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General Spell List — Draft

Working draft, not locked in. Pure utility magic — detection, communication, minor conveniences, travel — available to any Arcane spellcaster regardless of school, and forming the Divine baseline (General list access + a handful of unique domain-only spells per religion).

This is now the complete General list from High Magic (15 spells — every High Magic spell not claimed by Crimson, Mirage, Haras, Primal, or Unbound), per the full 52-spell audit. Two spells previously routed here on a tentative judgment call (Imperceptible Cerebral Divulgence, Damnation of the Sense) are confirmed as Mirage-exclusive instead — see /High_Magic_Audit.md.

No General Arts exist, and that's likely correct rather than a gap. In WWN, Arts belong to a casting class (High Mage Arts, Elementalist Arts, etc.), not to a shared spell list. General isn't its own class — it's a pool any Arcane caster can pull from — so it may not need Arts of its own. Worth keeping an eye on this while building the other schools: if something General-flavored keeps wanting to be an Art rather than a spell, that's probably a sign it belongs to a specific school instead.

Spell List (draft)

Tier 1 - Sense the Working (adapted from Apprehending the Arcane Form) — See active magic as colored light for 15 min/level; identify items with a one-sentence description; see in the dark as a side effect. - Beast-Speaker's Bond (adapted from Cognitive Supersession of the Inferior Orders) — Telepathically bond with and direct a normal animal; it won't fight but otherwise obeys. - Fleet Step (adapted from Velocitous Imbuement) — Augment movement speed/options for one target per level. - Shrink the Vessel (adapted from Compression of the Struggling Vessel — fan homebrew) — Hands-on-hull spell that temporarily shrinks a ship, cart, or other manned vehicle just long enough to pass through an otherwise-too-small gap. Doesn't work with crew aboard; lasts a scene. A nice, small, genuinely "minor convenience" piece — good fit for General's mandate.

Tier 2 - The Distant Eye (adapted from Casting Forth the Inner Eye) — Scry a distant location through a reflective or luminous surface. - Short Step (adapted from Conjunction of the Inexorable Step) — Teleport a creature or object to a visible safe point within half a mile. - Palanquin of Passage (adapted from The Jade Palanquin of the Faceless God) — Summon a floating platform that can carry heavy loads. Flavor/convenience piece more than a necessity. - Step From the World (adapted from Eschew the Path — fan homebrew) — Caster and one ally per level force themselves into a crack between worlds, ceasing to exist (undetectable by any conventional and most magical means) for up to 30 min/level. Costs 1 System Strain plus 1 more per full hour; exceeding max Strain means not returning. Genuinely powerful for the tier it's sourced at — flagged below, since "become completely undetectable" is a strong effect to hand out this early. - Loyal Servant (adapted from Calculation of the Evoked Servitor) — Summons a magical familiar that can't fight, but obeys all other orders. A pure convenience/utility summon, distinct from any combat servitor the other schools have. - Fair Weather (adapted from Visitation of the Clement Clime) — Caster and three allies per level become immune to natural heat or cold. Survival-flavored utility.

Tier 3 - Skyward Step (adapted from Scorn the Fetters of Earth) — Caster and allies can briefly move through open air. - Veil of Unseeing (adapted from The Excellent Transpicuous Transformation, moved down a tier to fit General's slower power curve) — Willing targets turn invisible for a duration. - Sight Through Stone (adapted from Touch of Elucidating Intangibility) — Touch a barrier to see through it, or briefly make it passable. - Lasting Impression (adapted from The Casting of a Historic Paradigm — fan homebrew) — After a day spent walking a site (up to 300 ft radius) and speaking the intended lore aloud, the area teaches roughly a paragraph of information to anyone who later enters it. No save to resist hearing it, though belief and action are up to the individual. Lasts up to a year. An unusual, worldbuilding-flavored utility spell — good texture for scholars, historians, or propagandists alike. - Short Foresight (adapted from Foresightful Apprehension) — Divine the most likely outcome of an action in the next five minutes. Pure detection/planning tool.

Tier 4 - The Near Gate (adapted from Pierce the Pallid Gate) — Open a short-range gate between two known points. - Swap (adapted from Ochre Sigil of Juxtaposition) — Swaps targets between a current place and a distant prepared one. Sits alongside Short Step and The Near Gate as General's third travel-tier option.

Tier 5 - The Long Road (adapted from Open the High Road) — Creates a temporary gate to a prepared distant target point. General's travel capstone — the natural endpoint of Short Step → The Near Gate → Swap → this.

Still open

  • Whether the tier-3/tier-4 placement (deliberately slowed from their original High Magic tiers) is the right curve for a shared utility list, or should match the source tiers exactly.
  • Step From the World is sourced as a tier-1 High Magic spell but reads as much stronger than anything else at that tier (true undetectability, not just invisibility) — worth a balance look, possibly moving it up a tier or two.
  • Several new additions (Loyal Servant, Fair Weather, Short Foresight, Swap, The Long Road) only have the book's one-line summary — full text not yet pulled from the PDF.
  • With the full audit complete, this list should be genuinely final from a High Magic sourcing standpoint — any future additions would be new fan-homebrew finds or entirely original spells.

Sources used

  • Official WWN High Magic spell list — complete, 15 of 52 spells (Worlds Without Number Free Edition PDF, pages 60–93).
  • Fan "Project Gemini" spellbook and "Prompts Without Number" Inktober page (sites.google.com/view/projectgemini/spellbook and /inktober) — homebrew, not official Sine Nomine content.
  • See /High_Magic_Audit.md for the full 52-spell cross-school assignment.