"So you find this book..."

[Darkdazzle]

Howdy!

My players LOVE coming across books while adventuring! Cook books! History books! Books on the gods! You know, the standard cool stuff.... woot!

MY question, I've been trying to find the rule or rules in incorporating them into play with a mechanic. You know, you find a book titled "Secrets of the Farmers Delve", and the player can use it as a reference for lore checks about said location. Or something like that!

Is there a mechanic in place? I've just been giving the player a +1 item bonus if the book is relevent to the check... is this game breaking? A better way to handle this?

AS always, much appreciated and I hope this makes sense!

[BishopMcQ]

The Library structure in Kingmaker did this on a broader scale.

Effects While in a settlement with a library, you gain a +1 item bonus to Lore checks made to Recall Knowledge while Investigating, as well as to Researching checks, and to Decipher Writing checks.

I think a book doing it for a specific Lore is fine, but I would have it be a 10 minute thing not a 1-action thing. If it was measured in actions, the mechanic would step on class design and some magic items.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

There's a spell that does this for you.

[Bluemagetim]

Books that do book things are probably an underdeveloped space.
But the howl of the wild does have this
Field Guide.
Which does kind of what your doing with books.

[Perpdepog]

You may also want to look at the scholarly journal item. That's what I've been using in my game that has a bookish PC in it.

[Errenor]

Darkdazzle wrote:

My players LOVE coming across books while adventuring! Cook books! History books! Books on the gods! You know, the standard cool stuff.... woot!

Well, apart from normal things, they also could find this nice book called the Dark Archive. It's from the same called rulebook. There's no statblock for it, but it's basically an artefact which provides travelling to occult adventures from the rulebook.

[Perpdepog]

Perpdepog wrote:

You may also want to look at the scholarly journal item. That's what I've been using in my game that has a bookish PC in it.

Also, forgot to mention that there is a book item in the Starfinder 2E playtest. It has no mechanical effects IIRC, but it should serve well for the cost of a narrative-facing book. Just convert the credit cost into a silver cost and you're good to go.

[Luke Styer]

Perpdepog wrote:

You may also want to look at the scholarly journal item.

That's the perfect answer. I'm happy this question was brought up, because I am going to be starting a new campaign soon, and it would be fun to sprinkle a few (or a ton) of reference books around.

[ottdmk]

This reminds me of Raise a Tome. the L2 Magus feat. My Sparkling Targe Magus has that one; it's fun!

[Agonarchy]

Long ago, in a D&D campaign I ran, I homebrewed a magic item in the shape of a book that had a little door when you opened the page. If you opened the door, you would be taken to a little dimensional space with some basic furniture cozily-lit, with an animated broom to keep things tidy, and a periodic conjuring of tea and cookies. It also has shelves that could somehow always carry more books, which were then easy to find.

That's right, it was a Library Book.

[Finoan]

Agonarchy wrote:

That's right, it was a Library Book.

From the description, I was also thinking of Myst - the video game that launched the PC CD drive.

[Darkdazzle]

Perpdepog wrote:

You may also want to look at the scholarly journal item. That's what I've been using in my game that has a bookish PC in it.

HOLY SMOKES, this is perfect! Thank you!

[Darkdazzle]

Hey all, thank you for the various ideas and links! Great stuff!