Quote Originally Posted by Damon_Tor View Post
And most of the time it wouldn't be relevant: you'd either have the time to read it or you wouldn't. It's there for the odd situation where timing is relevant, but I think it's safely ignored.



A few points:
  • The scroll itself lasts 10 days (if you don't use it) but the spell ends when the scroll is read, and the proficiency only lasts 24 hours. Most of these spells work this way, with the duration being the "shelf life" of the scroll while the duration of the buff/debuff is noted in the spell description.
  • The scroll can only grant proficiency in a skill, tool, or language you are already proficient in, so it's entirely a way to buff an ally, it's useless on yourself. And even then you're only allowing that ally to help cover a skill/tool you already are good at, or a language you can already translate. For the vast majority of skills/tools that puts this solidly in the "very situational" category. The outliers here are Stealth and Perception, where it's always good to have everyone on the team up to par, but even there the spell compares poorly to a spell like Enhance Ability, which is much more versatile and powerful. The main benefit of the scroll by comparison is that it can be "pre-cast" using the slots from the day before and the buff itself lasts a whole day.
  • The spell also consumes 10 gp. That's a token cost, but it's enough to make you pause and think about whether or not you really need to spend your slots making scrolls before you go to bed or not.
  • The long casting time means if you don't already have one of them on you when you need it, you probably don't have the time to cast it, and you have to pick the skill/tool/language at the time of casting. That means it's not useful for unexpected situations, further narrowing its niche.

I was completely and utterly confused by the spell and misreading it, after you explained all this I withdraw my complaint. With the duration of 10 days, I thought that mean you get the skill for 10 days and missed reading a lot of the words.