To give an example from AP 31, one of the treasures is a spellbook that has gotten wet. All but five spells have been destroyed by water damage.
A player then casts Make Whole on the book. What happens? Is the book now back in the condition it was before? Do magical writings like spellbook pages count as magic items?
Scenario 2
There's a book that's so old that it's crumbling to dust. There are a few pages which are meant to be legible enough to provide significant clues. The PC tosses Make Whole on it before even touching it. Is it back in mint condition?
Scenario 3
The NPC has left her diary. She has torn three pages out containing damning confessions. (They're meant to be found in the pocket of her dead body in another area). Someone casts MAKE WHOLE on the diary. Are the missing pages magically restored and does the writing come back?
Scenario 4
Someone has cast Erase on one page of a valuable book. Can Make Whole restore the missing writing?
Scenario 5
Someone has spilled ink on a book. Can Make Whole remove the inkstain but not the writing on the page?
Obviously yes these are all judgment calls for DMs, but it would be good to get a consensus of the limits of the spell.
make whole says it's the same thing as mending, and mending says "All of the pieces of an object must be present for this spell to function."
So I wouldn't allow it if pages (or parts) have been torn out.
Water and age could make it breaky, and air could easily take parts of broken pages away.
So it depends on "destroyed", if it works. Destroy = ruined, it could work, destroy = gone, it probably won't work.
scenarios:
2: if the book was never moved, no animals were around, and no wind ever blew, then it could work.
3: torn out is a no no
4: erase is mightier magic, I would rule no, also make whole perhaps doesn't recognises ink as part of the book. it would try to put parts of pages back where they were, nomatter what was written on them.
5: I would rule that it is impossible, because "the ink" is not a valid target for the spell. And as mentioned before, "the book" doesn't include ink.
However you could rule, that the spell could restore a single letter, thus after a few days, they could reproduce a page or so. Give them a hint of the information, they worked for it.
All this response is strictly my personal opinion (and a bit reading the rules) and helps that Magic doesn't shorten the plotline by 100%.
board took my long answer, so here's my short:
you need the complete material of the book to cast, torn out & crumbled and taken with the wind = can't cast
and the ink isn't part of the object "book", so nothing there to help.
you could cast it on the ink, but every character would need a single cast.
this is my opinion as a GM, because I don't want mages to screw my wonderful storyline.
However, for your earlier scenarios of repairing a book where not all pieces are present, then you need something in the 7th-9th range, based upon the function of Raise Dead vs. Resurrection. To restore something for which not all parts are present is thus at least 7th level, and in this case there is still a "spirit" or "soul" that willfully returns but also carries an "impression" of its proper state. Unless you live in a world where books are inhabited by kami then restoring entirely missing sections of a book probably requires something higher-yet.
Hmm....
Seems like Polymorph Any Object would fit the bill. It's 8th level. Of course it doesn't work on magic items, so there's a question of what a spellbook is.
Polymorph any object makes you choose what you transform it into, so you can't say "as it was before".
I would go with limited wish or something similiar. The enitity could scry into the past to see as it is written.
If there are any serious problems, like a magic book, or anti-scrying magic, you need a real wish. That's how I would judge.
Edit: I can't see how a spellbook could be considered a magic item.
I'd go further: casting Make Whole on the pages of a book would leave the book blank! Writing can be considered an alteration or deterioration of the paper or parchment on the pages, as you etch and stain with your pen. I'd let make whole work fine with binding, tears, etc, but not with the writing. And if a player tried targeting the ink, well Making Whole the ink would probably leave you with a condensed sphere of all the ink in the book which would promptly fall on the ground (the pristine state of the ink was together as a fluid, not stretched out and meshed with paper particles).
Quite hardcore interpretations, but that spell should not be a plot-killer... and it's more fun having the PCs end up with a silly face (and a blank book) than just say they can't do it.
I also apply my theory to things like etchings and engravings. If they try to restore a whole relief, when the adventure just calls for a couple clues in the fragments, well, the guys just fixed the stone door, now it's a smooth slab...
On the Kami idea
Without disturbing the Kami, if you're really devious you can write your spellbook on a living being's skin and then save a few clippings you may Clone.... Disgusting but effective. And yes, it's lvl 8, though Simulacrum would probably work. Raise Dead or Resurrection would, again "heal" away the writing, IMO.
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I'm going to go against the grain here.
This is a perfectly intelligent roleplaying choice. Player should be rewarded for making a smart moves.
Secretly add more spells to the book and have the player make a % roll to each page to see if he recovers them. Keep it reasonable, you are essentially rewarding a player for clever use of a spell so don't make it more than two or three low level spells (or maybe more but make the spells less useful ones like jump, erase, and comprehend langauages). I agree that the book wouldn't have all it's spells magically restored, just a few, and just enough to give the player a small reward for doing the smart thing.
This isn't a RAW thing, this is a GM doing a cool thing for the story/ role play thing.
Edit: We found the same book and this didn't occur to us... though we didn't have access to make whole at the time either so it wouldn't have mattered.
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Under the right circumstance I think it can be a "smart move", but given the nature of D&D and the way plots often revolve around mysteries, fragments and scraps of old books, notes and maps and so forth, what you're talking about is a game-breaker. Suddenly, any time the PCs find something they will cast make whole upon it to see what shows up. It goes from being an "intelligent choice" to rote SOP that kills many adventure plots.
I agree ... under certain circumstances, such as the stagnant pool I defined in my first posts, it is a clever choice ... but generally it's a game-/plot-breaking cheat wrapped in a 2nd level spell.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I feel that in THIS situation it would be a good reward but it's not a rules thing, it's GM discretion, sort of like many divination spells the GM gives what is appropriate and nothing more.
This is not a game breaker, it is giving the player a small reward for smart game play. If this becomes SOP that in no way implies that the GM is obliged to give away game secrets on half torn scraps of parchment.
I don't think it's a matter of needing to nerf plot-killer spells as just taking into account that they exist and not hinging the plot upon them.
In a world where clerics have Speak With Dead, most knowledgeable murderers will either kill people by stealth or at least desecrate the corpse in such a manner as to make the happy cleric spell useless. Yes, it ruins certain plots, but so does modern day forensic medicine and DNA testing.
In a world with Make Whole, shattering a priceless vase isn't that big of a deal because it can be magically restored to good-as-new condition. Of course, this might also make it less valuable if it removed the patina of age.
To go with that example, let's say you've got a thousand year old vase in a tomb. It's valuable, but part of what makes it valuable is the fine pattern of cracks and age marks from the glaze being a thousand years old. Then it gets broken. Does Make Whole rewind it to just before the breaking or does it take it all the way back to the day when it was taken out of the kiln and put on the shelf at the potter's workshop where it was first made?
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Seems to me like it takes the existing pieces and welds them back together. It wouldn't brighten faded dyes or remove yellowing from age. If the cracks were from actual fractures due to time it would repair them. If it were due to the fact that the vase shrank and the laquere didn't then they would remain.
I think this may be a case of 'overthinking' or bringing modern thinking into a magic area.
If you look at more primitive cultures where magic was a belief system, things had an 'essence'. A stone had an essence of earth. A carved stone had an essence of statue. That essence was changed by human or spirit interaction.
What that gets you is, that the essence of a spell book changes each time you put a new spell in it. The essence of a stone changes when you carve it. The essence of clay changes when you fire and glaze it into a vase.
So, to me, make whole should restore the essence of the object, if it can. So a shattered vase would have the essence of a vase. A spell book the essence of a spell book, etc.
Now, how do we get around the way that would ruin a mystery like above, where the clue is partially destroyed pages? Simple. The essence changes over time, so by the time the book degrades from age, it's essence has changed from book to dust. So casting Make Whole on it would only restore the bits of it that still had the essence of book or page remaining. What that would give the PCs is the sections of the book that are still legible can be restored so they can be moved and studied safely without destroying them. For the spell book, any pages that retained most of their ink and still had the 'essence' of spellbook would be restored, but those who had degraded in essence would just return to 'paper' at best.
I think it is simplest to restrain the spell to 'structural' repairs only.
... a spellbook that has gotten wet. All but five spells have been destroyed by water damage. - A player then casts Make Whole on the book.
The Book is whole and undamaged, but the pages mostly contain illegible stains.
This *would* work on stone tablets or a similar item, IMO, as that is a physical change in the structure of the book.
There's a book that's so old that it's crumbling to dust. There are a few pages which are meant to be legible enough to provide significant clues. The PC tosses Make Whole on it before even touching it. Is it back in mint condition?
If *all* the parts are there, sure. Even if the PC didn't touch the book, however, this is unlikely, unless it was in a hermetically sealed case.
The NPC has left her diary. She has torn three pages out containing damning confessions...
As someone pointed out, not all the parts are there, so no go.
Someone has cast Erase on one page of a valuable book. Can Make Whole restore the missing writing?
No go...The Erase made no structural changes, so there is nothing to repair.
Someone has spilled ink on a book. Can Make Whole remove the inkstain but not the writing on the page?
No structural change, so no effect from make whole. Prestidigitation might work if used quickly enough...