Important pages torn out of book trope


Advice


So, my chars researching something and found there are pages torn from a book.
important pages, of course.

the book was written a generation ago, 40-100 years ago.

My thoughts go to akashic record, or page bound epiphany, spell. I have wizard and druid spells, I dont think I can do speak with dead on the writer (both as a principle for those who manage the body and because its not on either of my spell lists).

I mean, this is even assuming gm has anything for that info (by why give a player the mystery of torn pages if you dont expect them to try looking for that missing info?).

What do you guys think?


Page Bound Epiphany is a spell I have seen used multiple times to great effect, but it requires the information to exist in another book somewhere. Plus, you essentially have to know what it is you want to ask about. If you don't know what's in the missing pages, it can be hard to ask about their contents.

Scarab Sages

Would depend on the context. I can see 3 possibilities off the top of my head.

1) Magical world and they're hiddem from the unworthy so there are protections against the normal ways to retrieve information and ypu need to follow the clues to find them.

2) They contain dangerous information a normal person tried to hide (evil dead series) and using your greater resources to find the information unleashes some magical apocalypse.

3) They're actually just lost to time and with a magcial worlds resources easily retrieved with no problems.

For one tjing your GM may have a plot in mind and didnt think of how mamy ways magic can derail it.


Yeah, consider the setting very much, of course. And also... it may be worth having your character ask around for help researching the topic. The author may be gone, but did he have students? Maybe with Page-Bound Epiphany you could find one of his students, track them down, and ask them for some information.


I can't speak for every GM out there, but I GM almost every campaign in my group and I homebrew all the time. There's only one reason I add mysteries such as a book with missing pages to my game: so that the players have something to do.

By something to do, I don't mean a single PC casting a spell between combats or during Downtime, solving the mystery by themselves, and then jumping to the next inevitable fight scene. No, I mean the four PCs, going to the shed to outfit their arms with chainsaws, throwing open the cellar door, and descending into the dark of Henrietta's root cellar to get those pages themselves.

If not the pages, I love the suggestions of Shorti upthread. Look around, use all of your resources. Maybe there are students or contemporaries of the author... perhaps an elemental weird or an ancient dragon with a long memory. Check through church scrolls, ancient libraries, tapestries hanging in old ruins. If the information is worthwhile on those missing pages, your GM likely has a way for you to gather that info beyond the casting of a spell.


Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

I can't speak for every GM out there, but I GM almost every campaign in my group and I homebrew all the time. There's only one reason I add mysteries such as a book with missing pages to my game: so that the players have something to do.

By something to do, I don't mean a single PC casting a spell between combats or during Downtime, solving the mystery by themselves, and then jumping to the next inevitable fight scene. No, I mean the four PCs, going to the shed to outfit their arms with chainsaws, throwing open the cellar door, and descending into the dark of Henrietta's root cellar to get those pages themselves.

If not the pages, I love the suggestions of Shorti upthread. Look around, use all of your resources. Maybe there are students or contemporaries of the author... perhaps an elemental weird or an ancient dragon with a long memory. Check through church scrolls, ancient libraries, tapestries hanging in old ruins. If the information is worthwhile on those missing pages, your GM likely has a way for you to gather that info beyond the casting of a spell.

I agree with all the above points.

With that said, just remember that while spells may not give you the answer you need, they might be able to point you toward someone that can nudge you along the path, or to a place you need to investigate. Divinations are a powerful drug.

But chances are just casting magic isn't the way to find out what's in the pages. Magic may be part of the process, but it's probably not going to be the full process.


If the book was unique and never viewed by the caster, I don't know of a non-wishlike spell that would divine the information directly. The usual divination spells could serve up the information, though they tend to be indirect and leave lots of room for the GM to make things interesting.


Mending? Make Whole?

Scarab Sages

Mudfoot wrote:
Mending? Make Whole?

Depends on the GM in my games you need the parts e.g. book with torn out pages + torn out pages = full book, book with torn out pages + nothing = book with torn out pages. So I wouldn't let you restore the book until you found the pages you want to repair it with. Basically if an items broken you need the various components to restore it if they're distinct. That is a piece of armour with a whole punched through it by a sword could be restored by itself but if it was split into two pieces you'd need both to restore it. It was a ruling to prevent a player who wanted to duplicate items by splitting them into two then using make whole on each one.

I also know one person who ruled in their game that writing on a book was "damage" so using those spells on it removed the writing restoring it to its original blank state.


Mudfoot wrote:
Mending? Make Whole?
Mending wrote:
All of the pieces of an object must be present for this spell to function.

If you have the ripped out pages, sure, it'll work fine.


Senko wrote:
It was a ruling to prevent a player who wanted to duplicate items by splitting them into two then using make whole on each one.

Wow, just wow. Smelly cheese.

IMO, Make Whole could repair the book's pages but not what was written on those pages.

Shinoskay wrote:

So, my chars researching something and found there are pages torn from a book.

important pages, of course.

the book was written a generation ago, 40-100 years ago.

My thoughts go to akashic record, or page bound epiphany, spell. I have wizard and druid spells, I dont think I can do speak with dead on the writer (both as a principle for those who manage the body and because its not on either of my spell lists).

I mean, this is even assuming gm has anything for that info (by why give a player the mystery of torn pages if you dont expect them to try looking for that missing info?).

What do you guys think?

Page-Bound Epiphany wrote:
You magically scour the world’s libraries for information that might refresh your memory about a topic. Upon casting this spell, the focus book’s pages fill with snippets and selections from countless books. You can spend up to 1 round per caster level (maximum 10) reading these notes. You may cease reading at any time, and when you do you can immediately attempt one Knowledge check with a +1 circumstance bonus for each round you spent studying the book (maximum +10). The writing disappears when the spell ends, and if you fail to succeed at a Knowledge check on the round you stop reading the notes, you don’t gain the benefits of this spell.

What were you trying to research? If it was a diary for example, I would expect a spell would be less effective as what is written there would be unique and personal. If it was a more scholarly text, then IMO Page-Bound Epiphany should let you make your knowledge roll on the topic. You wouldn't necessarily get the exact pages from the book, but you could get the same information from other sources. I don't know what kind of DM you have, so YMMV.


Valandil Ancalime wrote:
IMO, Make Whole could repair the book's pages but not what was written on those pages.

Without the missing pages, it can't even do that, per above.

With the missing pages, it can reassemble them, message and all, even if they're in itty-bitty pieces.

If you set them on fire? I'd argue that the result isn't a piece of the book any more, but that's dangerously close to catgirl-killing levels of physics.


You might get some info from the following spells:
Object Reading
legend lore
Probe History

You can also research a new spell. Divinatins to the future are hard due to the limitless possibilities, but seeing into the past should be a lot easier.

/cevah


In one of the PF Tales line (Prince of Thieves by Dave Gross), a 'Steal Book' spell explicitly restores torn out pages of a book it's used on. The book is a Pathfinder's journal, so definitely a unique text.

Per this discussion, the spell is in Kobold Quarterly, but has also helpfully been reproduced in the thread.

As a unique spell, I would make the PCs quest to find the person ( or... THING!!!) that created the spell to learn it or buy a casting.

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