By the way, as part of my low-magic campaign I seriously restrict the existance of magic items. Some on this forum have mentioned that by doing this I hinder the non-magic classes from keeping up with their casting buddy's power as they level up. By imposing some of the limits mentioned here, perhaps it helps level things back out a bit.
Ill be giving this a great deal of thought.
I main issue is that I dislike the idea that learning magic is simple. That it takes only an hour to learn a new spell from a book or scroll lying around, just doesn't fit with how I want magic to work in my setting. I want magic to be about big heavy books sealed in locks and chains, not just to protect the books but to protect those who might read them unprepared.
All right, so it's not just the size of the spellbook that bothers you (I cut that part of your quote, sorry), but how long it takes to learn a new spell? Your changes aren't aimed at that. To deal with that, you need to make a rule regarding how long it takes to translate and scribe a spell, not on the size of the spell tome. Change the rule so it takes 1 day per level of the spell to translate, and another day/level to scribe. That would slow down spell acquisition quite nicely. If it takes me over a week just to get dispel magic into my personal books, that's time that could be spent adventuring. Make sure it applies to scrolls as well.
As for the size of the tomes: treat the wizard's spellbook as the travelling spellbook, while his master librams stay at home. Make the master librams these huge things you describe, and the wizard's spellbook would be his notes from class. I still kept a few textbooks despite having taken a given class in college; wizards I imagine would do the same thing.
Alas, I have no ideas about the price of a spellbook and how to deal with that.
Ill give you Lathiira that by implementing this change one has to change the time it takes to learn/transcribe a spell from a tome.
In advanced(AKA 2nd edition) Going up levels and other non adventure actions all took weeks. It got so silly that every player had to have 3 characters. That way, a spare character would go on adventures while the other character was too busy. Either that or the fighters will build a castle while the wizard is copying a new spell into their spellbook. The cleric is gonna build a clay golem. If the campaign has a deadline, too bad, it's the GMs fault for nickle and dimeing the wizard timewise.
In advanced(AKA 2nd edition) Going up levels and other non adventure actions all took weeks. It got so silly that every player had to have 3 characters. That way, a spare character would go on adventures while the other character was too busy. Either that or the fighters will build a castle while the wizard is copying a new spell into their spellbook. The cleric is gonna build a clay golem. If the campaign has a deadline, too bad, it's the GMs fault for nickle and dimeing the wizard timewise.
But those are matters of campaign design and what you need for a specific campaign. If I was going to be running a game where people are racing against time to acquire the McGuffin o' Power, then yeah I wouldn't bother with things like this cause I need players to be mobile and in a hurry.
The campaign I'm working on however is one that involves extensive periods of downtime. Players will be using the rules in Ultimate Campaign for a lot of things. They will need to research different dungeons and histories, train for class levels, generate capital, socialize with locals and of course research spells.
I use different rules and consideration depending on what style of game I plan to run. This one happens to be a PCs operating out of home base style of thing.
So this is an Ultimate thing. I have no idea then.
The whole Tome thing will work for standard Pathfinder. It sets them apart from all other books. Tomes would be good for all other kinds of magical research.
So this is an Ultimate thing. I have no idea then.
The whole Tome thing will work for standard Pathfinder. It sets them apart from all other books. Tomes would be good for all other kinds of magical research.
Not specifically an Ultimate thing but fitting in alongside the stuff from Ultimate Campaign like PCs running their own businesses, setting up organizations, building their own place to live.
If you don't have it has a lot of stuff for expanding your campaign in different ways. Not all of it works for all campaigns but that's what rule options are for; You pick and choose the ones that capture the feel you are going for.
same goes for House rules. I use them to help capture the feel I am going for in a campaign. This isn't a house rule I'd be using if I was running say Carrion Crown but it might work well for Kingmaker, (although I'd probably loosen it up for Kingmaker cause I don't want magic feeling to rare there. Lower some of the DCs and such)
but Campaign feel dictates the rules used.
I happen to be going for a game where Magic is supposed to feel difficult and a little bit dangerous. Where an ancient book at the bottom of a dungeon is a Major find for any wizard, where the gods are actually watching what your Cleric does with his spells and where Making a Magic item involves going on a quest to get the materials you need for it.
The PCs are going to have the time to do things like spell research because I'm designing the game that way.
Flavor aspect: cool. I like the idea of giant tomes of magical theory lying around a wizard's library.
Mechanics: this really only acts as a speedbump, and olny then for wizards and magi. If you really want to adjust the spells a wizard learns from an enemy, why not do this:
When the villain is slain and his spellbook found, with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 new spells they cast in combat, the rest of the spellbook is identical to to PC's? "What the? We have the EXACT SAME 1-3rd level spells??!! All I got out of this fight was a stinkin Wall of Ice and Ice Storm? C'MON!!!"
But you'll be like "who cares buddy? You got 2 new spells...you're welcome."
Finding/gathering the raw materials should half again the cost of making an item. In first ed. so to speak, the raw ingredient for heal minor was an herb growing out of a saint's(local is good)grave.