#mage hands

Pensive Dwarf - Street Mage

"I might look like a discount-Jesus, but those mage hands ain't for healin, let me tell ya!"

So I'm playing as an Half Elf bard in this campaign for a few months, we're lvl 7.

A few days ago I found a magical ring, but I didn't really knew what it did. So today I thought "Well, why not?" And just activated it.

A bright light blinded everyone around me for a second, my hand started to glow, and suddently it fell off my wrist to the ground. The rind is now around my wrist, and from it grows a hand made of energy, and we can all feel it's enormous power.

The DM stare at me.

"The Hand of Vecna", he says.

A conversation between myself, ask-ravios-lil-sis, and resigned-to-destruction lead to this headcanon about mages.

For the many ways of magic in this world, those who specialize in certain spells are often shaped by this, more specifically their hands are.

For healers, their hands are smoothed by years of the practice. The spells used to regenerate others also affects their hands, times this by years of use over however many patients they have and you get hands that are constantly being exposed to mending.

Those who specialize in ice magic have drier hands, but callouses are not as prevalent. For apprentices, many suffer minor frostbites when holding a spell for too long, or sometimes have numbness in their fingers for a short while.

Fire magic is more advanced and no matter their field of practice a mage is always taught how to control a flame. It is often a rite of passage for an apprentice to have burnt hands, some even refusing the healers and instead proudly keeping their scars. For a mage who has made fire their main practice, their hands are often left calloused and rough. 

Electrical magic often leaves static attached all over the user, not just their hands, but being the main focal point of their conjuring one might experience a zap upon hand shakes. Their arm and neck hairs might be caught standing on end after a particularly rigorous training exercise or battle. In rare cases some have spider webbed scars up and down their hands and forearms where they redirected a very powerful lightning spell (or bolt, past scholars have taken their study straight to the source!), this is because most who practice electrical spells prefer redirection over barriers or dodging.