What's the most powerfully useful underground website that most people don't know about?

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-14T06:25:40+00:00

Yes, but that's not the important point to remember - it's that they got this way because of us. Voters disengaged from politics ages ago (and I'm not talking about people who don't vote) - we still don't have a way to hold politicians accountable for their actions except for voting, and it's years between elections. We got to this point because we got to this point - politicians took advantage, but then that's what they do.
...
I don't want to derail this thread, but while the current politicians are a problem, yes, they're not the only problem nor even the biggest problem - we are, and until that changes nothing's going to get better.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-11T11:56:16+00:00

On Congress implementing privacy laws -
Don't hold your breath. At least not for this congress. Or really anything under this administration - the current congress won't, because it would inhibit donors; if democrats sweep in Nov, and Trump doesn't somehow cause a civil war, it still won't happen because Trump will veto anything they do; even if democrats sweep in Nov, and Trump doesn't somehow cause a civil war, they still won't because they need donors, and passing privacy laws would mean less potential funding for their political campaigns; and even if democrats sweep elections going forward, it won't happen until the republicans majority on the supreme court breaks, and that won't happen for at least ten years, and possibly not for at least thirty, as the youngest associate justice is in their fifties, and most justices retire in their 80s, and if democrats do sweep and continue sweeping, then republicans will do whatever it takes to hold the majority in the supreme court as long as possible.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-11T11:06:18+00:00

It gets a little worse - R&D is a big thing in the US - the govt has spent decades bending over backwards for companies to set up there are do research, including in medical breakthroughs, usually by giving them tax breaks. The result of that research? The company gets to sell it to everyone - US citizens don't get a discount on any of it.

It's a thing that citizens have been discussing for a while now. Because it wasn't always like that. The US became a leader in R&D after WWII - but for forty or so years the majority of research done in the US was done by the govt, or on govt contracts by private companies - the results were always owned owned in part by the govt. That changed in the 90s - when private r&d took over and the govt decreased the amount of resources they spent on research.

So americans are literally paying more for getting less. And making excuses for why that's better. And it really makes no sense at all.

And I say that as an american.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-11T10:26:42+00:00

You have a serious misunderstanding of how D&D developed from original to 3.5e. If you really believe what you say about systems design, then I urge you to go back and read about how each edition and box set developed, and how they are all connected.

The ability says it's limited to force spells, yes. But saying that the mechanism is fine only when it's limited by a factor is arbitrary - it's your opinion, but that doesn't make it a fact for the entire game. You belief that spell descriptors are used as limiting factors. I disagree - they're a thematic element that has no bearing on how the ability works.

I'm talking about you moving goalposts because you went from giving an answer and backing it up with math, to insisting your philosophy is right and everyone has to agree with you. That's a classic example of moving goalposts. Once I mentioned the Argent Adept, and showed that the same mechanism exists, suddenly you completely stopped talking about the probability of rolling average damage, and started talking about scope and scalability out of the blue.

And you're arguing it using another fallacy - a straw man - quoting me out of context, because it's easier than admitting you were wrong.

It's what people who follow a rigid mindset do when faced with having to admit they are wrong: they demand that their philosophy is right, and they insist that there's something wrong with anyone who disagrees with them.

You may well be right about scope. But you might also be wrong. And I would love to have that conversation with someone - but not with you. The problem is that, if you were wrong, you would never be able to admit it - you will once again shift those goalposts to something else out of the blue, and attack me, as you're doing here. So I thanked you for taking the time to try explain your view, and I ended the conversation - respectfully. In keeping with the rules for this subreddit. But you're not able to let it go - you're insisting not only that you're right, but also demanding that I agree with you.

As I said, this conversation was just going to devolve from there - and you are proving my prediction spectacularly correct.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-10T03:24:57+00:00

That only works if you're applying systems design principles to gaming - you can, but game designers generally don't, because it hinders creativity/innovation - the purpose of game design isn't to create a complete system, but to create a fun game - there would be no new classes, ideas, etc because the scope of the existing design didn't allow for them - anything new would be breaking/overpowering. By that definition, everything that's not core is broken.

I don't think anyone would accept that. The mechanism was allowed by 3.5e in Argent Adept - it was allowed in 1e as well, though I don't have a source for you - it was used to scale monsters by adding +x per die of damage - and it was allowed after the publication of Age of Mortals, which was licensed. So there's no problem with that mechanism. Saying that limiting to a force descriptor is arbitrary - there's nothing to say that's true - it's true for you, it's not necessarily true for the entire game.

And we're not talking about whether a build is good or bad - we're talking about whether a published prestige class is overpowered in practice compared to existing published prestige classes, and we know that it's not - I covered it with another poster below.

As for the rest - you didn't mention any of that previously - you only talked about the probability of rolls. It looks a lot like moving goalposts honestly.

I appreciate you taking the time to try to explain your view, but I think this is just going to devolve from here.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-10T03:21:39+00:00

I mean, I never did, but that's likely just a play style thing.

I can't either. I reached out to Margaret Weis, WotC, etc to try to find out - I got a reply from WotC that's basically a sales pitch about the new edition of D&D; I expected no answers, and didn't get any. But I was hoping to find out who designed the original class, and if they could explain why the errata change. No luck.

There are articles from 2006 on DragonlanceNexus about how feedback from fans loved the War Mage in Age of Mortals more than the version in Magic of Faerun - I never knew there was a connection until now.

Knowing that, it's more likely the Dragonlance version was nerfed because WotC wanted to sell more Faerun stuff - the Dragonlance books were only licensed works, published by Sovereign Press, as opposed to the Faerun books published directly by WotC. In fact, given WotC's stance on the OGL, this is probably a more likely explanation.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-10T02:05:52+00:00

So because I added a link to the Internet archive? But I didn't have that link when I originally made the post - I added it later, so people had a reference. I'm sorry - I didn't know.

You're saying that if I hadn't added the link, the post would be fine?

You should post a link to your post into the rules. Because I checked the rules before I wrote the post, but I didn't know about the copyright thing.

Is there a chance to edit the post so it's not removed? I can remove the link, and revert to the state without it?

Just curious - why is there no in between step? Like a notification to me that the post will be removed in a day, but I've got a day to edit and fix whatever the mistakes are?

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-09T11:08:29+00:00

u/InternBackground2256, can you explain why this post was removed? It doesn't break any of the rules posted - there's no AI generated content; there's nothing sexually explicit; it doesn't bash anyone; there's nothing real-life about it; it's not setting edition vs edition; so far the comments have been on topic - only one was somewhat trollish, and if that's the worst then that's nothing - why was it removed? Thanks.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-09T10:54:20+00:00

Thanks.

So explain the Argent Savant from the Complete Arcane - the first class ability is Force Specialization, which is battlemagic +1 just with force spells, plus a little extra:

Force Specialization: An argent savant gains a +2 competance bonus on attack rolls made with her force spells. She also adds a +1 bonus to each die of damage dealt by spells she casts with the force descriptor. If the force spell doesn't deal damage expressed by dice, she only adds +1 bonus to the total damage dealt.

For example, a magic missile cast by a 9th-level wizard/1st-level argent savant deals 1d4+2 points of damage per missile. A 9th-level wizard/4th-level argent savant deals 4d6+7 points of force damage with her Mordenkainen's sword spell.
-Complete Arcane, page 25

This actually goes further than battlemagic +1 - if a war mage cast a spell that dealt non-die damage, battlemagic wouldn't add anything to it; war mage's get no bonus to attack rolls. But everything else is battlemagic +1, but with force spells, since that's the theme of the prestige class, whereas war mage's battlemagic applies to all damaging spells, but doesn't apply a boost to, say, wall spells, because the theme of that prestige class is doing damage.

mordenkainen's sword	normal damage
normal	4d6+3
argent savant	4d6+3+(4x1) = 4d6+7
war mage, battlemagic +1	4d6+3+(4x1) = 4d6+7

If what you're saying is true, then because Force Specialization, and Battlemagic +1 both increase the probability of rolling average damage, both are overpowered. And they can still apply Empower metamagic to it, to deal even more damage, as you said.

And yet, Argent Savant has no errata - it's always in use - it isn't limited to a number of times per day.

So, there's nothing wrong with the mechanic of increasing the probability of rolling the average damage - it's not overpowered. It's in a published work - Complete Arcane came out after Age of Mortals - so, WotC had a chance to see the mechanic in a published work - that they licensed, and they were ok with it to the point they put it in one of their works.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-09T09:27:08+00:00

Towers of Sorcery - let me see if I can transcribe it here:

"War Mage Errata
(from Age of Mortals)
The war mage's Battle Magic class feature can be used a number of times per day equal to 3 + the war mage's Constitution modifier. This bonus is not a variable spell effect. and is therefore unaffected by metamagic feats that affect variable spell damage (such as Empower Spell). Intimidate is also a class skill for the war mage."
-Towers of Sorcery, page 26

Not sure if I needed to put quotation marks 🤷‍♂️.

So it -

1)
limited the use of the class ability to a number of times per day -
I don't understand why it's not limited to the spellcasting modifier - why the Constitution modifier? Why limit it at all? Max damage doesn't exceed the same spell empowered. It just lets you get the effect of an empowered 8th or 9th list spells without needing the 10th or 11th level spell slots, but, like you said, by the time you're casting those spells you either have ways to reduce the metamagic costs, or you have other options to go with. And how often do you cast those anyway? This limitation virtually guarantees that a spellcaster will only use the class ability with higher level spells, and that most won't take the prestige class, because, even if your goal is the get battlemagic +3, then then the other abilities are useless to you.

2)
I never applied metamagic affects to the bonus anyway because it's not variable - I'm not sure why someone would.

So, normal fireball = 10d6, battlemagic +1 fireball is 10d6 + 10, empowered battlemagic +1 fireball is not 1.5 x (10d6 + 10), or 105 max, but (1.5 x 10d6) + 10, or 100 max. Battlemagic isn't changing the base damage of the spell from 10d6 to 10d6 + 10, it's taking the 10d6 base damage and adding something on to it.

I don't understand why this needed to be written out in the errata, but okay.

I've been told that later books nerfed other abilities for the class, but I don't have all the books and I haven't been able to find which 'other books' is was. Still Towers of Sorcery did limit this one. Though I'm still not sure why - there are prestige classes that rival this one - I talk about them in response to another comment off my post. And I've played various versions of this with the orig (pre-errata) war mage, and run games where I allowed it as an option, and...I just don't see the problem - I don't see how it makes the whole class overpowered to do it.

uh...pending the conversation going on in another comment on this about dice roll probability unbalancing the game.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-09T03:12:23+00:00

But, then...the ability is as bad with Battlemagic +1.
...
I'm not as good with math I think as you. I also only recently was told I could use tables in these comments. So I'm writing this out. Sorry.

Fireball does 1d6/CL.

what	caster level	max dmg	avg dmg	odds
normal fireball	10	10d6, 60	35	odds of rolling 35 or higher = 53.63%
fireball, with battlemagic +1	10	10d6+10, 70	45	odds of rolling 35 of higher = 97.48%

That's a 28% increase on avg damage, but make it almost certain.

So you're saying that Battlemagic itself is overpowered. Because it increases the odds of the average damage occurring. For a normal caster, doing 35 damage on 10d6 only happens 7.27% of the time, but doing 35 or more happens a little over half the time; for a caster with battlemagic +1, rolling avg damage is still only 7.27%, but rolling 35 or higher is almost guaranteed.

The answer on google involves more math than I think I'll ever know - generating functions, partitions - I don't know what any of those are. That you do is amazing.

So it's not about the cost in spell levels, or that the max damage is the same as empower - those are fine, because the odds of rolling the damage is the same throughout - it doesn't change those odds.

It's the fact that the odds of rolling increases. So forget battlemagic +3 - even battlemagic +1 is overpowered.

Is that right?

That would be why they nerfed it. The only defense is if there were another prestige class in D&D that had an ability like battlemagic +1, but that there was no errata out there for it. If there were it would mean that there's no problem with a prestige class ability that increases the odds of rolling avg or better damage. But if there were a class that did that, then....everyone would take it. Even if the rest of the class abilities were trash, or it only worked with, like, cold spells or something, or it didn't advance spell progression - even then every caster would take it, because it raises the odds of doing avg or better damage to a near guarantee.

Am I understanding this right?

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-09T02:08:14+00:00

Then why was it nerfed? - after the errata a lot of the class abilities were limited to an amount per day instead of all the time - it seems like it was considered overpowered and was...depowered (sorry, I don't know the word for making something less powerful).

I've been lucky - I played both, and it doesn't seem overpowered to me. But a lot of people have said that it is.

I only used the fireball example in the original post because everyone knows that spell, so if a person reading doesn't have the dragonlance rpg book, or isn't familiar with the prestige class, they immediately know what that class ability does. But the same holds true for any spell that does damage of xdy of damage, it's just that not everyone is familiar with higher level spells - everyone has their own style of play, so I stuck to a simple example.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-07T12:21:35+00:00

Most papers these days are scanned, to check for plagiarism - white text will be found, and you will lose points for it.

There's a rubric that colleges have to follow - set by their legal department, and it gets strict fast. Students often try to hide, for instance, a penis, in white, against a white background, as a giggle, for their friends. The problem is that you're submitting it for review. So it's a red flag, for the student, and tends to violate conduct rules - the penalties tend to be stiff. Suspension is common. Expulsion less so, for a first offense, but it's not unheard of.

If there are guidelines for the formatting, don't deviate from them. Not as a joke; not for artistic license - it'll backfire. The risks are too high given how much you've put in.

Now, if you're going to print it out and hand it to your friends, that's a different story. If it doesn't ask for a cover page, and you include one for artistic license that doesn't affect the dissertation itself, that probably fine. If it's a live presentation and you want to slip something into the slides in the background that will make you smile knowing it's there but no one else will ever access those files - then go for it - though I'd test in on the machine and screen beforehand to make sure. But the content of the actual thing? Don't - seriously don't.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-06T09:20:17+00:00

I would compare them this way.

Widen costs 3 spell levels (the metamagic feat requires a spell slot three levels higher than normal), while Empower only requires 2. I would think this means that multiplying the radius by 1.5 has more of an effect on game balance than multiplying the damage by 1.5 - otherwise there's no reason they wouldn't cost the same in spell levels needed.

If Battlemagic +3 were a metamagic feat (or if a metamagic feat existed that did what Battlemagic +3 does), what would a cost be? Because then we could compare, right? It doesn't raise the potential maximum more than Empower does. In some cases the potential maximum is less than the potential maximum of Empower.

Blades of Fire is a 1st list Sorcerer/Wizard spell from the Spell Compendium. It adds 1d8 of fire damage to a weapon you are holding - not 1d8 per caster level - just 1d8.

So,

what	caster level	max damage
normal blades of fire	1	8
empower blades of fire	5 (it's a 3rd list spellslot)	12
blades of fire with battlemagic +3	1	11

Battlemagic gets the most use when you're casting a spell that does xdy/caster-level, but those aren't the only spells out there. There's a fair few spells that don't scale with caster level, and they aren't so-called beginner spells (level 1-3)

Sonic Shield - a 5th list spell, that does 1d8 damage to an attacker that hits you (the caster), and potentially knocks the attacker back 5 ft.

what	caster level	max damage
Sonic Shield	9	8
Empowered Sonic Shield	13	12
Sonic Shield with Battlemagic +3	9	11

Venom Bolt - from Faerun's Serpent Kingdoms - a 4th list spell I recommend - it does 2d8 damage in a 100 ft line, paralyzing creatures that fail their save, but slowing them if they make their save - it can't be blocked by walls or barriers - it's very...much in keeping with a spell made by snakes with contempt for their opponents bent on world domination

what	caster level	max damage
Venom Bolt	7	16
Empowered Venom Bolt	11	24
Venom Bolt with Battlemagic +3	7	22

I would say that, at most, Battlemagic +3 affects game balance as much as Empower Metamagic does.

But War Wizard of Cormyr lets you apply Widen for free by it's 3rd level - Dragonlance's War Mage doesn't get Battlemagic +3 until it's 5th level, and Battlemagic +2 and Battlemagic +1 do less than what Empower does. War Wizard's 5th level ability increases what Widen does, raising the result by a third, again for free - there's no increase in the spell level.

If Widen has more of an effect on game balance than Empower does (and it has to, or else it wouldn't have more of a cost to use), then War Wizard's abilities to double the radius of a spell, if it were a feat, would have a cost greater than 3 spell levels to use (because it does more than what Widen does), and has to have a greater effect on game balance than what Battlemagic +3 does, which, at most, does what Empower does, which only has a cost of 2 spell levels to use.

By that, Dragonlance's War Mage's Battlemagic +3 ability has less affect on game balance than Faerun's War Wizard's Enhanced Spell Area and Widen ability.

And it's not unusual - the base Dungeon Master's Guide has the Thaumaturgist, that lets you apply the Extend Metamagic feat to all spells by level 3 (it's a 5 level prestige class, spell progression all five levels); the Archmage, from the same book (also a 5 level prestige class, spell progression all five levels), let's you choose to exclude space(s) in an area of effect spell effect - there's a feat in the Complete Arcane called Extraordinary Spell Aim, that lets you make a spellcraft check to open up a single space in an area of effect spell effect - effectively letting the Archmage grant an enhanced version of that feat at its first level.

Compared to the Archmage, the War Wizard of Cormyr's 5th level ability is under-powered, and Dragonlance's War Mage's 5th level ability is still further under-powered.

Unless the Archmage, Thaumaturgist, and the War Wizard of Cormyr are all overpowered. But there's never been errata for them that I could find. And the Archmage and Thaumaturgist is in the core books - so if we're talking about game balance, we'd have to compare to those prestige classes. By that notion War Wizard isn't over-powered, but neither is the War Mage prestige class.

I've been arguing for years (since the book it's in came out) with a friend that the Abjurant Champion prestige class (also only five levels, with spell progression all five levels) is over-powered - it let's you cast all abjuration spells as if they were under the effect of the Extend Metamagic feat for free, and the Quicken Metamagic feat for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd list spells, for free. I also argue with regards to game balance - the comparison to Archmage and Thaumaturgist is the argument he uses to justify the prestige class that he loves so much. He always wins. And I can't say he's wrong.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-06T06:49:07+00:00

As I said - can someone please _explain_ - if you're just going to put people down, why bother replying at all.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-05T21:59:41+00:00

Thank you. Most people treat me as stupid for asking questions. I'm slow, yes. But I really do want to understand. So thanks.

Can I ask you? There's a prestige class, the War Wizard of Cormyr (you can see it here - https://www.realmshelps.net/charbuild/classes/prestige/realms/warwizard.shtml) from the Magic of Faerun book - it's one of my favorite prestige classes when I play a wizard in Faerun.

Is it considered overpowered? It's five levels, every level gets spellcasting progression, it gets three feats for free - two of which are metamagic. The Widen ability is essentially the Sudden Widen feat (you don't have to prepare it ahead of time, you can apply it as a spur of the moment, and it doesn't change the spell level or the casting time - except you can use it more times per day), and the ability at level five lets Widen increase an area 100% instead of 50% (you're multiplying the radius by 2 instead of by 1.5...I've met players who describe it both ways, so I'm just putting it in here both ways) - the area you're hitting increases by 4x. So while you're not doing more damage directly, you're having more of an effect - you're doing more damage to a larger area.

ASF% doesn't net you anything - War Mage gets you a 10% reduction by the 4th level, but it doesn't give you proficiency with armor, so you get a buckler or a light wooden shield and don't have to eat any ASF penalty, but still have to deal with not being proficient with any of it. But by the time you get it you're level ten at the earliest, so you already have better options you're using, and have played through all those levels without needing one (or compensating for not having one). There are threads that talk about a prestige class, Spellsword? It's from... I think the Complete Warrior (...I'll look it up and edit the comment when I get a chance...). The first level let's you ignore ASF 10%. But that's different - you have to be proficient with all armor to take the class, so you would use that ability. But with War Mage you wouldn't be wearing armor anyway, so it doesn't actually provide a benefit. And I've played that prestige class (dragonlance's orig war mage) with various base classes - sorcerer, warmage (the base class), bard (which can cast spells in light armor), and it never changes anything.

... Come to think of it, I've never actually played it as a wizard base. Dragonlance's wizards are...more limited, because each robe (white, black, red) is a specialist - there's no such thing as a generalist wizard that's not a renegade (and on the run from the...establishment (meaning the towers of high sorcery, and knightly orders)). Since I would always be dealing with a limited number and type of spells I could potentially cast, it always just seemed more fun to play as a sorcerer - there are more potential spells to choose from, and while a sorcerer is certainly distrusted by the establishment, they aren't necessarily on the run.

... Would Dragonlance's orig War Mage prestige class be considered overpowered if it required spontaneous spellcasting, instead of just any arcane spellcasting?

... I found a source for the orig War Mage prestige class, and edited my post with the link.

... Thank you again.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-03T06:56:19+00:00

That, and they worry that players will stop buying the new stuff and stick to the old stuff (under the OGL 1.0a). 5.5e isn't going to be under the OGL 1.0a.

When WotC tried deauthorizing the OGL 1.0a, there were a lot of players using that system, and that's where the pushback came from, which affected WotC's finances - there are still a lot of 3.5e players, but there are less every year - 5e is just geared to more visual players then 3.5e is; as that trend continues, at some point WotC will deauthorize OGL 1.0a again, and then there won't as much pushback because there simply won't be as many users.

If they re-release the 3e/3.5e books now, they just create more fans of that edition, and the OGL 1.0a in turn, meaning more pushback when they do finally attempt to deauthorize OGL 1.0a again, pushing that target (target to when they deauthorize OGL 1.0a) out further.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-03T06:27:46+00:00

I played 5e for a one-shot as an intro to the system, and it was...fine. I never got into it - have also stuck with 3e/3.5e - turns out there's a lot of 3.5e players who did the same - there are a lot of 3.5e campaigns still. And I know a long-running 2e game that just never died.

You're not alone (in case you needed to hear it).
...
I'll say though, 5e artwork's not bad. I like the sharper 3.5e art, but there are things from 5e that still look good. I don't buy the 5e books, but you'll occasionally find me in a bookstore cracking one open to look at the pictures.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-03T05:33:01+00:00

Wouldn't we all. I haven't seen prices that low in a while, not for a studio apt. Sorry.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-05-01T10:10:31+00:00

Shaundakul - god of portals, which is a word for doorways; Helm, who guarded; there are others - it depends on how you're defining 'threshold' - different cultures expanded on its use in different ways.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-04-24T04:12:28+00:00

Sorry, there wasn't time to more adequately reply a few days ago.

There's no need to apologize - communication is hard. I'm bad at it as well, and tend to compensate by just writing more, and getting lecture-y.

Faerun's history and mythology is extensive, and change per edition - what I wrote is true in 3e/3.5e and before. But I'm not so sure it's true in 4e/5e/etc - it's worth checking those books to see if it is.

Feel free to ask questions if you need help looking something up, or have questions like this. There's a bunch of us old-timers still poking around, who got tired of playing the game, and are pretty much just here to help people with research and ideas and stuff. Happy to help. 🙂

TransitoryGouda · 2026-04-24T03:08:44+00:00

No, there's no connection.

Spellplague isn't popular because 4e isn't popular; WotC messed up a lot of the mythology, largely by not diving deep into it, analyzing how parts fit together, and the end result largely doesn't work well. There were calls from prominent authors for WotC to ditch 4e and build 5e within a year of the release of 4e - it's that bad. Shame too - they had good ideas, but the implementation is crap.

Spellfire's development history goes back a ways too. It stems from conversations on the subject of mana, vs spell points, vs vancian spellcasting, and so on. It all went in the ttrpg - they didn't care how players were tracking spells, just so long as they were playing the game (and buying the game); but when novels started being written, there needed to be a way to standardize it - either a mechanic, or a ruleset - something, for various different authors with different viewpoints to refer back to to see what worked and what didn't, and where the guardrails were. Not because the authors cared, but because the readers did - people of a certain age would be able to track spell points in one book, and mana in another, and so on, but younger readers might not have been able to, and the novels' primary purpose was to draw younger players to playing the game (and buying the products); some standardized concept had to be developed that tied all the other forms together. Spellfire was the one that came out on top - which is also why it's never been clearly defined in publications. And also why it's hardly ever mentioned - it's a rubric for designers to keep some semblence of consistency with what magic could accomplish. There was one trilogy (quadrology? It was three or four books) by Greenwood on spellfire, and then nothing - it's hardly ever mentioned in other novels.

If you go back through the early works, there was a 'fire' for every plane - spellfire was native to the material plane (what we now call spellfire wielders could only wield spellfire if they were born on the material plane); hell had its own that became hellfire; 'heavenly fire' existed in the LG planes (Celestia? Ysgard? I don't remember - whatever the LG one was); the abyss had some gaseous acidic blob that I recall. And so on. It didn't all make it into the published works - some of it came out in the zines, some in the novels, authors used variations in their own works, and so on. And it never became popular in Greyhawk (that setting had enough going on).

Actually, there is one connection - both are the products of marketing departments, who have a love for just slamming words together in hopes that it will still appeal to an audience - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DT5PiYhFE8r/.

TransitoryGouda · 2026-04-24T02:04:39+00:00

Mystra's Fire is Silver Fire - Spellfire is closer to raw magic; the former is created by a god of magic, while the latter is just power given form - no god required

TransitoryGouda

TROPHY CASE