Must a character touch a Book of Vile Darkness to benefit from it?

[Samael Morgenst]

According to its description, the books need to be studied intensively for a character to benefit from them.
The Book of Exalted Deeds disappears once read, the Vile Darkness does not.

This raises some questions:

1. Could a class of students study the book at the same time? Mabye using sound/image illusions to replicate pages or read passages, as a modern-day seminary would do using slides and recordings?

2. Could the book be read from afar using Clairvoicance or Scrying, or similar spells? What about a telescope? And a pdf version, if tech level reached internet?

[Duke of Urrel]

According to its description, the books need to be studied intensively for a character to benefit from them.
The Book of Exalted Deeds disappears once read, the Vile Darkness does not.

This raises some questions:

1. Could a class of students study the book at the same time? Mabye using sound/image illusions to replicate pages or read passages, as a modern-day seminary would do using slides and recordings?

2. Could the book be read from afar using Clairvoicance or Scrying, or similar spells? What about a telescope? And a pdf version, if tech level reached internet?

Magic cannot be reduced to scientific laws, because every magical effect "cheats" the laws of nature in at least one way. The formula that describes how a magic device works always divides by zero somewhere.

Consequently, magic devices work exactly as they are designed to work. They don't necessarily work in any other way. Whether they do or don't is entirely up to the dungeon master. And the dungeon master must consider whether adding new ways to use an already powerful artifact makes the artifact too powerful or even unbalances the multiverse.

Keeping this in mind, let's look at your speculations.

Could a class of students study the book at the same time? Maybe using sound/image illusions to replicate pages or read passages, as a modern-day seminary would do using slides and recordings?

Copies of magic items generally do not work like the originals. For example, you could hire a scribe to copy the words of a Tome of Clear Thought, verbatim. But the copy would not contain any magic of its own; thus, reading the copy would provide no magical benefit to the reader. This argument clearly applies to all modern means of copying, including audio-recording by a reader, xerography, and digital scanning.

But suppose we allowed the Book of Vile Darkness to work through audio-visual reproductions. I can easily imagine a lecture hall of arcanaloths, deep inside Gehenna's infamous Tower Arcane, in which one professor places a Book of Vile Darkness on a lectern and reads it aloud, page by page, to hundreds of students. An overhead projector could also be used for greater elucidation. But what would this do for the power of Gehenna? Would it upset the balance of power in the Blood War? Is this something that the dungeon master wants to happen?

Could the book be read from afar using Clairvoyance or Scrying, or similar spells?

Perhaps you could read a Book of Vile Darkness through a scrying sensor, but what would the effect be? As a house rule, I generally allow magical effects that are normally triggered by reading to be triggered through scrying sensors; however, these effects may not reach you, the scrier, because you're much too far away. For example, suppose you read Explosive Runes through a scrying sensor. I allow this action to trigger the runes, but since you, the scrier, are far away from the explosion, you suffer nothing. The same thing happens with a Sepia Snake Sigil; you can trigger the sepia snake by scrying, but you're much too far away to be captured by it.

As a dungeon master, I allow the Mind-Affecting magic of Illusory Script to affect you through a scrying sensor. If we argue that the magic of a Book of Vile Darkness is Mind-Affecting like Illusory Script, we may also argue that it works through a scrying sensor. However, you don't get the full benefit of a Book of Vile Darkness unless you read the whole thing. This requires somebody else to turn the pages for you, which no scrying sensor can do.

Another consideration is line of effect. If you're ethereal and you look at a Book of Vile Darkness, you're not on the same plane of existence as the book, which means that it has no line of effect to you. By default, magic doesn't work across interplanar boundaries.

What about a telescope? And a pdf version, if tech level reached internet?

Dot-PDFs and all digitized copies should fail to work, just as hand-written copies should, because all audio-visual copies of magic items should fail to work as magic items. On the other hand, if we allow powerful artifacts simply to be multiplied into millions of functional copies, the problem of "unbalancing the multiverse" arises.

Telescopes are a different question. These might work like scrying sensors, so that any magic triggerable by reading through a scrying sensor may be triggerable by reading through a telescope as well. Of course, the problem of turning pages still remains.

[loky1109]

Magic cannot be reduced to scientific laws, because every magical effect "cheats" the laws of nature in at least one way. The formula that describes how a magic device works always divides by zero somewhere.

Completely disagree. Everything can be described by scince and nothing could cheat nature laws.
Magic works within natural laws. It's just laws we don't know.

[Duke of Urrel]

Completely disagree. Everything can be described by scince and nothing could cheat nature laws.
Magic works within natural laws. It's just laws we don't know.

If we can expand our knowledge of natural laws to include magic, this is the equivalent of expanding our knowledge of mathematics to include knowing how to divide by zero.

Theoretically (or in our imagination), we can expand science to include magic, and we can expand math to include how to divide by zero. But in practice, and by the use of all reason and logic, all that we know of science and all that we know of mathematics can't help us to determine what will happen if we mix advanced magic with high technology. When we start getting "scientifically creative" with magical artifacts, we venture into a field that leaves all real-world science far behind us. So basically, whenever we do this, we're just making up new rules. Making up new rules is something that a dungeon master can do, but that a player can't do without their dungeon master's permission.

[loky1109]

If we can expand our knowledge of natural laws to include magic, this is the equivalent of expanding our knowledge of mathematics to include knowing how to divide by zero.

It's false analogy. Mathematics doesn't work with real world phenomena. Magic, in turn, if it existed, would be a real phenomenon of material world. Every real phenomenon of material world could be described by science and occur according to the laws of nature.
D&D magic is fictional and designed by people and and therefore contains many contradictions and doesn't work according to the any hard laws. But it is ideal to pursue.

But in practice, and by the use of all reason and logic, all that we know of science and all that we know of mathematics can't help us to determine what will happen if we mix advanced magic with high technology.

Yes, of course. As like as people in the meddle of the XVIII century can't fully correctly determine what will happen if they create airplane or nuclear reactor. Which were direct analogs of magic at that moment of history. Does this means airplanes and nuclear reactors "cheat" natural laws?

[Buufreak]

Mathematics doesn't work with real world phenomena.

I'm not sure I've ever heard such a wrong statement before. Mathematics literally defines the mechanisms of the natural world. Saying the two don't interact is completely contrary to literally thousands of years of history as math was developed and used to help define the world, and indeed how we understand and represent most everything in the universe. I implore you to name an aspect of this game or real world phenomena that doesn't have anything to do with mathematics in some way or form.

[Duke of Urrel]

It's false analogy. Mathematics doesn't work with real world phenomena. ...

I'm not sure I've ever heard such a wrong statement before. Mathematics literally defines the mechanisms of the natural world. ...

Peace, dear colleagues, peace!

I never wanted to start an argument about what the "higher science" or "higher mathematics" of D&D magic should or should not be. All that I wanted to say was that we have no knowledge of such science or mathematics. And I said this only because I wanted to make clear that everything else that I had to say about interactions between D&D magic and modern technology could only be pure speculation – not founded on science and not founded on math. Just an opinion, with no claim to ultimate truth.

You will notice that I never answered the first question that Samuel Morgenst asked, which was: Must a character touch a Book of Vile Darkness to benefit from it?

In two places, the DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE does state that you must touch a Book of Vile Darkness in order to have a certain effect – but this effect is a harmful one. If you are morally Neutral and you touch this artifact, you suffer 5d4 Hit-Points of damage. If you are morally Good and you you touch a Book of Vile Darkness, you suffer 5d6 Hit-Points of damage.

The DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE does not state that you must touch a Book of Vile Darkness in order to be affected by it in any other way. In my opinion, you don't have to touch a Book of Vile Darkness in order to gain experience points if you are Evil, to be afflicted by alignment change or to lose experience points if you are morally Neutral, or to suffer death or the loss of both sanity and experience points if you are Good. As I interpret the text, these effects come exclusively from reading the text of the Book of Vile Darkness, and I assume that you can do this from any distance, provided that some device, such as a scrying sensor or a telescope, empowers you to read the text from far away (and provided that you are not on another plane of existence).

But I don't speak as one who has reduced D&D magic down to a science. I don't speak as one whose opinions are as incontestable as facts of arithmetic. These are only my opinions, and I wanted to argue that opinions, and easily disputable opinions, are all that anybody can offer here.

[Darg]

I disagree that using a proxy will allow one to "read" the text. You wouldn't actually be reading the book, but rather a representation of it as constructed by the magic. I could see maybe a warlock's crawling eye working because it's them being there to read the book, but scrying isn't just opening a doorway in the fabric of space-time to look at something. Scrying in particular uses "sensors" that send you information. The rules say nothing about sending back any kind of magic or allow you to interact in any kind of real way on it's own.

[loky1109]

Peace, dear colleagues, peace!

Of course.

I'm not sure I've ever heard such a wrong statement before. Mathematics literally defines the mechanisms of the natural world. Saying the two don't interact is completely contrary to literally thousands of years of history as math was developed and used to help define the world, and indeed how we understand and represent most everything in the universe. I implore you to name an aspect of this game or real world phenomena that doesn't have anything to do with mathematics in some way or form.

I'm sure I heard even more wrong statements than yours.

Mathematics literally defines the mechanisms of the natural world.

Absolutely no. Mathematics works with abstractions. Mostly numbers. It can't work with real world objects or phenomena it can work only with their descriptions. At the best.

Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature or—in modern mathematics—entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms.

Does natural science use mathematics? Of course, yes! Does that make math natural science? No, it still is formal science.