Well…
You know you make me wanna (shout)
Kick my heels up and (shout)
Throw my hands up and (shout)
Throw my hands back and (shout)
Come on now (shout)

The Isley Brothers

Power Words

This idea first came to me when I was thinking about how to hack charge spells into 5e. The cool tech I came up with was investing more action economy into your spells to get more out of them. Since a character already gets an action and a bonus action on their turn, we have three levels of investment a player can make: action only, bonus action only, or both.

This reminded me of the game Skyrim, whose signature mechanic was based around shouts. Shouts could be unlocked at various shrines and was powered by the souls of dragons you conquered. In Skyrim, you can power up your shouts by holding them longer…