Cantrips

About

Cantrips are minor spells meant to add flavor and interest to your character. They may be used out of combat or in combat as a minor action, but provide no combat benefits. Typically, they don't require any special words to cast or hand gestures.

Learning Cantrips

In order to learn a cantrip, characters must have at least 3 Arcana. They learn their first cantrip at level 3, and their second cantrip at level 6. Characters may know a maximum of two cantrips (or more by acquiring special magic items).

Cantrips in the Lore

Cantrips can be learned from spellbooks, formal education, or other means. Characters with the appropriate arcana can un-learn cantrips and take others, but it requires a good RP reason to do so. Learning a new cantrip takes a few weeks of practice.

Scrolls

Cantrips can be inscribed on vellum scrolls at the cost of special inks and pigments that help direct ambient arcana. Anyone can cast cantrips using cantrip scrolls, even people with no Arcana, and they are consumed after they are used. Cantrips read from scrolls require an incantation to be spoken aloud for the spell to be cast.

Making Your Own Cantrips

If your character has a particular type of magic ability that isn't well-represented in the list of Cantrips, work with your Storyteller to create a new one. In general, Cantrips should not mimic the effects of Skills, Passives, or Tier Abilities and instead be oriented around performing a flavorful action. You can always rename Cantrips to be more flavorful if desired.

Cantrip List

Animate Dead
Choose a pile of bones or the corpse of a tiny animal. This cantrip imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead skeletal or zombified creature (your choice). After a few hours, the creature decays back into a lifeless pile of bones or a corpse.

Bend Element
Call upon the power of an element, and manipulate it. When you select this cantrip, choose a single element you are capable of manipulating (fire, earth, wind, water, light, shadow, or something else with Storyteller approval). You can create a handful of the element you chose from nothingness, and hold it in your palm. You can cause your element to form into simple shapes and animate at your direction. You can change the element’s color or opacity. You can also manipulate small sources of your element (candles, campfires, a glass of water, a puff of wind).

Bestow Blessing
You bless someone with a favorable, divine piece of luck that aids them in some way. A baby stops crying, a lost item is found, or they receive an important letter they’ve been waiting for. These minor boons tend to be benevolent ones. Rapid, repetitive uses of this cantrip render it ineffective.

Blessing of Rain
You conjure a miniature raincloud about 5’ in diameter. The cloud emits a drizzle of rain for a minute before dissipating.

Create Chords
This cantrip is used by bards, mages, and others in taverns across Ilisara to accompany their performances. You conjure musical notes from a hand drum, flute, lute, lyre, or violin in a rhythm and cadence of your choosing. The maximum volume of the sound is loud enough to be heard from 70’ away, but you can temper the volume to be as quiet as a whisper.

Conjure Weapon
You conjure a weapon of your choosing composed of raw magic. The weapon’s stats are identical to an equivalent non-magical Common weapon. At levels where magic-users normally receive inherent bonuses to their Magic Basic Attack damage (levels 5 and 7), these conjured weapons are treated as having +1 additional material modifier. The weapon can be dismissed at any time. If it is not being wielded, the weapon disappears after a few minutes.

Cosmic Light
You conjure a globe of sunlight, starlight, or moonlight in your hand. The light illuminates the area around you, and can be placed on a surface or inside of an object (such as a lantern) to provide continual light for a few minutes.

Druidcraft
You have a deep connection to the natural world. You can use this cantrip to instantly make fruits ripen, flowers bloom, a songbird's egg hatch, or bestow any other minor natural blessing.

Eyes of the Beast
This cantrip is used by rangers, animal tamers, and druids across Ilisara. You close your eyes, and merge minds with a friendly beast. For a few minutes, you may mentally guide its actions, see through its eyes, and otherwise use its senses as though they are your own. While doing so, your body is stationary in a trance.

Featherfall
Cast this cantrip to take no falling damage from leaps or falls of 30 feet or less. If you fall from higher up, you take only half damage when you land.

Illusory Projection
Commonly used by mages around Ilisara to display moving pictures to an audience, this cantrip allows you to project a scene, image, or object — such as a chair, muddy footprints, or a small chest — up to 30’ tall in the vicinity. The image fades after a few moments if the caster moves away from the illusory image. Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it.

Make Mischief
You plague someone with an uncanny, unnatural streak of bad luck. An animal bites them, they drop something fragile, let out an embarrassing sound, or suffer another kind of minor inconvenience for a moment. Rapid, repetitive uses of this cantrip will draw attention to the caster.

Meld Magic
You can change the damage type, color, and appearance of the next spell you cast.

Mentalism
You have a gift for influencing others via psychic or hypnotic means. With this cantrip, you can implant an image, thought, or emotion in the target's mind. You can learn the surface thoughts of a target—what is most on their mind in that moment, or their current emotions—what they feel in that moment. Finally, you can hypnotically compel willing or unsuspecting targets to take a simple action, though the action cannot cause them harm.

Minor Foresight
You anticipate the situations you find yourself in with a strange and sometimes confusing sense of prophesy. When you use this cantrip, you may retroactively declare that your character has brought along an item that they might have reasonably had recent access to. Using this cantrip more than once per day invokes a splintering headache due to the fickle nature of the threads of fate.

Minor Shapeshift
You can transform into a small, diminutive creature like a squirrel, housecat, or songbird. If you take any damage, you return to your normal form.

Phantom Self
You conjure a hazy, shimmering, incorporeal duplicate of yourself. The duplicate persists for a few minutes. It cannot attack, and only follows simple commands you will it to follow. It is capable of performing simple actions such as speaking, performing, or walking. The duplicate cannot touch or hold objects due to its ghostly nature. You do not share vision or senses with the duplicate, and it disappears if it takes damage.

Restore
Favored by pragmatists and tidy travelers, this cantrip instantly cleans soiled objects and mends minor tears, rips, or other damage to an item.

Seal of Silence
For the paranoid, discerning, or reclusive, this cantrip provides the sweet assurance that their words will not be overheard. It can be cast on a door, window, or other exit to a moderately sized room to soundproof it. Any sounds uttered inside the room cannot be heard outside of the room.

Serenity

You cross your legs and set your hands on your knees, assuming a meditative stance. After a few moments, you begin to levitate. While levitating, you may move half your movement speed in any direction, as if flying, or remain stationary and enter a trance-like state, which enables you to benefit from time resting as if you were asleep.

Thaumaturgy
Favored by priests and prophets, this cantrip enables the caster to channel a sign of supernatural power. You can make your eyes glow or change in appearance, form a magnificent halo around your head, manifest the faint outline of wings, or create any other minor effect that implies otherworldly influence or might.

Ventriloquy
You manifest a sound as quiet as a whisper or loud as a lion’s roar within 70’. The sound may be a few spoken words, or a short sound like a bird’s call or shattering glass. The sound can mimic almost any noise.