So I am playing in two campaigns at the moment. In the first I play a wizard and in the second I play a Tome Lock. Why does no other player seem to ever pick Arcana as a proficiency? Grouped up with bards, druids, clerics, paladins and artificers and have not been able to get a spell scroll made up. I'm fully at the DM's whim for random drops since there are no magic shops in the campaigns.
I guess we need to make fewer, in the dark, session zeros.
I get a paladin without Arcana but shouldn't full casters consider it?
Any suggestions to make a certain proficiency more appealing?
If you are a Artificers, Clerics, and Wizards should definitely take Arcana. If they don't that's really odd.
Bards and Druids could go either way (A bard may care more about the music, a Druid more about the nature). It's only a little odd.
Paladins, Rangers, Eldritch Fighters, Arcane Tricksters, Sorcerer, and Warlocks are less likely to take it. They either care less about magic or get their magic without training/knowledge.
The easiest way to make Arcana more valuable to the players without major changes is to limit their knowledge of magical game concepts without having proficiency.
If you have proficiency in Arcana, you know the spells in your class. If you don't you do not even know the real names of your own spells. You can give them a a free arcana check, DC = 10 + effect level to know anything more than what is visible or what it feels like. Just say something hits you, or it burns (for acid or fire), etc.
No names for magic items etc. without making that same Arcana Check. Can't ask for +1 Leather or Elven Chain unless you make an arcana check or have heard of it before. Instead all you can do is ask for "Magic" Leather.
This is all DM dependent, you can't make your DM do this. But you can suggest it.
Most likely because most DMs don't give "days off" to the PCs. Sure, there's downtime, but even that is hit or miss. 1 full day of scribing for a 1st level spell, 3 days for 2nd, etc is not something that DMs typically give a single player out of the party, because of the other players. Sure, arcana has other uses, but it's definitely situational from game to game. If you never got the time to scribe a scroll, taking arcana is a waste. (If you took it for that reason)
I agree Sigvard, the DM's screw players on Days off. When they do give them, they give them with pre-planned days off. As in "You take a month to train".
I object and say "My training takes a month and 5 days" He says "no, it takes a month" and I say "The other party members do NOT know that, I tell them I will be ready on X day". and he gets all pushy about it.
I find that days off are one of the key differences between an "adventure" and a "campaign". Both can last a long time IRL, but campaigns are the multi-year spanning games that include lots of downtime for crafting, training, stronghold building, etc. Adventures are the "you've got a month to kill the BBEG, no time for all that" type games. And yes, DMs can be pretty bad about it if they never intended to include those things, coming up with every excuse to not let it happen.
Sorry to clarify I have asked the prepared casters if they could make a scroll so I can put the spell in my spellbook but they never seem to have the required Arcana skill.
Sorry to clarify I have asked the prepared casters if they could make a scroll so I can put the spell in my spellbook but they never seem to have the required Arcana skill.
Was using the crafting as a big reason of why they might not have taken it. If I were to create a wizard, one of the first questions I would ask the DM is "Will I regularly get anywhere from 1 day to multiple workweeks of downtime to create scrolls in this campaign?" To which the typical answer is "No." If that's the case, I am way less likely to take Arcana even as a Wizard. Because to your point, creating scrolls is desirable, but very limited in that the DM has to give days off to the wizard to make them.
LOL. My cleric is a complete bookworm with Sage background and Researcher. I have proficiency in Arcana, History, Medicine, Nature and Religion. My bonus in WIS and INT makes me better than average in all skills for those attributes. Needless to say, melee and stealth can be disastrously bad for me. I told my DM I was going to be a healing and support caster cleric and he couldn't believe I put 8s for DEX and STR.
I think it's important to note that you don't necessarily need "Downtime" to craft spellscrolls. 1st level scrolls take a day to make and typically travel is 2-7 days depending on the distance the DM scrambled to make up. The rules only require 8 hours a day to make the spellscrolls and if your party does a typical travel of 8 hours and long rests for another 8 hours, you have 8 hours of downtime.
It needn't be a continuous activity, either. That means that if it's a 10 day journey up, it's 20 days round trip. You can craft a spellscroll up to 3rd level by that point.
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So I am playing in two campaigns at the moment. In the first I play a wizard and in the second I play a Tome Lock. Why does no other player seem to ever pick Arcana as a proficiency? Grouped up with bards, druids, clerics, paladins and artificers and have not been able to get a spell scroll made up. I'm fully at the DM's whim for random drops since there are no magic shops in the campaigns.
I guess we need to make fewer, in the dark, session zeros.
I get a paladin without Arcana but shouldn't full casters consider it?
Any suggestions to make a certain proficiency more appealing?
If you are a Artificers, Clerics, and Wizards should definitely take Arcana. If they don't that's really odd.
Bards and Druids could go either way (A bard may care more about the music, a Druid more about the nature). It's only a little odd.
Paladins, Rangers, Eldritch Fighters, Arcane Tricksters, Sorcerer, and Warlocks are less likely to take it. They either care less about magic or get their magic without training/knowledge.
The easiest way to make Arcana more valuable to the players without major changes is to limit their knowledge of magical game concepts without having proficiency.
If you have proficiency in Arcana, you know the spells in your class. If you don't you do not even know the real names of your own spells. You can give them a a free arcana check, DC = 10 + effect level to know anything more than what is visible or what it feels like. Just say something hits you, or it burns (for acid or fire), etc.
No names for magic items etc. without making that same Arcana Check. Can't ask for +1 Leather or Elven Chain unless you make an arcana check or have heard of it before. Instead all you can do is ask for "Magic" Leather.
This is all DM dependent, you can't make your DM do this. But you can suggest it.
Most likely because most DMs don't give "days off" to the PCs. Sure, there's downtime, but even that is hit or miss. 1 full day of scribing for a 1st level spell, 3 days for 2nd, etc is not something that DMs typically give a single player out of the party, because of the other players. Sure, arcana has other uses, but it's definitely situational from game to game. If you never got the time to scribe a scroll, taking arcana is a waste. (If you took it for that reason)
I agree Sigvard, the DM's screw players on Days off. When they do give them, they give them with pre-planned days off. As in "You take a month to train".
I object and say "My training takes a month and 5 days" He says "no, it takes a month" and I say "The other party members do NOT know that, I tell them I will be ready on X day". and he gets all pushy about it.
I find that days off are one of the key differences between an "adventure" and a "campaign". Both can last a long time IRL, but campaigns are the multi-year spanning games that include lots of downtime for crafting, training, stronghold building, etc. Adventures are the "you've got a month to kill the BBEG, no time for all that" type games. And yes, DMs can be pretty bad about it if they never intended to include those things, coming up with every excuse to not let it happen.
Sorry to clarify I have asked the prepared casters if they could make a scroll so I can put the spell in my spellbook but they never seem to have the required Arcana skill.
Was using the crafting as a big reason of why they might not have taken it. If I were to create a wizard, one of the first questions I would ask the DM is "Will I regularly get anywhere from 1 day to multiple workweeks of downtime to create scrolls in this campaign?" To which the typical answer is "No." If that's the case, I am way less likely to take Arcana even as a Wizard. Because to your point, creating scrolls is desirable, but very limited in that the DM has to give days off to the wizard to make them.
LOL. My cleric is a complete bookworm with Sage background and Researcher. I have proficiency in Arcana, History, Medicine, Nature and Religion. My bonus in WIS and INT makes me better than average in all skills for those attributes. Needless to say, melee and stealth can be disastrously bad for me. I told my DM I was going to be a healing and support caster cleric and he couldn't believe I put 8s for DEX and STR.
I think it's important to note that you don't necessarily need "Downtime" to craft spellscrolls. 1st level scrolls take a day to make and typically travel is 2-7 days depending on the distance the DM scrambled to make up. The rules only require 8 hours a day to make the spellscrolls and if your party does a typical travel of 8 hours and long rests for another 8 hours, you have 8 hours of downtime.
It needn't be a continuous activity, either. That means that if it's a 10 day journey up, it's 20 days round trip. You can craft a spellscroll up to 3rd level by that point.