So as I read the RAW in the "Magic" section of the Core ruleset, there are three ways that a wizard can learn new spells: "Spells Gained at a New Level", "Spells Copied from Another's Spellbook or a Scroll", and "Independent Research".
Now, my gaming group is starting a Pathfinder campaign (our first!) and I'm playing a Bard while one of my friends is playing a Wizard. And I expect that there could easily be instances where I take spells at level-up that he hasn't happened to get ahold of yet. Of course, since Wizards can learn arbitrarily many spells, I figure that in many cases it might make sense to pass on as many of such spells as I could to him as well (if he were interested, and they were in both of our spell lists) so that he could prepare them himself should the need ever arise.
My question is, how would this work according to the rules?
The pure-RAW way I could see would be for the two of us to scribe a scroll with that spell (under the collaborative item creation rules, with him providing the Scribe Scroll feat and me providing the "knowledge of the spell" requirement) and then he could turn right around and learn the spell from said scroll via Official Spell-learning Option #2. But that just seems... a bit silly to me, honestly, not to mention somewhat costly and convoluted. If the two of us are able to collaborate on writing the spell into a scroll, then realistically (a very different beast from RAW, I know) I would expect we could just collaborate on writing it straight into his spellbook to begin with. In effect, it would be me just teaching him the spell directly.
My question is, does RAW account for this kind of direct magical instruction anywhere, and I've just completely missed it? Or are Wizards just limited to those three methods of spell acquisition described in their section on learning new spells, and we would, in fact, need to use scrolls as an intermediary for any knowledge transfer we decided we wanted to do?
Not even wizards can teach other spells directly. They can only be copied from a written source (or gained by leveling up).
There is no RAW way to do it that I am aware of.
If your gm allows it, that is fine. He should keep in mind though, that he in this way gives you something for free that would normally require either a feat and small expenses (via scribe scroll) or bigger expenses (by just buying the scroll)
Under the right circumstances, this can save you quite an amount of money, especially if you do it with sorc and wiz and the sorc spends all his/her favored class boni on additional spells.
I would probably allow my players to do this without the feat by spending an appropriate amount of resources, at least the crafting cost of the scroll.
Otherwise it wouldn't seem fair towards the martial classes. They can't teach skills and feats to other PCs for free eiter, even though by real-world-logic they should be abled to. Because if a caster can tell another one "...and then you just tweak this bit of magic energy in that way and boom, fireball" a fighter should be able to tell another fighter "...and then you just hold your sword like this and swing it with a lot of power and place your feet like so" and teach him stuff like cleave or improved sunder that way.
This would, of course, completely unbalance the game, therefore no free spells for wizards either.
Edit: added a line to the fighter explanation
Follow the mechanics, but just RP over the rules. What happens in the game world doesn't need to be a transliteration of RAW. Spend the money to scribe scroll. The wizard is "taking notes" so he can study lthem later. Or if it's a spell he wants to take as one of his free ones for leveling up, then for once he grasped what you were telling him right away.
I was reading a thread about sorcerers. Raving Dork or someone made a point about how there was no rule against a sorcerer having a spellbook.
It might not give you any personal benefit (other than maybe masquerading as a wizard), but what exactly stops a wizard from having a spellbook?
One he could loan out to his closest friends?
While scroll scribing requires the spell, the access through another caster is still allowed.
Wizards get Scribe Scrolls for free, so they sit down with the sorcerer and scribe the scroll together (sorcerer provides the spell and wizard the feat). Now the wizard can learn it from the scroll.
More expensive than direct copying but still cheaper than buying it.
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sunbeam wrote: I was reading a thread about sorcerers. Raving Dork or someone made a point about how there was no rule against a sorcerer having a spellbook.
Raving Dork is fond of taking advantage of the unsaid to favor his preferred corner trick of the moment.
There is no rule against a sorcerer having a spellbook in his backpack. That is true. There's also no rule that says that the thing is going to do anything for that sorcerer, save add to his encumbrance.
What Raving Dork seems to forget is that sword of reasoning can swing both ways.
LazarX wrote: sunbeam wrote: I was reading a thread about sorcerers. Raving Dork or someone made a point about how there was no rule against a sorcerer having a spellbook.
Raving Dork is fond of taking advantage of the unsaid to favor his preferred corner trick of the moment.
There is no rule against a sorcerer having a spellbook in his backpack. That is true. There's also no rule that says that the thing is going to do anything for that sorcerer, save add to his encumbrance.
What Raving Dork seems to forget is that sword of reasoning can swing both ways. I would agree with you on that.
Sorcerers and wizards cast spells completely differnet. A wizard has not natural magic and he needs the spellbook to prepare his mind to perform that kind of magic with precise instructions and rituals.
A sorcerer just flicks a finger and boom, something blows up.
Umbral Reaver wrote: Not even wizards can teach other spells directly. They can only be copied from a written source (or gained by leveling up). Kalridian wrote: There is no RAW way to do it that I am aware of. Rats. Ah well, thanks for confirming that! Was hoping I'd missed something (given how many times I'd thought there were no rules on a subject, only to find some errata or tucked-away-somewhere-rule weeks later that I'd completely been unaware of) but I guess not.
Kalridian wrote: If your gm allows it, that is fine. He should keep in mind though, that he in this way gives you something for free that would normally require either a feat and small expenses (via scribe scroll) or bigger expenses (by just buying the scroll)
Under the right circumstances, this can save you quite an amount of money, especially if you do it with sorc and wiz and the sorc spends all his/her favored class boni on additional spells.
Well, the feat is free in any case, since the Wizard gets Scribe Scroll at first level and he can help with the scroll scribing via the collaborative crafting rules. The only thing we'd have been avoiding is the cost of that intermediary (crafted) scroll.
Honestly, this question probably wouldn't have even occurred to me to ask if it weren't for those crafting rules, and the perceived weirdness of how it interacts with the idea of transferring spells. It was actually the RAW method that occurred to me first, and I guess some strain of offended verisimilitude inside me just had to ask: "but wait... if it's the Wizard doing the actual writing anyway (since he's the one with Scribe Scroll) and our collaboration results in him being able to write it down (successfully) in the first place... why are we even bothering to write it down once, and then use the 'copy spell from scroll' rules to copy it down again into the book this time?"
Felt just odd enough that I figured there might be a rule somewhere for writing it in directly. Guess not, though.
Kalridian wrote: Otherwise it wouldn't seem fair towards the martial classes. They can't teach skills and feats to other PCs for free eiter, even though by real-world-logic they should be abled to. Because if a caster can tell another one "...and then you just tweak this bit of magic energy in that way and boom, fireball" a fighter should be able to tell another fighter "...and then you just hold your sword like this and swing it with a lot of power and place your feet like so" and teach him stuff like cleave or improved sunder that way.
This would, of course, completely unbalance the game, therefore no free spells for wizards either.
Well, that's already there to some extent, though. I mean, if it were two wizards in the party, say with different focuses, there would be no question on the matter whatsoever: it would be absolutely permissible for them to each take different level-up spells and then let each other copy from their books without charging each other anything, and any spells they bought would only need to be bought once per party.
This would have been, in a way, less powerful than that, since it's only one-way. I certainly wouldn't have been able to pull any spells back from the Wizard; my only question was whether we could work together to scribe spells directly into his book, and avoid doing that same process on the scroll in between.
therealthom wrote: Follow the mechanics, but just RP over the rules. What happens in the game world doesn't need to be a transliteration of RAW. Spend the money to scribe scroll. The wizard is "taking notes" so he can study lthem later. Or if it's a spell he wants to take as one of his free ones for leveling up, then for once he grasped what you were telling him right away. Excellent point; that would indeed be a nice way to play it out, for RP's sake.
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LazarX wrote: There is no rule against a sorcerer having a spellbook in his backpack. That is true. There's also no rule that says that the thing is going to do anything for that sorcerer, save add to his encumbrance. It makes people think you need it. So then they steal it from you and think you're useless. Then you dominate them and tell them to crawl around and oink like a pig.
Same reason any sorc I ever play will be sure to have a component pouch and use it whenever he casts a spell (nothing in Eschew Materials requires you to utilize it) so enemies may try to sunder or disarm/steal his component or whole pouch, only to get painfully surprised.
In general, I'm just a big fan of sandbagging / causing others to underestimate me.
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