Fortune’s Favor: Luck for Sale

Usable By: Wizard

Spell Level: 2

School: Divination (dunamancy)

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: 60 feet

Duration: 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (a white pearl worth at least 100 gp, which the spell consumes)

You impart latent luck to yourself or one willing creature you can see within range. When the chosen creature makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw before the spell ends, it can dismiss this spell on itself to roll an additional d20 and choose which of the d20s to use. Alternatively, when an attack roll is made against the chosen creature, it can dismiss this spell on itself to roll a d20 and choose which of the d20s to use, the one it rolled or the one the attacker rolled.

If the original d20 roll has advantage or disadvantage, the creature rolls the additional d20 after advantage or disadvantage has been applied to the original roll.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, you can target one additional creature for each slot level above 2nd.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

The Lucky feat: Powerful. Game warping. Infamous. For just a taste of its power, at the steep cost of one HUNDRED gold per use, you can pick up Fortune’s Favor. Luck, for an hour, when you need it.

This spell kind of functions like a super powered bardic inspiration die. With an hour long duration and minute cast time, this is something you’re going to want to use when you know somebody is about to attempt a series of incredibly difficult and important tasks. This is something you prep cast on the whole party before a big boss fight, or before diving into the critical heist. In those circumstances, it becomes either a great tool to help smooth out a plan and ensure its success, or a new adventuring constant that makes task after task trivial if you have enough gold to burn.

Balancing spells with gold is extraordinarily difficult to do right. Some players may really want the “naturally lucky” theme to expand out their character, and won’t ever have the gold on hand to realistically cast this. Other tables will find a pearl merchant, procure fifty of these, and have fifty plus encounters worth of luck to spend freely as they’d like. It's supposed to act as a valve DMs can mess with to open up access to spell-like features like this, but with how wildly varied gold ends up being table to table and how dense the rules for it all, it becomes a challenge to process and balance a game around. With all of the encounter, narrative, and character designing a DM has to do, asking them to also strategically and competently navigate the quantity of gold their players should have to access spells of varying costs on a case by case basis is just ridiculous.

In its optimal spot, Fortune’s Favor will be perfect at doing what it's set out to do: making you feel a little bit luckier. The super-advantage system it works with can feel like otherworldly luck intervening in the right moments. This is the kind of effect that, when constant, feels outrageously powerful. But in small doses, it can sell the fantasy without changing the game around it. My ultimate frustration then is because that gate is attached to gold and not a higher spell level or other mechanical constraint, the spell is going to vary in power and usefulness wildly table to table. If you don’t know how your table will manage this, I’d talk with your DM about their expectations for it, or steer clear.

5e Spells

Fortune’s Favor: Luck for Sale