I would say both. Not all sources of spells are scrolls. Some are from other spell books.
I'd say that it is what's in the PHB, unless you inform the players before character creation that Bad Things might happen! (I've always hated game world rules that only the GM is privy to.)
Heh. I'm using a ton of optional rules from the DMG without telling my players, as well as a few house-rules. I've told them everything they need to know for character creation, and standard play. They didn't know that wands were not rechargeable until they actually found one and cast Identify. They didn't know that they're was a Lingering Wounds chart (of my own devising) that's rolled on every critical hit, until it came up that a PC received internal wounds and was unable to continue in the fight until healed. There are still quite a few they've yet to uncover.I'd say that it is what's in the PHB, unless you inform the players before character creation that Bad Things might happen! (I've always hated game world rules that only the GM is privy to.)
Heh. I'm using a ton of optional rules from the DMG without telling my players, as well as a few house-rules. I've told them everything they need to know for character creation, and standard play.
Maybe it's just me, but when I think 'sense of wonder' in the context of the fantasy genre, I'm more likely to think 'dragon flying overhead' or 'uncovering secrets of a ruined temple' than 'sucking chest wound,' but hey, it takes all kinds...a PC received internal wounds and was unable to continue in the fight until healed.
This gives the players a sense of wonder, keeping the game from being just a numbers game.
I could imagine a world where items were /so/ rare, and wizards followed such a secretive hermetic tradition that an apprentice wizard out on his first adventures wouldn't know exactly how a wand might be recharged until he examined one - and even then might not be confident that the next one wouldn't be different....Ditto with magic item use. I'm pretty sure wizards would have figured out in-game that wands can't be recharged and that information would have become common knowledge among trained/organised arcane casters.