History WebAnimation / AnimatedSpellbook

* CurbStompBattle: In one video, Zee describes his first disastrous first experience with [=AD&D=]'s combat system. His two-person, first-level adventuring party squared off with three goblins and got slaughtered in the first round of combat. The third goblin didn't even have to do anything, because the PCs were already dead by the time his turn came around.

* AnAesop: In the ''Clone'' video: If it was easy to kill a high level necromancer, you probably didn't kill him.

* UpliftedAnimal: The Awaken spell, as it is in D&D, which gets {{discussed|Trope}} and questioned about what it might also cause by extension.

* ComplexityAddiction: Minor example with Skenk [=McGenk=]. He could have easily killed the unassuming Trevor in a myriad of ways, such as stopping time with ''Time Stop'' and fired off a ''Delayed Blast Fireball'' for massive damage, but instead he sacrificed one of his clones (each costing 3000 gold), spent god knows how long to inscribe a bunch of cupcakes with individual glyphs of warding (200 gold each), and for either [[CrazyPrepared assurance]] or [[KickTheDog spite]], turned Trevor's entire hometown into zombies (150 gold each via Create Undead).

* DidntThinkThisThrough: During the [=PvP=] event, he promised an opponent 100 gold from the winnings for throwing the match, and promised the same to a bard for giving him inspiration. He did win, but it turns out that the award was a title, land, and a mystical artifact. No money.

* TooDumbToLive: Glorf in the Darksun Spelljammer episode disguises himself as the cultist's torturer and shows him wearing regular iron scale male to prevent the cultists from questioning the sound of his armor. [[spoiler: Iron is ''rarer than gold'' in the Darksun setting, and seeing their torturer running around in iron armor promptly lead to the cultists beating the snot out of him and killing him.]]

%%* BalefulPolymorph: The assassin did a poor job checking for magical alarms.

* A homebrewed spell he called ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqKBfpQDwVk Erratic Hammering]]''

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: 12 years after Skenk [=McGenk=] used the Circle of Death spell to murder everything the orphan Trevor loved, they met again. Skenk didn't even remember the name of the town (Red Larch), much less what he did.

* ComplexityAddiction: Minor example with Skenk [=McGenk=]. He could have easily killed Trevor in a myriad of ways, such as stopping time with ''Time Stop'' and fired of a ''Delayed Blast Fireball'' for massive damage, but instead he sacrificed one of his clones (each costing 3000 gold) and spent god knows how long to inscribe a bunch of cupcakes with individual glyphs of warding (200 gold each).

* CriticalFailure:
** Team Funsize got three in a row in the bowels of Glitterhame. Especially depressing, considering that the RandomNumberGod had been with them all night.

** The ''Sending'' video revealed that his cameo in "A Crap Guide to ''D&D''" was canon to his series, and that WebAnimation/JoCat actually burned down his sanctum. At the end of the video, he challenges Jocat to a wizard duel, but Jocat either doesn't get the message or ignores it. [[spoiler: Zee gets his revenge in the ''Technology Wizard'' by transforming Jocat into a whale while atop a building in the middle of the city.]]

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Trevor went from a poor orphan who lost his friends, to a lv. 17 paladin (at least), gifted with a magical sword by the Sons of Durgeddin, known as Vengeance and the Twice King. He also killed a necromancer in a single blow.

-->'''Skenk:''' Now, the moral of this story is pretty clear: If it was easy to kill a high level necromancer, ''you didn't kill him.'' You probably vaulted their soul to a muddy cyst or some kind of reliquary in a secret tomb where they're gonna plot your eventual demise.

** When trying ([[ButForMeItWasTuesday and failing]]) to remember who Trevor is, Skenk [=McGenk=] mentions[[Podcast/AcquisitionsIncorporated Trevor the werewolf]]. Some of the videos also take place in Red Larch, settinng for The C-Team, and you can see ''The Dran and Courtier'' in the background of some shots.

* TemptingFate: Trevor the Orphan ponders how everything he loves fits within a 60 foot sphere. Cut to Skenk [=McGenk=] casting ''Circle of Death''.

* AchillesHeel: The frost goblins.

** Team Funsize's owl is far from useless.
** The Druidic Tome also has an entire episode on how you get max amount of pets, as long as you're cool with multiclassing.

** Also Al the al-Miraj. Generally very achievable with ''Find Familiar''.
** Being a Sorcerer or Wizard, you can further empower your companions with ''Dragon's Breath''.

** Mostly subverted, since the characters have either joke names or actually fantasy names, but the trio of Wade in Shadows, Sweet William and Dave counts. Note that Dave is pronounced Daveh.
** The party that went into Khundrukar consisted of Urko Greenbeard, Gideon Rusk, Johan von Generico, and later Skenk [=McGenk=].

* AttractiveBentGender: The Warlock in the Haste video attempted a seduction roll on a guard. It went... Poorly. Since the warlock was a changeling, it's possible that they were gender neutral, thus subverting this trope, but Zee's statement that they "turned into a ''woman''" seems to imply they did not usually identify as female.

* AndIMustScream: According to Laeral this is what happens if you try to conjure multiple objects at once.

* BalefulPolymorph: The assassin did a poor job checking for magical alarms.

* BodyHorror: The description of Sweet William's shot at Wick is quite graphic. So is the goblin zombie's attack on Daveh in the followup video.

* CallBack: Shifty Wick's backpack contains an invisible dagger and a blink arrow. The same artifacts he stole from Wade and Sweet William.

* TheCameo: In his ''Sending'' video, both ''WebAnimation/PuffinForest'' and ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' make minor appearances.

* CharmPerson: Skenk [=McGenk=] knows the ''Friends'' cantrip (using it ForTheEvulz), and Bashew made an entire video on ''Glibness'', which makes it impossible to tell if you're lying.

** He's been in multiple live streams with ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'' and ''WebAnimation/PuffinForest''. The Christmas stream of 2018 also featured Dingo's boyfriend Felix.

* DealWithTheDevil: Warlocks, of course. The players in his Curse of Strahd campaign also made a bargain with Mother Night, one of the two deities of Barovia.

* DismembermentIsCheap: Restoration is not.
* DoomedHometown: Red Larch, after Trevor pissed of the wrong necromancer.

* ExactWords: Skenk didn't ''poison'' the hero of Calimshan. He used glyphs of warding instead.
* EyeOfNewt: In the ''Erratic Hammering'' video, the dark magician lists the components of the ritual as the toenails of a lich, the stone of infinity, and the blood of a virgin. He has a band-aid on his finger.

* FireballEyeballs: In the ''Prestidigitation'' video, when he talks about the astronomical numbers of lives lost to Prestidigitation's create fire effect.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: In the ''Alarm'' video, he jokes that without late night intrud[[VerbalBackspace ...]] Visitors, he wouldn't have anyone to talk to save his puppets. In the end, he uses a warded chair to turn the intruder into a puppet.

* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the ''Silent Image'' video, "[[GodGuise Pelor]]" order the villagers to leave "all [their] possessions, and go to the fortress Family Size". The next picture is of them marching naked toward Family Size.

* {{Golem}}: His episode about ''Create Golem'' is about the magic item Manual of Golems, which can be used to create golems, although he treats it as a spell.

* GoryDiscretionShot: We are mercifully spared the image of Skenk crawling out of his clone vessel.
** But not during the ''Animate Dead'' video, where we get a brief shot of all the villagers at the barn dance burning alive from Skenk's fireball.

-->'''Skenk:''' Now, the moral of this story is pretty clear: If it was easy to kill a high level necromancer, ''you didn't kill him.''
* HitAndRunTactics: ''Heat Metal'' is ''very good at this against opponents with metal armor'' if the GM permits it, due to its range (and the ability to move outside of casting range for the concentration duration), continuous per-turn 2d8 fire damage and the ability to maintain that damage for ''ten rounds at least'' (medium and heavy armor requires 10 rounds to doff their armor if unassisted) if you can outrun your target, which is made easier since it forces the target to either drop any metal weapons or suffer disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks - the video itself revolves around the "Cook and Book" strategy. The only real downsides is that it can be morally questionable and also the moment a caster uses it all enemies will likely focus on them to stop the spell.
* HumanShield: Well, Halfling. He didn't last long.

* InevitableWaterfall: The ultimate fate of Johan von Generico.

* KungFuWizard: With a dash of MagicKnight. The Sorcerer in the ''True Strike'' video was designed to be "a single class Gish". Zee built him to jump around the battlefield with movement spells and strike hard and quickly with his quarterstaff. His first mistake was taking ''True Strike''.
* LaserGuidedKarma: During a [=PvP=] tournament event he plays as a villainous and dishonest knight who magically buffs other competitors to knock out the real threats. In his own matches, he hires a bard to buff him with his theme song, and bribes the remaining dangerous competitors to take a dive. Unfortunately, he promises to pay them all with a share of the winnings... which turn out to be a title of nobility, land in Cormyr and a ''Pearl of Power''. He quickly realizes that he'll have to sell one of these to pay off the group of angry adventurers he'd bribed.
** This is also why the party from ''Heat Metal'' targets the rich noble - the gnoll bard is resistant to the idea due to how ''grisly'' the spell can be, until he hears the target gloating about doing something evil.
* LookBehindYou: Zee got tricked by Pelathyon Hawkryn.

* MasterOfIllusion: Dave conjures up both a dwarf and a dragon.
* MechanicalLifeforms: Warforged, as usual.

* NonIndicativeTitle: The ''Healing Word'' video does not actually contain ''Healing Word''. He explains the spell, but no one uses it; the player who had it was new and didn't realize he had enough spell slots to cast it.
** He also complains about the spell ''Chill Touch'', which is a ranged spell that deals necrotic damage, not a touch spell that deals cold damage.

* NotQuiteFlight: Kenku can't fly. They can, however, glide. Also applies to the ''Feather Fall'' spell.

* PrecisionFStrike: At the end of the [=PvP=] video.

* RedEyesTakeWarning: Trevor, though this only fits if you're Skenk [=McGenk=], the very evil necromancer.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: It's not like that poor orphan who looks suspiciously like Skenk [=McGenk=] would poison the great hero of Calimshan or anything... [[spoiler:He didn't. Blow him up, on the other hand...]]
* TakeThat: Half the video about ''True Strike'' is about how awesome the spell sounds on paper. The other half is about how useless it actually is.

* TheresNoKillLikeOverkill: Skenk [=McGenk=] kills Trevor by serving him several plates of cupcakes, each engraved with a ''Glyph of Warding''. And then raises his entire village as zombies.

* TooDumbToLive: C'mon, when have mold in D&D ever been a good thing?

* ImpostorForgotOneDetail: In the Disguise Self video, Zee's character disguises himself as a cultist on [[TabletopGame/DarkSun Athas]] in order to sneak out. He attempted to avert this trope by making his disguise wear the same armor as him, so as to explain the sounds he made while walking. Unfortunately, he forgot that iron is extremely rare and valuable on Athas, so seeing a random cultist wear full iron armor was ''extremely'' suspicious.

The first episode was released in February 2018, and it has since then come out 21 episodes, not counting a few spinoffs and specials. Each episode takes a look at one or more spells from fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, often including a short story about a situation where Zee or one of his players used the spell, to varying effect. The series is narrated by the wizard Bashew, acting as an avatar for Zee himself, though he's sometimes replaced by different characters depending on the story being told. More recently, he's just been playing himself as a cashier at a card shop (who has to deal with a wargaming regular who either tries to correct him or gets angry at his advice).

* BadassBeard: One of his more recognizable features.

** The party that went into Khundrukar consisted of Urko Greenbeard, Gideon Rusk, Johan von Generico, and later Skenk Mcgenk.
* AffablyEvil: Skenk Mcgenk is very casual in explaining how he liberated a group of creatures from their mortal coil.

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: 12 years after Skenk Mcgenk used the Circle of Death spell to murder everything the orphan Trevor loved, they met again. Skenk didn't even remember the name of the town (Red Larch), much less what he did.
* ButHeSoundsHandsome: "...Killer of the handsome necromancer Skenk Mcgenk?"

* ChaoticStupid: The internal debate of Skenk Mcgenk. In the Mage Hand video, he ultimately decides to warn Gideon Rusk about the danger of the golden mold instead of prioritising loot acquisition over party (and personal, long term) survival.
* CharmPerson: Skenk Mcgenk knows the ''Friends'' cantrip (using it ForTheEvulz), and Bashew made an entire video on ''Glibness'', which makes it impossible to tell if you're lying.

* ComplexityAddiction: Minor example with Skenk Mcgenk. He could have easily killed Trevor in a myriad of ways, such as stopping time with ''Time Stop'' and fired of a ''Delayed Blast Fireball'' for massive damage, but instead he sacrificed one of his clones (each costing 3000 gold) and spent god knows how long to inscribe a bunch of cupcakes with individual glyphs of warding (200 gold each).

* RaisedByWolves: Skenk Mcgenk was apparently reared by lizardfolk.

* RedEyesTakeWarning: Trevor, though this only fits if you're Skenk Mcgenk, the very evil necromancer.

** When trying ([[ButForMeItWasTuesday and failing]]) to remember who Trevor is, Skenk Mcgenk mentions[[Podcast/AcquisitionsIncorporated Trevor the werewolf]]. Some of the videos also take place in Red Larch, settinng for The C-Team, and you can see ''The Dran and Courtier'' in the background of some shots.

* StayingAlive: The cloning episode is all about this, and Skenk Mcgenk does this twice. If all of the sealed vessels in Skenk's lair are ''also'' cloning jars, he can pull the same trick a considerable number of times.
-->'''Skenk Mcgenk:''' Now, the moral of the story is pretty clear. If it was easy to kill a high-level necromancer... you didn't kill 'em.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: It's not like that poor orphan who looks suspiciously like Skenk Mcgenk would poison the great hero of Calimshan or anything... [[spoiler:He didn't. Blow him up, on the other hand...]]

* TemptingFate: Trevor the Orphan ponders how everything he loves fits within a 60 foot sphere. Cut to Skenk Mcgenk casting ''Circle of Death''.
* TheresNoKillLikeOverkill: Skenk Mcgenk kills Trevor by serving him several plates of cupcakes, each engraved with a ''Glyph of Warding''. And then raises his entire village as zombies.

* KillerGameMaster: He's been on both ends of this. His expedition to Khundrukar had Johan von Generico thrown off a cliff because of this, his first ''D&D'' character was killed by [[RealityEnsues his awesome entrance]], and he himself threw survival rules in the face of the players who thought they got away.

* RealityEnsues: So it turns out falling from the heavens with enough force to create a shockwave that almost knocked a party of adventurers over is very lethal.

A series created by YouTuber and animator Zee Bashew meant to explain the intricacies of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' spells, although his definition of "Spell" can be rather loose.

* "Super Prodigies" roll consistently high, but have performance anxiety. While rolling, be sure to talk about how ridiculous it is to think dice have personality, and all sides have an equal 5% chance, to take the pressure of it.