Word of Recall: Don’t Forget to Save Your Game
Usable By: Cleric
Spell Level: 6
School: Conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 5 feet
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: V
You and up to five willing creatures within 5 feet of you instantly teleport to a previously designated sanctuary. You and any creatures that teleport with you appear in the nearest unoccupied space to the spot you designated when you prepared your sanctuary (see below). If you cast this spell without first preparing a sanctuary, the spell has no effect.
You must designate a sanctuary by casting this spell within a location, such as a temple, dedicated to or strongly linked to your deity. If you attempt to cast the spell in this manner in an area that isn’t dedicated to your deity, the spell has no effect.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Picture this: you and the squad are ankles deep in your own blood while being ripped to pieces by that pit fiend the barbarian somehow convinced everyone “wasn’t that tough”. The wizard is floating unconscious face down in the pool of blood, sweat, and tears, the rogue is sitting on five hit points after barely being saved by the luckiest natural 20 you’ve ever seen, and the barbarian who started this mess is currently in the process of being burned alive by an endless barrage of Fireballs. In those moments, when nothing else can possibly save you, grab your wizard buddie’s ankle, get the rogue to cunning action dash over here, and Word of Recall the near dead group back to the middle of your favorite church midway through Sunday mass. What a delightful image indeed!
For a 6th level spell Word of Recall requires you do a LOT of setup as well as get your group to coordinate well, but if you can manage this, it is one of the best contingency plans in the game. Instantaneous extraplanar teleportation that brings up to five people with you is crazy; the main caveat is the circumstances you’ll ever want to cast this spell the most is in the worst possible situations.
There lies the problem with Word of Recall; any group with the average level of competency adventurers tend to have (which is incredibly low, mind you) won’t often actually cast Word of Recall because they won’t be in situations where they need to. In big set piece fights, holding on to your 6th level slot isn’t viable until you’re in the epic tier of the game as you’d almost always want it to be doing something powerful that affects the encounter and hypothetically removes the need for this spell in the first place.
Even if you hold onto the slot and find yourself and friends in dire straits, you best be in a party of six or less, otherwise everyone else is being left behind! Beyond just the numbers problem for some groups, many fights you need to bail on will have players scattered across a huge space, making the actual cases where you can successfully pull of a Word of Recall rare. When they do happen, though, you’ll feel more relief than you’ve ever felt before.
The other time you’d consider using Word of Recall really acts as a means of convenience, or as a plot device. You can take a one way ticket to hell knowing once you kill satan you have a way out so long as you keep the cleric alive. Most games dedicated to getting into exceedingly dangerous places typically offer means of getting out without requiring player spells, but thanks to prepared casting, this can just be that plot device if you want.
I can’t ever see myself preparing this spell despite the cool deus ex machina moments you can get out of it. If you plan on taking Wish down the road, consider establishing a Word of recall spot prior you can use when casting Word of Recall with Wish. Otherwise, unless you really want to get that fantasy of saving the whole team from otherwise certain death by teleporting them across all of time and space to your hometown chapel, you’ll be better off using your 6th level slots to prevent said otherwise certain death in more proactive ways, and just casting this after finishing a long rest and wanting to head back to town.
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