Wizard Duels are an iconic part of fantasy fiction. It used to be an intricate part of D&D as well, as these classic spells show.
Fantasy stories are full of wizards, warlocks, witches, and other wielders of magical power getting into complex, sometimes world-shaking magical duels with each other. It’s an iconic part of fantasy, two spellcasters squaring off to see who can hack it best. In D&D, as you might imagine, wizard duels are still a thing – spells like Fire Shield and Counterspell are great ways of protecting yourself against enemy magical energy.
But there was a time when magical duels were more intricate. With spells that used to exist exclusively to tackle other wielders of the arcane arts (or monsters with magic) – you don’t have to look back too far in D&D’s history before you see examples like…
Mantle
Mantle was a very broad catch-all spell that comes out of both D&D novels and the original Baldur’s Gate, of all places. But that game was all about the wizard duels – especially Baldur’s Gate II and Jon Irenicus. At any rate, the spell Mantle gave a Wizard a suite of protections, including Feather Fall, protection from arrows, and the ability to control/adjust temperature in your personal space. On top of that, you could cast a more powerful version with even more abilities (or protect yourself against nonmagical weapons). And the point is this was a category of spell protection that other spellcasters had to contend with, to the point of developing spells like Mordenkainen’s Disjunction and Spell Breach to take care of it.
Elminster’s Effulgent Epuration
Elminster sure loved to get up to all kinds of shenanigans with magical orbs. And this spell would produce magical orbs that would float around the caster and serve to protect them from spells and spell-like abilities. They would absorb a spell whenever it was cast at the creature the spheres were protecting. They could also absorb area of effect spells as well – and because it’s Elminster, this spell is resistant to dispel magic and antimagic fields. You gotta bring the big dogs like Mordenkainen’s Disjunction to play.
Khelben’s Dweomerdoom
I love this one. Of all the spells on this list, it’s probably my favorite – as the name suggests, it was developed by Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun, and he developed it to fight mages. It’s a proactive Counterspell of sorts. Because you don’t have to wait for your enemy to cast a spell – you cast the spell, and it removes their highest-level prepared spell from their daily preparations. You’d have to change the mechanics a little for modern D&D, but I feel like this is a great tool for something like Arcana Unleashed.
Belorigar’s Baldric
One of the best weapons you can have in a magic duel is a bunch of magic spells. And Belorigar’s Baldric is an invisible sort of web of spells that you can pre-cast and have at your disposal. Each baldric only lasts a number of days dependent on your caster level, but the longer it lasts, the more spells you can have (up to 7). At higher levels, you can even unleash multiple spells from the baldric at the same time. It’s a Wizard weapon, for sure.
Magic Missile Reflection
Finally, this humble spell, from the old 2nd Edition Spell Compendium days. This does exactly what you think – it reflects a magic missile spell back at its caster, dealing its full damage to the person who dared to target you instead. It really only works in a Wizard Duel, but what an amazing card to have to pull out whenever you need it. It doesn’t just make you immune to magic missile, like Shield, it returns to sender.
Happy Adventuring!
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Source: Bell of Lost Souls
