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Deep Magic: Pestilent Arcane Spells

Deep Magic: Pestilent Arcane Spells

In the spirit of Deep Magic, your arcane caster can now explore the putrid potential of vermin and plague with Pestilent Magic. This entry presents a selection of spells available to an arcane spellcaster’s list of pestilent spells. Then, the tail of the west wind is a powerful magical dagger inspired by Pazuzu, whose purviews may be of interest to a plague sorcerer! (Or plague wizard, plague warlock…)

Illusion of Health

Illusion Cantrip (Pestilent)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S
Duration: 10 minutes

An illusion of yourself in your usual state of health and condition overlays your current form. This illusion will not exaggerate your usual state of health, but conceals wounds, injuries, and symptoms of disease or poison, including marks, tears, or stains on your clothing or armor. This changes no other facet of your appearance; it simply presents you and your worn equipment in a healthy, whole state. You are not healed of any damage, and any symptoms or effects from your conditions or ailments continue. Only visible signs are masked. (If you have a cough, you will continue to cough, for example.)

Pocketful of Posies

Abjuration Cantrip (Pestilent)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (flower petals)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

You crush a handful of flower petals and sing a morbid rhyme. For the duration, you have advantage on saving throws against disease. Additionally, any creature attempting a melee strike against you that could inflict a disease must succeed a Wisdom saving throw to make the strike, otherwise they must choose a different target in range or choose a different action.

Plague Marks

Necromancy Cantrip (Pestilent)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (pinch of fly wings placed in target’s mouth)
Duration: 1 hour

By touching an intact corpse that has not been dead more than 24 hours, you cause the visible signs of a disease of your choice to manifest on the body. These signs are temporary and are not contagious, but appear genuine under mundane scrutiny.

Purge

3rd-Level Necromancy (Pestilent)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet, or 15-foot-radius
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

A gout of caustic bile streams from your mouth. You can choose to create a toxic circle around yourself or target a stream of damaging vomit at one target within range.

Circle. You turn in a circle while vomiting, creating a 15-foot-radius field around you of slippery, acidic bile, turning the ground in the area into difficult terrain. Living creatures within the radius at the start of their turns, or who move into it, must succeed on Constitution saving throws or become poisoned from sickness and nausea until they leave the radius.

Targeted. You spray a jet of caustic vomit at a target within 30 feet. You make a ranged spell strike, dealing 4d6 acid damage on a successful hit, and the target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or become poisoned due to retching until the target (or an ally of the target) spends an action cleaning off the vomit.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage for your targeted vomit increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd.

Contingency Boils

5th-Level Necromancy (Pestilent)
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (an obsidian knife infused with mummy dust, worth at least 1,000 gp)
Duration: 10 days

Choose a necromancy spell of 5th level or lower that you can cast, that has a casting time of 1 action, and has a range of Touch or can affect no more than one creature. You make an incision into your flesh with the obsidian knife and create a magical boil to store that spell—called the contingent spell—as part of casting contingency boils, expending spell slots for both.

The contingent spell doesn’t come into effect when cast. Instead, you may rupture a boil as a reaction when you take damage from a melee or ranged strike. The contingent spell takes effect immediately after the rupture. The contingency boils spell then ends if you have no more boils.

You can create multiple boils in one casting of this spell. Each boil produced by this spell reduces your Charisma score by 2. If creating another boil would reduce your Charisma score to 0, you cannot create another boil. This reduction lasts until all boils are ruptured.

Casting this spell again while you have unruptured boils erases any current contingency boils. If you are affected by lesser restoration, greater restoration, or similar effect that removes diseases (such as a paladin’s Lay on Hands), your contingency boils are immediately cured and the spell ends, losing all remaining stored spells.

New Magic Item

This dagger is a true disease carrier.

Tail of the West Wind

Weapon (Dagger), Very Rare (Requires Attunement)

You gain a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. This dagger has sharp wings encompassing its hilt guard, and the blade curves into a thick edge like a scorpion’s tail.

This dagger has 3 charges. If you hit a diseased creature with a melee strike with this dagger, you can choose to inflict no damage and instead expend a charge to absorb the disease into the dagger, also curing the target of the disease. You can choose to release one or more diseases stored in the dagger as part of a successful melee strike, causing an additional 3d8 poison damage for each disease expended. The dagger’s charges are regained on the next dawn after they are expended.

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