From: kdelgado@loligo.cc.fsu.edu (Kevin Delgado)
Subject: Re: Small query on multiple mages in a party...
Organization: Florida State University Computing Center
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 21:21:59 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.191728@cc4.kuleuven.ac.be> stud02@cc4.kuleuven.ac.be writes:
>Hello,
>
>I have a party in which we have a human mage and an elven thief/magic-user.
>The mages would like to learn spells from eachother.  Because they have
>different spells in their spellbooks, it is their hope to be able to learn
>spells which are listed in the other's spellbook.  I do not see any objection
>to this, really, as it looks the same as learning a spell from a scroll.  Yet,
>when learning a spell from a scroll the scroll is destroyed.  Would this be
>likely to happen to the page the spell is written on in the spellbook?

First of all, all the info I am gonna give pertains to 2nd ed.

Ok, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the mages sharing their spells (tho
most mages like to get the lion's share of any deal...read the DMG for more on
that). The mages will, however, need to use READ MAGIC to be able to read the
other's spell book. This, of course, does not guarantee that the mage will be
able to actually _use_ the spells found in the book. Each mage must make the
appropriate rolls for "learn spell" (as indicated in the INT chart), and can
only know as many spells of each level as his INT indicates.

Now for the second part of you post. In first edition, spell books were 
treated very similarly to scrolls. That is to say that a person could read
off/cast a spell directly from his spell book just as in a scroll (tho this
destroys the page the spell was written on and possibly adjacent pages as
well). However, in second edition this is not the case. Spell books are now
considered to hold the "formulas" for spells. Through appropriate resting,
meditation, and memorization, the formulas for the spells can be converted
into magical "potential" in the mind. Thus you have spell "memorization".
You are no longer able to cast a spell directly out of your spell book simply
by reading the page aloud. All this does is make you look foolish in any
combat. So, basically, when the two mages share thier spells, the pages in
their books will remain intact. This change in the rules makes spellbooks far
less dangerous for people to own (ie portable tomes of scrolls), but it also
makes a _LOT_ more sense (think about it, a person could take a bunch of
scrolls and bind them together into a book. Then that person could say he
has a spellbook. Now, that would mean that he could make infinite copies of
the spells from his book, while before-when the scrolls weren't bound- he 
could not. 2nd ed. clears this mess up considerably).

Oh, one more thing, I just remembered that you have a human and an elven mage.
This could create a little problem depending on how yu run your campiagn. The
Elf mage _may_ be writing his magic script in his spellbook in elvish. If the
human doesn't know how to read elvish this could mean that he will need a 
spell to help him with that task (I don't beleive Read Magic translates). 
However, if you rule that magic script is "language independant" (which I
don't recomend...make every damn thing a little tougher for your PC's) in
your world, then this won't apply.

Hope I have helped.

>
>Any ideas, comments, suggestions on this?
>
>Kris Van Hees, DM.

Kevin Delgado, ancient player/DM (since '78...God I feel old!)