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2022-06-29, 06:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
And an inherent bonus is worth the same whether you got it from casting wish yourself, bound an Efreet, or bought a stat tome. It is demonstrably the case that there exist different ways of getting to the same place which have different impacts on subsequent net wealth.
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2022-06-29, 06:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
I assume any wizard has all "readily availabe" spells into his spellbook.
The reason is that if a wizard player wants a spell, but does not have it, the player will try to find the spell. hence you will devise a sidequest, or perhaps you will tell the wizard to spend a few days doing stuff. either way, the end result is the same: the wizard gets his spell. if he did a sidequest, he also gets other loot and xp. the table loses time that could be spent on more interesting endeavours than "find a scroll for mr wizard".
I also assume that any decently leveled adventurer has plenty of connections to other powerful people. A 15th level wizard surely must know other powerful wizards. call your collegues, ask the spell, trade for a favor.
My campaign world has universities and library directly. And sure, you must be a member of a powerful organization to access, but really, unless you are trying very hard to avoid ties, you will be. even if you're not, you can surely pay a fee or negotiate a favor. but even in a lower magic world, as i said, personal connections will generally do the trick.
so, is there any special reason the wizard could not get a certain spell by pulling all the various strings he can pull? there generally is not, because a high level character can pull a lot of strings. and so, just give him the damn spell and don't waste time. Say something like "ok, you spend 2d4 days of downtime and find the spell".
If there *is* a special reason, that may become a plot hook or worldbuilding point.
P.S. I also generally assume that whatever powerful organization the party find themselves part of - generally the military of a powerful nation, but there are others available - they will as part of payment provide spells, training opportunities, connections, and everything else that the party could reasonably get on their own, but would require time and effort and annoying bookkeeping.In memory of Evisceratus: he dreamed of a better world, but he lacked the class levels to make the dream come true.
Ridiculous monsters you won't take seriously even as they disembowel you
my take on the highly skilled professional: the specialized expert
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2022-06-29, 09:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Do you have something about a PC spellbook specifically? An NPC spellbook is worth considerably less since it has spells you want and spells you don't want. A solution might be to make a PC's extra spells semi-random and then charge spellbook cost.
Likewise if you go by treasure there will be some spells adventurers will find in scroll form and never in spellbook form during the campaign.Last edited by ericgrau; 2022-06-29 at 09:10 PM.
So you never have to interrupt a game to look up a rule again:
My 3.5e Rules Cheat Sheets: Normal, With Consolidated Skill System
TOGC's 3.5e Spell/etc Cards: rpgnow / drivethru rpg
Utilities: Magic Item Shop Generator (Req. MS Excel), Balanced Low Magic Item System
Printable Cardstock Dungeon Tiles and other terrain stuff (100 MB)
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2022-06-29, 11:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2019
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
PC or NPC doesn't matter. The value of a spellbook is simply its cost to purchase and the cost of the number of inscribed pages. That means they are calculated the same. What a player/character holds to be valuable does not mean it's worth more or less gp because of it. Services and consumables are simply not counted toward your expected wealth gain. That doesn't mean players can't overspend on those things and dip into their acquired wealth.
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2022-06-30, 04:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2013
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Having all of them doesn't actually happen, but it's still a goal.
As to counting them against WBL.
Look at Faily's post. 171 spell levels (plus unmentioned cantrips) if I counted right. 17,100gp. And 30gp for the books themselves.
If he buys Boccob's Book for 12,500gp, he can copy his books at no cost, and then sell his originals for 8565gp, costing him a mere 4,000gp overall.
If I kill the Wizard Faily and add his book(s) to my library, I have to add 17,100gp to my WBL?
What if half the spells are new to me, and the rest are duplicates of stuff I already know? Do I still count the whole value of the books?
If I want to make a copy of my books, do I have to count it against my WBL again?
An elf collegiate generalist can literally swap his fully free book for a Boccobs at L13 with some left over for lunch. And still put all his new spells in a regular book for the rest of his career, copy them to Boccobs, and immediately sell the original.
Since his original book wasn't part of his WBL, does the gold he got for it suddenly count when he sells it?
How about those 40 +1 longswords your fighter has stashed because he's going to take Leadership in a couple levels? Do those count for WBL? Does a giant pile of gold fall from the sky to replace that WBL when he hands them out to his new followers?
Wizards pay for scrolls (or copy privileges) for spells they want to add to their book, and the price per page, but that's it at my table. Once it's in the book, it's done, just like if you'd bought the scroll and cast the spell off it. It's not wealth any more.
If they loot a book and learn it (complete arcane), it costs them nothing other than the time they have to invest.
The wizard can only memorize so many spells a day anyway. If he has 4 4th level slots, it doesn't matter that there are 250 4th level spells in his books, some of which he may NEVER cast. It would be silly to count that 100,000gp against the rest of his gear.
Counting each and every spell known in each of your books towards wealth leads to players breaking ladders in half to sell 2 10' poles and a bundle of kindling for a profit, and all the other D&D getrichquick schemes.
It might be RAW, but tables that actually play that way are few and far between.Last edited by Elkad; 2022-06-30 at 04:30 AM.
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2022-06-30, 05:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
By RAW you count the whole value. A spellbook is worth X gp even if you have 5 identical ones.
If I want to make a copy of my books, do I have to count it against my WBL again?
An elf collegiate generalist can literally swap his fully free book for a Boccobs at L13 with some left over for lunch. And still put all his new spells in a regular book for the rest of his career, copy them to Boccobs, and immediately sell the original.
Since his original book wasn't part of his WBL, does the gold he got for it suddenly count when he sells it?
If you got them for free they're still worth 100gp/page if they're written in a normal spellbook.
It also doesn't matter that a Blessed Book effectively gets you 100k worth of spells for 12.5k gp.
WBL only cares what the things you own are worth.
It doesn't matter if you spent 90k on your weapon (increasing your combat ability) or an Apparatus of the Crab (a very expensive paperweight), they're worth the same chunk of your WBL.
How about those 40 +1 longswords your fighter has stashed because he's going to take Leadership in a couple levels? Do those count for WBL? Does a giant pile of gold fall from the sky to replace that WBL when he hands them out to his new followers?
Treasure doesn't fall from the sky to replace it immediately but the DM is supposed to increase treasure values to help bring you up to WBL again.
Note that all of those answers are the "by RAW" ones. I don't play it that way either because as you've noted it makes no sense.
Wizards pay for scrolls (or copy privileges) for spells they want to add to their book, and the price per page, but that's it at my table. Once it's in the book, it's done, just like if you'd bought the scroll and cast the spell off it. It's not wealth any more.
If they loot a book and learn it (complete arcane), it costs them nothing other than the time they have to invest.
The wizard can only memorize so many spells a day anyway. If he has 4 4th level slots, it doesn't matter that there are 250 4th level spells in his books, some of which he may NEVER cast. It would be silly to count that 100,000gp against the rest of his gear.
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2022-06-30, 08:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
If you know of my post history at all, you'd know that I am definitely NOT a Wizard fanboy in the least. I don't believe that they need any more power in the least, even just a straight classed core only Wizard can wreck the game if you have a player willing to try. I don't play with people that would abuse that possibility. The other, and real answer to why I allow easier scribing... Because accounting, bookkeeping WBL, nitpicking ink/supplies, etc... That crap just isn't fun! If a Wizard wants to pay to copy in a city, I can allow or restrict the selection if need be. Scrolls found in treasure are random so it's never been an issue for my games. Heck, my brother has a 20 something Wizard and he runs out of lower level spells first. Why? Because Fireball is fun. Because buffing a Wizard and smacking stuff like a Fighter can be fun. Because charming people can be fun. We're old school like that.
To answer your question though, as an actual fan of the mundanes rising to power in a magical world, yes I do make sure the casters are a little more limited in magic items and the mundanes get a little extra. Sometimes it's as simple as throwing in an item shoring up a weakness resulting from poor character build, or just making a weapon intelligent and giving it a special power or two to add options in and out of combat.
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2022-06-30, 11:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
For me, Wealth by level is generally only followed if a character is entering play past level 1. Yes, I am quite aware that some characters cannot face up against certain monsters without wealth by level. I care about wizards spell books being in line with wealth by level because each additional spell is another option and maybe somewhere in there is a broken combo that I have not yet noticed yet that can KO encounters real hard. Once you get into play, your treasure from there on out winds up being up to chance, which will often exceed wealth by level. Unless some character needs help to be viable, then maybe I will throw in a bone in the treasure hoard.
the first half of the meaning of life is that there isn't one.
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2022-07-01, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2007
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Several posts bring up a good point - when we're talking about WBL for starting characters (ie. a 10th level character coming in with 62k gp*), there are two ways to view that "wealth":
A) It's the market value of the stuff you have, regardless of how that stuff was acquired - bought, crafted, stolen, won gambling, etc, it doesn't matter - a Headband of Int +4 will always consume 16k of your starting WBL. In this model, the value of spells in a book is 100 gp / page, regardless of how those spells were acquired - by scrolls, copying, trading, stealing, etc.
B) It's a pile of money to spend before play starts. Which means that things like item crafting feats affect it, allowing you to start with more gear. In this case, the acquisition method of the spells does matter and would count against that cost.
IME, Method A is more commonly used, because it's usually more balanced and always easier to adjudicate - in Method B, if a character has extreme, superhuman negotiation skills, should they be able to get unlimited starting gear because they're able to (in play) convince many people to give them things for free?
* In PF1, since that's easier to look up.Last edited by icefractal; 2022-07-01 at 03:58 PM.
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2022-07-01, 04:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2019
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Or method C) market value of the stuff you have and can't be custom made until after the start of play. As in a Wizard starts play with only their class given spells known in however many spellbooks they desire. This is meant as encouragement to not simply leave party members behind if you can help it. We play as though characters are likely to die at any moment and the DM isn't going to fudge for your lives. Characters in a sense are expendable so there needs to be a little extra incentive to do what they can to keep the original party going or it makes things more punishing.
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2022-07-01, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Does that discourage party members from letting each other die? Just remember to always take the spellbook off your dead Wizard friends, and you get a nice payday every time one of them dies. If one of the players is willing to be Kenny, from South Park, that's a steady stream of income for the party.
Or, if the Wizard player can convince the other party members to hold onto all the spellbooks, each new Wizard he makes will inherit a boatload of spells from all his previous Wizards. Just pick different spells on every character, and you're only a few deaths away from having all the spells you could ever want.My Perpetually-Unfinished Homebrew: Tier-3 Class Suite, Homestuck Races for Pathfinder, Homestuck Races for 5e, Psionic Class Redux
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2022-07-01, 07:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2006
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2022-07-01, 09:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2007
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
See I wouldn't call buying additional spells any more "custom made" than having the particular items you want to begin with. Like, in most settings it's probably a lot easier to find a 3rd level Wizard you can copy Scorching Ray from (and/or a dead 3rd level Wizard's spellbook) than to find someone selling a Ring of Three Wishes.
Also, I kind of feel like people overestimate how potent "more spells known" is for a Wizard. Y'all are aware that Clerics and Druids get their entire list as known spells they can prepare from, for free? And that in practice, without extensive divinations I've not seen used in practice, that theoretical versatility has diminishing returns?
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2022-07-01, 11:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2019
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
It takes 24 hours to copy each spell, requires a spellcraft check, and anything they recover counts as treasure and so works toward WBL. There is a lot of incentive for them not to just leave their Wizard behind, especially when spell scribing is part of your expendable treasure like consumables and spell components (that stuff that allows you to rez).
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2022-07-02, 12:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
The Cleric list is vastly less abusable than the Wizard list. The only Cleric spells that caused any DM headaches were in AD&D in a campaign specific (Forgotten Realms because of course it was) called Prayers from the Faithful. It included some deity specific spells that were above the normal Cleric power curve. The deity specific rule was optional though and my old groups were all official game books and Dragon Magazine. Any official source was free game.
The 2 spells in particular:
Dimensional Folding - A funky worded gate-like Cleric Mass Teleport. It had a 15gp component which we did use. But having that would be expected for a 7th level spell right? Nah this one was only 4th level! Hoo boy did we use the crap outta that!
Might of Mystra - Another 4th level spell. It would replicate the effect of a spell cast either last round or earlier initiative this round. Not even a Spellcraft check or Intelligence check was required! The Wizard would just tell me what he was casting if he thought I might find it beneficial to duplicate! Didn't duplicate the actual spell, just the effect. Wording is key for this because Haste doesn't stack on another Haste, but this was just a similar effect, not a second Haste spell. 2E Haste was very powerful and this combo could just wreck encounters. I chose to save that trick for the campaign finale ;)
I'm just not seeing that level of cheese in 3.5e ;)Last edited by KoDT69; 2022-07-02 at 12:25 AM.
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2022-07-02, 12:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2019
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
It's just what we do. It isn't something personal to wizards, just a blanket way to play. It's also not like they can't find more spells to scribe as they play. As I mentioned before, they can spend WBL at the price of a scroll to learn any extra spells they want. It'll be made back up eventually because it's no longer wealth. Scribing spells ends up being free eventually anyways.
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2022-07-02, 12:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
When you find a spellbook, you don't spend time and money copying the spells. That would be silly.
You use one casting of Read Magic to decipher all the spells, and then you make a DC 15 + spell level Spellcraft check to prepare spells from it. You can take 10, as always, and you've got good Int and max ranks. So you always succeed.
Since your chances of failure are 0%, and you don't actually roll any dice because you're taking 10, there's really no reason to ever bother translating them into your own notation.My Perpetually-Unfinished Homebrew: Tier-3 Class Suite, Homestuck Races for Pathfinder, Homestuck Races for 5e, Psionic Class Redux
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2022-07-02, 02:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2012
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
That doesn't actually work. A wizard can only prepare a spell from a borrowed spellbook that he knows and already has written in his own spellbook.
Originally Posted by Wizard Spells and Borrowed Spellbooks
If you only want one or two spells from a looted spellbook it's faster and easier to just copy them over instead of mastering the entire book, especially if you have a Blessed Book or similar spellbook that doesn't have scribing costs.Last edited by sleepyphoenixx; 2022-07-02 at 02:23 AM.
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2022-07-02, 02:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Oh, well then nevermind.
My Perpetually-Unfinished Homebrew: Tier-3 Class Suite, Homestuck Races for Pathfinder, Homestuck Races for 5e, Psionic Class Redux
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2022-07-02, 06:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2013
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
That's true for any party member though. Kenny could be equipping everyone with Wings of Flying and Animated shields too.
Completely separate problem.
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If there are two wizards in my party, do they conspire on level-up choices and then swap spells with one another? Sure. They pay the scribing cost and it's done.
I control the treasure amount. That is it. Do I sometimes give out gear that is specifically targeted to a party member? Sure. That might be magic horseshoes for the paladin's mount, or spells to fill in some things I know the wizard wants. I don't tell the party how to divide it, never have, and they've unexpectedly sold things I thought they would really want to keep, and latched onto things I thought were junk (Apparatus of Kwalish is actually one of them).
This game, I'm using Yahzi's idea of XP as a physical commodity (see his World of Prime thread, and his books), and I don't even assign THAT to the party equally. It's on them to divvy it up.
I haven't looked at WBL once. The first session they had about 5gp of gear each. I gave them everything since then. If you added up the total value of everything the party has, it's probably 30% over what WBL says they should have, but I'm positive at least one of them is under by 50%, and some are over.
One of my house rules announced at game start was "any replacement character will be first level". They grumbled a bit. They discovered through gameplay that they could save XP. Couple sessions later I was expecting them to have leveled up (and had based encounters on that), and they were all a bit short. I asked for an accounting. I hadn't forgotten a reward, they had decided to reserve one equal share to instantly powerlevel any replacement character. (and then immediately spent it on something else, and then replaced it with an even bigger fund...). So they are walking around with more than a spare character in XP in their pockets. At 5gp/xp. By RAW that should be counted as WBL too.Last edited by Elkad; 2022-07-02 at 06:14 PM.
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2022-07-05, 11:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2011
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
So, I’m petty sure that a lot of you are using the phrase “wealth by level” when you actually just mean “wealth”, especially when it’s preceded by the phrase “counts against”. Unless you only make characters and never play them, or play in worlds where characters explode when equipped with too much wealth or something.
I think “30 per level, plus a couple of custom spells” is a petty fair guess at an average. Off hand, I’d say that most of my wizards have fewer, with Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named) being the outlier of “all the spells*, plus more custom spells than there are published spells” that makes up the difference.
As others have pointed out, “spells memorized” is a much more important limiting factor than “spells known” for the effectiveness of a Wizard in actual play most of the time. In fact, I’d argue that there may actually be a *negative* correlation between “number of spells known” and “odds of being useful right now”. Ymmv.
* all the 2e spells
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I’ma little confused how the concept of not counting consumables against characters in actual play works. Like, say y’all’re 10th level, and I come in with a new 10th level PC. Then, by the time we reach 11th level, I’ve blown all my gold onbeer and hookersconsumables like scrolls and potions 🧪, what happens?
Do the other PCs give up treasure (perhaps from a “party fund”) until we’re all even? Does money fall out of the sky (usually from the GM’s flying fiat) to cover my deficiency?
I genuinely don’t understand how this works, because I’m used to “you get X loot; how you spend it is up to you”, where the price at which you acquire new spells matters, and consumables (outside “party funds” healing / condition removal) are a personal choice (and generally a trap).
Ok, first off, kudos on possibly being the first person ever to use the phrase, “I'm just not seeing that level of cheese in 3.5e”
Second, my senility may be acting up, but isn’t Dimension Folding the one that randomly ages you?
Lastly, iirc my most busted “build” in 2e was getting off hundreds of attacks per round. It’s nice to see someone else looking at the power of stacking (although 2e Haste *also* had the “aging” problem…).Last edited by Quertus; 2022-07-05 at 11:40 AM.
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2022-07-05, 06:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2012
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
I don't have any hard numbers, but my gut feeling for tables I play at is:
Level 15 wizard in a game with downtime access to scrolls, spell books to copy and so on will have about 100 spells known.
In a game without ready scribing opportunities, about half that number or 50 spells known.I am rel.
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2022-07-05, 08:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
@Quertus
It did age the caster I think but it was a small enough amount for my non-human character to care about. We had potions of Longevity back then. I know I used 2 over the course of a campaign and had at least 1 or 2 more on hand, but the advanced age increased the mental stats as well so it wasn't all bad.
And yes, the 2E vs 3E multiplication made a huge difference.
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2022-07-07, 12:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2013
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
Level 1 npcs comes with 900gp worth of value. The figther should not be hording longswords for followers who have their equipment. Or if they dont they give their master 900gp each to buy equipment…
Lie of a bed of restoration, and cast steal life on yourself!Last edited by Max Caysey; 2022-07-07 at 12:19 AM.
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2022-07-07, 08:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2011
Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?
No humans in the party? Solo adventurer? How did this not matter? (AFB, iirc, it could potentially age those traveling through by decades at a time)
For that to work, first, you would need to bring about the spell plague or something. And, even then, you’d have to negotiate with the GM about how (or whenever!) the Dimension Folding spell would work in the new edition.
(Ie, I think you just gave a 3e solution to a 2e problem)
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2022-07-07, 09:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many spells should a high-level wizard know?