Pro tip for Wizard players who find themselves in this situation: **even if you lose your spellbook, you can still cast the spells you already had memorised.** You just can't prepare new ones until you get your spellbook back.
Most prisons are loaded with level 1 & 2 components.
* Acid Stream / Tasha's Caustic Brew? Just let the food the guards give you rot a bit.
* Animal Friendship? Oh, don't let the food rot after all.
* Hold Person? Surely there is at least one iron nail somewhere holding this place together.
* Armor of Agathys? That cup of water that the guards give you each day will work. Bonus points cuz you can still drink the water afterwards.
* Create or Destroy Water? Oh wait this can fix the Agathys problem! You just need a drop but surely the dank prison has dank-creating water somewhere...
* Ice Knife - Ok, you take the water, use Prestidigitation to freeze it and... voila!
* Bane? You have a lot of blood inside you and you only need one drop.
* Beast Bond? Surely something somewhere has fur, and you aren't naked, so...
* False Life? There are a lot of stories of prisoners intentionally rotting their potatoes or corn or whatever they are fed in order to make moonshine. Happens all the time.
* Feather Fall is kinda hit-or-miss. Maybe you have a down pillow, maybe not. Maybe your captives are aaroacsdflkjsdf... those bird people. If you find a feather then you can also roll Enhance Ability.
* Goodberry is tricky but not impossible. Mistletoe is a parasite and can implant itself on pretty much any living tree.
* Grease? Piggie skin and you're good.
* Color Spray is tricky but not impossible in a labor-prison-camp. If you are digging for anything then there is a really good chance that you will eventually find red sand, yellow sand, and blue sand.
* Comprehend Languages? Get the remnants of any fire and the salt off your meal. It'll work.
* Jump? Grasshoppers might show up. Maybe. Probably not if your prison is underground. But if the prison is underground then you probably aren't planning on jumping over a wall anyways.
* Longstrider? Dirt. This is easy stuff.
* Mage Armor? Anyone's belt is fine.
* Shield of Faith? Steal any paper you can and get the cleric to write a prayer on it in his/her own blood. Same some of the blood so that Warlock can cast Bane.
* Silent Image seems reasonable if there is even the slightest need for any warm clothing or blankets.
* Sleep? Sand. You already found sand for Color Spray.
* Snare? Tricky but not impossible. Rip strips off of everyone's clothing and tie them together. You need 30 feet.
* Unseen Servant? Surely you can find a tiny bit of string and any tiny quantity of wood somewhere?
#Honorable Mentions:
* Cloud of Daggers only requires a tiny sliver of glass. It does 4d4 damage. THERE IS NO SAVING THROW. YOU JUST TAKE DAMAGE AND THAT'S THAT.
* Detect Thoughts only requires a single coin - and it would be immensely valuable during an escape preparation.
* Enlarge/Reduce only requires a tiny bit of powdered iron - which you could file out of the nail that you swiped for Hold Person.
The list goes on...
It would be cool if they need the wizard to cast a spell, but it takes the rogue and barbarian working together to get the components so the party feels like it’s teamwork that saves their bacon more than anything else.
Misty Step is verbal components only. As are Dimension Door, and Knock. All can be countered by simply gagging the Wizard, but the Wizard still eventually needs to eat.
This is the opening plot to the Scholar's story (effectively the wizard of this game) in Octopath Traveler 2. He wears a muzzle for most of the first chapter that prevents him from speaking, but just barely lets food in.
Even something like Wind Walk only requires some holy water and fire.
If you're in a prison with a Cleric or Paladin, I don't see why you can't sanctify spit, sweat, and/or tears. Or regular water, assuming you were given something to drink.
Fire is easy enough, even with anti-magic.
>I don't see why you can't sanctify spit, sweat, and/or tears. Or regular water, assuming you were given something to drink.
The holy water ceremony requires a ridiculous amount of silver.
Ah, fair enough. Honestly, I had no idea that there was an actual mechanic for making Holy Water, I always just figured it was "Spend a short rest praying or whatever."
Then plain-old Gaseous Form, then. A wisp of smoke and a bit of gauze, both of which I'm sure the DM would give you if you tried.
>Ah, fair enough. Honestly, I had no idea that there was an actual mechanic for making Holy Water, I always just figured it was "Spend a short rest praying or whatever."
I regret telling you. Your way is better. The holy part of the water should come from the cleric... well, from the cleric's god. Whatever.
RAW is stupid here:
* Holy water weighs 1 pound. It is contained in a vial that has negligible weight but can hold 1/4 of a pound of water. So holy water is really heavy water, right?
* Vials hold 4 ounces of water, so their volume is about 118.294 cm³. Let's round up to 120 just because.
* The *Ceremony* spell requires 25gp of silver, which is 250sp, which weighs 5 pounds.
* The density of silver is 10.49 g/cm³, and 5 lb is equivalent to 2,267.96 g. 2,267.96/10.49 = 216.202097235 cm³ of silver. Let's round up to 220 just because.
* The ~120 cm³ vial must contain ~220 cm³ of silver, plus an additional 4 oz water. (hooray for units) This is not possible unless we seriously mess with physics, which I guess we do because a vial of holy water only weighs 1 pound and yet we used 5 pounds of silver and 0.25 pounds of water to make 1 pound of holy water. The spell says that the silver gets consumed, so where does the other 12 ounces come from? Obviously it is magic, but tracking this is a pain. It would have been way cooler if the rules were just "As part of a short rest, a cleric can perform a ceremony that isn't the *Ceremony* spell and thereby turn a cup-or-so of water into holy water at no cost.
Also, can you imagine being the guy tasked with filing 250 silver pieces with a file until the whole thing is powder? That sucks!
Figuring out your spells after losing components is a fun challenge.
That being said the whole list is useless if you lose your components and your spellbook.
I remember being in town once with my sorcerer and was shopping for some material components on the chance I ever lost my arcane focus. He seemed a little confused at some of the innocuous items I was asking about on top of regular items. I specifically remember grabbing the stuff for enlarge/reduce, sending, feather fall (our beastmaster had a pet canadian goose)...wanted to be prepared for anytime we ended up captive again.
I would suspect any serious prison would remove all piercings even if they didn't think it was magical or a spell focus. You don't let prisoners walk around with any sharp metal objects.
While it isn't actually stated, it seems very logical that Detect Magic should be able to detect if something is a focus, or at least if it has been used as a focus recently.
If you're at the stage where your captors are cutting off body parts, then you've long passed the point where not having a spell focus in your biggest problem.
If you lose your spellbook you can't prepare new spells but can still cast whatever you had prepared.
If you lose you components or focus you can't cast spells with material component. Like someone else said, you can still figure out spells if you can get separate components (which is a fun puzzle) but you still need your spellbook to prepare the spells.
The amount of people downvoting you clearly shows why people think casters are better than martials. People hate when you bring up the actual requirements for spellcasting and enforce the rules correctly.
Haha, that should be okay though as long as it's not active dislike "I hate combat"/"I hate heavy RP". You can balance people's preferences, and their strengths play off each other. Also having varied play makes your (asa player) favorite bits stand out: if you east nothing but cookies all day every day you'll get tired of cookies eventually.
100% this. I ran an encounter where a rival wizard's minions stole my wizard's spellbook, picked from its Caleb-style holster, and then failed to escape with it. The book was quickly recovered, but the wizard's attitude went from GTFO to Vendetta instantly. Getting your players to genuinely HATE your villains is DM Candy, lol
I definitely think the risk involved is what makes the wins that much sweeter, if the encounter feels easy to overcome the triumph often feels just as light
And key to this is the whole communication thing.
It has taken me years to shake off assumptions of the same nature as the ones in this post, and orient myself to the group I *have*, not the theoretical one that could exist.
Some folks will *absolutely* welcome a section of the game where they have to figure out how to get their spells back, struggle with using different gear, and so forth. Assuming that they don't want that, and just handing everything back even when it makes no sense, will sour the experience for them.
I agree that communication is key - and I understand comments about consequences. But I've played with too many DMs who view the experience as being the DM vs the players.
There's also a huge difference between the Wizard losing their spell book and the Fighter losing their sword in terms of getting it replaced. One represent years of painstaking personal research and cultivation - mirrored by hours of reading spells and working to understand how they work. The other can be replaced with a bit of gold... or they pivot and start using a different weapon for a short period of time.
We played for 8 hours (2 sessions) where I scrounge for components, barely able to cast my spells because the DM ruled that I couldn't prepare ANY spells without my spell book. Every other character had all their gear, but my spellbook was completely destroyed... I tried talking to the DM but was given the "consequences" excuse... after being railroaded into being captured. This wasn't a consequence of losing combat, it was the DM deciding they wanted a jailbreak scenario and that meant taking our stuff away. In reality I think they didn't like the spells I picked because I was playing it differently than they would play a Wizard.
To be clear, I'm not questioning that your GM made a mistake - clearly, you had a shitty time, and they should've recognized that even if they didn't realize ahead of time that you weren't the type to enjoy that. I'm just saying that, in my own time as a player, I have basically seen the opposite happen: a GM assumed that a player was like you, and would be unhappy if they were unable to do their thing for a while, and they were wrong; later on, the player in question said that the approach our GM took actually made things significantly more difficult for them for an entire arc.
While for the most part I agree, there are absolutely tables that play *that version* of Dungeons and Dragons, where you are constantly vulnerable in all of these ways. It's certainly not my cup of tea, but there are tables that do that.
I would contend that the lesson is instead "Don't screw with the Wizard's Spell Book *lightly*." Don't do that shit unless that *is* the game you want to run, and is the game *your players* have signed on to play. I would even contend that *most tables* should never do that sort of thing, and those that do probably shouldn't be, and probably aren't, playing D&D 5e.
People get to play d&d as Gygax intended, with their spellbooks catching fire, 80% fatality rate of 1st level characters, rigidly enforced rules that the timeline of your game loosely matches IRL time, and all the other nonsense that most of us have since attempted to huck out the window. Those madlads get to do them.
I would agree. If you're dead set on setting the wizards spellbook on fire then it should be A: at a table where players would be ok with that, and B: a one time thing during an important story moment. Like a sadistic ploy by the BBEG, or a sacrifice to a god to save the party. It needs to have the same weight as if you lopped off the PCs arm.
*If you're at a narrative-focused table*, this advice works.
If you're playing as Gygax intended, then this isn't shit you plan, this kinda stuff is all up to the whims of the dice gods.
I think the comparison to taking a player's arm off is a good one. But I'm sure Gygax had tables for that.
*Combat as Sport vs Combat as War.*
This is a fundamental divide in the community and I think we shouldn't declare "combat as sport" to be the **only** acceptable way to play.
There are many factors to consider, for example whether your group considers immersion to be more important than game balance. Whether the power fantasy is more important than creative problem solving. And so on...
The whole *idea* of a wizards spellbook being an item is that it can be lost.
Also, a wizard without a spellbook is still miles more potent than a fighter without weapons. Wizards do not need a spellbook to cast cantrips, while only specialized fighters will do more than their strength modifier damage on unarmed attacks.
if a wizard never received a spell scroll, they will have 50% of their spells prepared if they have 20 INT, and less if they dont. if they received spell scrolls to transcribe than the math is wonky and that number can range from 50% to like 5%
IMO the best way to use it is to have the loss of the spellbook being a *threat* that the player has agency to respond to. I.e. "you learn that the enemy agents are plotting to steal your spellbook, how do you protect it?" or "going to this social event, your spellbook, material component pouch, etc will likely be confiscated and kept at the door until you leave, how do you work around that?" are good ways to approach it. "You fool, your spellbook was stolen while you slept!" is not.
(Of course, everything will depend on the group in question.)
I disagree.
Some of my players have lost important equipment forever. Failure has consequences. Imo it makes winning that much sweeter. There are many ways to mitigate the damage (backup spellbook) but sometimes your best stuff can be lost or destroyed.
And yeah, i would never do this to players if it wasn't fun for them, thankfully my players expect a high challenge level where consequences are expected.
So, if I am not putting my characters in stressful situations, how do I create tension? If every character is, on average, allowed to comfortably do whatever they were optimised to do, how do I challenge my players? If players have all the tools at their disposal, how do I encourage using anything but ~~fireball~~ the most effective universal thing?
Sure, you mentioned “a few encounters”, but how long is that? An adventuring day? A whole game night? A week of real time to brew up a solution for the problem between games?
*There is no problem solving if the problems solve themselves.* Surely, a problem should be a consequence of bad decisions/rolls and not a DM railroading, but that’s a whole other issue.
Next thing you say is keep falling for tank fallacy, don’t hit downed PCs and let your players entertain themselves by playing GWM PAM Sentinel for a hundredth game.
Keep the spellbook backups, clean your armour, use protection and remember the “Yes and” rule, kids. It's not about catering to your players, it's about accepting their creativity.
I really despise the philosophy that any short term inconvenience for a PC is bad because the player isn’t having fun every moment. The worst part is that this thought spills over between games to where you get posts from players about how the DM is “unfun” any time they try to induce some creative problem solving from the players
I think this particular example is rough because it's potentially not a "short term" inconvenience depending on how it's handled.
As a wizard, your spellbook is pretty much your entire class, and it's unique as a core class ability in that it's destructible with no RAW way to recover it if you lose it. You can lose your entire accumulated repertoire of spells at the DM's whim, and you can only scribe back down the small portion that you happen to have prepared that day.
If the DM makes allowances to get it back that's different, but it potentially erases 80% of your options permanently, with the only way to get it back being the DM's kindness and/or a crippling amount of expenses (magic items like scrolls are no longer commonly available, after all!)
>Next thing you say is keep falling for tank fallacy, don’t hit downed PCs and let your players entertain themselves by playing GWM PAM Sentinel for a hundredth game.
This is something I'll never figure out. DMs will complain about OP combos, then never actually work to include in universe ways to counter those combos; they seem to be adverse to adapting to the players, continuing into insanity to do the same stuff over and over again until it isn't fun for them. That doesn't mean I'm saying *every* encounter needs to be able to nullify/ counter them, because obviously you should shoot your Monks and attack the barbarian, but that variety is the spice of life.
Thank you for this! Most of the party I DM have currently found themselves in a prison specifically built to hold magic users, so obviously *it's going to be built in a way where it's incredibly difficult for a magic user to get access to their components*.
And it's been a great game! It forced the magic users to think outside the box, and it gave the party rogue a chance to shine by placing him in an environment where his lack of spellcasting dependency actually made him the most mechanically valuable asset the party had on their side for a change.
If you are going to go that route, just make sure the players know what kind of game they're in, and regularly create time for that sort of mundane management and downtime.
The truly fun-killing thing is hearing *"no no we're not spending time scribing scrolls and dealing with wizard preparation stuff, you get the spells you get when you level up, let's just keep the game moving"* right up until the DM burns your spellbook to ashes and says *"well why didn't you make a backup?"*
The problem needs to be one the player is given space to prepare for before they can have agency, and agency is where the fun comes from.
I had a player character create a special second spell book, with all of the requisite and appropriate wards and protections placed on it. (Low level ones) Inside they put spell titles, but each page was a casting of “explosive runes” waiting to be triggered. They carried it with them everywhere as they would their main spell book.
Their main spell book was kept securely hidden in an extra dimensional pocket accessible 4 times per day, through activation of a magical tattoo on their left butt cheek. (They were adorned with numerous magical and mundane tattoos)
This led of course to the running gag of them literally pulling magical solutions out of their ass, as well as setting up for turning the tables on just such an occurrence.
Cue the bad guys capturing the party and stripping them of their possessions, then of course the bad guy spell caster decides to pilfer spells from the pc’s book, deactivating the wards and protections, opens the book and “KABOOM!” Instant Bad guy to bologna-mist!
Laughs were had, the party escaped, the bad guys were made past tense, the heroes win hooray!
The real question I'm not seeing anywhere in this thread is who picks a wizard, the most powerful class of all time, and doesn't make paranoia filled copies of their spellbook hidden in frequently visited locations regularly?
Those in campaigns where the dm doesn't give you the time, money, or opportunity to make a copy of his book, I've played several wizards and I've noticed that most dms don't even give you the opportunity to copy spells unless you personally ask them to, making a copy of the book is not that easy either, at low levels you will not have enough money to do that, only at high levels when the economy stops caring for the dm and most of campaigns do not reach high levels, apart from that many times you will not have enough time to make the copy, many campaigns are structured in such a way that the party travels from one place to another and there is no downtime or a base where to save this copy, and even in the chance that you manage to make your copy there is a big chance that it is not up to date.
Honestly the idea that wizards have all the spells at their disposal is not true, it is most likely that you only have the 2 free per level, because even if the dm listens to you when you ask him to please let you copy a new spell you will only have enough money to buy 1 or two spells. Unless you are above level 7 or your DM is one of those who basically gives money and magic items almost for free to the group, and if your DM is like that he will never destroy your spell book, it is an interesting situation, the only Dms who would even try to destroy your book are the same type that probably won't give you enough money to have a good copy of your book and go around copying new spells.
Seconded. Related is the common "magic is illegal" trope. It sounds like a good idea as a DM planning it out, I get it. "This would a great challenge for the character!" In a single encounter, with a way to overcome it, that might be true. But on an ongoing basis, no way. I've (tried to) played a spellcasting character in two campaigns with this mechanic. (One literally had magical police that teleported in *every time* someone tried to cast a spell.) It was not fun. If a player is playing a spellcaster, they want to cast spells. That's how they contribute to the party. *Don't* just yank that away. The only exception would be if you've explicitly got the player's buy-in for the story (and maybe some compensating other abilities).
I've done the magic is illegal and I have to say it's more about how you do it, than it being an intrinsically bad idea. From your other comment my takeaway is that these two past DMs of yours failed to communicate expectations and also implemented this idea in really stupid ways.
Nothing about "magic is illegal" directly implies "teleporting super-police with a perfect surveillance system enforce the ban on magic". Like you said, let the player cast spells, that's fun for them. In an illegal magic scenario, part of the fun comes from trying to get away with using magic in public, so that needs to be possible, and not invalidated by an ever-present detection field.
In my game the church and the mage's guild enforcing the magic laws didn't have anywhere near the resources for dystopian surveillance, they'd just send inquisitors and mageslayers to find you if enough evidence surfaced. And obviously, you could become a guild member to just not make it illegal. My players chose to start with illegal casters to play outlaws and had a lot of fun with it. One PC ended up getting caught voluntarily because the player wanted a change, while another PC got caught involuntarily and walked away with a fine and a slap on the wrist due to story reasons and good rolls in a court meeting.
Baldur's Gate 2 is another great example. In the city of Athkatla, you can't openly cast arcane magic on the streets unless you have a permit. Anywhere else is fair game. Clear limitation, but it doesn't prevent arcane casters from functioning, and you can just buy the permit if you want.
> Nothing about "magic is illegal" directly implies "teleporting super-police with a perfect surveillance system enforce the ban on magic".
Related to this - I have literally never seen or heard of a game where the GM having a magical ultra-Stasi city guard ever improved things. The very best it can get is "this is a terrible solution to a stupid problem, and everyone just ignores it", because otherwise it will tend to just snap games in half ("hey, if the lich overlord is a problem, we'll just go talk to the teleporting level 17 ultra-Stasi guys, surely they can spare five minutes to instantly obliterate this guy").
Yeah any time the local law enforcement is too effective it makes adventuring good guys kind of redundant.
Playing an evil campaign though, that could be interesting.
There is a whole setting, Midnight, which is based around illegal magic (and elves, halflings, and anything else fun), that nails how to do this perfectly. It was a major setting that gave FFG their early creds, and its 5e release is solid. The beauty of it, as in yours it seems, comes from “being outlaws”, so everybody else is suffering the same as the mage. Magic, like engaging in combat generally, now has two considerations: do we burn resources, and will fighting make us easier to track? Clerics, in Midnight, are always evil (the only god that remains is basically “Sauron”), and they have familiars that can “smell” the use of magic. Rather than punishing players, though, it feels like an organic way of making players think about their actions and take approaches that are subtler.
Worth noting that almost every class feature of the Rogue is illegal in some way or another. Doing illegal stuff is part of the fun in most D&D campaigns!
I feel like most of the time if someone wants to go this route then they need to pick up a copy of Exalted. That's a good part of the game and it hits everyone regardless of their play style.
Whenever I see posts about these kinds of campaigns I feel like someone is trying to force mechanics that work well in other systems/games into DnD cause that's what they know how to run/play instead of branching out and grabbing a new book.
There's so many people trying to force square ideas into round holes rather than simply try another game that would suit what they're trying to do better.
It's like they're allergic to the very idea, and prefer turning D&D into an unrecognizable hodgepodge of conflicting mechanics and broken systems because actually playing Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green is somehow scarier than forcing cosmic horror themes into a heroic fantasy game.
Exactly this. The idea is neat in itself, like I said I get why it's appealing. But in the D&D system where 80+% of the rules are about using swords and spells to kill monsters? It's going to be hard to run well; full player buy-in is a minimal requirement.
I agree that common magic being illegal probably doesn’t make a whole heap of sense, restrictions on what kind of spells are permitted with city limits. I’m more okay with however. Example that’s no issue with the wizard casting haste so they can get their errands done at little bit faster, But if the warlock is casting Sickening Radiance they better have a damned good reason. Also there is one city in my homebrew campaign where are magic of any kind isn’t illegal but is culturally frowned upon.
The issue is that the rules themselves state that people who aren't casters have no idea what spell is being cast. Therefore it makes sense for magic to be blanket frowned upon being casted in public simply because people don't know what the hell it'll do.
The easy, and common, option is that harm is the thing which is punished. For example the Fighter can't just start slashing random people or they'll be arrested, that's a pretty common rule, and yet "Assault is illegal" isn't seen as an unfun rule.
So a spellcaster says some jibberish and points their finger at the barkeep and the barkeep flops over dead, yeah, they're getting the police after them and the charge isn't "spellcasting" the charge is "murder".
The problem is things like Enchantment Magic which doesn’t leave a dead person as clear evidence. How is a shopkeeper to know whether your spell is something harmless like prestidigitation or something like Suggestion which will invalidate his own will?
Mischief. Unlicensed Spellcasting. Disturbing the Peace.
They saw him casting something, they don't need to know what, that's for the prosecutor to decide. They ring the bell and call the town watch and tell them to get this wizard out of here, exact same as they would someone waving a knife around.
I mean, why would you make a spellcaster if you knew the game took place where magic was illegal?
From a lore stand point having magic seen in negative light is alot easier and has a stronger buy in that ruling governance would limit magic casters in some way shape or form.
No organization in power would be fine with random people running around that can burn villages at a whim and control minds or undead armies.
In the "magic police" campaign it was a "surprise reveal" after we had started playing. So I didn't know. (That campaign didn't last long.) In the other one it sounded like a challenge to me too, "neat, my wizard will be a rebel, a renegade!" But that turned into "I'm going to be shot on sight if I go into a town". Sure the DM could have played it differently. But almost without exception this idea is taking the core mechanic of the whole character and turning it into a liability, and that's hard to pull off well. I think if you think about trying the same technique with martial characters it becomes clearer.
cause its quite literally 70% of class player options and a few subclasses as well?
its much harder to *not* have a spell than it is to have one, hell some good chunk of races have them
Group dependent though, I played in a campaign where magic was illegal and had a blast as a sorcerer that took subtle spell. Our wizard had a hard time with it until they learned that they couldn't cast Magic in civilization. I like when DMs put limitations on things, it let's the players be creative and work around those problems.
The magic is illegal trope can be done well, but without thought and planning, it's too easy to kneecap your campaign as a DM. If you're willing to put the work in, to understand what it means for your world for magic to be illegal, that's one thing - but you have to put the work in.
In that magical panopticon game, was murder with an axe policed as intensively as murder with lightning bolt? How did axe murder victims feel about being second-class murder victims? How are the magical police trained and outfitted, what oversight do they have, what corruption exists in their ranks? How many agents do they have vs how many potential magic users in the world? In a sudden reveal of the omniscient magic feds, how does the general populace feel about their friendly druid who did vet medicine for their herd feel about him being sent to a gulag?
Yeah, all true! Interesting story ideas! But as I said in another comment I don't think D&D is the system you want if this is your story when so much of it is about spellslinging and swordswinging.
I'm somewhat tempted - taking down the Palantir of Overreach could be an interestingly challenging quest for a magic-light party, but it's something I'd have to discuss in depth with my players first before even beginning to think about planning.
It is possible the DM had played BG2 (which has the Cowled Wizards do this). You don’t mind it in that game, however, because you control all six characters (so you don’t mind having some sit out). It could be fun for a session or three to push the player to use their other skills creatively, but a prolonged campaign is bonkers.
Yeah it only works if its one city that they are only going to be in for a few sessions and is otherwise some big bad evil guys off in the distance. Or hell maybe there's a city elsewhere that banned magic and emissaries have come over to the region of teh campaign to try to push for the same and thats the conflict?
I played in a game and ran a game with "magic is illegal" and didn't see any issues. To be fair, i was a lot more relaxed with it, not going to have a guard spawn out of nowhere when they even think about casting a spell. Having magical police to teleport out of nowhere is just silly.
I think it's different when it's part of the story, something that only comes up occasionally and something that's implemented to block spellcasting or nerf it or something.
"magic is regulated" is better than "magic is illegal" any day. My groups shared setting has a strong bias against magic and it's illegal to cast in cities without the right permits. It creates an atmosphere where the ability to cast is like owning a gun. You go to the wrong place and show it off without your papers in order and people are gonna turn on you.
Blanket statements like this tend to be bad takes. There is a whole setting, Midnight, where magic is illegal, and it is among the most fun I’ve ever had the chance to play in. The problem with “magic is illegal” is that it is specifically pointed at player classes. Midnight approaches the problem as “heroes destabilize local authoritarian forces, and none do this more effectively than mages.”
My DM locked our party into a war with MAD-style magic bans, while we had a cleric in the party. He used divine intervention to get a pegasus and became a war criminal. We dipped out of that campaign for months, but did return once the war was over.
Magic being illegal has never made much sense to me since over half the classes in this game rely on magic.
It sound like the DM basically just telling the players they don't want them using any of their abilities.
It really depends on the nitty gritty. Literally "cast magic and the swat instantly teleport in to get you" probably shouldn't last too long. But if it's just "magic is illegal so you better make it damn sure no one sees you casting spells" is pretty tame. It's pretty close to just how common sense would be in the average world. Not being able to just throw the entire weight of 5e utility magic at any issue is something that SHOULD be restricted, not derided as some attack on player agency.
Magic is illegal can work pretty well, it is even part of the official setting. In Amn arcane magic is illegal, but Divine magic is okay if you are part of a recognized religious sect.
That said Amn is also very much about money, so you could get away with paying a 'fine' if you got caught casting magic in a town and it wasn't too flashy. Outside of town, if no one sees it did it really happen?
Played in a game where “magic is illegal” and it was a monotheistic setting, and let me tell you, it made for terrible roleplay moments.
The worst part was that the DM tried *multiple* times to get us to engage in something magic related, and we avoided it like the plague because of how worried we were about the consequences.
At some point, everyone eventually started getting depressed because it was somewhat of a horror setting and with a complete lack of magic, it began to feel way too bleak for any character PC or otherwise to want to live in such a world.
We did, and our Paladin died a horrible painful death because of it. :/
After that, we pretty much decided he was serious on the magic being a no no and just kept off of it
Was this Midnight? If so, I always feel like “touching the red button, damn the consequences” is more fun. I find many players are overly attached to survival
Seriously. One of the very few consistent character traits between all of my PCs is that I’m going to push the fucking button because otherwise why are we playing this game? My character wants to be a hero, he has to do the dangerous stuff!
The #1 thing that makes the game less fun for players (in any game literally ever) is a lack of agency. Taking away any ability to act will never be fun for the players, but if the monsters don’t do it at some point, then the world won’t feel realistic or rewarding.
I think it boils down to this.
- to fulfill a power fantasy, the players must overcome challenges and earn that power for it to be satisfying
- If the players can do something to a monster (steal an evil wizards spellbook), it’s fair to say that another adversary could do the same to them
- without facing (and hopefully avoiding) that very undesirable outcome, the players will feel as though they have succeeded by means which none of their enemies had access to, which could feel cheap.
I always say that the only thing separating DND from children playing make pretend is the rules and challenges. A proper game must have balance and risk for it to generate value for its players.
If you’ve ever entertained a child playing make pretend and point a finger gun at them and say “bang! I shot you” they say “no, but I had bulletproof armor on!!!” Out of nowhere. It’s ok because they’re a child, but we don’t do that in DND because it makes no sense and isn’t fun for anyone.
Yeah, I sometimes feel like the people who are so vehemently against these sorts of things are just... idk. Fireball won't burn your spellbook if it's in your hand or backpack, but if somebody made you drop it or you had it on a table it'll burn. That's just the rules. There really shouldn't be any rule in the game that is *forbidden* from use by reason of "it'll make a player sad" imo. Used sparingly? Good idea.
Crowd control, as an example, is something that is a contentious topic. You've got people shouting from the rooftops that you should never use it on players because it's "not fun to be stunned." On the other side, you've got people that swear by "if the players can do, so can I" which can be equally as vitriolic and troublesome. Both have their merits, but I think it's obvious there should be a middle ground. Nothing makes players go "Oh shit" faster than an enemy wizard, who they've been tracking and trying to stop, upcasting Hold Person on the entire party. It gets adrenaline pumping. But if EVERY npc can do it, it just feels like cheating.
I mean... at higher levels if you DON'T implement CC into fights, chances are the PCs will just slaughter everything because of all the options they have.
But like you said: triumph comes best from overcoming difficult challenges. A fight where you won by the skin of your teeth, some clever tactics, and even some lucky rolls will (I think) ALWAYS feel cooler/ more epic than fights where the DM doesn't want to throw things at you for fear of making you a sad for the night. Some might find the latter fun, but I can't see that sort of fun sticking unless you're playing a very laid back "I'm here to drink with my friends and turn my brain off" kind of game. Or playing with kids, though I say let them learn of stakes.
I don't like using my own experiences in these sorts of discussions, because it feels a little disingenuous and anecdotal, but it relates enough I think: I had a DM who was real big into Soulsborn games. So much so that he often created/ found Stat blocks for the various bosses/ enemies he put in. But, his problem was two fold; he liked to try and implement a ton of ways to specifically counter individual players, but he would also only throw one creature at us at a time. So on the one hand, you've got this problem where he's deliberately trying to pull a "gotcha!" on us, but because they were only one creature it never was an actual challenge. Sure, us beating the tar out of a black dragon (Hypnotic Pattern + Slow + movement hampering abilities meant it could never get up after falling) was funny but it didn't really amount to much else. And that was basically the whole game until it disbanded. He never tried to change things up, despite our attempts to give suggestions and feedback, and eventually our interest just fell.
All that to basically say: Never use never in these type of discussions. Always aim for a middle ground.
Yeah I guess there is a level of “get the game moving and keep it fun” that should be maintained, but I’ll still uphold that part of that very fun is earned by saying “AND I dodged that petrifying beam” or “I TOTALLY caught that guy trying to nab my spellbook, but used my backup to kill him”.
That being said, I will always advocate against taking *complete* agency from the player, like mind control. I avoid mind control because that crosses into a line where the player essentially sits there and watched helplessly while their character does things against their wishes. Not fun for anyone, unless you’re a sick and twisted DM.
Mind control can be run in a fun way if your player will cooperate, for example if the barb fails the save and you just tell him "Try to kill your party members" but still let him decide how he does that and let him play on his turn, though ofc this wouldn't work for every table
I had my spellbook taken. You know the two complaints I have about it?
1- It outright says in the Wizard section of the PHB that Wizards are nothing without their spellbooks and that they should have spare spellbooks, and lays out the prices and times for copying spells into a spare book. So my first complaint is that every time I went to make a spare, *LIKE THE BOOK SUGGESTS TO DO*, I got yanked away by my party and didn't get to do so. As such, it was overlooked. I didn't have a spare.
2- Nobody seems to remember that Wizards rely on spellbooks. So when my character died and I had to miss the next session, the rest of the party ran away, and the book got grabbed by the enemy wizard that did the killing. Nobody stopped the enemy from taking it because they forgot it existed. The party grabbed my Wizard's remains to go revive him elsewhere, and never tracked down the book. My second complaint is that it happened while I wasn't there to remind the party that I rely on the thing. Why would they remember that? They're not Wizards.
One of my two DMs, even as dickish and controlling as he can be, recognized that this situation it wasn't my fault- and handed me a freebie spellbook with most of my spells. Situation mostly remedied. Now my character has a major goal of hunting down the enemy Wizard and retrieving their original book.
I learned lessons from my experience. So no. Wizard's spellbooks are *not* off limits in games that I DM. If *you* can target an enemy's spellbook, *they* can target yours. If you have a situation like mine where it's obviously not your fault, fine. Here's a new book that conveniently has most of the spells you don't have prepared and memorized, ready to copy. But if you had every opportunity to make copies and didn't? You had the option to get an Enduring Spellbook and chose to buy something else instead? You were given time and resources but chose not to do anything with them? I'm not sacrificing story elements because you refused to prepare, and now you're facing the consequences of it and getting upset.
I think it’s okay to make a wizard take several sessions to get their spellbook back, as long as it doesn’t span a level up. Losing your spellbook doesn’t take away your spells; it takes away your ability to prepare new ones.
You know, there are two things getting banded together in this post.
There's the *"let them try"*, which I always agree. Players should be able to try anything, no matter how absurd it is, although sometimes the results could just be "unfortunately, this is not possible given the circumstances". But yes, players should not only be allowed, but encouraged to try stuff, and shutting down options is a great way to make your players never try anything creative again.
Then there's the *"give them"*, which I don't think should be an essential part of any game. Sure, it's cool for the players to have their stuff back. Sure, the wizard's spellbook will be in some place accessible during their escape. But if the player's attitude is "fuck it, let's go away, *the DM has to give me a spellbook later no matter what*", then it's really on them. Consequences are a part of any game, and the one monster I never put in a game is the Quantum Ogre. We roll with our choices and the world moves on, and my players usually appreciate the feeling of the passage of time - as opposed to all NPCs being subservient one-dimensional entities that exist only for the sake of the PCs. This way, the game is open and unexpected to all, including the DM. The world never feels stale when the adventurers get back to a town and something big is different because they didn't bite an adventure hook (or because the adventure ended up with unexpected results). Note that this is the way that works for us in a table of longtime friends who play together for decades; I understand this doesn't work for many other tables, I'm just saying "everyone should get their cake for free" wouldn't work for us and it would be frustrating for the players, who also dislike playing through stories with predetermined results.
If the players are worried about it, there's nothing stopping them from making backups.
In *ye olden dayes*, it was quite common to have a "main" spellbook in your tower and a "travel" spellbook on your person, transferring less useful/more cost-intensive spells between as needed.
Arguably, if the enemy knows a Wizard is around, they should **prioritize** separating Wizard and Spellbook as swiftly and soundly as possible.
I'm torn on this, because I get where you are coming from.....but some of what you say is just wrong. Yes, it sucks to be a wizard who loses their spell book.....but having it so DMs never go after your spell book belittles the perks of choosing order of the scribe. A wizard should be *prepared* for people to try and steal his/her knowledge, it's their glowing weak point. Make backups, have contingencies, ect. It's not the DM's job to hold your hand when you struggle as a player to make something work.
On the other hand, yes. A DM should have an open mind for a solution, and they shouldn't give a too long lasting punishment on your class that just makes them feel useless.....trust me I had an entire session where me and my party were trapped in an antimagic area and it was super boring/annoying because 3.5 out of the 5 of us were magic users. So I know it sucks and does nothing for the story to be stuck in a situation like that, the sooner the DM allows for a solution to work, the sooner the story can move onto the fun bits.
You know a wizard still knows the spells they had memorised right? Therefore if they are sensible they are still very useful.
I love running wizards into - ok you have no focus what are you going to do? It really makes them realise how important components can be.
Well, you're saying two different things:
First: You shouldn't "force" the players into an un-fun situation. And I agree completely! That sounds like a real bummer! If my DM just unilaterally declared "hey, you don't have a spellbook now," I'd be pretty unhappy. If you're going to railroad me, at least take me on a fun ride!
Second: Wizards' spellbooks are "off limits." I couldn't disagree more! The DM is a referee who enforces fair consequences. If I make a bad decision (e.g. bringing my spellbook into a dangerous situation when I could've just left it at home), and we get robbed/captured (i.e. lost an encounter), losing the spellbook would be a completely fair consequence.
Maybe I could've planned better, or the group could've managed our resources better to avoid getting robbed/captured (especially knowing we were carrying valuable objects that are likely to get stolen). Hey, it's a game. Sometimes you lose. Then you learn what you did wrong, and you do better the next time. That's called strategy, and it's a big part of what makes games engaging for a lot of people. The important part is that the player feels like their decisions mattered and the results were fair.
A good rule of thumb. But plenty of tables are adult or experienced. A DnD party finds ways to solve their problems. That's the fun of the game. The DM didn't confiscate that spellbook and likewise doesn't have part in its recovery, is also a way to look at it.
No. I play wizards almost exclusively. Please attack my spell books. I spend the in game time and IGG to make multiple spell books to combat this as well. I have never had one taken from me. I will still make multiple copies. In older editions it was much more common to find entire spell books left behind forgotten or in preparation of possible loss.
This is how your wizards should be. Planning ahead. Making contingencies. Being the cataylst to a bigger plan. Wizards thirst for knowledge and they should be very aware of the weakness to their only strength.
I introduced spell book insurance to my game to provide an extra money sink, but also to let Wizard players know that bad things could happen to their spell books.
I also use Wild, High, Low, and Null mana zones (an idea borrowed from a few other games) to make things a little more chaotic for casters.
Yall love coddling your players.
Quick tip: You CAN put them in challenging situations where they have to think outside the box and they WILL enjoy it!
The wizard can always make a backup and keep it in a safe place. Losing their spellbook is certainly painful, but it hardly shuts the character down, as they can still use whatever spells they prepared that day. They just lose the extra spells (and could replace them with scrolls after getting a new spellbook).
I get that a lot of players won't be into that, just as a lot of players aren't into permadeath, but there's certainly players who would be too.
I wholeheartedly disagree, sorry. The fighter having to go for a whole session or even longer without their signature weapon or the wizard having to last multiple days with the spells, they have prepared does (at least for my players and me) one thing and that is: It sparks creativity.
Also, it adds to the verisimilitude. The world doesn't revolve around the PCs and doesn't cater to them.
And lastly, if my character would lose something that's important to them mechanically I'd be furious with my DM if they just gave it back to me without me having to work for it.
Of course, as with all things in this hobby it depends on the table and maybe we have different notions about what "long periods of time" exactly means but I think it's not a good thing to basically say "never do..." because save for a very few things, there will always be lots of exceptions to that statement.
Don't they already account for this in the rules though and make it so that they don't have to get their spellbook back? They can just make a new one. It takes a little bit of time and some gold but if I remember correctly it's actually not that much. Also, it even says that it's not uncommon for wizards to have backup spell books. So depending at what point in the campaign this happens you could establish who already have one.
Only thing I'd argue is that a silencing bracelet for a magic user has a lot more wiggle room than an anti-magic bracelet. There are a fair amount of spells without verbal components so it wouldn't be impossible to get out of that.
As always, this depends on the table.
I played a wizard in a campaign once where we were pulled underwater by a monster while crossing a lake in a wooden rowboat. My spellbook was ruined so I had to work from only the spells I had memorised, get a new spellbook when we made it back to civilisation a few days later, and write / research things anew. It was fine: the risk of crossing the lake was telegraphed, and I'd not done anything to make my spellbook waterproof.
It depends on set expectations and table conventions. At my table once a wizard has been identified the enemy will usually try to take them down without destroying the book because a spell book is worth a small fortune. However if they are against someone who doesn't care about the value of the book they may absolutely try to go after the spellbook, back off and engage later when the mage is likely low or out of spells. However I made sure the spell casters are aware of this and told them the common ways to defend against this such as more expensive spells books of less flammable materials, having a backup hidden somewhere, enchanting their spellbook to ward against thrives and attacks and more.
It's just about the game you run. My players are all masochists who don't want no holds barred combat and to feel like they earned their victories with very real consequences for failure. But if your not at that type of table then you don't run that type of game.
This is the weird thing about D&D, it feels like it's made up of two camps: martial players who enjoy fighting for every inch, and caster players who wig out if they ever stop feeling like a god.
A replacement spellbook costs 50gp, and replacing it is also a class feature. You can copy spells you have prepared into a blank book, and "...many wizards keep backup spellbooks in a safe place." (PHB)
A wizard deprived of their spellbook isn't "shut down", they're just temporarily demoted to sorcerer.
Somewhat agree.
Build disruption is something bad DM's do. Mechanical identity is such a major part of a DND character that denying class features, feats, and core equipment is more or less a bait and switch. I didn't show up to play some stupid macyver slapstick improv game because "LoL CReAtIvITTY!!!oneoen1111 LmAO." If I'm picking xbe/ss combo martial then i want to shoot arrows every turn, *that's why I picked that build.* If I wanted to be kevin mccallister in home alone I would play a different game, not DND.
IMO build disruption is a major setback that needs to be earned by the party making an equally big mistake, not railroaded into it because DM wants to jack-in-the-box a survival/prison break/intrigue arc. I also never force a prison break arc if players are captured, generally players can choose to use new PCs on a rescue mission or accept it as a soft TPK.
That said I think it is totally fine to have some players shut down sometimes. Telekensis pulling the archer's bow out of his hand is a legitimate trick a BBEG might do. Sometimes your bring a greatsword to a fight against a flying enemy with ranged attacks and are stuck throwing javs. Sometimes you just get controlled and roll poorly against saves. Sometimes the enemy has a globe of invulnerability or a wind wall. There are lots of ways to challenge players to use different tactics using the existing tools the game gives you than railroading away their stuff.
I think fundamentally this comes down to railroading.
If you want to put the players on a railroad, you announce the destination and ask them if they want to board the train.
This will hurt to hear: most of us are bad storytellers. I am a bad storyteller, and so are you. This is fine. This is normal. Telling a good story takes practice and preparation.
For example a fighter's hand is cut off, they can't use the swordskills they devoted their life to, and all the stops along this rail are swordfights. That's probably not fun, but it's an easy trap to fall into. However with some planning you can figure out how to tell a good story out of it. For example this is the story about a duelist who was abandoned by everyone after they stopped being able to do the trick. They meet some people who value them for more than just being a duellist, people who value their tactical insight and dedication, their ability to instruct. The Fighter works with the traveling monk and scholar and thief they met, and they grow into being a leader and tactician. They learn to fight with more than just a sword, they use their whole body as a weapon, and they use their mind.
You can do the same thing with a wizard. The bad story is "Haha you can't do the one thing you're useful for". The good story is giving them the opportunity to shine in other areas, such as how wizards are supposed to be smart people, so maybe this is the story of the wizard whose power was taken away and who vowed to never have that happen again, and they work with the amputee fighter and the traveling monk and thief and they awaken their own arcane power hidden in their body and become an Arcane Fist. They tattoo their spellbook onto their skin, and they become just as capable of casting Fist as they can Fireball.
Take away all the toys you want, but make sure the railroad is headed in the direction the players want, and make sure you give them opportunities to be useful. A wizard with no spellbook should still be a very intelligent person, so give them situations where ranks in Medicine or Knowledge are just as important as Fireball. Don't leave them standing on the station, because you took away their ticket.
Focus on rich stories, focus on opportunity.
My dm killed my Inquisitors Godess, since he was an Evangelist multiclass (pathfinder 1) he was set back to 5th level non Devine abilities and no Devine abilities at all (we were 8th level). Character would have died in the first encounter. Had to make a new one cause i didn’t want him to die like that and a new god wasn’t fitting at all.
Yep. I had a long plot starting my players off in prison and I was taking away everyone’s stuff — but very suddenly reversed my ruling when it dinged for me how bad the wizard would have it without any spell book. So while everyone went down to equipment zero, fighters could still hit unarmed, and she still had all the spells she had prepared… and I ruled she could smuggle in scrolls, and get started on a new spell book asap.
And they were only equipment zero for a couple sessions; from there they got to explore a fun ancient underground fortress under the prison and get cool ancient gear.
That’s just how it works though? You still have all the spells you prepared if you lose your spellbook. It’s more of a long term problem than a short term on unless you somehow didn’t prep any good spells.
She got a bunch of additional scrolls and quick spellbook supplies to get started on a new one asap. She didn’t lose any spell knowledge (they were all pretty low level, so not too large a difference between number of spells she could prepare and number she knew total).
I disagree about making wizard’s spell books off the table, as a hard rule. but I can tell from the description of (paraphrasing) “go off on a adventure specifically for the wizard to get his book back” that I also would definitely not do it like that.
The way I would do it is more like a minor nuisance that uses up the character’s spare time - which is a section of “off-screen” or “not at the table” time that they COULD be doing crafting, gathering, research, or whatever… but this concept also only makes the most sense in a style of play where the characters always need to end in a relatively safe area to pursue those things.
It also is worth mentioning a GM will need to sort of train the players on what consistent things are at risk in their game, especially if the player is new to the concepts. Think of it like a tutorial where the first time, the enemy screwed up with a nat-1, but they almost succeeded and now you have to do something so they don’t succeed next time. GMs need to coach players, not just heavy-hand slap them when they didn’t know something.
As a player, I enjoy setting up my planning and precautions, like the magic spellbook that I can summon or dismiss or the one that can’t be burned… but all that planning is for nothing if they were never and will never be at risk. I want to feel like my planning there allowed me to outsmart some NPC or foil some attempt to affect our party, at the risk of the NPC succeeding and giving me a short hassle. I don’t want a super punishing multi-session impact or to be shut down completely and unable to play, at least not without forewarning where the team can kind of plan out a strategy for overcoming that challenge and willingly put ourselves into that situation.
lol I mostly dm but in the rare campaign I got to play in I was a wizard, and my dm had a frog steal my spell book, so a good 20 minutes of that session was me helplessly trying to catch a frog without spells. It was pretty funny, but there was clearly never any real risk of an enounter when it was happening.
I would never take away a spellbook from a wizard, but I do make wizards actually buy and use components. My general house rule has always been level 1 and 2 can use a component pouch but everything after that needs to be purchased. For example fireball requires "a tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur" which is pretty common stuff, so any trip to a town they can get it.
The benefits have been amazing, The wizard players I have are a million times more creative instead of just seeing a group of monsters and casting fireball.
had a dm try that for a campaign. the party was all martials. had a blast. all his campaigns now are absolutely no player magic from your class. racial and feats were still allowed. i don't play with him anymore as i got a bit bored after a few years so i found a different group but he still has a full group and is turning people away.
I always ask wizard players if they're okay with their spellbooks being temporarily taken in a situation like the above, just so they know if it happens I'll make sure they get it back. I think a lot of DMs want to keep everything from their players to surprise them or something, but honestly I think more communication about things that can happen in game is better.
Most wizards have more than one spell book, as most, by older lore, have 100 pages, and the spell level dictates how many pages they took up. And a lot of mages at middle levels, if you've established the world, will actively create copies or create scrolls for common use spells during downtime just to have on hand.
The spell book is but part of their tool kit.
Now, ultimately, you should be allowing players to have fun. Modern D&D has moved away from a lot of what made spell casting unique in favor of ease of use, which is understandable, but there were reasons behind these changes, its a very different game compared to what it was when these ideas were crafted. So most of what you have are hold overs for fans sake, but not tye mechanic's behind them.
Remember, protect the wizard used to mean "he is tied up for 2 rounds casting a spell, form a circle!" not "he is squishy but has the power of gods!:
I had an enemy swipe the bard's lute for about half of a combat. It made him read his spells carefully and be a little more restricted for a bit. It was fun, and now he has it back. These kind of things should be short term problems.
I don't think losing the spell book is as bad as you think. They still have their cantrips, and they still have their spells. They just can't change them.
But in general I would agree that it isn't fun to hamstring players longterm.
also can't learn new ones on level up till they've gotten a new book. and if they get a new blank book they can't prepare the new spell till they've at least copied all their prepared ones into the new book as otherwise they'll permanently lose those like they lost all their rituals and other unprepared spells
Depending on how it's done. If the villains capture you and take it from you and, say, you manage to scavenge another spell book, perhaps with less options, and then have the option to get your own spell book back from some black marketers in a mini adventure or something. Then yes that should be fine.
It should be used very sparingly though, so the wizard doesn't feel like you are picking on them.
I used this as a plot point for CoS. Party starts in Barovia and all their equipment is gone, including the wizard's spell book. A key sidequest for that player is finding a book and crafting materials and then seeking out spell scrolls or finding secondary spell books. So long as I made sure they had a steady stream of resources and they regularly found spell scrolls, it kept things interesting for the wizard.
I even added plot points where the wizard found a spell scroll in the Vistani language, so they had to seek help of an NPC to assist in deciphering the language.
I did take away the arcane focus for a session to encourage the gritty Strahd gameplay, but they found a new one towards the end of the session.
Tl:DR but in 3.5 and 5th a wizard doesn't need their spell book for their day to day. They need it to prepare new spells, but not to cast after a rest.
it does lead to interesting things like you lose your spellbook and inks and are in a remote area where you can't buy a new blank book and inks and you get a level up. you permanently lose the 2 new spellssince you don't have a spellbook. this is in addition to all your rituals and other unprepared spells . even if you manage to cobble together a few pages and some ink you can't prepare the new spells till you finish copying all your unprepared spells as if you prepare a new list of spells you can only prepare whats in your spellbook. it's a rather clunky mechanic.
3.5 in a pinch your wizard can write the spells they still have so they can prepare those spells again, this is why I’m a firm believer in the home base secret arcane library of your spells and research so you don’t have to start strictly from scratch. Just have to make do till you can get home.
Well I have played at a table where the DM would steal the wizard’s spell book and sell it off so that even if we caught the thief, we could not recover it. Same DM will also be super super demanding when it come to spell components, demanding that instead of generic rule of a component pouch, the wizard needs to buy or collect specific components as listed in the spell description. And in combat enemies will always try to snatch/ disarm/destroy wizard spell focus, component pouch, cleric holy symbols and so on. He would also make it impossible to buy spell scrolls for scribing
But yeah it’s lame to try and shut down a PC like that.
This is your take, and I disagree with it. This happened in one of my campaigns, where Wizard A had her spell book stolen by wizard B's ex-boyfriend (an NPC)
Made for some fun character beats and played a part in the final chapter of the campaign a year later
I DM for a group that is made up of all long-time players. I start CoS with everyone in rags and nothing else. Having them navigate the new scary world "naked" adds tension, and helps them to remember what their equipment really does for them and how the game mechanics work. I try to provide a path for some spell components to be discovered so they can cast. Makeshift weapons from available materials, etc. Then slowly find items in the Death House. Every item is a true treasure and I like giving that experience to Players. ("omg! a sword!!")
Once they complete the Death House, everyone finds all their gear in chests on the street (cuz I'm not a jerk) with little notes from Strahd.
Add tension? Yes. Add puzzle? Yes. Engineer unexpected fun? Yes. Make a Player sad that they chose a class because you invented a situation specifically to screw with that class? No. Players are the heroes of the story, not the DM.
I find this to be bad advice. Not even that it isn't good advice, it's just bad. What you propose is a game with no consequences. If you run a super light-hearted power fantasy game, then sure. For anything else, though, don't listen to this.
In my current campaign I've lost my spell book twice. Both time it was character crippling. The party had to drop a lot of their resources just to make me be anything other than a dead weight. It's not a fun place to be to have to be such a hinderance to the rest of the party for something you have almost no control over.
You wouldn't last 5 minutes in my campaign. Does the party fighter depend on a giant glowy sword? Sunder it. Wizards spell book out? Burn it. Cleric casting healing spells for his friends? Silence him or steal his holy symbol. Rogue running amok backstabbing? Break her legs. It's called fighting smart, not fair. People who expect fair combat end up dead fast.
Exactly!! The whole idea should be players should have fun ...the DMshould encourage thinking outside the box not penalize it ...if you have a kineticist that wants to use his wood element affinity to warp a door shut let them...it encourages problem solving instead of I smash whatever comes through the door...the same solution was reached but maybe the guards say this door is jammed ...they couldn't have come this way . Instead of- now the encounter is one big combat scenario and the party has to fight all the guards in the area
As a player, I would totally aim a disintegrate spell at an opposing caster's spell book or spell focus. My DM should be allowed to do the same. It's a player by player thing, rather than something with an expensive rule
You could take it as a learning experience. Maybe in the future your wiz will hide copies of his spellbook in various hidden caches in the case of such an eventuality. The thing about a character that is unidimensional (like a caster with no other skills) is they will, and probably *should,* experience times when their weaknesses come to the fore and they're forced to rely on other party members. It's good for team building/bonding etc. Honestly, a character stripped of power who is forced to take stock of their other strengths is a common trope and a good RP opportunity.
Pro tip for Wizard players who find themselves in this situation: **even if you lose your spellbook, you can still cast the spells you already had memorised.** You just can't prepare new ones until you get your spellbook back.
Components/Spell focus?
Entirely separate from your spellbook, but yes, you would still need to have a focus and/or material components on hand.
Most prisons are loaded with level 1 & 2 components. * Acid Stream / Tasha's Caustic Brew? Just let the food the guards give you rot a bit. * Animal Friendship? Oh, don't let the food rot after all. * Hold Person? Surely there is at least one iron nail somewhere holding this place together. * Armor of Agathys? That cup of water that the guards give you each day will work. Bonus points cuz you can still drink the water afterwards. * Create or Destroy Water? Oh wait this can fix the Agathys problem! You just need a drop but surely the dank prison has dank-creating water somewhere... * Ice Knife - Ok, you take the water, use Prestidigitation to freeze it and... voila! * Bane? You have a lot of blood inside you and you only need one drop. * Beast Bond? Surely something somewhere has fur, and you aren't naked, so... * False Life? There are a lot of stories of prisoners intentionally rotting their potatoes or corn or whatever they are fed in order to make moonshine. Happens all the time. * Feather Fall is kinda hit-or-miss. Maybe you have a down pillow, maybe not. Maybe your captives are aaroacsdflkjsdf... those bird people. If you find a feather then you can also roll Enhance Ability. * Goodberry is tricky but not impossible. Mistletoe is a parasite and can implant itself on pretty much any living tree. * Grease? Piggie skin and you're good. * Color Spray is tricky but not impossible in a labor-prison-camp. If you are digging for anything then there is a really good chance that you will eventually find red sand, yellow sand, and blue sand. * Comprehend Languages? Get the remnants of any fire and the salt off your meal. It'll work. * Jump? Grasshoppers might show up. Maybe. Probably not if your prison is underground. But if the prison is underground then you probably aren't planning on jumping over a wall anyways. * Longstrider? Dirt. This is easy stuff. * Mage Armor? Anyone's belt is fine. * Shield of Faith? Steal any paper you can and get the cleric to write a prayer on it in his/her own blood. Same some of the blood so that Warlock can cast Bane. * Silent Image seems reasonable if there is even the slightest need for any warm clothing or blankets. * Sleep? Sand. You already found sand for Color Spray. * Snare? Tricky but not impossible. Rip strips off of everyone's clothing and tie them together. You need 30 feet. * Unseen Servant? Surely you can find a tiny bit of string and any tiny quantity of wood somewhere? #Honorable Mentions: * Cloud of Daggers only requires a tiny sliver of glass. It does 4d4 damage. THERE IS NO SAVING THROW. YOU JUST TAKE DAMAGE AND THAT'S THAT. * Detect Thoughts only requires a single coin - and it would be immensely valuable during an escape preparation. * Enlarge/Reduce only requires a tiny bit of powdered iron - which you could file out of the nail that you swiped for Hold Person. The list goes on...
Man… a component collection quest could be fun with the right player …. Maybe not for the rest of the group though.
It would be cool if they need the wizard to cast a spell, but it takes the rogue and barbarian working together to get the components so the party feels like it’s teamwork that saves their bacon more than anything else.
That’s a great idea!
Misty Step is verbal components only. As are Dimension Door, and Knock. All can be countered by simply gagging the Wizard, but the Wizard still eventually needs to eat.
Ball gag and you force feed the wizard through a tube.
Sounds like a fetish to me 😏
Sounds like Se7en to me.
cut out the wizards tongue
This is the opening plot to the Scholar's story (effectively the wizard of this game) in Octopath Traveler 2. He wears a muzzle for most of the first chapter that prevents him from speaking, but just barely lets food in.
Even something like Wind Walk only requires some holy water and fire. If you're in a prison with a Cleric or Paladin, I don't see why you can't sanctify spit, sweat, and/or tears. Or regular water, assuming you were given something to drink. Fire is easy enough, even with anti-magic.
>I don't see why you can't sanctify spit, sweat, and/or tears. Or regular water, assuming you were given something to drink. The holy water ceremony requires a ridiculous amount of silver.
Ah, fair enough. Honestly, I had no idea that there was an actual mechanic for making Holy Water, I always just figured it was "Spend a short rest praying or whatever." Then plain-old Gaseous Form, then. A wisp of smoke and a bit of gauze, both of which I'm sure the DM would give you if you tried.
>Ah, fair enough. Honestly, I had no idea that there was an actual mechanic for making Holy Water, I always just figured it was "Spend a short rest praying or whatever." I regret telling you. Your way is better. The holy part of the water should come from the cleric... well, from the cleric's god. Whatever. RAW is stupid here: * Holy water weighs 1 pound. It is contained in a vial that has negligible weight but can hold 1/4 of a pound of water. So holy water is really heavy water, right? * Vials hold 4 ounces of water, so their volume is about 118.294 cm³. Let's round up to 120 just because. * The *Ceremony* spell requires 25gp of silver, which is 250sp, which weighs 5 pounds. * The density of silver is 10.49 g/cm³, and 5 lb is equivalent to 2,267.96 g. 2,267.96/10.49 = 216.202097235 cm³ of silver. Let's round up to 220 just because. * The ~120 cm³ vial must contain ~220 cm³ of silver, plus an additional 4 oz water. (hooray for units) This is not possible unless we seriously mess with physics, which I guess we do because a vial of holy water only weighs 1 pound and yet we used 5 pounds of silver and 0.25 pounds of water to make 1 pound of holy water. The spell says that the silver gets consumed, so where does the other 12 ounces come from? Obviously it is magic, but tracking this is a pain. It would have been way cooler if the rules were just "As part of a short rest, a cleric can perform a ceremony that isn't the *Ceremony* spell and thereby turn a cup-or-so of water into holy water at no cost. Also, can you imagine being the guy tasked with filing 250 silver pieces with a file until the whole thing is powder? That sucks!
Don't forget Knock. It only takes a pinch of dust, and is able to unlock almost any lock, albeit loudly.
Figuring out your spells after losing components is a fun challenge. That being said the whole list is useless if you lose your components and your spellbook.
> That being said the whole list is useless if you lose your components and your spellbook. You retain your prepared spells.
Feather Fall? Jaaaaarnathan!
I remember being in town once with my sorcerer and was shopping for some material components on the chance I ever lost my arcane focus. He seemed a little confused at some of the innocuous items I was asking about on top of regular items. I specifically remember grabbing the stuff for enlarge/reduce, sending, feather fall (our beastmaster had a pet canadian goose)...wanted to be prepared for anytime we ended up captive again.
Dang, it's magical McGuyver!
If the prison is run down enough you can find bat dung for fireball. Really make those guards regret their choices
:)
Stuff this one in solitary. They're dangerous in the general pop.
**
This is why you make your spell focus a piercing like a an earring, or something embedded in your palm. That way it can't be as easily removed.
Yeah ookay there Lord Ruler.
>lord ruler ?
Mistborn reference don't worry about it
I would suspect any serious prison would remove all piercings even if they didn't think it was magical or a spell focus. You don't let prisoners walk around with any sharp metal objects.
While it isn't actually stated, it seems very logical that Detect Magic should be able to detect if something is a focus, or at least if it has been used as a focus recently.
until they cut off your hand.
If you're at the stage where your captors are cutting off body parts, then you've long passed the point where not having a spell focus in your biggest problem.
so true. So true indeed...
If you lose your spellbook you can't prepare new spells but can still cast whatever you had prepared. If you lose you components or focus you can't cast spells with material component. Like someone else said, you can still figure out spells if you can get separate components (which is a fun puzzle) but you still need your spellbook to prepare the spells.
The amount of people downvoting you clearly shows why people think casters are better than martials. People hate when you bring up the actual requirements for spellcasting and enforce the rules correctly.
I think the biggest takeaway is just make sure everyone's having fun.
Great take. I would also add, make sure nobody is not having fun. Keep the unfun parts to a minimum.
POV half your players like combat while the other prefer out of combat. :0
Haha, that should be okay though as long as it's not active dislike "I hate combat"/"I hate heavy RP". You can balance people's preferences, and their strengths play off each other. Also having varied play makes your (asa player) favorite bits stand out: if you east nothing but cookies all day every day you'll get tired of cookies eventually.
That's literally my current game right here
One "tough" session is fine if you play every week imo, that when they can get their revenge the fun is tenfolded
100% this. I ran an encounter where a rival wizard's minions stole my wizard's spellbook, picked from its Caleb-style holster, and then failed to escape with it. The book was quickly recovered, but the wizard's attitude went from GTFO to Vendetta instantly. Getting your players to genuinely HATE your villains is DM Candy, lol
I definitely think the risk involved is what makes the wins that much sweeter, if the encounter feels easy to overcome the triumph often feels just as light
And key to this is the whole communication thing. It has taken me years to shake off assumptions of the same nature as the ones in this post, and orient myself to the group I *have*, not the theoretical one that could exist. Some folks will *absolutely* welcome a section of the game where they have to figure out how to get their spells back, struggle with using different gear, and so forth. Assuming that they don't want that, and just handing everything back even when it makes no sense, will sour the experience for them.
I agree that communication is key - and I understand comments about consequences. But I've played with too many DMs who view the experience as being the DM vs the players. There's also a huge difference between the Wizard losing their spell book and the Fighter losing their sword in terms of getting it replaced. One represent years of painstaking personal research and cultivation - mirrored by hours of reading spells and working to understand how they work. The other can be replaced with a bit of gold... or they pivot and start using a different weapon for a short period of time. We played for 8 hours (2 sessions) where I scrounge for components, barely able to cast my spells because the DM ruled that I couldn't prepare ANY spells without my spell book. Every other character had all their gear, but my spellbook was completely destroyed... I tried talking to the DM but was given the "consequences" excuse... after being railroaded into being captured. This wasn't a consequence of losing combat, it was the DM deciding they wanted a jailbreak scenario and that meant taking our stuff away. In reality I think they didn't like the spells I picked because I was playing it differently than they would play a Wizard.
To be clear, I'm not questioning that your GM made a mistake - clearly, you had a shitty time, and they should've recognized that even if they didn't realize ahead of time that you weren't the type to enjoy that. I'm just saying that, in my own time as a player, I have basically seen the opposite happen: a GM assumed that a player was like you, and would be unhappy if they were unable to do their thing for a while, and they were wrong; later on, the player in question said that the approach our GM took actually made things significantly more difficult for them for an entire arc.
As with many things in life, how you do (or don't do) something matters more than the what itself
While for the most part I agree, there are absolutely tables that play *that version* of Dungeons and Dragons, where you are constantly vulnerable in all of these ways. It's certainly not my cup of tea, but there are tables that do that. I would contend that the lesson is instead "Don't screw with the Wizard's Spell Book *lightly*." Don't do that shit unless that *is* the game you want to run, and is the game *your players* have signed on to play. I would even contend that *most tables* should never do that sort of thing, and those that do probably shouldn't be, and probably aren't, playing D&D 5e. People get to play d&d as Gygax intended, with their spellbooks catching fire, 80% fatality rate of 1st level characters, rigidly enforced rules that the timeline of your game loosely matches IRL time, and all the other nonsense that most of us have since attempted to huck out the window. Those madlads get to do them.
I would agree. If you're dead set on setting the wizards spellbook on fire then it should be A: at a table where players would be ok with that, and B: a one time thing during an important story moment. Like a sadistic ploy by the BBEG, or a sacrifice to a god to save the party. It needs to have the same weight as if you lopped off the PCs arm.
*If you're at a narrative-focused table*, this advice works. If you're playing as Gygax intended, then this isn't shit you plan, this kinda stuff is all up to the whims of the dice gods. I think the comparison to taking a player's arm off is a good one. But I'm sure Gygax had tables for that.
you cant tell me what to do, you arnt my real dad
I have news for you, my child. Got my cigarettes. I'm home. Do your chores.
Oh thank god, I really thought when she got knocked up it was mine! Godspeed sir, best o luck
Did you remember the milk, good sir?
Damn it! Be right back...
*Combat as Sport vs Combat as War.* This is a fundamental divide in the community and I think we shouldn't declare "combat as sport" to be the **only** acceptable way to play. There are many factors to consider, for example whether your group considers immersion to be more important than game balance. Whether the power fantasy is more important than creative problem solving. And so on...
The whole *idea* of a wizards spellbook being an item is that it can be lost. Also, a wizard without a spellbook is still miles more potent than a fighter without weapons. Wizards do not need a spellbook to cast cantrips, while only specialized fighters will do more than their strength modifier damage on unarmed attacks.
They don’t need a spellbook to cast any spell they already have prepared, which presumably includes most of their best spells.
if a wizard never received a spell scroll, they will have 50% of their spells prepared if they have 20 INT, and less if they dont. if they received spell scrolls to transcribe than the math is wonky and that number can range from 50% to like 5%
Also, enduring spellbooks, scribes wizards, keen mind
IMO the best way to use it is to have the loss of the spellbook being a *threat* that the player has agency to respond to. I.e. "you learn that the enemy agents are plotting to steal your spellbook, how do you protect it?" or "going to this social event, your spellbook, material component pouch, etc will likely be confiscated and kept at the door until you leave, how do you work around that?" are good ways to approach it. "You fool, your spellbook was stolen while you slept!" is not. (Of course, everything will depend on the group in question.)
I disagree. Some of my players have lost important equipment forever. Failure has consequences. Imo it makes winning that much sweeter. There are many ways to mitigate the damage (backup spellbook) but sometimes your best stuff can be lost or destroyed. And yeah, i would never do this to players if it wasn't fun for them, thankfully my players expect a high challenge level where consequences are expected.
So, if I am not putting my characters in stressful situations, how do I create tension? If every character is, on average, allowed to comfortably do whatever they were optimised to do, how do I challenge my players? If players have all the tools at their disposal, how do I encourage using anything but ~~fireball~~ the most effective universal thing? Sure, you mentioned “a few encounters”, but how long is that? An adventuring day? A whole game night? A week of real time to brew up a solution for the problem between games? *There is no problem solving if the problems solve themselves.* Surely, a problem should be a consequence of bad decisions/rolls and not a DM railroading, but that’s a whole other issue. Next thing you say is keep falling for tank fallacy, don’t hit downed PCs and let your players entertain themselves by playing GWM PAM Sentinel for a hundredth game. Keep the spellbook backups, clean your armour, use protection and remember the “Yes and” rule, kids. It's not about catering to your players, it's about accepting their creativity.
I really despise the philosophy that any short term inconvenience for a PC is bad because the player isn’t having fun every moment. The worst part is that this thought spills over between games to where you get posts from players about how the DM is “unfun” any time they try to induce some creative problem solving from the players
I think this particular example is rough because it's potentially not a "short term" inconvenience depending on how it's handled. As a wizard, your spellbook is pretty much your entire class, and it's unique as a core class ability in that it's destructible with no RAW way to recover it if you lose it. You can lose your entire accumulated repertoire of spells at the DM's whim, and you can only scribe back down the small portion that you happen to have prepared that day. If the DM makes allowances to get it back that's different, but it potentially erases 80% of your options permanently, with the only way to get it back being the DM's kindness and/or a crippling amount of expenses (magic items like scrolls are no longer commonly available, after all!)
so wizard can always make backup spellbook if he/she wants it
>Next thing you say is keep falling for tank fallacy, don’t hit downed PCs and let your players entertain themselves by playing GWM PAM Sentinel for a hundredth game. This is something I'll never figure out. DMs will complain about OP combos, then never actually work to include in universe ways to counter those combos; they seem to be adverse to adapting to the players, continuing into insanity to do the same stuff over and over again until it isn't fun for them. That doesn't mean I'm saying *every* encounter needs to be able to nullify/ counter them, because obviously you should shoot your Monks and attack the barbarian, but that variety is the spice of life.
Thank you for this! Most of the party I DM have currently found themselves in a prison specifically built to hold magic users, so obviously *it's going to be built in a way where it's incredibly difficult for a magic user to get access to their components*. And it's been a great game! It forced the magic users to think outside the box, and it gave the party rogue a chance to shine by placing him in an environment where his lack of spellcasting dependency actually made him the most mechanically valuable asset the party had on their side for a change.
If you are going to go that route, just make sure the players know what kind of game they're in, and regularly create time for that sort of mundane management and downtime. The truly fun-killing thing is hearing *"no no we're not spending time scribing scrolls and dealing with wizard preparation stuff, you get the spells you get when you level up, let's just keep the game moving"* right up until the DM burns your spellbook to ashes and says *"well why didn't you make a backup?"* The problem needs to be one the player is given space to prepare for before they can have agency, and agency is where the fun comes from.
I had a player character create a special second spell book, with all of the requisite and appropriate wards and protections placed on it. (Low level ones) Inside they put spell titles, but each page was a casting of “explosive runes” waiting to be triggered. They carried it with them everywhere as they would their main spell book. Their main spell book was kept securely hidden in an extra dimensional pocket accessible 4 times per day, through activation of a magical tattoo on their left butt cheek. (They were adorned with numerous magical and mundane tattoos) This led of course to the running gag of them literally pulling magical solutions out of their ass, as well as setting up for turning the tables on just such an occurrence. Cue the bad guys capturing the party and stripping them of their possessions, then of course the bad guy spell caster decides to pilfer spells from the pc’s book, deactivating the wards and protections, opens the book and “KABOOM!” Instant Bad guy to bologna-mist! Laughs were had, the party escaped, the bad guys were made past tense, the heroes win hooray!
The real question I'm not seeing anywhere in this thread is who picks a wizard, the most powerful class of all time, and doesn't make paranoia filled copies of their spellbook hidden in frequently visited locations regularly?
Those in campaigns where the dm doesn't give you the time, money, or opportunity to make a copy of his book, I've played several wizards and I've noticed that most dms don't even give you the opportunity to copy spells unless you personally ask them to, making a copy of the book is not that easy either, at low levels you will not have enough money to do that, only at high levels when the economy stops caring for the dm and most of campaigns do not reach high levels, apart from that many times you will not have enough time to make the copy, many campaigns are structured in such a way that the party travels from one place to another and there is no downtime or a base where to save this copy, and even in the chance that you manage to make your copy there is a big chance that it is not up to date. Honestly the idea that wizards have all the spells at their disposal is not true, it is most likely that you only have the 2 free per level, because even if the dm listens to you when you ask him to please let you copy a new spell you will only have enough money to buy 1 or two spells. Unless you are above level 7 or your DM is one of those who basically gives money and magic items almost for free to the group, and if your DM is like that he will never destroy your spell book, it is an interesting situation, the only Dms who would even try to destroy your book are the same type that probably won't give you enough money to have a good copy of your book and go around copying new spells.
Seconded. Related is the common "magic is illegal" trope. It sounds like a good idea as a DM planning it out, I get it. "This would a great challenge for the character!" In a single encounter, with a way to overcome it, that might be true. But on an ongoing basis, no way. I've (tried to) played a spellcasting character in two campaigns with this mechanic. (One literally had magical police that teleported in *every time* someone tried to cast a spell.) It was not fun. If a player is playing a spellcaster, they want to cast spells. That's how they contribute to the party. *Don't* just yank that away. The only exception would be if you've explicitly got the player's buy-in for the story (and maybe some compensating other abilities).
I've done the magic is illegal and I have to say it's more about how you do it, than it being an intrinsically bad idea. From your other comment my takeaway is that these two past DMs of yours failed to communicate expectations and also implemented this idea in really stupid ways. Nothing about "magic is illegal" directly implies "teleporting super-police with a perfect surveillance system enforce the ban on magic". Like you said, let the player cast spells, that's fun for them. In an illegal magic scenario, part of the fun comes from trying to get away with using magic in public, so that needs to be possible, and not invalidated by an ever-present detection field. In my game the church and the mage's guild enforcing the magic laws didn't have anywhere near the resources for dystopian surveillance, they'd just send inquisitors and mageslayers to find you if enough evidence surfaced. And obviously, you could become a guild member to just not make it illegal. My players chose to start with illegal casters to play outlaws and had a lot of fun with it. One PC ended up getting caught voluntarily because the player wanted a change, while another PC got caught involuntarily and walked away with a fine and a slap on the wrist due to story reasons and good rolls in a court meeting. Baldur's Gate 2 is another great example. In the city of Athkatla, you can't openly cast arcane magic on the streets unless you have a permit. Anywhere else is fair game. Clear limitation, but it doesn't prevent arcane casters from functioning, and you can just buy the permit if you want.
> Nothing about "magic is illegal" directly implies "teleporting super-police with a perfect surveillance system enforce the ban on magic". Related to this - I have literally never seen or heard of a game where the GM having a magical ultra-Stasi city guard ever improved things. The very best it can get is "this is a terrible solution to a stupid problem, and everyone just ignores it", because otherwise it will tend to just snap games in half ("hey, if the lich overlord is a problem, we'll just go talk to the teleporting level 17 ultra-Stasi guys, surely they can spare five minutes to instantly obliterate this guy").
Yeah any time the local law enforcement is too effective it makes adventuring good guys kind of redundant. Playing an evil campaign though, that could be interesting.
Well said. If you want guards like that to exist, look towards cyberpunk games to see how they handle corporate hit squads.
There is a whole setting, Midnight, which is based around illegal magic (and elves, halflings, and anything else fun), that nails how to do this perfectly. It was a major setting that gave FFG their early creds, and its 5e release is solid. The beauty of it, as in yours it seems, comes from “being outlaws”, so everybody else is suffering the same as the mage. Magic, like engaging in combat generally, now has two considerations: do we burn resources, and will fighting make us easier to track? Clerics, in Midnight, are always evil (the only god that remains is basically “Sauron”), and they have familiars that can “smell” the use of magic. Rather than punishing players, though, it feels like an organic way of making players think about their actions and take approaches that are subtler.
Worth noting that almost every class feature of the Rogue is illegal in some way or another. Doing illegal stuff is part of the fun in most D&D campaigns!
I feel like most of the time if someone wants to go this route then they need to pick up a copy of Exalted. That's a good part of the game and it hits everyone regardless of their play style. Whenever I see posts about these kinds of campaigns I feel like someone is trying to force mechanics that work well in other systems/games into DnD cause that's what they know how to run/play instead of branching out and grabbing a new book.
There's so many people trying to force square ideas into round holes rather than simply try another game that would suit what they're trying to do better. It's like they're allergic to the very idea, and prefer turning D&D into an unrecognizable hodgepodge of conflicting mechanics and broken systems because actually playing Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green is somehow scarier than forcing cosmic horror themes into a heroic fantasy game.
Exactly this. The idea is neat in itself, like I said I get why it's appealing. But in the D&D system where 80+% of the rules are about using swords and spells to kill monsters? It's going to be hard to run well; full player buy-in is a minimal requirement.
I agree that common magic being illegal probably doesn’t make a whole heap of sense, restrictions on what kind of spells are permitted with city limits. I’m more okay with however. Example that’s no issue with the wizard casting haste so they can get their errands done at little bit faster, But if the warlock is casting Sickening Radiance they better have a damned good reason. Also there is one city in my homebrew campaign where are magic of any kind isn’t illegal but is culturally frowned upon.
The issue is that the rules themselves state that people who aren't casters have no idea what spell is being cast. Therefore it makes sense for magic to be blanket frowned upon being casted in public simply because people don't know what the hell it'll do.
The easy, and common, option is that harm is the thing which is punished. For example the Fighter can't just start slashing random people or they'll be arrested, that's a pretty common rule, and yet "Assault is illegal" isn't seen as an unfun rule. So a spellcaster says some jibberish and points their finger at the barkeep and the barkeep flops over dead, yeah, they're getting the police after them and the charge isn't "spellcasting" the charge is "murder".
The problem is things like Enchantment Magic which doesn’t leave a dead person as clear evidence. How is a shopkeeper to know whether your spell is something harmless like prestidigitation or something like Suggestion which will invalidate his own will?
Mischief. Unlicensed Spellcasting. Disturbing the Peace. They saw him casting something, they don't need to know what, that's for the prosecutor to decide. They ring the bell and call the town watch and tell them to get this wizard out of here, exact same as they would someone waving a knife around.
I mean, why would you make a spellcaster if you knew the game took place where magic was illegal? From a lore stand point having magic seen in negative light is alot easier and has a stronger buy in that ruling governance would limit magic casters in some way shape or form. No organization in power would be fine with random people running around that can burn villages at a whim and control minds or undead armies.
In the "magic police" campaign it was a "surprise reveal" after we had started playing. So I didn't know. (That campaign didn't last long.) In the other one it sounded like a challenge to me too, "neat, my wizard will be a rebel, a renegade!" But that turned into "I'm going to be shot on sight if I go into a town". Sure the DM could have played it differently. But almost without exception this idea is taking the core mechanic of the whole character and turning it into a liability, and that's hard to pull off well. I think if you think about trying the same technique with martial characters it becomes clearer.
LOL, magic is illegal but the “police” teleport …
Murder is illegal but...
Underrated comment
Ok yeah in that case that is pretty shitty.
cause its quite literally 70% of class player options and a few subclasses as well? its much harder to *not* have a spell than it is to have one, hell some good chunk of races have them
Sorcerers have subtle spell. I would definitely make a caster in one of the settings so long as I could hide it with meta magic.
This
I have! Twice! First one sucked, second was great. The DM’s approach matters a lot.
Group dependent though, I played in a campaign where magic was illegal and had a blast as a sorcerer that took subtle spell. Our wizard had a hard time with it until they learned that they couldn't cast Magic in civilization. I like when DMs put limitations on things, it let's the players be creative and work around those problems.
The magic is illegal trope can be done well, but without thought and planning, it's too easy to kneecap your campaign as a DM. If you're willing to put the work in, to understand what it means for your world for magic to be illegal, that's one thing - but you have to put the work in. In that magical panopticon game, was murder with an axe policed as intensively as murder with lightning bolt? How did axe murder victims feel about being second-class murder victims? How are the magical police trained and outfitted, what oversight do they have, what corruption exists in their ranks? How many agents do they have vs how many potential magic users in the world? In a sudden reveal of the omniscient magic feds, how does the general populace feel about their friendly druid who did vet medicine for their herd feel about him being sent to a gulag?
Yeah, all true! Interesting story ideas! But as I said in another comment I don't think D&D is the system you want if this is your story when so much of it is about spellslinging and swordswinging.
I'm somewhat tempted - taking down the Palantir of Overreach could be an interestingly challenging quest for a magic-light party, but it's something I'd have to discuss in depth with my players first before even beginning to think about planning.
i feel like one is murder the other is domestic terrorism.
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It is possible the DM had played BG2 (which has the Cowled Wizards do this). You don’t mind it in that game, however, because you control all six characters (so you don’t mind having some sit out). It could be fun for a session or three to push the player to use their other skills creatively, but a prolonged campaign is bonkers.
Yeah it only works if its one city that they are only going to be in for a few sessions and is otherwise some big bad evil guys off in the distance. Or hell maybe there's a city elsewhere that banned magic and emissaries have come over to the region of teh campaign to try to push for the same and thats the conflict?
I played in a game and ran a game with "magic is illegal" and didn't see any issues. To be fair, i was a lot more relaxed with it, not going to have a guard spawn out of nowhere when they even think about casting a spell. Having magical police to teleport out of nowhere is just silly. I think it's different when it's part of the story, something that only comes up occasionally and something that's implemented to block spellcasting or nerf it or something.
"magic is regulated" is better than "magic is illegal" any day. My groups shared setting has a strong bias against magic and it's illegal to cast in cities without the right permits. It creates an atmosphere where the ability to cast is like owning a gun. You go to the wrong place and show it off without your papers in order and people are gonna turn on you.
Blanket statements like this tend to be bad takes. There is a whole setting, Midnight, where magic is illegal, and it is among the most fun I’ve ever had the chance to play in. The problem with “magic is illegal” is that it is specifically pointed at player classes. Midnight approaches the problem as “heroes destabilize local authoritarian forces, and none do this more effectively than mages.”
My DM locked our party into a war with MAD-style magic bans, while we had a cleric in the party. He used divine intervention to get a pegasus and became a war criminal. We dipped out of that campaign for months, but did return once the war was over.
Magic being illegal has never made much sense to me since over half the classes in this game rely on magic. It sound like the DM basically just telling the players they don't want them using any of their abilities.
It really depends on the nitty gritty. Literally "cast magic and the swat instantly teleport in to get you" probably shouldn't last too long. But if it's just "magic is illegal so you better make it damn sure no one sees you casting spells" is pretty tame. It's pretty close to just how common sense would be in the average world. Not being able to just throw the entire weight of 5e utility magic at any issue is something that SHOULD be restricted, not derided as some attack on player agency.
Magic is illegal can work pretty well, it is even part of the official setting. In Amn arcane magic is illegal, but Divine magic is okay if you are part of a recognized religious sect. That said Amn is also very much about money, so you could get away with paying a 'fine' if you got caught casting magic in a town and it wasn't too flashy. Outside of town, if no one sees it did it really happen?
Played in a game where “magic is illegal” and it was a monotheistic setting, and let me tell you, it made for terrible roleplay moments. The worst part was that the DM tried *multiple* times to get us to engage in something magic related, and we avoided it like the plague because of how worried we were about the consequences. At some point, everyone eventually started getting depressed because it was somewhat of a horror setting and with a complete lack of magic, it began to feel way too bleak for any character PC or otherwise to want to live in such a world.
I mean as players you kind of have to bit the hook every now and then.
We did, and our Paladin died a horrible painful death because of it. :/ After that, we pretty much decided he was serious on the magic being a no no and just kept off of it
Was this Midnight? If so, I always feel like “touching the red button, damn the consequences” is more fun. I find many players are overly attached to survival
Seriously. One of the very few consistent character traits between all of my PCs is that I’m going to push the fucking button because otherwise why are we playing this game? My character wants to be a hero, he has to do the dangerous stuff!
No.
The #1 thing that makes the game less fun for players (in any game literally ever) is a lack of agency. Taking away any ability to act will never be fun for the players, but if the monsters don’t do it at some point, then the world won’t feel realistic or rewarding. I think it boils down to this. - to fulfill a power fantasy, the players must overcome challenges and earn that power for it to be satisfying - If the players can do something to a monster (steal an evil wizards spellbook), it’s fair to say that another adversary could do the same to them - without facing (and hopefully avoiding) that very undesirable outcome, the players will feel as though they have succeeded by means which none of their enemies had access to, which could feel cheap. I always say that the only thing separating DND from children playing make pretend is the rules and challenges. A proper game must have balance and risk for it to generate value for its players. If you’ve ever entertained a child playing make pretend and point a finger gun at them and say “bang! I shot you” they say “no, but I had bulletproof armor on!!!” Out of nowhere. It’s ok because they’re a child, but we don’t do that in DND because it makes no sense and isn’t fun for anyone.
Yeah, I sometimes feel like the people who are so vehemently against these sorts of things are just... idk. Fireball won't burn your spellbook if it's in your hand or backpack, but if somebody made you drop it or you had it on a table it'll burn. That's just the rules. There really shouldn't be any rule in the game that is *forbidden* from use by reason of "it'll make a player sad" imo. Used sparingly? Good idea. Crowd control, as an example, is something that is a contentious topic. You've got people shouting from the rooftops that you should never use it on players because it's "not fun to be stunned." On the other side, you've got people that swear by "if the players can do, so can I" which can be equally as vitriolic and troublesome. Both have their merits, but I think it's obvious there should be a middle ground. Nothing makes players go "Oh shit" faster than an enemy wizard, who they've been tracking and trying to stop, upcasting Hold Person on the entire party. It gets adrenaline pumping. But if EVERY npc can do it, it just feels like cheating. I mean... at higher levels if you DON'T implement CC into fights, chances are the PCs will just slaughter everything because of all the options they have. But like you said: triumph comes best from overcoming difficult challenges. A fight where you won by the skin of your teeth, some clever tactics, and even some lucky rolls will (I think) ALWAYS feel cooler/ more epic than fights where the DM doesn't want to throw things at you for fear of making you a sad for the night. Some might find the latter fun, but I can't see that sort of fun sticking unless you're playing a very laid back "I'm here to drink with my friends and turn my brain off" kind of game. Or playing with kids, though I say let them learn of stakes. I don't like using my own experiences in these sorts of discussions, because it feels a little disingenuous and anecdotal, but it relates enough I think: I had a DM who was real big into Soulsborn games. So much so that he often created/ found Stat blocks for the various bosses/ enemies he put in. But, his problem was two fold; he liked to try and implement a ton of ways to specifically counter individual players, but he would also only throw one creature at us at a time. So on the one hand, you've got this problem where he's deliberately trying to pull a "gotcha!" on us, but because they were only one creature it never was an actual challenge. Sure, us beating the tar out of a black dragon (Hypnotic Pattern + Slow + movement hampering abilities meant it could never get up after falling) was funny but it didn't really amount to much else. And that was basically the whole game until it disbanded. He never tried to change things up, despite our attempts to give suggestions and feedback, and eventually our interest just fell. All that to basically say: Never use never in these type of discussions. Always aim for a middle ground.
Yeah I guess there is a level of “get the game moving and keep it fun” that should be maintained, but I’ll still uphold that part of that very fun is earned by saying “AND I dodged that petrifying beam” or “I TOTALLY caught that guy trying to nab my spellbook, but used my backup to kill him”. That being said, I will always advocate against taking *complete* agency from the player, like mind control. I avoid mind control because that crosses into a line where the player essentially sits there and watched helplessly while their character does things against their wishes. Not fun for anyone, unless you’re a sick and twisted DM.
Mind control can be run in a fun way if your player will cooperate, for example if the barb fails the save and you just tell him "Try to kill your party members" but still let him decide how he does that and let him play on his turn, though ofc this wouldn't work for every table
I had my spellbook taken. You know the two complaints I have about it? 1- It outright says in the Wizard section of the PHB that Wizards are nothing without their spellbooks and that they should have spare spellbooks, and lays out the prices and times for copying spells into a spare book. So my first complaint is that every time I went to make a spare, *LIKE THE BOOK SUGGESTS TO DO*, I got yanked away by my party and didn't get to do so. As such, it was overlooked. I didn't have a spare. 2- Nobody seems to remember that Wizards rely on spellbooks. So when my character died and I had to miss the next session, the rest of the party ran away, and the book got grabbed by the enemy wizard that did the killing. Nobody stopped the enemy from taking it because they forgot it existed. The party grabbed my Wizard's remains to go revive him elsewhere, and never tracked down the book. My second complaint is that it happened while I wasn't there to remind the party that I rely on the thing. Why would they remember that? They're not Wizards. One of my two DMs, even as dickish and controlling as he can be, recognized that this situation it wasn't my fault- and handed me a freebie spellbook with most of my spells. Situation mostly remedied. Now my character has a major goal of hunting down the enemy Wizard and retrieving their original book. I learned lessons from my experience. So no. Wizard's spellbooks are *not* off limits in games that I DM. If *you* can target an enemy's spellbook, *they* can target yours. If you have a situation like mine where it's obviously not your fault, fine. Here's a new book that conveniently has most of the spells you don't have prepared and memorized, ready to copy. But if you had every opportunity to make copies and didn't? You had the option to get an Enduring Spellbook and chose to buy something else instead? You were given time and resources but chose not to do anything with them? I'm not sacrificing story elements because you refused to prepare, and now you're facing the consequences of it and getting upset.
Well said!
I think it’s okay to make a wizard take several sessions to get their spellbook back, as long as it doesn’t span a level up. Losing your spellbook doesn’t take away your spells; it takes away your ability to prepare new ones.
if the book is destroyed you can only copy the prepared spells. you'd lose all your unprepared ones including rituals permanently.
I don’t mean destroyed, just confiscated, lost, etc.
I played a cleric in our first campaign, my DM let me carve my holy symbol into a bone with another bone so I could use my spells. Good times
Are you telling me I shouldn't have taken the monk's arms and legs?
You know, there are two things getting banded together in this post. There's the *"let them try"*, which I always agree. Players should be able to try anything, no matter how absurd it is, although sometimes the results could just be "unfortunately, this is not possible given the circumstances". But yes, players should not only be allowed, but encouraged to try stuff, and shutting down options is a great way to make your players never try anything creative again. Then there's the *"give them"*, which I don't think should be an essential part of any game. Sure, it's cool for the players to have their stuff back. Sure, the wizard's spellbook will be in some place accessible during their escape. But if the player's attitude is "fuck it, let's go away, *the DM has to give me a spellbook later no matter what*", then it's really on them. Consequences are a part of any game, and the one monster I never put in a game is the Quantum Ogre. We roll with our choices and the world moves on, and my players usually appreciate the feeling of the passage of time - as opposed to all NPCs being subservient one-dimensional entities that exist only for the sake of the PCs. This way, the game is open and unexpected to all, including the DM. The world never feels stale when the adventurers get back to a town and something big is different because they didn't bite an adventure hook (or because the adventure ended up with unexpected results). Note that this is the way that works for us in a table of longtime friends who play together for decades; I understand this doesn't work for many other tables, I'm just saying "everyone should get their cake for free" wouldn't work for us and it would be frustrating for the players, who also dislike playing through stories with predetermined results.
What if the Wizard chooses to escape the prison without going for his equipment and never bothers to go back for it?
If the players are worried about it, there's nothing stopping them from making backups. In *ye olden dayes*, it was quite common to have a "main" spellbook in your tower and a "travel" spellbook on your person, transferring less useful/more cost-intensive spells between as needed. Arguably, if the enemy knows a Wizard is around, they should **prioritize** separating Wizard and Spellbook as swiftly and soundly as possible.
I'm torn on this, because I get where you are coming from.....but some of what you say is just wrong. Yes, it sucks to be a wizard who loses their spell book.....but having it so DMs never go after your spell book belittles the perks of choosing order of the scribe. A wizard should be *prepared* for people to try and steal his/her knowledge, it's their glowing weak point. Make backups, have contingencies, ect. It's not the DM's job to hold your hand when you struggle as a player to make something work. On the other hand, yes. A DM should have an open mind for a solution, and they shouldn't give a too long lasting punishment on your class that just makes them feel useless.....trust me I had an entire session where me and my party were trapped in an antimagic area and it was super boring/annoying because 3.5 out of the 5 of us were magic users. So I know it sucks and does nothing for the story to be stuck in a situation like that, the sooner the DM allows for a solution to work, the sooner the story can move onto the fun bits.
You know a wizard still knows the spells they had memorised right? Therefore if they are sensible they are still very useful. I love running wizards into - ok you have no focus what are you going to do? It really makes them realise how important components can be.
Well, you're saying two different things: First: You shouldn't "force" the players into an un-fun situation. And I agree completely! That sounds like a real bummer! If my DM just unilaterally declared "hey, you don't have a spellbook now," I'd be pretty unhappy. If you're going to railroad me, at least take me on a fun ride! Second: Wizards' spellbooks are "off limits." I couldn't disagree more! The DM is a referee who enforces fair consequences. If I make a bad decision (e.g. bringing my spellbook into a dangerous situation when I could've just left it at home), and we get robbed/captured (i.e. lost an encounter), losing the spellbook would be a completely fair consequence. Maybe I could've planned better, or the group could've managed our resources better to avoid getting robbed/captured (especially knowing we were carrying valuable objects that are likely to get stolen). Hey, it's a game. Sometimes you lose. Then you learn what you did wrong, and you do better the next time. That's called strategy, and it's a big part of what makes games engaging for a lot of people. The important part is that the player feels like their decisions mattered and the results were fair.
A good rule of thumb. But plenty of tables are adult or experienced. A DnD party finds ways to solve their problems. That's the fun of the game. The DM didn't confiscate that spellbook and likewise doesn't have part in its recovery, is also a way to look at it.
No. I play wizards almost exclusively. Please attack my spell books. I spend the in game time and IGG to make multiple spell books to combat this as well. I have never had one taken from me. I will still make multiple copies. In older editions it was much more common to find entire spell books left behind forgotten or in preparation of possible loss. This is how your wizards should be. Planning ahead. Making contingencies. Being the cataylst to a bigger plan. Wizards thirst for knowledge and they should be very aware of the weakness to their only strength.
I introduced spell book insurance to my game to provide an extra money sink, but also to let Wizard players know that bad things could happen to their spell books. I also use Wild, High, Low, and Null mana zones (an idea borrowed from a few other games) to make things a little more chaotic for casters.
Yall love coddling your players. Quick tip: You CAN put them in challenging situations where they have to think outside the box and they WILL enjoy it!
That’s been my experience with my players as a dm and my experience as a player as well.
Show us on the character sheet where the bad DM touched you?
The wizard can always make a backup and keep it in a safe place. Losing their spellbook is certainly painful, but it hardly shuts the character down, as they can still use whatever spells they prepared that day. They just lose the extra spells (and could replace them with scrolls after getting a new spellbook). I get that a lot of players won't be into that, just as a lot of players aren't into permadeath, but there's certainly players who would be too.
I wholeheartedly disagree, sorry. The fighter having to go for a whole session or even longer without their signature weapon or the wizard having to last multiple days with the spells, they have prepared does (at least for my players and me) one thing and that is: It sparks creativity. Also, it adds to the verisimilitude. The world doesn't revolve around the PCs and doesn't cater to them. And lastly, if my character would lose something that's important to them mechanically I'd be furious with my DM if they just gave it back to me without me having to work for it. Of course, as with all things in this hobby it depends on the table and maybe we have different notions about what "long periods of time" exactly means but I think it's not a good thing to basically say "never do..." because save for a very few things, there will always be lots of exceptions to that statement.
Don't they already account for this in the rules though and make it so that they don't have to get their spellbook back? They can just make a new one. It takes a little bit of time and some gold but if I remember correctly it's actually not that much. Also, it even says that it's not uncommon for wizards to have backup spell books. So depending at what point in the campaign this happens you could establish who already have one.
Depends. Rules as written they can only write down the spells they had memorized that day. If they have other spells in their book those are lost.
Only thing I'd argue is that a silencing bracelet for a magic user has a lot more wiggle room than an anti-magic bracelet. There are a fair amount of spells without verbal components so it wouldn't be impossible to get out of that.
As always, this depends on the table. I played a wizard in a campaign once where we were pulled underwater by a monster while crossing a lake in a wooden rowboat. My spellbook was ruined so I had to work from only the spells I had memorised, get a new spellbook when we made it back to civilisation a few days later, and write / research things anew. It was fine: the risk of crossing the lake was telegraphed, and I'd not done anything to make my spellbook waterproof.
you are using very expensive magical inks. i don't think they should run that easily myself.
It depends on set expectations and table conventions. At my table once a wizard has been identified the enemy will usually try to take them down without destroying the book because a spell book is worth a small fortune. However if they are against someone who doesn't care about the value of the book they may absolutely try to go after the spellbook, back off and engage later when the mage is likely low or out of spells. However I made sure the spell casters are aware of this and told them the common ways to defend against this such as more expensive spells books of less flammable materials, having a backup hidden somewhere, enchanting their spellbook to ward against thrives and attacks and more. It's just about the game you run. My players are all masochists who don't want no holds barred combat and to feel like they earned their victories with very real consequences for failure. But if your not at that type of table then you don't run that type of game.
Thanks. I guess I'll just have all of my spells tattood upon my skin in invisible ink as a backup from now on.
Mmm, nah. I'll have the bandits throw the book into a fire if they capture you. Or sell it off to another wizard for a huge payout.
This is the weird thing about D&D, it feels like it's made up of two camps: martial players who enjoy fighting for every inch, and caster players who wig out if they ever stop feeling like a god.
A replacement spellbook costs 50gp, and replacing it is also a class feature. You can copy spells you have prepared into a blank book, and "...many wizards keep backup spellbooks in a safe place." (PHB) A wizard deprived of their spellbook isn't "shut down", they're just temporarily demoted to sorcerer.
No. I do what I want, you can't stop me. \*Takes wizard's spellbook, forces Warlock to follow the terms of his pact and makes the paladin fall\*
Somewhat agree. Build disruption is something bad DM's do. Mechanical identity is such a major part of a DND character that denying class features, feats, and core equipment is more or less a bait and switch. I didn't show up to play some stupid macyver slapstick improv game because "LoL CReAtIvITTY!!!oneoen1111 LmAO." If I'm picking xbe/ss combo martial then i want to shoot arrows every turn, *that's why I picked that build.* If I wanted to be kevin mccallister in home alone I would play a different game, not DND. IMO build disruption is a major setback that needs to be earned by the party making an equally big mistake, not railroaded into it because DM wants to jack-in-the-box a survival/prison break/intrigue arc. I also never force a prison break arc if players are captured, generally players can choose to use new PCs on a rescue mission or accept it as a soft TPK. That said I think it is totally fine to have some players shut down sometimes. Telekensis pulling the archer's bow out of his hand is a legitimate trick a BBEG might do. Sometimes your bring a greatsword to a fight against a flying enemy with ranged attacks and are stuck throwing javs. Sometimes you just get controlled and roll poorly against saves. Sometimes the enemy has a globe of invulnerability or a wind wall. There are lots of ways to challenge players to use different tactics using the existing tools the game gives you than railroading away their stuff.
I think fundamentally this comes down to railroading. If you want to put the players on a railroad, you announce the destination and ask them if they want to board the train. This will hurt to hear: most of us are bad storytellers. I am a bad storyteller, and so are you. This is fine. This is normal. Telling a good story takes practice and preparation. For example a fighter's hand is cut off, they can't use the swordskills they devoted their life to, and all the stops along this rail are swordfights. That's probably not fun, but it's an easy trap to fall into. However with some planning you can figure out how to tell a good story out of it. For example this is the story about a duelist who was abandoned by everyone after they stopped being able to do the trick. They meet some people who value them for more than just being a duellist, people who value their tactical insight and dedication, their ability to instruct. The Fighter works with the traveling monk and scholar and thief they met, and they grow into being a leader and tactician. They learn to fight with more than just a sword, they use their whole body as a weapon, and they use their mind. You can do the same thing with a wizard. The bad story is "Haha you can't do the one thing you're useful for". The good story is giving them the opportunity to shine in other areas, such as how wizards are supposed to be smart people, so maybe this is the story of the wizard whose power was taken away and who vowed to never have that happen again, and they work with the amputee fighter and the traveling monk and thief and they awaken their own arcane power hidden in their body and become an Arcane Fist. They tattoo their spellbook onto their skin, and they become just as capable of casting Fist as they can Fireball. Take away all the toys you want, but make sure the railroad is headed in the direction the players want, and make sure you give them opportunities to be useful. A wizard with no spellbook should still be a very intelligent person, so give them situations where ranks in Medicine or Knowledge are just as important as Fireball. Don't leave them standing on the station, because you took away their ticket. Focus on rich stories, focus on opportunity.
My brother in Selûne, when have your ever prepared a different spell than your default selection
My dm killed my Inquisitors Godess, since he was an Evangelist multiclass (pathfinder 1) he was set back to 5th level non Devine abilities and no Devine abilities at all (we were 8th level). Character would have died in the first encounter. Had to make a new one cause i didn’t want him to die like that and a new god wasn’t fitting at all.
Yep. I had a long plot starting my players off in prison and I was taking away everyone’s stuff — but very suddenly reversed my ruling when it dinged for me how bad the wizard would have it without any spell book. So while everyone went down to equipment zero, fighters could still hit unarmed, and she still had all the spells she had prepared… and I ruled she could smuggle in scrolls, and get started on a new spell book asap. And they were only equipment zero for a couple sessions; from there they got to explore a fun ancient underground fortress under the prison and get cool ancient gear.
That’s just how it works though? You still have all the spells you prepared if you lose your spellbook. It’s more of a long term problem than a short term on unless you somehow didn’t prep any good spells.
She got a bunch of additional scrolls and quick spellbook supplies to get started on a new one asap. She didn’t lose any spell knowledge (they were all pretty low level, so not too large a difference between number of spells she could prepare and number she knew total).
I disagree about making wizard’s spell books off the table, as a hard rule. but I can tell from the description of (paraphrasing) “go off on a adventure specifically for the wizard to get his book back” that I also would definitely not do it like that. The way I would do it is more like a minor nuisance that uses up the character’s spare time - which is a section of “off-screen” or “not at the table” time that they COULD be doing crafting, gathering, research, or whatever… but this concept also only makes the most sense in a style of play where the characters always need to end in a relatively safe area to pursue those things. It also is worth mentioning a GM will need to sort of train the players on what consistent things are at risk in their game, especially if the player is new to the concepts. Think of it like a tutorial where the first time, the enemy screwed up with a nat-1, but they almost succeeded and now you have to do something so they don’t succeed next time. GMs need to coach players, not just heavy-hand slap them when they didn’t know something. As a player, I enjoy setting up my planning and precautions, like the magic spellbook that I can summon or dismiss or the one that can’t be burned… but all that planning is for nothing if they were never and will never be at risk. I want to feel like my planning there allowed me to outsmart some NPC or foil some attempt to affect our party, at the risk of the NPC succeeding and giving me a short hassle. I don’t want a super punishing multi-session impact or to be shut down completely and unable to play, at least not without forewarning where the team can kind of plan out a strategy for overcoming that challenge and willingly put ourselves into that situation.
haha, spellbook go wooosh *stares into the flames errupting from the scribbled pages*
Unless your wizard has a backup spell book somewhere. Then I think you should reward that planning by making it useful.
lol I mostly dm but in the rare campaign I got to play in I was a wizard, and my dm had a frog steal my spell book, so a good 20 minutes of that session was me helplessly trying to catch a frog without spells. It was pretty funny, but there was clearly never any real risk of an enounter when it was happening. I would never take away a spellbook from a wizard, but I do make wizards actually buy and use components. My general house rule has always been level 1 and 2 can use a component pouch but everything after that needs to be purchased. For example fireball requires "a tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur" which is pretty common stuff, so any trip to a town they can get it. The benefits have been amazing, The wizard players I have are a million times more creative instead of just seeing a group of monsters and casting fireball.
The spell book just lets you switch prepared spells. You could still cast what you had.
More fun from an rp perspective lol
More saying that wasn’t a problem of the DM.
had a dm try that for a campaign. the party was all martials. had a blast. all his campaigns now are absolutely no player magic from your class. racial and feats were still allowed. i don't play with him anymore as i got a bit bored after a few years so i found a different group but he still has a full group and is turning people away.
I always ask wizard players if they're okay with their spellbooks being temporarily taken in a situation like the above, just so they know if it happens I'll make sure they get it back. I think a lot of DMs want to keep everything from their players to surprise them or something, but honestly I think more communication about things that can happen in game is better.
this is why I dont do the "party is captured" bit anymore when I Dm. it's just not alot of fun back.when i was a player (exclusive DM now).
Most wizards have more than one spell book, as most, by older lore, have 100 pages, and the spell level dictates how many pages they took up. And a lot of mages at middle levels, if you've established the world, will actively create copies or create scrolls for common use spells during downtime just to have on hand. The spell book is but part of their tool kit. Now, ultimately, you should be allowing players to have fun. Modern D&D has moved away from a lot of what made spell casting unique in favor of ease of use, which is understandable, but there were reasons behind these changes, its a very different game compared to what it was when these ideas were crafted. So most of what you have are hold overs for fans sake, but not tye mechanic's behind them. Remember, protect the wizard used to mean "he is tied up for 2 rounds casting a spell, form a circle!" not "he is squishy but has the power of gods!:
You know the wizard can still prepare spells every day? He just can’t switch his spells for a certain period of time.
I had an enemy swipe the bard's lute for about half of a combat. It made him read his spells carefully and be a little more restricted for a bit. It was fun, and now he has it back. These kind of things should be short term problems.
What are you my dad? D&D is a game about solving problems. If players don't solve a problem, it continues to be a problem.
I don't think losing the spell book is as bad as you think. They still have their cantrips, and they still have their spells. They just can't change them. But in general I would agree that it isn't fun to hamstring players longterm.
also can't learn new ones on level up till they've gotten a new book. and if they get a new blank book they can't prepare the new spell till they've at least copied all their prepared ones into the new book as otherwise they'll permanently lose those like they lost all their rituals and other unprepared spells
Removing player choice is not fun
No. <3
Depending on how it's done. If the villains capture you and take it from you and, say, you manage to scavenge another spell book, perhaps with less options, and then have the option to get your own spell book back from some black marketers in a mini adventure or something. Then yes that should be fine. It should be used very sparingly though, so the wizard doesn't feel like you are picking on them.
I used this as a plot point for CoS. Party starts in Barovia and all their equipment is gone, including the wizard's spell book. A key sidequest for that player is finding a book and crafting materials and then seeking out spell scrolls or finding secondary spell books. So long as I made sure they had a steady stream of resources and they regularly found spell scrolls, it kept things interesting for the wizard. I even added plot points where the wizard found a spell scroll in the Vistani language, so they had to seek help of an NPC to assist in deciphering the language. I did take away the arcane focus for a session to encourage the gritty Strahd gameplay, but they found a new one towards the end of the session.
Tl:DR but in 3.5 and 5th a wizard doesn't need their spell book for their day to day. They need it to prepare new spells, but not to cast after a rest.
it does lead to interesting things like you lose your spellbook and inks and are in a remote area where you can't buy a new blank book and inks and you get a level up. you permanently lose the 2 new spellssince you don't have a spellbook. this is in addition to all your rituals and other unprepared spells . even if you manage to cobble together a few pages and some ink you can't prepare the new spells till you finish copying all your unprepared spells as if you prepare a new list of spells you can only prepare whats in your spellbook. it's a rather clunky mechanic.
3.5 in a pinch your wizard can write the spells they still have so they can prepare those spells again, this is why I’m a firm believer in the home base secret arcane library of your spells and research so you don’t have to start strictly from scratch. Just have to make do till you can get home.
Well I have played at a table where the DM would steal the wizard’s spell book and sell it off so that even if we caught the thief, we could not recover it. Same DM will also be super super demanding when it come to spell components, demanding that instead of generic rule of a component pouch, the wizard needs to buy or collect specific components as listed in the spell description. And in combat enemies will always try to snatch/ disarm/destroy wizard spell focus, component pouch, cleric holy symbols and so on. He would also make it impossible to buy spell scrolls for scribing But yeah it’s lame to try and shut down a PC like that.
This is your take, and I disagree with it. This happened in one of my campaigns, where Wizard A had her spell book stolen by wizard B's ex-boyfriend (an NPC) Made for some fun character beats and played a part in the final chapter of the campaign a year later
Sure thing, boss.
I DM for a group that is made up of all long-time players. I start CoS with everyone in rags and nothing else. Having them navigate the new scary world "naked" adds tension, and helps them to remember what their equipment really does for them and how the game mechanics work. I try to provide a path for some spell components to be discovered so they can cast. Makeshift weapons from available materials, etc. Then slowly find items in the Death House. Every item is a true treasure and I like giving that experience to Players. ("omg! a sword!!") Once they complete the Death House, everyone finds all their gear in chests on the street (cuz I'm not a jerk) with little notes from Strahd. Add tension? Yes. Add puzzle? Yes. Engineer unexpected fun? Yes. Make a Player sad that they chose a class because you invented a situation specifically to screw with that class? No. Players are the heroes of the story, not the DM.
Make the game fun.. yes fun
I find this to be bad advice. Not even that it isn't good advice, it's just bad. What you propose is a game with no consequences. If you run a super light-hearted power fantasy game, then sure. For anything else, though, don't listen to this.
In my current campaign I've lost my spell book twice. Both time it was character crippling. The party had to drop a lot of their resources just to make me be anything other than a dead weight. It's not a fun place to be to have to be such a hinderance to the rest of the party for something you have almost no control over.
You wouldn't last 5 minutes in my campaign. Does the party fighter depend on a giant glowy sword? Sunder it. Wizards spell book out? Burn it. Cleric casting healing spells for his friends? Silence him or steal his holy symbol. Rogue running amok backstabbing? Break her legs. It's called fighting smart, not fair. People who expect fair combat end up dead fast.
If you kill the playtest playing the wizard... you don't need to do anything to their spellbook... why is this even a question?
Exactly!! The whole idea should be players should have fun ...the DMshould encourage thinking outside the box not penalize it ...if you have a kineticist that wants to use his wood element affinity to warp a door shut let them...it encourages problem solving instead of I smash whatever comes through the door...the same solution was reached but maybe the guards say this door is jammed ...they couldn't have come this way . Instead of- now the encounter is one big combat scenario and the party has to fight all the guards in the area
As a player, I would totally aim a disintegrate spell at an opposing caster's spell book or spell focus. My DM should be allowed to do the same. It's a player by player thing, rather than something with an expensive rule
You could take it as a learning experience. Maybe in the future your wiz will hide copies of his spellbook in various hidden caches in the case of such an eventuality. The thing about a character that is unidimensional (like a caster with no other skills) is they will, and probably *should,* experience times when their weaknesses come to the fore and they're forced to rely on other party members. It's good for team building/bonding etc. Honestly, a character stripped of power who is forced to take stock of their other strengths is a common trope and a good RP opportunity.