Maybe you like a certain spell but the way it’s described isn’t quite how you see it working for your character. Well we’re going to talk about the do’s and don’ts of flavoring your dungeons and dragons spells. Stick around.
What you want to remember about flavoring your spells is that it’s all about how the spell looks and not necessarily about changing any of the information as written.
So as an example, let’s flavor the lightning bolt spell. As it’s written it says that
A stroke of lightning forming a line of 100 feet long and 5 feet wide blasts out from you in a direction you choose. Each creature in the line must make a Dexterity saving throw. A creature takes 8d6 lightning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
So for my storm sorcerer I see it more like he’s melding the lightning, moving it with his mind, you can see the forearms tensing as he feels the energy flow through him. I take lightning bolt and instead of a long beam of lightning energy, I make it a sort of ball of crackling light that rushes at each of the enemies one at a time. It moves so fast that they barely have a moment to comprehend what’s happening before it’s already colliding with their body. It moves through them in only a few seconds, my sorcerer stands there smiling as the energy crackles around him still.
I have not only taken the spell and made it unique to my character, giving him life in the process by describing him actually using the magic, but I have done it without changing the rules of the spell.
It still moved 100 feet and in the 5 foot wide line, but I flavored the actual appearance of it.
Now I’ll probably say this a lot, but Liam O’brien is one of the very best at this. He takes his characters and describes every little nuance of their action, really bringing them to life as he does.
Go into the details, after all, dungeons and dragons is a game where we use our imagination! Everyone at the table wants to bring the story and picture to life as much as possible, that way it’s sort of like a shared experience in everyone’s mind.
Just make sure you talk to your DM if you’re feeling like changing any of the dice, or mechanics of the spell, because at that point you’re home-brewing a spell and that takes a little bit of skill. So talk to your DM
Hopefully that example helped get your own spell flavoring creativity juices flowing.
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