[ITEM/MECHANICS/SKILL] Spellbooks, Wizards, & Reading Magic

[Rhangalas]

Lorewise, spellbooks are greatly coveted, closely guarded, and sought by wizards from all walks of life. In FK, spellbooks are trivial items and are only needed to memorize and learn spells. If you take a wizards spellbook item, all they have to do is simply buy another one and "wallah" all of their spells and notes are in the newly bought spellbook.

It would be a great improvement if spellbook items somehow recorded what spells they were used to learn. If stolen or lost, another wizard could attempt to gain knowledge from them either through a Read Magic spell (divination cantrip) or through being proficient enough with the magical language. This would come at a cost though, just like scrolls and wands sometimes backfire, so do spellbooks when they are tampered with by the inexperienced. Some lore regales apprentices going blind from trying to pry into their masters books, books self-destructing and befuddling the intruder (the burn-scarred beggar), tomes that throw the trespasser across the planes (random teleport) before "whiting-out" all the text within, some wizards have even gone insane attempting to read magic beyond their grasp. I'm not saying you could grab an archmages book and then learn every spell they know, only a few maybe, and that number determined by the difficulty level of the spell you are trying to learn from the book and with the higher the difficulty level of the spell, the higher the chance of backfire:

Max. Gain Chance of backfire per attempt
10 level 0 spells 5%
9 level 1 spells 10%
8 level 2 spells 20%
7 level 3 spells 30%
6 level 4 spells 40%
5 level 5 spells 50%
4 level 6 spells 60%
3 level 7 spells 70%
2 level 8 spells 80%
1 level 9 spells 90%

Those percentages are just the base chance and do not take proficiency of the the magical language nor the use of divination into account. One attempt grants the chance to learn one spell, not the maximum amount. e.g. attempting to learn the maximum of 10 level 0 spells would take one attempt per spell with a 5% chance of failing each time. Once the maximum gain is reached, further attempts will result in either backfire or nothing (echo: There is nothing more you can learn from this book.) Also, just because the maximum is one number, it does not mean that the book in question holds that many, say a book held 6 cantrips and 2 level 5 spells, you could learn everything in the book and still be within the maximum gain. The attempts could also be coded to work similar to the way blacksmiths craft. You can only study from a spellbook while logged off in a library. The study would have costs of its own for materials used experimenting and etc. This way the spell gain would not be instantaneous like it is with learning from scrolls.

Now, for the wizard who had their book stolen or lost, not only would they not be able to memorize new spells without the book, but they would be unable to meditate to regain the spells they previously memorized without a spellbook that contains a record of those spells. To prevent them using another wizards tome to meditate, the spellbooks could be flagged as owned by the PC upon purchase.

Say a wizard has two books, one of the books is the one they got at creation and they used it for a time, but then bought a fancier book and began using that. The fancy one was stolen, but they still have the newbie spellbook. They would still be able to meditate using the newbie spellbook, but would only be able to regain the use of spells recorded in it and would only be able to memorize the spells recorded in it.

This would place more importance on spellbooks, would make Spell Mastery useful, and could even create a place for an "advanced scroll" random reward item. Random spellbook items that hold 2 or more spells, but if you fail the check to learn from them, they backfire. You could use this as a way to introduce rarer spells to the game without needing a trainer for every spell in the game. It would negate the need to have trainers for both good and evil PCs, but it still wouldn't be a sure-thing. The spells would still be rare, but would be obtainable. If you manage to learn from them without it backfiring, it isn't consumed like scrolls are, they remain in-game until someone does fail.

[Ramirus]

Perhaps there should also be a way for the spellbooks to be configured with traps, by way of spells the wizard could learn, or some sort of npc that is an expert spellbook trapper.

[Bellayana]

This could be a rouge skill, trap. Since they have the ability to detrap perhaps they should also have the ability to set traps on objects like pouches or books. They would have to purchase the trap from a mobile merchant that sells various traps that blind, poison, or shoots lighting. Just a thought.

[Rhangalas]

I thought more about it and realized that if a wizards book was stolen and then was destroyed by another wizard attempting to pry secrets from it, the owner of the book would be sorely gimped. A good way around this would be to not only allow a library to be used to study from spellbooks, but also allow a wizard to transfer knowledge of the spells they know into a new spellbook, for the cost of time and coin. So in the event that they came into possession of a book they wanted to use over the one they already have, they could copy what they know into the new book and avoid having to carry multiple spellbooks around.

This might cause a problem with wizards duplicating spellbooks and then passing the old one on to other PCs for a chance at "free" spells, but maybe it could be logged and/or have a significant cost attached to both the studying and duplicating attempts.

Books are a primary source of knowledge for a lot of classes. I think it would be a nice addition to have books that codedly "teach" certain things, spells, knowledges, maybe even skills (to a certain and very low extent, inept at best). It could all be tied into attribute scores (int, wis) as well to further restrict abuse.