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This is a house rule I am working on for my next campaign.
There are two types of Spellbooks; Arcane Tomes and Personal Spellbooks
An Arcane Tome contained all the information needed to learn a spell. How to prepare it, the theories involved, the nature of the magical elements that create it, etc.... They are typically 25-50 pages per spell level. A Typical Arcane Tome will contain a single spell though some rare books will contain several related spells. Wizards learn spells from an Arcane Tome as described in the Core book for learning new spells from a spellbook.
Personal Spellbooks are the traditional spellbook with each spell taking up 1 page per spell level. Instead of detailing how to cast the spell however they are a series of short hand notes and memory aids designed to work with the Wizard's knowledge of the Arcane to help him prepare spells. Personal Spellbooks are just that, Personal. Each Wizard has his own notes and own tricks for remembering things (think of it as a University Student's notebook). As a result you cannot learn spells from another wizard's Personal Spellbook. To record a Spell in your Spellbook you need Ranks in Knowledge Arcane equal to the level of the spell in addition to having already learned the spell from an Arcane Tome.
Why this Rule?
Two main reasons.
Firstly is story. Arcane Tomes become more important setting wise, it makes magic seem more complex and difficult. It allows me to do things like have "the Tome of Kal'Razka" hidden away in a dungeon as a big dusty old book of magic with only 2 or 3 spells in it. It allows for "The Forbidden Section" of the arcane Library to contain the Books with Spells they don't want getting out. The "Necronica del Morte" containing Animate Dead, Create Undead and Greater Create Undead becomes a massive black book of 500+ pages instead of a pamphlet of 18 pages. The Wizard who learns those spells from the book still only takes up 18 pages in his personal spellbook but those pages consist of sketches and notes that read "use sigil of Thul'dan vor in the High and Low circles", "Chicken feet can sub for Powder of Ancient Bone", "R3RC", "Don't Forget the 3rd Ring", etc....
The Other is control. Let a wizard have easy access to new spells and they get out of hand in a hurry. Give the PCs a Wizard as a villain and suddenly the Wizard in the party has a dozen new spells in his book unless you go out of your way to make certain the bad guy has spells the PCs already know. By making it so that the Personal Spellbook isn't a pinata of new toys for Wizards I can better control the influx of spells into the game. Finding said evil Wizard's Library of Black arts becomes a Bigger deal but carting away several hundred pounds of books makes it more of an effort to get his whole Spell collection. Unless they have time and maybe a Wagon of Bag of Holding, players are more likely to cherry pick a few important Tomes and leave the rest.
So any Opinions or Suggestions
Seems designed just to make wizards less fun to play compared to Sorcerers, Clerics, Druids, and Oracles.
There are plenty of ways to have magical tomes and hidden knowledge without something like this.
Yup.
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i kinda like it.
but i would just lock the spells in a tome behind Spellcraft, and lock the spells is a personal book behind both Linguistics and Spellcraft.
you could then decide how 'difficult' or 'impossible' a spellbook is to read by choosing your DCs.
if you wanted, you could even allow a character to call upon certain Knowledge skills that could 'aid' in the translations, granting a +2 to the Linguistics and Spellcraft checks...
if you wanted, you could even allow a character to call upon certain Knowledge skills that could 'aid' in the translations, granting a +2 to the Linguistics and Spellcraft checks...
actually that would fit with the Fluff I've written for how magic works. I'll have to do up a quick list of what skills help which descriptors and schools.
And the sorcerer?
And the sorcerer?Don't be silly, this is just a bizarre plan to punch wizards in the face.
Actually it's a plan to make the setting somewhat less simplistic and make mastering Magic actually difficult,instead of picking a dead wizard's spellbook up off the ground and poof next day you're tossing magic missiles around.
Wizard's still get their 2 spells a level to reflect their growth and understanding of the arcane, they can still do research to learn more, can still return to their mentor for instruction and can still go to a college of wizardry and use the library.
But I don't have to worry about the PCs killing a minor wizard minion, picking up a slim little booklet a third of the size of the APG and tadaa a dozen new spells.
Learning Animate Dead would require studying a book some 200-400 pages long instead of skimming over 4 pages.
I mean really, the power to command the forces of the universe and it all fits in a spiral notebook like the one I can buy at Walmart?
In the right campaign, one with fewer full casters around, this could be a neat idea. In what I will call your typical campaign, this hurts the wizard. He now has to find one of these tomes, get left alone long enough to do all the translation and transcription...and now has the problem that someone could steal the tome away before he gets that chance. And yet it doesn't make mastering magic more difficult for anyone else, to borrow your expression: sorcerers, oracles, clerics, witches, and druids can master magic just fine.
If you want to limit the spells available to a wizard, so be it. That wizard minion they just killed? He doesn't know any new spells that the PC wizard didn't know; they party only finds a travelling spellbook with his current spells readied and a few others. Maybe just increase the time required to add spells to a spellbook, so that the PC has to think carefully about which spells he adds when.
But I will reiterate: in the right campaign, this idea could be fun.
And the sorcerer?Don't be silly, this is just a bizarre plan to punch wizards in the face.Actually it's a plan to make the setting somewhat less simplistic and make mastering Magic actually difficult,instead of picking a dead wizard's spellbook up off the ground and poof next day you're tossing magic missiles around.
Wizard's still get their 2 spells a level to reflect their growth and understanding of the arcane, they can still do research to learn more, can still return to their mentor for instruction and can still go to a college of wizardry and use the library.
But I don't have to worry about the PCs killing a minor wizard minion, picking up a slim little booklet a third of the size of the APG and tadaa a dozen new spells.
Learning Animate Dead would require studying a book some 200-400 pages long instead of skimming over 4 pages.
I mean really, the power to command the forces of the universe and it all fits in a spiral notebook like the one I can buy at Walmart?
I fully understand. It's a design to make life difficult FOR WIZARDS, but not other full casters. For no particular reason other than you don't like wizards getting spells and using one of their main class features.
You seem to say you're going to make it much harder to buy spells too.
If you hate wizards that much, why not just ban them instead of changing the rules so getting spells is a lot harder? Because you are just going to be upsetting the balance between Wizards and other full casters.
you seem to be reading way more into my comments that I am putting there.
I'm saying I don't like the idea that mastering every spell in existence amounts to 32 1/2 books. That's every spell, from every one of the Hardcover books. 3252 pages of spellbooks.
Books the size of a high school notebook. Books the size of one of Paizo's adventure path volumes.
All the magic in the world fits on 1 bookshelf
that makes sense to you does it?
In the right campaign, one with fewer full casters around, this could be a neat idea. In what I will call your typical campaign, this hurts the wizard. He now has to find one of these tomes, get left alone long enough to do all the translation and transcription...and now has the problem that someone could steal the tome away before he gets that chance. And yet it doesn't make mastering magic more difficult for anyone else, to borrow your expression: sorcerers, oracles, clerics, witches, and druids can master magic just fine.
If you want to limit the spells available to a wizard, so be it. That wizard minion they just killed? He doesn't know any new spells that the PC wizard didn't know; they party only finds a travelling spellbook with his current spells readied and a few others. Maybe just increase the time required to add spells to a spellbook, so that the PC has to think carefully about which spells he adds when.
But I will reiterate: in the right campaign, this idea could be fun.
Spell in general I'm breaking down by rarity, so all spellcasters will need to deal with that.
Core Book = Common. with a couple of exceptions like Wish. Unless circumstances are ludicrously against you finding or learning them them is simple. For wizard's Arcane Tomes with these will be in any decent arcane library and many of the lower level spells would be found in arcane book store. For other classes, they are a part of typical religious training, or they manifest easily in sorcerers.
Other Pathfinder book = Uncommon. Needs a bit of effort on the part of the character. Wizard might need to get permission to access the sealed parts of the library. Clerics might need to find and study a specific prayer book or perform a specific ritual. Not too hard just a bit of effort and role-playing to get at.
Rare Spells = Any 3rd party stuff I feel like including. These are Quest things.
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Yeah, don't weaken the wizard. We already know that it is the weakest caster in the game...
I will also make this note about books. You bring up that the wizard's spellbook is this small thing that holds all this information aka spells.
Look at a science textbook for any college class at the undergraduate level. They tend to be as big or bigger than the Core rules, with twice as many pages. My old Chem textbook, several editions out of date, is nearly 4 inches thick with 1000 pages. But when you're in class, you take notes. We got through that whole textbook in a year. My notes were not 4 inches thick. They weren't even one inch thick. So it seems that you can put a lot of information into a very small space at need. Just omit punctuation and the unnecessary letters :)
I could go with rainzax's suggestion and make Personal Spellbooks decipherable with the aid of Linguistics. Maybe not enough to get the spells after a night's light reading but they could be used as research aids off setting the time and cost needed to research the spells within.
I will also make this note about books. You bring up that the wizard's spellbook is this small thing that holds all this information aka spells.
Look at a science textbook for any college class at the undergraduate level. They tend to be as big or bigger than the Core rules, with twice as many pages. My old Chem textbook, several editions out of date, is nearly 4 inches thick with 1000 pages. But when you're in class, you take notes. We got through that whole textbook in a year. My notes were not 4 inches thick. They weren't even one inch thick. So it seems that you can put a lot of information into a very small space at need. Just omit punctuation and the unnecessary letters :)
This is exactly what I'm saying
The actual Books of Magic should be Big huge heavy things.
The Books a Wizard carries around on a trip to help him prepare his spells each day are the clip notes version, a memory aid to help spark the knowledge in his head that he has spent years amassing
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Great idea to enrich your game. Just don't let it crimp the Wizard compared to the other full casters.
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I quite like this from a world-building perspective. I've often been bothered that wizards fit everything in a small travel-sized book because you always picture wizards having a massive library. It seems like arcane tomes would give you something to stock libraries with, while still allowing wizards to carry their spells with them.
The mechanical game-side change though is that it means the wizard might not get access to as many spells which does diminish the class. Normally I would have no objections to house rules that down-power casters, however in this case it selectively only impacts the wizard which seems a bit unfair.
However it doesn't necessarily mean that the wizard will get less spells. You can normally only loot spells from an enemy wizard and with more and more alternate casters showing up in the game, that's less wizards that you're likely to fight. An enemy sorcerer, oracle, cleric, etc won't have any spellbook for you to loot anyway (and in my experience GMs usually find sorcerers easier than wizards to run in combat so they are a more encountered foe). However with arcane tomes being such big valuable items, they could potentially show up in any treasure horde, even one belonging to a non-caster.
I'm tempted to use this idea purely for its cosmetic effect and as long as you make sure there's plenty of opportunity to find arcane tomes it shouldn't negatively impact the wizard.
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I like the idea too, story-wise, as I prefer low magic games. To the valid concern about this putting Wizards at a disadvantage compared to other casters, I've always thought that too many Sorcerers look the same regardless of their bloodlines - a fey-blooded Sorcerer and a demon-blooded Sorcerer both end up with the same short list of spells because. Push Sorcerers to chose spells more consistent with their theme or some kind of opposed-schools-like list of spells that they can't choose. For divine casters, I've always wondered about some type of a piety check or something - you ask your god for certain spells, but unless you're a faithful cleric, you don't always get what you want.
Greylurker - consider your idea a permanent mechanic in my campaign. I agree that it makes a great deal more sense and lends itself to most of our visions of magical libraries and such.
I understand that it limits the typical Wizard from embellishing his own spell list through each encounter with an enemy wizard but adds a great deal to the value of the arcan tomes as treasure. A fair trade off I believe, as my world is rather low-magic anyway.
Good stuff, thanks!
I like this. Just don't make the spellbooks completely useless, and ensure that the tomes are really valuable. IMHO, wizards could do with the punch in the face, at least at higher levels. The magus is OK as is, but if there's no PC magus this might not matter.
Besides, wizards can learn spells from scrolls. And RAW, they can buy those scrolls at no great cost.
For divine casters, I've always wondered about some type of a piety check or something - you ask your god for certain spells, but unless you're a faithful cleric, you don't always get what you want.
I was once toying with the idea that as a house rule the cleric's player doesn't choose what spells they prepare but are given a specific list each day by the GM. The idea being that the player has to interpret what their god wants them to do, based on what spells they were given.
For example they're given a whole lot of remove disease spells and the temple runs off to warn the town leaders that a plague might be coming. If they're given a lot of combat spells, it's a sign that their god wants them to go to war, etc.
I've never implemented it though, so I'm not sure how it would work.
mkenner, very cool idea from a cinematic standpoint but tough on player freedom of action. In reality (or the pseudo reality of game play) a character dedicated to a diety might well have their destiny determined for them, in part or whole, in just the way you describe. It probably wouldnt be much fun though for the player and even less so for his group. If they were all wanting to go off and loot the dungeon and the cleric woke up with the devine notion that he needed to stick around town and feed the hungry it might upset some people.
mkenner, very cool idea from a cinematic standpoint but tough on player freedom of action. In reality (or the pseudo reality of game play) a character dedicated to a diety might well have their destiny determined for them, in part or whole, in just the way you describe. It probably wouldnt be much fun though for the player and even less so for his group. If they were all wanting to go off and loot the dungeon and the cleric woke up with the devine notion that he needed to stick around town and feed the hungry it might upset some people.
I agree. Now that I think about it though, you could get the best of both worlds if you stated that all clerics in the world work that way except for the PC who has for some reason been trusted by the deity to work as a self-directed free agent. It'd be a good reason why the PC cleric is traveling around independent of their church hierarchy. It would also let the PC feel special, which I think is always a plus.
None of my players give a hoot about optimization, they tend to visualize their characters first, then pick traits, skills and feats to match. They are, from the typical "build" standpoint, very inefficient but its how we prefer to play - cinematic v.s. tactical.
For this reason its quite easy to 'nerf', if such a term applies here, another spell user if it appears its needed. Slowing their learning of new spells is one easy method... but honestly i dont see it as necessary.
I read Alex Tanos's book and learned to astral project, so add tomes to the game, but leave spellbooks as is. Reading a Tome takes about a week of non game time. The spell in the tome replaces one already known for non wizards with the spell on their list. A tome is useable for spell research.
The rest of us can do this and laugh at the OP and his unfortunate players.
I like this idea and will likely implement it in my game. I don't see it as being especially unfair to wizards because all it does is kind of bring them to the same level as the witch is already on - unless your games have a proliferation of witches, which in my experience most games don't.
I'm sorry about the way I said that, but I cannot correct that last line of my post. If I could I would say, "The original poster can further limit wizards in this way, and hopefully find players looking for a greater challenge." Making captured spellbooks harder to use may lead to more players rolling up witches instead of wizards. That's how I would react.
Hey, guys!
to all those saying that this gimps wizards... you can make house rules to limit the other classes too.
For example, a good Cleric can't cast Bane or something silly like that.
Sorcerers get spells associated with their Bloodline, and a 3/4 BAB to compensate for the reduced versatility.
Oracles would have to pick extra spells as a revelation or a feat (give them more Revelations to compensate)
That's all for example, of course. But it's not like we JUST have to limit the Wizard like this.
Personal Spellbooks are just that, Personal. Each Wizard has his own notes and own tricks for remembering things (think of it as a University Student's notebook). As a result you cannot learn spells from another wizard's Personal Spellbook.
I agree with others that you'll just push the campaign towards spontaneous casters, but I feel you a bit about your hesitations.
Perhaps instead of the bolded line above, use "As a result, the DC to learn spells from another wizard's Personal Spellbook is increased by 5" (or maybe 10).
I dont see it as any different from any other personal choice by a player. I have a character that uses a shortsword. Yes, there are weapons that do more damage but he likes the shortsword. Its dumb to keep that same crappy weapons - I know but my character likes it. You can sooo do better if you do this or that. I know, but I like this.
Playing a character is not ALL about doing max damage, performing the very best all the time. Its about roleplaying - remember, its a roleplaying game. Sometimes a given role is just not as effecient, effective or powerful as another - thats life.
So if Wizards are limited a bit by not being able to rob the dead of their spells all the time - so what? Thats how it works in the OP's campaign - dont play a wizard then if you dont like it. I dont know how many players he has in his game but unless he has dozens of spell-caster types, its not going to be a big deal at all.
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I have just created a Wizard character for an upcoming campaign and am in love with this idea of Arcane Tomes vs. Spellbooks. I would welcome this as an added difficulty and challenge to playing my character as what I see him...a powerful manipulator of reality and knowledge hungry intellectual. Whether I feel that it is a "weakening" of my character or not isn't important to "me" as a player because it adds a good deal of flavor and RP possibilities all while addressing a very real and questionable issue with the ease of expanding a wizards repertoire.
Find a player like me and there is nothing at all wrong with this idea. I can see that for other players this idea would be loathsome. I fully intend to show this idea to my GM and see what he thinks of it!
My first question any time I see a house rule that aims to correct a 'problem' is simple: have you actually experienced this problem in your game? If it is a theoretical problem, my inclination is to suggest you play it as it is for the moment until you see how it plays out.
That said...
I don't really see how these kinds of rules are actually necessary to achieve the fluff you want. You can just as easy say, as the GM, that most books in an arcane library are hundreds of pages long even if they contain only a handful of spells - perhaps the rest is full of development notes, theory, and general wank by their creator. A character still has to skim through that drivel to get to the spell - no house rule needed. This can even be true with the spellbooks of other wizards (or PC wizards) at your inclination. Most of my wizards keep notes all kinds of things relating to the arcane in their spellbooks, swelling their size beyond only a couple of pages. This is largely fluff - the pages allocated towards these kinds of notes only marginally increase carry wait - but it seems to accomplish what you want without having to insert new rules into the existing system.
Regarding captured spellbooks (which seem to be a real concern for you), I would hold them as little different than captured weapons or gear for any other character. They come out of character wealth and often do so in ineffective ways. My long running wizard recovered something like eight or ten spellbooks in her last adventure. I think she gained ten or twelve new spells in total as a result - and she did not have a tremendous number of spells going in. She paid something like 20,000gp for the pleasure when treasure was split up.
Most spells a wizard uses are going to be pretty generic and similar to other wizards. Highly specialized characters may have a few unusual choices, but they are outliers in the scheme of things. Sure the first spellbook or two a wizard takes from a defeated foe may expanded their arcane lore significantly, but after that I wouldn't expect as much. High level spells are relatively rare. Traditionally wizards are protective and secretive with their arcane lore - they shouldn't share (especially high level) magic freely. I would expect most NPC wizards to have a relatively small number of spells of each level in their spellbook - perhaps five or six of each level - except in extraordinary circumstances.
Laying that aside, how often do you fight wizards relative to every other kind of foe? I went four or five levels without a single one showing up in a campaign - the PCs were fighting monstrous humanoids who drew most of their casters from the clerical or sorcerous ranks. The only reason I saw a large number recently was because the party became involved in an internal feud with the local arcane guide and ended up killing off most of its leaders. Typically spellbooks in my experience crop up as relatively rare but quite treasured loot for the party wizard - they can even serve as trophies of a sort. Harkening back to my own experience, I've got a wizard that carries around the tomes of defeated wizards, taking (some) pride in having overcome them and taken their lifetime of arcane lore as her battle-prize.
I feel like these rules close more doors than they open, both for players and GMs.
I've adjusted now so that personal spellbooks of other wizards aid in the research process. It's a matter of figuring out the other guy's short hand and comparing it what's in the Arcane Lore books. It speeds up and reduces the cost of researching spells.
It seems I may have been somewhat unclear and what is behind me making this rule
I main issue is that I dislike the idea that learning magic is simple. That it takes only an hour to learn a new spell from a book or scroll lying around, just doesn't fit with how I want magic to work in my setting. I want magic to be about big heavy books sealed in locks and chains, not just to protect the books but to protect those who might read them unprepared.
My concern over looting of enemy books isn't so much the free spells they give the wizards it's that my players tend towards copy the spells they want and then sell the books for big money. They see an enemy wizard as a piggybank. They are able to do that because it takes so little effort to copy the spells from the other book. I have to count spellbooks are part of the Encounter treasure when I would rather be using that value to give them other things. By reducing the value of personal spellbooks to 15 gp I can do that.
That and a thin little notebook sized spellbook just bugs me.
For the record I don't feel magic should be easy for other classes either. Clerics need to keep the doctrines of their faith in mind if they want to keep their powers, Patrons don't give Witches power for free they expect tasks performed on their behalf in return, etc...
I'm not trying to punish any particular class, I'm just creating a setting where Magic isn't easy to master.
I think that this idea works fine. I think that all spellcaster types should have some sort of inherent disadvantage. A Magus, since that class is basically a type of Wizard anyway, should also have this "limitation".
As mentioned above, limiting Sorcerers to spells that fit their Bloodline's theme is actually a good idea and helps Sorcerers feel different from Wizards. Bards should also have a theme, but this is generally linked to their style and/or archetype (and is not as much of an issue anyway).
I also think that Clerics. Druids, Paladins, and Rangers should also have spell lists that get tweaked by their chosen deity. It does makes perfect sense.
These ideas might "nerf" spellcasters, but they do help to keep each one thematically different. Diversity is good. It also serves to lower the bar set by the spellcasting classes a bit.
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For the record I don't feel magic should be easy for other classes either. Clerics need to keep the doctrines of their faith in mind if they want to keep their powers, Patrons don't give Witches power for free they expect tasks performed on their behalf in return, etc...
I'm not trying to punish any particular class, I'm just creating a setting where Magic isn't easy to master.
Im with you Greylurker, 100%. I have tried through strictly 'color and fluff" to present a world where magic is more rare, respected, spooky and costly but it contradicts the ease by which it is presented in the rules. Ive considered some house rules myself, yours has encouraged me.
Peter Stewart -house rules dont merely have to address a percieved problem but may intead present a new desired mechanic or bit of color to the game. I played in a campaign once where the casting of spells cost the caster HP.
There is certainly nothing WRONG with the spell casting or learning system at all, but if someone has a different vision for how it should work in their game... a house rule is the way to go.