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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3771054" data-attributes="member: 1465">SpellbookFlawed concept, and terrible practical rules. Every other caster simply "knows" spells, while the wizard cannot prepare any spell except Read Magic without a spellbook but OTOH he cannot use someone else's spellbook to prepare a spell he hasn't "learned"... so does he really "know" the spells or not? Why does it have to be ambiguous.My guess is that most gaming groups ignore the issue of a wizard having to carry around a spellbook. It is known that destroying or stealing a wizard's spellbook is a great damage, so basically there is an unwritten rule that says "don't mess with the wizard's spellbook". A DM that does that is seriously at risk of pissing off the wizard player who may feel penalized for being targetted directly. You can do this ONCE, just like you can use once the idea of the cleric deity's "shut off" her spells for some mysterious reason. But if you do it twice, it's already dead boring and frustrating, since the character is seriously limited during that time.And then there is the rule about page count... unnecessary at best. Who cares to keep track of how many pages are left in the book? This is much less interesting than for example keeping track of ingredient doses, which is not commonly done either. Not to mention the sillyness of "every spellbook has exactly 100 pages".I think the main reason for spellbooks is because wizards in fantasy literature are usually depicted as scholars who study tons of ancient books to unveil magical secrets... which is cool, but can be effectively maintained for LEARNING spells without involving preparation.Material components Ingredients are cool, but certainly keeping track of them carefully should be an optional rule. I don't see any damage in writing material components in the spell description, since the space taken is minimal. But if they were removed, no big deal, the PHB may simply mention that spells often use ingredients, but the players is free to make up her own.OTOH I hope they remove the rule about the need to "manipulate" the material components, because it adds nothing to the game. Somatic and verbal components are way enough and have more clear implications in the game, while material components in 3e only mattered during a grapple (but grapple was an overpowered tactic against spellcasters). IMHO a good change would be to make it easier to cast a Silent or Still spell (perhaps on the fly, or otherwise automatically apply these metamagic to all casting of a certain group of spells, if the character has the appropriate ability/feat), so that the Silence spell and Grappling are not universal anti-caster tactics anymore, and then get rid completely of any restriction/penalty coming from material components.</blockquote>

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