Alarming
It’s always nice to see Thief engaged in actual thievery. And for a good cause, no less! Wizard would surely be over the moon about such a thoughtful gift. After all, what mage doesn’t want a shiny new spellbook full of all the latest necromancy? Such bounty could even prompt a return to Wizard’s goth phase, and I have no doubt that the eyeliner would be spectacular. Unfortunately for Wizard’s repertoire, however, it wasn’t meant to be.
Now I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but spellbooks have always been something of an off-limits target within my group. PCs don’t sunder enemy casters’ spell component pouches; NPCs don’t steal spellbooks. That’s the unspoken gentleman’s agreement, and it’s held thus far. Nevertheless, any time I roll up a prepared caster, there’s always that specter of paranoia hanging over me. Do I need to throw down a sepia snake sigil? How many copies of my spellbook do I need to make? Should I learn secret chest so I’ve always got access to a backup? And won’t all of the above be wasted effort if we’ve got a gentleman’s agreement anyway?
Well folks, I take my lead from the Handbook on this one. It’s better to be a little paranoid than a lot sorry. The prospect of losing my hard-won magic and starting over from cantrips fills me with all manner of unreasoning dread, and I’ll go out of my way to make sure that contingencies are in place. Locks, wards, and anti-scrying spells are all relevant here. But for my money, the best and simplest technique is the buddy system. You just find a friendly NPC caster, swap spellbooks, and get to copying. A backstory master is especially useful for the purpose. Should the worst happen, you just retreat to your master’s tower and make with the scrivening. It’s unlikely that your ally will have also suffered spell thievery.
“But wait,” I hear you say. “Isn’t that just an invitation for GMs to mess with you? This is exactly the sort of situation where enemy wizards will descend on you and your buddy-system pal in a simultaneous book-napping!”
Think about it, bro. That’s the best possible outcome! Once you track down and slaughter all those nefarious NPC casters, you’ll get to steal all of their spellbooks in turn. That’s a windfall of free magic! If you should be so lucky as to capture an enemy spellbook, however, be on your guard. I hear there’s locks and wards and alarms and such. And nobody wants to end their spell-thief career by reading the words “exploding runes.”
So what do you say, brother magi? Have you ever lost your spellbook? Do you regularly seek out and capture enemy wizards’ libraries? Or do you too subscribe to the gentleman’s agreement against magical thievery? Let’s hear your tales of tome-taking, folio-filching, and grimoire-grabbing down in the comments!
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I‘d like to quote the guy who introduced me to D&D:
„if the DM did anything to my spell book, I’d hate him in real life and he knows that too“
Nobody likes a lawful evil DM:
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/imagebuzz/web04/2010/12/13/19/gamer-alignment-chart-27741-1292286962-13.jpg?downsize=700%3A%2A&output-quality=auto&output-format=auto
Bookworm, eats spellbooks and prayerbooks for all meals. Tge kbky official CR 1/10 monster in 3E.
My DM tends to be kind enough to not mess with my spellbook, but I swear I’m the only damn wizard in the land! Every time my bladesinger takes down a spellcaster and we search for loot, no spellbook. They’re all Sorcerers or clerics or nontome warlock’s, but no wizards! Enemy wizards that is, plenty of friendly wizards who I know won’t take kindly to me flipping through their spell books. Bah.
But yeah I personally go out of my way to kit out my own spellbook with as much protection both mundane and magical. Firstly I always ensure I mention to my GM that my spellbook is always in a watertight, fireproof bag on my person and not in my bag, and either attached to my robe/armor or otherwise impossible for someone to simply “take” without physically stripping me. I make sure that the book itself is certifiably magical as well, protecting it from mundane wear and tear. He book is sealed with a masterwork and arcane lock. And finally, I keep two other spare books; one in my bag which serves also as a decoy, and another with my familiar in the familiar realm.
It’s rough as a GM knowing that you need to come up with a spellbook on the spot if your wizard should die. The incentives are all there to make your minions spontaneous casters.
Of course, a quick google solves that problem: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~arredon/spellbook/
I’ve always believed in the gentleman’s agreement here, and I ask every dm I will spend significant amounts of time with about related ones for whatever character I do. For example if I do a paladin, I’ll ask about whether they’ll throw stuff at me with the exact purpose of trying to get my guy to break his oath, or of course the wizard problem listed above. For simplicities sake and because they have understood how annoying it would be, none have ever attempted to break it. There are also of course the lesser agreements with similar things such as what spells to cast and how to nerf guys and stuff like that, which actually can be on slightly shakier footing based on a use only when you need it or it would be really cool basis, or similar, but those tend to be less important.
I feel like paladins get a lot of attention, but many 3.X classes seem to come with these kinds of silver bullet restrictions. Druid, monk, and barbarian all come with class restrictions. Wizards are tied to their books. Fighty mans tend to specialize in one particular weapon. I suspect that paladins tend to get all the heat because they come paired with drama. Falling from grace in an organized religion is something to structure a dramatic arc around. “My greatsword broke” is a little harder.
As a GM, I make it very clear that a Wizards spellbook is not sacrosanct; if they take no effort to protect it, the worst can and will happen. But that said, if they take the most basic of precautions (fire resistant cover, water resistant wrap, spare copy stored in a bank lockbox), then I am not going to go out of my way to screw with them (in fact, I have never actually destroyed a Wizards spellbook, but I make sure the spectre of it hangs over them). The flip side of that is I make it also clear that every NPC spellcaster does have a spellbook out there somewhere in the world, and I will have noted it down, so they are out there in the wild for a player to claim as loot (with various levels of difficult in obtaining them, not every Wizard is going to be paranoid, but the ones that made it to high level likely have due to their level of paranoia).
When I played a Wizard myself, I made sure to practice what I preached (especially as my favourite DM is very oldschool, and pulls no punches). My Wizard had two copies of every spellbook (one in a bank, one in a trapped secret compartment in his study), a cut-down travelling spellbook with all the more common spells, with a fire resistant cover and a waterproof carrying bag, and Runes of Eyeball Explosion (that’s Hackmaster for you) inscribed on the first page of every book. Even then I sometimes worried I was being a little lax 😉
You’d think spellbooks would come with that mess standard. Methinks I smell a small business opportunity in-game.
Never hunted a wizard for his spellbook, but if that wizard turns out to be on the opposite side of the field of battle; well, it’s loot at that point, right? Had a Eldritch Scoundrel Rogue who engaged in a little good natured book theivery with the wizard, stealing his spellbook after he went to sleep and copying spells on the sly rather than just asking. It was eventually discovered and lead to a funny conversation where the wizard remarked “You saved me from assassins, you could have borrowed my book!” And Alexis replied “But there was no challenge in asking.”
The character I played who was most protective of their Spellbook though, was my Pathfinder Witch. Whose spellbook was not only her favorite black cat, but also was completely nullified by her being killed due to the annoying way that Familiars work. My GM basically gave me a grace period before my cat stopped being a spellbook to counter the really heavy death penalty.
Familiar satchel, my dude:
https://www.aonprd.com/EquipmentMiscDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Familiar%20satchel
Because fireball shouldn’t say “save vs. losing your magic.”
Well, I handled that by keeping my cat far back from the party and away from me, even though that meant I couldn’t benefit from Alertness. I originally started doing it cause my GM had some hang-up where he didn’t think cats have a strong sense of smell and thus was ignoring the Scent feature on my familiar (which is one of the reasons I went with the cat and not the Raven…).
But the problem we had was when I got petrified by a Basalisk, my cat technically stopped being a familiar for a little while, and that was a problem.
That’s one of those grey areas I love so well. As far as I know, it’s GM discretion when familiars and animal companions lose their masters. That makes for all sorts of interesting encounter ideas, even outside of PC / familiar relationships. I mean, what happens when you meet an unusually intelligent tiger out in the wilds that refuses to let you near an elf corpse? Befriend the thing? Try to help it retain sapience? Etc.!?
As Naneek above mentioned, it’s like with paladins, where a sort of a middle ground is required. It’s bad if a GM places me in situations designed to make me Fall, but I expect that every now and then there will be the hard dilemma and I’ll have to put in some serious effort, sacrifice or commitment to do the right thing in the right way.
In the same way, a GM going out of their way to get to my spellbook is going to be obnoxious: but having it, I have a well-known vulnerability that I can plan ahead (Bookplate of Recall, spare copies, and flesh-melting curses). Every now and then, it could be in jeopardy, which would both give me an iron-clad reason to follow a story hook (as I mostly play by forum these days, I’ve grown to love the railroad) as well as forcing me to think on my feet. And when I get it back, I shall take vengeance with righteous anger… after I take at least 15 minutes to prepare my best spells back.
I think of spellbooks as similar to rations. It’s not important until you’re in the “cross the endless desert” campaign arc. If it’s a major plot point, I’m down to clown. Otherwise I’d rather not worry about it. I mean, once you break 100 pages worth of spells, you’ve got to have a second book anyway (at least in Pathfinder, which is most of my wizard experience.) That kind of bookkeeping gets old fast.
As a GM, I’m not going to make your paladin fall. Although I will give him some opportunities here and there to succumb to temptation. About half of those temptation opportunities will also come with a suitable opportunity to make a heroic speech.
I don’t think messing with a spellbook or a component pouch is quite as evil as allowing your casters any spells they like, but neglecting to mention that some components may not be available in the campaign.
My all-time favourite as a DM was to play realistic economics with the components. “Demand for bat guano has shot up. I’m afraid I can only sell you 3g, and that’ll cost 50,000. The rest is all spoken for.”
Yup, I had the BBEG go around buying up all the stocks of magical components. I’ve never seen players so keen to complete the main quest.
I’m guessing that bat husbandry has become a profitable area of agriculture in your world.
I hold a disdain for wizards (and other tier 1 classes) both as a player and as a gm. So yes, before I made the switch to Spheres of Power, I did have intelligent NPCs target the wizard’s spellbook, the cleric’s holy symbol, etc. In the case of spellbooks in particular, I rarely destroy them though. Do you know how much downtime is required to rescribe a spellbook? No thankyou. Instead, I have them stolen away or confiscated, but I also make sure that the wizard gains access to another spellbook one way or another (which generally has a completely different set of spells).
While using Spheres of Power, I still target a caster’s focus or use tactics that utilize that caster’s drawbacks, but that generally just means that they have a harder time casting, not that they are unable to cast.
A focus or a component pouch is different from a Spellbook though. Clerics just have to get another holy symbol to gain access to all their spells again. Same way with the component pouch. It’s a temporary inconvenience or complication that won’t permanently depower the character. A wizard’s spellbook is his actual magical repository. You destroy it, he knows nothing but Cantrips now. You have crippled his character until he can replace it, and it is a very dangerous and lengthy process to replace. It’s the difference between Sundering a fighter’s sword and using magic to delete the knowledge of swords from his mind.
True. But if you’re in the middle of a wilderness adventure, it’s six of one and half dozen of the other. Replacing your equipment when you need it right now is the real bugger, and that’s true whether you’re talking sword or book.
That certainly sounds like an interesting challenge for a player to overcome. I question whether undoing all of a player’s spell selection choices takes away too much of their agency though.
My party quickly decided that any wizard whose spellbook we could readily steal simply wouldn’t be worth the effort. After all, if we could take it from them, then they wouldn’t have many good spells that could be used to, say, protect your spellbook from theft or your base from being invaded.
Now wizards who live in towers, with wards and guard monsters, those are good targets. Anything that you can make a proper adventure out of. If the fighter needs to kill something to take his sword, the wizard needs to kill something to take its spells.
Was there some particularly shrimpy and underwhelming apprentice wizard that gave rise to this opinion?
Can’t have your spell books stolen if you don’t even know how to cast spells in the first place.
This is fighter logic that I can agree on.
There’s fighter logic, and then there’s Fighter logic:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/falling-damage
Also, obligatory muscle wizard:
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/File:Muscle_wizard.jpg
I always assumed Wizards had some sort of Highlander setup where they’re all trying to acquire each other’s spells.
I like to think that the Mages Guild would approve of “Princes of the Universe” as an official anthem.
Too bad. Wizard would totally rock a goth look nowadays, and Thief would probably have a grand time designing it.
Haven’t ever lost a spellbook, as far as I can recall, but I have seen one stolen from an enemy ghost wizard. The fight started with him coming to retrieve his book, and the PCs being in “Oh no, we’re going to die” mode, but then his works started doing off in power, and they realized that he’d been burning through the strongest ones first, and was now dwindling towards the weaker ones.
And he was too much of a crochety old man who was set in his ways to ever use a melee attack on the PCs, even his powerful ghost abilities. Instead, he eventually fell back on cantrips while the brawler and ranger wailed on him for round after round after round of weak half-damage hits.
The battle took something like eight hours of real-life time.
I’ve toyed with the idea of having the heroes switch genres from time to time. I did that a million years ago in the Star Wars comic…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/warsinthestars
…and I bet a Vampire game could be worth a laugh. Goth clothes for everybody!
I believe I mentioned trying to make a wizard once and not being able to. That was my only prepared caster for a long time. My other casters were a bard and hunter. Then I made a druid, but didn’t play her for long so never got the spells going. And she needs a rebuild anyway. Now I have 2 warpriests (one is natural attack focused), an Eldritch Scion Magus, an Inquisitor, a cleric, an Antipaladin (made to be an NPC statted out like a PC just for the fun of it), a sorcerer, and 2 alchemists. Only the alchemists need spellbooks.
Alchemist spellbook restrictions always amuse me. “I can copy from you. You can’t copy from me. Deal with it.”
I can just picture wizards getting all upset about the “convoluted logic” of actual science.
How many times have Alchemist and Wizard interacted in the comic? You could probably do something about Abercrombie (that’s the tumor, right?) trying to steal her spellbook so he can copy the spells in it.
I actually still need to pick out Alchemist 2’s spells. He gets 4 of them total. Alchemist 1 gets 5 since he has a higher Int. He’s a Gunchemist so I gave him Longshot, as well as True Strike, Disguise Self, Shield, and Cure Light Wounds. Alchemist 2 is natural attack focused with the Feral Mutagen discovery.
I’m not sure what levels we’re talking, but my alchemist buddy gets a lot of play out of this hot little number:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/alchemical-allocation/
Our Goblin Druid used to do that. He must have been an alchemist before he retrained. It was disgusting. Let’s just say he didn’t have the best dental hygiene and there was an occasional tooth floating in the potions.
My Alchemists are both level one. I did recently go to a convention that had PFS games going and managed to get my Kitsune Warpriest to level 2. No idea how I’m supposed to adjust the sheet now though.
Once it happened to my wizard like it is happening to antipaladin today. My wizard was in his tent resting and preparing to sleep, then the other member of the group start arguing about something, whatever. My pc comes out of his tent and i describe him, angry, shirtless and with lots of spells tattooed on his skin. Since robes are very concealing, and wizards aren’t usually fighting hordes of enemies shirtless, that was a revelation for the group. Chest, abdomen, fore arm, upper arm and back, 38 pages of magic and arcane power in is skin. My fellow player then ask me why my pc have used his hard earned gold in tattoos. I told them that way the only way of losing that spells was for my pc to be skinned, and they were only the most essential spells in case of emergency, also that my pc have done the inking during downtime and it was on y character sheet so it was legal. Later when the party ended jailed and naked they didn’t say anything when my wizard opened the cell doors and turned some guards in zombies. Since that time, not matter if there is an actual system for tattooed spellbooks or not, my warlocks, sorcerers and wizard ink their art on their skin.
Also in many home-brew settings a wizard’s book is more valuable than a king’s ransom. Spellbooks are worth ten times their weight in gold and a hundred times that in paranoid security measures. Spellbooks, the real ones, are a highly sought commodity. A shelve is worth a minor war among wizards. Many arcane arts users then take measures to protect their property, inking themselves and striping naked or getting shirtless to cast spells in a minor inconvenience aceptable for their mental health. Also the only girl in the group kinda like wizards stripping shirtless to cast fireballs to each other with the magic power lighting their tattoos and sweat 🙂
Yup. Wizard’s purple robe of the archmagi is still there under the outer robes. I’m sure all wizards will be wearing under-robes soon. They’re so terribly comfortable.
What size font did you use?
Complete arcane, 3.5, italics 😉
I’m not playing a spellcaster right now, but at times I’ve been tempted to ape Knights of the Dinner Table
“Hold still, I need to tattoo my backup spells on your back…”
Is it worth going back and looking through KotDT? I’m vaguely aware that it exists, but I’ve never really sought it out for a binge.
I’d suggest starting with the Bag Wars Saga stand-alone volume if you happen to find it; it’s a George-Lucas-style remaster of incidental strips/backup features, but as a complete story it can no doubt help you get a feel for the style of humour.
Truth be told, sometimes the GM-player antagonism of some of the KoDT characters grates me a little.
I always admired Giant in the Playground for doing away with the GM figure entirely. Burlew is probably my main influence now that I come to think of it.
The average back doesn’t have enough surface area to be a functional spellbook.
The equivalent of 10 pages on the upper back and 4 on the lower back, according to page 187 of the belowmentioned Complete Arcane, but there’s a footnote that a wizard can’t read spells in those locations without the use of a mirror, scrying magic or a familiar’s assistance, so the base assumption is apparantly that the wizard would only tattoo himself.
Presumably with the aid a mirror, scrying magic or a familiar’s assistance. 😛
The few times I’ve played a wizard, they were in 3.5 games, and I always picked up Spell Mastery so that I could still cast some spells without my book. It came in handy once, when we were spared and captured by an enemy.
Now see, that’s an agonizing choice for me. I want my feats to be useful all the time, not once in a blue moon. And yet, the one time it is useful it saves your ass. The anguish of indecision! It afflicts me so. 🙁
My GM never had any reservations about messing with our spellbooks which eventually led to me investing several ranks in craft: Tattoo and just tattooing my entire spellbook on to my characters body. Needless to say it was never stolen again.
This seems to be a surprisingly common tactic. Is there some kind of ability or feat that supports this, or is it just a good idea everyone but me has come up with?
There are crafting feats for special magical tattoos which do things other than act as scrolls, an archetype for sorcerer that focuses on scroll-like tattoos and even has a familiar as a tattoo (Tattooed Sorcerer), and the iconic Sorceresss, Seoni, is a caster full of magical tattos. There is some support! Runes are similar in this fashion, acting as something you inscribe on your body, only it’s more like being branded than tattoo’d, and is thematically linked to the empire of Thassilon and it’s legacy of deadly sins (or virtues, if you dig deep enough into its hidden lore).
The act of writing a spellbook in tattoo form is not feasible by RAW, however: Most spells take dozens of pages to write down, and your body space is limited. A single 9th level tattoo can take up half your body, let alone an entire spellbook.
This, of course, assuming that anyone bothers with that clunky rule.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/oots0306.gif
Furthermore, you have to be able to read or see the tattoo on your body. Good luck reading your back – or inscribing on it, without a giant mirror, or a way to activate it without looking at it (e.g. vocal commands). You either need a special archetype, ability, or feat to make a tattoo spellbook – such as this 3rd party one:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/3rd-party-feats/tattooed-spellbook/
Scrolls, luckily, are another matter, and can easily be inscribed due to being compacted to a single page – there are even rules to support it.
I’d heard of the Tattooed Sorcerer stuff, but the whole “X pages of spells” thing threw me off. I’m sitting here like, “What is this, a spell for ants?” I think that Ryubbert_Narraetsor down below nailed it though. Those rules look like the answer.
The ‘alternate spellbook’ rules I know of are in the back of the Complete Arcane 3.5 book. They may have been Dragon magazine before that? I forget.
I’m am constantly surprised and delighted by the breadth of options in 3.X. There’s always something cool and new to find!
I feel like the dynamic between Necromancy Wizard and OathBreaker Paladin is under-explored.
He’s not an oathbreaker, he’s an Antipaladin https://www.aonprd.com/ClassDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Antipaladin
Reads
So a Mathfinder AnitPaladin is a fallen Paladin who took up with the forces of evil to maintain their power. In 5E that’s an Oathbreaker Paladin.
Yeah I used to be concerned about that kind of thing for a while until I played with enough different GMs and GMed myself to realize that by and large GMs don’t want to really even bother remembering spellbooks are a thing…. because that’s an extension of them not wanting to have to care about every item in everyone’s inventory which is just pointless extra work on top of all the work they already have to do.
And because messing with people’s items is one of the most guaranteed ways to get players actually upset in a not upset in a fun dramatic way but just upset at the GM way which isn’t good for games.
Also I suspect, though I have no real proof, that’s it’s an unspoken agreement amongst most rpers that messing with a PC’s spellbook or such is a dick move since it’s just going “Haha, the rules allow me to turn off all of your class features!” since this is an incredibly unequal proposition depending on what classes people are. Like maybe it would be more common if Fighters and Paladins and Rogues and Monks and whatever also had all of their class features invested in an easily stolen or destroyed item, but as is it’s just really unfair to punish only specific people for what is a flavor aspect of their character that they have no choice about.
When I did used to care about my spellbook getting messed with, my biggest concern wasn’t theft though. It was water. Because nothing says your backpack is waterproof. It’s just a “backpack”. And how often do characters have to swim, ford rivers, or lengthy travel in the rain? Pretty commonly and books in non-watertight bags don’t tend to fair too well to those circumstances. Admittedly, having a spare spellbook doesn’t even help this at all. Which was why when I can get my hands on it I’ll always go for those weird eberron memory crystal spellbooky things and other “isn’t made of paper” spellbook options.
On the other subject…. it’s remarkable how often NPCs seem to have the resources to waste on casting spells or limited duration or lengthy duration at extreme cost on spellbooks and chests. Every time I’ve even considered the idea as a PC it became immediately obvious that there was no way those kinds of precautions were reasonable expenses.
Also I’ve always been very confused at the idea of NPC spellcasters just leaving their spellbooks around instead of having them on their person. There’s not a single reason to do that. Unless they’re a lich it’s not like they’re going to think “But what if I get fireballed so hard the spellbook in my pocket burns up?…..While I’m also dying because attended objects don’t take damage normally so it had to kill me first.”
Because seriously, what kind of sense does it make to expend spell slots and/or loads of money to protect something (in a way that probably just harms/inconveniences and not kills/actually prevents people trying to steal it) you’re only leaving behind so you can trap it because it’s something you can’t function without?
There is A LOT for a GM to think about. That makes targeting the specific weaknesses of a class difficult. In my latest Pathfinder 1e game, for example, I allowed my players to take drawbacks:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/drawbacks/
Unless I’m staring at my notes, I can and will forget to bring those interesting character nuggets into play.
Now I want to build a lich lair with spells written out on every available surface. The low-level stuff is in the outer chambers, while the high-level magic is written on the walls towards the interior. The lich figures that someone would have to destroy its whole lair to get rid of its magic, while the lure of new spells causes a fresh supply of adventuring mages to venture deeper and deeper into the lair’s network of deathtraps.
Plus you could do fun and ironic stuff like putting a levitate spell on the floor of a pit trap.
Ok that’s an amazing dungeon idea.
Water Breathing in a room that fills with gas. Fire Shield on the wall of a poison darts hallway. Find the Path at the end of a maze. Lightning Bolt in an underwater area.
Man, that’d just be great.
In a way, it’s a bummer that spell casters are considered so powerful. Caster-centric ideas like this tend not to happen because giving bonus magic to the already-powerful dude seems like a misallocation of resources. If I was a wizard in that group though, I’d be doing backflips.
Argh! Necromancer, truly, you are the epitome of the evil alignment with your lack of proper punctuation. Also, are you teasing the next HoEF entry with goth femwizard?
How about I put “goth femwizard” on the next pinup poll? She’d probably need other redesign pinup options to compete against though… Maybe “magical girl Barbarian” and “light cycle racer Inquisitor.”
Very first 5e character I made was a conjuration wizard, and I didn’t know the system would be 5e when I got there. I had an impromptu invitation from another newbie, thought it was 3.5 so came woth a dragonfire adept. Had to spend the first 2 hours frantically flipping through the PHB and treantmonk’s wizard guide. I went wizard because of the other six players, one was a rogue, one a ranger, one a paladin, and the others were fighters, so I thought we really needed some casting. I’d never played with the DM before so didn’t know if my spellbook would be targeted so I decided to try safeguarding against it as a contingency, while also not bringing attention to my safeguarding in case it made the spellbook a target. Unfortunately 5e has far fewer options for the low level paranoid wizard than 3e/PF. Then I stumbled on the Keen Mind feat, which among other things let’s you perfectly recall information for a month. A nice if niche feature, but of course I still needed to study a spellbook to get spells. Which is where my Minor Conjuration comes in. My plan was if I was ever seperated from my spellbook, I’d make a Minor Conjuration of my nonmagical spellbook and use that to regain my spells until I could recover it. Simple and innocuous. Fortunately my spellbook never was targeted so I never had to try getting away with this, but Keen Mind did help me when an archmage let me browse through her spellbook for three spells I wanted to scribe, and I pointedly flipped through the whole thing so I could memorize all of them and scribe them later. Never had to worry about finding another caster’s spellbook to scribe new spells after that.
I always appreciate the 5e “half feats.” Grabbing +1 to an odd Ability score is such a “no duh” bit of design space, allowing for fun effects that don’t quite warrant a full feat. The Actor feat on my Warlock saw a lot of use, for example.
GJ with that archmage, btw. That’s using your keen mind in-game and out!
I play in a game with a DM who is unlikely/unwilling to really do stuff like harm player equipment, particularly vital stuff like spellbooks. Financial loss is the epitome of not-fun, unless you can spin some RP around it (e.g. giving to charity, spending money on gifts, etc… There’s no RP value from having your shiny new 10000 gp blade be turned into scrap and rust by a random bug-like monster, or your mace breaking because you had to fight a construct who’s sturdy enough to damage weapons with its face – and you’re the fighter who can’t do anything but smack things in the face.
Despite this, my Ratfolk wizard invested quite a bit of gold into the safety and security of his spellbook – partly because he has to have it readily available to read, mid-combat, to swap out spells (exploiter wizard with the Quick Study exploit), partly because of RP stuff.
As such, my personal set of book security tools include:
– A bookplate of recall, which lets me summon the spellbook from almost anywhere by just naming it. Useful if it’s stolen or I’m captured.
– A book lariat, which is a fancy term for ‘book on a rope’. Useful since I don’t want to ever have to leave it behind/drop it when browsing it mid-combat.
– Secluded Grimoire, a spell which shunts the spellbook into the ether and lets me recover it on a whim later – essentially an astral safe deposit box.
– Book Ward, a spell that makes the spellbook mostly waterproof, fireproof, and other kinds incidental-damage-proof.
Other things I could invest in:
– A good, expensive lock, further boosted with the ‘arcane lock’ spell.
– Sepia Snake Sigil spell to capture/stop anyone reading through it.
– Explosive Runes to “stop” anyone trying to read through it. Assuming I can figure out how to protect the book from the explosion…
– Various ‘symbol of X’ spells on the pages.
– ‘Hidden Page’ spells to hide particularly strong spells.
And unrelated to spellbooks, this kind of paranoia is life-saving when it comes to resting! Indeed, during our campaign, we had some troubles with night-time ambushing that our preparedness stopped – likely saving at least one PCs life in the process.
We had just arrived to Magnimar and had delivered an important evil artifact into the Pathfinder’s vaults, after previously preventing a cult from stealing it from our hands. So we were on edge when we were given a fancy hotel room to spend the night in.
Things turned further distressing as we found ourselves given an anonymous gift – a box of cigars and a set of candies. Investigation of the gifts soon lead to perilous info: though the candies were safe for consumption, the box was trapped to release a toxic cloud, one which would have made resting wracked with nightmares. Furthermore, we discovered via scent-tracking that the gift-giver entered and exited through a window.
Thus, we quickly prepared some measures to defend ourselves during the night:
– My ratfolk wizard slept under a table instead of a bed. The other party members did the same, sleeping hidden from immediate sight.
– One party member, a lizardfolk brawler, stayed awake, spying on the window and the other parts of the room.
– We barricaded the doors to the rooms.
– We put pillow dummies in every bed, so that they looked like someone was sleeping in them.
Come the following night, our preparation paid off – even though a ninja manged to sneak through a window and evaded the watchful eye of our brawler, they didn’t pay enough attention and ended up coup-attacking the Ratfolk-sized pillow dummy – finally alerting the brawler to their presence. Brawler proceeded to mimic the audible features of the ‘Alarm’ spell (much lizardfolk shrieking) before tackling them in a surprise round. My wizard followed up with a glitterdust spell, blinding them and negating any ninja invisibility shenanigans. The rest was a brutal beatdown of the blind, highly visible ninja, followed by a looting and interrogation which gave us more info on the cult that was hunting us. Overall, great success!
And now, in later levels, our resting is extremely secure: With access to ‘Keep Watch’, we can count as rested despite being wide awake, making surprises difficult at best. ‘Rope Trick’ gives us a secure and easily hidden place to rest each night. A ‘Field Scrivener’s Desk’ mimics the ‘Tiny Hut’ spell, protecting from the elements and prying eyes, in addition to being a nice place to do some spell scribing and research/reading/paperwork. Alarm spells flat out alert us of intruders.
Who hurt you? Was it a GM? Was it a GM with an ambush? Did they ambush your spellbook with an invisible ninja when you weren’t looking?
If I ever get a chance to play my wizard character more, I’m definitely going to have a contingency plan for if I somehow lose my spellbook. In the oneshot where I got to play him, we were only level 3, so most of my meager starting money was spent getting a decent supply of spell-scribing supplies just in case we happened upon some scrolls or something. I’ve planned for the later addition of an emergency copy of the spellbook to be sequestered in a secure location, preferably one where we can start setting up fast travel methods. I might end up mining this comment thread for more ideas.
On a side note, my current group fought a wizard a while back. They captured him, but he managed to elude them by enlisting the help of a criminal organization. This got him pretty deep in hock, especially considering both the expensive resources used to bust him out and the two agents who were killed in a delaying action. On top of that, he also lost both his enchanted staff and his spellbook (I’m not even sure where it ended up — I don’t think any of my group wrote it down on their sheets), with all of the various difficulties that implies.
He hates my group’s characters SO MUCH right now. The fact that he’s too far in debt to have any sort of resources for going after them just means he hates them even more. It’s going to be fun if they ever run into him again.
My mental image of this wizard:
https://media3.giphy.com/media/l2SqesOcnfoXCaWsw/giphy.gif
The one time I did run a wizard, I had the main spellbook, the travelling spellbook, and the emergency full backup copy of the main spellbook fitted with a bookplate of recall and kept under lock and key in a high security location. And also at least 3 spell component pouches on myself at all times. The GM never made any indication that the spellbook would ever be a target, but I was playing a -wizard- so being overprepared to the point of paranoia was in-theme.
You ever see “Surf Ninjas?” Because I’m pretty sure you swallow one of those spell component pouches.
once I got to 4th level spells I’d slap a fake Sepia Snake Sigil (made from Shadow Conjuration) on every single page. It’s free, the DC is one higher than a regular one and the thief or whoever wants to know what spells are within will fail the saves eventually.
lol. That’s genius.