deleted

[wefoij123]

Don't need this answered anymore so deleted.

[loky1109]

Requiring you to trigger a prepared spell to scribe means you're pouring your magic into the thing.
Where did you take it from? You don't need prepare spell to write it into spellbook. In most cases you even can't do it.
And again. Is scroll with word "please" magical? "Please" is "magical word", you know?

[Paragon]

That is interesting.
What about some kind of compromise and making them an alchemical item such as Alchemist Fire and the likes ?
It could be mundane yet you could more easily argue that it's not your common sheet of paper that can hold magic ?

[Paragon]

Sure, I wasn't trying to say I got raw support for this claim, just that I found it somewhat elegant since it would put spellbooks in the gray area of close-to-magic-but-mundane

[sleepyphoenixx]

Is there a need to compromise? I do not see any mechanical relevance whether spellbooks are magical or mundane, except for players with detect magic finding them easier.
Magic items get saving throws. Mundane items don't. Not exactly likely to come up with spellbooks though unless your player is careless.

It only really becomes a problem if you use alternative spellbooks like magic tattoos. Is your wizard a magic item now? Does he radiate an aura? If so, what school? What CL?
There are no answers to those questions, so Occam's Razor suggests that they're not magical.

The only reference i've been able to find that might help is Amanuensis - the MoF version lets you copy from spellbooks but not scrolls. The revised SC version doesn't though, and it just lumps it under "arcane magical writings", which doesn't exactly clear things up.

Really the main argument against spellbooks being magical is that they have neither a school, a CL or an associated item creation feat.
There is no evidence to suggest they're magical, they have no magical abilities, they're in the mundane equipment section and nothing about writing a spell into a spellbook even implies that that makes it magical, so the easiest solution is to rule that they're not.


Sure, I wasn't trying to say I got raw support for this claim, just that I found it somewhat elegant since it would put spellbooks in the gray area of close-to-magic-but-mundane

According to the fluff text on spellbooks in CArc and MoF (CArc basically copies MoF word for word) they're just well-crafted normal books that are alchemically treated.

[Malphegor]

I think some of this definition stuff *might* be hangover terminology from 2e in which I think you could use spellbook pages as scrolls by tearing the pages out and using them, so spellbooks are sort of collections of scrolls.

I think. 2e stuff I’m not well read up on.

But yeah I think spellbooks used to be magical items but slowly became mundane works that contain writing that can be used to produce magic spells and scrolls, the blueprints/raw code rather than the building/program itself, over the course of 3e and 3.5.

[Duke of Urrel]

I've been reviewing the pertinent rules regarding this, and I think the answer is yes. But I could be wrong so I thought I'd ask.


There's also scribing a spell from a scroll, which wipes the scroll out, just like using a scroll to fulfill a magic item creation spell requirement.

This makes me think if you copy a spell from a spellbook, the spellbook is pouring magic into your spellbook just like the scroll is but because it's a spellbook and not a scroll, nothing happens. This is just an extrapolated opinion however and not RAW.

The question that I need to ask you – and that you need to ask yourself, too, if you haven't already – is: What do you mean by "magical"?

A spellbook can be created only by a wizard, that is, by a spellcaster who has the power to prepare spells using the spellbook and also the power to create magic scrolls. However, in many other ways, spelltexts and scribed scrolls are very different.


The text of a scribed scroll radiates magic. It is a magic item. Using the text of a scribed scroll to complete a spell – or transcribing it into your spellbook – causes the text of the magic scroll to disappear, followed by the detectable magic, which lingers only for a short time as a dim, residual magic aura and then dissipates altogether.



A spelltext, in contrast, does not radiate any detectable magic. Preparing a spell from a spellbook does not consume the text that describes this spell, as it would consume the text of a magic scroll. It also does not consume, drain, or in any way change the spellbook itself. This indicates that a spelltext in a spellbook contains no magic of its own and contributes no magic to the wizard who studies it; instead, it acts as a catalyst.

Moreover, as a general rule, nobody except a wizard can prepare a spell from a spellbook. For example, rogues can't use spellbooks for any practical purpose (except to sell as plunder), even if they have Use Magic Device skill. Therefore, a spellbook is not a magic device. It has no magic of its own; all the magic is in the wizard who uses it to prepare spells for casting.

In all these respects, a spellbook resembles a focus, that is, a specially created object that you use and reuse for the purpose of creating magic. When you compare a spellbook to a focus, it seems to be magical not in the sense in which a scribed scroll (or any other magic item) is magical, but only in the limited sense in which a focus is magical.


There is more to the magical nature of a spellbook, of course.


If you are a wizard, you create many of the spelltexts in your spellbook as you advance in level and automatically learn more spells. Your spellbook is therefore the product of your magic power, the power to cast spells as a spellcaster.



Also, if you are a wizard, you often create spelltexts representing spells that you did not learn all by yourself, but only with the help of other wizards, who created spelltexts in their own spellbooks and scribed their own magic scrolls. You can make practical use of these items only by means of Spellcraft skill. You need to use Spellcraft skill to decipher a spelltext (or a magic scroll), to prepare a spell using a spelltext (or a magic scroll), and to transcribe a spell text (or the text of a magic scroll) into your spell book as a new spelltext. Spellcraft skill, like Use Magic Device skill, is a skill concerned specifically with magic.

Both Spellcraft skill and Use Magic Device skill enable you to make use of texts that were written in a very strange language. It is a language whose spoken form you cannot learn with Speak Language skill and whose written form you cannot decipher with Decipher Script skill. It is a language that (as I understand it) every spellcaster speaks differently and that every spellcaster also writes differently, so that it can never be "mastered" as a mundane language can be. Not even the Comprehend Languages spell and the Tongues spell empower you to read magical texts or to understand spoken magic words; for both of these tasks, you need the Read Magic spell or Spellcraft skill (or Use Magic Device skill if your task is to decipher a scribed scroll).

So I would say that a spellbook is not only an alchemical item but also a linguistically magical one, that is, an item written in a very peculiar language that is used exclusively for magical purposes.


In many other senses of the word "magical," as Sleepyphoenixx has summarized for us, spellbooks are not magical.

[Beni-Kujaku]

My take on this is "The book isn't magical, the writing on them is". The thing is, you can scribe on basically anything, even not specially prepared. You just need the right ink and components to scribe something on it. You also need Read Magic to read a spellbook. They also don't have a caster level, so they don't register on Detect Magic.

[sleepyphoenixx]

So I think this nullifies your Occam's Razor argument. Terran Brandy and Black Grass is what I had in mind when I thought of spellbooks being magical or not, but checking Black Grass, it's not stated to be magical so no idea about that. Do note that Terran Brandy is not some bizarre exception to the norm. There are several alchemical items that are actually magical instead of just being quasi-magical. What aura would these radiate?
I'd say those fall under "specific trumps general". They're magical because they explicitly say so, but that doesn't make other items magical unless they say so too.


But you're definitely wrong about one thing. There being no implication. The fact that you expend a spell or a scroll when scribing is an implication. This and Terran Brandy is 100% of my reason why I suspect they are magical. But this implication is not proof of anything hence why I created this thread.
You only expend a spell slot when scribing from memory though. You don't expend spell slots when copying from a scroll or spellbook.
We can probably agree that where you got the spell from doesn't make a difference for the end product at least.


All other "magical writings" being magical (scrolls and glyph of warding), so why would this one be an exception?
Terran Brandy and other magical alchemical items are proof that no cl no school magical items exist.
You expend a spell or a scroll when scribing spells into spellbooks.
Scrolls are magical because they're explicitly magic items. Glyph of warding is magical because it's a spell effect.
The other two i covered above


Are you sure they don't radiate magic? I couldn't find a quote that says they don't radiate magic. If you have one that will settle the matter right here.
If it doesn't say it radiates magic either, so lacking a definite statement i'd go with "it only does what it says it does".



My take on this is "The book isn't magical, the writing on them is". The thing is, you can scribe on basically anything, even not specially prepared. You just need the right ink and components to scribe something on it. You also need Read Magic to read a spellbook. They also don't have a caster level, so they don't register on Detect Magic.
Slight nitpick: You don't need Read Magic to read a spellbook, it just lets you skip the spellcraft check to decipher it, and you only need to do that once (the first time you use it).

[Duke of Urrel]

Are you sure they don't radiate magic? I couldn't find a quote that says they don't radiate magic. If you have one that will settle the matter right here.

I said that spellbooks didn't radiate any detectable magic. The word "detectable" is very important.

The Detect Magic spell empowers you to detect only spells and magic items. The Arcane Sight spell and the Greater Arcane Sight spell empower you additionally to detect spellcasting ability or spell-like abilities in a creature that has them (and that has not yet spent all of its daily spells). But these are not the only magical things in the Multiverse.

There are two kinds of magic that none of these spells can detect.

The first kind of undetectable magic is supernatural magic. Lots of creatures possess supernatural abilities and can use them to create supernatural magical effects, but neither these effects nor the creatures that create them are detectable by the spells mentioned above.

The second kind of undetectable magic is not well defined, but I think it's reasonable to assume that it exists: undetectable deific magic.


Consider the ongoing effect of the Hallow spell or the Unhallow spell. Since these spells have an Instantaneous duration, they leave only a residue of detectable magic behind after you cast them, and this residue dissipates after 1d6 minutes. However, the Hallow or Unhallow spell creates a permanently holy or unholy site whose powers can only be called magical, since they consist of the effects of well-known divine spells.



Consider also holy water and unholy water. Neither item is considered to be a magic item; both items are listed under "Special Substances" on page 128 of the Player's Handbook v. 3.5 (2012). Both the Bless Water spell and the Curse Water spell, like the Hallow spell and the Unhallow spell, have Instantaneous durations, so neither holy water nor unholy water radiates any detectable magic after the residual magic of the spell dissipates, which takes only 1d6 rounds. However, what are we to call holy water and unholy water if not magical? Are they merely extraordinary, or perhaps alchemical? I don't think so.

I think effects such as the defensive magic surrounding holy and unholy sites and the offensive magic of holy and unholy water are effects of undetectable deific magic.

I think many other effects in the Multiverse that cannot be detected by means of mortal magic are the effects of undetectable deific magic. These may also include interplanar vortices, for example, which you might be able to identify using Spellcraft because they are "strange or unique magical effects," but which you cannot detect by means of any mortal magic that I know.

Since magic isn't real, we can't apply any real-world science to draw a hard-and-fast line between the magical and the nonmagical in the D&D Multiverse. On the one hand, pretty much everything in the Multiverse was once created by deific magic, wasn't it? And out of the divinely created stuff of the Multiverse, even out of the stuff that most beings call "mundane," new magic can be created by mortal beings who possess the talent to do so. Pretty much everything in the Multiverse is at least potentially magical, isn't it? Because otherwise, how would material components work? Even an ordinary lump of sulfur and bat guano becomes, under the right circumstances – that is, when manipulated by the hand of a talented spellcaster – fuel for the magic of a Fireball spell.

But is this lump of sulfur and bat guano magical by itself? No. And my opinion of spellbooks is the same.

[Jay R]

You are making an assumption that the word "magical" has a single unambiguous meaning, and that everything in the world is either "magical" or "non-magical". I see no evidence for that assumption.

There is a category of "magic items", which included scrolls, wands, rings, staffs, wands, magic weapons, magic armor, and wondrous items. Spellbooks are not in that category.

Would a detect magic spell detect a spellbook? I've never seen it treated that way, and don't know of any published module that treats it that way.

A spellbook is certainly an item with which a wizard can do magic and a non-wizard cannot, so they are "magical" in that sense.

So I conclude that the word "magical" can be applied in more than one sense -- like virtually every other English word.

[sleepyphoenixx]

There's no rule forbidding non-wizards from scribing spells. There's usually no point, but anyone with spellcraft can do it as long as they have a spellbook or scroll to copy from.
By RAW the only thing you need to scribe a spell is spellcraft. No magic necessary. You can do it in an AMF if you want to.
You can even let your familiar scribe for you (if it has hands) - it shares your spellcraft skill after all.

Also according to the rules for alternative spellbooks in CArc a structure spellbook can be crafted by non-wizards as long as one maps out the design.

So you don't need magic to copy from spellbook to spellbook. You only need a source to copy from, either a spellbook, a scroll or having the spell already memorized (= prepared).
Scrolls and prepared spells get used up, but they always are when you use them. That by itself is not evidence of anything.

[sleepyphoenixx]

There is in Rules Compendium.

--Rules Compendium p.160
This sentence restricts spell scribing to spellcasters that use spellbooks.
This alone doesn't say spellbooks are magical because alchemical items can only be created by spellcasters and they're not magical.
I don't see a restriction in your quote. It doesn't say only spellcasters who use spellbooks can add spells to a spellbook or that you need to be a spellbook-using caster to scribe a spell.
Others usually just have no reason to.


The alternate spellbooks like the structure one you mentioned doesn't say it is an exception to normal spellbook rules so you will have to expend a scroll or spell slot to do so.
Or you could... copy from a spellbook instead?


This does make a new interesting question though, can a wizard create a structure spellbook with the 2 free spells he receives at level up?
Probably not. It's not expressly forbidden but the extra rules about construction and treating them like borrowed spellbooks instead of your own at least strongly imply it.

[sleepyphoenixx]

It's the exact same argument you've been making. If the rules don't explicitly say you can, you can't. The rules say spellcasters who prepare spells can and is silent about nonspellcasters and spellcasters who don't prepare spells. Therefore only spellcasters who prepare spells can unless there is a conflict with another rule.

But the rules say you can. The spellcraft skill is not limited to wizards.
Everyone who has spellcraft can use all functions of spellcraft unless a rule says otherwise.
Scribing spells is a function of the spellcraft skill.

Without a rule restricting this particular use of the skill to spellbook-users only it's as accessible to every user of spellcraft as any other function of the skill.

For comparison look at craft(alchemy). Everyone can craft, but only spellcrafters can craft alchemical items, so the rules say so.
Or rogues. Everyone can use search to find traps, but only rogues can find traps with a DC over 20.

If you needed to be a wizard to scribe a spell the rules would say so.

Edit: For an official example of non-wizards using spellbooks you can look here. (https://web.archive.org/web/20150920040613/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mb/20040721a)

[sleepyphoenixx]

--PHB p.82

Spellcraft directly restricts that to wizards only.

Non-wizards can use spellbooks such as anyspell clerics. But that doesn't mean they can scribe in one. I remember this making a player of mine who was going anyspell cleric really unhappy.

Learning a spell and scribing one into a spellbook are not the same thing.

Well, they are if you're a wizard, but not being capable of the first does not automatically preclude the latter.

[Faily]

A spellbook is not magical in the same way a scroll is, even if they both contain "magical writing".

What makes a scroll magical (a magic item) is that it actually *has* the very essence of the spell on it, which will be completed once the command word is spoken, thus triggering the spell's effects. A spellbook by comparison is more like a recipe-book, telling you all the right ingredients, gestures, vocalizations, foci, and everything else that goes into casting the spells inscribed within.

The scroll is a microwave-dinner that only needs to be completed with the push of a button. The spellbook is a recipe-book.

Duke of Urrel pretty much hits all the points on this though. 100% agreed with their posts.

[Duke of Urrel]

The question that I need to ask you – and that you need to ask yourself, too, if you haven't already – is: What do you mean by "magical"?


As magical as Terran Brandy.


You guys are just saying the word "magical" can be used to describe mundane things pertaining to magic. And then just declaring yourselves right. You're not adding to the discussion.

But instead of providing evidence of your own that suggest spellbooks are mundane, you guys just say "because the word magical can be applied to mundane items that are related to magic, spellbooks are mundane." The former is not evidence of the latter.

I can only return to my original suggestion: What do you mean by "magical"?

I still don't know. "Terran Brandy" is only one example of a "magical" thing. It is not a definition of what the word "magical" means. And from every description of Terran Brandy that I've found, the only reason why it is magical is that it's called that. Indeed, being able to function in an Antimagic Field is usually an indicator that a thing is not magical.

This argument applies to holy and unholy water, too, of course, and supports the claim that these things are not magical. So if I argue that holy and unholy water actually are magical in some way (which I recently did, earlier in this thread), I have to explain what I mean. And my explanation is this: holy and unholy water are works of deific magic, so that even though they are magical, they radiate no detectable magic and Antimagic Fields have no effect on them.

I make the same claim about holy and unholy sites created by the Hallow spell or the Unhallow spell in support of my claim that these things are magical, too. These things are works of deific magic, so they should not be affected by Antimagic Fields. (Not everybody may agree with this reasoning.) And of course, holy and unholy sites follow certain rules, even though they are powered by the gods themselves. The Consecrate spell or the Desecrate spell can cut off a holy or unholy site from its patron deity or deities – because the gods agree among themselves that this should happen.

A very good question to consider – and a hard one to ponder – is whether a wizard can prepare spells from their spellbook while inside an Antimagic Field. I argue that they can, because preparing a spell in your mind merely endows you with potential magic, not actual magic. You "actualize" a spell only when you cast it. Moreover, as I have said elsewhere, I don't believe spellbooks themselves are magical.

Is it necessary to say that spellbooks work inside Antimagic Fields because they are actually works of deific magic? Not really. Is there any in-game reason to say that spellbooks are works of deific magic? Not that I know of.

In my head canon, wizards are like classical musicians who read sheet music. Sorcerers, in contrast, are jazz musicians who never use sheet music. Although classical musicians and jazz musicians are different, they are both creators of their own music – especially if the classical musician is a composer who actually wrote their own music down on paper and now plays their own composition by reading the score. But even if a musician reads music off a score that some other composer has written, the actual music still doesn't come from the notes; it comes from the musician.

In contrast, scribed scrolls and other magic items are like recorded music. If you know which buttons to push, you can make a CD player or any other music media player produce the music that it contains, and you don't need any musical talent to do so.

A musical recording contains its own music. Sheet music doesn't.

Obviously, all of us have different notions in our heads of what the word "magical" means. But unless we know what YOU mean ... you're right. We're not going to make any progress here.

[Seward]

If I wanted to make a decision on this for the flavor of my campaign I'd focus on the spell ink (and possibly the quills you write with).

The only thing in the crunch is that it is EXPENSIVE to make a spellbook and requires special ink. In a 3.0 campaign I actually caused a regional shortage of ink (we were in a backwater and I was teleporting around to every wizard I had ever heard of on the a Britain-sized island, and then to anybody they knew and sharing spells for both of us caused supply problems. Our equivalent of Greyhawk City where the magic marts were was actually dangerous to enter if you weren't an elf so us lesser races had to make do). Our solution was to find and kill a giant squid I think since the resource bottleneck was squid ink.

If you nail down why the ink is needed, a lot could be answered. For example, maybe you need blood or perhaps powdered bones or something of a highly magical creature that is then mixed with any ordinary ink. Such body parts don't radiate magic but they help the wizard attune his magic to the writings (needing spellcraft checks or read magic spell to make that connection) - there is more to it than the words on the page, and the person who scribes it captures the idea of it into the ink, but it's kind of like writing with invisible ink, you need another wizard to "see" the relevant information to really "get" what the words mean, the mental state you have to achieve to prepare the spell for later casting. If this was how I set up my campaign I'd describe what is captured in the ink as something beyond the usual 5 senses, and being able to "feel" what is in the writing is what distinguishes a wizard (or anybody else who can prepare spells from a spellbook) from everybody else.

Which is why sorcerers are fine, they intuit that "feeling" for the spells they know, and anybody can use a scroll post "read magic" or "spellcraft" because the magic item crafting catches that part of the spell into the scroll ink, the scroll is casting it, you are just activating it by also reading the words. Wands just need a command word, more of the effort is captured in the magic item than a scroll, which is why a level 1 ranger can use a CLW wand and the UMD check is easier. Potions capture everything, and anyone can use it because drinking it infuses your body with the whole package, but you can't target a potion if it isn't designed as an oil to "Smear on a target and infuse it" rather than ingesting it.

So to conclude with this rationale, you know if it is a magic item by whether a crafter had to spend XP to create it (permanently lose a little bit of their own power to empower the item). Magical writing from a spell generally discharges and is powered by the act of casting the spell, can be dispelled and ends after it is triggered eventually.

It is merely mundane magical writing if it can not create a magical effect on its own but requires the reader to be special in some way to get any benefit from it, or to copy it. Note that you just need to be special, not powerful . A level 1 mage wizard can scribe a level 9 spell into a spellbook, there is just a high chance of failure and wasting the ink. Such writings don't radiate magic and aren't subject to UMD and being in an antimagic field doesn't stop a wizard from using them to prepare spells.

[Seward]

I do not think sorcerers can write into spellbooks. I think the Rules Compendium quote I quoted earlier restricts copying spellbooks only to spellcasters who can prepare.

They can't. I intended that meaning to be obvious in my flavor description above. Sorcerers don't need to "feel" what spell ink describes to the wizard any more than they need to "prepare" a spell, barring trying to do metamagic faster or join a snooty PRC that only allows prepared casters. They just "know" what it feels like to cast the spells they know, and that "feeling" doesn't discharge after casting, which is why they can annoy wizards by casting prestidigitation 16 hours a day to stay spotlessly clean if they're willing to burn the slots, or move a company of troops with a swarm of floating disks.

Basically a prepared caster needs extra help when filling spell slots, whether from a deity or a spellbook. Preparing multiple times extends that "feeling" and a pearl of power or effect like Mordenkainen's Lucubration restores that for a recently cast spell, probably detecting the residue somehow. A spont caster just refreshes the slots in 1/4 the time and doesn't forget how to cast his own spells.



I disagree with this reasoning. Some Magic Items require the user to be "special". As in requires to be a specific class, just like the spellbook does. Ring of Wizardry for example.


A coin is round. A plate is round. Therefore a plate is a coin. Except it isn't. That's the mistake here.

Magical writing that is not magical costs cash/special materials to make and no XP, but also isn't useful to somebody who is not special in the way it requires. Some items (Boccob book) or class features (Geometer) might modify that cost, but normally it costs wealth, and is both not useful to and can not be copied by anyone who isn't special in a specific way.

An item may radiate magic, but it is only permanent if an xp cost and magic item creation feat or equivalent class feature was used to create it (like Battlesmith). A few rare class features (ancestral weapon) may replace xp cost with character advancement, others (Kensai) may eliminate the wealth cost, tying it to character advancement. But the investment of personal resources in xp or by becoming high enough level is always a part of it. Such an item is only suppressed with dispel magic briefly, not rendered mundane. Otherwise such an item simply has a spell effect, including possibly magic aura, that will have a duration, can be dispelled permanently etc.

Finally you have artifacts, which normally exist outside the rule set, but are similar to magic items except they don't radiate magic and only very powerful magic (Disjunction, if you roll really well) or specific actions (toss into volcano where it was forged in a famous literary example) can destroy it.

[Seward]

When I said "magical writing created by a spell" what I was trying to talk about was "created by a spell" not "magical writings in general". I was talking about spells like explosive runes, glyph of warding, snake sigil, the Symbol line of spells, etc.

The idea was to distinguish what they did as compared to the kind of magical writing that is explicitly a spell trigger item like a scroll.


I disagree with this as well. Magical Alchemical Items can be created without expending xp. And while they're not "magic items", they are magical and cease to function in an AMF. So needing to spend XP is not a good indicator of whether a crafted object is magical or not because we got an entire category of magical objects that defy it..


What is an example of an alchemical magic item? Certainly it isn't Alchemist fire or a Sunrod using "Craft Alchemy" rules or any crafting feats I am aware of.

If it requires a specific class to create or a special feat it falls under the exceptions I listed in the last post - an Ancestral Weapon doesn't take XP to advance, just cash. But what you can make is tied to your character level, which is a different kind of xp tax, you must earn XXX amount of xp to become amazing enough that your mere presence as the creator can do it with just gold and not a permanent xp penalty.

[JNAProductions]

Wefoij, I think you're assigning more competence to Wizards of the Coast than is warranted.

3.5 is not some kind of perfectly crafted marvel of a system-there's a lot of contradictions, misused terminology, outright errors...

It's fun! But the deeper you look, the messier it is. Your best bet, as a DM, is to go with what makes sense and works for your table-if that means going against the RAW, or even RAI... Who cares? It's your table-if it works for you and your players, that's all that really matters.

You don't need to be "officially right" you just need to make a fun game.

[JNAProductions]

Yeah, at this point I'm convinced that spellbooks are magical. And every single time WotC uses the word "magical", they mean it in a mechanical context especially in core, which this is.

All the counterarguments presented here have been shot down by direct rule quotes.
Here we have another example of something requiring a class feature's magical ability turning the end result magical.

So with no opposition, the fact that scribing spells in spellbooks require a prepared spell or scroll, and the fact that spellbooks are described as "magical writing", I'm convinced. Spellbooks are magical and cannot be created with True Creation.


Playing by other people's rules is what's fun for me. I tried the "rules are guidelines and do whatever I want" approach and it wasn't fun. Whatever homebrew I allowed the players to use, there was no skill in it. It was all "can I do this, can I do that" and "sure, sure" on my part. If I wanted a monster to deal a certain amount of damage a turn, I just said it does that. If I found his attack too low, I just jacked it up. And I didn't like it. Like what's the point of using D&D at all if I'm just gonna do whatever I want with no restrictions?

Playing strictly by the rules however, now I'm a "player" in the game too now. I need to wrack my brain to get these monsters numbers up just like the players have to.

The best way to describe it is playing a board game like monopoly. If I defy the rules, am I even playing monopoly at that point?

Even as a DM I find the mechanical side extremely fun so I stick by it no matter what. And d&d has enough content to allow pretty much anything with 0 homebrew so I don't allow any homebrew.

To properly do that would require the system to be perfect-to have no contradictions, no need for rulings, and cover everything.
That's no game ever. Especially not anything made by WotC.

I'm not saying "Toss the entire rulebook out" but I am saying "When situations like this come up, make a ruling, stick to it, and be done."
You don't need a five page thread canvassing people (and ignoring everything they say) every time the rules aren't perfect.

[Seward]

It seems I'm misunderstanding your posts quite a bit. I'll be more careful.
Terran Brandy
p.43 BoVD.
Created with a DC30 Craft Alchemy check and is explicitly magical and explicitly said to not function in an AMF. No xp cost used.

Positoxins

p.74 Libris Mortis

No worries about misunderstandings. In my head, the wording was clear because I had my context. But often a sentence can be read many ways based on what words resonate in your own context. I got explicit training on that kind of problem in a business communications course because that is often a cause of many problems and misunderstandings - if you see two people arguing past each other, repeating the same words, often each is not really hearing what the other person is saying.

Sometimes they LITERALLY don't hear the same words, their brain filters it into their own mental framework to actually different words, similar to how witnesses might describe the color of a car in an accident differently.

Sometimes they hear the same words but the meaning they take is completely different.

Both get frustrated because they can't see why the other person isn't talking to the point they want to address. It happens in online communications too, sometimes more because context cues like body language/inflection aren't there, sometimes cultural differences, sometimes just where your mind is when you are reading it.

.......

Interesting. LM isn't a source I ever owned, and poisons never really seemed to work well in 3.5 so I've mostly ignored it. I'm better versed on Pathfinder alchemical rules, having actually played a couple Alchemist class members and a rogue-like character that was a generalist and would take drugs/use alchemical items to fill gaps in her limited skill points.

Basically I'd categorize those in the "you must be this awesome to make this item" category. A first level character can't make a DC 30 check under normal conditions (I'm sure people on this board could show me various ways how it was done but stay with me) and the time it takes to craft items is based on how expensive it is and how much you can beat the check. So to make it in any reasonable amount of time would require you to level up first, thus be a creature filled with the glory of defeated enemies and challenges overcome that please the gods (or however you flavor xp gain in your universe).

Still everything I suggested is just a framework for making the 3.5 crunch internally consistent. It isn't actually, there are always exceptions. The only thing we know for sure about spellbook ink is that it has a cost in both gold, and in time (power word Blind takes 8 pages of spellbook ink and 8 days to scribe, for a spell that is cast in a single word...). Also it can only be copied or scribed from a scroll or a prepared spell if you are of the character class that can make use of a spellbook, nobody else can do it period. There are also probably situations (there are in Pathfinder) where one class can use a wizard spellbook for spells that share their list but not for spells that aren't on both lists, or where a wizard can't use your spellbook and vice versa. In my flavor, they just "feel" too different, even with read magic to translate it.

Also we know that every rule I just described has an exception. There are items that eliminate the cost. There are class features that reduce cost by reducing number of spell pages needed. There might be a class that lets a non-spellbook-prepared-caster copy a spellbook or maybe make a scroll from it but I don't know about it. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 3.5 went to a lot of strange places by many authors who often didn't consult each other and made contradictory rules, and faq rulings sometimes made it even more muddled, not less.

We also know dispel magic doesn't remove the ink, and you can't use UMD to prepare spells from a spellbook or copy it. There is also no indication it radiates magic in any way. All of that strongly implies it is a mundane item not affected by an AMF. It is also not an artifact as it is easy to destroy.

If you don't like my description of how it works pleasing, skin it to suit your campaign's flavor.

[JNAProductions]

No. If it has contradictions thats a point of discussion. If there is no contradiction then that's how the rules work. The point of a Rules Q&A thread is to figure out if there is a contradiction or not, and if there is we discuss is using contradiction resolving rules, and if there isn't we figured out how to use the rules.

The only things I ignore are house rule or homebrew suggestions. Or baseless claims. I have addressed every claim that stems from a rule quote somewhere, which is suprisingly extremely rare in this forum. In all discussions it's always me providing the quotes to shoot down other people's quoteless claims.

You're confusing contradiction for ambiguity. Ambiguity can be resolved-it might appear unclear at first glance, but the rules definitively say that one way is correct and the other is not.
A contradiction means the rules literally say two different, mutually exclusive things. Which one you follow is what the DM decides-there's no resolving it by the rules, because the rules aren't perfect.

[Seward]

You're confusing contradiction for ambiguity. Ambiguity can be resolved-it might appear unclear at first glance, but the rules definitively say that one way is correct and the other is not.
A contradiction means the rules literally say two different, mutually exclusive things. Which one you follow is what the DM decides-there's no resolving it by the rules, because the rules aren't perfect.

Ambiguity can also mean that an honest reading of the rules can be interpreted in more than one way, the rules didn't cover the explicit situation.

In this situation I don't think there is anywhere that says a spellbook is magical (as in radiates magic or can't be copied/scribed/prepared from in an AMF). There also is not anywhere that strictly says it is mundane as far as I know.

That is an honest ambiguity, and an honest GM could go either way. I've stated the rules where I think it IMPLIES that it is nonmagical compared to spells, spell trigger items, spell completion items, magic items and artifacts. I can not, however PROVE it beyond a shadow of the doubt.

Rules lawyering in D&D is about "preponderance of evidence" vs "beyond reasonable doubt" and no matter what you argue what the judge (GM) decides is final. He might rule against preponderance of evidence because he just likes the other option better or might do it for a meta-reason like "it doesn't fit my campaign very well".

Going back to my 3.0 experience, the magic-mart rules only applied to places that would be an adventure to get to (the Empire of the Elves, think Rome except Caesar Augustus lived 1000 years, and foreign non-citizens (ie non-elves) were not normally allowed as the emperor had just died and civil wars were shaping up). Otherwise the GM assumed much more restricted resources so getting even unusual spell components might overtax the local economy if you used it excessively. One reason I took teleport was to travel around a wider region (of still backwater areas) to find people to sell loot to, trade spells with and purchase useful items if I didn't have time to craft them myself (which I often did not).

The spell ink rule was enforced rigorously. The availability of spell ink assumed not very many wizards per square mile needing to do it not especially often. This campaign restriction on the magic market was treated as an opportunity for side-adventures in this case both to find enough spells to actually deplete the market supply of ink, and to get raw materials to get the ink made (I had fabricate, I could do a lot with raw materials to preprocess them, and had the relevant crafting skills). It was also a problem I accepted, playing a crafting oriented wizard in a campaign where it might be hard to find the raw materials to craft things, or the time to do it. The challenge of working around it and finding solutions was part of the fun of playing the character.

[JNAProductions]

Ambiguity can also mean that an honest reading of the rules can be interpreted in more than one way, the rules didn't cover the explicit situation.

In this situation I don't think there is anywhere that says a spellbook is magical (as in radiates magic or can't be copied/scribed/prepared from in an AMF). There also is not anywhere that strictly says it is mundane as far as I know.

That is an honest ambiguity, and an honest GM could go either way. I've stated the rules where I think it IMPLIES that it is nonmagical compared to spells, spell trigger items, spell completion items, magic items and artifacts. I can not, however PROVE it beyond a shadow of the doubt.

Rules lawyering in D&D is about "preponderance of evidence" vs "beyond reasonable doubt" and no matter what you argue what the judge (GM) decides is final.

Yeah, that's a fair way to put it. Thanks.

[Faily]

Complete Mage, pg. 34.

A WIZARD DESCRIBES PREPARING A SPELL
Have you ever seen a scribe readying a page to copy a piece of text? The scribe scrapes the sheet clean, then carefully traces out perfectly straight lines to contain the text and set it in order. Finally, the scribe sharpens a quill and carefully forms each letter in the text, stringing the characters together to form words, paragraphs, and finally the whole page. Preparing a spell is like that. I have my spellbooks, the original manuscript. I begin the processes by resting my mind and body, erasing the detritus from the previous day. Sleep wipes my mental parchment clean. When I awake, a focus for a while. I cast off the details left over from my dreams and set my thoughts in order, just like a scribe setting the rules and margins on a page. When I finish, I have built a mental structure for my spells. This is the essence of magic. As I have continued to hone my magical art, I find I can create more and more mental pages to contain my spells. When I have created as many blank pages as my mind can hold, I turn to my spellbook and copy the spells I need. I don’t use pen and ink, of course, I carefully review the arcane formulae recorded in the book and fill the empty structures in my mind with magical power. There’s no feeling quite like finishing preparation for a spell. Thoughts swirl like autumn leaves through my mind. By sheer force of training and will, I force those mental leaves into motes of arcane power. The motes collect on the framework like beads of dew on a spider’s web. The final result is a thing of stunning and sublime beauty. With every breath I take, I can feel the structure thrum with power.

This goes back to my previous comment that spellbooks are not magic in themselves, but are recipe-books on how to do specific magical-formulaes.


Complete Arcane, pg 139.

SPELLBOOKS
Although most folks think of them as thick, heavy tomes of parchment or vellum pages bound with ornate covers and heavy locks, a wizard’s spellbooks can take almost any form. A spellbook can be made from belts of linked metal plates that serve as pages, scribed on thin sheets of ivory, or disguised by magic to look like a shield, gaming board, lute, or almost any other mundane item of equivalent size. Whatever their appearance, spellbooks are generally classified in two groups—arcanabula and grimoires. Arcanabula, or workbooks, are a wizard’s everyday working tomes. They tend to contain spells jumbled in any order, interspersed with annotations and notes of magical lore, and are often stained and battered from travel and use in the field.
Grimoires, sometimes called greatbooks, are formal, ordered collections of spells. Greatbooks tend to be locked, guarded, and hidden, either in a secure cache or in a wizard’s abode. Most are composed with gilded ornamentation or inks, and they might even have plates of polished ivory or platinum within them, engraved or stamped with arcane writings. They are usually large and often of unusual proportions (such as very tall for their width), and many have metal-bound corners (ornate protective caps) and chased or relief-carved covers.

Recipe-books with personal notes, annotations, maybe even scribbles in the margin.

From that page onward, Complete Arcane goes on about the creation of blank spellbooks (which is not a process that requires any magic), as well as how one can make magical spellbooks that are enhanced with magic. Likewise, Complete Arcane also has the unconventional spellbooks such as structures and tattoos, and none of these turn the "spellbook" into something that would ping on Detect Magic. If spellbook-tattoos made the tattooed person magical, would we then have a slippery slope discussion about how they, seeing as they are magic items, would take up Body Slots for slotted-magic items?

To make something magic in D&D in a permanent way (without casting the Permanency spell), it is almost always outlined under Magic Item Creation rules, with specific requirements on what Feat and specific Spells are required, as well as other costs (GP, XP, special components). Scribing spells into a spellbook is not under Magic Item Creation rules, it doesn't even require Item Creation Feats or specific spells (such as Bless Water is the spell required to make holy water, there is no Make Spell-page spell).

The term "magical writing" is descriptive, in the same way that a book on medicine would contain "medical text". I understand that can get confusing for some readers, especially if English is not the first language, but I think that several posters in this thread has put forward more evidence to support that spellbooks are not magic (even if they contain magical writing), than there has been evidence put forward to support that spellbooks are magic and would thus be detected with Detect Magic.


EDIT: Magical can be used to specify something that is infused with magic (magic weapons, wondrous items, magic armor, potions, etc), changed by magic (magical beasts), but it can also be used as a descriptive form about something. Like the descriptor of the Wizard class says "They examine musty old tomes, debate magical theory with their peers, and practice minor magics whenever they can". That doesn't make the *theory* in itself magical (like say a verbal-based spell that will make people agree with you in a debate!) but it describes how they are discussing the theories *of* magic. Magical writing in a spellbook is "writing that is about magic".

[loky1109]

If True Creation can create it, it's not magical. If True Creation cannot create it, it's magical.
First is true. Second isn't.

[Seward]

"arcane magical writing"

"Arcane magical writing" is not a defined term in D&D.

Scrolls are a spell completion item. That is a defined term. The rules for creating scrolls is defined, the consequence of a targeted dispel magic is defined, of an AMF are defined, what happens with UMD, detect magic, identify and similar spells is defined. These rules are all consistent between all magic items, except for how the scroll is used, and that is also specified that it is in the "spell completion" category, rather than "spell trigger", "command word" or "use activated".

Spellbooks share only these element with Scrolls - both require expensive materials, usually "ink and paper" but not always to create, and have restrictions on who can create them (scrolls need a crafting feat, but can be done regardless of class or whether you prepare spells. Spellbooks require a person who can prepare spells from that spellbook to create one, be it by copying, scribing from a prepared spell or scribing from a scroll.)

All of the other specific rules applying to magic items are not defined for a spellbook. If a spellbook is a magic item, it will have all those other attributes (detect magic shows a bunch of spell schools, identify probably gives the entire list of spells, disjunction destroys, dispel magic suppresses briefly, AMF suppresses while in fieldand it would probably have to be "use activated' where "use" is "preparing spells by reading it" and it gets a saving throw even if unattended).

The question here is not "is it arcane magical writing" which is undefined. The question is "does arcane magical writing mean that a spellbook is a magic item, which is defined,not a magic item, which is also defined, or something else"? THAT is what is ambiguous. I default to Mundane if nothing in rules text specifically says otherwise (as the LM alchemical items were a special case of what is normally a purely mundane creation after creation, even if the skill craft alchemy requires a caster level in something to make advanced alchemical substances).

Again going to the alchemical example. Like scrolls and spellbooks, they share a similar creation process. Alchemist fire uses the same mechanics to create as the LM DC30 crafting items. But the former is a purely mundane item, where the latter is a magical item, because the rules say it is, unambiguously. Anything created with Craft Alchemy is mundane, unless its specific text says otherwise. Any other "item created using a craft skill instead of a feat/class ability" is normally purely mundane, not requiring even the caster level on the creator, unless some exception makes it otherwise (and all that I'm aware of require a craft-item-like process after the item is forged. The closest I can come to not requiring that are things like Vow of Poverty that make any weapon you hold get an enhancement bonus after a few levels, while remaining a mundane weapon for all other purposes, or the spell Greater Magic Weapon which can make a mundane item behave as if it was a magic item for hardness/hitpoints/bonuses/spell crystals but it isn't actually a magic item, as in it wouldn't get a save if unattended and Identify would reveal no properties)

[sleepyphoenixx]

So it comes down to "Does requiring an expenditure of a spell or scroll like magic items show that an ambiguously magical thing is actually magical?" My thoughts are still yes but I'm pretty sure most of you don't think it's that damning as I think it is. I'd love to hear your reasons why though.

Because copying from a spellbook requires no expending of anything except ink.
It's a specific drawback to scribing from a scroll or from memory, not an inherent requirement of copying a spell into a spellbook.

A spellbook is the same no matter what source the spells were scribed from.
The argument "having to expend a spell makes it magical" isn't very convincing when you don't have to expend a spell for 1 of the 3 options.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Learning a new spell is the one aberration. I think it's that way because there's no way for you to expend a prepared spell without learning it first.
Copying a spell from your own spellbook requiring you to expend a spell slot is damning imo. Scribing spellbooks require expenditure of magical energy. If expenditure of magical energy turns positoxin from mundane to magical, i don't see why it wouldn't be the same here.

Simply ignoring the bits that don't fit your interpretation does not make for a very convincing argument.

[Seward]

Your list isn't accurate Step one is understanding the new spell.



Adding Spells to a Wizard’s Spellbook

Wizards can add new spells to their spellbooks through several methods. If a wizard has chosen to specialize in a school of magic, she can learn spells only from schools whose spells she can cast.

Spells Gained at a New Level
....


Method one. No resources expended, no spells no xp, no money. But you do have to level up.



A wizard can also add a spell to her book whenever she encounters one on a magic scroll or in another wizard’s spellbook. No matter what the spell’s source, the wizard must first decipher the magical writing (see Arcane Magical Writings, above). Next, she must spend a day studying the spell. At the end of the day, she must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell’s level). A wizard who has specialized in a school of spells gains a +2 bonus on the Spellcraft check if the new spell is from her specialty school. She cannot, however, learn any spells from her prohibited schools. If the check succeeds, the wizard understands the spell and can copy it into her spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook, below). The process leaves a spellbook that was copied from unharmed, but a spell successfully copied from a magic scroll disappears from the parchment.

If the check fails, the wizard cannot understand or copy the spell. She cannot attempt to learn or copy that spell again until she gains another rank in Spellcraft. A spell that was being copied from a scroll does not vanish from the scroll.


No need to prepare the spell. You just have to understand it with a spellcraft check. Original spellbook is unaffected. If it is a scroll though, the process destroys the scroll.

Of 3 methods, only the scroll method is expending magic, presumably because you have to activate the scroll to get information out of it that normally would take 1-9 pages of dense writing in a spellbook to give you. If you don't understand it well enough to scribe it, you don't do that "activate scroll" step.




A wizard also can research a spell independently, duplicating an existing spell or creating an entirely new one.


This costs time, money, lab, but no spell spent.


All of the above things mean the wizard now understands the spell well enough to write it into a spellbook. That still has not happened.




Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook

Once a wizard understands a new spell, she can record it into her spellbook.
Time

The process takes 24 hours, regardless of the spell’s level.
Space in the Spellbook

A spell takes up one page of the spellbook per spell level. Even a 0-level spell (cantrip) takes one page. A spellbook has one hundred pages.
Materials and Costs

Materials for writing the spell cost 100 gp per page.

Note that a wizard does not have to pay these costs in time or gold for the spells she gains for free at each new level.


What is interesting about this, something I never noticed before, is a wizard can understand spells not in their spellbook. They just can't PREPARE the spells until they have spent the time and spell ink to do so (or got it by gaining a level). 24 hours later they fill 1-9 pages of their spellbook.

Here's the interesting thing. Copying/Reconstructing



Replacing and Copying Spellbooks

A wizard can use the procedure for learning a spell to reconstruct a lost spellbook. If she already has a particular spell prepared, she can write it directly into a new book at a cost of 100 gp per page (as noted in Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook, above). The process wipes the prepared spell from her mind, just as casting it would. If she does not have the spell prepared, she can prepare it from a borrowed spellbook and then write it into a new book.

Duplicating an existing spellbook uses the same procedure as replacing it, but the task is much easier. The time requirement and cost per page are halved.



If you have the spell prepared and you already "understand it" you can skip the understanding step, research, spellcraft etc and just go straight ahead to the writing. Whether it was already in your head or from a borrowed spellbook or from a duplicate spellbook you wrote.

Basically if you don't "understand it" this is a two-step process, taking a minimum of 2 days but doesn't have a "prepare the spell step". If you do "understand it" preparing the spell from any available source (but notably NOT a scroll) will let you skip the time of "understanding" it.

What isn't stated is whether once you "understand" it you can go back and do it the other way. Imagine that a spell you understand isn't prepared when your spellbook is disintegrated but you have a scroll. What can you do? You can't prepare the spell from a scroll. But you shouldn't be able to do LESS than you could do before you understood it, that makes no sense.

So probably if you lack a borrowed spellbook but have a scroll you can burn the scroll in one day, then scribe it the next day (perhaps the scroll can restore your "understanding when not prepared" state well enough to make up for lack of a borrowed spellbook).

You can presumably also re-research the spell, or take it again on levelup, if the spell is unique (so there are no borrowed spellbooks to be had anywhere and it isn't in your head) or if getting to a borrowed spellbook isn't possible for some reason ("plane shift" was destroyed and you are on the plane of Ranch Dressing).

Prepping the spell is a shortcut to the process, whether in your head or from another spellbook. You can still do it the slow way, which doesn't require spell preparation. However there is one thing that is implied by these rules....

If you do it the "slow" way there is some time limit between when you "understand" the spell and when you can create spellbook pages to prepare it in future. It might be XXX days, or it might be "if you prepare any spell you wipe that understanding and have to start over" or something else - rules don't say, but SOMETHING keeps you from just copying the spell from your previous research back into your spellbook without having it prepared or cribbed from another spellbook and forcing you to repeat that research/burn another scroll/level up.


The crunch introduces an ambiguity between the "Adding Spells to your Spellbook" entry and "Replacing and Copying Spellbooks" entry. The GM will have to rule what happens in those edge conditions.

[sreservoir]

Is there a need to compromise? I do not see any mechanical relevance whether spellbooks are magical or mundane, except for players with detect magic finding them easier.

Okay, fine then, why do you want to read that they're magical?

Is the elephant in the room not that you're arguing this as a step toward "so they're magical materials and you can rip a couple cantrips out of your spellbook to summon your familiar (and/or substitute for any other generic magical materials)", to which the only sensible response has always been "no, that's obviously wrong"?

[Batcathat]

I'm not ignoring it. It's more like you're using the one thing to ignore everything else.

Spellbook requires to expend a prepared spell except the one situation where you literally can't do that
v.s.
That one situation is proof you don't need to expend magic even when copying from your own spellbook requires you to expend it.

If you don't need to expend magic then why don't you explain why you need to prepare the spell when you're just copying your own spellbook?

How about foreign spellbooks? The first time you copy from a foreign spellbook don't need to expend it. But all subsequent times you copy from a foreign spellbook you need to prepare the spell and then expend it during scribing.

My explanation explains it. It's to prevent a catch 22. What's your explanation?

Your explanation may very well be the reason why the rules are the way they are, but that doesn't change what they say. Clearly, "expenditure of magical energy" is not always needed, regardless of why that is.

[JNAProductions]

My familiar? I'm the DM. Why would I have a familiar? Why would I want spellbooks to be magical?

The reason I'm arguing for that they're magical is because there's no one here doing that and I got concerns. Once people show quotes that my concerns were mistaken I drop them. We're down to the last one.

Unlike the vast majority of people on this forum, I like to stick to the rules as closely as possible. It seems like this is such an alien concept to this so called "optimization" forum that I can't have a single thread

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Now i'm gonna go back to responding to Seward, the one of two people in this entire thread that is actually providing quotes.

Hey, since you're sticking to the rules 100%, what damage die does a Scorpion Whip have? (From Sandstorm.) Since, clearly, the WotC writers were perfect, never made any mistakes, never had any inconsistencies, and there is zero need for a DM to make their own judgement calls, it should be easy to answer, right?

[sleepyphoenixx]

My explanation explains it. It's to prevent a catch 22. What's your explanation?
"The rules don't say it's magical so it's not magical."
Because it doesn't need any more explanation than that unless you're trying to justify a ruling you don't have enough support for.

[Batcathat]

Unlike the vast majority of people on this forum, I like to stick to the rules as closely as possible.

That's a respectable position to take, even if I don't agree with it all the time. Though it does seem a little odd, coming right after you ignoring part of the rules that didn't agree with your interpretation, justifying it with a guess (not an unreasonable one, but a guess none the less) about the intent of the rule makers.

[Seward]

Ok, yeah, what you described is a solid interpretation of the text.

I'll just say this in defense of the forum.

There is a LOT of situations where the rules simply aren't cut and dried. When we say "make a decision" we mean "choose any interpretation that fits the text". That's basically what you just did. Not every GM will interpret it precisely the way you did, but your way is self-consistent.

There are also a LOT of situations where something seems obviously wrong to one person, and absolutely RAW by another. The scorpion whip example given above is one of those. An absolutely mundane item that does 1d43 damage at size medium and 1d33 damage at size small with no errata and no reprint changes and nothing in the text to clarify it. Now most folks would go "a whip does 1d3 at small and 1d4 at medium" and say that's the intent and rule that a weapon costing less than 100gp should not do 22 points of average damage, similar to a 6d6 weapon. But when people talk about RAW-only campaigns they're talking about incorporating all the silly stuff that never got fixed before the game ended.

Because of this, people on this forum are very disinclined to say something is ABSOLUTELY correct under all circumstances and will have no table variation between GMs. I think perhaps this thread could have started by quoting the relevant text for scribing a spell earlier, but that text, which cemented your ruling, only came up when we got into the "is it a magic item" thing and you clarified that wasn't what you were trying to determine. Then I said it wasn't a defined term, you told me where it was defined and I found the rules that lead to your solution.

It is not always clear to us when somebody is asking about a rule what problem they are trying to solve. The way to get to that truth is to poke at the person asking the question till the problem becomes clear. That can be irritating to the questioner but you will find in communication, this is a common problem.

It took me 5 years of being a software developer to learn what people asked me to code was rarely what they NEEDED me to code. They'd have a problem, think they knew what would fix it, describe me that idea, even do requirement documents and code review, I'd build it and then they'd user test it and it wouldn't solve their real problem. So I learned to ask "what is the problem you're asking me to solve". But most folks get annoyed with that if you just say that as they've written a document telling you what to build. They just want to know when it will be done. I had to learn how to extract the real problem before writing a line of code. What we did here together was that, done reflexively by me. You'll note I made mistakes but we got closer every step of the way.

Most folks on this forum know more than I do about 3.5/Pathfinder. I only played 3.0 for a year and a half in one game, and 3.5 till the game died in 2008 mostly in Living Greyhawk and a couple other home campaigns where about 1/3 of the rules weren't allowed and 1/3 of the rules were "fun things you'd earn as part of an adventure to use as build options". While I GM'd and playtested and even wrote one adventure and co-authored bits of others, I'm not the best guy who knows all the rules here. Some people here never stopped playing and exploring character and monster designs, using ALL the resources of the games, not just the ones I was allowed, for three times the amount of time I actually played. Some have run or played in "anything goes high charop RAW not RAI" games. Some have actually played a lot of pre-epic and epic play (I've run one game in pre-epic and played maybe 4-6 adventures in that range). There is a deep well of knowledge here about the game.

And the truth of this game is that the more you know, the more you stop believing any rule has only one interpretation.

So be patient. You're more likely to find somebody who can get you to the answer if you keep at it without appearing impatient in your posts or dismissive (you can curse the inappropriate response all you want behind the screen, but take a moment and write it like you would to your mom or your boss when posting). Somebody here probably will find an answer you will like in time. The odds that it will be me and nobody else is frankly low, so pissing off other posters with impatience isn't going to improve your odds. I got lucky to be the one to stumble down the path to what you needed to answer your own question.

Instead when you get answers that don't address your question think about why that might be. They're coming at it from a different context then you, communication is failing. Try to find another way to express the problem or perhaps do what you did with me and follow up a thread that is getting closer but not there yet. You aren't going to find a better resource than right here for this kind of esoteric question, but you also won't get the answer in one post usually.

Getting your answer in 56 posts isn't bad actually.

[Faily]

Ok, so if we explain why something that requires you to expend a spell slot or scroll isn't magical, I will be fully satisfied.


Bless Water spell creates holy water, which is not a magic item, does not radiate magic (except in a short amount of time with residual magic from the spellcasting as its duration is Instantenous), and is not considered to be magical (in the same way that a potion is magical). It is simply water that has been mixed with silver and been sanctified with holy.

EDIT: My bad, didn't see that you had found the answers you needed until after I posted.