Spell Lists Suck: Fiction-Focused Magic in D&D

I typically propose very minor alterations to D&D: how to fix summoning, how to fix shapechanging, how to fix weapon damage. I'm not really interested in redesigning the core system - just relatively simple fixes to pain points I've experienced in play. This time, I'm proposing something a little more drastic.

Spell lists suck. The way that spellcasters pick and choose the spells they learn and prepare is dumb.

Now that I've stated my thesis, I will walk it back slightly by saying spell lists are okay. Every spellcasting class has its own spell list that the player chooses from when deciding what spells their character learns or prepares each day. The unique spell lists for each spellcaster do a nice job differentiating the classes. Spellcasters either use "magic magic", "holy magic", or "nature magic", and two classes that use the same type are further differentiated by the specific spells available to them - warlocks have "creepy" spells compared to wizards, and paladins have more "battle magic" compared to clerics.

The existence of spell lists also allows for them to be subverted. Bards can, at certain levels, learn spells from any class's list. Clerics, druids, paladins, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks get access to a handful of thematic bonus spells to pad out their lists. For some reason, druids, rangers, and sorcerers don't always get these bonus spells, warlocks don't automatically learn them but instead can choose to learn them, despite every other class getting them for free, and some classes draw their thematic spells from other class's spell lists while others get free access to spells they could have had anyway...but this is a tangent.

I say spell lists suck because every class gets their spells the same way: by picking the "good" ones off a big list. There are minor differences in that clerics, druids, and paladins get all of their spells at each level at once and prepare a limited number each day, while bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks learn a limited number and always have them prepared. But the process by which clerics, druids, and paladins - or bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks - actually choose their spells is exactly the same from one class to the other.

The flavor text for the classes suggests that each is either channeling a different type of magic or else channeling the same type of magic in a different way (wizards memorize and recite arcane formula, sorcerers draw on their innate power, and warlocks use magic gifted to them by otherworldly patrons), but this isn't reflected at all in how the caster acquires the actual spells they can cast.

The cleric might acquire a couple spells which are thematic to their god, but they are otherwise preparing the same spells as any other cleric. The sorcerer doesn't unlock some new power specific to their unique origin - they just learn the next most optimal generic sorcerer spell. The warlock does not commune and negotiate with their patron for enhanced powers - they just get another warlock spell, most of which are available to all warlocks.

No class is acquiring spells in a way that's at all related to the fiction, and because everyone is just picking spells off their own little menu, the classes are distinct from one another, but multiple characters within a single class are often not.

The exception is the wizard, who we're told learns magic by reading spellbooks and scrolls, which is actually how they learn magic in the game...sometimes. Because the designers feel they can't trust the DM to include spellbooks and scrolls in their game, wizards also just arbitrarily learn spells each time they level up. Like everyone else.

If I were to redesign the spellcasting system in a drastic way, I would design fiction-focused rules for how each spellcasting class acquires their spells. What would that look like?

Wizards

It is a myth that wizards can only master "arcane" magic. All magic is arcane - even if the druids and the gods would like the world to believe otherwise.

In truth, wizards can learn any magic that is written down. The magic of the gods is written in prayer books and inscribed on altars and in reliquaries. The magic of nature is etched into ancient standing stones and trees. None of these are beyond the wizard's comprehension.

The process of learning a spell remains unchanged from the base rules - the wizard must spend a certain amount of time and money (representing the purchasing of magically primed rare inks and parchment), then succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check, the DC equaling 10 + the spell's level, in order to write the magic in their spellbook.

As in the base rules, the wizard begins their career with a spellbook containing six 1st-level spells. These spells are usually taught to them by their master, but could also be acquired and learned by chance. The DM chooses which spells they are. To encourage the wizard to adventure and discover new magic, their master should probably be dead or estranged. The adventurer wizard can always find a new master through politicking or networking.

I feel very strongly that the DM should choose the new wizard's starting spells, but I'm sure there are many who find this unconscionable. The DM and player could also negotiate what the the six spells are. Or, to simplify things, perhaps all novice wizards learn the same six spells: comprehend languages, detect magic, mage armor, magic missile, shield, and sleep. A bit dull, but classic, and not at all useless.

Other subclasses which cast wizard spells (such as the arcane trickster and eldritch knight) also have spellbooks, and learn spells in the exact same manner as the wizard. Since this is a choice which is made later in the character's career, it's best for the player to declare their intention to take this option sooner rather than later, so that the DM can plan to include a spellbook which the character can acquire. Otherwise, a character who pursues this path does not have any spells until they can acquire a suitable spellbook (another wizard in the party can help them create one, or perhaps basic primers are sold in metropolitan markets).

One of the small things that bothers me about arcane tricksters and eldritch knights is that they learn the same magic as wizards but in an entirely different way. If wizards learn from books and can learn as many spells as they can find, other classes that cast wizard spells should do the same!

Clerics

Clerics do not learn spells - they are granted spells through faith and prayer. The deity and its intermediaries provide access to the magic. This is represented by a generic cleric spell list which is then supplemented with a selection of always-ready subclass-specific spells. This is fine, but it still results in largely similar clerics with just a few unique signature spells. Why is 90% of each god's repertoire the same spell list as every other god?

In AD&D, cleric spells like bless, cure wounds, and remove curse were reversible, and the reverse versions were the purview of evil clerics only. 2e sorted cleric spells into spheres of influence and introduced specialty priests (the druid being used as an example) which had their own unique powers as well as access to specific spheres. These two elements gave distinction to good and evil clerics as well as clerics of specific deities.

Each of 5e's Divine Domains should have a unique spell list, accessible only by worshiping a god who rules over that domain. This domains akin to 2e's spheres of influence. I wouldn't only split all of the current cleric spells into these domains, but would instead go through all of the spells in the game to determine which domains (if any) each might fit into.

There would also be a general domain for the most essential cleric spells like bless. These I would divide into good and evil domains. Want to cast cure wounds? Worship a good deity. Want to cast inflict wounds? Worship an evil deity.

This is probably a great time to mention that these are broad ideas. I'm taking big hypothetical swings here. A lot of these ideas might be kind of impractical, but things that I want to toy around with on a very small scale eventually (like, if a player in my game wanted to be a Life cleric, I might create a custom Life Domain spell list for them instead of creating spell lists for every domain).

From there, clerics could remain much the same, simply choosing their domain depending on their deity, except they would have access to a specific spell list based on that choice. A single god could grant access to multiple domains at once, or a cleric may have to choose which aspect of the god they worship - i.e., the destructive firepower of the god-phoenix, or the healing power symbolized by its rebirth?

It's worth nothing that D&D is typically a polytheistic setting. I don't see why a single cleric couldn't simultaneously petition multiple deities, so long as they aren't opposed to one another. A piety system such as that in Mythic Odysseys of Theros could be used to determine what level of magic from each deity the cleric has access to, depending on their in-game actions, allowing a cleric to essentially "multiclass" with a variety of gods to gain access to a breadth of magic which rivals the wizard.

Druid

Druid spellcasting in most editions of D&D works exactly the same as for clerics, albeit with different spells. If we're making a spell list for each cleric domain, one could simply give them access to the Nature Domain spell list and call it a day, but that would be a disservice. 

My understanding of druids is not that they are just clerics for gods of nature, but instead that they are channelers of D&D's ubiquitous "background magic" associated with "nature spirits". The druid is not praying to the nature god to cast earth magic, but channeling the powers of the local earth spirits.

Because druids channel the magic of the natural spirits in their environment to cast spells, just as clerics need a unique spell list for each Divine Domain, druids need a unique spell list for each natural environment - grassland, forest, hills, desert, swamp, water, mountain, underdark, etc. Like clerics, they would also have a more general list to include things which aren't environment-specific like animal spells, healing, and the like.

Can druids cast spells in unnatural environments like settlements and dungeons? Those places still have natural elements, so I don't see why not. A mining town is still in the hills, a mummy's tomb is still in the desert, and a merfolk stronghold is still underwater, after all.

In some cases, environmental elements need to be woven into the components of the druid's individual spells. That is, casting entangle requires the presence of plant life, and call lightning requires the druid to be outdoors during a storm, which could preclude the use of those spells in certain environments.

Should druids still be required to prepare spells? If they are channeling the natural spirits of their current environment, that sounds like spontaneous casting. Spellcasters who prepare their spells do so at the beginning of the day. In the morning the druid could be in the forest, but by afternoon they might be in the swamp. Should they be able to carry forest magic into the swamp with them?

Maybe they should. There is something interesting about a high-level druid who flies quickly to the desert, communes with it, and then flies quickly to the dark wood to use the desert's withering spells against the corrupted plant monsters there. It has Pokémon vibes (complimentary). Much to think about.

Paladin and Ranger

I'll skip to these two as they are straightforward. My solution for the two of them is simple: paladin spellcasting works the same as for clerics, and ranger spellcasting works the same as for druids.

In older editions, paladins and rangers were akin to variants of the fighter with higher ability score requirements and some special thematic powers. They weren't even spellcasters until much later in their career (in 2e, 9th-level for paladins and 8th-level for rangers), and their spellcasting abilities were quite weak at that time.

I won't advocate for returning to that style of doing things. The "half-caster" spell progression of 5e works just fine (at most, I'd consider making them a "one-third-caster" like the eldritch knight or arcane trickster). 

The point is that paladins are warriors who cast cleric spells, and rangers are warriors who cast druid spells. They don't need their own spell list or unique mechanics. They will benefit from the versatility that comes from the broader cleric and druid lists.

The elephant in the room is that this requires paladins to go back to worshipping gods. I like that in 5e, paladins draw their power from the magic of the oath they swear. It's very thematic, and it implies a setting where oaths carry cosmic weight. However, I have no idea how to make it fiction-focused with regards to what spells they can cast or how their magic works.

So, paladins have to worship gods again, which is fine by me. Like clerics, their spell list is determined by their deity's domain of influence. They should still have an oath with principles they must adhere to, but the oath is sworn between them and their deity, and the deity provides the magic so long as the paladin continues to abide. The chosen deity informs which oaths are available.

Bard

In 5e, the bard learns a set number of spells and casts them spontaneously. Their spell list is mostly arcane magic, but is also a weird grab bag of divine and nature magic. Their Magical Secrets feature allows them to pilfer spells from other class's spell lists. There's some flavor text about how the bard utilizes the "Words of Creation", which are learned from "hard study" and "natural talent", but of course this isn't actually reflected in how they learn their spells.

My bard is instead inspired by the bards of editions past.

The AD&D 1e bard is famously weird. It is essentially the first "prestige class" - part fighter, part thief, and part druid.

In 2e, the bard is largely similar, except the druid spells are replaced with wizard spells. Bards in 2e keep a spellbook.

To split the difference, the fiction-focused bard uses both the wizard's and druid's rules for spellcasting simultaneously. They have a spellbook and can learn any spell that's written down, and they can also channel the magic of nature spirits and cast druid spells spontaneously. It's up to the player to choose which slots to spend on which spells.

This preserves the main element which makes bards' spellcasting unique - the hodgepodge of spells they get from different types of casters. It also fully embraces two very different interpretations of the bard of which I'm equally fond.

Sorcerer and Warlock

I'm lumping these together because the post is getting long, I don't have a lot to say about them, and the systems I have in mind for them are very similar.

In 5e, both sorcerers and warlocks learn spells as they level up and can cast them spontaneously. Some sorcerer subclasses get bonus spells that they learn automatically. Every warlock subclass gets an expanded spell list, but they don't learn the spells automatically. They have to pick them as the spells they learn when they gain levels.

Fiction-focused sorcerers have a unique spell list determined by their Sorcerous Origin, and fiction-focused warlocks have a unique spell list determined by their Otherworldly Patron. Not every sorcerer regardless of their magical origin can cast control winds. Not every warlock patron has the power to grant their petitioners finger of death. 

This makes sorcerers and warlocks the most tightly-focused casters in the game, which they should be. It doesn't make sense to me that anyone with a magical soul/anyone who makes a pact with an otherworldly entity can cast from almost exactly the same list of spells.

Conclusion

So, that is a pretty crazy system I'm proposing. The 5e PHB has eight spell lists (one for each spellcasting class). If I were to follow my own advice and make all of the specific spell lists I'm proposing - only counting classes and subclasses in the PHB - I would end up with 20 unique spell lists (seven for the cleric domains, eight for each type of natural environment, two for the sorcerer subclasses, and three for the warlock subclasses - the bard, paladin, ranger, and wizard don't need their own lists).

It is incredibly obvious why the 5e design team did not do this. The unique spell list for each class plus signature spells for things like Divine Domain, Druid Circle, Sacred Oath, and the like is an elegant solution. 

But, I just can't shake the feeling that spellcasters who use different types of magic should feel different beyond just the flavor of their spells and what kind of armor they can wear. Clerics, druids, and paladins, bards, rangers, sorcerers, and warlocks should not be learning and using magic exactly the same way as one another.

Mostly, I want the spells that casters can access to make sense in the fiction. If the wizard is supposed to learn spells by finding them in dungeons while adventuring, they should not be stumbling upon 9th-level spells in the spellbook their master gifted them as an apprentice. Not all gods should grant access to the same magic. A druid who draws magic from the environment should not be casting the same spells in the desert as in the forest. A sorcerer or warlock with a very specific magical power source shouldn't have the same spell selection as every other sorcerer or warlock.

Well, it's easy enough for me to argue in favor of doing all this extra work without putting my money where my mouth is, so I totally understand if this sounds like a bonkers idea to anyone else. It sounds pretty bonkers to me. But in a kinda cool way.

D&D is a Problem-Solving Game

The argument that D&D is combat game goes like this: A game is "about" what it has rules for. Because D&D (specifically 5e) has far more rules for combat than for anything else, it's a combat game. 

I don't really have or care to have an opinion as to whether "system matters", aside from the simple fact that one should play a system they enjoy, and that yes, there are other games besides D&D which facilitate an experience that is not like D&D. D&D is not the all-encompassing system that some people treat it like it is. I don't want to play a 5e-compatible farming simulator or whatever, but I also don't care much if someone else decides to till that barren soil.

I do think things are a bit more nuanced than "If most of a game's rules pertain to X, then the game is about X." So, I wanted to try to articulate what kind of game I think D&D is.

Is D&D a combat game?

I see it broadly like this: D&D is first and foremost a fantasy roleplaying game. More specifically: D&D is a fantasy problem-solving game, with a greater or lesser focus towards combat as the primary problem-solving method, depending on the edition, DM, and players. Different editions have greater or fewer rules for things other than combat. Different DMs prepare greater or fewer scenarios which they anticipate the players will resolve using combat. Different players are more or less inclined towards fighting everything their characters encounter.

5e, allegedly, specifically leans towards combat because it has a lot of DM- and player-facing rules for it. There are a lot of monsters, for example, and most of the statistics for those monsters are oriented towards fighting them. Most character abilities are combat abilities. The DMG goes into great detail as to how to create a combat encounter.

The very specific guidelines for building combat encounters (plus online tools to assist in doing so) makes it relatively easy to quickly create a combat scenario that is "balanced" for the player characters' level to the DM's taste (i.e. easy, medium, hard, or deadly).

If the DM has a session coming up, and nothing prepped, it's easy to open the Monster Manual, pick a monster for the player characters to fight that week, and build an appropriate encounter which will eat up a lot of game time. It's easy to force the player characters to fight something - the monster of the week is causing problems, and if the player characters go investigate, it attacks them and tries to kill them - now they have to kill it. It's a convenient crutch for the unprepared or inexperienced DM.

It's not so easy to instead create a non-hostile NPC to oppose the player characters socially, determine why they're opposed to the characters, what would convince them to leave the characters alone, and how hard it should be to convince them to do so. It's not so easy to design such an encounter to take up all or most of a session. It's not so easy to force the player characters into a social confrontation with the NPC.

But it's also not impossible. The DMG has guidelines for creating NPCs with ideals, bonds, flaws, and goals, and for adjudicating social interactions with those NPCs. They don't read as strongly as "rules" because, by comparison, combat has numbers and statistics and all sorts of things that appeal to people who think that numbers = rules, and combat in D&D is expected to have that structure. 

Social interaction is looser, and more nebulous, and it should be because it mostly involves person-to-person interaction and only the occasional rolling of dice, informed by predetermined NPC characteristics (again, provided by the DMG) and DM judgment. But because there are fewer hard numbers and because lifelike people in a fantasy world are somewhat hard to conceptualize, many DMs shy away from prepping these types of scenarios in the same way they prep combat scenarios.

So, inexperienced or underprepared DMs are going to tend to lean on combat a lot, prepping many encounters to which the only solution is fighting. Players under such DMs are going to learn to expect to fight most of their problems. If that is one's experience with D&D, it's easy to see why so many people see it as a "combat game".

Ancient Mechanisms

Compared to 5e, older editions have far more mechanics which support modes of play other than combat: rules for generating dungeons and wilderness environments, stocking them, and structured dungeon and wilderness exploration procedures make it easier to prep an exploration scenario; reaction rolls make it more likely that not every monster will immediately attack the player characters - some may even want to help them; morale rules make monsters less likely to fight to the death, which can turn combat encounters into chase scenes or social interactions; player characters gain most XP from acquiring treasure, not killing monsters. 

In the latter case, the goal is to acquire the treasure by any means necessary - if fighting can be avoided, then that's great, because characters can advance without undue risk. The problem to solve is getting the treasure, not killing the monster.

Pretty much all of these mechanics had been discarded by the time we got to 5e: the DMG has a pretty lackluster dungeon generator (with monsters in a whopping 50% of rooms) and an unsatisfying optional morale mechanic; reaction rolls appear only in Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants, for some reason; experience points are "most often" rewarded for combat, not gold, though I argue that instead they should be rewarded for overcoming challenges of all kinds.

As a result, a 5e DM will probably only know about these mechanics from familiarity with past editions - either from having played those editions, from reading the old books, or from word of mouth. This is why I'm grateful for blogs and for the OSR: for turning me on to bits of knowledge that make the game far more enjoyable for me and my players, but which have been lost in modern editions of D&D. The blogs, in turn, have peaked my interest in reading about and running older editions of the game.

The problem is that as D&D develops, valuable tools from prior editions are dropped, and those tools are lost to new players who aren't familiar with the game's history. Most new DMs and players are unlikely to be familiar with any edition beyond the current, most popular one, and the current version of the game teaches new DMs - via the DMG - only how to prep combat encounters, and it teaches players - via their characters' abilities - to expect to solve their problems using combat.

Right?

Sort of. 

Goals of Play

It's definitely true that most of 5e's rules lean towards combat, and that the procedures for prepping combat encounters are very mathematically detailed. However, I want to look at the chapter in the DMG on creating adventures, specifically "Location-Based Adventures", on page 72. That section has tables for dungeon goals, wilderness goals, and "other" goals.

All of the goals presented by these tables can be viewed instead as problems to solve. The "Dungeon Goals" table has exactly one entry out of 19 which explicitly says, basically, "Fight a monster" ("Slay a dragon or some other challenging monster"). There are a few other entries that could be loosely interpreted as "fight a monster":

• Stop the dungeon's monstrous inhabitants from raiding the surface world [by fighting them]
• Foil a villain's evil scheme [by fighting them]
• Destroy a magical effect inside the dungeon [by fighting it]
• Pursue fleeing foes taking refuge in the dungeon [and fight them]
• Clear a ruin so it can be rebuilt and reoccupied [by fighting everything inside]

Those are all assumptions, though. The player characters could find out why the dungeon's inhabitants are raiding the surface world, and convince them to stop by other means. The magical effect might not be a monster, but a complex trap to disarm or a restless spirit to placate. The fleeing foes might parley with the characters, or need to be captured (alive) and brought back to civilization to see justice. The ruin to be cleared might be filled with traps and hazards, rather than monsters. 

The other two tables are similarly diverse in the goals they present. What this indicates to me is that 5e is meant to be a problem-solving game, and these tables are prompts with which the DM can generate problems for the players to solve however they wish.

Achieving those goals might involve fighting monsters along the way, but combat is a part of the game (and often, a fun one), and one that both DMs and players anticipate engaging with from time to time.

True, the combat-orientation of D&D's rules might lead the DM and/or players to anticipate combat and prepare or consider no other solutions, leading to a bias towards combat, but that's a playstyle issue. It isn't being strictly enforced by the DMG itself. The fact that the first step in prepping a location-based adventure is to determine the party's goals, and that so few of those goals explicitly state that something has to be fought, suggests to me that player characters are supposed to experience a wide array of goals and problems during their adventuring career.

It's not like fighting is the only skill at the player characters' disposal. They have character knowledge, the ability to perceive and intuit things, social skills, equipment other than weapons, and magical abilities that allow them to understand languages, disguise themselves, charm others, and the like. They can do anything that a person in the real world can do, and more. The players have their own real-life skills and knowledge they can draw upon as well.

The rules for social interaction aren't robust, but they're sufficient; the players (via their characters) and DM (via their NPCs) have a conversation, and when the outcome of that conversation is in doubt, an ability check is rolled, based on the NPC's disposition towards the characters. I drew upon old-school reaction rolls and other materials to make my own social interaction mechanics more robust, because that was my preference, but doing so isn't strictly necessary for this aspect of the game to function. 

Similarly, I supplemented my prep procedures with more old-school mechanics to make combat less of a default method of interacting with NPCs and monsters. 

Well, that's just great - I added some mechanics that aren't in the rules and now my games are less combat-oriented. That doesn't mean the game itself isn't about combat.

But that's the thing - when I think about the statement "D&D is a combat game", I'm not just thinking about the current edition, or how "most" people play it. I'm thinking about D&D in its totality. It isn't one thing. Not even one specific edition is the same across groups - every table plays it differently, and the rules don't prescribe one type of play. I like my modern D&D to feel more like old-school D&D, and I modify things to suit that preference. Other DMs may modify it to feel more like Pathfinder, or Warhammer, or Dark Souls, or Animal Crossing, or whatever - whether they should be playing a different game is a conversation for another time.

So new players maybe play D&D more like a combat game than anything else, but we don't even know that for sure, and the way that most people seem to play the game isn't necessarily the same as the way the game designers are trying to indicate that one should play. It might be easier for a new DM to prepare a combat scenario, which might lead to new DMs preparing more combat scenarios, but the DMG isn't telling DMs to only ever prepare combat scenarios. 

Could the game be designed better to communicate this intent? Probably. But would people actually read the books and thus grasp this intended playstyle, or would they keep on playing their own version of D&D based on their idea of what the game is supposed to be? If the game is designed one way, but people play it another way, which game are we talking about when we say the game is a "combat game"?

So, is D&D a combat game? Yes, kind of, but also only to extent that the DM and players make it about that. I would probably be disappointed to play in a D&D game where I never got to fight a dragon, but I'd also be disappointed to play in one where I never got to talk to a dragon, or where the DM hadn't drawn up the dragon's lair so that we could explore it in detail. Some players and DMs may just want one of those three things, but the game's designers are clearly saying that there should be a mix of all three.

On Hands (and how to use them)

Okay, weird post title. Bear with me.

This post was inspired by Warren D.'s post "WHAT'S INTERESTING ABOUT BASIC DUNGONEERING: And what is not" on the I Cast Light! blog. What got me thinking about hands specifically is Warren's thoughts on light and weapons (highlights mine):

Light: Due to torch cost and number per slot, it is easy to carry a lot of torches.

Not interesting: Carrying enough light to last 12-24 turns- easily done

Interesting: When torches extinguish-- like in the middle of a fight or when the goblins you are negotiating with get mad; how many hands in the party are occupied by torches

... 

Weapons: I've yet to find a really good way to do weapons simply outside of 1d6 damage for all types. I don't mind BX's variable weapon damage. And I do like some old rulesets sorta "first strike" if your weapon is larger than an opponents other wise smaller, lighter weapons strike first in subsequent arounds.

So here is what I have got so far: Using a weapon two-handed is a +1 to damage, using an off-hand weapon is +1 to-hit, and a shield is of course +1 AC. I do like that fighters with bows can shoot twice if they did not move and the "cleave" ability.

Not interesting: Weapon factors that are so extensive they require a separate rules discussion, trigger player obsession, and/or orient the whole of gameplay to combat

Interesting: What PCs chose to do with their hands: more armor, more weapons, or more light

What I'm interested in is how player characters choose to use their hands. It's a simple thing, but it's important - a hand can do any of the following things:

• Cast a spell with material or somatic components
• Hold a torch or lantern (providing light with which to see)
• Increase weapon damage (per my rules for variable weapon damage, using two hands increases a weapon's damage die size by one) 
• Increase a weapon's reach (most weapons with the reach property require two hands to use)
• Increase a weapon's range (ranged weapons which require two hands, such as bows, usually have a longer range than those which require one hand, such as thrown weapons)
• Interact with objects (open doors, throw levers, withdraw items from a bag or pouch)
• Make an extra attack (if dual wielding or a monk)
• Provide extra protection (a hand used to hold a shield provides +2 to the character's armor class)
• Use items (drink a potion, read a scroll, activate a wand, etc.)

It's something many DMs might not even think about, and I suspect that most modern DMs view it as one of those things - like encumbrance - which is too onerous to keep track of, and simply don't, beyond "Is the character dual-wielding, two-handing, or using a shield?" I have certainly forgotten about it a good number of times. In fact, when thinking about this, I realized that in a recent AD&D 2e session, I forgot about something very important - light.

Who is Carrying the Light?

The player characters were exploring a network of subterranean tunnels made by a brood of ankhegs. When the party first entered the tunnels, I said, "It's dark, so you'll probably want a light source. Who is carrying the light?" Then, when the party had its climactic battle with the ankheg brood, I never once considered the issue of light. Characters were firing bows, dual wielding, two-handing, and wielding shields. Who was carrying the light? Could the characters even see? I don't know.

When not in combat, the question of who is carrying the light isn't incredibly important. One might as well assume that all of the characters are carrying light unless they state otherwise. Characters might place a torch in a sconce when exploring a room or put it on the ground while they check a chest for traps. True, monsters hidden far away in the dark might target the torchbearer specifically, but in that case, the DM can simply check with the players who exactly is carrying the light before springing the ambush, after which the specifics become more crucial.

Once combat begins, it becomes very important who is carrying the light, because that character can't use their light-carrying hand to cast spells, wield a weapon with both hands, interact with other objects, duel wield (aside from using the torch as a weapon), wield a shield, or use items. That character is making a choice to benefit the rest of the party (by providing light) at the expense of their own tactical versatility. It's part of what makes light-providing spells, weapons, torchbearers, and the like valuable - they can provide light without occupying a hand.

Furthermore, the light source typically moves with the torchbearer, unless the torchbearer drops their torch on the ground in order to free up their other hand. Monsters may attempt to attack the torchbearer and snuff out the light. So, keeping track of who is carrying the light in these scenarios is very important. 

Stow, Drop, and Draw

In D&D 5e, a character can interact with one object for free on their turn, as part of their attack or move action (PHB, page 190). This includes drawing a weapon as part of the action they use to make an attack, opening a door as they move through it, picking up a dropped item, stowing an item, or withdrawing a stowed item. Redditors will happily say that according to the rules, a spellcaster wielding a sword and shield can drop their sword (no action required), freeing up a hand to cast a spell, then immediately pick up the sword again (using their free object interaction).

I hate this. It's stupid. Changing what hand is doing what is a tactical choice. It should have benefits and drawbacks like any other.

Baldur's Gate 3 is the current hotness as far as video games based on 5e go, but another 5e-based game, Solasta: The Crown of the Magister, is much better at little rules minutia like this. In Solasta, each character has weapon sets - a primary weapon set, a secondary weapon set, and a light source set. A character can switch between sets once on their turn.

So if a character is wielding a sword and shield, but wants to make a ranged attack, they switch to their longbow. After attacking with their longbow, they cannot then switch back to their sword and shield to benefit from the improved armor class. If light is an issue, the character can switch to holding their sword and torch, but cannot then switch back to their sword and shield.

This is more or less how I do it in my games, although locking characters into using predefined "weapon sets" is not exactly lifelike. Instead, I implement a stow/drop/draw action, which allows a character to switch what they're holding in each hand once per turn. They can drop their torch and draw another weapon, stow their sword and draw their wand, stow two items to free up both hands, or any combination of those things, so long as the item being held or not is interacted with just once, and the hand switches between only two items per turn. That means no dropping an item to do something with the hand and then picking the item right back up again.

To Two-Hand or Not to Two-Hand

A character who chooses to wield a two-handed weapon is making a deliberate choice. They are doing more damage if they hit, but they are sacrificing increased armor class (from a shield) and number of chances to hit (a dual-wielding character is making an extra attack each round). 

Only, are they actually doing more damage than a dual-wielding character? Using my own rules for variant weapon damage, a character wielding a heavy martial weapon with two hands does d12 damage. A character wielding a light martial weapon in each hand does d6 damage with each. If they hit with both, they do an average of 7 damage, versus the two-hander's average 6.5. Not a huge difference, but it's there.

On top of that, normally, the player does not add their character's Strength or Dexterity modifier to the damage roll from their off-hand weapon, but the two-weapon fighting style allows them to do so, which can make the disparity greater. The dual-wielder also has an extra chance to score a critical hit.

But aha, two-handed weapons only require two hands when making an attack (PHB, page 146)! The second hand is free for the rest of the character's turn, allowing them to manipulate objects, draw items, and the like. If they can cast spells, they might also use their now-free hand for that (more on that later). If the dual-wielder wants to free up a hand, they have to use their stow/drop/draw action on that turn to do so, then use their stow/drop/draw action again on their next turn to switch back. Not a huge difference, but it's there.

Shields

Shields might be an exception to the stow/drop/draw action rule. In 5e, shields require a full action to don or doff (PHB, page 146). This feels overly punitive to me. I would rule that a character could switch their shield out for another item as if that hand was holding anything else. Maybe this isn't realistic (assuming the shield is strapped to the arm), but the gamey, mechanical tradeoff decision from round to round is what I'm interested in here, not realism.

This requires another change - in 5e, a character can benefit from a shield even if they're not proficient with shields. Here's the tradeoff: "If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells" (PHB, page 144). 

That above rule doesn't matter (aside from making saving throws) if the character has already taken their action that turn, meaning a character without shield proficiency could take their action as normal, then whip out a shield to benefit from the extra AC. I don't want that.

So if we remove the action required to don or doff a shield, we have to go a bit further and say "You do not benefit from the bonus to Armor Class when wielding a shield with which you are not proficient." Easy.

The Buckler Shield

One thing I miss from AD&D is different types of shields. 2e has buckler shields, small shields, medium shields, and body shields. I've simplified this a bit in 5e, introducing light (buckler) shields, medium (standard) shields, and heavy (body) shields. 

A character no longer needs proficiency in shields to use one - they just need proficiency in the corresponding armor type. This means that classes which don't normally get to use shields (most bards, rogues, and warlocks) can now use some certain shields, which doesn't bother me.

Standard shields work the same as the typical 5e shield. Body shields are similar, but against ranged attacks from the front and flanks, the character is treated as having three-quarters cover (+5 to AC, instead of the +2 typical of shields).

The buckler is the important shield when it comes to the discussion of hands, because it's light and fastens to the forearm, allowing the hand of the shield arm to be used to do things like fire a bow or crossbow, cast a spell, hold a torch, open a door, or the like. So the character wielding a buckler never needs to worry about stowing, dropping, or drawing their shield.

The tradeoff is that the buckler shield only grants the +2 bonus to Armor Class against one attack per round, and only if the character uses their reaction. It comes in handy (haha), but only if the character's reaction isn't already spoken for, and it's still not as good as having a proper shield.

The Components of a Spellcaster

Finally, I want to talk about spellcasting components. There are three kinds of spell components in D&D 5e: verbal, somatic, and material (PHB, page 203). Every spell in D&D requires at least one of these components, but more often, some combination of two or all three components in order to cast. 

Verbal components are "mystic words" which are spoken aloud as the spell is cast. It's not enough to simply say the words - the combination of sounds requires "specific pitch and resonance" to "set the threads of magic in motion". It's why, in my opinion, a character cannot "quietly" or "stealthily" cast a spell. Uttering the verbal components is loud and showy - it's evident to everyone present that a spell is being cast, disgraced 5e designers be damned.

Somatic components "might include a forceful gesticulation or an intricate set of gestures". Material components are "particular objects" but can be substituted by a component pouch or spellcasting focus so long as the components has no cost and isn't consumed by the spell.

Here's where we get to hands: To cast a spell with somatic components, "the caster must have free use of at least one hand". To cast a spell with material components, "a spellcaster must have a hand free to access [the] material components". However, the hand used to access the material components "can be the same hand that [the caster] uses to perform somatic components".

It used to be that a caster's whole body had to be free to cast a spell. A spellcaster casting a spell with somatic components couldn't just wiggle their fingers. Their whole body had to move. They had to do a dumb little dance. A spellcaster could not move on the same turn they cast a spell. If they were on a ship in the middle of a storm, the rest of the party would have to brace them to hold them still so that they could cast without being thrown around the ship. This, along with proper Vancian spellcasting and simultaneous actions in combat - allowing spellcasters to be interrupted while casting - was a huge element of reigning in the power of spellcasters. 

5e has a much different conception of spellcasters. They're basically hyper-mobile artillery. They can run, ride, and fly around casting spells, and all the while, they only need one hand free. They can be restrained by a titanic boa constrictor and can still cast spells with somatic and material components, so long as they can wiggle their fingers.

I personally rule that a spellcaster can't cast spells with somatic components if they're, for example, grappled or restrained, and in that case, they also can't cast spells with a material component unless those materials are already in hand.

I'm inclined to take it a step farther. What if spellcasters needed one free hand for somatic components, and another for material components? Casting a spell which requires both is a full-body action, meaning the character has to stow or drop whatever other items are occupying their hands before they cast.

Unfortunately, the characters who would suffer most from this aren't the dedicated casters, who probably aren't holding much other than a spellcasting focus anyway - the true victims are those that straddle the line between fighting and spellcasting: artificers, clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers. These characters are spellcasters as well as characters that want to wield weapons and, often, shields.

Most of these classes have features which would mitigate the impact of this effect, allowing them to substitute some other item for a spellcasting focus. Artificers can use infused items as spellcasting foci, meaning that an artificer could infuse their weapon or shield, using it for their material components. Clerics and paladins can etch their holy symbol into a shield or, even better, simply wear it visibly on their person. Druids and - as of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - rangers can use a druidic focus, which can be a staff, which is also a weapon (although maybe not the preferred one). 

In baseline 5e, this allows each of these character types to wield a useful item while still casting spells which require both somatic and material components (oddly, if the spell only requires a somatic component, they still need a free hand). If we change the rule to require one free hand for each of these components, then they at least need one less hand free.

These classes can also benefit from taking the War Caster feat, which eliminates the need for a free hand to use somatic components, so long as the character is wielding weapons or a shield in one or both hands (my reading of it is that the character couldn't cast a spell requiring somatic components while holding a torch in one hand and holding a potion in the other, for example).

Certain subclasses suffer more greatly - those classes which normally don't cast spells, but have subclasses which do, such as the eldritch knight fighter or the arcane trickster rogue, or those classes which normally don't wield weapons, but have subclasses which do, such as the swords and valor bards and the hexblade warlock. Since 5e is designed in such a way that casting spells with somatic components, material components, or both requires just one hand, this isn't normally a problem. If we require them to use both hands, they become much more limited. If I were to implement the house rule I'm proposing, I would likely give these subclasses some extra feature that allows them to use a weapon or shield as a focus.

Overall, I've not totally sold myself on making this change. It's not like changing a single spell or the way a class feature works, which is relatively easy - it's changing the base rules about how spellcasting as a whole works, which potentially has tons of knock-on effects. 

I'm not particularly interested in going through the whole spell list and analyzing the edge cases of which spells become more or less effective with different classes and subclasses depending on what they can and can't use as a spellcasting focus. It's the kind of thing that would require playtesting. Maybe next time I run a 5e game, I'll try it. Or maybe by then I'll have decided I don't really care.

The important take away is that I'm trying to pay more attention to what my players' characters are doing with their hands. Doing so generates interesting round-by-round decision points (holding a light source, choosing weapons, using a shield, and casting spells are all meaningful tradeoffs). This, and a healthy dose of common sense, reigns in more powerful character concepts, such as spellcasters (a wizard can't cast elaborate spells while being throttled by a tentacled beast). That at the very least is worth considering.

On Identification

In my most recent AD&D 2e play report, the player characters wanted to discover the properties of a strange alien helmet they found in an old tomb. The helmet had seemingly been used to torture someone so badly that they became a ghost, so of course none of the characters dared to try it on and find out for themselves what it was capable of. The players are not quite ready to embrace the old-school approach that is bribing or bullying their henchmen and hirelings into being magic item guinea pigs, either. So, they decided to find the most capable wizard in town and ask her to identify the item for them. 

The problem? According to Table 69 of the 2e DMG (page 154), getting an NPC to cast identify should cost at least 1,000 gold pieces per item or function of an item to be identified. The DMG states that "the costs of purchasing a spell are such that it is far better for someone in the party to learn the spell. In general, the mercenary use of NPC spellcasters should be discouraged whenever possible. The player character are supposed to face challenges on their own!"

Clearly, there is an intended playstyle justification for the high cost of getting an NPC to cast an identify spell. But there is also a mechanical justification - identifying magic items in 2e is hard! Below is the description of the identify spell in 2e, with important parts bolded (PHB, page 175):

Range: 0

Components: V, S, M

Duration: 1 rd./level

Casting Time: Special

Area of Effect: 1 item/level

Saving Throw: None

When an identify spell is cast, magical items subsequently touched by the wizard can be identified. The eight hours immediately preceding the casting of the spell must be spent purifying the items and removing influences that would corrupt and blur their magical auras. If this period is interrupted, it must be begun again. When the spell is cast, each item must be handled in turn by the wizard. Any consequences of this handling fall fully upon the wizard and may end the spell, although the wizard is allowed any applicable saving throw.

The chance of learning a piece of information about an item is equal to 10% per level of the caster, to a maximum of 90%, rolled by the DM. Any roll of 96-00 indicates a false reading (91-95 reveals nothing). Only one function of a multifunction item is discovered per handling (i.e., a 5th-level wizard could attempt to determine the nature of five different items, five different functions of a single item, or any combination of the two). If any attempt at reading fails, the caster cannot learn any more about that item until he advances a level. Note that some items, such as special magical tomes, cannot be identified with this spell.

The item never reveals its exact attack or damage bonuses, although the fact that it has few or many bonuses can be determined. If it has charges, only a general indication of the number of charges remaining is learned: powerful (81% - 100% of the total possible charges), strong (61% - 80%), moderate (41% - 60%), weak (6% - 40%), or faint (five charges or less). The faint result takes precedence, so a fully charged ring of three wishes always appears to be only faintly charged.

After casting the spell and determining what can be learned from it, the wizard loses 8 points of Constitution. He must rest for one hour to recover each point of Constitution. If the 8-point loss drops the spellcaster below a Constitution of 1, he falls unconscious. Consciousness is not regained until full Constitution is restored, which takes 24 hours (one point per three hours for an unconscious character).

The material components of this spell are a pearl (of at least 100 gp value) and an owl feather steeped in wine; the infusion must be drunk prior to spellcasting. If a luckstone is powdered and added to the infusion, the divination becomes much more potent: Exact bonuses or charges can be determined, and the functions of a multifunctional item can be learned from a single reading. At the DM's option, certain properties of an artifact or relic might also be learned.

The key takeaway is this: In 2e, the caster must spend 8 hours preparing to cast the spell, as well as at least 8 hours recovering from casting the spell, and because the caster must handle each item, they are vulnerable to any curses which might befall them from doing so. Additionally, unlike in D&D 5e, for example, material components of spells are consumed unless stated otherwise (PHB, page 114) - in 5e, they're not consumed unless stated otherwise (PHB, page 203) - meaning that every casting of identify in 2e consumes a 100 gp pearl.

In 2e, when the player characters pay 1,000 gp to an NPC wizard to cast identify, they are paying for an entire day of the wizard's time (8 hours of prep and at least 8 hours of recovery), as well as reimbursing the wizard for the lost pearl, the risk of curses, and the risk of falling into a brief coma. Suddenly, 1,000 gp sounds more fair.

Also worth noting is that identify in 2e does not automatically reveal information about the item (the spell always has a chance of failure). A higher-level wizard has a better chance of determining an item's properties, and a wizard with access to powdered luckstone can discern more specific item properties like exact bonuses and number of charges. If anything, identify should be more expensive depending on the level of the wizard whose services are employed, as well as any additional components they might be using.

This guy will risk getting cursed and falling into a coma for 1,000 gp.

Identification, Made Easy

Over the editions of D&D, magical item identification has gradually become faster, more reliable, and less costly. In 3e, identify takes 1 hour to cast and requires no recovery time, and it automatically reveals all properties of a single item, including the means of activating the item and how many charges it has (if any).

I don't remember much from my brief time with D&D 4e, but from Googling around it looks like this was the edition which introduced the concept of automatically identifying items on a short rest, which brings us to 5e (DMG, page 136):

"A character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while being in physical contact with the item. At the end of the rest, the character learns the item's properties, as well as how to use them."

The identify spell still exists in 5e, for those players who don't want to have to take the time to identify items the more accessible way. 5e's identify takes 1 minute to cast if a spell slot is used, or 10 minutes when cast as a ritual (avoiding the use of a spell slot). The 100 gp pearl is no longer consumed. The spell allows the character to "learn [the item's] properties and how to use them, whether it requires attunement to use, and how many charges it has, if any" as well as "whether any spells are affecting the item and what they are" and "which spell created [the item]." (PHB, page 252)

So, at worst, the player character can spend an hour to identify an item without error (without even being a spellcaster or having any knowledge of magic). At best, they can spend a spell slot to identify it in 1 minute (if they know identify and/or have it prepared). In the middle, they can spend 10 minutes and no other resources to identify it (if they know identify and can cast ritual spells).

From 2e to 5e, we went from 16 total hours of time spent on a single casting of identify to as little as 1 minute, from a 100 gp pearl which is consumed with every casting to a 100 gp pearl that can be used indefinitely, and from an uncertain prospect of success and a one-property-at-a-time process of discovery to an automatically thorough and accurate reading of an item with a single casting.

Much like the intended playstyle of 2e (player characters should overcome challenges on their own) informs 2e's approach to identification, the intended playstyle of 5e informs 5e's approach to identification. In 5e, player characters aren't meant to struggle with mundane adventurer tasks like figuring out what their new toys are and how to use them. Player character abilities simply work, they work instantaneously, and they do not usually have drawbacks, penalties, or restrictions.

This is especially true of spells - players can only learn a handful of spells as their characters progress, so they're unlikely to choose those which they deem "underpowered" or unreliable Thus, all spells must attempt to be equally compelling in order to attract players to choose them. (Wizards can technically learn every spell available to their class, but even their potential, from the player's perspective, is throttled by the greedy DM's draconian vice grip on scrolls and spellbooks found in treasure hoards.)

The modernization of magic in D&D comes at the expense of the fiction which the game was originally intended to emulate - conjurers can pick and choose exactly what otherwordly creature they summon, and have perfect and minute control over such creatures, transmuters can spend lifetimes polymorphed into monsters with no risk of ever truly becoming monsters themselves, and rare, powerful, and alien artifacts readily and reliably yield all of their secrets and powers in as little as a minute (or at most, in an hour, to any non-magic-using schmuck who handles them and thinks really hard about it).

This guy doesn't even know magic, but even he can force the cube to yield all of its most occult secrets during his lunch break!

Identification, Made Boring

The consequence of the modernization of magic item identification is that there's simply no reason for player characters to experiment with magic items ever again. Why would they, when, in a worst case scenario, they can simply sit for an hour and think really hard about the item to unerringly learn all of its properties?

The 5e DMG (page 136) does shoutout experimentation as a means of identification, for some reason: "Wearing or experimenting with an item can also offer hints about its properties. For example, if a character puts on a ring of jumping, you could say, "Your steps feel strangely springy." Perhaps the character then jumps up and down to see what happens. You then say the character jumps unexpectedly high."

Why special mention is given to experimentation when the mechanics almost completely eliminate the need for it is anyone's guess. In some scenarios, the party may have no spellcasters capable of casting identify, and may not have time to stop for an hour, or may have need of the item urgently, but this has never happened in one of my games. It's probably because one of my players almost always plays a wizard.

The DMG also has a variant rule which eliminates the ability to identify magic items on a short rest: "If you prefer magic items to have a greater mystique, consider removing the ability to identify the properties of a magic item during a short rest, and require the identify spell, experimentation, or both to reveal what a magic item does." 

Of course, there's no example given as to what a combination of identify and experimentation looks like, which would be helpful, given that identify, as written, is 100% accurate 100% of the time - so in what scenario would experimentation also be needed? Even in a campaign where short rest identification is eliminated, the identify spell is still foolproof. 

If the player characters can't cast identify themselves, they can probably find an NPC to do it for them, and certain official Wizards of the Coast products list the price of magic item identification being as cheap as 20 gp per item, which is trivially cheap even at 1st-level. There is still no incentive to experiment.

Identification, Made Interesting

Ultimately, I was inspired to write this post by two things - my above reading of the AD&D 2e description of identify, and Prismatic Wasteland's post on Potion Clues. 

Warren's post specifically made me think about how in 5e, the DMG provides a brief description of what every potion looks like. A potion of healing is red and glimmers when agitated. A potion of fire breath is flickering orange, and smoke fills the top of the container and wafts out whenever its opened. A potion of animal friendship is a muddy liquid containing a fish scale, a hummingbird tongue, a cat's claw, and a squirrel's hair. 

Details like this invite players to speculate as to a potion's properties, take notes on potions they've encountered in the past, and perhaps most importantly, experiment. The characters have had potions of healing before, so they are able to recognize the glimmering red liquid. They are able to intuit from the appearance of a potion of fire breath that the potion has something to do with fire. In en encounter with a wild animal, they might risk quaffing a potion of animal friendship, having deduced that it has at least something to do with animals, and might give them an advantage. 

Hilariously, the DMG specifically says "Potions are an exception [to the usual identification rules]; a little taste is enough to tell the taster what the potion does." On the one hand, we have an interesting way for player characters to deduce a potion's properties just by looking at them. On the other hand, the DMG says, "Nevermind all that - just take a little sip, which has no consequences whatsoever, and all will be revealed!"

Warren writes that making the effects of a potion less immediately transparent "rewards characters who can identify potions, encourages seeking out sages who identify them, and creates interesting decision points when they have unidentified potions in their bags but their backs are up against the wall." I would go a step farther and apply this approach to all magic items.

In fact, the 5e DMG even suggests that all magic items should be visually distinct (page 136): "The command word to activate a ring might be etched in tiny letters inside it, or a feathered design might suggest that it's a ring of feather falling."

A few pages later, the 5e DMG has a great section on "Special Features" of magic items (page 141). That section includes tables to determine who or what created the item or was intended to use it, details from the item's history, and minor properties and quirks of the item. 

There's probably enough material here for a separate post which goes into more detail on making magic items themselves interesting, so that the process of learning their properties is in turn interesting. Discovering that a war hammer is a +1 war hammer and only a +1 war hammer is never going to be interesting no matter how the DM adjudicates it. So, a DM should never simply give the players a +1 war hammer - they can buy that in a shop, if all they want is a +1 bonus (magic item shops are already almost completely devoid of wonder, so the items to be found there might as well be accordingly wonder-less). 

Instead, that magic war hammer the player characters find by chance in an actual dungeon on an actual adventure is the Black Earth Bludgeon, crafted of solid stone and bejeweled with polished rock. It was made by cultists of Ogrémoch to slay beings of elemental air and the worshippers of Yan-C-Bin. It grants the wielder uncanny senses when underground, but makes them slothful and lethargic on the surface world, beneath the open sky.

So, how do the player characters learn all of this about the seemingly humble +1 war hammer? The purpose of my approach, which I'll detail below, is for a magic item's properties to be communicated entirely within the fiction of the game, and to encourage experimentation by the player characters as the single best way to truly discern an item's various properties.

Identification, Made Complex

First, we have to entirely eliminate identification via a short rest. It's both easy and reliable, which makes it boring. Then, we have to make identification via identify less informative. I don't want identify to reveal an item's properties at all - only fictional information about the item's identity. Casting identify should only reveal the +1 war hammer's name, origin, and purpose.

At the DM's option, identify could also be made more costly, and less reliable. Let's say that each casting of identify requires an Intelligence (Arcana) check to properly identify the item, and that the DC is determined by the item's rarity, like so:

Item Rarity    Intelligence (Arcana) check DC
Common         10
Uncommon     15
Rare                20
Very Rare        25
Legendary       30
Artifact            35

Now, a 1st-level wizard, assuming that they have proficiency with Arcana and start the game with an Intelligence of 16 (+3) - although I don't mind player characters starting with higher ability scores - can somewhat reliably identify common and uncommon items, and can less easily identify rare and very rare items. By 13th-level, the same wizard probably has +10 to their Arcana skill, meaning they can reliably identify rare items, and can occasionally identify even legendary items. Only a character with expertise in Arcana can ever properly identify an artifact.

On a failed check, the caster has failed to magically divine the item's identity from the depths of time. On a successful check, the caster learns that the +1 war hammer is the Black Earth Bludgeon, crafted by cultists of Ogrémoch to slay beings of elemental air and the worshippers of Yan-C-Bin. There's still plenty to learn about this item, but the player characters have a place to start.

What's to stop a caster from simply attempting to identify an item over and over again until they succeed? Make the 100 gp pearl component consumable when used to attempt to identify a magic item. Now, every attempt comes with a cost.

Players and their characters can still intuit things about an item based on its appearance, as I described with regard to potions. In the case of the Black Earth Bludgeon, the players, drawing on their knowledge of the genre, might conclude that the bejeweled stone hammer was crafted either by dwarves or elementals. They might seek out these creatures, or NPCs who are knowledgeable about these creatures, to attempt to learn more about the item.

If the players don't intuit information themselves, they might lean on their characters' skills to do so. A character proficient in History, Religion, or jeweler's or mason's tools might recall reading about the item in An Encyclopedia of Elemental Evil, recognize certain symbols of the Black Earth carved into the hammer's head or haft, or recognize the magical stonecutting employed by Black Earth artisan-priests. 

Loosely interpreting a rule from Xanathar's Guide to Everything (page 78) - as I've done in the past - tool proficiencies can be combined with skill proficiencies to gain advantage on ability checks. In my case, I allow two proficiencies of any type to combine in this way, not just one tool proficiency and one skill proficiency - so a character with any combination of History, Religion, and jeweler's and mason's tools would have an increased chance of recognizing the origin of the Black Earth Bludgeon. I would use the same DC-by-rarity guidelines I outlined above for identify.

This eliminates the need for identify to some extent, but this is a good thing, as it rewards players for being able to draw their own conclusions, or for making characters with niche knowledge and skills. In a scenario where none of the players or characters have any idea what the nature of an item might be, identify still exists, but it's more costly, in addition to being somewhat unreliable.

So, either through player skill, character skill, leveraging knowledgeable NPCs, or falling back on the identify spell, the players and their characters now know a bit more about the item. How do they figure out what it actually does?

Identification, Made Fun

They experiment! 

The Black Earth Bludgeon was crafted by cultists of Ogremoch to slay beings of elemental air and the worshippers of Yan-C-Bin, so the player characters might try using it to fight air elementals, Howling Hatred cultists, and flying creatures. Against these foes, the hammer feels twice as heavy when delivering blows, but not any more difficult for the wielder to swing. These enemies crumble against the hammer's awesome might. Perhaps, against these enemies, it grants additional bonuses to attack and damage rolls, or advantage on attacks. It might cause flying enemies to fall to the ground immediately, turn enemy cultists to stone, or banish air elementals back to their home plane.

The Black Earth Bludgeon is clearly attuned with the earth itself, so the player characters might try bringing it underground. Suddenly, the wielder has an intuitive sense of how deep they are beneath the surface, and which direction is north. Secret doors and maybe even dungeon walls crumble beneath the hammer's blows. Perhaps the hammer's head pulls in the direction of precious stones.

When they return to the surface, the wielder notices that the hammer feels twice as heavy. Their every step is a burden. The endless, wide open sky feels like it's crashing down around them. They're becoming agoraphobic.

In this way, the magic item becomes another character in the game. The player characters have to spend time with the item, devote resources to uncovering its secrets, and most importantly, play with it. 

For this to be truly interesting and fun, the magic item should likewise be interesting and fun. It should have a unique appearance from which players can draw conclusions, an origin and history which the player characters and NPCs might be aware of, and multiple features, including both benefits and drawbacks, which are discovered only through continual experimentation in a variety of scenarios. Player characters cannot simply find an item, sit down with it during a coffee break, and immediately decide if they want to use it or throw it in a bag of holding to sell at the local Magic Mart.

This playstyle isn't for everyone. To some extent, it's working directly against the intended playstyle of modern D&D, which might be too much for some DMs and players. There's presumably a reason why WotC designed this element of the game this way. I'd guess that it's probably because players complained about identification being too onerous in the past. WotC loves to design by committee, rather than by vision.

I'm sure there are plenty of players who simply want to hit the identify button and be done with it, and get to using their new toy, but sometimes it's more fun to start playing with the toy without knowing what it might do.

On Language

The topic of languages in RPGs is a contentious issue. In D&D, language acquisition is unrealistic. It's a binary on-off switch - when a player character decides to learn a language, they suddenly know it in its totality, and can engage in conversations of varying complexity with all speakers of the language, regardless of things like dialect. 

Real-world "intelligence" (whatever that means - my education in psychology has taught me that it's hotly debated and that a nuanced understanding of "multiple intelligences" is more accurate) has little to do with language acquisition - it's much more important to be immersed in a language from an early age, suggesting that a PC's background is more useful as a metric for what languages they should know. So why do older editions of D&D and OSR games use Intelligence to determine language acquisition?

Others argue that because it's so difficult for humans in the real world to learn languages from cultures other than their own, it makes little sense in a fantasy game for intelligent creatures of one species to sufficiently learn the language and understand the worldview of an entire other species.

And that's not even touching on what alignment languages are supposed to represent.

It's not only appeals to realism which are used to critique language proficiency in D&D. Language acquisition happens most frequently during character creation, when a player's knowledge of the setting, the challenges they may face, and the languages they might encounter is often incomplete. 

The result is that if the players choose the "wrong" languages, they end up missing out on valuable information, and consequently have fewer choices - they are either less well-equipped to make informed decisions, or they are locked out of certain approaches to situations. If the party encounters unfriendly or hostile intelligent creatures and they do not share a language, negotiation is more or less not an option, which means combat often becomes the only way forward.

I'm not particularly concerned with realistically representing language acquisition in my games. In D&D, language is often just another challenge to overcome, whether by clever roleplaying or with hard-coded skills. Ability scores are one among many abstractions in D&D which are necessary to keep the game relatively simple and gameable. I'm not trying to introduce six new ability scores to represent the different types of intelligence, for example. 

I view Intelligence in D&D not as a character's inherent smartness, but more as the level of education and learnedness that a new character enters the game with. When a wizard in D&D 5e, for example, increases their Intelligence as they level up, it doesn't represent a magical increase in their inherent ability to learn - it represents a deepening knowledge of the world gained through adventuring and study. 

It makes enough sense to me that a wizard would begin the game with a higher Intelligence due to their study under a mentor or at an academy, and thus would have a greater capacity for language acquisition and use, even if attributing such a thing to a single measure of "intelligence" in the real world might be overly simple and potentially problematic. 

I also don't think it makes the game more interesting to forego the acquisition of exotic languages entirely just because it doesn't necessarily make sense for a human to be able to fully comprehend the nuances of not just Dwarvish vocabulary and grammar, but also the Dwarvish worldview.

I do agree with two of the above points: that language acquisition is too binary, and doesn't account for the complexity of interpretation, and that the nature and timing of language acquisition in the game often leads to uninformed decisions which unfortunately lock players out of certain choices in play.

Language is a Proficiency

Beginning with AD&D 2e, if the optional proficiency system is used, language has been one of many possible proficiencies available to player characters in D&D. 

It continues to be a proficiency in 5e, but for some reason isn't used as such. If a character is proficient in a language, they simply know it - no check is required to speak, read, or write in that language. The only other proficiency which is treated this way is armor - even weapons technically require an ability check (an attack roll) every time a character attempts to use them. This is a major missed opportunity for language. If language is instead treated like any other proficiency, a world of possibilities emerges.

Language is a Skill

My house rule for using languages in 5e works like this: Any languages which a character acquires via their race (Common and Dwarvish, for example, if the character is a dwarf) is a native language. The character grew up speaking it and can speak, read, and write in that language without difficulty. Any other language that character knows (such as those acquired from the character's background, the occasional class feature, or downtime spent studying) is a learned language.

Non-native languages always require an Intelligence (Language) check when the character attempts to speak, read, or write in that language. If the character has proficiency in the language, they can apply their proficiency bonus to the ability check. A success indicates that the character has successfully communicated their intent or understood the intent of another. A failure indicates a misunderstanding, mistranslation, or faux pas. 

The difficulty class of the Intelligence (Language) check is determined based on a variety of factors, including the complexity of the ideas being communicated, vocabulary used, expected etiquette, the speed with which another creature is speaking to the interpreter, legibility of the writing, and the like.

At the DM's option, a failed Intelligence (Language) check to comprehend a speaker or piece of writing may still allow the character to glean some information in the form of common or key words:

Degree of Failure    Number of Words
1-4                            1d12
5-9                            1d10
10-14                        1d8
15-19                        1d6
20+                           1d4

Alternatively, a simpler rule would be to say that a failure of 5 or less indicates that 1-3 key words are understood, and a failure of more than 5 indicates that a (potentially) disastrous misinterpretation has occurred.

This not only allows for a less binary system of language acquisition, but also for the possibility that characters who don't necessarily have proficiency with a language can still attempt to understand it. In that case, an Intelligence check without proficiency is made. A success means that the character conveys or understands more or less the gist of what's intended. No longer are the players locked out of negotiating with the goblins just because nobody picked Goblin as a language in character creation!

This may seem unrealistic to some, but adventurers are worldly individuals who interact with all manner of creatures. It makes plenty of sense to me that they may pick up a few common words here or there, or that the wizard with their nose in a book at every opportunity is somewhat capable of navigating simple and intermediate conversations in a foreign tongue. Many adventurers would know that "bree-yark" is Goblin for "We surrender"...it is, isn't it?

Treating language as a skill proficiency has a few added effects. Any mechanic which interacts with ability checks can be applied to language ability checks. 

Skill Mechanics

If language is treated as a skill, characters who gain the expertise feature (such as bards and rogues, and those characters which take certain feats) can take expertise in a language if they wish to get a better grasp than most. 

Bards at 2nd-level gain the Jack of All Trades feature (PHB, page 51), which allows them to apply half their proficiency bonus to skills with which they're not already proficient. Now that applies to languages, too. The bard is the worldliest and wordiest of adventurers, after all, so it stands to reason that they would have a better than average grasp of even those languages they haven't devoted time or resources to learning.

Rogues also benefit, as at 11th-level they gain the Reliable Talent feature (PHB, page 94), which prevents them from ever rolling under 10 on an ability check with which they have proficiency. Now the rogue has more or less mastered even the slangiest thieves' cant, as well as any other languages they've picked up on their adventures. This sort of harkens back to the thief's ability in past editions to read any language, though I'm tempted to give them a version of Jack of All Trades which applies only to language ability checks to represent that more accurately.

One of my favorite 5e mechanics is found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Chapter 2: Dungeon Master's Tools, under Tool Proficiencies (page 78). The rule pertains to the use of tool proficiencies in combination with skill proficiencies: "If the use of a tool and the use of a skill both apply to a check, and a character is proficient with the tool and the skill, consider allowing the character to make the check with advantage."

When I read this, I decided to completely ignore the fact that it specifically refers to using tools, and started using this mechanic any time my players did anything that could conceivably fall under more than one of their proficiencies. Trying to use historical precedent to convince an NPC to do something? That's a Persuasion check, and if the character has proficiency with History, it's made with advantage. Trying to trick the cultists into believing that the character is a fanatical follower of the Bone Lord? That's a Deception check, and if the character has proficiency with Religion, it's made with advantage.

This can work with language ability checks, too. A character may be able to kind of sort of get by speaking and interpreting another languages sometimes, but they're particularly well-versed in a certain field of study and have learned several words which are important when discussing it, or reading or writing about it. 

If the character is building a stronghold and wants to communicate construction specifications to the dwarf stonemasons, the character's proficiency with mason's tools applies, and they have advantage on their check to communicate their intent. A character with proficiency in Religion is better able to communicate and interpret religious ideas to and from goblins. A character with proficiency in Nature is better able to decipher an Elvish bestiary with information on the mating habits of owlbears.

Lost in Translation

Another benefit of using ability checks for language is that it can complicate negotiations. When the character succeeds in an attempt to communicate, and is simultaneously attempting to deceive, intimidate, or persuade the creature to which they're speaking, the result of their language ability check can also be used a cap for the following Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion check (i.e. if the result of the language check is 15, the following Charisma check cannot be higher than a 15). The bard may be great at working a crowd, but their ability to work a crowd of orcs is much less potent than it would be with a crowd of humans.

For best results, this mechanic should be combined with a robust system for social interaction.

Related Languages

Languages in the real world often share connections. An English speaker can sometimes follow the meaning of a Spanish speaker because some of the words are alike. It stands to reason that fantasy languages would also share commonalities. To determine which languages in 5e are related, I refer to their scripts:

If two languages share a script, then they're related. If a character attempts to converse in or comprehend a language with which they are not proficient, they have advantage on the ability check if they're proficient in a related language.

Standard and Exotic Languages

D&D 5e makes a useful distinction between "standard" and "exotic" languages (PHB, page 123)...which then isn't actually used at all, except to say "With your DM's permission, you can instead choose a language from the Exotic Languages table". I don't think I've ever had a player ask my permission to learn any language during character creation.

Standard languages are those spoken by the typical player character races - Dwarvish, Elvish, Halfling, and the like. Exotic languages are typically those spoken by monsters - Celestial, Draconic, Infernal, etc. I've written before about how the DM can, prior to character creation, change up which languages are standard or exotic based on the setting.

I don't love that it's equally easy to learn both standard and exotic languages - after all, what makes exotic languages exotic, other than this vague notion of "Hey, maybe ask your DM first, if you want"?. 

I house rule that if a feature allows a character to learn two or more languages (such as with certain backgrounds), the character can learn one exotic language in lieu of two standard languages. A character with the sage background can learn Dwarvish and Elvish, or Infernal, but not Dwarvish and Infernal.

To represent the difficulty of fully grasping an exotic language, I recommend increasing the DC of Intelligence (Language) checks made to speak or comprehend exotic languages by at least 5 across the board. (I actually roll to determine the DC of most ability checks during prep, so I usually roll twice and take the higher result when it comes to exotic languages.) 

Learning Languages

I use XGE's rules for the training downtime activity (page 134) to handle language acquisition beyond those languages learned by other means. The downtime activity normally takes ten weeks and costs 25 gold per week. I house rule that learning an exotic language instead takes twice as long and costs 50 gold per week.

This is one case where I would apply a limit to the maximum knowable languages based on Intelligence. Otherwise, with enough downtime and cash, player characters can learn every language (which is maybe fine, but I still want there to be some tradeoff and element of strategy when deciding which languages to learn - if the character only gets three, then the player better choose them carefully, ideally after spending some time in the world and determining which languages are most useful).

If the DM wants to stick with mechanics which exist in 5e, the number of languages can be limited by the character's Intelligence modifier, meaning that a character of the highest degree of nonmagically-augmented Intelligence can learn five languages, which seems fairly reasonable. Through magical augmentation and ability score increases beyond 20th level (DMG, page 230), a character's Intelligence modifier can go all the way up to +10.

Quantum Language

As evidenced by the many hyperlinks in this article, there's a wide variety of discussion on this topic. I wasn't sure how else to work it into this post - and my "ability check without proficiency" approach pretty much covers the possibility for any character to know (enough of) any language at any given time - but one might also consider playing around with quantum languages as another way of doing things.

Conclusion

None of this is to say that this is a 100% fix for language in D&D 5e, but I think it's a big improvement. Obviously, language in 5e is intended to be a binary ability - the character either knows the language or they don't - but this to me is a much more interesting way of doing it. 

This approach mitigates the binary nature of language acquisition, which also makes the player's specific choice of known languages at the start of the game less crucial, and allows for a wider array of character choices in encounters with NPCs, even if the characters and NPCs don't share a language.