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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8140150" data-attributes="member: 93670">The awakened spellbook's damage shuffle is "you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook, which magically alters the spell's formula for this casting only. The latter spell must be of the same level as the spell slot you expend."This archetype needs both the <a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/177-spell-spotlight-fireball" target="_blank">"intentionally overtuned"</a> spells of each level in addition to one or more damage spells chosen entirely for their damage type of each spell level to make use of it. That eats both of the free 2/level spells and relies on the benevolence of the gm and/or whims of adventure builders in addition to gold putting a bigger need  ton the archtype to scribe more spells than other wizards. Thanks to the boneheaded choice to lean into "natural language" there is a reasonable argument to be made that the first point does and does not provide the ink needed to scribe the spell into the spellbook depending on which way specific beats general leans resulting in a class that plays massively different from table to table. In both cases, without something like the old guidance for purchasing copying spells from another wizard they can't even take a mountain of gold & buy them like classes that do the same with +n weapons & armor...  To rub salt in the wound though, because the wizard spends so much scribing spells to their spellbook they are going to have a hard time buying anything like that as the only class with a built in class mechanic gold sink even if the gm lets them go shoppingYes some HC adventures are better than others & newer ones are doing better than older ones, but Descent into avernus is not one of them & I'll go into that at the end...  Without a WBL type chart the GM has no yardstick to determine if the players are underfunded overfunded or just about right & how much they should do about it if they suspect they need to bring things in line.  Likewise if the players had too much treasure they couldn't find/take as you noted they have nothing they can point at when trying to convince the gm why they need to let them do some side quests for coin to make up for bad perception/investigation checks, generally not painstakingly mapping out every square inch of everything, and inadvertently stumble the path that seals off the option for treasure  too oftenIt should be a great wizard archetype that has a clear niche within the scope of the class  that differs from evoker's blasting, necromancer's undead, etc in a visceral way that feels rewarding, but the determination of that falls largely on how a particular bit of natural language is interpreted & in the event of one interpretation if the GM or adventure has enough gold+scrolls/spellbooks available to meet that bar.The level 6 manifest mind is a nice feature & I wasn't trying to suggest otherwise, but a 10ft radius dim light that lets you cast a spell from it  proficiency bonus times/long rest is not the "encounter trivializing" super scout  the archetype should hang it's claim to fame on that some people are making it out to be... The scouting also stomps hard on the toes of scout types like rogue making "let me send my spellbook to go arcane eye around" both frustrating for other players & certain to push the gm towards creating "solutions" for an invincible camera drone that will have long lasting effects on the usefulness when it's actually neededAs to your choice to tally up the gold for levels 1-4 in descent into avernus.... Thanks you for choosing such an incredible example for my point.  Yes page22  does indeed have...[spoiler="-THREE- spellbooks"][ATTACH=full]129564[/ATTACH][/spoiler]Just so there is no confusion, I highlighted the first level spells & underlined the second level spells which leaves....Page 23 has a slightly better spellbook on flennis with [spoiler="these"][ATTACH=full]129565[/ATTACH][/spoiler]Notice how one page apart the wizard is already up to 11 first level spells with five of them being  duplicates in the 4 spellbooks.  That's ok though because I'm sure there's another better spellbook later in the adventure?... oh wait no there isn't.  Maybe the spell scrolls will save it?Pg70.. mass healing, remove curse, tongues...  well tongues & remove class are on the wizard list too so huzzah?.... Maybe DiA makes up for it with amazing caster loot to match up with the awesome monty haul levels of martial  focused treasurepg95 wand of magic missile, page102 circlet of blasting &<a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/wand-of-secrets" target="_blank"> wand of secrets</a>, page 109 +1 wand of the war mage(one).  In addition to all the +1/+2 martial stuff not listed<a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items?filter-type=0&filter-search=&filter-requires-attunement=&filter-effect-type=&filter-effect-subtype=&filter-has-charges=&filter-source=48" target="_blank"> here</a> that totally compares to all the amazing monty haul martial gear in DiA... but take heart because a wizard can be sure to have plenty of gold to scribe every wizard spell they could find in the entire hardcover  long before they hit level 5.  Did you seriously take the time to add up all of the gold in levels 1-4 of DiA & not notice how bad the spellbooks are compared to the randomly generated treantmonk one or even stop to consider if there were other better spellbooks in the entire HC?  That sort of oversight while holding it up as an example of WotC meeting the needs of the wizard class in adventure design makes it reasonable to wonder how fundamentally flawed the quicksand foundations supporting the rest of your arguments are beond just the flaws I've pointed out.</blockquote>

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