casting from a spellbook

[Jack Simth]

Better yet, why does it cost 800gp to write one word into your spell book: "blind".




power word blind

Oh, sure, Power Word Blind takes up only a single line.... if you want the personal version of the spell. If, however, you want the channels, walls, and such set up properly so that your target goes blind, you're going to need the careful instructions for the purely mental and morning casting portions of the spell.

And it's those careful instructions that cost so much; the inks have to be insanely precise, and carefully re-layered over each other to properly align with the way the spell energies are supposed to flow; one line off and, well, let's just say you don't have a viable spell.

Of course, that's all fluff.

But if the stuff in a Wizard's spellbook was just a description of the proper verbal, somatic, material, focus, and other components, Fireball would likely take up less than a single page - after all, it's a quick hand motion, a little dabbling of bat guano and sulfur, and a spoken word..... can't take all THAT long to describe, can it?

 

[Infiniti2000]

But if the stuff in a Wizard's spellbook was just a description of the proper verbal, somatic, material, focus, and other components, Fireball would likely take up less than a single page - after all, it's a quick hand motion, a little dabbling of bat guano and sulfur, and a spoken word..... can't take all THAT long to describe, can it?

You forgot the part about squinching up your butt cheeks. Doing that just right can make or break a proper fireball. That's the difference between rolling 25 or rolling 10 on 5d6.

 

[IndyPendant]

I like your description and agree with you, but I have to ask "if a spellbook is just a notebook" then why does it cost a significant amount of money to write in it?

This is of course harder to put into words. But I shall try. I touched upon it with the second paragraph in my previous post. I think I shall need to use analogy to show what I mean.

If you want to draw a building, you grab a piece of paper, a writing utensil, take some time, and--assuming you (unlike me) have some visual artistic ability--voila! Building drawn. This is the equivalent of describing the spell Power Word: Blind.

Blueprints that define *how* to construct a building require precise diagrams filled with arcane symbols and descriptions that are, for the most part, difficult or impossible to decipher by anyone who is not a trained engineer. (The following assumes pre-CAD engineering.) It also requires special surfaces to write on, as well as specific pencils, pens, and paper. It is a *lot* easier to draw a simple building than to 'describe' (via blueprints) how to build one.

A spellbook is a description of how to 'build' a spell. A blueprint. However, it is a blueprint of *magic*. There are two reasons I can see why you would need special materials for a spell: 1) durability, and 2) to properly 'capture' the essence of magic.

You could scribble the instructions for a spell into your notebook with a pencil--but keep in mind, a wizard thumbs through his spellbook for at least *one hour* each and *every* day. --And for much of that time, he is not curled up in his easy chair by a warm fire; he's deep in a dank, dirty, damp dungeon. Or atop Mount Everest. Or on a ship tossed about in a storm. Or...etc, etc. If you manhandled your pen-written notebook, going over everything you have so far written, for an hour each and every day, under adventuring conditions...how long do you think it would last? A week? Four at maximum, if you're extremely lucky? A wizard's spellbook needs to last through years of such use, commonly decades.

Secondly, magic is Special. You can describe how to design a house using symbology and precise measurements, such that anyone who is extremely careful and has a very basic knowledge of construction could follow those instructions and build the house. Not so with magic. This is represented by the fact that a bottle of ink made from the spit of a frightened octopus gathered at midnight during the summer solstice is *different* for the purposes of magic, than common ink off the shelf. Using 'common' ink to describe the magical flow of a spell would no more help show a wizard how to cast a spell than using the metric system would help an engineer who is only familiar with inches and feet.

(This, btw, also easily explains why the "Power Word: Blind" spell requires so many pages in a spellbook. It's not just the word alone, by far--otherwise, everyone would be blind as every farmer, merchant, and child blinds whomever they don't like. It's describing precisely how to channel, construct, and contain the magical energy within yourself such that you can a) safely store it, and b) release it with a single word c) only when you intend to (and not the very next time you utter the word 'blind'), that takes up all that space. As a how-to, taking many pages to 'write down' Power Word: Blind makes perfect sense--Order of the Stick aside. : )

I would like to end this post with one more statement: Everything I have typed in this thread is gibberish. It's a bunch of pretty words wrapped around a complete absense of any substance whatsoever. I'm *not* trying to say "This is the one and only way magic works in DND!" --All I'm trying to do is create a framework of flavour text that sounds sensible, and is consistent with the rules. If it works for you, then great! If not...*shrug*. Make up your own flavour text. : )

 

[Someone]

But if the stuff in a Wizard's spellbook was just a description of the proper verbal, somatic, material, focus, and other components, Fireball would likely take up less than a single page - after all, it's a quick hand motion, a little dabbling of bat guano and sulfur, and a spoken word..... can't take all THAT long to describe, can it?

Casting the spell takes actually much more than 1 standard action. By the RAW you cast almost all the spell when you prepare it, except the final stages of it.

How this relates to sorcerers, I don´t know. Maybe they are supercharged with almost prepared spells...

 

[Jack Simth]

Casting the spell takes actually much more than 1 standard action. By the RAW you cast almost all the spell when you prepare it, except the final stages of it.

Yeah. But a 5th level specialist Wizard who spent all his spells the previous day except his bonus spell slots from a high Int is prepareing 13 different spells in that hour. And he's looking up the instructions as he goes. a 20th level specialist wizard in the same boat is preparing 49 spells. That's about 73 seconds per spell, on average, for an expert at it. Hardly enough time to open the book to the proper page.....

How this relates to sorcerers, I don´t know. Maybe they are supercharged with almost prepared spells...

A sorceror spends 15 minutes in concentration to regain spells for the day - perhaps he's got some kind of internal template for the spells, and only needs to throw built-up energy at them, something like the Epic Master Staff feat, or how a wand of Magic Missle at caster level 1 takes only one spell to make, but stores 50.

You forgot the part about squinching up your butt cheeks. Doing that just right can make or break a proper fireball. That's the difference between rolling 25 or rolling 10 on 5d6.

I mentioned somatic components, didn't I?

 

[Corvidae]

I gotta say Indypendant, you have some awesome fluff.

I think you really hit the nail on the head with this one. One thought I had was perhaps the cost is not in the ink and materials itself, but rather in the attunement process. Since it is so difficult to use another's spellbook, perhaps the ink is attuned to a particular person, and gives them insight into how magic works depending on perhaps the exact shade it takes when laid down, or the iridesence of it.

So perhaps the wizard must 'attune themselves to the ink in order to make any sense out of it. Another thing might be that the wizard must use magic to scribe the spellbook, for example, the wizard holds the ink in his or her hand and focuses on the targeting, channeling and elements of the spell Meanwhile the ink flows from his or her hand into arcane symbols that let the wizard remember exactly what it takes to cast the spell. Kinda like the difference between building a building from memory, or having the blueprints "downloaded" into your memory everyday.

Hope that helps.

John