Weight of a Grimoire

[khorboth]

I've been working on a Dragonlance conversion to GURPS and have hit a snag. GURPS has a seriously large number of spells. If spells take one page per level (level is based on PRC), we are quickly presented with a grimoire of 700 or more pages. At TL4- I think we're looking at Vellum instead of paper. How much would that weigh? I would think it's about 30 lbs, but haven't managed to find a good source for the weight of vellum. It seems like if a wizard has his grimoire as well as the one from the last baddie that he's still studying, he can't carry anything else. This image of a wizard laden down with the weight of his spells ruins the image of the powerful caster.

So... How much does vellum weigh? Is there a good solution that doesn't require a magic item?

Edit: I am using Vancian magic from Thaumatology.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

See GURPS Low-Tech p. 46 for a list of writing materials with their weights and costs.

[Bruno]

A GURPS wizard doesn't need to carry his old textbooks around, any more than as a programmer I need to carry around my old college textbooks. They're useful to have for offsetting situational penalties, but I certainly don't keep them at work, or even reference them at home all that often.

GURPS wizards don't need to re-memorize their spells every day!

So yes, the spell grimoires looted from the evil wizards laboratory might be pretty heavy, but they're probably a multivolume set, and you just have to figure out how to bring them home once (to study in your downtime) rather than having to lug them around everywhere.

[Blind Mapmaker]

If you want to keep the spell memorisation and the spell book that comes with it, why not change the number of pages you need "per spell level"? Or change the spell level? I may be mistaken in the case of Drangonlance, but in the Forgotten Realms novels nobody refers to spells by level. So either change the level or rule that the diagrams, runes etc. that make up a spell take up 1/4 folio page per level. Instant weight reduction.

Also you might want to reduce the number of spells a Dragonlance mage knows and just encourage them to take high levels in every spell they know (D&D spells don't usually fail if you wear no armour and cast an unresisted spell). Just ruling that you can know only Magery x 10 spells really cuts down on the size of the spell list, too.

[Bruno]

Yes, 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 or so times prerequisite count will help keep things down to a "dull roar" too.

Modular Ability (Super Memorization) based spellcasters will have to tote around references - but part of the "balancing act" there is that their spells are dependent on expensive, physical media. I would say that the "one point per prerequisite" was covered by "prerequisite count in pages" however - BUT I would require more pages if you wanted to be able to allocate more than one point in your spell slot.

And then I'd use the rules from DF Sages just to avoid tracking fiddly bits.

But were I inclined to track such things at a more detailed level, I'd probably go with something like the following:

Spell Level	Points	Pages
IQ + Magery -2	1	PRC*
IQ + Magery -1	2	PRC+1
IQ + Magery +0	4	PRC+2
IQ + Magery +1	8	PRC+4
IQ + Magery +2	12	PRC+8
IQ + Magery +3	16	PRC+16
IQ + Magery +4	20	PRC+32
IQ + Magery +5	24	PRC+64

* PRC = Prerequisite Count (not counting non-spell requirements)
Cost = cost of the book plus PRC * 25$, usually + a few 100$ for Hard spells. Up to ten times the price for illegal "black magic" spells but generally looking for or selling those gets you in huge trouble.

[Hannes665]

Also Grimoirs don´t have to have all spells from the Magic book, more likely that they have few generic or collage dedicated spell grimoirs.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Bruno

A GURPS wizard doesn't need to carry his old textbooks around, any more than as a programmer I need to carry around my old college textbooks. They're useful to have for offsetting situational penalties, but I certainly don't keep them at work, or even reference them at home all that often.

GURPS wizards don't need to re-memorize their spells every day!

So yes, the spell grimoires looted from the evil wizards laboratory might be pretty heavy, but they're probably a multivolume set, and you just have to figure out how to bring them home once (to study in your downtime) rather than having to lug them around everywhere.

Figure no grimoire should exceed 2 x basic lift of the wizard to be portable. THEREFORE any Grimoire exceeding that weight was not intended to be portable loot and your PCs have a problem to overcome.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Figure no grimoire should exceed 2 x basic lift of the wizard to be portable. THEREFORE any Grimoire exceeding that weight was not intended to be portable loot and your PCs have a problem to overcome.

Good point. Heavy treasure is a good workout for your PCs problem solving skills.

I put a honking great big solid gold disk (18" diameter by 1.5" depth gold sun) at the final adventure in a mini campaign (half a TON of gold) 30' off the ground over an archway, and let them figure out how to deal with it :)

[doulos05]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Good point. Heavy treasure is a good workout for your PCs problem solving skills.

I put a honking great big solid gold disk (18" diameter by 1.5" depth gold sun) at the final adventure in a mini campaign (half a TON of gold) 30' off the ground over an archway, and let them figure out how to deal with it :)

Ok, I have to know. How did they deal with it? And how did you deal with the equipment fallout from that?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Bruno

GURPS wizards don't need to re-memorize their spells every day!

Except that the OP's do.

Originally Posted by khorboth

I am using Vancian magic from Thaumatology.