Discovering Spells in OD&D's Empty Spaces

Salty Goo's GLoG magic gives each spell a combination of two words which make up the essence of the spell. Kind of like these spells but backwards, where the spell comes first and the words come later. The important thing is, you can use these words to mix and match and create new spells.

I thought that was an awesome mechanic, so I defined a bunch of spell words for all the spells in OD&D (plus Turn Undead, so it can be treated as a spell), because that's the game I'm currently fixated on. I iterated on this a few times to reduce the overall number of words - you'll see why underneath the complete word list below.

Some spell words.

The Spells and their Words

1. Animate Dead - animate + dead
2. Anti-Magic Shell - nullify + magic
3. Bless - divine + enhance
4. Cause Disease - create + disease
5. Cause Light Wounds - create + harm
6. Cause Serious Wounds - create + harm
7. Charm Monster - charm + monster
8. Charm Person - charm + person
9. Clairaudience - distant + sound
10. Clairvoyance - distant + sight
11. Cloudkill - cloud + death
12. Commune - divine + speak
13. Confusion - impair + knowledge
14. Conjure Elemental - conjure + elemental
15. Contact Higher Plane - divine + speak
16. Continual Dark - everlasting + dark
17. Continual Light - everlasting + light
18. Control Weather - control + weather
19. Create Food - create + food
20. Create Water - create + water
21. Cure Disease - heal + disease
22. Cure Light Wounds - heal + harm
23. Cure Serious Wounds - heal + harm
24. Curse - divine + impair
25. Dark - create + dark
26. Death Spell - creature + death
27. Detect Evil - detect + evil
28. Detect Good - detect + good
29. Detect Invisible - detect + invisible
30. Detect Magic - detect + magic
31. Dimension Door - dimension + door
32. Disintegrate - make + dust
33. Dispell Evil - dispel + evil
34. Dispell Good - dispel + good
35. Dispell Magic - dispel + magic
36. ESP - sense + thought
37. Feeblemind - impair + mind
38. Find Traps - detect + trap
39. Finger of Death - make + dead
40. Fire Ball - projectile + fire
41. Fly - air + move
42. Geas - quest + death
43. Growth/Animal - animal + grow
44. Growth/Plant - plant + grow
45. Hallucinatory Terrain - illusion + area
46. Haste Spell - enhance + speed
47. Hold Monster - hold + monster
48. Hold Person - hold + person
49. Hold Portal - ward + door
50. Infravision - enhance + sight
51. Insect Plague - insect + plague
52. Invisibility - person + invisible
53. Invisibility, 10' r. - invisible + area
54. Invisible Stalker - invisible + person
55. Knock - open + door
56. Levitate - levitate + self
57. Light - create + light
58. Lightning Bolt - projectile + lightning
59. Locate Object - detect + object
60. Lower Water - reduce + water
61. Magic Jar - soul + container
62. Massmorph - morph + area
63. Move Earth - move + earth
64. Neutralize Poison - nullify + poison
65. Part Water - part + water
66. Pass-Wall - part + wall
67. Phantasmal Forces - illusion + force
68. Polymorph Others - morph + person
69. Polymorph Self - morph + self
70. Projected Image - illusion + sight
71. Protection/Evil - repel + evil*
72. Protection/Evil, 10' r. - good + area*
73. Protection/Good - repel + good*
74. Protection/Good, 10'r. - evil + area*
75. Protection/Normal Missiles - repel + projectile
76. Purify Food & Water - purify + food
77. Putrefy Food & Water - taint + food
78. Quest - quest + curse
79. Raise Dead - heal + dead
80. Read Languages - read + language
81. Read Magic - read + magic
82. Reincarnation - new + body
83. Remove Curse - nullify + curse
84. Sleep - creature + sleep
85. Slow Spell - impair + speed
86. Speak with Animals - speak + animal
87. Speak with plants - speak + plant
88. Stone-Flesh - stone + flesh
89. Telekenesis - distant + force
90. Teleport - distant + location
91. Transmute Rock-Mud - stone + mud
92. Turn sticks to snakes - stick + snake
93. Turn undead - repel + undead
94. Wall of Fire - wall + fire
95. Wall of Ice - wall + ice
96. Wall of Iron - wall + iron
97. Wall of Stone - wall + stone
98. Water Breathing - water + breathe
99. Wizard Eye - sight + move
100. Wizard Lock - close + lock

*Protection from evil/good and its AoE equivalents are given entirely different words. This does two things: solidifies their status as distinct spells rather than two power levels of the same spell, and also gives Clerics/Anticlerics access to the words for both good and evil. Of course, the way they use those words is restricted by their faith.

The Word List

The colored emojis by the words denote which classes have access to that word through their listed spells - 🔵Wizards, ⚪Clerics and ⚫Anticlerics. Word restrictions could be because they are forbidden, kept secret, impossible for their kind of magic, taboo, undiscovered, or simply not practiced by that particular tradition.

1. Air 🔵
2. Animal 🔵⚪⚫
3. Animate 🔵
4. Area 🔵⚪⚫
5. Body 🔵
6. Breathe 🔵
7. Charm 🔵
8. Close 🔵
9. Cloud 🔵
10. Conjure 🔵
11. Container 🔵
12. Control 🔵
13. Create 🔵⚪⚫
14. Creature 🔵
15. Curse 🔵⚪⚫
16. Dark⚫
17. Dead 🔵⚪⚫
18. Death 🔵
19. Detect 🔵⚪⚫
20. Dimension 🔵
21. Distant 🔵
22. Disease ⚪⚫
23. Dispel 🔵⚪⚫
24. Divine 🔵⚪⚫
25. Door 🔵
26. Dust 🔵
27. Earth 🔵
28. Elemental 🔵
29. Enhance 🔵⚪
30. Everlasting 🔵⚪⚫
31. Evil 🔵⚪⚫
32. Fire 🔵
33. Flesh 🔵
34. Food ⚪⚫
35. Force 🔵
36. Good 🔵⚪⚫
37. Grow 🔵
38. Harm⚪⚫
39. Heal ⚪
40. Hold 🔵⚪⚫
41. Ice 🔵
42. Illusion 🔵
43. Impair 🔵
44. Insect ⚪⚫
45. Invisible 🔵
46. Iron 🔵
47. Knowledge 🔵
48. Language 🔵
49. Levitate 🔵
50. Light 🔵⚪
51. Lightning 🔵
52. Location 🔵
53. Lock 🔵
54. Magic 🔵⚪⚫
55. Make 🔵⚫
56. Mind 🔵
57. Monster 🔵
58. Morph 🔵
59. Move 🔵
60. Mud 🔵
61. New 🔵
62. Nullify 🔵⚪⚫
63. Object 🔵⚪⚫
64. Open 🔵
65. Part 🔵
66. Person 🔵⚪
67. Plague ⚪⚫
68. Plant 🔵⚪
69. Poison ⚪⚫
70. Projectile 🔵
71. Purify ⚪
72. Quest 🔵⚪⚫
73. Read 🔵
74. Reduce 🔵
75. Repel 🔵⚪⚫
76. Self 🔵
77. Sense 🔵
78. Soul 🔵
79. Sound 🔵
80. Sight 🔵
81. Sleep 🔵
82. Snake⚪⚫
83. Speak 🔵⚪⚫
84. Speed 🔵
85. Stick ⚪⚫
86. Stone 🔵
87. Taint⚫
88. Trap ⚪⚫
89. Thought 🔵
90. Undead ⚪
91. Wall 🔵
92. Ward 🔵
93. Water 🔵⚪⚫
94. Weather 🔵

But why?

So that's 94 words to make up all the spells in OD&D. Ignoring the handful of duplicates (multiple spells are allowed to use the same combination of words) this creates a "wordspace" of 8742 combinations of words - or at the very minimum, 4465 if you don't consider "fire + projectile" and "projectile + fire" to be different.

And yet the wizards and clerics of the world have only discovered 100 spells. There are between 4365 and 8642 completely unused spells worth of wordspace in the magical continuum. And that's assuming they've discovered all the words, and that new ones couldn't mutate.

• 🔵Wizards have a vast library, but they are not able to cast any spells with Dark, Disease, Food, Harm, Heal, Insect, Plague, Poison, Purify, Snake, Stick, Taint, Trap, or Undead.
• ⚪Clerics are much more restricted, having access to only 34 words, but several of those words are inaccessible to Wizards. They exclusively have access to the Heal and Purify words, and also Undead which they use for their Turn Undead ability.
• ⚫Anticlerics mostly have the same words as Clerics, minus Enhance, Heal, Purify, and (bizarrely) Undead. They have access to Make, which Clerics don't, through the Finger of Death. They have exclusive access to the Dark and Taint words, making them the class which can literally bring darkness and corruption to the world.

With those restrictions in mind, let's do like this guy and discover some theoretical magic. I'll kick this off with some random rolls.

food + stick: An excellent first roll. This Cleric/Anticleric word combination produces the fearsome spell Conjure Banana.

door + dark: A Wizard would need to steal an Anticleric's spell (or vice versa) for this combo to be possible, as sharing spells between disciplines is almost universally forbidden. These words could create Veil Portal, which completely blocks perception through a doorway.

disease + purify: A Cleric spell, Proliferate Cure, which converts a disease into an infectious antidote.

food + dead: A Cleric (subject to faith) or Anticleric spell, Corpse to Food. Does what it says on the tin. Perhaps it could alternatively create a spell for humanely slaughtering livestock, though that seems less useful from an adventuring point of view.

plague + sleep: Another spell that requires input from both classes, Plaguesleep has a delayed effect which puts a target to sleep and spreads like a disease to those who touch the target (for instance, attempting to wake them up). Anyone it spreads to becomes drowsy takes a few minutes to fall asleep and can spread the effect to anyone else. Each generation of infection past the second gets a cumulative +1 to the saving throw (becoming easier to resist the further it spreads).

Not all combinations of words produce a useful or interesting spell, but that's fine. In-game, this won't be done by simply choosing random words as I did above. Finding the interesting ones is what players are for.

How to use this in-game

When PCs do spell research, have them only be able to create effects which can be combined from words they know through other spells. Discovering a whole other new word requires either researching the word itself or stealing a spell from another caster acquiring a spell with that word through legitimate means. This is technically a nerf, but it adds depth and a whole new layer of game to the process of spell research. It might help some players to have spell creation be more defined too, rather than just telling them they can make whatever they please. Limitation breeds creativity, after all. I know I wouldn't have ever written "Conjure Banana" without being prompted by the words.