Wizarding Exam Security

[Oli Ironbar]

Aside from the practical demonstration of casting a high level spell, how would you determine that a wizard has mastered the conceptual framework of their craft and guarantee that the work is their own, with no outside help or input from notes or others of any kind?

Lead lined walls? Telepathic silence? What is everything that is needed to give a secure exam to a wizard (spell level by spell level)?

[Melkiador]

Give them an empty spellbook and have them scribe the highest level spell they have prepared into it.

[Pizza Lord]

Melkiador wrote:

Give them an empty spellbook and have them scribe the highest level spell they have prepared into it.

This is a simple, yet elegant and great answer, in my opinion. Give them the needed inks and spellbook and have them start writing. Other than that, you could do the same with a scroll, since ostensibly any wizard (other than some variant) should know how to Scribe Scroll, but that leaves a chance for some other spellcasting class, like a sorcerer, to have just taken the feat. So scribing into a spellbook is probably the most effective and hard to fake.

[Azothath]

it just checks the highest spell memorized and class ability to scribe into a spellbook. The cost to scribe from prepared is the standard 10*(SplLvl^2)gp & SplLvl hrs.

For specialists a lot of the school powers pop in at 8th level.

Simply casting arcane sight:D3 and examining a creature reveals caster level etc. So three judges conferring can do a guy every 2-3 rounds.

[Dasrak]

As my Wizard in a long-running play-by-post game once said: "Is it really cheating to use a Charm Person spell to ace an Enchantment exam?"

I think the key thing is that you have to make sure the Wizard being tested doesn't know the security measures being used against them. Because especially once you get to the mid levels, Wizards have too many tools to guard against.

[zza ni]

Testing that the knowledge and ability of a wizard is his alone goes against wizardly tradition, the very basic and honorable way wizards conducted themselves for years (ever since 1st edition).

As the creator of 'Mathmagician' put it back then:
"To copy from another wizard's spell book is plagiarism, to kill him for it is research!"

[Melkiador]

Azothath wrote:

Simply casting arcane sight:D3 and examining a creature reveals caster level etc. So three judges conferring can do a guy every 2-3 rounds.

That only tells if they are an arcane spellcaster. I guess my method also lets arcanists pass, but we don't know if that is intentional to the world. I imagine flavor-wise that an arcanist is treated more as a wizard with an archetype than as a different class.

[Oli Ironbar]

Melkiador wrote:

Give them an empty spellbook and have them scribe the highest level spell they have prepared into it.

Could you cast memorize page while looking a spellbook from the library?

[Oli Ironbar]

Azothath wrote:

Simply casting arcane sight:D3 and examining a creature reveals caster level etc. So three judges conferring can do a guy every 2-3 rounds.

Could a sorcerer fake this?