Creamsteak
Explorer
Take your ordinary 1st level Cleric, but this one's different. He's using a spell book instead of direct contact with his god when he casts his spells. This isn't because he is bad favor with his god, or for any other reason, but he just likes to read his spells out of the book. He's more comfortable that way. He doesn't 'miss opportunities' by saving his spells up, he's always got yesterdays scribes handy with him.
It costs him a bit of money to cast his spells this way of course, he has to pay 37.5 gold pieces to scribe his three first level spells into his book every day, not something that's easy to handle when your a young adventurer. If he wants to scribe his weaker spells, well, that's only 18.75 gold pieces, and it's not really worth it too much.
This cleric, you see, thinks that should there ever be an emergency, he's prepared with a whole book full of cure light wounds spells. He figures, since it only takes about 0.075 hours (five minutes I think) to scribe all these spells in the morning, it's not going to slow down his adventuring at all.
So this Cleric, he runs out of money to do this early on and starts casting his spells normally, but by the time he first hits it big and has a few thousand gold pieces to spend, he's back to his old habit of scribing scrolls. By the time this guy hits 4th level he's worth maybe 5400, 1350 of which has been burned up in scroll creation. Now-adays it's costing our little Cleric 31.25-125 gold pieces to scribe his 0 level spells, 62.5-250 gold pieces to scribe his 1st level spells, and 300-400 gold pieces to scribe his 2nd level spells.
This, let's suppose, doesn't bother the cleric much. He tends to sell off some of his scrolls (like the two 100 page compendiums of cure light wounds that he has prepared) any time he finds someone with enough money. Some of his adventuring buddies think that it's a slight nuisance, toting around a few books and such, but the cleric tells them it's all in their best interests. Afterall, he's the only cleric that has enough healing potential to keep an entire city well. Sometimes thieves steal from him, and he fails to catch them, but he assumes the best (that his god will smite them, or the spells are going to a better place).
By the time this cleric is supposed to hit 8th level though, he's a level behind the party. Doesn't bother him much, his plans are to open a scroll shop as soon as he finds a city big enough to support his massive hoard of spells. He also was forced to have a Heward's Handy Haversack constructed specifically to handle books. All's well though, afterall, one time he came upon a plague infested town on the brink of death and saved hundreds of lives, personally and literally. Ever since then he's become a bit famous, of course, drawing a few more looters in the process. Nowadays though he can ward his materials against most thugs, and has a solid group of friends that don't want anything bad to happen to their tomes of helpfullness.
And of course, the player of this character just loves doing the paperwork to keep everything organized. And the player of this character also likes the concept of reading his spells from a book, all the while still praising his god (Boccob Perhaps...), and making quite a bit of a library...
My question then is, what do other DMs think of this idea? What about from a players perspective (a fellow party member I mean)? I'm thinking that it's definitely worth trying, as a player, and I can't wait to put it down on paper. I feel a bit hesitant though, is it really a good idea? Assuming that the character had the best of circumstances, and always managed to stay up with the standard PC gold rates, and spent 50% of that on his scribing, he'd only be level 17 when the party hit 20th, but I don't think that's a problem to me. I like the concept... I want to give it a shot...
It costs him a bit of money to cast his spells this way of course, he has to pay 37.5 gold pieces to scribe his three first level spells into his book every day, not something that's easy to handle when your a young adventurer. If he wants to scribe his weaker spells, well, that's only 18.75 gold pieces, and it's not really worth it too much.
This cleric, you see, thinks that should there ever be an emergency, he's prepared with a whole book full of cure light wounds spells. He figures, since it only takes about 0.075 hours (five minutes I think) to scribe all these spells in the morning, it's not going to slow down his adventuring at all.
So this Cleric, he runs out of money to do this early on and starts casting his spells normally, but by the time he first hits it big and has a few thousand gold pieces to spend, he's back to his old habit of scribing scrolls. By the time this guy hits 4th level he's worth maybe 5400, 1350 of which has been burned up in scroll creation. Now-adays it's costing our little Cleric 31.25-125 gold pieces to scribe his 0 level spells, 62.5-250 gold pieces to scribe his 1st level spells, and 300-400 gold pieces to scribe his 2nd level spells.
This, let's suppose, doesn't bother the cleric much. He tends to sell off some of his scrolls (like the two 100 page compendiums of cure light wounds that he has prepared) any time he finds someone with enough money. Some of his adventuring buddies think that it's a slight nuisance, toting around a few books and such, but the cleric tells them it's all in their best interests. Afterall, he's the only cleric that has enough healing potential to keep an entire city well. Sometimes thieves steal from him, and he fails to catch them, but he assumes the best (that his god will smite them, or the spells are going to a better place).
By the time this cleric is supposed to hit 8th level though, he's a level behind the party. Doesn't bother him much, his plans are to open a scroll shop as soon as he finds a city big enough to support his massive hoard of spells. He also was forced to have a Heward's Handy Haversack constructed specifically to handle books. All's well though, afterall, one time he came upon a plague infested town on the brink of death and saved hundreds of lives, personally and literally. Ever since then he's become a bit famous, of course, drawing a few more looters in the process. Nowadays though he can ward his materials against most thugs, and has a solid group of friends that don't want anything bad to happen to their tomes of helpfullness.
And of course, the player of this character just loves doing the paperwork to keep everything organized. And the player of this character also likes the concept of reading his spells from a book, all the while still praising his god (Boccob Perhaps...), and making quite a bit of a library...
My question then is, what do other DMs think of this idea? What about from a players perspective (a fellow party member I mean)? I'm thinking that it's definitely worth trying, as a player, and I can't wait to put it down on paper. I feel a bit hesitant though, is it really a good idea? Assuming that the character had the best of circumstances, and always managed to stay up with the standard PC gold rates, and spent 50% of that on his scribing, he'd only be level 17 when the party hit 20th, but I don't think that's a problem to me. I like the concept... I want to give it a shot...
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I think people have forgotten that the books are only guidelines and one can play their game the way they want. Way to go DWARF!
) have a cleric write up any scroll much less a full book. I have to encourage more scroll writing from clerics in the future, maybe even giving them the Scribe Scroll Feat for free at a relatively low level (1st - 3rd).
