Deep Water
Severn's travels often required spanning seas to reach faraway lands. Indeed, often the journey is as important for learning as the destination. The following are a collection of maritime spells, gathered from all sorts of colourful peoples who call the high seas their home, from deep sea Cultists to vicious Pirates, and an occasional Hag.
Call Leviathan
9th Level Conjuration
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: 90 feet
- Components: V, S, M (A pearl worth 1000gp; a whale's tear)
- Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
You attempt to summon a leviathan, (CR 20 Elemental, MToF) targeting a body of water no smaller than a 50ft cube and calling forth the great beast from the elemental plane to yours.
The leviathan's attacks are considered magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances and immunity to nonmagical damage, and they cannot use their Legendary Actions or Legendary Resistances. Additionally, you have a psychic link to the leviathan for the duration, through which you are able to issue commands.
When you summon it and on each of your turns thereafter, you can issue a mental command to it (requiring no action on your part), telling it what it must do on its next turn, else it spends its turn attacking any creature within reach that has attacked it.
At the end of each of the leviathan’s turns, it can choose to make a Charisma saving throw (DM's discretion as to whether it dislikes the orders it's given). On a failed save, it continues to obey you. On a successful save, your control of the leviathan ends for the rest of the duration, and the leviathan spends its turns pursuing and attacking its enemies to the best of its ability, or returns to the plane of water as an action.
Classes: Druid, Warlock, Wizard
Conjure Crustacean
5th Level Evocation
- Casting Time: 1 minute
- Range: 90 feet
- Components: V, S, M (A piece of shell from the desired creature with a drop of saltwater)
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
You call forth a creature from the depths. The shell grows and the drop of saltwater expands until it overflows, the two coalescing into the large form of a Hulking Crab.
The crab attacks are considered magical for the purposes of overcoming resistances and immunities, and it can carry up to 3 creatures on its shell.
The crab is friendly to you and your companions for the duration. Roll initiative for the crab, which has its own turns. It obeys any verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don't issue any commands to the crab, it defends itself from hostile creatures but otherwise takes no actions. If your concentration is broken, the crab doesn't disappear. Instead, you lose control of the crab, it becomes hostile toward you and your companions, and it might attack. An uncontrolled crab can’t be dismissed by you, and it disappears 1 hour after you summoned it. The GM has the crab’s statistics.
At Higher Levels When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 7th level or higher, you can summon one additional crab for every 2 slot levels above 5th.
Classes: Druid, Ranger
Art Credits: Sea Serpent by Iwao-Ryuuji
Maroon
7th Level Conjuration
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: 30 feet
- Components: V, S, M (A handful of sand from a deserted island)
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
You attempt to send one creature that you can see within range to a desert island in a demiplane. The target must succeed on a Charisma saving throw or be banished. The target remains there for the duration or until it finds treasure.
Whilst there, the target suffers from the heat. At the start of each of their turns whilst within the demiplane, they must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, they take 4d6 fire damage. If they fail 3 saves against the effect over the course of the spell, they gain 2 levels of exhaustion.
The target can use its action to attempt to look for the buried treasure. When it does so, it makes a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check. If it succeeds, it finds the treasure, and the spell ends.
When the spell ends the target reappears in the space it left or if that space is occupied, the nearest unoccupied space.
Classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
Mizzenmast
3rd Level Transmutation (Variant: Ritual)
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: Touch
- Components: V, S, M (A piece of the desired ship; Ritual: A piece of the rudder, which the spell consumes)
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
You can target a ship within range. The ship comes alive, the rigging whipping in the wind as the ship lurches into motion, preparing itself to set sail. You must maintain contact with the ship for the duration of the spell, else the spell fails.
At the start of your next turn, the ship is ready to set sail. At the start of that turn and each turn thereafter, you can move the ship up to its movement speed in a direction you choose.
Once the ship is sailing, you may as an action make an attack with the rigging on the ship. A target creature on the ship or within 10ft. of the ship must make a Dexterity saving throw or be restrained (Escape DC equal to your save DC).
Ritual: The casting time increases to 1 hour and the range increases to unlimited but the ship must be on the same plane of existence as you. You can call the ship to your location upon casting or send it to a specific location (you must know how to get there via boat); the ship then navigates itself to that location safely, provided it is able to. Once used this way, you cannot cast Mizzenmast on the same ship again. You must have spent 8 hours etching ritual markings on the desired ship before you can cast Mizzenmast this way.
Classes: Druid (Coast), Sorcerer, Wizard
Drown
4th Level Evocation (Variant: Ritual)
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: 30 feet
- Components: V, S, M (Ritual: A piece of hair from each target)
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
You attempt to drown a creature that you can see within range. If the target needs to breathe, they must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save the target cannot breath or speak as it begins drowning, and must spend their action on their next turn coughing up water. On a successful save the creature isn't affected.
A drowning creature must make another Constitution saving throw at the start of each of its turns, losing it's action on a failure. If it successfully saves against this spell three times, the spell ends. If it fails three times, the creature falls unconscious and must begin making death saving throws.
Ritual: The casting time increases to 1 hour, and the range increases to unlimited, but the target/s must be on the same plane of existence as you. Once a creature has been targeted by this spell, they cannot be targeted again until a lunar cycle has passed. On a blood moon, the creature drowns in their own blood.
At Higher Levels When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 4th.
Classes: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
Art Credits: Desert Island by Denise Lauren
Find Aquatic Steed
3rd Level Conjuration
- Casting Time: 10 Minutes
- Range: 30 feet
- Components: V, S
- Duration: Instantaneous
You summon a spirit that assumes the form of a loyal, majestic mount. Appearing in an unoccupied space within range, the spirit takes on a form you choose: a giant toad, an ice toad, a giant octopus or a giant seahorse (warhorse with a 60ft. swim speed). The creature has the statistics provided in the Monster Manual for the chosen form, though it is a celestial, a fey, or a fiend (your choice) instead of its normal creature type. Additionally, if it has an Intelligence score of 5 or lower, its Intelligence becomes 6, and it gains the ability to understand one language of your choice that you speak. Lastly, the creature loses all speeds except swim speeds, as it cannot survive on land.
You control the mount in combat. While the mount is within 1 mile of you, you can communicate with it telepathically. While mounted on it, you can make any spell you cast that targets only you also target the mount.
The mount disappears temporarily when it drops to 0 hit points, when you dismiss it as an action or when it remains out of a body of water for more than 1 minute. Casting this spell again re-summons the bonded mount, with all its hit points restored and any conditions removed.
You can't have more than one mount bonded by this spell or find steed at the same time. As an action, you can release a mount from its bond, causing it to disappear permanently.
Whenever the mount disappears, it leaves behind any objects it was wearing or carrying.
Classes: Paladin
Creeping Frost
4th Level Transmutation
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: 60 feet
- Components: V, S, M (A shard of black ice someone has slipped on)
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
You choose a point you can see within range, firing a thin snow-white bead that ruptures, frost pouring out. The ground in a 5ft. radius immediately freezes over, and when any creature enters the area or attempts to move through the area for the first time on their turn, they must make a Dexterity saving throw or fall prone, taking 2d6 bludgeoning damage and 1d4 cold damage. They make the save at disadvantage if there is a creature prone in an adjacent tile. On a successful save, the creature can move through the ice, but it is treated as difficult terrain.
When a creature starts its turn prone on the ice, they take 2d4 cold damage. Additionally, at the start of each of your turns, the area the ice covers grows by 5ft. into the adjacent tiles, and the ice creeps up walls and onto ceilings. For each turn the ice remains, the cold damage increases by 1d4. If the ice comes into contact with water, it also spreads through it at 5ft. per round.
If you maintain concentration on the spell for the full duration, the ice remains for up to 1 hour. Each 5ft. square has AC 10 and 10 hit points, and is vulnerable to fire damage. If all the ice is destroyed but you maintain concentration on the spell, the ice begins growing again from the initial point of impact of the spell.
At Higher Levels When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the initial cold damage increases by 2d4 for each slot level above 4th, and the initial radius increases by 10ft for every two slot levels above 4th.
Classes: Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
Art Credits: Water Horse by Htg17