Old rules about Spellbooks.

[wingsandsword]

I've been thinking of the way wizards and their spellbooks were treated before 3rd edition. I didn't DM much before 3e, so I often didn't look up intricacies of rules. However, among the various DM's I played under, there were two concepts about spellbooks that seemed pretty much constant. I never could find where these rules were written out, so it might have been house rules that cross-pollinated or rules from some obscure source which became more popular than their obscure source would indicate.

I was wondering if anybody knew the origin of these rules, or at least had heard of them being used if they were just house rules.

First, that a wizard could cast spells straight out of his spellbook, using the written spells as if they were scrolls. However, like a scroll the spell disappears off the book as it's cast, and there is a chance (I think it was like 1% per spell level) of the entire spellbook being consumed when the spell was cast. (If this was a house rule, I think it was a common one, because I remember reading internet humor back in the '90's referencing this concept)

Second, that a wizard's spellbook is outrageously expensive, on the order of thousands of gold pieces. This means that a starting Wizard is the richest member of his party because his book he automatically starts with cost more than the fighter's weapons, armor, and mount. This also means that if a wizard loses his spellbook for any reason, unless he's out of the first few levels and has a decent chunk of change to lay down, he's up a creek if he loses his spellbook. Even if he had a captured spellbook if he didn't have Read Magic memorized in one of his 1st level slots, he could be stuck unable to cast spells for quite a while until you found a scroll of Read Magic or bought a new spellbook to start scribing spells to out of memory (since pre 3e you couldn't automatically memorize Read Magic nor "master" a foreign spellbook). The justifications for this I always heard were something like it being very expensive and difficult to make paper good enough to use for a spellbook and bookbinding was very labor intensive. They always seemed flimsy to me, especially when you run across entire libraries of books, that at those rates one bookcase full could cost as much as the tower you store it in.

 

[rossik]

wow..never heard of it..

from DMG:
Spell Book Cost

The one thing all spell books have in common is their cost. Books are never cheap, and a wizard's spell books are more expensive than most.

For the materials and their preparation, the wizard must pay 50 gp per page. Traveling spell books, which are even more compact, cost 100 gp per page.

How Many Pages in a Spell Book?

Each spell requires a number of pages equal to its level plus 0-5 (1d6-1) additional pages. The actual number of pages a spell takes differs for each wizard. Even if two or more wizards are recording the same spell, the number of pages varies, since there are differences in handwriting and notations.

Further, no spell book can have more than 100 pages

 

[diaglo]

it has basically always been that way.

but i allow things other than "Books".

tattoos, etchings, carvings on a walking stick, necklace/prayer beads, clay figurines, etc...

any thing that is measurable and a limited resource. you only have so much skin. or you can only carry so many beads or figures. or the stick is only so long.

 

[Henry]

I was wondering if anybody knew the origin of these rules, or at least had heard of them being used if they were just house rules.

First, that a wizard could cast spells straight out of his spellbook...

Straight from Unearthed Arcana, 1st edition AD&D, circa 1985; it had been either house rules, or came from an article in Dragon Magazine, I cannot say for sure; many of the UA's new rules, classes, and spells came from articles in Dragon.

Second, that a wizard's spellbook is outrageously expensive, on the order of thousands of gold pieces...

Again, these rules were set down in Unearthed Arcana; before that, in the DMG for 1st ed, it was just stated that the spellbook was "a gift from the Wizard's teacher/mentor," and was very expensive and contained a few precious spells. UA set up the rules for how expensive it was, how many pages a spell took, and new rules for travelling spell books, which were less expensive, but slightly more fragile.

 

[dcas]

There are lots of rules regarding spellbooks (including rules for casting directly from the spellbook) in the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana. That's almost certainly where the rules you're referencing are found.

 

[dagger]

We used the rules from the UA, but we ignored the 1% change to destroy the book. Losing a spell was bad enough for us.

 

[Delta]

Yes, the high valuation of spellbooks turned into a significant problem in my AD&D campaign with Unearthed Arcana. My low-level PCs were making most of their money by getting a new wizard, getting him killed in a dungeon, selling spellbooks, rolling up a new wizard, etc.

But, note that using another's spellbook was actually easier in 1E. Just use read magic, immediately use any spells you're familiar with, spend 2-8 hours to learn new spells you hadn't seen previously (see bottom). The 3E "mastery" rules are more of a restriction than an allowance in that regard.

AD&D 1E Unearthed Arcana by Gary Gygax, p. 79-80:

Value of spell books
A standard spell book has an Experience Point Value of 500 points
per spell level contained therein (again, considering cantrips as 1st level
spells), and a Gold Piece Sale Value of 1,000 gp per spell level
(applies to all spells, including cantrips). As with any other magical
items acquired, spell books must either be sold immediately or else
the x.p. value taken. This holds true regardless of whether or not any
tome is eventually sold. Thus, a spell book cannot be kept while a particular
spell or spells are transcribed, and then the work sold for the
Gold Piece Sale Value and the proceeds taken toward experience
points.

Casting spells directly from books
In extremis, the DM may allow a magic-user to cast a spell directly
from any sort of spell book just as if the book were a scroll. The book
must be of appropriate sort so that the spell matches the profession of
the caster, Le. magic-user spell, magic-user spell book. The caster
must be able to know and use the spell in question. (Note that in this
regard, reading directly from a spell book differs from the use of scroll
spells.)

Direct casting of a spell from a spell book automatically destroys that
spell. There is also a 1% chance per level of the spell that the spells
immediately preceding and following the spell cast will likewise be destroyed.
There is an additional 1% chance that the casting oi a spell
directly from a spell book will destroy the entire book. A permanency
spell, for instance, would not prevent a spell from “disappearing”
when cast in this manner; even though writing might remain on the
page, that writing will no longer be magical in nature. These strictures
apply whether a spell caster is using his or her personal book or the
book of another. Read magic is required for one magic-user to read
another magic-user’s spell book, and a magic-user can learn a spell
by reading it from another’s book. This learning process requires 2-8
hours of study per level of the spell, after which time the spell is
learned and thereby immediately usable by the magic-user who did
the studying.

 

[diaglo]

Yes, the high valuation of spellbooks turned into a significant problem in my AD&D campaign with Unearthed Arcana. My low-level PCs were making most of their money by getting a new wizard, getting him killed in a dungeon, selling spellbooks, rolling up a new wizard, etc.

AD&D 1E Unearthed Arcana by Gary Gygax, p. 79-80:

this is where you enact the inheritance rules.

magic user A dies.

magic user A's family shows up at the party's next tavern and demands his things.

 

[Delta]

These particular PCs would have definitely (a) hidden the body without telling anyone, (b) moved to another town anonymously, (c) attacked anyone who came for the goods. They found that a lot easier than dungeoneering at that point.

 

[T. Foster]

FWIW, the spellbook rules that later showed up in Unearthed Arcana originally appeared in Dragon #62 (June 1982) in Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column.