D&D 5E Why not write spellbooks in Common?

[Dannyalcatraz]

o-O Far too many for me to sleep soundly. And only one needs to get their hands on a Wish spell, or a Fireball, or heck, even Sleep. Unlike world-changing weapons and technology of today, once learnt, most spells are readily available, with the majority recharging daily. And all we need is some folks with a specialist skillset? Terrifying!


..hmm. I think the take away from this is: We must kill the poets. Before it is too late!

"First, kill all the po...HEY!"

 

[Ancalagon]

Since when does a farmer know how to read?

Books on farming were available in the Tudor era. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Tusser for an example. For a latex example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stephens_(writer_on_agriculture)

I know there is at least another good one out there but I've been unable to find it.

Basically as soon as printing became widely available, documents on "how to farm better" started being produced.

Edit: aha, found it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fitzherbert#Boke_of_Husbandry.2C_1523.2F34

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True, but they were probably mostly read by the land-owners as opposed to the farmers who actually worked the land, because outside of the clergy, clerks and others who actually NEEDED to be literate in order to go about their daily duties, illiteracy was still the norm.
http://iron.lmc.gatech.edu/classes/...f11/index.php/Literacy_in_England_(1575-1625)

IOW, the literate landlords would mostly educate the farmers on the techniques (read: tell the farmers what to do, and when) without the farmers actually needing to be able to read the tracts that contained the knowledge.

 

[Cyvris]

Hmmm...now I really want to make an obsessive organization of Wizards who live by the Coast who do nothing more than attack other magic-users to steal their secrets and destroy their work.

I smell a great minor campaign villain! Mine will probably scribe all their spells onto Magic playing cards one must Gather.

 

[Saeviomagy]

They are in common...

 

[MNblockhead]

Since when does a farmer know how to read?

Guess that depends on your campaign setting. Not sure what the literacy rate is in the Forgotten Realms.

 

[Mercule]

I can think of several reasons.

One would be tradition. "My master taught me in Enochian, so I use Enochian. Besides, it really isn't worth the effort of doing a wholesale translation on all my books. Sometimes I find one written in Sumerian or Khemetan. I can read those languages - mostly - but it's still better for everyone involved if I just take the couple days and put them into Enochian, just to make sure I don't accidentally summon a demon. Even then, I can sometimes get away with a few Enochian notes in the margin."

To take a cue from real-world religion, it's sometimes about power. The Romans wanted the Bible kept in Latin, even though the language was dead, because it kept the knowledge/power exclusive. Why spend a spell slot to do something, when you can use someone's imagination about what you could do against them? Sure, you sometimes get a John Hess or Martin Luther, but those cases tend to get "handled" such that even sympathizers keep quiet.

Magic is dangerous and, whether at an individual or organizational level, you tend to run into unsavory sorts. Even if you trust your apprentice, milk maid, guards, etc. These stupid adventurers have no qualms about being hired to break in and steal your stuff. Well, if it's coded, it's less appealing to randomly kill you and steal it (unless everyone uses a code, but then it's a matter of not being the one idiot without a firewall). Also, assuming you aren't killed in the process of stealing your secrets, it makes it harder for your secrets to be used against you.

Real world languages tend to express different concepts better than others. I tend to think that one reason why there were so many great Greek philosophers is that Ancient Greek lent itself well to describing such things. Whether Common is a pidgin tongue or just the native tongue of whatever nation is currently "on top", it may not be the best for expressing the subtle differences between setting your enemy on fire and setting yourself on fire ("Hey, did you know the only difference between 'ten feet in front of me' and 'in my pants' in Common is an accent mark on the 'a' sound?").

 

[Warmaster Horus]

There is a long and storied tradition of wizards keeping their knowledge of magic secret.

 

[AmerginLiath]

As someone who cannot code. I think coding is an amazing example.

Indeed. Likewise, I tend to think of spells in the magical language as being like advanced mathematical formulae. Trying to write out the math in, for example, English – not only including describing what the variables represent, but actually discussing the process of what the operational symbols represent – would be surprisingly voluminous for even a single equation (and consequently the graphed image that that equation represents). That the formulae and the 'language' of mathematics are such that one can simply define such complex concepts into equations (and then either solve them for fixed numbers or effectively back-translate them into graphical representations) without using long pages of description or indeed having to somehow containedly write out infinite sets strikes me as a fair comparison to scribing magical spells (looking at runes and sigils, one can even imagine them to be somewhat like a calculus equation, simply written/graphed out in a different form than the sort of formulae that we're used to).

 

[Ed Laprade]

Indeed. Likewise, I tend to think of spells in the magical language as being like advanced mathematical formulae. Trying to write out the math in, for example, English – not only including describing what the variables represent, but actually discussing the process of what the operational symbols represent – would be surprisingly voluminous for even a single equation (and consequently the graphed image that that equation represents). That the formulae and the 'language' of mathematics are such that one can simply define such complex concepts into equations (and then either solve them for fixed numbers or effectively back-translate them into graphical representations) without using long pages of description or indeed having to somehow containedly write out infinite sets strikes me as a fair comparison to scribing magical spells (looking at runes and sigils, one can even imagine them to be somewhat like a calculus equation, simply written/graphed out in a different form than the sort of formulae that we're used to).

To play devil's advocate, that only works if you know what the symbols stand for. Take the celebrated E=MC2. Really? Every good science fiction fan knows that C = 1. So how does that work? (I will run and hide now.)