Artifacts of Antiquity

As my conversion of the 3.5 Spell Compendium into 5e was drawing to a close with the final Spells of Antiquity bundle ready to go up on DMsGuild, I started looking into what project I wanted to do second. Following the common DM trope, I already had a dozen or two partially-finished projects that in various states of completion. What I settled on was a full conversion of the 2e Encyclopedia Magica into 5e. This project won't be finished any time soon. With over 6,000 items in the Encyclopedia, published over a series of volumes where each has around 100 different items, I'll be at this for quite a while. Just as I did with the Spells of Antiquity, each one is being released as PWYW (pay what you want), which makes the series completely available to anyone who wants to spice up their games with some wacky items from back in days of old.

I've taken a slightly different approach this time than I did with the Spell Compendium. While converting spells, I didn't hesitate to hack down spells and discard them entirely if they didn't really fit into the current edition. Largely, this was due to balance concerns- spells have levels and certain amounts of power that can reasonably fit into those levels. Not to mention,  several mechanics from 3.5 either no longer exist or are different enough that they no longer have a strong function (ability damage, alignment-based spells, etc). This isn't as much of an issue when it comes to magic items. 

Magic items in general don't seem to have nearly as much structure in 5e. Sure, there's rarity and a cost range associated with it in the DMG, but other than that the system seems to assume magic items aren't necessary and ignores them for balance purposes. With that being the case, there's a lot more freedom to just go wild and make whatever you want. With that in mind, I did try to keep as many items as possible and avoid cuts where I could. The rare exceptions that have come up so far are when magic items are virtually identical to one another (so think: Amulet of Protection from ESP vs Amulet Against ESP) or items that have multiple entries that are the same item, just with a slightly different word choice.

Current Volumes:

1) Artifacts of Antiquity Volume 1

2) Artifacts of Antiquity Volume 2

3) Artifacts of Antiquity Volume 3

4) Artifacts of Antiquity Volume 4

5) Artifacts of Antiquity Volume 5

6) Artifacts of Antiquity Volume 6

Spells of Antiquity

   

 As I mentioned before, a full 5e conversion of the 3.5 spell compendium was the first project I decided to take on. In hindsight it happened to be a pretty big one as well- over 600 spells total, published over the course of 2022 across 14 volumes.  But now it is finished and available for anyone who wants a truly ridiculous number of extra spells to choose from: Spells of Antiquity. Now, it is worth noting before I continue that each of the 14 titles is individually available as PWYW (pay what you want), which means that they’re all freely available to anyone who wants them.

Now, for those familiar with the original Spell Compendium, you might have noticed that it advertises over 1000 spells and be wondering where those 400 or so got to. That’s a fair question, and there’s a few reasons behind that:

1. Spell Scaling. In 5e, your Cure Wounds spell has that bit at the end: “At Higher Levels”, with an extra 1d8 of healing for each spell slot level beyond the first. In third edition, you had Cure Light Wounds at 1st level spells, Cure Moderate Wounds at 2nd level spells, Cure Serious Wounds at 3rd level spells, etc. Rather than spells being able to be cast at higher levels for greater effects, you ended up with a slew of spells that had virtually identical effects with the numbers scaled up slightly.

2. Redundancy. Third edition had some fairly chaotic energy, where it felt like new books were being rapid fired out there, with each new one not seeming to be aware of the others already out there. As such, there ended up a whole lot of spells that were extremely close to being identical. I figured there were only so many different ways “you grow some natural weapons” should be added in before things just start getting silly.

3. Alignment. In third edition, alignment was treated as much more than just one aspect of your character’s personality. Alignment was a more tangible force, which spells and abilities would regularly reference, to the extent that some classes were not allowed to be anything other than certain alignments (Paladins were exclusively allowed to be lawful good). A lot of those spells just didn't seem to fit, so for now at least I left them out.

4. Ability Damage. Once upon a time, reducing ability scores was considerably more commonplace than it is now. It was, simply put, a pain in the ass. This was especially true when you had an ability score reduced enough to change your modifiers, which might change everything from skills to attack rolls to spell save DCs temporarily. In general, 5e has steered mostly away from these, with several exceptions. In general, I tried to keep spells true to their flavor, even when their exact mechanics didn’t translate as well.

5. Conditions. This one is similar to spell scaling in some regards. In third edition, there were around 38 different conditions, compared to the 15 in 5e. Some of these seemed to be a continuum based on one condition. For example, where 5e has the frightened condition, third edition had shaken, frightened and panicked all as separate conditions with similar effects that got progressively more severe. As is the theme so far, a lot of that ended up getting scaled back and as such a handful of spells just ended up without a real place in the world.

So, where do I plan to go from here? Well, one of the big plans is to wait for OneD&D, then go back through everything and update spells based on whatever mechanical changes are involved. I would most likely not release it as a replacement for the current. I might also look to some spells that were not included in the original Spell Compendium for whatever reason or even go further back to see how the spell lists in 2e looked.

In the meantime, I will probably give things another round of proofreading and update files as needed.  Also, playtesting! Though I tried my best to balance things appropriately, there are definitely some wacky spells that I would want to give some more hands-on experience with before I feel completely comfortable with how they turned out. I’m looking to potentially combine all 14 volumes into one big mega-compendium, though at least for the moment that’s probably pretty far into the future.

That’s about it for now. Did I leave out your favorite spell? Do you see any glaring problems I could fix up? Is there any other more general feedback you have? Please feel free to share.