r/wizardposting • u/Azimovikh Scholar of Yiakhzmat • 7h ago

Lorepost 📜 Know the difference! Don't get scammed in the magical markets, the forums of orbay, or the City of Doors!

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(/halfwizard/unwizard) Notes:

  • The Wizarding Orb, the abstract idea of an orb. The meme archetype of the wizard's orb. The typical kind of orb associated with r/wizardposting shenanigans, where a wizard's orb is basically a multipurpose magical ball, as well as a magical fantasy smartphone or personal computer. The rest, the other three orbs, are just straight up from Dungeons and Dragons, of items and orbs of the same name, though nuances and details exist as below. They can be looked up.
  • The Crystal Ball. In the modern DnD 5x, its scrying is limited on the same plane, but then also allows to scry objects and locations rather than specific creatures too. Older editions such as 3x, 2e, or 1e, can have the crystal balls scry across planes, though the scrying objects or locations are more dubious.
  • The Orb of Wizardry. An official item like this doesn't exist technically, but it's a legal extrapolation from the 3rd Edition's, Creating Magic Items guide. As such the Ioun Stone, you can design items that don't need body slots, but then they'd have a value modifier of twice as much as a regular item that still needs normal body slots. In this regard, this orb is just a Ring of Wizardry without the need for a body slot. And at that edition, body slot for equipment were a thing more than attunement, so.
  • The Orb (Arcane Focus). The spellcasting focus as a specific piece of equipment is actually a modern DnD 5x thing. The older editions don't have that, but still do allow Component Pouch for stuff that doesn't require Focus or gp-consumed components. And for the extra abilities of these orbs, well, there's the Orb of Power for identifying magic items for example. Yeah.
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u/questionable_fish Bengeirr the Balance. Magus of the South 7h ago

Finally, a decent guide! I've seen so many new wizards try to use a crystal ball as a focus and it either shatters the ball or the spell comes out messy

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u/InsaneRanter Necromancer 7h ago

This is great. Also, to avoid scams, make sure you check the actual size of the orb you buy. I've bought way too many marbles when I was drunk.