Introduction                                                                                                                                       Identify From https://gamingmage.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/sunday-spell/    What is this?       In the world of table-top gaming, no game is quite so well known as Dungeons and Dragons. Over the years, this iconic table-top game has been changed and updated, altering how characters are made, how the game is played, and, most notably, changing how magic works.       Dungeons and Dragons is a story-telling and role-playing game that details the travels and adventures of the player's personal characters in a world described (and sometimes created) by a person referred to as the story-teller or game master.       Some worlds have become so iconic in this game that they have been crafted and formed by the whole community. One such world is the Forgotten Realms, the stories taking place primarily on the continent of Faerun.      Between editions of Dungeons and Dragons, there were usually world altering events on Faerun to go along with it. These events often had a major effect on how magic worked in the Forgotten Realms. I decided to examine how these events (from 2nd to 5th edition D&D) altered the amount of energy that casters of similar skill levels could harness.      The spell that I will be using to examine this power difference is burning hands, a spell where the wizard causes a fan (or cone) of fire to burst forth from their fingertips. A Brief History of Magic on Faerun      Mystryl was born from the chaos of combat between the two goddesses Selune, goddess of the moon, and Shar, goddess of darkness, and with Mystryl was born the energies that would be called magic.      Mystryl let magic on Faerun be used freely without limit or restriction. Elves and Humans alike made powerful magic items and crafted powerful spells, making an entire kingdom of magic users who lived in floating cities, powered by magic alone. This kingdom was called Netheril.      Netheril found itself at war with another race of monstrous magic-users. The land had been made entirely infertile, and nothing would grow, Netheril was losing. One wizard, a prodigy named Karsus, had a plan for ending the war.      Karsus invented a spell that would allow him to ascend to godhood, allowing him to take the place of another deity. His target was Mystryl. The wizard's spell ended in disaster. The instant he cast it, magic energy spiked, doubling the power of every spell on Faerun for a short time. Karsus realized as he was draining Mystryl's power that his spell would end up destroying magic altogether.      Mystryl, in an attempt to save magic, killed herself so that she could be reborn, turning Karsus to stone in the process. As Mystryl died, so did magic, the flying cities of Netheril falling from the sky as the deity of magic was reborn into the goddess Mystra.      Mystra reformed magic, calling it the Weave, and placed limitations on the amount of power that could be gained from it, making sure that no one could gain the amount of power that Karsus had.      Magic would remain relatively the same for 1600 years, until the gods fell to earth. The Fall of Netheril (Karsus' Folly) by Winterkeep From http://orig10.deviantart.net/34b0/f/2012/298/f/7/the_fall_of_netheril__also_called_karsus__folly_by_winterkeep-d5iwkzk.jpg