Recharge Magic (D&D)

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Unofficial rules compendium

I use a variant of the recharge magic rules from Unearthed Arcana page 157.

At its heart, the recharge magic variant is simple: A well rested spellcaster can cast any spell he knows or has prepared, but then loses access to that level of spells until they have been successfully recharged. Spell slots are never expended; they just become temporarily unavailable.

Spells are prepared in the ordinary fashion. In addition, any spell you can substitute into is automatically considered prepared each day. This includes cure/cause wounds spells for clerics and summon nature's ally for druids.

Recharging doesn’t require any actions and doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity. As long as a spellcaster is alive, he naturally recharges his energy. However, it can be prevented is certain ways.

• It is impossible to recharge magic in a null-magic area.
• There is a special substance, Alchemist's Lead, that prevents recharging of arcane spells if you are in contact with it. Likewise, being completely encased in ordinary lead, such as a cell lined with lead or a suit of lead armor, also prevents the recharge of arcane spells.
• A divine caster must have his divine focus in order to recharge spells.

Once a character has cast a spell, he can’t cast another spell of that level until he has made a successful recharge test. At the end of each round, you are allowed one recharge roll for each level of spell that is presently not charged. You continue to roll for each uncharged level of spell each round until all your spells are recharged. Once recharged, any prepared spell of that level can be cast again.

Recharge roll

DC 18
 + Spell level
 - Maximum spell level you can cast
-2 if Sorcerer (suggenja, spirit shaman)


If the DC is 10 or lower, you automatically succeed on the first roll.

When not running round-by round initiative, a single die roll can be made to determine recharge time. Make a recharge roll as normal; if the roll succeeds, the spell is instantly recharged. If it fails, halve the result of the die roll, rounding down (to a minimum of one); the result is the number of rounds until the spell recharges. Using this system, it never takes more than eight rounds to recharge a spell.

Multiclass Spellcasters

A multiclass spellcaster with access to two different spell lists (for example, a cleric/wizard) applies the recharge magic rules separately to each class. So a Cleric 1, Wizard 3 would roll separately to recharge cleric spells of level 0 (DC 17), 1 (DC 18) and wizard spells of level 0 (DC 16), 1 (DC 17), and 2 (DC 18).

Special Cases

Spellcasters with a fixed number of known spells such as bards or sorcerers get to add their usual spells/day bonus from attributes to their number of known spells instead. This is because spells per day is no longer relevant to them.

A specific spell cannot be cast again while the effect of a previous spellcast lasts. In most cases this applies until the spell's duration expires In the case of instantaneous spells that create or summon things, this applies as long as the effect lasts. In either case, preparing new spells the next day nulls this limitation. One way around this limitation is to learn/prepare the same spell several times; if you have prepared cat's grace twice, you can keep two instances of that spell running at once. Any spell can be renewed by casting it on the same target again before the duration runs out.

A spellcaster that is drained of spells (such as by a spellthief) cannot recharge those spells for an hour.

Maintaining spells

With this system, a spellcaster can maintain a large number of spells with a duration by constantly re-casting them. Constantly re-casting such spells over a long period requires discipline and Concentration. See the skill description for details.

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