The Ezrin Quale Trilogy

When I published my previous catalogue of peculiarly pointless magic, I was confident – certain, even – that I had uncovered the very worst the arcane arts could offer. After all, how many crap cantrips can truly exist in one world? It turns out: quite a lot.

Barely a week after the book’s release, letters began arriving from across the realms. Adventurers, academics, hedge-witches, and even a baker wrote to inform me of cantrips so trivial or baffling that I had to add them to my collection. Still more were gifted to me with suspicious enthusiasm by students who insisted I would find them “awful”.

I must pause here to note that The dean of the Arcane University of Highmark has repeatedly begged me to rename this section to something “more suitable for an accredited institution”. Her preferred alternative is Cantrips of Questionable Application. Unfortunately for her, Crap Cantrip has now become a recognised technical term. Two journals and several libraries already use it as a classification for spells whose “expected benefit is lower than the inconvenience of casting them.” Renaming the category at this point would break half a dozen catalogues and annoy even more librarians, which is highly inadvisable.

Regardless, I have collected the most interesting of these misbegotten magics for your study and amusement. You may find that a handful of them are marginally useful under extremely specific conditions. Others, I assure you, are not.

- Professor Ezrin Quale

This page has a memorandum pinned to it.

RE: Your continued use of the term “crap cantrip”

Professor Quale,

I have reviewed the latest manuscript and feel obliged to comment. While I would prefer a more dignified label in works associated with this institution, I cannot deny that the phrase has, regrettably, become established. (Not least among our students.)

The librarians, for the record, fully support your assessment. As you know, they possess both long memories and excellent aim.

Therefore, the Board will (cautiously) permit you to retain the heading, trusting that you will exercise at least a little discretion in future volumes. I do, however, reserve the right to sigh heavily whenever it appears in print.

- Dean Mereth Halverine

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6th-level conjuration

Casting Time: 10 minutes Range: 30 feet Components: V, S, M (a gem-encrusted pitcher worth at least 1,000 gp) Duration: Instantaneous

You conjure a lavish feast, complete with rich food, flowing drink, and every indulgence a hero could ask for, which appears on a table in an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within range. The revelry takes 1 hour, and the food and drink disappear at the end of that time, and the spell’s effects take hold only after the hour is over. Up to twelve creatures can partake.

A creature that partakes of the feast suffers the after-effects of its excess. The creature becomes poisoned, gains one level of exhaustion, and has disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws. It also takes 2d10 poison damage, which can’t reduce its hit points below 1. The creature’s hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the poison damage taken. These effects last for 24 hours.

Ezrin's Notes

Inversion of Heroes’ Feast.

It took an uncomfortably small amount of magical pressure to invert a feast of fortitude into a binge of regret. I cannot shake the feeling that Heroes’ Feast wanted to collapse into this version all along.

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2nd-level evocation

Casting Time: 1 action Range: Touch Components: V, S, M (a piece of gold wire, worth at least 20 gp, which the spell consumes) Duration: Until dispelled

You touch a willing creature and bind a message to its mind. Until the spell ends, the target can cast the sending spell once, but only targeting you. When it does so, the target casts sending without expending a spell slot or requiring material components.

The spell ends when the target casts sending in this way or if the target dies.

Ezrin's Notes

Inversion of Sending.

Before casting this on anyone, consider carefully whether you truly want them to have a guaranteed method of contacting you.

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5th-level abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action Range: 60 feet Components: V, S Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

You create a 30-foot-radius sphere centred on a point you choose within range. Until the spell ends, the area is imbued with magic that reveals true appearances.

While a creature is in the area, the spell suppresses the following magical effects that alter that creature’s form or appearance: effects from spells of 5th level or lower, such as disguise self, seeming, alter self, or polymorph, and non-spell magical effects such as a druid’s wild shape or a creature's Shapechanger trait. A suppressed effect resumes when the creature leaves the area.

If a spell of 5th level or lower or any other magical effect this spell suppresses would be used to alter a creature's form or appearance while that creature is in the area, the effect fails to change that creature while it remains there.

Within the area, a creature wearing a mundane disguise or attempting to pass itself off as another creature has disadvantage on Charisma (Deception) checks made to maintain that disguise, and other creatures have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) and Wisdom (Perception) checks made to see through the disguise.

Ezrin's Notes

Inversion of Seeming.

Before demonstrating to room full of people, make sure nobody is wearing a magical hairpiece.

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4th-level transmutation

Casting Time: 10 minutes Range: 120 feet Components: V, S Duration: Instantaneous

You convert a finished object into raw materials of the same kind. For example, you can reduce a wooden bridge to timber, a rope to loose hemp fibres, or clothes to raw cloth or unspun wool. This spell never creates living creatures.

Choose an object that you can see within range. The object must fit within a 10-foot cube, or within eight connected 5-foot cubes, and must be made primarily of one type of material. Small components of other materials, such as nails, stitching, or hinges, are unaffected and fall to the ground unchanged.

If you are working with metal, stone, or another mineral substance, the object you target can be no larger than Medium (contained within a single 5-foot cube).

An object that forms part of a larger structure can be targeted only if it could reasonably be removed without compromising the structure’s integrity, such as a door, a window shutter, or a cart’s wheel. The GM has discretion as to which objects apply. Creatures and objects that are worn or carried by a creatures are unaffected by this spell.

The targeted object is transformed into an equivalent quantity of crude, unworked material of the same type. The quality of the raw materials produced by the spell is similar to the quality of the original object.

Ezrin's Notes

Inversion of Fabricate.

I once reversed a mediocre portrait to its set of very expensive paint pigments. The patron thanked me. The artist did not.

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Transmutation cantrip

Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you take when you would fall Range: Self Components: V, S Duration: 1 round

In a moment of cartoonish defiance, you hover weightlessly above a drop. When you would begin to fall, you instead remain suspended in the air until the spell ends at the start of your next turn.

If you try to move, or are moved by any means, or if another creature or object touches you, the spell ends immediately. When the spell ends, you immediately fall as normal from your current position.

You cannot cast this spell as a reaction to the spell ending, or to the fall that results from its ending, nor can you cast it in reaction to a fall already in progress.

Ezrin's Notes

Kindly loaned to me by the Arcane Conclave of Magical Experimentation.

Grants just enough time to fully contemplate your impending demise.

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Enchantment cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action Range: Self (5-foot radius) Components: V Duration: Instantaneous

You unleash a pun so objectionable that nearby minds recoil in self-defence. Each creature within 5 feet of you that can hear you, including you, must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take 1d4 psychic damage and have disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn.

This spell’s damage increases by 1d4 when you reach 5th level (2d4), 11th level (3d4), and 17th level (4d4).

Ezrin's Notes

Sold to me by a bagpipe-playing dwarven bard. He seemed happy to be rid of the scroll.

Only cast if you are a sucker for PUNishment.

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Conjuration cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action Range: Touch Components: V, S Duration: Instantaneous

You touch one nonmagical page of written material, such as a letter, form, or ledger sheet, no larger than 1 foot on a side. Two additional sheets of paper appear next to it. Each new sheet bears the same text, markings, layout, and blank spaces as the original at the moment you cast the spell, as well as an obvious watermark reading “Triplicate”.

The new sheets are ordinary nonmagical documents.

Mis-Spelling. When you cast this spell, the GM may choose to roll five d10. If all five rolls are 1, a massive explosion erupts centred on you. Each creature and object within 300 feet of you takes 6d6 fire damage, or half as much on a successful Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC. You take this damage automatically with no save.

GM's Note: The mis-spelling clause is primarily designed to inflict hilarious consequences on a bureaucratic NPC. Use with care.

Ezrin's Notes

A very boring cantrip with a needlessly dramatic name. Suggested for inclusion by The Bursar, who notes it saves him “hours of copying forms”.

There's something vaguely ominous about this spell, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Odd.

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Divination cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action Range: 10 feet Components: V, S Duration: Instantaneous

Choose one object you can see within 10 feet. For a brief moment, you experience its flavor on your tongue as though you had just tasted it. You learn the flavor as described by the GM, but are spared any effects of actually tasting the object.

Ezrin's Notes

Sent to me by a baker who uses it to try his wares. A “have your cake and eat it too” situation.

As soon as I learned about this spell, I set out to explore flavors no mortal tongue could ever touch. Here is a selection of my notes:

a red-hot horseshoe: peppery, metallic concentrated acid: sharply citrus drow poison: almond, floral lightning: metallic, effervescent molten glass: sweet, faintly mineral

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Enchantment cantrip

Casting Time: 1 action Range: 30 feet Components: V or S Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

You implant a short, irritating tune in the mind of one creature you can see within range. As part of casting this spell, you must audibly perform the tune you wish to implant, such as by whistling, humming, singing, or playing it on a musical instrument with which you are proficient.

The target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is distracted by the persistent melody for the duration. While distracted in this way, the creature has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks.

If the spell ends because its duration expires or the caster ends it willingly, the tune lingers in the minds of both the caster and the creature for the next 24 hours, during which time they occasionally and involuntarily recall the melody. This lingering effect is annoying, but has no mechanical impact.

On a successful saving throw, the creature is immune to this spell for 24 hours.

Ezrin's Notes

The bard who passed me this spell also gleefully shared their method for avoiding the side-effect: ask a friend to hit you until you lose concentration. This seemed excessive until I tried the spell myself.

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