Magic in the Realms - Spellfire
Spellfire is the raw energy of the Weave. It can be manipulated in two ways. Mystra gives the silver fire ability to her Chosen and certain other favored servants. The spellfire ability - the wielding of true spellfire - is by far the more powerful of these rare and precious talents. It is a random gift bestowed upon only a handful of women and men in a generation.
Spellfire in any form is refined, controlled raw magic. In beneficent manifestations, it is a font of silver light and healing energy. In battle, it is a searing blue-white jet of all-consuming radiance.
Silver Fire
This powerful supernatural ability is unique to the Chosen of Mystra. Manifesting as a beautiful silver-white flame that surrounds the wielder and fills the area into which it is projected, silver fire can be used for different effects. It can act as a ring of warmth or a ring of mind shielding, allow the user to breathe water, or banish all external magical compulsions upon the user as if a greater dispelling spell were cast upon her. Only one of the above effects can be used at any time.
The user can call upon silver fire to revitalize her, allowing her to function without food or drink for up to seven days. (This function can only be used once a tenday.) Once every 70 minutes she may unleash silver fire as a blast of flame. This blast may be in an area 5 feet wide and up to 70 feet long, breaking through barriers as a lightning bolt would and overcoming magical barriers and spell resistance automatically. This blast deals 4d12 points of fire damage (Reflex half DC 23). Alternately, the silver fire can be unleashed in a 70-foot cone, dealing no damage but permanently restoring dead magic zones within the cone to normal and dispelling (as a greater dispelling spell) any antimagic field effects that contact the cone. This cone effect is draining on the Weave, and Mystra discourages its use except for emergencies.
All effects function as if cast by a 20th-level sorcerer.
Spellfire
Persons gifted with the spellfire ability can do amazing things, dependent upon their skill, talent, and the amount of magical energy they have within them at the time. In general, spellfire can be used to heal, create blasts of destructive fire, or absorb magical effects it contacts, although the exact effects vary by circumstance and user. Talented wielders can release multiple blasts at once or even fly using the ability.
A spellfire wielder can ready an action to absorb spells targeted at her as if she were a rod of absorption. She gets one level of spellfire energy for every spell level absorbed and can store a number of spellfire energy levels equal to her Constitution score.
As a standard action, she may expend these spellfire energy levels as a ranged touch attack (maximum range 400 feet), dealing 1d6 points of spellfire damage per level expended (Reflex half DC 20). Spellfire damage is half fire damage and half raw magical power, just like the damage of a flame strike spell is half fire and half divine energy. Creatures with immunity, resistance, or protection against fire apply these effects to half the damage.
A spellfire wielder can also heal a target by touch, restoring 2 hit points per spellfire energy level expended for this purpose.
Unlike most supernatural abilities, spellfire is affected by spells and magic items that affect spell-like abilities, such as a rod of absorption or a rod of negation (if pointed at the manifestation rather than the wielder). It can be thwarted or counterspelled by dispel magic, and theoretically a spellfire wielder could counterspell another's spellfire. However, spellfire is a supernatural ability and does not provoke an attack of opportunity when used, nor is it subject to spell resistance.
The Story of Spellfire
Right or wrong, legend holds that only one person in all Faerûn is gifted with true spellfire at a time. Gossip identifies that one person today as the lass Shandril Shessair, an orphaned kitchen-maid from a tavern in Highmoon of Deepingdale.
Shandril has spellfire, yes, and a hundred mages hound her for it, Zhentarim and Thayans and Cult of the Dragon and independents, slaughtering each other in their ruthless pursuit of her power. Learn this, if you heed nothing else in this book: Legends lie.
Mystra's Chosen wield lesser spellfire if they care to call on it, and some among them command true spellfire.
A mage hiding in the Border Kingdoms possesses true spellfire, and a cruel and arrogant noble of Chessenta, and the wizard R- but I'm sure you grasp my point.
In the early Sword Coast North, the ranger Haclam Sunderstone undoubtedly possessed spellfire. He stood alone against an orc horde pouring south past the Coldwood - and turned them into smokes and scorch scars.
I could go on. So can anyone who cares to spend the years in study at Candlekeep that I did before I chose to flee to this nameless backwater keep and cloak myself in squalor and obscurity.
Why did I spend my fortune and my eyesight, and then steal away to here, to grow wizened and ugly and bent?
Why? Well, because I have true spellfire too, of course. Come looking for me, and I will blast you to dust, and then lay waste to all your descendants, ancestors, and the realm you came from, every last tree and stone of it. Why? Well, it's what I usually do.
Baerendtia Riverhand, Sage of Sperndelzyon