Please turn to page 3 for the table of contents, timestamps are included 0:08 Subscribe, Seriously. Costs you literally nothing. 0:49 Overview of Spellbooks in general. 1:40 The Travelling Spellbook and an Apprentice's Spellbook 3:56 General Costs 4:55 Sizes, Materials, Capacity of the Book, and a bit more on cost 8:03 Orizon Spellbook, and Arcanabulla (Illusionists) Spellbook 8:48 Suth trees of the Forgotten Realms 11:43 The Inks 13:01 Personal Sigils. Very interesting to see kind of the behind the scenes making of items like these, especially the Inks and the use of Suth wood. Speaking about Wizards, maybe you would like to see something on the people who use these in the game. And while you are at it, Subscribe and become a Member! The History of Netheril (Part 1): ua-cam.com/video/aPf6f6y3eCw/v-deo.html Thay: ua-cam.com/video/SWHjWGfBp8M/v-deo.html Famous Wizards: ua-cam.com/video/-_8ilJq4r4c/v-deo.html
“Always keep extra copies of spellbooks well hidden in a safe place...especially if those spellbooks actually belong to other wizards!” ~ Morzed the Morally Gray
You just inspired me to create a mimic that has taken the form of a spell book that has changed the spells, so if you are trying to cast fireball you may cast a sleep spell instead.
There's a lot of cool potential homebrew inspiration material in the 3.0 Player's Guide to Wizards, Sorcerers, and Bards.... Also, dont forget about the Geometer prestige class! :)
I came up with a concept of a species of moth that is drawn to magic, and tends to consume things like spellbooks and scrolls. When the caterpillars consume the paper, they can store whatever spell is on it, which, after they pupate and then emerge from the cocoon, is displayed in the patterns of its wings in the form it was written. It can then cast the spell once a day, with a sort of animal cunning and understanding of the spell’s effects baked into their tiny brains as they reform during pupation (so they don’t immediately, say, kill themselves with fireballs). Around (5/spell level)% of its offspring will inherit this spell pattern, regardless of what spell they consume. At scale, this can actually be a viable way to manufacture “spell scrolls” for sale. Allegedly, some spells were discovered not from research, but from the rare situation of a moth inheriting a pattern from not just one parent, but both, resulting in a unique magical effect.
I'm absolutely stealing this. A pest, yes, but if you can kill one (without destroying its body), it functions as a spell scroll. This allows for recovery, if one is lucky. If one is not, some adventurers may recover some of your research, some day 😂
Funny thing, books were created because someone wasn't able to make the really long scrolls. I forget who and the exact reason they couldn't recreate them, though.
One of the many things I love about the Order of Scribes Wizard subclass is getting to rp your sentient spellbook as floating along above or through most hazards, perhaps even have it chuckle at its fleshy owner as his robes get covered in mud or have to slosh through a bog. And then of course having it act as a drone and remote spellcasting proxy or just belch out your spells like an automated turret. Ronan named his Jim.
When WotC 3.0e first came out I more or less stated in my games that 3rd-level wizards must take the item creation feat: Create Wondrous Item , .. or else. Since the level to be came a lich was lowered to 11th-level spellcaster all mage characters were encourage to Magic Trap their Wands to be unlimited use machine gun pistols of magic like from the Harry Porter books, ( it was a couple of years before the movie came out.) A mage " phylactery " were their, .. a.) Spell book with multiple protection spells on them to resist water/ fire dmg. Also so pages couldn't be ripped out. Since the druid spell Awaken Animal was turn to Awaken Lesser Undead to make zombies self aware. So were spell books. One starting player wanted his mentor traveling spell book cause of background campaign reasons. So the DM said okay be the traveling high level spell book never stop insulting the party group. b.) Wooden wands made tough as steel, you have to caste Dispel Magic on them so you could break them like a normal stick. c.) Steel ring covered in silver, with Mage Hand cast on it. ( Jedi hand grab effect.) Along with other effects. d.) Wizard's casting dagger. Made twice to three times as heavy for extra strength against breaking. Some players, " I don't want to play a game where I have to worry that the DM wants to turn my PC into a ghost or lich cause he wants too. " Other players, " Wait you are giving me the option to Magic Jar someone after my PC death and Polymorph them into looking like my PC ? Sweet !"
12:00 So THAT'S WHY coppying spells is SO EXPENCIVE! I thought it was because the ink had to had to have magical propertys, in order to be usable for memorizing spells in a way they would actually work.
I wanted my characters spellbook to be made of Glassteel, with the pages acting like an array of lenses that you had to align correctly to read and could be read in 3D. Shining bright light through it might cast the arcane formula like a projector. Or course you'd probably want to cast a levitation enchantment on it so it doesn't weigh you down.
i had a enchantment wizard/fiend warlock multi who kept her spellbook as a series of brass strips kept on a chain with the formulas etched into them. why? well when the flames of phlegethos wreath your very being with every casting of fireball you dont want any absent minded slip ups costing you thousands of gold
I would have really loved if you had gone even more in depth, into objects such as Boccobs Blessed Book, Eidedic Memory (Dragon #357 89) removes the need for a spellbook altogether, but you potentially loose all your spells if your memory is somehow damaged... wizard's spellshard (Eberron Campaign Setting 121, 122), and a little more specifically Aureon's spellshard (ECS 265) when speaking of Spellshards, and telkiira (Lost Empires 155-6) and necklace of the phantom library (Explorer's Handbook 152-3) are a bit of special cases, but still applicable as 'alternative' spellbooks... There's also the Geometer prestige class that has a neat ability at 2nd level to reduce the space (and hence cost) of a spell when transcribing it to their spellbook lol Sadly, there's not that much attention given to Spellbooks as items, in general. Over the course of the entire 3.5 run, there were eventually some nice options put out to help protect spellbooks, and even options to make them from completely different materials, even completely out of Adamantium, with and Adamantium case... Some of the spells and alchemical items made the book immune to water damage, fire resistant or immune, made them look like other objects, there was a chain belt that you could connect to your spellbook to keep it at your side... it's really neat (to me) the finer details of what can be done with the items themselves, not just their general uses lol There should be a Feat, be it metamagic or otherwise, that allows you to reduce the cost of transcribing/learning spells and spellbooks... Good spellcasters know that they can loose their most valuable posessions... so it's a good idea to have copies of them in safe keeping... but it's _so_ ludicrously expensive to copy your spellbook! The only exception, of course, being Blessed Books... Which are in and of themselves, quite expensive... There's a Pathfinder class Archetype, Inquisitor (Living Grimoir), that turns the "holy book" / spellbook into a iron-clad weapon spiritually bound to the character... I love it thematically lol
Pretty neat stuff, and adds some depth to what's a pretty common item that get's almost forgotten by most groups. An interesting section of "Complete Arcane" for 3.5 was the section on alternative spellbooks (p186 for those curious), in which rules for things such as carving spells into skulls or stones, tattooing your spellbook onto your body, and creating a spellbook out of structures, like whole buildings, or the rooms within them, were covered. I found the concepts pretty interesting, and suggestive of a broader culture of Wizardry. Some use books, others carve their spells into the bones of their masters, and still others build entire schools, which both provide a place to study, and are the curricula.
I blew the socks off my friend Iain when I said "Imagine a Druid ritual that is 'recorded' in the ecosystem of a specific area, and once every hundred years or so, there is the exact combination of seemingly random factors, that allows the moss on a patch of ground to bloom with tiny stems that spell out the instructions for the druidic ritual magic". The forest itself as a living spellbook.
@@AJPickett Fantastic idea, and very much in line with mindset of the druid, who often eschews the trappings of civilization, which can extend at time even to the use of written word. The Forest as teacher is a wonderful concept.
@@AJPickett In Norway they still have rural traditions of carving faces into trees which morph/ grow into some interesting faces over thirty to eighty years. Also old druid writing were notches cut into the edges of poles. So some trees were their history/ spell books. Old field stone built root cellars from abandon farmers later became fairy barrows in folk lore of later settlers. Some of them ended up having oak trees growing on them which lead to more local legends.
Never judge the caster, or the spells within a spellbook by it's bindings/cover. Obviously any book(magical or not) bound in the flesh of some humanoid need never be opened unless you've already dipped your toes in the pool of evil. However, not all spellbooks bound in gold and silver are carried by good aligned casters. The "Book of the Dead" from the Mummy comes to mind.
Necronomicon, ... leather face stretch across as it's cover with a squid markings. If you see it, don't touch it. Do not read it, .. Just slowly back out the room and have a drink and forget you ever saw it.
Vellum is basically thin and evenly smoothed rawhide (often from calves; the words veal and vellum are related), and is quite sturdy. As a reference, in the middle ages, before the printing press, a book would be worth about the same as a horse (sometimes a broken down nag, sometimes a champion racehorse). These days you can buy a horse for about the same as the cost of a car. Books also get quite expensive when written on parchment (lower in quality than vellum--not as even and sometimes animals have scars or spots) as for a large tome (research tome sized) every 2 pages is 1 sheep.
I’ve heard that there are problems with having a Spellbook, but the “Order of Scribes” subclass is able to fix them. I once built a Scribes Wizard with the “Rune Carver” background to make it easier to work with.
The Evocation wizard artificter NPC that follows my brother, I describe him using spells, is either through his book or through a pistol that he crafted himself. For example, if he has to use strong spells, he pulls out his book. And if he wants to use weaker spells, like cantrips, or buffs like haste, he uses his pistol.
Martial classes can be expensive, if they're trying to keep up with the casters, they need better arms & armor. I'm not saying anyone can buy the better swords (+1, +2, and so on) and whatnot, but the price is high. It is paid in blood, sweat and tears...and probably also money.
@@draxthemsklonst Yeah, a couple hundred or maybe even a couple thousand for a sword or some platemail (if you buy it and don't just take it off the corpse of a baddie your group just took down) that you will then be using for the next 5 levels. Yawn. A good wizard, one focused on knowledge and power, will burn through that in one or two levels just buying scrolls to copy into their tome (which will then likely run them an additional 100g per spell slot for each scroll). Then you're expected to have extensive plans that likely require the building of a tower, acquisition of tomes/knowledge, rare alchemical or magical components, and any number of stupid expensive things to pursue your "wizardly plots/plans". A nice sword and some platemail are expensive but infrequent purchases. Wizards are ALWAYS spending large amounts of money. They are the single most powerful class in the game (suck it sorcerers), and wizards certainly have to pay for that. What would I give to be some happy-go-lucky entitled sorcerer, and just have cosmic power handed to me?! But not, I typically play wizards, who earn their cosmic power, with blood, sweat, tears, and a mountain of money.
Heres a subject i'm VERY interested in. A mages spellbook is extremly important,you cant just whip it together fast. Its imperative that you take your time with it as one tiny mistake on pg...."which ever" can ruin all the mages hard work! My drow/archmage uses ink in one of his sets that can only be read using infravision. He also uses creatures from the Elemental plane of Fire to hide inside it so as no one can use it! Spellbook design can be lots of fun and quite interesting! 😁😁😁 I also have a gnome illusionist/thief/gemcutter who uses expensive gems to store his spells in as well. Thanks AJ,another job well done!
A new DM idea for spellbooks, scrolls & ciphers. The spell book is actually the origami animal on the desk - each origami object showing a different spell. This makes it more portable (one page), hides it from thieves (they keep stealing your diary instead), and makes sure novices can't access spells they aren't ready for (well, unless they do origami as a hobby). Having a mage school that runs like a Taoist tea shop (complete with an "Iroh") with calligraphy and origami everywhere adds a nice flavor of "wonder" to a campaign. (Animated origami animals would be a hit with the kids, too)
I use a simple formula for spellbooks. Two gold pieces per page, fifteen gold pieces for a standard, non-exotic binding. Where it gets interesting is in things like the ranger’s weather-proof bookcase. It’s quite literally a chest, just big enough to fit a single book and protect it from the elements. Between the hinges, latches, weather-proof sealing and the book made specifically for it, it can set you back a pretty penny. Most of those are made for collections of maps, so they aren’t something you can just swap out for any book. That’ll set you back 10-20 gold after buying and binding the book. I always thought the prices were too extreme for spellbooks, so I stole my buddy Jim’s rules for spellbooks. Even a poor wizard with just a handful of loose pages can call it a spellbook, but having it neatly bound will make him more welcome in academic circles.
I was thinking, if you were to take a ring of mind protection, and if you can have a blank soul with no memory or personality to inhabit it, then you could technically feed it your memory of the spells, and create a living spell book.
One time, our novice wizard was “given” a new spell book only to discover that it was cursed when he opened it. Long story short, eventually my paladin casts dispel magic on both the wizard and the tome, and when it was clear that that didn’t work, he threw the book into a fire. Our wizard, despite DYING from the cursed tome, was distraught that I burned it. I actually played the wizard class twice before, so I knew how bad that actually was for Wizards. I partially prepared a quote/did improv for if a situation like that ever happened Wizard: *”incoherent angry noises* Do you realize what you’ve done?!” Paladin:”I destroyed a tome that was worth hundreds of gold pieces just to save your life.”
Great video AJ. Where were these kinds of details when I made my 2nd Ed AD&D world from scratch? Oh, right, I'm a dinosaur. ;) The first spellbook all player character wizards had was a 50-page traveler's spellbook with all their initial spells in it. For "Mages", the rules for typical spellbooks applied as they are to them... and were quite standard all over each world. "Read Magic" was needed to read any magical reading that is not by the hand of the writer save for the one-use scrolls that can be used by any class. So, I ran with it. I had a dark necromancer's school make them from various skins with most of the book creators as necromancers really skilled in taxidermy and leatherwork (sentient being bodies being the best). Also, tears of sorry are used in the ink for hydrating the crystal dust base... children's tears were the best. Interacting with that school's (guild's) NPCs on this is fun for me, really creepy for my players. They push the grizzly human-resourced ones without directly mentioning humans (especially children and other innocents) are the best harvests for it... hinting at it. Some prefer other demi-humans. With abjurers, the most difficult to work with wood and bamboo was used. Clay must be beaten into the pages in a way that they don't tear and still be paper-thin. The voice of 3 types of shell-wearing animals/monsters must be harvested to harden the binder, hardback book cover, and to activate the ink... a different harvest for the ink. I had a clay tablet version too but I can't remember much of the details right now. With diviners, it's a special case that's really expensive to produce. Their blank pages are a specially prepared petrified set of wood chips a square inch in surface area (thin otherwise). When transcribing a new spell, they use their burning wand (heat it to engrave) to put the spell on a bunch of chips. Diviners study spells by opening up the case, thinking of the spell, grabbing chips, and throwing them on a surface. The right chips and their positions are always granted because of the nature of the "book" and its "pages". With conjurers, they were absurdly expensive. Only one player wanted that path because it was the only specialist wizard that had "Wish" in its magical school... long-term thinking. Powdered gemstones were a part of every aspect and gold (or higher GPV metal) was integrated into its everything that's not pages. It's also the only spellbook that can get a save vs. Fireball (or Dragon Breath, magical fire/acid, etc) with failure damaging it while otherwise ignoring the spell. Oh, never tell anyone you are a conjurer. Your spellbook is worth a fortune as mere material loot. "The Ancients" were Crystonians, they had crystal technology, their super-high-magic existence was their technology and based upon crystals. Finding a Crystoninan magical item is pretty much finding an artifact with a generic era history... it has problems that come with its gifts. Conjurers crushed up gemstones to leech upon their legacy to do the more reality-altering powers their spells give. They dabbled in demonology among other things as well. With Transmuters, most have only their first travelers' spellbook for forever while carrying cheap transcribable scrolls in the meantime. Every component needs a quest. There's a 10% chance you can buy a component for the book and 1% to get the whole book at a very high cost. Most of the time, you will be given a side quest. Component quests: A doppelganger's honesty, the voice of a fish, the eye of a basilisk, the tear of the unfeeling, gold that was once lead, the blood of the polymorphed (from the polymorphed form), a pound of lycanthrope fur, the horn of a gorgon, etc. If you succeed in the quest, you get not only that component for the book but you get GPV in gems for what they can use in their school (guild). For white (and grey) necromancers, their spellbook is an especially protected set of scroll tubes with super-thin super-durable "parchment" with the best renaissance era quill, ink, and magnifying glass. Each component is virtually a component for a magic item. The magnifying glass is a special form of hardened crystal, not really glass. The quill is a special form of fountain pen. Writings are done extremely small. The school (guild) is always founded upon morally questionable methods (like our world's obsession with not messing with the dead all the way to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein) to give such wizards a bad name. Also, these are the guys who created the first Flesh Golems... golems, not undeads. They dabbled in demonology among other things as well. Meh... 1000s of hours wasted. I should have just focused on a world. I love the Forgotten Realms. I always had. I was just too obsessed with my homebrew because I disagreed with some aspects.
Speaking of a magnifying glass, I highly recommend those as emergency fire starters in your survival kits. Also, I got a bit of a scare this evening as I found myself squinting to read the calorie count on a pack of pre-cooked, microwave pasta (who needs MRE's these days, everyone is eating rations!) then I realized I was trying to read in a dark room, four feet away from the light of an open microwave oven :) For a moment there, I was thinking "Oh shit, here we go.. reading glasses".
Each tome of magic, not just spellbooks, is customized by the user, it serves both as a journal and works in that specific domain of magic, to give a better understanding, look at the Celestial Wizards & Golden Order from WarHammer Fantasy, they keep many records of their research and studies in there respective fields of magic, while in the case of Celestial Wizards, they also keep wast maps of the stars, alteration changes and new spells, techniques etc. that are tested and verified are kept, by them to use by new Wizards and improve on them, etc. Very few Master Wizards, Arch Mages, High Sorcerers, in DnD, ever attempt a memory tome, this is basically an imprint of a soul like the holocrons from Star Wars, that is because while an apprentice will have a spellbook to learn said spell and journal to keep tracks of his work, even after reaching a senior and master rank, even after learning all his spells, the process is not easy as the tome must be made from specific types of components, those who show sturdiness, like basilisk hide, that is waterproof, the pages must be made from either lamb, sheep or cattle hide, that has been alchemically treated and enchanted to prevent damages same as its covers, ink is another thing, usually, it volcanic iron mixed with the mages blood, some silver or other things and yes it also enchanted, finally there security measures, like wards placed on it, after all you cannot allow just any one to access it,
God I wish stuff like the Sigils were in the player's handbook its such a small thing and it may not work in every world, but man does it add a lot of flavors
Between this and spell components, spellcasters really are quite an economic boon for any community. Of course you have to take the bad with the good, which may just be a new breed of ooze that slowly engulfs the town... 🙃
3rd edition's "Magic of Faerun" has additional capabilities for spellbooks to protect them. See pages 172-174 for materials and permanent enchantment costs.
What seperates a spellbook from a regular book that hapens to have stuff about magic written in it? ... Also, what seperates a regular stick from an archane wand or druid staff?
Do you remember the character Ergo the Magnificent from the movie Krull? His sodden collection of individual pages of spell notes he was always trying to look through to cast the right spell? That pretty much is the reason why you need to buy a damn good book for your spells. You remember when the 5th edition rule books came out, and the pages were prone to falling out? mmm hmmm!
That’s one of the things the game doesn’t capture from the books. The great mages in the chapter books were sorcerers who picked up a spellbook and went to wizarding school.
I would not make Spellbooks so expensive. Too much of a penalty. However I would make scrolls tough to make given how much they can wildly expand a mage’s repertoire.
Back in the day (honestly can't remember if it was 100 or 2000 years ago) someone wanted to make an asbestos book that would last forever. A book made of salamander fur sounds like a good idea for a fantasy setting... Just don't rip it up and snort it without a cleric present.
@@devinm.6149 Salamander fur is an old term for asbestos. For some reason salamanders were heavily associated with fire and some medieval scholars thought asbestos was their fur. History guy did a good vid on it ua-cam.com/video/-EJ-4koV7m0/v-deo.html That vid and this one has inspired me to make a wizard apprentice who found a book that won't burn and goes on a quest to find what the pages are woven from. Edit: Damned shame that mineral is so harmful. If it didn't cause horrible diseases it would easily be top ten best substances ever.
@@AJPickett oh man! I searched AJ Pickett Nagpa a few days ago, and all I found were some cell phone videos of people mentioning muppets. What was the title?
This reminds me of a question i had with regards to more intelligent familiars. Aj do you think it would be possible to use more intelligent familiars as a backup spell focus? I was thinking just give them a few levels as a spell caster and give them one spell slot per level but the more i think on it the more concerned i become for balance. Would a tressym able to cast counterspell be too much? I dunno just food for thought. Keep up the great work 😄
Tressym are indeed highly intelligent, why if one wanted to, it could learn how to use a computer keyboard and answer all of a sage's video comments... and yes, it is, therefore, possible for a one to learn a spell, however, they are very limited if a Humanoid tries to teach them how to do this, they need the style of spell casting mastered by non-verbal, non-somatic spell casting creatures. Mostly a Tressym is particularly favored thanks to their beauty, grace, fine personality and ability to detect poison and warn their master. Anyway, you are certainly onto something there, it is heartwarming to see someone so attentive to the vital role a familiar can play.
@@AJPickett lol i just felt that in all my research on the subject that familiars felt a bit neglected with regards to mechanics. As for verbal and sematic spell types i hadnt thought of that so tha k you for reminding me. I appreciate all your hard work Aj
I wonder what would happen if someone drew a silly little doodle in the margin of a wizard's spellbook. (I'm assuming the "artist" and the wizard would be in the same adventuring party.)
Anyone know if you can cast spells from a spellbook like they were scrolls and lose the spell from the book in that way? Like use the spell as written in the book like it was a spell scroll that then is destroyed from the book. You know, in a desperate circumstance a wizard out of spell slots could still literally burn their spellbook if necessary.
No, spellbooks are collections of notes and information, lessons, observations, translations and such, they are much more complicated than a spell scroll.. spell scrolls are carefully made to both invoke a mystical effect and to protect the mind and body of whoever is casting the spell, otherwise they might have their mind burnt out in the process.
@@AJPickett Wow! thank you so much for your response! This was super helpful! And now I have to let my wizard know that his last 3 spell slots are all he's got against a beur hag and her minions in her lair. eep!
If you want to run a Grim/Dark campaign where you have to last ditch effort burn your spell book to cast a given spell. Go ahead ! My last gaming group played and ran 3.5e and we used the DMG section on Creating Magic Trap to cover the making of wands, weapons, and any other spell item with a given effect. Just replace gp value with the spellcaster xp for cost payment. We had wizards using tent fabric for spellscrolls and note book scrolls and writing ink made with charcoal. Rolled up and carried in a leather water proofed scroll case tube. In one game the .. tent .. was enchanted to be water/ weather proof and fire resistance . Along with being written on inside and out. Wizard, " You can't use my Spell Book as a Tent. !" Other players, " Then you shouldn't have written all over Our tent as your spellbook !" We also did a stone age game of npc class Adepts for run the mill clerics, druids, and sorcerers. Since the sorcerer took Create Wondrous Item to create runes/ sigils to protect the cave entrance and for other useful spell effects instead of Scribe Scroll feat. Another player argue and stated if his PC learns enough of the sorcerer Arcane theories and spellcraft he could learn to become a wizard. So the wizards spell book became cave walls and animal skins. Magic items were not made from gold & silver but wood and stone imbue with Xp channeling the caster person energy into the item equal to gp cost. Stone spear with spells of Mend, Make Whole, Elemental type " fire or Chill Touch," follow with stander magic weapon spell bonus from +1 to +3 to hit/ dmg. Along with a gorge enchanted with protection from moisture/water and fire, which holds cantrips to create music and Sleep or cast Fear to deal with unruly children up pass their bed time. My last shop DMs would run mini game campaigns in different time frames so it's the PCs are the ones to create the settings Legendary Items.
Sharkskin, shell, I am not sure where I read it but I think there is an example of an aquatic race that uses strings of beads where the knots and their placement represent the words and motions for the spells.
Besides different leathers or scales from aquatic critters (ex: krakens like to replace body parts to avoid their breeding season), best I could come up with off the top of my head is nacre. Nacre starts as a liquid, which can be poured into a pre-etched (coral, stone, et cetera) mold, until hardened into a pearl material. This makes pages out of pearl, that can survive corrosion by saltwater, and the erosion via ocean currents. Another option is getting them tattooed on the character or etched into a water resistant metal, like "cheat sheet" bracers. I would think the books of aquatic races would definitely be different and slightly more difficult to make than a regular handmade book. There's magic though, so maybe I have no idea what I'm saying, it could be easy.
I'm not entirely sure how some of thus would work in 5e; it's my understanding that a wizard needs to have written the spell themselves, using their own nomenclature, to be able to cast it, which leads me to wonder how a Master might fabricate a copy of an apprentices book as a gift? I know scrolls are special, but if you defeat an enemy caster, and steal his book, or nab your master's and flee into the night, you can't prepare those spells to cast, unless you first jot them down in your own hand, into your spellbook. Personally, I like coming up with strange alternatives to books, lice etched crystals, and I think I remember Dark Sun even using complicated arrangements of braided knots, since books are unheard of on paper-poor Athas.
Elven druids who shepherd seasonal moss and lichen growths so that, on certain days, when the weather is just right, you can read magical knowledge in the patterns of green on the ground, growing on very old trees and draping river boulders in carpets of ancient lore.
By the way, i didn't see anyone mentioning that you could cast (or acid etch/engrave) a spell book in precious metals (or even some semi-precious metals or alloys) if you wanted something that would last quite awhile. (Of course, you probably wouldn't tote these kinds of books around. These would probably be kept in a safe location that is well kept and not well known, even if you wanted to keep using levitation or the good ol' disk.)
Also, the main purpose of folding steel is removing various impurities and the re-distribution of remaining impurities throughout the forged object or the billet that is to be forged. (It does look pretty good at times though, I will admit.)
Would not each school of the art have its own take on the grimoire? Also why would each of the eight schools of the art not have their own take on the other schools such as necromantic conjuration or enchantment or an evocative form of transmutation?
Wizards choose an arcane tradition at 2nd level, they probably do have their own quirks and techniques and requirements, but ... I would be simply making up lore rather than researching it if I were to talk about that, I think it is far more fun for each DM or Setting or Novel to come up with their own take on it, following their own inspiration. Also, that would be a video over an hour long :D
@@AJPickett Thanks for the answer and that is sort of my idea. I was thinking that say a necromancer conjured something what he would use and draw upon to do do would differ from say a standard conjurer though they were casting the same spell. Your videos are amazing.
@@SkullCowboy333 A victim forced to read a and memorize a series of spell book pages, then they are executed and ritually transformed into Undead Skull-Books that can only answer questions related to the contents of those pages.
@@AJPickett with all the new tattoo spell items and there was a wonderful KS that had more magic tattoos, and even a whole class build with subclasses. Maybe a video about that kind of spell book would be interesting. Where i found the tattoo info in is, "Complete Arcane" 3.5, pg 186-187
AJ Pickett: I have seen debates back and forth. When people say they cantrips are *no* included in spellbooks, I point out the “Pact of the Tome” feature for Warlocks. It provides access to a “Book of Shadows”, which is a magical grimoire. I think the difference between cantrips and spells is that spells need to be memorized every day, and cantrips are learned by rote. There is no reason that a wizard can not learn a new cantrip from another spellbook and add it to their repertoire, though, once they are of sufficient level to do so! 😊
@@AJPickett If a wizard dosn't heve to memorise/prepair their cantrips, then is their really a need to write them into their traveling spellbooks? If they know them by heart anyways, why waste the page-space? ... Also, If they are written down, could 2 wizards use their spellbook feature to share cantrips, as they could with regular spells? ... If so, would they need to use a spell slot to use a cantrip that they gaind via the spellbook feature? (as oppose to the ones gained via leveling up in casting classes, the magic initiative feat, multiclassing casters, or features such as bardic-secrets or warlock tome-pact?
Could be that it has to be written down once to memorize it. Or could be an addendum from Azuth on Mishra's Ban or whatnot. Memorized by rote = memorized by wrote? Also, something about that *crystalline ink structure* seems important.
Think of spells written in a spellbook as very complex mathematics, the higher the level, the more complicated the equations. Without knowing what the symbols, diagrams and the like mean, the book isn't very useful. A sorcerer has innate magical ability, but they aren't born knowing how to read and understand advanced quantum mechanics.
I would say no. Sorcerors learn magic through their understanding of how magic flows. This is why they can manipulate it so freely. They innately know how to because of the process they go through to learn any magic. They know that spell in a very intimate way. Wizards by comparison are working the magic in a very removed way. They can't feel it like a Sorceror can. Their minds may be predisposed towards the use of magic but they have no innate connection to it. They are working it like pulling a lever on a machine. It takes incredible experience to gain the understanding that Sorcerors have from the start. But wizards have and develop instructions that let them use a greater array of spells.
@@AJPickett Piggy backing on this, would you mind linking the images at 13:05 & 14:00 . Also, have you ever considered just having a list of the links to the images in your videos in the doobly-doo?
@@draxthemsklonst How? only way I can think of is screen shot them and then cut them out of that and do an image search, which is a pain. Is there another method? Also I don't think its a big ask for the fine fellow who makes the video to put up a list of links in the video description so the artists get credit, and we get sources.
I’m four years late but I’m a geologist. Electrum occurs naturally. In that ore can often contain gold and silver. If you don’t separate the metal you get electrum. I would introduce it as being used by a primitive society that doesn’t have sophisticated metal working. A group that would just pull the ore out of the ground smelt the metal then make shined objects.
I talk about the birth/crafting, gestation/inscribing, behavior/uses, types/species, construction/anatomy and distribution/habitat of spell books... do I not? :)
Well first of all no one in any D&D world ever ever ever ever ever would refer to it as a spell book in character in World in Universe just like in the real world they're called a Grimoire Speaking from personal experience your first through 6th level spells will be upfront they will be as presented on the paper in your Grimoire However everything above that is probably hidden behind one if not several layers of encryption and symbolism and specific ways of folding pages together to create new pages this makes it a little bit harder for your average idiot casting 9th level spell and this is probably for the best because there are people out there that have an Supernatural Affinity with magic and as such even unskilled and uneducated could accidentally start casting an 8th or 9th level spell mess it up severely hurt themselves a lot of people around them also duplicate your Spellbook make multiple backups and Scrolls if you don't have scribe scroll and you're a wizard or a sorcerer you're doing it wrong
And if you noticed certain symbols certain ways of combining specific letters from each page or however it's encrypted over the Millennia those are lost contact for any symbol is desperately needed when trying to convey a message I would say 90% of all spells ever made were probably only ever cast by a single person and after that casters death those spells simply cease to exist furthermore you would have a hard time trying to understand symbols from one side of the main continent to another because of cultural difference imagine that plus a thousand years your not likely to find the deeper hidden meanings in these works because of this
Remember the best ink comes from the most powerful creatures like a kraken or a flail snail or the blood of the innocent I mean it really depends on what you're trying to do Let's just say if you were to take and make your spell book where each page in the book contains a full sheet a flesh from a sentient mortal race bind it in the hair from a unicorns mein with a pen made from a feather of a slain solar and all of this bound gold dragon wyrmling flesh written with the blood of Innocence Congratulations you now earned yourself a one-way ticket to the lower planes and you can start studying true necromancy
I had an idea I thought you would enjoy, a troglodyte wizard who's spell book is a smell book, and the Spells recorded there in are done so through smears,smudges and smatterings of partially digested material components, along with various other troglodyte effluence. Imagine a group of adventurers taking down the troglodyte Wizard and trying to translate the Spells.... we're talkin nauseating people.
Wizard idea: A youth craving adventure finds his great-great-great-granduncles traveling spellbook one day in his basement. He spends all his free time studying it until he eventually becomes a level 1 wizard, then sets out into the world to find the location of his great-great-great-granduncle's original research notes. The kicker, you have to randomly roll for every spell you have access to, because those are the spells that your great-great-great-granduncle had written in his traveling spellbook at the time.
@@sagesheahan6732 Uh, .. I think I know how this spell is meant to work .. ? DM, " Oh, .. Great ! Now I can pull out my Chaos Magic random effect chart some more !" OMG .. it's .. Willow .. trying to figure out how that Wand works again.
electrum is a metal it's naturally occurring it's an alloy of gold silver copper with some Platinum metal group impurities it was first used in the first coins before using gold
A wizard should always make his own spellbook....never buy one as you can never be sure of the quality of the product you purchase...."buyer beware! Lol
Please turn to page 3 for the table of contents, timestamps are included
0:08 Subscribe, Seriously. Costs you literally nothing.
0:49 Overview of Spellbooks in general.
1:40 The Travelling Spellbook and an Apprentice's Spellbook
3:56 General Costs
4:55 Sizes, Materials, Capacity of the Book, and a bit more on cost
8:03 Orizon Spellbook, and Arcanabulla (Illusionists) Spellbook
8:48 Suth trees of the Forgotten Realms
11:43 The Inks
13:01 Personal Sigils.
Very interesting to see kind of the behind the scenes making of items like these, especially the Inks and the use of Suth wood.
Speaking about Wizards, maybe you would like to see something on the people who use these in the game. And while you are at it, Subscribe and become a Member!
The History of Netheril (Part 1): ua-cam.com/video/aPf6f6y3eCw/v-deo.html
Thay: ua-cam.com/video/SWHjWGfBp8M/v-deo.html
Famous Wizards: ua-cam.com/video/-_8ilJq4r4c/v-deo.html
Thanks!!!
“Always keep extra copies of spellbooks well hidden in a safe place...especially if those spellbooks actually belong to other wizards!” ~ Morzed the Morally Gray
You just inspired me to create a mimic that has taken the form of a spell book that has changed the spells, so if you are trying to cast fireball you may cast a sleep spell instead.
LOL, that's a great idea.
Oh! What if you had a pact of the tome warlock, who's patron is the mimic?
@@patrickdees5256 that could be a whole new warlock sub class.
@@gunmetal611 huh. A Hombrewed subclass?
There's a lot of cool potential homebrew inspiration material in the 3.0 Player's Guide to Wizards, Sorcerers, and Bards....
Also, dont forget about the Geometer prestige class! :)
I came up with a concept of a species of moth that is drawn to magic, and tends to consume things like spellbooks and scrolls. When the caterpillars consume the paper, they can store whatever spell is on it, which, after they pupate and then emerge from the cocoon, is displayed in the patterns of its wings in the form it was written. It can then cast the spell once a day, with a sort of animal cunning and understanding of the spell’s effects baked into their tiny brains as they reform during pupation (so they don’t immediately, say, kill themselves with fireballs).
Around (5/spell level)% of its offspring will inherit this spell pattern, regardless of what spell they consume. At scale, this can actually be a viable way to manufacture “spell scrolls” for sale.
Allegedly, some spells were discovered not from research, but from the rare situation of a moth inheriting a pattern from not just one parent, but both, resulting in a unique magical effect.
I'm absolutely stealing this. A pest, yes, but if you can kill one (without destroying its body), it functions as a spell scroll. This allows for recovery, if one is lucky. If one is not, some adventurers may recover some of your research, some day 😂
Sometimes, a spell book is a large scroll tube with a lot of scrolls in it.
IRL scrolls *are* books, just an older variety.
Clearly, they just cheaped out on binding. But hey, spellbook for the go!
Funny thing, books were created because someone wasn't able to make the really long scrolls. I forget who and the exact reason they couldn't recreate them, though.
The video has great lore, but the coolest part was the shout out at the end to all the other DnD Lore video creators.
One of the many things I love about the Order of Scribes Wizard subclass is getting to rp your sentient spellbook as floating along above or through most hazards, perhaps even have it chuckle at its fleshy owner as his robes get covered in mud or have to slosh through a bog. And then of course having it act as a drone and remote spellcasting proxy or just belch out your spells like an automated turret. Ronan named his Jim.
When WotC 3.0e first came out I more or less stated in my games that 3rd-level wizards must take the item creation feat: Create Wondrous Item , .. or else.
Since the level to be came a lich was lowered to 11th-level spellcaster all mage characters were encourage to Magic Trap their Wands to be unlimited use machine gun pistols of magic like from the Harry Porter books, ( it was a couple of years before the movie came out.)
A mage " phylactery " were their, ..
a.) Spell book with multiple protection spells on them to resist water/ fire dmg. Also so pages couldn't be ripped out.
Since the druid spell Awaken Animal was turn to Awaken Lesser Undead to make zombies self aware. So were spell books.
One starting player wanted his mentor traveling spell book cause of background campaign reasons. So the DM said okay be the traveling high level spell book never stop insulting the party group.
b.) Wooden wands made tough as steel, you have to caste Dispel Magic on them so you could break them like a normal stick.
c.) Steel ring covered in silver, with Mage Hand cast on it. ( Jedi hand grab effect.) Along with other effects.
d.) Wizard's casting dagger. Made twice to three times as heavy for extra strength against breaking.
Some players, " I don't want to play a game where I have to worry that the DM wants to turn my PC into a ghost or lich cause he wants too. "
Other players, " Wait you are giving me the option to Magic Jar someone after my PC death and Polymorph them into looking like my PC ? Sweet !"
12:00 So THAT'S WHY coppying spells is SO EXPENCIVE! I thought it was because the ink had to had to have magical propertys, in order to be usable for memorizing spells in a way they would actually work.
It makes way too much sense now.
Sigils the original magic copyright that exploded whenever copied. Genius.
Seems like a great way to create cheap counterfeit-proof currency.
This is why you dont f**k with a wizard's things.
I wanted my characters spellbook to be made of Glassteel, with the pages acting like an array of lenses that you had to align correctly to read and could be read in 3D. Shining bright light through it might cast the arcane formula like a projector. Or course you'd probably want to cast a levitation enchantment on it so it doesn't weigh you down.
That sounds so cool!!!
That is an awesome idea!
i had a enchantment wizard/fiend warlock multi who kept her spellbook as a series of brass strips kept on a chain with the formulas etched into them. why? well when the flames of phlegethos wreath your very being with every casting of fireball you dont want any absent minded slip ups costing you thousands of gold
Good point
I would have really loved if you had gone even more in depth, into objects such as Boccobs Blessed Book, Eidedic Memory (Dragon #357 89) removes the need for a spellbook altogether, but you potentially loose all your spells if your memory is somehow damaged... wizard's spellshard (Eberron Campaign Setting 121, 122), and a little more specifically Aureon's spellshard (ECS 265) when speaking of Spellshards, and telkiira (Lost Empires 155-6) and necklace of the phantom library (Explorer's Handbook 152-3) are a bit of special cases, but still applicable as 'alternative' spellbooks... There's also the Geometer prestige class that has a neat ability at 2nd level to reduce the space (and hence cost) of a spell when transcribing it to their spellbook lol
Sadly, there's not that much attention given to Spellbooks as items, in general. Over the course of the entire 3.5 run, there were eventually some nice options put out to help protect spellbooks, and even options to make them from completely different materials, even completely out of Adamantium, with and Adamantium case... Some of the spells and alchemical items made the book immune to water damage, fire resistant or immune, made them look like other objects, there was a chain belt that you could connect to your spellbook to keep it at your side... it's really neat (to me) the finer details of what can be done with the items themselves, not just their general uses lol
There should be a Feat, be it metamagic or otherwise, that allows you to reduce the cost of transcribing/learning spells and spellbooks... Good spellcasters know that they can loose their most valuable posessions... so it's a good idea to have copies of them in safe keeping... but it's _so_ ludicrously expensive to copy your spellbook! The only exception, of course, being Blessed Books... Which are in and of themselves, quite expensive...
There's a Pathfinder class Archetype, Inquisitor (Living Grimoir), that turns the "holy book" / spellbook into a iron-clad weapon spiritually bound to the character... I love it thematically lol
Pretty neat stuff, and adds some depth to what's a pretty common item that get's almost forgotten by most groups. An interesting section of "Complete Arcane" for 3.5 was the section on alternative spellbooks (p186 for those curious), in which rules for things such as carving spells into skulls or stones, tattooing your spellbook onto your body, and creating a spellbook out of structures, like whole buildings, or the rooms within them, were covered. I found the concepts pretty interesting, and suggestive of a broader culture of Wizardry. Some use books, others carve their spells into the bones of their masters, and still others build entire schools, which both provide a place to study, and are the curricula.
I blew the socks off my friend Iain when I said "Imagine a Druid ritual that is 'recorded' in the ecosystem of a specific area, and once every hundred years or so, there is the exact combination of seemingly random factors, that allows the moss on a patch of ground to bloom with tiny stems that spell out the instructions for the druidic ritual magic". The forest itself as a living spellbook.
@@AJPickett Fantastic idea, and very much in line with mindset of the druid, who often eschews the trappings of civilization, which can extend at time even to the use of written word. The Forest as teacher is a wonderful concept.
@@AJPickett In Norway they still have rural traditions of carving faces into trees which morph/ grow into some interesting faces over thirty to eighty years.
Also old druid writing were notches cut into the edges of poles. So some trees were their history/ spell books.
Old field stone built root cellars from abandon farmers later became fairy barrows in folk lore of later settlers. Some of them ended up having oak trees growing on them which lead to more local legends.
Never judge the caster, or the spells within a spellbook by it's bindings/cover. Obviously any book(magical or not) bound in the flesh of some humanoid need never be opened unless you've already dipped your toes in the pool of evil. However, not all spellbooks bound in gold and silver are carried by good aligned casters. The "Book of the Dead" from the Mummy comes to mind.
Necronomicon, ... leather face stretch across as it's cover with a squid markings.
If you see it, don't touch it.
Do not read it, ..
Just slowly back out the room and have a drink and forget you ever saw it.
Vellum is basically thin and evenly smoothed rawhide (often from calves; the words veal and vellum are related), and is quite sturdy. As a reference, in the middle ages, before the printing press, a book would be worth about the same as a horse (sometimes a broken down nag, sometimes a champion racehorse). These days you can buy a horse for about the same as the cost of a car. Books also get quite expensive when written on parchment (lower in quality than vellum--not as even and sometimes animals have scars or spots) as for a large tome (research tome sized) every 2 pages is 1 sheep.
I’ve heard that there are problems with having a Spellbook, but the “Order of Scribes” subclass is able to fix them.
I once built a Scribes Wizard with the “Rune Carver” background to make it easier to work with.
I made a painter kid that scribes spells with painting and give it to the other members as a gift and scroll
So fun
I can't wait to get to lvl 6
@@jackhilton4285, that’s Awesome
The Evocation wizard artificter NPC that follows my brother, I describe him using spells, is either through his book or through a pistol that he crafted himself. For example, if he has to use strong spells, he pulls out his book. And if he wants to use weaker spells, like cantrips, or buffs like haste, he uses his pistol.
Wizards is the most powerful and interesting of classes. It is also BY FAR the most expensive.
Side note: You should check out "Where does medieval ink come from?
" by Modern History TV.
Martial classes can be expensive, if they're trying to keep up with the casters, they need better arms & armor.
I'm not saying anyone can buy the better swords (+1, +2, and so on) and whatnot, but the price is high.
It is paid in blood, sweat and tears...and probably also money.
@@draxthemsklonst Yeah, a couple hundred or maybe even a couple thousand for a sword or some platemail (if you buy it and don't just take it off the corpse of a baddie your group just took down) that you will then be using for the next 5 levels. Yawn. A good wizard, one focused on knowledge and power, will burn through that in one or two levels just buying scrolls to copy into their tome (which will then likely run them an additional 100g per spell slot for each scroll). Then you're expected to have extensive plans that likely require the building of a tower, acquisition of tomes/knowledge, rare alchemical or magical components, and any number of stupid expensive things to pursue your "wizardly plots/plans".
A nice sword and some platemail are expensive but infrequent purchases. Wizards are ALWAYS spending large amounts of money. They are the single most powerful class in the game (suck it sorcerers), and wizards certainly have to pay for that. What would I give to be some happy-go-lucky entitled sorcerer, and just have cosmic power handed to me?! But not, I typically play wizards, who earn their cosmic power, with blood, sweat, tears, and a mountain of money.
Heres a subject i'm VERY interested in. A mages spellbook is extremly important,you cant just whip it together fast. Its imperative that you take your time with it as one tiny mistake on pg...."which ever" can ruin all the mages hard work! My drow/archmage uses ink in one of his sets that can only be read using infravision. He also uses creatures from the Elemental plane of Fire to hide inside it so as no one can use it! Spellbook design can be lots of fun and quite interesting! 😁😁😁 I also have a gnome illusionist/thief/gemcutter who uses expensive gems to store his spells in as well. Thanks AJ,another job well done!
Oh yeah that creature i use and trap inside my spellbook is called a Tome Guardian
*thief
@@devinm.6149 no need to be a douche. I'm typing on a cellphone! 😒
A new DM idea for spellbooks, scrolls & ciphers. The spell book is actually the origami animal on the desk - each origami object showing a different spell. This makes it more portable (one page), hides it from thieves (they keep stealing your diary instead), and makes sure novices can't access spells they aren't ready for (well, unless they do origami as a hobby). Having a mage school that runs like a Taoist tea shop (complete with an "Iroh") with calligraphy and origami everywhere adds a nice flavor of "wonder" to a campaign. (Animated origami animals would be a hit with the kids, too)
I use a simple formula for spellbooks. Two gold pieces per page, fifteen gold pieces for a standard, non-exotic binding.
Where it gets interesting is in things like the ranger’s weather-proof bookcase. It’s quite literally a chest, just big enough to fit a single book and protect it from the elements. Between the hinges, latches, weather-proof sealing and the book made specifically for it, it can set you back a pretty penny. Most of those are made for collections of maps, so they aren’t something you can just swap out for any book. That’ll set you back 10-20 gold after buying and binding the book.
I always thought the prices were too extreme for spellbooks, so I stole my buddy Jim’s rules for spellbooks. Even a poor wizard with just a handful of loose pages can call it a spellbook, but having it neatly bound will make him more welcome in academic circles.
I was thinking, if you were to take a ring of mind protection, and if you can have a blank soul with no memory or personality to inhabit it, then you could technically feed it your memory of the spells, and create a living spell book.
That might work with an elemental.
AJ Pickett great idea, if a elemental has a soul, it can also power other devices if contained correctly.
Would love to someday see a follow-up on Spell components. Pretty pretty please
One time, our novice wizard was “given” a new spell book only to discover that it was cursed when he opened it. Long story short, eventually my paladin casts dispel magic on both the wizard and the tome, and when it was clear that that didn’t work, he threw the book into a fire. Our wizard, despite DYING
from the cursed tome, was distraught that I burned it.
I actually played the wizard class twice before, so I knew how bad that actually was for Wizards. I partially prepared a quote/did improv for if a situation like that ever happened
Wizard: *”incoherent angry noises* Do you realize what you’ve done?!”
Paladin:”I destroyed a tome that was worth hundreds of gold pieces just to save your life.”
" cough, cough," .. worth Thousands of gold pieces.
Great video AJ. Where were these kinds of details when I made my 2nd Ed AD&D world from scratch? Oh, right, I'm a dinosaur. ;)
The first spellbook all player character wizards had was a 50-page traveler's spellbook with all their initial spells in it. For "Mages", the rules for typical spellbooks applied as they are to them... and were quite standard all over each world.
"Read Magic" was needed to read any magical reading that is not by the hand of the writer save for the one-use scrolls that can be used by any class. So, I ran with it.
I had a dark necromancer's school make them from various skins with most of the book creators as necromancers really skilled in taxidermy and leatherwork (sentient being bodies being the best). Also, tears of sorry are used in the ink for hydrating the crystal dust base... children's tears were the best. Interacting with that school's (guild's) NPCs on this is fun for me, really creepy for my players. They push the grizzly human-resourced ones without directly mentioning humans (especially children and other innocents) are the best harvests for it... hinting at it. Some prefer other demi-humans.
With abjurers, the most difficult to work with wood and bamboo was used. Clay must be beaten into the pages in a way that they don't tear and still be paper-thin. The voice of 3 types of shell-wearing animals/monsters must be harvested to harden the binder, hardback book cover, and to activate the ink... a different harvest for the ink. I had a clay tablet version too but I can't remember much of the details right now.
With diviners, it's a special case that's really expensive to produce. Their blank pages are a specially prepared petrified set of wood chips a square inch in surface area (thin otherwise). When transcribing a new spell, they use their burning wand (heat it to engrave) to put the spell on a bunch of chips. Diviners study spells by opening up the case, thinking of the spell, grabbing chips, and throwing them on a surface. The right chips and their positions are always granted because of the nature of the "book" and its "pages".
With conjurers, they were absurdly expensive. Only one player wanted that path because it was the only specialist wizard that had "Wish" in its magical school... long-term thinking. Powdered gemstones were a part of every aspect and gold (or higher GPV metal) was integrated into its everything that's not pages. It's also the only spellbook that can get a save vs. Fireball (or Dragon Breath, magical fire/acid, etc) with failure damaging it while otherwise ignoring the spell. Oh, never tell anyone you are a conjurer. Your spellbook is worth a fortune as mere material loot. "The Ancients" were Crystonians, they had crystal technology, their super-high-magic existence was their technology and based upon crystals. Finding a Crystoninan magical item is pretty much finding an artifact with a generic era history... it has problems that come with its gifts. Conjurers crushed up gemstones to leech upon their legacy to do the more reality-altering powers their spells give. They dabbled in demonology among other things as well.
With Transmuters, most have only their first travelers' spellbook for forever while carrying cheap transcribable scrolls in the meantime. Every component needs a quest. There's a 10% chance you can buy a component for the book and 1% to get the whole book at a very high cost. Most of the time, you will be given a side quest. Component quests: A doppelganger's honesty, the voice of a fish, the eye of a basilisk, the tear of the unfeeling, gold that was once lead, the blood of the polymorphed (from the polymorphed form), a pound of lycanthrope fur, the horn of a gorgon, etc. If you succeed in the quest, you get not only that component for the book but you get GPV in gems for what they can use in their school (guild).
For white (and grey) necromancers, their spellbook is an especially protected set of scroll tubes with super-thin super-durable "parchment" with the best renaissance era quill, ink, and magnifying glass. Each component is virtually a component for a magic item. The magnifying glass is a special form of hardened crystal, not really glass. The quill is a special form of fountain pen. Writings are done extremely small. The school (guild) is always founded upon morally questionable methods (like our world's obsession with not messing with the dead all the way to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein) to give such wizards a bad name. Also, these are the guys who created the first Flesh Golems... golems, not undeads. They dabbled in demonology among other things as well.
Meh... 1000s of hours wasted. I should have just focused on a world. I love the Forgotten Realms. I always had. I was just too obsessed with my homebrew because I disagreed with some aspects.
Speaking of a magnifying glass, I highly recommend those as emergency fire starters in your survival kits. Also, I got a bit of a scare this evening as I found myself squinting to read the calorie count on a pack of pre-cooked, microwave pasta (who needs MRE's these days, everyone is eating rations!) then I realized I was trying to read in a dark room, four feet away from the light of an open microwave oven :) For a moment there, I was thinking "Oh shit, here we go.. reading glasses".
@@AJPickett Ah, you are a Gnome Technomancer. You are victim of the "oops" factor.
13:44 I can just picture a wizard academy panicking if a young wizard *somehow* came in with a spellbook that has a lich’s sigil
The ideas of sigils is really cool, and I'm surprised it isn't made more of in adventures or the the PHB or DMHB.
Yeah, now you mention it...
Each tome of magic, not just spellbooks, is customized by the user, it serves both as a journal and works in that specific domain of magic, to give a better understanding, look at the Celestial Wizards & Golden Order from WarHammer Fantasy, they keep many records of their research and studies in there respective fields of magic, while in the case of Celestial Wizards, they also keep wast maps of the stars, alteration changes and new spells, techniques etc. that are tested and verified are kept, by them to use by new Wizards and improve on them, etc.
Very few Master Wizards, Arch Mages, High Sorcerers, in DnD, ever attempt a memory tome, this is basically an imprint of a soul like the holocrons from Star Wars, that is because while an apprentice will have a spellbook to learn said spell and journal to keep tracks of his work, even after reaching a senior and master rank, even after learning all his spells, the process is not easy as the tome must be made from specific types of components, those who show sturdiness, like basilisk hide, that is waterproof, the pages must be made from either lamb, sheep or cattle hide, that has been alchemically treated and enchanted to prevent damages same as its covers, ink is another thing, usually, it volcanic iron mixed with the mages blood, some silver or other things and yes it also enchanted, finally there security measures, like wards placed on it, after all you cannot allow just any one to access it,
God I wish stuff like the Sigils were in the player's handbook its such a small thing and it may not work in every world, but man does it add a lot of flavors
Really appreciate your channel and your content. Definitely one of the best DnD channels on YT
Thanks SHAQ
Thank you I just gave out a spellbook (was loot) in the campaign I'm running but did not fully know how to implement it.
Got you covered :)
Between this and spell components, spellcasters really are quite an economic boon for any community. Of course you have to take the bad with the good, which may just be a new breed of ooze that slowly engulfs the town... 🙃
Helluva anti-piracy measure there. Divine wrath plus shaming.
Folding Spell books are great as well. They can be folded up to 3 inches across. I got the idea from the wizards handbook! 😁
3rd edition's "Magic of Faerun" has additional capabilities for spellbooks to protect them. See pages 172-174 for materials and permanent enchantment costs.
What seperates a spellbook from a regular book that hapens to have stuff about magic written in it?
...
Also, what seperates a regular stick from an archane wand or druid staff?
Do you remember the character Ergo the Magnificent from the movie Krull? His sodden collection of individual pages of spell notes he was always trying to look through to cast the right spell? That pretty much is the reason why you need to buy a damn good book for your spells. You remember when the 5th edition rule books came out, and the pages were prone to falling out? mmm hmmm!
Brilliant video AJ, also once again well timed for my current campaign thanks.
Heck, githzerai have puzzledisc spellbooks, just remembered that
That’s one of the things the game doesn’t capture from the books. The great mages in the chapter books were sorcerers who picked up a spellbook and went to wizarding school.
sees thumbnail, "Spell Boobs?"
oh! Books! Spell Books!
*notes reaction down on a bit of laboratory paper* Interesting...
@@AJPickett I'm sure I wasn't the only one...
I would not make Spellbooks so expensive. Too much of a penalty. However I would make scrolls tough to make given how much they can wildly expand a mage’s repertoire.
Strange. Hard to believe you're not at least at 100k subs. If ya like the vids, subscribe peeps.
thank you very much, very interesting and well presented
Back in the day (honestly can't remember if it was 100 or 2000 years ago) someone wanted to make an asbestos book that would last forever.
A book made of salamander fur sounds like a good idea for a fantasy setting... Just don't rip it up and snort it without a cleric present.
Salamander fur?
@@devinm.6149 Salamander fur is an old term for asbestos. For some reason salamanders were heavily associated with fire and some medieval scholars thought asbestos was their fur. History guy did a good vid on it ua-cam.com/video/-EJ-4koV7m0/v-deo.html
That vid and this one has inspired me to make a wizard apprentice who found a book that won't burn and goes on a quest to find what the pages are woven from.
Edit: Damned shame that mineral is so harmful. If it didn't cause horrible diseases it would easily be top ten best substances ever.
So, since the sigil is theirs until death, what happens with resurrection magic if someone "chose" their sigil between death and being brought back?
Good question. This is also why liches probably whinge at Mystra a fair bit.
I adore these videos. Any chance you'll do the Nagpa?
I have done a video on the Nagpa :)
@@AJPickett oh man! I searched AJ Pickett Nagpa a few days ago, and all I found were some cell phone videos of people mentioning muppets. What was the title?
maybe lore on spells. such as why the spell fireball is made and such, I have been always curious on spell creation
Now I have to wonder what the difference would be between a normal mage's spellbook and a Book of Shadows gifted to a warlock by their patron. Hmm....
Well, that ain't calf leather!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
Each page is made from the skin of a Night Hag and each page has something to say.
Many lower plane fiends have regeneration, so ..
My Necromancer Drow Tath’myr now own’s one of Halaster’s spell books in his Estate in Phlan in from his time in
Undermountian in AL🕷🕸💯
Undermountain rocks! Halaster,what a nut! 😂😂😂
Very interesting video
Thanks for the information
When you said "book binding," did you mean "book binding" as in crafting the book, or "binding," as in atunment, like to a magic-item?
Crafting the book
Thank you
This reminds me of a question i had with regards to more intelligent familiars. Aj do you think it would be possible to use more intelligent familiars as a backup spell focus? I was thinking just give them a few levels as a spell caster and give them one spell slot per level but the more i think on it the more concerned i become for balance. Would a tressym able to cast counterspell be too much? I dunno just food for thought. Keep up the great work 😄
Tressym are indeed highly intelligent, why if one wanted to, it could learn how to use a computer keyboard and answer all of a sage's video comments... and yes, it is, therefore, possible for a one to learn a spell, however, they are very limited if a Humanoid tries to teach them how to do this, they need the style of spell casting mastered by non-verbal, non-somatic spell casting creatures. Mostly a Tressym is particularly favored thanks to their beauty, grace, fine personality and ability to detect poison and warn their master. Anyway, you are certainly onto something there, it is heartwarming to see someone so attentive to the vital role a familiar can play.
@@AJPickett lol i just felt that in all my research on the subject that familiars felt a bit neglected with regards to mechanics. As for verbal and sematic spell types i hadnt thought of that so tha k you for reminding me. I appreciate all your hard work Aj
Makes me want to start a character that's the son of a prominent Giant Cobra farmer.
a simple dude with the baddest spellbook in the hamlet, everyone's like "how did you afford that book? you couldn't even afford a good pair of shoes!"
I wonder what would happen if someone drew a silly little doodle in the margin of a wizard's spellbook. (I'm assuming the "artist" and the wizard would be in the same adventuring party.)
Imagine drawing one's dagger and it is, instead, a spoon....
I learned new things today lol great video
Anyone know if you can cast spells from a spellbook like they were scrolls and lose the spell from the book in that way? Like use the spell as written in the book like it was a spell scroll that then is destroyed from the book. You know, in a desperate circumstance a wizard out of spell slots could still literally burn their spellbook if necessary.
No, spellbooks are collections of notes and information, lessons, observations, translations and such, they are much more complicated than a spell scroll.. spell scrolls are carefully made to both invoke a mystical effect and to protect the mind and body of whoever is casting the spell, otherwise they might have their mind burnt out in the process.
@@AJPickett Wow! thank you so much for your response! This was super helpful! And now I have to let my wizard know that his last 3 spell slots are all he's got against a beur hag and her minions in her lair. eep!
If you want to run a Grim/Dark campaign where you have to last ditch effort burn your spell book to cast a given spell.
Go ahead !
My last gaming group played and ran 3.5e and we used the DMG section on Creating Magic Trap to cover the making of wands, weapons, and any other spell item with a given effect. Just replace gp value with the spellcaster xp for cost payment.
We had wizards using tent fabric for spellscrolls and note book scrolls and writing ink made with charcoal. Rolled up and carried in a leather water proofed scroll case tube.
In one game the .. tent .. was enchanted to be water/ weather proof and fire resistance . Along with being written on inside and out.
Wizard, " You can't use my Spell Book as a Tent. !"
Other players, " Then you shouldn't have written all over Our tent as your spellbook !"
We also did a stone age game of npc class Adepts for run the mill clerics, druids, and sorcerers.
Since the sorcerer took Create Wondrous Item to create runes/ sigils to protect the cave entrance and for other useful spell effects instead of Scribe Scroll feat. Another player argue and stated if his PC learns enough of the sorcerer Arcane theories and spellcraft he could learn to become a wizard.
So the wizards spell book became cave walls and animal skins.
Magic items were not made from gold & silver but wood and stone imbue with Xp channeling the caster person energy into the item equal to gp cost.
Stone spear with spells of Mend, Make Whole, Elemental type " fire or Chill Touch," follow with stander magic weapon spell bonus from +1 to +3 to hit/ dmg.
Along with a gorge enchanted with protection from moisture/water and fire, which holds cantrips to create music and Sleep or cast Fear to deal with unruly children up pass their bed time.
My last shop DMs would run mini game campaigns in different time frames so it's the PCs are the ones to create the settings Legendary Items.
Are you going to expand on sigils of mages? Great video though.
I can do that.
Wizards today would have spell flash drives :)
Indeed.
Spell external hard drives, enchanted to run faster that would otherwise be safe/stable.
Gnomes have tiny hands
Ah! That makes sense.
What materials might aquatic creatures use for spellbooks?
Sharkskin, shell, I am not sure where I read it but I think there is an example of an aquatic race that uses strings of beads where the knots and their placement represent the words and motions for the spells.
Besides different leathers or scales from aquatic critters (ex: krakens like to replace body parts to avoid their breeding season), best I could come up with off the top of my head is nacre.
Nacre starts as a liquid, which can be poured into a pre-etched (coral, stone, et cetera) mold, until hardened into a pearl material. This makes pages out of pearl, that can survive corrosion by saltwater, and the erosion via ocean currents.
Another option is getting them tattooed on the character or etched into a water resistant metal, like "cheat sheet" bracers.
I would think the books of aquatic races would definitely be different and slightly more difficult to make than a regular handmade book.
There's magic though, so maybe I have no idea what I'm saying, it could be easy.
@@AJPickett interesting, thank you.
@@AJPickett The Sahuagin priestesses use beads & shells to "write".
I'm not entirely sure how some of thus would work in 5e; it's my understanding that a wizard needs to have written the spell themselves, using their own nomenclature, to be able to cast it, which leads me to wonder how a Master might fabricate a copy of an apprentices book as a gift? I know scrolls are special, but if you defeat an enemy caster, and steal his book, or nab your master's and flee into the night, you can't prepare those spells to cast, unless you first jot them down in your own hand, into your spellbook.
Personally, I like coming up with strange alternatives to books, lice etched crystals, and I think I remember Dark Sun even using complicated arrangements of braided knots, since books are unheard of on paper-poor Athas.
Elven druids who shepherd seasonal moss and lichen growths so that, on certain days, when the weather is just right, you can read magical knowledge in the patterns of green on the ground, growing on very old trees and draping river boulders in carpets of ancient lore.
Spell books and scrolls can be copied and then possibly used by wizards. Not sure about other mages.
*Relevant and Supportive Comment*
By the way, i didn't see anyone mentioning that you could cast (or acid etch/engrave) a spell book in precious metals (or even some semi-precious metals or alloys) if you wanted something that would last quite awhile.
(Of course, you probably wouldn't tote these kinds of books around.
These would probably be kept in a safe location that is well kept and not well known, even if you wanted to keep using levitation or the good ol' disk.)
Also, the main purpose of folding steel is removing various impurities and the re-distribution of remaining impurities throughout the forged object or the billet that is to be forged.
(It does look pretty good at times though, I will admit.)
@@LurkerDaBerzerker I have a great story about that.
I'll bet the lady wizard on the thumbnail used an enlarge spell! 😉
@@No-hf5xb 🤔
DAMN that lady has some THICC spellbooks to her shes definitely a ten! Lvl 10 wizard!
When I looked at the thumbnail I first read it "spellb00bs"... Not sure why... :D
*lifts enchanted spray bottle of holy water* BAD! *tsst tsst tsst*
Would not each school of the art have its own take on the grimoire? Also why would each of the eight schools of the art not have their own take on the other schools such as necromantic conjuration or enchantment or an evocative form of transmutation?
Wizards choose an arcane tradition at 2nd level, they probably do have their own quirks and techniques and requirements, but ... I would be simply making up lore rather than researching it if I were to talk about that, I think it is far more fun for each DM or Setting or Novel to come up with their own take on it, following their own inspiration. Also, that would be a video over an hour long :D
@@AJPickett Thanks for the answer and that is sort of my idea. I was thinking that say a necromancer conjured something what he would use and draw upon to do do would differ from say a standard conjurer though they were casting the same spell. Your videos are amazing.
@@SkullCowboy333 A victim forced to read a and memorize a series of spell book pages, then they are executed and ritually transformed into Undead Skull-Books that can only answer questions related to the contents of those pages.
Lots easier to make this info relevant in old school dnd than modern ones for sure
Didn't you do 1 on tattooed spellbook reference 3.5?
I don't think I have.
@@AJPickett with all the new tattoo spell items and there was a wonderful KS that had more magic tattoos, and even a whole class build with subclasses. Maybe a video about that kind of spell book would be interesting. Where i found the tattoo info in is, "Complete Arcane" 3.5, pg 186-187
Are cantrips written in spellbooks, I thought they were just memorized by rote?
They are most certainly written down.
AJ Pickett: I have seen debates back and forth.
When people say they cantrips are *no* included in spellbooks, I point out the “Pact of the Tome” feature for Warlocks. It provides access to a “Book of Shadows”, which is a magical grimoire.
I think the difference between cantrips and spells is that spells need to be memorized every day, and cantrips are learned by rote. There is no reason that a wizard can not learn a new cantrip from another spellbook and add it to their repertoire, though, once they are of sufficient level to do so! 😊
@@alanschaub147 Cantrips are included in the wizards first spell book, they are part of their very first training.
@@AJPickett If a wizard dosn't heve to memorise/prepair their cantrips, then is their really a need to write them into their traveling spellbooks? If they know them by heart anyways, why waste the page-space?
...
Also, If they are written down, could 2 wizards use their spellbook feature to share cantrips, as they could with regular spells?
...
If so, would they need to use a spell slot to use a cantrip that they gaind via the spellbook feature? (as oppose to the ones gained via leveling up in casting classes, the magic initiative feat, multiclassing casters, or features such as bardic-secrets or warlock tome-pact?
Could be that it has to be written down once to memorize it. Or could be an addendum from Azuth on Mishra's Ban or whatnot.
Memorized by rote = memorized by wrote?
Also, something about that *crystalline ink structure* seems important.
The best spellbook pages are made of wood soaked in wood...
rewatched
If a Sorcerer acquires a spell book, can they use the spells from the new spellbook?
Think of spells written in a spellbook as very complex mathematics, the higher the level, the more complicated the equations. Without knowing what the symbols, diagrams and the like mean, the book isn't very useful. A sorcerer has innate magical ability, but they aren't born knowing how to read and understand advanced quantum mechanics.
@@couldntthinkofacoolname9608 Great! Thanks for the clarification!
I would say no. Sorcerors learn magic through their understanding of how magic flows. This is why they can manipulate it so freely. They innately know how to because of the process they go through to learn any magic. They know that spell in a very intimate way. Wizards by comparison are working the magic in a very removed way. They can't feel it like a Sorceror can. Their minds may be predisposed towards the use of magic but they have no innate connection to it. They are working it like pulling a lever on a machine. It takes incredible experience to gain the understanding that Sorcerors have from the start. But wizards have and develop instructions that let them use a greater array of spells.
Who is the artist who made the painting you used as this video's thunbnail.
coolvibe.com/2012/portrait-rune-mage/
@@AJPickett Piggy backing on this, would you mind linking the images at 13:05 & 14:00 .
Also, have you ever considered just having a list of the links to the images in your videos in the doobly-doo?
@@Lurklen
Reverse image search them.
@@draxthemsklonst How? only way I can think of is screen shot them and then cut them out of that and do an image search, which is a pain. Is there another method? Also I don't think its a big ask for the fine fellow who makes the video to put up a list of links in the video description so the artists get credit, and we get sources.
@@Lurklen
Yes. That's all I can think of, any ideas? Maybe that coolvibe site?
Yes, it is inconvenient, sorry bud... if I knew I'd tell you.
I have a question in the question is this, how can you use electrum and your games and what's the point of it?
It's the $3 bill of D&D. The oddball.
@@draxthemsklonst Is it $ 3 billion for 1 electrum? And how can I use it in my games?
@@akrdragon1240
forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Currency
I’m four years late but I’m a geologist. Electrum occurs naturally. In that ore can often contain gold and silver. If you don’t separate the metal you get electrum. I would introduce it as being used by a primitive society that doesn’t have sophisticated metal working. A group that would just pull the ore out of the ground smelt the metal then make shined objects.
“The ecology of the spellbook”
About 97% sure you’re not using the word “ecology” correctly in that statement.
I talk about the birth/crafting, gestation/inscribing, behavior/uses, types/species, construction/anatomy and distribution/habitat of spell books... do I not? :)
AJ Pickett Hm....that is fair, but I just thought that the term ecology applied to living things exclusively.
Woah, so what if magic is alive? This made my day Dr. Bright.
*sees thumbnail*
Wow she has some
Big,
Amazing,
Delectable,
Spell books.
This is why we can't have nice things.
@@AJPickett
Yep.
Question: Where did you find info about personal sigils?
2nd edition AD&D mostly.
Well first of all no one in any D&D world ever ever ever ever ever would refer to it as a spell book in character in World in Universe just like in the real world they're called a Grimoire
Speaking from personal experience your first through 6th level spells will be upfront they will be as presented on the paper in your Grimoire
However everything above that is probably hidden behind one if not several layers of encryption and symbolism and specific ways of folding pages together to create new pages this makes it a little bit harder for your average idiot casting 9th level spell and this is probably for the best because there are people out there that have an Supernatural Affinity with magic and as such even unskilled and uneducated could accidentally start casting an 8th or 9th level spell mess it up severely hurt themselves a lot of people around them also duplicate your Spellbook make multiple backups and Scrolls if you don't have scribe scroll and you're a wizard or a sorcerer you're doing it wrong
And if you noticed certain symbols certain ways of combining specific letters from each page or however it's encrypted over the Millennia those are lost contact for any symbol is desperately needed when trying to convey a message I would say 90% of all spells ever made were probably only ever cast by a single person and after that casters death those spells simply cease to exist furthermore you would have a hard time trying to understand symbols from one side of the main continent to another because of cultural difference imagine that plus a thousand years your not likely to find the deeper hidden meanings in these works because of this
Remember the best ink comes from the most powerful creatures like a kraken or a flail snail or the blood of the innocent I mean it really depends on what you're trying to do
Let's just say if you were to take and make your spell book where each page in the book contains a full sheet a flesh from a sentient mortal race bind it in the hair from a unicorns mein with a pen made from a feather of a slain solar and all of this bound gold dragon wyrmling flesh written with the blood of Innocence
Congratulations you now earned yourself a one-way ticket to the lower planes and you can start studying true necromancy
@@linguisticallyoversight8685 Don't confuse the ink on spell scrolls, with the ink in a spell book.
I like to disguise my spellbook as a piece of furniture. 😉
I had an idea I thought you would enjoy, a troglodyte wizard who's spell book is a smell book, and the Spells recorded there in are done so through smears,smudges and smatterings of partially digested material components, along with various other troglodyte effluence. Imagine a group of adventurers taking down the troglodyte Wizard and trying to translate the Spells.... we're talkin nauseating people.
Druid writing were marks cut into the edges of a staff.
Now I want to play a wizard...
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Wizard idea: A youth craving adventure finds his great-great-great-granduncles traveling spellbook one day in his basement. He spends all his free time studying it until he eventually becomes a level 1 wizard, then sets out into the world to find the location of his great-great-great-granduncle's original research notes. The kicker, you have to randomly roll for every spell you have access to, because those are the spells that your great-great-great-granduncle had written in his traveling spellbook at the time.
I might actually have a lot of fun playing that or something akin to it.
@@sagesheahan6732 Uh, .. I think I know how this spell is meant to work .. ?
DM, " Oh, .. Great ! Now I can pull out my Chaos Magic random effect chart some more !"
OMG .. it's .. Willow .. trying to figure out how that Wand works again.
Also what were the election be the equivalent in real world?
electrum is a metal it's naturally occurring it's an alloy of gold silver copper with some Platinum metal group impurities it was first used in the first coins before using gold
It can sometimes have a slightly greenish color to it so you know it's called green gold if you took the copper out you'd have white gold
We r all deeply offended
Oh go book yourself.
A wizard should always make his own spellbook....never buy one as you can never be sure of the quality of the product you purchase...."buyer beware! Lol
Candlekeep stands by its reputation (and its price).
@@AJPickett I'll need to window shop there! ☺
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im not sure when the video starts .
there is not stop after the selfadvertisement...
It's called an intro, for people who are new to the channel :)
@@AJPickett people seriously need to quit bitching about it. Also please do yeenoghu.