Things to do with Downtime Days

skerritthegreen said:

DM's are not suppose to add loot like that, and I believe you are under estimating the actual number of spellbooks we've given out. We do understand its an issue however and it is something the admins are looking at.

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Off the too of my head, There was a spellbook in early season 1(flameskull?), one from Azbara, and one from his boss in S1. There was boltsmelters book and one from Aerisi in S2. 2 from royal oozes in S3, and one so-far in S4. So yeah, I underestimated. There are many expeditions I've never gone through so there are probably a couple I dont know about.

Spellbooks are mundane gear...DMs are explicitly instructed to add in mundane treasure in many many places. Especially in places where AL deliberately deletes magic item rewards that the designers intended the PCs to find. If they want to fix that all they need to do is get WOTC to eratta the value of spellbooks with spells . Since they won't even errata obvious things like Simulacrum , contagion and Phantasmal Force, I don't really see that happening.

I have noticed the effort to have at least a 'couple' spell books exist in the world. I very nearly decided to go on a Fabricate crusade with my wizard, disseminating copies of spellbooks across the land to spread folks interest in magic. If I could go to cons I would have been passing out my own custom little spellbook certs to tables, with a little back story and a makers mark on each one.

Byakugan said:

I had a number of posts on the defunkt wotc forum, regarding the near impossibility of wizards to get new spells in AL.

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As a player who prefers to play wizards, I have to say I don't see this -- it seems that most modules have scrolls, even if not every scroll can be copied into a spellbook. In addition, Season 2 had a specific mechanic that allowed characters to add spells to their spellbooks.

Also, since each spell added to a spellbook costs 50gp per level, it's categorically not true that an empty spellbook has the same 'value' as a filled one -- the spellbook in the equipment list is explicitly blank ("a leather-bound tome with 100 blank vellum pages").

It's nice that the admins are looking at providing more options, but I don't see that the existing options are cripplingly small, unless you feel you're entitled to always have all the spells with every wizard character you play in AL. *That*, to me, is not a valid expectation, just as it's not a valid expectation for characters to be proficient with every skill in the game.

--
Pauper

About a quarter of AL adventures published so far have spellbooks, and there are scrolls in nearly every adventure. More importantly, as a wizard, all you have to do is play with another wizard once and you'll have more spells available than you can even copy.

A potential future Faction Reward could be
"You are granted a day to peruse the faction's spell library. Add any combination of (AL-legal) spells that requires 8 hours or less copying time to your spellbook. You expend 1 Downtime Day and must pay for the special inks from your own pocket."

I did something like this when my Tiamat party returned to Waterdeep after facing Arauthator. They had earned it.

Eltab said:

A potential future Faction Reward could be
"You are granted a day to peruse the faction's spell library. Add any combination of (AL-legal) spells that requires 8 hours or less copying time to your spellbook. You expend 1 Downtime Day and must pay for the special inks from your own pocket."

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That's an elegant way to do it, Eltab.

Sounds good, but I would expand it to allow you to spend more than 1 day. Each day spent would still net you 8 hours of time, but that way you could add spells above 4th level to your spellbook.

That is an interesting faction award, however it is specific to a single class so I doubt it would see play unless there are other class-specific awards as well.

kalani said:

That is an interesting faction award, however it is specific to a single class so I doubt it would see play unless there are other class-specific awards as well.

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Perhaps reword it so that it's more in line with Orcsplitter reward for spellcasters? Allow those who have spellbooks/ritual books to add to their books. All other casters could use this to add spells to their spell list.

Instead of tying to one of the core 5 factions, it could be tied to a season-specific faction like the Cloaks, which were a class-specific faction.

Also, since each spell added to a spellbook costs 50gp per level, it's categorically not true that an empty spellbook has the same 'value' as a filled one -- the spellbook in the equipment list is explicitly blank ("a leather-bound tome with 100 blank vellum pages").

This is furthur from the truth than what I claimed. If you are playing an AL wizard, it is highly likely that the majority of your spells were added to your spellbook -completely free-. On top of that, spells in your specialization school cost less to scribe. Retroactively calculating how much a wizard -would have had to spend- to make their spellbook is impossible to calculate in most cases.

I was being generous saying filled spellbooks are only worth the value of a spellbook. They actually have no specific value at all, and can only even be kept by wizards because AL made a specific rule to allow them to. This is an exception to the usual rule that mundane items are either destroyed or liquidated automatically. A spellbook that is not claimed by a wizard creates precisely 0 gold to each party member. There has been talk about adding a rule into AL to cover this, however it hasn't happened yet. For example, the admins said it was legal to cast Fabricate to make a copy of a spellbook, but there is no value for them. DMs might hate that, or even stop it altogether, but that is probably considered house rules.

Everyone's mileage may vary, but through 40 sessions in season 1, including 3 Expeditions, my wizard never encountered a single wizard scroll or spellbook until he got Azbara Jos' spellbook from chapter 6.

Byakugan said:

They actually have no specific value at all, and can only even be kept by wizards because AL made a specific rule to allow them to.

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Wait, what now? What is this rule you refer to? Maybe I read that wrong.