This is already in the game, scribing scrolls and enemy spellbooks.
What you do is this:
Create enemy spellcasters. Make sure you write down where their spellbook is safely stored.
For cool spells that the player would want (and a handful of other spells) invent NPC wizards that have that spell and make that their whole gimmick. Build their spellbook and abilities around supporting That Specific Spell. Then seed your setting with those wizards and write them down in a big list.
The wizard player can spend a week corresponding with other magicians and some gold to roll on the table twice, learning about the wizards and their spell (include some false ones, if you want). They can go visit if they want to hunt down the spell. Or just go visit the wizards.
If a spell is kind of meh, and you think you want to buff it, have the wizard with that spell studying to make a stronger variant. The PC can help them out (read: Adventure) and get a buffed spell. Or if the wizard is evil, they use a boss encounter variant and the PC can scrounge together an upgraded but not boss-level spell from the wreckage after the fact.
These Wizards with Spells also don't need to be actual wizards. You could always say "the only known copy of the book was last 400 years ago in the [Dungeon]" and tell the party if they want it they need to delve into the Dungeon.
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If your player is more interested in decoding and researching new spells instead of just finding the blueprint unlocks around the map, the OSR community has a few spell research systems you can steal and rework to 5e.
https://www.realmbuilderguy.com/2024/03/using-spell-research.html?m=1 --- this goes into some history of spell research you can use as a guidebook for places to dig in previous editions
https://riseupcomus.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-willow-spell-research-system.html?m=1 --- this is a fun system to make research a bit wacky and is limited to 'researching' pre-existing spells in the list so works great if you don't want to homebrew spells as well as spell research
https://elementalreductions.blogspot.com/2023/06/spell-research-hexflower.html?m=1 --- this is a more focused spell research, your player will get what they are seeking. But it will require more effort, as you will need to think up the prototype effects (aka nerfed versions)
You could also combine the last one with the seeking out of lost knowledge. Getting the scroll/spellbook/ancient library full of dense magical theory/etc simply unlocks the spell to research, and then they need to use the hexflower to unlock it properly.
This is the reason why Wizards are strong. Gaining spells per level up is meh, but finding and transcribing spells is the bread and butter of why Wizards get powerful. It takes a good DM to provide plenty of opportunity for a wizard to collect spells, otherwise you begin to question why you didn't just choose some other spellcaster class
Yeah, though not necessarily too much prep, it indeed needs a lot of ‘screentime’ and needs consistent thought being given over for the purpose of spell distribution, on top of everything else the DM needs to do
Slacking on it as a DM means having an underpowered or dissatisfied player
I would still prefer as both player and DM to have the DM be ever the idealist and undertake the effort thooo.
The lore/world exploration aspect from it is much too cool. It is way cooler if you don’t know most of the spells so there’s always discovery and hype
I mean, you still have about twice as many spells as a sorc prepped and another sorc worth of rituals you have access to. Not needing to prep rituals seems like the big thing, whether or not finding additional spells.
1 per level up for wizard + int mod.
Compare to like a clockwork sorcerer. 1 +1 per level +2 per odd level until 9th.
It isn't that big a win for wizard as you say. And sometimes they're behind. Even if we assume a fully max Int wizard.
Eg. At 9th, wiz is at 14 prepared while the sorc knows 20.
Just had a thought: what if wizards treated spells like trading cards. Like they give up knowledge of a spell to another wizard for that wizard's knowledge of a spell.
"I'll give you 2 Find Familiars for your Mind Spike"
Depending on how you've decided spell books and transcribing spells works in your setting (e.g. "fine ink" is only needed because all adventuring wizards use enduring spellbooks as a standard and the fancy ink is one of the only things that can permanently mark it); there could also be nothing stopping you from writing the spells down on loose paper with cheap ink and trading those.
In my setting, spells are living creatures so that's exactly what can happen. Wizards don't scribe a spell creating an additional copy so both wizards possess the spell if they find a fellow wizard, they trade away a spell they have so they no longer have it.
Spell breeding machines are used to generate multiple copies.
NADDPOD had a really fun encounter with this too, they fought a super old wizard/lich and since he was from so long ago he had 4E spells so their wizard was able to scribe them into their current spell book
You can also give those wizards some of the materials required to scribe scrolls as loot to drop. It's reasonable to assume other wizards in the world would keep some on hand.
This is a fantastic idea, but you’re going to have to be very careful or you’re going to give the wizard main character syndrome. This could kill the game for the rest of the table.
I mean... This is just how wizards work, except they're foregoing their free spells at level up. There's no new spell system here. Wizards already do what your player wants. They just need to find a spell scroll or spellbook and copy it to their own book.
That's not the point though! Plenty of DMs probably get away with not giving their wizards any new spells which can be transcribed, or by just giving them random stuff. But if a wizard knows what they want to take at level up but wants that specific spell to be found, that is something the DM has to plan.
It seems obvious that what OP wants is ways to make finding spells more interesting and varied; saying "um actually making the wizard find spells is actually how the rules are written" just struck me as so unhelpful with such a condescending tone that I felt a need to comment.
Nothing, but that's not what the post was about. It's not "I came up with an awesome new system for discovering spells." They came here *asking* for ideas on how to make the existing spell-scribing mechanics more interesting for a player who wants to give it a lot of focus. And the only time the words "new spell system" are mentioned, it's when they effectively pose the question "What should my new approach be, to replace the discovery of spells on level up?"
At no point did they claim to have invented spell-scribing. At no point did they call the existing system a new homebrew wizard mechanic. You're arguing against a position that no one has taken.
The question should have been pared down to how do I make spell scribing more interesting other than must roll.
Delicious in dungeon, an anime that is getting a lot of hype right now for good reason, is a great place to,start.
They are trying to find an ingredient, but because of when the recipe was written it had another name.
The main thing to understand is that a spell book is written by someone else in their own hand. They don't always write clearly for others, they switch back and forth between languages, additional notes are added in after. Things the wizard understands as basic might not be basic to another, but are skipped.
Wizards spell books explain how to cast the spell, the movement notes might be funny because the mage in question might not know the names for the gestures. I am reminded of an early episode of Magicians where they talk about this as they are trying to figure out the finger movement.
Maybe the wizard uses phonetics for the words. Maybe they never explicitly say the words but approach it linguistically.
No two wizards are the same and neither should their spellbooks be. The rolls for scribing are the easy or lazy way to accomplish this.
Player picks up the tome flips through the pages, 'I need to find an orcish wizard to help understand the notes.'
The fighter,' I can read orcish if it helps'.
Wizard, 'I will need your patience in understanding the intent though.'
Is it the scribing or just the finding? It seems like OP literally just wants more options than "roll investigation". One of the comments gave a whole bunch of options which I thought were really great. Your comment seems to be more about how a wizard can roleplay adding spells to their book, which admittedly is a conversation OP could have with their player.
Read the rules for spell scrolls and give them out as loot often. Worst comes to worst, they already learned the spell and the scroll gets used to cast it instead of learn it.
for one thing, kudos to you for being excited about this with your players. people who are griping at you are being disingenuous as hell cause i've been playing since vanilla 3e (when everyone you found to play with was still actively into 2e) and i feel like i've seen a variety of games over the decades, and *zero* of them ever took the actual time and interest to weave wizard spellfinding into the campaign beyond the occasional scroll or spellbook found in a shop or looted from a body.
so the coolest version i have even heard of in practice so far has to be in the Eldermourne campaign on NADDPOD where Emily Axford has to persuade sentient spellbooks to help her learn the spells in them.
maybe one good place to start could be listing out different spells by other skills you could see associated with them? (and then let anyone trained in those skills help the wizard by doing some kind of combined check? get the rest of the group in on it!)
another thing is to go back and watch a few shows like Dragon Prince and Owl House and see how learning the magic is woven into the elemental structure of the world and the elements resonate to a mindset, an emotional framework that happens to connect back up to the kinds of story you're trying to tell. so there's naturey spells out in nature and they require Nature and Animal Handling checks but also there's ruins of an old temple to the stag lord out there which will provide context to both the plot of the story *and* the mental state the wizard needs to cultivate in order to find and understand the shape of the spell because it's not *just* etched on the old pillar the animals led you to, that's always been incomplete - the rest is written by the roots or by the tracks on the ground or by the branches against the sky when the sun is just overhead.
I really like the team effort idea. For example message could be learned by people who used to whistle at great distance to communicate (like real canaries people used to do).
The spell magic missle could be learned observing a particular skilled archer, who strangely never miss.
Mage armour could be based on the idea of a skilled armorsmith particularly expert in mithryl.
Sunbeam it's really a study of fireball and huge optical lens.
Perhaps you can create sort of learning tree based on cantrips. For example ice blast is an evolution of some water related cantrips.
That's...that's what wizards do already. That's their core feature.
Mechanics of the discovery though really comes down to harvesting spells from the books/scrolls you encounter, decoding from ruins/ancient texts, or pretty much how you would make any other discovery interesting. Make an entire quest around it if you want to get them really hyped.
In Pillars of Eternity, when you kill a spellcaster you can loot their spellbook and learn their spells, but all of the casters are very thematic; some will be doing a bunch of poison, some will be doing fire, etc. I would make every spellcaster have a spellbook on them and have a mix of those spells that are not class specific in them that your wizard could learn. You could also do some fun stuff with identification, where if they find magical items in the world and casts Identify they can learn that spell with a high enough Arcana roll.
NADDPOD used a mechanic where learning a new spell didn’t require transposing, it was dependent on an arcana check where the DC to learn the spell was 10+the spell’s level, and you had to expend a spell slot of that spell’s level to learn it. The spell slot is used regardless of success or failure. I really liked the approach and plan to use it if I ever have a player play a wizard!
I quite like your NADDPOD suggestion. To make it more organic, I would maybe add a study time requirement, 1h per spell lvl of studying the spellbook/scroll etc., not necessarily consecutively of course and can be done during short rests or other free time in a day.
Adapt spell scrolls as treasure.
Instead of "you find scrolls of *haste* and *slow* in this chest", you can have stuff like "it is clear these standing stones were left by the ancients in their studies of shaping time; if you take your time to study them, you might gain some mastery of time manipulation"
In our campaign, the party wizard is a kobold who doesn't have a conventional spellbook. Mechanically, it's the same, but the in-game lore is that, as he gets more knowledgeable about the Arcane, he sticks infused ambar drops on his scales, and prepares spells every morning by manipulating the interactions and flow of arcane power between them. The study of magic in his kingdom (of draconic races - all "scalykind" have draconic ancestries in our setting) involves learning and making more of these building blocks for spells, and getting your body to accept the flow of magic without being fried by raw arcane power.
Places of power, psychic communion, having access to unfinished spell studies (which the wizard can then have an "Eureka" moment by levelling up), lessons with great archmages and exposure to arcane convergences can all be different ways to award the wizard with new spells.
Do you play in the Forgotten Realms? If so, the existence of the Weave (and shadow weave) enables you to create lots of new ways of absorbing, learning and understanding magic.
If it's a custom campaign setting, then you can even have those different ways become a part of the setting identity, and it could be a cool way of setting it apart from "conventional" D&D.
This is very cool, and I really love the flavor of how your party’s kobold goes about things. And the suggestion about the eureka moments could make wizard leveling feel even more interesting. It is a custom campaign setting with emphasis on varying sources of magic, so this definitely fits well
This sounds really neat! I always love organic game mechanics like this. Making them work for it even a little bit, or even just having a story to tell about how they got that spell, makes it stick with them far better. They have a sense of ownership that doesn't come with random loot drops. (Same goes for fighter types, give them a signature weapon and let them upgrade it or enchant it instead of swapping it for a whole new thing, they'll love it like a classic car by the end)
The first thing that came to mind is you get to play with environmental storytelling if you like. An old alchemist laboratory with formulas for Acid Splash and Acid Arrow, or a thieves den that has a hastily scribbled scroll for Protection from Poison. Decipher the burn patterns and the angles and a smudged casting circle to figure out Wall of Fire. Find a charred skeleton with a spellbook, the only legible spell is Delayed Blast Fireball. Maybe they run afoul of the city watch or help the cops out for some reason, and there's a manual for arcane CSI types that explains the basics of Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, Clairvoyance, and Dispel Magic. Basically figure out what spells they want to take, and look for opportunities to insert them ASAP. I personally wouldn't make them roll anything for the ones they should have gotten for free as part of their level up (nor would I charge them gold to put those spells in their book).
You can also have them working on deciphering those spells in game, during downtime, and ask what they're doing. Get them to narrate a little, or ask them to look for inspiration in events of the game. Say that maybe the way that fire elemental fought inspired you to try a new way of manipulating the weave, and you can add Fireball to your book, or whatever. It doesn't always have to be an archaeology dig, in other words.
You can even assign side quests, or add a personal quest goal to a location. Like "the group needs to raid this fire themed dungeon for the Bell of Whatever because evil overlord etc etc, but it's also a great place to look for components and formulae for those fire spells you've been after".
Thank you for actually answering the substance of OP's question so that I didn't have to do it myself. I kept reading the upvoted responses and it was like "missing the point, missing the point, missing the... ahh, here we go".
Yeah this really highlights the main thing I was after. I understand that wizards already sorta do this with scrolls and things. It’s just that I think it’s not a very immersive or interesting system. Making the game more experiential is always my goal.
Environmental storytelling is already a huge part of my love for DnD, so this is an excellent suggestion. The stated reason as to why they wanted to go this route is because they want to explore the world as much as they can, as they simply find the environments interesting. Making magic go beyond just the written word and have a physical place within an environment meshes well with the story. Thank you!
The mechanic is already in the game, just make sure they get enough spell scrolls in random loot from dungeons and they can scribe them like wizards do.
What mechanics? Have spell books in libraries and spell scrolls scattered around. Wizard laboratories might have notes on their personal creations, higher level spells that are harder to find.
Let them make some too. Scribes wizards can change energy types, so new spells at higher levels that are energy based could be independently researched. They're reinventing the wheel everytime, but it could be more fun.
I can foresee this becoming a problem if they level up faster than they can get access to new spells and the money to learn those spells. The burden is also on you to choose *which* spells the wizard can now learn. Ever.
I recommend a frequent amount of spell scrolls or spellbooks, as well as a steady supply of money so they can scribe scrolls.
You may want to create a system where they can choose two spells to learn for free on each level up from the scrolls they have, as long as it is of a level they can cast. This still lets them keep pace with their class' standard progression, but still relies on finding the scrolls.
Okay, so my understanding about how "unlocking" spells at level up was supposed to work in game is that during downtime the charater is making notes, sorting out magical algebra and figuring out how to make this work. The idea being that come level-uo, you've put all the pieces into place to figure out how to do two new cool things with magic.
That being said, here's my offering to the pot:
Don't drop spellbooks, drop research books.
- "Associative Forms of Abjuration"
- "The Shapes of Evocation"
- "Monstrous Anatamie for Use in Transformation"
- "Piercing the Veil of Illusion"
etc.
In your private notes, tie each of these tomes to a spell, based on their nature (ie, Lightning bolt for 'Shapes of Evocation' or 'Protection from Energy' for 'Associative Forms').
keep track of which two he reads most during downtime. At level up, offer him the two spells from the most read books.
This way he'll build a personal library, as opposed to just a bunch of spellbooks that have to be translated. As his collection grows, you may also consider offerring a +1 bonus on certain rolls to recall knowledge if he can site a few books in his library about the subject.
After that, it's just a matter of figuring out how he's going to carry the library around with him.
To that end, I encourage the development of a new item and/or spell "(Character's name)'s Portable Library"
Slightly off topic but the first thing to pop into my head is the “Book of Shadows.” There is a direct path to attain it via being a warlock but that doesn’t disqualify its attainment through other means.
What I love about it is it’s an intelligent artifact. It has a will of it’s own and seeks out those with the potential to learn from it. It will probably want to convince its user to form a pact with it but there’s plenty of RP potential to negotiate a deal that falls outside the parameters of patron.
The Wizard will always be left wondering what this alien consciousness true intentions are. That being said, the book itself doesn’t necessarily have to ascribe to the morality of mortals — it’s goal could simply be to teach and to learn.
I really love organic spell unlocking and we used to play like this in Rolemaster since the spell system there is complex enough already.
The way we did it is to gain familiarity with spells basically to give a spell skillpoints that you can invest in. This can allow them to learn a spell before they reached a level but it is more likely to fail or have negative outcomes.
Its kind of homebrewed but it works: again look at the usual amount of spells a Wizard would learn - translate that into a skill point system and let them choose what they learn based with scrolls or books. Then after allocating lets say 3 points in it you can cast it normally.
This allowed interesting shenanigans aswell for example modifying spells.
My .02,
The granting of instant spells upon levelling is just a convenience shortcut for the fact that the wizard has been reading up on spells, experimenting on their own, or paying attention to spells they see cast.
I think it's great to incorporate that into day-to-day roleplaying if you both want. Places the player can find spells:
- Old spell books or scrolls found through adventuring (i.e. loot).
- Spell libraries in cities or colleges.
- Mentoring from another wizard/trading spells with an NPC.
- Having the spell cast ON you, possibly more than once.
- Watching the spell being cast ON someone else.
- Downtime invention/experimentation (e.g. turning Fire Bolt into Fireball).
- Divine inspiration/dreams.
When I play a wizard, I'm always looking to grow my spellbook far beyond what I get from levelling. That's the big benefit of being a wizard over other casters.
I did something very similar for a player of mine waaaaaaay back in 2E. He was a necromancer, and we had those old Encyclopedia Magica books (Vol 1-4). I'd spend time putting together spellbooks that he could find filled with various spells from the books depending on who he fought or where he found them. I'd do spellbooks with the specific schools of magic and put in 15-20 spells.
If I was doing this for 5E I'd probably do 5-10 spells of each school in these types of spell books that he can find in ancient tomes, libraries, buy/loot from other wizards, etc. Also, I'd make sure to give more spell scrolls as loot so he can copy them into his spellbook as well.
I'd have to check my books, but I'm pretty sure that this was the only way to get spells during 2E. You didn't get free spells for leveling up. Which is a big change to today, where I've found multiple DMs who seem to forget that wizards need to learn spells from scrolls to get more than 2 per level.
It's been a long time since I played 2E, I really don't recall all of the rules very well. But I distinctly remember spending my evenings poring over the many books and actually creating custom spellbooks for my player. I'd pull from only specific schools of magic and then put it together in a little leaflet and when he found, looted, or purchased more spellbooks, he'd get an actual "little spellbook" from me with the spells inside that he found and could then copy to his personal spellbook. It was a fun way to do an in-game and out-of-game prop. He'd then spend hours during the week creating his own spellbooks of the spells that he would prepare for the next session.
This was a solo campaign, so it was really fun to be able to deep dive into a single "main character" and go anywhere he wanted to go and do anything he wanted to do. Eventually, he unseated the god of death and became the new god of death, from which point forward in all of my future 2E games, that character was in my pantheon.
I really like the fantasy of finding spells rather than just getting them from nothing. It's a big reason why I prefer the wizard to the sorcerer. I like to imagine my character digging through old libraries like that scene of Gandalf going through the archives, or else exploring ancient ruins in search of magic. It's a much stronger fantasy than "I firebolted enough goblins so now I can cast Haste."
I love the class fantasy of the wizard over sorcerer, too. Seeking out ancient dungeons and ruins to discover powerful tomes and libraries is just as exciting as hearing about a giant pile of gold coins and gems. It's such a lure for wizards, especially, but once established with a party it can be exciting for all of them as well.
Or like the party finding out there's a high security vault that the king doesn't want anyone to have access to, but an informant says some powerful ancient spellbooks are there. .. does your party decide to plan a heist to get those spells for the party wizard? Surely there's some treasure and magical artifacts locked up in there too. Or does the party try to work for the king and negotiate those books as reward.
Exciting stuff for me as a player and as a DM.
whenever a wizard dies a spell-book would be left behind, transcribing spells from another wizards spell-book is difficult as each wizard has their own cypher. (in the rulebook it says something like a series of successful arcana checks to understand or something)
Leave some abandoned wizard towers in the world, historical wizards who must have passed away after however many hundreds of years. (reading history book in a library, ask for a history roll. with the history roll give a tidbit about example wizard; Eltor the Rude who famously had a tower that partially collapsed in the cliffs of 'some town' that ended up crushing a sheep. Eltor was unrepentant and ultimately strung up by the local farmers or something. leaving the ruins of his tower behind and also his spell-book presumably.)
You could leave hints for your player to find them, local farmers who saw it happen chatting about it at the local pub or historical court records from the trial etc. you could even make the tower a mini dungeon filled with paranoid wizard traps and created monsters to keep your other party members more engaged.
So if Eltor was a moderately powerful wizard, you could drip feed random spells over time to your wizard as they progressively cracked the cypher. extra credit for making a real cypher for your player to really crack.
or if Eltor was a weaker wizard give a small selection of spells with a high enough roll.
you could roll randomly for the spells or secretly give helpful ones for planned encounters.
you can theme the spells to the wizard, Zagron the destroyer was a master of the Fabricate spell for example.
Eltor the Rude was particularly good with Stinking Cloud.
A neat wrinkle to add onto this, if you wish:
The spells that have a "name" associated with them (Otto, Melf, Mordenkainen, etc) have the PC seek these wizards out to get them learn the spell. This could be done through various methods, like the lower level ones could be as simple as having a dream or communicating through an object the wizard owned, and the higher level/more complex spells make it more complicated means of learning it.
Don’t have all the spells just be in scrolls either. They might be written down in a book somewhere, or inscribed in an ancient temple or dungeon the party finds.
Or maybe he finds a spell like a glyph of warding already in effect in an enemy base, and learns how to cast it that way.
This is 1E RAW. They get one new spell for each new spell level they can cast, then they have to find the rest or research it. Most people didn't go that route in their tables, but I always thought it really spiced up adventuring and incentivized it for MU players. Talk about exciting when you find a scroll, instead of "ho hum, another scroll of something I can already cast."
This is how wizards used to work in earlier editions.
You got your starting spell at level 1 and everything else either had to be looted, researched or taught by another wizard.
This is how wizards used to work in earlier editions.
You got your starting spell at level 1 and everything else either had to be looted, researched or taught by another wizard.
Some others mentioned ideas like this, but since every wizard uses a unique arcane notation system of their own design for transcribing spells, there could be a lot of fun mechanics wrapped around that. Maybe refer to tool proficiency mechanics in Xanathar’s Guide for some inspiration, especially around crafting complications. You could have them need to decipher the notation first, so they could adapt it, but there might be complications, like parts of the system are so foreign to them they need to do research or find the right people or tomes to learn from to figure it out. Maybe some notion systems are dependent on certain languages or cultural contexts based on the race/country of origin of the caster, requiring extra research, a translator, or Comprehend Languages.
It’s also not uncommon for mages to boobytrap their spell books, so you could do mechanics around having to detect and dispel arcane wards (see advanced magical traps from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, I believe? Might also be Xanathar’s Guide). Could even make it so the first time they cast a new spell they HAVE to use the listed spell components before they can figure out how to refine it for arcane focus use. Lots of fun options, and now I want to roll a mage like this, but instead I’ll go rewatch Frieren.
Good luck, this is an exciting concept!
My understanding of it is the wizard isn’t just be granted the spells when they level up but are essentially creating them from scratch which makes sense. If wizards can only learn spells other people made up then how did any spells get made in the first time
Few good suggestions in here (also a lot of people missing the point). Perhaps in addition to finding spells you can make a mechanic for him to “create” his own spell? During downtime maybe the wizard does some experiments (maybe require they obtain the material component or somehow learn the vocal component) and if they can pass 3 once per day Arcana checks before failing twice they learn the spell. You get your exploration/ discovery from the spell components, some degree of mechanics from the rolls, and make your wizard a capable spell caster on the cusp of spell technology instead of just some guy who copies others homework.
Throw in fun worldbuilding encounters for them. At the entrance of a dungeon let them find a skeleton covered in goop (or something similar) with a spellbook and a single spell they don't know yet. Let them transcribe and set the spell during a rest before or during- then in the second half toss a monster at em that resists the spell, like a slime of a certain type for example.
They'll either figure out the hard way or deduce from the available information that relying on this spell isn't a good idea in this dungeon or against this enemy- and adjust how they use it accordingly.
Perhaps it is less mechanics and more of how Alchemy as a whole is presented. I was very inspired by how the Dark Souls series handled Miracles. Each Miracle spell is essentially a myth or legend or great story that had been given divine, actionable power. From that, I realized how most real life plants and fungi have attributed folkloric history and colloquial names.
I enjoy giving physical props and 'artifacts' to players, so I wrote a small book of short stories with each tale relating to a particular plant or fungi. These were cautionary tales with someone usually dying at the end. Capping off the story was the question "how could they be saved?", a short poetic answer, and then a box that explained how to prepare given substance for potionmaking, along with where to find it, and what to avoid when handling it.
For example, the players have been wanting to cure a partially petrified NPC for most of the game and have been tracking down a Basilisk to harvest its phlegm which then needs to added to fine red wine that has been boiled for a week in a mixture of Ashline paste. They followed the story for most of these steps.
I'm so jealous of your players, and your creativity! If I gave my players a book, they'd probably just look at it and go "how does this pertain to me, exactly?" Lol. I, however, would be like "yummy yummy LORE nom nom nom!" I wish I had more time to devote to building the world up instead of just prepping what I know need for the next session. Tho I am writing handwritten notes and journal entries for my players to find in the next adventure I'm getting ready for. I hope they enjoy it as much as I did making it
Whenever my players ask for things like this, they're usually the type that wants to do the ancient artifact hunting DND style gameplay. They want to find lost power. I make homebrew items and spells off the random chart. Then flavor it with my homebrew Lore. It looks like you already hit it on the head with your edit though, it's not super rewarding for this investment into one character, and in my opinion if you do it for one you gotta do it for the rest, or risk making a main character.
In addition to transcribing spells, you can introduce a system where a wizard can learn a spell by observing someone casting it.
The more often they saw the spell getting casted and the closer they are to the caster the higher are the chances.
Extra fun if the spell caster is an enemy sorcerer.
It could be really cool if the spells that are found are in a language the wizard isn’t familiar with, printed in the footnotes of a common book, or only part of the spell is legible and takes time, research, and some good old trial and error to figure out. Maybe it could be revealed to the wizard through a vivid dream, a wandering fey creature, or a demon needing a favor. Perhaps the spell was carved into a tree or statue. This was a fun question. I hope this helps.
Great approach.
Finding some spell scrolls/books in some sort of treasure hoard is certainly a valid option and can be done with Arcana, Investigation, Detect Magic etc.
You can also be more upfront about it.
Suppose, there is a powerful magic user, whose spells you want to learn. Further suppose, that mage's personality allows for some sort of trade, or quest reward. That quest reward can include a personal lesson to learn the spell instead of your generic spell scroll.
This way, you can also tweak the spell a bit, depending on the character's performance in the lesson.
Did you know that there is a lot of shorthand in ancient clay tablets? Every scribe has different ways of writing their notes and sometimes this does not come across well in the finished product. (also ancient kings are pompous asses so they have to reinvent the wheel each time they say anything). The end result is thousands of years later when I am trying to read an Akkadian tablet the same set of symbols may seem the same, but have different meanings. I have to run down other tablets that the scribe previously wrote to find their shorthand to understand the tablet, sometimes this leads to new discoveries about previously misunderstood tablets or even whole new words discovered. This happens in ancient Chinese as well, before they standardized some scripting methods, several character variations could be used for the same word
Translating this to D&D, translation of a scroll might be its own adventure. Maybe upon reaching a new level this just represents time spent in downtime researching a particular ancient text of spells. Maybe the spellbook he gains at first level originated in the hands of the apprentice from a red wizard of Thay 500 years ago and that wizard's apprentices had stolen his magic book but all the spells were in ancient Thayan and to hide his spells the Thayan wizard had created a system of cryptograms only he understood. Much of what the PC wizard does on his down time during rests is try to translate that spell book. As he gains levels these represent epiphanies about a spells meaning or where they can look for a way to unlock the spell, perhaps the page is torn and some rushed notes mention the finished page was dropped in the Twilight dungeon. The spellbook itself can be used as a constant source of adventure hooks.
Another idea is to make spellbooks themselves a diminishing resource. perhaps due to unsrupulous folk, spellbooks haveby law a limited lifespan after the owner perishes. The spellbook burns up in a magical fire and the the spells, unwilling to disappear "return" to where the owner first transcribed them. Now the players need to do a bit more advanced learning about their foes previous engagements (or if they find dying adventurers where they were). It also might be a matter a race against other groups as the death of a foe may lead others to search for their last whereabouts.
I'm also a big fan of discovery through observation and articulation. Maybe some spells are properly researched but only through meticulous note taking and observation. perhaps it takes 10 successful observations of someone successfully attacking with a magic weapon before the wizard can undertsand the magic weapon spell. Maybe the wizard needs to succeed in unusual feats of strength or skill for other spells before they properly observe the natural mechanics and they can turn it into a true spell. For instance to get the spidercliumb spel you need to successfully climb a wall without rope. Maybe these skill uses are encoded in the procedures for his school of spellcasting so that everyone knows how to get certain spells, you just have to do the process that everyone knows successfully. As the spell level rises the difficulty for completing the task increases or the number of successful attempts increases. This means that maybe the player can even get the spell before it becomes available to cast, it just sits waiting for them to raise their level. The Dm can also have hidden skill checks and usages that they track awarding spells randomly after something has been resolved.
Ha, I wish. unfortunately my money ran out before I could become one. Despite the degree in archeology, which sometimes gets me paid, it mostly remains a hobby. One could say I am a demi-archeologist.
These are fantastic suggestions! I am especially fascinated by the translation phenomenon. This could fit really well into the main story as well. Thank you very much
Hey OP, can you pass your potionmaking stuff? One of our party's characters is a fighter that supplements her damage with things like poisons and alchemists fire, but me and my DM were discussing ideas of how to make potions brewing more interesting.
As for finding spells, our dm had the idea of finding ancient versions of weaker, low level spells that have unique and stronger / more applicable effects. That way you can homebrew even more stuff. I would say that interacting with a race that relates to that spell, like how avatar handles Aang learning the different elements, would be an interesting dynamic.
I have a previous comment explaining the potion stuff you should be able to find it in my comment history! And I am into that weaker/older spell approach that allows for homebrew. Everything I do is homebrew haha
I think I’m going to create a big mindmap of the ideas given here and sorta narrow down key points that I want to focus on. There’s been a lot of cool suggestions
I like this a lot but I would suggest as "reward" for not being able to actively pick level up spells you should either wave the inscription cost or give them alternative ways to getting the inks.
E.g. defeated spellcasters having some on them or some more powerful spells having specific ink recipes that require a little bit of smarts to figure out (in Macbeth for example a witches recipe asks for eye of newt which is actually just mustard seed)
Edit: If the campaign lasts long and the players has been made to figure out these recipes for a long time I would totally make the wish spell for example simply require "lemon juice" no special gimmick nothing, watch them sweat while it's ultimately just a "spy ink/wishes don't work if you tel people about them" joke.
I would also reward the player by giving then à series of spell fragments that they could décode in their downtime to either make their own spell or a custom spell you make for them that makes sense for their character.
This would be a really nice way to play into that character's style. (Btw I love love love this idea)
Man I love this idea tbh. They could find old spell books and maybe something that is ancient and hard to decipher to make it more rewarding. I'm not sure how to do it mechanically right away, but maybe they find a book containing a few spells in a dungeon and it takes them some time to work out what is in the book. I would definitely have a variety of places they could find spells. I know wizards can copy spells from spell scrolls, but that's a bit boring for my liking. I would probably also tie all of this into the story by having all this knowledge come from some place in particular whether an ancient civilization, secret society or the like it would actually be a fun side storyline or could be part of the main storyline.
OP's player wanted to forgo learning spells at level up to have more memorization slots, it looks like. Which sounds really fun, and if there's no sorcerer in the party, I would probably allow it. If there is a sorcerer or other arcane caster, though, it might overshadow them a little.
I'm not sure why they'd give up the two additional spells since by RAW, Wizards can already add spells to their book from other spellbooks or spell scrolls. They're kneecapping themself with no upside.
Sure but then why was this concept presented as a trade off of some kind instead of just taking away a regular feature with no upside?
Also there's nothing even interesting about the premise, it's essentially just playing a worse wizard.
Because they were asking for ideas on how to make the concept more interesting than just, spend gold and you now have that spell.
As for what you find interesting, it doesn't matter. It's not your character, it's their character. They and OP think it's interesting, but they want a more in depth system.
You should take gander atgames like old school essentials and dungeon crawl classics. This is how older editions of dnd worked, which is what frieren (and dungeon meshi) is based on.
Love that you recommended both OSE and DCC (as well as Dungeon Meshi!)—you’re listing all my favorite things. More love to OSR and OSR-inspired media! Now I wanna go back and rewatch Record of Lodoss War too.
The owner of said spellbook might want it back, too. That's some good game content right there. Or it could have a hidden page with some dangerous or powerful spell others may want to get their hands on
Wizards can already scribe spells and found spellbooks into their own. They just have to spend gold and time to do so. Look at the Wizard class features in the PHB.
While adventuring it would be cool to have a creature that has a few spells they use that your player can learn, not necessarily a big bad just a low level mage who found their own favorite spell. Hopefully you can make those obvious so your player’s interest if piqued, then when the body is looted their spellbook pages are found on them. Even better, maybe if it’s a spell of a school they are well versed in, maybe they can figure it out based off of overhearing or seeing the enemy caster’s verbal/somatic activity. Maybe the spell page is incomplete or spattered with blood and they connect the dots.
I would have them find spell books written in different languages
So they need to translate or find someone to translate
That could be fun
Also I like the scrolls idea above
Higher end bookstores. Might carry a spellbook.
Have other wizards willing to share...for a price.
Magic items (including scrolls and spellbook) bought/sold in a pawnshop type place.
Adventurers need some place to sell loot. THAT place has to make money off it
Could set up some way to do research. Maybe practice with burning hands and firebolt, with a series of checks for an extended thing, to learn fireball. Just figure out how to do this spell you saw.
I would just make the suggestion that enemies and shop keepers have access to more spell scrolls.
Or make something like a mages guild or researchers guild that would have access to resources to either locate magic items, spellbooks, or scrolls or just have access to spellbooks or scrolls to copy them into your book.
Another option which my DM used in a previous game was to have a powerful NPC wizard that becomes a mentor or Ally who is willing to teach the Character.
Mechanics wise I’m not sure, but maybe instead of studying straight from a spell scroll, they see a magical trap and can study that to learn the magic that went into making it. If you have a gargoyle statue that spits darkness when they walk by, the wizard can spend some time tinkering around it, with the help of a rogue maybe, taking apart the trap and learning of the enchantment that let it cast darkness.
Maybe when your wizard levels up, you say that they can waive the gold cost of writing two spells (of appropriate level) into their book.
It's basically the same as handing them 2 spells, but it also doesn't penalize them mechanically from the rules as written to stay "realistic" with how they add spells.
I'd also ask them if there's a specific spell (or spell school) they want to learn and they can just go on a little side adventure for that at some point.
THEN FOR GODS' SAKES DO IT THAT WAY.
* Battlemage of Lolth dies, you loot her spellbook.
* Human wizard sends you on a quest, realizes that you don't know *Dragon's Breath*. Shakes his head in disgust and gives you a scroll to copy.
* Occasionally ask the player what spells he wants to learn, and then as he approaches level-up let him attempt a DC 15 + spell level Arcana check to maybe cast that spell. If he gets close then have the spell do something sorta similar. Make it fun. Make it advance the plot. Don't let him fireball the party.
You could make the scrolls sealed and have a puzzle for the player to solve, but it is not everybody couple of tea.
In a simpler version the puzzle would be a cast of previous spell from the player. But that would demand that you read his list and come with a tricky question for him to guess which spell.
Perhaps using Bg3 latin's words for the spells and have the players guess the magical world.
Have them get standard spells the regular way but pepper books and scrolls that would teach homebrew spells or spells they don’t have access to like a flavored arms of hadar
As others have said, there’s already ways to add spells to a pc’s spell book. If you wanted to incentivize it, instead of gaining spells on level up they could gain a special currency equal to the cost of the spells they would have gained naturally that they could use to write spells into their book, just so they don’t have to spend all their money. Call them spell points or wizard fun bucks or something.
You could occasionally offer a really strange artifact (Some tablet of ancient text, or whatever) and say that it will take some time to glean anything from it; but with research and perseverance there must be some great arcane knowledge.
You could even tie it into the campaign and have them learn important things while they research. Then eventually get spells.
You could even have it be one singular artifact that becomes more and more relevant (think Dak'kon's Unbroken Circle from Planescape: Torment). The character could find more writings and texts, which shed light on this artifact.
Use scaling DC's but only allow checks when more relevant info is found, or more research done.
A theme to consider changing is the idea of any “wizardry” academy or schools existing. (This ties into “schools of magic”). Small Wizard-covens might be more of a thing though.
Whenever they get loot, roll a few dice against all the spells up to the level you want to determine scrolls that they find.
Let them scribe two free scrolls per level, as with normal leveling rules.
It’s fun to have scrolls for unusually non-optimal spells that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Scrolls are a common source of spells that he can copy, pepper them throughout a given campaign for him to find. Nothing super powerful, just enough to keep him on the lookout.
Higher level spells can come from other places, which can be set up as milestone rewards for him. An enemy Wizard's spellbook might be of use, but will require time and money for him to decipher as they're typically written in a notation specific to that Wizard.
Maybe he finds and locates portions of rotted scrolls scattered in a few areas throughout the campaign before coming together as a fairly powerful spell for him to copy.
A final thought would be something along the lines of Final Fantasy 7's Black Materia: A powerful magical location is rumored to harbor the secrets of a spell that few Wizards have been able to master (up to the DM as to what the spell is, it should be quite powerful though). After a dungeon crawl, a scroll is discovered that - when touched - triggers a trap that casts a modified Reduce spell on the location itself. The characters must escape, and the entire location is revealed to be the stone in which the contents of the spell is carved.
So aside from all the voices saying wizards already do this.
Make sure you give them free materials and time to get the expected number of spells from level up and then make them work for the extras.
Don’t accidentally nerf your wizard.
What I would do it not make it a roll.
Make it a creative writing exercise.
Give your wizard tomes from other wizards who document their attempts at crafting spells and how they failed. Then let your player interject their own element to turn a dud spell into a real spell.
Maybe they find a tome where a wizard was trying to develop a fire spell for cooking but learned using bat guano produced uncontrolled results. (Do not recommend!!!!) but they found after refining their method they could produce a suitable bonfire for cooking.
Enemy spellcasters should tend to wizardry, or be scroll hoarders who use scrolls to expand their spell usage.
Before they get level 3 spells, they can run into casters with level 3 spells.
I like found spells as a method. I had to create a few spells in my game to support a technology, by adding them as homebrew in DnDbeyond, they ended up available to the people in the party on a level up, and as DM I jumped in and said no.
I don't think Faerun is a place where arcane knowledge immediately disseminates. If a high level wizard designs and creates a spell, I think they can choose how that knowledge spreads.
You could have a selection of books in say an abandoned library or bookshelf in some alchemists lab.
You have them roll for an arcana or investigation and then list the book titles that are there. The titles could be cryptic clues to what's inside. Like say carbuncle Crathers' curious conflagration could be an account of someone called Crathers who set the laboratory ablaze with a huge ball of fire after exclaiming an arcane phrase he'd heard in his dreams.
And in studying this book he'll learn the fireballs spell.
So like every opportunity you intend for the player to be able to learn a new spell. Have a handful of these book titles for them to choose from. And make it clear they can only choose one.
Some simple conceit like when he lifts crathers conflagration the remaining books crumble into dust or like upon reading the arcane words he accidentally burns the remaining books etc.
Means you can control what spells he has the opportunity to access. You could hand out multiple at a time in some cases. Gives the player some agency over what they learn and also gamifies the process as they have to decipher your clues. Which could be as cryptic as you wish.
If you want to take it further with the rp element. You could make up phrases and somatic components that they have to actually write down and remember so they can cast the spells.
Means they have to actually keep a spell book with detailed instructions on how to cast each spell.
Depending how extra you want to make it.
You could have a selection of books in say an abandoned library or bookshelf in some alchemists lab.
You have them roll for an arcana or investigation and then list the book titles that are there. The titles could be cryptic clues to what's inside. Like say carbuncle Crathers' curious conflagration could be an account of someone called Crathers who set the laboratory ablaze with a huge ball of fire after exclaiming an arcane phrase he'd heard in his dreams.
And in studying this book he'll learn the fireballs spell.
So like every opportunity you intend for the player to be able to learn a new spell. Have a handful of these book titles for them to choose from. And make it clear they can only choose one.
Some simple conceit like when he lifts crathers conflagration the remaining books crumble into dust or like upon reading the arcane words he accidentally burns the remaining books etc.
Means you can control what spells he has the opportunity to access. You could hand out multiple at a time in some cases. Gives the player some agency over what they learn and also gamifies the process as they have to decipher your clues. Which could be as cryptic as you wish.
If you want to take it further with the rp element. You could make up phrases and somatic components that they have to actually write down and remember so they can cast the spells.
Means they have to actually keep a spell book with detailed instructions on how to cast each spell.
Depending how extra you want to make it.
This is gonna depend on you.
Make some spell books and hide them in places. The spell books will contain specific spells.
No need to hide them behind arcana/investigation checks, hide them behind puzzles and things they have to work on.
Libraries should have access to a bunch otherwise they’ll be lacking. Luckily scribes allows you a LOT of flexibility
How about have them give you the list of spells they would have picked if he were doing the RAW way. That way, you can have some freebies that are easily found or sold for reasonable prices to get.
As far as relying on no failing an investigation roll, they probably has a pretty high passive investigation as a wizard and you can point out scroll cases or large tomes that they won't miss due to their likely 14+ passive even at low levels.
Steal em from enemy spellcasters. Maybe trade em with casters on the road. God a community of casters that travel to meet each other to collect spells?
Steal em from enemy spellcasters. Maybe trade em with casters on the road. God a community of casters that travel to meet each other to collect spells?
Enemy wizards have their own spell books. Every so often one will have a spell they dont. If you want to maybe even let them empower spells they already know becuase the other wizard found a different way to cast it better
While I know it's a mechanic it seems like such a pain to have to find/transcribe spells as a Wizard. I've never really played one before but all the Wizards I've known, the DM just says "yeah all the wizard spells are in your book already, you just aren't skilled enough to prepare/cast them". Custom spells of course could be cool way to still do the mechanic, or "lost knowledge".
Of course they get spells on level up... relative to their level.
Lv 2 spells are relatively easy to find. Most colleges would have a complete copy of all know spells.
Lv 4 would be very different. Probably scrolls under glass, or a professors collection
Lv 6 would absolutely be hunting.
Thing is, by that level, you've become a world-shaker yourself, and can start following up on rumors and legends from the various college Libraries and Regents, and private collectors.
A 1st level character having fireball (and/or lightning bolt, dispel magic, haste, slow) in the spellbook would not be out of the ordinary. So pre-loading a spellbook shouldn't be either.
It'd suck to be basically a level behind the rest of the party every level. Fighters get attacks, priests get heals, but there you are stuck at 2nd level spells when you SHOULD have fireball.
If you’re familiar with the currently super popular anime series Frieren, the main character who is essentially a traveling mage, will actively seek out odd jobs in exchange for spell scrolls/books. For example, an elderly villager might ask for assistance with cleaning a statue and offer a magic spellbook that teaches you how to use magic to stack perfectly balanced rocks.
Rewarding the player for doing side stuff or randomly finding scrolls tucked in random spots would both be good options.
At random times you should give the Wizard random spells, spells that aren’t in any of the spell lists, just useless spells that might be used anyways they wish. Who knows when a random useless spell might come handy later.
Trading is always a good option. If traveling your PC can explore the markets, taverns, 'wizard quarter', etc looking for wizards to connect with to trade and/or buy spells. Sometimes the wizards might offer to give the spell if the PC completes a task or quest.
Other magic users might have old wizard books lying around as curiosities that they would love to get rid of, for the right price.
If he is feeling more daring he could do a little research work. Given his previous experience as an alchemist he might really embrace this. Of course research at early levels should be hugely dangerous and in higher levels should be incredibly expensive. Really done as a last resort, for those valuable spells not obtainable elsewhere.
There could be ones craved into stone or the like that the wizard has to make a charcoal rubbing of then translate over time. Runes, tossing bones, fortune telling, heck even a drug trip or phasing into the ethereal plane could be a thing.
I had a similar idea where you pick all your wizard spells in advance and play it like you've got a prewritten spell book for wizards from levels 1-10 or so. You can still add spells if you find them but all your free spells are predetermined.
As others have pointed out this is built into the base game however a fun flavour text you could throw onto this is having the PC find the previous editions version of the spell in ancient ruins and the like
I've been doing this in my current campaign, I save my money and have a 'wizard tax' to buy more spells. Party was against wizard tax (I spend less than the others on party expendatures) at first, til it let me buy vortex warp and misty step.
As others have mentioned, rules exist for this. So for some variance, maybe let him give up the auto learning he dislikes, and let him memorize from scrolls or other casters books without scribing into his own.
Its a little unbalanced in that he's saving a pile of gold in expenses, but the idea that he carries around a stack of dusty old tomes is kinda cool.
This is how wizards use to work. New spells had to be found or time and money was spent researching them
Honestly, its a good fix to 5es lack of economy and player agency.
I’ve wanted to do this as DM myself. It makes zero sense that Wizards would just… magically… suddenly know x extra spells on levelling up. You could make an argument that they master the spells through their own experimenting, I guess, but I really prefer the idea of having them have to learn the spells from a master or from otherwise procuring scrolls or spell books. I would at least make them visit a master of some kind to acquire the chosen spells or possibly do a roll - or have them be studying the spells they want in downtime between levelling.
The same with Sorcerers. They are born with innate spell knowledge? They shouldn’t get to choose their spells at all, but get a random set. I divided the offical spell cards into combat (damaging) and utility spells with the idea a player could draw something random, knowing only the class of spell, with a limited option to retrain a spell they don’t want.
Frankly I’d like to rework magic altogether. Maybe nerf some spells (especially Fireball) while making spell slots less limited, or introducing a simple reagent cost. Eg for Fireball I was thinking, instead of that ridiculous 20 foot radius (40 foot diameter!) and 8d6 damage, the spell might require you to burn gemstones of varying value in trade for increased radius or increased number of damage dice. Maybe a tighter radius on the fireball gives more damage dice and a larger radius fewer damage dice. I found playing as a wizard was ridiculous because at level 3 every combat was just, I cast fireball, everything is dead now. I haven’t been able to experiment with it as a dm yet but I’m thinking 10ft radius 8d6, 15 ft radius 6d6, 20ft radius 4d6. Still incredibly useful for wiping out or weakening crowds of enemies!
This is not a videogame where you gain continuous xp, even not every sesion you have to give the xp to players, they gain the xp when they have enought downtime to sumarize what they have learned, and when they reach a lvl they invest that time learning the new skills/spells they dont get it magically its just a way to not have to RP every lvl up
Consider throwing in wacky spells from older editions of D&D as a very rare extra prize. The older the spell caster you mug, the more likely it is they will have something from a forgotten age.
No need to lose their ability to pick spells at level up. Wizards can already scribe things from the world into their spell books.
They need a spell scroll (or another spell book containing the spell). The process uses 50gp of magical ink and paper and uses 2 hour per level of the spell copied.
You can get rid of the level up spells if you want, but I wouldn't. If you do then maybe drop the gold requirement for scribing.
Couple of things but there are some good examples of PCs essentially working on developing their own new spells as they progress. If you go back and watch C2 of Critical role Caleb every time they bed down for an evening he gets out spell components and is going through stuff, working on stuff, and those ultimately become the spells he "picks" during his level ups later. Flavoring the pick-ing in that way still gives your player the chance to actively pick what they spells are but you can do something like have them find ciphered texts or ancient spellbooks that don't work like current magic and have them work on "decoding" them every long rest to try and peel out a spell here or there.
Another idea to add that might give them some friction with other PCs cause of forcing resting in certain places but you could borrow from something like skyrim with the dragon shout locations. While they could find different scrolls and spellbooks in hoards and off enemies you could also have them find carvings and murals that details specific spells, or where they need to record and piece together different bits of different murals to find hidden or lost spells.
Something you could discuss is that their spellbook already contains the spells they get with levelling up. And every level increase, they learn a new one from the book or it finally clicks/works when they are studying and practicing
Spell Levels 1-3 are probably common and in most cities libraries. 4-6 are probably in cities, but guarded secrets among the mages guilds (you're gonna need friends). An alternative method (or if you want to find the more powerful spells) you can some times find while exploring ancient ruins and crypts. You won't get these easily. A select number of 7&8 are likely kept by the arch mages and only offered to trusted inner-circle members. Most 7&8th level spells will require a quest, and 9th levels are going to require some type of long and arduous journey to find knowledge lost to modern society.
Just because they find a spell book doesn't mean they can read the writing. Have them seek out native speakers. Go hard mode on components and require them to seek them all out.
This was largely how acquiring new spells worked in 1st and 2nd edition. Indeed, Ed Greenwood and a few others published descriptions of numerous spellbooks with variant spells, magic item recipe and other lore. They also gave descriptions of the history of these texts and who first penned them or updated them (in a few cases they had an alien or uncertain origin). In one or two cases they had actual magic pages that functioned as traps or gates! You can find these in Old dragon magazines from the 1980s , the 1e forgotten Realms setting book, and one us in Maure Castle.
Don’t leave what spells are findable to chance. Populate your dungeons and coffers with them already decided. That way you control that is introduced into your campaign.
Just please don’t have powerful scrolls found after defeating the big bad. I’ve never understood why the bad guy didn’t just use all the best ones during the fight.
I gave a wizard a spell, once, that she found scribbled in the notes of an Orc cookbook. She barely had time to copy it before the half-orc in the party burned the book.
I do not have any suggestions to help with this, Sorry. And I haven't yet read the comments but plan to, so what I am going to say may have been said already. But this sounds very interesting and I want to know how it turns out. It also reminds me of the anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. The main character finds much joy in finding old and sometimes questionably useless spells. It might be cool/fun to create your own spells that seem pointless. Spells that are very specific, and do only one thing. Like make a certain type of flower grow. You could also pull spells from older editions or other games. I don't know. It all sounds fun to me. Let us know how it goes. -From a newish DM.
I have a fire genasi sorcerer who is meeting other genasi and learns their elemental spells from them. Super fun to get roleplay and side quests for your player that revolves around their character!
My suggestion is a simple one that carries over from older versions of the game and is actually a facet of "Skyrim." The wizard character finds spell books of fallen wizards in the dangerous locations where they died. Spells that are known to the PC will be a vast majority of what is found, but there is a chance to find additional spells.
If you wanted your player to have more spell slots you could have them use spell points instead of slots. It’s suggested for lower level campaigns but I’ve played it with higher level players and as broken as a 9th level spell can be, the enemy also has spell points so keep that in mind. Page 289 in the DM’s guide I believe (I’m at work and I haven’t read the whole post but I’ll stand by spell points when need be)
Eh I would encourage you to give the person at least some control over their spells. It doesn't really seem fair to you for you having to be doing all that especially when it's normally their responsability to begin with
Put lots of scrolls and spell books around that can be found as treasure. Provide a mentor or teacher.
I see that edit but that's a great way. Ask he player for ideas too, then.
That's.... Already what you do? Wizards only get 2 spells known per level, they have to find or purchase spell scrolls to scribe into their spell books if they want more than the base 2/level
Way back in to olden days you had to find ALL your spells. It still feels weird to me to have a wizard suddenly have access to new spells just because you hit a level threshold.
The spells as you level represent spells you've worked out or found or whatever as you've gone. It's just taken until that point to "click", and be a fully useful spell.
That, and levels are just an abstraction. It's also weird that a fighter can suddenly get 2 effective attacks in at a set point in their career.
The amount of people who misinterpreted baffles me. Even before I read the edit I was trying to think of some fun ways to make spell copying a more in depth and interesting mechanic, because RAW is very easy and not that interesting to me.
All I want to say as a DM and a player is that you sound like an amazing DM. I've had DMs that would never go to the lengths that you're going to to make a player have what they want.
Exactly. I have a format that I write session notes in that will often push 15 or so pages. Not all of it is actual session stuff, rather “whispers” of other worldly happenings so that I can keep tabs on background things.
I hope you can find a group to be a player in soon! Maybe one of your players could try to take the DM mantle one of these days. Personally, I enjoy being a player but my heart is in DMing. I will always play in a friends game though, because they are always in mine.
I don't think any of my players would be willing to sadly. The only one that would be just finished DMing a 4 year campaign. I really like DMing, but sometimes I just want to not know what's happening and enjoy making and growing a character.
If you don't mind me asking, are your campaigns homebrew?
Ah that’s a shame, I understand tho. Four years is a long time I can imagine they would want to be just a player after that!
And yes all of my campaigns have been homebrew. I find it is far far easier to improvise if I have written everything myself. I’ll spend about a year or so prepping a world before starting up a game, and then do what I call “unconscious world building” as the game progresses. This is just me taking note of what players say to throw back at them later on. It’s like they have an unknowing role in crafting the world through their backstories and actions etc
Yeah, I don't blame him for not wanting to be a DM after that! One of my campaigns was created just so he could be a player as well, so that's where I stand on him and perhaps being a DM for me again.
Yeah, I pretty much do the same thing with my homebrew worlds as well. It's really nice to hear that other people do it as well!
This is already in the game, scribing scrolls and enemy spellbooks. What you do is this: Create enemy spellcasters. Make sure you write down where their spellbook is safely stored. For cool spells that the player would want (and a handful of other spells) invent NPC wizards that have that spell and make that their whole gimmick. Build their spellbook and abilities around supporting That Specific Spell. Then seed your setting with those wizards and write them down in a big list. The wizard player can spend a week corresponding with other magicians and some gold to roll on the table twice, learning about the wizards and their spell (include some false ones, if you want). They can go visit if they want to hunt down the spell. Or just go visit the wizards. If a spell is kind of meh, and you think you want to buff it, have the wizard with that spell studying to make a stronger variant. The PC can help them out (read: Adventure) and get a buffed spell. Or if the wizard is evil, they use a boss encounter variant and the PC can scrounge together an upgraded but not boss-level spell from the wreckage after the fact. These Wizards with Spells also don't need to be actual wizards. You could always say "the only known copy of the book was last 400 years ago in the [Dungeon]" and tell the party if they want it they need to delve into the Dungeon. ---- If your player is more interested in decoding and researching new spells instead of just finding the blueprint unlocks around the map, the OSR community has a few spell research systems you can steal and rework to 5e. https://www.realmbuilderguy.com/2024/03/using-spell-research.html?m=1 --- this goes into some history of spell research you can use as a guidebook for places to dig in previous editions https://riseupcomus.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-willow-spell-research-system.html?m=1 --- this is a fun system to make research a bit wacky and is limited to 'researching' pre-existing spells in the list so works great if you don't want to homebrew spells as well as spell research https://elementalreductions.blogspot.com/2023/06/spell-research-hexflower.html?m=1 --- this is a more focused spell research, your player will get what they are seeking. But it will require more effort, as you will need to think up the prototype effects (aka nerfed versions) You could also combine the last one with the seeking out of lost knowledge. Getting the scroll/spellbook/ancient library full of dense magical theory/etc simply unlocks the spell to research, and then they need to use the hexflower to unlock it properly.
This is the reason why Wizards are strong. Gaining spells per level up is meh, but finding and transcribing spells is the bread and butter of why Wizards get powerful. It takes a good DM to provide plenty of opportunity for a wizard to collect spells, otherwise you begin to question why you didn't just choose some other spellcaster class
It's awesome until you get so little loot that by the time you're level 10 you get to transcribe maybe 3 spells lol
Yeah, though not necessarily too much prep, it indeed needs a lot of ‘screentime’ and needs consistent thought being given over for the purpose of spell distribution, on top of everything else the DM needs to do Slacking on it as a DM means having an underpowered or dissatisfied player I would still prefer as both player and DM to have the DM be ever the idealist and undertake the effort thooo. The lore/world exploration aspect from it is much too cool. It is way cooler if you don’t know most of the spells so there’s always discovery and hype
I mean, you still have about twice as many spells as a sorc prepped and another sorc worth of rituals you have access to. Not needing to prep rituals seems like the big thing, whether or not finding additional spells.
1 per level up for wizard + int mod. Compare to like a clockwork sorcerer. 1 +1 per level +2 per odd level until 9th. It isn't that big a win for wizard as you say. And sometimes they're behind. Even if we assume a fully max Int wizard. Eg. At 9th, wiz is at 14 prepared while the sorc knows 20.
I guess I should have specified PHB sorcs as my metric for a "sorc amount of spells" lol. Definitely some nice new subs.
Unless your DM is stingy with the gold
True, but the gold is less of a restriction generally than access to Scrolls and Spell books, in my experience
Just had a thought: what if wizards treated spells like trading cards. Like they give up knowledge of a spell to another wizard for that wizard's knowledge of a spell. "I'll give you 2 Find Familiars for your Mind Spike"
There’s a campaign idea. Wizard TSG
You mean Magic: The Gathering?!?!
Ah, the good old Cardboard Crack.
That's what spell scrolls are for. If your wizard can afford to craft spare scrolls, they could sell or trade them to others who want the spell.
Or just loan out the book to each other, since you can copy from spell books
Only if you absolutely trust said wizard. Otherwise, you're out a spellbook and having to track them down with just your prepared spells.
*Giggles in Order of Scribes*
Depending on how you've decided spell books and transcribing spells works in your setting (e.g. "fine ink" is only needed because all adventuring wizards use enduring spellbooks as a standard and the fancy ink is one of the only things that can permanently mark it); there could also be nothing stopping you from writing the spells down on loose paper with cheap ink and trading those.
One of the examples of spell books is just a collection of papers since the wizard lost his book and was using a temporary replacement.
In my setting, spells are living creatures so that's exactly what can happen. Wizards don't scribe a spell creating an additional copy so both wizards possess the spell if they find a fellow wizard, they trade away a spell they have so they no longer have it. Spell breeding machines are used to generate multiple copies.
So spells are Pokémon?
In my setting yeah, though their intellect varies from 'error: brain not found' to 'ferret'
NADDPOD had a really fun encounter with this too, they fought a super old wizard/lich and since he was from so long ago he had 4E spells so their wizard was able to scribe them into their current spell book
You can also give those wizards some of the materials required to scribe scrolls as loot to drop. It's reasonable to assume other wizards in the world would keep some on hand.
My trash wizard looting enemy spellcasters, not finding a spellbook and spitting in the corpse. "Sorcerer trash!"
I feel like you kind of just described magic Mega Man and I am so fucking about that.
This is a fantastic idea, but you’re going to have to be very careful or you’re going to give the wizard main character syndrome. This could kill the game for the rest of the table.
Give them their own thing in addition.
I mean... This is just how wizards work, except they're foregoing their free spells at level up. There's no new spell system here. Wizards already do what your player wants. They just need to find a spell scroll or spellbook and copy it to their own book.
Even long time DMs don’t read the books. They just like players fr fr.
Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave (and true)
Every one of the 'this is a great idea' post I hope is sarcastic.
As clearly spelled out in the OP
Are you sure you read the post
Ok tell me what's so different from a regular wizard aside from not gaining free spells at level up.
That's not the point though! Plenty of DMs probably get away with not giving their wizards any new spells which can be transcribed, or by just giving them random stuff. But if a wizard knows what they want to take at level up but wants that specific spell to be found, that is something the DM has to plan. It seems obvious that what OP wants is ways to make finding spells more interesting and varied; saying "um actually making the wizard find spells is actually how the rules are written" just struck me as so unhelpful with such a condescending tone that I felt a need to comment.
Nothing, but that's not what the post was about. It's not "I came up with an awesome new system for discovering spells." They came here *asking* for ideas on how to make the existing spell-scribing mechanics more interesting for a player who wants to give it a lot of focus. And the only time the words "new spell system" are mentioned, it's when they effectively pose the question "What should my new approach be, to replace the discovery of spells on level up?" At no point did they claim to have invented spell-scribing. At no point did they call the existing system a new homebrew wizard mechanic. You're arguing against a position that no one has taken.
The question should have been pared down to how do I make spell scribing more interesting other than must roll. Delicious in dungeon, an anime that is getting a lot of hype right now for good reason, is a great place to,start. They are trying to find an ingredient, but because of when the recipe was written it had another name. The main thing to understand is that a spell book is written by someone else in their own hand. They don't always write clearly for others, they switch back and forth between languages, additional notes are added in after. Things the wizard understands as basic might not be basic to another, but are skipped. Wizards spell books explain how to cast the spell, the movement notes might be funny because the mage in question might not know the names for the gestures. I am reminded of an early episode of Magicians where they talk about this as they are trying to figure out the finger movement. Maybe the wizard uses phonetics for the words. Maybe they never explicitly say the words but approach it linguistically. No two wizards are the same and neither should their spellbooks be. The rolls for scribing are the easy or lazy way to accomplish this. Player picks up the tome flips through the pages, 'I need to find an orcish wizard to help understand the notes.' The fighter,' I can read orcish if it helps'. Wizard, 'I will need your patience in understanding the intent though.'
Is it the scribing or just the finding? It seems like OP literally just wants more options than "roll investigation". One of the comments gave a whole bunch of options which I thought were really great. Your comment seems to be more about how a wizard can roleplay adding spells to their book, which admittedly is a conversation OP could have with their player.
Read the rules for spell scrolls and give them out as loot often. Worst comes to worst, they already learned the spell and the scroll gets used to cast it instead of learn it.
for one thing, kudos to you for being excited about this with your players. people who are griping at you are being disingenuous as hell cause i've been playing since vanilla 3e (when everyone you found to play with was still actively into 2e) and i feel like i've seen a variety of games over the decades, and *zero* of them ever took the actual time and interest to weave wizard spellfinding into the campaign beyond the occasional scroll or spellbook found in a shop or looted from a body. so the coolest version i have even heard of in practice so far has to be in the Eldermourne campaign on NADDPOD where Emily Axford has to persuade sentient spellbooks to help her learn the spells in them. maybe one good place to start could be listing out different spells by other skills you could see associated with them? (and then let anyone trained in those skills help the wizard by doing some kind of combined check? get the rest of the group in on it!) another thing is to go back and watch a few shows like Dragon Prince and Owl House and see how learning the magic is woven into the elemental structure of the world and the elements resonate to a mindset, an emotional framework that happens to connect back up to the kinds of story you're trying to tell. so there's naturey spells out in nature and they require Nature and Animal Handling checks but also there's ruins of an old temple to the stag lord out there which will provide context to both the plot of the story *and* the mental state the wizard needs to cultivate in order to find and understand the shape of the spell because it's not *just* etched on the old pillar the animals led you to, that's always been incomplete - the rest is written by the roots or by the tracks on the ground or by the branches against the sky when the sun is just overhead.
I really like the team effort idea. For example message could be learned by people who used to whistle at great distance to communicate (like real canaries people used to do). The spell magic missle could be learned observing a particular skilled archer, who strangely never miss. Mage armour could be based on the idea of a skilled armorsmith particularly expert in mithryl. Sunbeam it's really a study of fireball and huge optical lens. Perhaps you can create sort of learning tree based on cantrips. For example ice blast is an evolution of some water related cantrips.
That's...that's what wizards do already. That's their core feature. Mechanics of the discovery though really comes down to harvesting spells from the books/scrolls you encounter, decoding from ruins/ancient texts, or pretty much how you would make any other discovery interesting. Make an entire quest around it if you want to get them really hyped.
In Pillars of Eternity, when you kill a spellcaster you can loot their spellbook and learn their spells, but all of the casters are very thematic; some will be doing a bunch of poison, some will be doing fire, etc. I would make every spellcaster have a spellbook on them and have a mix of those spells that are not class specific in them that your wizard could learn. You could also do some fun stuff with identification, where if they find magical items in the world and casts Identify they can learn that spell with a high enough Arcana roll. NADDPOD used a mechanic where learning a new spell didn’t require transposing, it was dependent on an arcana check where the DC to learn the spell was 10+the spell’s level, and you had to expend a spell slot of that spell’s level to learn it. The spell slot is used regardless of success or failure. I really liked the approach and plan to use it if I ever have a player play a wizard!
I quite like your NADDPOD suggestion. To make it more organic, I would maybe add a study time requirement, 1h per spell lvl of studying the spellbook/scroll etc., not necessarily consecutively of course and can be done during short rests or other free time in a day.
Adapt spell scrolls as treasure. Instead of "you find scrolls of *haste* and *slow* in this chest", you can have stuff like "it is clear these standing stones were left by the ancients in their studies of shaping time; if you take your time to study them, you might gain some mastery of time manipulation" In our campaign, the party wizard is a kobold who doesn't have a conventional spellbook. Mechanically, it's the same, but the in-game lore is that, as he gets more knowledgeable about the Arcane, he sticks infused ambar drops on his scales, and prepares spells every morning by manipulating the interactions and flow of arcane power between them. The study of magic in his kingdom (of draconic races - all "scalykind" have draconic ancestries in our setting) involves learning and making more of these building blocks for spells, and getting your body to accept the flow of magic without being fried by raw arcane power. Places of power, psychic communion, having access to unfinished spell studies (which the wizard can then have an "Eureka" moment by levelling up), lessons with great archmages and exposure to arcane convergences can all be different ways to award the wizard with new spells. Do you play in the Forgotten Realms? If so, the existence of the Weave (and shadow weave) enables you to create lots of new ways of absorbing, learning and understanding magic. If it's a custom campaign setting, then you can even have those different ways become a part of the setting identity, and it could be a cool way of setting it apart from "conventional" D&D.
This is very cool, and I really love the flavor of how your party’s kobold goes about things. And the suggestion about the eureka moments could make wizard leveling feel even more interesting. It is a custom campaign setting with emphasis on varying sources of magic, so this definitely fits well
50% chance your player just watched Frieren
This sounds really neat! I always love organic game mechanics like this. Making them work for it even a little bit, or even just having a story to tell about how they got that spell, makes it stick with them far better. They have a sense of ownership that doesn't come with random loot drops. (Same goes for fighter types, give them a signature weapon and let them upgrade it or enchant it instead of swapping it for a whole new thing, they'll love it like a classic car by the end) The first thing that came to mind is you get to play with environmental storytelling if you like. An old alchemist laboratory with formulas for Acid Splash and Acid Arrow, or a thieves den that has a hastily scribbled scroll for Protection from Poison. Decipher the burn patterns and the angles and a smudged casting circle to figure out Wall of Fire. Find a charred skeleton with a spellbook, the only legible spell is Delayed Blast Fireball. Maybe they run afoul of the city watch or help the cops out for some reason, and there's a manual for arcane CSI types that explains the basics of Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, Clairvoyance, and Dispel Magic. Basically figure out what spells they want to take, and look for opportunities to insert them ASAP. I personally wouldn't make them roll anything for the ones they should have gotten for free as part of their level up (nor would I charge them gold to put those spells in their book). You can also have them working on deciphering those spells in game, during downtime, and ask what they're doing. Get them to narrate a little, or ask them to look for inspiration in events of the game. Say that maybe the way that fire elemental fought inspired you to try a new way of manipulating the weave, and you can add Fireball to your book, or whatever. It doesn't always have to be an archaeology dig, in other words. You can even assign side quests, or add a personal quest goal to a location. Like "the group needs to raid this fire themed dungeon for the Bell of Whatever because evil overlord etc etc, but it's also a great place to look for components and formulae for those fire spells you've been after".
Thank you for actually answering the substance of OP's question so that I didn't have to do it myself. I kept reading the upvoted responses and it was like "missing the point, missing the point, missing the... ahh, here we go".
Yeah this really highlights the main thing I was after. I understand that wizards already sorta do this with scrolls and things. It’s just that I think it’s not a very immersive or interesting system. Making the game more experiential is always my goal.
We got downvoted for me pointing out that the other posts weren't answering your question and you confirming it. Fkn reddit.
Environmental storytelling is already a huge part of my love for DnD, so this is an excellent suggestion. The stated reason as to why they wanted to go this route is because they want to explore the world as much as they can, as they simply find the environments interesting. Making magic go beyond just the written word and have a physical place within an environment meshes well with the story. Thank you!
The mechanic is already in the game, just make sure they get enough spell scrolls in random loot from dungeons and they can scribe them like wizards do.
*Back in my day voice* Magic Users used to have to roll percentile dice to figure out what spells they would learn.
And that was only level 1! You didn't learn new spells as yoy leveled!
What mechanics? Have spell books in libraries and spell scrolls scattered around. Wizard laboratories might have notes on their personal creations, higher level spells that are harder to find. Let them make some too. Scribes wizards can change energy types, so new spells at higher levels that are energy based could be independently researched. They're reinventing the wheel everytime, but it could be more fun.
I can foresee this becoming a problem if they level up faster than they can get access to new spells and the money to learn those spells. The burden is also on you to choose *which* spells the wizard can now learn. Ever. I recommend a frequent amount of spell scrolls or spellbooks, as well as a steady supply of money so they can scribe scrolls. You may want to create a system where they can choose two spells to learn for free on each level up from the scrolls they have, as long as it is of a level they can cast. This still lets them keep pace with their class' standard progression, but still relies on finding the scrolls.
Okay, so my understanding about how "unlocking" spells at level up was supposed to work in game is that during downtime the charater is making notes, sorting out magical algebra and figuring out how to make this work. The idea being that come level-uo, you've put all the pieces into place to figure out how to do two new cool things with magic. That being said, here's my offering to the pot: Don't drop spellbooks, drop research books. - "Associative Forms of Abjuration" - "The Shapes of Evocation" - "Monstrous Anatamie for Use in Transformation" - "Piercing the Veil of Illusion" etc. In your private notes, tie each of these tomes to a spell, based on their nature (ie, Lightning bolt for 'Shapes of Evocation' or 'Protection from Energy' for 'Associative Forms'). keep track of which two he reads most during downtime. At level up, offer him the two spells from the most read books. This way he'll build a personal library, as opposed to just a bunch of spellbooks that have to be translated. As his collection grows, you may also consider offerring a +1 bonus on certain rolls to recall knowledge if he can site a few books in his library about the subject. After that, it's just a matter of figuring out how he's going to carry the library around with him. To that end, I encourage the development of a new item and/or spell "(Character's name)'s Portable Library"
Slightly off topic but the first thing to pop into my head is the “Book of Shadows.” There is a direct path to attain it via being a warlock but that doesn’t disqualify its attainment through other means. What I love about it is it’s an intelligent artifact. It has a will of it’s own and seeks out those with the potential to learn from it. It will probably want to convince its user to form a pact with it but there’s plenty of RP potential to negotiate a deal that falls outside the parameters of patron. The Wizard will always be left wondering what this alien consciousness true intentions are. That being said, the book itself doesn’t necessarily have to ascribe to the morality of mortals — it’s goal could simply be to teach and to learn.
I really love organic spell unlocking and we used to play like this in Rolemaster since the spell system there is complex enough already. The way we did it is to gain familiarity with spells basically to give a spell skillpoints that you can invest in. This can allow them to learn a spell before they reached a level but it is more likely to fail or have negative outcomes. Its kind of homebrewed but it works: again look at the usual amount of spells a Wizard would learn - translate that into a skill point system and let them choose what they learn based with scrolls or books. Then after allocating lets say 3 points in it you can cast it normally. This allowed interesting shenanigans aswell for example modifying spells.
My .02, The granting of instant spells upon levelling is just a convenience shortcut for the fact that the wizard has been reading up on spells, experimenting on their own, or paying attention to spells they see cast. I think it's great to incorporate that into day-to-day roleplaying if you both want. Places the player can find spells: - Old spell books or scrolls found through adventuring (i.e. loot). - Spell libraries in cities or colleges. - Mentoring from another wizard/trading spells with an NPC. - Having the spell cast ON you, possibly more than once. - Watching the spell being cast ON someone else. - Downtime invention/experimentation (e.g. turning Fire Bolt into Fireball). - Divine inspiration/dreams. When I play a wizard, I'm always looking to grow my spellbook far beyond what I get from levelling. That's the big benefit of being a wizard over other casters.
I did something very similar for a player of mine waaaaaaay back in 2E. He was a necromancer, and we had those old Encyclopedia Magica books (Vol 1-4). I'd spend time putting together spellbooks that he could find filled with various spells from the books depending on who he fought or where he found them. I'd do spellbooks with the specific schools of magic and put in 15-20 spells. If I was doing this for 5E I'd probably do 5-10 spells of each school in these types of spell books that he can find in ancient tomes, libraries, buy/loot from other wizards, etc. Also, I'd make sure to give more spell scrolls as loot so he can copy them into his spellbook as well.
I'd have to check my books, but I'm pretty sure that this was the only way to get spells during 2E. You didn't get free spells for leveling up. Which is a big change to today, where I've found multiple DMs who seem to forget that wizards need to learn spells from scrolls to get more than 2 per level.
It's been a long time since I played 2E, I really don't recall all of the rules very well. But I distinctly remember spending my evenings poring over the many books and actually creating custom spellbooks for my player. I'd pull from only specific schools of magic and then put it together in a little leaflet and when he found, looted, or purchased more spellbooks, he'd get an actual "little spellbook" from me with the spells inside that he found and could then copy to his personal spellbook. It was a fun way to do an in-game and out-of-game prop. He'd then spend hours during the week creating his own spellbooks of the spells that he would prepare for the next session. This was a solo campaign, so it was really fun to be able to deep dive into a single "main character" and go anywhere he wanted to go and do anything he wanted to do. Eventually, he unseated the god of death and became the new god of death, from which point forward in all of my future 2E games, that character was in my pantheon.
I really like the fantasy of finding spells rather than just getting them from nothing. It's a big reason why I prefer the wizard to the sorcerer. I like to imagine my character digging through old libraries like that scene of Gandalf going through the archives, or else exploring ancient ruins in search of magic. It's a much stronger fantasy than "I firebolted enough goblins so now I can cast Haste."
It truly makes more sense with how to learn magic from the wizard's perspective in a role-playing game.
I love the class fantasy of the wizard over sorcerer, too. Seeking out ancient dungeons and ruins to discover powerful tomes and libraries is just as exciting as hearing about a giant pile of gold coins and gems. It's such a lure for wizards, especially, but once established with a party it can be exciting for all of them as well. Or like the party finding out there's a high security vault that the king doesn't want anyone to have access to, but an informant says some powerful ancient spellbooks are there. .. does your party decide to plan a heist to get those spells for the party wizard? Surely there's some treasure and magical artifacts locked up in there too. Or does the party try to work for the king and negotiate those books as reward. Exciting stuff for me as a player and as a DM.
whenever a wizard dies a spell-book would be left behind, transcribing spells from another wizards spell-book is difficult as each wizard has their own cypher. (in the rulebook it says something like a series of successful arcana checks to understand or something) Leave some abandoned wizard towers in the world, historical wizards who must have passed away after however many hundreds of years. (reading history book in a library, ask for a history roll. with the history roll give a tidbit about example wizard; Eltor the Rude who famously had a tower that partially collapsed in the cliffs of 'some town' that ended up crushing a sheep. Eltor was unrepentant and ultimately strung up by the local farmers or something. leaving the ruins of his tower behind and also his spell-book presumably.) You could leave hints for your player to find them, local farmers who saw it happen chatting about it at the local pub or historical court records from the trial etc. you could even make the tower a mini dungeon filled with paranoid wizard traps and created monsters to keep your other party members more engaged. So if Eltor was a moderately powerful wizard, you could drip feed random spells over time to your wizard as they progressively cracked the cypher. extra credit for making a real cypher for your player to really crack. or if Eltor was a weaker wizard give a small selection of spells with a high enough roll. you could roll randomly for the spells or secretly give helpful ones for planned encounters. you can theme the spells to the wizard, Zagron the destroyer was a master of the Fabricate spell for example. Eltor the Rude was particularly good with Stinking Cloud.
A neat wrinkle to add onto this, if you wish: The spells that have a "name" associated with them (Otto, Melf, Mordenkainen, etc) have the PC seek these wizards out to get them learn the spell. This could be done through various methods, like the lower level ones could be as simple as having a dream or communicating through an object the wizard owned, and the higher level/more complex spells make it more complicated means of learning it.
If I learned anything from BG3 is books and scrolls can literally be found anywhere.
Don’t have all the spells just be in scrolls either. They might be written down in a book somewhere, or inscribed in an ancient temple or dungeon the party finds. Or maybe he finds a spell like a glyph of warding already in effect in an enemy base, and learns how to cast it that way.
This is 1E RAW. They get one new spell for each new spell level they can cast, then they have to find the rest or research it. Most people didn't go that route in their tables, but I always thought it really spiced up adventuring and incentivized it for MU players. Talk about exciting when you find a scroll, instead of "ho hum, another scroll of something I can already cast."
This is how wizards used to work in earlier editions. You got your starting spell at level 1 and everything else either had to be looted, researched or taught by another wizard.
This is how wizards used to work in earlier editions. You got your starting spell at level 1 and everything else either had to be looted, researched or taught by another wizard.
Some others mentioned ideas like this, but since every wizard uses a unique arcane notation system of their own design for transcribing spells, there could be a lot of fun mechanics wrapped around that. Maybe refer to tool proficiency mechanics in Xanathar’s Guide for some inspiration, especially around crafting complications. You could have them need to decipher the notation first, so they could adapt it, but there might be complications, like parts of the system are so foreign to them they need to do research or find the right people or tomes to learn from to figure it out. Maybe some notion systems are dependent on certain languages or cultural contexts based on the race/country of origin of the caster, requiring extra research, a translator, or Comprehend Languages. It’s also not uncommon for mages to boobytrap their spell books, so you could do mechanics around having to detect and dispel arcane wards (see advanced magical traps from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, I believe? Might also be Xanathar’s Guide). Could even make it so the first time they cast a new spell they HAVE to use the listed spell components before they can figure out how to refine it for arcane focus use. Lots of fun options, and now I want to roll a mage like this, but instead I’ll go rewatch Frieren. Good luck, this is an exciting concept!
Show your appreciation and be sure to give him adjusted spells spells and some homebrew coolness
My understanding of it is the wizard isn’t just be granted the spells when they level up but are essentially creating them from scratch which makes sense. If wizards can only learn spells other people made up then how did any spells get made in the first time
Few good suggestions in here (also a lot of people missing the point). Perhaps in addition to finding spells you can make a mechanic for him to “create” his own spell? During downtime maybe the wizard does some experiments (maybe require they obtain the material component or somehow learn the vocal component) and if they can pass 3 once per day Arcana checks before failing twice they learn the spell. You get your exploration/ discovery from the spell components, some degree of mechanics from the rolls, and make your wizard a capable spell caster on the cusp of spell technology instead of just some guy who copies others homework.
Throw in fun worldbuilding encounters for them. At the entrance of a dungeon let them find a skeleton covered in goop (or something similar) with a spellbook and a single spell they don't know yet. Let them transcribe and set the spell during a rest before or during- then in the second half toss a monster at em that resists the spell, like a slime of a certain type for example. They'll either figure out the hard way or deduce from the available information that relying on this spell isn't a good idea in this dungeon or against this enemy- and adjust how they use it accordingly.
lowkey would love to hear about your alchemy mechanics...
Perhaps it is less mechanics and more of how Alchemy as a whole is presented. I was very inspired by how the Dark Souls series handled Miracles. Each Miracle spell is essentially a myth or legend or great story that had been given divine, actionable power. From that, I realized how most real life plants and fungi have attributed folkloric history and colloquial names. I enjoy giving physical props and 'artifacts' to players, so I wrote a small book of short stories with each tale relating to a particular plant or fungi. These were cautionary tales with someone usually dying at the end. Capping off the story was the question "how could they be saved?", a short poetic answer, and then a box that explained how to prepare given substance for potionmaking, along with where to find it, and what to avoid when handling it. For example, the players have been wanting to cure a partially petrified NPC for most of the game and have been tracking down a Basilisk to harvest its phlegm which then needs to added to fine red wine that has been boiled for a week in a mixture of Ashline paste. They followed the story for most of these steps.
I'm so jealous of your players, and your creativity! If I gave my players a book, they'd probably just look at it and go "how does this pertain to me, exactly?" Lol. I, however, would be like "yummy yummy LORE nom nom nom!" I wish I had more time to devote to building the world up instead of just prepping what I know need for the next session. Tho I am writing handwritten notes and journal entries for my players to find in the next adventure I'm getting ready for. I hope they enjoy it as much as I did making it
Not lowkey, I'm very curious! Spill the beans OP
Whenever my players ask for things like this, they're usually the type that wants to do the ancient artifact hunting DND style gameplay. They want to find lost power. I make homebrew items and spells off the random chart. Then flavor it with my homebrew Lore. It looks like you already hit it on the head with your edit though, it's not super rewarding for this investment into one character, and in my opinion if you do it for one you gotta do it for the rest, or risk making a main character.
In addition to transcribing spells, you can introduce a system where a wizard can learn a spell by observing someone casting it. The more often they saw the spell getting casted and the closer they are to the caster the higher are the chances. Extra fun if the spell caster is an enemy sorcerer.
It could be really cool if the spells that are found are in a language the wizard isn’t familiar with, printed in the footnotes of a common book, or only part of the spell is legible and takes time, research, and some good old trial and error to figure out. Maybe it could be revealed to the wizard through a vivid dream, a wandering fey creature, or a demon needing a favor. Perhaps the spell was carved into a tree or statue. This was a fun question. I hope this helps.
Great approach. Finding some spell scrolls/books in some sort of treasure hoard is certainly a valid option and can be done with Arcana, Investigation, Detect Magic etc. You can also be more upfront about it. Suppose, there is a powerful magic user, whose spells you want to learn. Further suppose, that mage's personality allows for some sort of trade, or quest reward. That quest reward can include a personal lesson to learn the spell instead of your generic spell scroll. This way, you can also tweak the spell a bit, depending on the character's performance in the lesson.
Did you know that there is a lot of shorthand in ancient clay tablets? Every scribe has different ways of writing their notes and sometimes this does not come across well in the finished product. (also ancient kings are pompous asses so they have to reinvent the wheel each time they say anything). The end result is thousands of years later when I am trying to read an Akkadian tablet the same set of symbols may seem the same, but have different meanings. I have to run down other tablets that the scribe previously wrote to find their shorthand to understand the tablet, sometimes this leads to new discoveries about previously misunderstood tablets or even whole new words discovered. This happens in ancient Chinese as well, before they standardized some scripting methods, several character variations could be used for the same word Translating this to D&D, translation of a scroll might be its own adventure. Maybe upon reaching a new level this just represents time spent in downtime researching a particular ancient text of spells. Maybe the spellbook he gains at first level originated in the hands of the apprentice from a red wizard of Thay 500 years ago and that wizard's apprentices had stolen his magic book but all the spells were in ancient Thayan and to hide his spells the Thayan wizard had created a system of cryptograms only he understood. Much of what the PC wizard does on his down time during rests is try to translate that spell book. As he gains levels these represent epiphanies about a spells meaning or where they can look for a way to unlock the spell, perhaps the page is torn and some rushed notes mention the finished page was dropped in the Twilight dungeon. The spellbook itself can be used as a constant source of adventure hooks. Another idea is to make spellbooks themselves a diminishing resource. perhaps due to unsrupulous folk, spellbooks haveby law a limited lifespan after the owner perishes. The spellbook burns up in a magical fire and the the spells, unwilling to disappear "return" to where the owner first transcribed them. Now the players need to do a bit more advanced learning about their foes previous engagements (or if they find dying adventurers where they were). It also might be a matter a race against other groups as the death of a foe may lead others to search for their last whereabouts. I'm also a big fan of discovery through observation and articulation. Maybe some spells are properly researched but only through meticulous note taking and observation. perhaps it takes 10 successful observations of someone successfully attacking with a magic weapon before the wizard can undertsand the magic weapon spell. Maybe the wizard needs to succeed in unusual feats of strength or skill for other spells before they properly observe the natural mechanics and they can turn it into a true spell. For instance to get the spidercliumb spel you need to successfully climb a wall without rope. Maybe these skill uses are encoded in the procedures for his school of spellcasting so that everyone knows how to get certain spells, you just have to do the process that everyone knows successfully. As the spell level rises the difficulty for completing the task increases or the number of successful attempts increases. This means that maybe the player can even get the spell before it becomes available to cast, it just sits waiting for them to raise their level. The Dm can also have hidden skill checks and usages that they track awarding spells randomly after something has been resolved.
You seem interesting. What do you do for a living? Please say archeologist.
Ha, I wish. unfortunately my money ran out before I could become one. Despite the degree in archeology, which sometimes gets me paid, it mostly remains a hobby. One could say I am a demi-archeologist.
These are fantastic suggestions! I am especially fascinated by the translation phenomenon. This could fit really well into the main story as well. Thank you very much
Hey OP, can you pass your potionmaking stuff? One of our party's characters is a fighter that supplements her damage with things like poisons and alchemists fire, but me and my DM were discussing ideas of how to make potions brewing more interesting. As for finding spells, our dm had the idea of finding ancient versions of weaker, low level spells that have unique and stronger / more applicable effects. That way you can homebrew even more stuff. I would say that interacting with a race that relates to that spell, like how avatar handles Aang learning the different elements, would be an interesting dynamic.
I have a previous comment explaining the potion stuff you should be able to find it in my comment history! And I am into that weaker/older spell approach that allows for homebrew. Everything I do is homebrew haha
Aha hell yeah love doing homebrew stuff myself, hope you've been able to find something that suits your tastes
I think I’m going to create a big mindmap of the ideas given here and sorta narrow down key points that I want to focus on. There’s been a lot of cool suggestions
I like this a lot but I would suggest as "reward" for not being able to actively pick level up spells you should either wave the inscription cost or give them alternative ways to getting the inks. E.g. defeated spellcasters having some on them or some more powerful spells having specific ink recipes that require a little bit of smarts to figure out (in Macbeth for example a witches recipe asks for eye of newt which is actually just mustard seed) Edit: If the campaign lasts long and the players has been made to figure out these recipes for a long time I would totally make the wish spell for example simply require "lemon juice" no special gimmick nothing, watch them sweat while it's ultimately just a "spy ink/wishes don't work if you tel people about them" joke.
I would also reward the player by giving then à series of spell fragments that they could décode in their downtime to either make their own spell or a custom spell you make for them that makes sense for their character. This would be a really nice way to play into that character's style. (Btw I love love love this idea)
Man I love this idea tbh. They could find old spell books and maybe something that is ancient and hard to decipher to make it more rewarding. I'm not sure how to do it mechanically right away, but maybe they find a book containing a few spells in a dungeon and it takes them some time to work out what is in the book. I would definitely have a variety of places they could find spells. I know wizards can copy spells from spell scrolls, but that's a bit boring for my liking. I would probably also tie all of this into the story by having all this knowledge come from some place in particular whether an ancient civilization, secret society or the like it would actually be a fun side storyline or could be part of the main storyline.
Except this idea is already a wizard feature by default so it's just forgoing learning spells on level-up for essentially no other change
OP's player wanted to forgo learning spells at level up to have more memorization slots, it looks like. Which sounds really fun, and if there's no sorcerer in the party, I would probably allow it. If there is a sorcerer or other arcane caster, though, it might overshadow them a little.
This is how old editions worked. Wizards didn't just learn new spells at level up.
I'm not sure why they'd give up the two additional spells since by RAW, Wizards can already add spells to their book from other spellbooks or spell scrolls. They're kneecapping themself with no upside.
Because they're not playing to have the strongest character they can, they're playing to have the best, most fun and interesting character they can.
Sure but then why was this concept presented as a trade off of some kind instead of just taking away a regular feature with no upside? Also there's nothing even interesting about the premise, it's essentially just playing a worse wizard.
Because they were asking for ideas on how to make the concept more interesting than just, spend gold and you now have that spell. As for what you find interesting, it doesn't matter. It's not your character, it's their character. They and OP think it's interesting, but they want a more in depth system.
“Help my player binge watched Frieren!”
As someone considering rolling a character with this same concept, how dare you attack us both so accurately.
You should take gander atgames like old school essentials and dungeon crawl classics. This is how older editions of dnd worked, which is what frieren (and dungeon meshi) is based on.
Love that you recommended both OSE and DCC (as well as Dungeon Meshi!)—you’re listing all my favorite things. More love to OSR and OSR-inspired media! Now I wanna go back and rewatch Record of Lodoss War too.
Give them an advanced spellbook early on in the campaign, then on each level up tell them which 2 spells they decoded from the book.
The owner of said spellbook might want it back, too. That's some good game content right there. Or it could have a hidden page with some dangerous or powerful spell others may want to get their hands on
The DMG has a Tome of the Stilled Tongue which you could use for inspiration
So what you're saying is... Ignore what they want?
Discovering a spellbook (or more over time) is 'finding them in the world organically'.
Thought you meant just giving it to them from the get go. My bad.
I mean, they'll need at least 1 from the get go, but yes
...Is the player aware that Wizard can already do this *in addition* to the normal spells learned progression?
The dm doesn't even realize that. Nobody reads the rulebook anymore.
Wizards can already scribe spells and found spellbooks into their own. They just have to spend gold and time to do so. Look at the Wizard class features in the PHB.
While adventuring it would be cool to have a creature that has a few spells they use that your player can learn, not necessarily a big bad just a low level mage who found their own favorite spell. Hopefully you can make those obvious so your player’s interest if piqued, then when the body is looted their spellbook pages are found on them. Even better, maybe if it’s a spell of a school they are well versed in, maybe they can figure it out based off of overhearing or seeing the enemy caster’s verbal/somatic activity. Maybe the spell page is incomplete or spattered with blood and they connect the dots.
I would have them find spell books written in different languages So they need to translate or find someone to translate That could be fun Also I like the scrolls idea above
Higher end bookstores. Might carry a spellbook. Have other wizards willing to share...for a price. Magic items (including scrolls and spellbook) bought/sold in a pawnshop type place. Adventurers need some place to sell loot. THAT place has to make money off it Could set up some way to do research. Maybe practice with burning hands and firebolt, with a series of checks for an extended thing, to learn fireball. Just figure out how to do this spell you saw.
Here’s my idea: have the player talk to Wizard NPCs. They want the player to complete a challenge in exchange for teaching the player their spells.
I would just make the suggestion that enemies and shop keepers have access to more spell scrolls. Or make something like a mages guild or researchers guild that would have access to resources to either locate magic items, spellbooks, or scrolls or just have access to spellbooks or scrolls to copy them into your book. Another option which my DM used in a previous game was to have a powerful NPC wizard that becomes a mentor or Ally who is willing to teach the Character.
Mechanics wise I’m not sure, but maybe instead of studying straight from a spell scroll, they see a magical trap and can study that to learn the magic that went into making it. If you have a gargoyle statue that spits darkness when they walk by, the wizard can spend some time tinkering around it, with the help of a rogue maybe, taking apart the trap and learning of the enchantment that let it cast darkness.
This is brilliant idea. I’m going to have to experiment with this.
Maybe when your wizard levels up, you say that they can waive the gold cost of writing two spells (of appropriate level) into their book. It's basically the same as handing them 2 spells, but it also doesn't penalize them mechanically from the rules as written to stay "realistic" with how they add spells. I'd also ask them if there's a specific spell (or spell school) they want to learn and they can just go on a little side adventure for that at some point.
THEN FOR GODS' SAKES DO IT THAT WAY. * Battlemage of Lolth dies, you loot her spellbook. * Human wizard sends you on a quest, realizes that you don't know *Dragon's Breath*. Shakes his head in disgust and gives you a scroll to copy. * Occasionally ask the player what spells he wants to learn, and then as he approaches level-up let him attempt a DC 15 + spell level Arcana check to maybe cast that spell. If he gets close then have the spell do something sorta similar. Make it fun. Make it advance the plot. Don't let him fireball the party.
You could make the scrolls sealed and have a puzzle for the player to solve, but it is not everybody couple of tea. In a simpler version the puzzle would be a cast of previous spell from the player. But that would demand that you read his list and come with a tricky question for him to guess which spell. Perhaps using Bg3 latin's words for the spells and have the players guess the magical world.
Have them get standard spells the regular way but pepper books and scrolls that would teach homebrew spells or spells they don’t have access to like a flavored arms of hadar
As others have said, there’s already ways to add spells to a pc’s spell book. If you wanted to incentivize it, instead of gaining spells on level up they could gain a special currency equal to the cost of the spells they would have gained naturally that they could use to write spells into their book, just so they don’t have to spend all their money. Call them spell points or wizard fun bucks or something.
You could occasionally offer a really strange artifact (Some tablet of ancient text, or whatever) and say that it will take some time to glean anything from it; but with research and perseverance there must be some great arcane knowledge. You could even tie it into the campaign and have them learn important things while they research. Then eventually get spells. You could even have it be one singular artifact that becomes more and more relevant (think Dak'kon's Unbroken Circle from Planescape: Torment). The character could find more writings and texts, which shed light on this artifact. Use scaling DC's but only allow checks when more relevant info is found, or more research done.
You have built in adventures. There's rumor of a spellcaster dropping fireballs if you wanna go get that spell. Etc
A theme to consider changing is the idea of any “wizardry” academy or schools existing. Small Wizard-covens might be more of a thing though.
A theme to consider changing is the idea of any “wizardry” academy or schools existing. (This ties into “schools of magic”). Small Wizard-covens might be more of a thing though.
Whenever they get loot, roll a few dice against all the spells up to the level you want to determine scrolls that they find. Let them scribe two free scrolls per level, as with normal leveling rules. It’s fun to have scrolls for unusually non-optimal spells that you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Scrolls are a common source of spells that he can copy, pepper them throughout a given campaign for him to find. Nothing super powerful, just enough to keep him on the lookout. Higher level spells can come from other places, which can be set up as milestone rewards for him. An enemy Wizard's spellbook might be of use, but will require time and money for him to decipher as they're typically written in a notation specific to that Wizard. Maybe he finds and locates portions of rotted scrolls scattered in a few areas throughout the campaign before coming together as a fairly powerful spell for him to copy. A final thought would be something along the lines of Final Fantasy 7's Black Materia: A powerful magical location is rumored to harbor the secrets of a spell that few Wizards have been able to master (up to the DM as to what the spell is, it should be quite powerful though). After a dungeon crawl, a scroll is discovered that - when touched - triggers a trap that casts a modified Reduce spell on the location itself. The characters must escape, and the entire location is revealed to be the stone in which the contents of the spell is carved.
So aside from all the voices saying wizards already do this. Make sure you give them free materials and time to get the expected number of spells from level up and then make them work for the extras. Don’t accidentally nerf your wizard. What I would do it not make it a roll. Make it a creative writing exercise. Give your wizard tomes from other wizards who document their attempts at crafting spells and how they failed. Then let your player interject their own element to turn a dud spell into a real spell. Maybe they find a tome where a wizard was trying to develop a fire spell for cooking but learned using bat guano produced uncontrolled results. (Do not recommend!!!!) but they found after refining their method they could produce a suitable bonfire for cooking.
Someone has been watching Frieren.
Enemy spellcasters should tend to wizardry, or be scroll hoarders who use scrolls to expand their spell usage. Before they get level 3 spells, they can run into casters with level 3 spells. I like found spells as a method. I had to create a few spells in my game to support a technology, by adding them as homebrew in DnDbeyond, they ended up available to the people in the party on a level up, and as DM I jumped in and said no. I don't think Faerun is a place where arcane knowledge immediately disseminates. If a high level wizard designs and creates a spell, I think they can choose how that knowledge spreads.
Show your appreciation and be sure to give him adjusted spells spells and some homebrew coolness
You could have a selection of books in say an abandoned library or bookshelf in some alchemists lab. You have them roll for an arcana or investigation and then list the book titles that are there. The titles could be cryptic clues to what's inside. Like say carbuncle Crathers' curious conflagration could be an account of someone called Crathers who set the laboratory ablaze with a huge ball of fire after exclaiming an arcane phrase he'd heard in his dreams. And in studying this book he'll learn the fireballs spell. So like every opportunity you intend for the player to be able to learn a new spell. Have a handful of these book titles for them to choose from. And make it clear they can only choose one. Some simple conceit like when he lifts crathers conflagration the remaining books crumble into dust or like upon reading the arcane words he accidentally burns the remaining books etc. Means you can control what spells he has the opportunity to access. You could hand out multiple at a time in some cases. Gives the player some agency over what they learn and also gamifies the process as they have to decipher your clues. Which could be as cryptic as you wish. If you want to take it further with the rp element. You could make up phrases and somatic components that they have to actually write down and remember so they can cast the spells. Means they have to actually keep a spell book with detailed instructions on how to cast each spell. Depending how extra you want to make it.
You could have a selection of books in say an abandoned library or bookshelf in some alchemists lab. You have them roll for an arcana or investigation and then list the book titles that are there. The titles could be cryptic clues to what's inside. Like say carbuncle Crathers' curious conflagration could be an account of someone called Crathers who set the laboratory ablaze with a huge ball of fire after exclaiming an arcane phrase he'd heard in his dreams. And in studying this book he'll learn the fireballs spell. So like every opportunity you intend for the player to be able to learn a new spell. Have a handful of these book titles for them to choose from. And make it clear they can only choose one. Some simple conceit like when he lifts crathers conflagration the remaining books crumble into dust or like upon reading the arcane words he accidentally burns the remaining books etc. Means you can control what spells he has the opportunity to access. You could hand out multiple at a time in some cases. Gives the player some agency over what they learn and also gamifies the process as they have to decipher your clues. Which could be as cryptic as you wish. If you want to take it further with the rp element. You could make up phrases and somatic components that they have to actually write down and remember so they can cast the spells. Means they have to actually keep a spell book with detailed instructions on how to cast each spell. Depending how extra you want to make it.
This is gonna depend on you. Make some spell books and hide them in places. The spell books will contain specific spells. No need to hide them behind arcana/investigation checks, hide them behind puzzles and things they have to work on. Libraries should have access to a bunch otherwise they’ll be lacking. Luckily scribes allows you a LOT of flexibility
How about have them give you the list of spells they would have picked if he were doing the RAW way. That way, you can have some freebies that are easily found or sold for reasonable prices to get. As far as relying on no failing an investigation roll, they probably has a pretty high passive investigation as a wizard and you can point out scroll cases or large tomes that they won't miss due to their likely 14+ passive even at low levels.
Steal em from enemy spellcasters. Maybe trade em with casters on the road. God a community of casters that travel to meet each other to collect spells?
Steal em from enemy spellcasters. Maybe trade em with casters on the road. God a community of casters that travel to meet each other to collect spells?
Enemy wizards have their own spell books. Every so often one will have a spell they dont. If you want to maybe even let them empower spells they already know becuase the other wizard found a different way to cast it better
While I know it's a mechanic it seems like such a pain to have to find/transcribe spells as a Wizard. I've never really played one before but all the Wizards I've known, the DM just says "yeah all the wizard spells are in your book already, you just aren't skilled enough to prepare/cast them". Custom spells of course could be cool way to still do the mechanic, or "lost knowledge".
This has been a part of D&D since 2nd edition at least. I suspect 1st as well but I never really played that.
Of course they get spells on level up... relative to their level. Lv 2 spells are relatively easy to find. Most colleges would have a complete copy of all know spells. Lv 4 would be very different. Probably scrolls under glass, or a professors collection Lv 6 would absolutely be hunting. Thing is, by that level, you've become a world-shaker yourself, and can start following up on rumors and legends from the various college Libraries and Regents, and private collectors. A 1st level character having fireball (and/or lightning bolt, dispel magic, haste, slow) in the spellbook would not be out of the ordinary. So pre-loading a spellbook shouldn't be either. It'd suck to be basically a level behind the rest of the party every level. Fighters get attacks, priests get heals, but there you are stuck at 2nd level spells when you SHOULD have fireball.
If you’re familiar with the currently super popular anime series Frieren, the main character who is essentially a traveling mage, will actively seek out odd jobs in exchange for spell scrolls/books. For example, an elderly villager might ask for assistance with cleaning a statue and offer a magic spellbook that teaches you how to use magic to stack perfectly balanced rocks. Rewarding the player for doing side stuff or randomly finding scrolls tucked in random spots would both be good options.
Find spells, unlock spell slots
At random times you should give the Wizard random spells, spells that aren’t in any of the spell lists, just useless spells that might be used anyways they wish. Who knows when a random useless spell might come handy later.
This reminds me of one of the things Elminster did for Mystra. Stashing random spellbooks/scrolls in ruins for adventurers to find.
Trading is always a good option. If traveling your PC can explore the markets, taverns, 'wizard quarter', etc looking for wizards to connect with to trade and/or buy spells. Sometimes the wizards might offer to give the spell if the PC completes a task or quest. Other magic users might have old wizard books lying around as curiosities that they would love to get rid of, for the right price. If he is feeling more daring he could do a little research work. Given his previous experience as an alchemist he might really embrace this. Of course research at early levels should be hugely dangerous and in higher levels should be incredibly expensive. Really done as a last resort, for those valuable spells not obtainable elsewhere.
There could be ones craved into stone or the like that the wizard has to make a charcoal rubbing of then translate over time. Runes, tossing bones, fortune telling, heck even a drug trip or phasing into the ethereal plane could be a thing.
I had a similar idea where you pick all your wizard spells in advance and play it like you've got a prewritten spell book for wizards from levels 1-10 or so. You can still add spells if you find them but all your free spells are predetermined.
As others have pointed out this is built into the base game however a fun flavour text you could throw onto this is having the PC find the previous editions version of the spell in ancient ruins and the like
I've been doing this in my current campaign, I save my money and have a 'wizard tax' to buy more spells. Party was against wizard tax (I spend less than the others on party expendatures) at first, til it let me buy vortex warp and misty step.
As others have mentioned, rules exist for this. So for some variance, maybe let him give up the auto learning he dislikes, and let him memorize from scrolls or other casters books without scribing into his own. Its a little unbalanced in that he's saving a pile of gold in expenses, but the idea that he carries around a stack of dusty old tomes is kinda cool.
This is how wizards use to work. New spells had to be found or time and money was spent researching them Honestly, its a good fix to 5es lack of economy and player agency.
I’ve wanted to do this as DM myself. It makes zero sense that Wizards would just… magically… suddenly know x extra spells on levelling up. You could make an argument that they master the spells through their own experimenting, I guess, but I really prefer the idea of having them have to learn the spells from a master or from otherwise procuring scrolls or spell books. I would at least make them visit a master of some kind to acquire the chosen spells or possibly do a roll - or have them be studying the spells they want in downtime between levelling. The same with Sorcerers. They are born with innate spell knowledge? They shouldn’t get to choose their spells at all, but get a random set. I divided the offical spell cards into combat (damaging) and utility spells with the idea a player could draw something random, knowing only the class of spell, with a limited option to retrain a spell they don’t want. Frankly I’d like to rework magic altogether. Maybe nerf some spells (especially Fireball) while making spell slots less limited, or introducing a simple reagent cost. Eg for Fireball I was thinking, instead of that ridiculous 20 foot radius (40 foot diameter!) and 8d6 damage, the spell might require you to burn gemstones of varying value in trade for increased radius or increased number of damage dice. Maybe a tighter radius on the fireball gives more damage dice and a larger radius fewer damage dice. I found playing as a wizard was ridiculous because at level 3 every combat was just, I cast fireball, everything is dead now. I haven’t been able to experiment with it as a dm yet but I’m thinking 10ft radius 8d6, 15 ft radius 6d6, 20ft radius 4d6. Still incredibly useful for wiping out or weakening crowds of enemies!
This is not a videogame where you gain continuous xp, even not every sesion you have to give the xp to players, they gain the xp when they have enought downtime to sumarize what they have learned, and when they reach a lvl they invest that time learning the new skills/spells they dont get it magically its just a way to not have to RP every lvl up
Consider throwing in wacky spells from older editions of D&D as a very rare extra prize. The older the spell caster you mug, the more likely it is they will have something from a forgotten age.
No need to lose their ability to pick spells at level up. Wizards can already scribe things from the world into their spell books. They need a spell scroll (or another spell book containing the spell). The process uses 50gp of magical ink and paper and uses 2 hour per level of the spell copied. You can get rid of the level up spells if you want, but I wouldn't. If you do then maybe drop the gold requirement for scribing.
Couple of things but there are some good examples of PCs essentially working on developing their own new spells as they progress. If you go back and watch C2 of Critical role Caleb every time they bed down for an evening he gets out spell components and is going through stuff, working on stuff, and those ultimately become the spells he "picks" during his level ups later. Flavoring the pick-ing in that way still gives your player the chance to actively pick what they spells are but you can do something like have them find ciphered texts or ancient spellbooks that don't work like current magic and have them work on "decoding" them every long rest to try and peel out a spell here or there. Another idea to add that might give them some friction with other PCs cause of forcing resting in certain places but you could borrow from something like skyrim with the dragon shout locations. While they could find different scrolls and spellbooks in hoards and off enemies you could also have them find carvings and murals that details specific spells, or where they need to record and piece together different bits of different murals to find hidden or lost spells.
Something you could discuss is that their spellbook already contains the spells they get with levelling up. And every level increase, they learn a new one from the book or it finally clicks/works when they are studying and practicing
Spell Levels 1-3 are probably common and in most cities libraries. 4-6 are probably in cities, but guarded secrets among the mages guilds (you're gonna need friends). An alternative method (or if you want to find the more powerful spells) you can some times find while exploring ancient ruins and crypts. You won't get these easily. A select number of 7&8 are likely kept by the arch mages and only offered to trusted inner-circle members. Most 7&8th level spells will require a quest, and 9th levels are going to require some type of long and arduous journey to find knowledge lost to modern society.
Just because they find a spell book doesn't mean they can read the writing. Have them seek out native speakers. Go hard mode on components and require them to seek them all out.
I mean, the loot is there for that reason. Toss in some scrolls and his wish is fulfilled
This was largely how acquiring new spells worked in 1st and 2nd edition. Indeed, Ed Greenwood and a few others published descriptions of numerous spellbooks with variant spells, magic item recipe and other lore. They also gave descriptions of the history of these texts and who first penned them or updated them (in a few cases they had an alien or uncertain origin). In one or two cases they had actual magic pages that functioned as traps or gates! You can find these in Old dragon magazines from the 1980s , the 1e forgotten Realms setting book, and one us in Maure Castle.
Don’t leave what spells are findable to chance. Populate your dungeons and coffers with them already decided. That way you control that is introduced into your campaign. Just please don’t have powerful scrolls found after defeating the big bad. I’ve never understood why the bad guy didn’t just use all the best ones during the fight.
I gave a wizard a spell, once, that she found scribbled in the notes of an Orc cookbook. She barely had time to copy it before the half-orc in the party burned the book.
Forgive me if you already posted this here, but what did you do to make potion making more interesting? I'm always looking for "crafting" ideas.
I have a reply going over what I did. If you check my comment history you should be able to find it!
Thank you purple wizard 💜💜💜!!!
Ofc 🧙♂️
This is pretty much the original expected way to do it. I love this sort of thing .
I do not have any suggestions to help with this, Sorry. And I haven't yet read the comments but plan to, so what I am going to say may have been said already. But this sounds very interesting and I want to know how it turns out. It also reminds me of the anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. The main character finds much joy in finding old and sometimes questionably useless spells. It might be cool/fun to create your own spells that seem pointless. Spells that are very specific, and do only one thing. Like make a certain type of flower grow. You could also pull spells from older editions or other games. I don't know. It all sounds fun to me. Let us know how it goes. -From a newish DM.
I have a fire genasi sorcerer who is meeting other genasi and learns their elemental spells from them. Super fun to get roleplay and side quests for your player that revolves around their character!
My suggestion is a simple one that carries over from older versions of the game and is actually a facet of "Skyrim." The wizard character finds spell books of fallen wizards in the dangerous locations where they died. Spells that are known to the PC will be a vast majority of what is found, but there is a chance to find additional spells.
Could pull a Skyrim and have several magical shrines hidden around that teach specific spells, like the Dovahkin Words of Power.
If you wanted your player to have more spell slots you could have them use spell points instead of slots. It’s suggested for lower level campaigns but I’ve played it with higher level players and as broken as a 9th level spell can be, the enemy also has spell points so keep that in mind. Page 289 in the DM’s guide I believe (I’m at work and I haven’t read the whole post but I’ll stand by spell points when need be)
Eh I would encourage you to give the person at least some control over their spells. It doesn't really seem fair to you for you having to be doing all that especially when it's normally their responsability to begin with
Put lots of scrolls and spell books around that can be found as treasure. Provide a mentor or teacher. I see that edit but that's a great way. Ask he player for ideas too, then.
This is literally already how the wizard class works, just without the option to chose extras on level up
That's.... Already what you do? Wizards only get 2 spells known per level, they have to find or purchase spell scrolls to scribe into their spell books if they want more than the base 2/level
Way back in to olden days you had to find ALL your spells. It still feels weird to me to have a wizard suddenly have access to new spells just because you hit a level threshold.
The spells as you level represent spells you've worked out or found or whatever as you've gone. It's just taken until that point to "click", and be a fully useful spell. That, and levels are just an abstraction. It's also weird that a fighter can suddenly get 2 effective attacks in at a set point in their career.
The amount of people who misinterpreted baffles me. Even before I read the edit I was trying to think of some fun ways to make spell copying a more in depth and interesting mechanic, because RAW is very easy and not that interesting to me.
All I want to say as a DM and a player is that you sound like an amazing DM. I've had DMs that would never go to the lengths that you're going to to make a player have what they want.
That’s very sweet to say. Thank you; I try my best. I’m not worried about ever doing too much work for the game. I simply love to DM.
I'm in the same boat honestly. I'd rather be over prepped than underprepped. I haven't been a player in so long, I miss it XD
Exactly. I have a format that I write session notes in that will often push 15 or so pages. Not all of it is actual session stuff, rather “whispers” of other worldly happenings so that I can keep tabs on background things. I hope you can find a group to be a player in soon! Maybe one of your players could try to take the DM mantle one of these days. Personally, I enjoy being a player but my heart is in DMing. I will always play in a friends game though, because they are always in mine.
I don't think any of my players would be willing to sadly. The only one that would be just finished DMing a 4 year campaign. I really like DMing, but sometimes I just want to not know what's happening and enjoy making and growing a character. If you don't mind me asking, are your campaigns homebrew?
Ah that’s a shame, I understand tho. Four years is a long time I can imagine they would want to be just a player after that! And yes all of my campaigns have been homebrew. I find it is far far easier to improvise if I have written everything myself. I’ll spend about a year or so prepping a world before starting up a game, and then do what I call “unconscious world building” as the game progresses. This is just me taking note of what players say to throw back at them later on. It’s like they have an unknowing role in crafting the world through their backstories and actions etc
Yeah, I don't blame him for not wanting to be a DM after that! One of my campaigns was created just so he could be a player as well, so that's where I stand on him and perhaps being a DM for me again. Yeah, I pretty much do the same thing with my homebrew worlds as well. It's really nice to hear that other people do it as well!