I looked in the various books and on AoN and I haven't been able find anything on the cost and the time to craft, does anyone have ideas or suggestions?
I mean, on a strictly RAW reading, I see no reason why it wouldn't follow the same rules as normal Crafting: have a formula, supply the materials, spend four days doing so. From there, you could fill out the pages with spells just by using the Learn a Spell activity. Of import is the line:
If you have a spellbook, Learning a Spell lets you add the spell to your spellbook; (cont.)
Now, that's a rather strict RAW reading, I feel. As a GM, if I have a player interested in a "backup spellbook" and already has the previous spells written in their primary spellbook, I would instead just treat all of their attempts to Learn A Spell they already have previously as though they had rolled critical successes. That's entirely a personal houserule, however, and I don't think I would expect everyone to agree with how I'd run such a scenario.
I would also say that you are not crafting magic item, it is just book with the spell incantations/Formula per say. These aren't scrolls and again even if you are going off a RAW ruling what is the cost. These aren't scrolls you can't use the spell book cast the spells you can only use them to study or memorize the spells.
I would also say that you are not crafting magic item, it is just book with the spell incantations/Formula per say. These aren't scrolls and again even if you are going off a RAW ruling what is the cost. These aren't scrolls you can't use the spell book cast the spells you can only use them to study or memorize the spells.
Sure, it's not magical, but you still use Crafting to make a non-magical item and the spellbook is just a single gold piece so making one is relatively inexpensive. But so is just buying a spellbook and filling it in with spells. I should stress that I didn't mean for you to use the Craft activity to write spells in, but rather to create the spellbook itself (which I may have gone a little too literal in the question of "rules for Crafting a spellbook").
If your question is how to add spells to a spellbook, even spells you have already put into a different spellbook, I would look to the Learn A Spell activity and (houseruling things a little) make the cost much smaller for the scribing.
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I think making a backup of a spell already learnt is not the same than learn a spell.
The cost for learning a spell is associated with experimentation included in the process. For making a copy should not have the same cost.
Some off-play rules are written vaguely indeed not only this one. As quick rule I'd say half cost just like for crafting including only materials. And maybe change hours by minutes.
And I have to suppose that spells written is a spellbook are protected against liquid, weather and etc (another thing not written in rules). If not and is just something written in paper for studying, the cost would be just mundane ink and pen.
On a far more metagame approach, if it's easy and cheap for a wizard to make a copy of his spellbook, then spellbooks full of spells should be flooding the market. Every corner shop would have a shelf full, and every wizard would be able to learn every spell. Nope, they, like everything else, has to have enough cost to it to make sure it's not worth abandoning the adventuring life for just cranking out spellbook copies.
I also suggest using the "Learn a Spell" activity. Handwriting a physical copy is still going to require testing the new spell and careful proofreading, to prevent a faulty copy, so it still takes time and effort. My only alternate suggestion here - permit a wizard with some sort of "Scribing" lore or specialty crafting to make copies at a reduced DC and/or time and cost.
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Learning a spell that you don't already know would follow the 'learn a spell' rules concerning costs and time and such.
As far as selling copies of spellbooks full of spells already, that could in-game be described as differences in casting processes between casters. One caster's recorded notes on how to cast a spell won't make much sense to another caster until that caster takes some time and effort to really read and study the written version.
Making a copy of a spell that you do already know shouldn't follow the 'learn a spell' rules. Unless there is some benefit of having multiple recorded copies of a known spell that I am not aware of.
Exactly, in fact the access to common spells to learn could be perfectly based on that they have high availability, as the game does not imposes much limitation to learn the common spells you want.
I think making a backup of a spell already learnt is not the same than learn a spell.
It is the best we have, aside from the cost for creating a scroll. Which again is not the same.
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Grimoire rules allow moving a spell from one book to another with 1 minute and zero cost.
That is also different since it removes the existing copy.
But it is another balance point to consider when trying to homebrew a cost for making a duplicate of a spell already known.
Thanks for a much more detailed discussion than I expected to see following my question. After consideration I'm going to keep the cost and time outlay for transcribing a backup spellbook significantly cheaper than RAW for learning a spell (for example to learn a cantrip or a 1st level is 2gp I would think to transcribe it in another spellbook or spellbook analog would cost 2sp). My thoughts for this while it isn't magical itself you would still want it made of the best materials available to you and the time required to fabricate it I'm thinking 10 to 15 minutes per spell level and along with this would be a skill check equal to the learn spell DC minus 5 (so the previous cantrip to 1st level spell would a DC 10) with a failure being lost time. Critical failure being lost time and materials, success would be obvious, and critical success would cut the cost and time in half.
My reasoning is this gives it minor risk/reward option and same it keeps the concept of backup spellbooks from being entirely trivia
I also have to agree that even you got someone else's spellbook , you still would have to spend the time and money to learn the spells in the other spell as RAW, and I think even if you already knew the spells in the found spellbook you would still need to spend time studying the new spellbook to fully understand the original writers short hand and spell methodology. So while you might not have to spend as much time and money as new Learn Spell action I would think that you would still have to spend something in the way of time and money.
On a far more metagame approach, if it's easy and cheap for a wizard to make a copy of his spellbook, then spellbooks full of spells should be flooding the market. Every corner shop would have a shelf full, and every wizard would be able to learn every spell. Nope, they, like everything else, has to have enough cost to it to make sure it's not worth abandoning the adventuring life for just cranking out spellbook copies.
I also suggest using the "Learn a Spell" activity. Handwriting a physical copy is still going to require testing the new spell and careful proofreading, to prevent a faulty copy, so it still takes time and effort. My only alternate suggestion here - permit a wizard with some sort of "Scribing" lore or specialty crafting to make copies at a reduced DC and/or time and cost.
I don't really agree with the first part because Golarion is mostly pre-industrial production and I would argue that reasonably most places shouldn't be considered to operate with markets being the center of the economy like modern day society. Presumably all these medieval kingdoms are filled with serfs and landlords making up a feudal economy primarily based on "rent" in the traditional sense. I would say even if spellbooks would be hypothetically easy to make they all have to be hand written and hand constructed one by one without any mass production techniques, and most of society would be illiterate
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I don't really agree with the first part because Golarion is mostly pre-industrial production and I would argue that reasonably most places shouldn't be considered to operate with markets being the center of the economy like modern day society. Presumably all these medieval kingdoms are filled with serfs and landlords making up a feudal economy primarily based on "rent" in the traditional sense. I would say even if spellbooks would be hypothetically easy to make they all have to be hand written and hand constructed one by one without any mass production techniques, and most of society would be illiterateOn a far more metagame approach, if it's easy and cheap for a wizard to make a copy of his spellbook, then spellbooks full of spells should be flooding the market. Every corner shop would have a shelf full, and every wizard would be able to learn every spell. Nope, they, like everything else, has to have enough cost to it to make sure it's not worth abandoning the adventuring life for just cranking out spellbook copies.
I also suggest using the "Learn a Spell" activity. Handwriting a physical copy is still going to require testing the new spell and careful proofreading, to prevent a faulty copy, so it still takes time and effort. My only alternate suggestion here - permit a wizard with some sort of "Scribing" lore or specialty crafting to make copies at a reduced DC and/or time and cost.
Also I am not sure there are enough Wizards around to warrant the mass production of spellbooks. Or maybe these are exactly what the first level Wizard gets, with their starting spells prewritten and lot of pages for their future discoveries.
I’d use this post as is related for some advices about preserving your valuable spellbook:
- Use Lock as 2nd level spell so only you can open it (unless forced).
- Use Magic Mouth with the trigger if someone not you touches it. It is not specified if the mouth can shout, if your GM allows it then it would shout “don’t touch my book!”, if not then just saying it but you would hear if near you (to avoid steal).
- Make your spellbook your bonded item and get the Call Bonded Item feat.
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There are several story arcs that can be really fun and well done - if all of the players involved are agreeing and consenting to it - and will be very much not fun and rather toxic if some of the players are not agreeing and consenting to it.
Playing a Wizard who has had their spellbook stolen is one of those cases.
Writing official rules or even homebrew to try and prevent a Wizard player's GM from stripping the character of their main class features without permission from the player isn't something worth spending paper and ink on. Either in game or IRL paper and ink.
Yes but the options are there, that's the reason of feats like Call Bonded.
It is also not much written about a Cleric losing the path and powers, but it could happen.
If you play in a realistic manner anything can happens, and investing against it is part of the game. Obviously not recommended for players who don't accept that something can go wrong or beyond their expectations. But for those who like to play like if they was the character in that world, enjoys fully role-playing the character in all its facets.
Notice that the game is better prepared for that than how much we could think, as if you lose your personal spellbook, you can always get some books from shops or libraries (at low cost) and use Borrow Arcane Spell from those sources and your scrolls, while you try to recover your spellbook or start creating a new one, in addition that if you don't need to change cantrips can continue using the same ones.
This opens a new thing to invest on that is having your Arcana proficiency up to date (usual) and Assurance for the skill, so you can automatically prepare any spell using Borrow, as the difficulty would be easier (typically using the previous difficulty modifier, usually -2 for easy DC).