D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 Bbb

[Pax]

There are some no brainers I can live with.

After all getting a magic weapon is a no brainer for a Fighter.

But the BBB is actually CHEAPER than gettign the NONmagical equivalent!

Picture, a "vanilla" +5 Greatsword costs 50,350gp; it gets, of cours,e +5 to hit and +5 damage.

So, what if Joe Gamer comes up with a new weapon special ability, let's call it "[...] of Cheese", that adds +4 to damage and +4 to hit, for only a +1 market value equivalent?

So a "+1 Greatsword of Cheese" has the same bonusses to hit (+5 apiece), but, it's only a +2 marker price sword, and costs a mere 8,350gp.

Same effect, less money. That is what the BBB is: the same thing all wizards must do, for less money. And it's more durable than ordinary spellbooks, and it has 10x as many pages, and it's SMALLER than an ordinary spellbook?

FFS, if I made a fighter-oriented magic item or feat or prestige class that saved almost 88% of the cost of the fighter's desired huge-mega-weapon, I'd be laughed off of ENWorld.

Yet when it's BBB, everyone looks at le like I have three eyes, for pointing out that it's BROKEN.

...

IMC, BBB won't allow free scribing. Period. OFC, I also favor reduced scribing costs in general, since I think it's silly for a spell to cost more to put into a spellbook, than to scribe a scroll of it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Yet when it's BBB, everyone looks at le like I have three eyes, for pointing out that it's BROKEN.

Hey, have you seen me looking at you like you have three eyes?

FWIW, I agree with you

-Hyp.

 

[Pax]

Hey, have you seen me looking at you like you have three eyes?

FWIW, I agree with you

-Hyp.

Yeah, but you're not everyone, you're Hyp ...

Funny thing is, if they'd dropped the spellbook scribing costs to 10gp/page, I'd've swallowed the free scribing with greater ease -- for most spells, it'd be minor, and the money saved on 1,000 pages of scribing (10,000gp) would at least be LESS than the cost of the book itself.

 

[Storm Raven]

Re: Re: 3.5 Bbb

A thin book with a thousand pages, more durable than most, is itself of value. I see no reason why the thing should be FREE to scribe into ... none whatsoever.

Um, perhaps the reason is that the designers of the game wanted it to work that way all along? Perhaps they balanced the item with the assumption that it would be routinely used by any wizard who could get his hands on one.

I will point out that this lays to rest all of the silly arguments about whether or not "freely accepts" was intended to actually mean that you could scribe spells into the BBB without cost. From the revised language, one can see that it did.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Re: Re: Re: 3.5 Bbb

I will point out that this lays to rest all of the silly arguments about whether or not "freely accepts" was intended to actually mean that you could scribe spells into the BBB without cost. From the revised language, one can see that it did.

And from the revised language, one can see that Haste was never meant to give an extra partial action, and Rangers were always supposed to have a choice of feat trees, and Tower Shields were never supposed to give a cover bonus...

-Hyp.

 

[Storm Raven]

Re: Re: Re: Re: 3.5 Bbb

And from the revised language, one can see that Haste was never meant to give an extra partial action, and Rangers were always supposed to have a choice of feat trees, and Tower Shields were never supposed to give a cover bonus...

Do you always say silly things or is this a unique case? The BBB said it "freely accepts" spells. Every person who had a hand in making the original DMG who voiced an opinion on the matter said it means exactly what the clarification now makes patently obvious to anyone who can read. Simply accept that your strained interpretations of the BBB (i.e. that it did not allow bypassing the srcibing costs of spells) was not what was intended by the previous language and move on.

 

[Rel]

I'll state up front that I'm an advocate of the "scribe for free" interpretation of the BBB. I'll also admit that my view is tainted by my utter hatred of the way scribing costs were implemented in the 3.0 PHB. Just for the record, I don't contend that there should be no costs. I just don't like the inconsistent way it is put into effect (and I've house ruled the hell out of it in my campaigns, largely rendering the BBB issue moot).

That said, I rarely see folks on the other side of the argument (which I respect if don't agree with) acknowledge that there are some opportunity costs associated with the BBB. The necessity to acquire the Secret Page spell as well as spend the time and money to craft it, not to mention the Craft Wonderous Item feat (though I'd probably argue that the feat is its own reward) are costs that will take some time to recoup. Alternatively, the Wizard could part with twice as much money and simply buy one, but that requires that he be in circumstances where such a thing is possible.

Once he has one, will he want to re-scribe the spells in his old spellbook into it to consolidate things? If so, that will take up some time as well as space in the BBB. When he goes up levels and gets his "free" spells, they'll take up space in the BBB (again assuming that he wants to keep things in one book) and he isn't really getting any return on his investment for those spells because they wouldn't have cost him anything to scribe anyway.

The payoff is when he finds new scrolls that he can scribe. But there is a cost associated with that too. If he didn't have the BBB, it might have been cost prohibitive for him to scribe the new scroll into his spellbook, especially if it was a spell he didn't think he would cast very often. But if he had opted not to scribe it, he would still have the scroll and would have been able to use it instead of scribe it. Of course he can still make the same decision once he has the BBB, but then he isn't getting any return on his investment.

Looking at the 3.5 version of the BBB, we can easily do the math and see that it can hold 1,000 pages and we know that scribing costs remain 100GP/Page so it has a potential for saving the Wizard 100,000 GP. For a one time expenditure of only 12,500 GP! An amazing value!

But consider this: What if I offered to sell you a truck, suitable for hauling loads of gravel, for $12,500. I further inform you that people are paying $100 per load of gravel and it takes one day to haul each load. It is expected that you will be able to haul 1,000 loads over the life of the truck. So that's a $100,000 return on a $12,500 investment! You'd be a fool not to buy it!

But wait, it's not every day that somebody is going to want a load of gravel. It might not be even every other day. You have to haul at least 125 loads of gravel just to break even. Even if you haul a load every 3 days, it will take over a year before that happens! And for you to get the whole $100,000, it will take over 8 years at that rate.

The question is: How long will it take for the Wizard to encounter 125 levels worth of scrolls that he doesn't already have and that he would have wanted to scribe into his spellbook anyway? Until he does that, he hasn't even broken even on the BBB yet. There are a LOT of other magic items that he could have crafted or bought for that 12,500 GP that would have helped him out during that time.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I wonder if spell book capture made it into the game. It also makes the cost of scribing seem very pointless.

 

[Bauglir]

Why are people still persisting in this debate?

It was clarified (in sage advice I believe) that the 3.0 book DOES in fact allow scribing for free. Many people (hyp included) decided they didn't like that and house ruled it the other way, just like those same people are doing with the 3.5 version (based on this sneak peek) so really nothing has changed much.

That said, with all the changes made in 3.5 one can hardly point to the wording of a 3.5 text to imply anything about the 3.0 version. (Hence hyp's comment about haste etc)

 

[Rel]

Why are people still persisting in this debate?

Slow work day before July 4th.

Although Hypersmurf isn't American, so I don't know what his excuse is.