How do people handle finding enemy spellbooks?

[TheNovaLord]

][/I].

Spell Level Writing Cost
0 ~ 5 gp
1 ~ 10 gp
2 ~ 40 gp
3 ~ 90 gp
4 ~ 160 gp
5 ~ 250 gp
6 ~ 360 gp
7 ~ 490 gp
8 ~ 640 gp
9 ~ 810 gp

Selling a Spellbook
Captured spellbooks can be sold for an amount equal to half the cost of purchasing and inscribing the spells within.

i struggle with this sentence in the book

1st lv spell:

does it mean 5gp (inscribe)
OR
5gp (inscribe), plus half the cost (purchase) of a scroll of it in the first place?

 

[frankthedm]

i struggle with this sentence in the book

1st lv spell:

does it mean 5gp (inscribe)
OR
5gp (inscribe), plus half the cost (purchase) of a scroll of it in the first place?

This fee is usually equal to half the cost to write the spell into a spellbook

So sell price total per spell is...

0th level 3.75 gp
1st level 7.5 gp
2nd level 30 gp
3rd level 67.5 gp
4th level 120 gp
5th level 187.5 gp
6th level 270 gp
7th level 367.5 gp
8th level 480 gp
9th level 607.5 gp

This is a VAST improvement over 3.5's 200gp [sell 100gp] per spell level.

 

[frankthedm]

Do note it looks like there is a profit to be made duplicating spell books and selling the duplicates.

Duplicating an existing spellbook uses the same procedure as replacing it, but the task is much easier. The time requirement and cost per page are halved.

Selling a Spellbook
Captured spellbooks can be sold for an amount equal to half the cost of purchasing and inscribing the spells within.

 

[Jdvn1]

"How come all these Wizards have such terrible handwriting?!"

They are monsters.

 

[Munktar]

Just make all spellbook have some strange effect so you players will not sell the extra's.

Most of the spellbooks NPC wizards have, are research books.

A research book contains the research on a spell and can have some additional strange and wonderfull effects. A wizards research into the Magic missle spell might contain the Magic Missle spell in 3 different versions.

The magic missle spell, the standard spell
The Magic bottle spell, as the magic missle, but the missles look like broken beer bottles, nice for barbrawls
The Magic Missle spell, that has a small chang to bypass the shield spell if special material components are used. the ingredients of these components are written in the same spellbook, and might contain several pages with the recepy.

Further the shield spell will be in the book and more spell like it.

The book will also give you a +2 to learn magic misslle or shield related spell.

Now nobody will sell the book

And of course just get you spellcraft up so much that you can learn from other book.

This is a great way to create pc wizards libraries....

 

[cattoy]

I have a 4th level wizard with the minimum # of spells.

At some point, I will hopefully answer this question.

 

[RaZorHamZteR]

In our group the other GM and I decided that captured spell-books are considered “owned” after having the book for a year and a day, reading it, studying it for all that time...

This way the spellcaster don't waste time and money on writing spells he will own in some time.

This will off course present with the problem of hiring butlers to carry all your books

 

[Set]

At one point in a 2nd edition game, it got to the point where, when we encountered a Deck of Many Things, and my Wizard got a Wish, she wished for her spellbooks to be sorted, since she was carrying seven spellbooks, by that point. She used the Wish to put all of the spells she regularly used into a single book, and then funneled the rest into secondary books, leaving the duplicates in the last three books, which she could sell off...

In a later game, a DM had us fighting a series of humanoids, being influenced by a cabal of wizards. The spell books, infuriatingly, all had the same spells (with maybe one or two unique spells each), because the wizards were all students of the same master.

Clever DM, I'll get you for that!

 

[megablake]

In the campaign I'm currently running, I went so far as to make a little notecard "spellbook" prop for a PC who had taken the spellbook of an evil wizard. The spellbook is haunted by said evil wizard's ghost.

 

[cattoy]

In a later game, a DM had us fighting a series of humanoids, being influenced by a cabal of wizards. The spell books, infuriatingly, all had the same spells (with maybe one or two unique spells each), because the wizards were all students of the same master.

Clever DM, I'll get you for that!

Even so, don't each of the nearly identical spellbooks all have a decent resale value? (it might take a little legwork to sell them in different cities, but still...)