Stuff I agree with
Reasonable precautions are reasonable. NPCs should be smart and play to their strengths, just as the PCs should. If a PC does not take Reasonable (key word) precautions, he should not be exempt from the consequences of his inattention or inaction.
--JD
StuffFrom the book
"He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare."
Means for 9 hours a day you aren't moving. More than 1/3 of the day You are sleeping or you are meditating. This is a specific weakness of the class. As you point out, divine casters only have to meditate for an hour, Wizards need to both rest and meditate. It is a wizard specific thing, just like lugging around that spell book. Sorcerers don't need to. Witches do.
Why?
Because it is a balancing weakness.
He only has to spend 9 hours to replenish spells. BNW's point was that if the wizard is traveling, he may not not expend his spells for several days and not need to go through the routine.
Besides, a simple rope trick spell (or any of the numerous other spells of the like) negates the whole thief spy thing. And I don't know how your party's work, but in mine if someone with high perception spots a person following the party, he would shout it out, instantly mobilizing the party. Even if the high perception person failed his sense-motive check, someone else would make it. Regardless, the wizard is now tipped off to the stranger's presence.
I also have to give a big shout out to the Diviner wizard specialist; at level 8 he gets permanent Detect-Scrying. He also always acts in a surprise round and has an insane initiative check. That's pretty anti-theif/assassin.
It is no wonder you think Wizards are over-powered if all of the features added to balance them are off limits in your games...
If your only retort is to insult the way people play based on made up accusations then you don't have a point.
"He must choose and prepare his spells ahead of time by getting 8 hours of sleep and spending 1 hour studying his spellbook. While studying, the wizard decides which spells to prepare."
And here's why i said its not as big a deal as you seem to think
Rest: To prepare his daily spells, a wizard must first sleep for 8 hours. The wizard does not have to slumber for every minute of the time, but he must refrain from movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period. If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells. If the character does not need to sleep for some reason, he still must have 8 hours of restful calm before preparing any spells.
So unless the party is being pelted by pixies (and wracking up a body count) for the entire 8 hours, come sunrise or at worst noon the wizard takes a cat nap and and boom, ultimate arcane power.
Means for 9 hours a day you aren't moving. More than 1/3 of the day You are sleeping or you are meditating.
No, it doesn't. It means that on days where the wizard is blowing though his spells he's asleep or meditating for an 9 hours a day. As the DM i know which days will have random encounters and which days will have a side adventure that will suck off his spells, it doesn't mean the NPC's know which days those will be.(not that they couldn't set something up)
Is sundering/disarming a weapon going after the fighter? Nope. So why is interrupted sleep, spellbook theft or destructions, etc?
Sundering more or less yes. I think its really cheesy to deprive a fighter of their weapon focus and weapons specialization feats and/or their highest enchancement bonus weapon for a long period of time. Its something i might do once as a plot point near the end of the dungeon but i don't consider it as a regular tactic because as with the wizards spellbook, i can't really justify an NPC doing it. While it might fit the "evil is all one big happy family who exist to make the PC's lives miserable" model I run my monsters as individuals. What does it gain an individual monster to sunder a sword? Not much. It deprives them of loot and its a sub optimal tactic for winning a fight. Why on earth would the orc in encounter 1 risk his life to make things easier on the Big bad at the end of the dungeon? I might occasionally have a herd of religious fanatics with that attitude, but its far from SOP.
I'm not coddling the wizard either. The battle hym of the Orcish republic is "Kill da wiiiizard" sung to the tune of "Kill the waaaaabit" (its also why my wizards tend to wear stylish leather outfits and carry a shortsword and crossbow)
If someone has the resources to track and follow the party, and then sneak up next to the wizard while he's sleeping with the spellbook under his pillow, why on earth wouldn't you just coup de grace the wizard rather than making the rather high slight of hand check to lift his head up off the pillow and get it?
Would you also argue attacking a witch familiar is off-limits?
Depends on what its doing. If a pig is moving around for a flank its fair game. If the scorpion is hanging out in the witches left pocket it seems rather arbitrary, not to mention idiotic, for random goblin number 5 to start targeting it.
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He only has to spend 9 hours to replenish spells. BNW's point was that if the wizard is traveling, he may not not expend his spells for several days and not need to go through the routine.
Besides, a simple rope trick spell (or any of the numerous other spells of the like) negates the whole thief spy thing. And I don't know how your party's work, but in mine if someone with high perception spots a person following the party, he would shout it out, instantly mobilizing the party. Even if the high perception person failed his sense-motive check, someone else would make it. Regardless, the wizard is now tipped off to the stranger's presence.
I also have to give a big shout out to the Diviner wizard specialist; at level 8 he gets permanent Detect-Scrying. He also always acts in a surprise round and has an insane initiative check. That's pretty anti-theif/assassin.
Which are reasonable precautions. Just like every night a good GM will ask how and where you are sleeping, if there are shifts, who is on what shift, etc...
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If his rest is interrupted, each interruption adds 1 hour to the total amount of time he has to rest in order to clear his mind, and he must have at least 1 hour of uninterrupted rest immediately prior to preparing his spells.
Thanks for helping me make my point. So each pixie attack would interrupt rest and add an hour. I'm not sure where you got this from, but it helps my case so thanks.
As to sneaking up while sleeping, who said that. Pick pocket while you are in town, or if it isn't safely stowed away you can target to damage or sunder (it's only paper).
These are things that can be countered with reasonable precautions, but they are things that must be countered.
Also the sunder rules changed so magic weapons are really hard to sunder.
And a fighter should have a good enough CMD to protect himself from such things, unlike a wizard.
As was said, simple things like Rope trick fix most of these issues most of the time. But you have to spend the gold/spells/time to do them. And if a party falls into a predictable pattern that is no longer as effective as they get to higher levels and smarter enemies...
All I am saying is that a wizard is more vulnerable than most other classes, which is the truth of the class. Potentially both the most powerful in the game and the most vulnerable.
The notion of "reasonable precautions" is pretty subjective. As we've seen in this thread, that can range from thousands of gold piece investments to simple spells.
I'm sure that not even BNW would object to a wizard storing the book in something like a handy haversack and using rope trick, for both of those are rather standard operating procedures. It's probably pretty common to keep a backup book as well. But many of us object to "reasonable" being defined as elaborate enchantments, schemes, and gold piece investments. At that point it is crossing the line between reasonable precautions and anti-GM defenses.
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The notion of "reasonable precautions" is pretty subjective. As we've seen in this thread, that can range from thousands of gold piece investments to simple spells.
I'm sure that not even BNW would object to a wizard storing the book in something like a handy haversack and using rope trick, for both of those are rather standard operating procedures. It's probably pretty common to keep a backup book as well. But many of us object to "reasonable" being defined as elaborate enchantments, schemes, and gold piece investments. At that point it is crossing the line between reasonable precautions and anti-GM defenses.
I don't think he would either. But then both become significant costs for wizards that should be built in when discussing class needs.
This appears to often be handwaved in "Wizard/God" discussions. The wizard is fairly fragile relative to other classes unless certain provisions are made to assist them in being successful. Some of these provisions (guards for example) come as a result of being part of a mixed group.
Thanks for helping me make my point. So each pixie attack would interrupt rest and add an hour. I'm not sure where you got this from, but it helps my case so thanks.
It completely ruins your point. You were going by the old "Wizard was woken up by a fighter taking a leak, no rest for you, no spells for you" malarky because you only read the short version in the into section. Tell me, how many times were you bothered by pixies that night?
It comes from
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/magic.html
As to sneaking up while sleeping, who said that. Pick pocket while you are in town, or if it isn't safely stowed away you can target to damage or sunder (it's only paper).
What kind of wizard keeps their spellbook in a pocket? Seriously, you can't pick pocket something out of the middle of a backpack.
These are things that can be countered with reasonable precautions, but they are things that must be countered.
Have you had a wizard holding out his spellbook while running around town or something?
And a fighter should have a good enough CMD to protect himself from such things, unlike a wizard.
Hence labeling it a sub optimal tactic.
All I am saying is that a wizard is more vulnerable than most other classes, which is the truth of the class. Potentially both the most powerful in the game and the most vulnerable.
The wizard is more vulnerable than his spellbook. Half the planning it takes to get the spellbook could be used to kill him instead.
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No rogue would ever steal a spellbook unless specially commissioned (ie. it's a plot point). Why?
Rogue 1: That spellbook looks easy to steal. I bet it'd sell for a lot on the black market.
Rogue 2: Are you iggerant or just stupid? No fence'll take a spellbook. They can be tracked. Sometimes they 'splode if anyone but their owner looks at them. And you get a pissed off wizard hunting you.
Rogue 1: but without his spellbook what's he going to do?
Rogue 2: I hear lots o' wizards keep spares. And besides, he hangs out with a cleric. You want to upset a church? 'taint worth my hide robbin' a cleric. Robbin' a cleric's buddy is near as bad. They c'n find things.
It's like having shall issue concealed weapon permits. Crime goes down because there's no way to know if the victim has a gun or not. The availability of countermeasures keeps people from stealing spellbooks because they have no way of knowing there really are no precautions.
Are you kidding me?
Spellbooks are incredibly valuable. That is like saying no one would steal gold from a wizard.
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Honestly, depending on the wizard, it's not that hard to destroy his spell book if you are wanting to. Unfortunately, as the system shows, it's often easier to do this than kill the wizard. Despite all the talk about it being easier to kill the wizard.
If you have an NPC sniper, there's a limit to how much damage he can do to the wizard from a sniping position. He may be able to one shot the wizard, he might not be able to. The higher the wizard, the less likely his is to one shot him.
However, one-shotting a spell book the wizard is reading as he memorizes his spells, that's pretty much a given if he's using it in the open. Any wizard who's dumb enough to study his spell book out in the open, deserves to have it sniped by the sniper and burned to a crisp with a flaming arrow or bolt or magic missile.
The problem being, of course, that depending on the circumstances, the Wizard may not be able to do his memorizing in a hidden location. Depending on how much he's used his spells the previous day, and his resources. A smart wizard will have a wand of Rope Trick or something, for such situations.
The point is, everyone makes mistakes, and if a wizard makes the mistake of exposing his spell book then he deserves it being sundered or stolen. By the same token, this means the only wizards who are going to let you peruse their spellbooks are those who have more than one, and they are not going to let you look at their main one. They're going to let you look at a book that's specifically for that, so they don't lose their spells. And their more powerful ones won't be in there, since they will want to keep them for themselves (in my own world, if you want a level X spell, you have to find someone capable of casting X+2 to look at their spell books to get it, which means that 8 and 9 level spells are either researched or obtained from purloined spell books, the most powerful of wizards don't share their ultimate spells, because they don't want to give up that power). And yes, that means 8th and 9th level scrolls are very rare.
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It completely ruins your point. You were going by the old "Wizard was woken up by a fighter taking a leak, no rest for you, no spells for you" malarky because you only read the short version in the into section. Tell me, how many times were you bothered by pixies that night?
It comes from
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/magic.html
Being attacked by pixies doesn't qualify as "...movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period" and doesn't count as an interruption?
And yes, if a spell book is a small object it could be pick pocketed from your backpack, much as a laptop could be if you were in South America as happened to a friend of mine. The can also just take the entire backpack.
Why take a spellbook? Aside from nerfing the wizard, they can be quite valuable.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/spellbooks
And those books don't have nearly as many spells as a PC spellbook would.
The point is that Wizards, while powerful, are also very vulnerable and dependent. It's part of the fun of the class.
Rogue 2: I hear lots o' wizards keep spares. And besides, he hangs out with a cleric. You want to upset a church? 'taint worth my hide robbin' a cleric. Robbin' a cleric's buddy is near as bad. They c'n find things.
By this logic, no thief would ever target a party for fear of upsetting some nameless entity or someone that may or may not have detection spells memorized. Consider, most PCs do not keep detection spells memorized or at most they have one or two. Based on that gross over-generalization, the rogue may believe he has several hours or a day to get rid of the book.
If the rogue thinks he can get away with it, and has a fence that is willing to liquidate the spell book, why wouldn't he do that? If he gets rid of it fast enough, the wizard doesn't catch him with it and the wizard cannot prove anything to the King's Justice. If the wizard goes medieval on the rogue to find out what happened to the spell book, the rogue has the wizard arrested for assault. If it goes too far, the wizard makes a move toward an evil alignment and the wizard is arrested for murder.
Again, it comes down to story v. whimsy. If the wizard is wandering around town, nose is his spell book, not paying attention to his surroundings, he may very well get jumped by a couple of thugs that can keep him from casting spells by constantly threatening with AoO and sneak attack damage. That's fine within the story concept. If the GM is doing it because he thinks the wizard is too powerful or some other whimsical reason, then the GM probably shouldn't be GM'ing.
--JD
Spellbooks are incredibly valuable. That is like saying no one would steal gold from a wizard.
Gold pieces generally don't have booby-traps. Also, the very value of a spellbook makes it harder to dispose of. It's easy to fence a few pieces of jewelry; a spellbook takes somebody with serious money to move it. Kind of like stealing expensive art, you should have a buyer lined up before you steal it.
Even then, duplication of resources (i.e. spells) means that any buyer will really only want a small portion of most spellbooks, as they probably already have a good portion of the spells in their own books. This means that it's more cost effective to legitimately acquire the few spells you need than buy up a whole spellbook for its market value (sum total of spells).
Of course, wizards could just steal spellbooks themselves, but that's another story. And there will always be somebody dumb enough to not consider the consequences; criminals are often both stupid and greedy.
Enchanting your spellbook as an intelligent item with Speech is probably a good place to start. When your spellbook can identify itself to authorities, it's a lot riskier to dispose of (and harder to steal). Adding 1000gp to the price of a Blessed Book isn't much (500gp base, Int 10, speech).
Being attacked by pixies doesn't qualify as "...movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period" and doesn't count as an interruption?
Not what i said. Not what i implied and you had to ignore a direct question to make this "point". Enough. Goodbye.
Spellbooks are incredibly valuable. That is like saying no one would steal gold from a wizard.Gold pieces generally don't have booby-traps. Also, the very value of a spellbook makes it harder to dispose of. It's easy to fence a few pieces of jewelry; a spellbook takes somebody with serious money to move it. Kind of like stealing expensive art, you should have a buyer lined up before you steal it.
Even then, duplication of resources (i.e. spells) means that any buyer will really only want a small portion of most spellbooks, as they probably already have a good portion of the spells in their own books. This means that it's more cost effective to legitimately acquire the few spells you need than buy up a whole spellbook for its market value (sum total of spells).
Of course, wizards could just steal spellbooks themselves, but that's another story. And there will always be somebody dumb enough to not consider the consequences; criminals are often both stupid and greedy.
Enchanting your spellbook as an intelligent item with Speech is probably a good place to start. When your spellbook can identify itself to authorities, it's a lot riskier to dispose of (and harder to steal). Adding 1000gp to the price of a Blessed Book isn't much (500gp base, Int 10, speech).
Stealing spellbooks is all about the risk vs. the reward. It is incredibly dangerous. But if you can pull it off, there is a lot of profit that can be made. Joe the street-rat is not going to try his hand at it. But the high level thief who wants something else to do besides pulling the gems out of statues in active temples might give it a shot. He loves the danger, is a little crazy, and has the skills/resources/contacts to make it work.
For reasons already stated, if the GM wants your book... your screwed. The best you can do is make it technically not something he would get by coincidence like a sinking ship or something. I like to use spellshards/Auron's spellshards from the eberron book to avoid this problem since it's a crystal... crystal get wet, so what! Improve hardness ()or whatever the spell I'm thinking of is called) is lowish in level and has a permanent duration allowing it to cover all but the most determined direct attack (i.e. you angered the GM and are screwed).
Don't taunt/anger your GM and give him reason to lash out at your book, stuff it in your bag and treat it like Varsuvius from OoTS treats his raven (it only comes out when directly interacted with:))
Joe the street-rat is not going to try his hand at it
Well, he did. Thats why they now call him the street rat.
Bring him some cheese if you're passing by the deli ok?
However, one-shotting a spell book the wizard is reading as he memorizes his spells, that's pretty much a given if he's using it in the open. Any wizard who's dumb enough to study his spell book out in the open, deserves to have it sniped by the sniper and burned to a crisp with a flaming arrow or bolt
Books are harder than you think to set on fire, especially high quality ones that are probably made of vellum rather than paper.
or magic missile.
Targets up to five creatures, no two of which can be more than 15 ft. apart
Objects are not damaged by the spell.
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Being attacked by pixies doesn't qualify as "...movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task during the rest period" and doesn't count as an interruption?Not what i said. Not what i implied and you had to ignore a direct question to make this "point". Enough. Goodbye.
It was exactly what you said, based on the scenario I described where I told you how a GM had pixies keep the party up all night, messing with the wizards sleep.
Which would cause interruptions which extend the rest time needed by an hour which is exactly what happened. And is exactly what is described in the rule you cited.
As to the fragility of books.
Paper or cloth has a hardness of 0 and 2 hit points per inch of thickness.
Which is less than a wizard.
At higher levels you have more ways to protect your spellbook, but you have to protect it and if you are smart you'll want to have a back up.
Which costs gold.
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Would you also argue attacking a witch familiar is off-limits?
In fact, I will not as a DM attack a familar unless and until they start using it in combat to deliver touch attacks, maul face, etc.
Its just poor action economy for my npcs most of the time. Say I gak a toad with an attack. The caster is still at full HP and only needs to 5ft back and cast dominate person and treat the NPC as a toad till he gets the familar back.
By KOing the famiar my NPC had done nothing to win the combat that he's in right now. All hes done is make a caster very angry with him personally. Simular thought processes apply to sundering a spellbook hanging from a wizards belt (as if any wizard were actually that blatent about it).
On the other hand, if I sunder a fighters sword, the odds of winning the fight go way up. At worst he won't be full attacking while he pulls out a back up morningstar and at best the fighter is out of luck.
In either case a make whole cast after the fight will repair both items (unless killed by a decentigrate or somthing equally out there) - especially if your DM removes the double caster level requirement to fix magic items (and he should).
@OP:
Cast Shrink Item on spellbook. Turn it into piece of cloth. Cast Magic Aura to remove the aura. Wear cloth as your loincloth. Nobody ever takes your loincloth.
And if you run into an Anti-Magic Field:
Look surprised and say in a loud voice, "I'm such a powerful Wizard, I crap spellbooks." Gain circumstance bonus for Intimidation check.
A similar discussion can be found here.
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@OP:
Cast Shrink Item on spellbook. Turn it into piece of cloth. Cast Magic Aura to remove the aura. Wear cloth as your loincloth. Nobody ever takes your loincloth.
And if you run into an Anti-Magic Field:
Look surprised and say in a loud voice, "I'm such a powerful Wizard, I crap spellbooks." Gain circumstance bonus for Intimidation check.
A similar discussion can be found here.
Actually in prison yes they do take your loincloth. Other then identification purposes they give you "new" set of cloths in case you smuggle something.
there are other balancing features we forgot about involving classes like the wizard. or almost any class that prepares spells
if you prepare a spell for a situation that doesn't occur that day, it's effectively a wasted slot.
and you can only cast a spell a number of times equal to the number of copies you prepare
and if you want to apply a metamagic feat to the spell without buying a rod. you have to prepare the spell accordingly by designating a higher level slot when you prepare it.
just because you have potential access to your classes whole spell list doesn't mean you have the slots to prepare each spell.
you have something you must protect, whether tome, familiar or set of ideals.
these issues are less severe for most spontaneous casters.
Actually in a modern prison yes they do take your loincloth. Other then identification purposes they give you "new" set of cloths in case you smuggle something.
Fixed that for you.
@OP:
Cast Shrink Item on spellbook. Turn it into piece of cloth. Cast Magic Aura to remove the aura. Wear cloth as your loincloth. Nobody ever takes your loincloth.
Does Shrink Item turn it into whatever cloth you might choose, or just turn it into a tiny, cloth-like replica of the item? The spell isn't exactly clear on the matter, and I think you'd get a tiny, pillow-like spellbook rather than something suitable for use as a loincloth.
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Would you also argue attacking a witch familiar is off-limits?
In fact, I will not as a DM attack a familar unless and until they start using it in combat to deliver touch attacks, maul face, etc.
Its just poor action economy for my npcs most of the time. Say I gak a toad with an attack. The caster is still at full HP and only needs to 5ft back and cast dominate person and treat the NPC as a toad till he gets the familar back.
By KOing the famiar my NPC had done nothing to win the combat that he's in right now. All hes done is make a caster very angry with him personally. Simular thought processes apply to sundering a spellbook hanging from a wizards belt (as if any wizard were actually that blatent about it).
On the other hand, if I sunder a fighters sword, the odds of winning the fight go way up. At worst he won't be full attacking while he pulls out a back up morningstar and at best the fighter is out of luck.
In either case a make whole cast after the fight will repair both items (unless killed by a decentigrate or somthing equally out there) - especially if your DM removes the double caster level requirement to fix magic items (and he should).
I agree with you it shouldn't be the "go to" move, and I would use the same criteria as you as to if I'm going to attack that familiar.
But this is where the expectation comes in that a player spend resources to protect these valuable things, like spellbooks and familiars. This is a resource tax of sorts on these classes, which is built into the design of the classes. The wizard needs to be protected at night and to spend on backup spellbooks and spells slots such as rope trick.
Also, as an aside, the sunder rules changed a lot so it is very, very hard to sunder a magic item.
"Damaging Magic Weapons: An attacker cannot damage a magic weapon that has an enhancement bonus unless his weapon has at least as high an enhancement bonus as the weapon struck."
I just remembered an old NPC I made for a 3.5 game.
He had a clone of himself, wearing a ring of fire resistance, preserved with a backup (fireproof) spellbook which included (among many spells) D-Door. They were stored in the enclosed furnace of an old mage tower.
He also had clones & treated books in various other places - an acid pool, a disease infested crypt crowded with mummies, and in an air pocket deep in the earth, filled with poisonous volcanic gas.
Party's job was to discreetly seek out and destroy the clones before killing the mage; pull out his safety net and then face him with his (now) false sense of immortality.
Just a side note on Rope Trick:
It's dangerous.
You can still be tracked to your Rope Trick, and you might need to come out swinging. Or they may just end the Rope Trick for you...
Edit: Oh, and my players often left backup spell books with major temples or secure institutions. Often they traveled with a lesser spellbook if they knew they were going into hazardous environments (i.e. water/volcano/etc.) that may harm the books.
Pulling a side thread here: What forms do spellbooks take in games you play. Extra kudos to really nifty new versions. I prime the pump.
Spellbook: a book containing a number of pages upon which the essense of spells are written in ink. Book may be made of a number of materials and with various exteriors. Pages are traditionally parchment, though some worlds allow paper, vellum, metal, etc., and others allow fireproofed, etc. at additional cost. Inks are 'special', read as 'expensive' and some are even further down the road being waterproof or even 'day-glo'.
Scrolls: mostly considered one shot spells, these are also usable as 'spellbooks' with similar features. Bulky and cumbersome.
Gems: Some games allow spell information to be imbued in gems. expensive, but always a fashion statement.
Pulling a side thread here: What forms do spellbooks take in games you play. Extra kudos to really nifty new versions. I prime the pump.
Spellbook: a book containing a number of pages upon which the essense of spells are written in ink. Book may be made of a number of materials and with various exteriors. Pages are traditionally parchment, though some worlds allow paper, vellum, metal, etc., and others allow fireproofed, etc. at additional cost. Inks are 'special', read as 'expensive' and some are even further down the road being waterproof or even 'day-glo'.
Scrolls: mostly considered one shot spells, these are also usable as 'spellbooks' with similar features. Bulky and cumbersome.
Gems: Some games allow spell information to be imbued in gems. expensive, but always a fashion statement.
I liked the Kiri's in 3.5. That was my favorite spell book type.
Things i have done with the spelbook
-stuck it in a familiar pocket along with the familiar
-Hewards
-Using said hewards as a pillow(pretty standard practice when camping)
-Under the mattress
-plans to make a bed with a hallow center and fill an outer compartment with alchemists fire so you can't drill into it.
-change shape. All your equipment merges with you. Or hand it to the druid.
-Being so flipping crazy that someone would have to be completely out of their gourd trying to guess what on earth the actual protections on your spellbook are. Case in point, I had a conjurer (the one with the bats in his belfry) Set up his house in the worst part of town. He built it in a week using Wall of Stone, had a practice yard where he would routinely spar with the monk in dragon form (complete with seats and a permanently invisible wall of stone to protect the audience from splatter), and included a multi leveled stone maze/obstacle course in the back yard for the kids. Anyone looking in the windows would see a demon and an angel playing chess in the window, and he would frequently summon extra planar beings to dinner for conversation and small favors, including an Imp who spent a week in his bathroom.
Things I've done in games to protect spell books (Note, I'm the GM, so this is things the NPCs have done).
1) Adamantine tome with a lead filled cover (the cover folded down over the outside, to cover the pages, making a lead-lined adamantine box). The spells were engraved on 1/16th inch thick sheets of adamantine. The tome was guarded by a fire and lightning elemental, nicknamed Chilly and Mute.
2) High Level wizard with a small library with 100 books in it, each one with a permanent Aura on it. Ninety Nine had magic writing in them that was actually rune traps. The 100th one was his spell book, with no traps on it at all. All 100 were exactly the same externally (bought in bulk from the same manufacturer, and 200 more in storage, unspelled).
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Minor Serpent's Skull spoilers below
My elf diviner in Serpent's Skull AP decided that the hidden temple we found on the first island would be a good "backup base," and sequestered a copy of his spellbook there, stashed amongst the old scrolls in the library section. I used the spellbook rules in Complete Arcane to add the "glamered" property to the book, making it match the other old, dusty tomes. He ended up tricking the place out with various forms of alarms and protections; sepia snake sigil on random "bait" scrolls, the "sign of sealing" spell from the ol' Spell Compendium on several doorways, and a few "hidden panels" to act as more decoys. The general plan was to make the search for the book so tedious that nobody in their right mind would waste the time. With the profits from the sale of the salt mine, affording those protections was pretty easy.
I never thought about it, but making backup scrolls and stashing those is also a good option. May try that with my next wizard and use the "Scrollmaster" archetype to get some extra use out of those backups.
One of my players once had his great spell book made acid resistant and let his tame troll eat it. Then he gave it a necklace of fire and acid resistance.
It was smart I thought, playing to the mostly-invincible nature of trolls, but it ended when he got mad at the troll and it decided it wasn't quite as tame as the wizard wanted it to be.
Then they had to go on a quest chasing the wizard's "chest".