Dungeons and Dragons: Mithrondil's Spell Book, Page 8

Mithrondil got into a sword fight, which is not unusual, but in this fight he lost an arm. Luckily, he had the means to preserve the arm, in hopes of finding a way to make himself whole again. With even more luck, one of the rings that was part of his share of the treasure retrieved on the venture turned out to be a Ring of Regeneration. Well, his arm grew back, but he still had this preserved arm that had once been a part of his body. He didn't want to just throw it away, even though it was not of much use to him in its present state. He got a diabolical idea. What if he were to find a way to reattach this severed limb? He got very enthusiastic with this and worked to develop a spell that would allow such a thing to be done, and then he took it to extremes.

The result was Graft, a spell which would allow the grafting of body parts to a host. At first, the idea was to make someone whole again, but the possibility was there, and Mithrondil exploited that possibility, to make someone or something more than it was before. It could be argued that he only rediscovered a magic that had been lost. After all, there is the Chimera, a creature which is the blending together of different creatures, and the hippogrif, the hippocampus, and many others besides.

The finished spell will allow a sorcerer to graft any once-living body part to any host creature. There are dangers to the host and a substantial chance of failure, or partial failure, attached to it. Any creature that is unwilling to be disfigured does get to make a saving throw vs. spell; if the save succeeds then the spell does not. The danger, and the chances that something can go wrong increases with the unlikelihood of the end result having come from nature.

The body part to be grafted to the new host may be any limb, horn, tail, eye-stalk, organ, gland, or etc. It is even theoretically possible to graft human arms onto a tree, though Mithrondil has never tried to do such a thing. The body part may be attached at any location on the receiving body. If successful, any necessary bones, nerves, muscles, tendons, blood vessels, or other support organs will automatically form in the process.

There are certain preparations and prerequisites involved, and they are somewhat complicated. There must, of course, be a living host and a preserved, once-living body part. The sorcerer must also fashion clay figures of these, in proper proportion, each containing a tissue sample of both. The host and the body part must be cut with a silver dagger at the points of intended joining. The subject will take maximum damage from this, so a successful To Hit roll must be made against an unwilling subject. The sorcerer then begins the incantation, which includes an Animate Dead spell and a Curse spell, while joining the two clay figures. If the spell is working, to this point, he will see the actual event take place as well. The body part will be drawn towards the host and will attach. As he continues to chant, the host and the body part must each pass a system shock roll. If either of them fail, then so does the spell, and the grafted part will fall away and die. Once this is done, the host must take control of the attached body part. This is done by a Wisdom check of the host, modified by the difference in ethics and morals between the two.

Whether the Graft was successful or not, the subject will require a full seven days to recuperate and the sorcerer will need two full days. If, as in the case of Mithrondil, these are the same entity, then these times are multiplied instead of being added together. Mithrondil, having a great affinity for symmetry, chose to undergo this twice. He had one of his henchmen to sever his other arm and preserve it, then he attached both arms to himself in the manner described. It was quite an ordeal, but the end result was a multi-classed Drow with four arms. Unfortunately, he did not gain full control of one of the grafted arms. It will defend itself (and therefore him), but it cannot be used in offense. He tends to use it only to carry a shield and to wear a defensive magical ring. Still, it is an advantage on some of his thieving abilities and he does get to hit three times in a round, instead of only twice.

The details of this spell are best left to the player and the Dungeon Master. Mithrondil had charts which described varying degrees of success or failure. The spell description went to seven hand-written pages. Extraordinary changes and additions resulted in extraordinary results. Such things as the addition of an alien head, complete replacement of skin, addition of fantastic organs or adding more than 50% of the host's body mass could result in instant death, insanity, the dominance of the host by the attached part, unending pain to the host, or worse.

I hope you have found something in Mithrondil's spell book that is useful to you. Next, we see the results of his cleric-envy.