strictly home-brewed no canon source
Alustriel's Banner	1	Illusion	2e  Wizard's Spell Compendium Volume One
Turtle Soup	1	Evocation	2e Wizard's Spell Compendium Volume Four
Alustriel's Fang	2	Alteration	2e  Wizard's Spell Compendium Volume One
Alustriel's Mantle	4	Abjuration	2e  Wizard's Spell Compendium Volume One
Alustriel's Improved Mantle	7	Evocation	2e  Wizard's Spell Compendium Volume One
Alustriel's Sword of Stars	7	Evocation	2e  Wizard's Spell Compendium Volume One.
Alustriel’s Queenmantle	9	Abjuration	2e Dragon Annual #1, Gem of the North, pp. 59-60

Feat: Mage Slayer

There is a nifty feat titled Mage Slayer which seems clearly intended to make melee characters effective at shutting down casters or at least noticeably better at that task.

By RAW the Mage Slayer when he/she is nose to nose (within 5 feet) of a caster can poke that caster as a reaction to a spell cast.  Disappointingly, the mage slayer must politely wait for the cast to complete before making his/her attack.  

That wait can be rather disappointing if the caster decided to polymorph the mage slayer into a slug, teleported away, or any of a myriad casts that disable the mage slayer's ability.  

I'd think the mage slayer wouldn't patiently wait for the spell to complete, he or she would smack the caster and hope to fizzle that spell before it completes.  This posting considers how to make that work in 5E (hint: a house rule).

Exhaustion and Fatigue

 

Exhaustion is described in the Player's Handbook in Appendix A.  I read it as being rather clear and understandable as well as punishingly debilitating.

The high level of punishment is my driver for this post.  Exhaustion is used in 5E as a penalty for extended forced marches, long term exposure to extreme conditions, chases of a minute or so duration and a few other things.

Recovering from exhaustion requires a long rest to heal one level, meaning that a character that has pushed forward for days and reached 5 stacks of exhaustion is going to need 5 days of rest to fully recover.  That is a lot, but it is an extreme level of exhaustion from great and extended effort.  A chase, run RAW, can result in that same level of exhaustion in 8 rounds, less than a minute of running.  This implies that a far number of people running a quarter mile sprint end up incapacitated for the better part of a week before they are back to normal and suggests that longer sprints are just impossible.   

Average Adventurers are Anything But Average (in D&D 5e)

One of the first issues facing any new campaign is how the characters will be created.  I believe there are actually two issues that tend to be addressed a bit sloppily together when it comes to establishing character stats: (1) The technique to come up with values, and, (2) how to make the characters heroic, or amazing, or simply better than average - as the player who wants to play a below average character is fairly rare.  

A similar issue also arises on hit points and in some games critical hits.  Both of these aspects are oh so tempting to buff to make the player characters feel more heroic. 

While the DM can always, with effort, scale challenges to fit any inflated "heroic" party, that just seems unnecessary to me.  The game system also tends to break more easily at its limits.  A character with multiple 20s in stats is going to be taking feats which when stacked can result in synergies that are both fun (for some) and game-breaking for everyone.

In this post I will be spelling out my view on the following topics, generally advocating an average approach, which given that adventurers are far, far from average, is actually heroic.   

1. Starting Stats
2. Hit Points per Level
3. Critical Hits
   

Light, Darkness, and Darkvision...ok, mostly Darkvision

 

You just can not see in the dark.  Well, unless you are playing D&D 5E as one of the something like 70% of races that have Darkvision.   

Darkvision is pervasive in D&D 5E.  Most of the playable races have it, almost all of the monsters have it. Tasha's even introduced an option to let everyone have it.  It is just pervasive.

I've seen many adventuring groups with one poor human being lead around in the dark by his group mates who refuse to light a light. Presumably there are whole underground cities with nary a light source to be had...hmm, that just doesn't jib with typical fantasy world visions.  It also makes dungeon delving a different thing than what I want to run.  So, I'm going to look deeper into this topic in this post and make sure I know how I want to handle this topic.

Chase Scenes

The assassin fires a crossbow bolt through the window, landing a bolt in the chest of her target.  He then leaps from the balcony and attempts to escape into the crowd hoping that his slight lead over the party will be enough to get away....What follows could be an interesting chase event or just a simple counting of distances with a predetermined result just playing out as difference in speeds.  I've DMed such an event rarely but never had I been happy with the way it worked.  

I ran across a post on oldschoolroleplaying.com that reviews the history of pursuit rules in D&D.  I think it makes an interesting read.  In this post, I will look at how chases are defined in RAW and consider a couple alternative rules.  

UA Class Features and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (TCoE)

Tasha Contemplating

 TCoE includes a large number of class specific options.  Each class has a number of OPTIONAL Class Features and then a handful of new subclasses.  

Tha Class Features are most, but by no means all of the features specified in the 2019, UNEARTHED ARCANA Class Feature Variants article. They will be the focus of this posting.

The subclasses are a combination of new and retreaded information. Many of them have previously been specified in various Unearthed Arcana articles.  Some are from campaign source books, such as Artificer from Eberron and Bladesinger from the Sword Coast. I've not looked in detail, but I presume that some tweaks have been made and that the TCoE version, as the newest is the default RAW definition. I'm not going to look further at the subclasses unless a game setting suggests one as useful or a player wants to play one.

Rests Revisited & Revised

Back in July 2020 I put together some thoughts on rest durations and effects in response to an interesting video I watched.  The author of that video suggested several changes, some of which resonated with me while others seemed like change for changes sake.  

In this post I am will spell out the experimental home rule, subject to refinement and further change, that I would like to implement in my next game to define four levels of rests:

1. Breather (10 minutes)
2. Short Rest (1 hour)
3. Long Rest (8 hours)
4. Full Rest (12+ hours in safety)

Character Creation and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (TCoE)

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, the most recently published rule book contains a lot of additions of this and that.  A fair number of those additions are formalization of what has previously been UA or specific campaign material.  What I am looking at in this post is all new defined in a section titled Customizing Your Origin that basically (optionally) throws the entire D&D rule book out the window.  It allows assignment of stat bonuses to any stat, changing languages, even adding darkvision to any character all as OPTIONS.

This post will discuss the customizing origins rules in TCoE as I see them and outline what I will typically be allowing in my games. 

Rests: Breather, Short, Long, and Full

I've long been bothered by the high power of the Long Rest the relative weakness of Short Rests in my D&D 5E games.  It always seems that if a place for a short rest can be found, a place of a long rest is only slightly more elusive.  A group on an extended delve need only find that lovely niche to hide in for eight hours and they are miraculously fully healed and rejuvenated.

I'm not alone in this thinking, as I was just pointed at a video by a guy calling himself the dungeon coach.  First a link to his video and then my reactions to some elements.  Finally, what I think I would like to do in my games.

Counterspell and Knowing What is Cast

Counterspell is one of the potentially messiest spells in the game.  Enemy caster begins casting something, player wonders what that spell is (doesn't want to blow a 3+ level spell stopping a cantrip), player opts to counterspell, enemy decides to counterspell the counterspell, another player decides to counterspell the counterspell of the counter spell, then one or more heads explode around the table.

There are clear RAW answers to most of teh relevant questions.  I'm not much satisfied with them.  This post will summarize relevant RAW as I understand it and then offer the rule that I intend to use.

Encumbrance: Weight and Size

The rules in D&D 5E for encumbrance, weight, and size are very generalized.  I've seen the rule generalized as:  "It is absolutely 100% true that almost no character will ever, in their class' native gear, need to worry about carrying too much. And the heaviest armors have STR prereqs anyway, which makes basic gear even less of an issue." (Deliverator) That's a fundamental feature of the most basic encumbrance rule:

Carrying Capacity. Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, which is high enough that most characters don't usually have to worry about it.

Push, Drag, or Lift. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet.

Size and Strength. Larger creatures can bear more weight, whereas Tiny creatures can carry less. For each size category above Medium, double the creature's carrying capacity and the amount it can push, drag, or lift. For a Tiny creature, halve these weights.

D&D 5E Aerial Combat

Aerial combat is defined, sort of, in RAW.  The relevant rules are as badly fragment as the Aquatic rules and they are rarely used, so they are a bit of a challenge to smoothly get right during play.  I will attempt to produce an updated summary and add just a bit in this article.

Before getting into the nitty gritty, I want to give credit to Michael Long published a good summary of the Aerial Combat rules on his Tribality blog back on 2014. His article is an easy read, though it lacks XGE information.

House Rules -- Some Minor Tweaks and Things

In speaking with my group last night, we identified several more things that we have found unclear or that can stand to be better documented for our use.  I'll  role them into my house rules document, for now, I am putting the items and some dicussion into this article.  The topics include:

• Feat: Shield Master 
• Feat: Great Weapon Master
• Feat: Sharpshooter
• Feat: Tough and Durable
• Class: Druid Shape Change Healing
• Rules: Knot Tying
• Rules: Resting in Armor
• Rules: Cost of Creating Scrolls

Character Creation (Borrowed from Dungeon Dudes)

Character creation is both one of the most fun, exciting, tedious and potentially dooming events of many campaigns.  A long running campaign where one or two characters are head and shoulders above others makes it hard to avoid situations where the spotlight shines excessively on the high-stat characters.

I just watched a Dungeon Dudes video that delves into some house rules that they use that address this and a few other issues.  I think all the rules they suggest have some merit.  I'll go over them in this post.

Casting Higher Level Spells from Scroll

I have been wrestling with the case of a multi classed caster trying to cast higher level spell from scroll.  For an example, assume a 4th level wizard / 1st level cleric and a Fireball scroll (3rd level).

TL;DR: Must be able to cast the appropriate level spell or make ability check.

Five Simple House Rules — Dungeon Dudes

I just watched a video recommended to me (thanks Jon) titled Five Simple House Rules for Better Combat in Dungeons and Dragons 5e by the Dungeon Dudes.  In it they lay out five house rules that they like to use and I wanted to crystalize my thought on them.  So, here we go.

First, the house rules in summary:

1. Critical Hits: Maximize First Set of Die Results
2. Healing Potions: Maximize Healing Potions
3. Flanking:  Provides +2 to hit not advantage
4. Bloodied: Use Bloodied condition defined in D&D 4E
5. Minions: Use 1HP minions essentially from D&D 4E

Magic Item Costs or Values aka Sane Pricing

The magic item pricing system for D&D 5e, if we can call what it a pricing system, combines uselessness with insanity.  I'm going to delve into my thoughts on the subject in this article and point to what seems like a reasonable alternative.

Creating Characters: Point Buy vs Rolls

One of the longest lasting element of any character are his opening stats.  It feels great to roll those dice and get monster stats.  It feels a lot less great to come up with middling numbers. Often times a DM will allow a reroll, but their is a tendency for some people to just accept what they have rolled and possibly be unhappy with it for a long time. 

I've always favored point-buy or similar approaches as they result in the same resources for all players.  This starts everyone off on an even playing field and pretty much assures that class abilities will matter.

I ran across an article that discusses the benefits of point buy on the web, and want to share the link here: Dungeon Solvers: Why You Should Use Point Buy for D&D 5e Character Creation

Another approach that allows rolling stats, is a collective pool.  All the participants roll up their set of stats and then the numbers are put into a common pool. The players then take turns taking the number of their choice from the pool.  Most likely in an order determined by high rolls, reversing in the next round, so that the person who picks first in round one picks last in round two.  The next two sets of rounds can retain the same order or determine new orders.

Find Familiar

A Familiar is awesome in D&D 5E, full stop. Learning and using the Find Familiar spell is something that every Wizard should strive for. This spell is a bit of a can'o'worms to fully understand and to use.