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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9615702" data-attributes="member: 7737">Commentary:We remove the “stiff spike” from “the top pocket of our jerkin”...Thanks to WIS 3, we are foolish enough to store a very ouchy manticore quill-spike in our jerkin rather than in our belt pouch or in one of our extradimensional Deeppockets.…open our traveling spellbook to the parchment leaf “containing the spell [we’ve] been studying more than any other for the past month.”We “begin” to translate our father’s Wizard’s Scrawl…One cannot "begin" to translate something right now if one has "been studying" it for the past month. (Unless one has merely been gazing blankly at the squiggly lines on the page and wondering what they are, which I suppose is possible for OUR Carr Delling.)If "studying" means that same thing in gamebook land as it does in normal land, how the HECK could we not know that Enchant an Item takes multiple days to cast?! Especially given that's the second sentence of the spell?!“At the instant each word is read, it vanishes from the magical parchment as if it were a scroll spell.”Let's see what the AD&D rules have to say about Read Magic, spellbooks, and scrolls.PH p. 68, the Read Magic spell explanationBy means of a read magic spell, the magic-user is able to read magical inscriptions on objects — books, scrolls, weapons and the like — which would otherwise be totally unintelligible to him or her. (The personal books of the magic-user, and works already magically read, are intelligible.) This deciphering does not normally invoke the magic contained in the writing, although it may do so in the case of a curse scroll. Furthermore, once the spell is cast and the magic-user has read the magical inscription, he or she is thereafter able to read that particular writing without recourse to the use of the read magic spell.Three key points:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You can read your own personal spellbooks without Read Magic.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You can re-read "works already magically read" without Read Magic. This is mentioned twice.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Read Magic doesn't "normally" invoke the magic in the writing, unless it's cursed or similar (Explosive Runes being a fan favorite).</li> </ol>The traveling spellbook consists of three of Landor's most powerful spells that we haven't scribed into our own spellbook yet, likely because, in game terms, they are above the level we can cast. But that doesn't matter because after we use Read Magic the very first time to look at Landor's spells, we can always thereafter understand them without recourse to Read Magic. It doubly doesn't matter because we have a permanent Read Magic cast upon ourself! Thus we can always re-read Landor's spells, even the ones in the traveling spellbook, any time we want, with no danger of accidentally casting them. We could have and should have read the entire Enchant an Item spell way before this adventure so we'd know how it works.PH p. 100, Scroll SpellsUse of scroll spells is similar to the casting of normal (memorized) spells. They too disappear when read off the scroll, for their magical properties and energies are bound up in the characters, runes, signs, sigils, and words written for the particular spell.There is one confusing word here, and that is the "too" in the second sentence, because by definition memorized spells are not being "read", so the words of a memorized spell cannot "disappear when read". That aside, this paragraph establishes the rule that scrolls do indeed get used up when read.However….DMG p. 127, Scrolls (in the Treasure chapter)Each scroll is written in its own magical cypher, so to understand what sort of scroll has been found the ability to read magic must be available. Once a scroll is read to determine its contents, a read magic will not be needed at a subsequent time to invoke the magic. [...] Reading a scroll to find its contents does not invoke its magic unless it is a specially triggered curse.In case there was any doubt about the Read Magic explanation in the PH, the DMG reiterates that reading a scroll to determine "its contents" does not cast the spell. Now, that does leave open to interpretation what the phrase "its contents" may mean. I could definitely see a harsh adversarial DM interpret this to mean that the player finds out the name of the spell and nothing else. That doesn’t entirely make sense given that after you use Read Magic on the scroll for “its contents”, you can thereafter “invoke the magic” without Read Magic.But even if the DM told you only the scroll-spell’s title, this would be a meaningless restriction because any player worth his salt would immediately consult the PH for the details of the spell.Overall: By the rules as written and practiced, the player of Carr Delling would already know the title of his "scroll" (the traveling spellbook page) and would have read about it in the PH. He thus would most certainly know that Enchant an Item has a casting time of (by the book) "base 16 hours plus an additional 8-64 hours"; would know that the magic-user must remain in physical contact with the item being enchanted during the day and no more than 1 foot distant while resting; and would also know that any spell cast into the item also requires the Permanency spell to fix it in place. Altogether, a sensibly played magic-user would never sit down in a sulfurous swamp to start casting Enchant an Item.As always, though, we're in gamebook land where the rules as written hold no sway. And where OUR Carr Delling is a complete nincompoop with the foresight of a gnat.</blockquote>

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