Spellbooks for PCs and enemies alike.

I was mucking about a few new 'tradeskill books' to cover the new skills that weren't in when I made the last batch... and I had an idea.

Spellbooks. Ones that work like in PnP.

In NWN, wizards and sorceres don't need a spellbook to memorize spells of course, but there can be some usefulness in a functioning spellbook item.

My idea is to have a spellbook item with a unique onuse power. A new spellbook is "blank", no spells in it at all. To "add" a spell to the book, prepare the spell, and then use a vc command, maybe something like ";;spellbook add spell-name". That spell then is added to the book as a string variable on the book itself. Using the unique power on the book would list all the spells currently recorded into the book (if any).

To bring it as close to PnP as possible, also have a spellcraft check to recognize the spells... (a check to see if the spellbook is the player's own, if so, skip the spellcraft check. If it's not your spellbook, spellcraft check for each spell in the book. The "ownership" variable on the book can be set with the first use of the book's unique power. After that, the "ownership" is set, so even if you sell the spellbook to another, they have to pass the spellcraft check like in PnP.

Now, to 'copy' spells from another wizard's spellbook, you'd have to identify the spells in the book, and then use a VC command (say, ;;spellbook copy spellnamehere), then use the book's onuse power on your OWN spellbook. Should you pass the spellcraft check (such as with PnP rules), you can copy the spell into your own spellbook (it's added to your spell book, and you get a scroll for the actual "learning" of the spell nwn mechanics wise). And have a small check in the code to make sure that wizard in question doesn't already have the spell in their own spellbook... no mass-producing spell scrolls for essentially free).

In PnP, there's also a time consideration for copying spells into the spellbooks besides the spellcraft check. I would say for a PW setting, this restriction could be ignored. Realisticly if a player wants to share all their spells with another, putting on such a restriction would be pointless as we'd just go about doing it the way things are done now... scribe the scrolls. The spellbooks are meant to be both a nice RP tool, AND make spell-sharing between PC wizards less XP/GP costly (if anything, by PnP rules the wizard sharing his spells would GAIN GP by charging another for the privilage of peeking into his spellbook).

This could be useful for many things.... PC wizards could create spellbooks for their PC apprentices to learn off of over the course of time. Or it could also be used to make interresting spellbooks to capture from enemy NPC casters.

Kill a vampire mage, and find her spellbook. It could have a random selection of spells on it (A spellbook with pre-set spellname variables placed on it). This would be a great in-game way for wizards to gain access to new spells besides 'scroll hunting'.

What wizard also doesn't want to know what spells Greyskull's packing, or how about those drow wizards? What does the elder brain have packing in his spellbook?

And a side note.... this could also be a great way to list in-game the "material components" needed for a given spell should a PC decide to use the optional material component system (personally, I don't use it because... I just don't know what the components for a given spell ARE, and I do not know of a single place to find that information)

And, new PC wizards could get a blank spellbook on character creation... a pretty basic plain looking one.

And there could be a merchant that sells spellbooks of different varieties (ie, different icons, but all essentially the same item mechanicly). One could then scribe a new book of just boom spells, one of utilitiy spells, one with defensive spells, each with it's own icon/look, and one they could write their own description onto with the ;;tool item desc command, and rename to their liking with the ;;tool itemname command

Holy crap, dude, that's Christmas gold!