Hi there!
I’m new to open legend and want to make a spell caster. I come from D&D 5e, so I was shocked to see that there aren’t any spell lists! What are the substitutes for spells? And where can I find them?
Thanks!
Open Legend uses Banes and Boons to simulate the various effects you might want to apply to your enemies. There are not pre-built spells, instead it’s better to think in terms of abilities. Rather than your wizard only being able to do cone of cold and fireball, you can instead just say they have ice magic and fire magic: where for ice magic they might inflict the Immobile or Slowed banes, or the Barrier boon; and for fire they might be able to set their enemies ablaze with the Persistent Damage bane and illuminate a room with the Light boon. If you want to be able to do a cone attack, or make a big explosion, or zig-zag a lightning bolt between enemies, then you can check out multi-targeting in the combat chapter; these can be combined with any bane or boon (or damaging attack) in any way which makes sense for your character. You also don’t have “spell slots”, I understand this takes some getting used to but it’s more fitting with how most spellcasters work in fiction (you never see Harry Potter or Gandalf run out of spells) and it means you get to do your cool stuff all the time!
You gain these abilities through the Extraordinary Attributes, which are similar to schools of magic (though they don’t have to be magical abilities, just something most people can’t do) and you level them up in the same way as your other attributes to access more powerful effects, do your smaller effects more reliably and deal more damage. If you want to be a pyromancer, then you can put points into Energy. A Necromancer would use Entropy. An illusionist, Influence. You just need to match the abilities granted by an attribute to what you want your character to be able to do, and you can level up as many or as few of these Extraordinary attributes as you like.
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Oh! Thats pretty cool!
Is it the same for damaging spells?
Damaging spells can use the same multi-targeting rules to affect whatever area you choose (though bigger areas come with bigger penalties to your roll). For a damaging attack, you simply explain what you’re trying to do and then roll the appropriate attribute dice; you add up your roll, and if it’s high enough then the difference between your roll and the target’s defence score is the amount of damage you deal. We also use a rule called “exceptional success” where if you deal 10 or more damage you also get to inflict a free bane! So if you roll Energy to use a fireball to deal 12 damage to an enemy you can then choose to also set them on fire with Persistent Damage, or maybe you were using Lightning instead and now they are Stunned! There’s a lot of options available to you. Also, if you like the idea of setting enemies on fire when you do damage you can pick up the Bane Focus feat, which would let you inflict Persistent Damage on 5+ damage rather than 10+
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Oh! Thats really cool actually! I know I’m asking some pretty noobish questions, but are you limited to a certain number of banes, or can you just use any that you have a high enough score for?
Anything that you have a high enough score for, though it does have to make sense for how you’re describing your character’s abilities. You can’t usually, for example, use Summon Creature if you’re using Entropy to represent your advanced poisons and disintegration rays. Most characters will generally only use about 5 or so different banes or boons though, depending on how you specialise them with feats and such.
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Oh! Ok! Thats really cool 
I can’t wait to start playing next week haha.
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It’s a great option to look at some pregen casters to get a feel for it:
Traditional Spellcaster: https://openlegend.heromuster.com/character?s=pregen-fantasy8
An example of OL’s power: https://openlegend.heromuster.com/character?s=pregen-fantasy9
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