[3.5] Creative Ways to Handle Learning New Spells?

[Unusual Muse]

Hi all...

In the interests of making things more interesting as well as putting a very mild nerf on arcane casting, I'm brainstorming mechanics by which to make learning new spells less straightforward than just automatically knowing 2 new spells each level.

From the standpoint of fitting this mechanic into the game world, I very much like the idea of an arrangement a la Moorcock's Elric, whereby those who cast spells have to bargain with extraplanar beings to learn their craft (thus providing potential consequences for failure and also creating plot threads via relationships with those beings), go on "adventures within the adventure," contend with obscure literature/locations/substances in ways that can fail, etc.

So the subject for creative conjecture is, what are some different ways that this can be systematized mechanically in ways that are interesting? Brainstormers: GO!

[Doctor Despair]

It's tough to require quests for wizards to learn new spells because that essentially means the party's quests are going to either be based around the wizard OR prevent the wizard from learning spells. Either way, it is a point of tension. Something you might do as a DM is select a natural spell progression and call them seeds since that's how epic spells are worded. A wizard might inherently be a student of fire and know scorching ray (lv2), fireball (lv3), etc, but be unable to cast them until the appropriate level. You might call this a seed within the school of evocations. Then, the party might be willing to go on a quest if it meant the wizard would learn a new spell at every level when they learn the "water" seed or something. This does mean that, as a DM, you'd have to do a LOT of work developing what would be balanced, thematic, and most importantly, worthwhile seeds. If the party needs to go on a quest for every seed, there needs to be something in every seed that the party would desire. Otherwise you are essentially just blacklisting spells. Of course spells will be left out this way, but the DM could talk to casters in the party to determine what kinds of spells they are interested in to begin with. The caster should run spells by the DM in any case, so this shouldn't present too much of a barrier.

[ZxxZ]

Well you could treat it as an epiphany from long time observation of their own spells and how they affect the world around them. Say that your wizard or Archivist or whatever went to magic college. He has a basic understanding of how magic works and most spells he has an idea how they function. After a while of using their magic in the field, one of the spells they were studying suddenly clicked in their head and they go "Oh yeah, so that's how that works! BRB, I gotta write this down." This has a couple of issues with it, I mean a Wizard who is just using Magic Missile or whatever levels up and from observing his Magic Missile he learns how to do something like Create Minor Image. Of course they are wizards so their logic might not necessarily follow our common sense

[Thurbane]

One and only time I've played a Wizard in 3.X, I stupidly mentioned to the DM how I felt it was weird that the spells just "appeared" in the spellbook, so my character had to pop in to the local wizards guild every time he leveled up to claim his spells. At low levels (this was a Scourge of the howling Horde/Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde game), it was an absolute pain. Made playing my first 3E Wizard a real drag.

Campaign also had almost no downtime, so I could do much scribing either...

[/rant]

[Âmesang]

I figured wizards learned their basic spells through bits of self research, such as while the party is camping between encounters.

…then again my longest-running character's a sorceress, so the only time research ever came into play was while trying to invent a new spell. :smalltongue:

[LoyalPaladin]

I once asked my DM "If I bury a potato in a field and do a rain dance, can I learn call lightning?" While playing a sorcerer. He told me no. But it was creative!

[Segev]

In truth, a wizard who is only getting his 2 free spells per level is going to feel quite the pinch in his spell selection. He has fewer spells than a sorcerer at most levels, at that point, especially of his highest levels. I'd leave it be; the wizard is probably going to want to seek out spells anyway.

It's not like clerics and druids face this problem at all.