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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7570645" data-attributes="member: 6677017">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.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 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.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.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.)</blockquote>

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