Learning new spells

[Herzog]

I have several house rules in place for wizards that you might want to consider using.

First, my game world is very low in magic, so no magic shops.
Also, I dropped the 'automatic' spells the wizard gets at each level.

Before I get flamed, the wizard gets some things in return.
Some of these are not the topic of discussion here and so I will not name them.
What I did do was drop the cost of copying from a scroll or existing spell book, although they still need to make spellcraft checks. (So, in effect, all spells are 'free', but they need to find and learn them first).

I also reduced the cost of creating 'new' spells (which is the way you can get existing spells you didn't find) from 1000 gp per spell level to 100 gp per spell level. It still costs 1 week per spell level to research them.

This also allows me to keep tabs on the spells the wizards have access too, and if they inform me they want to research a spell I can inform them the research fails when it is a spell I don't want in my campaign.
When I'm feeling generous, I/you can inform them of this before the research time and money has been spent.
There's also the option of granting a similar, but different spell than intended as a result of the research. (A polymorph subschool spell instead of the polymorph they were researching, for instance)

Hope this gives you some ideas.

 

[Dandu]

This also allows me to keep tabs on the spells the wizards have access too, and if they inform me they want to research a spell I can inform them the research fails when it is a spell I don't want in my campaign.

Another point of view: I desire to know what spells my players have as well, so I just ask they run the spells they learn upon leveling by me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm brewing a new campaign and a couple of other threads in this forum have got me thinking. Despite preparing a list of house rules to deal with problematic spells (for which I'm grateful to Dannyalcatraz, Empirate and Celebrim, among others), I'm not that happy with wizards being able to simply choose the spells they want when they level.

I want to make the rules for research, or copying from scroll or book, the default way for wizards to learn new spells when they level.

I might limit sorcerers and rangers to only being able to learn only those spells they have seen being cast (irrespective of whether or not they identified them with a spellcraft check at the time). I might allow them to be taught by other members of their class.

Druids aren't a problem, because there will be no druids.

Clerics I'm not sure about. I'd like the cloistered cleric to be the default and I'm inclined to let them retain their usual spell acquisition mechanism.

Opinions welcome.

In the pre-3Ed versions of the game, Wizards chose their initial spells from a short, short list: as I recall, their spellbook included an attack spell, a defensive spell, a miscellaneous/utility spell, and one more.

Learning spells after that required a roll. My personal take on that was it represented the process of research: the mage was researching a lot of different spells, but, as in real life, just because you're studying something doesn't necessarily mean you understand it. IOW, despite intense research on one spell, perhaps the caster had an epiphany about another, and that flash of insight let him learn the other spell instead of the one he's been trying to cram into his mind.