Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7570585" data-attributes="member: 6677017">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).</blockquote>

Verification