Wizard Death and Spellbooks

Ridley's Cohort said:


Your [sarcasm][/sarcasm] tags seems to be missing.

I cannot quite see how by the furthest stretch of the human imagination "exchanging" ~5000-10000xp for 2000gp worth of spells is a winning tactic. Obviously you have never played a character who can craft magic items.

Yeah, I forgot to add them :)
 

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DiFier said:
So you are saying that when you are resurected part of the resurection spell erases your spell book?

Yep. Betcha wish your cheapskate friends had sprung for a True Res, huh? ;-)

I freely admit it seems to not make sense. One can adjust it to say that they're still there, but incomprehensible, and the wizard can choose to re-learn them when they next level or choose others.

But to let them have those two free spells and keep them if they die and get raised or ressed, is unfair to non-wizards. You don't let them keep their class abilities from the level they lost, do you? And what if they decide to multiclass? Are they going to forget them then, when instead of replacing that lost wizard level, they take a level of rogue or cleric?

Brad
 

First, if you have a fighter/wizard and the player opts to lose a level of fighter, when he re-gains the level, he's required to regain the one that he lost.

Second, I can't imagine ruling that a player loses the spells out of his spellbook. And when he re-gains the level, I'd let him pick two more. I may be a rat bastard, but I'm not that much of a rat bastard. The guy's already a full level behind his comrades, and if he were to intentionally die a couple times, he'd be falling even further behind the group. There's no way I'd choose to have two more 6th level spells in my spellbook over having access to a 7th level spell.
 

Dinkeldog said:
First, if you have a fighter/wizard and the player opts to lose a level of fighter, when he re-gains the level, he's required to regain the one that he lost.

Where does it say this?
 

It would be rediculous to say that the spellbook loses spells when the character is res'd. If he is not of level to cast them, he lacks the ability to power spells of that level in whatever manner the campaign's magical metaphysics wishes to explain it. Because the Wizard can add new spells that he finds (if he pays to copy them), the spellbook and its contents remain items posessed, not class abilities. When you lose a level, items do not disappear to put you down to the DMG recommended wealth for your level, do they?

I also think that he does gain new spells when he takes the level again. The new spells represent offtime research while he is earning the XP to level. If he goes through the leveling process again, he has spent that much more time, and has discovered that much more time worth of spells.
 

Barcode said:
Question: What happens to his two free spells? Obviously they don't disappear from his spellbook. Does he lose some mental/magical link to them, or do they remain available for him to use?

Now through additional adventuring, he levels up to 9th again.
Does he get another two new spells?

Nothing in the rules suggests that the spells fade away from the spellbook, and the spellbook has nothing at all to do with the Wizard's level, apart the fact that he adds spells on it with time, but once a spell is written there's no difference between a spell gained when levelling up and an extra one gained by spending time&money.

Thinking about how the rules work with the spellbook, a Wizard actually really "knows" only 1 spell (Read Magic), which he can prepare without the spellbook, plus any spells he eventually chose with Spell Mastery. Every other spell he doesn't really "know" it, he always needs the spellbook to prepare it, although he can prepare also from other sources but only from his own spellbook he can prepare them with no failure chance.

For those reasons I think the Wizard does not lose already written spells in the sense that they are still in the spellbook. Maybe he loses the familiarity with 2 of them in the sense that he treats them as they were written on someone else's spellbook, which requires a Spellcraft check to correctly prepare them IIRC.
 

Dinkeldog said:
First, if you have a fighter/wizard and the player opts to lose a level of fighter, when he re-gains the level, he's required to regain the one that he lost.

I don't think there's an option, actually - you lose a level from the class with the most levels.

I'd say that the writing is still in the spellbook, but the wizard no longer understands it because he doesn't have the same experience as he did when he wrote his notes. That arcane formula may have meant something to him when he inscribed it but it doesn't, now. To get access to those spells he needs to either choose them as his level-up spells or go out and get a scroll and pay the money to scribe them again.

As for re-earning a different level, I use a house rule that makes the players declare what their *next* level is going to be upon earning one. So if he'd declared "my next level will be wizard" the last time he leveled, that's what he's got to re-earn.

J
 

Wizard is 8th level. He can cast spells of level 0, 1, 2, 3 & 4.

He gains XP and become level 9. Woohoo ! Now he can cast spell of level 5 also !

Obviously, he will want to have level 5 spells to cast. So guess what his free spells are ? Level 5, right ! You're so clever !

Now, he dies and his raised. He's now back to level 8. He can't cast level 5 spells anymore.

So, you've got your answer.

Now, if your wizard gone from level 9 to 10 and back again to 9, that would have been different.

But, bear with me. Assuming the spellbook was not destroyed, he did wrote the spells inside, right ?

Now, if making him lose a level undo actions he has done, like writing spells, then you've got an important rule in your world: raising undo actions.

I imagine, then, that you could easily perform mass resurrection when a psychopath perform a mass murder: just catch him, kill him, and raise him. His murders will be undone, resulting in the raising of all his latest victims.

As it's completely stupid, the spells stays in the spellbook.

If he levels again, he'll got two new spells again. This isn't a benefit of the gained level, this is a benefit of leveling as a wizard.

Where's the harm ? That'll hardly unbalance the fact that he'll lag one level behind the rest of the party. Also, the wizard is a class that has been built to gain new spells over the time.

Just consider that a cleric or druid knows all spells, period. And has better spells (proof ? clerics can get wizard spells, from domain or from the XP-free miracle, even high level ones, while wizards can never, never, never get cleric spells, even simple ones like cure minor wounds, or only at the 300 XP or 5000 XP cost of a limited wish or wish). And cast more. And have better saves. Better BAB. Better HD. Better AC.
 

Yep. Gez has it. One of the benefits of being a Wizard instead of a crappy Sorcerer is that you get to write your spells down in a book. If you die, nothing happens to them.

Now, it might be reasonable to make a player spend one day for each spell and make a spellcraft check to "relearn" them. But no need to rescribe them.. that's silly.

Dying sucks... two spells ain't gonna make up for it.
 

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