Value of a spell book (gp wise)

[TaranTheWanderer]

I don't understand what are you referring to. Do you mean in general my guideline prices are too low? Sure, that's a legitimate criticism.

Otherwise if you refer to my line "the buyer will see value only in spells she doesn't already know", why do you think this is not the case?



Heh, the OP is asking for guidelines... as much as I tried to stick to what is written in the books, to make up some guidelines I had to accept quite a few assumptions. There are way too many variables otherwise.

I was referring to 5ekyu saying they aren't worth much because you get free ones. I can see that to a certain extent but I can also see higher level spells being very valuable because of their rarity. In general, there are less high level casters who have those spells, so finding all the spells you want by the time you are higher level - even with your free spells - could be difficult and could increase the price. If you have ye 'old magic shop selling spell books with 7-9th level spells, then a random spell book won't be worth much.

It's like Scotch. The older, rarer scotches are worth lots of money, especially if the distillery doesn't exist anymore. So, maybe, Time Stop was known by a wizard two-hundred years ago. Where is his library? Who owns it now?

All in all - Spellbooks actually provide little value to another spellcaster. The value would be highly conditional based upon who is in the customer base, and there are conflicting forces that drive down the price (the more resources you have to spend, the less you need it).

Yeah, I agree with this to a certain extent. You might need Mind Blank RIGHT NOW because you just pissed off that Demon Prince and now his minions are hunting you and scrying you. Suddenly that spell becomes very, very valuable to you. (Once again, Supulchrave's story-hour demonstrated this very well) I think there's more value in trade when it comes to spellbooks anyways. I'll trade you this spell that you don't have for this spell that I need. But maybe that other wizard is a rival and doesn't trust you and barters a magic item out of the deal - or whatever.

For non-spellcasters, trading a book for a service might be better.

 

[5ekyu]

I was referring to 5ekyu saying they aren't worth much because you get free ones. I can see that to a certain extent but I can also see higher level spells being very valuable because of their rarity. In general, there are less high level casters who have those spells, so finding all the spells you want by the time you are higher level - even with your free spells - could be difficult and could increase the price. If you have ye 'old magic shop selling spell books with 7-9th level spells, then a random spell book won't be worth much.

It's like Scotch. The older, rarer scotches are worth lots of money, especially if the distillery doesn't exist anymore. So, maybe, Time Stop was known by a wizard two-hundred years ago. Where is his library? Who owns it now?



Yeah, I agree with this to a certain extent. You might need Mind Blank RIGHT NOW because you just pissed off that Demon Prince and now his minions are hunting you and scrying you. Suddenly that spell becomes very, very valuable to you. (Once again, Supulchrave's story-hour demonstrated this very well) I think there's more value in trade when it comes to spellbooks anyways. I'll trade you this spell that you don't have for this spell that I need. But maybe that other wizard is a rival and doesn't trust you and barters a magic item out of the deal - or whatever.

For non-spellcasters, trading a book for a service might be better.

"I was referring to 5ekyu saying they aren't worth much because you get free ones. I can see that to a certain extent but I can also see higher level spells being very valuable because of their rarity."

Ok so since that is to me, consider this.

First, I acknowledged there were opportunity buyers - specific people with specific needs for specific spells now. Sure, there will be those - similar to finding someone who has all but one of a common piece of a collection an wants it. If they can just get that last item on Ebay for free pick-up a month from now, they are not likely to be willing to pay a lot now - the free spells per level is like that.

Second, you mentioned scotch after distillery is out of business and that in your game you block out certain spells from level selection - that would also create for those particular items a value sure, but in the absence of the house rules - those factors dont exist.

Third, you mention that of one just took the free spells that would be "underwhelming" or some such, but in comparison to what?

Maybe you meant comparing to other arcane class casters? In fact that's like 44 spells over a 20 level wizard run (ignoring cantrips and feats may change that slightly. That's like triple the spells known of the sorc for instance. That also ignores spells added found from scrolls. I would suggest to you that the wizard class even without a single spell from a found or bought spellbook is still a very potent and strong character, easily on par with the others.

Maybe you mean in comparison to other wizards? That's a catch-22. If its underwhelming, that means there is a more common normally "whelming " level of spells - where did they get them? If there is a commonly available source that many others got extra spells from that was cheap enough and reliable that they could afford it on top of the scribing cost **and** that it produced a sufficient increase in needed spells in spellbooks then that source itself devalues you sprllbook-4-sell/rent. the spellbook someone wants to sell is valued at a low cost because of that other resource being so commonly available that it makes your own wizard's 44 spells or whatever disappointingly small.

So, again, it seems more of an opportunity market , happening to find someone who wants that specific spell now - who has that money to spare.

But I did not say they had no value. Just that it would be minimal, a small percentage of their available wealth - a convenience buy.

Put another way, the mechanics would seem to put it as a disposable income purchase - outside of those opportunity buyers. That's far from the trope of wizard spellbooks being highly valued items **by others.**

On the other hand, the basic 5e rules do setup a major lucrative market for spellbooks - a ransom market.

A spellbook is a massive financial investment to its creator. Except for conjurers, loss of a spellbook is a massive loss of power (until replaced) and costs a lot of time and money to replace. So, the "money" in acquiring spellbooks is in transforming them back to their non-conjurers creators, not to strangers who might have a passing interest.

The other financial gain would be acquiring a living wizard's spellbook for hire to weaken the wizard temporarily, perhaps as a service to his enemy.

Now, as you mentioned for your campaign, a set of setting specific rules or house rules that put some spells into different categories can put them at more valuable tiers than others.

If a GM wanted he could house rule that copying from another wizards spellbook was cheaper than copying from scrolls. That would make it similarly valuable for those who sought additional spells.

Making the automatics cost and the copies cost less (by saying it's already figured out) even if you make copying take more time - that would establish a measurable value.

But absent those kinds of house rules or setting specific elements such as an organization that creates a baseline market (perhaps by buying spellbooks based on a formula they defined) or themselves providing a resource for purchasing access it's just a one-on-one convenience/opportunity market setup. Absent those changes to the mechanics, the time and cost is all on the

Spellbook ransom tho, that's a very different thing.

And your answer to the other poster shows the opportunity buyer quite well.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION]

I was going to quote you but this saves space.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I was partially agreeing with you. I think it really is campaign dependent and that isn't house-rules. That's just setting. The usefulness of a wizard is his/her flexibility, so having more spells than the base lets you do more of what the wizard is good at.

Let's look at a 17th level wizard. Assuming they took only 8th level spells at 15th and 16th and not any of the lower levels spells they missed out on at lower levels, they only have 4 of 17 8th level spells available.

At 17th they get 2 of 15 9th level spells.

Let's say a particular adventure would be easier or necessitate(from the caster's perspective) the purchase of a different 8th level spell they do not currently own. They can wait until they level up or they can try to find the spell they want. How valuable that spell is depends on its rarity and its rarity depends on how many other wizards within of the appropriate level exist. And this goes to what you said earlier: In this case, it's just saving the Wizard time. It would be more convenient to have that spell now and not in a month or year or whatever the time it takes to level up (assuming you weren't hoping to use your free spells on something else).

But factors like, 'Is there a 15-20th level wizard in every major town?' play in to the value. It'll be easy to find/trade/buy a spell. But, if there is only 5 in the entire country? That 8th level spell is going to be harder to track down and it will probably be a bigger expense if you don't have a spell you can trade. This isn't house-ruling, this is Campaign Setting. If there are only 5 level 17+wizards in the country then their combined library might not have the spell you seek. So, now, where do you find the spell?

It is possible that some wizards would be perfectly happy to only own the spells they get for free but I'm not sure that's the standard. So, I think there would be demand and I think that demand increases as you level up and want those useful high level spells.

 

[5ekyu]

[MENTION=6919838]5ekyu[/MENTION]

I was going to quote you but this saves space.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I was partially agreeing with you. I think it really is campaign dependent and that isn't house-rules. That's just setting. The usefulness of a wizard is his/her flexibility, so having more spells than the base lets you do more of what the wizard is good at.

Let's look at a 17th level wizard. Assuming they took only 8th level spells at 15th and 16th and not any of the lower levels spells they missed out on at lower levels, they only have 4 of 17 8th level spells available.

At 17th they get 2 of 15 9th level spells.

Let's say a particular adventure would be easier or necessitate(from the caster's perspective) the purchase of a different 8th level spell they do not currently own. They can wait until they level up or they can try to find the spell they want. How valuable that spell is depends on its rarity and its rarity depends on how many other wizards within of the appropriate level exist. And this goes to what you said earlier: In this case, it's just saving the Wizard time. It would be more convenient to have that spell now and not in a month or year or whatever the time it takes to level up (assuming you weren't hoping to use your free spells on something else).

But factors like, 'Is there a 15-20th level wizard in every major town?' play in to the value. It'll be easy to find/trade/buy a spell. But, if there is only 5 in the entire country? That 8th level spell is going to be harder to track down and it will probably be a bigger expense if you don't have a spell you can trade. This isn't house-ruling, this is Campaign Setting. If there are only 5 level 17+wizards in the country then their combined library might not have the spell you seek. So, now, where do you find the spell?

It is possible that some wizards would be perfectly happy to only own the spells they get for free but I'm not sure that's the standard. So, I think there would be demand and I think that demand increases as you level up and want those useful high level spells.

As far as I can tell, we agree - perhaps only disagreeing on whether *wizards cannot select this PHB wizard spell as a free spell and must find it* is a house rule or setting element.

The other factors are definitely setting factors/defines and setup examples of opportunity costs/buys.

But, I would point out that the same scarcity (of either high level casters or high level spells) keeps moving this into very ratified elite buyer specialty thing - at a level where gold is almost certainly not the currency in vogue - which moves it way out of the OP scope which seemed more targeted at more common cases than finding a spellbook with 8th and 9th level- spells in a world with less than a dozen folks who could scribe them.

In my game, I do introduce a few spells here and there that are not "available on lists" and have to be found or taught. That would make spellbooks with those a definite commodity- but still an elite purchase.

I will tend to have 1 custom spell in a set of spellbooks "acquired" at tier-2 and one more for each tier higher - based on caster level of the former owner. But that's just my campaign.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In our campaigns spellbooks are real treasures, and a wizard can never have enough spells.

That's just part of being a wizard. The very idea of being satisfied with the couple of spells you get when you level up is laughable. I mean, you would be the laughing stock of wizards everywhere.

My "wizard" (technically a home-brew warrior-mage, but uses wizard spellcasting) has never met a spell he doesn't want to scribe. He's found three or four spellbooks in the campaign so far, and he intends to scribe every single new spell in those books (many of them he already knows, because certain spells are just staples that almost everyone has in their spellbook). The rest of the party is slowly building up their wealth--he is constantly broke and asking for small loans from rich party members so he can scribe that last spell from that book. And if he ever comes across a morally repugnant spell, he'll still learn it, even though he has no intention of casting it. That, or he'll keep the book.

And you know what? If he weren't so broke, he'd keep most of those books after he learned all their spells. They'll go into his eventual wizard's library. As it is now, they are low-level and he's reluctantly sold a couple of the books in Sigil or Waterdeep for a few hundred gp to partly recoup his costs of copying the spells.

Some of those spells he might never cast in an adventuring context (though I try to cast each one at least once "on screen" to have the experience of trying it out). But he certainly wants to know all the arcane secrets he can!

Copying a spell into your spellbook: 50 gp per level. Having the right spell when you need it: priceless.

The idea of a wizard being satisfied with his paltry 2/level is just...

 

[5ekyu]

In our campaigns spellbooks are real treasures, and a wizard can never have enough spells.

That's just part of being a wizard. The very idea of being satisfied with the couple of spells you get when you level up is laughable. I mean, you would be the laughing stock of wizards everywhere.

My "wizard" (technically a home-brew warrior-mage, but uses wizard spellcasting) has never met a spell he doesn't want to scribe. He's found three or four spellbooks in the campaign so far, and he intends to scribe every single new spell in those books (many of them he already knows, because certain spells are just staples that almost everyone has in their spellbook). The rest of the party is slowly building up their wealth--he is constantly broke and asking for small loans from rich party members so he can scribe that last spell from that book. And if he ever comes across a morally repugnant spell, he'll still learn it, even though he has no intention of casting it. That, or he'll keep the book.

And you know what? If he weren't so broke, he'd keep most of those books after he learned all their spells. They'll go into his eventual wizard's library. As it is now, they are low-level and he's reluctantly sold a couple of the books in Sigil or Waterdeep for a few hundred gp to partly recoup his costs of copying the spells.

Some of those spells he might never cast in an adventuring context (though I try to cast each one at least once "on screen" to have the experience of trying it out). But he certainly wants to know all the arcane secrets he can!

Copying a spell into your spellbook: 50 gp per level. Having the right spell when you need it: priceless.

The idea of a wizard being satisfied with his paltry 2/level is just...

Sounds like a great opportunity customer.


In my campaign, i expect the wizard players would be more selective especially if you had a campaign that prices spellbooks as real "treasures."

I mean, sure, my guys might scribe in spelldms they find as they find them, but taking that to the next step of paying "real treasures" to buy others spellbooks too? That cuts into the same fund used for scribing costs.

So, its more not a case of scribing cost vs having the right spell if spellbooks are priced as treasures, but more like scribing vs backlog.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I think most wizards want to expand their spellbooks. So, paying for a spellbook to just pay again to scribe it might not be worth it but it would depend what’s in the book and what the wizard is looking for.

A merchant might buy it to let wizards ‘rent’ the book and scribe the spells out of it. Which would be cheaper than buying the whole book and allow a merchant to recoup the cost. But honestly, I don’t see that for spellbooks with anything over 3rd level spells. Once again, depends on setting.

Of course, non of this actually helps the op cost out a spellbook.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Sounds like a great opportunity customer.


In my campaign, i expect the wizard players would be more selective especially if you had a campaign that prices spellbooks as real "treasures."

I mean, sure, my guys might scribe in spelldms they find as they find them, but taking that to the next step of paying "real treasures" to buy others spellbooks too? That cuts into the same fund used for scribing costs.

So, its more not a case of scribing cost vs having the right spell if spellbooks are priced as treasures, but more like scribing vs backlog.

Yep, no real disagreement with those thoughts. My 4th-level character (we use a very slow XP advancement system, which is why he's already had enough adventures to find 3 or 4 spellbooks) can't afford to go buying new spellbooks when he can hardly afford to scribe the spells he already has. But that's a level thing. Probably most of those who buy spellbooks are higher level or just independently wealthy. That doesn't mean all the books for sale are high-level. You might buy a book of low-level spells for your apprentice to learn from, if the time it would take to make is worth more than the gold it would take to buy.

The system we use makes it the benefits to buyer versus seller different depending on whether books are being sold, versus just permission to copy individual spells from a book. It's generally to the merchant's advantage to sell you a whole book, but if he has a good enough set up (well guarded copying room), he might sell copying privileges on a per spell basis to someone he can't up-sell to a whole book. Hence, he might not offer copying privileges if you just want identify and detect magic. You might have to buy a book that also includes a couple of other bread and butter 1st level spells, so he can make more of a profit from you. And then of course there's slightly different dynamics with scrolls, which are more valuable because they are true magic item, but they have the downside that attempts to copy from them can fail. We actually were ignoring the failure chance when scribing scrolls initially, but decided to start using it to make them less of an automatic scribe to learn thing. Now the failure chance means you probably aren't going to attempt to copy a high level scroll unless you really have no other way to learn that spell. You might try to copy a lower level scroll, or you might not.

But I also keep magic rare and fairly expensive. My prices aren't as high as some others (a book with 4 first level, 2 second level, and 1 third level spell would have an average value of about 450 gp), but you've got to be at a fairly large (or highly magical) population center to find such a thing as a "magic shop", and most of those just sell things like spell components, empty spellbooks, and those scribing materials you need to copy spells into your spellbook, with a few scrolls and maybe a few specific magic items that have come into their possession. In general, I like 5e's fine art market comparison, though there are exceptions. Sigil has everything for sale, with a variety of magic shops, and a place like Waterdeep boasts better stocked ones than most cities. But nothing like 3e where you can expect to find whatever you are looking for up to x gp value based on the size of the city. I generally roll randomly to determine a few featured items that might be available, and then it's a matter of the shopkeeper perhaps being able to find the item you want for you with enough time (and a commission that is going to raise the price).

 

[5ekyu]

about 4 spellbooks of spells found by fourth level - guessing of course some overlap for the more commonly used ones. But still if we assume even 1/3 of those are overlaps with the ones they already chose thats maybe another 10-20 spells on top of their own innate dozen at fourth level.

Reasonable to assume that as their levels get higher the captured spellbooks get stronger - more full - unless they are out hunting down low level guys to harvest lots of first level spells they likely already have, so the catch i see is this - how then are spellsbooks "real treasures" on a market when the availabiltiy of found spellbooks is so high?

They actually seem to be fairly common without paying a dime to buy one.

its back to the catch-22 - if you find a lot and so have them to sell, the need to buy them diminishes a lot - except for the completionist collector types of fanatics.

I mean, sure, a Gm can just say in this world you find spellbooks frequently yet they also sale liken they are rare tomes even though they do you no good without then after market costs and you get so many spells that... etc and thats how it works in their world.

But using your model and the assumption of "only 1/3 of the spells are new to you" then at 12 chosen and say 20 found spells before they even hit 3rd level spells - you are looking at (assuming HALF of those 20 finds are of "good spell choices") you are looking at say having 11 top of the list spells each from first and second level spells and then having an additional 5 each level of lets say "the rest" scribed in at a cost of 1500 gp give or take before hitting fourth level and yet they are supposed to be looking for more spellbooks to buy to get the remaining "not the top ten" and "not one of the strays" they already have?

hey, sounds like a fun game.

i guess a lot of it though can come down to how decisions are made.

If a lot of the contents and scrolls and such are determined "randomly" so that a spellbook with illusory script is as likely as one with "Witch bolt" is as likely as one with mage armor or shield or magic missile etc... that creates a different sort of dynamic.

So, yeah, the more random driven a so-called market becomes, a lot of expectations change.

Either way, it doesnt get to much in the way of a standard pricing, since mostly spellbooks are just known to be "real treasures" so its and they are found quite a bit too.

My players just sold spellbooks - for a good price - back to its original owner last session but then my world is quite different from yours.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

about 4 spellbooks of spells found by fourth level - guessing of course some overlap for the more commonly used ones. But still if we assume even 1/3 of those are overlaps with the ones they already chose thats maybe another 10-20 spells on top of their own innate dozen at fourth level.

Looking at the books, it looks like it's 27 new spells learned. Three of those are 3rd-level so they haven't been learned yet.

Reasonable to assume that as their levels get higher the captured spellbooks get stronger - more full - unless they are out hunting down low level guys to harvest lots of first level spells they likely already have, so the catch i see is this - how then are spellsbooks "real treasures" on a market when the availabiltiy of found spellbooks is so high?

They actually seem to be fairly common without paying a dime to buy one.

its back to the catch-22 - if you find a lot and so have them to sell, the need to buy them diminishes a lot - except for the completionist collector types of fanatics.

One of the things I apparently did a poor job expressing is that buying spellbooks isn't the kind of thing that most PCs will be intentionally doing--not unless it's "the Spellbook of Fistandantilus" or something. It's wealthy (and generally high-level) NPCs that are going to be buying the good books, along with the kind of collectors and magical universities that like to have spellbooks just to have them, even if there aren't any new spells in them. Of course, once/if a PC wizard has a lot of gold to burn, checking any mage shops you come across to see if they happen to have a spellbook you might be interested in is going to become much more likely.

I mean, sure, a Gm can just say in this world you find spellbooks frequently yet they also sale liken they are rare tomes even though they do you no good without then after market costs and you get so many spells that... etc and thats how it works in their world.

I wouldn't say you find them frequently in this campaign. It's been about 88 sessions and we just hit level 4 recently. Slow level advancement.

But using your model and the assumption of "only 1/3 of the spells are new to you" then at 12 chosen and say 20 found spells before they even hit 3rd level spells - you are looking at (assuming HALF of those 20 finds are of "good spell choices") you are looking at say having 11 top of the list spells each from first and second level spells and then having an additional 5 each level of lets say "the rest" scribed in at a cost of 1500 gp give or take before hitting fourth level and yet they are supposed to be looking for more spellbooks to buy to get the remaining "not the top ten" and "not one of the strays" they already have?

hey, sounds like a fun game.

i guess a lot of it though can come down to how decisions are made.

If a lot of the contents and scrolls and such are determined "randomly" so that a spellbook with illusory script is as likely as one with "Witch bolt" is as likely as one with mage armor or shield or magic missile etc... that creates a different sort of dynamic.

So, yeah, the more random driven a so-called market becomes, a lot of expectations change.

Yeah, I didn't mention it, but spellbooks are random. Here's how the contents of NPC spellbooks are determined: 1) They have a number of spells equal to what their level should give them, plus a random but modest number of additional spells. They aren't adventurers (so they aren't capturing spellbooks from others as much), and even if they are, a difficult to avoid metagame consideration is that you really don't want an adventurer-sized spell book being handed out. So they get a few more than they would from leveling. 2) They get whatever spells are included in their statblock, plus some standard spells almost all wizards have (which means the PC wizard probably already has them if he's high enough level), unless there is a reason they wouldn't have one of those. 3) Their remaining spells are random rolled, mostly from the PHB.

Either way, it doesnt get to much in the way of a standard pricing, since mostly spellbooks are just known to be "real treasures" so its and they are found quite a bit too.

My players just sold spellbooks - for a good price - back to its original owner last session but then my world is quite different from yours.

Ransoming spellbooks would be a reasonable tactic, although I'd fear retribution later. My character actually reluctantly decided to return the spellbook of a captured duergar mage who had been part of the other side of the battle. Although the PCs were on an authorized military assault, the presence of the duergar base wasn't anticipated and they technically invaded their home, so my character just didn't feel right about stealing from him too. (Who knows whether the military they turned the captives over to will actually give the duergar back the spellbook, but my character is idealistic about some things, and just wasn't going to be a part of depriving a foe who honorably surrendered of his most precious possession.)