That sounds like a great magic system for a fantasy novel series. Not certain about a game, but these sorts of systems that reward character creativity are exactly the sort of things that shape worlds, and get people talking.

The concept of a shadow having an age is just fantastic

Why would we want s balanced thing? WE CRAVE POWER

I love this sort of homebrew. As a DM, it let's you play around and have a new way to control things. But it can also lead players to clever loopholes and workarounds. They may take you by surprise, but those are some of the best stories from games.

I love this idea. Much more flavorful than spell slots and adds a fun “magic is everywhere but doesn’t just bend to the will of mortals” angle

One of my players came up with a cool idea where magical power was tied to altitude, so stronger spells required being physically higher off the ground. So wizards used towers because the highest floor would have access to the strongest magic, and a lot of towers had been haphazardly built up over the years to push the boundaries of what they could do in them.

I can imagine a wizard with a squire whose entire purpose is to use the Decanter of Endless Water to fuel the wizard's spells

I can just imagine a fire focus wizard knowing an army is coming. When the army approaches, they see a great pile of wood, a mile long and several feet high. The wizard calmly turns his back to them, and casts the create bonfire cantrip. And with an inferno suddenly set alight behind him, the wizard turns to face the army once more, with unstoppable fiery magic to throw to his hearts content.

What if there was a literally dark lord who had a shadow focus? He had a bunch of minions that go around casting darkness, hallucinatory terrain, and maddening darkness on loop, spreading shadows. Obviously spreading permanent shadows is dangerous so the players would have to go into the darkness to stop him. However, the deeper towards the center, the older the shadows, therefor the more powerful the Dark Lord and his minions get.

This seems incredible for a narrative heavy game. It will really make it feel like a story where magic is complex and requires skill to use.

This is exactly how "Adventures in Rokugan" works. This is a 5e professional grade book in the setting of Legends of the Five Rings you can buy and they've figured out the details and balance for you. Playing a caster is so immersive in the setting! You really care about temples, thresholds, and the weather. Please boost this comment so more people learn about Rokugan.

My groups been running with this in altered form, since we tend to be very Caster Heavy parties and play at 10+ levels. We've mostly started fleshing out the fussy Focus and playing around with it, some letting concentration on Cantrips to produce effects to start the eventual shuffle up the early spell levels - produce bonfire into more fire, eventually into Fireball and that's given spell casters a really dynamic feal. We've really liked it - honestly, especially since we run with allready buffed martial classes. We've found it also helps solve some of the rest issues people can have when playing with very few combats a day.

This would work so well for a more raw magic world! For sure making use of this and the rules for martials in a hardcore game in future

Your martial adjustments sound really good. And the fussy focus idea sounds really tight in a "this is rough, but it's life" sort of way. It forces players to sometimes set up the conditions they need to be at their best, not just be there for free. I like it. Helps balance the "caster - martial" divide even more. Good stuff! (thanks for the share!)

I LOVE this idea. As primarily a Druid main, this adds SO much flavour to the stuff I'd wanna do

As dm dependent as it is, being able to fine tune an encounter's feel and reward player creativity is pretty neat. Even passively gives martials an upside since they're very consentient in comparison.

I love the idea of learning an enemy's weakness and overcoming it. Puzzle bosses are great like this, and a fussy focus sounds like an amazing puzzle boss!

Ok Zee.... now 😂 we need an animated tale of your adventures with the fussy focus rules. This sounds incredible!

Fascinating idea for sure! Both limiting and empowering spell use in a new, and convoluted way.

Sounds like a cool idea. I could see this in a MtG themed adventure focused around mana sources.

As someone who doens't play D&D, it sounds cool! Probably not something you'd see in an official publication since it would be too much "mother may I cast my spell?" and so on, but definitely neat. Kind of reminds me of how Exalted does its Sorcery. While you can just use your innate casting abilities, you often augment them with Sorcerous Initiations which give you bonuses based on how you learned magic. So like, a necromancer might get benefits from people giving them burnt offerings ahead of time, someone from a drowned school of magic prepare for magic by drowning themselves ahead of time, while someone from a school would get a bonus from careful study and glyphs. One of the examples in a book I found was water-based initiation that gave you a bonus for being wet. Then the sidebar went "what if I make a little cloud to rain on me all the time?" andswering "then you will be known as gangrenous sorcerer and nobody will be want to be around you. People do be like that though, so if you want to be a sorcerous weirdo, do it!" which was rather fun :D.

The sourdough starter fussy focus. Stronger the older it is and greatly coveted by all. Just need to feed properly and continuously.

Inspired by this, I “crafted” a spell focus for our Druid, who is underpowered compared to the rest of the party. Her staff now contains a gem that will +2 increase her casting rolls if/ when she is holding it over dirt/earth. Not a huge boost, but a little, and gives her an edge on her home turf, so to speak. We will see how it works out.😊

Bard Focus that scales to failed seductions they had that day. The more spectacular the failure, the higher the slot

This definitely feels like a good way to make spell casting focus more I interesting and desired. Pretty much every game of dnd I’ve played with either completely ignores or just doesn’t know the point of, noir the purpose of spell casting focuses in general.

Thank you Zee, your videos are a constant delight ☺️

Given how often a caster can create their own element, this sounds intriguing. Start with a light cantrip, spend a couple of rounds building power into brighter sources of light while the enemy tries to stop them from visibly charging up until BOOM high level spell dominates the battlefield.

I have to be honest, as a DnD fence sitter, this whole arrangement sounds BADASS!

This is such a cool idea! I particularly like the shadow focus. I think that one could work quite well in a dungeon crawl heavy game. Plenty of dark places beneath the earth that have not seen the passing light of a torch in untold centuries.

That’s sounds like it would be really fun with the right group! A really great built in role playing opportunity during combat!

This is a really cool idea for how to implement the Magic system into my Magic The Gathering D&D campaign idea. Basically the focus would only work if you were around mana sources for the focus' color of mana

Am I the only one who gets strong "Avatar - the last airbender" vibes from this homebrew? Not so much the magic / bending system itself, but this are exactly the kind of thought processes, struggles and obstacles the bending characters needed to overcome in the show. At least with the elemental themed fuzzy focus. I'll definitely shelf this idea for a future campaign! Thanks a lot!

Zee please! I beg of you for more info about this insane homebrew! I need to play this at my table Edit: to be clear I really wanna hear more about the martial changes because lord knows they could use it

Kinda reminds me of character options in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Some of the backgrounds you could take were "Sky Mage" - bonus to magic power under an open sky, malus when you can't see the sky. Day/Night Mage - bonus during the day/night respectively, malus otherwise. Nature Mage etc. etc. but the fun one that broke the mold a bit was "Sold your soul" - magic bonus applied constantly, but you were forever cursed with a hefty penalty to NPCs' reaction to you, and your alignment could never go above evil. Though obviously, it was nowhere near as cool as in your homebrew, due to the bonus in Arcanum being a simple +20% magic power, and not actually drawing spells from environment, which is a damn great concept for wizards.

Man I lost my job last week and your videos and others in the dnd community have really helped me stay afloat mentally.

That is actually a really cool homebrew. Could be very fun for a short campaign where everyone is playing a caster.

Cool! Thematic! Ya gotta love homebrew that has a purpose and makes meaningful changes, even if it's unbalanced it still actually adds something of value compared to yet another DarkEdgeSpellBlade class or massive binder of kitsune variants

This is a system that sounds really busted on paper and really fun in practice, I'd imagine playing these rules at a table of all spellcasters would be pretty fun

That's a really cool idea! I can see the death focus being wicked powerful - bring small sacrificial animals with you to get started and then as the battle goes on, the power compounds. Or a focus like fire could make casting powerful spells be a danger to the user giving them a tactical choice to make. Making the power unlimited but not free is pretty intriguing.

Zee absolutely does the BEST homebrew mechanics. It's always a little messy, probably exploitable, with poor balance overall, but it's *cool as heck* and INTENSELY flavourful! This is a REALLY good one, which I'd love to use someday!

Your home brews are so inspirational. A great way to incentivize player involvement and meld mechanics with immersion. Definitely going to use something like it in my own games

Thank you so much! This looks amazing.

Excellent ideas here! Reminds me a little of Dark Sun defilers, and the cool mercurial effects in DCC, will definitely be giving this a try.

Would love to see more homebrew like this that cares more about the feel and how fun and interesting it is and less about balance.

I really like this idea. You could use it to make late game a bit easier only for your main antagonist to flip everything and strip you of that power right before facing them, making their fight much harder as the spell casters are now extremely limited on what spells to utilize.

I've been trying to think of a way to add infinite spells without breaking things. This might not be it, but damn is it cool.

Excellent ideas! Here's some random additional ideas others could expand. Chaos Focus: Fussy focus changes its rules every few days/per module the group is doing, that way they can't solve it too much. Fussy Focus Ideas: - Wish Focus Level 1: Heard a simple request from a unique person within the past week. Level 2: Heard a inner request from a unique person within the past week. Level 3: Heard a dying wish from a unique person within the past week. - Hungering Focus (replaces verbal components) Level 1: Consume a handful of food. Level 2: Consume a handful of fine food. Level 3: Consume a handful of exquisite food and a swig of fine drink. Level 6: Consume the soul essence of an living innocent. - Geometric Focus This one is a bit special, if the recently constructed structures are disturbed, the focus goes Fussy and shuts down or reduces in power. Higher level Geometric spells would pulse and direct towards the structure. Level 1: Draw a 2D structured shape within 100 yards. Level 2: Construct a 3D structured shape within 100 yards. Level 3: Construct a precise 3D structured shape within 100 yards. Level 4: Construct two or more precise and fragile 3D structured shape within 100 yards. Level 6: Construct a 8+ hedron network of precise and fragile 3D structures within 250 yards. - Enigma Focus This would be related to unknown questions - Sound Focus This would be related to music and audio emanations. So the sounds of combat and magic could disrupt it.

This is so cool! I could honestly see building a whole system around this style of magic, something like Blades in the Dark where orchestrating the perfect encounter is more important than stats or subsequent rolls.

Where is Zee

Been a while since your last video. Hope everything is cool with ya zee.

I adore strong, contextual magic systems. Huge bit of inspiration for the system I was playtest for, and now I am obsessed with it!

This is just the sort of homebrew rule I love: something that adds a cool option for players to get creative with, and through using it the houserule makes the setting more alive with mystique and flavor. Fussy Focuses make for a more magical world than "spell slots that every spellcaster just has for some unexplained reason."

Super cool! I'll definitely be pocketing this for later. It's also pretty close to the system I'm working on for my own game! Only to make it more balanced, it's only enchantments and more permanent spells that need a source, like a forge for the lore of Iron, or a recently filled space ( such as the home of a recently dead person, or a pair of shoes someone has just taken off) for Void. Normal spells just require a focus of a type like the lore being used.

I loved it. The thrifty focus was just perfect for my start in out of the abyss

I like it! I did a similar weapon thing like that picture you had in the beginning. Spears give +1 AC, swords are standard, maces have less damage but +1 to hit. Fun little stuff.

Great ideas thank you!!!

This is absolutely spectacular theming and creative thinking-wise Imma cook something up - thanks for the recipe

The animation looks so good, and i loved the ideas presented in the video Great work ^^

I got a friend, nickname's Zero, and one of his Homebrew things are physical spell slots - they're an item you wear. And, you can actually equip more than your level should hold - at the cost of taking progressively more damage with each slot to the point of DYING if you fail a save. He likes Hollow Knight, if you couldn't tell.

This is fantastic, dynamic homebrewing! I love the idea!

Thanks for sharing the ideas 😎

This has ridiculous flavor potential and I would love to see a story sett in a world where this is how magic works.

It sounds GREAT, a fine addition to my already working mp magic system

This is genius I dont like having to count spell slots so this is a huge help It will allow me to make some Noita like spells while also limiting their usage Thank you so much

Oooo I love this!!

I dig this homebrew, thanks for sharing

I always like the idea of casters with more of a focused flavor that I think this would result in.

Great concept!

I did something similar with spell canisters for spell guns in a steampunk environment. Made spellcasters more about making them or using them more efficiently while giving martials some ways to play with spells like a canister in the hilt of a sword lighting it on fire for a couple rounds n stuff like that.

What a neat idea! I would also love the martial changes.

I love your videos! And I would love to hear more about homebrew stuff, the flavor of these fussy focii really hits the mark

fantastic consept

Those martial homebrews look pretty cool. Definitely love the dagger effect the most.

This is actually pretty neat. It's like a normal spell focus, but amped up to 11. You're either very powerful, or very weak. Taking away the spell focus, or the necessary conditions for it to work, effectively disarms you. I like it. I've experimented with different incarnations of slot-less magic, including a couple different schemes for at will casting. The most complete is probably my homebrew Wild Magic system, based off of Tzeentch's Curse from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Basically, to cast a spell you roll one to four dice and add them together. Roll high enough, and the spell casts successfully (DC is determined by the spell level). But if you roll doubles, triples, or quadruples, you trigger a wild magic surge. Using more dice increases the odds of successfully getting the spell off, but also the risk of a surge. A big chunk of the effects for a minor surge (rolling doubles) wear off after a long rest (some after a short rest), making it sort of equivalent to needing to rest to regain spell slots. Major surges (triples) are actively harmful or permanent, and catastrophic surges (quadruples) can instantly kill your character. As you level up, your dice get bigger, increases the odds of successfully casting spells while reducing your odds of getting a surge. Another scheme I've considered is a channeler class that can cast spells at-will but can only have a limited number active at a time. I think I had the base class mostly done, but never got around to finishing any subclasses. This one required a very carefully tailored spell list, one that mostly consisted of concentration spells and spells with a duration of a minute or longer. You still need open channels to cast an instantaneous spell, but obviously the spell ends immediately and those channels become open again. Something else I've looked into is special rules for PCs that are either gods, demigods, or are ascending to godhood. Basically, start by learning a couple of free cantrips chosen from any spell list and using any mental stat to cast. As you level up, you gain two 1st level spells, then two 2nd level spells, etc., all the way up to two 5th level spells, each of which can be cast at will. Your choices essentially define your divine domain, and these spells become your domain spells once you're able to empower your own clerics. You can slap this over a 1st level character to simulate a fallen/"dead" god regaining their power, or a new god growing into their godhood. Or maybe you're not a god yourself but have been chosen as a champion by another god. I just really like having utility spells as at will options, as that means it no longer has to be a rare thing constrained by resources. It can completely change how you approach problems because you have this new tool in your toolbox that you don't have to worry about "running out", and thus can incorporate it into a plan any chance you get. It changes the dynamic from, "Should I use this ability now or save it for later?" to, "How can I use this ability in this situation?" I just think it helps foster creativity and makes it more fun, as you're actively looking for any opportunity to use the ability instead of hoarding your resources until they're absolutely needed.

0:51 Tempest Cleric used Rain Dance! It's started to rain.

That sounds amazing!

You are awesome! I love your take on traditional d&d

Glad you're not afraid to share openly broken/unbalanced but fun experimental stuff. Also, thanks for cluing into Blades In The Dark, its pretty damn good.

i love this system, and id love to hear more about those extra martial rules too

Sounds like fun! 👍

This is cool. Love the list of examples of things that make trained violence using tools of mayhem much more dangerous, and it sounds really neat to have magic's power and availability be situational both as a downside, and an upside in that you can temporarily be vastly powerful in the right situations.

I love it in concept! I'm constantly looking for good non-vancian (sp?) magic systems: Magic that's not incredibly narrow, has a little bit of customization to it, doesn't limit to an arbitrary number of spells (or even spell levels), and somehow also doesn't break the game. I usually settle on adding some kind of mental HP and making spellcasting checks to see whether/how much damage is taken, but... it scarcely feels better tbh. ... And if any of my friends would let me use spheres of power I'd try that. XD

That's really cool and creative. Love the martial stuff too.

God, I love these suggestions!

These are some really cool ideas. Bravo for trying them out and having fun with it.

It sounds like it gives each member of the party a time to shine, and allows the DM to place them where all or none of them will shine. If it can be at least halfway balanced somehow it's be AWESOME.

I love the Idea of making magic your own: This is my System that im working on: Every Spell starts as a cantrip, as you level up you get Points and slots ( 1 or 2 max basicly). With those points your level up the cantrip and make a new spell. So firebolt can eventually become fireball, and fireball can eventually be a 9th lvl spell with the range of a whole city - if you use your points to buy aoe. That way you can really choose what fantasy you want to have. Wizards have more spells to customize, Warlocks have more points to spend and so on. I have a similar system for martial classes where they build their own comabt stance/style with points.

I had a cursed magic item that did something similar to this. A blood-stained crown of twisted metal with an unquenchable thirst for battle. Effectively it did the following. +Unlimited spell slots, of course. +All spells cast were level 3, and could not be lower or higher (This campaign only lasted to level 10, mind you) -At the beginning of battle, or after a long rest, the sorcerer would shuffle their spell cards and draw 5. These were the only spells they could cast on their turn. -Once cast, they would discard the card and draw a new one. -The only cards they could use outside of battle were the 5 left over from the previous battle/long rest, and would not be replaced after use. Fights were pretty frequent, so this restriction wasn't too detrimental, otherwise I would have probably written a rule for short rests and the like. -For every long rest they would discard all remaining cards, shuffle their discard pile back into their draw pile and choose 5 new cards. -5 Additional spells not already in their known spells list were added, selected by me. These were exclusively utility or under-utilized spells (Enlarge/Reduce and Jump, for instance) -Cantrips remained unaffected, but I think one of the additional spells I added was a cantrip. The sorcerer had a lot of fun with this, they enjoyed not having to manage spell slots, and I got to appreciate them using spells other than fireball and scorching ray, which up to that point had been their exclusive choices. It led to a few creative uses of spells that otherwise wouldn't have happened. I wish I had done more with the concept, like having ways to modify their deck, swap out cards or something like that. Really turn the game into a psuedo deck builder. But what was there was still plenty fun.

The idea is lovely. It reminds me of the Evoker from Fabula Ultima. The GM must disclose the presence of at least 2 elemental sources each combat you are in, and the spells available to you change based on those sources!

This sounds like it could be really fun for a Necromancer. In places of undeath or using your Undead Minions as sources you could power your spells exponentially as your foes fall, but in the absence you could directly convert health and hit dice into spell slots, playing an extremely risky game in hopes to get a few bodies on and then off the ground to allow you to cast other spells. I also feel that Tempest Cleric could’ve gotten creative in using their own blood as a source of power. A lot of room to play with blood tbh.

Really cool idea!

I’m definitely playing with this homebrew!

I love this sorta homebrew for campaigns set in an era when magic is either new (say a bronze/stone-age type of setting) or a setting where magic is being rediscovered after a long time being dormant. It shows that people have been trying to make magic work with their flawed understanding for lifetimes before your characters showed up and found the product of their twisted minds.

Sound very fun Brilliant narrative mechanics

This sounds like it would be so much fun!!!! An all caster team with different foci running around would be so dope

this sounds great! I'd love to hear more about how you made Martials scary as hell.

Sounds like a fun way of separating factions, too. Certain mages with afinity towards certain spell types will constantly find ways of facilitating their magic. You can end up with elaborate contraptions so that ideal conditions are met for their spells to be cast, or faction leaders scheming to expand the territory for their ideal spell type to gain an edge in a war. For example, the shadow spellcasters think of a plan to block out the sun so they can destroy a rival faction that gets power from daylight. The ones needing water can try and flood large landmasses. A world like this would be in constant strife and it's a perfect setup to make a point about balance and harmony.

That sounds So cool!

I could imagine this playing really well in the Fate Core (or Accelerated) system. Plus, it has a vaguely Avatar:TLAB vibe to it. Sounds utterly delightful!

I might give this a try. Also the martial class stuff looks amazing