D&D 5E Keeping Spellbooks Unique

[JiffyPopTart]

My suggestion is a fairly big change from how D&D is designed to work but would make spells themselves have a very unique feel.

What if every "spell" as recorded in a spellbook only exists as long as its original creator was still "alive"? By creator I mean mechanically "took that spell as one of the free ones when they leveled up." Furthermore what if the spells cannot be copied, but rather can be cut-and-pasted from one spell book to another?

This way you can never really just copy spells from someone but you can steal or borrow them. Lets say the party busts down a door and kills the evil wizard running a cult...there aren't going to be any spells to steal because once the wizard is dead all their spells are dead too. If instead, you snuck into the lair of the evil lich and stole his Sleep spell then the spell remains functional and now you have someone that is going to be coming for you while you have it in addition to the lich no longer being able to cast Sleep while its gone.

Conversely, in the party itself, if the wizards cooperate then they can "borrow" each others spells but not all have simultaneous access to them. Similarly, if you had three wizards in the party and they all wanted to know Fireball, then they are all going to have to take it as one of their level up learns.

If you wanted to use this concept I would add in a method for a wizard who has their items stolen to be able to locate them that is native to the class. Similarly I would like to probably work up a way to let wizards hide their "spells" learned and be able to access them while on the road rather than just keeping them all in one easily stolen object.

Maybe this is why evil wizards always live in dungeons and towers full of traps...because they don't want people getting their grubby paws on their "Spells".

 

[Horwath]

I'm looking at starting a campaign that is mage centric. One of the things I would like is some uniqueness to the spell books.
What can I house rule to make this so. As an example, if Dave the Wizard finds a scroll of Ice Storm and copies it into his spell book, how can I prevent that spell from quickly finding its way into Steve the Wizard and Chris the Wizard's spellbooks.
The 5E rules allow this, I would like to at least make this hard. Thoughts?

G

as many already asked, why?

Wizards learn more spells per level that they can prepare and they can prepare more spells that they can cast.

Is it ritual casting?

Will those few 1-3 level spells extra that can be cast as ritual really be a problem?

Is having party with water breathing 24/7 a problem?

Or hauling gear on Tenser's floating disc instead of a cart, a problem?

 

[Krachek]

Pretty paradoxal to have a mage centric world where wizard have problem to copy and share spells!

 

[Maxperson]

It doesn't matter to me why. Since he wants to do it this way, I'm going to help him if I can.

One idea that could work is modifying magic a bit for your setting. You could set it up so that if a given spell only has so much magic to power it on a daily basis, so the more that know and use a spell, the weaker it gets. Create an in game reason for why wizards don't want to share spells with other wizards.

 

[Krachek]

Better add additional feature to subclass base on magic school.
if players have chosen different school, they will tend to specialize to get benefit of their more powerful subclass power.

otherwise state that you cannot copy spell from spell book, but rather transfert it from one to another.
thus the only way to have new spell is the two ones at each level, or steal it from another book or scroll.

 

[Fenris447]

Let me reiterate that last point one more time - wizards get plenty of spells in their spellbook just from leveling. If they find a cool spell and you do not want it to just be copied into a spellbook, you may need to consider what will happen when they level and choose that spell.

For what it's worth, Wizards have very few spells relative to other classes. Wizards prepare and can cast very similar to Druids and Clerics. But the latter two have their entire spell list to choose from each day, whereas Wizards must pick what they have in their spell book then choose from that very limited list. And there aren't any major class or subclass features that offset this lack of choice with any significantly powerful/useful abilities. Put up against other classes, the Wizard is clearly designed to receive extra spells from the DM/world in order to keep up.

 

[Horwath]

For what it's worth, Wizards have very few spells relative to other classes. Wizards prepare and can cast very similar to Druids and Clerics. But the latter two have their entire spell list to choose from each day, whereas Wizards must pick what they have in their spell book then choose from that very limited list. And there aren't any major class or subclass features that offset this lack of choice with any significantly powerful/useful abilities. Put up against other classes, the Wizard is clearly designed to receive extra spells from the DM/world in order to keep up.

more or less, this!

 

[Krachek]

I read somewhere that the Wizard can be playable with only its two spells he get at each level.
So you can state that adding spell to a spell book by other mean is impossible.
better change the savant feature that will become useless.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I share the OPs sentiments. I think it would be a more interesting world if spells were more rare and precious. Unfortunately I just don’t think it easily fits mechanically with the game. Partly because of the huge imbalance in the utility/power of the spells.

Let’s say there’s some chance you are unable to copy any given spell, and your character gets unlucky with both Fireball and Counterspell. WTF??

If you mitigate that with multiple tries you’ve mostly negated the goal of the new mechanic.

if I were going to make a change, I might introduce a chance of failure during copying that destroys the source. (Fluff might be the it requires “reading” a spell, as if from a scroll, and there’s an art to getting right up to that line without crossing it. And sometimes you goof). For that reason wizards would be unlikely to allow strangers to copy, and it means you wouldn’t automatically get every spell in a found/captured spell book. Maybe make it an Int (Arcana) check of 10 + spell level. Advantage if it’s your school.

 

[Maxperson]

You could make it impossible to copy from book to book. Create special scrolls that wizards can make, and them make them very expensive or involve hard to get ingredients. Players might be able to make a few over time, but it would limit them and explain why wizard books are so different. At the same time, it would allow NPCs and treasure hordes to offer/contain them, so PCs still have a source of gaining new spells.