3.x ed.--While Playing My 15th Level Wizard Last Night, I Realized Something...

[Corsair]

[sblock=IceFractal]Just looking in the SRD here, and excluding even defensive spells that any Wizard might prepare just in case, or non-violent combat stuff to deal with bar fights/angry mobs:

8th Level:
Greater Planar Binding - Extraplanar creatures can serve as a source of information or useful powers, not just combat aids.
Discern Location - Find where anything is, no matter what.
Prying Eyes - Allows you not only to scout faster, but also research faster and/or observe an experiment from multiple directions.
Telekinetic Sphere - Easily move large objects, contain dangerous materials, etc.
Polymorph any Object - Too many uses to even count.

7th Level:
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion - Live large, even in the most crowded city or the most desolate wasteland, for one spell slot a day.
Greater Teleport - Travel safely in seconds.
Greater Scrying - Watch what's going on whenever you want.
Simulacrum - Get a single sample of a rare creature, and you can have a near perfect duplicate that cooperates with you completely.
Control Weather - Don't feel like rain? No problem!
Reverse Gravity - Many uses, both practical, experimental, and comedic.

6th Level:
Planar Binding - Same reason as Greater Planar Binding.
Wall of Iron - Instant raw materials, especially when combined with Fabricate.
Legend Lore - For obvious reasons.
Freezing Sphere - Ice was hard to get before refrigeration, but not for you.
Permanent / Programmed Image - With a month or so to kill, you could build a whole illusory town. At the very least, you can spruce up your tower with this.
Shadow Walk - If you need to transport a larger group than Teleport does.
Control Water / Disintegrate / Move Earth - A great aid in construction projects.
Mass Stat Buffs - Need your assistants to be a lot more capable, without extra training or expensive items?[/sblock]


Going beyond that, 5th level gives you Contact Other Plane, a staple of diviners, depending on how risky you feel like being.

 

[WayneLigon]

my overall question is, what does a spellbook of an 18th level wizard who has never been in combat, doesn't plan to be in combat, dungeon delve, or adventure in any way, shape, or form, look like?

My simple answer is: those people never get to 18th level. They tend to plateau at around Wizard4-5 and stay there for the rest of their lives. They make some potions and charms, etc. They take a few levels of Expert so they have a lot of Knowledge skills, plus some languages or more esoteric skills such as forgery. They're hedge wizards and while they'll be respected in their community, they'll never really amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

The complex answer is: redesign the spell system. You are right that it's just plain stupid that there's a million different damage-things-with-x spells and nothing in there about growing crops or helping women with a difficult pregnancy.

The other answer: Here's the list I'd give them: These are spells known; not a lot of them, since he's not out finding them as treasure or taking spellbooks from defeated foes.

1st - Alarm, Hold Portal, Identify, Comprehend Languages, Sleep, Silent IMage, Disguise Self, Cause Fear, Erase, Feather Fall.
2nd - Arcane Lock, Detect Thoughts, Locate Object, Continual Flame, Darkness, Knock, Darkvision.
3rd - Dispel Magic, Phantom Steed, Arcane Sight, Tongues, Daylight, Water Breathing, Fly.
4rth - Remove Curse, Scrying, Detect Scrying, Stone Shape, Locate Creature
5th - Break Enchantment, Mages Private Sanctum, Secret Chest, Fabricate, Permanancy
6th - Dispel Magic Greater, True Seeing, Legend Lore, Control Water, Disinteregrate
7th - Banishment, Teleport Greater, Teleport Object, Vision, Control Weather
8th - Protection from Spells, Discern location, Antipathy, Prying Eyes Greater
9th - Wish

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, to reply to the OP's original conundrum, Magic Item Compendium has a 3000 gp item that any character could use and any mid level wizard with craft wondrous could create -- Gloves of Object Reading, page 107.

Basically, you handle an inanimate object like say...that note, and after a few minutes learn details about the previous owner of the item. Specifically, race, gender, age, alignment, and how the item was found and then lost by the previous owner. All of which would take a total of 5 minutes. For each minute thereafter, you can then learn details about the next-to-last owner, and the item seems to imply you can keep this up and go back as far as you want for previous owners, if you're worried there were some intermediaries who delivered the note after it was written. Of course, just getting a lead at all is helpful.

 

[Rechan]

The thing about 3.x that amuses me is that if you need to make magical items, you need to be of level x. But when you make an item of level x, you lose XP. If you want to make more, then you need more XP.

So you can wind up with 18th level weapon smiths or arcane mages who, having retired and now just make magical items, still need to go out and "grind" to get XP.

However, to be a more practical point: Wizards can gain XP without getting into combat.

How?

Same way a commoner, expert, or other NPC class gets beyond level 1.

Doing a job at a constant interval of time must generate XP. Otherwise you have 8th level experts who have to go kill monsters in order to craft items or write books better, commoners need to go into dungeons so they can crow corn more skillfully, etc.

So, a professional Diviner or Illusionist who doesn't fight, gains XP by being hired to cast his spells on a daily basis. After years and years of doing this, he is bound to generate XP.

 

[Arkhandus]

Quite simply, non-adventuring spells are just not really important to D&D's core premises, so they are not commonly included in D&D rulebooks. D&D is a game about ADVENTURE, and generally, adventure doesn't involve a lot of drudge-work and mundane tasks, at least not in a fantasy game where part of the point is to escape the drudgery of everyday life and have fun playing out the adventures of an exciting hero doing exciting and heroic things.

Just because the rulebooks don't have a set of specific non-adventuring spells in them doesn't mean that any given D&D setting must lack such spells. Just that they aren't important enough to an adventurer, in other words a PC, for inclusion within the limited space of the rulebooks. Sure, once in a blue moon you'll really wish your wizard had a spell for this or that handy but non-exciting little task, but the core rules already have some details on designing/researching new spells and whatnot.

With the DM's approval, you can easily work up some utility spells for your game, and maybe he won't even make your character pay the research costs, and will just say that they're already common spells he just has to study normally in the academy/library/whatever.


And the rules ALREADY have some utility spells, just not a lot of them, because it's rare that an adventuring wizard would need more than that. Want to find out who really sent you that letter? Scry on them. Want to get some chores done? Cast Unseen Servant or Prestidigitation. Etc.

And I'm pretty sure there were more utility spells in 1E and 2E, that Wizards of the Coast just never updated to 3E. Amanuensis in the FRCS or Magic of Faerun for 3E is just a copy of a Core 2E spell I remember (though it had a different name back then, I think), which copies text from one source onto others, useful for bookmaking and such. And I know there have to be others. Also, Dragon Magazine had an article or two about practical magic, about a year or so ago, when it was still in print.

Plus, there are psionics. Psionics have had a power for learning the history of an item or place since, what, 1E? They certainly had it in 2E and 3E. With how 3E turned psionics into just a cheap imitation of magic, it would be easy to convert the power into a wizard spell. Psionics has some other utility powers as well.


Blast-Ar the Adventuring Wizard has no use for a Show Me Who Made This Item And When spell; he can Scry or Legend Lore it if it's important, and he doesn't likely need to know the circumstances of its creation, he just needs to know who he should teleport to and annihilate or give some cookies to, or whether or not the item is important to his quest. Sage-Gar the Siss-er, Scholarly Wizard might want just such a spell, but he's boring and nobody wants to RP him except as cannon fodder, so he can just go cry in a corner about how boring he is. The rest of us will be kickin' arse and takin' Truenames, along with buckets of treasure to build our towers and supermagical flying fortresses and other cool stuff.

 

[Victim]

i'm not looking for just that particular spell.

my overall question is, what does a spellbook of an 18th level wizard who has never been in combat, doesn't plan to be in combat, dungeon delve, or adventure in any way, shape, or form, look like?

I generally see that as a contridiction in terms. People don't get levels for sitting around on their rear ends, IMO, even if they're really old. Someone who has never faced adventure or hazard - someone who never pushes maybe a little too hard - doesn't get to 18th level.

 

[Drowbane]

[snarky]

..."what does a spellbook of an 18th level wizard who has never been in combat, doesn't plan to be in combat, dungeon delve, or adventure in any way, shape, or form, look like?"

~Dorkminster the Sage of Shadowrail~
Venerable Human Male Expert 20 - Str 8, Dex 11, Con 6, Int 32, Wis 16, Cha 16...
Feats: skill focus (x10, one per Knowledge Skill)
Skills: 20 ranks in each Knowledge (mod of.... +33?)
Gear: +6 pointy hat of Int +6, a nice cottage in Shadowrail (a small town where nothing ever happens... except adventurers often seek out Dorkminster for information.), tons of books, including Dorkminster's Guide to All things Linguistic (a spelling-book - this massive tome is basicly a Common to all other languages in one binding. Dorkminster's lifework.)

[/snarky]

Ya know, I kinda think thats how I'd stat out ol Elminster if/when my PCs next decide to visit him for info...

 

[S'mon]

You don't get to be an 18th level Wizard without lots of combat.

 

[Imp]

My simple answer is: those people never get to 18th level. They tend to plateau at around Wizard4-5 and stay there for the rest of their lives. They make some potions and charms, etc.

I agree – when simming things in 3e games, I don't have NPCs go past 5th level unless they've survived some pretty extraordinary events. And those are the ones that work and work and work and even achieve breakthroughs in their areas of expertise.

Peaceful lives have a low Challenge Rating.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

So you can wind up with 18th level weapon smiths or arcane mages who, having retired and now just make magical items, still need to go out and "grind" to get XP.

Only if the character is a PC or an NPC adventuring WITH PC's. NPC's otherwise do not "earn" their xp - they are ASSIGNED as much xp for whatever reason the DM desires. An NPC magical-weaponsmith can even become a magical-weaponsmith simply because the DM wants him to, not because the DM has detailed information about 100 different adventures the NPC participated in to "earn" the XP that would enable a PC to do the same thing.

The game requires no other justification than that. YOU might feel some inexplicable obligation to do so but none is actually needed.