Cheesing your spellbook

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Ancestral Relic would be a fun way to do it.  Just make the item be your spell book.

JaronK

I feel your pain JaronK, I post that trick on every archivist build thread and no one notices it then either.  If you are a good character, this feat by far is the best.  It lets you sacrific anything with a listed gold value to increase the value of your choosen item on a 1:1 basis.  It does not specify the effects have to be magical enchantments and you do not need any requirements to add whatever you want.  It works just as well as mercantile background, at least for the spell book.

Mercantile sell at 75%  buy at 75%
Ancestral Relic Sacrifce at 100% to get 100%

While you cannot sell at 75% to buy other stuff, you also get the ability to destroy items that are evil you would not want to sell, have a sink that lets you dump things of value without effecting the market (wall of salt produces 10,000's of gp), and can have alot of fun with a lich's phalactery.

Only Caveat, you have to be good.

To add to the geomancer fun, I like to add in the feat Arcane Shorthand from dragon #358.  It cuts the space and price to scribe spells into a spell book in half.  This is alot more fun with an archivist which can literally cast any spell when you take into account alternative spell source.

As for the domain trick, there is the feat Customize Domain from dragon 325 that lets you rearrange the spells on the domain.  If retraining is allowed, you can take that feat and retrain it later.

One spell you might want to look at is "Choose Destiny", a level 9 spell in the Destiny domain from races of destiny.  It does not appear on any other lists, but lets you roll twice for every action and take the better roll.  Very funny as a persistent spell if you use divine metamagic tricks (or arcane divine metamagic tricks).

Yeah, but is there any entry for "masterwork" spellbooks?

[PhaedrusXY]

I'm allowing retraining, but not during chargen. So Phaedrus, just wait a level to retrain; otherwise, figure out another way to do this.

Although, if you can pay for a manifesting of PsyRef, I'll let that fly in chargen.

OK. I'll see what I can do. I'm sure one of those will work. I'll just have to cut out something. Thanks for getting back to me.

Edit: I trimmed my item list a bit, and dumped Collegiate Wizard.

[Endarire]

Secret page works for copying spells.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Secret page works for copying spells.

Depends if you think that the expensive exotic inks have a purpose other than just having pretty colors.

[PhaedrusXY]

Secret page works for copying spells.

Depends if you think that the expensive exotic inks have a purpose other than just having pretty colors.

Yeah. I figured at the least you should be able to use Secret Page to place a second spell on the same page as another spell in your spellbook (both of them use the "special ink", the second one just rearranges it). So you'd basically be able to halve your scribing costs. This doesn't seem like it would work with Aureon's Spellshard, though, as that isn't actually a book with pages...

[Widow]

Ancestral Relic would be a fun way to do it.  Just make the item be your spell book.

JaronK

I feel your pain JaronK, I post that trick on every archivist build thread and no one notices it then either.  If you are a good character, this feat by far is the best.  It lets you sacrific anything with a listed gold value to increase the value of your choosen item on a 1:1 basis.  It does not specify the effects have to be magical enchantments and you do not need any requirements to add whatever you want.  It works just as well as mercantile background, at least for the spell book.

Mercantile sell at 75%  buy at 75%
Ancestral Relic Sacrifce at 100% to get 100%

While you cannot sell at 75% to buy other stuff, you also get the ability to destroy items that are evil you would not want to sell, have a sink that lets you dump things of value without effecting the market (wall of salt produces 10,000's of gp), and can have alot of fun with a lich's phalactery.

Only Caveat, you have to be good.

To add to the geomancer fun, I like to add in the feat Arcane Shorthand from dragon #358.  It cuts the space and price to scribe spells into a spell book in half.  This is alot more fun with an archivist which can literally cast any spell when you take into account alternative spell source.

As for the domain trick, there is the feat Customize Domain from dragon 325 that lets you rearrange the spells on the domain.  If retraining is allowed, you can take that feat and retrain it later.

One spell you might want to look at is "Choose Destiny", a level 9 spell in the Destiny domain from races of destiny.  It does not appear on any other lists, but lets you roll twice for every action and take the better roll.  Very funny as a persistent spell if you use divine metamagic tricks (or arcane divine metamagic tricks).

Yeah, but is there any entry for "masterwork" spellbooks?

The SRD lists wizard's spellbooks under the tool section.  Also under the tool section is masterworked tools (the generic entry).  Pay 50gp and you have your masterworked spellbook.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsandservices.htm

[Phaenix]

Ancestral Relic would be a fun way to do it.  Just make the item be your spell book.

JaronK

I feel your pain JaronK, I post that trick on every archivist build thread and no one notices it then either.  If you are a good character, this feat by far is the best.  It lets you sacrific anything with a listed gold value to increase the value of your choosen item on a 1:1 basis.  It does not specify the effects have to be magical enchantments and you do not need any requirements to add whatever you want.  It works just as well as mercantile background, at least for the spell book.

Mercantile sell at 75%  buy at 75%
Ancestral Relic Sacrifce at 100% to get 100%

While you cannot sell at 75% to buy other stuff, you also get the ability to destroy items that are evil you would not want to sell, have a sink that lets you dump things of value without effecting the market (wall of salt produces 10,000's of gp), and can have alot of fun with a lich's phalactery.

Only Caveat, you have to be good.

To add to the geomancer fun, I like to add in the feat Arcane Shorthand from dragon #358.  It cuts the space and price to scribe spells into a spell book in half.  This is alot more fun with an archivist which can literally cast any spell when you take into account alternative spell source.

As for the domain trick, there is the feat Customize Domain from dragon 325 that lets you rearrange the spells on the domain.  If retraining is allowed, you can take that feat and retrain it later.

One spell you might want to look at is "Choose Destiny", a level 9 spell in the Destiny domain from races of destiny.  It does not appear on any other lists, but lets you roll twice for every action and take the better roll.  Very funny as a persistent spell if you use divine metamagic tricks (or arcane divine metamagic tricks).

Yeah, but is there any entry for "masterwork" spellbooks?

The SRD lists wizard's spellbooks under the tool section.  Also under the tool section is masterworked tools (the generic entry).  Pay 50gp and you have your masterworked spellbook.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsandservices.htm

Or paste a little placard on the inside cover with crib notes for reading your own cramped handwriting. Voila, it's a masterwork Decipher Script tool now!

[PhaedrusXY]

So... now that I've gotten the spellbook figured out, where should I go with this character in the future? The focus of the game he's in is exploring and mapping weird dungeons, which will include planar pockets with odd geometry and more than 3 spatial dimensions, and is expected to be very dangerous.

Starting out he's a:
dragonwrought (blue) desert kobold wiz 4/cl.cleric 1/unseen seer 1

He'll be a capable scout, trapmonkey, and overall utility/BFC caster, with some damage capacity.

Feats:
Improved Initiative (Diviner ACF)
Dragonwrought (RotD)(1)
Spell Mastery (flaw 1)
Mercantile Background (flaw 2)
Uncanny Forethought (Exemplars of Evil)(3)
Knowledge Devotion (CChamp)(traded Knowledge domain for this)
Planar Touchstone (Catalogues of Enlightenment)(6)

Due to feat requirements, I'm starting out with the 4 levels of wizard, then a level of cloistered cleric to get Knowledge Devotion for free, trapfinding (kobold domain), and the skills required to enter Unseen Seer. Some of those 1st level cleric spells are also amazing. Eyes of the Avoral, anyone? Or Sign? Omen of Peril? And it lets me use cleric magic items without sinking ranks in UMD. With the kobold and trickery domains, I can also function as the party scout/trapspringer.

With Uncanny Forethought, a big Int score, and a fat spellbook, he'll be able to have nearly any spell he needs on the fly, especially with the Planar Touchstone feat giving him access to cleric domain spells. I'll eventually take the 5th wizard level for Spontaneous Divination and pick up Versatile Spellcaster, for even more spontaneous casting capacity.

I banned enchantment and necromancy, so a mindbender dip for mindsight is out, although I could always get an imp or psuedodragon improved familiar and Psychic Reformat them to pick it up if I really want it to add onto my scouting capacity. I guess taking the feats from LEoF that let you cast from your prohibited schools would open up his options even more, also.

More Unseen Seer is a fairly obvious direction, and probably what I'll wind up going with, but I want to explore other options. I'll at least go far enough to get the first Advanced Learning (or whatever it's called) to pick up Hunter's Eye for more SA, but it would really be nice to be able to persist that sucker. The easiest way to do that is probably Incantatrix 3, but I haven't taken the feats for that.

I also thought about Mage of the Arcane Order to build on his "toolbox" nature. Even if he didn't have a spell that he needed in his spellbook, he could pull it out of the Spellpool. I could also cheese this a bit to be able to scribe those into his spell book using Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer or something similar. I think this is a bit redundant, though, at this point.

Likely this stuff won't come up in this game, as it's a PbP and those are slow as molasses. So I'm mostly just brainstorming about this build's capacities.