Spell Acquisition

I dislike the way spells are acquired in the game. Especially for starting warbands, getting an awful spell will really ruin your day. I thought why not just only choose your first spell, and after some searching on the forum I found many people use this house rule.

I decided to take it one step further. When a wizard/priest acquires a new spell/prayer (including the starting one), pick three spells from the list. Assign each spell to two numbers on 1D6, then roll to see what spell you get.

Example, you have a spell list of 6 spells: A B C D E F
I choose A, C, F
1-2 = A
3-4 = C
5-6 = F

You now have a 1/3 chance to get the spell you want, instead of 1/6. You do this every time you gain a spell. The rules for getting a spell you already know don't change, it's difficulty will still decrease. However, so it doesn't get too easy to cast, a spell can not be reduced by more than 2 difficulty points.

What do you guys think? I haven't tested this out in a campaign yet, but will it make spellcasting too strong? Anyone already try this?

I guess this is a middle ground between purely random spell selection as per official rules and always choosing spell as per some house rules. It could work. I am a bit uncertain about restricting the ability to reduce a spell difficulty by no more than 2 points. This probably isn't an issue initially but would obviously need to be reviewed in a very long campaign once a spell caster has acquired all six spells and reduced the difficulty of all six spells by 2 points. (That would obviously be a very long campaign to get to that point.) Perhaps you could still allow the player to role a D6 as per standard rules to allow them to decrease the difficulty past 2 points if desired but obviously with the risk of any other spell being rolled.

In our group we roll one extra spell for new spell casters and let the player choose. However, we have then stuck with random spell selection for all advancements.

That's a nice idea. I also dislike the total randomness combined with both awesome and awful spells in most lists and was thinking of increasing a wizard's price by maybe 10% and allow him to choose the first spell. But your idea, like RL said, might be a good middle ground.
Try it out. About that long campaign-thing: Now wizward will roll a skill/spell every advancement and even if, there are enough good other skills to choose. So I see no problem. How many advancements CAN the average hero-wizard make anyways?

Not a bad idea, although I think I still prefer our way (you pick the first spell, all others = a random roll).

In my group we use mweaver's system with the addition that you can look for a specific Tome of Magic at +4 to the rarity. Books of magic are very rare indeed and will not always contain the spell you are looking for.

That being said, I like the idea as a middle ground of a tome to roll on your pick of 3 spells at, say, +2 to the rarity.

Grimscull wrote:

How many advancements CAN the average hero-wizard make anyways?

Just from levelling? Probably about 5-8. From tomes of magic as well? How much gold do you have? How often do you do Wizard's Mansion?

You buy a tome, learn the spell, and then sell the book and *bam* you are almost half-way to buying your *next* spell. If you are focusing on spells you can get a *lot* during a campaign.

@Lord 0... Interesting. So you partly treat a Tome of Magic as containing a single spell when giving it to a spellcaster. RAW this means that you don't know which spell until you by it. Your house rule allows for a specific spell to be chosen (requested/searched for) but at +4 rarity to represent that it is a lot more tricky. I like it.