Horn spells

https://www.flickr.com/photos/26424952@N00/14485039914

4 delicious horn-themed spells for your bard, noise cleric, storm druid, or musically talented generic spellcaster. Levels are rough estimates as I've not tested these for balance.

Grow Clarion
Cantrip
Duration: Instant / Permanent
Range: Self
Casting Time: 1 Minute
Components: V, S

Caster concentrates and grows a single keratin horn from any convenient body part from a tiny sliver to a full 16" horn. When the horn finishes growing, the caster can keep it or snap it off at will to produce a fully-functional wind instrument. If the caster doesn't concentrate for the full minute, the horn remains partially grown and is not suitable as a wind instrument. Horns produced by this spell are not useful in combat and simply snap off when placed under any notable stress.

Some casters have special skill when producing these horns and can produce horns with colors, curves, and unique patterns.

Clarion Call
Level 3
Duration: 1 Round
Range: Self
Casting Time: 1 Action
Components: V, S, Focus: Music horn or trumpet

Caster uses a horn to produce a clear, mighty note of sound audible at a distance of 6 miles. Anyone within 100' who is concentrating on a spell (including the caster) must make a DC 10 Con save to maintain concentration on the spell. Anyone within 30' attempting to cast a spell during the spell's effect must make a Con save vs the caster's save DC or be unable to cast their spell this round. Deaf creatures or creatures wearing hearing protection are immune to this effect. Using this spell is liable to provoke wandering monster checks, dislodge unstable masonry, cause avalanches, or other side effects.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14586315900

Peal of Powder
Level 4
Duration: Instant
Range: 90' Cone
Casting Time: 1 Action
Components: V, S, Focus: Music horn or trumpet

Caster produced a series of pinging notes from a horn that rattle teeth and windows. Reduce a 90' cone of biological material to dust as long as the material is dead (not undead) and not held or worn. Magical items get a saving throw. What counts for this spell?

• Tapestries - yes
• Clothing - not if worn, yes if unattended.
• Wood chests, doors, and critical support beams - yes
• Rocks, dirt, and living bugs - no
• Food - yes, unless alive
• Tree roots - no, unless dead
• Ghosts and animated skeletons - no, spell does not effect undead
• Inanimate skeletons - yes
• Log cabins and stockades - yes

Alphonse Lévy [Public domain]

Hornscry
Level 1
Duration: Instant
Range: 30' Cone
Casting Time: 1 Action
Components: V, S, Focus: Music horn or trumpet

Using the horn, the caster blows several notes outside the range of humanoid hearing while also looking through the horn. The caster learns the contents of 2 horizontal bands in the cone that could be perceived with blindsight by rolling on the below table twice and rerolling duplicates:
1) 5'
2) 10'
3) 15'
4) 20'
5) 25'
6) 30'

The bands are always horizontal / perpendicular to the orientation of the cone / spell emanation.

The noise emitted as part of this spell is not audible to humanoids, but is audible to any plausibly aware creature, such as bats, whales, or creatures with hearing-based blindsight.

Rolling Stats for Doctors of Lisbon

In my Doctors of Lisbon home game, I built a complicated but fair ability score generation procedure. Maybe it has the sorts of advantages you are looking for in your home games?

Advantages:

• Everyone at the table gets a character with a total number of ability score points that matches everyone else. This means that the characters are roughly equal in power, since power increases and decreases linearly with higher and lower ability scores.
• The stats generated are mostly random. It is my hypothesis that stats generated semi-randomly make characters that interest 'concept-first' players and also 'numbers-first' players when generating characters. Players that like to start with a concept and roll dice don't like it when their character concept isn't possible, and players that like to start with numbers first don't like it when the numbers are too flexibly arranged (I think of this as a choice-paralysis problem).
• You get to roll your dice instead of just assigning numbers.
• Every character has slightly inoptimal stats, but not painfully inoptimal.

Disadvantages:

• It is complicated compared to other methods. This is a pain. If I thought about the math some more I might be able to make it less complicated while still accomplishing the same goal.
• You only get to roll 1d6 at a time.
• All characters are roughly equal in power. I'm willing to take this disadvantage in my game.
• You don't get stunningly inept characters. This will be a problem if you are running a game set in a crapsack world. I'm willing to take this disadvantage in this specific campaign.

Custom Stat Generation Rules

This weird stat generation trick gets everyone fair stats, but it has more randomness than point-buy or fixed array. My apologies for the complexity. Your average stat is still a 13, same as the traditional 4d6 drop lowest.

Roll on this table 12 times and count the number of times you land on each value:

1	Str
2	Dex
3	Con
4	Int
5	Wis
6	Cha

If you land on one of these values more than 5 times while rolling your twelve times, reroll that time until you get a different value - these rerolls don’t count against the 12 original rolls.

After these rolls, you should have a little table of numbers showing 0-5 for each stat like this:

Str: 2

Dex: 2

Con: 2

Int: 0

Wis: 5

Cha: 1

Subtract 1 from each stat - it should look like this:

Str: 1

Dex: 1

Con: 1

Int: -1

Wis: 4

Cha: 0

Now the tricky part - convert these to the even stats that represent these as if they were modifiers according to normal D&D stats like this:

Str: 12

Dex: 12

Con: 12

Int: 8

Wis: 18

Cha: 10

These are the stats for your character before racial adjustments.

OPTIONAL: You may choose any 1 set of 2 stats and swap them. Here I swap Dex and Wis:

Str: 12

Dex: 18

Con: 12

Int: 8

Wis: 12

Cha: 10

OPTIONAL: If your Con stat is 8, you may choose to subtract 2 from either your highest stat or your second highest stat and add it to Con to increase it to 10.

Last Step! Roll on this table until you get 3 unique stats, then add +1 to each of your stats that correspond to the table. Reroll any values that would push you over 18 in any one stat.

1	Str
2	Dex
3	Con
4	Int
5	Wis
6	Cha

My example stats are:

Str: 12

Dex: 18

Con: 12

Int: 8

Wis: 12

Cha: 10

I roll a 1, a 4, and a 4, so I roll again and get a 6. I increase my stats like this:

Str: 13

Dex: 18

Con: 12

Int: 9

Wis: 12

Cha: 11