This is part 2 of my series where I explore magic in Dungeons & Dragons 5e that manages to be everything but magical. You can read the first post here. Today's entry is going to be focused on magic food and drink, and how to make what's mundane into something fun.
Whining and Dining
For the purpose of this series, I'm going to ignore the Outlander background and half of the Ranger traits, even though my primary complaint about these spells could probably apply to those things too. My main issue with these spells, is that they can completely trivialize a part of the game that can be oh so fun for some groups: survival. Finding food and drink while in the wilderness, or a mile underground, or even on another Plane of Mild Existence can lead to some amazingly fun situations, or even prop up an entire adventure on its own, assuming you actually use and enforce inventory slots, scarcity, and food / water requirements in your game, that is.
I'm not even sure that's a problem with the spells themselves, but a symptom of the system. Even though there are rules for survival, by design it's so easy to trivialize that aspect of the game that the class most-suited to deal with that is so undesirable that it's been reworked more than twice by the original designers and still can't seem to find its place.
Goodberry - I actually really like this spell, not because of the nourishment for 24 hours, or the healing which is relatively benign, but simply for the fact that watermelons, pumpkins, and bananas all count as berries. Do with that information what you will.
Create Food and Water - I'm on the fence with this one: on one hand, it's a 3rd level spell, which is the same level as classics like Fireball and Counterspell, which means you have to have a pretty strong reason to even pick this spell. On the other hand, you create 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of water....that's quite a lot, and creative players can definitely get their money's worth with that.
Purify Food and Drink - I almost feel bad for this spell to be honest. In all my years of gaming, I don't know if anyone has ever picked this spell on purpose.
Heroes Feast - This one gets a pass, because it has so much flavor baked in, and has a cost, and actually provides some (pretty hefty) benefits.
Eating Magically Created Foods
Serve them with a twist. Whenever you eat magically created food, roll 2d6:
2. You get sick and puke rainbow colored bile every 1d10 minutes for an hour.
3. Next time you eat magically created foods, its nourishment efficacy is halved. After a week of only eating real foods are the effects of magically created foods returned to normal for you.
4. Make a Wisdom saving throw or become addicted to magically created food and drink (real food just isn't quite the same anymore). Repeat saving throw once a week.
5 - 9. Nothing Happens
10. Your mouth and lips are stained a bright and vibrant color of whatever you ate for 24 hours.
11. You can see into the Ethereal Plane out to 120 feet for 1d3 hours
12. You can feel it in your soul. Roll a Constitution saving throw, recovering a spell slot on a success.
Whining and Dining
For the purpose of this series, I'm going to ignore the Outlander background and half of the Ranger traits, even though my primary complaint about these spells could probably apply to those things too. My main issue with these spells, is that they can completely trivialize a part of the game that can be oh so fun for some groups: survival. Finding food and drink while in the wilderness, or a mile underground, or even on another Plane of Mild Existence can lead to some amazingly fun situations, or even prop up an entire adventure on its own, assuming you actually use and enforce inventory slots, scarcity, and food / water requirements in your game, that is.
I'm not even sure that's a problem with the spells themselves, but a symptom of the system. Even though there are rules for survival, by design it's so easy to trivialize that aspect of the game that the class most-suited to deal with that is so undesirable that it's been reworked more than twice by the original designers and still can't seem to find its place.
Goodberry - I actually really like this spell, not because of the nourishment for 24 hours, or the healing which is relatively benign, but simply for the fact that watermelons, pumpkins, and bananas all count as berries. Do with that information what you will.
Create Food and Water - I'm on the fence with this one: on one hand, it's a 3rd level spell, which is the same level as classics like Fireball and Counterspell, which means you have to have a pretty strong reason to even pick this spell. On the other hand, you create 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of water....that's quite a lot, and creative players can definitely get their money's worth with that.
Purify Food and Drink - I almost feel bad for this spell to be honest. In all my years of gaming, I don't know if anyone has ever picked this spell on purpose.
Heroes Feast - This one gets a pass, because it has so much flavor baked in, and has a cost, and actually provides some (pretty hefty) benefits.
Eating Magically Created Foods
Serve them with a twist. Whenever you eat magically created food, roll 2d6:
2. You get sick and puke rainbow colored bile every 1d10 minutes for an hour.
3. Next time you eat magically created foods, its nourishment efficacy is halved. After a week of only eating real foods are the effects of magically created foods returned to normal for you.
4. Make a Wisdom saving throw or become addicted to magically created food and drink (real food just isn't quite the same anymore). Repeat saving throw once a week.
5 - 9. Nothing Happens
10. Your mouth and lips are stained a bright and vibrant color of whatever you ate for 24 hours.
11. You can see into the Ethereal Plane out to 120 feet for 1d3 hours
12. You can feel it in your soul. Roll a Constitution saving throw, recovering a spell slot on a success.
I like the table here, especially the "You become an addict" result. I'm curious why you went with "every time you eat" instead of "every time you cast". So, with that in mind, I could eat two goodberries created from the same spell and have completely different results, right?
ReplyDeleteThat's one of those things that would probably be up to your GM. If I were running the game, you could probably get away with only rolling once for eating a handful of berries.
DeleteI've heard of a fix for Goodberry where it uses up a nonmagical berry to cast the spell. That means you still have to find food in a survival setting.
ReplyDeleteCreate food suffers from the old utility spell problem- utility spells are just spread across levels willy-nilly. Then they make up for it by having it be too effective to be fun. I'd just bump it down a level. Or maybe replace it with a "target person needn't eat for a full day" spell.