Quote:
Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk
I'm not sure if Copy is a huge problem. Or rather, its not a problem on the scale of Earth to Stone. You would probably have a more literate world, but the spell has to be cast once per item(right?) resulting in a lot more copies of rare manuscripts, but you'd still have all the everyday communication stuff done by mundanes, just because I don't think a common scribe makes as much as a mage.
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Copy as written now, can produce 100 copied pages of a book for 8 fatigue, or possibly 7 if the skill is at 15+. A "Common" mage casting this spell would learn it at IQ 9 for 1 character point, and require a requisite chain of 5 spells plus the one he wanted (ie Copy).
A 400 page book can be copied for a cost of roughly 33 fatigue (including the one expected statistical failure if skill is 12). This would require a total of 330 minutes of rest to recover the fatigue, or roughly 6 hours to produce. That is a book a day, as contrasted with about a book a year.
Addtional thought: If a copying scribe earned say, $700 per month income, a book he produces, absent the cost of materials such as vellum, ink, etc - would earn about $8,400 for the book he took a year to make. So, lets add about say, $600 for the additional costs involved for the other stuff. That makes the book's value worth about $9,000. That same book produced in a single day, would now cost $600 for materials, and a day's labor for the mage or roughly $29. Call it $650 just to be cute.
That places this book's availability in a niche that has more widespread appeal. Instead of the Filthy rich being the only ones to afford books, now a comfortable income or even a common income individual can afford to buy such a book.