Spell(not)books


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Was thinking of some non standard ways to keep Arcane Magical Writings without using a Spellbook.

Spellstaff
This staff has room for 8 levels of spells carved into its length.
Craft woodworking is needed to add spells.

Spellcloak
This cloak has room for 40 levels of spells, 20 per side.
A large number of these cloaks have the 20 outside spells used for the Wizards cantrips.
Craft tailor is needed to add spells.

What are some other things/items that could be used?


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Perhaps you could write some cantrips on your socks?

Though, seriously, if you did propose this as an alternative magical writings, they'd be stupidly costly when lost, nicked, torn, or muddied. I'd be happy to claim my half-elf has a Vanish spell etched on their pants, but be sure you have Prestidigitation handy... and Mending.

My only issue would be the fact that a true spellbook is part of the class feature. There may or may not be reasons to keep it to book form, but it'll take a GM's ruling to say a Wizard can keep his endure elements spell on his scarf. At the very least, you could claim that both Hide armor and parchment have their origins in animal tissue, just that one is processed differently. I'd prefer using a spellbook, Secluded Grimoire, and be done with it without sequestering your undies in another plane of existence.


Thank you Bane for getting behind the idea of this thread. Yes, I do understand that non-standard Spellbooks will have there own problems. I do like your idea of the scarf.

Anyone else have any more?

Spellscarf
This scarf has patches attached that hold 6 levels of spells.
The most common has Endure Elements on it.


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I was mostly kidding. But if you insist...

Tatoos would be an effective way to write spells across your body, so long as you're only inking in the magical writing and not a spell completion effect or something else possible via the Inscribe Magical Tatoo feat. I'd recommend Craft(Calligraphy) or something similar for the effect. Silk or cloth wrappings work just as well. Naturally, this all comes at the normal price for creating magical writings plus whatever relevant items (ink, or dye) are needed. Edit: Be aware you need to study your spellbook... so have a mirror handy!

A Fan (or Fighting Fan) may not be the best martial weapon in the hands of a wizard, but it's light enough to carry around. Why not have a gust of wind written across its blades?

A Scrying spell requires multiple pages. However, if you can manage to condense or otherwise store that information on the back of a handmirror, you have a spell and focus in one!

A blanket is a grand tapestry just begging to be made into a giant spell page. Here's the thing; Write everything you need to prepare Treasure Stitching on one side of it, and it already qualifies as that spell's material component. Why? Because it's got some expensive magic writing on it, making it worth over 100gp!

Ever wanted to wield your own totem in combat? Find a tree large enough, and with enough work, you can chisel an entire spellbook's worth of information into its form. Shrink Item makes it into a neat quarterstaff to use as a walking stick or even weapon. In an emergency, extending it outwards can save you from a trap that's making those walls close in. Or to cross a river. Or to squish a house. Just be careful not to be dispelled!


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Well, by the rules, it's only a spellbook that can be used. But to hell with the rules, I like the idea of more flavorful 'spellbooks' that can be used.

For reference:

----------
SPELLBOOK
Price: 15 gp
Weight: 3 lbs

A spellbook has 100 pages of parchment, and each spell takes up one page per spell level (one page each for 0-level spells). A newly purchased spellbook contains no spells. A wizard character begins play with a spellbook containing the spells he knows (Core Rulebook 79).
----------

So, as long as whatever your alternate spellbook is costs at least 15 cp per page, and weigh at least .03 per page, it should be quite balanced. Anything more expensive and weightier means balance is no longer a real concern.

I remember one comic that had spell tattoos. On the backs of the wizard's friends, so they were living spellbooks he always had access to. Takes some really close characters for that, though.

I like the idea of alternate spellbooks. Such as undersea races using etched shells, or primitive cultures using finely treated leather scrolls. Or even stonehenge-like monoliths that are used by a tribe.


You probably can find some cheap or throwaway books.

As an experiment, see how many pages you can legibly wrap around a cane... keeping in mind that each spell takes up a page per level, minimum of one. You'll see pretty fast why once books were invented, they pretty much outbred all of the alternatives.. liked rolled up parchments. And why books on a staff were never in the running.


Tattoo a few on your familiar if you are jealous of the witch, etched into your sword blade for a magus, a prayer rug sounds spiffy to me. I don' t recall the name at the moment, but there was a prewriting doodad, celtic I think, knotted cord, the knots were patterned to be a mneumonic device for recalling stories and the like, model the rules after the goblin "smell book" for alchemists.


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... Look into this crystal, kind sir. Do you see the strange lines inside? Look closer and meditate on the lines. Now you see the incantation needed for a spell....

Inscribing crystals with magic to implant the spell text into the crystal at the same (or similar) price as a spell book. You need a bigger crystal for a higher level spell. Inscribing uses a new 1st level spell: write spell that creates a spell you have memorized into a spell crystal. Limit one spell per crystal. These crystals can easily be made into a necklace.

Based off a 3.X thing.

/cevah


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Hmmm.... It might take a GM ruling, but it would be really cool if you got permission to scribe a scroll, if not your entire spellbook, on some of the objects (bonus points if they say the item isn't destroyed afterwards!) I mean, there's no way you could get away with it without the relevant feat(s) (Scribe scroll being the most obvious, but your GM maybe requiring other feats relevant to what's being used as the scroll.)

But for other spellbook types, why not go with having spells etched in (very small) glyphs on glasses? Put them on, go very cross-eyed, and prepare your spells!
Or, maybe a painting that depicts all kinds of different objects, say maybe a night sky, a campfire, a bat swooping overhead, and a cloud being blown by the wind. When studied closely, the night sky has the spell for darkness, the campfire tells the formula for a fireball, the bat contains summon monster, the cloud has obscuring mist, and the wind has gust of wind written in-between the lines...


Dot.

The Exchange

Playing off of the thought that Cevah shared, I'd possibly go down the route of an item based around a pair of spectacles that had interchangeable lenses...something akin to what opticians use at eye tests.

You could store each spell within a single lens which you can insert as a move action (or half of one).
I'd possibly go one step further by having it so that the right lens is the spell slot and the left lens is made available for a meta-magic enhancement.

There's also an option to make the lenses tinted with different colours to indicate the school of magic they belong to.

I would say that you'd require some form of craft: jewellery or craft: glasswork to successfully transcribe the spell onto the lens without damaging the fragile material.


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Bane Wraith wrote:
Tatoos would be an effective way to write spells across your body, so long as you're only inking in the magical writing and not a spell completion effect or something else possible via the Inscribe Magical Tatoo feat. I'd recommend Craft(Calligraphy) or something similar for the effect.

well...

Spell-Scars (Ex)

Benefit: The magus can use special scar-based tattoos called spell-scars on his skin to cast or prepare spells, much like scrolls. He can cast a spell from a spell-scar exactly like casting from a scroll; the ink and scars vanish when the spell is cast. The magus can also prepare spells from his spell-scars without expending them, similar to a wizard using the Spell Mastery feat.

The magus does not need to be able to see his spell-scar to use it. A magus has room on his skin for 18 total spell levels of spell-scars, which he can create using the rules for scribing scrolls (although they do not require the Scribe Scroll feat).

It's a Magus Arcana so not everyone can use it, but you could always just make it a feat?


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In my 2e homebrew setting, Gnoll wizards (called magic users back then) used a quipu for storing spells. For anyone not familiar with the quipu, here's a link.

Quipu


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There was a whole thing of this sort of stuff in Complete Magic for 3.5 edition. I think most of those ideas have been covered already, but I also recall some sort of tiles, and maybe a couple of other things.


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Spellbooks & Scrolls Variant Rules might be of interest to the OP.


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DungeonmasterCal wrote:

In my 2e homebrew setting, Gnoll wizards (called magic users back then) used a quipu for storing spells. For anyone not familiar with the quipu, here's a link.

Quipu

Thanks! Was trying to remember this in my earlier post, clearly my recall was way off.


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Java Man wrote:
Thaks! Was trying to remember this in my earlier post, clearly my recall was way off.

You're very welcome!


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DungeonmasterCal wrote:

In my 2e homebrew setting, Gnoll wizards (called magic users back then) used a quipu for storing spells. For anyone not familiar with the quipu, here's a link.

Quipu

So your gnoll's were the setting's inca people?


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Not so much, really. I didn't really have "real world" analogies in that setting. In fact, the current PF campaign I'm running has more than any other setting I've ever run before.


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I'm stealing that idea, if you don't mind. Gnolls are one of my favorite races, I've been trying to think of ways to turn them into memorable foes and not "just another war-like monster species". Little things like that are great!


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Cevah wrote:

... Look into this crystal, kind sir. Do you see the strange lines inside? Look closer and meditate on the lines. Now you see the incantation needed for a spell....

Inscribing crystals with magic to implant the spell text into the crystal at the same (or similar) price as a spell book. You need a bigger crystal for a higher level spell. Inscribing uses a new 1st level spell: write spell that creates a spell you have memorized into a spell crystal. Limit one spell per crystal. These crystals can easily be made into a necklace.

Based off a 3.X thing.

/cevah

I've done something similar with one of my Pathfinder characters. Really, all we did was change the flavor of Scribe Scroll and a few other abilities, and suddenly, we had a "gem mage."


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PK the Dragon wrote:
I'm stealing that idea, if you don't mind. Gnolls are one of my favorite races, I've been trying to think of ways to turn them into memorable foes and not "just another war-like monster species". Little things like that are great!

Steal away! I don't mind sharing my ideas as I've borrowed ideas from multiple posters over the years.


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3.5 had a few alternatives to books for spellbooks, though I don't remember much of them.


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SPELLTANKAED
Aura faint abjuration; CL 3rd
Slot none; Price 6,000 gp; Weight 2 lbs.
DESCRIPTION
This well crafted Tankard fills with an alcoholic beverage once per day. As the alcohol is being consumed, the drinker Sings out there reference spells to memorize. The Singer must have skill ranks in Preform(Sing) equal or greater than the spells level. To add new spells to the Tankard, alcohol must be added to the Tankard (the price of the alcohol must exceed the price for adding spells to a Spellbook). Then alcohol is consumed while the new spell is sung into it. A SpellTankerd can hold up to 400 spell levels. The first appearance of a SpellTankerd was from a mystic theurge of a Deity of Song and Spirits.
CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, share memory (Ultimate Magic), creator must have Perform(Sing); Cost 3,000gp


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Monster codex has pictographic spell books for Goblins and I cannibalised those rules for using cave paintings as spellbooks.


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why not use a mirror?


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I'm imagining a community of Elven wizards maintaining a group spellbook on the trunk of a tree in a secret grove. They have more typical spellbooks in case one of them needs to travel but they all add any spells they learn in their travels to the tree.


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andygal wrote:
I'm imagining a community of Elven wizards maintaining a group spellbook on the trunk of a tree in a secret grove. They have more typical spellbooks in case one of them needs to travel but they all add any spells they learn in their travels to the tree.

Dwarf wizards in my game have a library inscribed into the walls of a series of rooms. Each new wizard learns his or her spells by rote from the markings left by others. A new room means new spells. Unfortunately, they must learn every spell in a room before advancing. Very stilted and dwarf-like.

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