What Happens If You Lose Your Spellbook?

[Falling Icicle]

Losing one's spellbook has always been the Wizard's worst nightmare, but I haven't found any rules in 4e for what happens if a spellbook is lost or destroyed. Anyone know?

 

[Drakhar]

They only have the daily/utility spells that they know as well as have no rituals to cast.

 

[On Puget Sound]

What a great opportunity for a Skill Challenge! Arcana for each spell to be reconstructed from memory, with higher level spells requiring harder tests. On a fail, History or Nature might provide a clue to jog your memory. Diplomacy might let you beg, borrow or buy a spell from someone else.

The only problem is, non-wizards probably can't contribute much to the challenge.

For extra fun, maybe the DM makes the rolls in secret. On a narrow miss, you think you have the spell right, until the first time you use it in combat. Then you discover you missed one tiny detail and it works...differently. Perhaps only a role-playing effect added. "Hmm. My sleep spell now leaves its victims snoring six inches off the ground. How odd..."

 

[gnfnrf]

My roommate was trying to convince me that nowhere in the description of the spellbook class feature does it say that a wizard needs the spellbook on hand to select daily/utility spells.

I didn't agree, but you could argue that.

--
gnfnrf

 

[Falling Icicle]

They only have the daily/utility spells that they know as well as have no rituals to cast.

And which daily/utility spells do they "know"? The one's they currently had prepared? What about the one's they've already cast that day? And what about the other spells in the book? How does the Wizard go about replacing them?

What a great opportunity for a Skill Challenge! Arcana for each spell to be reconstructed from memory, with higher level spells requiring harder tests. On a fail, History or Nature might provide a clue to jog your memory. Diplomacy might let you beg, borrow or buy a spell from someone else.

The only problem is, non-wizards probably can't contribute much to the challenge.

For extra fun, maybe the DM makes the rolls in secret. On a narrow miss, you think you have the spell right, until the first time you use it in combat. Then you discover you missed one tiny detail and it works...differently. Perhaps only a role-playing effect added. "Hmm. My sleep spell now leaves its victims snoring six inches off the ground. How odd..."

I like your idea, but I guess that means that there really aren't any actual rules for this. That's a pretty big oversight on WotC's part.

The more I learn about how Spellbooks work in 4e, the less I like it. It seems like a very contrived and thrown together system without much thought about how it interacts with the game world. For example, why are several spells named after famous Wizards, like Bigby or Mordenkainen, when spells can't even be traded, sold or copied anymore? Why would I credit Bigby for a spell that I thought up myself? Why would any Wizard? And what reason, other than sharing rituals, do Wizards have to be in guilds, academies, etc? Why quest to find some legendary Wizard's spellbook when I can't even use the spells recorded in it? And if I did just think up/research all my spells on my own, as the "only gain spels when you level up" system implies, why do I even need to keep them in a book? None of it makes any sense to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they kept the spellbook in some fashion, as the strategy of preparation was always one of the funnest things about playing a Wizard for me. But I wish they had done it a bit differently. For example, instead of getting two spells when you level up, you should get one, and then be able to find/research additional ones with roleplaying, like in older editions. But that's just my 2c.

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

Go with what bones the player the least. The caster buys a new spellbook, and the next day it happens to have all of his spells and rituals in it. Anything else is punishing the wizard for being the wizard.

 

[Lurker37]

Call me crazy, but if the DM puts the players in a situation where the spellbooks get lost, and the DM doesn't have rules to allow it to be easily reconstructed, then I think it should be the DM's responsibility to give them a way of getting it back. This is because the spellbook is a class feature, and thus not as easily replaced as it was in 3.X.

So it's probably in the lair of the current threat, or the rogue can trace it via the local guild, or the next group of bandits happens to include the thief, or the next bunch of NPCs they rescue found it and hand it back for free as a reward, or whatever.

Worst case scenario - the Wizard can probably get a new spellbook with all the spells and rituals they got as class benefits (as opposed to rituals bought or learnt from other ritual books) from whomever they receive training from.

Of course, that's just how I play, and it's only because access to the spellbook and the free rituals is part of the balance of the Wizard class.

 

[hamishspence]

reason for big names

archmage destiny: merge with demispell, from then on name gets attached to certain spells. They did provide a reason. Not sure how good a reason it is though.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Agree. Making a wizard face an encounter without his spells would be akin to taking the ranger's bow or the fighter's sword. It should not be done, except under exceedingly rare circumstances. Perhaps they just escaped from captivity and are unarmed and unarmored, or whatever... in such a case you need to design in either a way to avoid the encounter or a way to win it, as well as a way to get their stuff back.

Call me crazy, but if the DM puts the players in a situation where the spellbooks get lost, and the DM doesn't have rules to allow it to be easily reconstructed, then I think it should be the DM's responsibility to give them a way of getting it back. This is because the spellbook is a class feature, and thus not as easily replaced as it was in 3.X.

So it's probably in the lair of the current threat, or the rogue can trace it via the local guild, or the next group of bandits happens to include the thief, or the next bunch of NPCs they rescue found it and hand it back for free as a reward, or whatever.

Worst case scenario - the Wizard can probably get a new spellbook with all the spells and rituals they got as class benefits (as opposed to rituals bought or learnt from other ritual books) from whomever they receive training from.

Of course, that's just how I play, and it's only because access to the spellbook and the free rituals is part of the balance of the Wizard class.

 

[Drakhar]

And which daily/utility spells do they "know"? The one's they currently had prepared? What about the one's they've already cast that day? And what about the other spells in the book? How does the Wizard go about replacing them?

Spells wizards have prepared don't magically vanish after they've been used like in 3.x. Spells they've already cast that day are restored after a rest as usual. As far as replacing the spells in the book they lost? Unless the book was destroyed, find the book. If your book was destroyed, talk to your DM. I'd suspect you'd most likely need to buy a new spellbook and spend X amount of time replacing the spells you learnt.