Dungeons & Dragons offers spellcasters plenty of options for how to damage and debilitate enemies while protecting themselves and their party members, but more than 20 years ago Wizards of the Coast made spellcasting even more versatile by giving players the tools to design their own spells. While it certainly wasn’t balanced and involved a lot of math, the epic spellcasting system in the D&D 3rd Edition Epic Level Handbook made it possible to create archmages and high priests with truly awesome power.
The book broke all of magic down into 24 seeds that could be used to develop custom spells, providing a list of examples to show how it would be done. For instance, Crown of Vermin used the summon and fortify seeds to surround a spellcaster in biting insects. Damnation combined the foresee, transport, and compel seeds to send an enemy to hell to face the torment they deserved for their evildoing.
Developing epic spells was meant to be an expensive and time-consuming process for the characters. The price was based on how many seeds were incorporated and other factors like the spell’s duration and casting time. Players could mitigate some of the cost by having the spell require expensive material components, deal backlash damage to the caster, or even drain their character of experience points. Recruiting other characters made the process easier, encouraging collaboration within the party and creating the potential for some fun plots where you’d have to trade favors with other powerful wizards and clerics.
These rules weren’t well-balanced. It was surprisingly easy to move yourself into another timestream or give your party permanent spell resistance and damage reduction. But the versatility it offered was incredible. My D&D group developed dozens of epic spells that did everything from making it easier to communicate with our allies to allowing everyone in the party to heal a bit.
Our Dungeon Master used the rules to make enemy spellcasters feel unique and terrifying. At 20th level, everyone is prepared for Energy Drain and Meteor Swarm. But when the archmage we fought cast Scour to rip buff spells off our characters while also tearing off our flesh, we got pretty scared.
Most games never make it to level 20 because the majority of modules are written for lower levels and it takes a very dedicated group to advance that far. Even before level 20, powerful magic like Wind Walk and Teleport can remove many of the challenges that make a campaign fun. We had to implement a lot of house rules to allow the game to keep functioning long enough to get to the Epic Level Handbook.
As a result, we’re unlikely to see Wizards of the Coast produce something like the Epic Level Handbook again. But I’d still love for D&D to offer a new version of the spell seed system to offer players a chance to make their own spells if they want to put in the work. Mages retreating to their towers to conduct arcane research or gathering together for powerful rituals is a core part of many fantasy stories, and epic spellcasting allowed us to bring that concept to our gaming table.
