A Guide to Writing Spells

for DnD 5e

I really like DnD.
I really like magic.
I really like magic circles.
So I wanted to create a way to simply and efficiently draw magic circles for my characters’ spells.

That said, here’s a simple guide on how I create my magic circles. But there are no rules! If you wanna draw your own magic circles or just use this as inspiration for another system than DnD 5e, feel free to shake things up! If something doesn’t make sense to you, change it! Go wild and have fun, but if you use my spellwriting system in any way, I’d love to see your magic circles!

Anyway, in DnD, each spell has some basic information that I use to draw the magic circle.
I've come up with a total of 6 steps to draw them.

As we go through them I will use Elemental Bane as an example.
Magic Cirlce of Elemental Bane

1 – School of Magic

Abjuration

Conjuration

Divination

Enchantment

Evocation

Illusion

Necromancy

Transmutation

There are 8 schools of magic in DnD. Instead of making my own symbols, I simply used the ones that were already created by Dan Conolly, with just some slight alterations that, in all honestly, mostly just happened on accident as I was drawing a bunch of circles.

This symbol will be the base for our magic circle.

Elemental Bane is a
Transmutation Spell

2.1 – The Spell's Target

Who or what kind of area does the spell target? While this seems pretty simple at first, it is what I tend to struggle with the most because descriptions can be kinda vague sometimes. But mostly, it’s pretty straight forward.

Elemental Bane has a
single, ranged target

Single Target, Ranged

Single Target, Touch

Cones

Self

Cubes, Cuboids and Lines

Spheres, Cylinders and Radius

Sometimes, I draw two target symbols.
For example, Thunderwave creates a cube that originates from the caster, so it gets BOTH the self and the cube descriptor:

Thunderwave

I also do this for cones, even though, as far as I am aware, all spells that cast cones come from the caster… but just in case there is one obscure cone spell out there that doesn’t, there’s an option for it!
Here's Burning Hands as an example:

Burning Hands

Some spells don’t really have a clear target (that’s on the map), or multiple. As those, I would count spells such as Augury, Find Familiar, Wish or Bless. Those simply don’t get a descriptor.
Makes them look special.

Augury

Find Familiar

Wish

Bless

2.2 – Does it need Concentration?

Elemental Bane
requires Concentration.
For spells like this, I add the (outer) target descriptor twice.

If a spell doesn’t have a range descriptor, like Infernal Calling or Flock of Familiars, I just add a half circle around the Magic School descriptor. I do this in order to avoid confusion with the Sphere Range.

Infernal Calling

Flock of Familiars

3 – Casting Time

Action

Bonus Action

Reaction

Is it an action, a bonus action or a reaction?
Spells that take minutes, hours or even longer to cast simply don’t get a time descriptor.

Elemental Bane is cast as an
action

4 – Spell Components

A circle for each possible spell component type.
Top is Material, left is verbal, right is somatic.

Verbal

Somatic

Material

Elemental Bane has no material component,
but it DOES require both a
somatic and a verbal component

5 – Damage Type(s)

Cold

Fire

Thunder

Lightning

Force

Psychic

Radiant

Acid

Poison

Necrotic

Bludgeoning

Slashing

Piercing

There’s so many damage types. You add the ones that belong to your spell to your main circle.

You may want to move the damage type descriptor around on its respective line, especially if you need to stack them, like in Elemental Bane, which does all of the elemental damage types

Some spells don't deal damage, or even heal. Those simply don't get a damage type descriptor.

Shield of Faith
(no damage)

Toll the Dead
(necrotic damage)

6 – Level

the Levels are shown by a line that goes around the rest of the magic circle.
It takes a sharp turn for each new level and is closed by a small circle.

I use the spell level the spell first appears in – even if you upcast Elemental Bane, it will always get a forth level line, because it’s originally a forth level spell.

Level 0
Cantrip

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5

Level 6

Level 7

Level 8

Level 9

Like I said, Elemental Bane is a

4th Level Spell

and we're done!

This system worked really well for me so far and
I'm having a lot of fun writing spells this way.

Here’s another example for
Eldritch Blast
(because I am an endless lover and defender of warlocks (I can fix them, I swear))

Evocation