DM help: Player intentionally smashed the black monks scroll case (fixing scrolls?) (spoiler chapter 4)

[Daniel B]

Hi,
I am DMing for a group of six players ROTRL. They just beat the black monk and two mummified gynosphinxe that I added to balance the encounter for six players.

The barbarian player decided as part of his characters role play that he smashes the scroll case (half of the party decides to help him thinking it is an evil artifact). He smashed it in one round and destroyed six of the scrolles.

Now the chapter says they can be repaired by castings of mendin or make whole, which goes against the text of both spells. Should it be possible to fix the magic scroll even when the scroll is CL 17? It also seems to make the act of destroying the scrolles meaningless if they can be repaired for free with a cantrip. On the other hand the scrolles are very valuable and I don't want to create a problem for the party where one player (who is generally very good and is not "that guy") destroyed thousands of gp worth of loot.

What do you think?

[Askar Avari]

Given that they intentionally destroyed it, I would say that the spell scrolls are totally destroyed, though perhaps have just 1 be retrievable (the True Resurrection scroll proving too resilient to destroy). And, of course, the Anathema Archive is not so easily destroyed - real evil artifacts aren't so easily destroyed, after all.

If they really regret their actions and want to repair the whole thing, I'd allow them to use greater make whole to repair one scroll at a time - obviously not RAW, but a 4th level spell cast to get a 5th+ level scroll repaired seems fair.

Ultimately, I think your party's decision is reasonable, and the only lasting consequence I think there should be is the loss of the Writ of Passage.

[Nicolas Paradise]

My party finished Jorgenfist and all of book 4 completely skipping the section and besides the nice reward of a true res scroll they aren't any worse for missing it.