Wizards: Unsuitable Adventurers?

[Norfleet]

I've been thinking about this, and it seems to be that a wizard is probably the one character class most unsuitable for adventuring. There's no denying that wizards can be quite powerful, but an adventuring wizard has a very glaring Achilles heel: His spellbook. Without this one, relatively fragile and breakable item, the wizard is shortly reduced to the level of a commoner of equivalent level.

The spellbook is a "large, leatherbound" with "pages of parchment". This is not the sort of item that you'd expect to survive terribly well when carried around on an adventure: Adventurers are regularly dunked in pools of fluids both mentionable and unmentionable, hacked, stabbed, beaten, shot, crushed, burned, set on fire, etc. A large tome of parchment pages is not going to survive such abuse for terribly long, even if it is treated for a certain level of resistance and protected. If anyone doubts this, I challenge him to try hauling his PHB around on a trek through the Amazon rainforest, and seeing what condition it winds up in, if he still HAS it, after returning. Would you even consider bringing such an item along? I don't think so.

Of all characters most vulnerable to losing their stuff, it is surprisingly the wizard who suffers worst: A warrior who loses his weapons and armor is still able to grab a convenient blunt instrument, use it as a club, and bludgeon his enemies. A rogue is still stealthy. A druid, cleric, or paladin can still pray for and cast spells. Monks are more or less unaffected. Sorcerors can still cast spells. Bards can still sing. Wizards, without their spellbook, have basically completely lost access to all of their class abilities, perhaps permanently: Without that spellbook, the wizard's collective pool of known spells is largely up in smoke. This leaves the wizard with two choices: Leave the book home, or find an alternative method for scribing one's spellbook. Tattooing the thing onto oneself would seem to work rather well. PHB does not, however, cover this. This hugely glaring vulnerability would seem to render a wizard largely unsuitable for an adventuring career in anything remotely resembling an adverse environment.

Any comments on this?

 

[James McMurray]

I've been thinking about this, and it seems to be that a wizard is probably the one character class most unsuitable for adventuring. There's no denying that wizards can be quite powerful, but an adventuring wizard has a very glaring Achilles heel: His spellbook. Without this one, relatively fragile and breakable item, the wizard is shortly reduced to the level of a commoner of equivalent level.

The spellbook is a "large, leatherbound" with "pages of parchment". This is not the sort of item that you'd expect to survive terribly well when carried around on an adventure: Adventurers are regularly dunked in pools of fluids both mentionable and unmentionable, hacked, stabbed, beaten, shot, crushed, burned, set on fire, etc. A large tome of parchment pages is not going to survive such abuse for terribly long, even if it is treated for a certain level of resistance and protected. If anyone doubts this, I challenge him to try hauling his PHB around on a trek through the Amazon rainforest, and seeing what condition it winds up in, if he still HAS it, after returning. Would you even consider bringing such an item along? I don't think so.

Of all characters most vulnerable to losing their stuff, it is surprisingly the wizard who suffers worst: A warrior who loses his weapons and armor is still able to grab a convenient blunt instrument, use it as a club, and bludgeon his enemies. A rogue is still stealthy. A druid, cleric, or paladin can still pray for and cast spells. Monks are more or less unaffected. Sorcerors can still cast spells. Bards can still sing. Wizards, without their spellbook, have basically completely lost access to all of their class abilities, perhaps permanently: Without that spellbook, the wizard's collective pool of known spells is largely up in smoke. This leaves the wizard with two choices: Leave the book home, or find an alternative method for scribing one's spellbook. Tattooing the thing onto oneself would seem to work rather well. PHB does not, however, cover this. This hugely glaring vulnerability would seem to render a wizard largely unsuitable for an adventuring career in anything remotely resembling an adverse environment.

Any comments on this?

D&D assumes that your gear survives anything that you survive. If you fall into acid and don't die, your gear does not get destroyed.

Clerics are partly in the same boat though, as they are fairly useless without a holy symbol, except that they're better armed and armored.

 

[BeauNiddle]

The spellbook is a "large, leatherbound" with "pages of parchment". This is not the sort of item that you'd expect to survive terribly well when carried around on an adventure: Adventurers are regularly dunked in pools of fluids both mentionable and unmentionable, hacked, stabbed, beaten, shot, crushed, burned, set on fire, etc. A large tome of parchment pages is not going to survive such abuse for terribly long, even if it is treated for a certain level of resistance and protected. If anyone doubts this, I challenge him to try hauling his PHB around on a trek through the Amazon rainforest, and seeing what condition it winds up in, if he still HAS it, after returning. Would you even consider bringing such an item along? I don't think so.

Explorers used to keep Journals, some even managed to gather exquisite drawings of local fauna and flora. Explorers have been to the hottest desert, dampest forest and coldest tundra.

A spellbook is unlikely to be a pristine encyclopedia type tome, more that favourite paperback people have, folded and dog eared but still readable.

Add in magic to make the pages a bit tougher and the ink a bit more legible plus of course a metal and water proofed leather carrying case to keep it safe and you shouldn't have any problems. (with only d4 hitpoints it's not the books health most wizards have to worry about)

 

[Norfleet]

Clerics are partly in the same boat though, as they are fairly useless without a holy symbol, except that they're better armed and armored.

Clerical holy symbols are also smaller than a tome, and made of sturdier metal or wood, and as such, not as susceptible to damage. Also, the holy symbol is replaceable if lost: A wizard's spellbook isn't quite as replaceable, since unless the wizard has a place of residence in which he stores an extra copy, that spellbook represents the sum total of all of a wizard's abilities: If he loses the book, he can only replace it with a blank one that contains nothing. Without any existing spells, he can't copy anything into the book, which renders it still useless.

Explorers used to keep Journals, some even managed to gather exquisite drawings of local fauna and flora. Explorers have been to the hottest desert, dampest forest and coldest tundra.

Explorer's journals were also frequently lost, in whole or in part. Since this didn't really stop the explorer from rewriting or recreating the smudged or damaged sections, nor did it stop the explorer from exploring, this wasn't a major problem. Also, explorers were not in the habit of getting into fights with, and running from, and being eaten by, large angry monsters. A wizard who loses a page or two out of his spellbook has essentially lost the knowledge of a spell or two, and likely wouldn't be able to re-scribe it since wizards lose their memorized spells on casting.

 

[KingOfChaos]

That's why my wizards usually pay for a spellbook that has several instances of energy immunity enchanted into it or that are made from actual metal. My high level casters usually have MULTIPLE copies of their spellbooks hidden in different places, often guarded by monsters/golems and simply teleport there when needing to study for the night.

There are ways of getting around the 'fragile spellbook' problem

 

[AuraSeer]

As James McMurray points out, it's quite hard for equipment to be destroyed in D&D. Just as a fighter can survive multiple sword blows as long as he's not helpless, a parchment spellbook can survive any number of fires and explosions as long as it's not left unattended.

The only time any of your gear is accidentally damaged is when you roll a 1 on a saving throw. Even then, your spellbook won't be the thing taking damage, unless you're walking around with it in hand all the time. Just keep it in your handy haversack, and it will be out of harm's way. Even when you take a swim through a volcano, the book will survive as long as you do.

Some might argue that this is not realistic. I think it makes perfect sense in the context of the game. Perhaps a real-life wizard would have trouble keeping his spellbook usable, but a real-life wizard also couldn't walk through a wall of fire without singing his clothes.

 

[Nifft]

What those above me have said.

Also, Wizards have Prestidigitation -- they can keep their spellbooks dry through all sorts of damp conditions which would slowly ruin normal books.

Finally, if you wish for a specific handwave, consider the cost of scribing a spell in a spellbook: consider that a large part of that cost is for magically making those specific pages resistant to most damage.

-- Nifft

 

[Scarbonac]

Yeah, my primary wizard has at least a half-dozen copies of his spellbooks scattered (hidden) across the campaign world and carries a couple of Boccob's Blessed Books on adventures -- when he goes, that is. He acts more as a consultant these days.

All of my Wizards have at least one copy of his or her spells stashed somewhere.

 

[Norfleet]

And all of this runs under the assumption that the wizard can and will be able to return to the points at which he has stashed the backups, something which cannot be guaranteed for an adventuring wizard, especially one of lower level.

 

[James McMurray]

And all of this runs under the assumption that the wizard can and will be able to return to the points at which he has stashed the backups, something which cannot be guaranteed for an adventuring wizard, especially one of lower level.

A lower level wizard can't really afford a backup spellbook anyway. Luckily he is protected by the rules so that his spellbook is fairly hard to destroy.