Something that has always bothered me with D&D spells is how efficient and "texture-less" they often are. What I mean by texture-less is that the magic doesn't interact with the world in a meaningful way. The cleric mumbles something, snaps their fingers and poof you've got food and drink for the evening. Mundane solutions often have so much more interesting details to them that can be interacted with. For example if you're trying to make someone dead from across the room, the wizard answer is to use magic missile, while a more mundane answer is to use a gun. The gun has a lot more limitations on it, it requires effort to make the gun, gunpowder that isn't wet, bullets, careful aim and all the infrastructure that makes those things possible. The wizard does have to learn the spell, and pull off fancy hand gestures for it to work, but it isn't as intuitive to imagine as all the details that make a gun work. Due to this the costs of magic will get sidelined and ignored. People have come up with solutions for this, like spell mishap tables, but I don't think that's the best solution either. With many things in life the bad part is inseparable from the good part, because they are not two things, but one thing that has both positive and negative properties. Fire that can't burn you is fire that won't be useful for cooking food or working steel. If the consequences of a spell are woven directly into the spell itself than the spell has greater verisimilitude and is more interesting. Now that I'm done rambling about my opinions on spells in general, I'll actually address the title of this post.
Summon Phantom Steed:
Level 1 spell
A whistle (if you want it be a magic item or itO style arcanum)
When this spell is cast, a phantom steed appears out of nowhere at a light trot. The phantom steed has the stats of a horse in your system with the following differences:
- It is clearly not a horse, roll a d6 to see what it looks like:
- 1. A horse made by someone who's never seen one, legs and neck too long, and you can't tell how much legs it has, but it's the wrong amount.
- 2. Some infernal cross between a dragon, a wagon and a beetle. It gurgles and bellows awful smoke behind it.
- 3. A giant self propelled wheel with crooked spokes to grab onto. 50% it has spikes along it, 50% chance it's on fire.
- 4. A palanquin with human legs sticking out of the carrying poles. It is otherwise quite tastefully decorated.
- 5. A large terrestrial bird, similar to an ostrich if ostriches were made to be as aerodynamic as inhumanly possible.
- 6. A chariot pulled by a a single fly. This fly is angry and metallic and strong enought to pull a chariot, but it's still a fly.
- If something would inhibit it's ability to move, it either doesn't or destroys the steed, 50% 50% chance.
- It is not able to slow down, it can only maintain it's current speed or go faster.
- If given the option it will always choose to go faster.
The reason I've made this spell work they way it does, is so it's not a strictly more optimal option to have than a horse. The fact that it can't slow down means that it's difficult to control. Sense it can not stop getting on and off will poss some difficulty, and in the case of getting off could involve taking damage from the tumble. Also holding on will be difficult if you it's allowed to get fast enought. This spell also has utility as a combat spell, because even if the hell on wheels doesn't run into something, the intimidation factor of it whizzing by could have an effect.
