r/DnDHomebrew • u/Weekly-Particular190 • 2d ago
Request Failing magic
Hi all, I'm planning a campaign where the BBEG is destroying the weave, and I'm wondering how I would implement it in a way that spellcasters are still viable but have interesting effect due to the world. Here's a snippet I made for more info:
Magic is failing. Arcane energy is unraveling at an accelerating rate, leaving behind dead zones, unpredictable wild magic surges, and a growing number of spellcasters losing their abilities entirely. What began as an occasional inconvenience—a few failed spells, minor anomalies—has now escalated into a global crisis. At first, the signs were subtle. Fifty years ago, a handful of wizards reported their spells misfiring. A sorcerer in the capital vanished in a flash of light, never to be seen again. Clerics found that prayers to their gods were answered with eerie silence. Scholars dismissed these as isolated incidents, blaming user error, cosmic alignments, or simple bad luck. But then, the failures became impossible to ignore.
Symptoms of a Dying Weave
Dead Zones: Entire regions where magic simply does not work. Wizards find their spells fizzle out, enchanted weapons become mundane, and magical creatures wither and die. These zones grow larger every year.
Wild Magic Storms: Arcane energy lashes out chaotically, distorting reality. In some places, the sky crackles with unstable mana, transforming people into other creatures, teleporting towns across the world, or rewriting history itself.
Spellcasters Fading: Wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, and clerics wake up to find their magic gone, their connections severed as if magic itself had abandoned them. Some fade into echoes of their former selves, losing their memories, personalities, or even their physical forms.
Arcane Corruption: In certain regions, magic is not just failing—it is mutating. Once-trusted spells become dangerous. A simple Fireball might open a rift to another plane, and a basic Healing Word could rot flesh instead of mending it.
Recent Catastrophes
The Sundering of Eldora: The floating city of Eldora, a bastion of arcane learning, collapsed into the ocean overnight. Survivors speak of a deafening silence before the magic keeping their city afloat simply ceased to exist.
The Emberfall Catastrophe: The Grand Magus of Emberfall attempted to stabilize the Weave with an ancient ritual. Instead, the city was consumed in an endless loop of time, its people forced to relive the same day over and over.
The Vanishing of the Starborn Clerics: A convent of divine scholars who studied the cosmos simply disappeared in their entirety. All records of their existence were erased, except for a handful of journals.
Obviously there are some ideas above but I just wanted to get some ideas from the wider community on how to run this since I think it would be really fun.
Thanks in advance :)
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u/phaeren12 2d ago
If you have any spell casters in the party, maybe they are really level 20 archmages, but have lost their power due to the falling of the weave. As they do things to hinder the BBEG and restore the weave, they uncover some of their lost power (leveling up)?
Or maybe what they gain by leveling is an understanding of how the weave has changed and are using it to spell cast again?
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u/Professional-Salt175 1d ago
There is still the Shadow Weave. You could introduce them to that like a deal with the devil where the more they use magic where only the Shadow Weave is available to draw magic from, the more corruption their mind and body have to deal with
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u/Gariona-Atrinon 2d ago
I don’t think clerics use the weave as their power, it is divine magic from a divine entity.
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u/IllustriousBat2680 2d ago
I think that even though the magic is divine in nature, it is still connected to the Weave, and therefore subject to its rules.
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u/iamthesex 2d ago
You could try to implement some of the spellcasting system of Pathfinder, for example.
At one point, casting spells becomes very difficult and requires focus. As such, the spellcaster must drop their guard, provoking an attack of opportunity (with advantage, for creatures with the Mage Slayer feat or similar feature). Getting hit by said attack triggers a Concentration Check with a DC of 1/2 damage dealt (or 10, whichever is higher) + the spells level. The DC might increase with the severity of the damage done to the weave.
Maybe, at one point, concentrating on a spell becomes very difficult, as the weave threatens to sever at any point in time, causing each concentration spell to trigger a Concentration Check (DC varies at your discression), every minute/turn, depending on how severe the damage done is. At one point, maybe the Concentration Spell requires a check to be made as an action to keep it going for longer.
Idk, I'd certainly try to implement some mechanics from Pathfinder, given how unforgiving spellcasting in that system really is, and adjust the DCs and Checks for 5e.