Unbound Spellbooks

Anyone can have a leather-bound book to carry around their spells. There’s a reason it’s the default, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t explore other options; there are a lot of different cultural reasons to explore different concepts of spellbooks. Other rulebooks have even suggested different concepts, such as card-like ofuda or even pearls; one module even has a sorcerer who uses an army of slaves as his spellbook. Once you start playing around with the idea, there are plenty of different “spellbooks” you can employ for storing your spells.

Let’s Talk Basics

The basic spellbook is pretty simple: It has 100 pages, is leather bound, and weighs about three pounds, all for 50 gp. You can get a tougher version, the traveling spellbook, for 100 gp but it weighs 5 pounds. Cantrips use a half page each while regular spells use a page per level; inscribing a spell costs 2 hours and 50 gp per level (cantrips are 30 minutes and 25 gp); your initial spells are free as previous work. You can use non-magical scrolls, but the same prices and room apply; scroll cases carry from 10 to 30 pages. Each page is 16"x12". with books being roughly six inches thick.

[This gives DMs three ways to mess with wizards: Steal or destroy their books, make the ingredients for their inks hard to find all of a sudden, or even just tear out pages with spells that annoy you. Destroying spellbooks is extremely dirty pool, especially if the wizard only had one copy of a particular spell, so seriously debate it. Finding torn-out pages can make for their own quest.]

The wizard can have multiple spellbooks with spells in all of his books, allowing for destroyed books, torn pages, or erase spells. It even allows the wizard to tear out pages so he can deprive another wizard of a spell or use it himself once he inscribes it into his own book or uses read magic. A wizard can even tear out a spell from his own spellbook if he knows the book is about to be stolen or destroyed. However, it’s your option if pages from one book can replace the torn-out pages in another book; this does make life easier for some mages.

[Read magic is required because every wizard has their own style of formulae, sigils, and other notes; even master and apprentice have significantly different enough styles that they can’t use each other spellbooks. This also allows some weirdness when working with different types of spellbooks, as it means you don’t necessarily need the same sheer volume when dealing with pearls, for example. This also allows a mage willing to pay the inscribing cost to give out spells as party favors,. even though he’s likely to use apprentices (this could create its own fads, as well as explain why certain spells are so popular). ]

You can throw in additional features (such as a latch), different materials, and enchantments, but they add to the cost and value of their respective items. But why limit it to just paper? After all, if the idea is to provide a wizard with a way to remember his spells daily while allowing him the flexibility of being able to change his spells (unlike a sorcerer who has access to all of his known spells at any given time). This gives him access to more spells than a sorcerer, even if he does need to decide on which ones he has memorized. If we allow for that and some game balance, the possibilities are endless.

Right on Your Skin

The average 6' male has about 18 square feet of surface area, if properly shaved. This would work out to roughly 14 spell levels, right? We can do better than that. Tattoo spells should take up [spell level²] square inches (same inscription cost, but also requires a tattooing kit). However, besides the usual weakness to erase, you also need to be able to clearly read the tattoo (so cleanliness becomes important and dyes become a potential hazard). Wounds also become a problem, as a called shot can eliminate a spell until the wound heals; campaigns with hit location rules also become more complicated.

Note that these are not magical tattoos, where the person just has to touch or concentrate on the tattoo to work. You need to be able to read them just like any other inscribed spell. However, this also means that the flesh does not need to be alive to be used to regain spells; it thus becomes possible to use your own dead body and/or preserved skin as a spellbook. It also means that if the limb with a tattoo is cut off, it will not “grow back” if the limb is subjected to a regeneration spell, and new bodies (such as clones) will not have the inscribed spells.

[Some evil wizards use slaves as their tattooed spellbook. This requires the tattooed entity to be present to be read, be it dead or alive. However, this also puts a premium bounty on runaways, from both the wizard being escaped from and anyone who wants the spells on his body.]

For inscribing locations that are hard to get to (such as the middle of the back), a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (DC 5+5/spell level) is required; spells that grant some contortionist ability add twice their level to the roll, but only the highest bonus applies. They also require a mirror to read. You also need to do it yourself; a spell so inscribed is someone else’s spell and requires read magic for the bearer to use it.

So if your character has no modesty issues, this could work for them.

Dealing With A Deck

Playing cards would make for an interesting spellbook. The wizard could even disguise them as playing cards or tarot decks (Wisdom (Craft) DC 15 per card). Also, a missing card means that the spell can’t be memorized, and cards from the wizard’s other decks can replace the missing card (this applies to regular books as well, and it’s DM’s option if a card can replace a page (“That’s not my bookmark! It’s part of the book!”).

However, this does make them subject to being shuffled, and the wizard can’t use 2nd level or higher spells until they’ve been put back into order; this can apply per spell rather than the entire deck. Combined with a scattering effect (such as gust of wind), a mage could be busy for an hour or more, especially in a windy area.

But What About Pearls?

in D&D OA, the naga use strings of pearls for pages. This adds a Wisdom (Craft (DC 5+spell level) and a single pearl per spell, but the pearl must be worth the (spell levelx50) gp; a 50 gp carving kit is also required (one-time cost). This eliminates the torn-page problem of hiding one or more pearls and the problem of scattered/shuffled pages (a cut string of pearls can get into more places than paper).

This could apply to other stones and gems as well, thus making that really cool ruby necklace even more valuable. This also applies to regular rocks as well, making some shiny rocks with a few more scratches on them more open to scrutiny.

Other Weirdness

Obviously, this opens things up for world-building and character design. It also opens up all sorts of new ways to mess with players: An abstract painting could be a wish spell, for example. That really nice chess set? Just a spellbook (16 first-level spells, 4 each 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level spells, and two each 5th and 6th level spells for a total cost of 3700 gp (board not included)). There is no real limit to how you can create a spellbook as long as it’s physical; no cheating with mental or purely magical spellbooks.

The spellbook doesn’t need to be just a book; you can have all sorts of fun with the basic concept. Just figure out what would be fair to other casters and works with the culture of the wizard, and you can create some really weird “spellbooks.” As usual, the limit is your imagination, so get creative!