Still double-speak. The reasons for vague magic items were given. I gave 3 reference points to use in your games (general magic purchasing, costs based on item creation rules, the AL guidelines). This was to help you because you are concerned about the resource. Helping you with some of the options available has nothing to do with any concerns for or against spell versatility.
The only person hung up on the cost and / or the availability of additional spells for a spell book in this thread so far has been you. You've been clinging to it and repeating it as a rebuttal to the discussion on spell versatility while making posts like the one above that don't give any information regarding "issues" with spell versatility.
What do you think is actually going to happen in play? A group with a wizard and a sorcerer go into town, sleep for the night, the sorcerer changes out 1 spell maybe and the wizard changes to his or her "in town" list? Or the group doesn't have both and it's not possible for one to overshadow the other? Replacing "sorcerer" with bard doesn't change anything because the bard is just going to take different spells from the wizard.
I'm not dismissing the "stepping on toes" argument. I'm disagreeing with it. And giving reasons why. The reasons why, to be clear, are:
The problem isn't that I have been ignoring what's been said. It's that what I've said in response seems to have been ignored.
- There is no incentive to regularly change spells for spells known classes. How often something can be done has nothing to do with how often something will be done.
- The wizard's connection to the spell book is reinforces in his identity because it's still the key to his spell selection as different from other arcane spell casters.
- Other aspects of the wizard's identity are completely untouched. These include class features and traditions.
- Spell versatility is completely underwhelming as a short rest mechanic in comparison to spell preparation. There's no comparison between swapping a single spell for a single spell with the same level compared swapping any number of spells among any number of levels available.
- This is a move to correct a concern to meet the intended spell swapping of these classes. A class cannot step on any toes in doing what it was originally intended to do.
- This started in the concept stage years ago according to interview with Crawford that you also reposted. That demonstrates a lot of though and feed back has gone into it before getting to this point.
- Crawford stated several times in several ways how this did not negatively impact the wizard identity as he sees it. As a designer and player this should be a consideration at the very least.
- What happens in downtime play is a minor consideration. Downtime is mostly not playing by definition and simply things that happen as time goes by. Once play begins it's become a detail in history. What's important is what happens in actual gameplay.
Through the swap on a level up?
You know, mentioning how much money it costs wizards all the time reminded me of something.
There is a fun part of the Player's Handbook I bet many player's do not take advantage of, pg 159, Spellcasting Services. Wizards can sell spells at a rate of 10 to 50 gp for a 1st or 2nd level spell. And, I know what you are thinking, "but sorcerers could do that too and they don't have spell costs". However, Sorcerers do not get Ritual Casting. Which means, at 10 minutes a spell, with no cost, over let us say a month of downtime, a 3rd level wizard could potentially make 1,800 gold... assuming they get 6 customers a day for a total of a single hour of work a day.
Just saying, money and time are rarely the costs that people seem to think they are, if a player is determined.
You know what I do when I find "yet another longsword?" I sell it.
I wonder how much an Archmage's spellbook sells for on the open market.
did you not read the section you were pointing at enough to realize that it's talking about hirelings?
services
Adventurers can pay nonplayer characters to assist them or act on their behalf in a variety o f circumstances. Most such hirelings have fairly ordinary skills, while others are masters of a craft or art, and a few are experts with specialized adventuring skills.
S om e of the most basic types of hirelings appear on the Services table. Other common hirelings include any of the wide variety of people w ho inhabit a typical town or city, when the adventurers pay them to perform a specific task.
....
spellcasting services
eople who are able to cast spells don’t fall into the category of ordinary hirelings. It might be possible to find someone willing to cast a spell in exchange for coin or favors, but it is rarely easy and no established pay rates exist. As a rule, the higher the level of the desired spell, the harder it is to find someeone who can cast it and the more it costs.
You do realize that PCs and NPCs don't follow all of the same rules
You accurately note that an archmage's spellbook might sell for a notable amount, but the fact that people think spellbooks are still considered to have the same kind of astronomical value as they did under the LFQW days. There are prices for spell scrolls on xge174, raritydc/atack bonuses for spell scrolls on dmg200, but neither gives even a suggested formula for converting filled spellbook pages to an estimated price. A scroll does quite a bit more than a spell book as it can actually be scribed or cast while the book can only be cast. The answer is "literally whatever the gm decides because spellbooks don't even have example rarities" for anything shy of artifacts like the book of vile darkness/book of exalted deeds on dmg222... It's almost like you've brought up yet another basic question about wizards wotc provides no guidance for guiding a GM.
That's great, but a spellbook with a bunch of spells only useful for a wizard wanting to scribe it is extremely different from an enormous stack of scrolls that anyone can cast using the rules on dmg200. To a non-wizard, one is useful & the other one is somewhere between "worth a lot" & "soft toilet paper" depending on f you can find a wizard to buy it or not. Back in 3.5 page 54 of the dmg said "If you’re designing an encounter with a wizard, subtract the valueof a spellbook and material components (see Selling a Spellbook,page 179 of the Player’s Handbook) from the averagetreasure value, but I'm not aware of any such rules in 5e, are you?"Following the guidelines for a PC's spellbook, with 8 1st, and 2 of each from 2nd to 9th, you would get the following:
If you use the rules in XGtE for scribing scrolls, about 700,000 gp.
If you use the rules in XGtE for selling scrolls, about 330,000 gp.
Those are about the minimums. If you had more spells, of course the value would increase.
edit: For arguments sake, that section back in the 3.5 phb read
"
Selling a Spellbook
Captured spellbooks can be sold for a gp amount equal to one-half the cost of purchasing and inscribing the spells within (that is, one-half of 100 gp per page of spells). A spellbook entirely filled with spells (thatis, with one hundred pages of spells inscribed in it) is worth 5,000 gp.
"
5e isn't the sort of gold fountain as 3.5, so it's safe to say dramatically less than the 330,000-700,000 guesstimate above & probably even less than the 3.5 value of 100gp/spell level
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