Well, as many folks will be pointing you to 3.5 books lets start this off by asking, Just what books are you allowed to use?
And what level is your Wizard?
Use a stick...and the rogue. Trapfinging is a class feature, pay the rogue for every book trap he discovers. Use the stick if he gives you lip.
Who is targeting you, undead? Hide from undead, command undead mindless get no save. Melee types can be slowed with summon monster, invisibily or fly to become a harder target to locate or reach.
What level are you? What spells or wands can you get or make. Magic Missle can make it harder for casters to get spells off.
Explosives runes + cereal box = Breakfast time fun for all in a ten foot radius.
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The only problem with having 'sploding runes on your spell book is that it would almost surely destroy your spellbook. I think there's rules out there somewhere for books bound in other materials--it shouldn't be too hard to have it bound in iron or cold iron or adamantite. Just look up the price per pound and figure it in for covers of the book.
I know those rules were in magic of Farun, I think they also where in one of the complete books, Arcane maybe.
I have a few suggestions:
1) Don't worry too much about keeping books from getting stolen. If someone takes your spellbook(s), ou're likely dead anyways (at least from my 26 years of experience.
2) focus on spellbook protections; fire resistance, water resistance, etc. If someone does take them, and you live, there is always the fun of tracking them down again and getting vengeance(and perhaps more spellbooks).
3) Handy haversack is good to store it. See about, at some point, creating a dimensional pocket(or a secret chest) attached to a ring, in which to store and summon your spellbooks from when needed. You are focused on conjuring after all.
4) Making copies of your spellbooks is another option - carry one set, keep the others safely hidden/stored.
5) Combine some or all these ideas.
Here's a virtually foolproof way to secure your book at your level. It does, however require the daily use of one of your 3rd level spells, and, optionally, a 1st level one, as well, at least till you can afford a magic item to do it for you.
Stage One: After memorizing spells for the day, Cast Shrink Item on your book. Choose to turn it into a piece of cloth. Take five minutes to sew the cloth into your undergarments. Optionally, cast Magic Aura to mask the lingering magic from the Shrink Item spell. The only way for someone to steal your book for the next 24 hours is for them to know to strip you naked and steal your underwear. Literally. If the thief is that good a pickpocket, and has that good of an intelligence network (to know where it is), then he or she deserves to get it.
A once per day item that casts Shrink Item is about 5K in gp, half that if you can craft it yourself, and 360gp (180 to craft) for a once per day Magic Aura item. A kind DM will probably halve those costs again, seeing as how these are strictly non-combat items. Assuming your DM is that kindly, and you can do the crafting, you're looking at two misc. magic items costing about 1400gp total, well within what you can afford at 6th level.
Your spell book is now secure from all but the best and well informed thieves. But you're really only half done.
Stage Two: Now, a wizard who isn't lugging a spell book might make a potential thief wonder where it is, so take a page from the best con men and show the potential thief (mark) what he or she expects, and wants, to see, i.e., a spell book. Buy a blank book, use Sepia and Exploding runes to trap it to your heart's content. Don't leave it out in the open or the thief might get suspicious, so keep it in your pack under lock and key. Make sure it is distinctive enough to be traced with Locate Object, in case the thief just grabs it and runs, and you want to track him down. Also have the rogue trap it with a poisoned lock, etc. You want it to look as real as possible.
Thief rummages through your things looking for a spell book. He finds it, then either gets paralyzed, exploded, or tracked back to his lair. Epic win for you, Epic fail for the thief.
At higher levels, other options become available, like enchanting your book with a low level of sentience and the ability to teleport. Then, if the book gets stolen, or even threatened, it can just t-port itself back to you. Might as well give it a few ranks in Spellcraft so it can aid you in spell research while you're at it. You won't be able to do use the Shrink Item strategy anymore (it doesn't work on magical objects), but you'll have plenty of other options.
Hope this helps.
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4) Making copies of your spellbooks is another option - carry one set, keep the others safely hidden/stored.Always have copies.
Older editions differentiated between the "traveling spell book(s)" and the "tome", the latter being a massive volume kept safe back in the magic-user's tower, crypt or wherever. It's really not a bad idea.
Always be prepared to cut and run, then have back-ups.
R.
Which of course by the rules is pretty much completely unfeasable until pretty much teen levels.
Fake tooth, heh, I like that. Not sure if the book would fit, tho....
Unless the captured book is made out of some special material, the explosive runes trap should have destroyed it.
The safest way to avoid getting damaged by the book is...not to read it. What I mean is, let the rogue do it. He can detect even the magical traps and have an opportunity to disarm them, or let you use magic like erase or dispel magic to counter them, after he or she has found them.
In fact, the easiest thing to do would be to take a few days off, if possible, and repeatedly cast Dispel Magic over and over again. The spells written in the book aren't magical in and of themselves, so you shouldn't damage anything.
Hiring a higher level caster to cast Dispel Magic for you is another option.
Hope this helps.
Oh, and Mirror Image is a possible life saver as well, since it's possible the book has a "ray" trap of some kind that makes an attack roll. Mirror Image would give an excellent chance of avoiding that type of trap.
Sounds like a pretty good plan.
A couple of caveats, tho. You are dealing with "magic" so sometimes things don't go exactly by the "rules". A creative DM might, for example, have a trap keyed to the use of Dispel Magic, so it's not guaranteed. A truly devious DM might have a creature bound to the book that can only be freed when some "thief" casts dispel magic and removes the mystical bindings that keep it from manifesting.
Also, a trap could be shielded from detection by Magic Aura, so Detect Magic might not find it. Those are unlikely complications, at best, tho.
The long and the short of it is, "You pays your money, and you takes your chances."
Oh, and you might want to consider that, should you enter an Anti-Magic field, or get targeted by a Dispel Magic at just the right time, the book would return to normal size. Which, if it's in your mouth, could be...bad.
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You could always put it in a condom and transport it the way mules transport drugs. Just don't miscalculate when the shrink item spell is going to expire and hope you don't get hit with greater dispel magic. Though I suspect where the sun don't shine might block line of effect...
Oh... Ouch. Tooth or Bum... Anti magic zones are going to HURT BAD.
Well, at least with the bum you can still cast spells with verbal components....
Edit: Might get a free conversion to "sonic" damage as well if you're casting when it happens.
Take some levels in Geometer until you get the ability to write spells on one page regardless of level, then tattoo them to your body. Your DM just needs to allow Complete Arcane material and rules. This will keep your spellbook safe as long as you have... ummmm... skin.
Heck, just not taking levels in Geometer and just tattooing them to your body is a short-term solution until you get high enough level to do something really exotic and it won't matter that you ran out of skin-space.
But if I got really high-level and paranoid, I'd use Polymorph Any Object to turn my spellbook into a powerful monster, and use dispel when I needed to memorize spells. A chained up monster, because my spellbook should not be escaping and having its own life. :P
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Easiest method to save your spellbook (without shoving a shrunken book where the sun doesn't shine, etc.) is as noted to just cough up the gold and copy your spellbook, then keep it in a safe place with traps in place.
As for intelligent foes (animals and foes with similar intelligence should not be attacking you unless provided an obvious reason...they attack the nearest obvious enemy), you as PCs usually "get the caster" first. Can you give some examples of the enemy going after you first? Might be simple as a change in party tactics.
My Wizards rely upon a few handy little tricks:
False Book: A false book with the middle cut out, in which your actual spell-book is resting inside a lead-lined box made of adamantine, just large enough to hold the book and with hardness enough to protect against the Explosive Runes or whatever other spell you choose to tie to the book.
THAT is your grimoire?: The Decoy tactic also works well. Nothing is stopping the PC from declaring a set of scrolls as his actual spell-book (think big, massive scrolls like what would be used in old libraries, not the light, easily rolled up scrolls spells can be cast from) and an ornate-looking book with some heavy-duty Magic Aura and arcane gobbledegook scribbled inside can also lead to hilarious shenanigans as the villains snatch up the 'Grimoire', ask you what can you possibly do now, you hold up the 'Scroll' Spellbook, give them a mocking smile and blow them off the face of Golarion.
Other forms of spellbook are naturally limited only to your deviousness and what you can slip past the DM, naturally.
Store it in a Skeleton. Yes its gross but a decent HD Skeleton can have the box chained inside it, stuff it's skull(s) with items that will explode when struck (hopefully after the skeleton has been smashed to pieces so you can get even more pain on the thieves), then have explosive runes cast on the chest, then have a chinese puzzle-box like setup inside, again filled with magical traps that are going to burn, freeze, melt or blast the faces off the thieves, and the final, most evil trick is a Summon Monster spell that summons some sort of Lawful entity that will NOT be impressed with such a Chaotic act as Theft.....
I'm confused.
What's the issue here? Why is this happening? Why is your wizard's spellbook so frequent a target for theft/destruction that you'd need to post this thread?
You say you've got a kinder, gentler GM. Sarcasm? It sounds to me that he's metagaming pretty heavily. In the D&D universe, there's such a thing as a sorcerer. Just because you encounter an arcane caster doesn't mean he or she has a spellbook. Even assuming an opponent suspects you might be a wizard, it should be relatively rare that a foe goes fro your book.
Is anyone trying to steal your barbarian/fighter/paladin's weapons in the middle of the night, every night? Do you find bad guys always try to sunder the cleric's holy symbol? If not, you're being picked on. Not fair.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm getting the feeling the best way to protect your character's spellbook is to sit down with your GM and figure out what his beef is.
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It's reasonable to protect your spellbook, fails get saved, you get dunked in water, sometimes you get captured. It's uncommon but happens. Probably the safest bet is just to keep a backup book with your most critical spells somewhere handy. I do like the shrink item idea for this reason, it's fairly inexpensive and you only have to refresh it once every week or two.
I agree that it's unreasonable for a GM to repeatedly target a spellbook specifically. Maybe once in a campaign, or ever.
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Easiest method to save your spellbook (without shoving a shrunken book where the sun doesn't shine, etc.) is as noted to just cough up the gold and copy your spellbook, then keep it in a safe place with traps in place.
As for intelligent foes (animals and foes with similar intelligence should not be attacking you unless provided an obvious reason...they attack the nearest obvious enemy), you as PCs usually "get the caster" first. Can you give some examples of the enemy going after you first? Might be simple as a change in party tactics.
1) If your playing by the rules...then this is the HARDEST option because it requires you to have the wealth of a level 10+ character.
2) There is a difference between geek the mage and going after the spellbook. The OP isn't asking for help with the first, he's asking for help with the second.
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"Trying to kill my wizard." DMs are impartial, they'd never pull anything like that!
A good DM won't target a spellbook because that's an easy way to drive players away from the table, but that doesn't solve any issues of protecting while underwater, etc.
If it becomes obvious your spellbook is worth something more than any other spellbook (perhaps word leaks out you've researched a unique spell), then there might be a DM reason for thieves to seek you out.
I seem to remember a Dragon issue, third edition I believe, with a very awesome Spellcraft (although it may have been called something else then)article about spellbooks. A lot of the spells were geared towards protecting the book.
I wonder where that magazine is...I think it was that one with the article with the four small races (including a raven thing, a spider thing, a sort of gnome, and something else). Anybody remember which one that was?
There's a great Pathfinder spell called "Bookward". I don't know the source but you can find it at the Archives of Nethys.
Phantom trap is another great spell since it tells the thief there's always one more trap that really isn't there, and they can't disarm it or determine what it is no matter how high they roll.
Placing spell traps on the book or it's lead lined waterproof container is free. Alarm, Sleep, Deep Slumber, Summon Monster, Summon Swarm, and Suggestion (bring the book to you), and teleport are all great spells that can be upgraded as you level up and learn them. Remember, designing a spell trap doesn't always have to follow the effect of the spell exactly, you can shape them to do slightly different things just like when crafting wondrous items. Tying an alarm spell to a locate object on your book will create a beacon that you can home in on as long as you're on the same plane. The duration is something you might have to work with your DM on to get extended but it's better than nothing.
I'm very fond of the 1st ed solution of having a traveling spellbook with you in the field and one of the "great books" back in your wizard's tower. If you're too low a level to have your own personal tower set up, the great book is your old master's and you just need to go back and beg him to let you rescribe your spells back into your traveling spellbook.
There are assorted enchantments specifically for spellbooks in the 3.0 book Magic of Faerun, p. 172 to 174.
Now, following the strict Pathfinder RAW, what you need for ultimate spellbook protection is a few regular protection items that you probably want anyway and one feat you don't want as much but doesn't hurt, namely a Cloak of Resistance +5, a Stone of Luck, and the Iron Will Feat. Another item is a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing. A fourth is a drop of Sovereign Glue.
The final things you need are a couple items you should be able to pick up at your local magic item emporium's bargain table or if not craft yourself by purposely raising the DC when crafting wondrous items so as to receive a cursed item: the Stone of Weight and the Vacuous Grimoire.
The Stone of Weight decreases your movement rate by half, which is a bug which can be gotten around mostly or all the way via the Boots of Striding and Springing depending on whether you're a medium or small character. This leaves you with a handy magic rock you can't lose unless someone casts Remove Curse on it and then you willingly discard it. Theft won't get around this, even if the thief casts remove curse. The bad penny will eventually disappear from their possession and show up in yours.
Why is this useful? Well, you've used Sovereign Glue to glue it to a Vacuous Grimoire. Why do you want a book that can suck your Intelligence, Charisma and Wisdom out if you fail a couple DC 15 Will saves? Because even more so than with the Stone of Weight, this is not a bug but a feature. You're a wizard, so Will is your best save, and once you're 10th level, if you have the Cloak of Resistance +5 and the Luckstone, you simply can't fail a DC 15 Will Save if you've also taken the Iron Will feat.
But beyond that, you now have a book that can't be destroyed even by dropping it in a volcano unless someone casts Remove Curse on it first, and with the Stone of Weight permanently attached, it will be bouncing back to you like a faithful dog even if stolen by someone with Teleport.
You cast Secret Page on your Vacuous Grimoire and use the secret pages for your spellbook. It's a wonderful protection system since it blasts the minds of those who try to peek at your secrets but lets you read them with impunity. If your DM decides to be difficult and declares that you cannot use Secret Page on a Vacuous Grimoire to inscribe your spells therein, then simply make a Blessed Book, open the Vacuous Grimoire to the middle, smear it with Sovereign Glue, and glue your Blessed Book inside it's wonderful indestructible cover.
You may find Book Ward a useful spell from the Pathfinder Chronicles: Seekers of Secrets.
I'm confused.
What's the issue here? Why is this happening? Why is your wizard's spellbook so frequent a target for theft/destruction that you'd need to post this thread?
You say you've got a kinder, gentler GM. Sarcasm? It sounds to me that he's metagaming pretty heavily. In the D&D universe, there's such a thing as a sorcerer. Just because you encounter an arcane caster doesn't mean he or she has a spellbook. Even assuming an opponent suspects you might be a wizard, it should be relatively rare that a foe goes fro your book.
Is anyone trying to steal your barbarian/fighter/paladin's weapons in the middle of the night, every night? Do you find bad guys always try to sunder the cleric's holy symbol? If not, you're being picked on. Not fair.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm getting the feeling the best way to protect your character's spellbook is to sit down with your GM and figure out what his beef is.
Well, it's generally agreed that wizards are the most powerful individuals. If you are trying to come up with decently intelligent and realistic opponents who are not just one-shot enemies, they would (or should) aim to disable their opponents. It shouldn't happen every other day, but it should be a constant threat.
If the party has been disabled in combat and captured, what is the most reasonable thing for their capturers to do? Disarm them. They take the fighter's sword, break the cleric's holy symbol, burn the wizard's spellbook. Now, if the party escapes, what would be the first thing to do? The fighter grabs a big stick, the cleric carves himself a new symbol, and the wizard... well, he better had taken spell mastery. Tough luck. It's not being picked on. It's realistic. So the wizard had better taken precautions against his spellbook being taken away. After all, he has the means to do it.
(Same thing goes for the Arcane Bond object.)
I may have overlooked it, but it didn't look like anyone recommended using the TRAP MAKING RULES to trap your spellbook.
All you need is Craft Wondrous Items and a high Spellcraft check. After that, you can get REALLY creative in the kinds of traps you put onto it.
It could be something as simple as a shocking grasp spell that targets anyone who touches the book without first saying the right password, or something as complex as, well, something really complex.
Also, never underestimate the power of permenancied runes. hey can be set to trigger by touch you know.