Paid Sponsor (Big Bad Booklet): bigbadbooklet.com/ Spellbooks in d&d dungeons and dragons, how do they work? How do you learn new spells between levels? How much does it cost? Can you cast spells out of your book directly (no usually)
Played a divination wizard with the charlatan background and my "spellbook" was the deck of tarot cards with the spells hidden in the pictures. Got arrested a couple of times trying to steal spell scrolls, but they always let me keep a deck of cards to "entertain" myself. My catchphrase was "Pick a card and reveal your fate" Surprisingly, it kept coming up fireball
"Pick a card, and reveal your fate" he said as he unpacked and fanned out a deck of small, leather-backed tarot cards. Unsure, you meagerly grasped for one, and he pulled them back, hastily. His eyes began to light up, literally. Brimming with fire as he flips over the card to face you. "Interesting... the sun..."
@@jamesmontney865 One might trade, per say, consider trading summon spells for another dueling wizard's summon spell, or perhaps offer up their own removal?
@@crabs4sale825 intellect doesn't mean sum of knowledge, I've always seen it as capacity to learn. If a wizard figured out how to cast based on images they draw then more power to them. I think maybe a workaround could be another player reading a spell for them that they then draw in their picture spell book. Anyway that's an amateur DMs humble opinion
DnD has Intelligence and Wisdom backwards. If we look at the Oxford Languages definition of Intelligence, Intellect and Wisdom, they are as follows. Intelligence: "The ability to acquire knowledge and skills" Intellect: "the faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively, especially with regard to abstract matters." Wisdom: "the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise." From these descriptions, it's clear that Intelligence should be your ability to learn, while wisdom is having prior knowledge. For some reason the only Intelligence Check that is tied to gaining new information is Investigation, whereas all the others rely on prior knowledge. Wisdom is more of a mixed bag, with Animal Handling, Medicine and arguably Survival fitting the bill: But leaving Perception and Insight as skills that should really be applied to Intelligence. Oddly enough, Wizards, the spellcaster that's all about knowing how a spell works, uses Intelligence instead of Wisdom. One could argue that is just wrong on a fundamental level, but it does work for their ability to learn spells from reading other spellbooks and spellscrolls. Now, regarding the self-taught, illiterate Wizard, he displays an immense intelligence in personally learning these spells through what one can assume to be strategic trial and error. That he's able to create pictograms that describe the casting of the spell is akin to creating an entire language for himself on top of autonomously learning the magic. From my perspective, this requires a lot more intelligence than just repeating what someone else taught you, be that a written language or the casting of spells. As long as the lines are muddled and Wizards are tied to intelligence, this character is not only plausible, but has one of the best arguments I've seen for starting with a very high Int stat.
@@philipmrkeberg7985 This has always irked me. It always felt to me they just wanted to have 3 vaguely mental stats to correlate to the 3 physical stats, but the whole INT/WIS divide is all kinds of wrong. It also lead to int being the dump stat for most people who aren't wizards or artificers, because not many terribly usefull things are tied to it combat wise. But then DEX is also kinda wierd, as it includes essentially agility.. It's hardly surprising that many video games set out to change these stats.
Lol, that's our current campaign, made a rit caster bard because no one wanted to make a wizard (plus, you know, free familiar) and our module gave us an NPC wizard as a permanent party member. Now we're besties who are always on the hunt for wizard rit spells to share.
Two issues from Xanathar's Guide and logic: 1. Given spells are personal and thematic to assist the wizard, two wizards living in the same area probably find the same spell useful, so the variety is stunted. 2. XGE does state the act of copying a spell requires one to maintain concentration on that task alone. Each minor distraction will cause a spell scroll or spell book entry to fail. That is why wizards tend to copy them in isolation or designated studies In your example, the wizards would have to concentrate on each spell separately and one simple sneeze would cause it to automatically fail, wasting your gold. (Cause as Zee said, gold pays for the expensive ink, which was still used)
I'm going to be running a mage school game in the future and this is basically what my players were planning to do. They were all going to be Wizards of different schools and select different spells from each other, then lend each other their spellbooks so they can copy each other's spells. I entirely expected them to do this, but what I think they didn't think of is where they'll get the gold to do all of that copying.
@@lonelyscribe3939 You could also work that into the game by having them learn new spells from classes/lessons, and them copying spells is just them sharing notes like IRL. Maybe even allow players to split the cost and time of learning a new spell if they work together, too.
@@ENCHANTMEN_ that was kind of the idea. They'd start the game as essentially "level 0" Wizards, with no spells in their books yet. Then, after their first class, they'd get all of their cantrips and 1st-level spells. From then on, everytime that they level up and get new spells, that'd essentially be spells which they were taught in class. They will have limited access to "free" components for copying spells to their spellbooks (those components are essentially part of their tuition), but probably only enough to copy another two spells into their books a level. Any additional components they'd need to purchase for themselves or they'd need to acquire in some other way.
@@manfredweber996 I think they mean the Cantrip Formulas optional rule. At 3rd level after a long rest you can swap a cantrip for another one from the wizard spell list.
Now that you say that whole selling books thing, mage's colleges make sense to me. Like "Oh yeah, wizards have to interpret eachother's nonsense, just like I have to in my coding class."
@@notyou2353 I just thought of a giant "corporation" (an archmage with a ton of simulacrums) pumping out standardized spellbooks every day and wizards don't even bother making their own anymore. They just buy them from the store and interpret them
I made a Pact of the Tome Archfey Warlock. His spellbook looked like a bunch of leaves strung together with twine, but somehow inexplicably held together as if it were a properly bound book.
Personally, I'd probably copy individual spells into separate books (along with related reference material, to pad page count), and keep them in a library. Wizards or anyone else could pay for access to this library (or to individual books). They can't take the books with them, but they can copy the spells themselves, and I might even have inks, paper, and material components on hand to facilitate this. Mostly, I'd do this because my time and effort is precious, and I'd rather just do all the copying once and then let people copy from those copies. I'm a Wizard, I have research to do and calamities to avert.
Copying/selling spellbooks could, in theory, be rectified with an Artificer, assuming the DM lets you create a rudimentary Gutenberg Press, and then develop it from there.
@@simondiamond9628 This would open up the setting to massive changes, relative to the "standard" D&D assumptions. I consider this a feature, rather than a bug. A revolution of availability for magical knowledge - opening it up to the masses - would be a very interesting campaign to run. (We see a bit of the logical endpoint to this kind of thing in Skerples's _Magical Industrial Revolution_ book, which depicts exactly what it sounds like it does).
@@Bluecho4, that's similiar to what I was thinking. With access comes the capacity to cause great harm. Just like The Anarchist's Cookbook. Knowledge is free. Wisdom is Priceless.
I like the image of a Wizard who learned magic while in prison, and had to tattoo spells on their skin because they don't have access to paper or other materials, and/or needed to hide that stuff from the guards.
Made a 1000 year old skeleton wizard that roams the world with a thirst for knowledge, adventure and his past memories. While he also uses an ancient arcane cane bulb as his arcane focus, and if he needs to read up on a spell, he can just shake it like a magic 8-ball and it will show his notes.
I really like how open ended they are about this in 5e. Spells can technically be documented using ANY medium. In a specific example I'm GM in a game that's been going on for a while now. The wizard seemed a bit miffed that there were not much in the way of spell scrolls. Lots of other consumables like potions or enchanted ammo were found but no spell scrolls. He thought it was a bit unfair, until he found out what I had been doing. The major dungeon they had been exploring had a repeat theme of large and grand murals depicting magic users. Wizards in this ancient empire were revered as gods and one in particular thought this was wrong. He secretly hid his knowledge in the murals. With a simple glance, people could see that there was writing on it but a lot of it was not a language they understood, it was an arcane script. With a successful investigation or arcana check, a person could trace along a number of different symbols. This would activate a simple illumination spell which would reveal some spells were carved into the opposite side of the stones that were used to decorate the wall. Once they realized that they back tracked and checked every other mural. Some of them even had hidden compartments with arcane material focuses and one had a spell book. It was a dumb simple thing but spells written on a wall, I thought was cool idea and a great way to hide something right in front of them. The guy who put this all together wanted people to figure it out, he wanted them to know wizards were not gods but he couldn't say that without being labeled as a heretic demon.
I'm now picturing someone documenting a powerful spell as a Poo-casso original. Just walking into the tavern bathroom and seeing fireball scrawled on the wall in excrement.
The way I understand it in terms of academia: spell scroll = journal article, spellbook = the raw, un-edited research notes that served as a basis for the journal article. Where either you have dig though the ramblings or figure it out or work out what was obmitted cause it is "so obvious".
Journal articles don't generally disappear or self-destruct when you make use of them. I mean, I don't think they do - it's been a while since I was in academia...
@@GodzillasaurusJr In that aspect no, they don't 😅. But Journal articles are peer-reviewed and developed, so *technically* they do disappear as they are built upon and updated as research moves on, but, it was more of a "quick-and-dirty" construct to explain why it takes longer to read from a mage's book Vs. a spell scroll.
Makes me wonder, what if ye copy your awakaned spellbook the normal way, and awaken it as well, afterwards? Do ye have two awakened Spellbooks then? Or what if ye transfer your spellbook after you lost it on something that isn't a book? Like maybe an Dagger or something? And since we already opened this can of worms, what if ye transfer it on something alive? Maybe your Familiar (and if ye do that, will that awaken the familiar?)? Or Heck, why not even yourself, since everybody seems to love the Tattoo idea? Or maybe, if it doesn't work on living creatures, what if ye use it on a corpse (can even be some none human creature!), on that ye use animate Dead afterwards? That way it wouldn't be alive in the moment when transfering the Spellbook, even if "undead" still would have counted as "kinda alive"! And could it gain control over it? The Spellbook is sentinent after all, so it might could use this Zombie as an body of it's own? Would there even be the need to cast animate dead further to keep that Zombie under Control? It would be the body of the spellbook at that point, after all! And there are Probably tons of other interesting stuff ye might could do that way! Like, maybeye wanna playan Dryad (Dryad, the creature, not Druid, the class) Wizzardress, without multiclassing? Since she would been boundto her tree she can't leave the area, but what if her tree would be her spellbook? Now, if we assume for a moment that this way of awakening something would work onliving things the same way as the awakening spell (which is something an Wizzard has no access to, after all) usually would, this means her tree would be able to walk! Or maybe the DM says no to thatas well, they might allow it to become an sentinent, living Wizzard stuff, with only very limiged movement or anything. At that point the DM might allow it, an Dryad is no player Race after all. Heck, she could even enter it and hide inside! Or, instead, write the spells on it's inside, so only she would be able to access it! In any case, this feature might gonna allow a ton of real cool and insane stuff and really gives me a ton of Ideas for different builds!
My chronomancer kobold was fully insane after a magical accident fractured his mind. His “spellbook” was an infinitely self contained tesseract. He was badly mutilated and emotionally broken, but deeply kind and when he finally got the wish we had spent five irl years questing for to fix his mind he instead used it to bring the elf Druid’s husband back to life, because, “I don’t remember what I lost. But she does.” Miss that crazy little bastard.
gm: you find a spell scroll, it'll take you some materials to transfer it to your book wizard: i use staples gm: you what wizard: i staple the scroll to my book gm: you cant do that wizard: why not gm: staples don't exist wizard: ok... does anyone have glue... or nails gm: this is why we don't invite you, ever since your peasant railgun
As a gm I'd let you do that, but there would be a risk of damaging the scroll causing it to self destruct. As soon as you cast or prepared it, the scroll would also self destruct and might take spells on neighboring pages with it.
Spell scrolls are typically written in different languages and notation and typically require translating as a wizard between languages and notations so that way it is written in a way for your wizard to easily understand and read it. You could just staple it or something into your book, however each time you want to cast it you would most likely need to re-translate it making it not-so-viable in combat or urgent situations.
As someone who has lost 2 spellbooks in a past campaign, replacing them takes a lot of time and effort. And you are not very useful for the party while doing so. Dm's please be very careful when even thinking of doing this to the party's wizard. It can backfire soooo easily...
Losing a traveling spell book I can understand. If your hit with a fire ball and basically lose an item saving throw that destroys all your equipment fine. It's when the DM start destroying your back up spell books locked in a safe, in a cave, in a whale in the bottom of the ocean you know your DM is being mean.
If I ever destroy a spell book (which I have in the past), I always make sure that the party finds either a bookshop with a beginner’s spell book or something temporary that they can use so they aren’t without magic for any long periods of time.
Destroying a wizard's spellbook is like disconnecting a monk from their ki or chopping off a fighter's hands so they cant use weapons. It kills the core abilities of the character, makes them useless to the party, and ensures the player will have a terrible and frustrating time in game. I'm glad none of my DMs have done this and I hope none do in the future...
@@rinhato8453 Exactly, I've seen a bunch of people treat the wizard's spellbook as something extra to the class, which it isn't. It's as much part of the class as the rage from Barbarian or Wild Shape for a druid for example.
In one campaign we got "sold" and we ended up in a gladiator company. No Magic use. As the parties only magic guy all they had to do was take a way my spell book and I was mostly toast. We spend 2 painful levels going from 4th level to 6th level with me as a strength 9 "fighter" and my build now had 2 levels of fighter in it. I ended up concentrating on being a rider. My hope was that I could get so good at a mount that I could run away! LOL The DM was sort of a Fighters are best guy. Never play a wizard when your DM really like fighters! LOL
Reminds me the good old days of 2e spellbooks. You had to cast read magic to read another wizards spell book. If for some reason you lost your spell book and didn't have read magic memorized.... you were basically no longer a wizard. You'd have to spend weeks and thousands of gold to research Read magic and basically invent it again to read magic again.
You could just buy a scroll of Read Magic instead of researching it. There was a reason that the old modules tended to hand out a lot of scrolls with that spell tacked on at random, and most players I knew made damn sure they owned at least one (either bought, found, or homemade) and had somebody else in the part carrying it/them so everything didn't go up in a single bad fireball or whatever.
@@darienb1127 Welcome to old school D&D. I'm a fan of the OSR movement for its creativity and independence from corporate culture, not because the rules they're so nostalgic for were actually all that good. The best of that stuff doesn't even try to hack OD&D into something good, they're either system agnostic or runnning on their own engines. Can't even make the claim that TSR's rules were all all we had to use back then. Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System (the engine for Runequest and Call of Cthulhu among many others) was available by the 80s, and has always been mechanically superior to any edition of D&D.
I love the idea of a wizard's spellbook being tattooed onto their body I imagine a master level wizard just being absolutely *covered* in tats, and while invoking them the specific runes describing the spell glow
Fighter: "Ah! We've been captured by a clan of Yuan-Ti!!!" Yuan-Ti Leader: "Remove the magic one's spellbook!" Wizard: "HA I've had it tattooed to my very skin!" Yuan-Ti Leader: "You misunderstand..... Remove.... His.... Spellbook."
I came up with rules for this with my DM, because it powerful to never be able to lose your your spellbook we came up with a system where you would roll on a table when damaged to see if you temporarily lose a spell slot because of the tattoo being broken
Me and my pal use a house rule we call "Impromptu Spell Scrolls." "A wizard may tear a page from their spell book and cast the spell written on that page as an impromptu spell scroll, although the caster must provide the material component of the spell if any are required (spellcasting focuses work as always). Doing so consumes the page just as a scroll would be, causing the wizard to lose that spell from their spell book. Only a wizard who is familiar with this writing of the spell (likely the wizard who wrote the spellbook, or another wizard who has studied this writing of the spell) may use it as an impromptu spell scroll, as the way it is written is incomprehensible to most and not made to function on it’s own." I just think it's a neat idea, being able to tear apart pieces of your life's work in an emergency in order to save you or your party members. It's explicitly worded where the wizard cannot use this ability to make cheap spell scrolls for everybody else to use. While there is the concern of a wizard using this rule to make cheap spell scrolls for themselves (or other wizards), they'd basically be replacing the spell slot with 10gp and 1 hour, each times the spell level. Sure, that's a better deal than Xanathar's Guide offers on scroll making (by the way, I think a scroll episode would be sweet, love your stuff Mr. Bashew), but you still need to provide any material components and only you can use it (and you need to buy the initial spare spellbook, which is 50gp). Frankly, if they so desperately want to trade their money and time for cheap knockoff spell scrolls, well... Why not, I suppose.
Lol that's David Lynch, a famous sci-fi writer/director/actor. He's got a very interesting mind and his whole job is basically translating his imagination into words in a very abstract way which usually makes him talk funny. This was a great representation of him because his process is actually to write random ideas on notecards just like this and throw them all together until it forms a story. He's got some awesome movies and he did my favorite TV show Twin Peaks
Yeah, David Lynch makes movies be dreams, fragments of them, lots of them mashed up, he is weird, doesn't make sense every time, but! Make some amazing situations that you sure don't anticipate
I have an Elvin wizard who's family has a thing for cooking, so his spell-book is spells hidden in recipes, All written in draconic and elvish of course
I was just thinking of doing something similar. A necromancer lizardfolk who assesses people based on how best to use them: tools, servants, or food. His spellbook is a recipe book with the spells in little sidebars.
"And if your spells are lost in say, *a fire...*" I love that Subtle Spell stab at JoCat xD. Especially after his animated spell card "Just Fireball" in the recently ended Deck of Many Kickstarter.
You only briefly touched on this, but it really deserves a bigger spotlight: Wizards can cast rituals *from their book*! That's bonkers! Everyone else has to have the ritual prepared, or else take the ritual caster feat! One super useful place to keep your backup spellbook is the chest created by Leomund's Secret Chest, since nobody can get to it there. Also, there's a lovely item in the Eberron book, called a "spellshard"; it's functionally a 320-page book (or spellbook!), in the form of a gem. To read or write in it, you just think really hard about reading or writing.
Full-casters get the Ritual Caster feat automatically, IIRC. This means that Clerics, Bards, Warlocks, and Sorcerers (Among others that I may or may not have missed) can do the same thing.
@@kennyholmes5196 Not quite! TL;DR: Wizards cast rituals from spellbooks, Bards/Clerics/Druids cast rituals from prepared spells, Sorcerers/Warlocks don't cast rituals (except for Tomelocks, who cast rituals from their tome.) Wizards, Clerics, Bards, and Druids gain the Ritual _Casting_ ability, which is distinct from the Ritual _Caster_ feat, and its exact mechanic depends on your class; they're described under the Spellcasting section. By the way, Sorcerers and Warlocks don't get it at all. Bards, Clerics, and Druids can only cast ritual spells they have prepared (Technically for Bards, it's actually from spells known, but for Bards, known and prepared are the same thing). Clerics and Druids may _know_ their class's entire spell list, but they can't cast rituals of spells they don't _currently_ have prepared. They have no ritual book, and cannot copy down new rituals. Wizards, by comparison, can only cast Wizard rituals spells written in their spellbook. They still can't put non-Wizard spells in their spellbook, and they can't ritualcast from memory like the Bard/Cleric/Druid can. (This rarely matters unless you, say, lose your spellbook.) Now, I said Warlocks don't get rituals, but that's only half-true. They don't have it built in, _but,_ a Tome Pact warlock has access to the invocation "Book of Ancient Secrets", which makes them the best ritual caster in the game. Like the Wizard, or those who take the feat, they ritual cast from a book, and gain new rituals by copying them into it. But unlike Wizards and featlings, Tomelocks can write ritual spells from _every_ class into their Tome. They don't have to pick just one class. They get them all. Lastly, an honourable mention goes to the Totem Barbarian, who has their own personal version of ritual casting where they can cast only two specific spells, which is just super funny. They don't get a book, they can never learn new rituals, technically they don't even _know_ the spells. Very Barbarian.
Even better, a wizard who cast spells as dirty poems. Love those DM's that allow flavor text in your spell casting. "Rose's are Red, Violets are Blue. Fireballs blow up, and so do you"
This whole video is why order of scribes is factually the best wizard subclass Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna copy down another wizard’s entire spellbook in less than two hours, and even if it gets destroyed I can just teleport all my spells regardless of whether I have them prepared or not into a new book, cost-free!
Fun spellbook idea: A trained parrot (or if you want a more villainous twist, a collared-and-chained kenku slave) kept as a familiar that can vomit up a word-soup of encoded spell formulae on command.
3 ideas have made in my head. A mimic spellbook: for those who want their spells protected A warforge’s mask: for those who want their spells close to hand (think bionicle) A dirty [CENSORED] spellbook: for those want all except the dirtiest of bards to not read the book
The Mimic spell book makes me think of the monster book from Harry Potter, except sadly it would not be as blatently obvious it was a monster. But I like the idea that my wizard might have to pet his spellbook or do some odd other thing to relax the thing bfore opening it to try and read.
I so agree, it's so cruel of him to bring them back just for this, but at least we got this, would love if he continued that series, but it doesn;t seem like he will.
Mancerclass wizard for Transmutation should be good ol' Tiberius from "The Old Guard" episode. "Transmutation is the key, my boys!! Transmutation is the key!!"
Never be so sure, more are always added. It is near infinite, so knowing all possible spells is near impossible. So what you say is false, possible... but false.
@@JoshSweetvale And a good GM will remember that and sometimes give them the spells that deity wants them to have, not what they asked for. And when they violate that deity's ethos, they get nothing but nightmares and visions calling them out. Only time I've had a spellbook bite me in the ass like that it turned out to actually be a mimic in disguise. :)
@@Robert_Rankin In theory yes, but I think to make EB really worth having you need at least the "+Cha mod" and the "Push 10ft per hit" invocations, which would require at least 2 levels of warlock. And I specifically outlined the above build to get the absolute maximum amount and variation of cantrips and also get 9th level spells. So you could do 1/1/1/2/15 If you didnt care about 9th level slots (Read: Your 1 Wish spell per day) Or 1/2/17 Or anything in between. If you wanted to keep the same amount of total cantrips, you could instead swap the 1 Druid for 1 Warlock, as they both only get 2. The downside being that the warlock list greatly overlaps with the Sorc and Wiz lists. So you'd lose access to the Druid ones (Which you can't get any other way easily) and instead just get 2 more from the list you've already probably picked dry by now. ...Or I guess, 1 more. Since of your 2 warlock cantrips, as we established, 1 was EB.
0:42 “The cantrip master would be a super broken build” Me with my sorcerer who took a 3 level dip into warlock for pact of the tome and agonizing eldritch blast: Heh.
Deadass, I have a Tome Warlock/Lore Bard with a level in Divine Soul sorcerer and Magic Initiate. She has like 12 cantrips, not including her At-Will spells. I started running out of good cantrips so now I have just random shit that I picked up for fun. I can confirm it's busted as hell.
Xanathar's has some cool book suggestions, my favourites being: Long straps of leather on which spells are written, wrapped around a staff for ease of transport & Small stones inscribed with spells and kept in a cloth bag
I have a backup wizard character who uses a pouch filled with animal bones and such as flavor for his spellbook. He's going to be a divination wizard with a witch doctor style.
I seem to recall spells take a full page per spell level, so a lot of these ideas, while flavorful, seem like not enough storage space. For example, if you tattoo a 4th level spell on your skin, that's something like 60% of your body. Thematically, I was introduced to it being the spellbook containing all the "behind the scenes" of your spell warping the fabric of reality, which is condensed into the bare-bones "what to do" when you prepare it, or when you make a spell scroll. Deciphering the condensed version into your spellbook is why the scroll is destroyed when you write the spell: You essentially cast the magic piecemeal to see how it functions.
There was a book in the Forgotten Realms' Harper Series that really opened my eyes to the creativity of what spellbooks could be. It was called The Parched Sea and introduced a desert Bedouin-type mage who stitched her spells in fine gold thread into a sash she wore. I had never considered such an idea that a spellbook could be anything else but a book. After that, all kinds of cool ideas came to mind, like Incan Quipo, the aforementioned tattoos, stylized drawings or sculptures, etc. Even though it's only a theme, not actual mechanics, it really does give the mage an interesting sense of identity when describing how one collects, studies, or prepares spells.
Epheros Aldor Stuff like this is really interesting. I have a bard/necromancy wizard who was a bard first and a wizard second. As such, she understands magic only as a kind of music so powerful that it warps reality and so beautiful even the dead must dance to it. She transcribes spells she finds into a book of handwritten sheetmusic, along with all the other songs she knows.
You guys are awesome for these ideas, I’ll treasure them. For me, I had an Eldritch Knight descended from secret wizards, her tome was technically the unreadable book item from the big table of random belongings. On every level she was compelled to read it, eyes glazed over for hours, never realizing what happened until she was told later, and suddenly she could make floating images or fire or a hole in spacetime. The book also caused her to zone out and purchase a boat ticket to a new continent and make her way to the woods outside a small settlement before releasing her, as her village was about to get megacursed. It wasn’t anything especially creative, but it was a lot of random elements suddenly weaving themselves into a narrative piece, so thought maybe it would be fun to share
I once played a warforged wizard who engraved spells in binary on a massive gem on his chest, like a hard drive. He quickly got nicknamed as "the install wizard".
Oh, I just thought of a really funny spellbook. So imagine a noir-like campaign where the players are detectives. One player plays a wizard and is an enchantment wizard. How funny/cool would it be for his spell book to be his little notepad. He would just flick it out, mumbling to himself for a bit, and then shoot off a giant fireball.
noir-like campaign where the wizard detective's spellbook is a corkboard with thousands of push-pins in it, making wild connections in red twine to seemingly unrelated newspaper clippings
@@realityveil6151 it depends on how you run it. Detect thoughts only detects the surface level thoughts a person is thinking. However, you can try to pry into their mind more for information with a DC. Plus as a DM, you could just not allow Detect Thoughts or similar spells, I'm pretty sure the players would understand.
Yes but the creation and upkeep on running a printing press that can also perform the magical aspects of spell scribing and use the necessary inks and materials has got to cost a fortune to set up
@@crowsenpai5625 Yes it would cost a lot to create and maintain... but think of the amount of money you could make if you could do this. Wizards from all over the world would come to you to get their spells printed at a slight discount. Remember, it's normally 50 gold per spell level. Even if you only cut the price to 30 gold per spell level, that's a pretty big discount.
Not really. Remember that part of the video that mentioned that wizards are eccentric and can look like gibberish? DND isn't a one method fits all magic system. Everyone casts differently, and everyone interprets magic differently. Mass producing spellbooks would drive the price of them into the gutter and make them unprofitable. The only notable diffence would be that Wizardry would be more about effort and aptitude rather than wealth.
@@AlphaOmega1237 True, but it is possible to translate that gibberish into your own notation. Either way, printed spellbooks can be a massive boon to wizards.
Spellbook concept time: An assortment of different stone runes passed down from master to student for generations. The spells are not written in any of the runes in particular but instead, the owner knows that laying them down in a specific order reveals the correct components required to perform a certain spell. From a gameplay standpoint leveling up and learning spells this way, means that the student is figuring out new arrays for the runes, revealing more complex spells than the ones originally known. While copying new spells to the spellbook means the student is crafting new runes into the mix, making the spellbook more "complete" but also harder to decipher.
Another spellbook concept: This wizard's spellbook is stored in their "mind palace". They do not risk it burning up in a fire, but they need an intelligence check (low DC, but it increases with the spell's level, except for cantrips) whenever they try to cast a spell. It does not cost them gold to copy spells into the "book", but the time requirement is doubled and they always require an arcana check regardless of whether the spell comes from a scroll or book. Whenever the wizard's mind is disturbed by mind control or other mind altering effect, they have a chance to lose spells. The wizard must roll an intelligence saving throw, the result affects whether or not they lose any spells and how many. Low level unprepared spells go first, then higher level unprepared spells, then low level prepared spells. Whenever the wizard dies, he loses a random number of spells (1d4?) chosen at random, regardless of level or prepared status. I am no D&D loremaster so I have no idea if this is possible in the established lore, but it seems like an interesting concept for a campaign that allows some homebrewing. It also kind of requires a sensible DM that won't constantly bombard the wizard with mind-altering effects.
sounds like a keyboard lol. you learn to arrange the order you push different buttons to create different words, sentences, spells. aw heck how bout lugging around a typewriter as a "spell book" hehe
One Dm I played with added a magic item to the fancier shops of his world: nonburnable, unbreakable, waterproof spell books! Only takes one purchase and a quick copying of your old messy spellbook for your spells to be (mostly) secure. No warranty on stolen or lost goods.
@@ronanomalley8264 Yes, but off brand Think “Mr Pibb” and “Dr Pepper” Why obsess over a brand name “Xanathar” when an Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt spellbook works just as well and costs less?
Make it return to your hand like Thor's hammer and I'm sold. Sidenote, if I put that in my shops my players would instantly buy 12 and try to add them to their armour. "Well you did say it was unbreakable".
I once had a wizard character who was a prisoner in the Nine Hells and his spellbook were iron brands and tattoos on his body. Worked out some loose rules on how high damage/critical hits could effect the spells in my "book" like a mishap roll. It was awesome! Nothing more thrilling and risky than wearing your spells on your body.
I hope if you ever revisit the Mancerclass series, when you hit Transmutation and Evocation you are able to get Caleb Widogast and Jim Darkmagic for them.
This makes me think that Caleb's spellbook is going to be destroyed by the end of the campaign. In a last ditch attempt to save a friend he'll toss his book at the final boss and cast a spell. He'll finish the campaign as he started, a bum in the streets.
Two variant spell books in my game: Dwarf wizard jeweler who has the spells microcarved into his false teeth that he reads using the loupe built in to his glass eye. Gnome illusionist entertainer who has his spells on various playing card decks.
My Asimar evoker, super nerd, spellbook was the equivalent of magik the gathering cards. I picked a spell cast it and threw the card which manifested the magic. then the card returned to my deck.
One idea I just came up with for a unique spellbook: a Lament Configuration-style puzzle box, which the wizard solves into different configurations for the desired spell he wants to prepare.
Reminds me of a Pathfinder Final Fantasy tinkerer, a young Moogle whose toys were his casting items. Best moment was the villain being the first to treat this boy as a child in a long time, and him seething in his cell playing with a paper fortune teller... muttering... D̸̙͍̞̮̙̦̞͗̒̀̐͒̓̅͑͜ò̢̱̬͙̳̗̀̓̌̿̏͜ơ̧̞̝̥̼̣͆̊̄̍̃͟͝m̢̙͕̭̼͚͙͉͇̉̀̌̂̄̾͘ͅ ķ̴̰̠̫̠͕̜͛̅́̋͘ͅů̞̰̦̫̀̕͟͞͠p̧̳͓͎͓̻̦̰̓̾́̈̀͆͛̚̚͠ợ̗̩͖̙͋͑̂̓̃͑͒̕
Pretty sure the process is in the PHB, but the draw back and requiring a arcane check isn't mentioned. So basically if your DM is cruel you'll have no idea it could fail and/or consume the scroll.
Transcript: Welcome to this episode of The Animated Spellbook, brought to you by a paid sponsorship for the Deck of Many's *Big Bad Booklet.* We have covered spellbooks in previous episodes, but I *_B I F F E D I T_* so... Spellbooks are one of the most important features of a Wizard in D&D. Where other arcane casters can only learn spells by leveling, Wizards - on the other hand, in addition to learning two spells per level - can also learn spells between levels by copying them down into their spellbook. In order to copy down a spell, it needs to meet the following criteria: -You must have spell slots of its level or higher -It must be a Wizard spell; it can't be a cantrip, which kinda sucks but... It makes mechanical sense, if not common sense because The Cantrip Master would be a super broken build. -And finally, you have to find it written down somewhere in the game world. Whether that's in a spellbook, or a dusty tome, or... a spell scroll. Anyway, to copy a spell from another Wizard's spellbook or scroll takes some time because Wizards are either: _Eccentric..._ "Oh, it's just mere Draconic. You see, it says, 'Eat of my lab- *_Oh.' "_* _Paranoid..._ "It seems somehow encoded in a... Dirty poem..." _Or disorganized._ "You don't create spells, you catch them. The desire to learn a spell is much like casting your hook in the murky waters. They're out there in the aether, millions of them, and you don't know them until they enter your consciousness. I'm not much of a writer, but sometimes I write those spells down on pieces of paper so that when I read them back, the spell comes back to me in full. It's important to write down your spells so that you don't forget them." So with that in mind, it becomes really obvious why it takes at least two hours per spell level to convert another Wizard's nonsense into, well, your nonsense. Beyond that, it takes practice, expensive inks, and components, which amount to 50 gold per spell level. Probably worth mentioning that most arcane traditions will give you a discount on spells of their school. Once you've spent the time and money, guess what? It's in your book! But what does your spellbook look like? "Though not explicitly stated in the Player's Handbook, most DMs will usually allow interesting thematic spellbooks. Whether that's one tattooed on your body, a text bound in the flesh of a family pet, whatever the _hell_ this is, or the classic *tome."* After a long rest, you can prepare a number of spells from your spellbook equal to your level plus your Intelligence modifier. With the exception casting rituals as rituals, you can't cast spells directly out of your spellbook, they need to be prepared first. You can only cast spells from your book that you have prepared. And if your spellbook is lost in, say, _A F I R E_ all of your unprepared spells... _Are gone._ When that happens, you can copy down the prepared spells you have into a new book at the cost of one hour and 10 gold per spell level... And uh... guess what? You don't get the other ones back, you've just gotta re-expand your collection like you did in the first place. If your DM is a bastard, uh, keep a backup. You can copy spells from your book to another backup spellbook for a cost of 10 gold and one hour per spell level. You could possibly sell those books to make the gold needed to learn spells from other Wizard's books, and then... Make more books with those spells. _You could be a billionaire._ Oh hey, parting note: Copying spells from a spell scroll, one that you could use to cast the spell without using a slot or whatever, *does* destroy the scroll AND requires an Arcana Check of 10 plus the spell's level which isn't mentioned in the Player's Handbook for some fuckin' reason. Thanks for watching this episode sponsored by the Big Bad Booklet, a monthly 5e boss monster zine by the Deck of Many. This month: Tendon and Bone. "A twisted Drow and their blind basilisk companion stalk prey in the crystal caverns deep below the earth. Will you be the hunter... Or the hunted?" Subscribe today at bigbadbooklet dot com!
I have a Dwarf wizard who's spell book is a relic passed down by generations of other wizards. So many spells and charms and additions have been made to this book that it basically breaks the laws of reality and extra pages will often appear while flipping through it as well as plenty other magical fuckery.
Funny enough this kind of reminds me of how the death note is capable of producing more pages if it’s going to run out of space. this makes me wonder does your character getting two spell when they level is explained by them getting an additional page in that book , because that sounds clever and funny
I don't want to interject anything about someone else's played character but I do find the idea of wish already being written or carved somewhere in the relic incredibly hilarious. Old dwarven Grogni, ancient of rites of it's time and your characters great great grandfather wrote it down delicately and with great care but then your character's grandpa came around and wrote this really amazing spell he used to hook up with a lady and now it's lost (for now) XD Idk the visual is very funny to me even if I don't know the entire backstory
I like the idea of the spellbook also serving as another type of book. Like a diary/spellbook that has the spells described with the story of how it was learned or a cook/spellbook that describes spells as though they were recipes.
"The cantrip master" Easy build. Tiefling sorcerer/wizard. You get 8 cantrips by level 2 and with magic initiate you have at least 10. Edit: sorcerer/warlock might be better, sorcerers start with a lot of cantrips already. And if you pick warlock, you can get eldritch blast, and some invocations to allow you to cast certain spells at will like cantrips and make eldritch blast more powerful. Fiendish vigor, agonizing blast, etc. With pact of the tome you can get additional cantrips, and eventually you will have a googleplex of at-will casting.
Tiefling pact of tome celestial warlock is better, combine Shilleligh +green flame blade+radiant soul+flames of phlethgoros for sexy results (bonus points if you take a 2 level paladin dip, not anachronistic with a celestial patron, so you can pump a smite and add +2 dueling damage. If you already have Shilleleigh up, you can also tack on a searing smite or flaming sphere with your bonus action both benefitting from FoP. If you haven't made an example by the end of your first attack, give your opponent a wicked little smile and step back if you have remaining movement. Pile FoP and your tiefling Hellosh Rebuke [also possibly Armor of Agathys if you were able to get that up before the fight] if they hit you with an AoO
Actually something I have as a setting note for a Caveman setting of D&D has instead of tomes, Carved Staffs that can have one or many spells upon them. Long Pictographs on a hide, Carved Stones so intricate they tell a story by themselves, elaborate Bead Work or Knot Work and my personal favourite for a witch that never left her home, Cave Paintings. An entire cliff face was that woman's spellbook. That's also putting aside fun things like ritual scarification that works like a tattoo but is made through mutilation for those who want to get their edgelord on.
Scars and tats both seem like a good idea right up until you get captured and one of your opponents with some arcane lore looks at your "spellbook" and proceeds to skin you alive for it. Mean GMs will also have serious injuries damage your "book" and force you to pay to get it repaired with new ink, fresh sets of scars, etc. after you've healed up. Being chewed on by a landshark is not going to leave your body art intact.
@@richmcgee434 Welcome to hardcore roleplay, I see none of this as a legit detriment. Imagine being able to skin an enemy for a spell as well. Remember things go multiple ways. Besides, who doesn't love a hardcore heavy metal campaign?
@@MagicalMaster Who doesn't? Most 5th edition players, IME. OTOH, the OSR community loves that sort of thing. Besides, my point is that enemy wizards usually won't use tats for spellbooks, simply because they expect to get skinned if they do.
@@richmcgee434 Well it's more roleplay potential. Besides, if a tattoo is a tribal thing, known only to your ancestors and yourself then who's to say what it looks like? Think the elaborate tattoo you get in Far Cry 3 for inspiration or Maui from Moana. Those things are elaborate enough to easily be at least a couple of spells for the game and a whole tome for the movie.
One thing I also like to think of with how diverse the spell book itself is, the method of casting is equally diverse. I feel that just like every wizard writes the same spell differently, each wizard also casts the same spell differently. (excluding using the necessary spell components) maybe your wizard snaps the fingers to trigger the spell. The spell book you mentioned, maybe the semantic components (physical movements) to cast the spell are those sick dance moves while humming a certain corresponding tune for the verbal components. Maybe for a spell book encoded in dirty poems involve a dirty one liner for the verbal components and a pelvic thrust for the semantic before the target is engulfed in a fireball. This would also explain the time needed to translate a spell, because you ain’t copying down THEIR casting of fireball, you’re using their arcane notes as a basis to create *YOUR* fireball. Like how no two snowflakes are the same, no two wizards fireball in just the same way either.
Having shops that sell scrolls when you've got wizards in your party is always fun. They get really excited, buy out the stock, and learn that the wizard who designed the spells put copy-protection on them. My favorite is that each spell has the word "Abjur's" before it. So you've got "Abjur's Fireball", "Abjur's hideous laughter", "Abjur's Scrying". These spells are normal in every way, except they have a gold-component cost which the spell consumes. The gold is teleported to Abjur's stash, and he gets royalties every time someone copies & uses his spells!
I played in an evil two shot where I was a 15th level Goliath Necromancer who's spells were tattooed all over his body. The DM gave me a level 10 undead fighter for my 14th level ability and let me tell you, high level necromancers are scary powerful lol.
In Pathfinder an alchemist can give out magical tattoos...I have been getting tattooed every break we have in our campaign. Let's just say that a swashbuckler who can never be hit with magic tattoos are crazy strong.
Biffed it, although I remember that term as a kid, like if you "busted your ass" or "ate shit". More or less unintentional bodily impact on a stationary object and it hurt (sometimes just your ego got damaged). But yeah it still doesn't make sense how he used it.
@@fistfullofglass It's also generally used in place of something like "messed up" or "fucked up" (at least where I'm from). As in like, "We have covered spellbooks in previous episodes, but I didn't do a very good job."
I have a wizard who, as an apprentice and while working for the local guard, was killed by a bunch of crooks. The city gathered gnome artificers who created him a new body... a cybernetic body... He became Reborn as... Roberto Coppa! While he no longer has access to the Weave, he uses his mechanical body and its attachments to replicate spells. His spellbook is a combination of a traditional book, mechanics manuals, and hand-written notes, that he keeps stashed in a compartment that opens out of his thigh.
One of my old spell books was a tomb that had a seaweed design and constantly dripped water that disappeared once it hit the ground. It also gave me the added bonus of changing how my find familiar spell works. Instead of a fey, fiend or celestial, it was a small elemental of the water verity, giving it heightened swimming speed, resistance to non magic bludgeoning damage and the ability to change which animal it could have the form of. Later in the campaign, he had managed to gain an apprentice who had a spell book that was basically the same but with fire, and after a bit more homebrewing, managed to bind the spirit of the small fire elemental into the corpse of a death tyrant and with one last homebrew item, one that I came up with under need, my apprentice has a small flaming skull with her at all times
And the first spellbook would be immune to water and resistant to fire too, though not necessarily fireproof. The second meanwhile would be immune to fire and possibly water as well.
I always thought about copying spells as "This is how this person used energy manipulation to conjure this spell. How would I use my abilities to make the same effect?" It's kinda like swordplay. There are styles and skills you can learn, but, in the end, what really matters is how you make those teachings your own. Do you stick to the strict letter of the teachings, or do you make them fit you? And how would either of those attitudes fit with passing those teachings on? That's how I always viewed spell copying. A little Caster preference and a little personal ability. Like trying to reveres engineer someone's math homework. I, personally, have it that there are extra prices that have to be paid if the spell being copied is outside either the College the Wizard is, I feel is outside the personality of the character. Easy example. If your Wizard specializes in healing and protection, but they want to learn this higher level Necromancy spell for whatever reason, they will have to do something to bring out and understand that kind of magic. Depending on the situation, it might be "Use a freshly dead animal", to "must be familiar with the creature like a pet", all the way up to "Must kill a person with your own hands and use that body."
There's a Psion class that can do that. The Erudite. Use psionics to mimic spells. No reagent cost either. A sane GM sets some other limit. Great idea for a 'gather all knowledge' character.
Oh, you eventually get to that point. First, though, you have to make sense of someone else's notes. Once you figure out what they previous writer is talking about, then you can begin to figure out how the spell works. Look up old real-life alchemical recipes for an example, but have aspirin ready...
Oh, you eventually get to that point. First, though, you have to make sense of someone else's notes. Once you figure out what they previous writer is talking about, then you can begin to figure out how the spell works. Look up old real-life alchemical recipes for an example, but have aspirin ready...
The Forgotten Realms articles about wizards' spellbooks in Dragon magazine were excellent examples of ways to incorporate particularly unusual spellbooks into game lore, as well as examples of unusual spells books in some instances (I recall one being made of etched copper plates, rendering it fairly resistant to fire compared to a paper or parchment tome, and another that was enchanted to extinguish flames larger than a candle within a 10' radius (magical fires weren't affected, but it's handy if a candle falls over into your scrap parchment while you're out of the house, and really irritating if you walk by your party's campfire carrying it).
I had an interesting tome idea called the Tome of Requirement. Basically once per day, when the need is most dire (either story demands or you run out of spell slots) you can cast a spell that is half you max spell casting level for no cost and without expending a spell slot. Basically the tome shows you a quick, no cost, way to cast the spell, but at the cost that you don't remember the method it showed you.
The Touhou series of games has one character with a really interesting spellbook. Byakuren Hijiri is a buddhist monk (in the traditional religious monastic sense, not in the D&D sense, though she does have some of that too) who's also a magic user. Her spells are mostly either light or lightning attacks, or physical enhancement, and are cast in the form of chanted sutras. Her spellbook takes the form of two metal rods that, when pulled apart, have rainbow text floating between them, resembling a scroll in design. Looks really neat, could probably use the idea for a really rare hard-to-get kind of spellbook. Oh and the "scroll" will chant the sutras for her. Kind of a ridiculous item, when you think of it.
I love the idea of a spellbook that is tattooed onto your body, maybe it's like an arcane script that forms an illusion that only the wizard can see showing the information regarding the spell
This makes me want to run a session where the wizards spell book gets stolen and the party has to track down the thief to recover the book. Probably been done before and not very unique idea but would be fun to run. More investigation and conversation, maybe there's a fight at the end once the wizard regains his full power, reward him at the end with a spell scroll or another stolen spell book that has a couple spells he could copy into his book as compensation for being left without his full power for a session.
My wizard's "spellbook" was a cloak he wore almost all the time. When he found a new spell he would write it down on a scroll or scrap of paper and place it in his pocket. Afterwards when he was asleep (during a long rest) his mind would enter a pseudo pocket deminsion that took shape of a giant library with books filled with the spells he knew. He would then spend time studying the spells. Then once he woke up he knew his spells for the day.
I always thought it was cool how you could write spells as tattoos a d very handy. Imagine having a living tattoo, constantly shifting, being able to breath letters along itself as thoughts are alive, pooled from a gem affixed to the body which stores the knowledge and power to instantly ready the spell. Hell, you could make a class out of that!!!
that was part of the backstory for my first wizard, who had been adventuring for almost a decade but kept getting hurt and/or losing her spellbook so she had to stop to let her body recover and relearn half her spells whenever she started making any progress
Well done as always! The section on possible creative spell books got me thinking about some other possibilities: Etched into a tablet of stone, carved into metal trinkets like jewelry or bracelets, scarred or burned into the skin (Like the tattoos but more gruesome), written into cloth worn as a cape, kilt, or sash; adrift as pure thought inside an item of crystal or glass, or psychically embedded into your head so you see the lettering when you close your eyes for long enough.
I recently finished a campaign where I played a Drow divination wizard who wrote his spells down backwards in upside-down draconic in his book. I should play another wizard with an even more eccentric take on the tome.
One with the Linguist feat could make a personal cypher that only another Linguist would have a chance to decode. Another option is a game world with a more realistic amount of languages and dialects, some of which use completely different grammatical structures, alphabets that don't directly correlate with each other, or complex characters that change meanings entirely if you get a diacritical mark wrong.
I'm sure it's been pointed out already, but, just in case: wizards can cast any rituals from their spellbook, prepared or not. Awesome animation as usual. Love these videos!
I forget which edition of D&D it is, but I love the specific rules for how much space in your book spells take, where you quickly realise you will have to either get a bag of holding or a cart for your spellbook(s), or have a master tome which you leave at home and a number of travelling spellbook(s) that you take along on adventures, that just holds the ones you think you'll need.
My wizard's spellbook is a family heirloom made out of glass-steel and you use the pages like optic lenses that when properly aligned under the right light allow you to discern the spells within. Unfortunately the cipher to decode the bloody thing is lost
I freaking love how weird and eccentric all your example wizards are. It really captures the sort of person who exists in a lonely void, caring only for the unimaginable power locked away in cryptic bits of parchment.
