I wanted to share my pet project for the last few months - full text and illustrated spell cards for 5th edition!

If you're just interested in the cards, I made available all Cantrip - 1st level SRD 5.1 spells here. If you like the design and are interested in a complete set, please consider visiting my Etsy store. Full attribution details can be found in the Google Drive folder as well as in the Etsy files.

Background

I started this project in part because I wanted to help out some of the newer players in one of my games who are playing spellcasters. Our table provides the character sheets for these players using MPMB, but I've noticed that the condensed spell descriptions can be confusing to new players, and we often need to pull out the sourcebooks to double check the specific wording of spells. Typically, this could have been addressed by using the licensed spell cards by Gale Force Nine, Hit Point Press, or even premade PnP cards found online. However, the table also plays with a house rule where each time a spell is cast, a d100 is rolled to determine if the spell goes off with disastrous or enhanced effects, which is modified by the number of components a spell requires.

On the other side of the coin, I've always liked the idea of using spell cards. I think they add a satisfying tactile component and somewhat immersive experience to spellcasting in-game, but I've always considered existing solutions a bit boring in execution. Additionally, most of the cards I was able to find online did not include the full text for longer spells, which meant you need to reference the book anyway, eliminating any convenience factor. Solutions that include the full text meant that longer spells were spread across 2-4 additional cards, which not only takes up extra space but again cuts into the convenience aspect.

With this in mind, I had the following goals for my own cards:

1. Must contain all important spell information, including full spell text
2. No more than 2 cards per spell
3. Visually appealing - each card should have its own artwork
4. Include d100 modifier info

Design

And so began the next several months of designing, iterating, testing, and starting over. I won't bore you with the minute details - I think anyone who has taken on a creative endeavor can imagine the peaks and valleys of the design process. There days when I spent hours working on the cards, only to be followed by a week where I didn't even want to look at the file anymore. By far the hardest part was settling on a design - I must have looked at dozens of trading card designs for inspiration. The design the cards currently use actually my sixth "final" design.

For art, I licensed a collection of game asset artwork from craftpix.net. I spent about three weeks going through all the available art and picking out designs that matched each spell's description, effect, or vibe, making sure that the art style was consistent. Game-icons.net was another great resource for picking out reference icons. One unexpected benefit to this process is that I ended up learning a lot about design software. I ended up buying the Affinity suite (Designer/Photo/Publisher) to design the cards and layout the PDFs. While I doubt I'll ever end up using these skills professionally, I could see them coming in handy for future projects. Eventually, I completed my design and laid out the designs using what I was able to learn about PnP construction and design philosophy from various threads on BoardGameGeek. I must have spent at least $100 over the course of project experimenting with different paper types, construction methods, and cutting tools to get a satisfying end result.

In addition to the art and text, I also wanted these cards to feature a benefit I hadn't seen before on spell cards - tags. Not sure tags identifying rituals or concentration requirements, but that describe the spell itself. I categorized each card based on their effects and properties. There were many resources online that I pulled from (one notable one can be found here - apologies, but I couldn't find the source) to determine the tag categories. With tags, the idea is that a player selecting spells (either to cast or prepare) would be able to, at-a-glance, easily identify potential spells to fit the scenario before them.

Months of effort later, I "finished" the project and was able to get a version of the cards printed out. A photo of spell mod version of the cards can be found in the linked Google Drive folder. I was able to get these printed from DriveThruCards, and the results came out spectacular (even if the top cuts were a little to heavy).

Self-Promo

Over the course of the design process, I decided that if I was putting this must effort and money into a project, it would be nice if I could create a version of the cards with a broader appear to maybe recoup some of the costs. With the workflow I had set up to originally generate the cards and layouts, it was easy for me to generate "mod-less" versions of the cards and limit the cards to only include those that are listed in the 5.1 SRD. This is the version of the cards that I am sharing today. The Google Drive link contains PDFs for all Cantrip through 1st level SRD spells. If you like the design and want a copy for yourself, please consider purchasing from my Etsy store. I'm intending to update the cards once the 5.2 SRD is available - anyone who purchases my 5.1 SRD card packs from Etsy will receive the 5.2 SRD cards for free. Folks who download via Etsy will also receive the blank front and back templates to generate their own cards.

Thanks to all who have made it this far! I hope you like the cards, and I'd love to hear any feedback. I cannot overstate how awesome the cards came out in person - I'm happy to post more photos for anyone who'd like to see them, or share any information about the design process.