What do you put in your spell books?

[VoodistMonk]

I need some ideas for what all goes into the average grimoire. Many spells fill multiple pages each, so what do these pages actually contain?

Is it a block of text detailing what to think, what to say, what to do with your hands, in what sequence and timing?

Is it glyphs and symbols from dead languages and ancient texts? Diagrams showing hand motions?

Is it simply prayers with margin notes on which planetary hour you should pray, or which direction to face when you pray?

Do different spells involve casting cards or drawing fews as part of their memorization?

[avr]

Any of those.

Essays on the exact shades of meanings of the words of power used so that you can use them effectively.

History of the uses of the spell, with scribbled notations on how this caster thinks they might match those uses.

Accounts of experiences of deep personal meaning to this spellcaster. Remembering them helps achieve the state of mind necessary to prepare the spell.

A stray shopping list, next to details on which sources of the spell's material component worked and which didn't.

[VoodistMonk]

Awesome. Thanks.

I really like the personal state of mind notes. The shopping list with what works and, more importantly, did not work is a good detail to include, as well.

Any advice on the actual books themselves is also welcome and appreciated.

Hardcover or softback?

What should it be bound in if human skin isn't an option?

Is it acceptable to jam other pages in there? Post-it notes? Built-in bookmarks?

How big are they? 100 pages, yeah, but how big are the pages themselves? Is this a pocket-bible that stops a bullet for a soldier in the trenches, or a textbook that belongs on a shelf with finely craved bookends of granite?

[avr]

A wizard's spellbook is light enough to carry on your travels but at 3 pounds, about 1.3 kg it's obviously not light. Probably a leatherbound hardcover with the covers forming a case by default (you likely don't want leaks getting in, or pages getting crumpled or torn by other stuff in your pack) but if weight was no concern at all - a homebody wizard or one with magical means of carrying gear - the covers might be wood or metal or the armored hide of some exotic monster for protection and show.

Look thru the spellbooks here, there's a line of description for each. Dragon magazine had a bunch of articles about spellbooks which went into excessive detail about each, but I dunno where you'd find those now. Edit: one early one's here, it's the Pages from the Mages article.

Acceptable to whom? One mage might see their spellbook as a pure and beautiful thing of order, another might have everything from pressed flowers to pinned butterflies among the mismatched pages they call their spellbook.

Re size I'm thinking textbook. There's a travelling spellbook which is 1 pound for the pocket-bible role. The pages are presumably thicker than you'll get with modern paper. (though I remember reading once that the figures for wizard spellbooks still suggested unreasonably heavy paper).

[*Khan*]

Why not create extra dimensional pages, so each spell is one page easy to catalog and find, but the you can “open” the page and all the notes is preserved and protected.

[VoodistMonk]

As wonderful as extradimensional pages with a scrollbar and zoom capabilities and night reading mode would be, I am actually thinking about assembling some physical spell books and sadly lack the ability to make such fancy pages.

Pressed flowers, I can do.

Leather-bound hardcover... I like it being a thing of magnificence, rather than something like a pocket dictionary. Although, in an adventuring environmemt, the pocket version is probably way more practical.

[OmniMage]

VoodistMonk wrote:

How big are they? 100 pages, yeah, but how big are the pages themselves? Is this a pocket-bible that stops a bullet for a soldier in the trenches, or a textbook that belongs on a shelf with finely craved bookends of granite?

Ultimate Equipment says that a standard sheet of paper is 9 x 6 inches. The blessed book (magic item) is 12 by 8 inches.

For reference, normal paper is 8 1/2 x 11 inches (or 216 x 279mm for). Common size for printer paper and note books.

*Khan* wrote:

Why not create extra dimensional pages, so each spell is one page easy to catalog and find, but the you can “open” the page and all the notes is preserved and protected.

There is a magic item called a "Blessed Book". It can hold 1000 pages of spells. It also costs nothing to add spells to it (though the book itself is expensive).

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

I like the idea of turning multipage spell entries into centerfold-style pullouts.

[Mark Hoover 330]

VoodistMonk wrote:

As wonderful as extradimensional pages with a scrollbar and zoom capabilities and night reading mode would be, I am actually thinking about assembling some physical spell books and sadly lack the ability to make such fancy pages.

Pressed flowers, I can do.

Leather-bound hardcover... I like it being a thing of magnificence, rather than something like a pocket dictionary. Although, in an adventuring environmemt, the pocket version is probably way more practical.

I'm guessing that, if you're making them in the really real world there's no point to sharing my homebrewed table of different fictional-monster hides and their effect on spells contained within (Red Dragon plus 600 GP ensures all Fire based spells with a Duration greater than Instantaneous persist as if affected by Extend Spell).

Still, one thing I've always imagined is that Int based, prepared spellcasters might be kind of like absent minded professors. They devote so much brain-space to eldritch formulae and study that they misplace things, only wear the same color robe all the time and so on.

As such, I usually design spellbooks around themes or with unique, different marks on their fronts. This way if a caster has multiple books (say, levels 1-4, level 5-7, and then levels 8 & 9) they can easily pick the right tome.

So maybe red drake hide, brass fixtures and a fire motif on the front for Cold spells, or cured spider's hide and a crystalized spider's eye for healing and so on. I don't know, get crazy with it!

[VoodistMonk]

Oh, now I definitely AM interested in your homebrewed table. Regardless of what I have going on with making spell books IRL, I can always use good creative ideas for interesting loot to put in my games.

I also like the centerfold pages like in the Voynich Manuscripts.

[Mudfoot]

You need this:

Spoiler:

Explosive Runes

[Quixote]

We had one character who carried ten different books or so. Some were cook books, some were spellbooks disguised as cookbooks, and some were cookbooks disguised as spellbound.

Another character animated a giant skeleton to carry around her 4ft tall spellbook with pages made from hammered copper sheets.

One had...I don't quite know how to describe it. Several books that all shared the same cover? Some were bound along the main spine, some were bound horizontally inside the main pages. Some unfolded straight out like an origami accordion. And the text jumped around from one spot to another; maybe magic missile starts in section 3b, page 17, and continues on the same page in section 7a. Dimension Door is written on sequential pages across several sections and Black Tentacles reads straight across three different sections that all happen to line up, margins be damned.

I had a friend who made spellbooks; leather-bound journals with old diagrams and some Latin verse, mostly.

[VoodistMonk]

Right meow I have a bunch of ancient alchemy and astrological symbols, Seal of Solomon type stuff, things like the Wheel of the Year, and the 7pt star for planetary days, lots of notes written in Theban cipher and/or the beith luis nin Ogham alphabet of old Celtic druids, inspiration drawn heavily from the aforementioned Voynich Manuscripts.

Just don't know how to arrange it, or what else to put in them... didn't know what to even put it all in until this discussion convinced me that a hardcover bound in hu... leather just seems proper.

[Senko]

Personally I tend to use the rules as a starting point then have the spellbooks vary depending on culture/purpose and the like. I have a number of published content somewhere (been awhile since I played) that give a huge range of suggestions.

1) Various covers: Human skin, leather, bark, metal plates, etc.

2) Coloured Inks: Writing and drawings in various different coloured inks that convey information to the mage who's book it is but not necessarily others. This spell is in green ink was that what they had available? Is it green because its a healing spell? Is it green because it requires they picture a triangle with a spinning crystal in it when casting? Is it green because it requires they try to feel compassion for the target? Lots of different possibilities.

3) Special inks: Squid ink for one type of spell, ink with powdered gemstones in it, inks which give off a specific scent.

3) Different materials: books of paper, papyrus, metal, etched gemstones.

4) Spells with enchantments: Hidden pages, protections against fire or water damage, pages that glow to allow the book to be read in the dark.

As for the spell information itself there's a huge amount of possibilities. Components, effects, things that alter the effect e.g. fireball underwater, method of casting, history of the spell, diagrams, general magical theory to explain specific magical concepts, mental and emotional state, personal notes on the spell by the mage who copied/created it.

[Mark Hoover 330]

VoodistMonk wrote:

Right meow I have a bunch of ancient alchemy and astrological symbols, Seal of Solomon type stuff, things like the Wheel of the Year, and the 7pt star for planetary days, lots of notes written in Theban cipher and/or the beith luis nin Ogham alphabet of old Celtic druids, inspiration drawn heavily from the aforementioned Voynich Manuscripts.

Just don't know how to arrange it, or what else to put in them... didn't know what to even put it all in until this discussion convinced me that a hardcover bound in hu... leather just seems proper.

So, something else to think about... who is using these spellbooks? Why were they crafted? If they're meant as non-adventuring texts, sitting on a shelf for research and study, they might only have the symbols you've already got planned. Here are some other suggestions:

1. Adventuring spellbooks - smaller, more lightweight with cheaper bindings or filigree; standard paper versus silver or gold-lined paper; pages with spells, other pages with field notes in the margins - effectiveness of Sleep on Fey creatures, diminishing power of Gust of Wind beyond its radius and so on; still other pages with adventuring notes, such as dungeon or geographical maps, monster sketches, illustrations of traps or secret doors

2. Lab/spell research spellbook - standard size books but similiarly "no frills" like adventuring spellbooks; the leather or bindings show wear and tear, like acid burns or weird, planar stains/warps; any metal attachments are worn and scratched showing significant use; pages inside contain spells along with calculations and experiment notes, sometimes beside the spells researched or sometimes on their own pages; illustrations of dissections of monsters showing the effect of spells; Transmutation illustrations; creature size charts; notes on the efficacy of differing substances as potential spell components

3. Metamagic spellbook - standard spellbook size/design (leather bound, hardcover 8 1/2" x 11", heavy stock paper, faux filigree to simulate brass fixtures/reinforcements and so on); pages inside contain standard and metamagic versions of spells - standard spell shows Verbal, Somatic, and Material components (possibly with illustrations, written descriptions, precise measurements, etc); metamagic version shows extra steps used to enhance the spell, calculations of said enhancements and intended result; ex: one page shows a standard Sleep spell with the incantation to be recited, an illustration showing the exact measurement of sand and grit level, other illustrations of the hand, head and body movements needed to create a harmonic resonance with targets at range and so on; the metamagic, in this case applying Extend Spell, shows the same as the previous page but with the ratio and calculations of grit enhancement needed for the sand, added hand gestures required and expected toll of additional spell energy required to power the enhanced effect

You can also theme your spellbooks based on WHO created them. The book of a Necromancy-specialized emo/edge-lord type caster might have leather you stain and scrape to make it look like undead flesh, then use faux-bone and onyx to decorate the cover and bindings; spells inside could be bone white letters against rust red backgrounds because, y'know. Meanwhile a blaster-type wizard might craft in a design resembling their favored energy, strongly reinforced (against potential blowback from damaging spells), with spells inside written to resemble ice, acid or flame.

Finally, piggybacking on AVR's commentary on the state of mind needed for spell prep, the creator of the book might have Preparation Rituals that, if followed exactly may take a toll on the user but grant some extra benefit to spells cast for the day. In this case these might prescribe breathing exercises, mnemonic devices, enhanced casting techniques similar to the metamagic book above, and so on.

[VoodistMonk]

Thank you SO much.