D&D 5E A Wizard without a spell book...........

[Staccat0]

There's a bunch of spells that need no M. Almost all cantrips, for instance.

Additionally a lot of the material components for low level spells are things they could just scrounge up. Color spray, for instance means you need to find some red, yellow and blue sand. Grease requires some pork rind or butter.

Finding the material components for the spells you want to cast makes for an interesting part of the break out attempt.

I think this sounds potentially really fun. You may look at their spell list and try to come up with some natural ways they could scrounge for a few spells. You just might want to be explicit from the start being like "Hey you don't have an arcane focus, so if you want to cast a spell that have a material component you'll wanna keep an eye out."

if they think of a cool plan that that hinges on getting a certain component, you can probably spin an opportunity on the fly. If they fail to get it, it just heightens the tension. When they finally get that wand it should make for a good time.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I guess one question is: did he never have a spellbook, or was it taken from him? If the former, then...he's not really a wizard, is he? And if the latter, he would still have the last spells he memorized.

 

[CTurbo]

I'm setting this up now. I can do whatever I need to do as far as the spellbook goes. I assume he had one and it was taken from him when he got caught.

 

[Horwath]

There's a bunch of spells that need no M. Almost all cantrips, for instance.

Additionally a lot of the material components for low level spells are things they could just scrounge up. Color spray, for instance means you need to find some red, yellow and blue sand. Grease requires some pork rind or butter.

Finding the material components for the spells you want to cast makes for an interesting part of the break out attempt.

This.

I remember in 3.5, I was escaping from prison and as a sorcerer I had reduce person spell.

Material component was iron dust for it. So I pulled out one tooth so I could grind down little of the iron bars for iron scraps.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Anyway, I'm about to start a new campaign and I want to start the characters off unarmed and in a prison camp of some sort.

One of the least popular (with players - module writers seem to like it) ways to start a campaign.

I guess my question is, what can an unarmed Wizard do? Cantrips? Maybe spells that are somatic only?

Any spell that doesn't have a material component (Magic Missile is still V,S, for instance), or that you can scrounge the material component (some spells have components like 'dust' or 'a bit of cobweb' or 'a feather' - at least, they did back in the day.... checking Sleep, for instance, it's back to a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a cricket...), an 'unarmed' wizard can cast.

The Wizard only needs his book to change which spells he has prepared, so he can go quite a while, casting his full allotment of daily slots, recovering them with a long rest, and doing it again, until he can recover his book or acquire a new one. He's just getting a taste of how the other half live for that time. The other half of casters, who simply have known spells, that is, not the other much smaller fraction of benighted adventurers who never get to cast spells, at all.

 

[Nupo]

It might be more fun if their captors don't know he is a wizard. If they do, they would probably take precautions to prevent him from being able to cast anything. Also, it could be fun for him to have to work to keep that fact a secret from their captors.

 

[MarkB]

You did not say what level you are starting the characters at, and that would make a big difference in how important the spell book would be. One of the published WotC 5E adventures, Out of the Abyss, starts the characters out as prisoners. It started them at 1st level, so replacing starting gear, if they could not recover their confiscated gear, was not a big deal. Though I guess not having your spell book is always a big deal to a class that requires one. lol

When I was preparing to run Out of the Abyss, I came up with a plan for the eventuality of someone playing a wizard (as it happened, nobody did). The spellbook was to be hung up at the entrance to an outhouse, conveniently close to where the prisoners would be taken to and from their daily tasks so that the wizard could see it in passing. Each day, the Drow guards would make occasional use of some of the book's pages, which were soft and absorbant. How many spells the wizard had access to by the time the spellbook was recovered would depend upon how many days it took them to escape.

 

[MrHotter]

One of the least popular (with players - module writers seem to like it) ways to start a campaign.
Any spell that doesn't have a material component (Magic Missile is still V,S, for instance), or that you can scrounge the material component (some spells have components like 'dust' or 'a bit of cobweb' or 'a feather' - at least, they did back in the day.... checking Sleep, for instance, it's back to a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a cricket...), an 'unarmed' wizard can cast.

The Wizard only needs his book to change which spells he has prepared, so he can go quite a while, casting his full allotment of daily slots, recovering them with a long rest, and doing it again, until he can recover his book or acquire a new one. He's just getting a taste of how the other half live for that time. The other half of casters, who simply have known spells, that is, not the other much smaller fraction of benighted adventurers who never get to cast spells, at all.

This is why I like reading the boards. I was under the impression that a wizard needed their spellbook to recover spell slots on a long rest. Thanks for giving me one more thing that I won't do wrong at my table.

So it looks like a captured wizard that has his spellbook and arcane focus/component pouch taken away would:

1. Not be able to cast any spell with a material component.
2. not be able to change their current memorized spells.
3. not be able to cast a spell as a ritual unless the spell is memorized.

That's not so bad. There may be cases when a wizard would intentionally leave their spellbook behind if they were worried about losing it.

 

[ruy343]

Well... at least one cheesy solution is for the wizard to take the Keen Mind feat, and then upon reaching second level, if they decided to follow the Conjurer specialty, they'd be able to conjure their spellbook from thin air, word-for-word, as long as they had seen it within the last month...

 

[jgsugden]

In 5E, a wizard can survive without a spellbook for a long time as long as they have some prepared spells. I had a POW storyline and the wizard did just fine without his spellbook for the 3 levels that he did not have it - he had to find some imaginative uses for his prepared spells. Just make sure you provide him with access to an implement sometime early on so that he can avoid material components - although my wizard had a fun time with substitute material components for a bit ... I won't tell you how we made a substitution for fireball spell components, but he found them in his own cell....