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Generating spellbooks is always a hassle. Each book is its own unique collection of spells, requiring considerably more care and effort to assemble than other classes of magical items. At the same time they tend to be throw-away items, something for the party wizard to study in his downtime before pawning it off. So I really don't want to put a lot of effort into making these things, especially if I'm just stocking the local magick shoppe with merchandise my wizard player might not even purchase.
So, I decided to create a >> Random Spellbook Generator <<
I still plan on improving this further, but I feel it's far enough along to share it and get some feedback. I do plan on including more sources as well (in the immediate future, Ultimate Combat and Advanced Class Guide are priorities). Any feedback, questions, feature requests, or bug reports are welcome.
So can inappropriate spells be replaced with homebrew spells when they occur? If there is a GMs choice that comes up, that is just as well.
Fun. The only error I noticed in generating a handful of spellbooks was that Ear-Piercing Scream was misspelt.
It's quite interesting looking at such a spellbook and imagining what it says about the wizard who compiled it.
Do all spells have an equal chance of showing up, or are some spells more likely to occur?
So can inappropriate spells be replaced with homebrew spells when they occur? If there is a GMs choice that comes up, that is just as well.
Sure, the GM absolutely has final say over what they bring into their game. If you want to tweak these random spellbooks after generating them, power to you.
Fun. The only error I noticed in generating a handful of spellbooks was that Ear-Piercing Scream was misspelt.
Fixed.
It's quite interesting looking at such a spellbook and imagining what it says about the wizard who compiled it.
One of the first spellbooks I generated was a 5th level Evoker whose only two 3rd level spells were Daylight and Tiny Hut.
The occasional surreal result is one of the charms of using random generators.
Do all spells have an equal chance of showing up, or are some spells more likely to occur?
Spells from your specialty school are significantly more likely to appear, and spells from opposition schools won't appear. Otherwise yes, all spells have an equal chance of appearing. (Edit: also you're guaranteed at least one specialty school spell at every included spell level)
Adding some more weighting options is definitely something I'd consider doing. Weighting by source seems to be the easiest approach, and I could replace the checkboxes with weighting sliders for each source to give the user control over that. Weighting by individual spell may be more problematic since there's no way I could fit that on the user interface, so I'd need to apply my own subjective discretion to determine what the weighting should be. Still, this would allow iconic spells like fireball, dispel magic, or invisibility to be prioritized. I'm definitely open to any suggestions people may have on the matter.
This is a nice tool, but it would be nice to have some spells always in the list. i.e. an Evoker will always have fireball. A weighting system may be a way to do this.
Opposition school spells still should show up, but with a low chance. Some spells are occasionally worth two spell slots to mem.
Support for elementalists would be nice too.
This is a nice tool, but it would be nice to have some spells always in the list. i.e. an Evoker will always have fireball. A weighting system may be a way to do this.
I wouldn't say that Evokers would always have Fireballs, but weighting such an iconic spell higher than others makes a lot of sense to me. The difficult question is which spells and how much higher should they be weighted. That's a very subjective question.
I think I will make an effort this weekend to rework the back-end randomizer to support more nuanced weighting. I'm not sure how I'm going to weight the spells, but I'll get the support in there so that it's not a pain to implement in future. At very least this will let me introduce opposition spells as being unlikely rather than impossible.
Support for elementalists would be nice too.
Yeah, I think that's doable. I'm adding it to the to-do list.
Time wizards are more likely to have expeditious retreat and haste. Less likely to have slow and hold person.
I've updated the spellbook generator. The program now supports elemental specialization and opposition options, and has a toggle to specify the maximum number of pages the spellbook can contain.
Note that unlike the conventional spell schools, the elemental options are Wizard exclusive and will have no effect if you try to use them on other classes. The spellbook generator also has an upper limit on how much content it will generate for a single spellbook, so there's no point to having spellbooks with four digit page counts (the theoretical maximum is 720 pages used, but realistically you probably won't see higher than 500 even with a 20th level Wizard)
I've already done a lot of work towards supporting spell weighting, and the bulk of the work now is in actually deciding which spells to give increased weighting to. Some are obviously iconic, like Magic Missile or Invisibility or Dispel Magic, but there are a lot of spells that straddle that line. Glitterdust, Black Tentacles, or Sending; spells that are very common, but not really iconic in the way the three I mentioned earlier.
@Goth Guru: I won't be weighting by theme. I am definitely open to general suggestions of which spells should be weighted highly for any Wizard. Both Haste and Slow are very iconic Transmutation spells in my view, for instance.
It's stopped generating anything for me. No visible activity when I click Generate Spellbook.
So if you had Time School wizards, especially in Occult or Spacefinder, you could go transmutation opposed by abjuration. I might go with spirit anchor, where anybody who finds the spellbook might become possessed by the original owner.
It's stopped generating anything for me. No visible activity when I click Generate Spellbook.
What setting configuration did you use?
So if you had Time School wizards
I wasn't aware there was a Time School option published for Wizards. Could you link me to the source?
I tried a few different settings. L10 alchemist first, then a L10 wood elementalist wizard, then a L1 diviner wizard. CRB, APG & UM selected as sources, no other options changed.
Playing around just now it looks like the problem occurs with either APG or UM selected as a source.
Thanks for spotting this. I've found and fixed the issue, so it should now support multiple sourcebooks properly again.
Probably Power Word Kill, but Phantasmal Killer in wall form would be awesome.
Yes, it's supposed to be Power Word Kill. As awesome as Power Wall Kill sounds, I've fixed the typo.
I made another update just now to support weighting different spells. Opposition spells are now just weighted low rather than being completely eliminated from contention, and I've weighted Core spells 20% higher than spells from other sources. I plan to go through the spell list tomorrow and pick out specific iconic spells to have significantly increased chances of appearing.
I've updated the spellbook generator. It now supports spells from Ultimate Combat and the Advanced Class Guide.
I've also adjusted the weighting of individual spells from the core rulebook to weight iconic ones more highly than others. You can find the weighting in this spreadsheet. A blank entry in the weighting column means normal weight, and each point of weighting is approximately a +25% chance of appearing (exact odds will vary).
Another option that's been added is the "style" of spellbook generation. Standard maintains the behavior from previous version, while slim will generate fewer spells per level on average and thick will generate more spells per level on average. Note that the exact number of spells is still random, and it is possible for 2d4 to out-roll 3d6.
Very nice! Are you planning any further details? Cover, Page material, Safeguards?
Very nice! Are you planning any further details? Cover, Page material, Safeguards?
I probably won't have time to do anything on it until next weekend, but I would definitely consider adding touches like those. Safeguards and protections would probably be the highest priority among the things you listed, but some randomly generated flavor text regarding the tome doesn't sound like a bad idea at all :-)
The cover is made from [tanned gnome skin] with [jade] [clasps]. The [highest level spells] are protected by [fire trap].
Ever played Dwarf Fortress?
The cover is made from [tanned gnome skin] with [jade] [clasps]. The [highest level spells] are protected by [fire trap].
More or less what I had in mind, but the devil is always in the details.
Ever played Dwarf Fortress?
No, I value my sanity too much.
THIS IS AWESOME
Neat. One thing I would add (that shouldn't be too hard to add) is the ability to mandate a certain GP value (and possibly a percent the value can be deviated from), as it'd be handy for creating loot.
Hmm... now you've got me thinking about the best way to do this. Capping the GP value would be pretty easy, but it'd require a bit more work to prevent the randomizer from undershooting while still respecting the page limits. I'll think about it and see what I can do.
As for weighting spells, if you went with that I'd recommend an option basing weighting on how guides rate them. Would ensure Mage Armor is more common than Damp Powder.
There is already some weighting going on, but I based it less on the mechanical strengths of the spells and more on how iconic they are. Mage Armor is more than twice as likely to appear than Damp Powder based on the current weighting. I have the weightings listed in this spreadsheet. Blank means standard weighting, and each point of weighting means approximately +20% odds of appearing. Exact odds can vary based on your specialty and opposition.
My system is graded by CR. There is a bunt of the caster's level to prevent a spell book of a first level being the high end wizard's only, plus a bump to more/bigger books at higher levels. I am 40yrs out of programming, but your doing good work!
Great stuff here! I used it again this week. Capital work!
Fun. The only error I noticed in generating a handful of spellbooks was that Ear-Piercing Scream was misspelt.
It's quite interesting looking at such a spellbook and imagining what it says about the wizard who compiled it.
How can you correct spelling and used a word that doesn't exist? lol
it's misspelled. No such thing as misspelt..
This is amazingly useful.
A mink with a bright pink pelt.
That's misspelt!:)
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Fun. The only error I noticed in generating a handful of spellbooks was that Ear-Piercing Scream was misspelt.
It's quite interesting looking at such a spellbook and imagining what it says about the wizard who compiled it.
How can you correct spelling and used a word that doesn't exist? lol
it's misspelled. No such thing as misspelt..
misspell
verbpast tense: misspelt; past participle: misspelt
From British English, which is closer to NZ English than US. At a guess it doesn't exist in your dialect but that's not the same as not existing at all.