Tome of clear thought (and related items) make no sense whatsoever

[King of Nowhere]

If you only consider it logically.

You can use wish to raise by 1 an abilityb score. It costs the caster 5000 XP. The tome instead costs 5100 XP, plus some gold. So, if a wizard wants to raise his intelligence, he will just ccast wish, which is cheaper.
If, instead, somebody is paying a handsome sum to the wizard to have a stat raised, it is still favorable for the wizard to cast the spell on the fly.
So the only reason one may want to scribe a tome of clear thought is to sell it for profit. Except that it sucks hard as a way of making profit. it costs 27500 gp, and you must spend 5100 XP for it, so you sell 1 XP for approximately 5 gp. Definitely a horrible deal, you can craft any other item andd get 12.5 gp for every XP you spend. Also, at high levels getting money is much easier than getting XP (else the world would be full of epic people), I really don't see a 17th level wizard giving away his XP so cheaply. Nobody should sell a wish for less than 50000.
But wait, there's even worse! If you sell the wish too an adventurer, you may get full price on it. But! If you sell it to a merchant, you can get half price. So you'll spend a wish to get a profit of 12000 gp. You're better off just using that wish to conjure some money. And as we said before, if you want to sell the wish to an adventurer, you cast the spell on the spot, you don't need to spend more money and XP to create a book.

But even discounting all of that, a scroll of wish costs (by the book) only 1250 gp more than a tome of clear thought. I already said how that's a ridiculously low price for how expensive is wish for the spellcaster. But the thing is, if you're making a wish-based item, you may as well scribe a scroll - which any wizard can, by default - it only costs 5% more, and it's so much more versatile. If you're a merchant, what would you put in your stock? an incredibly expensive item that deals something extremely specific - with the risk that nobody will eveyr buy it, or that you'll be robbed along the way - or something that only costs slightly more, can do the same thing, and can do much, MUCH more?
From the merchant's point of view, it does not make sense to buy a tome of clear thought when a scroll of wish will do. Even then, it does make more sense for the buyer to pay the merchant to have the wizard's address, and buy the spell from the wizard. And in any case, if the wizard is looking for money, it makes sense to craft anything else, it has a better return on investment.

So, I can't see any circumstance in which anyone would want to craft a book of clear thought, or order one, or buy one.

[Karl Aegis]

You hide it in a chest behind a secret door so when adventurers try and steal it you kill them and take their gold and XP.

[Nifft]

Many items found in dungeons exist only for meta-game reasons.

You can play along, or you can remove them from your game.


If you want to play along, here are some flimsy excuses which might help:
- "The gods did it!"
- "A craaaaaaazy Wizard did it!" (therefore logic need not apply)
- "An Artificer needed to use up all of her Craft XP before leveling so she just threw them into a Tome +1 and sold it."

[tyckspoon]

Don't forget if you want more than a +1 bonus, you need multiple Wishes cast consecutively, which means you need to have a high-level Wizard who has A: Multiple Wishes available and B: has and is willing to expend tens of thousands of XP on your behalf (and the way stacking bonuses work makes inherent bonuses weirdly all or nothing - you can't sell back your wish or Tome to put value toward the next higher one or have your existing inherent bonus upgraded, just overwritten with a higher value.. so you never want to buy a smaller inherent bonus than what you hope to end up with, because that's completely wasted gold/XP.) Crafting a Tome instead makes some sense in that situation, because it allows you to spread out the XP spend and, depending on the resources you have available, significantly decrease the cost with crafting reduction feats and alternate sources of paying XP costs (Artificer craft XP, ambrosia/distilled joy/liquid pain/souls/etc components, spells and items that allow other people to contribute their own XP to the project to spread the cost.)

..'course, both of these are just symptoms of the fact that inherent bonuses are wildly expensive for what they are, and the 'cheapest' way to get them either directly or via item creation is XP-free Wishes.. and that gets into all kinds of messy issues.

[Vaern]

Crafting the book only consumes one spell slot per day. Increasing an inherent bonus with wish requires casting the spell multiple times in immediate succession. If you're going to try getting inherent bonuses off of a 17th level wizard, who only has 1 9th level spell slot to burn per day, he's not going to be able to get you past +1. He can, however, craft a tome of up to the maximum value of +5 for you with just that one spell slot.

These books are probably the result of stupid fighter knocking on a wizard's door and saying, "Hey, I need +3 strength. Cast some wishes on me." The wizard then gives him the finger and tells him to **** off for three months while he writes his book. The fighter doesn't show up again when the book is done because he has fallen into a pit of spikes and then had a gelatinous cube dropped on him.
Many months later the wizard then sells the book to a passing barbarian, promising that it will bring him great strength, perhaps at a slight discount as the wizard really doesn't have the room on his bookshelf to keep this tome and just wants to get rid of it at this point.
The barbarian takes it with him into a dungeon, and while resting in a room that seems relatively safe he tries deciphering the strange markings in this "book," which perhaps the shamans or loremasters of his tribe in the western desert could have read to him. He is then ambushed by the creatures of the dungeon, his hiding spot not being as safe as he had initially thought, and his belongings are stripped from his corpse and stored in a treasure vault.

Even at 20th level, a wizard only has 4 9th level spell slots. Unless the NPC was created with a point buy system rather than a standard stat array specifically to buff his int, he's not going to have a bonus spell slot to cast 5 wishes at once, meaning he'd need to have at least one scroll on hand to get the job done properly.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I guess stat tomes are generally created by people with Legendary Artisan and Magical Artisan.

[atemu1234]

Crafting the book only consumes one spell slot per day. Increasing an inherent bonus with wish requires casting the spell multiple times in immediate succession. If you're going to try getting inherent bonuses off of a 17th level wizard, who only has 1 9th level spell slot to burn per day, he's not going to be able to get you past +1. He can, however, craft a tome of up to the maximum value of +5 for you with just that one spell slot.

These books are probably the result of stupid fighter knocking on a wizard's door and saying, "Hey, I need +3 strength. Cast some wishes on me." The wizard then gives him the finger and tells him to **** off for three months while he writes his book. The fighter doesn't show up again when the book is done because he has fallen into a pit of spikes and then had a gelatinous cube dropped on him.
Many months later the wizard then sells the book to a passing barbarian, promising that it will bring him great strength, perhaps at a slight discount as the wizard really doesn't have the room on his bookshelf to keep this tome and just wants to get rid of it at this point.
The barbarian takes it with him into a dungeon, and while resting in a room that seems relatively safe he tries deciphering the strange markings in this "book," which perhaps the shamans or loremasters of his tribe in the western desert could have read to him. He is then ambushed by the creatures of the dungeon, his hiding spot not being as safe as he had initially thought, and his belongings are stripped from his corpse and stored in a treasure vault.

Even at 20th level, a wizard only has 4 9th level spell slots. Unless the NPC was created with a point buy system rather than a standard stat array specifically to buff his int, he's not going to have a bonus spell slot to cast 5 wishes at once, meaning he'd need to have at least one scroll on hand to get the job done properly.

This, and the ability to sell something is definitely worth a bit of trouble. Maybe it's Githzerai (or was it Githyanki?) who don't want to be murdered by their queen?

[King of Nowhere]

So, inherent bonus can't be upgraded?
I always assumed that the fact that you could get upwards to +5 with wish meant that you could get a +1 up to 5 times, and there were no contraints at all on it.
In that case, the tomes of greater than +1 bonus make sense.

I also didn't consider that there are ways you can get discounts for crafting, because I'm not expert with that kind of stuff. I suppose with them you can get the spell cheaper than 5000 XP, so it would make sense to always cast wish from a scroll anyway if that kind of thing is allowed in your campaign world (it isn't in mine because of how easily it can be abused, and that sometimes make me forget that it exist at all).
And yes, if it makes sense that those of greater than +1 bonus exist, then it also makes sense that they are commissioned and then the buyer dies before the item is finished, so some merchant may have it. Or he wizard never managed to sell it at a good price so it was left in his tower after the wizard died.
I still think 5 gp to 1 XP is a terrible bargain for selling, especially for a high level wizard, though I understand the balancing reasons that pushed for those prices. Inherent bonuses are very expensive and should be reasonably sought only after maxing the enhancement bonuses; you can't ask a 20th levell guy to spend one third of his money to max a stat.
i'd personally would have made such an item only cost 2000 XP for +1 granted, and justify it by saying that since it is a very specific use of the wish spell, there is a way to craft an item that is less expensive that the wish spell, as it has a much narrower application. Like, wish is an iphone with 1000 functions and it is awfully expensive, if you want to make a phone that does nothing but phone calls it's going to be much cheaper; using a wish to pump your stat is like using the iphone to do nothing but phone calls, while the stat-raising book is the cheaper phone. That way, you can justify the book being cheaper, AND the fact that it is convenient to scribe one.

[Nifft]

So, inherent bonus can't be upgraded?

Same-name bonuses don't stack unless there's a special provision which allows them to stack.

Any Dodge bonus will stack with any other Dodge bonus, for example.

For Inherent bonuses, there are some specific stacking rules in the Wish text.

[ZamielVanWeber]

The general rules for stacking bonuses are:
1) Differently typed bonuses stack;
2) Dodge and untyped self stack;
3) Bonuses from the same source do not stack
The inherent bonuses from tomes are the same type so they do not stack. 2 +1 Int tomes or 2 non-consecutive wishes boosting int will leave your Int at +1.

[Elkad]

The "immediate succession" Wishes thing is a rules change I don't really like. It means character either have to wait until they can afford the whole +5, or pay for it multiple times over their career.

I don't require it in my games. I let my players stack their Wish bonuses over time, same as prior editions.

[Thurbane]

...seriously though, legacy item ports. They existed back in AD&D 1E, where the item crafting rules were radically different (read: nonexistent).

[Sagetim]

...seriously though, legacy item ports. They existed back in AD&D 1E, where the item crafting rules were radically different (read: nonexistent).

I mean, AD&D is also written in such a way as to imply (if not outright state) that you should practically be tripping over wish scrolls and other access to the spell regularly at mid to high level. Also, raising a stat of 16 or higher in 2nd ed cost 10 wishes. Yeah, that's right, 10. And instead of the low low price of 5000 measly xp*, it aged you 5 years per casting. And you couldn't get bonus spells by having high Intelligence, so unlike a 3.5 wizard who is probably going to be rocking a +9 or better int mod by the time they reach level 17, the 2nd ed wizard was just never going to have that many spells per day (at least not by comparison).

*Do remember, that in 2nd ed xp tables ramped up very fast (and at different rates for different classes), so while it might take one person 40,000 xp to hit level 9, it could take another 250,000 xp to hit level 9. No one hit Wish with less than a million xp under their belt, so if the cost was only 5k per wish, players would be playing very fast and loose with them in 2nd ed.

In any case, people crafting items like the Tome of Clear Thought start making sense when they have access to feats like Legendary Craftsman from Ebberon, or prestige class abilities that let them mitigate some percentage of that xp cost.

Also, is there anything stating that you have to rely on one caster to get you to +5? Is there anything preventing 5 casters from each casting wish once on you, simultaneously, to get you up to that +5 inherent bonus? If that works, then it would probably be easier to do some god-jobs and get them to sent a quintet of Solar's over to each give you a head pat of stat of your choice. At that high a level, you could probably contact the deity yourself and advertise around until you find one that's willing to trade you a few quests for some inherent bonus.

[Elkad]

...And you couldn't get bonus spells by having high Intelligence, so unlike a 3.5 wizard who is probably going to be rocking a +9 or better int mod by the time they reach level 17, the 2nd ed wizard was just never going to have that many spells per day (at least not by comparison).

Of course Clerics got bonus spells. In some weird progression that ended up with more 4th level bonus spells than any other level if I remember right.

Int did get you outright immunity to illusions. 1st level at 19, topping at 7th level at 25.
Wis got you immunity to a stack of enchantments.

[ATHATH]

These books are probably the result of stupid fighter knocking on a wizard's door and saying, "Hey, I need +3 strength. Cast some wishes on me." The wizard then gives him the finger and tells him to **** off for three months while he writes his book. The fighter doesn't show up again when the book is done because he has fallen into a pit of spikes and then had a gelatinous cube dropped on him.
Many months later the wizard then sells the book to a passing barbarian, promising that it will bring him great strength, perhaps at a slight discount as the wizard really doesn't have the room on his bookshelf to keep this tome and just wants to get rid of it at this point.
The barbarian takes it with him into a dungeon, and while resting in a room that seems relatively safe he tries deciphering the strange markings in this "book," which perhaps the shamans or loremasters of his tribe in the western desert could have read to him. He is then ambushed by the creatures of the dungeon, his hiding spot not being as safe as he had initially thought, and his belongings are stripped from his corpse and stored in a treasure vault.

This is now how/why the next Tome of Strength that my party finds (if/when I next DM a game that would drop such an item as loot) was made/got in the dungeon.

[Nifft]

I kinda feel like maybe the Tomes of +X Stat ought to be artifacts.

Like, there's only one Manual of Gainful Exercise (+3 Strength), and since it teleports away randomly when you finish reading it, it just always appears where the plot demands, as the gods intended.

Maybe the Manuals of Gainful Exercise were created by some deity of Strength + Literacy -- some kind of "Library Kord" -- who uses them to tempt Barbarians into spending the two gosh-darn skill points to finally learn them some letters.

Maybe there's a short prayer and dedication from that long-forgotten god, but the god remains forgotten because nobody in ten thousand years has bothered to read the inscription. All they want is that juicy stat bonus. Isn't it sad, O Illustriously Illuminated Invigorator, O Literately Lifting Lord?

[AvatarVecna]

If you want to play along, here are some flimsy excuses which might help:
- "The gods did it!"
- "A craaaaaaazy Wizard did it!" (therefore logic need not apply)
- "An Artificer needed to use up all of her Craft XP before leveling so she just threw them into a Tome +1 and sold it."

There's a point in one of the Neverwinter Nights campaigns (the one with the drow invading via Undermountain, I forget the campaign name) where one of the deurgar you kill is carrying +6 padded armor. My brother and I were eternally puzzled over why anybody would spend 720000 gp on such a piece of garbage armor, especially when their stats don't have the Dex necessary to really take advantage of it. We eventually decided that it must've been a wish gone wrong: this stupid deurgar found a genie and wished for "epic armor", but the genie was in a bad mood or something and decided to twist the wish, giving the poor deep dwarf the hands-down ****tiest armor that was still technically epic.

"Genie was deliberately screwing people over" is another neat excuse for things like this, although it's admittedly harder to apply than some of the things here.

[King of Nowhere]

re: old ruleset: so what advantages were there for casters to max their casting stat? I am playing baldur's gate II, which uses an odd mix of 2e and 3e, and I'm still not clear on it. It does not seem to affect saving throws. The only stat affected seem to be the chance of scribing scroll - which, by the way, is a horrible mechanic: scrolls are more expensive and difficult to find than powerful weapons, and when you find one, you even have a chance of failing and losing a potentially irreplaceable scroll. Say what you want about 3.5 and its flaws, but it at least makes clear why wizards need intelligence and it gives a clear benefit from pumping it.

Also, is there anything stating that you have to rely on one caster to get you to +5? Is there anything preventing 5 casters from each casting wish once on you, simultaneously, to get you up to that +5 inherent bonus? If that works, then it would probably be easier to do some god-jobs and get them to sent a quintet of Solar's over to each give you a head pat of stat of your choice. At that high a level, you could probably contact the deity yourself and advertise around until you find one that's willing to trade you a few quests for some inherent bonus.

It's strongly setting-dependent, but very few are the settings where it's possible to gather 5 wizards of such a high level willing to sell one quarter of level.

There's a point in one of the Neverwinter Nights campaigns (the one with the drow invading via Undermountain, I forget the campaign name) where one of the deurgar you kill is carrying +6 padded armor. My brother and I were eternally puzzled over why anybody would spend 720000 gp on such a piece of garbage armor, especially when their stats don't have the Dex necessary to really take advantage of it. We eventually decided that it must've been a wish gone wrong: this stupid deurgar found a genie and wished for "epic armor", but the genie was in a bad mood or something and decided to twist the wish, giving the poor deep dwarf the hands-down ****tiest armor that was still technically epic.

"Genie was deliberately screwing people over" is another neat excuse for things like this, although it's admittedly harder to apply than some of the things here.

Maybe the armor was made for a high level rogue who could profit from the high max dex bonus, and then the rogue died and was looted. Still, for a fighter-type it makes much more sense to sell that armor and buy a nonmagical full plate, it gives a better bonus

This is now how/why the next Tome of Strength that my party finds (if/when I next DM a game that would drop such an item as loot) was made/got in the dungeon.

I established long ago that the vast majjority of loot in dugeons is the gear of fallen adventurers. As in "whatever was of value in here was looted long ago, but people keep exploring anyway; some of them die and drop their magical loot. hence there is a whole economy of people exploring ruins in the hope of finding the gear of someone who died before them".
Yeah, dungeon crawling is quite overrated in my campaign world. Smart adventurers do other things, and go to dungeons only if they have good intel that there is something valuable

[ATHATH]

re: old ruleset: so what advantages were there for casters to max their casting stat? I am playing baldur's gate II, which uses an odd mix of 2e and 3e, and I'm still not clear on it. It does not seem to affect saving throws. The only stat affected seem to be the chance of scribing scroll - which, by the way, is a horrible mechanic: scrolls are more expensive and difficult to find than powerful weapons, and when you find one, you even have a chance of failing and losing a potentially irreplaceable scroll. Say what you want about 3.5 and its flaws, but it at least makes clear why wizards need intelligence and it gives a clear benefit from pumping it.

It determines your limit on spells known. IIRC, it might also determine the maximum level of spell that you can cast, but I'm not sure on that.

It's also mindflayer-insurance, I guess.

[Nifft]

It determines your limit on spells known. IIRC, it might also determine the maximum level of spell that you can cast, but I'm not sure on that.

Also % chance to successfully scribe a scroll into your spellbook, but that's a rule which many people turn off, since scrolls are rare in that game.

[Elkad]

Also % chance to successfully scribe a scroll into your spellbook, but that's a rule which many people turn off, since scrolls are rare in that game.

Ignoring Baldurs Gate, it's also your chance to understand a spell you found in someone else's spellbook. Or even to understand the spells you pick leveling up. (though in that case you don't lose them, you just have to pick something else until you succeed on a roll)

[Telonius]

This, and the ability to sell something is definitely worth a bit of trouble. Maybe it's Githzerai (or was it Githyanki?) who don't want to be murdered by their queen?

Githyanki I believe. In my games high-level Gith item crafters are the ultimate source of all of the Tridents of Fish Command, Folding Boats, and other randomly weird items you'll sometimes find in treasure hoards.

[Gnaeus]

There's a point in one of the Neverwinter Nights campaigns (the one with the drow invading via Undermountain, I forget the campaign name) where one of the deurgar you kill is carrying +6 padded armor. My brother and I were eternally puzzled over why anybody would spend 720000 gp on such a piece of garbage armor, especially when their stats don't have the Dex necessary to really take advantage of it. We eventually decided that it must've been a wish gone wrong: this stupid deurgar found a genie and wished for "epic armor", but the genie was in a bad mood or something and decided to twist the wish, giving the poor deep dwarf the hands-down ****tiest armor that was still technically epic.

"Genie was deliberately screwing people over" is another neat excuse for things like this, although it's admittedly harder to apply than some of the things here.

Logically, the great preponderance of magic weapons and armor, especially at high level, should be of kinds that wizards, clerics and Druids use. There should be a dozen +5 daggers (or +1 with a bunch of special powers) for each +5 greatsword. Pearls of power everywhere.

[Jack_Simth]

This, and the ability to sell something is definitely worth a bit of trouble. Maybe it's Githzerai (or was it Githyanki?) who don't want to be murdered by their queen?

They generally can't cast Wish in the first place, because that's a 9th level spell and they get culled before they get those....

[Melcar]

If you only consider it logically.

So, I can't see any circumstance in which anyone would want to craft a book of clear thought, or order one, or buy one.

Buying one saves the exp, so if you can find one, and you have the money, then buy it... no exp cost!

[Sagetim]

re: old ruleset: so what advantages were there for casters to max their casting stat? I am playing baldur's gate II, which uses an odd mix of 2e and 3e, and I'm still not clear on it. It does not seem to affect saving throws. The only stat affected seem to be the chance of scribing scroll - which, by the way, is a horrible mechanic: scrolls are more expensive and difficult to find than powerful weapons, and when you find one, you even have a chance of failing and losing a potentially irreplaceable scroll. Say what you want about 3.5 and its flaws, but it at least makes clear why wizards need intelligence and it gives a clear benefit from pumping it.

It's strongly setting-dependent, but very few are the settings where it's possible to gather 5 wizards of such a high level willing to sell one quarter of level.
*snip*

Baldur's Gate 2 is just 2nd edition rules. It doesn't operate on 3rd edition rules. It's not mixing in anything from 3.0, beyond maybe the existence of some of the classes (Barbarian, Sorcerer), even then, the classes are statted out with 2nd edition mechanics, not 3rd edition mechanics.

In addition to making your more likely to scribe a scroll into your spellbook (a mechanic from 2nd edition, and something that doesn't need to apply in game if you're playing on the lower difficulty settings anyway), a high intelligence makes you immune to certain illusion spells (as mentioned, all the way up to 7th level spells of illusion), and it also gets you out of Mazes faster. And no, no one's casting stat makes their spells harder to resist. That's actually, mostly level dependent and class dependent for your targets. They roll a d20 against their saving throw number. So a scrub level 5 wizard casting fireball on someone provokes a save vs spell from the targets (If I recall right), but that save's difficulty is entirely personal to the targets involved. An magnificent archmage with 20 wizard levels and 19 int casting a Fireball on the same targets would provoke the same difficulty of save vs spell from them (though his damage with fireball would be much better, as a function of his caster level).

Divine casters get the most out of their casting stat, actually. Clerics are on easy street when it comes to that, because they get more spell slots for the levels of spells they do get (1 to 7, in ADND), and wisdom gives them bonus spell slots. And because their XP table doesn't hate them, they'll actually be up near level 20 by the end of the Baldur's Gate 2 xp chart, as opposed to Druids who are barely breaking level 14. In Throne of Bhaal the xp cap moves up to 8 million, and eventually the disparity in levels dissipates for Druids and Clerics, but Clerics have a pretty solid advantage for a long time because of their xp chart.

And when it comes to gathering 5 people who could throw a wish out, there's more than just high level wizards as potential sources. Djinn and Solars, for example, have Wish as a spell like ability. This means they don't blow xp casting it (though Djinn do have additional limitations in granting Wishes, and are also jerks). This is why I think you'd be best off doing some deity based quests to get them to send some of their Solars over to use their 1/day wish to give you inherent stat bonus as reward.

[King of Nowhere]

Isn't calling a djinn or efreeti to get a wish something that every DM bans on account of being too easy to get the spell that way,, not to mention the potential for infinite wish loops?

[weckar]

There's also dem Artisan feats that cut the exp cost of creating the tome below what a wish would cost.

[Elkad]

Isn't calling a djinn or efreeti to get a wish something that every DM bans on account of being too easy to get the spell that way,, not to mention the potential for infinite wish loops?

Ban? No. Be a jerk about? Sure.
I require truenames for extraplanar creatures, which are found as treasure, expensively researched, etc. So you'll likely start with one name, which means every time you summon an efreet you get the same one...

[Fouredged Sword]

I was under the impression that +stat tomes existed only as items that people wished for. Why cast 5 wishes to get +5 to a stat when you can cast ONE wish for a +5 tome and read it for +5 to a stat?