D&D 5E Creating a spell book as loot for a wizard

[Curmudjinn]

I rarely left spellbooks. If I did, they were destroyed aside from a handful of pages identifiable over a full evening of translation.

A 3.5 game I played in had an issue with the wizard constantly getting scrolls and spellbooks. Eventually the party felt left behind, as the fighter classes couldn't swap feat suites per day, and it was mostly melee classes. So I am reluctant now to throw out full books in my own games.

 

[robus]

Thanks, everyone, for the thoughtful responses. Lots of good ideas here.

 

[MechaPilot]

When I create a spellbook as loot for the PCs, I generally assume that the book has a lot of overlap with the PCs' spellbooks. A lot of spells (Mage Armor, Feather Fall, etc) are just plain common sense for adventuring wizards who plan to survive. I generally put one spell the PCs don't know that is of the highest level the PCs can cast in the book. If the book is from a fallen enemy and is not just found somewhere, then I make sure the book includes all the spells the enemy used against the PCs (just for the sake of consistency).

 

[Sunseeker]

"Rewarding" a player with spells is great...if you run a game where the Wizard actually has to go buy/learn/train those spells. If not, you're not really rewarding him with anything!

I like to take the approach that a spellbook contains at least one unique ritual or spell. It is often complicated and at best, barely legible, but when you think about those Wizards with towers full of books, you can't imagine that they are all simply the spells in the PHB! They've got to contain knowledge that while greatly valuable, is also very dangers and the Wizard keeps it because he both desires to use it, but is terrified of what might happen if he does.

The long-and-short of it is that I determine how "complex" the special spell is (ie: pick a DC) and the player may make that DC any time as part of their 'light activity' of a long rest (or once a day during any downtime) to advance their knowledge of the ritual. Once they have advanced their knowledge of the ritual, they become capable of performing it (typically these are one-shot specials). Typically a "simple" spell requires 25 successful checks. Yeah, that's a lot, but I have a lot of downtime in my games and I don't want this to be super easy to get, understand and use "crazy arcane lore".