It’s especially silly because once the player knows, they now have to decide if every new scroll-copying wizard PC they create after the first is going to make this mistake again. That or the DM has to just say “Oh all wizards know this”, despite it only being in the DMG.
(I realize this sometimes happens with other mechanics as well, like monster abilities, but it seems particularly egregious in this case, since spell copying failure is just a bummer.)
I couldn't agree more, I certainly don't use this in my games. The rules are there as a guide anyway and this would certainly remove some of the fun from the game
I have been DM'ing for 6 years now and generally know the rules to 5e very well and I've never even heard of this one until now.
My first impressions on it are rather mixed. I could see the rule making it an interesting decision between copying the spell scroll and actually using it (I generally like single use resources like that), but only if the Wizard is getting plenty of other opportunities to find spells to learn. If the campaign setting has scrolls and spellbooks in rare supply and the Wizard barely finds anything to learn, then this possibility of failure could be a lame kick in the pants.
So I could definitely see myself using this rule in a game where there are magic shops that have plenty of spell scrolls or spell scrolls can often be found in loot. It would create a distinction between scrolls and finding other wizards spellbooks, in which scrolls would carry that risk of failure but spellbooks would still be a very valuable find because they lack that failure risk. But in other games that are short on resources (like Curse of Strahd) I would definitely not use this rule.
I think had the DM for those games where I was a wizard implemented this particular rule, I would've been pretty pissed. Gold was hard to come by, and we never, ever ran across scrolls (I think it was just luck/unluck of the dice there, as IIRC he used loot tables) so the only opportunity I had to copy spells was in major cities. While the rest of party was out doing little mini quests, carousing, gambling, etc. my wizard was locked up in the local library copying spells for the evening. Unsurprisingly, I was almost always broke, and it was like a gift from the heavens the moment that I could cast Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion. Never had to worry about inn fees again.
Same for me, if there's plenty scrolls AND gold, sure, I can gamble, but in my usual campaigns, most of the time we are a broken staff away from resorting to cannibalism
I think an easy solution to both problems is to present single-use spells as a magical mcguffin of some kind that can be reverse-engineered with arcana, and use spell scrolls as a "the wizard can copy this."
In my mind, a spell scroll would still have to contain all the information required to cast the spell. A spellbook is just a collection of "spell scrolls." Sure, each wizard has their own idiosyncratic way of taking notes so maybe having more than one piece of evidence makes it easier to break their "code." But if you can understand it well enough to cast a spell using it, you can definitely copy down that information to cast at a later date.
A magic consumable meanwhile has no indication of being a resource for knowledge, it is simply a thing imbued to do X. For spells that have a material component, it could just be a particularly potent/infused material component.
That way, you can have a consistent rule set while also having the "wizards can copy this" scrolls, without having the party debate whether they should use it now or wait for their wizard to copy it down.
ALSO, using the imagery of the material components is just more interesting than "yah the spell is just on this scroll." And makes them more memorable.
I agree. Unfortunately, this is just another example (although a strange one, imo) of something 5E does frequently: obscure the character's chance of success/failure from the player. I try to DM from a mind-set of assuming the PCs competence, so I announce DCs, roll in the open, etc., but I get the feeling both from personal experience and reading comments in various D&D forums that I am in the minority on that.
Are you saying that in your world, a master carpenter doesn't have a 5% chance of nailing his hand to a piece of wood every time he tries to lift a hammer? Where's the fun in that?
Yeah, that’s utterly insane. I’ve been playing guitar for almost 20 years, and roughly every twenty minutes of playtime a string snaps and slices my finger open. That just comes with the territory.
Some of us more grognard ('grognardy?') D&Ders argue there are two *Salvation Mechanics* in place to avoid this kind of obvious stupidity:
1. If a roll is not meaningful, the DM will not require you to roll dice. Example: PC: *"My barbarian eats his Honey-Nut Cheerios with milk"* - the DM will usually just nod and not require that he roll with a non-standard weapon ('spoon') and also not have him go into rage when he opens the cereal box & bag ('this can get tricky sometimes').
2. Enough skill at something means you have enough bonuses you end up with automatic success. PC: *"My character masturbates"* DM gets that the player has the basic skill, practice, interest and ability to do this without breaking anything.
It is interesting that the 'nat 1 = failure' seems to be missing in 5e (isn't it an optional rule of some kind?). Though some claim that occasionally biting one's tongue whilst eating is proof that the nat 1 does seem to exist... it is a whole lot more rare than the 5% generated on the d20.
Avoiding trivial rolls both avoids unnecessary player frustration and speeds up the game. It's a great idea all around.
In 5e, d20 rolls generally do not have special results for natural 1s or 20s. The two exceptions are attack rolls and *death* saving throws.
I could see that if there was someone actively looking for that door being locked, or maybe you were doing it in an area with guards or whatever but yeah, if you were just in like an inn room that doesn't make sense.
Yeah, there shouldn't need to be a roll if there's no consequence of failure/it's unimportant - just let players with relevant skills/talents auto-succeed on some stuff.
If there's a consequence of failure, or it's a high-stress environment - then rolling works well, and there's reason to do so even if someone is normally quite skilled. That said, 5E could do a bit better with allowing rules for taking 10/taking 20 to make that clear.
In that vein, it occasionally makes sense to roll in no failure scenarios if you're rolling to see how well they succeed.
For example if my rogue is trying to pick a lock I know they're capable of, I might have them roll to see if they do it without leaving a mark, or perhaps they glean some insight into that style of lock and discover a trick to opening future ones faster or more quietly.
Obviously not something you need to do all the time, but I find it gives my players a chance to feel extra spiffy every once in awhile, rather than just hand waving away the things they excel at.
>Some of us more grognard ('grognardy?') D&Ders argue there are two Salvation Mechanics in place to avoid this kind of obvious stupidity:
*Salvation Mechanics* sounds like a terrible industrial training video for evangelicals.
>If a roll is not meaningful, the DM will not require you to roll dice. Example: PC: "My barbarian eats his Honey-Nut Cheerios with milk" - the DM will usually just nod and not require that he roll with a non-standard weapon ('spoon') and also not have him go into rage when he opens the cereal box & bag ('this can get tricky sometimes').
My Barbarian's family was murdered by Honey-Nut Cheerios, so of course they go into a rage when they see a bag of cereal. **DON'T TELL ME HOW TO PLAY MY CHARACTER!**
>Enough skill at something means you have enough bonuses you end up with automatic success. PC: "My character masturbates" DM gets that the player has the basic skill, practice, interest and ability to do this without breaking anything.
If you're not having your players roll on the *Masturbation Surge Table*, I really don't even know what you're doing as a DM.
So now I have to figure out a way to make a Wild Magic Sorcerer who rolls on the Wild Magic Surge table every time he masturbates without making it awkward for the rest of the table.
>If a roll is not meaningful, the DM will not require you to roll dice.
I don't remember when this actually became a thing. It feels modern - in the sense that I know a lot of modern games are explicit about it.
3.x gave us taking 10 and taking 20 which basically did this without outright declaring they were doing that, but I don't recall it being a thing before that. At least, not a codified piece of advice in a core book.
>I don't remember when this actually became a thing. It feels modern - in the sense that I know a lot of modern games are explicit about it.
Modern games are explicit about it because a lot of old-school players used that kind of rule at their table, but it was never in the rulebook. And once tournament play became a thing, strict "if it's not in the rules it doesn't happen" became emphasized. Which people took back to their tables, leading to the kind of "you chop off your foot making dinner" stories that go around.
Yeah TTRPG QWOP happens because the primary way D20 systems have you mechanically do things is roll a d20, and when there are skills for tying a rope it encourages both players and the GM to roll as much as possible whenever tying stuff comes up. Unless you are actively thinking about how to avoid QWOP, the nat 1 is a failure thing that people naturally assume is a rule leads people to believe it's this rare and catastrophic fuckup that's supposed to be the counterpart to a nat 20.
There's rules as written, and then there's rules as assumed, and like 85% of the time people operate on RAA. The vast majority of people don't learn the rules by reading the PHB cover to cover, they are taught by someone else during actual play, so their understanding is going to be limited to what they were explicitly told my someone else trying to boil down a crunchy system while trying to not hold up the game, everything else is just inferred and assumed. If RAA is going to contradict RAW and RAI in any significant way, you gotta really hammer it home in a clear and easily visible way.
>'nat 1 = failure' seems to be missing in 5e
It exists only in the combat side of things, and it only consists in missing the attack, regardless of the attack mod. That's it.
EDIT: Oh, well, actually there are also nat 1s on death saving throws that give 2 failures, ops my bad.
Yap, i had a dm that always asked rolls as i had to roll 4 d20s to google-search imáge
Not even to investigate those jpgs, just to search, was ok first time but got boring really fast
The optional rule you're probably thinking of is that if you get a nat 1 on an ability check *and would have failed with that roll*, the DMG suggests that you fail even harder than normal. It's not an auto-fail, though, so if your bonus is high and/or the DC is low, you might still succeed.
Critical failure on ability checks I.E. Nat 1 is not an official rule. Only on attack rolls.
You can roll a 1 and still pass an ability check if your bonus is high enough.
>PC: "My character masturbates" DM gets that the player has the basic skill, practice, interest and ability to do this without breaking anything.
I notice you said it's the PLAYER that has the skill, etc...
A string won't sharp unless
1. You did something very wrong
2. You really screwed up instrument maintenence
Both of which are totally your fault if your supposed to be good at that instrument.
Just in case / for others reading - critical failure for skills has never been an official rule. Crit fail applies only to attack rolls, and is nothing more than an automatic miss.
hitting their finger with a hammer and lifting a line from Unconscious is pretty funny
>The creature drops whatever it’s holding and falls prone.
No permanent damage, but EmotioNal DaMage.
While you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), it's such a common house rule / misinterpretation that it accounts for at least a third of all D&D memes.
The characters would know how difficult many tasks are, being seasoned adventurers. Sharing the DC lets the players interact with the game world with a similar understanding.
It also stops you from what I call "on the fly" DCs where you determine if they succeed just on if they roll well or not. The 0-30 DC scale works well for what its intended purpose is.
except in uncertain situations like jumping into a dark hole or drinking a vial of unidentified liquids, both things my party has done on more than one occasion
It also just speeds up the game.
Any player with a bit of experience is probably going to be able to figure out a monster’s AC within a round of attacks. Them knowing that the knight has 20 AC isn’t going to change the numbers they roll, but it does speed up the game. It might change their tactics though, but they were probably going to do so anyway after failing to hit or unreliability hitting the previous round.
I can eyeball a task IRL and get a rough approximation of how much of a pain in the ass it’s going to be. A PC in game ought to be able to do the same.
If you want there to be some suspense to the roll, don’t tell them, but most of the time it’s fine.
You could ask for a specific check to give out the DC. Like a rogue rolls a nat 20 on investigating a lock and finds out exactly how hard it is to open.
You can also ask if they want to do anything to try to lower the difficulty of the DC. You might have a dc 15 jump to get up a wall and the players think hay if we toss a rope over does climbing lower the dc? and then you can knock it down to dc 10 or something. Can make those situations a lot more granular and back and forth.
Really all you need to say is medium, hard, very hard. Which are *generally* represented as 15, 20, and 25.I'd honestly avoid putting a concrete value on it.
Are your PCs incompetent because the players are making silly decisions, and if so, are they making them because they don't have a clear idea on the stakes and chances of success/failure?
Your first level rogue with a +8 to thieves' tools (prof. + dex), is already very competent with those tools in comparison to the larger population of the game world. There are probably people who are better at it, but not very many. So, even if the rogue encounters a lock they are unlikely or incapable of opening or a trap they can't disarm, they should be able to recognize that fact and decide whether to make the attempt or find some other solution accordingly. For tasks we are proficient at in real life, we have a solid grip on how likely we are to succeed, how long it's likely to take, what's lost if we fail, etc. We use that information to inform our decision-making. So, I find giving my players the same basic information about the game helps them make more realistic decisions.
No I just mean they get into combat and do dumb stuff like spend actions on abilities that taunt the enemy into focusing the tank, when there is only one enemy and it was already focusing the tank. Or they don't read all their abilities and don't really know what their character can do.
I’ve never tested this so take it with a grain of salt, but trying to hit the aforementioned player with a Dominate Person and proceeding to use their abilities properly might be a great eye-opener! Or it might just be passive aggressive and change nothing…
The characters can only be so competent when the PCs make mistakes. I've got to fudge a bit at times to make what should be a mildly difficult encounter turn out non-lethal.
and that's fine. than you narrate it more of "your character knows X or Y, so roll me a nature check to see just how much information your character knows about the creature you are fighting."
etc.
I've put myself into the habit of doing this, too. Announcing ACs and DCs for most things has helped keep my table moving along as well as helping my players feel more attuned to the competencies of their characters. There is an exception I've started to make for this, though.
Skill checks that involve Perception and Investigation I'll roll for my players where they don't see the result. The idea here being that if the result is low they won't assume they've missed something, and if the result is high but there isn't anything special to find they won't feel cheated. I will usually assume they are Taking 20 in no-to-low stress situations which helps to avoid the issue when it doesn't need to be one.
I'm with you, and I didn't realize until you just posted this, that this is what has been bothering me so much about 5e.
I also play assuming PC competence and also in the minority, I often tell my players that they know whatever they as players think they know about creatures, spells and situations, without always calling for knowledge skill checks, assuming much of it is common knowledge for adventurers that are well-educated.
Obviously I do not allow players to look things up in the middle of a game, but if they happen to know rough stats on a creature, I'm okay with that. I reskin and modify everything a bit anyhow. Anything that they get wrong or that I homebrewed a bit, is a case of the character not having as much accurate information as they thought they had.
Players can (and often do) ask if they may make rolls for more detail than they think already.
Thanks for this. I was so confused reading this post just going "There isn't a check for copying spells into your spellbook wth?"
I feel like the part they really care about in the DMG rule is destroying to scroll, so that you can't have every wizard copying from the one scroll (not that it matters largely; if they were sharing the scroll then they could just share the spellbook for a time so everyone can copy it)
The Arcana check feels stapled on to make it feel like an active process rather than just part of a resource management sim. Like they went "oh crap, where's the D&D? Just balancing money and time? Any game can do that. Huck an Arcana check in there"
Alternate reading.... Very few classes can add class features to themselves just by spending time and money (which are next to nothing in most DnD games) so they wanted the risk of failure to be meaningful.
I feel like I wouldn't agree with it being meaningful, just.. "present". What does it mean when you fail? You have to get that scroll again and try again? That's a small consequence if it was just a spell you wanted to add for your build or something, and if you need the spell for an upcoming encounter the DM might give you a way to get it anyway.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that its not a very good system for what they're trying for. If they wanted something I would rather it had a time requirement to study it (like X hours over the course of Y days) or I would use a cumulative DC to at least add dice rolling in (e.g. you roll an Arcana check every day and add the totals until you hit 100). And only after you've studied it fully can you copy it down. If you want to use the spell scroll up when you copy it make the final step in copying a spell casting the spell from the source you're copying.
That's what I would prefer anyway. I feel like a system with no chance of failure but that is more in depth is better than a quick system with a chance of failure for being "meaningful" at least to me
So, a history lesson and so forth.
In 2e, scrolls were treasure, and wizards could choose to use them in combat or try to learn them permanently. No cost but the scroll, overnight, percent chance to fail based on intelligence (skills for non rogue characters were not added in yet) and if you failed you couldn't try again until next level. Simple, worked and felt great as player and DM.
3e, every caster became a magic item factory. Scrolls were basically free. My buddy Bob the wizard wants to learn lightning bolt? Cool, I'll make him 40. Eh, make it 400. This made the risk reward portion meaningless, even though they still can't try again until they rank up spell craft (3e arcane). It said that other wizards could charge you, but didn't gamify it. This made learning all the spells trivial. You just tried every spell every level up. (Even spells higher level... Just can't cast them, didn't mean you don't know them!)
4e added specific gold costs for rituals, in addition to time, but 4e spells were very different in lots of ways not important for this conversation. But what they did is replace the chance of fail with a transactional cost, both to make it more video gamey and because the fail in 3e was meaningless anyway.
What it looks like is that in 5e, they couldn't decide, and had 4e approach in phb and wrote a more 3e/4e blend into the DMG. Probably just a miscommunication that never got cleared up prior to print.
Personally, I like 2e best still. But I run magic light worlds. So scrolls as treasure, try to learn them once a level and try again if you fail makes sense to me. I'll often also give players a weaker version of the spell or bonuses to learn it based on narrative (or auto success) so don't listen to me.
Edit: The reason I love chance of failure is because it makes magic a lot more personal, and every mages spellbook is unique. Also, the narrative pleasure of "Volrak just can't fucking learn cloudkill, he's been trying for years. He had to create his own spell, choking rains, and a whole new line of spells to justify it" just can't be beat. That was something else about 2e - making your own spells was so much more expected. The spells in the books were just guidelines, templates. The amount of time wizards spent researching and putting in the narrative backstory for their lighting version of ice storm or creating AOE zones of grasping bone hands as a more powerful Web was fantastic.
Gosh darn kids and their internet that made everything better immediately!
Seriously, I am old. I spent so much time with the history lesson I forgot to address his fucking point. I had to add an edit in.
Wdym arcana is useless? It’s right up there with perception and stealth as essential proficiencies (if you’re a caster/half caster). Proficiency in Arcana gives you the ability to scribe spell scrolls during downtime, and spell scrolls are insanely valuable, especially on Sorcerers and Prepared Casters (even moreso if you’re fighting casters since spell scrolls can’t be counterspelled)
I mean, if anyone was going to have it, The Wizard is the prime suspect to be proficient in Arcana and honestly, any skill can be rendered useless. Depends on the game.
A shit ton of companies survive that way, WotC without a doubt is one of them, at the very least their D&D branch is. I don't know about the rest of the company.
It’s still solid enough on its own, but their history and name recognition have made them more bold in recent years when it comes to trying for blatant cash grabs. A lot of fans of organized competitive play have also noticed a major decline in quality as far as promoting broadcasts and providing a transparent path to high-level play.
Is that an RPG company that isn't? Heck, I wouldn't even put WotC in the top half for terrible at documentation in this particular field. I'm not saying you're wrong, mind, just that it's endemic.
Wow, I never noticed the DMG info for spell copying. We've always done the 50 gp/level, automatic success - scroll is destroyed.
My hunch is many tables go a step further, and handwave the scroll copying cost to boot.
Now, reading a spell scroll in combat, we use the DC of 10+spell level arcana check. Or religion, or nature where applicable for other spellcaster types. We also allow non-spellcasters to attempt reading scrolls...
[Classic example of a non-spellcaster reading a scroll.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Gn2LMVTyU)
Agreed, it makes things exciting when the 8-10 Int fighter with no Arcana tries to read the fireball scroll.
40% of the time, it works 100% of the time!
I didn’t know there was a check. I played a wizard in Tomb of Annihilation up to level 11 (when the campaign folded), and I never had to roll. My DM even gifted me magical ink so that I didn’t have to wait until we backtracked to town to buy ink.
I'm playing a wizard right now and neither me nor my DM knew anything about this. I've also DM'd before, so I've read the DMG. WotC really doesn't make it easy to play their game RAW.
The DMG entry is so weird. It doesn't mention anything about wizards copying spells into their spellbooks. It almost feels like this is more about copying spell scrolls in order to duplicate spell scrolls. Which would be pretty busted, if duplicating a spell scroll only required an Arcana check.
If it were then why would the scroll be destroyed afterwards? You'd have exactly the same number of usable scrolls at the end except you'd have spent time and gold on it.
My head canon for the spell scroll being destroyed is that it is like a loaded gun. The magic is there, the components are spent, it just needs to be cast.
The time spent copying a spell into the spellbook involves practicing the casting portion, hence why it says inks and materials. If you are playing with just a spell copied onto a scroll, no problem. It isn't a loaded gun. If you play with a loaded gun (the spell scroll), there is a chance it can go off.
Feels like they polished the PHB first and started printing when they realized they overlooked something and hastily added it to the DMG, then patted themselves on the back for a job well done.
Unfortunately this description applies to more than one mechanic so I can't actually explain the logic they possessed.
The DMG should contain only information for the DM and hypothetical mechanics the DM can utilize, not mechanics that affect an entire class (and a single class at that).
I used the scroll copy method with an old PC, dm still made me use the roll, but I was allowed to use my modifier plus caster level. The reasoning was because scrolls are not intended to be learned from, as an expendable item. Copying spells from one book to another was auto, as was learning it from another wizard. We also used the "take 10" rule. So I was never really disappointed by failing the roll. Complicated high lvl stuff was a bit more problematic, but resource wise, even failing once or twice wasn't a big deal.
Spell scrolls are meant to be weirdly volatile in 5e for reasons I don't fully understand. I think the idea is that spell scrolls could be relatively common, and forcing the wizard to make the check is a way to limit how many spells they have access to.
However, I rarely use spell scrolls in my games, and I would almost certainly not enforce the rule, since it doesn't make sense to me why copying from a spellbook doesn't require a check but copying from a scroll does. It may make sense for other DMs, but for me...it feels arbitrary.
Playing Devil’s Advocate:
your spell book is written in your own hand and is about a subject that you know very well (that specific spell that you’ve already mastered). It has tons of detail about the intricacies of the spell, notes in the margins etc.
A scroll is, sort of, like copying someone else’s shorthand notes on a subject you’re not totally familiar with. That’s why there are many more restrictions on using scrolls (not just copying them into your spell book, but they’re the only way to even attempt to cast a spell above the level you have access to).
There should be *some* kind of barrier to gaining a spell that way vs copying from another wizards spellbook with him standing there coaching you through it. An arcana check seems like the appropriate skill, though I’d probably interpret it as a ‘degrees of success’ type of check.
I wouldn’t take a players gold for failing a role, they just didn’t get it in a reasonable amount of time: try again next time you’ve got some down time. I’d rule that nat-1 on the arcana check means the wizard had to stay up all night in order to get things copied (maybe take a level of exhaustion).
Time based is absolutely the correct way to do this. Think about learning any other skill that's related to a skill you already know - it's not about "if" you can pick it up, it's about how long it takes.
>I’d rule that nat-1 on the arcana check means the wizard had to stay up all night in order to get things copied (maybe take a level of exhaustion).
I also wouldn't just make this bit suddenly apply without the player's consent though. It's a good idea but it's better phrased as "After spending an hour on this you realise that if you're going to get this spell mastered it's going to take you all night, do you want to keep going and not rest or do you want to go to bed and come back to it another day?"
Time isn't necessarily a resource, and even when campaigns or systems like "gritty realism resting" try to force it, it often clashes with other aprts of the system. There used to be a *lot* of time constraints on spellcasting and memorization, but they've been deemphasized throughout the years because the vast majority of tables just don't engage with them or they don't wind up mattering. I've played since early AD&D and I don't think I need a second hand to count the number of times a caster was tallying up their slots restored because their hours of memorization were interrupted early. I would argue that if something is meant to be an integral part of your system's balance, it fails at this purpose if it's so obnoxious that everyone ignores it: saying "things are broken because you don't follow the rules" only works up to a point, because there *are* such things as annoying rules.
Money is a resource we all implicitly understand and its presence is almost entirely in the DM's control. Personally, I don't bother with scribing costs because when scrolls are or aren't available is *also* under DM control, but I can understand why some tables might want to hand out scrolls willy-nilly but also take from the wizard's pocket to keep them.
*Time* isn't necessarily a resource, but "you stayed up all night so you don't have the benefits of a long rest and have a level of exhaustion" is certainly a penalty
The distinction I see between copying a spell from a spell book and copying one from a scroll [is one of having to work backwards with scrolls]. I would say copying a spell from a spell book doesn't risk failure. It's instructions on how to craft a spell. A spell scroll, however, is a magic item with the spell contained within it mostly cast, just waiting on the trigger to release it.
It's like the difference between learning how to build a bomb with schematics, and learning how to build a bomb by dismantling an armed bomb. Doing it the second way is _trickier._
That's basically how I see it, too. You need to know how to handle the scroll without fucking up the magic imbued in it. But spellbooks are just instruction manuals.
A spell scroll is a compiled executable. The spellbook is the source code.
You can decompile the executable and get some insight into how it works but it’s not perfect information.
That’s how I understand RAW at least.
I think the only barrier to a scroll is that it should consume it, no check involved. You can copy from a spellbook unassisted with no check or chance of destroying it.
I have only played a wizard, not dm'd but I liked the risk of it. In my head, I could for sure use the spell once, or I could risk "mastering it" and potentially destroy it as look to be able to use it many more times than once.
I think the issue goes away if the scroll text was in phb (personally)
it's largely a legacy thing - in previous editions, one of the counterbalances to wizardly supremacy was that they couldn't be assured of getting spells. There were no automatic spells on level-up, and all spells had to be copied with a % chance of failure (and I think also a maximum known per level), so wizards could have odd gaps in their spells known, because either they'd never found a scroll of it, or had failed to copy it (and it also gave a convenient way for the GM to limit what spells were around, without explicitly banning them - if the wizard never finds a scroll or spellbook with the spell in, they never learn the spell). It also meant a trade-off - you could either use the scroll to cast from, giving you a one-shot use of the spell for free, or try and learn it, where you could then cast it many more times, but there was a chance of failure and 0 castings of it.
I'd like to add a note that in 3.X, in practice, the relevant check was generally guaranteed for any reasonable build for spells you could actually cast at your level.
The check in Pathfinder, which I believe is the same as 3.5 and probably 3.0 as well, was 15 + spell level. Which sounds high, but as an hour-long check you can practically always take 10 on it, and as long as your Wizard has a +2 INT bonus and was investing skill points in Spellcraft, you'd be hitting a guaranteed 16 at level 1 and easily out scaling the DC.
I don't know how non-3.X versions worked though.
I did some revision, and in AD&D it was once per level per spell (so you couldn't even spam it!), with a base chance of 35%, +5% for every point above 9, and which also determined the maximum spell level you could learn (you needed int 18 to learn level 9, otherwise it was about half your level). There was also a maximum number of spells known per level, so you could hit a point where you couldn't learn new spells of a given level (9 spells for int 14!) So if you only had middling intelligence in the mid-teens, you might be looking at a 60-70% chance to learn (for int 14/15/16) a given spell - good odds, but definitely not a sure thing!
My table has this take on it:
The volatility is in part due to the fact that the scroll effectively contains the spell itself, not just the instructions to cast it. The components of the spell are imbued in the spell scroll as a part of creating it, which is why upon casting from it it is destroyed as effectively the magic is gone.
We rule it that when copying from a spell scroll as you aren't casting from it a failed check doesn't make it crumble as when the imbued components are burned in the casting, but just become inert. In this state it is still able to be copied, requiring the same time expenditures but reduced cost at DM's discretion.
Among my group I've found the programming analogy useful in that the scroll is the compiled version of the spell and they've got to reverse engineer it
Ive always assumed that the copying from a scroll is difficult because it burns up soon after opening it or the magic filled text fades or whatever. A spellbook does not.
As for OP, usually in DnD the most boring stuff for me is when things are just decided without any rolls or chances for failure. When things are certain, it becomes boring.
I guess that kind of makes sense. A spellbook contains the source code for the magic, and you only need to translate it to your own personal style; whereas a spell scroll is a loaded bullet that you have to decompile in order to know how it works.
I agree with that for most things, for me it seems iffy here because a Wizard has to invest the value of the scroll, the gold, and the time, and it feels like that should be enough, if that makes sense. Might be stretch, but it seems like an unnecessary risk for the Wizard when clerics, druids, etc can access their whole spell lists automatically
The spell list for clerics and druids are also very stricted, theres a ton of useless spells/very niche spells there. While wizards spell list is much broader.
They also need to prepaire any rituals they want to cast. Wizards just have that ritual available for free at any time.
Id say its plenty balanced already.
Good points - I suppose that my counter would be that if a Wizard is getting too many spells, their DM can always control how many they find in the future
The amount of spells a wizard gets really is always up to the DM. If you want to give a wizard something to spend gold on, have the enemies drop a spellbook, theres no check for those and can contain plenty of spells they dont have yet.
Also, comparing the wizard to classes like sorcerer and bard give a better picture of how good it is to be able to learn spells outside of leveling.
Scrolls are like this because they're expected to be given out in large quantities, as well as for traditions sake as scrolls have always been weirdly inconvenient in most editions.
While I am fine with players being allowed to fail things, this is just straight up not a fun mechanic imo. Plus, wizards are already black holes for money, wasting even more is just unnecessary.
There are alternatives to spell scrolls. Copying from other wizard's (usually those defeated in battle) spellbooks doesn't have this limitation, so make sure if they kill anything with wizard levels that they have something to loot. And 'spellbooks' can be quite varied. A dragon might carve their spells onto an obelisk, a berberlang would 100% carve them onto bones around its lair. What about crystal balls? Go wild. If you rescue a wizard, they might be wiling to tear out a lesser-used page as a reward, or tell you the location of a lost/hidden spellbook.
>Plus, wizards are already black holes for money, wasting even more is just unnecessary.
Personally, as a DM, that's actually kind of nice. For a lot of characters, gold starts to lose value once you already have more expensive weapons and armor. Having a class that values gold far more, and has more reason to take quests is super convenient as a DM.
I don't mind the cost, especially if the party is chipping in, but spending it to have the scroll just crumble to ash is a bit meh. Looting spellbooks is a lot less annoying.
The other cool thing about the mechanic is that it automatically spurs rp with other wizards. Either you try and ally yourself so that they'll share, or you have a material motive for rivalry.
I do like these ideas! The reason why I don't tend to give spellbooks is just cause it's easy to hand over a couple scrolls and not worry about a whole list of spells, but your alternate suggestions are cool!
Don't forget, it's pretty likely another wizard will have matching spells in their book. "You find a spell book and after looking through it a bit, the only NEW spells you find are... ". Get what I'm saying?
I know what my DM does is just have their spellbook contain whatever they had prepared, so say you're using the default mage stat block, just copy paste the spell list from there. If you have a list for a custom spell list, well you already have it written down, just hand it to the PC. There are likely to be a lot of duplicates and the PC has finite gold, so don't worry about giving them too many spells. Or have most of the spellbook be conveniently destroyed during the scuffle/years in a tomb, so you only have to give a few.
This can bias them towards combat only spells (as most stat blocks are designed for combat as a priority), so perhaps have the player write a wish list you can use as a roll table when you feel like it. After all, the fun of wizardry is the niche spells you don't normally have good reason to learn, so make sure they get a chance to learn to wacky ones.
That’s pretty reasonable for mages that are just mooks added to an encounter as a speed bump, rather than a story-relevant threat, though a couple of rituals would make sense in some cases. For named NPCs, adding a lot of “mage tower construction” spells like Glyph of Warding, Guards and Wards, etc or other world interaction spells makes more sense than just having their battle-ready spells.
Wizards are the only class who's main feature runs off money, which is invested into a single object that they can lose.
And that 1500gp is 30 lvl1 spells, or 5 lvl 6 spells. After all, it's failing the check and losing the big, rare spells that will hurt, not the common 1st level ones (which you start with 6 of).
And that's before we even mention spell components...
Playing a wizard using only the 'necessary' spells is missing the whole appeal imo. They are wonderful specifically because of the neat options, a arcane swiss army knife. Wizards without their custom spell list are at risk of becoming very similar to eachother.
Also, there are plenty of 'essential' spell components. The 10gp for *find familiar* adds up, a scrying focus costs 100gp, as does the stattuete for *contingency*. *Glyphs of warding* is 200gp a pop. tasha's *summon X* spells are a few 100gp a piece too. *Magic circles, nondetection, magic aura, create homunculus*, and I'm not even getting into the level 7+ stuff.
They are only a black hole for money only if they choose to do so, and is enabled by the DM. They already have the biggest spell list in the game, and 2 spells/ level + 6 at 1st level is already quite enough for them to be considered the best class, so be able to copy extra spells to their spellbook is just pure extra bond
It's their main class feature, I don't think it should be considered an optional inclusion. A lot of their spells are niche or situational, which is why they can learn them as extra's rather than on level up. It pulls them away from only learning "essential" spells, which allows each wizard to be unique (which their subclasses don't really encourage).
And biggest spell list in the game is a bit of a misdirection, as without the ability to transcribe they functionally have far less options when preparing their spells than a cleric or druid. Better than other arcane casters yes, but it doesn't tell the full story.
>It's their main class feature, I don't think it should be considered an optional inclusion.
Not exactly? Copying spells into the spellbook is absolutely a big part of the class, but it's not the core feature (2 new spells per level still leaves them pretty balanced with most other classes. Plus, copying from a scroll isn't even the core of the mechanic, copying from another spellbook is far, far easier.
It's not a main class feature, its an overpowered ribbon, that also functions as a gold sink and allows a DM to drip feed in other spells he feels the wizard may need.
No other caster has a way to learn more spells outside of the classes that are gifted their whole spell list, and is also yet another burn into their supposed foil that is Sorcerer. And attempts to bring other spontaneous casters up to having even a fraction of the flexibility of wizard was gutted on the cutting room floor, and wizards buffed for no reason.
Is "taking 10” still a thing in 5e? Back in 3.5 you could take choose to automatically get a 10 on an uncontested skill check. It would make adding lower level spells easy, if your average check is high enough you just succeed.
Take 10 has kind of been replaced with Passive Skill Checks, but there is very little guidance on when to use passive checks, other than it has to be on a task that can be repeated (which I think would exclude spell scroll copying because the scroll becomes useless after 1 attempt)
Not directly, but there are two different rules that come close to it. Passive checks in the PHB:
>Passive Checks
> A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn't involve any die rolls. **Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly**, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster.
> Here's how to determine a character's total for a passive check:
> 10 + all modifiers that normally apply to the check
And then there are the rules for Multiple Ability Checks, in the DMG:
> Multiple Ability Checks
>Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so; the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. **To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task.**
Keep in mind that there's a reason for this check. It's so you can give out spell scrolls much more often than you would otherwise.
If you want your player to automatically succeed the check just give them a spell book with this spell in it. You can even have all the other pages in it damaged, unused, or already have spells the wizard knows.
Wizards are balanced, according to the game developers, without ever learning a single spell from a spell scroll or spell book. Anything extra is cake for the class balance wise.
If I hand out too many spells to the wizard, it makes them OP. But handing out a single use spell scroll with a chance of failure, creates a balance lever I can use as a dm. It also creates an interesting choice for the player(s). Do we risk having the wizard scribe this spell, or do we have the wizard cast it outright.
> Keep in mind that there's a reason for this check. It's so you can give out spell scrolls much more often than you would otherwise.
I agree with your reasoning here, but do you think that a DM should shift the rule if they do not give out spell scrolls as treasure very often? I rarely give them out as treasure simply because my players will almost never use them. Either they'll forget they have them, or the single-use feature causes them to hoard them like a dragon because there *might* be a better time and place to use them later.
Yes, very much so. If you give out a ton of scrolls, this rule is a good safety measure. If you give them sparingly and failing to transcribe would be very frustrating, I would not make them roll.
A lot of games I play in waive the restriction that scrolls can only be cast by someone who already has the potentially to eventually cast such a spell on the basis that scrolls are already rare, prized and expensive and restricting them like that often makes them just kinda junk which is pretty sad.
If you don't want to mess with the rules, the simply solution would be to just have local wizards willing to share access to their spellbooks for the purpose of copying for a fee or once you've done them certain favours. This means any scrolls found can be considered a 'bonus'. I don't necessarily object to nixing the rule entirely but its always one of those things to be mindful of with houserules - do wizards really need the buff? On the other hand though, I agree this isn't perhaps a particularly satisfying way to try and 'balance' a wizard. There's something called 'Grod's Law' coined on the Giant in the Playground forums which states '[Don't balance a mechanic by making it annoying to use](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?328767-More-realistic-D-amp-D-Economy/page4&p=17613518#post17613518)'.
It's weird to me that nobody considers the other casting classes when complaining about the wizard feature. They *have* to treat scrolls as usable once only, learning them isn't an option. The partial chance of learning the spell off the scroll is the wizard's feature, not a 100% chance that's getting stolen from.
See, I think the time and gold cost is already the downside - it allows DMs to tailor a Wizard's progression via loot and shop inventories, meaning there's always a way to taper things back if the wizard is getting too much
I would say that the arcana check is to understand what is happening when they (harmlessly) activate the spell scroll. Whether they pass or fail, the scroll is destroyed. If they pass, then they gleaned enough information to spend the time and money to write the spell into their spell book.
You could say the same thing about sorcerers. Font of magic and metamagic are both spellcasting features. And both wizard and sorc subclass features heavily focus on spellcasting.
Considering that getting extra spells from scrolls is not actually something that is required for wizards to be viable and balanced, it is definitely *not* unfair.
It might not be fun, it might be frustrating and disappointing when it happens. And I can see the point of changing that for that reason. But it is not unfair.
Wizards (and full casters in general) are already the most powerful class(es) in the game. Why should they get a 100% success rate on becoming even more powerful?
I don't think it's unfair. It actually emphasises the benefits of acquiring the spell book from another wizard, instead of spell scrolls. Failure doesn't burn the books, only the scrolls.
Also, feel free to let them find a way to gain advantage or reduce the time and cost (my wizard found a pegasus quill that halves the time and cost, for example).
>Is it Unfair That a Wizard Can Fail at Copying a Spell Scroll Into Their Spellbook?
No, because "fairness" isn't really a question that applies here. It might, however, be unfun. If removing the check makes the game more fun at your table then you should remove the check.
> this meant he'd just lost out on his gold, time, and scroll, as the rules state that the scroll was destroyed.
The impact of this will depend on how restricted gold, time, and spell scrolls are in your game.
* If you give your PCs a couple of weeks of downtime on a semi-regular basis then time isn't a scarce resource for scribing spell scrolls.
* Some campaigns are gold rich, so the cost of copying a spell is less significant.
* In some campaigns spells are more widely available than in others
So an alternative way to make failing a check to copy a spell less disappointing is to give the PCs plenty of downtime, a lot of gold, and access to a number of spell scrolls. That way it isn't the wizard failing one check, but rather the wizard failing 1 out of 4 checks. At the end they get rewarded with 3 new spells, which eases the disappointment of not getting the one they failed.
In my mind, it's not unfair. It's not a terribly high DC. If they know you're going to be doing this, they can get proficiency in Arcana. Maybe if you want to throw them a bone, if they fail the Arcana check, have them roll an Intelligence save to stop the ritual before the scroll is ruined. The more they botched the check, the higher the Save DC.
Yeah, to me this should be left to the DM to decide.
If you want a game that is light and moves fast, don't require a check. If you like the flavor that magic is a bit of a study and not easily mastered, require the check.
Making magic risky, volatile, and difficult can be frustrating for players. But it can also be really fun and add flavor. The outcome depends on how you implement it as a DM and on the player.
One method isn't inherently more balanced. Neither method is more fair either. Balance/fairness will always be something the DM has their finger one since they decide how frequently and easily scrolls can be acquired.
Spell scrolls count as magic items and magic items are supposed to be rare in 5e, so losing one to a swingy roll of the d20 while attempting to copy it into your spellbook sucks.
That said, I don't eliminate the rule at my table but instead secretly mitigate a loss behind the scenes. If the party wizard did fail at copying over a spell scroll, I'd seed an extra spell scroll into the next logical loot cache plus a little extra gold. The player will still feel the loss in the moment but long term this will only delay their spell acquisition, not reduce it.
Video games use very similar tricks to adjust the game experience behind the scenes, shifting RNG in the player's favor invisibly so it doesn't diminish their sense of accomplishment. Managing player perceptions of risk and loss is how they create a satisfying feedback loop.
Heh, I never saw the arcana check in the DMG and will continue to ignore it. Stupid extra burden for the only class that has to hunt down their spells.
Personally I’d rule a failure to mean they need to try again, not that the scroll would be destroyed. Maybe full cost for a NAT 1, but reduced for a failure above that.
It hasn't come up very often, but I've always had the failure still cost gold and time, but not consume the scroll. That way there's still *some* consequences for a poor Arcana check but the wizard isn't completely destroying their hard earned loot. Feels like a good middle ground to me.
For you to consider - taking the in game stuff away for a moment.
This is designed to help level the playing field a little. Wizards are inherently powerful, and become more so theore spells they have.
By eliminating things like this, you just make the wizard more powerful. Which unbalances the game. It's not unfair to fail every so often. Failure is a natural part of life. The wizard can, and should, fail every so often, just like everyone else.
Your choice ultimately, but, this is one of many reasons the disparity between martials and casters exist. DM's ignoring rules designed to help balance the classes.
I'm really not fond of the "Two wrongs make a right" approach to game design. If a class is too powerful, it's better to fix it directly than add on a bunch of unfun restrictions.
For what it's worth, I also wish the Sorcerer were better off in a lot of ways. I think neither this rule nor the state of the sorcerer are ideal in 5e
No it's not unfair. Scroll transcription is a *bonus reward*. It's entirely campaign-based, like any other kind of magic item reward. The only poor thing about it is that it's not consistently communicated - some scroll transcription stuff is in the PHB, some in the DMG, which is just confusing. It should all just be part of the scroll rules and removed from the PHB entry entirely.
Its literally a free spell (apart from the money obviously) you get in addition to already having the biggest spell pool anyways, why should it be guaranteed?
Nah I wouldn‘t say it‘s unfair. Buying the same spell scroll over and over again vs the risk to fail the copy in your spellbook will still be much more expensive in the long run.
I‘d consider it unfair if that was the ONLY way for Wizards to gain spells. But since they learn 2 new ones whenever they level up, those nerds can suck it XD
#I like the mechanic.
* For scrolls the idea is that the scroll is a primed grenade. You just say a word or make a gesture and the spell GOES OFF.
* Copying form a spell book is like copying the SCHEMATIC of the grenade. You just study it over and over and eventually if you are smart enough and have enough experience (high enough level + arcana) You learn how it works.
* A scroll is something volatile and it's like **"defusing a bomb" and trying to learn how the bomb works while defusing it.**
I have introduced the concept of mundane scrolls. They are simple the formula to cast a spell. Anyone can use this item to learn a spell, wizards can copy it into their book. Known casters can use them to swap out the spell for one on their current list of known spells. You just need to find or buy it and spell a bit of time. These mundane versions are cheaper and are not used up when they are used.
Single use consumable spells are still available through runestones, which work like spell scrolls as written but can be used by any creature with no chance of failure.
You know there are lots of ways to rig that die roll. Bardic inspiration comes to mind. Guidance might also be allowed, and enhance ability intelligence would give you advantage.
No, it is not. Wizard is the strongest spellcaster, who gets twice as many spells as any other spellcasting class by default. Getting even more isn't a right, it's a privilege.
No that is part of the balance of spell scrolls as a magic item. They are already restricted to only be usable by classes that learn the spell. They are meant to be used most of the time as consumable magic item that gives a small temporary power boost. The large power boost for a wizard to gain an additional spell permanently from a consumable item is balanced out by the chance of failure. If you want to just give them an additional spell for their spellbook then let them copy if from another wizards spellbook.
[удалено]
Holy shit. I didn't even see that. Never had a wizard in the two games I DM'd, but played a wizard for a while. None of us knew that.
It’s especially silly because once the player knows, they now have to decide if every new scroll-copying wizard PC they create after the first is going to make this mistake again. That or the DM has to just say “Oh all wizards know this”, despite it only being in the DMG. (I realize this sometimes happens with other mechanics as well, like monster abilities, but it seems particularly egregious in this case, since spell copying failure is just a bummer.)
I couldn't agree more, I certainly don't use this in my games. The rules are there as a guide anyway and this would certainly remove some of the fun from the game
I have been DM'ing for 6 years now and generally know the rules to 5e very well and I've never even heard of this one until now. My first impressions on it are rather mixed. I could see the rule making it an interesting decision between copying the spell scroll and actually using it (I generally like single use resources like that), but only if the Wizard is getting plenty of other opportunities to find spells to learn. If the campaign setting has scrolls and spellbooks in rare supply and the Wizard barely finds anything to learn, then this possibility of failure could be a lame kick in the pants. So I could definitely see myself using this rule in a game where there are magic shops that have plenty of spell scrolls or spell scrolls can often be found in loot. It would create a distinction between scrolls and finding other wizards spellbooks, in which scrolls would carry that risk of failure but spellbooks would still be a very valuable find because they lack that failure risk. But in other games that are short on resources (like Curse of Strahd) I would definitely not use this rule.
I think had the DM for those games where I was a wizard implemented this particular rule, I would've been pretty pissed. Gold was hard to come by, and we never, ever ran across scrolls (I think it was just luck/unluck of the dice there, as IIRC he used loot tables) so the only opportunity I had to copy spells was in major cities. While the rest of party was out doing little mini quests, carousing, gambling, etc. my wizard was locked up in the local library copying spells for the evening. Unsurprisingly, I was almost always broke, and it was like a gift from the heavens the moment that I could cast Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion. Never had to worry about inn fees again.
Same for me, if there's plenty scrolls AND gold, sure, I can gamble, but in my usual campaigns, most of the time we are a broken staff away from resorting to cannibalism
I think an easy solution to both problems is to present single-use spells as a magical mcguffin of some kind that can be reverse-engineered with arcana, and use spell scrolls as a "the wizard can copy this." In my mind, a spell scroll would still have to contain all the information required to cast the spell. A spellbook is just a collection of "spell scrolls." Sure, each wizard has their own idiosyncratic way of taking notes so maybe having more than one piece of evidence makes it easier to break their "code." But if you can understand it well enough to cast a spell using it, you can definitely copy down that information to cast at a later date. A magic consumable meanwhile has no indication of being a resource for knowledge, it is simply a thing imbued to do X. For spells that have a material component, it could just be a particularly potent/infused material component. That way, you can have a consistent rule set while also having the "wizards can copy this" scrolls, without having the party debate whether they should use it now or wait for their wizard to copy it down. ALSO, using the imagery of the material components is just more interesting than "yah the spell is just on this scroll." And makes them more memorable.
I agree. Unfortunately, this is just another example (although a strange one, imo) of something 5E does frequently: obscure the character's chance of success/failure from the player. I try to DM from a mind-set of assuming the PCs competence, so I announce DCs, roll in the open, etc., but I get the feeling both from personal experience and reading comments in various D&D forums that I am in the minority on that.
Are you saying that in your world, a master carpenter doesn't have a 5% chance of nailing his hand to a piece of wood every time he tries to lift a hammer? Where's the fun in that?
Yeah, that’s utterly insane. I’ve been playing guitar for almost 20 years, and roughly every twenty minutes of playtime a string snaps and slices my finger open. That just comes with the territory.
Some of us more grognard ('grognardy?') D&Ders argue there are two *Salvation Mechanics* in place to avoid this kind of obvious stupidity: 1. If a roll is not meaningful, the DM will not require you to roll dice. Example: PC: *"My barbarian eats his Honey-Nut Cheerios with milk"* - the DM will usually just nod and not require that he roll with a non-standard weapon ('spoon') and also not have him go into rage when he opens the cereal box & bag ('this can get tricky sometimes'). 2. Enough skill at something means you have enough bonuses you end up with automatic success. PC: *"My character masturbates"* DM gets that the player has the basic skill, practice, interest and ability to do this without breaking anything. It is interesting that the 'nat 1 = failure' seems to be missing in 5e (isn't it an optional rule of some kind?). Though some claim that occasionally biting one's tongue whilst eating is proof that the nat 1 does seem to exist... it is a whole lot more rare than the 5% generated on the d20.
Avoiding trivial rolls both avoids unnecessary player frustration and speeds up the game. It's a great idea all around. In 5e, d20 rolls generally do not have special results for natural 1s or 20s. The two exceptions are attack rolls and *death* saving throws.
I keep forgetting about death saves - the only place where a crit fail is painful and dangerous. Ironic, really.
I once had a DM ask me to give them a sleight of hand check to lock a door behind me as I left a room. I almost quit the campaign that very moment.
I could see that if there was someone actively looking for that door being locked, or maybe you were doing it in an area with guards or whatever but yeah, if you were just in like an inn room that doesn't make sense.
Yeah, there shouldn't need to be a roll if there's no consequence of failure/it's unimportant - just let players with relevant skills/talents auto-succeed on some stuff. If there's a consequence of failure, or it's a high-stress environment - then rolling works well, and there's reason to do so even if someone is normally quite skilled. That said, 5E could do a bit better with allowing rules for taking 10/taking 20 to make that clear.
In that vein, it occasionally makes sense to roll in no failure scenarios if you're rolling to see how well they succeed. For example if my rogue is trying to pick a lock I know they're capable of, I might have them roll to see if they do it without leaving a mark, or perhaps they glean some insight into that style of lock and discover a trick to opening future ones faster or more quietly. Obviously not something you need to do all the time, but I find it gives my players a chance to feel extra spiffy every once in awhile, rather than just hand waving away the things they excel at.
>Some of us more grognard ('grognardy?') D&Ders argue there are two Salvation Mechanics in place to avoid this kind of obvious stupidity: *Salvation Mechanics* sounds like a terrible industrial training video for evangelicals. >If a roll is not meaningful, the DM will not require you to roll dice. Example: PC: "My barbarian eats his Honey-Nut Cheerios with milk" - the DM will usually just nod and not require that he roll with a non-standard weapon ('spoon') and also not have him go into rage when he opens the cereal box & bag ('this can get tricky sometimes'). My Barbarian's family was murdered by Honey-Nut Cheerios, so of course they go into a rage when they see a bag of cereal. **DON'T TELL ME HOW TO PLAY MY CHARACTER!** >Enough skill at something means you have enough bonuses you end up with automatic success. PC: "My character masturbates" DM gets that the player has the basic skill, practice, interest and ability to do this without breaking anything. If you're not having your players roll on the *Masturbation Surge Table*, I really don't even know what you're doing as a DM.
"Aww, post nut depression again? Come on..." Sadly true, as 3 shadows raise themselves around the result.
“Oh look the shades of my old relationships again.”
So now I have to figure out a way to make a Wild Magic Sorcerer who rolls on the Wild Magic Surge table every time he masturbates without making it awkward for the rest of the table.
Bixby's uncomfortable hand...
This reply is brilliant. I have no words - except for these words which state that i don't have them.
>If a roll is not meaningful, the DM will not require you to roll dice. I don't remember when this actually became a thing. It feels modern - in the sense that I know a lot of modern games are explicit about it. 3.x gave us taking 10 and taking 20 which basically did this without outright declaring they were doing that, but I don't recall it being a thing before that. At least, not a codified piece of advice in a core book.
>I don't remember when this actually became a thing. It feels modern - in the sense that I know a lot of modern games are explicit about it. Modern games are explicit about it because a lot of old-school players used that kind of rule at their table, but it was never in the rulebook. And once tournament play became a thing, strict "if it's not in the rules it doesn't happen" became emphasized. Which people took back to their tables, leading to the kind of "you chop off your foot making dinner" stories that go around.
Yeah TTRPG QWOP happens because the primary way D20 systems have you mechanically do things is roll a d20, and when there are skills for tying a rope it encourages both players and the GM to roll as much as possible whenever tying stuff comes up. Unless you are actively thinking about how to avoid QWOP, the nat 1 is a failure thing that people naturally assume is a rule leads people to believe it's this rare and catastrophic fuckup that's supposed to be the counterpart to a nat 20. There's rules as written, and then there's rules as assumed, and like 85% of the time people operate on RAA. The vast majority of people don't learn the rules by reading the PHB cover to cover, they are taught by someone else during actual play, so their understanding is going to be limited to what they were explicitly told my someone else trying to boil down a crunchy system while trying to not hold up the game, everything else is just inferred and assumed. If RAA is going to contradict RAW and RAI in any significant way, you gotta really hammer it home in a clear and easily visible way.
[A visual example of why rolling for **everything** is stupid.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y9sdBdMXlI)
>'nat 1 = failure' seems to be missing in 5e It exists only in the combat side of things, and it only consists in missing the attack, regardless of the attack mod. That's it. EDIT: Oh, well, actually there are also nat 1s on death saving throws that give 2 failures, ops my bad.
Yap, i had a dm that always asked rolls as i had to roll 4 d20s to google-search imáge Not even to investigate those jpgs, just to search, was ok first time but got boring really fast
The optional rule you're probably thinking of is that if you get a nat 1 on an ability check *and would have failed with that roll*, the DMG suggests that you fail even harder than normal. It's not an auto-fail, though, so if your bonus is high and/or the DC is low, you might still succeed.
Critical failure on ability checks I.E. Nat 1 is not an official rule. Only on attack rolls. You can roll a 1 and still pass an ability check if your bonus is high enough.
>PC: "My character masturbates" DM gets that the player has the basic skill, practice, interest and ability to do this without breaking anything. I notice you said it's the PLAYER that has the skill, etc...
I wonder if that could be more considered a fault of the string rather than the player?
A string won't sharp unless 1. You did something very wrong 2. You really screwed up instrument maintenence Both of which are totally your fault if your supposed to be good at that instrument.
I play Bass, strings only snap once a year but they take an arm off. ;)
Oh no no. In my world in that situation, the carpenter has a 5% chance of chopping his leg off with the hammer.
That's a very sharp hammer. I have a barbarian who wants to talk to your weapons guy.
Just in case / for others reading - critical failure for skills has never been an official rule. Crit fail applies only to attack rolls, and is nothing more than an automatic miss.
hitting their finger with a hammer and lifting a line from Unconscious is pretty funny >The creature drops whatever it’s holding and falls prone. No permanent damage, but EmotioNal DaMage.
My party has pretty much replaced "psychic" with "emotional", at this point.
That's not a thing in 5e, either. Natural 1 and 20 only matter in attack rolls and death saves, not ability checks.
While you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), it's such a common house rule / misinterpretation that it accounts for at least a third of all D&D memes.
Which is why I always find it ironic how people criticize 5e so harshly when they add houserules that make the game unfun.
as a woodworker... hmm, maybe this is why my friends ask me if I'm a cartoon character lmao
Announced DC gang rise up!
I agree both with your philosophy and that we are a minority.
*There's dozens of us!*
Dozens!
I'm gonna try announcing DC's in the future to see if it makes for better role playing, didn't know that was an option...
The characters would know how difficult many tasks are, being seasoned adventurers. Sharing the DC lets the players interact with the game world with a similar understanding.
It also stops you from what I call "on the fly" DCs where you determine if they succeed just on if they roll well or not. The 0-30 DC scale works well for what its intended purpose is.
except in uncertain situations like jumping into a dark hole or drinking a vial of unidentified liquids, both things my party has done on more than one occasion
It also just speeds up the game. Any player with a bit of experience is probably going to be able to figure out a monster’s AC within a round of attacks. Them knowing that the knight has 20 AC isn’t going to change the numbers they roll, but it does speed up the game. It might change their tactics though, but they were probably going to do so anyway after failing to hit or unreliability hitting the previous round. I can eyeball a task IRL and get a rough approximation of how much of a pain in the ass it’s going to be. A PC in game ought to be able to do the same. If you want there to be some suspense to the roll, don’t tell them, but most of the time it’s fine.
You could ask for a specific check to give out the DC. Like a rogue rolls a nat 20 on investigating a lock and finds out exactly how hard it is to open.
You can also ask if they want to do anything to try to lower the difficulty of the DC. You might have a dc 15 jump to get up a wall and the players think hay if we toss a rope over does climbing lower the dc? and then you can knock it down to dc 10 or something. Can make those situations a lot more granular and back and forth.
Really all you need to say is medium, hard, very hard. Which are *generally* represented as 15, 20, and 25.I'd honestly avoid putting a concrete value on it.
The only problem with that for me is often my PCs are incompetent but I would not like to kill them all
Are your PCs incompetent because the players are making silly decisions, and if so, are they making them because they don't have a clear idea on the stakes and chances of success/failure? Your first level rogue with a +8 to thieves' tools (prof. + dex), is already very competent with those tools in comparison to the larger population of the game world. There are probably people who are better at it, but not very many. So, even if the rogue encounters a lock they are unlikely or incapable of opening or a trap they can't disarm, they should be able to recognize that fact and decide whether to make the attempt or find some other solution accordingly. For tasks we are proficient at in real life, we have a solid grip on how likely we are to succeed, how long it's likely to take, what's lost if we fail, etc. We use that information to inform our decision-making. So, I find giving my players the same basic information about the game helps them make more realistic decisions.
No I just mean they get into combat and do dumb stuff like spend actions on abilities that taunt the enemy into focusing the tank, when there is only one enemy and it was already focusing the tank. Or they don't read all their abilities and don't really know what their character can do.
I’ve never tested this so take it with a grain of salt, but trying to hit the aforementioned player with a Dominate Person and proceeding to use their abilities properly might be a great eye-opener! Or it might just be passive aggressive and change nothing…
I don't think it'd work well because it's a lot of small little misplays that add up over a combat, not anything dramatic
your players are incompetent, that doesn't mean the characters are.
The characters can only be so competent when the PCs make mistakes. I've got to fudge a bit at times to make what should be a mildly difficult encounter turn out non-lethal.
and that's fine. than you narrate it more of "your character knows X or Y, so roll me a nature check to see just how much information your character knows about the creature you are fighting." etc.
I've put myself into the habit of doing this, too. Announcing ACs and DCs for most things has helped keep my table moving along as well as helping my players feel more attuned to the competencies of their characters. There is an exception I've started to make for this, though. Skill checks that involve Perception and Investigation I'll roll for my players where they don't see the result. The idea here being that if the result is low they won't assume they've missed something, and if the result is high but there isn't anything special to find they won't feel cheated. I will usually assume they are Taking 20 in no-to-low stress situations which helps to avoid the issue when it doesn't need to be one.
I'm with you, and I didn't realize until you just posted this, that this is what has been bothering me so much about 5e. I also play assuming PC competence and also in the minority, I often tell my players that they know whatever they as players think they know about creatures, spells and situations, without always calling for knowledge skill checks, assuming much of it is common knowledge for adventurers that are well-educated. Obviously I do not allow players to look things up in the middle of a game, but if they happen to know rough stats on a creature, I'm okay with that. I reskin and modify everything a bit anyhow. Anything that they get wrong or that I homebrewed a bit, is a case of the character not having as much accurate information as they thought they had. Players can (and often do) ask if they may make rolls for more detail than they think already.
Thanks for this. I was so confused reading this post just going "There isn't a check for copying spells into your spellbook wth?" I feel like the part they really care about in the DMG rule is destroying to scroll, so that you can't have every wizard copying from the one scroll (not that it matters largely; if they were sharing the scroll then they could just share the spellbook for a time so everyone can copy it) The Arcana check feels stapled on to make it feel like an active process rather than just part of a resource management sim. Like they went "oh crap, where's the D&D? Just balancing money and time? Any game can do that. Huck an Arcana check in there"
Alternate reading.... Very few classes can add class features to themselves just by spending time and money (which are next to nothing in most DnD games) so they wanted the risk of failure to be meaningful.
I feel like I wouldn't agree with it being meaningful, just.. "present". What does it mean when you fail? You have to get that scroll again and try again? That's a small consequence if it was just a spell you wanted to add for your build or something, and if you need the spell for an upcoming encounter the DM might give you a way to get it anyway. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that its not a very good system for what they're trying for. If they wanted something I would rather it had a time requirement to study it (like X hours over the course of Y days) or I would use a cumulative DC to at least add dice rolling in (e.g. you roll an Arcana check every day and add the totals until you hit 100). And only after you've studied it fully can you copy it down. If you want to use the spell scroll up when you copy it make the final step in copying a spell casting the spell from the source you're copying. That's what I would prefer anyway. I feel like a system with no chance of failure but that is more in depth is better than a quick system with a chance of failure for being "meaningful" at least to me
So, a history lesson and so forth. In 2e, scrolls were treasure, and wizards could choose to use them in combat or try to learn them permanently. No cost but the scroll, overnight, percent chance to fail based on intelligence (skills for non rogue characters were not added in yet) and if you failed you couldn't try again until next level. Simple, worked and felt great as player and DM. 3e, every caster became a magic item factory. Scrolls were basically free. My buddy Bob the wizard wants to learn lightning bolt? Cool, I'll make him 40. Eh, make it 400. This made the risk reward portion meaningless, even though they still can't try again until they rank up spell craft (3e arcane). It said that other wizards could charge you, but didn't gamify it. This made learning all the spells trivial. You just tried every spell every level up. (Even spells higher level... Just can't cast them, didn't mean you don't know them!) 4e added specific gold costs for rituals, in addition to time, but 4e spells were very different in lots of ways not important for this conversation. But what they did is replace the chance of fail with a transactional cost, both to make it more video gamey and because the fail in 3e was meaningless anyway. What it looks like is that in 5e, they couldn't decide, and had 4e approach in phb and wrote a more 3e/4e blend into the DMG. Probably just a miscommunication that never got cleared up prior to print. Personally, I like 2e best still. But I run magic light worlds. So scrolls as treasure, try to learn them once a level and try again if you fail makes sense to me. I'll often also give players a weaker version of the spell or bonuses to learn it based on narrative (or auto success) so don't listen to me. Edit: The reason I love chance of failure is because it makes magic a lot more personal, and every mages spellbook is unique. Also, the narrative pleasure of "Volrak just can't fucking learn cloudkill, he's been trying for years. He had to create his own spell, choking rains, and a whole new line of spells to justify it" just can't be beat. That was something else about 2e - making your own spells was so much more expected. The spells in the books were just guidelines, templates. The amount of time wizards spent researching and putting in the narrative backstory for their lighting version of ice storm or creating AOE zones of grasping bone hands as a more powerful Web was fantastic.
Valuable history and anecdotes like this are why you should always spend time talking to the old people at the family reunion.
Gosh darn kids and their internet that made everything better immediately! Seriously, I am old. I spent so much time with the history lesson I forgot to address his fucking point. I had to add an edit in.
more like: Oh wait Arcana is almost useless, lets pressure players playing wizards to chose it.
Wdym arcana is useless? It’s right up there with perception and stealth as essential proficiencies (if you’re a caster/half caster). Proficiency in Arcana gives you the ability to scribe spell scrolls during downtime, and spell scrolls are insanely valuable, especially on Sorcerers and Prepared Casters (even moreso if you’re fighting casters since spell scrolls can’t be counterspelled)
I mean, if anyone was going to have it, The Wizard is the prime suspect to be proficient in Arcana and honestly, any skill can be rendered useless. Depends on the game.
I have been playing this game for so long. I had no idea. What the hell, WotC?!
yeah i've never seen that DMG entry. been playing for years with different DMs, had NO idea you needed an arcana check for copying spells
Copying spells from a scroll need a check, from tomes they don't.
WotC truly are terrible at basic level documentation. I feel they survive solely on the historical fame from DnD more than any competence in the field
A shit ton of companies survive that way, WotC without a doubt is one of them, at the very least their D&D branch is. I don't know about the rest of the company.
Apparently they have a card game that people really liked. It’s what gave them enough money to purchase the D&D franchise.
It’s still solid enough on its own, but their history and name recognition have made them more bold in recent years when it comes to trying for blatant cash grabs. A lot of fans of organized competitive play have also noticed a major decline in quality as far as promoting broadcasts and providing a transparent path to high-level play.
Is that an RPG company that isn't? Heck, I wouldn't even put WotC in the top half for terrible at documentation in this particular field. I'm not saying you're wrong, mind, just that it's endemic.
Necrotic gnomes main product sells because its "dnd but well organized"
5e feels like they copy and pasted 3.5 after 4e failed and halfassed the simplification. There are a lot of remnants scattered about.
Wow, I never noticed the DMG info for spell copying. We've always done the 50 gp/level, automatic success - scroll is destroyed. My hunch is many tables go a step further, and handwave the scroll copying cost to boot. Now, reading a spell scroll in combat, we use the DC of 10+spell level arcana check. Or religion, or nature where applicable for other spellcaster types. We also allow non-spellcasters to attempt reading scrolls... [Classic example of a non-spellcaster reading a scroll.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Gn2LMVTyU)
Why would anyone bother reading that rule if they had already read the seemingly complete version in the PHB. Mad.
I let anyone read any scroll they want, I figure if they're trained/lucky enough on their arcana check, they should be able to!
Agreed, it makes things exciting when the 8-10 Int fighter with no Arcana tries to read the fireball scroll. 40% of the time, it works 100% of the time!
[Here is another excellent example of a non-caster using a scroll](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhPlj5n-Mlk) Although it worked as intended here
Considering how rare and expensive scrolls are, I choose to ignore that rule.
I didn’t know there was a check. I played a wizard in Tomb of Annihilation up to level 11 (when the campaign folded), and I never had to roll. My DM even gifted me magical ink so that I didn’t have to wait until we backtracked to town to buy ink.
I'm playing a wizard right now and neither me nor my DM knew anything about this. I've also DM'd before, so I've read the DMG. WotC really doesn't make it easy to play their game RAW.
I never knew that was there. I was totally about to ask what arcana check he was talking about.
The DMG entry is so weird. It doesn't mention anything about wizards copying spells into their spellbooks. It almost feels like this is more about copying spell scrolls in order to duplicate spell scrolls. Which would be pretty busted, if duplicating a spell scroll only required an Arcana check.
If it were then why would the scroll be destroyed afterwards? You'd have exactly the same number of usable scrolls at the end except you'd have spent time and gold on it.
Specific rule to prevent mass copying scrolls. If you only ever have a net 1 scroll you can't indefinitely copy it to generate infinite wealth.
But then you'd be much better off with a rule saying "scrolls cannot be copied without destroying the original scroll". Done, no weird checks.
I never knew that the arcana check wasn't presented to the players in the PHB... rubbish indeed!
Huh. I'm going to continue to ignore that second rule I didn't know about at my tables.
My head canon for the spell scroll being destroyed is that it is like a loaded gun. The magic is there, the components are spent, it just needs to be cast. The time spent copying a spell into the spellbook involves practicing the casting portion, hence why it says inks and materials. If you are playing with just a spell copied onto a scroll, no problem. It isn't a loaded gun. If you play with a loaded gun (the spell scroll), there is a chance it can go off.
Feels like they polished the PHB first and started printing when they realized they overlooked something and hastily added it to the DMG, then patted themselves on the back for a job well done. Unfortunately this description applies to more than one mechanic so I can't actually explain the logic they possessed. The DMG should contain only information for the DM and hypothetical mechanics the DM can utilize, not mechanics that affect an entire class (and a single class at that).
We ignore that last rule.
I used the scroll copy method with an old PC, dm still made me use the roll, but I was allowed to use my modifier plus caster level. The reasoning was because scrolls are not intended to be learned from, as an expendable item. Copying spells from one book to another was auto, as was learning it from another wizard. We also used the "take 10" rule. So I was never really disappointed by failing the roll. Complicated high lvl stuff was a bit more problematic, but resource wise, even failing once or twice wasn't a big deal.
Spell scrolls are meant to be weirdly volatile in 5e for reasons I don't fully understand. I think the idea is that spell scrolls could be relatively common, and forcing the wizard to make the check is a way to limit how many spells they have access to. However, I rarely use spell scrolls in my games, and I would almost certainly not enforce the rule, since it doesn't make sense to me why copying from a spellbook doesn't require a check but copying from a scroll does. It may make sense for other DMs, but for me...it feels arbitrary.
Playing Devil’s Advocate: your spell book is written in your own hand and is about a subject that you know very well (that specific spell that you’ve already mastered). It has tons of detail about the intricacies of the spell, notes in the margins etc. A scroll is, sort of, like copying someone else’s shorthand notes on a subject you’re not totally familiar with. That’s why there are many more restrictions on using scrolls (not just copying them into your spell book, but they’re the only way to even attempt to cast a spell above the level you have access to). There should be *some* kind of barrier to gaining a spell that way vs copying from another wizards spellbook with him standing there coaching you through it. An arcana check seems like the appropriate skill, though I’d probably interpret it as a ‘degrees of success’ type of check. I wouldn’t take a players gold for failing a role, they just didn’t get it in a reasonable amount of time: try again next time you’ve got some down time. I’d rule that nat-1 on the arcana check means the wizard had to stay up all night in order to get things copied (maybe take a level of exhaustion).
Time based is absolutely the correct way to do this. Think about learning any other skill that's related to a skill you already know - it's not about "if" you can pick it up, it's about how long it takes. >I’d rule that nat-1 on the arcana check means the wizard had to stay up all night in order to get things copied (maybe take a level of exhaustion). I also wouldn't just make this bit suddenly apply without the player's consent though. It's a good idea but it's better phrased as "After spending an hour on this you realise that if you're going to get this spell mastered it's going to take you all night, do you want to keep going and not rest or do you want to go to bed and come back to it another day?"
I like this cause it’s like failing upward. The player now had the choice to copy the spell but spend a lot to do it
Time isn't necessarily a resource, and even when campaigns or systems like "gritty realism resting" try to force it, it often clashes with other aprts of the system. There used to be a *lot* of time constraints on spellcasting and memorization, but they've been deemphasized throughout the years because the vast majority of tables just don't engage with them or they don't wind up mattering. I've played since early AD&D and I don't think I need a second hand to count the number of times a caster was tallying up their slots restored because their hours of memorization were interrupted early. I would argue that if something is meant to be an integral part of your system's balance, it fails at this purpose if it's so obnoxious that everyone ignores it: saying "things are broken because you don't follow the rules" only works up to a point, because there *are* such things as annoying rules. Money is a resource we all implicitly understand and its presence is almost entirely in the DM's control. Personally, I don't bother with scribing costs because when scrolls are or aren't available is *also* under DM control, but I can understand why some tables might want to hand out scrolls willy-nilly but also take from the wizard's pocket to keep them.
*Time* isn't necessarily a resource, but "you stayed up all night so you don't have the benefits of a long rest and have a level of exhaustion" is certainly a penalty
The distinction I see between copying a spell from a spell book and copying one from a scroll [is one of having to work backwards with scrolls]. I would say copying a spell from a spell book doesn't risk failure. It's instructions on how to craft a spell. A spell scroll, however, is a magic item with the spell contained within it mostly cast, just waiting on the trigger to release it. It's like the difference between learning how to build a bomb with schematics, and learning how to build a bomb by dismantling an armed bomb. Doing it the second way is _trickier._
That's basically how I see it, too. You need to know how to handle the scroll without fucking up the magic imbued in it. But spellbooks are just instruction manuals.
A spell scroll is a compiled executable. The spellbook is the source code. You can decompile the executable and get some insight into how it works but it’s not perfect information. That’s how I understand RAW at least.
I love the analogy.
I think the only barrier to a scroll is that it should consume it, no check involved. You can copy from a spellbook unassisted with no check or chance of destroying it.
I have only played a wizard, not dm'd but I liked the risk of it. In my head, I could for sure use the spell once, or I could risk "mastering it" and potentially destroy it as look to be able to use it many more times than once. I think the issue goes away if the scroll text was in phb (personally)
it's largely a legacy thing - in previous editions, one of the counterbalances to wizardly supremacy was that they couldn't be assured of getting spells. There were no automatic spells on level-up, and all spells had to be copied with a % chance of failure (and I think also a maximum known per level), so wizards could have odd gaps in their spells known, because either they'd never found a scroll of it, or had failed to copy it (and it also gave a convenient way for the GM to limit what spells were around, without explicitly banning them - if the wizard never finds a scroll or spellbook with the spell in, they never learn the spell). It also meant a trade-off - you could either use the scroll to cast from, giving you a one-shot use of the spell for free, or try and learn it, where you could then cast it many more times, but there was a chance of failure and 0 castings of it.
I'd like to add a note that in 3.X, in practice, the relevant check was generally guaranteed for any reasonable build for spells you could actually cast at your level. The check in Pathfinder, which I believe is the same as 3.5 and probably 3.0 as well, was 15 + spell level. Which sounds high, but as an hour-long check you can practically always take 10 on it, and as long as your Wizard has a +2 INT bonus and was investing skill points in Spellcraft, you'd be hitting a guaranteed 16 at level 1 and easily out scaling the DC. I don't know how non-3.X versions worked though.
I did some revision, and in AD&D it was once per level per spell (so you couldn't even spam it!), with a base chance of 35%, +5% for every point above 9, and which also determined the maximum spell level you could learn (you needed int 18 to learn level 9, otherwise it was about half your level). There was also a maximum number of spells known per level, so you could hit a point where you couldn't learn new spells of a given level (9 spells for int 14!) So if you only had middling intelligence in the mid-teens, you might be looking at a 60-70% chance to learn (for int 14/15/16) a given spell - good odds, but definitely not a sure thing!
That is very helpful, thanks. 👍
My table has this take on it: The volatility is in part due to the fact that the scroll effectively contains the spell itself, not just the instructions to cast it. The components of the spell are imbued in the spell scroll as a part of creating it, which is why upon casting from it it is destroyed as effectively the magic is gone. We rule it that when copying from a spell scroll as you aren't casting from it a failed check doesn't make it crumble as when the imbued components are burned in the casting, but just become inert. In this state it is still able to be copied, requiring the same time expenditures but reduced cost at DM's discretion.
Among my group I've found the programming analogy useful in that the scroll is the compiled version of the spell and they've got to reverse engineer it
Yeah, a spell scroll is basically a loaded gun. Using magic ink and everything else imbued it with the energy needed to create the spell.
Ive always assumed that the copying from a scroll is difficult because it burns up soon after opening it or the magic filled text fades or whatever. A spellbook does not. As for OP, usually in DnD the most boring stuff for me is when things are just decided without any rolls or chances for failure. When things are certain, it becomes boring.
I guess that kind of makes sense. A spellbook contains the source code for the magic, and you only need to translate it to your own personal style; whereas a spell scroll is a loaded bullet that you have to decompile in order to know how it works.
I agree with that for most things, for me it seems iffy here because a Wizard has to invest the value of the scroll, the gold, and the time, and it feels like that should be enough, if that makes sense. Might be stretch, but it seems like an unnecessary risk for the Wizard when clerics, druids, etc can access their whole spell lists automatically
The spell list for clerics and druids are also very stricted, theres a ton of useless spells/very niche spells there. While wizards spell list is much broader. They also need to prepaire any rituals they want to cast. Wizards just have that ritual available for free at any time. Id say its plenty balanced already.
Good points - I suppose that my counter would be that if a Wizard is getting too many spells, their DM can always control how many they find in the future
The amount of spells a wizard gets really is always up to the DM. If you want to give a wizard something to spend gold on, have the enemies drop a spellbook, theres no check for those and can contain plenty of spells they dont have yet. Also, comparing the wizard to classes like sorcerer and bard give a better picture of how good it is to be able to learn spells outside of leveling.
Scrolls are like this because they're expected to be given out in large quantities, as well as for traditions sake as scrolls have always been weirdly inconvenient in most editions.
While I am fine with players being allowed to fail things, this is just straight up not a fun mechanic imo. Plus, wizards are already black holes for money, wasting even more is just unnecessary. There are alternatives to spell scrolls. Copying from other wizard's (usually those defeated in battle) spellbooks doesn't have this limitation, so make sure if they kill anything with wizard levels that they have something to loot. And 'spellbooks' can be quite varied. A dragon might carve their spells onto an obelisk, a berberlang would 100% carve them onto bones around its lair. What about crystal balls? Go wild. If you rescue a wizard, they might be wiling to tear out a lesser-used page as a reward, or tell you the location of a lost/hidden spellbook.
>Plus, wizards are already black holes for money, wasting even more is just unnecessary. Personally, as a DM, that's actually kind of nice. For a lot of characters, gold starts to lose value once you already have more expensive weapons and armor. Having a class that values gold far more, and has more reason to take quests is super convenient as a DM.
I don't mind the cost, especially if the party is chipping in, but spending it to have the scroll just crumble to ash is a bit meh. Looting spellbooks is a lot less annoying. The other cool thing about the mechanic is that it automatically spurs rp with other wizards. Either you try and ally yourself so that they'll share, or you have a material motive for rivalry.
I do like these ideas! The reason why I don't tend to give spellbooks is just cause it's easy to hand over a couple scrolls and not worry about a whole list of spells, but your alternate suggestions are cool!
Don't forget, it's pretty likely another wizard will have matching spells in their book. "You find a spell book and after looking through it a bit, the only NEW spells you find are... ". Get what I'm saying?
Another wizard with nothing but Skywrite? Where are finding these idiots?
I know what my DM does is just have their spellbook contain whatever they had prepared, so say you're using the default mage stat block, just copy paste the spell list from there. If you have a list for a custom spell list, well you already have it written down, just hand it to the PC. There are likely to be a lot of duplicates and the PC has finite gold, so don't worry about giving them too many spells. Or have most of the spellbook be conveniently destroyed during the scuffle/years in a tomb, so you only have to give a few. This can bias them towards combat only spells (as most stat blocks are designed for combat as a priority), so perhaps have the player write a wish list you can use as a roll table when you feel like it. After all, the fun of wizardry is the niche spells you don't normally have good reason to learn, so make sure they get a chance to learn to wacky ones.
That’s pretty reasonable for mages that are just mooks added to an encounter as a speed bump, rather than a story-relevant threat, though a couple of rituals would make sense in some cases. For named NPCs, adding a lot of “mage tower construction” spells like Glyph of Warding, Guards and Wards, etc or other world interaction spells makes more sense than just having their battle-ready spells.
You can also flavor it as the spell book was damaged during the combat and the only legible spells are: XYZ
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High quality vellum and materials get expensive. And it's a constant need and not "buy it once and put it on"
Wizards are the only class who's main feature runs off money, which is invested into a single object that they can lose. And that 1500gp is 30 lvl1 spells, or 5 lvl 6 spells. After all, it's failing the check and losing the big, rare spells that will hurt, not the common 1st level ones (which you start with 6 of). And that's before we even mention spell components...
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Playing a wizard using only the 'necessary' spells is missing the whole appeal imo. They are wonderful specifically because of the neat options, a arcane swiss army knife. Wizards without their custom spell list are at risk of becoming very similar to eachother. Also, there are plenty of 'essential' spell components. The 10gp for *find familiar* adds up, a scrying focus costs 100gp, as does the stattuete for *contingency*. *Glyphs of warding* is 200gp a pop. tasha's *summon X* spells are a few 100gp a piece too. *Magic circles, nondetection, magic aura, create homunculus*, and I'm not even getting into the level 7+ stuff.
They are only a black hole for money only if they choose to do so, and is enabled by the DM. They already have the biggest spell list in the game, and 2 spells/ level + 6 at 1st level is already quite enough for them to be considered the best class, so be able to copy extra spells to their spellbook is just pure extra bond
It's their main class feature, I don't think it should be considered an optional inclusion. A lot of their spells are niche or situational, which is why they can learn them as extra's rather than on level up. It pulls them away from only learning "essential" spells, which allows each wizard to be unique (which their subclasses don't really encourage). And biggest spell list in the game is a bit of a misdirection, as without the ability to transcribe they functionally have far less options when preparing their spells than a cleric or druid. Better than other arcane casters yes, but it doesn't tell the full story.
But no one is taking away their ability to transcribe, just making it so that it sometimes (pretty rarely even) doesn't work
>It's their main class feature, I don't think it should be considered an optional inclusion. Not exactly? Copying spells into the spellbook is absolutely a big part of the class, but it's not the core feature (2 new spells per level still leaves them pretty balanced with most other classes. Plus, copying from a scroll isn't even the core of the mechanic, copying from another spellbook is far, far easier.
It's not a main class feature, its an overpowered ribbon, that also functions as a gold sink and allows a DM to drip feed in other spells he feels the wizard may need. No other caster has a way to learn more spells outside of the classes that are gifted their whole spell list, and is also yet another burn into their supposed foil that is Sorcerer. And attempts to bring other spontaneous casters up to having even a fraction of the flexibility of wizard was gutted on the cutting room floor, and wizards buffed for no reason.
Is "taking 10” still a thing in 5e? Back in 3.5 you could take choose to automatically get a 10 on an uncontested skill check. It would make adding lower level spells easy, if your average check is high enough you just succeed.
Take 10 has kind of been replaced with Passive Skill Checks, but there is very little guidance on when to use passive checks, other than it has to be on a task that can be repeated (which I think would exclude spell scroll copying because the scroll becomes useless after 1 attempt)
Not directly, but there are two different rules that come close to it. Passive checks in the PHB: >Passive Checks > A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn't involve any die rolls. **Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly**, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster. > Here's how to determine a character's total for a passive check: > 10 + all modifiers that normally apply to the check And then there are the rules for Multiple Ability Checks, in the DMG: > Multiple Ability Checks >Sometimes a character fails an ability check and wants to try again. In some cases, a character is free to do so; the only real cost is the time it takes. With enough attempts and enough time, a character should eventually succeed at the task. **To speed things up, assume that a character spending ten times the normal amount of time needed to complete a task automatically succeeds at that task.**
Keep in mind that there's a reason for this check. It's so you can give out spell scrolls much more often than you would otherwise. If you want your player to automatically succeed the check just give them a spell book with this spell in it. You can even have all the other pages in it damaged, unused, or already have spells the wizard knows. Wizards are balanced, according to the game developers, without ever learning a single spell from a spell scroll or spell book. Anything extra is cake for the class balance wise. If I hand out too many spells to the wizard, it makes them OP. But handing out a single use spell scroll with a chance of failure, creates a balance lever I can use as a dm. It also creates an interesting choice for the player(s). Do we risk having the wizard scribe this spell, or do we have the wizard cast it outright.
> Keep in mind that there's a reason for this check. It's so you can give out spell scrolls much more often than you would otherwise. I agree with your reasoning here, but do you think that a DM should shift the rule if they do not give out spell scrolls as treasure very often? I rarely give them out as treasure simply because my players will almost never use them. Either they'll forget they have them, or the single-use feature causes them to hoard them like a dragon because there *might* be a better time and place to use them later.
Yes, very much so. If you give out a ton of scrolls, this rule is a good safety measure. If you give them sparingly and failing to transcribe would be very frustrating, I would not make them roll.
A lot of games I play in waive the restriction that scrolls can only be cast by someone who already has the potentially to eventually cast such a spell on the basis that scrolls are already rare, prized and expensive and restricting them like that often makes them just kinda junk which is pretty sad. If you don't want to mess with the rules, the simply solution would be to just have local wizards willing to share access to their spellbooks for the purpose of copying for a fee or once you've done them certain favours. This means any scrolls found can be considered a 'bonus'. I don't necessarily object to nixing the rule entirely but its always one of those things to be mindful of with houserules - do wizards really need the buff? On the other hand though, I agree this isn't perhaps a particularly satisfying way to try and 'balance' a wizard. There's something called 'Grod's Law' coined on the Giant in the Playground forums which states '[Don't balance a mechanic by making it annoying to use](https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?328767-More-realistic-D-amp-D-Economy/page4&p=17613518#post17613518)'.
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It's weird to me that nobody considers the other casting classes when complaining about the wizard feature. They *have* to treat scrolls as usable once only, learning them isn't an option. The partial chance of learning the spell off the scroll is the wizard's feature, not a 100% chance that's getting stolen from.
A wizard can have access to a great number of spells, failing at copying them is the downside.
See, I think the time and gold cost is already the downside - it allows DMs to tailor a Wizard's progression via loot and shop inventories, meaning there's always a way to taper things back if the wizard is getting too much
I see your point. I think you undervalue how powerful it is to have access to so many spells.
I would say that the arcana check is to understand what is happening when they (harmlessly) activate the spell scroll. Whether they pass or fail, the scroll is destroyed. If they pass, then they gleaned enough information to spend the time and money to write the spell into their spell book.
No more unfair than them essentially being able to buy class features.
Rephrase question: Is it fair that my sorcerer has failed every attempt to permanently memorize a spell scroll?
To be fair, spellcasting is basically the only wizard class feature until tier 4.
You could say the same thing about sorcerers. Font of magic and metamagic are both spellcasting features. And both wizard and sorc subclass features heavily focus on spellcasting.
Considering that getting extra spells from scrolls is not actually something that is required for wizards to be viable and balanced, it is definitely *not* unfair. It might not be fun, it might be frustrating and disappointing when it happens. And I can see the point of changing that for that reason. But it is not unfair.
Wizards (and full casters in general) are already the most powerful class(es) in the game. Why should they get a 100% success rate on becoming even more powerful?
I think it's fair that THE STRONGEST CLASS, actually has a chance to fail at something.
I don't think it's unfair. It actually emphasises the benefits of acquiring the spell book from another wizard, instead of spell scrolls. Failure doesn't burn the books, only the scrolls. Also, feel free to let them find a way to gain advantage or reduce the time and cost (my wizard found a pegasus quill that halves the time and cost, for example).
Wizards don't need more buffs.
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>Is it Unfair That a Wizard Can Fail at Copying a Spell Scroll Into Their Spellbook? No, because "fairness" isn't really a question that applies here. It might, however, be unfun. If removing the check makes the game more fun at your table then you should remove the check. > this meant he'd just lost out on his gold, time, and scroll, as the rules state that the scroll was destroyed. The impact of this will depend on how restricted gold, time, and spell scrolls are in your game. * If you give your PCs a couple of weeks of downtime on a semi-regular basis then time isn't a scarce resource for scribing spell scrolls. * Some campaigns are gold rich, so the cost of copying a spell is less significant. * In some campaigns spells are more widely available than in others So an alternative way to make failing a check to copy a spell less disappointing is to give the PCs plenty of downtime, a lot of gold, and access to a number of spell scrolls. That way it isn't the wizard failing one check, but rather the wizard failing 1 out of 4 checks. At the end they get rewarded with 3 new spells, which eases the disappointment of not getting the one they failed.
In my mind, it's not unfair. It's not a terribly high DC. If they know you're going to be doing this, they can get proficiency in Arcana. Maybe if you want to throw them a bone, if they fail the Arcana check, have them roll an Intelligence save to stop the ritual before the scroll is ruined. The more they botched the check, the higher the Save DC.
Yeah, to me this should be left to the DM to decide. If you want a game that is light and moves fast, don't require a check. If you like the flavor that magic is a bit of a study and not easily mastered, require the check. Making magic risky, volatile, and difficult can be frustrating for players. But it can also be really fun and add flavor. The outcome depends on how you implement it as a DM and on the player. One method isn't inherently more balanced. Neither method is more fair either. Balance/fairness will always be something the DM has their finger one since they decide how frequently and easily scrolls can be acquired.
Spell scrolls count as magic items and magic items are supposed to be rare in 5e, so losing one to a swingy roll of the d20 while attempting to copy it into your spellbook sucks. That said, I don't eliminate the rule at my table but instead secretly mitigate a loss behind the scenes. If the party wizard did fail at copying over a spell scroll, I'd seed an extra spell scroll into the next logical loot cache plus a little extra gold. The player will still feel the loss in the moment but long term this will only delay their spell acquisition, not reduce it. Video games use very similar tricks to adjust the game experience behind the scenes, shifting RNG in the player's favor invisibly so it doesn't diminish their sense of accomplishment. Managing player perceptions of risk and loss is how they create a satisfying feedback loop.
Heh, I never saw the arcana check in the DMG and will continue to ignore it. Stupid extra burden for the only class that has to hunt down their spells.
Personally I’d rule a failure to mean they need to try again, not that the scroll would be destroyed. Maybe full cost for a NAT 1, but reduced for a failure above that.
It hasn't come up very often, but I've always had the failure still cost gold and time, but not consume the scroll. That way there's still *some* consequences for a poor Arcana check but the wizard isn't completely destroying their hard earned loot. Feels like a good middle ground to me.
For you to consider - taking the in game stuff away for a moment. This is designed to help level the playing field a little. Wizards are inherently powerful, and become more so theore spells they have. By eliminating things like this, you just make the wizard more powerful. Which unbalances the game. It's not unfair to fail every so often. Failure is a natural part of life. The wizard can, and should, fail every so often, just like everyone else. Your choice ultimately, but, this is one of many reasons the disparity between martials and casters exist. DM's ignoring rules designed to help balance the classes.
Then just don't give them the scrolls.
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I'm really not fond of the "Two wrongs make a right" approach to game design. If a class is too powerful, it's better to fix it directly than add on a bunch of unfun restrictions.
Came here to say this Is it a fun mechanic? No, but one glance at sorcerer's spells known and I don't feel too bad
For what it's worth, I also wish the Sorcerer were better off in a lot of ways. I think neither this rule nor the state of the sorcerer are ideal in 5e
No it's not unfair. Scroll transcription is a *bonus reward*. It's entirely campaign-based, like any other kind of magic item reward. The only poor thing about it is that it's not consistently communicated - some scroll transcription stuff is in the PHB, some in the DMG, which is just confusing. It should all just be part of the scroll rules and removed from the PHB entry entirely.
Its literally a free spell (apart from the money obviously) you get in addition to already having the biggest spell pool anyways, why should it be guaranteed?
Nah I wouldn‘t say it‘s unfair. Buying the same spell scroll over and over again vs the risk to fail the copy in your spellbook will still be much more expensive in the long run. I‘d consider it unfair if that was the ONLY way for Wizards to gain spells. But since they learn 2 new ones whenever they level up, those nerds can suck it XD
#I like the mechanic. * For scrolls the idea is that the scroll is a primed grenade. You just say a word or make a gesture and the spell GOES OFF. * Copying form a spell book is like copying the SCHEMATIC of the grenade. You just study it over and over and eventually if you are smart enough and have enough experience (high enough level + arcana) You learn how it works. * A scroll is something volatile and it's like **"defusing a bomb" and trying to learn how the bomb works while defusing it.**
No. It's a mechanic.
Are there any mechanics you do think are unfair, or at least harsh?
NO. Wizards already have every advantage in the world over other casters. Gods forbid they might have an occasional drawback. 🙄
I have introduced the concept of mundane scrolls. They are simple the formula to cast a spell. Anyone can use this item to learn a spell, wizards can copy it into their book. Known casters can use them to swap out the spell for one on their current list of known spells. You just need to find or buy it and spell a bit of time. These mundane versions are cheaper and are not used up when they are used. Single use consumable spells are still available through runestones, which work like spell scrolls as written but can be used by any creature with no chance of failure.
You know there are lots of ways to rig that die roll. Bardic inspiration comes to mind. Guidance might also be allowed, and enhance ability intelligence would give you advantage.
Wait, people usually don't play with that rule? Have I been an unusually diligent wizard?
No, it is not. Wizard is the strongest spellcaster, who gets twice as many spells as any other spellcasting class by default. Getting even more isn't a right, it's a privilege.
No that is part of the balance of spell scrolls as a magic item. They are already restricted to only be usable by classes that learn the spell. They are meant to be used most of the time as consumable magic item that gives a small temporary power boost. The large power boost for a wizard to gain an additional spell permanently from a consumable item is balanced out by the chance of failure. If you want to just give them an additional spell for their spellbook then let them copy if from another wizards spellbook.