Spellbooks, Scrolls, and Bonded Items


Round 2: Words of Power Discussion

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Looking through the Words of Power rules, it appears that a wizard who chooses to use Words of Powers will be able to fill up his spellbook with every word of power known for far less cost than a regular wizard would be able to fill up his spellbook with every available spell, assuming access to a library or scroll dealer with everything in stock. This looks like a balance issue.

There's a question also of what a Word of Power wizard gets to put on his scrolls. He automatically gets Scribe Scroll for being a wizard, so conceivably he gets to scribe scrolls, but what's on them? Are they individual flash cards with a Word of Power each such that a wizard with a deck of them could instantly cobble together any Word of Power effect he wanted? Or are they traditional scrolls with a single effect on them such that the equivalent of a Fireball scroll would be a scroll with the Words of Power for "Medium" and "Fire Burst"?

If a traditional wizard finds a WoP wizard's scroll of "Medium Fire Burst," can he use that to scribe "Fireball" into his traditional spellbook? If he can, can he also look at a WoP wizard's spell book and cobble together all the traditional spells that could conceivably be duplicated with that word list?

Alchemists can copy formulas for their formularies if they get access to a wizard's spellbooks. If they find a WoP wizard's spellbook that would conceivably have some combo of words in it that would duplicate an alchemist formula, can they use that combo to divine the formula so they can transcribe it into their formulary?

A wizard can also use his bonded item to get any spell he knows. Can a WoP wizard do the same with his bonded item and Words of Power, and if so, what's the limit on what he can come up with?


I would rule with bonded objects they would have to be able to cast the spell at there level still.


As for scrolls, I see no problem with a wizard making a scroll with a complete WoP spell on it, prepared the same way a wizard would prepare one in his spell slots(thats basicly all scrolls are, portable spell slots)

As for learning cross spell book, no, a normal wizard should not be able to look at a wordcasters book and say, "gee this looks like fireball"

Contributor

What about an alchemist?

By the RAW right now, an alchemist can look at a regular wizard's spellbook, and if the spell name matches one of the "formula" names on the alchemist's formula list, he can put that formula in his own formula book.

One of the big problems I had in my last campaign was the "big book of magic that you don't understand" problem. Having regular wizard, a shadowcaster, a factotum, etc. running around, everyone kept running into these books of magic that were utterly useless to them no matter how much spellcraft they had. I eventually started handwaving and said the shadowcaster could divine new mysteries from studying regular wizardry darkness spells, etc.

There really needs to be some official form of "close enough" rule with Wizards' Spellbooks, Alchemists' Formularies, Word of Power wizzes' Lexicons (what I'd call them, as they aren't precisely spells) and all the rest so GMs don't have to purposefully stuff the BBEG's lair with valuable magic books he can't use so there's a prize waiting for the caster in the party.

For example, have some book called "Secrets of the Unseen." The classic wizard goes and reads it and says, "Huzzah! I've found a copy of the Invisibility spell!" The alchemist says, "Eureka! I've found the Invisibility formula!" The WoP wizard goes "W00t! I have found whatever the 'invisibility' word is going to be called when the full book is out!"

After all, if a WoP wizard can recognize a regular wizard casting Fireball as a fire spell and can then counterspell it from that so long as it has one effect word in common, that seems to indicate that a WoP wizard should be able to look at a regular wizards' Fireball spell and derive some portion of the "fire" effect. Otherwise you've got a bizarre scenario where Spellcraft can identify magic when it's being cast but can't make heads or tails of it written down on the page.


I see no problem with a wordcaster creating a scroll of a specific word-spell (that is, a spell created using the various words of power). This fits into one of his spells slots as normal. Why wouldn't it, as a singular unit and not as the various words, fit into a regular wizard's spell slot. Lets say that a wordcaster creates a 2nd level spell using the various words he knows. He then writes this spell onto a scroll. For this example, the caster in question is a wizard, so whatever spell he creates would have to be a wizard spell. From that, a regular wizard ought to be able to learn this 2nd level spell and cast it (as written, with no modifications) from a 2nd level spell slot.

This is rather similar to if a regular wizard spends time researching and creating a new spell.

Magic > Arcane Magic Writings > Independent Research wrote:
Independent Research: A wizard can also research a spell independently, duplicating an existing spell or creating an entirely new one. The cost to research a new spell, and the time required, are left up to GM discretion, but it should probably take at least 1 week and cost at least 1,000 gp per level of the spell to be researched. This should also require a number of Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) checks.

These new spells are treated like any other spell on the wizards list (because no exceptions to this rule are listed), so picking up a wordcasting wizard's spell should be no different.

Some complication might come with wizards picking up spells from wordcasting sorcerers. While, for the most part, the two classes share spell lists, some exceptions exist. In this case, it might be such that wordcasting sorcerers create "sorcerer" spells and not "sorcerer/wizard" spells.

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