Things to do with Downtime Days

[Byakugan]

I think it is perfectly reasonable for spellbooks to be valuable. Heck I think they should be -very valuable- because to the people that need them they are as good as magic items.

But your method of pricing goes against AL rules.

Step 1: does the module say how much it is worth?
Step 2: If no, then see what the PHB/DMG say it is
worth.
Step 3: if none of those sources list a value, the item is worth 0.

 

[Pauper]

Step 2: If no, then see what the PHB/DMG say it is
worth.

The PH says an empty spellbook costs 50gp. So if a player said, "I erase all the spells in the spellbook," would the DM then have to award 25gp?

I can accept that some DMs don't want to go through the trouble of identifying how valuable an in-game spellbook would be, if no one wants to claim it as treasure and they'd rather sell it. But that, again, doesn't mean that those spellbooks have no value.

--
Pauper

 

[Byakugan]

In a home game, that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If I were running a home game, I would make up a value too. I would also let the sage background actually help a wizard in finding magical research. I would also house rule a slew of broken spells and abilities, and I wouldn't -delete- all the parts of the modules where the designers intended for magic items to be but AL says no. I also wouldn't perma-curse new/uninformed players who picked up a magic flashlight on accident. I would let characters pool resources to buy stuff without a bunch of illogical caveats.

In AL though, most of those things are called 'adding rewards', which is forbidden. Thankfully, as you pointed out, it is all based on the honor system. Most of our DMs figured out that the rules are worth bending/breaking for the sake of a bunch of happy players.

 

[Byakugan]

The reason I said earlier that the -invested- value of spellbooks was impossible to calculate is simple.

Crystal clear example is this: A spellbook looted from a certain scary house.

1st level: disguise self, identify, mage armor, magic missile, protection from evil and good
2nd level: darkvision, hold person, invisibility, magic weapon

Can you tell me what level the owner must have been? How many of the spells were free and how many did he pay for? What specialization was he/she? Did he decide not to start with all his 1st level spells, or did he forget to learn some free ones? Maybe it is just a backup book? Way too many unknown variables in this math equation.

 

[Pauper]

The reason I said earlier that the -invested- value of spellbooks was impossible to calculate is simple.

Crystal clear example is this: A spellbook looted from a certain scary house.

1st level: disguise self, identify, mage armor, magic missile, protection from evil and good
2nd level: darkvision, hold person, invisibility, magic weapon

Can you tell me what level the owner must have been? How many of the spells were free and how many did he pay for? What specialization was he/she? Did he decide not to start with all his 1st level spells, or did he forget to learn some free ones? Maybe it is just a backup book? Way too many unknown variables in this math equation.

None of those questions are relevant for determining the 'value' of the book (as opposed to the 'cost' of the book to the original caster). Simply treat every spell as if it has been scribed by the owner of the book for determining the value of the book. In this case, there are 5 first-level spells and 4 second-level spells, for a total of 13 spell levels. The value of the book is therefore 50 gold (for the blank book) plus 650 gold (for the thirteen spell levels) for a total of 700 gold, resulting in 350 gold if the book is sold.

If the original owner scribed some of those spells for free when advancing a level in wizard, or scribed some spells for half cost because they were school spells, that's no big deal -- congrats, you used a class ability to get a more valuable item than you normally would have access to!

(Edit: If your argument is correct, Byakugan, then you also would arguably penalize a character for using downtime days to craft her own plate mail, because she only 'paid' half cost to create it. That seems unreasonable to me.)

The only potential problem this ruling opens up is that is allows wizards to scribe 'backup' books using their downtime and sell them for a profit, since the cost of copying spells into a backup spellbook is less than half of the cost of scribing a new spell into the book. This might explain why filled spellbooks are treated as being no more valuable than empty spellbooks in AL.

--
Pauper

 

[Pauper]

In AL though, most of those things are called 'adding rewards', which is forbidden.

It's hard for me to explain to a player how an item that's explicitly listed under the 'treasure' section of a module is something I added to the game.

If the players decide to sell the spellbook and I give them nothing, I'm arguably removing treasure from the module that the players earned, which is also not supposed to happen. So which rule do I break?

--
Pauper

 

[Byakugan]

It is virtually impossible for a character to craft Plate armor in AL. It might actually be impossible, since tier 2 characters cant run 1-4 expeditions/encounters. I dont know what the theoretical maximum currently is but I imagine it is probably close at this point.

It takes 300 downtime days to craft plate armor. I have never heard of anyone accumulating anything close to that much. PCs can afford to buy plate at around level 5-6.

As far as treasure goes, there are many things listed as treasure in all the seasons that have no value. In fact, the majority of items NPCs have are worthless. For example, Droki has several pieces of specific treasure with no value. Like I said earlier, AL rules originally required spellbooks to be used as soon as they were found, then become useless at the end of the session. The base value of a spellbook makes it too valuable to be a trinket, and all mundane treasure is automatically liquidated. It is obviously an oversight. somewhere around 6 months into season 1 Jeremy Crawford tweeted that spellbooks arent magic items but that they COULD be kept. He also said it was ok to Fabricate copies of spellbooks, and that they had intended spellbooks to be scribed using downtime days, but that they had not added that rule in. Currently the FAQ only has a couple entries about spellbooks.

 

[Mirtek]

It is virtually impossible for a character to craft Plate armor in AL. It might actually be impossible, since tier 2 characters cant run 1-4 expeditions/encounters. I dont know what the theoretical maximum currently is but I imagine it is probably close at this point.

It takes 300 downtime days to craft plate armor. I have never heard of anyone accumulating anything close to that much. PCs can afford to buy plate at around level 5-6.

at around 11th level you would have that many DT days, since there's really nothing worthwhile to spend them on.

If course at that point you're already playing jenga with all your platinum bars, since there's nothing to spend gold either ( even if you're a snob who buys 7 suits of full plate to have a different suit to wear for every day

 

[Pauper]

As far as treasure goes, there are many things listed as treasure in all the seasons that have no value. In fact, the majority of items NPCs have are worthless. For example, Droki has several pieces of specific treasure with no value. Like I said earlier, AL rules originally required spellbooks to be used as soon as they were found, then become useless at the end of the session. The base value of a spellbook makes it too valuable to be a trinket, and all mundane treasure is automatically liquidated. It is obviously an oversight. somewhere around 6 months into season 1 Jeremy Crawford tweeted that spellbooks arent magic items but that they COULD be kept. He also said it was ok to Fabricate copies of spellbooks, and that they had intended spellbooks to be scribed using downtime days, but that they had not added that rule in. Currently the FAQ only has a couple entries about spellbooks.

You seem to be confused about some of the rules for AL:

- The only items that NPCs have that are inherently worthless are arms and armor, and not always even then (ALPG 3.0, p.6, "Arms and armor obtained from monsters is worthless unless otherwise specified"). There is at least one Season 1 adventure with lootable plate mail, for example.

- None of the ALPGs have ever referenced spellbooks and how to handle them explicitly apart from other types of loot. The ad-hoc rule of 'spend downtime days equal to 1/4 of the total spell levels in the spellbook' was created by the community and then adapted to allow characters to copy spells from other characters' spellbooks, which otherwise would have needed to have been done during an adventure. (Since you have a 'looted' spellbook in your inventory, there's no reason not to take as much time as you need to copy those spells, but you don't have unlimited time to spend with another wizard's spellbook you happened to adventure with.) I'm familiar with this ruling, since I helped promote it back when I was organizing the Recommended Rulings on the WotC boards.

- Jeremy Crawford has no responsibility and no authority in the Adventurers League; he is not a member of the admin team, and his rulings, either via Twitter or Sage Advice, are not considered official for the League. Crawford's opinion is no more relevant than if you got Gary Gygax to communicate via Ouija board.

Hope that helps you get up to speed.

--
Pauper

 

[kalani]

I am unaware of that rule Pauper (spending 1/4 SLs in DT I mean). The rule for spellbooks in the AL is as follows:

[h=5]Are players allowed to copy other players' spellbooks? How does copying spells work with downtime?[/h]
Yes, characters can copy spells from found spellbooks or other characters’ spell books. If the DM allows in game copying go by the rules in the Player’s Handbook. If it’s out of game, copying can be done with downtime at a rate of one downtime day for up to 8 hours of copying. (FAQ 3/20/15)

To my understanding, the above ruling has been clarified to allow the following:

1. You can copy spellbooks in-game without spending downtime (providing you have sufficient time to do so). In out of the abyss for example, there is a period of 3 months that occurs between the first and second half of the adventure that players could easily take advantage of; while most other adventures have either no opportunity, or at most 1-2 days opportunity to copy spells.
2. You can only copy spells from another player at the same table (unlike magic items which can be traded between characters who never adventured together - copying spells requires both characters to be physically at the same table).
3. Once the adventure ends, those players have one opportunity to spend downtime copying spells from each others spellbooks.
4. You can copy spells from a looted spellbook at any time. If two (or more) characters play the same adventure - each of those characters can copy spells from the looted spellbook in-game, or at the end of the adventure using downtime, after which it is my understanding that one character can keep the spellbook as a physical item (and copy spells from it at a later point).
5. Players can also copy spells from a previously looted spellbook in-game (but cannot do so with DT unless they have physical possession of the book on their character sheet).