Dungeons and Dragons: Mithrondil's Spell Book in Detail

If you have played Dungeons and Dragons for any time at all, you must have noted that one of the favorite spells of nearly all low-level wizards is Magic Missile. It is popular because it never misses its target, and it gets more powerful with the mage who uses it; up to a point. Long before it has reached its greatest potential though, it falls to the wayside and is used more often than not because the wizard has run out of his more powerful offensive spells. He will choose a Lightning Bolt or a Fireball as his first option, rather than the lowly Magic Missile.

This is because, at experience level five, the Magic Missile only has the potential to do 15 points of damage (1d4+1 per missile), while the newly acquired Lightning Bolt will do twice that. By the time the spell reaches its greatest potential and can do up to 25 points of damage, the Fireball can affect multiple targets for a possible 54 points of damage to each, and has not yet reached its own full potential. And there are a number of other powerful spells available to the mage by this time. It would seem to be a popular spell anyway, if you consider the other end of the range, but it's not. Magic Missile, used by a wizard of tenth level experience, will do at least 10 points of damage and hit every time. There are very few ways to avoid it, if you are the intended target. That same wizard may cast a Fireball of minimum damage, doing 10 points. The victim can making a Saving Throw for half damage and, if he has other protections in place, may take almost no damage at all. Still, the chance to do 60 points of damage, instead of 25, is enough to make him choose the Fireball first.

Mithrondil stumbled upon this fact in an unplanned practical demonstration one time. He loves his fire-based spells, but once he was let down by some low-scoring uses and had to fall back upon his old friend, the Magic Missile, which helped win the day. It dawned upon him that a nearly-certain 10 - 25 points was worth more than a chancy 0 - 60, when you got down to it. He set about trying to make this a more powerful spell and he developed, not one spell, but two . So, in this installment you get a bonus; Missile of Power, and Sorcerous Missile.

Both of these are natural extensions of the parent spell, and they work the same way as Magic Missile in all respects except for the damage they inflict. The Missile of Power is a second level spell and does damage based on six-sided dice, rather than four-sided, while the Sorcerous Missile is third level of spell use and uses eight-sided dice. At ninth level of experience, the minimum damage will still be only 10 points for each of them, but their maximums will be 35 points, and 45 points, respectively. He has lately been considering a furtherance of this research, to make even more powerful versions of the spell.

Consider the possibilities. Of course, he could raise the base damage to ten- or twelve-sided dice, but he could also find a way to allow more than five missiles. Why should that be the absolute limit? If a mage gains one missile at every odd-numbered experience level, why stop at level nine? What about a slight alteration to the Sorcerous Missile, so damage is two four-sided dice, instead of one eight-sided? This would leave the maximum damage as is, but increase the minimum. Maybe there's a way to raise the base damage from one die plus one point (1d4+1), to one die plus two points (1d4+2). This will increase the minimum damage and the maximum for the entire family of spells.

As a Dungeon Master, you might want to impose limitations on this. Maybe five missiles really is the absolute limit that can be generated in any one round of combat. Maybe the increased stress of gathering enough mystic energy to produce missiles capable of inflicting 1d4+2 damage will cause a temporary loss of one point of Constitution for the caster. Maybe a step of twice the damage results in a step of three times the level of magic use, as is the case for the Sorcerous Missile. That would mean that a double-strength Missile of Power (level two) would be a level six spell, and a double strength Sorcerous Missile (level three) would be a ninth level spell, and that would be the limit. It is, after all, your world and you can impose whatever restrictions are necessary to help you retain control.

As a player, I encourage you to exercise your imagination. Many of the things that you love about this game were worked out by trial and error, over time, by the people who first brought it to life. Many of the published spells carry the names of the characters that were played by real people. Tenser, Drawmij, Nystul, Rary, Bigby, Leomund, Melf, Tasha, Otto, Otiluke, Evard, Serten, and Mordenkainen should all be familiar names to you. Many of them, and maybe all of them, were characters that were really played in someone's game. The spells that bear these names are the products of the players' imaginations. You can do the same thing. Put your thoughts on paper and submit them to your dungeon master. You live in his world, so why not make it your own?