selling a spellbook

[kengar]

Party killed a Wiz6, took her spellbook. It contained the following:

Cantrips — all

1st —
alarm, cause fear, color spray, mage armor, obscuring mist, ray of
enfeeblement, shocking grasp, spider climb

2nd —
arcane lock, bull's strength, invisibility, melf's acid arrow

3rd — dispel magic, lightning bolt.

Is there a rule for the market value of a spellbook? They aren't scrolls & most of the cost wizards incur is in copying the dang things.

 

[Dimwhit]

To my knowledge, there are no rules for it. As an idea, I would do this: Figure the cost to have all those spells as scrolls. Then figure the cost to scribe all those spells into a book. Add the two together for a market value and sell it for half that (or more, depending on your DM).

 

[kengar]

To my knowledge, there are no rules for it. As an idea, I would do this: Figure the cost to have all those spells as scrolls. Then figure the cost to scribe all those spells into a book. Add the two together for a market value and sell it for half that (or more, depending on your DM).

Using your formula, it has (@100gp/page for copying costs):
- 13 cantrips, 1 page per cantrip (1300gp)
- 8 1st Level spells, 2 pages per spell (1600gp)
- 4 2nd Level spells, 4 pages per spell (1600gp)
- 2 3rd Level spells, 6 pages per spell (1200gp)

That's a subtotal of 5700gp

Scroll costs:

Cantrips: No cost given (we'll call it 25gp each) 325gp
1st Level Spells: 200gp
2nd Level Spells: (175 for Arcane Lock, 150 each for the rest.) 625gp
3rd Level Spells: 375 ea. 750gp

1900gp subtotal

That's 7800gp total, divided by 2 = 3800gp

The problem I have with that is that pages from a spellbook can't be used as scrolls.

Also, unless the wizard buying it already knows the spell in the book, he can't memorize the spell from the new book until he's spent the money on copying it to his book anyway. I would think this would seriously drop the value of the book. At least, this is how the rules read to me.

Thoughts & ideas?

 

[Rel]

Is there a rule for the market value of a spellbook?

No, there is not. This question gets asked a lot. And with all due respect to dimwhit, his "rule of thumb" gets posted in almost every thread where this question is asked and it is (in my opinion) NOT a good way of placing value on a spellbook. (I'm not bagging on you, dimwhit.)

The reason for this is simple: The end user of a sold book cannot get any value out of the fact that these spells were previously scribed in the book and therefore that expendature has no value to him in the transaction.

For a real life example of this, let's say I'm in the market for a Green Bicycle. dimwhit has a (previously Red) Bicycle that he would have sold me for $5 (the going market rate). But he just recently had it painted a nice, shiny Blue for a cost of $10. So he tells me that the bicycle will cost $15 in total to account for the paint job. But the Blue paint job has no value to me because for me to have a Green Bicycle, I'd have to spend the $10 all over again to have it repainted.

Under the rules as written (wherein you cannot use a spell from another Wizard's spellbook unless you have copied it into your own) the only value that a spellbook has is that it gives you access to the spells in it. That means that the cantrips are utterly worthless (because all wizards start with all cantrips in their spellbook) unless the book contains a newly researched 0-level spell. The other spells have value commensurate with how difficult it is to find them in the current market. This is completely contingent on the GM's game world setup.

However, it is noteworthy that under the PHB rules, there is no such thing as a "rare spell" that has not been specially researched. Any Wizard capable of casting a spell of a given level may select any spell of that level or lower when he advances in level.

I'm not interested in trying to derail this into a house rules discussion but I will mention that I HATE the spellbook rules presented in the PHB for precisely the reason that you bring up, kengar. I have added just a few small house rules that restore some logic to the spellbook system and I'm much happier now.

 

[Dimwhit]

No, there is not. This question gets asked a lot. And with all due respect to dimwhit, his "rule of thumb" gets posted in almost every thread where this question is asked and it is (in my opinion) NOT a good way of placing value on a spellbook. (I'm not bagging on you, dimwhit.)

No problem. I'm actually impressed that my idea has been stated before. I'd never heard it. Just seemed like a good place to start.

I thought there were rules for learning daily spells from someone else's spellbook (once you deciphered them). I could be wrong, though (it has happened once or twice, I think). I don't play Wizards/Sorcerer's much. If you can't, then you're right, other spellbooks don't have that much value.

If that's the case, I would just value the book as if they were scrolls. Maybe a little cheaper. You can still decipher them and put them in your own book, just as you can with scrolls.

On the other hand, I'll bet a spellbook would make a really nice campfire for the night...

 

[Archade]

Selling Spellbooks

IMC, my house rule is selling a spell book is the equivalent of 4x their value as scrolls ... after all, they don't go away when you scribe them ...

So a 1st level spellcaster with 16 cantrips and 5 1st level spells has an object worth (5x25x4 +16x12.5x4) 1300gp ... not too heavy...

Archade

 

[AuraSeer]

Re: Selling Spellbooks

IMC, my house rule is selling a spell book is the equivalent of 4x their value as scrolls ... after all, they don't go away when you scribe them ...

But after you scribe them, the book is totally useless! You cannot cast directly from a spellbook like you can from a scroll, and you can only prepare from your own book. Once you know all the spells, the original book is just a big paperweight.

Also, as pointed out above, cantrips should be ignored for purposes of the cost calculation. All wizards already know all the cantrips, so as far as the buyer is concerned, any pages that hold cantrips are just a waste of paper.

Originally posted by Dimwhit
I thought there were rules for learning daily spells from someone else's spellbook (once you deciphered them).

They're in the FRCS, and are not core. If you want to include those rules, the whole basis of the question changes. In a world where wizards can prepare from someone else's book, a captured one becomes tremendously more valuable, because the buyer need not scribe everything over again.

 

[Lucius Foxhound]

Re: Selling Spellbooks

IMC, my house rule is selling a spell book is the equivalent of 4x their value as scrolls ... after all, they don't go away when you scribe them ...

So a 1st level spellcaster with 16 cantrips and 5 1st level spells has an object worth (5x25x4 +16x12.5x4) 1300gp ... not too heavy...Archade

I think you're missing something important, though. Scrolls are much more valuable than scribed spells. Here's why:

1. Any components needed for the spell (even valuable ones) are included in a scroll.
2. Arcane scrolls can be cast by any arcane Wizard with a read magic spell. You have to learn what's in a spell book. So technically, until you learn it, a scribed spell is useless.
3. Scrolls can be still copied into a spellbook just like a scribed spell.

So really, a scribed spell should be LESS than a scroll. As such, thinking about my Wizard and the spells he needs, the system I've come up with is that scribed spells are worth 1/2 their scrolled value.

Let's say my Wizard wants to get a disintegrate spell. He can go out and buy a scroll for 1,650 gp. With that scroll in hand, he can either a) keep it around a read it whenever he wants or b) go our and spend 700 gp to scribe it in his book.

So I'd say a page from a spellbook with disintergrate on it (actually 7 pages) would cost 825 gp. After all, it's only got one use and I still have to spend an additional 700 gp to scribe it into a spellbook.

 

[Rel]

Interesting point of view, Archade. I'm not sure I agree that the value of a spellbook should be that high, but it brings up the idea of the "Found Spellbook as a Backup Copy". Unfortunately, this idea is fraught with problems too.

For example, I'm fresh out of Wizard school and I've got my spellbook with all the cantrips and (for sake of our exampel) five 1st level spells. So, I go out and run into Evil Eddie, another first level Wizard and I kill him and take his spellbook. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a single new spell in it and is, in fact, identical to my own spellbook. Bummer. It has no contributory value in terms of me gaining greater access to more spells. BUT, I take the book and leave it in my library at home. Now if I lose my original spellbook (prior to scribing anything else in it), I have a backup that contains every spell I know. If I had to create this by myself, it would have cost me 1/2 the normal scribing cost to make a backup copy.

Now, I go out and find Evil Elvis, Eddie's brother (and another 1st level Wizard) and kill him too. I get his spellbook and find that while it has the same cantrips I'm familiar with, all five of the 1st level spells in it are different than the ones in my book. This means that it has considerable contributory value toward a greater spell diversity, but I need 1,000gp to take advantage of this resource. Since I don't have 1,000gp handy to scribe them at the moment, I opt to stash it back at the house. But now if I lose my original spellbook and I go back to the house and grab this one, it is nearly worthless as a backup copy because the only spells in it that were in my original spellbook are the cantrips.

So that means that if I want to be able to cast Burning Hands, which is in Elvis's book but wasn't in my original book, I could copy it from page 1 to page 50 of the same book and now I can use it.

I know that most people are fine with these rules as written, but they just seem to invite headache.

 

[AuraSeer]

[Edit: Double post, ignore it.]