Spell: Animate Lump

Art by Lex Cazimi

     Recently I have found myself feeling the need to try my hand at writing spells, something that I find a little intimidating because it can get rather long and coming up with an escalation at each jump always feels a little overwhelming to me. Recently Nick, from Breaker Press Games made a video where he made a spell for DCC using Knave 2E's system of naming a spell and then worked from there. This video really got me in the mood to give making spells a shot. Doing what he did in that video is definitely in the cards for us but today we have a spell that I've been thinking about for a while.

    So this is how we get Animate Lump, the 1st level wizard spell. This was made after I read over the spell Breathe Life in the core rulebook. I like the idea of a wizard animating things. What I didn't care for with that spell was that it was both not swingy enough and didn't offer enough control. That seems like it might contradictory and it is! What I mean is that when this spell is cast, the most pathetic of your options are temporary. As it is written, this is fine, because the spell doesn't have a cost component unless you get to the really high end. On it's higher end this spell allows the creation of golems and other animated guardians at a steep price with a great amount of control over what comes out the other side. 

I think there is room for two options to expand the ability to create constructs.

The first is linked below, Animate Lump. This allows a wizard to create a permanent servant that, for the most part, isn't better than having a hireling but does allow a creative mage with gold to burn to create a useful and potentially interesting tool for dungeon exploration or small conveniences such as a torch bearer that can and will advance down a trapped hallway without a second though. The trade off is that it's costly. the circle costs 100gp in materials, the golem costs another 50gp. It takes one day and one point of spell burn. this is a steep cost at lower levels and allows the wizard to experiment during down time at higher levels when money is a little more available. 

 The second... I think the creation of golems under Breathe Life offers too much control. Magic is supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous. I think that the creation of a golem should work similar to sword magic. There should be dice rolls, there should be powers that you never expected to be added to the golem. There should be strange things that you couldn't foresee that are a part of the golem's creation. I think, when I am more familiar with writing spells, I'll write myself a higher level spell that emulates the nature of sword magic in the creation of a golem or animated construct. 

 

Here is Animate Lump, I hope you get some mileage out of it!
Animate Lump