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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 4540464" data-attributes="member: 13966">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.</blockquote>

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