d20 Escaped Spells

We all know that spells are actually spirits from another dimension that a wizard traps in his brain.

But we usually don't bother with the implications of that. He always meets them in books, doesn't he? He *could* meet them face-to-face, right there in the dungeon. Wild Spells. Escaped Spells. Spirits, for all intents and purposes.

Roll on this table for a random spell encounter. Or use it when your player's spells gain sentience.
Here they are.

by Apofiss.

1. Meln. A small, pink candlelight floating without a candle. Will strike up a conversation. 
1. Personality: hey heeey, my man! 
2. Speaks: like a ridiculously disarming friend with this voice who hasn't seen you in a long time. 
3. Wants: everyone to get along. 
4. Spell: Charm Person. The person regards you as a good friend and ignores the obvious spell you just cast on them. If you invest at least 4 dice into this spell, the duration becomes permanent.
2. Tutatat. Looks like any of the perfectly normal d3 following: 1. a red apple 2. a fresh fish (1 out of 6 odds it's swimming through the air) 3 a silver spoon. Ideally players take it with them before they realize it's a spirit. 
1. Personality: very, very shy. Will be embarrassed if the players figure out what it is. 
2. Voice: like a 4 year old girl, including the child-like cadence. 
3. Wants: to hide and to be hidden! 
4. Spell: Disguise.
3. Sashaan. An upside down green-stained copper mask wreathed in blue flame. 
1. Personality: seemingly harmless, but will express alarming interest in cutting tools and facial injuries. 
2. Voice: hoarse and after a while kind of creepy. 
3. Wants: to replace and become a face. All human corpses in the dungeon are missing their faces. 
4. Spell: Death Mask
4. Xoixoi. A floating eyeball in a reddish vortex. If it spots you it will scream and scream and scream until you can calm it down (CHA check). This may attract enemies, for which it will apologize.
1. Personality: skittish and anxiety-riddled. 
2. Voice: high and hysterical. 
3. Wants: for everyone to DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT, CHRIST. 
4. Spell: Alarm. Becomes a floating eyeball for [sum] / 2 hours; if it sees an intruder it will scream; you’ll hear it at any distance.
5. Skeltwit. Invisible, but makes a humming noise, will probably smack straight into your face and apologize. 
1. Personality: here to do a job, ma'am. Yes ma'am. Of course ma'am. 
2. Voice: Monotone, businesslike, assuring. Can only speak in variations of "Yes, ma'am" and "Yes, sir."
3. Wants: to protect something. Is probably guarding someone or something; maybe the treasure, maybe something worthless. Try talking it out of doing so.
4. Spell: Shield. Becomes an invisible shield around yourself or something within range that will block anything; magic or physical, but [sum] / 2 hits as hard or harder than a sword blow will break the shield with a hollow ringing like a giant bell.
6. Borrobollo. A disgusting glob of grease shaped roughly like a fat floating baby. 
1. Personality: disgusting lazy slob.
2. Voice: squelching, bubbling voice, like it's coming through a mouth full of custard. Sounds drunk.
3. Wants: to eat fatty foods.
4. Spell: Grease. Becomes a splash of grease that makes a 1 square meter or one object ultra-slippery for [sum] hours.
7. Minnie. A horse skull in a glowing undulating silvery goop.
1. Personality: fun-loving, exuberant, enthousiastic, unbreakably naive.
2. Voice: a plucky young woman.
3. Wants: to experience new things.
4. Spell: Mount. Becomes a glob of spit that if you spit it will grow into a riding horse for [sum] hours.
8. Hufelt. Two cat's eyes floating luxuriantly and effortly through the air in a cloud of fog. From further away it looks like a terrifyingly floaty being is hidden in the fog, until you notice that it IS the fog's eyes.
1. Personality: tired, bored, arrogant.
2. Voice: none.
3. Wants: a place to relax.
4. Spell: Obscuring Mist. Becomes fog that surrounds you; nobody can see a thing.
9. Churrsa. A flaming snake coiling through the air. 
1. Personality: Quick to anger, insecure.
2. Voice: Angry guy. Quick, irritable. If angry: yelling slowly ascending in loudness.
3. Wants: To become a Fireball spell OR for Fireball spells to acknowledge it.
4. Spell: Flaming Hands.
10. - No name -. A horrifying, undulating composite of constantly shifting, terrifying things; mostly gruesome wounds, horrible fangs, and the face of your mother's corpse. Use your fear mechanic when PC's see it.
1. Personality: Silent, weird, unnerving, obsessive.
2. Voice: Quiet, gravelly, Australian. Like the Sniper from TF2. Maybe drop the Australian.
3. Wants: It won't say, but it keeps demanding odd favours and objects.
4. Spell: Make Terrifying. You can make an object or creature bizarrely terrifying for [sum] minutes for reasons no one can explain. Use your preferred fear mechanics. You are not immune to this.
11. Laylaps. A quick-flitting pink bubbly blob with cute big eyes and a tiny tiny mouth. It shapeshifts around the dungeon, if the players find it twice, it will accompany them as pet rather than spell.
1. Personality: Like an excitable pet. Can be given commands other than its spell effect, but 2/3 odds it does it hilariously wrong in some way.
2. Voice: High squeaky repititions of what others say.
3. Wants: To be loved for what it truly is.
4. Spell: Just make it your favourite Illusion spell.
12. Babbeler. A yellow koi carp swimming in the air. It exudes a soft golden glow.
1. Personality: Friendly, obsessive though.
2. Voice: A hoarse woman's voice, professional, unless near an animal.
3. Wants: To learn animal languages! Keeps trying to talk to them.
4. Spell: Comprehend Languages. A yellow carp comes out of your mouth; if you feed it a morsel of food it, shrinking, enters your ear again. You can speak and write the language of the person who prepared the food, but not your own, and you must make roll charisma to make people not weird out about the yellow fish tail coming out of your ear.
13. Null. A white-hot glowing tiny woman in a white aura, Tinkerbell-style. Don't let it near magic objects, they might be disenchanted.
1. Personality: Bored, bored, bored, bored. It loves magic but it keeps disappearing near it.
2. Voice: A monotone. Lots of sighs.
3. Wants: To see magic!!! Give it a spell to examine and dispel.
4. Spell: Dispel Magic.
14. Warb. A splash of liquid silver. It zooms around the dungeon unlocking locks (maybe put an escaped Lock spell in the same dungeon).
1. Personality: Like a happy, happy bird.
2. Voice: Tweeting like a bird.
3. Wants: To inspect and understand complex mechanisms. Might break 'em.
4. Spell: Knock or Unlock type spell. If you use Warb as as a spell, it comes out of your nose and flies into the target.
15. Qurvul. An ugly, nasty, gross, naked, baby-voldemort lookin' goblin. It actually walks instead of floats. Only looking closely or otherwise inspecting Qurvul reveals that he's a spell. It goes around locking things (maybe put an escaped unlock spell in the same dungeon).
1. Personality: An old, annoying, bitter man.
2. Voice: A wheezy, insane monotone as he rambles to himself.
3. Wants: To seal everything up nice and tidy. Things. Must. Be. SEPARATED. and. CLOSED. Will be annoyed if the party are varying races and classes.
4. Spell: Lock. If you use Qurvul as lock, he'll crawl out from under your robe/out of your pant leg and walk agonizingly slow and muttering to himself to the target, before getting an enormous keychain and look for the one to the target. If some sort of danger is imminent, like an enemy coming through the door, Qurvul will not be on time if you fail to hurry him on (CHA). However, enraged at the interruption, he will Lock a crucial part of the enemy's anatomy; like joints, eyes, or lungs.
16. Mora. A tiny floating elephant skeleton made of obsidian. It casts the shadow of a living elephant. 
1. Personality: An old kind grandmother.
2. Voice: A very old very teensy very sweet very worried woman.
3. Wants: To care for something. Probably caring for some random goblin or object.
4. Spell: Darkness.
17. Sûr. Like any spirit of rot; a thin long black snake coiling through the air. It is friendly but does not speak. If it touches you, you grow one year older.
1. Personality: Laid back, lazy, chill.
2. Voice: None, mute.
3. Wants: Food to consume (i.e., rot)
4. Spell: Rotting Touch.
18. Magwar. A fucking skull wreathed in fucking flame.
1. Personality: HAHAHA YOU FUCKING FOOLS, TASTE MY POWER
2. Voice: VERY LOUD AND RASPY HAHAHA
3. Wants: TO BURN AND BURN AND SQUASH THE WEAK HAHAHA
4. Spell: Fireball. Magwar the Fireball has a laughing, shrieking skull inside it though. It might intimidate people.
19. Doifoiloi. A collection of frothing bubles that change colour. They remind you of something.
1. Personality: Obsessive.
2. Voice: No speak. Just brain-speak. (Communicates through emotions and memories).
3. Wants: To explore depths. Is probably in some deep pit or pool.
4. Spell: Dredge.
20. Gribus. A blue shimmering on the edge of vision.
1. Personality: Inquisitive, calm.
2. Voice: A faint gurgling that seems to contain no words. Will speak through whatever it animates, but like yoda speaks it does.
3. Wants: To be an artist. It will take any time off while animated as an opportunity to make art. Is it crude or amazing?
4. Spell: Animate. This spell can animate any inanimate object shaped like a living being. This includes animal corpses and skeletons (1 dice), human corpses and skeletons (2 dice), and statues and artwork (3 dice). Lasts for [sum] hours. Permanent if you make a golem of your own for Gribus to live in and invest 4 dice.
21. The Cartaphrax. A collection of rotating bizarre crystals that catch the light in colourful and strangely duplicating ways. 
1. Personality: THE CRYSTALS WILL NOT SUFFER DISTRACTIONS. 
2. Voice: None; rather a bizarre computer like buzzing and beeping. 
3. Wants: to make everything beautiful like them. 
4. Spell: Colour Spray.
22. Xisfix. Looks like a pink glowing sphere with many delicate tendrils, moves as if it was underwater.
1. Personality: Unable to tell; calm though.
2. Voice: Can only say "glub glub glub glub glub"
3. Wants: To smooth over and close gaps in anything it can find.
4. Spell: Any healing spell.

Here, you get two!! bonus ones for free. Was gonna write d100 but christ, there's not even that many good spells.

They should be pretty rare and to be honest, good OSR-like spells are hard to come by, so i've borrowed some from Goblin Punch and Coins and Scrolls and made some of my own with Scrap Princess' excellent notions of what a good spell is (i.e., "material", and with a high "hi-jink potential")

They're conscious, they've got a name, a personality. They float around the dungeon doing their spell effects. They probably know stuff about the dungeon.

A wizard can invite them in his brain by making an INT check! And a spell slot open. This can only be done if you have an empty spell slot. They don't mind being invited, but if you fail, they'll become angry if you try again. If they attack you, they perform their spell on you and then flee.

You can also try to catch them in your spellbook or a scroll by making an INT check, which they won't sense until it succeeds, so bring your gear. If the spell sees you trying to do this, they'll be aghast that you would capture them so and attack! You can even catch them in a glass jar (make a DEX check), then study them later (or just let them out in a pinch). Better bring some.

If the wizard catches this spell, it remains sentient. If it accepted your invitation it'll start liking you. If you caught it in writing you'll have to pacify it according to its wants before it will cast. Most don't like spellbooks but enjoy the ride around in your brain.