Other than spell scrolls it seems the only other way for a PC wizard to gain spells is capture defeated wizards spellbooks. However, the modules only give the spells that any particular NPC wizard has memorized. It seems too me that any particular NPC wizard would have a spellbook. This spellbook could be captured by the PC wizard and the spells from that book aclimated to the PC wizard. I can think of two right off the top of my head. One being Glassstaff from LMoP. The other being the Red Wizard ath the Old Owl Well in LMoP. Glassstaff does have a chance to escape and fight again another day. It seems feasible that by knowing how the PC's operate he would be able to switch out some spells from his spellbooks. This also gives the PC an extra edge to playing the Wizard class. Any ideas?
Decides what other spells he might have, and give a list. Depending on the situation though, a Wizard might not have his spellbook with him. If his home/lab is near by, and he isnt far from it, Id imagine it would be there. I like to reward players, buy NPC's should still act like real people too. BUt yeah, you just have to create a list that you can give to your wizard player if your handing books as treasure. Remember the time and cost of putting books into their book though.
Its not a big deal.
Wizards rarely change out their prepared spell lists from one day to another, so a bunch of free spells to add to his spellbook will not really change anything as it does not increase his number of prepared spells. It'll just give him some new rituals I guess?
Wizard spell books, I think, would have a hard time surviving violence. In my games I plan on giving very few spells out in this way, narrating that the spell books are damaged by killing the wizard. E.g. the wizard was hacked down by the fighter? Desperate to save himself, the enemy placed his book between himself and the incoming sword... fruitlessly. This way the character don't get access to dozens of spells by taking out a witch coven.
In many fantasy worlds, wizards prepare their spells in the safety of their personal libraries and then set out on their adventures with no spellbook at all, or only a "travelling spellbook" which has some spells contained within because those specific spells might have ocassion to be more useful than the spells prepared before leaving (such as preparing a spell that deals lightning damage, and bringing a book which contains that spell and a similar spell that deals another damage type because you might run into lighting immune or resistant creatures) and some ritual spells that might be handy to have along.
That way the wizard can be sure that even if he is robbed of everything he is carrying, his most valued possession (his spell collection) is still resting wtihin the safety of his home.
There are also wizards that carry their entire spellbook with them, but stash it away somewhere safe whenever they reach somewhere they are going to stay for a while.
In either case, it present the explanation for the party defeating an enemy wizard and not being immediately flooded with new spells to learn and add to their own spellbooks.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Leugren wrote:
Also remember that they don't get those new spells right away. They would need downtime to go over the spellbook, decipher it, transcribe to their own spell book, and spend gold to do the research with (trial and error castings). This is somewhat simplified in the whole "gain X spells when levelling" method by assuming they've found writings to translate, or researched a new spell entirely on their own (it just duplicates what's in the rulebooks).
Not all spellcasters will be wizards so not all of them will have a spellbook either. In the end it's up to the DM to decide if a caster is a wizard, if they have any spellbook, and what spells are contained within. Just keep in mind that with the downtime and money any spells within will become available to the party wizard on top of those they get from levelling so it increases their flexibility but not their power level since it doesn't change their preperation limit or spell slot usage.
The ability to acquire new spells by doing research and then tracking down the whereabouts of ancient spell tomes and/or scrolls is one of the things that I like the most about playing a wizard. I make a wishlist of the spells that I want to add to my spellbook, and if the list exceeds the limits allotted to me by virtue of advancement, I spend my downtime scouring through libraries for clues to the whereabouts of spell books which might contain the spells I'm looking for. This often leads to personal quests and dungeon crawls in order to recover these books. It really gives my character a strong motivator to adventure which fits nicely with his nature as a beetle-browed academic. I like this research-based approach to spell acquisition a lot. Finding an NPC spellbook purely by chance should be an extremely rare occurrence in my opinion; you should have to work for it, and it should feel like Christmas when you finally get your hands on one.
If controlling the influx of new spells is what you are trying to do, the easiest and least intrusive way is to make most of the spells in an NPC wizards spellbook be the same as the spells in the Players spellbook.
This also makes a certain amount of "in-character" sense because the reasoning that would lead a PC wizard to conclude "These are the best spells to have" would also occur to most other wizards.
Minegar wrote:
Since it seems apparent wizards do not want to share their secrets as a rule, I'm surprised spell books are not in code.
Emerikol wrote:
I'm definitely a DM who worries about spellbooks. I don't like PCs to acquire too many new spells at one time. Sure, they are limited by spell slots, but part of the fun of playing a wizard (at least to me when I played one in the old days) was to find spells as I adventured. A windfall, finding a bunch of spells in one place, was too easy and killed my enjoyment.
I think I will propose in my next homebrew campaign (who knows when I'll start that) that every spellcaster writes his or her spells in a unique way. Therefore, finding a spellbook does not guarantee that the wizard will be able to decipher every spell even with a read magic spell. It will take time and research to puzzle it out, and from a single spellbook, perhaps a wizard will be able to attempt to learn 1d6 spells per level. As time passes, maybe a week of study, the player can roll an arcana check DC 10+spell level to learn one of the spells. Something like that.
Here is another interesting question.
If a wizards spell book is found and there are no wizards in the party. Where wizard's spell tomes are priceless to wizards, what do you think others would pay for these books of arcana. My guess is that it would be based on how many spells and what level. Perhaps like a scroll of a spell for that level?
Thank you for all of your responses. Very helpful seeing what others do for their campaigns.
Suppose the PCs find themselves fighting a Magic-User. They find out (the hard way) that he has a cool spell (or a high-powered spell). The party wizard wants a copy for himself.
By and large, think of this as a Major Quest for the wizard. It may be a Minor Quest for the other PCs.
Skill Challenges (plus creative dictation) to:
- find out where the spellbook was hidden;
- to open it without mishap (Explosive Runes 
);
- to decipher the personal code the contents are written in
Whatever the rules say needs to be done, to learn a new spell.
Combat to get into the Magic-user's home and defeat the guardians and bust into his safe / secret room / whatever
Ask your Wizard to give you a 'wish list' of spells he wants to acquire. Have an NPC use it on him (to find out if it is as cool as it sounds). If he's been questing for a long time and survived being blasted with it and put a lot of time and effort into the project, reward him by letting him turn the tide of the BBEG fight with his new spell !
is there no Spell Research in 5e?
Delazar78 wrote:
Minegar wrote:
Anything extra is gravy. You choose, but there is the finding.
MechaPilot wrote:
Delazar78 wrote:
I guess I don't see a real issue with letting PCs pick up all the spells from defeated enemies. I mean, clerics and druids know their entire spell list with no effort on their part. Giving wizards the option to learn the spells of defeated opponents by spending time and gold seems not only appropriate to me, but almost necessary. Those 2 spells per level just don't add up to enough to have the versatile feel that I think a wizard deserves.
It's also worth noting that many of the spells in an NPCs spell book are likely to be spells the PC wizard already has, just because certain spells are popular, and through random chance.
What I did with Glasstaff is figure out how many spells he would have based on his level. I subtracted the spells he was listed as having prepared in the adventure, then rolled randomly for the remaining spells in his book. This meant he had ended up with overlap with the PC wizard, and a few new spells to add to her spellbook.
Some of the new spells are interesting enough to her, others aren't. She couldn't afford to copy them when she first got them, and she still has only copied a few of the new spells available. It's relatively expensive at lower levels, and the player may not consider it worth it to even copy them all.
So I'm not seeing a concern unless their is a major difference in how we see the power of the wizard class relative to the spells know. Just give NPCs appropriate spell books, let the PCs grab them if they can find where they are stored, and you really aren't likely to have it upset your game. A more likely result is that your wizard players will feel rewarded and become poorer at the same time.
Sword_of_Spirit wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Sword_of_Spirit wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
This whole conversation has been done to death in every version of the game that I have ever played (all except 4th edition). The issue here is that spell knowledge is a non-rival good. “Non-rival good” means that If I teach you something I don't lose the knowledge myself, unlike rival goods which must be traded in a zero-sum way. So if I teach you how to fish, I don't lose knowledge of fishing, but if I give you a fish, then I have one less fish.
Similarly, if I teach you a spell I know, I still know it, but if I give you a scroll, I’m out a scroll.
The issue comes down to two things:
1) How do you treat wizard spells as treasure?
2) Given that knowledge is a non-rival good, what does it take to convince another wizard to teach you his spells?
The answer to these questions is highly DM specific.
For #1, scrolls are the ONLY thing that the rules explicitly say anything about, a HUGE oversight as far as I am concerned. This is made even more problematical by the ridiculous cost in time and money that it takes to scribe a scroll. I plan to house-rule this, and say that it takes rare components that must be obtained by adventure to scribe higher level scrolls, and I plan to use this to police the scribing of scrolls (and brewing of potions) in my world.
Conversely I'm pretty liberal about giving out spellbooks as treasure - they are arguably less valuable than scrolls on a spell-for-spell basis (especially under the current system), but they have MANY spells in them, so they should be rare finds and noteworthy accomplishments for the players. Maybe 2-4 times in a career will you capture a spellbook. Spellbooks can also be trapped, and the traps can destroy the spellbooks. Note that spells that trap writing have changes substantially - so be careful with this.
For #2, trading spells seems like the sort of thing that is going to depend a lot on culture: Spells are also weapons, so selling spells is a lot like selling guns. Once they own the gun, what's to stop them from shooting the store owner? In our culture, it's basically the knowledge that the store owner is also probably armed, and the knowledge that the cops will come after you if you murder the guy. It is also the knowledge that if you kill the guy, you won't have anyone else to sell you guns. In a fantasy society, these truths may not hold, which means that someone who sells spells is going to only do so when he feels safe. Which might be never.
On the other hand, at low levels, getting a court wizard to sell you a few spells might not be that difficult, after all, you are a low level wizard buying spells in a castle full of soldiers. If I’m a 5th level court wizard, and some 2nd level wizard wants to buy magic missile from me, I’m not going to worry that he can take me, much less the castle-full of men with swords that he has to fight through to escape after killing me, so, why not make some coin?
Finally there is the matter of personal relationships and/or gain. If I’m a wizard who hires a band of adventurers to run an errand for me, I could probably see my way to selling a spell or two as a form of advance payment. If the wizard s my friend, and I trust him and care about his safety I would probably share as well. These are role-playing reasons to share magic.
So that’s how I handle it – I’m not formulaic, but I’m not stingy either.
Are there any other issues I’ve left out?