I made up a village where the wizards there specialized in a form of magic called scriptomancy. It was just intended to be something cool to pop up every now and then, but one of my players LOVED the idea and decided to follow it as his class option, to the point where he left his character at the school and made up another one to play with while his MAIN character was learning scryptomancy. That meant i had to come up with practical rules for something I never intended to be used.
If anyone decides to play this, please let me know! I'd love to hear how it goes, so I can change rules around as necessary.
Arcane Tradition
Scriptomancy is the study of written spells, using inks or engraves symbols imbued with magic to create magical effects. While they take longer to cast, they also last considerably longer than normal spells. Nearly any and every spell can be enchanted into writing, based on the Wizards skill level.
Spell Script Manual
Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, you gain a second, separate spell book from your regular spell book that includes all the spells you know how to engrave. When you choose this school, you can choose 2 cantrips and 1 spell (of level 1 or 2) to copy into your script mannuel for free. These must be spells you have in your wizards book. For every wizard spell level you gain after 3, you may add 1 spell of a level you have spell slots for, regardless of whether or not you can use this spell in your regular spell book. However, unlike your regular spellbook, you cannot change this book with every level. At wizard levels 7, 13, and 19 you may add another cantrip, to a total of 5 cantrips. You may also come across instructions for spell script in stores or loot. You may learn to write spells from other classes if you find the instructions, but you must use wizard spells for your free spell per level.
Paper Spells
Starting at the 2nd level, you learn how to write spells using Script Ink (5 GP per 5 oz. bottle) and blank parchment or vellum.
You may spend 0.5 hours copying a cantrip from your Script Manual onto a blank piece of parchment. A first level spell requires 1 hour to copy, 2nd level takes 2 hours, and so on. The spell will remain in the scroll unless destroyed or wet. Anyone holding the scroll may activate the spell instantly by ripping or burning the scroll. The scroll is consumed in the process.
The ink cost for write a spell is as follows
Cantrip- 0.25 oz.
1st Level- 0.5 oz.
2nd Level- 1 oz.
3rd Level- 1.25 oz.
4th Level- 1.5 oz.
5th Level- 2 oz.
6th Level- 3 oz.
7th Level- 4 oz.
8th Level- 5 oz.
9th Level - 6 oz.
Rune Stones
Starting at the 6th level you gain the ability to carve runes and spells from your script manual into gemstones or wood. You need either woodcarvers or jewelers tools, depending on what you are carving. Rune carving does not require ink, but stones or pieces of wood. Anyone in contact with the rune stone can activate the spell as a bonus action with the command word, chosen by the enchanter. You or a crafter may craft an enchanted medium into jewelry. You can write spells at a higher level, up to your spell slot maximum. The amount of charges of the spell and the time it takes depends on the price of the stone or wood. The amount of charges a spell consumed depends on the level. When all the charges have been depleted, the stone loses all magic, and may be enchanted again.
Charges Consumed
Cantrip- 1 Charge
1st- 2 Charges
2nd- 3 Charges
And so on
Gemstones
10 GP- 1d4 +2 charges, 2 hours to carve
50 GP- 1d6 + 2 charges, 3 hours to carve
100 GP- 1d8 + 2 charges, 4 hours to carve
500 GP- 1d10 + 2 charges, 6 hours to carve
1000 GP- 1d12 + 2 charges, 10 hours to carve
5000 GP- 1d20 + 2 charges, 12 hours to carve
Wood
1 GP- 1 charge, 0.5 hours to carve
5GP- 1d4 charges, 1 hour to carve
10 GP- 1d4+1 charges, 1.5 hours to carve
15 GP- 1d4+2 charges, 2 hours to carve
50 GP- 1d6 charges, 3 hours to carve
100 GP- 1d6+2 charges, 3.5 hours to carve
Distance Activation
Starting at the 10th level, you can activate rune stones or scripts that you have made at a distance equal to your intelligence modifier x10, including modifiers from magic items worn. All effects of the rune occur instantly and in the direct vicinity of the stone. Spells with an area effect will have that effect occur originating from the rune's location. The caster can chose the direction of the area of effect for cone and line areas. Spells that designate a target simply explode the effect in a 5ft radius of the stone, affecting up to 3 targets in that radius. You may throw the stone or script, range 20/60. Make a ranged attack roll if you wish to throw the stone or script. You may also drop or place them to activate later.
Item Enchantment
Starting at the 14th level you can carve runes from your script manual into any item. Items can be enchanted to carry up to 12 spell slots worth of spells, but cannot be enchanted in the same day. You must wait 1 day before enchanting the same item again. 2 cantrips can be enchanted per day, which will take up 1 slot in the item. A 9th level spell will take up 9 slots it the item's storage. You may enchant a deck of cards, but each card can only hold one spell, regardless of level.
The item gains 1d20 + Int. Modifier charges upon first enchantment. With every additional enchantment, you have the chance to change the charges on the item. Roll 1d20. If you roll 18 or higher, you may reroll the charges, 1d20+ Int. Modifier, and it will only apply if the charges are higher. If your roll was 4 or under, you must reroll 1d20+ Int. Modifier and take a lesser number of charges.
1d8 charges can be recovered daily at dawn. Your runestones will now also recover 1d8 charges at dawn. When an item reaches 0 charges, roll a 1d20. At rolls 2-5, the item looses the highest level spell enchanted on it. It the item has multiple spells of that level, the DM selects which spell is lost. At a roll of 1, the item looses all magical properties and cannot be enchanted again.
Time spent to enchant the item follows the spell scroll time chart, and the charges a spell consumed follows the charge chart on the runestones chart.
For Rune Stones and upwards, there's no difference in cost regardless of the level of the spell you're imbuing. Getting X charges of a 9th level spell is just as easy as X charges of a 1st level spell. I think especially with higher spells this could be a major problem. For 10GP and 2 hours you can get up to 6 uses of a 9th level spell. There's no restriction on casting these either, so you could be casting 6 9th level spells in one day - or even in one encounter! - when normally you'd just get 1 per day. If you take 5000GP and 12 hours, you're potentially casting 22 9th level spells in one day. If that doesn't sound game-breakingly powerful, then I don't know what does.
Add to this the fact that anyone can activate the runes, and you could spend a few days of downtime (and admittedly a fair amount of GP) carving, and you've kitted the entire party out as powerful casters, who can cast without VSM components, while holding other items. This doesn't just make one player OP, this has the potential to make the entire party way OP.
I think you should at the very least restrict the maximum level of a spell that can be stored in a rune - perhaps 5th level. I'd also recommend you lower the number of charges quite a bit - instead of going d4, d6, d8, etc, maybe just go 1, 2, 3, etc. I'd also suggest that maybe creating a rune expends a spell slot of the relevant level, as well as requiring any material components with a cost. But this still seems like it could end up pretty OP.
Actually, here's a suggestion that might fix it a bit: creating a rune "occupies" a spell slot until all charges have been expended. This way you can never have more runes than you would have spell slots, restricting the possibility of downtime abuse. I'd still say you should reduce the amount of charges you can get in each case, but with this system you might not need to restrict it to 5th level and below (though it might still be a good idea).
I'd also suggest that when you first get Rune Stones, they're only usable by you, and then at a later level other people can use them. Or perhaps require that, to use a rune stone, a character must be able to cast spells of that level.
For Item Enchantment and Building and Item Imbuing, these abilities are nice follow-ons from the original rune stone abilities. They make sense flavour-wise, and I think if you fix the balance on rune stones, then these won't be OP either. My one worry is that they might be a little boring, because they're such an obvious next step. Perhaps swap out the 10th level ability to something a little different and less obvious, and then keep the 14th level ability the same (which will also let them carve runes into weapons and armour at the same time). This also means that you can rename the level 14 one to Item Enchantment, which is good because the current name is a bit rubbish.
Another point: arcane traditions don't normally get an extra feature at level 20. But that's ok, because I think you can safely strip that feature out completely - halving the time to inscribe runes is a power boost to an already-OP subclass, and like I say above I think you should lower the number of charges so the player isn't rolling, which means "advantage on charge rolls" doesn't make sense any more.
Paper Spells doesn't seem too bad - the scrolls are single-use, so they don't get overpowered in the same way and it's fine for non-casters to use them. Maybe there should be some cap on the number of scrolls you can create, to prevent a player from stockpiling and then nova-ing in a ridiculous way. I'm not sure what the appropriate cap would be though - probably something that increases as you level up? Is 5+INT scrolls too restrictive?
Overall, it's a cool concept, and this is a good start at defining it, but you need to bring the power level WAY down before it's anywhere near balanced. And I hope you do that, because with a bit of editing I think it would be a really nice subclass option.
Thank you for the suggestions! I will be sure to moderate. My insurance on the really high spell level point was that the wizard can only scribe for spell levels that they have slots for, but you do have a point that 22 charges for a 9th level spell is a bit much! But I'll go through and work on moderating. I DO want to give them the ability to use 9th level spells, but I'll definitely lower it all down.
Idea to bounce off on you: Keep the base charges for the stones, but set it so that cantrips use 1 charge, 1st level spells use 2, and so on? Make higher levels spells more expensive charge wise? That way a 10GP stone cant even hold a 9th level spell. You'll need a 500GP stone at minimum, and it will hold 1 charge. I also want to make charges capable of replenishing at dawn, giving the wizard the ability to create actual magical items. Should I allow these stones to recharge, or just the magic items?
I want to keep the weapon/armor enchanting option open at level 10, but I'll try to come up with something new. Reason being, when I introduced this story-wise, just trying to do something cool for the starting town, I had a set up where the college wizards would enchant the parties crappy weapons, and all the buildings had runes carved into the pillars and floors. So I want to make these options available to the players. They are already planning how they want to enchant their boat and their fortress when they get it. Also, I play a custom world where magic is absolutely everywhere. All the players in my party either get magic items or magic abilities right out the gate, and it's been working well for us.
Hi, sorry it's taken me a little while to get back to this.
I think the changes you've made are a massive step in the right direction. Making higher level spells consume more charges is an excellent way to balance them against lower level ones. I think it's now at the point where you'd need to do playtesting to be certain about the balance level, but to me it seems like it's probably not OP any more.
The new 10th level feature is good. It's different to the rest and provides a little more utility, but without seeming OP. The one thing I'm not sure about is that spells with a single target can suddenly target up to 5 characters, but maybe that's not an issue. If it did prove to be a problem, you could change it to "Spells that designate a single target affect one creature of your choice within 5 feet of the stone." Another thing that might be helpful is specifying how you can throw it, seeing as that's probably going to be the main way you'll get these stones near to enemies but far from you. I'd suggest treating them as a thrown weapon with range 20/60, dealing 0 damage; on a successful attack roll it lands in the square you targeted, on a fail it lands 10 feet away in a square of the DM's choice. You also haven't specified what it takes to activate them, action-wise. You could say that it takes an action, but I think you could make it a bonus action to fit with a strategy of throw and activate in one turn.
The Item Enchantment looks mainly good, though I think portions of them are overcomplicated. I think it might be enough to just make the player wait a single day between enchantments, regardless of spell level. Waiting [spell level] days to enchant again does make higher level spells cost more, but I'm not sure it's necessary, and it seems like it would add extra faff to keeping track. I could be wrong though. The rules for increasing the number of charges also seems overly complicated. I get that you're trying to avoid making it too easy for a player to end up with maximum charges. Idk, maybe it's fine as is.
I think that items regaining charges is a good choice, and I think the way you've done it is good. But I'm not sure that the rune stones should be regaining charges, they seem much more like a "consumable"-ish item to me. I'm not saying that they should disappear at 0 charges, just revert to the unenchanted gemstone/wood, even after level 14.
As I said before, I think the level 20 feature Script Savant is unnecessary. Arcane Traditions don't normally get a feature at level 20, and I think the power level is fine without it.
No prob! If left me plenty of time to edit. Thanks again for your feedback, this was my first attempt at a homebrew subclass. I'm going to leave everything in place for now, since it will be a long while before I can play test this. The player who wanted it only just got to level 2 wizard (he multiclassed when he decided he wanted to do this), so it'll be a while before I can test the level 17 enchantments.
Also, thanks for the throwing suggestion, I'll definitely use that. I was thinking more on the lines of traps than projectiles. I have now given my characters access to magic grenades. What have I done?
If anyone decides to play this, let me know how it goes! I'd love the info.
I made up a village where the wizards there specialized in a form of magic called scriptomancy. It was just intended to be something cool to pop up every now and then, but one of my players LOVED the idea and decided to follow it as his class option, to the point where he left his character at the school and made up another one to play with while his MAIN character was learning scryptomancy. That meant i had to come up with practical rules for something I never intended to be used.
If anyone decides to play this, please let me know! I'd love to hear how it goes, so I can change rules around as necessary.
Arcane Tradition
Scriptomancy is the study of written spells, using inks or engraves symbols imbued with magic to create magical effects. While they take longer to cast, they also last considerably longer than normal spells. Nearly any and every spell can be enchanted into writing, based on the Wizards skill level.
Spell Script Manual
Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, you gain a second, separate spell book from your regular spell book that includes all the spells you know how to engrave. When you choose this school, you can choose 2 cantrips and 1 spell (of level 1 or 2) to copy into your script mannuel for free. These must be spells you have in your wizards book. For every wizard spell level you gain after 3, you may add 1 spell of a level you have spell slots for, regardless of whether or not you can use this spell in your regular spell book. However, unlike your regular spellbook, you cannot change this book with every level. At wizard levels 7, 13, and 19 you may add another cantrip, to a total of 5 cantrips. You may also come across instructions for spell script in stores or loot. You may learn to write spells from other classes if you find the instructions, but you must use wizard spells for your free spell per level.
Paper Spells
Starting at the 2nd level, you learn how to write spells using Script Ink (5 GP per 5 oz. bottle) and blank parchment or vellum.
You may spend 0.5 hours copying a cantrip from your Script Manual onto a blank piece of parchment. A first level spell requires 1 hour to copy, 2nd level takes 2 hours, and so on. The spell will remain in the scroll unless destroyed or wet. Anyone holding the scroll may activate the spell instantly by ripping or burning the scroll. The scroll is consumed in the process.
The ink cost for write a spell is as follows
Rune Stones
Starting at the 6th level you gain the ability to carve runes and spells from your script manual into gemstones or wood. You need either woodcarvers or jewelers tools, depending on what you are carving. Rune carving does not require ink, but stones or pieces of wood. Anyone in contact with the rune stone can activate the spell as a bonus action with the command word, chosen by the enchanter. You or a crafter may craft an enchanted medium into jewelry. You can write spells at a higher level, up to your spell slot maximum. The amount of charges of the spell and the time it takes depends on the price of the stone or wood. The amount of charges a spell consumed depends on the level. When all the charges have been depleted, the stone loses all magic, and may be enchanted again.
Distance Activation
Starting at the 10th level, you can activate rune stones or scripts that you have made at a distance equal to your intelligence modifier x10, including modifiers from magic items worn. All effects of the rune occur instantly and in the direct vicinity of the stone. Spells with an area effect will have that effect occur originating from the rune's location. The caster can chose the direction of the area of effect for cone and line areas. Spells that designate a target simply explode the effect in a 5ft radius of the stone, affecting up to 3 targets in that radius. You may throw the stone or script, range 20/60. Make a ranged attack roll if you wish to throw the stone or script. You may also drop or place them to activate later.
Item Enchantment
Starting at the 14th level you can carve runes from your script manual into any item. Items can be enchanted to carry up to 12 spell slots worth of spells, but cannot be enchanted in the same day. You must wait 1 day before enchanting the same item again. 2 cantrips can be enchanted per day, which will take up 1 slot in the item. A 9th level spell will take up 9 slots it the item's storage. You may enchant a deck of cards, but each card can only hold one spell, regardless of level.
The item gains 1d20 + Int. Modifier charges upon first enchantment. With every additional enchantment, you have the chance to change the charges on the item. Roll 1d20. If you roll 18 or higher, you may reroll the charges, 1d20+ Int. Modifier, and it will only apply if the charges are higher. If your roll was 4 or under, you must reroll 1d20+ Int. Modifier and take a lesser number of charges.
1d8 charges can be recovered daily at dawn. Your runestones will now also recover 1d8 charges at dawn. When an item reaches 0 charges, roll a 1d20. At rolls 2-5, the item looses the highest level spell enchanted on it. It the item has multiple spells of that level, the DM selects which spell is lost. At a roll of 1, the item looses all magical properties and cannot be enchanted again.
Time spent to enchant the item follows the spell scroll time chart, and the charges a spell consumed follows the charge chart on the runestones chart.
this is really cool I would love to play this
I heard one time at band camp
I can see a few potential problems with this:
For Rune Stones and upwards, there's no difference in cost regardless of the level of the spell you're imbuing. Getting X charges of a 9th level spell is just as easy as X charges of a 1st level spell. I think especially with higher spells this could be a major problem. For 10GP and 2 hours you can get up to 6 uses of a 9th level spell. There's no restriction on casting these either, so you could be casting 6 9th level spells in one day - or even in one encounter! - when normally you'd just get 1 per day. If you take 5000GP and 12 hours, you're potentially casting 22 9th level spells in one day. If that doesn't sound game-breakingly powerful, then I don't know what does.
Add to this the fact that anyone can activate the runes, and you could spend a few days of downtime (and admittedly a fair amount of GP) carving, and you've kitted the entire party out as powerful casters, who can cast without VSM components, while holding other items. This doesn't just make one player OP, this has the potential to make the entire party way OP.
I think you should at the very least restrict the maximum level of a spell that can be stored in a rune - perhaps 5th level. I'd also recommend you lower the number of charges quite a bit - instead of going d4, d6, d8, etc, maybe just go 1, 2, 3, etc. I'd also suggest that maybe creating a rune expends a spell slot of the relevant level, as well as requiring any material components with a cost. But this still seems like it could end up pretty OP.
Actually, here's a suggestion that might fix it a bit: creating a rune "occupies" a spell slot until all charges have been expended. This way you can never have more runes than you would have spell slots, restricting the possibility of downtime abuse. I'd still say you should reduce the amount of charges you can get in each case, but with this system you might not need to restrict it to 5th level and below (though it might still be a good idea).
I'd also suggest that when you first get Rune Stones, they're only usable by you, and then at a later level other people can use them. Or perhaps require that, to use a rune stone, a character must be able to cast spells of that level.
For Item Enchantment and Building and Item Imbuing, these abilities are nice follow-ons from the original rune stone abilities. They make sense flavour-wise, and I think if you fix the balance on rune stones, then these won't be OP either. My one worry is that they might be a little boring, because they're such an obvious next step. Perhaps swap out the 10th level ability to something a little different and less obvious, and then keep the 14th level ability the same (which will also let them carve runes into weapons and armour at the same time). This also means that you can rename the level 14 one to Item Enchantment, which is good because the current name is a bit rubbish.
Another point: arcane traditions don't normally get an extra feature at level 20. But that's ok, because I think you can safely strip that feature out completely - halving the time to inscribe runes is a power boost to an already-OP subclass, and like I say above I think you should lower the number of charges so the player isn't rolling, which means "advantage on charge rolls" doesn't make sense any more.
Paper Spells doesn't seem too bad - the scrolls are single-use, so they don't get overpowered in the same way and it's fine for non-casters to use them. Maybe there should be some cap on the number of scrolls you can create, to prevent a player from stockpiling and then nova-ing in a ridiculous way. I'm not sure what the appropriate cap would be though - probably something that increases as you level up? Is 5+INT scrolls too restrictive?
Overall, it's a cool concept, and this is a good start at defining it, but you need to bring the power level WAY down before it's anywhere near balanced. And I hope you do that, because with a bit of editing I think it would be a really nice subclass option.
Thank you for the suggestions! I will be sure to moderate. My insurance on the really high spell level point was that the wizard can only scribe for spell levels that they have slots for, but you do have a point that 22 charges for a 9th level spell is a bit much! But I'll go through and work on moderating. I DO want to give them the ability to use 9th level spells, but I'll definitely lower it all down.
Idea to bounce off on you: Keep the base charges for the stones, but set it so that cantrips use 1 charge, 1st level spells use 2, and so on? Make higher levels spells more expensive charge wise? That way a 10GP stone cant even hold a 9th level spell. You'll need a 500GP stone at minimum, and it will hold 1 charge. I also want to make charges capable of replenishing at dawn, giving the wizard the ability to create actual magical items. Should I allow these stones to recharge, or just the magic items?
I want to keep the weapon/armor enchanting option open at level 10, but I'll try to come up with something new. Reason being, when I introduced this story-wise, just trying to do something cool for the starting town, I had a set up where the college wizards would enchant the parties crappy weapons, and all the buildings had runes carved into the pillars and floors. So I want to make these options available to the players. They are already planning how they want to enchant their boat and their fortress when they get it. Also, I play a custom world where magic is absolutely everywhere. All the players in my party either get magic items or magic abilities right out the gate, and it's been working well for us.
Edited the set up. Let me know what you think!
Hi, sorry it's taken me a little while to get back to this.
I think the changes you've made are a massive step in the right direction. Making higher level spells consume more charges is an excellent way to balance them against lower level ones. I think it's now at the point where you'd need to do playtesting to be certain about the balance level, but to me it seems like it's probably not OP any more.
The new 10th level feature is good. It's different to the rest and provides a little more utility, but without seeming OP. The one thing I'm not sure about is that spells with a single target can suddenly target up to 5 characters, but maybe that's not an issue. If it did prove to be a problem, you could change it to "Spells that designate a single target affect one creature of your choice within 5 feet of the stone." Another thing that might be helpful is specifying how you can throw it, seeing as that's probably going to be the main way you'll get these stones near to enemies but far from you. I'd suggest treating them as a thrown weapon with range 20/60, dealing 0 damage; on a successful attack roll it lands in the square you targeted, on a fail it lands 10 feet away in a square of the DM's choice. You also haven't specified what it takes to activate them, action-wise. You could say that it takes an action, but I think you could make it a bonus action to fit with a strategy of throw and activate in one turn.
The Item Enchantment looks mainly good, though I think portions of them are overcomplicated. I think it might be enough to just make the player wait a single day between enchantments, regardless of spell level. Waiting [spell level] days to enchant again does make higher level spells cost more, but I'm not sure it's necessary, and it seems like it would add extra faff to keeping track. I could be wrong though. The rules for increasing the number of charges also seems overly complicated. I get that you're trying to avoid making it too easy for a player to end up with maximum charges. Idk, maybe it's fine as is.
I think that items regaining charges is a good choice, and I think the way you've done it is good. But I'm not sure that the rune stones should be regaining charges, they seem much more like a "consumable"-ish item to me. I'm not saying that they should disappear at 0 charges, just revert to the unenchanted gemstone/wood, even after level 14.
As I said before, I think the level 20 feature Script Savant is unnecessary. Arcane Traditions don't normally get a feature at level 20, and I think the power level is fine without it.
No prob! If left me plenty of time to edit. Thanks again for your feedback, this was my first attempt at a homebrew subclass. I'm going to leave everything in place for now, since it will be a long while before I can play test this. The player who wanted it only just got to level 2 wizard (he multiclassed when he decided he wanted to do this), so it'll be a while before I can test the level 17 enchantments.
Also, thanks for the throwing suggestion, I'll definitely use that. I was thinking more on the lines of traps than projectiles. I have now given my characters access to magic grenades. What have I done?
If anyone decides to play this, let me know how it goes! I'd love the info.
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