Every Little Thing She Does is Magic: Reworking Spells

While spells are not the core of every character it's arguable that magic, and spells in particular, are one of the pillars that make D&D what it is. Of course magic, along with fantastical monsters, is part of what makes a fantasy game, rather than a historical or pseudo-historical one. But, just as much as crawling through a dungeon and fighting a dragon, a wizard casting fireball is one of the iconic images of D&D.

You can slice and dice your categories of spells however you like, schools of magic, or heals, buffs, debuffs, DD, AOE, etc. Mostly, I'm not going to touch those spells, in general terms for 6e. I'm not saying that the rules text for the 6e Fireball spell will be identical to the rules text for the 5e Fireball spell, but you'll still have a big bang, save for half damage, AOE fire spell that you'll recognise. 

I also like cantrips. I remember the days when a first level wizard cast Magic Missile (their only first level spell for the day) then heaved out their staff and hit things around the head, risking their d4 hit points (no automatic maximum in those days) and no armour... because that was all they could do. Ouch. Cantrips offer them a lot more to do and are much more in keeping with their nature. 

But, two big groups of spells stick out as having a problem. These are the Save-or-Suck spells and Summoning spells, albeit for different reasons.

Save-or-Suck Spells

The problem with SOS spells is two-fold. 

1. If they succeed, the encounter often just disappears. At first level, Inflict Wounds is a huge amount of damage. At third level, Hold Person is equally devastating. By eleventh level Hold Monster has some competition, but it's still an encounter killer.
2. If they fail, the wizard (and it's usually the wizard) has just wasted their action, sits back and watches the fighter with their four attacks and bonus action, the ranger with their pet, their two attacks and so on, the monk with their four attack and all the rest do lots of things... Then they eventually line it up again.

So, how do we handle this? There isn't a one-size fits all solution. But there are three general approaches that should work for most cases that I would adopt.

1. There are a group of spells that are mainly used in RP situations, but can be used in combat with caveats. Charm Person is perhaps the most obvious of these. I'm going to leave those largely unchanged. I might roll them into item 2 below, but my instinct is to leave them as they are - I like them as they work, both in combat and in social RP.
2. There are the Hold Person type combat, bang, you're out of the fight spells. There's a whole little family of these, of increasing messiness. I'm going to make them less SOS in general, but less top-end heavy. So, in 5e terms Hold Person wouldn't inflict the paralysed condition, with a save every round, save for no effect, it would, instead, inflict the restrained condition on a fail, the grappled condition on a pass, and either a fixed duration (less bookkeeping) or a save every round to let you move from restrained to grappled, grappled to free. There are also the Inflict Wounds hit for lots of damage or (more rarely) a saving throw for no damage (cantrips are the obvious example here, but I'm not going to change them, they consume no resources and function like a fighter's attacks, you're allowed to miss there). For these spells, there are two choices: 
1. go back to the 3e/3.5e TAC approach
2. a new mechanic. I'm going with this one - I'm going to lower the damage, so it's more in line with the level, and make Inflict Wounds have a lingering charge. Perhaps 2d8+d8 per level when upcast, and it lingers for your Wis modifier rounds or until you hit. You might still swing and miss in the first round, but it's there next round for you to try again.
3. There are some spells, something like Dominate Monster, that lead to good stories, with possessed characters (whether NPCs or, more rarely, PCs) and so on. While evil characters may be rare, and it's hard to imagine good characters using them, they ought to be in the spell list, so... move them to the ritual only list, tie them around poppets, require that classic lock of hair or drop of blood and I don't mind them being and SOS spell - they're out of the encounter ruining game, they're not consuming a resource and they're not leaving the player deflated mid-fight.

There might be some special cases, but these cover most things.

Summoning Spells

Summoning spells, and to a lesser extent pets, can cause the game to grind to a halt. I'm going to do this, my pet is going to do this, my summoned sprite is going to do this and so on. Even with a good player, on top of their game, everything gets to move, act and so forth. 5e tried to make it better than previous editions, by making summoning spells concentration, so you can only have one active at a time, but they're still a significant drag.

So, stealing unashamedly from Pathfinder and the Wild Druid, rather than actually summoning a creature from the MM, you summon an archetypal creature. This creature can be modified by feats (or possibly invocations) and gets stronger with higher level spells (more HP, better AC, more attacks/higher damage etc.) but it's written into the spell description. Feats might let you add a swim speed, a fly speed, extra HP or similar, possibly at a cost, for example, "you can give the creature a fly speed equal to half its move speed but it suffers -1 to AC or a fly speed equal to its move speed but it suffers -1 to AC and -1 to all attack rolls". This cuts out one part of the slow down: looking the monster up, rolling on a random table and so on. Summoned creatures would also have defined abilities that the conjurer would be used to using and would spend an action on (remember in 6e just three actions in a round, no splitting them up into different types) to instruct the creature on what to do. A conjurer could have, potentially three creatures, and command them all - that might have to be amended in play test.

Fudge D&D

How does this work for Fudge D&D? 

In essence all the spells need quite a big rewrite. But some of them carry over. Heal spells can still heal, DD spells still damage the target, AOE spells still work against multiple targets nicely. Utility spells do their stuff. 

SOS spells though... just don't fit in really. If you have a second level spell like Dragon's Breath (that does a 3d6 cone attack for up to a minute, on concentration) how does that stack up against Hold Person in a fudge dice system when you're looking to stack up successes to overcome a challenge? As written, it doesn't. That doesn't mean Hold Person has to disappear, it just gets rewritten: perhaps it lowers the TN for your allies, perhaps the next n attacks gets +1 success, where n depends on how many successes you get or similar. It still has an effect that's similar, but it's not SOS. That permeates throughout the system. Inflict Wounds becomes an attack spell, with a good TN or similar.

Summoning spells in essence summon an ally that acts. Broadly I would copy down the changes from above, just the stats and so on would change from those used in a d20 game to those used in a Fudge game.