[AD&D Gamebook] Sceptre of Power (Kingdom of Sorcery, book 1 of 3)

Back to the gamebook.

Fresh off learning the Light spell, we return to our room for another lengthy study session.

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16, redux

A die roll of 6 sends us to (4) to learn Find Familiar.

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4

Uncle Beldon teaches the Find Familiar class personally. That's because it is "the most powerful and costly incantation listed in the catalog." Everyone who's anyone is taking this class, including our rival Arno.

We ask Beldon if Find Familiar "always" lets a wizard summon "his" magical assistant. Well that's a dumb question. It's called Find Familiar, not Summon Familiar. See, a summon spell brings a creature from another plane -- wait, sorry; wrong edition.

Beldon explains that "unless a more powerful force has control of your particular familiar, the spell will work." However, it's a costly spell [one hundred whole gold pieces! which is less than a minute of work for our magic pouch] and can only be cast once a year. Apparently it's also dangerous if miscast. For those reasons, we aren't actually allowed to cast Find Familiar until we leave the college.

Everyone is disappointed, but Beldon stands firm. We will prepare as if we were to cast the spell, but we won't make the actual movements. Also we will only chant for a few hours instead of all night.

Beldon prepares a huge brass brazier [must… resist… 15-year-old boy… joke… GAH, failed my resistance test] along with fifty pounds of charcoal (!), "several sacks" of herbs, and "rare Tikandian incense."

Beldon asks the class how to begin.

We raise our hand. So does Arno. He smirks at us and lowers his hand.

We make an INT test to answer Beldon's question.

(212) if 23 or higher
(237) if less

This INT test is not a gimme: at a maximum starting INT 16, we need at least a 7 to hit the 23 to learn the spell.



We call our shot like Babe Ruth and get 23 exactly. Turn to (212).

212

We stride to the front of the class and explain what we learned in the manual last night: that you get everything ready and then at the moment the sun drops below the horizon, you light the brazier, add all the ingredients, and chant the "spell phrase" over and over in a monotone.

Beldon asks us to demonstrate but without actually lighting the brazier here in the classroom. And we should go slowly because we have to last all night.

[must… resist… 15-year-old boy… joke… GAH, failed my resistance test]

We nod, but don't waver in our chant and methodical addition of components to the brazier: "incense, catnip, basil, arrowroot, savory; incense, catnip, basil, arrowroot, …."

Beldon scrutinizes our form and pronunciation. After half an hour, he's satisfied and says he is impressed with our preparations: our casting was "flawless"!

"It remains to be seen whether he could keep that up all night without rest," [oh dear] but for now Beldon calls this a success.

We turn to see a sneer on Arno's face. We smirk back at him, add +1 INT (to 17) and +1 CHA (to 16), mark Find Familiar in our spellbook, and go back to (16).

Commentary:

The Find Familiar material components (brass brazier, charcoal, herbs -- specifically "basil, savory, and catnip for sure" -- and incense) and long casting time (1-24 hours) are taken directly from the 1st edition AD&D Players Handbook spell description.

You then roll a d20 and hope not to get screwed over by the "no familiar available" result (16-20) which means you just wasted a bunch of time and money. In fact you are hoping to roll a 15 so you get one of the special familiars. And you're really hoping NOT to roll an 11-12 for a toad, which gets you laughed at by everyone else at the magic-user soirees.

Back in the gamebook, it's weird to me that Find Familiar is here described as though it summons a specific creature rather than whatever randomly determined creature is within range.

Also, why is Find Familiar one of the spells we can "choose" to learn, only to find out we don't actually cast it? Why not let us learn, and cast, one of the other 1st level magic-user spells instead?

As a veteran player of this gamebook from back in the day, I know that Carr is CAPABLE of ending up with a familiar. But not by learning the spell from Beldon. Cue mysterious music!

This school is really poorly managed.

Criticism #1: Find Familiar is the most potent spell they teach, yet it's level 1. So basically, you can't learn advanced magic here. For the most prestigious College Arcane, I'd have hoped one of the students could fly or cast a fireball, but nope. You'll leave only with 1st-level education.

Criticism #2: The school is financially mismanaged. They spend nearly a thousand gold to gather the components and they'll do all the ritual except... light a bunch of coal in a brazier? OK 50 pounds, but 1 gp is 20 pounds of bituminous coal in 2e, and a pound of coal is 5sp in 5e. It can't make up a significant fraction of the components used to... not cast the spell?

Criticism #3; They expose students to hazardous practices. This spell, if miscast, is dangerous, so, students... you won't cast it under the supervision of the faculty. You'll, instead, go back to the comfort of your own home to attempt the casting unsupervised. I hope you have a good house insurance.

Criticism #4: Arno is learning Find Familiar. That means blue robes aren't real wizards yet... so you were exactly right, they let true beginners teach spells in this academy!

Jfdlsjfd said:

Criticism #1: Find Familiar is the most potent spell they teach, yet it's level 1. So basically, you can't learn advanced magic here.

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In fairness I think the implication is that Carr is taking the just-past-the-cantrips course, and there are other more advanced courses also available. So Find Familiar could be the most powerful spell in the catalogue of 1st level spells for this semester, not necessarily the most powerful spell taught in the entire school.

Jfdlsjfd said:

You'll leave only with 1st-level education.

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You can turn to (26) any time you want, but you can never leave. If you leave, who will teach the next crop of suckers? I mean, students.

Jfdlsjfd said:

They expose students to hazardous practices. This spell, if miscast, is dangerous,

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So dangerous that if Carr fails the INT check, he… gets embarrassed in front of the class, loses 1 INT, and is sent to his room without supper.

That’s… not how I remembered this. I am sure there are some lethally dangerous mis-casts in this book and it is now my sworn mission to find them!

Jfdlsjfd said:

so, students... you won't cast it under the supervision of the faculty. You'll, instead, go back to the comfort of your own home to attempt the casting unsupervised.

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I mean honestly that seems like good risk management on the part of the college.

Jfdlsjfd said:

Criticism #4: Arno is learning Find Familiar. That means blue robes aren't real wizards yet

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Technically no-one here is a wizard.
…
They’re all magic-users.

16, redux-er

Back in our room, we roll a 2, which is Light, so we re-roll and get a 5 which is Sleep.

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151

Arno unloads an entire paragraph of exposition about how great the Sleep spell is. Once you put your subjects under, you can do "whatever you like" to them.

But because pain will wake them, if you want to harm them, you need to make it clean and swift, perhaps with a dagger thrust to the throat….

"Arno's dark eyes gleam as he describes the use of the Sleep incantation to assassinate subjects." Yikes!

We have long suspected Arno wasn't a very nice guy and this just confirms it. His dark features don't seem fully human, although we can't place him as any demihuman race with which we are familiar.

Arno needs an assistant for his demonstration and of course he picks us. Everyone else "titters" at the inevitable showdown.

["Titters"? What are we, a bunch of society ladies scandalized by a rude joke?]

From a pocket inside his blue robe, Arno pulls forth a vial of fine white sand. "Take a tiny pinch and fling it into your subject's face while you say 'Shhhh!' and think of nothing but perfect stillness."

Rather than merely describe the technique, Arno casts the Sleep spell on us!

INT test…
(216) if 21 or more
(178) if less

We roll a 1 & 3, add this to our INT 17, and eke out a 21. Thank goodness we acquired some extra INT just prior to this section!

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216

Due to our intensive studying, we're prepared for Arno's attempt to put us to Sleep so he can molest us like a pervert and then murder us. We focus our will and become completely alert. We concentrate on each individual grain of sand as it strikes our face.

We resist the spell. Arno is shaken by our mental fortitude. And turnabout is fair play.

One could hear a pin drop in the room. Beads of sweat stand out on Arno's forehead. The only thing missing is an Ennio Morricone soundtrack to make this as tense a quickdraw contest.

We take the vial of sand and throw some at Arno while we say "'Shhhh!" and imagine "perfect quiet and stillness."

Arno tries to fight our spell but is overcome. He falls to the floor to the cheers of the other novices. We look around and grab a quill from a nearby inkwell which we use to draw a mustache on Arno's upper lip. Then we pinch him to wake him up.

"You're right, Arno," we say, "you can do anything to the victim of a Sleep spell." Arno goes pale as he hears the class's laughter and realizes what happened. He clambers to his feet and angrily points a finger at us --

-- but is interrupted by Beldon, who must have that school teacher's sixth sense about when students are about to get into a fight. Beldon cannot suppress a smile at our accomplishment, though, and he advises that Arno should be more careful about choosing opponents who "may be stronger than you imagine."

Beldon dismisses the class.

Arno glares at us with an even more fierce expression of hatred as we saunter out of the room.

Because we "seem to be smarter than [our] original die roll" we get to add 1 to our INT, and because we drew a mustache on a helpless victim we get to 2 to our CHA.

We record Sleep in our spellbook and turn back to (16).

Commentary:

Based on the instructions at (16), we don't have to proceed to (26) until we have recorded three spells in our spellbook (and on our spiffy bookmark). We rolled well and managed to learn three spells in a row on our first try, but it is of course possible to fail to learn some in which case our INT and/or CHA will go down instead of up. Your ability scores can keep changing until you eventually learn a third spell, have attempted all six spells (whether you learned any or not!), or take a break and turn to (26) "to get away from your studies for a while."

In this playthrough, our bookmark-slash-character-sheet now looks like this:



We have a whopping 18 INT and 18 CHA -- which would be incredibly great scores for any magic-user in a full-on AD&D game.

Our spell selection could be better, though.

• Light is "meh" in AD&D. I'd much rather have Spider Climb, Unseen Servant, or Armor from the "Weak" spells list.
• Find Familiar is good in games where the DM lets you get away with a lot of clever uses for the familiar, but can be worthless if your DM doesn't allow that type of play. Plus a familiar is a huge liability: when it dies, the magic-user loses double its number of HP permanently. Which either kills you outright at low levels or leaves you crippled for the rest of your career.
• Sleep is a fantastic "save or die" spell. Arno was right about that.

At least we didn't randomly get saddled with the starting spells Affect Normal Fires and Nystul's Magic Aura, which I swear I rolled every. single. time. I played a magic-user in the old days.

Joshua Randall said:

Arno unloads an entire paragraph of exposition about how great the Sleep spell is. Once you put your subjects under, you can do "whatever you like" to them.

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A (male) teenager's dream. I suppose his lessons had full attendance.

Joshua Randall said:

But because pain will wake them, if you want to harm them, you need to make it clean and swift, perhaps with a dagger thrust to the throat….

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That's what you get when youu let random psycho killers teach a 101 course.

Joshua Randall said:

We have a whopping 18 INT and 18 CHA -- which would be incredibly great scores for any magic-user in a full-on AD&D game.

Click to expand...

Did we miss some opportunity to increase INT by foregoing cantrip-learning?

Jfdlsjfd said:

A (male) teenager's dream. I suppose his lessons had full attendance.

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Let’s face it: if AD&D spells existed in real life — Sleep, Unseen Servant, Mage Hand, Invisibility, Silence… my goodness. Think of the possibilities.

Jfdlsjfd said:

Did we miss some opportunity to increase INT by foregoing cantrip-learning?

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Some of the spells (whether cantrips or not) give you +INT and some don’t, with no apparent rhyme nor reason.