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mjlush
2013-06-29, 10:38 AM
Some Mage are inclined to put a few mislabled booby trap spells(1) to trip up anyone who nicks their spellbook here are a few:-

1) Illusory Invisibility (makes the recipient think there invisible)
2) Bulls grace
3) Owls Strength
4) Undelayed Blast Fireball

any more?

(1) naturally they have a failure chance so they should work fine the first few times and would have a stiff DC spellcraft to notice the flaw

Xeratos
2013-06-29, 11:04 AM
As a concept, nifty, but really, if you're smart enough to actually understand what you're reading in the spell book, aren't you smart enough to know that just because the first line says the spell is called Illusory Invisibility doesn't actually mean that's what it does?

Slipperychicken
2013-06-29, 01:05 PM
If you hit the Spellcraft check to learn and copy a spell, you have a full (http:// http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm) understanding of what the spell does (as though you read the spell's entry). If you don't make it, then you fail to learn the spell and can't copy it. A deception such as you describe is impossible.

mjlush
2013-06-29, 01:06 PM
As a concept, nifty, but really, if you're smart enough to actually understand what you're reading in the spell book, aren't you smart enough to know that just because the first line says the spell is called Illusory Invisibility doesn't actually mean that's what it does?

I've always had the impression that creating a spell is a great achievement, that imply s that
most mage's don't really understand how their spells work (I guess it depends on the setting my impression is D&D is rote learning)

I'd also think that there is a class of failed spell creations that are simply unreliable Owls strength happens because the verbal complainant says something like 'rase/raze my strength' most of the time it works but if its pronounced with more of a zz it goes the other way.

Slipperychicken
2013-06-29, 01:18 PM
I've always had the impression that creating a spell is a great achievement, that imply s that
most mage's don't really understand how their spells work


I imagine spell research like writing a book as opposed to reading one. You can read a novel and perfectly understand what the author means to depict (and how he goes about doing that), but it always takes far more skill, creativity, and effort to write a comparable work.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-29, 03:01 PM
Xeratos is right in that the mislabeling spells wouldn't work as once they've deciphered the book they'll figure out the spell is a fraud.

Now here's a real trick that stands a chance of working, deciphering a spell takes time, so what if what you were deciphering wasn't really a spell but a geas trap designed to appear to be a spell. By the time you've figured it out you may have already spent 10 minutes reading it and wham the trap is triggered.

mjlush
2013-06-29, 03:08 PM
I imagine spell research like writing a book as opposed to reading one. You can read a novel and perfectly understand what the author means to depict (and how he goes about doing that), but it always takes far more skill, creativity, and effort to write a comparable work.

A really good author could write in multiple layers of subtext which completely change the meaning of the story and aren't apparent on first reading.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-06-29, 03:11 PM
As a concept, nifty, but really, if you're smart enough to actually understand what you're reading in the spell book, aren't you smart enough to know that just because the first line says the spell is called Illusory Invisibility doesn't actually mean that's what it does?
You would be surprised. Under a lot of circumstances, really smart people are capable of doing really unintelligent things, especially when they're quickly glancing over something and they assume they already know what it says.

It's force of habit, really.

Slipperychicken
2013-06-29, 03:32 PM
quickly glancing over something and they assume they already know what it says.


A Wizard must take 24 uninterrupted hours to study even a single page spell, and this is just to decipher a spell (Copying is an additional 24 hours). He knows that if he fails, he might never get a chance to try again (can't try again until he levels up), so he is careful.

Because a wizard must go to such incredible painstaking lengths to analyze every possible detail of the spell, he's not going to miss anything.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-06-29, 04:30 PM
A Wizard must take 24 uninterrupted hours to study even a single page spell, and this is just to decipher a spell (Copying is an additional 24 hours). He knows that if he fails, he might never get a chance to try again (can't try again until he levels up), so he is careful.

Because a wizard must go to such incredible painstaking lengths to analyze every possible detail of the spell, he's not going to miss anything.
Huh. So, basically, pulling two all-nighters without the reckless energy of a college kid.

I feel like human wizards have a great deal of trust in the people they buy spells from.

TheCountAlucard
2013-06-29, 04:54 PM
It'd probably work a lot better as a cursed wand or scroll, really.

From my NetHack experience, reading a cursed spell book of invisibility doesn't make you think you're invisible; it blinds you. Drinking a cursed potion of invisibility, on the other hand, causes every monster on the level to know where you are. :smalltongue:

JustPlayItLoud
2013-06-29, 05:14 PM
I would definitely think cursed scrolls would be easier. Perhaps the DC to decipher the actual effect of the scroll would be higher than the DC to decipher what the scroll appears to be. A wizard who makes one check and fails the other might then use the scroll thus activating the cursed effect. The scroll might even be enchanted such that it repels any sort of magical attempt to determine its true effect.

A wizard attempting to scribe the scroll to a spellbook would achieve one of two results depending on how you would want to handle it. First, upon studying the actual arcane formula in an attempt to copy it the wizard automatically discovers the true nature of the scroll as he has to recreate the spell step by step into his spellbook. Or, second, the "cursed" portion of the spell is a unique part of the formula that is unique to a spell scribed onto a scroll so that a wizard scribing it would just get a normal version of the spell.

Balain
2013-06-30, 02:51 AM
Dragon Magazine did a couple articles called Outrages from the mages. I recall seeing two of them anyways. The one that sticks out the most was about this mage that had a cylinder where one side could be spun so you got spells like remove hands, locate hands, flaming mouth, stone to rock, all kinds of whacky spells scrolls to give to players....The most useful of them was flaming mouth, yes it did more damage to the caster but it could do some damage to something really close to you.

Cerlis
2013-06-30, 04:25 AM
If you hit the Spellcraft check to learn and copy a spell, you have a full (http:// http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm) understanding of what the spell does (as though you read the spell's entry). If you don't make it, then you fail to learn the spell and can't copy it. A deception such as you describe is impossible.

as someone said you could put in subtext basically.

If you constantly fully understood it then you wouldnt need a spell book at all.

It would be like grilling a page long speech into your head to rate off at the end of the day, you forget it when you go to sleep cus you didnt really commit it to long term memory (the reason you dont want to stay up all night studying).

I'd point out two things in writing/reading. When writing its a common mistake to put That at the end of a line of text and That at the beginning of the text. they are suppose to be the same word but you end up writing it twice, and often when you reread your work you dont catch it because when you read the second That, you are thinking "that"

another phenomenon is the fact that only be reading the content of the whole sentence can the difference between Your and you're be determined. something tells me that an Arcane language (as in old and secret, not Magic) would have tons of these possibilities. Not to mention actual real languages in which simply increasing the speed of the word changes its meaning.

So i think it would be easy to use these tricks to screw up a spell so that it would be difficult to figure out that it does the wrong thing. the craft DC would have to be higher though than the spellcraft DC to learn the spell.
---------------------------

but technically thats all off topic.

A spell to teleport you to the plane of fire (or any plane) and instead takes you into a volcano (or simular to wanted plane enviroment) would be fun.

TuggyNE
2013-06-30, 04:56 AM
aI'd point out two things in writing/reading. When writing its a common mistake to put That at the end of a line of text and That at the beginning of the text. they are suppose to be the same word but you end up writing it twice, and often when you reread your work you dont catch it because when you read the second That, you are thinking "that"

another phenomenon is the fact that only be reading the content of the whole sentence can the difference between Your and you're be determined. something tells me that an Arcane language (as in old and secret, not Magic) would have tons of these possibilities. Not to mention actual real languages in which simply increasing the speed of the word changes its meaning.

I gotta admit, I find the argument "it's fairly straightforward to mess up a text in a subtle way that an absurdly smart, dedicated scholar with a known need to make sure everything is precisely correct would miss" oddly uncompelling. Wizards would be some of the best proofreaders around, because they're smart, they study hard, and they know if they get something wrong it could easily blow up in their face. Getting past that? Yeah, no, not gonna happen. Do a few runs for Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net/) sometime, it'll expand your mind.

mjlush
2013-06-30, 11:47 AM
I gotta admit, I find the argument "it's fairly straightforward to mess up a text in a subtle way that an absurdly smart, dedicated scholar with a known need to make sure everything is precisely correct would miss" oddly uncompelling. Wizards would be some of the best proofreaders around, because they're smart, they study hard, and they know if they get something wrong it could easily blow up in their face. Getting past that? Yeah, no, not gonna happen. Do a few runs for Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net/) sometime, it'll expand your mind.

This really depends on your model of magic, there are settings were the mages have literally no idea what there doing...all they know is doing particular sounds, gestures etc makes magic happen. In D&D learning to replicate these these would be a spellcraft check.

Tarqiup Inua
2013-06-30, 12:46 PM
I believe it is somehow possible to prepare casting of a spell from someone else's book? Wouldn't it work then?

Lord Vukodlak
2013-07-02, 07:13 AM
I believe it is somehow possible to prepare casting of a spell from someone else's book? Wouldn't it work then?

No because they still have to decipher the book before they can use it. The only way for it to work is to have some kind of delusional/compulsion trap on the book that makes the character believe a spell does something different then it actually does.

JustSomeGuy
2013-07-02, 10:13 AM
Along these lines: how, if verbal and physical spell components are so precise, do spellcasters with differenct accents, languages, oratory anatomy and limb structures manage to get the same consisent results?

It seems to me that one guy's fireball would end up as some other guys knock.

SethoMarkus
2013-07-02, 10:43 AM
Along these lines: how, if verbal and physical spell components are so precise, do spellcasters with differenct accents, languages, oratory anatomy and limb structures manage to get the same consisent results?

It seems to me that one guy's fireball would end up as some other guys knock.

That is precisely why I don't think that something like the OP would work, interesting idea that it is.

I always kind of figured that when a wizard copies a spell from a spellbook, he isn't really "copying" in the conventional sense and rather he is reverse engineering the spell. He studies the original text to intently and meticulously as to discover the nature of the spell and how it works. He then formulates how the spell would work for himself and writes that down in his own spellbook. This would also explain why a wizard needs to spend so much time and energy when attempting to interpret a spellbook that is not his own. (Scrolls and the such have the spell actually cast into them as they are being transcribed, thus the user only needs to activate the scroll not fully understand it.)

geeky_monkey
2013-07-02, 10:44 AM
I encountered a booby-trapped spell book during a D&D game a few years back.

It was a fancy, leather-bound tome covered in jewels.

However the jewels weren't just decorative - unless you rotated one particular gem the book replaced all the spells with Explosive Runes. Our wizard got a faceful of gems, leather, and paper and a forceful lesson in not touching other mages stuff.