Quote Originally Posted by Talya View Post
Scribing costs are not the big money sink. I generally ignore them altogether, they end up being far less significant than the cost of the spells themselves.

ASSUMING (which no published setting does by default - even Forgotten Realms) that you have access to Ye Olde Magicke Marte with any spell in any book available for purchase as a scroll, a 3rd level spell costs minimum 375gp to purchase, and then 300 gp to scribe. A level 5 spell costs a minimum 1125gp to purchase, and then 500gp to scribe.

Everyone seems to assume the wizard is getting all these spells free, usually by trading with some conveniently available other wizard. Except the ability to find such a wizard is contingent on the DM, and is in most cases less available than the scrolls that show up as random loot on encounters.

Someone in this thread even went so far as to say it is the DM's job to make these wizard spellbooks available to the party wizard. No, it is not. In fact it is the DM's job to prevent such a thing from happening too often. Under no circumstances should the DM be proactively taking actions that make the strongest class in the game even stronger.
There's a listed price for access to a spell in another wizard's spellbook (interestingly it's roughly the cost of writing the spell in a backup spell-book, which implies to me that you probably have to wait a day while he copies the spell prior to getting access to his "free" new backup book rather than the primary). The settlement size description on what's for sale pretty well states that it follows that you can get any spell at any settlement of any significant size.

Mind, I'd completely ignore this if convenient; but doing so in no significant way hinders the wizard, as he can get far more spells than he's likely to need at the cost of one feat and no cash.

Spell access is not a significant limitation in 3.x.