A DM’s Skills and Magic System

The Making of a Spellbook

The Wizardly Arts Unlocked

While yes, I did unlock spellbooks for all classes to open up new magical avenues to them that were previously locked into the wizard class, I did make them sweat for it.

First, they had to physically construct the book, which meant they needed a whole list of supplies just to get started. High quality paper, of course, leather for the cover, ink for the decorative tracings and to sign their name on the inner cover, powdered silver for the inlay on the front cover and to act as an attractant for magical energy, and extra silver if they wanted to later socket gems into the cover of their spellbook.

The cost for just making the spellbook could run each character about a thousand gold pieces, not to mention the amount of ink that they would quickly run through as they scrambled to add spells to their new spellbooks.

Now, here’s how learning new spells worked. It kept to the same table as the amount of time, effort, and supplies that a wizard would use, however, casters of all stripes could teach one another spells or learn them from magical scrolls purchased from the Moonstone Conclave. This gave the players a reason to visit the site and begin a gameplay loop involving hunting down monsters in the wilds and in the mountains so that they could then come back, sell the monster parts, buy new scrolls, and start ticking spells off their lists.

To save money on purchasing spells, the player characters could also teach one another spells that were already in their spell lists, such as a cleric’s Cure Wounds or a warlock’s Counterspell. This meant that the player characters spent more time in camp studying with one another, exchanging spells, and bringing the group closer together as they not only became companions, but also valuable spellcasting resources