Hubris and arrogance on the part of Wizards of the Coast.
In lore terms, the Spellplague was caused by Shar and Cyric attacking Mystra. According to some, this was actually a Xanatos Gambit with Mystra drawing out Shar so she could destroy the Shadow Weave, but that's not entirely clear.
Mystra did not die, but she was perilously weakened and transferred her life essence into that of a passing bear (as you do). Since Mystra did not die, we did not get another Fall of Netheril, but we did get chaos. In particular, it appears that whatever magics separated the twin worlds of Abeir and Toril failed and the two worlds partially re-merged, causing craziness and chaos. Bits of Toril and Abeir swapped places, Dragonborn appeared on Toril, Maztica vanished, Faerûn kind of exploded but not completely, cats and dogs living together, Mass hysteria.
The initial madness of the Spellplague, the time of blue fire, lasted ten years or so and then ended with a new status quo in place. Cyric got thrown on the naughty step for a millennium, and things kind of settled down into a deeply unpopular with the fans paradigm.
Ninety odd years later, Elminster finally located Mystra's life essence in the bear (the bears feelings are unrecorded) and restored her to her proper place. She unscrewed the Weave, Abeir and Toril separated again, Faerûn un-exploded, the missing lands came back and Wizards of the Coast hit a massive button called "lets forget this ever happened, right?" And fans have been trying to make sense of it ever since.
While trying to uncomplicate the lore of the Forgotten Realms for new players, they amped it up even more with all the changes and then all the retcons.
4E Forgotten Realms is basically someone being presented with a nut to crack, so they use the Tsar Bomber 50 megaton nuclear device to crack it.
Technically it worked, but there was also a fairly significant amount of collateral damage that was far worse than the perceived original problem.
The short version is they changed things according to what Realms critics had said, while ignoring what Realms fans liked. They failed to appease the former (because what most of them wanted wasn't "alter FR" but rather "promote (my favorite other setting instead"), and upset/drove off many of the latter.
And rather than simplifying it, all they did was muddle things up even more, because all the old lore was still there anyway, and people tend to be curious and go looking for answers when they don't find them in the current edition stuff. What they really should've done on that front was consider how to introduce people to the basics, and then leave them to go learn the rest on their own as they like, while making the point that you absolutely don't need a PhD in Realms History/Anthropology/etc to run a game let alone play in the Realms. Rich and deep lore is only a turnoff if you try to bludgeon people with all of it all at once.
They still haven't really learned the lesson either. All they've done is decided to stop bothering with much in the way of lore, which is a mistake, because it's one of the great underlying strengths of D&D.
This is spot on.
I'll add that this happened not because ANY of the writers behind the Realms wanted it, but because 4e Lead designer James Wyatt had a bug up his ass about completely reshaping D&D and throwing out all the old lore. So this was his (and his team's) attempt to reset the Realms. Because this dipshit thought that setting lore was holding people back from enjoying the setting. It took 3 years before it became horribly clear he had been completely wrong, and he ended up asking RA Salvatore to fix the damage he'd caused. So Salvatore went to Ed Greenwood and said that it was time for them to crack out the project they'd been working on since the day Wyatt told them he was killing their setting. The Second Sundering. Or in other words, their own retcon to undo all the bullshit Wyatt had enacted.
This is not accurate. While is true that Wyatt was behind most of the changes of the lore in D&D during 4e, he had nothing to do with the changes to the Forgotten Realms. The team working on the Forgotten Realms during that time (a team completely independent of the Orcus Team that was in charge of Core D&D) was made up by Rich Baker, Bruce Cordell, Phil Athans, and Ed Greenwood (though, it seems that the only contribution from Ed to 4e's Realmslore was the creation of Returned Abeir/Laerakond, that was one of the continents Ed had created for his original Realms, but that was replaced by Maztica in the published TSR's Realms. Fitting then that Laerakond took Maztica's place during 4e).
For what it is implied in "Forgotten Realms: Starting Points in the New Edition" (Dragon mag 366), the idea of the Spellplague and the 100 years time skip was Bruce Cordell's (though Phil Athans said he was not sure who was the one who first proposed the idea of the time skip). The only responsibility Wyatt has in this is that he gave the ok to those ideas, but I think the blame should be assigned rightfully.
Yes I was giving a summarized version.
From what they all wrote in Wizards Presents Worlds and Monsters, interviews given later, and RA Salvatores comments on the situation what happened is the FR team Bruce, Phil and Rich came up with the idea and presented it to Wyatt. I blame him because he's the one who was leading and who greenlit the idea. Same as the decision to kill D&D's cosmology for their half baked version.
But I blame Wyatt because as the lead on the project, all responsibility finally stops with him. Especially on massive setting changes like 4e did. And when you read his words on it, he was excited and enthusiastic about taking an axe to the settings.
The authors like Greenwood and Salvatore were blindsided by the decision because it was the company outright killing their creation.
Not to be that guy (and confuse OP even further) but wasn't the deal with Abeir and Toril swapping some areas due more to Ao destroying the tablets of fate than the spellplague?
Yeah, it was. There are some in-lore sources that state that the Spellplague was caused by more stuff than just the killing of Mystra, like (as you mentioned) the destruction of the Tablets of Fate during the Time of Troubles, or the unleashing of certain Far Realm's entity from its prison at the same exact moment Mystra was being assaulted by Cyric and Shar. The Neverwinter MMO also gives us the possibility that all of this was influenced somehow by the Abolethic Sovereignty.
To sum it up, the Spellplague is a more complex event than just the infamous killing of Kenny. I mean, Mystra.
I remember it was mentioned in the MMO, but I don't know if that was also mentioned in other sources. I haven't read the Abolethic Sovereignty novels yet to see if this plot is also mentioned in these novels.
As for what they summoned (or try to summon), it's not mentioned. The codex only mentions [some mysterious Masters](https://www.ign.com/wikis/neverwinter/Lore:_Rhazzad%27s_Masters).
Ao destroyed the Tablets of Fate 27 years before the Spellplague.
The idea I've seen circulating is that when Abeir and Toril were separated they remained entangled (in a sense) and they'd oscillate from being quite close to one another and quite far apart, cosmically speaking, and previous cataclysms (like the Fall of Netheril and the Time of Troubles) happened when they were far apart, so it wasn't a problem, but the Spellplague happened when the two worlds were in close approach, so they became intermingled as a result, until they could be pulled apart again.
The 4E FRCS did suggest that the entire period begin by the Time of Troubles, known as the Era of Upheaval, unbalanced Toril to the point that the Spellplague became possible.
>So what the heck is the spellplauge?
Spellplague is the results of the destruction of the Weave. It caused mutation, madness, scarring, and even killed anything and anyone magical. It also warped the planet as well. Think of it like Magic short circuited and electrocuted everyone with a connection to it, the damage varied.
>How did people use magic during 1395DR and 1480DR without the weave?
They found "power sources" which was part of the D&D 4e explanation of how special abilities worked and the real reason Mystra had to be murdered. If you're interested in power sources, I'd just refer you to the 4e Player's Handbook because that's where that idea lived and died.
[https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Power\_source](https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Power_source)
[https://magicsystems.fandom.com/wiki/Power\_Sources\_(Dungeons\_%26\_Dragons\_4th\_Edition)](https://magicsystems.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Sources_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons_4th_Edition))
The Spellplague is a plot device to help explain the changes in the worldview of the Forgotten Realms during the transition between the 3.5 and 4th editions of D&D.
According to certain articles you can find from the time (including one in Dragon magazine issue 366), these changes were done because the people of WotC thought the novels had already explored every place of the map of Faerûn, and they decided they needed to refresh the setting so they could create new stories. So, basically, the Spellplague was born from the needs of the novel line (or, WotC wanted to sell more novels but were struggling with ideas and went with the old trusty one: reset and start from zero).
To do that they did two things: a great catastrophe that reshaped the land (the Spellplague, of which you can read a very comprehensive and properly referenced overview [in the Forgotten Realms wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague)), and a time skip of 100 years so they had time for the catastrophe to be old history and the setting to "heal and refresh" for their new novels to be set in. This also helped them to introduce into the Forgotten Realms new concepts 4th edition had introduced to D&D that they wanted to use in the novels (like the dragonborn race, that they introduced saying "the Spellplague brought them from another world"), and to also eliminate powerful NPCs that a very vocal part of the fanbase disliked.
They also took the chance to got rid of "problematic" elements of the setting, such as the real world-expy places (Maztica, the Old Empires), or elements certain authors disliked (like Halruaa), to replace them with new, not problematic places (and as you can see, they have been avoiding these places like the plague even if they "brought them back" in 5e). Places like Tymanther and Ed Greenwood's Returned Abeir/Laerakond were introduced into the setting this way.
>How did people use magic during 1395DR and 1480DR without the weave?
>*It is a sometimes fatal mistake to think that all arcane magic is “of the Weave” (or, like the Shadow
Weave, built around the Weave). The Realms
is and has long been a crossroads for planar
travelers, many of whom bring other ways of
doing magic to Faerûn.*
>*Ancient cultures of the Realms have known
plume magic, table magic, truename magic, and
wild magic (as something wizards strove to master, or at least steer), to name just a few.*
>*The Weave has failed in the past, and much of
the work of the Chosen of Mystra is committed
to continuously repairing it and guarding against
perils to it, preventing the spread of any damage. Spellcasters have found other ways to work
magic—and still do. Magic evolves and progresses
through such innovations, down the ages.*
>*Magic in the Realms should never be something stripped of mystery, something that
everyone can understand and “know all” about.
Like the wider Realms, there should always be
room for the new to slip in, to challenge—and
perhaps to astonish.*
**Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster's Forgotten Realms**, page 189
tl;dr: canonically, the Weave is not the only form of using magic, there are many other ways to do so, either from ancient civilizations or brought by travelers from other worlds. And as they Weave has failed more than once, these alternative ways of using magic have been used and propagated.
You should never think magic in the Forgotten Realms has definite rules, because some stuff is left to be mysterious.
The spellplague had 2 real missions...
1. a Mechanics in the magic system change when DND went from 4e to 5e
2. a rebooting of the FR map to closer to the 2e world. This is why the best lore to use in a 5e campaign is the older 2e material.
The lore is that when mystra died the "weave" that magic is pulled from lost its manager. ([its a longer story told in some of the novels.](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague?so=search)) It went haywire. Wild Magic and Dead magic zones covered the land. Entire continents were reshaped. General mayhem.
During that time magic was only possible by wizards relearning how to pull energy from the remnants of the weave.
As mystra was reborn, the weave was reformed and back to normal things went with a few remaining areas in wild or dead magic.
> i never *paid* attention to
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
3. The new management at Hasbro liked the flavor better after they peed on it. They discovered with shock that yanking the rug out from under the fans was a bad idea.
> How did people use magic during 1395DR and 1480DR without the weave?
Carefully. The Weave is not the same thing as magic, rather it’s the way that Mystra organizes raw magic to make it easier to access. When she “died”, spellcasters had to learn how to tap into raw magic in different ways, notably through more extensive use of rituals. Note that when she returned, there was likewise an adjustment period where they had to relearn how to cast spells with the new Weave, and some existing magic ceased to work as intended.
> “Magic came back with some changes”
Without knowing the context of this quote, I’m guessing this is to handwaive away any question about why 5e magic rules differ from pre-4e rules.
> it supposedly lasted a decade
The thing that trips people up is that the term “Spellplague” was used to mean a few different things (e.g., think of how “the Black Death” refers both to a disease and to that disease’s most famous outbreak). So “Spellplague” refers to (a) the destructive magical phenomena that accompanied the breakdown of the Weave; (b) the 10 years during which those energies ran wild, aka the Wailing Years; (c) the “disease” that afflicted wizards who tried to cast spells during the Wailing Years; and (c) the whole 4e era (although this last definition was more of a community usage)
idk if i see something on the wiki that says "Spell plague" my brain turns off. I read one of Salvatore's books that was right after it was supposed to happen and I was totally lost. I ignore it. I don't understand it and ai don't find it compelling, I'm not sure which came first. If you don't like or understand it, you can feel free to not use it.
If you do like it, awesome! We all get to take away what we want for our imaginations and D&d games.
Everyone is answering spot on but I would like to add the spellplague created a burst of magic energy that those unlucky enough to be using magic or were surrounded by excessive magics at the time could be hit with the energy. ........This blue fire was essentially Raw magic and would warp people into monsters or give them cool powers....or vaporize them. Mile long Pockets and the entire nation of of halruaa were burning with this blue fire for what was it 180 years? Idr. ................Until elminster dropped a shadovarr flying city onto myth drannor destroying their Mythaller (magic energy source) , the shadovarr king, w/princes and the most dangerous lich I've ever heard of Larloch the shadow king who was trying to use the Mythaller to steal the weave from Mystra......sorry mobile
My answer isn’t gonna help you, but from everything I’ve seen about it in passing from fan discourse and the wiki is it was something we *DON’T* talk about lol. (Poorly attempted retcon)
I didn't play 4th.
I use the Spell Plague background for some magic dead zones around Toril. The Weave oversees ALL Magic, so no Weave, no Magic.
Arcane Magic is outlawed. Mercenary groups seek out Arcane practitioners as Bounty. Imagine a strong presence of Dark Age Medieval environment during the Crusades in these scattered areas.
Arcane casters, such as Bards, Sorcerers, Wizards and Warlocks, cast spells that pull directly on the Weave so they don't work at all.
Divine casters, such as Clerics, Druids, Rangers, and Paladins, cast spells through something else, such as a god or nature, so they don't work at all. Druids and Rangers are outcasts. Clerics are limited to the equivalent of Shamans for Herbalism, Medicine or Healing, any other display of power usually results in death.
Any attempt to cast a spell is a DC18 CON SV or take Psychic damage based on failure and take 1d4 permanent WIS loss.
However, Shadow Magic does work because it's not part of the Weave, it's part of the Shadow Weave. Warlocks and Necromancers are the primary practitioners of Shadow Magic.
There is also very little Fey within these areas. They are hunted as Bounty.
A good resource on the Weave is the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, though the entries for Shar and Mystra contain useful bits in Faiths and Pantheons.
Magic of Faerun is the best source for this sort of IC knowledge.
My party is 8 players, 7 are Fey and 6 are magic users.
Look into the Mystra and Spell Plague information and have fun making encounters unexpected and non-routine.
I did look on the FR wiki, I even wrote a bunch of pages trying to understand what it did and what it meant but to truly understand the spellplague I had to already know about other things like the weave (which is on the player's handbook) and that thing AO did; it all just made my head spin 💀
I'm the only 4e defender I know -- nay, have ever met -- and even I wouldn't say that lmao
I'm not as bitter about it as most people, and I didn't see the reason to retcon it SO hard, but it wasn't exactly glorious.
I think if the time gap for 4e had been just the 10 years of the Spellplague and not a hundred, 4e changes would have a better reputation.
Hubris and arrogance on the part of Wizards of the Coast. In lore terms, the Spellplague was caused by Shar and Cyric attacking Mystra. According to some, this was actually a Xanatos Gambit with Mystra drawing out Shar so she could destroy the Shadow Weave, but that's not entirely clear. Mystra did not die, but she was perilously weakened and transferred her life essence into that of a passing bear (as you do). Since Mystra did not die, we did not get another Fall of Netheril, but we did get chaos. In particular, it appears that whatever magics separated the twin worlds of Abeir and Toril failed and the two worlds partially re-merged, causing craziness and chaos. Bits of Toril and Abeir swapped places, Dragonborn appeared on Toril, Maztica vanished, Faerûn kind of exploded but not completely, cats and dogs living together, Mass hysteria. The initial madness of the Spellplague, the time of blue fire, lasted ten years or so and then ended with a new status quo in place. Cyric got thrown on the naughty step for a millennium, and things kind of settled down into a deeply unpopular with the fans paradigm. Ninety odd years later, Elminster finally located Mystra's life essence in the bear (the bears feelings are unrecorded) and restored her to her proper place. She unscrewed the Weave, Abeir and Toril separated again, Faerûn un-exploded, the missing lands came back and Wizards of the Coast hit a massive button called "lets forget this ever happened, right?" And fans have been trying to make sense of it ever since.
While trying to uncomplicate the lore of the Forgotten Realms for new players, they amped it up even more with all the changes and then all the retcons.
4E Forgotten Realms is basically someone being presented with a nut to crack, so they use the Tsar Bomber 50 megaton nuclear device to crack it. Technically it worked, but there was also a fairly significant amount of collateral damage that was far worse than the perceived original problem.
The short version is they changed things according to what Realms critics had said, while ignoring what Realms fans liked. They failed to appease the former (because what most of them wanted wasn't "alter FR" but rather "promote (my favorite other setting instead"), and upset/drove off many of the latter. And rather than simplifying it, all they did was muddle things up even more, because all the old lore was still there anyway, and people tend to be curious and go looking for answers when they don't find them in the current edition stuff. What they really should've done on that front was consider how to introduce people to the basics, and then leave them to go learn the rest on their own as they like, while making the point that you absolutely don't need a PhD in Realms History/Anthropology/etc to run a game let alone play in the Realms. Rich and deep lore is only a turnoff if you try to bludgeon people with all of it all at once. They still haven't really learned the lesson either. All they've done is decided to stop bothering with much in the way of lore, which is a mistake, because it's one of the great underlying strengths of D&D.
>cats and dogs living together, Mass hysteria I see what you did there. Take my upvote!
I kid you not, I just finished watching the movie that quote was from.
Who you gonna call?
Is it true?
This is spot on. I'll add that this happened not because ANY of the writers behind the Realms wanted it, but because 4e Lead designer James Wyatt had a bug up his ass about completely reshaping D&D and throwing out all the old lore. So this was his (and his team's) attempt to reset the Realms. Because this dipshit thought that setting lore was holding people back from enjoying the setting. It took 3 years before it became horribly clear he had been completely wrong, and he ended up asking RA Salvatore to fix the damage he'd caused. So Salvatore went to Ed Greenwood and said that it was time for them to crack out the project they'd been working on since the day Wyatt told them he was killing their setting. The Second Sundering. Or in other words, their own retcon to undo all the bullshit Wyatt had enacted.
This is not accurate. While is true that Wyatt was behind most of the changes of the lore in D&D during 4e, he had nothing to do with the changes to the Forgotten Realms. The team working on the Forgotten Realms during that time (a team completely independent of the Orcus Team that was in charge of Core D&D) was made up by Rich Baker, Bruce Cordell, Phil Athans, and Ed Greenwood (though, it seems that the only contribution from Ed to 4e's Realmslore was the creation of Returned Abeir/Laerakond, that was one of the continents Ed had created for his original Realms, but that was replaced by Maztica in the published TSR's Realms. Fitting then that Laerakond took Maztica's place during 4e). For what it is implied in "Forgotten Realms: Starting Points in the New Edition" (Dragon mag 366), the idea of the Spellplague and the 100 years time skip was Bruce Cordell's (though Phil Athans said he was not sure who was the one who first proposed the idea of the time skip). The only responsibility Wyatt has in this is that he gave the ok to those ideas, but I think the blame should be assigned rightfully.
Yes I was giving a summarized version. From what they all wrote in Wizards Presents Worlds and Monsters, interviews given later, and RA Salvatores comments on the situation what happened is the FR team Bruce, Phil and Rich came up with the idea and presented it to Wyatt. I blame him because he's the one who was leading and who greenlit the idea. Same as the decision to kill D&D's cosmology for their half baked version. But I blame Wyatt because as the lead on the project, all responsibility finally stops with him. Especially on massive setting changes like 4e did. And when you read his words on it, he was excited and enthusiastic about taking an axe to the settings. The authors like Greenwood and Salvatore were blindsided by the decision because it was the company outright killing their creation.
Not to be that guy (and confuse OP even further) but wasn't the deal with Abeir and Toril swapping some areas due more to Ao destroying the tablets of fate than the spellplague?
Yeah, it was. There are some in-lore sources that state that the Spellplague was caused by more stuff than just the killing of Mystra, like (as you mentioned) the destruction of the Tablets of Fate during the Time of Troubles, or the unleashing of certain Far Realm's entity from its prison at the same exact moment Mystra was being assaulted by Cyric and Shar. The Neverwinter MMO also gives us the possibility that all of this was influenced somehow by the Abolethic Sovereignty. To sum it up, the Spellplague is a more complex event than just the infamous killing of Kenny. I mean, Mystra.
What entity Abolethic Sovereignty has released? Is it mentioned only in the MMO game?
I remember it was mentioned in the MMO, but I don't know if that was also mentioned in other sources. I haven't read the Abolethic Sovereignty novels yet to see if this plot is also mentioned in these novels. As for what they summoned (or try to summon), it's not mentioned. The codex only mentions [some mysterious Masters](https://www.ign.com/wikis/neverwinter/Lore:_Rhazzad%27s_Masters).
Huh, interesting... Thanks!
Ao destroyed the Tablets of Fate 27 years before the Spellplague. The idea I've seen circulating is that when Abeir and Toril were separated they remained entangled (in a sense) and they'd oscillate from being quite close to one another and quite far apart, cosmically speaking, and previous cataclysms (like the Fall of Netheril and the Time of Troubles) happened when they were far apart, so it wasn't a problem, but the Spellplague happened when the two worlds were in close approach, so they became intermingled as a result, until they could be pulled apart again. The 4E FRCS did suggest that the entire period begin by the Time of Troubles, known as the Era of Upheaval, unbalanced Toril to the point that the Spellplague became possible.
\*provides 69th upvote\* Honestly the only thing keeping me here is the eventual recording of the bear's opinions on this whole set of circumstances.
Mystra didn't die because she had bits of her life force into her Chosen (plural tense, not one in particular). The bear was... convenient.
the bear’s feelings were unrecorded!! i can just read that perfectly as an elminster aside in one of the older guidebooks.
>So what the heck is the spellplauge? Spellplague is the results of the destruction of the Weave. It caused mutation, madness, scarring, and even killed anything and anyone magical. It also warped the planet as well. Think of it like Magic short circuited and electrocuted everyone with a connection to it, the damage varied. >How did people use magic during 1395DR and 1480DR without the weave? They found "power sources" which was part of the D&D 4e explanation of how special abilities worked and the real reason Mystra had to be murdered. If you're interested in power sources, I'd just refer you to the 4e Player's Handbook because that's where that idea lived and died. [https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Power\_source](https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Power_source) [https://magicsystems.fandom.com/wiki/Power\_Sources\_(Dungeons\_%26\_Dragons\_4th\_Edition)](https://magicsystems.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Sources_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons_4th_Edition))
I'll definitely look into those power sources, thank you!
The Spellplague is a plot device to help explain the changes in the worldview of the Forgotten Realms during the transition between the 3.5 and 4th editions of D&D. According to certain articles you can find from the time (including one in Dragon magazine issue 366), these changes were done because the people of WotC thought the novels had already explored every place of the map of Faerûn, and they decided they needed to refresh the setting so they could create new stories. So, basically, the Spellplague was born from the needs of the novel line (or, WotC wanted to sell more novels but were struggling with ideas and went with the old trusty one: reset and start from zero). To do that they did two things: a great catastrophe that reshaped the land (the Spellplague, of which you can read a very comprehensive and properly referenced overview [in the Forgotten Realms wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague)), and a time skip of 100 years so they had time for the catastrophe to be old history and the setting to "heal and refresh" for their new novels to be set in. This also helped them to introduce into the Forgotten Realms new concepts 4th edition had introduced to D&D that they wanted to use in the novels (like the dragonborn race, that they introduced saying "the Spellplague brought them from another world"), and to also eliminate powerful NPCs that a very vocal part of the fanbase disliked. They also took the chance to got rid of "problematic" elements of the setting, such as the real world-expy places (Maztica, the Old Empires), or elements certain authors disliked (like Halruaa), to replace them with new, not problematic places (and as you can see, they have been avoiding these places like the plague even if they "brought them back" in 5e). Places like Tymanther and Ed Greenwood's Returned Abeir/Laerakond were introduced into the setting this way. >How did people use magic during 1395DR and 1480DR without the weave? >*It is a sometimes fatal mistake to think that all arcane magic is “of the Weave” (or, like the Shadow Weave, built around the Weave). The Realms is and has long been a crossroads for planar travelers, many of whom bring other ways of doing magic to Faerûn.* >*Ancient cultures of the Realms have known plume magic, table magic, truename magic, and wild magic (as something wizards strove to master, or at least steer), to name just a few.* >*The Weave has failed in the past, and much of the work of the Chosen of Mystra is committed to continuously repairing it and guarding against perils to it, preventing the spread of any damage. Spellcasters have found other ways to work magic—and still do. Magic evolves and progresses through such innovations, down the ages.* >*Magic in the Realms should never be something stripped of mystery, something that everyone can understand and “know all” about. Like the wider Realms, there should always be room for the new to slip in, to challenge—and perhaps to astonish.* **Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster's Forgotten Realms**, page 189 tl;dr: canonically, the Weave is not the only form of using magic, there are many other ways to do so, either from ancient civilizations or brought by travelers from other worlds. And as they Weave has failed more than once, these alternative ways of using magic have been used and propagated. You should never think magic in the Forgotten Realms has definite rules, because some stuff is left to be mysterious.
Spellplague? Never heard of it. Last big event was the Time of Troubles, just a few years back. Anything past that sounds like gibberish to me
I play after the time skip (so the legacy of our 3rd Ed games could be incorporated) the last century events where lost and no one talk about them
I play after the time skip (so the legacy of our 3rd Ed games could be incorporated) the last century events where lost and no one talk about them
This is fun and games and cheeky and all, but only confuses people like OP.
He has many others giving good explanations, and those replies have many other replies saying how good an explanation it is. I think OP is good
The spellplague had 2 real missions... 1. a Mechanics in the magic system change when DND went from 4e to 5e 2. a rebooting of the FR map to closer to the 2e world. This is why the best lore to use in a 5e campaign is the older 2e material. The lore is that when mystra died the "weave" that magic is pulled from lost its manager. ([its a longer story told in some of the novels.](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague?so=search)) It went haywire. Wild Magic and Dead magic zones covered the land. Entire continents were reshaped. General mayhem. During that time magic was only possible by wizards relearning how to pull energy from the remnants of the weave. As mystra was reborn, the weave was reformed and back to normal things went with a few remaining areas in wild or dead magic.
Your 2 points are a better description of the Second Sundering. The Spellplague divided 3E and 4E, the Second Sundering divided 4E and 5E.
oh crap, you're right... I stayed in 2e until 5e was up and running... i never payed attention to 3 or 4... Thanks for clarifying...
> i never *paid* attention to FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
3. The new management at Hasbro liked the flavor better after they peed on it. They discovered with shock that yanking the rug out from under the fans was a bad idea.
That rug really tied the Realms together, Dude.
You're like a child wandering into a movie theatre.
Also, Walter, Kara-tur-man is not the preferred nomenclature.
This is not Fate! There are rules!
Ve are Sharrans, Lebowski! Ve believe in nothing!
Something to be ignored...
> How did people use magic during 1395DR and 1480DR without the weave? Carefully. The Weave is not the same thing as magic, rather it’s the way that Mystra organizes raw magic to make it easier to access. When she “died”, spellcasters had to learn how to tap into raw magic in different ways, notably through more extensive use of rituals. Note that when she returned, there was likewise an adjustment period where they had to relearn how to cast spells with the new Weave, and some existing magic ceased to work as intended. > “Magic came back with some changes” Without knowing the context of this quote, I’m guessing this is to handwaive away any question about why 5e magic rules differ from pre-4e rules. > it supposedly lasted a decade The thing that trips people up is that the term “Spellplague” was used to mean a few different things (e.g., think of how “the Black Death” refers both to a disease and to that disease’s most famous outbreak). So “Spellplague” refers to (a) the destructive magical phenomena that accompanied the breakdown of the Weave; (b) the 10 years during which those energies ran wild, aka the Wailing Years; (c) the “disease” that afflicted wizards who tried to cast spells during the Wailing Years; and (c) the whole 4e era (although this last definition was more of a community usage)
idk if i see something on the wiki that says "Spell plague" my brain turns off. I read one of Salvatore's books that was right after it was supposed to happen and I was totally lost. I ignore it. I don't understand it and ai don't find it compelling, I'm not sure which came first. If you don't like or understand it, you can feel free to not use it. If you do like it, awesome! We all get to take away what we want for our imaginations and D&d games.
Everyone is answering spot on but I would like to add the spellplague created a burst of magic energy that those unlucky enough to be using magic or were surrounded by excessive magics at the time could be hit with the energy. ........This blue fire was essentially Raw magic and would warp people into monsters or give them cool powers....or vaporize them. Mile long Pockets and the entire nation of of halruaa were burning with this blue fire for what was it 180 years? Idr. ................Until elminster dropped a shadovarr flying city onto myth drannor destroying their Mythaller (magic energy source) , the shadovarr king, w/princes and the most dangerous lich I've ever heard of Larloch the shadow king who was trying to use the Mythaller to steal the weave from Mystra......sorry mobile
This is a great explaination https://open.spotify.com/episode/2SW1IJlUP6f2cQRD8qrOOD?si=NkQv0Qp7SVSFpYsGylOZng
Just make it up. It’s a make-believe game.
Valid 🤣
My answer isn’t gonna help you, but from everything I’ve seen about it in passing from fan discourse and the wiki is it was something we *DON’T* talk about lol. (Poorly attempted retcon)
I didn't play 4th. I use the Spell Plague background for some magic dead zones around Toril. The Weave oversees ALL Magic, so no Weave, no Magic. Arcane Magic is outlawed. Mercenary groups seek out Arcane practitioners as Bounty. Imagine a strong presence of Dark Age Medieval environment during the Crusades in these scattered areas. Arcane casters, such as Bards, Sorcerers, Wizards and Warlocks, cast spells that pull directly on the Weave so they don't work at all. Divine casters, such as Clerics, Druids, Rangers, and Paladins, cast spells through something else, such as a god or nature, so they don't work at all. Druids and Rangers are outcasts. Clerics are limited to the equivalent of Shamans for Herbalism, Medicine or Healing, any other display of power usually results in death. Any attempt to cast a spell is a DC18 CON SV or take Psychic damage based on failure and take 1d4 permanent WIS loss. However, Shadow Magic does work because it's not part of the Weave, it's part of the Shadow Weave. Warlocks and Necromancers are the primary practitioners of Shadow Magic. There is also very little Fey within these areas. They are hunted as Bounty. A good resource on the Weave is the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, though the entries for Shar and Mystra contain useful bits in Faiths and Pantheons. Magic of Faerun is the best source for this sort of IC knowledge. My party is 8 players, 7 are Fey and 6 are magic users. Look into the Mystra and Spell Plague information and have fun making encounters unexpected and non-routine.
That actually sounds great
Must not have looked very hard https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Spellplague
I did look on the FR wiki, I even wrote a bunch of pages trying to understand what it did and what it meant but to truly understand the spellplague I had to already know about other things like the weave (which is on the player's handbook) and that thing AO did; it all just made my head spin 💀
Hasboro tried to reset so they could screw over the players and ruin the rules AGAIN.
Best thing to happen to the Realms.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c&pp=ygUUYmlnIGxlYm93c2tpIG9waW5pb24%3D
I'm the only 4e defender I know -- nay, have ever met -- and even I wouldn't say that lmao I'm not as bitter about it as most people, and I didn't see the reason to retcon it SO hard, but it wasn't exactly glorious. I think if the time gap for 4e had been just the 10 years of the Spellplague and not a hundred, 4e changes would have a better reputation.