D&D 5E Keeping Spellbooks Unique

[Theo R Cwithin]

Spellbooks are touchy, unstable things.
Copying a spell (from a scroll, spellbook, or whatever) into your own spellbook risks damaging/destroying your own spellbook. (Could be an arcana check or something, and failure erases 1dN random spells from the book?)
This risk drops as more time and expense is put into completing the copy. This risk rises the more complex (higher level) the copied spell is, and the more complex (total spell levels) your own spellbook is.

This represents the wizardly research needed to ensure the "energy [insert arcanobabble] frequencies" of a spell from an unfamiliar source aren't too dissonant with your own spellbook.

PCs can still do the copies, but there's a huge risk... but that risk can also be mitigated with enough time and drop a lot of coin.

 

[Undrave]

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

Just reintroduce limitation based on school specialization. 'Steve, you can't learn Ice Storm because you're not allowed Evocation spells'

 

[Blue]

If you are going with "multiple mages with different spells", maybe you want to make whatever provides magic in your world unique to support the concept.

Perhaps when a spell is cast in an area, the "weave" conforms to it. Any others casting the same spell in the same area for a period have to upcast it one level just to have it go off (with no other benefits from that level of upcasting). Maybe cantrips are too minor, but it's 1 round for 1st level spells (so not to deny everyone utility spells like shield), 1 minute for 2nd level spells (most combats), 10 minute for 3rd level spells (most other scenes), 1 hour for 4th level spells, 8 hours for 5th level spells, 1 day for 6th level spells, a week for 7th level spells, a month for 8th level spells and a full year for 9th level spells.

So that high level casters stay away from each other since it's possible a spell they want to cast has already been cast in the area.

I mentioned per area, which you could customize. I was picturing at least big enough for a small settlement or a dungeon, but many different in a city.

 

[MarkB]

One option would be for it to be literally impossible to copy a spell into a spellbook in your gameworld.

Instead, the only way for a wizard to gain a spell other than through levelling is to take a spell scroll and literally splice it into their existing spellbook in a ritual than can be performed as part of a short or long rest. Doing so binds and contains the spell's magic such that it can be imparted into a wizard's memory on a daily basis rather than being expended in a single casting.

That way, the only way for friendly wizards* to share spells is by crafting a spell scroll, which is an extended downtime activity that increases exponentially in cost depending upon the spell's level (see Xanathar's Guide to Everything for details).

That way you're not outright prohibiting copying of spells, but it's a major undertaking which could require months of work and a major expenditure for higher-level spells.

* For non-friendly wizards there's another option - performing the ritual in reverse will pull a spell out of a wizard's spellbook and transform it into a scroll, which can then either be expended normally, or spliced into your own spellbook - but the owner of the donor spellbook loses that spell.

 

[Nagol]

Spellbooks are touchy, unstable things.
Copying a spell (from a scroll, spellbook, or whatever) into your own spellbook risks damaging/destroying your own spellbook. (Could be an arcana check or something, and failure erases 1dN random spells from the book?)
This risk drops as more time and expense is put into completing the copy. This risk rises the more complex (higher level) the copied spell is, and the more complex (total spell levels) your own spellbook is.

This represents the wizardly research needed to ensure the "energy [insert arcanobabble] frequencies" of a spell from an unfamiliar source aren't too dissonant with your own spellbook.

PCs can still do the copies, but there's a huge risk... but that risk can also be mitigated with enough time and drop a lot of coin.

Just buy a blank spellbook and make your conversion copy there. Then copy that safe spell to your regularly used book. That has to be safe or PCs can't have backup spellbooks. That would be terrifying to a wizard because something sometime is going to trash your only copy and then you are completely screwed

 

[Nagol]

One option would be for it to be literally impossible to copy a spell into a spellbook in your gameworld.

Instead, the only way for a wizard to gain a spell other than through levelling is to take a spell scroll and literally splice it into their existing spellbook in a ritual than can be performed as part of a short or long rest. Doing so binds and contains the spell's magic such that it can be imparted into a wizard's memory on a daily basis rather than being expended in a single casting.

That way, the only way for friendly wizards* to share spells is by crafting a spell scroll, which is an extended downtime activity that increases exponentially in cost depending upon the spell's level (see Xanathar's Guide to Everything for details).

That way you're not outright prohibiting copying of spells, but it's a major undertaking which could require months of work and a major expenditure for higher-level spells.

* For non-friendly wizards there's another option - performing the ritual in reverse will pull a spell out of a wizard's spellbook and transform it into a scroll, which can then either be expended normally, or spliced into your own spellbook - but the owner of the donor spellbook loses that spell.

A pretty good approach with limited downsides. As the PCs progress, the low level useful spells will become ubiquitous, but higher level spells will only be shared if they are considered must-have and every wizard picks it as one of their leveling choices.

 

[FarBeyondC]

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

Question: Assuming uniqueness in spell books is the true goal, what stops the group from doing the same research? In other words, for the spells that the wizards gets simply for leveling up, what stops those spells from being the same? Because if the answer to that is 'nothing' or "player choice" (which is effectively nothing), then the goal of making spellbooks unique is probably pointless to pursue.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think that a solution that is easy to apply across the board is the best. Improve the “Savant” feature so it costs 1/4 of the cost and resources to copy spells of your school, BUT wizards have to pay the gp cost (not time cost) for the spells they receive on level up.

Choosing spells outside your favored school now becomes a choice, rather than a no-brainer.

 

[Orius]

Honestly, I don't really see it as a big deal. There was never any rule against PC wizards sharing spells, and smart players will probably pass the most useful magic around the group. In AD&D, the rules strongly suggested that NPCs would jealously guard their magic and not share spells, but players were free to do as they wished.

Now in AD&D, a wizard had a % chance based on Int to learn new spells from books or scrolls, and in 3e it required a Spellcraft check based on the spell's level. If you don't want them to automatically learn new spells, you could require an Arcana check for them to learn the spell. Also, if the check failed, a wizard could not check again until gaining a new level in AD&D or another rank in Spellcraft in 3e, so a failed Arcana check means the wizard can't learn the spell until his proficency bonus increases or something.

Were I to do something like this, I'd treat spellbooks as using different languages...not like elvish, dwarven, draconic, etc., but like programming languages (C#, Java, COBOL, etc.). Now transferring a spell isn't so much just copying line-for-line, but having to re-code and rewrite the whole thing.

Is this something along the line of how magic-users and illusionists had different scripts in 1e and couldn't read each other's spells? One could set things up so that each magical tradition has its own unique script and it takes specialized skills or spells to read a spell written in another tradition if at all.

 

[Shiroiken]

I was thinking "I've literally never seen that happen!" and then I got to "in high school", and I got a dreadful flashback to exactly this lol between two PCs (they were Clerics though).

I don't think adult players are typically going to do behave like that, though.

True, it's less likely to occur in adults, but I've still seen it. Hell, I saw one campaign die in session 0 when one player managed to roll 18, 18, 17, 16, 16, 16 (legit rolls at the table). His attitude about it, along with one player's particularly competitive nature, devolved the entire session 0 into snarky comments between the two of them until everyone left (except the DM, who's house we were at). Needless to say, I no longer game with either of the two, nor the DM who couldn't bring things under control.