[Dungeon Fantasy] Spellbooks

[Xplo]

I suspect the content of a spellbook would vary widely depending on various factors.

For instance, in a world where magic is as predictable, well-understood, and widely-practiced as modern chemistry, basic spellbooks might consist mainly of theory, with advanced ones consisting primarily of formula; many spells could be crammed into a book not dedicated to explaining how they work, since each one would require perhaps only a few pages, and spellbooks would resemble college textbooks or even pocket references. (In a world where magic is so widely practiced as to become a commodity, there may even be "Magic for Dummies" books!)

In a world where magic is poorly understood (chemistry circa 1500?) or inherently unpredictable (perhaps all spellcasting requires a mage to "read" the local mana field and adapt his casting ritual to suit?), the text would be filled with red herrings: unnecessary bits of ritual, optimizations for specific circumstances.. or they may lack necessary information for casting the spells without those specific circumstances! (An evil GM could easily use this to justify forcing PCs to learn alternate versions on spells that take more time or energy to cast, require strange rituals or material components regardless of skill level, or only work in certain circumstances, such as "at night" or "near a large body of water". Slightly less evil GMs might let PCs buy off the penalties by spending more CP to learn the spell better, spending time in game researching the spell more completely, finding another book that explains the spell in a different way, or whatever.)

In a world where magic is rare or outlawed, spellbooks will be rare too. All of them will necessarily be written by criminals, frauds, mad hermits, and the demon-tainted. Any spellbook might also contain research notes (possibly on spells not actually described in that book!), personal journal entries, or just plain gibberish; mad hermits tend to think themselves philosophers or prophets. Or it may contain lies.. and nothing else, if the book was written by a fraud! Or it may be written in code. In such a world, even books such as these would be valuable to the aspiring mage, since he has no better way to learn the art, but each one might only be good for a limited number of points of self-study.. and the would-be student might need to make skill rolls or know other languages simply to understand the text and determine which parts of it are really valuable! Here, again, a GM might inflict "crippled" spells on PCs; mages who master one or more spells might become famous for their mastery, and their secrets highly sought after!

[AstralRunner]

I'd think that even spell-books in rare-magic settings would tend to be well-written, since inventors and scientists still need to be able to read their own work, and any programmer can tell you that after a year, uncommented, poorly constructed code doesn't become any more readable just because you wrote it!

In settings where magic is approached with scientific rigor, in which spells are considered intellectual property, or both, spellbooks will probably follow modern guidelines for inventor's notebooks, which would give, IMO, a significant bonus to attempts at learning the material contained therein, since it will have been written specifically with the ability of people familiar with the material to understand it quickly and to the extent that they can reproduce it easily.

[vitruvian]

When recovering an ancient, valuable grimoire from the dungeon, a cute option is to provide that before his death, the wizard that penned the tome cast Soul Jar on it.

If you are really lucky, said wizard's soul is not totally insane and takes a liking to you, helping you interpret the chicken scratch, code, or any blanks in the spell descriptors. It could even count as an instructor, allowing you to learn faster than for self-study.

If you are really unlucky, said wizard's soul takes a liking to your or another party member's *body*, and knows Permanent Possession or Exchange Bodies at 20- or more.

[Kromm]

I've found that even without Possession, etc., many PCs will assume that an item with a soul that talks to them is a "free Ally," however evil it is. In a world-hopping cross-genre game I ran once, one player had a Luger P08 that called itself "the General," reminisced about "the War," and trained its owner in Leadership, Strategy, Tactics, etc. It also told him about ice moons and valkyries and the Thule society. And the player really believed that his "Ally" had Intuition, so he assumed the answers it gave in tough moral situations had to do with the "right" choice. Heh.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

That's a very good point, given how expensive even simple paper is in the setting. Add, say, gold-chased dragon leather, a few jewels, gold-leaf illumination, the market value of good spell descriptions (since these in themselves are not magical, they count), you can get up to quite a high value.

Hmm, I like that idea...

"Yeah I'm carrying grandpappy's Fire Tome, no I don't read it, but man it packs the same fire punch old grandpappy used to."

When the book is a fire aspected power receptacle/powerstone with 14 FP, force recharge it as a manastone, or allow it to recharge as a normal powerstone.

[vitruvian]

When the book is a fire aspected power receptacle/powerstone with 14 FP, force recharge it as a manastone, or allow it to recharge as a normal powerstone.

Well, we don't have canon rules yet for recharging the energy in your own power items, but perhaps we'll see them in the Next Level. If not, it's not too hard to base a new Charge Power Item spell on Charge Powerstone.

Another cool power item - your whole darn wizard's tower! Actually, that's likely to go beyond the chart given; anyone know what the progression would be going up into the hundreds of thousands of $s?

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by RobKamm

Of course there is another simple possibility for why spellbooks are so often depicted as large, leather and steel bound tomes, illuminated with gold-leaf, etc. This makes them very expensive items and thus powerful as power items. Perhaps the notes on how to cast spells, thaumatological musings, and the rest are simply window dressing for the "greater" purpose.

That is great. I like this very much.

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Well, we don't have canon rules yet for recharging the energy in your own power items, but perhaps we'll see them in the Next Level. If not, it's not too hard to base a new Charge Power Item spell on Charge Powerstone.
(...)

There are excellent contributions in this thread. Please go on!

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

There are excellent contributions in this thread. Please go on!

There's always the idea of having something like a magical Tome being a required power focus.

You know, like:
Magery +1 (Accessibility: Magical Tome -30%) [7]

or maybe even
Magery +1 (Accessibility: Magical Tome -30%; Accessibility: Properly Constructed Wand -30%) [4]

[vitruvian]

There are excellent contributions in this thread. Please go on!

Here's one, to expand on the idea of spellbooks from which you can read the spells before studying them.

Since this is a DF PC's first foray into enchantment anyway, and we don't really care too much how balanced the rules for NPCs are, first redefine the enchantment cost for Scroll to be equal to the energy that must usually be put into a given spell. The reader/caster must still expend the energy to actually cast the spell. However, the enchantment process can only be performed by a single enchanter working alone, and neither Powerstones nor Power Items may be used, restricting Q&D enchantment to energy costs of 20 or less. That's fine for most regular scrolls - a solitary enchanter can probably make a good living out of just churning a handful of these out a day. However, the cost for a permanent scroll is 100 times that, and still needs to be done by a single enchanter - no round-robin writing circles! - and therefore is always Slow&Sure. Most enchanters, even the types to sit in their towers all the time, aren't too likely to take the time, but when they do, they can end up with spellbooks that allow a relative novice to cast any spell in them so long as they can read from the right page, without the text erasing itself afterwards. You still haven't learned the spell till you put the study time in, though, although being able to actually practice the use of the spell from the beginning might help a learner in a similar manner to a teacher.

[vitruvian]

There's always the idea of having something like a magical Tome being a required power focus.

You know, like:
Magery +1 (Accessibility: Magical Tome -30%) [7]

or maybe even
Magery +1 (Accessibility: Magical Tome -30%; Accessibility: Properly Constructed Wand -30%) [4]

I would probably actually use Gadget limitations, in that it takes some effort to replace a book or a wand, and then put +1 to +5 Magery in the wand and perhaps a bit of Modular Abilities in the book. Of course, if doing this you might require characters to also buy Energy Reserve gadgets rather than be able to make Power Items out of mundanely valuable objects.