Perfect Preparation mythic adventures

[Elias Darrowphayne]

So my rules question:

The archmage path ability Perfect Preparation says a prepared arcane caster no longer needs his spell book to prepare spells.

Does this mean he now prepairs spells like a cleric? Knowing every wis/sor spell (in the case of wizards) and is just limited by his number of prepared spells per level?

What was the intention behind this ability? It leaves alot of guessing.

Id like a dev's perspective on this please. As i know we are all rules lawyers to a point but i need something official ish,

[BigDTBone]

No, it just means that you don't have to have your physical book to prepare from. You still have to know it and it still has to be in your spellbook.

[Elias Darrowphayne]

That cant be right as it says you can keep or abandon your spellbook/familiar.

Again, looking for a Developer's thoughts/rulings on exactly what this path ability is suppose to do for a wiz.

[kestral287]

BigDTBone wrote:

No, it just means that you don't have to have your physical book to prepare from. You still have to know it and it still has to be in your spellbook.

It definitely does not have to be in your spellbook since you can explicitly throw the thing away.

That said, no, it shouldn't give you the entire Wizard list. The simplest interpretation is that it moves your spellbook to your head. You still have to learn spells (memorize them from a scroll or some such), but you don't have to write them down on anything; once you know them you're set.

That said, it's a poorly written ability. Talk to your GM about it.

[Seannoss]

From the PRD : 'You have discovered the secret to preparing spells without having to refer to outside sources. You no longer need to prepare spells from a spellbook (if you're a magus or wizard) or a familiar (if you're a witch). You still must spend the normal amount of time preparing spells. You may keep or discard your spellbook or familiar.'

Seems pretty straightforward. You no longer need a spellbook/familiar to prepare spells.

[Eltacolibre]

Virtually all mythic abilities, never go into all the details of how they work, because there isn't enough space in a book to talk about everything.

But anyway, I just assumed your spellbook indeed moves to your head as explained above, so you don't have spell pages limit while you put them in your head.

[blahpers]

The fun part is now "why do I need to buy all these special inks et al. to scribe new spells into my head?"

[Narquelion]

I think the intent is that you can "save" new spells in your head.

Let's take a wizard. Taking Perfect Preparation, he "saves a copy" of his spellbook in his head. From now on, he can prepare those spells from memory.
If he finds new magical writings (say a spellbook and a bunch of scrolls taken from a defeated rival) and he wish to add these new spells to his brain, he must decipher them (a Spellcraft check DC 20 + the spell's level or go go gadget read magic). Next, he must spend 1 hour studying each spell. At the end of the hour, he must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell's level). If the check succeeds, he can add the spell to his brain. This act might take another hour... or not, since he isn't actually writing it. Ask your GM about this detail.

Remember that he has a +2 to the second check if his favored school matches the spell's and that if he's "copying" a scroll it will disappear at the end of the process.

[Chris Lambertz]

Removed a post. If it's not about the rules question, it doesn't belong here, and this level of sarcasm is really unhelpful.

[Trellon Falorin]

So you no longer have to pay the material cost of inscribing the spells into your spellbook?
That would mean you just have to keep up with what spells your character knows which just takes time and Spellcraft checks.

[Mark Carlson 255]

The way I take it is that you still have to do the stuff you would normally do to inscribe spells into your book but that you do not need your book to refresh your spells every day.
How would I do that fluff wise? Well have the arcane caster do the things that they would do to write spell into book, then when they have learned the spell they can do what ever they want will pages.
I am not that familiar with the witch class so I do not know how I would deal with it in that case.
MDC

[Alleran]

blahpers wrote:

The fun part is now "why do I need to buy all these special inks et al. to scribe new spells into my head?"

There's a spell-book abandoning ability in 3.5 called "Eidetic Spellcaster" that allows you to no longer need a spellbook. Instead, the cost in inks etc. is replaced by the cost of special incense and such to help you fix the spell in your "memory" versus your "memorised spells" (so to speak). It would be fairly simple to adapt that if spell scribing costs is an issue.

The better question is whether the Perfect Preparation ability applies to prepared casters introduced since Mythic Adventures was released (e.g. Arcanist). Probably deserves FAQing, actually.