wizards learning from scrolls faster

[evilbob]

I admit: I enjoy faster-paced games. Part of this comes from how battles are fought, but part of it also comes from characters moving quickly through the world and accomplishing things with little time to spare.

One class that really gets kicked in the groin from this approach is a wizard. They -have- to have downtime to expand their class. It takes -days- to add scrolls to spellbooks or to copy spells from other spellbooks or to just write things down. I've already come up with the house rule that copying scrolls into a spell book takes a maximum of one day (deciphering, writing - all of it is one day), and we've never bothered to keep track of any time costs for wizards learning two new spells when they level up.

However, this still isn't enough. Sometimes the players are doing things really quickly, and as part of the story cannot really "stop" to take a break for a few days while they wait on the wizard to catch up. It also puts the wizard in an unfair position, where he's asking everyone to slow down, but no one else needs this kind of time in order to advance their class. (And a wizard without new spells just about may as well have not even bothered to level up.)

On the flipside, of course, it seems a bit much to have no restrictions whatsoever on a wizard when it comes to scrolls, since his spells really are his bread and butter. And arcane power is so much more powerful than anything else in the game, it makes sense that it should have lots of limitations.

So, what do people think about this house rule, as a sort of compromise: when a wizard levels up, he may choose to scribe two spells into his spellbook from scrolls in addition to the two spells they receive as normal. None of this requires any time, and is considered to be "background training" the wizard does as he can, similar to the way a fighter might develop new styles of fighting (feats), or a rogue may better learn how to target vital spots on the body (adding sneak attack). The wizard must possess the scrolls in question and they must be valid scrolls for the wizard to learn.

A variant of this variant would be to allow [wizard's level] number of scrolls to be scribed, but I really don't see this as being anything but a way to indirectly encourage shopping sprees around certain XP levels - and honestly if the limit is that high you might as well not keep track.

Thoughts, ideas? Other suggestions?

 

[Kerrick]

So, what do people think about this house rule, as a sort of compromise: when a wizard levels up, he may choose to scribe two spells into his spellbook from scrolls in addition to the two spells they receive as normal. None of this requires any time, and is considered to be "background training" the wizard does as he can, similar to the way a fighter might develop new styles of fighting (feats), or a rogue may better learn how to target vital spots on the body (adding sneak attack). The wizard must possess the scrolls in question and they must be valid scrolls for the wizard to learn.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Our group uses the rule that scribing scrolls takes 10 minutes per spell level, which carries over to spellbooks as well.

 

[evilbob]

Ha! And here I thought my system could be too fast...

That's a really good idea - I like it. I might use hours instead of ten minutes, but that sounds interesting to me...

 

[Li Shenron]

Fast-paced games from player's point of view or character's point of view? Both?

If you're having them constantly go adventuring every day, I hope you're compensating by drastically reduce the XP rate. I just hate games where PCs go from 1st level to 20th in a year or less of PC's time. But that's my own problem, how you play it is your own business...

If you're frustrated by downtime requirements, I say just ditch them altogether.

Tracking minutes to scribe scrolls is a useless rule: just say it's instantaneous, but cannot be done in combat.

Hours-based is almost as useless: unless they want to scribe a bunch in a row, say it's instantaneous, but cannot be done in combat and neither during dungeon/locale exploration.

 

[evilbob]

Fast-paced games from player's point of view or character's point of view? Both?

Both.

If you're having them constantly go adventuring every day, I hope you're compensating by drastically reduce the XP rate.

I actually could not disagree more with this idea. Penalizing XP just so a time line comes out right seems fairly arbitrary to me.

If you're frustrated by downtime requirements, I say just ditch them altogether.

Fair enough. Creating rules to fix other rules is usually not the answer; I agree.

Hours-based is almost as useless...

Actually, I think I like this idea the best. Hours is easily measurable and sets a bit of a limit without making it be completely free-form. It doesn't seem like it would be a lot of work and it's simple enough to rule: for example, if you have 3 hours between the time you woke up and the time you headed out, then you can scribe a 3rd level scroll (or lower, or some combination of lower ones). That keeps the day moving briskly without much overhead, and gives the wizard some opportunities without just handing them new spells immediately.

Then again, I'm sure this is rather campaign-specific. Folks who have looser campaigns or who don't track time very much (or who give a lot of downtime) should probably throw out the rule altogether, as you said.