I know that you could cast spells directly from your spellbook like a scroll in earlier editions, but can't find any rule for it now, anybody out there that could point me in the right directions if they know where it is? If not I guess the easy way is just to let the wizard cast it like a scroll and loose the spell from the book. But when he does that and buys the spell again, he need to make a spellcraft check to be able to write it correctly, right?
O.
Under the current edition of the rules, wizards cannot cast spells directly out of their spellbooks.
Instead, they receive the Scribe Scroll feat automatically at 1st level. So, the easiest thing to do would be to have him spend the gold and XP on making scrolls.
I'm at work atm so can't be 100% sure of the casting from the spellbook, but I just "know" that I have read about it somewhere. But it could be that my imagination is running wild hehe. Will consider to run the RAW thing here so poor players which are in deep s**& and was gonna burn some spells from the spellbook to get out :)
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I believe that spells are described as a bunch of scribbles and notes that don't actually read well but when studied, sorted out, and committed to memory produce a spell. Reading a spell from a spellbook would be like reading a scientist's scribble pad that had ideas and little doodles on it, whereas a scroll is a mostly cast spell that only needs the final gestures and/or commands to complete for casting. That is the way that 3.5's take on spells is (at least that is the way I read it). If you wanted to allow casters to cast from the book maybe something like a casting time of 1 minute per level of spell or something, although that seems pretty low considering some of the 9th level spells out there.
I would just tell the wizard to make 2 scrolls of each spell he knows and walk around like that.
Also remember that wizards don't have to fill all their spell slots each morning, you could leave a slot or 2 open per spell level so that when you come across a problem that you don't have the necessary spell for you can rememberize it on the spot with a bit of study. Comes in handy also when you run out of firepower but need to get through 1 or 2 more hostile areas.
FH
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I seem to remember there being a description somewhere that intimated that most of the work in spellcasting is done upon preparation of the spell. After that, the spell hangs around in the caster's mind as potential magic that is just waiting for the final few words or phrases to be unleashed. If that's the case, casting a spell from a spellbook (if you choose to allow it), should take alot longer than normal. I would think it might be something on the order of 10 minutes for a first level spell. Also (OOTS jokes aside), the more powerful the spell, the more pages the spell takes up, and the longer it should take to cast.
IMC we use spell points, so take the above for what its worth. Probably less than 2 cents.
Also (OOTS jokes aside)...
But it's just ONE WORD!
I allow cating of spells from a spell book in my home brew.
Here is what my players book says about the topic.
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Chapter Eight/Part Eight: Spell books
The material that follows replaces the material in the Players Handbook and brings it more in line with what I want for the campaign. Some one may read any arcane or divine magical writing by making a spell craft check of DC 20+ the level of the spell. Read Magic always allows one to read the writing. Having the person who actually wrote the material present and helping makes success automatic. Having some one present that understands the material adds +10 to the check. Bought scrolls usually have some one present that understands the material. The check can be done once per day until it succeeds.
Wizards may copy spells from scrolls or other spells into their own spell book. If the owner of a spell book is present and helping to copy the spell over then the spell remains in the owners spell book. Otherwise the material is treated as a scroll and it vanishes once successfully copied. This means that two people cannot learn spells from a single spell book when the owner is not around. But of course one person could then copy the spell from the others spell book. Finally a Wizard can only have one spell book with which they are magically attuned. That spell book does not actually have to be a single volume; the key requirement is that the wizard’s spells in their spell book exist only once. Essentially every wizard has a ‘master copy’ of each of their spells and cannot have more then one master copy. If a wizard wants a second copy of a spell they must create a scroll. A smart wizard might well create a scroll of every spell they know and keep it in some safe place in case they loose their original. These scrolls would still not qualify as the master copy but they could then be learned and copied into a new spell book, which would become the master copy of each spell if the original spell book was lost. Its possible for more then one wizard to use the same spell book and treat the same spell as a master copy for each of them. Civilized spell casters pretty much never do this making even apprentices maintain their own spell books but its fairly common among goblinoids were access to spell books and writing material is very constrained.
A player is considered to start with a spell book that contains 100 pages. Each spell they have takes up one page per level of the spell. One can buy new spell books that are either larger or have multiple volumes in their spell book as they see fit. The magically prepared material and the material to write in them cost 25 gp per page. Otherwise buying and selling spells and spell books is changed from the player’s handbook. Selling found spell books is not as lucrative as the spells found in the spell book vanish if the player has learned them and written them in his own spell book and the paper once used can’t be used again (no recycling magic paper). However spells are bought and sold as scrolls. Wizards might let close acquaintances copy spells from each others spell books but acquiring other spells means buying scrolls with the spells on them. Spells in found spell books that are not learnt can be sold as scrolls as well.
So treat all spells in found spell books as scrolls as essentially that’s what they are. Wizards may also choose to treat their master copy as a scroll. In effect they can cast spells directly from their own spell books if they are willing to have the spell vanish from the spell book itself.
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This is all pretty long winded but essentially it deals with three issues that came up when I implemented this house rule.
* How spell casters that want to co-operate can copy each others spells.
* What happens when a spell book full of usable spells is acquired by theft or taken off a dead enemy wizard.
* What the limitations of this rule are. Essentially one can't copy a spell they multiple times in order to cast the same spell from their spell book over and over again.
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I believe that spells are described as a bunch of scribbles and notes that don't actually read well...Dang! When I saw your name show up I was so sure you popped in to exclaim "it's LOSE, not LOOSE!". :-)
Nope, my mission is to stamp out the commonly maligned "ROGUE" error. A core class should be spelled correctly barring an occasional bout of finger fumbles.
Carry on, nothing to see here.FH
I know that you could cast spells directly from your spellbook like a scroll in earlier editions
Actually, it was just a rather common house rule. I remember it being discussed on and off quite extensively in the Forum section of Dragon magazine around when I started reading.
I don't allow it IMC.
And the answer is....
I've gone back into my library and read everything there is on spellbooks, spells, scrolls, casting, etc., ad nauseum. I went through the whole of 2nd ed. (a CD with everything in a searchable PDF file titled The Complete Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition Archive by some guy named Dorian X {some 5900 pages}). Nothing.
I even broke out my original 1st ed. stuff. There was no reference to this ability in Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasures, Underground and Wilderness Adventures, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, or Gods, Demigods and Heroes (unless I fell asleep during some critical paragraph).
Given this lack in both 1st and 2nd ed. books, I can only conclude that the reference is in a more essoteric source (very old-timey Dragon Magizine, etc.) which I do not have, or that it does not exist at all. If the folks at Dungeon, Dragon, Paizo, or WotC don't have information on it, the only other thing to do is try to contact Gygaxx or Arneson and ask them...or conclude...
It isn't part of the RAW, never was, and is one of those wide-spread house rules that everybody uses and nobody can explain.
Seems like even an old codger like me can still learn something. Wow...
Casting spells directly out of spellbooks to me is something that should remain on TV shows liked Charmed, nursery rhymes with witches, and the Evil Dead movies. Now, while I have nothing against the Evil Dead movies, Charmed, or nursery rhymes their spellcasting reflects a simplistic view of magic.
Someone on this thread said that a wizard's spellbook is a collection of formulae, esoteric notes, calculations, diagrams and what not. It's one of the reasons scrolls can contain multiple spells and a normal 5th-level spell takes up 5 pages in a spellbook. Now here's the thing, the spell on a scroll is a neatly wrapped up package of power that can usually be cast as a standard action. Try doing that with a fireball spell from a spellbook, which takes up 3 (count them) 3 full pages in a spellbook! How is that possible as a standard action? The answer is - its not. Even the fastest speed reader couldn't do it.
This is my point at the beginning of the post. Unless your spells are laid out like poems in your spellbook (and even then), how are you possibly supposed to read them in time? Casting a typical spell requires a couple of gestures, a few words and a bit of material. Do you need to make these gestures and use up material components while casting from a spellbook? Who knows - because it aint a rule of the game.
Who would want to cast a spell from their spellbook anyway? It's dumb. If the wizard is worth his salt he would never even consider it, and would tell the barbarian who mentioned it to go jump in the lake.
He could use it if he was desperate I suppose, but my last wizard character would rather have been tortured by hairy smelly ogres for 10 days than erase one spell in his spellbook.
By the way Jeremy, you wouldn't have to use so many rules if you just said that wizards couldn't cast spells out of their spellbooks. But, each to his own I suppose.
You can't cast from the spellbook anymore. Check the spell section of the PHB. I recently tried to find the rule for a character I am currently playing. I am pretty sure I found out that you no longer can do that. But yo7ur the Dm and you can change the rule if you so feel.
Phil and whoever posted above him (Sebastian? I'm lazy and it's late here and I didn't check and I'm not gonna! Phbbbt!) have it head on. The way I see a spellbook, the first pages give an overview of the spell, describing what its essential function does, notes on interesting quirks and limitations, perhaps even a history of where it came from (where else is this info going to be recorded?). Then you may have a list of reagents and materials needed for casting, complex diagrams of the hand gestures, meticulously written words with plenty of accent marks, notes on the mental exercises one must go through to cast the spell, diagrams and illustrations for easier comprehension, notations of interesting, esoteric bits of magical principals and things and how they relate to this spell, etc. All in shorthand.
Simply put, it's not in a format for simply casting straight from the book. It tells you how to go about casting the spell, and it's something that you have to pour over several times before you can even attempt to actually go about memorizing and casting the thing. Only a fraction of the space in the book is actually the stuff essential to working the magic- the rest just tells how to handle those tools. And it's all organized, or not, according to the individual wizard who wrote the thing.
In short, no. It's neither in the rules that one can cast from a spellbook, nor is it hard to come up with a good in-game reason why this is the case, nor is it even that appealing of an option (I certainly would never expunge fireball from my spellbook just to use it one more time!)
Simply put, it's not in a format for simply casting straight from the book...
In addition, the scroll is usually prepped (remember I do 2nd ed.) with use of some or all of the material components in the ink, on the vellum, or whatever. Hand gestures and such are made one-handed (which is part of what adds to the casting time). The spell has already been "charged" by the person who wrote it (which is part of what takes so long in their making).
Treat a spell scroll like a Macro for the actual spell in the book. The book gives all informaiton needed to cast. The Scroll Macro has already been written to automate as much of the function as possible. Pull the scroll and start reading and you activate the Macro and follow the bouncing ball till it goes off.
The problem with allowing a mage to cast spells from a book is that you give him a versatility limited only by his pocket. In order to balance that against the core wizard you must make him less powerful; as a result the class might be unplayably weak.
I'm fairly certain that the casting spells from spellbooks rule came from 1e Unearthed Arcana.
And actually you CAN still cast spells from spellbooks. If you don't memorize your full allotment of spells, you can take 15 minutes to cast a spell directly from your spellbook. Not particularly useful for combat, but a potentially worthwhile thing to do if you need a divination or some such at some point in the day.
I can actually picture non adventuring wizards casting quite a few of their spells from their spellbooks rather than preparing them in the morning.
I'm fairly certain that the casting spells from spellbooks rule came from 1e Unearthed Arcana.
And actually you CAN still cast spells from spellbooks. If you don't memorize your full allotment of spells, you can take 15 minutes to cast a spell directly from your spellbook. Not particularly useful for combat, but a potentially worthwhile thing to do if you need a divination or some such at some point in the day.
I can actually picture non adventuring wizards casting quite a few of their spells from their spellbooks rather than preparing them in the morning.
DO you know where to find that info in the D&D 3.5 core rule books. Just if I decide to use this option, i can point it out to the DM.
By the way Jeremy, you wouldn't have to use so many rules if you just said that wizards couldn't cast spells out of their spellbooks. But, each to his own I suppose.
Sure but I want them to be able to do so in a pinch. Sure its pricey to have to then go and buy a scroll of fireball so you can copy it back into your spell book but that starts looking like a pretty cheap option when the Cleric's already dead and the fighter is 3 hps from going down.
Its main benefit though is that it means finding Magic Missile in a spell book when you have already chosen it as one of your spells is still useful. On the other hand spells are hard to get in my campaign. By 11th level a wizard player, in my campaign, has probably spent 10,000-20,000 gp buying arcane scrolls to copy over into his spell book. The thing is worth a fortune.
WTF?
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*** By thuh way Jeremy, yawl wouldn't hav tuh use so many rules hif yawl jist said thet wizards couldn't cast spells out uh thur spellbooks. But, each tuh his own Ah suppose.***
Shore but Ah want them tuh bay able tuh do so in uh pinch. Shore its pricey tuh hav tuh then go an' buy uh scroll uh farball so yawl can copy it back into chur spell book but thet starts lookin' lahk uh purdy cheap option wheyun thuh Cleric's already dead an' thuh fiteer iz 3 hps frum goin' down.
Its main benefit though iz thet it means findin' Magic Missile in uh spell book wheyun yawl hav already chosen it as wun uh chur spells iz still useful. On thuh other hand spells is hard tuh git in mah campaign. By 11 th level uh wizard player, in mah campaign, has probly spent 10 ,000-20,000 gp buyin' arcane scrolls tuh copy ovur into his spell book. Thuh thin' iz worth uh fortune.
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The message board is switching accents or something???