Unbreakable Spellbook

[Tibbaerrohwen]

Playing a Wizard (or any other prepared Arcance casting class) if your Spellbook get burned, cut, in some cases wet, you are now without your greatest tool for survival. Questions:

1) Can you enchant a Spellbook?

2) a) How could you create a Spellbook that could not be damage or would repair it's own damage?

b) How much would this cost?

3) Out of simply curiosity, can a Spellbook be intelligent and/or act as one's familiar?

Thanks

[Waker]

1) Can you enchant a Spellbook?

Yes, as an example look at Boccob's Blessed Book in the DMG.

2) a) How could you create a Spellbook that could not be damamge or would repair it's own dmamage?

b) How much would this cost?

Can't answer that one off the top of my head. Would require a lot of digging around.

3) Out of simply curiosity, can a Spellbook be intelligent and/or act as one's familiar?

Yes. Since there are magical books, such as the one listed above, they could be made intelligent. Note though, that this cannot be applied to all spellbooks. The rules state that items containing charges (wands, scrolls, and so on) cannot be made into intelligent items. The rules treat spellbooks as collections of scrolls, so a normal spellbook wouldn't be eligible.
Making it into a familiar is another story. I can't find any specific rules about making an intelligent item into a familiar, but you could use the rules presented in Pathfinder about making an item into a familiar.

[Kuma Kode]

1) Yes, a spellbook can be enchanted. Complete Arcane has the relevant information.

2A) Complete Arcane doesn't have any enchantments that would repair damage. You could potentially use a mending or make whole contingent spell.

2B) Dunno.

3) Spellbooks are not magic items by themselves, and so cannot be treated like one. An enchanted one might be able to, as well as a blessed book, depending on whether you consider it 'consumable' (it can run out of pages).

[Mastikator]

Can't you just put it inside a fire-proof and water-proof bag? You're gonna run out of pages on the spellbook eventually and you'll just need to also enchant the next anyway.

[Kylarra]

I'd just take the Eidetic spellcaster ACF and be done with it honestly.

[Asheram]

Now, I do know that it's a bit costly, but
"The Necklace of the Phantom Library" From Eberron - Explorers handbook (p152)
Is quite nifty. It's not a book but a necklace that works like a holographic spellbook. It's interface is intuitive and you only spend eight hours to write new spells into the memory. Since it's all holographic it doesn't even cost anything to fill the 500 pages.

Now the downsides are ofcourse that it costs 15.000gp and it can be immediatly erased.
But it's really nice to have while out traveling and having your "real" spellbooks in safe storage at home.

[Draculmaulkee]

You could just use secret page to create a bunch of duplicate spellbooks so it wouldn't matter if one was lost/burned/stolen.

[Thurbane]

You could potentially make a "self repairing" spellbook from Aurorum metal, but it would be very expensive. Also, would depend if the DM allowed the pages to be thin sheets of Aurorum.

Maybe just store your book in an Adamantine, lead-lined box when you're not using it.

[Psyren]

I'd just take the Eidetic spellcaster ACF and be done with it honestly.

This, although it does cost you neat tricks like Abrupt Jaunt.

[JeminiZero]

2) a) How could you create a Spellbook that could not be damamge or would repair it's own dmamage?

As mentioned above, Complete Arcane has rules for making tougher spellbooks. It even has rules for tattooing spells on yourself. Its not truly unbreakable, but in the event your body is destroyed, the loss of your spellbook is the least of your concerns.

Unfortunately, there isn't must space on the body to hold tattoos. I usually try to have at least 1 spell of each level tattooed, so that in the event my wizard loses his book, he can cast *something*.

Besides that, you can try forging an air-tight box of Riverine to store your spellbook in. Riverine is from stormwrack and is virtually indestructable- even more so than adamantium. Its essentially walls of force but shapeable into mundane object, but its hideously expensive at 2,000 gp per lb. Such a box probably weighs 2 lb at least (since a semi-waterproof spellbook sheath weighs 1 lb) and will set thus you back 4,000 gp.

[Tibbaerrohwen]

I'd just take the Eidetic spellcaster ACF and be done with it honestly.

I have never heard of this before. What is it, or, rather, where is it from?

2A) Complete Arcane doesn't have any enchantments that would repair damage. You could potentially use a mending or make whole contingent spell.
.

Could you enchant a Spellbook to cast Make Whole or Mending at will?

You could potentially make a "self repairing" spellbook from Aurorum metal, but it would be very expensive. Also, would depend if the DM allowed the pages to be thin sheets of Aurorum.

Complete Arcane does have rules about making pages in a Spellbook out of metal, though I don't think they had this in mind; brilliant though.

The reason I ask is because I'm playing a character who writes and binds books on the side. As a gift to the party Wizard, a self-repairing Spellbook would be pretty cool.

[FMArthur]

How about a special place to hide copies of your spellbook? Is there a way to have, for instance, the same persistent Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion show up when you cast the spell? Even a persistent summoned critter can hold onto some stuff for you if there is such a thing.

If nothing else you can bury a small chamber containing your spellbook if you don't plan on adventuring more than 900 to 20000 or more miles away and just teleport to it when you need to. Using Spell Mastery isn't too horrible when it's a prerequisite for Uncanny Forethought, after all. I'm just loathe to give up my rapid summoning or abrupt jaunt for a memorized spellbook.

[gorfnab]

I have never heard of this before. What is it, or, rather, where is it from?

Eidetic Spellcaster ACF - Dragon Magazine #357 - give up your Familiar and Scribe Scroll for the ability to know and cast spells without ever needing a spellbook. Researching new spells still costs the same amount but instead you buy special incense instead of special inks.

Combines very nicely with Elf Wizard Racial Sub (RotW), the feats Collegiate Wizard (CA) and Aerenal Arcanist (PGtE), and the Domain Wizard ACF (UA).

[ThirdEmperor]

Well, I can't think of anything unbreakable off the top of my head, but here's an idea: Get Leadership. Then use your followers as a giant collection of walking spellbooks via tattoos.

Or, extra-dimensional storage, secret page, and/or some kind of illusion, although I'm not sure how that last one would work.

[Coidzor]

I believe you could haunt shift (libris mortis) an undead minion into the book and make it into an animated object. I believe that'll up the HP compared to just making it out of more expensive things.

Then again, you might be able to make the cover out of Riverine.

...Or shrink item it and store it inside of something riverine inside of a tough minion/animated object/golem/something.

[Zeful]

2A) Complete Arcane doesn't have any enchantments that would repair damage. You could potentially use a mending or make whole contingent spell.

However both those spells have limits (can't repair fire damage being one of them).

[Arbitrarity]

Higher levels I try for storing multiple redundant copies of spellbooks (secret page'd, of course) in Leomund's hidden chest (with a shrink item'd focus hidden in a secret compartment in my boot), portable holes/bags of holding, a hollowed out underground lair that was cleared with disintegrate and then filled to have no entrances with Wall of Stone, (I also consider dropping a Clone there) and hidden ethereally around the globe with Teleport Object (popular locations include mountains, miles up in the sky, deserts, and the ocean. Shrink iteming the material component for Instant Summons and hiding that on your person can also be useful. Oh, and rotating Sequesters on everything.
Sadly, it takes a bit of time out of your schedule to keep up. I think I managed to get the allocation down to around 4 slots per day or so.

That game I also carefully designed my Magnificent Mansion to try and detect intruders early and warn us, used Greater Prying Eyes liberally, and typically slept in the Magnificent Mansion 2-3 miles up in the sky (good luck finding an invisible door), via Phantom Steeds. I took spell mastery simply to always be capable of recovering a spellbook.

The game lasted two sessions.

[FelixG]

I would say your best bet would be to tattoo Mending
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mending.htm
onto yourself that way if your spellbook gets soaked or cut (but not burned) you can just prepare a bunch of your Mending spells in your slots and fix up the book right quick.

Sadly you need to be a cleric to get Make Whole

[SPoilaaja]

Get a spellbook with soft covers. Get Hoard Gullet spell. Roll spellbook into a roll. Swallow it.

Edit - Needs some levels to keep the gullet 24/7.

[Psyren]

Get a spellbook with soft covers. Get Hoard Gullet spell. Roll spellbook into a roll. Swallow it.

Edit - Needs some levels to keep the gullet 24/7.

That's more for one-time transport than routine storage. Since you, er...

"As a full-round action, you can expel its entire contents into your square.
...
At the end of the spell's duration, anything still in your second stomach is immediately and instantly brought up, falling to the ground next to you."

Let's just say you wouldn't be the most popular party-member if you were doing this every night. Your book doesn't sound like it would be particularly pleasant either..

[WinWin]

The spell Hardening would increase it's hardness. Nothing prevents repreated castings of the spell, though it can be dispelled.

An option for higher level wizards would simply be to PaO their spellbook into a dangerous creature. Even if the creature is slain, it simply reverts to a spellbook.

Traps are fairly cheap compared to other items. With the Craft Wonderous Items feat you can create any number of spell 'traps' set to trigger vs certain stimuli.

An intelligent Blessed Book that polymorphs into a Greater Shadow whenever it is in danger and fires off a Sending to the wizard as it does so would be pretty nifty.

[Yuki Akuma]

Anything can be enchanted.

Anything.

Also I'd say a book that repairs 1 hp of damage to itself per minute or so would be fine with a mending spell prerequisite.

[Tibbaerrohwen]

Eidetic Spellcaster ACF - Dragon Magazine #357 - give up your Familiar and Scribe Scroll for the ability to know and cast spells without ever needing a spellbook. Researching new spells still costs the same amount but instead you buy special incense instead of special inks.

Combines very nicely with Elf Wizard Racial Sub (RotW), the feats Collegiate Wizard (CA) and Aerenal Arcanist (PGtE), and the Domain Wizard ACF (UA).

That a pretty awesome idea. I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm playing a Wizard.

What book is PGtE? I don't think I recognize it.

I believe you could haunt shift (libris mortis) an undead minion into the book and make it into an animated object. I believe that'll up the HP compared to just making it out of more expensive things.

Then again, you might be able to make the cover out of Riverine.

...Or shrink item it and store it inside of something riverine inside of a tough minion/animated object/golem/something.

I look into both of these ideas. Thanks.

Anything can be enchanted.

Anything.

Also I'd say a book that repairs 1 hp of damage to itself per minute or so would be fine with a mending spell prerequisite.

Okay, this is something to consider. Thanks.

However both those spells have limits (can't repair fire damage being one of them).

I did not know this. I'll have to do a bit of digging and see if I can come up with replacement spells. Thanks for the insight.

There were a lot of good ideas above but you need to member I'm not using the Spellbook; it is a gift for another party member that my character is making. Feats, templates, build changes are all thing I cannot do.

[Coidzor]

PGtE is Player's Guide to Eberron. It's got some gems hidden in there. And I mean hidden, since the index and table of contents makes it so there's like 3 places where what you want to look up could be half the time. :/

There's a spell that repairs constructs that's used for healing warforged... But I can't remember how it interacts with objects though. Like Repair Light, Repair Moderate, Critical, etc...

[RndmNumGen]

It's already been mentioned, but I think your best bet would be to use the rules that Complete Arcane has for making a spellbook with metal plates for the covers and thin metal sheets for the pages. You could craft it out of Aurorum from The Book of Exalted Deeds, which is a type of steel that allows you to fully repair any sundered object as a full-round action by bringing the pieces together, though since it's essentially made of steel it will be rather difficult to destroy in the first place. Such a book would cost 4,700gp. If you want something even sturdier, make it out of Obdurium from the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, which is 50% harder and stronger than Adamantine, though it's ludicrously expensive and brings the cost to 38,200gp. Obdurium also lacks the repair ability of Aurorum.

[Darrin]

Make your spellbook out of aurorum (+4000 GP, BoED p. 48). If it gets sundered, you can put it back together as a full-round action.

Even better, make it out of Riverine (+2000 GP/pound, Stormwrack p. 128). This makes it immune to all damage and almost all spells. It can only be destroyed by four things: disintegrate, disjunction, rod of cancellation, or a sphere of annihilation. Standard spellbook weights 3 lbs, so only 6015 GP for a riverine spellbook.

Hmm. Can that Necklace of the Phantom Library be made out of riverine? Probably not, the description says it's made out of gold and dragonshards.

There's a few things in Forgotten Realms that can be used as a spellbook... mostly gems. Kiira, for example (Magic of Faerun p. 162). Mount it on the inside of a riverine spiked helmet, make the helmet a Spellblade (to cover disintegrate), and it would be nearly indestructible.

[Set]

Transmuter;
Use shrink item, reduce spellbook to about the size of a matchbox, turn it to cloth and shove it somewhere uncomfortable. Nothing will destroy it without first doing something to you that makes you wish it had just killed you instead.
Alternately, enchant your spellbook with a variation of flesh to stone, called 'spellbook to band of adamantine that I wear on my finger,' and make it able to change back and forth with a command word.

Illusionist;
Create a quasi-real permanant image out of shadow magic, of your spellbook. The real spellbook is at home, and the only thing that can destroy your illusory spellbook, which is invulnerable to physical harm, is high level dispel magic effects and sunray. Puckishly curse it so that any non-illusionist who prepares a spell from it finds that the spell is only quasi-real 'shadow magic.' (Ha ha, no loot for you!)

Diviner;
New 1st level spell, called 'scry on spellbook.' The spellbook sits at home, under all sorts of security, and you have the key to the lock on it's binding, so that you can sit down and mime 'opening the book' and see it's pages in your mind, studying it from miles and miles away. You used to have to prepare the spell (and carried scrolls of it, just in case), but since you placed the spell as an enchantment on the book and key, you don't have to anymore, although you still keep a scroll or two handy, in case something happens to your key...

Conjuror;
There's this imp-like entity, and you can summon it once per day, so long as you pay it in blood, drawn with the jagged black iron dagger that was given to you as part of the bargain you made with the Infernal. It has your spellbook, which is as secure as anything under the guardianship of your patron, Mammom, the archdevil of Greed, can be. [Change type of outsider as necessary. There might not even be a physical book, depending on the patron, and a genie might appear and directly instruct you in the spells that you have scribed into the book that you gave them for safekeeping.]

Or, using teleportation / conjuration magic, you can teleport your book to you, but the teleportation effect is temporary, and only lasts an hour, or less, if you choose to end it sooner, with the book snapping back to it's safe storage area when the effect ends.

Necromancer;
[Nice] You have made contact with the spirits of your arcane ancestors, and you scribe each spell you learn normally, and then, in a special ceremony, invite this spectral 'mages council' of your forefathers, and burn the page, giving them all knowledge of this new spell you've learned. In the morning, you call up this council, and they refresh your memory of any spell that you've sacrificed to them in this manner. All you have to do is keep safe the necklace made from the fingerbones of these seven ancestors, as that is the talisman you need to call them forth, to share with you the spell knowledge that you have given to them for safekeeping.

[Naughty] You take on apprentices, from time to time, but always in different towns, under different names. Once the apprentices have learned the spells that you wish 'scribed,' you murder them in a ritual fashion, and bind their spirits to hover invisibly on the border of life-in-death, awaiting your morning call, to share with you instruction in how to refresh your preparation of the spells they have studied. As you gain in levels, you find it particularly onerous, as you have to slay higher and higher level wizards to use as this 'spectral spellbook'...

[Weird] You tattooed your spells on the skin of living creatures (animals, really), and then skinned them and transformed their *skins* into mindless incorporeal undead. They flutter invisibly behind you, rags of skin, covered with runes, like tattered scraps of flags from nations long dust, and you can make them become visible to your eyes, so that you can study your spells. Try to keep them from getting Turned. That would be awkward.

Abjurer;
You have a book. It has warding spells on it that non-Abjurers don't even suspect exist. It has so many stacked defensive spells on it, that it's actually hard to look at, because the normally invisible magical auras are so thick as to be visible to the mundane eye. You saved some cash by making the book require magical energy to keep itself charged. At the end of every day, you cast a number of spell levels of spells that you did not use during that day into the book, to keep it 'fed.' For days when you absolutely had to blow every spell at your disposal, you keep a wand handy. Wouldn't wand the book to miss a meal.

Evoker;
My 'spellbook' is made out of invisible planes of force, with letters of magical light and darkness. It has Hardness 'Yes / all' and fears nothing but disjunction. It is sometimes also on fire, with much burning.

Enchanter;
A complicated mnemonic device encodes the spells that have been 'scribed,' within the spellcasters own mind during a special hypnogogic state of trance. He deciphers them during his dreams, and in the morning, in a vision that only he experiences, the words sing themselves to him in a sing-song rhyme, dancing in the air before him in complicated mathematical patterns. *He* is the spellbook, and each spell is translated, encoded and contained, zipped away in a compact form somewhere deep within his subconscious, to be unfolded later, after a night's dreaming preparation, for conscious access. There is nothing physical that remains, the 'spellbook' itself destroyed as part of the process required to create the subconcious 'akashic record' within the distant reaches of his hidden self. There is, of course, the risk that any permanant Intelligence damage or memory altering effect (such as a Modify Memory spell) might corrupt some of the compressed data, causing it to unfold in a mangled or unusable (or dangerously unpredictable!) state.

No system is perfect, after all...

[SPoilaaja]

Let's just say you wouldn't be the most popular party-member if you were doing this every night. Your book doesn't sound like it would be particularly pleasant either..

It's what Dragons use to store their hoard. It's like bag of holding, which just needs to be emptied all at once. So the gullet shouldn't be wet or nasty. If you're worried about the book getting wet when barfed out, just use some kind of waterproof wrapper around it. It's a really useful spell for lvl 1 spell. Just store all loot inside of you!

[bot]

Illusionist;
Create a quasi-real permanant image out of shadow magic, of your spellbook. The real spellbook is at home, and the only thing that can destroy your illusory spellbook, which is invulnerable to physical harm, is high level dispel magic effects and sunray. Puckishly curse it so that any non-illusionist who prepares a spell from it finds that the spell is only quasi-real 'shadow magic.' (Ha ha, no loot for you!)

While I loved this idea, especially since im currently playing a shadowcraft mage, then I was sad to realize why this wouldn't work - Permanant Image has a fixed non-mobile area, so you can't bring it along with you. And I really doubt anyone would allow you to make an illusion of your spellbook om the fly, since you'll need to be able to visualize what you create, and if your mental image of your spellbook is that clear, I wouldn't think you'd need it to begin with.

[Coidzor]

While I loved this idea, especially since im currently playing a shadowcraft mage, then I was sad to realize why this wouldn't work - Permanant Image has a fixed non-mobile area, so you can't bring it along with you. And I really doubt anyone would allow you to make an illusion of your spellbook om the fly, since you'll need to be able to visualize what you create, and if your mental image of your spellbook is that clear, I wouldn't think you'd need it to begin with.

Autohypnosis allows one to perfectly memorize and recall a page of text each time it's used and one can do this for an uncapped number of pages. You can't memorize spells that way, so I'd say that being able to recall it perfectly isn't the issue there.