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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 825648" data-attributes="member: 3146">And I have a fighter/wizard/spellsword who considers going not going WITHOUT a BBB to be a less-than-bright idea. The point isn't necessarily that there are REALLY items that absolutely EVERYONE should have (although I'd argue that, in fact, absolutely everyone should have cloaks/ vests of resistance, +6 stat boost items, and magic weapons). The point is that just because an item is useful for everyone (or almost everyone) wouldn't make it broken.I've played and played with fighters who had higher priorities than magic weapons but I've yet to meet a player of a non-forsaker weapon using character who would choose for his high level character to use a non-magical weapon except to prove a point. That doesn't make magic weapons broken. Similarly, every wizard I know of wants a headband of intellect and every sorceror or bard (and most paladins) wants a cloak of charisma but that doesn't make those items broken.I'm not quite sure why people would hold up the "wizards get to know mega-amounts of additional spells" arguments. I think such arguments are specious. Not that wizards can't know mega-amounts of additional spells but that, in most situations, that knowledge is not really a significant advantage--it's not usually worth the cost (with or without BBB--note that a PC who bought a BBB and used it for every first level spell would lose money in the deal even with the "free scribing" interpretation).While the ability to know more spells than a sorceror is an advantage of wizards, I would argue that the advantage shows up in these ways:1. At odd levels (except 1 and 19), a wizard knows two spells of a level the sorceror knows no spells at. (And the wizard knows twice as many spells at the sorceror's highest castable level as well).2. At even levels, a wizard knows four spells of his highest castable level and a sorceror only knows one.3. (a very distant argument compared to the first two) a wizard can afford to occasionally spend a few hundred gp on a low level spell that is very rarely useful but occasionally invaluable on the theory that if he ever needs it he can fill an empty slot with it (usually that empty slot will  be filled with an extra magic missile or shield spell though).Wizards who know every spell in the PH are not much more powerful than wizards who only know their free spells. In fact, if they insist on leaving lots of slots open for "just the right spell", they'll end up being less powerful because for every situation that they get 15 minutes to prepare "just the right spell" there will be five when another magic missile, shield, glitterdust, web, fireball, haste, improved invisibility, or cone of cold would have been useful but they didn't have it because the slot was left open. (And if they intend to avoid that disadvantage by relying on wands or scrolls for combat spells, they've really decreased their power--those items cost money which a more sensible wizard can better in other ways. And those items, have lower DCs and are therefore less effective than the spells he could cast himself).All of my explanations for why people seem to think it's in a wizard's interest to know twice as many spells at each level as he can prepare probably boil down to insulting their intelligence however.And I agree with that--except at low levels (1-5). Just because I don't think BBB is broken if it eliminates scribing costs doesn't mean I disagree with the rest of what you're saying.Definitely. There's also a small benefit to being able to scribe spells like Alarm which are useful but not useful enough to show up on a sorceror's known spells list. There's also a small benefit to being able to choose spells which are very good for a small window of time will soon be outdated (sleep, scare) knowing that, when they become useless, a good spell will only cost 2-400gp. However, as I indicated, that's not really a wizard's big advantage. (IMO, the wizard's biggest advantage is that they're actually interesting to play at levels 2, 3, 4, and 5--if I get to create a higher level character, I'm much more likely to consider a sorceror than if I'm starting at first or second level).I guess you responded to my message before I edited out that last bit. I think your math, however, does go to demonstrate that without either the free scribing benefit of BBB a DM willing to allow blatant misuse of the Secret Page spell (the page can be made to appear like another spell--cast it on a blank book and then read the illusionary spells it creates), or the Magic of Faerun spellbook mastery rules, creating backup spellbooks is a prohibitively expensive task for a wizard of almost any level.I think that the free scribing benefit of BBB, while not significantly increasing the power of a wizard (because the small number of extra spells that actually contribute to his power would cost less to scribe than BBB does to buy), does allow a wizard to reduce his vulnerability to losing his spellbook at a reasonable cost. I believe that to be a worthwhile function for a magic item and not out of line with its cost.</blockquote>

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