Wizards locating high quality ink.

[Falconcry]

Hey guys searching the forums showed me some 3.5 answers but nothing in 5e about this.

One of the road blocks to low level wizards is the cost of ink to add found scrolls into their spellbooks. I get that spell versatility is a class feature but 50 gp worth of ink per spell level seems daunting in tier 1 play.

Is that familiar on your shoulder the solution?

Rather then an owl or a rat you could turn him into your Ink Factory (Octopus). Herbs and incense for swapping forms seem easier to come across in the wild / dungeon then the volume of ink that seems to be required. One bottle in the PHB is 10 gp and you would need five bottles for a level 1 scroll.

20 gp and a bowl of water to swap your familiar back and forth seems alot more reasonable.

[Waterdeep Merch]

That cost isn't entirely about the ink. It's also about the necessary materials you need to use when practicing that spell so that you properly learn how to perform it. There's no detail on what proportion of your gold is going to these components versus the ink, though. It'd be up to your DM.

They mention 'fine inks', so it's probably something costlier than you see in the PHB. Also interesting- a Pact of the Tome Warlock has to use 'rare inks' to transcribe new rituals using Book of Ancient Secrets, which actually do cost 50 gp per level of the spell in just the ink. We can at least give a precise cost for that, and estimate that fine inks must be somewhat cheaper.

WARNING- Extreme Nerdery Below

An average ballpoint pen holds .00912979 ounces of ink. It can write approximately 42,000 words on average.

A 5e spellbook weighs 3 lbs. and has 100 vellum pages. It is, strangely, lighter than a normal book, which weighs 5 lbs. A modern paperback book weighs just shy of 2 pounds, while a modern hardback weights close to 3 pounds. Both of those averages assume 420 pages, and an average of 500 single-spaced words per page. We can eyeball this and assume that a spellbook has pages four times larger than a modern book- that's probably accurate given the art, with any weight difference in vellum versus paper being made up for in the heavier leather exterior versus cloth and light woods. Bearing all this mind, a single page on a wizard spell would take up the equivalent of 1,000 words of ink. That means you'd need 2.38 modern pens to fill it, or .0217 ounces of ink, total.

A single vial of ink holds 1 ounce. Regardless of how pricey the stuff actually is, a single vial should suffice to fill more than 4 spellbooks. If it's a 'fine ink' that costs more than 10 gp an ounce, we'll put it's minimum price at 11 gp and it's maximum at 49 gp, since it explicitly mentions practicing with components in that 50 gp per page segment. This would mean a single vial of this fine ink costs somewhere between 11 gp and 225,415 gp 9 sp 2 cp. Rare ink would cost 230,016 gp 2 sp 4 cp per vial.

I possibly/probably screwed up some math somewhere, but that is some seriously expensive ink.

[Spiritchaser]

Most of my NPC wizards have a little chest locked away somewhere with a good variety of rare inks and writing materials suitable for spellbook work.

I had one player get to level 6 just using inks he, er, came across.

It makes for a cool little treasure to hide away behind a secret panel, or behind a puzzle lock.

[JackPhoenix]

One bottle in the PHB is 10 gp and you would need five bottles for a level 1 scroll.

You assume that you need more ink rather than the same amount of rarer, more expensive ink. I find that assumption suspect.

Besides, writting ink was generally mineral-based, rather than coming from squids.

[Falconcry]

Thank you for the responses guys.

In regards to some of the cost going into materials to learn the spell. Working on Disguise Self which is V,S.
*lowers voice to Adam Baldwin's baritone*
" let me do the math here, nothing into nothing, carry the nothin'..."

I surely understand the quality vs quantity issue. Just trying to find ways to increase spell list to keep up with the divine casters that get the whole level available.

Fighter gets new plate mail. I get a 3 lb flyswatter.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Wizardry is an expensive habit. You can ask for some donations from other party members for good team spells, components, and rituals, so long as they don't recognize your arcane addiction for what it is yet. There is no such thing as a satisfied wizard.

On the plus side, it's the only thing you really want to spend money on anyway. You don't need new weapons or armor, and adventuring gear is for people that don't warp the fabric of space and time as a standard action. Funnel everything into your hunger for knowledge and power.

[RogueJK]

The way I run it, "fine ink" isn't all that tough to locate. "Fine ink" is just any ink that's a step up from run-of-the-mill ink that the shopkeep uses to ledger his books or the commoner uses to scrawl a letter to a friend.

So any enemy wizard would have a good chance to have some ink on him, or especially in their room/lair.

You'd also have a good chance of finding some in a noble's estate/castle, likely in their desk or office. As well as in any larger temple or higher level government office.

And any magical shop, bookshop, or even general store in a reasonably sized town, would be almost certain to have some for sale.


So ask your DM. Keep pestering them. (Within reason.) Let them know it's important to you.

"Okay, you've said that it contains a +1 dagger, a Potion of Healing, and three spell scrolls... But does the wizard's chest have any bottles of fine ink in it?"

"While we're sneaking through the Governor's estate, I'm going to be keeping me eye out for a writing desk. I'd like to acquire some fine ink."