Is Cipher Script Wort It?

[Maat Mons]

Looking through a Pathfinder Wizard handbook, I counted up how many spells of each level it rated Blue, and how many it rated Green.

The way it worked out is that the Blue-rated spells would take up a total of 373 spellbook pages, and the Blue- and Green-rated spells combined would take up a total of 1,174 spellbook pages. A Blessed Book has 1,000 pages. So a Wizard capable of casting 9th-level spells would have to choose a few of the Green-rated ones to leave out of his "on the go" spellbook. But lower-level Wizards would have room to spare.

With Cipher Script, the figures go down to 208 spellbook pages for the Blue-rated spells, and 657 spellbook pages for both the Blue- and Green-rated spells together. This would leave a single Blessed Book with over 1/3rd of its pages free for less-optimal spells. So you'd be less likely to need to pull out your extended library when you wanted to do something unusual.



There's also the benefit of being able to write into your spellbook faster. Normally, making a backup copy of a full Blessed Book takes around 3 months. But with Cipher Script, you can write spells 6 times faster. Though you can also fit somewhere in the neighborhood of twice as many spells in the book. So the net effect is that making a backup copy of a full Blessed Book takes about 1 month.

[Particle_Man]

I guess it depends on how much attention your table pays to spell book limits. Some looser tables might just allow one spellbook to potentially hold an infinite number of spells (to match the spell component pouch seemingly holding an infinite number of cheap spell components). Other tables might be strict with page count. For those tables it might be about the level of the Eschew Materials feat.

[sreservoir]

Is it common to need to spend resources maintaining spare spellbooks at your table? This is the main thing, because the costs of maintaining one copy of every spell you'd ever want to cast are ... well, you'd probably save more taking something like Craft Wondrous Item.

Because, well, between your ~4 free spells of each spell level (~200 pages right there), not actually having access to higher-level spells (which are also the ones that take up more space) for most of your career, and just Pareto principle in general, you've got pretty good odds of never filling out your entire blessed book in the first place—frankly, even the 125 spell levels breakeven point where the blessed book is worth its up-front cost often doesn't arrive until solidly into double-digit levels.

[Kurald Galain]

I would never spend a feat on this, and frankly rank it red.

This is because you can carry multiple spellbooks in a Bag of Holding.

Aside from that, no wizard ever has a spellbook with all blue- and green spells from whatever handbook that is. Practically speaking, most wizards pick four to eight spells per spell level that they really like, and stick with those.

[Serafina]

Keep in mind that spells cost money to scribe as well.
At the point where you can afford to scribe that many spells which you will rarely or never use, you can afford to have a second (or third or fourth) spell book quite trivially. And you'd save more money with Craft Wondrous Item, too.

[Crake]

Nothing says you can't combine two wondrous spellbooks to create one with 2000 pages if you wish, and pathfinder has the secluded grimoire spell, which should mean your spellbook should never be at risk at higher levels. Ask your DM if you can make a secluded grimoire nameplate that you can attach to your spellbook that lets you cast secluded grimoire at will for 2000gp, to let you summon and dismiss your spellbook at your whim.


Keep in mind that spells cost money to scribe as well.

Not with a blessed book, those costs are already covered in the magic item's cost, and come relatively cheaper than normal scribing (10,000gp for 1000 pages = 10gp per page rather than the scaling cost of normal scribing).