Legend Lore: For Profit Wikipedia

Spell Level: 5

School: Divination

Casting Time: 10 minutes

Range: Self

Duration: Instantaneous

Components: V, S, M (Incense worth at least 250 gp, which the spell consumes, and four ivory strips worth at least 50 gp each)

Name or describe a person, place, or object. The spell brings to your mind a brief summary of the significant lore about the thing you named. The lore might consist of current tales, forgotten stories, or even secret lore that has never been widely known. If the thing you named isn’t of legendary importance, you gain no information. The more information you already have about the thing, the more precise and detailed the information you receive is.

The information you learn is accurate but might be couched in figurative language. For example, if you have a mysterious magic axe on hand, the spell might yield this information: “Woe to the evildoer whose hand touches the axe, for even the haft slices the hand of the evil ones. Only a true Child of Stone, lover and beloved of Moradin, may awaken the true powers of the axe, and only with the sacred word Rudnogg on the lips.”

Review by Samuel West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

“What did the DM say was the name of that guy who did the thing with the ring, was it Salamander? Saurial? Saloon? Hold on, let me google it-” Sam Wise, if he was a player character casting Legend Lore at a modern D&D table.

Legend Lore is fine; it’s a last ditch effort to learn critical information the DM needs to get out to move the plot and quest forward. The gold cost attached to it is prohibitively expensive for some tables, which can majorly limit this spell's use, but should gold not be an issue, it does what you’d expect.

Personally, I love the concept DMs like Brennan Lee Mulligan bring to magic like Identify, where the spells come with personalities and voices all their own. Hearing a Siri-esque voice chirping out “Sauron, originally born Mairon, was an ancient evil entity that created a series of jewelry that decimated the people of Middle Earth’s lives,” brings me joy. Alternatively, you could go with how the spell describes the message with the classic fantasy look of “mystical poem bears a warning with a prophecy, and it's extra cryptic!”, which is fine. Not my thing, but I know a lot of tables love it.

It's a weird choice to sometimes have the spell yield nothing; this can in itself be information at least. If a swindler sells you a dagger claiming it's the sacrificial blade used in the cult of the deep’s yearly rituals, a single Legend Lore can double check that functioning akin to getting it appraised. If you’re going to be spending thousands of gold or more, having Legend Lore check out the stories of the item you're looking to get can help decide whether or not the object you're getting is indeed worth the coin.

Otherwise, the spell is a way to quickly get the TLDR of the world building notes the DM has written up that nobody would ever see otherwise. This information ranges from helpful to completely pointless, but it can be a fun experience to go through at least. Most tables don’t ever need this information. Having access to it, then, is typically unnecessary.

If you are looking for information on a relatively new band of monsters, the spell is worthless. The game basically points you towards the other fifth level information acquiring spells, all of which do slightly different things. Legend Lore has its place among those; I don’t get why it has to be more expensive than the rest. You can take Legend Lore; you’ll probably get something out of it now and then, but it probably won’t be as useful as the competing info dump options.

5e Spells

Legend Lore: For Profit Wikipedia