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Web Animation / Animated Spellbook

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He probably won't need the healing potion... Probably. note 

"Haha, it was an animated Spellbook the whole time!"
— Zee Bashew

A series created by YouTuber and animator Zee Bashew meant to explain the intricacies of Dungeons & Dragons spells, although his definition of "Spell" can be rather loose.

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. Sometimes, he portrays 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).

While the spells themselves are the main draw of the series, he has also made a few spinoffs and specials, though they are rarely as consistent as the Spellbook. These includes the Cold Road Campaign diaries, an illustrated story that happened in a game, the Animated Sword, like the animated Spellbook, but for strategies and ideas that often come up in D&D, and Druidic Tome, a series focused solely on druids. For the sake of simplicity, they're all on this same page.

    Spells and Magic 

    Other Mechanics 

    Advice for DMs and Players 

Watch his work on youtube Here, while you can donate to his Patreon for more animations Here

The Non-Animated Tropebook:

  • Action Pet:
    • The Druidic Tome has an entire episode on how you get the maximum number of pets, as long as you're cool with multiclassing.
    • The Find Familiar video has a familiar doing most of the scouting (and even some fighting) while the caster is hiding in the paladin's backpack.
  • Adaptational Ugliness: In canon, Laeral Silverhand appears to be in her 40s, and is rather attractive, kept young and healthy by her divine blood. Zee's version, on the other hand, looks like Yzma.
  • Aerith and Bob:
    • Normally subverted, since the characters have either joke names or fantasy-sounding names, but the trio of Wade in Shadows, Sweet William and Dave counts. Note that Dave is pronounced "Daveh".
  • Affably Evil: Skenk McGenk is very casual in explaining how he liberated a group of creatures from their mortal coil.
  • Affectionate Parody: His Carpet of Flying "review" is a parody of youtube product reviewers.
  • All Just a Dream: In the "Metagaming at Larry's table" video, Zee's character is killed and replaced by a shapeshifter, which turns out to have been just a dream, just as a metagaming player attacks him under the assumption that he's the shapeshifter.
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: 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, but Zee's statement that they "turned into a woman" seems to imply they did not usually identify as female.
  • Anti-Hero: Brit'ny may be out to protect Waterdeep, but she won't let something like civilian casualties get in her way.
  • Author Avatar: There are a number of narrators depending on the topic of the video, but the primary author avatars are the gray-bearded wizard who covers magic and an animated representation of Bashew himself who tends to talk about tabletop gaming as a broader concept.
  • Artifact of Doom: Helgar's Spear. We never get to see what it does, but it apparently has the potential to destabilize the entirety of Faerûn. Shifty Wick stealing one piece of it was serious enough that the Unmasked Lord themselves hired a group of adventurers to retrieve it.
  • Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: The orcs guarding Glitterhame. Outrunning team Funsize is a fool's errand.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Zee suggests Golems are more of a status symbol for wealthy and powerful wizards than anything. Given the significant investment of time, stats, and money, as well as the fact that you can only use a Manual of Golems once, using the gold to hire a small army of mercenaries instead would be a more practical investment.
  • Axe-Crazy: Gabriella shows shades of this, being disturbingly okay with slitting Zee's throat (he got better).
  • Badass Boast: The cleric in the Healing Feat video declares that "If you so much as LOOK AT ME funny, I'll excommunicate your ass into the grave!"
  • The Big Guy: Gideon appears to be this for team Funsize.
  • Book Ends: Part 3 of the Cold Road ends the same way part 1 started: Shifty Wick in danger, and the party contemplating whether or not to save him.
  • Boring, but Practical: Zee provides multiple examples of spells that aren't terribly flashy at first glance but can be very useful:
    • Magic Missile is a simple first-level spell that does reliable damage, but it is also fantastic for breaking another spellcaster's concentration, since the spellcaster has to roll a 10 DC concentration check every time they take damage, and with a minimum of three bolts hitting with each cast, the target has a good chance of failing.
    • Mending is good at fixing things, though what it can do in specific situations is GM-dependent - it can repair certain types of constructs, and combined with Gentle Repose, you could potentially repair a corpse before casting Revivify.
    • Tenser's Floating Disc basically exists to carry loot that the party can't carry by themselves. It basically makes your party's life easier if they need to carry a lot around at a time.
  • Born Lucky: The entire idea of the Build Murray build. With a halfling divination wizard and the lucky feat, you can get five rerolls a day.
  • Breath Weapon: Par for the course for dragons and Dragonborn. Daveh and Kalatrax the Blue has lightning ones. It can also be accomplished through the use of the Dragon's Breath spell.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Pelathyon Hawkryn may have some weird mannerisms, and certainly a few conflicts of interests, but everything he says about abjuration, with one exception, is true. He provides a detailed overview of the abjuration school, and even his claims about moonstone, while exaggerated, are technically true. The only time he blatantly misleads the viewer is in claiming that reactions are useless to a wizardnote , and even then, Zee admitted that that was his mistake.
  • Bus Crash: Urko Greenbeard died sometime between the Mage Hand video and the Silent Image video.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: 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. He remembers him come the second time they meet.
  • …But He Sounds Handsome: "...Killer of the handsome necromancer Skenk McGenk?"
  • Call-Back:
    • Shifty Wick's backpack contains an invisible dagger and a blink arrow. The same artifacts he stole from Wade and Sweet William.
    • Sweet Tooth's Potionary from the Feather Fall video reappears in the Three goblins stole a deck of many things video.
    • When confronted by Trevor (who in and of himself was a character from the previous video), Skenk asked if this was about the thing with Pelor and the lizardfolk.
  • The Cameo: In his Sending video, both Puffin Forest and Dingo Doodles make minor appearances.
  • Catchphrase: One of Zee's old D&D buddies had "Transmutation is the key, my boys, transmutation is the key".
  • Chaotic Stupid: 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.
  • Charm Person: Skenk McGenk knows the Friends cantrip (using it For the Evulz), and Bashew made an entire video on Glibness, which makes it impossible to tell if you're lying.
  • Cold Equation: The Sorcerer in the fireball video did a cost-benefit analysis, and ended up casting Fireball on the many guards surrounding the monk. The gamble pans out; the monk, having both the Evasion feat and the high saves monks tend to have, is completely unharmed, while the guards are toasted.
  • Complexity Addiction: 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), inscribed multiple glyphs of warding (200 gold each), and for either assurance or spite, turned Trevor's entire hometown into zombies. Though, given who Skenk is, it's likely he just wanted something that allowed Trevor to go Oh, Crap! before he died, and also do a lot of collateral damage.
  • Connected All Along: Skenk McGenk and the recurring necromancer with spiky pink hair are actually brothers, as revealed in the Animate Dead video.
  • Continuity Nod: In the Sending video, his sanctum is burned down (as well as the library in Luskan where he kept his backup spellbook) because JoCat threw a fireball at it in his Wizard video.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Pelathyon Hawkryn opened a school that teaches how to use moonstone as a replacement for other spell components. His family owns a moonstone mine.
  • Critical Failure: Team Funsize got three in a row in the bowels of Glitterhame. Especially depressing, considering that the Random Number God had been with them all night.
  • Crossover:
    • He's been in multiple livestreams with Dingo Doodles and Puffin Forest. The Christmas stream of 2018 also featured Dingo's boyfriend Felix.
    • The Sending video revealed that his cameo in "A Crap Guide to D&D" was canon to his series, and that 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. Zee gets his revenge in the Technology Wizard by transforming Jocat into a whale while atop a building in the middle of the city.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: 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.
  • Deal with the Devil: 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.
  • Deity of Human Origin: As per usual, Kuo Toa can believe something hard enough to make it real. In Zee's games, this tends to present itself as numerous Kuo Toa surfacing for a "birthing" ceremony where they create a new god; when a Kuo Toa dies, they have a chance to deify whatever the last cool thing they saw (usually the thing that killed them) with more dead Kuo Toa bolstering its power. By the end of the birthing process the Kuo Toa have a new god-like version of whatever that earlier cool thing was.
  • Demonic Possession: Quintus ends up possessed by a wraith, nearly killing Wade.
  • The Determinator: Brit'ny doesn't let anything stop her from catching the thieves. Not thick smoke, not a lost trail, and certainly not civilian casualties.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • 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.
    • 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. 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.
  • Dirty Coward: Zee shows this tendency from time to time, polymorphing into horses to run away, or casting Invisibility on himself and a cleric, leaving the fighter to die.
    Zee: [agressivley defensive] Hey don't you judge me! You try fighting twenty guards!
  • Doomed Hometown: Red Larch, after Trevor pissed off the wrong necromancer, not that he ends up remembering by the time Trevor confronts him in the Help Action video.
  • Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: Pelathyon Hawkryn is so hoarse that the subtitles have trouble comprehending him, and often confusing him drawing his breath (or laughing) for choking.
  • Evil Is Cool: The cultists in his Darksun video march in procession set to a driving dance beat, and look absolutely sick while doing it.
  • Exact Words: Skenk didn't poison Trevor with cupcakes. He covered them in glyphs of warding to blow him up instead.
  • Eye of Newt: 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.
  • Failed a Spot Check: The team completely forgot to check the end of the cave they were in, thus letting the frost goblins set up an ambush.
  • Fan Disservice: Seeing Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun dancing in his underwear will require some Brain Bleach.
  • Fantastic Racism: All waterdhavians hate goblins.
  • Fireball Eyeballs: In the Prestidigitation video, when he talks about the astronomical numbers of lives lost to Prestidigitation's ability to create fire.
  • Fluffy the Terrible: Team Funsize performs a lot of morally questionable or outright evil actions, such as manipulating a town's religion to turn them into servants and stealing their stuff, casting Circle of Death in the middle of a shop to get components for a necromancy spell (namely a corpse), and Skenk even considers letting his companion die to get a larger cut of the treasure.
  • Foreshadowing: In the Alarm video, he jokes that without late night intrud... 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.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare:
    • 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 as well, who started out as a minor adventurer who ventured into Glitterhame to retrieve treasure, and ended up as a powerful necromancer who once wiped out an entire town and made himself functionally immortal with clones.
  • Funny Background Event: In the Silent Image video, "Pelor" orders 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.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Dee, in his Spellbook video, points out that the rule that players can only learn new spells and not cantrips from scrolls and book makes more mechanic sense than common sense, since a wizard with every cantrip would be ludicrously overpowered.
  • Genre Savvy: The Countdown Puzzle counts on the players being this, as they would expect a death trap, but the actual solution is just letting the countdown reach its end.
  • Glass Cannon: The "Oops! all wizards" episode has Zee discuss a recent game in which everyone plays a Squishy Wizard, as the title implies. It's really stress-inducing for how poorly everyone takes hits, but the whole party has crazy utility capabilities for the ability to share spells amongst each other.
    Zee: "Every fight ends like this." [Cut to a camera shot of the dungeon. Everything is on fire, including a number of burning skeletons. All the party members are wounded and/or collapsed on the floor.]
  • God Guise: The team used Silent Image combined with some voice acting to imitate the sun god Pelor.
  • 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.
  • Good Is Boring: Gabriella certainly thinks so.
    Zee: Bring me my good and lawful book.
    Gabriella: This book utilitarian book. Good book no fun.
  • Gory Discretion Shot:
    • We are mercifully spared the image of Skenk crawling out of his clone vessel before he starts explaining the Clone spell.
    • Averted in the Animate Dead video, where we get a brief shot of all the villagers at the barn dance burning alive from Skenk's fireball.
  • Hand Puppet: Uses these on a few occasions.
  • Happy Ending Override: Oh, so you thought Trevor and Ghost Pig had finally killed Skenk and avenged their old friends? Fool, Skenk had several clones hidden somewhere, and was ready to take revenge.
    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.
  • Hit-and-Run Tactics: Heat Metal is very good at allowing for this when used against opponents with metal armor so long as 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.
  • Ignored Epiphany: Skenk McGenk takes a moment to ask if he's too cartoonishly evil, to which his brother replies "We have fun!". The two proceed to burn down a barn dance to have material for their new undead army.
  • I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Jim is a driver, not a servant.
  • Impostor Forgot One Detail: In the Hold Person video, Zee's character disguises himself as a cultist on 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.
  • Improvised Weapon: After failing the sweet-tooth potionary heist, the party used the stash they'd stolen against the guards.
  • Invincible Incompetent: The intent of the Build Murray build is to create a character who has no business adventuring but bumbles through life-threatening situations on sheer luck.
  • Killed Off for Real: He made a video on death in D&D, and actively encourages permadeath.
  • Killer Game Master: 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 his awesome entrance, and he himself threw survival rules in the face of the players who thought they got away.
  • Kung-Fu Wizard: With a dash of Magic Knight. 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 instead of just attacking for two turns.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: 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.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Discussed in the Healer Feat video. The Cleric mocks the martial class-playing viewer for only being able to attack with their weapons when he is passively generating large amounts of damage with his spirit guardians and guardian of faith spells, bringing the dead back to life, and attacking with his spiritual weapon, all on the same turn.
  • Loophole Abuse: The Coffeelock video, in which he discusses how a player can get theoretically infinite spell slots at once given enough short rests, and how DMs are absolutely in their right to disallow this.
  • Magic Knight: Since Armor and Magic Don't Mix, the True Strike sorcerer is more focused on Dexterity. See Kung-Fu Wizard.
  • Magitek: The Magic Mouth spell gets examined: since the spell essentially lasts indefinitely and is capable of doing logical operations, Zee surmises that you can make "Tom Pewter" with enough time and dedication. And then questions for what reason one would want to make a computer out of animated mouths.
  • Mechanical Lifeforms: Any character created as a Warforged.
  • Meaningful Name: Trevor is called the Twice King, and has two crowns on his pauldrons.
  • Mood Whiplash: The end of the invisibility video. Thus far, it had been a pretty normal episode. At the end, however, to demonstrate the effects of Greater Invisibility, Gabriella slit Zee's throat. He bleeds out while desperately reaching for a healing potion.
  • Munchkin:
    • Zee's tricks seesaw in and out of being various kinds of creative munchkinnery, and he often pulls a lot of sneaky tricks (e.g. charging his party-mates 20 gp for Familiar revivals due to deaths in combat... when it actually costs 10gp; he was pocketing the change for potions/etc.), but he rarely pulls off anything extremely broken — or at least anything unwarranted, considering run-ins with Killer Game Masters.
    • He played it like this during the PvP event. He paid off opponents to throw the match, secretly aided weaker contestants so they could take out the larger threats, and paid a bard to give him inspiration before combat. It all came back to bite him.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Ghost Pig, the College of Valor Bard who's also the ghost of a pig.
  • Non-Indicative Title:
    • 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 Chill Touch, which is a ranged spell that deals necrotic damage, not a touch spell that deals cold damage.
  • No Name Given: Averted, Zee names most of the characters in his video. Even the wizard narrator is referred to by Laeral as Bashew (it's unclear if his name is Zee Bashew like his creator or just Bashew). The only exceptions are the members of the sorcerer's party, who remain unnamed.
  • No Social Skills: Laeral Silverhand is this in Zee's head, a side effect of the years of studies it takes to become a skilled wizard. Not only does she talk in an unnerving tone, and practically never blinks (half goddess, after all), but she demonstrates a teleport spell on Bashew without his consent ("we're friends, just say yes"), creepily affirms their friendship, and considers Bashew a "jokester" when he gets sick from the afore mentioned teleportation.
  • Not Quite Flight: Kenku can't fly. They can, however, glide. Also applies to the Feather Fall spell.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Cold Road Wraiths have the life drain and fear of sunlight that's common to D&D wraiths (although these are actually harmed by sunlight, whereas typical D&D wraiths are only uncomfortable), but they also have the Mark of the Wraith ability, which allows them to possess a victim from any distance. Quintus was affected, and nearly kills Wade.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: An entire video about them, actually. Zee suggests reducing their hp to 1, so they die in one hit (but can outlive that thanks to Undead Fortitude), but give them the ability to infect player characters with The Plague.
  • Pit Trap: A suggested use of the Mold Earth spell.
  • Precision F-Strike: Zee drops one at the end of the PvP video upon realising that his attempt at cheating his way to winning a tournament didn't win him any money.
  • Raised by Wolves: Skenk McGenk was apparently reared by lizardfolk.
  • Random Number God: Taken to a science in "Dice 101", which discusses the different types of dice and how to use them.
    • A "Blorp" hits the table without rolling, usually landing at a number close to what you held them at. The dice of liars and cheaters. So pick one up.
    • "Diamond in the Rough": An ugly die that rolls good, even if it doesn't work well with your set.
    • "Shy Dice" start of low, but ramp up over the course of a game. Very reliable, but you have to roll out the bad ones before the game starts.
    • "Low & Slow" roll reliably low numbers, which is good for dungeon masters who want to build tension but don't actually want to kill their players.
    • A "Traitor" rolls natural twenties only on test rolls and rolls that are utterly useless. In actual life-or-death situations, it will fail you, and in the hands of the DM it will be merciless.
    • "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.
  • Red Baron: Trevor has got himself an impressive list of titles, including the Blade in the Dark, Vengeance, Strahd slayer and the Twice King.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Trevor after he grows up into a more gruff, intimidating warrior seeking revenge against Skenk McGenk.
  • Ridiculously Fast Construction: Erratic Hammering, in which the user rapidly builds a piece of wooden furniture on the spot, if and only if held for its full three hour duration.
  • Robe and Wizard Hat: Bashew fits the trope to a T, the other narrators generally ditch the hat.
  • Screwed by the Network: Many of Bashew's removed videos were a direct response to You Tube's changes in site policy to comply with COPPA. As such, Bashew retired many of his old videos due to being potentially seen as too child friendly, then made sure his future content was Hotter and Sexier and Bloodier and Gorier.
  • Shared Universe: Downplayed. His characters all inhabit the Forgotten Realms.
  • Shockwave Stomp: 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.
  • Shout-Out:
    • "I'm pickle Zee!!!!!"
    • Several of his videos tell stories from existing modules. His Mage Hand episode and Animated Sword about the potential of using water against the players are both about the same campaign. The Forge of Fury, specifically. He also mentions the Barovian witches who sell dream pastries from Curse of Strahd in his Mold Earth video.
    • Build Murray is a play on Bill Murray and the character he uses is a caricature of him.
    • The Detect Magic video has wizard Batman. The spell is even portrayed as looking similar to detective vision.
    • The intruder in the Alarm video turns out to be Corvo Attano.
    • Zee's 'utilitarian raiment' is a Big Daddy suit.
    • The Warforged Paladin in the Find Familiar video looks a lot like Alphonse Elric.
    • The cleric that shows up in several of his videos looks like Lucio.
    • When trying (and failing) to remember who Trevor is, Skenk McGenk mentions Trevor the werewolf. Some of the videos also take place in Red Larch, the setting for The C-Team, and you can see The Dran and Courtier in the background of some shots.
    • The video about Dragon's Breath has Zee's sorceror suggest to his wizard an idea for an episode: a YouTube show in which they eat increasingly spicy food while conducting an interview, which is just describing Hot Ones (complete with a draconic version of the Hot Ones logo).
  • Sole Survivor: Out of the party that originally entered Glitterhame, only Gideon Rusk made it out, although he picked up some new companions along the way.
  • Staying Alive: 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.
  • Suddenly Shouting: In the video about the AD&D spell Erase, he caps off his explanation of why using the titular spell on another wizard's spellbook is a bad idea this way:
    The second problem is, if you have Erase prepped, uh... presumably, it's the best choice you had available. Which means... that you DESPERATELY NEED THAT SPELLBOOK!
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In "The Old Guard", Zee describes how the very first character he created was a "half-demon half-angel edgelord", and wanted to introduce him to the rest of the party by having him fall out of the sky like a comet and land on the road in front of them. The DM shrugged and went along with it... then rolled some dice and told Zee that his character took 359 fall damage and died the moment he hit the ground.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: It's not like that poor orphan who looks suspiciously like Skenk McGenk would poison the great hero of Calimshan or anything... He didn't. He did blow him up with glyphs of warding, though.
  • Take That!: The first 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 in comparison to attacking twice.
  • Tempting Fate: Trevor the Orphan ponders how everything he loves fits within a 60 foot sphere, which is the exact range of a Circle of Death spell.
  • There's No Kill like Overkill: Skenk McGenk kills Trevor by serving him several plates of cupcakes, each engraved with a Glyph of Warding. And then comes back with the Clone spell and raises his entire village as zombies.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Manual of Golems magic item contains knowledge of how to construct a golem, and a variant of the Conjure Elemental spell to animate it.
  • Uplifted Animal: The Awaken spell, as it is in D&D, causes a targeted animal or flora to gain 10 intelligence, cognisant thought, and the ability to speak the same language as the caster. This gets discussed and questioned about what it might also cause by extension.
    Zee: "Does self-awareness trap them in a prison of fear and doubt? Uh, uh, that isolates them from the rest of their species?"
    Pig: [Sad harmonica toot]
  • The War on Straw: He's used puppets to illustrate both sides of an argument.
  • Wizarding School: Both mancerclass videos are narrated by the founder/headmaster of one, each famous for one specific school of magic.

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