Selling stolen or looted spellbooks in a campaign.

[bookkeeping guy]

Here's an interesting thought...

Say you are dueling other mages in an ad&d campaign and kill them. So of course you want to take their power and learn their secrets, so you steal the spell books of the fallen mages.

What are the chances you can gain something from it? Would they be allowed access to all the spells inside or only one or two? How do you work this out in campaigns? Is it giving them too much power to say they can decipher all of the spells instead of just one or two?

If your people are roleplaying even if there's no gain they might be collecting them just because that's what a roleplayed mage would do.

And how would you determine the selling value of such items? Obviously some people would want to sell fallen mages spell books after trying to gain something for their own.

The uses and applications around this concept seem interesting right? What do you think about this?

[Keltest]

Well, in general I will allow a wizard who obtains another spellbook to use all the spells in that book that they can cast, as if it were their own spellbook. If for some reason I don't want them to be able to cast one or more of those spells, I will either destroy part of all of the spellbook on the enemy wizard's death (magic duels are hazardous, yo!) or have it written in code or otherwise protected from just being copied willy nilly.

[P.F.]

At lower levels, an enemy wizard's spellbook is one of the most desirable possible pieces of loot for a wizard in most of the games I've played in. We generally expect to be able to learn all the spells from that spellbook (although chances are some of them the PC already knows). A book of spells only costs 100 gp per inscribed page, but in my experience, the ones offered for sale usually only have common spells in them.

How secretive wizards are about their spells varies a lot form game to game. Usually other PC's will agree to trade spells, while NPC wizards (i.e., the DM) are usually more reticent. They might agree to let you copy a spell for less than the cost of a scroll, but will probably want at least an additional 100 gp per spell level if you don't know any spells they want to trade for. But in all the games I've played, any captured spellbook has been worth more as a spellbook than as gold.

[DeadMech]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm#sellingaSpellbook

A party's always going to appreciate capturing an enemy wizards spell book. According to the link above they can sell it for half it's value 50GP per written page. Which is a nice chunk of change.

Higher up on that page is the information the wizard of the party's more interested in. A 20+spell level spell craft check is needed to recognize what any spell in it is. Failure just means they need to try again another day. Though this can be skipped with a casting of read magic.

Next it's a 15+spell level dc spell craft check to either prepare the spell from the "borrowed" book or to try to learn it. Failure here is a bit worse. You can't try again until you gain more spell craft skill so likely not until a level up.

It costs 100GP per spell level to write into a wizards book and takes up spell level amount of pages. Level 0 is treated as level 1 for these purposes. As well it takes 24 hours.

All this should count against your wizards wealth by level. Extra spells they copy through their career that is. not the ones they gain through level up. At least that's what I assume. Unless it's a rubbish spell the player doesn't want they will probably take the opportunity. Though at low level a wizard might need to borrow funds from the party before they'll have the dough to make the copy and have to pay them back later when the book is sold. I'd as a DM try to sprinkle in a few spells my party's wizard doesn't yet have. Anything I'm okay with them having anyway. But it'll contain whatever the enemy wizard knew. So specialists will have spells leaning towards their specialty. Higher level wizards will have more. Whatever they were described as casting in the fight should be in there or the party might get a bit chaffed.

Selling it may be easy or hard depending how you feel it should be. As loot it's only really useful to wizards or similar occupations. So the party may have to track down a wizard or an organization that contains them if they want to get full value out of it. A college or maybe a Royal's wizard adviser or whatnot.

[Bullet06320]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm#sellingaSpellbook

A party's always going to appreciate capturing an enemy wizards spell book. According to the link above they can sell it for half it's value 50GP per written page. Which is a nice chunk of change.

Higher up on that page is the information the wizard of the party's more interested in. A 20+spell level spell craft check is needed to recognize what any spell in it is. Failure just means they need to try again another day. Though this can be skipped with a casting of read magic.

Next it's a 15+spell level dc spell craft check to either prepare the spell from the "borrowed" book or to try to learn it. Failure here is a bit worse. You can't try again until you gain more spell craft skill so likely not until a level up.

It costs 100GP per spell level to write into a wizards book and takes up spell level amount of pages. Level 0 is treated as level 1 for these purposes. As well it takes 24 hours.

All this should count against your wizards wealth by level. Extra spells they copy through their career that is. not the ones they gain through level up. At least that's what I assume. Unless it's a rubbish spell the player doesn't want they will probably take the opportunity. Though at low level a wizard might need to borrow funds from the party before they'll have the dough to make the copy and have to pay them back later when the book is sold. I'd as a DM try to sprinkle in a few spells my party's wizard doesn't yet have. Anything I'm okay with them having anyway. But it'll contain whatever the enemy wizard knew. So specialists will have spells leaning towards their specialty. Higher level wizards will have more. Whatever they were described as casting in the fight should be in there or the party might get a bit chaffed.

Selling it may be easy or hard depending how you feel it should be. As loot it's only really useful to wizards or similar occupations. So the party may have to track down a wizard or an organization that contains them if they want to get full value out of it. A college or maybe a Royal's wizard adviser or whatnot.

pretty much this

whenever I use npc wizards, I always list what spells are in their spellboks, incase they are captured, they are fair game. at least this way players only get what spells I feel they should be allowed

we had one group we played for awhile, it was pretty much finders keepers, only loot that was split, was if others where there when it was found, and usually only amongst those players. that game actually ran decently well. I had a thief that looted a wizards spellbook, and turned around and sold it the party wiazard, lol.

if im a player, I ask for a list of all spells in that book, even if I don't get it for metagame reasons, I like to make sure its written down so when I have a chance I can go through and see whats in it

[Crake]

Here's an interesting thought...

Say you are dueling other mages in an ad&d campaign and kill them. So of course you want to take their power and learn their secrets, so you steal the spell books of the fallen mages.

What are the chances you can gain something from it? Would they be allowed access to all the spells inside or only one or two? How do you work this out in campaigns? Is it giving them too much power to say they can decipher all of the spells instead of just one or two?

If your people are roleplaying even if there's no gain they might be collecting them just because that's what a roleplayed mage would do.

And how would you determine the selling value of such items? Obviously some people would want to sell fallen mages spell books after trying to gain something for their own.

The uses and applications around this concept seem interesting right? What do you think about this?

Bolded for emphasis: This is the 3e/3.5/pf subforum, if you're playing adnd then this might not be the right place to ask questions. As someone else already linked, 3.5 actually has pretty straightforward rules on the use of captured spellbooks, so that's easily covered if you're playing 3rd, but for adnd, the answers may very well be different.