@TheEdVerse Are spellbooks just simple books with spells recorded in them and get carried around like any typical item, or do Wizards materialize them out of nothing at will?
— Xyn Raven (@XynRaven) March 14, 2019
1)
Neither. As in, they aren’t simple, at all. Depending on the edition of the game and the DM’s decisions, they may need special paper or equivalent writing surface (e.g. beaten metal pages; see my Pages From The Mages DRAGON articles or 2e sourcebook of the same…#Realmslore 2)
…name for examples), and the spells must be written with special inks, varying from spell to spell, that require as ingredients some rare and difficult/dangerous to obtain substances (e.g. wyvern's blood, cockatrice feathers, illithid brain ichor, beholder eye…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 14, 2019
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…fluid), just to “contain” the power of the spell’s enchantment (a written spell usually consists of a written incantation, a written-out process for how to intone it and the process of gesturing and focusing the mind and using any material components, plus…#Realmslore 4)
…glyphs on the page that store essential spell triggering energies). Or the DM may decide to dispense with this level of detail, though it alone can make for a great one-player-one-DM "solo arcane spellcaster PC" campaign (the adventuring for acquiring all of…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 14, 2019
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…these necessities).
But in any case, a spellbook is a literal book carried around. There are spells that allow a spellbook to be held extra-dimensionally and whisked to the caster upon command, and rare beings have managed spells to “hold a spellbook in their…#Realmslore 6)
…heads, BUT these spells are inherently unstable, and risk damage to the book and the caster's mind (which has its mental limits; see my Realms novel SHADOWS OF DOOM for an example of someone powerful trying to cope with being overloaded), loss of the book, …#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 14, 2019
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…and inability to retrieve the book when needed.
In addition to all of this, many spellbooks are encrypted; that is, written in a shorthand code understandable only to those “in the know.” A few even have pitfalls (mistakes) built in to mislead the unwary who…#Realmslore 8)
…try to cast or memorize a spell from the book, trusting it, if they don't know about these traps. Meaning the spell fails when cast, or has an unintended and unforeseen magical effect.
So a spellbook, to an arcane spellcaster, is the greatest treasure.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 14, 2019
Didn’t make sense to me why spellbooks would need any special components instead of regular paper & ink ’til you said spell energies, ‘cuz from my research, I thought the memorization process of spells was just memorizing the incantation, gestures & (if any) material components You are correct, but in some earlier editions of D&D the special spell ink formulae and similar lore were official (see Volo's Guide To All Things Magical and a few tome writeups in Pages From The Mages). So they're firmly and deeply embedded in Realmslore.
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 15, 2019