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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 4270992" data-attributes="member: 9391">This is a pretty common interpretation of 4e in general, about a lot of things, not just spellbooks.  I totally get why people think of it that way because the old versions just told you how it worked "in game", the new one really doesn't care as long as the mechanics fit your explanation.The spellbook, as a game construct, works the way the rules indicate. The spellbook, as an in-game physical item, works however you wish to justify it, *as long as* the end result matches the game mechanics. This is true of powers, monsters from the MM, really everything in the game. Plenty of people aren't happy about that, but it's how it's written.The in-game description of almost anything in 4e is not finalized by the rules, it's left up to the DM and the campaign. That's just how it's designed. Trying to come up with in-game justifications as to how things work from the flavor text in 4e isn't going to give useful results any more than trying to play Magic: the Gathering and considering flavor text on the cards as part of the rules. One way I'd handle it to improve plausibility would be to allow Wizards to cast any spells they'd had in their spellbook but had retrained out of to cast them as rituals, with the in-game justification being that you can't keep more than X spells in your spellbook fresh enough in your head to be ready to cast easily. It gives the wizard a little extra power, but not all that much, since any power with a purely combat usage, for example, is pretty much worthless as a lengthy ritual. And it at least fits with the mechanics and flavor of collecting rituals since that's where the whole "wizard collecting all the mystical lore they can find" shtick has moved to. (As for the "I can't forget that, it's only been a week!" thing -- if you're leveling up that fast, just think back to finals week in college for explanation. I can remember plenty of times where by Friday I wouldn't be able to remember a single thing from an exam I'd taken on Monday. And that was without overland travel and deadly combat in the mix. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )</blockquote>

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