Need advice on creating an intellegent spellbook as a PC

[flamewolf393]

This is a complicated idea to actually play, so please ask questions and point out things I may not have thought of. The easier this character is on the DM and his having to make rulings, the longer it will survive. Feel free point out homebrew rulings that make sense.


Basic Premise

It is a minor artifact version of Boccob's Blessed Book. It is intellegent/sentient. It's primary purpose is the gathering of knowledge and spells for eventual collection by Boccob himself. It has no real morals or ethics. It wont burn down an orphanage just to get a scroll, but it may not save a burning orphanage if it has yet to visit the local library.

Physical form and abilities

Its a fairly large tome, about 12x8x6. Its outer binding/casing is waterproof, fire resistant, and can be enchanted as armor/shield and can deliver touch attacks, and has a weak slam attack.

It can still wear magic items, they just get absorbed into the book, and the first few pages are dedicated to pictures/descriptions of items currently in use. It effectively has a bag of holding concealed within its pages as well.

Knowledge absorption: It can learn new spells and knowledge by eating scrolls and books. It can immediately know/understand it by eating a single page at a time (how long should this take?), or it can store entire sheaves and books for later organization. I think there should be a penalty to knowledge checks or at least to research checks for any un-organized documents.

As an artifact it's basic functions are immune to dispel/AMF.

Interacting with the environment

It will have magic flight at standard 30' movement speed.

How should it sense its environment? What kind of senses would it have? Blindsight, tremorsense, darkvision? Should I give it magical senses like detect life/magic/alignment/etc?

How should it communicate? Should it be able to speak, be telepathic, or should it be limited to printing words on a page to be read?

I need it to be able to interact with objects around it. Not sure how to handle this to make sure it balanced. I was thinking that it could have at will mage hand, and could have two active at once, but with a range limit of 5 feet.

Unbalanced benefits
With magic senses and no real front/facing, it would be like an ooze, immune to crits, flanking, and sneak attacks. It would have full object immunities (poison, disease, sleep, etc). As an artifact (even a minor one) I am supposed to be very hard to destroy. How do I balance this with the need for level based saves and hitpoints?

[Gildedragon]

Easier way to stat out the PC part of this.
Treat as a trap haunt with a construct or living construct type as opposed to undead.
Upgrading the book ought to be part of the character's WBL
Treat the physical manifestation of the 'ghost' as a permanent unseen servant or the like. (Remove the cost of some riverine or ghost touch gauntlets from WBL for this ability)
Make the item an ancestral relic and legacy item: keep boosting it into minor artifactness

[dascarletm]

This is a complicated idea to actually play, so please ask questions and point out things I may not have thought of. The easier this character is on the DM and his having to make rulings, the longer it will survive. Feel free point out homebrew rulings that make sense.

First, let me start by saying the closest you can make it to an actual character the better. There are plenty of ways to fluff it being like that. Otherwise what sort of Level Adjustment/"Racial" HD are you looking for?

Find a playable race that is equivalent to the feel the book should have and start there. I'll call it the base race or BR.


Its a fairly large tome, about 12x8x6. Its outer binding/casing is waterproof, fire resistant, and can be enchanted as armor/shield and can deliver touch attacks, and has a weak slam attack.

I'd say treat the initial enchantments toward water/fire resistance to emulate that of just being a regular old character, or what the BR is towards those things. Allow the character to enchant as needed.



It can still wear magic items, they just get absorbed into the book, and the first few pages are dedicated to pictures/descriptions of items currently in use. It effectively has a bag of holding concealed within its pages as well.

Cool idea, I like it. You could also have them be adornments instead of pages. Example: Ring of Three wishes becomes three gems encrusted to the front cover, that disappear as wishes are used.

Give the character a Str score, and that is going to be the size carryable by it's bag of holding (until it buys one.) Basically keep all rules on carry capacity and just hand-wave the practicality of a book holding things saying "magic holding space."
This STR score is how much physical pressure it can foce on the world with it's magical ability. Mechanically same as BR, but fluffed as artifact powers



Knowledge absorption: It can learn new spells and knowledge by eating scrolls and books. It can immediately know/understand it by eating a single page at a time (how long should this take?), or it can store entire sheaves and books for later organization. I think there should be a penalty to knowledge checks or at least to research checks for any un-organized documents.

Make it take as long as any other character would take. Easy to make this work in the fluff


As an artifact it's basic functions are immune to dispel/AMF.

I'd make all its inherent abilities immune (the ones just emulating the BR), but let it's items and other effects on it not be immune.




It will have magic flight at standard 30' movement speed.

I'd give it the movement of the BR, for land speed say that it is flying, but can only do it at ground level, and treat it mechanically as the BR.



How should it sense its environment? What kind of senses would it have? Blindsight, tremorsense, darkvision? Should I give it magical senses like detect life/magic/alignment/etc?

Have it start like the BR, and let it be upgradeable (cost as per DMG cost).


How should it communicate? Should it be able to speak, be telepathic, or should it be limited to printing words on a page to be read?

Hrm... Have it increase with power over time?




I need it to be able to interact with objects around it. Not sure how to handle this to make sure it balanced. I was thinking that it could have at will mage hand, and could have two active at once, but with a range limit of 5 feet.

As BR, fluffed as it's magical ability.



With magic senses and no real front/facing, it would be like an ooze, immune to crits, flanking, and sneak attacks. It would have full object immunities (poison, disease, sleep, etc). As an artifact (even a minor one) I am supposed to be very hard to destroy. How do I balance this with the need for level based saves and hitpoints?

Treat as BR+classes it has. Fluff can easily justify this. Perhaps you are not destroyed, but damaged when brought to death in HP, and require powerful magic (ressurection powerful) to regain your intelligent properties.


As for BR maybe something like a construct such as Warforged?

[flamewolf393]

As for BR maybe something like a construct such as Warforged?

Or maybe just a animated object? A tiny animated object is CR 1/2. So that leaves room on the race creator to add some stuff.

[flamewolf393]

Bringing this thread back to life as I now fully intend to play this character in an upcoming campaign, and would like to see if anyone else has any good suggestions for this idea. It was mostly a thought exercise/interesting idea before, but now I need to make it a legit build.

Ideas for appropriate classes for it would also be appreciated. I need a class that learns new spells like a wizard can, but has spontaneous access to all the spells it knows. I seem to recall some weird ones like that out there, but cant remember any of them.

[Cybris75]

Very cute idea, I like it!


I need a class that learns new spells like a wizard can, but has spontaneous access to all the spells it knows.

I would advise against this, unless your party has a seriously high power level. A spontaneously casting wizard sounds really unbalanced. Fluff your spell slots as special pages that receive the prepared spells from your storage pages.

If you want spontaneous casting, I recommend you take Spell Mastery and Uncanny Forethought as feats. That at least has some drawbacks.

An alternative would be taking Mage of the Arcane Order levels, so you get access to the spellpool. You could talk to your DM to lower entry requirements and restrict your spellpool to your spells known. (I'm now imagining a whole library of intelligent books communicating telepathically and lending themselves pages.)

How will you handle scrolls BTW? Shed some paper for later use (Scribe Scroll)? What if you find/buy multiples of a scroll, are they added as loose extra sheets?

For the speech problem buy a pearl of speech. Have a face on the cover that can accept the pearl.

How will you handle spell components? Built-in spell component pouch? And verbal and somatic components, lacking voice and hands?

[flamewolf393]

Scrolls: This book is like a minor artifact version of Boccobs sacred book, as such is basically has infinite extra-dimensional pages. So when it makes a scroll, it would just drop off as a loose sheet.

This extradimensional space can also be used for storage as per a bag of holding (I am including features like this in item creation and taking out appropriate costs from my starting money. We are starting above level 1 so I have plenty of money to start with) This would easily accommodate the needs of a component pouch.

To represent basic functions, it will have continuous effects of telekinesis, ghost sound, and flight. Being capable of a form of speech covers verbal components, not sure about somatic, I was thinking maybe it has to flip open to the page containing the particular spell and point in the direction its aiming?


One question, I plan on having its binding/cover made of adamantine, should I count this as armor or hardness.

[Phyxion]

Bringing this thread back to life as I now fully intend to play this character in an upcoming campaign, and would like to see if anyone else has any good suggestions for this idea. It was mostly a thought exercise/interesting idea before, but now I need to make it a legit build.

Ideas for appropriate classes for it would also be appreciated. I need a class that learns new spells like a wizard can, but has spontaneous access to all the spells it knows. I seem to recall some weird ones like that out there, but cant remember any of them.
Have you looked at the PF Arcanist? It's in the Advanced Class Guide playtest document, available for free here (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/advancedClassGuide). Since the playtest period is over, I have no idea how long they plan to leave that up, BTW.

I would consider looking at the Android (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/android) race as well, it's basically a living construct that is balanced to be a playable race.

Hope this helps :)