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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IndyPendant" data-source="post: 2984504" data-attributes="member: 8738">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. : )</blockquote>

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