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MrNexx
2006-11-14, 07:51 AM
Can a wizard take 10 on the Spellcraft check to prepare a spell from a borrowed (read: looted) spellbook? I don't see any reason they couldn't, in most cases, but that also makes the mechanic useless after a bit (since once you have a +14 modifier to Spellcraft, its no longer an issue, no matter the spell).

Pegasos989
2006-11-14, 07:57 AM
You can. I see it as quite logical that archmage simply could use anyone's spellbook with no problems.

The DC is a bit higher if the original owner is that CArc PrC that draws symbols etc. and +5 dc to use their spellbook or something.

Thomas
2006-11-14, 10:03 AM
You can use someone else's spellbook just fine, as far as I know.

Not being able to do this would rob the game of a very good story element/motivation - seeking out spellbooks. (What do you think Raistlin was doing crawling around in Xak Tsaroth with a bunch of rejects?)

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 10:42 AM
Quoth the SRD (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/arcaneSpells.html):


Wizard Spells and Borrowed Spellbooks

A wizard can use a borrowed spellbook to prepare a spell she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook, but preparation success is not assured. First, the wizard must decipher the writing in the book (see Arcane Magical Writings, above). Once a spell from another spellcaster’s book is deciphered, the reader must make a Spellcraft (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/SkillsAll.html#Spellcraft) check (DC 15 + spell’s level) to prepare the spell. If the check succeeds, the wizard can prepare the spell. She must repeat the check to prepare the spell again, no matter how many times she has prepared it before. If the check fails, she cannot try to prepare the spell from the same source again until the next day. (However, as explained above, she does not need to repeat a check to decipher the writing.)


Here's the thing... I think making someone record it in their own spellbook is really, really stupid. Spend time learning it? Sure, that makes sense. But why should they have to recopy it if they have a spellbook with the spell in it? They can obviously USE the spellbook as-is... why write everything down again?

idksocrates
2006-11-14, 10:46 AM
if you take the Power Word "so-and-so" argument, its not a matter of the spell being written down, its that each individual wizard needs to write down his own notes and techniques needed to cast the spell. Its the research and magical supplies that go into his spellbook that allows them to "learn" it.

This rule, like many in DnD, leans more towards balance than logic. If you, as DM, want to get rid of this rule, go ahead. But that means that a wizard no longer has to spend money to learn a spell.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 10:54 AM
Yes and no. He no longer has to spend money to learn a spell if he's captured a spellbook with that spell. If he wants to buy a specific spell, or scribe one off a scroll, he still has to pay. It also means hauling around several books, or learning bookbinding. And he can avoid it anyway with a Blessed Book (which is either expensive or treasure).

I dislike that they completely linked the copying and learning mechanics... there's no rules for simply copying a spell you're not trying to learn, and no rules for learning a spell you're not trying to copy.

Thomas
2006-11-14, 10:56 AM
Here's the thing... I think making someone record it in their own spellbook is really, really stupid. Spend time learning it? Sure, that makes sense. But why should they have to recopy it if they have a spellbook with the spell in it? They can obviously USE the spellbook as-is... why write everything down again?

Got to agree there. Surely spellbooks are passed down from wizard to wizard! (Raistlin kept Fistandantilus' books in his bookshelf in the tower.)

And here Complete Arcane comes to the rescue! Starting on page 139, there's a great section on spellbooks; on page 140 there's a bit on "Mastering a foreign spellbook." Weeks of study and a Spellcraft check at DC 26 to 34 (depending on the spells contained) will allow you to use the spellbook as your own. Great mechanic, if you ask me.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 11:08 AM
The thing is, you don't need to master it, though... once you learn all the spells in there, you can usually use the thing without mastering it, simply by taking 10 on all of your spellcraft checks. The DC is 15 + Spell level. Assuming you have a 14 Intelligence, maximum ranks in Spellcraft, and take 10:

1st level: 16 (enough for 1st level spells)
3rd level: 18 (enough for 3rd level spells)
5th level: 20 (enough for 5th level spells)
7th level: 22 (enough for 7th level spells)
9th level: 24 (enough for 9th level spells)

And that's with just a 14, with no increase over time or through abilities, maxing out the skill you want to have high anyway. You never have a reason to master a spellbook. It's a neat-looking mechanic, but a useless one.

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-14, 11:12 AM
Umm...the way I'm reading that, it isn't that you have to re-record the spell. It's that you have to have it recorded in your spellbook in the first place. IE, you "know" the spell. It's one of the ones you added to your spellbook at level-up, or you added it from a scroll. Note that nowhere in the description of "how to prepare spells from another wizard's book" does it tell you to write down the spell, which usually takes 24 hours and 100 gp/spell level. So it just means you can only prepare a spell you're already familiar with.

edit: and this, indeed, makes "mastering" the book worthwhile. If it's full of spells you've never heard of...it's cheaper and easier to just master the whole book at once, rather than trying to add each spell to your own list one at a time.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 11:24 AM
But you already have a copy. In this spellbook that you looted off the wizard you just waxed. You're re-recording it because you've got a copy, and now you have to rewrite it to be able to use it.

Yuki Akuma
2006-11-14, 11:28 AM
But you already have a copy. In this spellbook that you looted off the wizard you just waxed. You're re-recording it because you've got a copy, and now you have to rewrite it to be able to use it.

This is why you'll want to master the spellbook instead of copying it into your own; you already have the spellbook. Just make it your own. :P

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-14, 12:22 PM
Right. Think about the "different notation methods" like programming languages or file formats or something similar. If you decipher the script, you can understand the other mage's language , but you can't necessarily "run the code" so to speak. If you already know that spell, you're familiar enough with it that you can use the unfamiliar code as a reference to prepare that spell (since it's intended to do the same thing, you can plug in certain strings or whatever). If you aren't familiar with the spell, you'll have to either translate it into your language (copying it to you spellbook), or upgrade yourself to run the unfamiliar code (mastering the spellbook.)

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 12:24 PM
But it's already evident that you can learn spells out of someone else's spellbook... or off a scroll that disappears in 6 seconds.

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-14, 12:41 PM
But it's already evident that you can learn spells out of someone else's spellbook... or off a scroll that disappears in 6 seconds.

Yeah, by copying them into your own spellbook. Anyway who's arguing that you can't do that?

The whole point of the "you must know the spell to prepare it" is so you can't just defeat the BBEG, take his uber spellbook, and instantly double your available spells. You have to go to some effort to have those new spells available to you, be that by transcribing (translating) them, or by mastering the new spellbook.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 01:05 PM
Why do you have to copy them, though? You can obviously learn from them when they're written elsewhere. You can obviously use them when someone else has written them "weird". Why a requirement to copy them?

Yuki Akuma
2006-11-14, 01:06 PM
To use a spell from a foreign spellbook you have to "know" it, i.e. it must be in a spellbook you own. Therefore you must either copy it into your own spellbook by deciphering it and then writing it with your own notation, or master the spellbook.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 01:07 PM
To use a spell from a foreign spellbook you have to "know" it, i.e. it must be in a spellbook you own. Therefore you must either copy it into your own spellbook by deciphering it and then writing it with your own notation, or master the spellbook.

I'm not asking the rules... I'm asking the why.

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-14, 01:24 PM
Why do you have to copy them, though? You can obviously learn from them when they're written elsewhere. You can obviously use them when someone else has written them "weird". Why a requirement to copy them?
But again, only if you already know them (IE, have them in your spellbook) yourself. I guess my analogy as to the "why" of it wasn't to your liking? I'll try to make a more detailed example.

You know how to cast magic missile. It's written in your spellbook. Let's say you have to do the following steps in the following order to prepare the spell for the day.

wiggle hands in gesture 247
mystic phrase 65
incant formula 27
gesture 83
phrase 71

Your spellbook has these instructions written down in a notation you understand (in this case, decimal). You find a strange spellbook, and decipher it well enough to know that it's magic missile. But he has it written down

gesture 367
phrase 101
formula 33
gesture 123
phrase 107

Now, even without your spellbook you know magic missile well enough to figure out (with a spellcraft check) that, okay, by Gesture 367, he means the same as what you mean by Gesture 247 (because he's using octal)

But the same spellbook also has some other spells in it, that you don't know. Let's say...Melf's Acid Arrow.

phrase 34
gesture 16
phrase 876
formula 22

In this case, you can't prepare the spell because you don't know enough to convert HIS phrase 34 into YOUR phrase ???. You need to use spellcraft to translate the spell so that you can write it down in your own familiar notation, because until you do, you have no idea what those phrases and gestures stand for. In other words, you have to spend the time to convert his octal into your decimal. OR, you can spend a week learning the other spellcaster's notation so well that it becomes as familiar as your own, thereby mastering his book (or, in our example, learning to read in octal as easily as in decimal, without calculations).

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 02:30 PM
In this case, you can't prepare the spell because you don't know enough to convert HIS phrase 34 into YOUR phrase ???. You need to use spellcraft to translate the spell so that you can write it down in your own familiar notation, because until you do, you have no idea what those phrases and gestures stand for.

But you do know enough.

RAW (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/skillsInt.html), you can learn the spell out of his spellbook with a spellcraft check of 15+spell level. You spend gold, copy it into your spellbook. Your spellbook is destroyed, lost, or somehow unavailable. You still have his spellbook, however, so you can prepare it out of his spellbook with a check of 15+spell level.

Why do you have to copy it down in the first place if you're capable of learning it from his book, then preparing it from his book? Why bother to master it if you can simply learn the spell then, with a trivial Spellcraft check, use his spellbook anyway?

Yuki Akuma
2006-11-14, 02:38 PM
But you do know enough.

RAW (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/skillsInt.html), you can learn the spell out of his spellbook with a spellcraft check of 15+spell level. You spend gold, copy it into your spellbook. Your spellbook is destroyed, lost, or somehow unavailable. You still have his spellbook, however, so you can prepare it out of his spellbook with a check of 15+spell level.

Why do you have to copy it down in the first place if you're capable of learning it from his book, then preparing it from his book? Why bother to master it if you can simply learn the spell then, with a trivial Spellcraft check, use his spellbook anyway?

Because that's not the way it works.

If you want to house rule it that way, fine, but that's not how it works by the RAW.

Deal with it, the RAW says you have to know a spell in order to prepare it from a foreign spellbook.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 02:57 PM
Because that's not the way it works.

If you want to house rule it that way, fine, but that's not how it works by the RAW.

Deal with it, the RAW says you have to know a spell in order to prepare it from a foreign spellbook.

However, I'm reading it again. It doesn't say you have to copy it to your spellbook... merely that you can.

From Spellcraft:
15 + spell level Learn a spell from a spellbook or scroll (wizard only). No retry for that spell until you gain at least 1 rank in Spellcraft (even if you find another source to try to learn the spell from). Requires 8 hours.

From Spells Copied from Another’s Spellbook or a Scroll:
Next, she must spend a day studying the spell. At the end of the day, she must make a Spellcraft (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/skillsAll.html#Spellcraft) check (DC 15 + spell’s level). ... If the check succeeds, the wizard understands the spell and can copy it into her spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook, below).

The processes are explicitly different... learning takes 8 hours, copying takes 24.

Now, if you learned a spell from a scroll and failed to make a copy of it into your spellbook, you're not going to be able to prepare it until you find it again... but you're right. The RAW is clear.

Yuki Akuma
2006-11-14, 02:59 PM
That doesn't make a difference, as the rules state that the spell must be in your spellbook for you to prepare it from another spellbook anyway.

And you're being pedantic now.

Devils_Advocate
2006-11-14, 03:04 PM
I agree with what SpiderBrigade is saying. Let me try a different analogy:

You find a lengthy speech written in German. You know German well enough to translate it, but it's slow going; it's a laborious process of deciphering one sentence at a time. If you do this without writing down the translation, then by the time you're done, you've forgotten most of it. You remember bits and pieces, and looking at the German text helps to remind you of them, but you still can't read the English translation as if it were sitting in front of you.

So, you translate the text again, this time writing down the translation as you go. Now you have an English translation in front of you that you can read out loud as easily as you could anything else. And if you read through this translation a few times, you become familiar with it. Maybe not familiar enough that you can recite it from memory, but familiar enough that now looking at the original German is enough to let you recall the entire thing. Your familiarity with the English translation is enough to allow you to quickly reconstruct it, even from languages other than German!

Now, on the other hand, if you didn't want to write the English translation down, it would be much harder to learn. You'd have to go through the process of translating the speech aloud again and again and again before you'd finally be able to read it at the same pace as you could as if it were in English. Having to translate the speech each time you go through it makes learning the English translation of it take much longer, since you don't have that translation actually sitting in front of you in written form to read directly.

So, in order to be able to read the speech in English (prepare the spell) you need to either have written the translation down (transcribed the spell) or have manually translated it without writing it down so many times that you can now do so quickly (mastered the spell).

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-14, 03:52 PM
The processes are explicitly different... learning takes 8 hours, copying takes 24.Okay, fnow I think I see what you're getting at. Spellcraft gives the time to "learn" a spell. But, what good does it do to "learn" it? You can't prepare it unless it's written in your spellbook. So your argument is that since you can understand the stranger's spellbook well enough, you should just be able to prepare from that?

I'm going to say that since it doesn't do anything mechanically, I mean ANYTHING, the notes on "learning" a spell are meaningless. Other than your argument, does "knowing" a spell but not having it in your book do anything? Is it good for anything? Not at all. I'm going to go with "they wrote unclearly."

Edit: okay, there is one other place where you could argue that "knowing" a spell is useful: when replacing a lost spellbook. There, you can prepare spells from a borrowed book - but again, only those that were originally written down.

From a flavor perspective (aka the "why" of this) I'd say that actually writing the spell down crystallizes your understanding of it. "Knowing" the spell just means you know more or less how it works - you still have to copy down the intricate magical mumbo-jumbo that you personally use before you can prepare the spell. When you meet a new spell, you have to come up with your own way of formulating the magic. After that, you can crib off of someone else's sheet, since you remember the mechanics well enough to reconstruct your particular formulation, just using their writing for reminders and pointers.

Jack Mann
2006-11-14, 04:13 PM
Of course, by a strict reading of the rules, a wizard who's lost his spellbook no longer knows any spells, except for read magic, any spells he has through spell mastery, and whatever he hadn't cast when he lost his spellbook.

Not that any sane DM would do that to a poor bereft wizard, of course, unless he was completely evil.

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 04:25 PM
Okay, fnow I think I see what you're getting at. Spellcraft gives the time to "learn" a spell. But, what good does it do to "learn" it? You can't prepare it unless it's written in your spellbook. So your argument is that since you can understand the stranger's spellbook well enough, you should just be able to prepare from that?

No, you can't prepare it unless it's written in a spellbook. That's black-letter rules that you can use someone else's spellbook to prepare a spell that you know.


I'm going to say that since it doesn't do anything mechanically, I mean ANYTHING, the notes on "learning" a spell are meaningless. Other than your argument, does "knowing" a spell but not having it in your book do anything? Is it good for anything? Not at all. I'm going to go with "they wrote unclearly."

Preparing from a book when yours is not available for some reason. Unless you can provide errata which shows them to be saying "We messed up and were writing unclearly", the default assumption has to be that they were writing clearly.



From a flavor perspective (aka the "why" of this) I'd say that actually writing the spell down crystallizes your understanding of it. "Knowing" the spell just means you know more or less how it works - you still have to copy down the intricate magical mumbo-jumbo that you personally use before you can prepare the spell. When you meet a new spell, you have to come up with your own way of formulating the magic. After that, you can crib off of someone else's sheet, since you remember the mechanics well enough to reconstruct your particular formulation, just using their writing for reminders and pointers.


Point to it in the RAW. I've pointed to my interpretation in the RAW; I can provide SRD links, if need be, and page numbers when I get home. Point to it in the raw that your interpretation is the correct on.

Subotei
2006-11-14, 05:53 PM
I've always thought of magic as, well, magical. Thats why you need Read Magic to read it. The spells written in the book protect their secrets from strangers. Perhaps the page looks different everytime you look at the spell?

Its a game rule to add a bit of flavour and to prevent Wizards from being too powerful. Oh, wait...

MrNexx
2006-11-14, 06:47 PM
But you can beat the encoding with a Spellcraft check to decipher magic writing, so it's not an aspect of magical nature.

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-14, 08:46 PM
Oh wait, this is a RAW discussion now? How about the quote you yourself used:
A wizard can use a borrowed spellbook to prepare a spell she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook That's pretty clear. I was under the impresion that we were arguing about whether or not this "made sense" to you.

If you're wanting me to point to RAW supporting my flavor examples, obviously I can't. It's flavor. You've said several times that you know the rules, you just want to know the "why" of it. So, I was coming up with some (IMO) reasonable fluff to support how the rules already work, by RAW. Now, if you don't LIKE my fluff, that's fine.

Also, your statement that the benefit of "knowing" a spell is "Preparing from a book when yours is not available for some reason." Except the rules state that knowing the spell isn't enough. It also has to be recorded in your own spellbook. So, in fact, knowing a spell doesn't do anything by itself. You could remove the concept of "knowing a spell" from the game, and nothing would change. It's already covered by "having a spell in your spellbook."

SlyJohnny
2006-11-14, 10:33 PM
Of course, by a strict reading of the rules, a wizard who's lost his spellbook no longer knows any spells, except for read magic, any spells he has through spell mastery, and whatever he hadn't cast when he lost his spellbook.

Not that any sane DM would do that to a poor bereft wizard, of course, unless he was completely evil.

What the hell? Of course he would. You've got this all wrong.

A wizard can KNOW spells without being able to PREPARE them.

Guys, you're all getting confused here:

*You KNOW any spell that you've read, from anothers book OR a scroll, and passed a Spellcraft roll on. Or that you gained via levelling up.

*You can WRITE DOWN IN YOUR BOOK, any spell that you first KNOW.

*You can PREPARE any spell you KNOW and also have WRITTEN DOWN IN YOUR BOOK, (which by virtue of specification, is also a spell that you KNOW), from chillaxing and reading your book.

If you try to prepare from someone elses book, you must pass a spellcraft check to either translate their annotation to a form you understand, OR, if you accept the additional rules from Complete Arcane, a more difficult Spellcraft roll, to understand their WHOLE spellbook, at once.

THEREFORE.

A Wizard that looses his Book, can no longer PREPARE spells from that book. However! Losing the book does not automatically mean he doesn't KNOW the spells in that book anymore. He KNOWS all the spells he has ever WRITTEN DOWN, and maybe even some he never did write down; but if he wrote it down at any stage, he has to have known it. It doesn't matter if his book subsequently gets eaten by a dog. He still KNOWS them, and can write them out again, if he gets another book.

The exceptions are Read Magic, and the Spell Mastery feats.



I dislike that they completely linked the copying and learning mechanics... there's no rules for simply copying a spell you're not trying to learn, and no rules for learning a spell you're not trying to copy.Untrue. You can learn a spell and never copy it. You are correct you cannot write a spell you do not know.

Ive read about seven other quotes that are all wrong here. And I don't want to be an ******* about this, but... well, Iam right, and pretty much everyone else who's replied to this topic has no idea what they're talking about, sooo... yeah, reread what I just wrote about five times.

MrNexx
2006-11-15, 12:49 AM
A Wizard that looses his Book, can no longer PREPARE spells from that book. However! Losing the book does not automatically mean he doesn't KNOW the spells in that book anymore. He KNOWS all the spells he has ever WRITTEN DOWN, and maybe even some he never did write down; but if he wrote it down at any stage, he has to have known it. It doesn't matter if his book subsequently gets eaten by a dog. He still KNOWS them, and can write them out again, if he gets another book.


Actually, he can only write it out if he has it prepared; page 179 of the PH. However, I think you're right about the rest. I think it's stupid ("I'm a wizard and I can't learn by reading!"). On the other hand, it gimps wizards who are short on time even further, since they now have to spend about 2 days on any given spell (assuming a 16 hour work day, they spend 8 hours figuring it out, then 24 writing it into the book).

SlyJohnny
2006-11-15, 02:31 AM
He can prepare them from someone elses spellbook, and he doesn't need to roll the spellcraft check again: once you learn a spell, you know it forever. You don't to spend the eight hour "making sense of it/learning it" time, you just make the roll to be able to prepare it, if you're using someone elses book.

Although yeah, you're right: losing your spellbook sucks big time. You should be really protective about it, and trap it up the wazoo. Yet on the other hand, wizards are extremely eager to steal one anothers spellbooks...

Jack Mann
2006-11-15, 05:27 AM
But that's the problem. There is no definition for wizard's spells known, except for what's in his spellbook. That's the only RAW measure I've been able to find for what spells he knows. Understanding a spell does not mean you know it. A sorceror must understand a scroll before he can cast from it; either through read magic or decipher script. However, he doesn't know it. This isn't to say that knowing a spell is the same for both classes, but it does set the precedent that knowing and understanding a spell are two different animals.

Even if you rule that having cast or prepared the spell previously counts as knowing it, if the wizard's spellbook is destroyed, then the wizard has no spellbook in which the spells are recorded, which means that, until he gets a new spellbook and copies the spells into it, he can't prepare them at all.

It's an extremely strict reading of the rules, of course, and it's fairly obvious that it wasn't the intention. My point is not that it is the correct interpretation, only that it is one that follows the letter of the rules.

Yuki Akuma
2006-11-15, 05:37 AM
It's an extremely strict reading of the rules, of course, and it's fairly obvious that it wasn't the intention. My point is not that it is the correct interpretation, only that it is one that follows the letter of the rules.

How is it obvious that that "wasn't the intention"? Did you take a level of Telepath?

The RAW give specific rules on what spells a wizard can copy into a new spellbook if he loses his old one: any spell he has prepared (and therefore Read Magic and any spell he knows by virtue of having taken Spell Mastery). Doing so removes them from their spell slots just like scribing them as a scroll.

All other spells are lost.

SpiderBrigade
2006-11-15, 10:20 AM
How is it obvious that that "wasn't the intention"? Did you take a level of Telepath?

The RAW give specific rules on what spells a wizard can copy into a new spellbook if he loses his old one: any spell he has prepared (and therefore Read Magic and any spell he knows by virtue of having taken Spell Mastery). Doing so removes them from their spell slots just like scribing them as a scroll.

All other spells are lost.

Well, not entirely ALL other spells. It does say that he can prepare, from a borrowed spellbook, any of the spells that had been written in his original, and then write them into the new book from memory.

MrNexx
2006-11-15, 10:22 AM
Why not just copy them? Since he's already learned them (the 8 hour process), he just has to copy them (which is shortened to 12 hours in making a copy).

Jack Mann
2006-11-15, 02:37 PM
How is it obvious that that "wasn't the intention"? Did you take a level of Telepath?

The RAW give specific rules on what spells a wizard can copy into a new spellbook if he loses his old one: any spell he has prepared (and therefore Read Magic and any spell he knows by virtue of having taken Spell Mastery). Doing so removes them from their spell slots just like scribing them as a scroll.

All other spells are lost.

It's obvious, in this case, because of the section on replacing a spellbook, in which it suggests that you prepare spells from someone else's spellbook to put them into your own. It's a matter of two conflicting sections. You could rule either way, but the section on replacement and copying indicates that they intended that you could still copy from another spellbook, provided the spells had been in your spellbook before it was destroyed.

GuesssWho
2007-01-27, 07:48 PM
What do you think Raistlin was doing crawling around in Xak Tsaroth with a bunch of rejects?

Yeah, they were serious idiots. Even his brother!
Of course, he may have had to copy the spells out . . .:smallwink:

AtomicKitKat
2007-01-28, 09:34 AM
Long first page, so here's my take on it. You want only some spells from that book, so you transcribe the ones you want into your "di rigeur" spellbook, so that you don't have to dig through your backpack/bag of holding/library of Leng/Lowbie Wizard Minion for the captured book(or borrow it) everytime you want to prepare the spell. After which you can return the book(if minion's), or destroy it(if it was captured), so that the disciples/minions of the BBEG you took it from can't later master it(and it might be easier for them, circumstance bonus and what not) to come after you.

archmagedrow
2007-01-28, 10:07 AM
If a wizard loses his spellbook then he is thourouly screwed. He needs to find the spells he doesnt have in memory. Also notice the sheer amount of time raistlin spent pouring over Fistandulios's spellbook. One could argue that he was trying to decipher the spellbook or master it. For preparing spells from another spellbook can be used but he you still have the oppertunity to role a one, and note that the DC to read it without the benefit of read magic requires a DC 21-29. so taking a 10 on a spellcraft check can only be done for a wizard of 8th lvl. Which is the DC for a lvl 1 spell. Sorry if the just rehashes.