Borrowed Spellbooks

[MrNexx]

Can a wizard take 10 on the Spellcraft check to prepare a spell from a borrowed (read: looted) spellbook? I don't see any reason they couldn't, in most cases, but that also makes the mechanic useless after a bit (since once you have a +14 modifier to Spellcraft, its no longer an issue, no matter the spell).

[Pegasos989]

You can. I see it as quite logical that archmage simply could use anyone's spellbook with no problems.

The DC is a bit higher if the original owner is that CArc PrC that draws symbols etc. and +5 dc to use their spellbook or something.

[Thomas]

You can use someone else's spellbook just fine, as far as I know.

Not being able to do this would rob the game of a very good story element/motivation - seeking out spellbooks. (What do you think Raistlin was doing crawling around in Xak Tsaroth with a bunch of rejects?)

[MrNexx]

Quoth the SRD:

Wizard Spells and Borrowed Spellbooks

A wizard can use a borrowed spellbook to prepare a spell she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook, but preparation success is not assured. First, the wizard must decipher the writing in the book (see Arcane Magical Writings, above). Once a spell from another spellcaster’s book is deciphered, the reader must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell’s level) to prepare the spell. If the check succeeds, the wizard can prepare the spell. She must repeat the check to prepare the spell again, no matter how many times she has prepared it before. If the check fails, she cannot try to prepare the spell from the same source again until the next day. (However, as explained above, she does not need to repeat a check to decipher the writing.)

Here's the thing... I think making someone record it in their own spellbook is really, really stupid. Spend time learning it? Sure, that makes sense. But why should they have to recopy it if they have a spellbook with the spell in it? They can obviously USE the spellbook as-is... why write everything down again?

[idksocrates]

if you take the Power Word "so-and-so" argument, its not a matter of the spell being written down, its that each individual wizard needs to write down his own notes and techniques needed to cast the spell. Its the research and magical supplies that go into his spellbook that allows them to "learn" it.

This rule, like many in DnD, leans more towards balance than logic. If you, as DM, want to get rid of this rule, go ahead. But that means that a wizard no longer has to spend money to learn a spell.

[MrNexx]

Yes and no. He no longer has to spend money to learn a spell if he's captured a spellbook with that spell. If he wants to buy a specific spell, or scribe one off a scroll, he still has to pay. It also means hauling around several books, or learning bookbinding. And he can avoid it anyway with a Blessed Book (which is either expensive or treasure).

I dislike that they completely linked the copying and learning mechanics... there's no rules for simply copying a spell you're not trying to learn, and no rules for learning a spell you're not trying to copy.

[Thomas]

Here's the thing... I think making someone record it in their own spellbook is really, really stupid. Spend time learning it? Sure, that makes sense. But why should they have to recopy it if they have a spellbook with the spell in it? They can obviously USE the spellbook as-is... why write everything down again?

Got to agree there. Surely spellbooks are passed down from wizard to wizard! (Raistlin kept Fistandantilus' books in his bookshelf in the tower.)

And here Complete Arcane comes to the rescue! Starting on page 139, there's a great section on spellbooks; on page 140 there's a bit on "Mastering a foreign spellbook." Weeks of study and a Spellcraft check at DC 26 to 34 (depending on the spells contained) will allow you to use the spellbook as your own. Great mechanic, if you ask me.

[MrNexx]

The thing is, you don't need to master it, though... once you learn all the spells in there, you can usually use the thing without mastering it, simply by taking 10 on all of your spellcraft checks. The DC is 15 + Spell level. Assuming you have a 14 Intelligence, maximum ranks in Spellcraft, and take 10:

1st level: 16 (enough for 1st level spells)
3rd level: 18 (enough for 3rd level spells)
5th level: 20 (enough for 5th level spells)
7th level: 22 (enough for 7th level spells)
9th level: 24 (enough for 9th level spells)

And that's with just a 14, with no increase over time or through abilities, maxing out the skill you want to have high anyway. You never have a reason to master a spellbook. It's a neat-looking mechanic, but a useless one.

[SpiderBrigade]

Umm...the way I'm reading that, it isn't that you have to re-record the spell. It's that you have to have it recorded in your spellbook in the first place. IE, you "know" the spell. It's one of the ones you added to your spellbook at level-up, or you added it from a scroll. Note that nowhere in the description of "how to prepare spells from another wizard's book" does it tell you to write down the spell, which usually takes 24 hours and 100 gp/spell level. So it just means you can only prepare a spell you're already familiar with.

edit: and this, indeed, makes "mastering" the book worthwhile. If it's full of spells you've never heard of...it's cheaper and easier to just master the whole book at once, rather than trying to add each spell to your own list one at a time.

[MrNexx]

But you already have a copy. In this spellbook that you looted off the wizard you just waxed. You're re-recording it because you've got a copy, and now you have to rewrite it to be able to use it.

[Yuki Akuma]

But you already have a copy. In this spellbook that you looted off the wizard you just waxed. You're re-recording it because you've got a copy, and now you have to rewrite it to be able to use it.

This is why you'll want to master the spellbook instead of copying it into your own; you already have the spellbook. Just make it your own. :P

[SpiderBrigade]

Right. Think about the "different notation methods" like programming languages or file formats or something similar. If you decipher the script, you can understand the other mage's language , but you can't necessarily "run the code" so to speak. If you already know that spell, you're familiar enough with it that you can use the unfamiliar code as a reference to prepare that spell (since it's intended to do the same thing, you can plug in certain strings or whatever). If you aren't familiar with the spell, you'll have to either translate it into your language (copying it to you spellbook), or upgrade yourself to run the unfamiliar code (mastering the spellbook.)

[MrNexx]

But it's already evident that you can learn spells out of someone else's spellbook... or off a scroll that disappears in 6 seconds.

[SpiderBrigade]

But it's already evident that you can learn spells out of someone else's spellbook... or off a scroll that disappears in 6 seconds.

Yeah, by copying them into your own spellbook. Anyway who's arguing that you can't do that?

The whole point of the "you must know the spell to prepare it" is so you can't just defeat the BBEG, take his uber spellbook, and instantly double your available spells. You have to go to some effort to have those new spells available to you, be that by transcribing (translating) them, or by mastering the new spellbook.

[MrNexx]

Why do you have to copy them, though? You can obviously learn from them when they're written elsewhere. You can obviously use them when someone else has written them "weird". Why a requirement to copy them?

[Yuki Akuma]

To use a spell from a foreign spellbook you have to "know" it, i.e. it must be in a spellbook you own. Therefore you must either copy it into your own spellbook by deciphering it and then writing it with your own notation, or master the spellbook.

[MrNexx]

To use a spell from a foreign spellbook you have to "know" it, i.e. it must be in a spellbook you own. Therefore you must either copy it into your own spellbook by deciphering it and then writing it with your own notation, or master the spellbook.

I'm not asking the rules... I'm asking the why.

[SpiderBrigade]

Why do you have to copy them, though? You can obviously learn from them when they're written elsewhere. You can obviously use them when someone else has written them "weird". Why a requirement to copy them?

But again, only if you already know them (IE, have them in your spellbook) yourself. I guess my analogy as to the "why" of it wasn't to your liking? I'll try to make a more detailed example.

You know how to cast magic missile. It's written in your spellbook. Let's say you have to do the following steps in the following order to prepare the spell for the day.

wiggle hands in gesture 247
mystic phrase 65
incant formula 27
gesture 83
phrase 71

Your spellbook has these instructions written down in a notation you understand (in this case, decimal). You find a strange spellbook, and decipher it well enough to know that it's magic missile. But he has it written down

gesture 367
phrase 101
formula 33
gesture 123
phrase 107

Now, even without your spellbook you know magic missile well enough to figure out (with a spellcraft check) that, okay, by Gesture 367, he means the same as what you mean by Gesture 247 (because he's using octal)

But the same spellbook also has some other spells in it, that you don't know. Let's say...Melf's Acid Arrow.

phrase 34
gesture 16
phrase 876
formula 22

In this case, you can't prepare the spell because you don't know enough to convert HIS phrase 34 into YOUR phrase ???. You need to use spellcraft to translate the spell so that you can write it down in your own familiar notation, because until you do, you have no idea what those phrases and gestures stand for. In other words, you have to spend the time to convert his octal into your decimal. OR, you can spend a week learning the other spellcaster's notation so well that it becomes as familiar as your own, thereby mastering his book (or, in our example, learning to read in octal as easily as in decimal, without calculations).

[MrNexx]

In this case, you can't prepare the spell because you don't know enough to convert HIS phrase 34 into YOUR phrase ???. You need to use spellcraft to translate the spell so that you can write it down in your own familiar notation, because until you do, you have no idea what those phrases and gestures stand for.

But you do know enough.

RAW, you can learn the spell out of his spellbook with a spellcraft check of 15+spell level. You spend gold, copy it into your spellbook. Your spellbook is destroyed, lost, or somehow unavailable. You still have his spellbook, however, so you can prepare it out of his spellbook with a check of 15+spell level.

Why do you have to copy it down in the first place if you're capable of learning it from his book, then preparing it from his book? Why bother to master it if you can simply learn the spell then, with a trivial Spellcraft check, use his spellbook anyway?

[Yuki Akuma]

But you do know enough.

RAW, you can learn the spell out of his spellbook with a spellcraft check of 15+spell level. You spend gold, copy it into your spellbook. Your spellbook is destroyed, lost, or somehow unavailable. You still have his spellbook, however, so you can prepare it out of his spellbook with a check of 15+spell level.

Why do you have to copy it down in the first place if you're capable of learning it from his book, then preparing it from his book? Why bother to master it if you can simply learn the spell then, with a trivial Spellcraft check, use his spellbook anyway?

Because that's not the way it works.

If you want to house rule it that way, fine, but that's not how it works by the RAW.

Deal with it, the RAW says you have to know a spell in order to prepare it from a foreign spellbook.

[MrNexx]

Because that's not the way it works.

If you want to house rule it that way, fine, but that's not how it works by the RAW.

Deal with it, the RAW says you have to know a spell in order to prepare it from a foreign spellbook.

However, I'm reading it again. It doesn't say you have to copy it to your spellbook... merely that you can.

From Spellcraft:

15 + spell level Learn a spell from a spellbook or scroll (wizard only). No retry for that spell until you gain at least 1 rank in Spellcraft (even if you find another source to try to learn the spell from). Requires 8 hours.

From Spells Copied from Another’s Spellbook or a Scroll:

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). ... 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 processes are explicitly different... learning takes 8 hours, copying takes 24.

Now, if you learned a spell from a scroll and failed to make a copy of it into your spellbook, you're not going to be able to prepare it until you find it again... but you're right. The RAW is clear.

[Yuki Akuma]

That doesn't make a difference, as the rules state that the spell must be in your spellbook for you to prepare it from another spellbook anyway.

And you're being pedantic now.

[Devils_Advocate]

I agree with what SpiderBrigade is saying. Let me try a different analogy:

You find a lengthy speech written in German. You know German well enough to translate it, but it's slow going; it's a laborious process of deciphering one sentence at a time. If you do this without writing down the translation, then by the time you're done, you've forgotten most of it. You remember bits and pieces, and looking at the German text helps to remind you of them, but you still can't read the English translation as if it were sitting in front of you.

So, you translate the text again, this time writing down the translation as you go. Now you have an English translation in front of you that you can read out loud as easily as you could anything else. And if you read through this translation a few times, you become familiar with it. Maybe not familiar enough that you can recite it from memory, but familiar enough that now looking at the original German is enough to let you recall the entire thing. Your familiarity with the English translation is enough to allow you to quickly reconstruct it, even from languages other than German!

Now, on the other hand, if you didn't want to write the English translation down, it would be much harder to learn. You'd have to go through the process of translating the speech aloud again and again and again before you'd finally be able to read it at the same pace as you could as if it were in English. Having to translate the speech each time you go through it makes learning the English translation of it take much longer, since you don't have that translation actually sitting in front of you in written form to read directly.

So, in order to be able to read the speech in English (prepare the spell) you need to either have written the translation down (transcribed the spell) or have manually translated it without writing it down so many times that you can now do so quickly (mastered the spell).

[SpiderBrigade]

The processes are explicitly different... learning takes 8 hours, copying takes 24.

Okay, fnow I think I see what you're getting at. Spellcraft gives the time to "learn" a spell. But, what good does it do to "learn" it? You can't prepare it unless it's written in your spellbook. So your argument is that since you can understand the stranger's spellbook well enough, you should just be able to prepare from that?

I'm going to say that since it doesn't do anything mechanically, I mean ANYTHING, the notes on "learning" a spell are meaningless. Other than your argument, does "knowing" a spell but not having it in your book do anything? Is it good for anything? Not at all. I'm going to go with "they wrote unclearly."

Edit: okay, there is one other place where you could argue that "knowing" a spell is useful: when replacing a lost spellbook. There, you can prepare spells from a borrowed book - but again, only those that were originally written down.

From a flavor perspective (aka the "why" of this) I'd say that actually writing the spell down crystallizes your understanding of it. "Knowing" the spell just means you know more or less how it works - you still have to copy down the intricate magical mumbo-jumbo that you personally use before you can prepare the spell. When you meet a new spell, you have to come up with your own way of formulating the magic. After that, you can crib off of someone else's sheet, since you remember the mechanics well enough to reconstruct your particular formulation, just using their writing for reminders and pointers.

[Jack Mann]

Of course, by a strict reading of the rules, a wizard who's lost his spellbook no longer knows any spells, except for read magic, any spells he has through spell mastery, and whatever he hadn't cast when he lost his spellbook.

Not that any sane DM would do that to a poor bereft wizard, of course, unless he was completely evil.

[MrNexx]

Okay, fnow I think I see what you're getting at. Spellcraft gives the time to "learn" a spell. But, what good does it do to "learn" it? You can't prepare it unless it's written in your spellbook. So your argument is that since you can understand the stranger's spellbook well enough, you should just be able to prepare from that?

No, you can't prepare it unless it's written in a spellbook. That's black-letter rules that you can use someone else's spellbook to prepare a spell that you know.

I'm going to say that since it doesn't do anything mechanically, I mean ANYTHING, the notes on "learning" a spell are meaningless. Other than your argument, does "knowing" a spell but not having it in your book do anything? Is it good for anything? Not at all. I'm going to go with "they wrote unclearly."

Preparing from a book when yours is not available for some reason. Unless you can provide errata which shows them to be saying "We messed up and were writing unclearly", the default assumption has to be that they were writing clearly.

From a flavor perspective (aka the "why" of this) I'd say that actually writing the spell down crystallizes your understanding of it. "Knowing" the spell just means you know more or less how it works - you still have to copy down the intricate magical mumbo-jumbo that you personally use before you can prepare the spell. When you meet a new spell, you have to come up with your own way of formulating the magic. After that, you can crib off of someone else's sheet, since you remember the mechanics well enough to reconstruct your particular formulation, just using their writing for reminders and pointers.

Point to it in the RAW. I've pointed to my interpretation in the RAW; I can provide SRD links, if need be, and page numbers when I get home. Point to it in the raw that your interpretation is the correct on.

[Subotei]

I've always thought of magic as, well, magical. Thats why you need Read Magic to read it. The spells written in the book protect their secrets from strangers. Perhaps the page looks different everytime you look at the spell?

Its a game rule to add a bit of flavour and to prevent Wizards from being too powerful. Oh, wait...

[MrNexx]

But you can beat the encoding with a Spellcraft check to decipher magic writing, so it's not an aspect of magical nature.

[SpiderBrigade]

Oh wait, this is a RAW discussion now? How about the quote you yourself used:

A wizard can use a borrowed spellbook to prepare a spell she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook

That's pretty clear. I was under the impresion that we were arguing about whether or not this "made sense" to you.

If you're wanting me to point to RAW supporting my flavor examples, obviously I can't. It's flavor. You've said several times that you know the rules, you just want to know the "why" of it. So, I was coming up with some (IMO) reasonable fluff to support how the rules already work, by RAW. Now, if you don't LIKE my fluff, that's fine.

Also, your statement that the benefit of "knowing" a spell is "Preparing from a book when yours is not available for some reason." Except the rules state that knowing the spell isn't enough. It also has to be recorded in your own spellbook. So, in fact, knowing a spell doesn't do anything by itself. You could remove the concept of "knowing a spell" from the game, and nothing would change. It's already covered by "having a spell in your spellbook."

[SlyJohnny]

Of course, by a strict reading of the rules, a wizard who's lost his spellbook no longer knows any spells, except for read magic, any spells he has through spell mastery, and whatever he hadn't cast when he lost his spellbook.

Not that any sane DM would do that to a poor bereft wizard, of course, unless he was completely evil.

What the hell? Of course he would. You've got this all wrong.

A wizard can KNOW spells without being able to PREPARE them.

Guys, you're all getting confused here:

*You KNOW any spell that you've read, from anothers book OR a scroll, and passed a Spellcraft roll on. Or that you gained via levelling up.

*You can WRITE DOWN IN YOUR BOOK, any spell that you first KNOW.

*You can PREPARE any spell you KNOW and also have WRITTEN DOWN IN YOUR BOOK, (which by virtue of specification, is also a spell that you KNOW), from chillaxing and reading your book.

If you try to prepare from someone elses book, you must pass a spellcraft check to either translate their annotation to a form you understand, OR, if you accept the additional rules from Complete Arcane, a more difficult Spellcraft roll, to understand their WHOLE spellbook, at once.

THEREFORE.

A Wizard that looses his Book, can no longer PREPARE spells from that book. However! Losing the book does not automatically mean he doesn't KNOW the spells in that book anymore. He KNOWS all the spells he has ever WRITTEN DOWN, and maybe even some he never did write down; but if he wrote it down at any stage, he has to have known it. It doesn't matter if his book subsequently gets eaten by a dog. He still KNOWS them, and can write them out again, if he gets another book.

The exceptions are Read Magic, and the Spell Mastery feats.

I dislike that they completely linked the copying and learning mechanics... there's no rules for simply copying a spell you're not trying to learn, and no rules for learning a spell you're not trying to copy.

Untrue. You can learn a spell and never copy it. You are correct you cannot write a spell you do not know.

Ive read about seven other quotes that are all wrong here. And I don't want to be an ******* about this, but... well, Iam right, and pretty much everyone else who's replied to this topic has no idea what they're talking about, sooo... yeah, reread what I just wrote about five times.