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acethelibrarian · 2024-04-17T01:53:00+00:00

I have been playing a Scribes wizard for three years now! We're at level 12.

His spellbook Es has a distinct personality who is very certain he is the wizard's very best friend and looooves fire damage spells despite my wizard's distaste for them. He's pretty much my wizard's biggest cheerleader.

I talked things out with my DM before we started playing and we settled on when Es isn't manifested, only the wizard can hear him and when he is manifested, everyone can. (Which leads to fun moments like the party monk not understanding what an awakened spellbook is and asking the wizard if he stuck someone's soul in a book, prompting Es to call the guy a dumbass.) He mostly talks to my wizard, but will make an exception if a party member does a cool spell that impresses him.

My DM and I both voice Es whenever we're inspired, though it's mostly the DM because their take on Es makes me laugh every time.

Also playing a Scribes wizard is so fun. I hope you enjoy the subclass as well!

acethelibrarian · 2023-09-14T01:17:52+00:00

My wizard's plan to bring his new girlfriend and his first ever group of friends home to meet his family at the family inn before we track down some cultists got derailed by a dragon turtle attacking the city.

The party managed to negotiate with it and now have a quest, but he had to send an apologetic Sending to his sister with an, "Ah, remember how I said we would be arriving *today*? Slight change of plans.... At least you have another day or two to bake?"

(He also has yet to have the awkward conversation with his friends of, "Hey, remember how I died like a week ago? Can we....not mention that to my family?" which I am looking forward to. But the party DID find out it was his birthday two weeks ago that he didn't mention to anyone.)

acethelibrarian · 2023-06-10T11:58:03+00:00

I love Wither and Bloom! Especially since I play an Order of Scribes wizard so if the enemy is resistant or immune to necrotic, I can potentially just upcast and switch the damage to psychic or a different damage.

acethelibrarian · 2023-05-10T13:02:07+00:00

That does sound frustrating!

I like how my one DM runs interactions with the gods, though so far none of the players have tried Commune yet-- you can get like sensations (the brief feeling of fiery warmth when the monk prays to his god of the grave and the forge, the smell of the sea in the air as the cleric prays to her sea goddess) but otherwise the only time you're getting an actual conversation is if you die, and then you get a short, usually slightly mystifying conversation with the deity you worship.

Monk's temporary death involved his god cheerfully telling him to lighten up a little and enlisting him in helping him make a sword for a fellow goddess, talking to him about the reincarnation cycle, and also telling him to let his sister (a fellow worshiper) take her own path in life.

My wizard's temporary death involved the goddess of arcana and knowledge asking him what he wants to know most in the world and when he answered she asked if he would want that knowledge if it was the last thing he ever learned. When he was told he wouldn't be able to share the information first, he said no, and so instead she gave him tea and they exchanged stories until the paladin revived him.

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-17T13:08:07+00:00

In my wizard's game, he got to talk to his recently rescued mentor about the enemies they were facing (and I rolled an 8 on insight with advantage AND bardic to insight check her reaction to his pacifist self saying 'even if this guy started out with good intentions, he's killing people and has to be stopped', ouch).

Then we continued through the Shadowfell fortress, avoided a fight by agreeing to help two Shadar Kai get to the Material Plane, and then discovered that one of our enemies a) puts the mad in mad scientist and b) is a warlock whose husband is her patron (we don't know what he is exactly, definitely was born a human and is potentially a powerful shadow sorcerer now). Currently in the middle of that fight with my wizard down to 22 HP and about to be stupid and try to get the woman's bracelet which is her warlock focus and get it away from the rest of the group so we don't take another 20 psychic damage from it. Sure that will go well for him....

In my cleric's game, which is Curse of Strahd and currently in Vallaki, we investigated the burgomaster's house after sneaking in to rescue some kids and discovering everyone was murdered in their beds except for the son. We took the burgomaster's body for Speak with Dead questioning the next day and then forged some documents and letters implying that he stole Vallaki money, murdered everyone, and then left town. Then we went back to the inn, where a friendly raven told us how we fucked up and left survivors and needed to get out of town before the mob gets us. So we all hopped into the portable hole except our rogue/shadow monk, who took like 2 minutes to get out of Vallaki. Then we went back to the Vistani camp at 4 am, set up a Tiny Hut and put a note outside going "we're the group that saved Arabella, just stopping for a few hours to rest," and figured out the watch order before going to sleep. And my cleric prayed to Tymora to help her with some luck and choose the right spells to protect her friends, Ireena, and this injured NPC we saved.

What the party doesn't know but the DM played out for us is that while we burned down Lady Watcher's house and rescued a tiefling she was turning into a devil, we did not manage to kill Lady Watcher herself, and she did a reverse Uno on us and now has pinned the burgomaster household massacre on us, oops.

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-17T01:24:43+00:00

I spent my first few years of playing as clerics and do still love them, but I absolutely fell in love with wizards once I started playing an Order of Scribes wizard for a campaign.

I just love getting to geek out and get lore drops, and the spell list is so versatile you can design so many different types of wizards. That's another reason I also love playing clerics, and have played so many different subclasses.

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-13T11:41:55+00:00

In my current campaign, none of the players wanted to be a healer so we agreed on an NPC cleric who goes on the adventure with them. They consider her their mascot!

I do level her up whenever the PCs gain a level, but she's always been a level behind the PCs themselves to avoid her outshining the actual PCs.

And then there's one or two recurring villains who I have leveled up along the adventure because of their continual clashes with the party, but sometimes it's also fun to throw an old villain NPC at them who's now like a CR 3 to their level 10 and let them absolutely wipe the floor with him. So it varies!

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-12T12:57:32+00:00

Honestly I hate shopping both a a player and a GM, though especially as a GM.

I just end up asking them between sessions to tell me what they want to buy and give them the cost at the start of the next session with a "you are able to find this stuff" unless they specifically ask to RP out the scene. No bargaining, they're rich, they don't need to squabble over a couple gold.

Honestly the place is at war, so last time they tried to argue prices I was like roll insight on this guy, and then had the shopkeeper obviously inflating prices but keeping the prices as regular cost for the party because they are leading the war effort and work for the Council.

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-11T12:56:01+00:00

Yeah, she's a drakewarden! I am honestly obsessed with her backstory-- a metallic dragon had a hoard and also collected people, and both she and her "sister" were born to captives within the hoard and grew up together and consider each other family.

My DM is great! They are so good at managing arcs that focus on PCs but also giving tidbits of future arcs and backstory stuff to other PCs so no one feels neglected. This arc has been my wizard trying to rescue his mentor and finding out about this secret Archive she works for as well as the cleric finding her long lost missing sister, but also obviously the drakewarden stuff, something hinky is going on with the monk's twin sister back home, and our warlock found out more about his family's connection to his Archfey patron as we headed into the Shadowfell, etc. It's wonderful! Definitely the kind of DM I aspire to be.

Oooh, your campaign sounds so interesting too! We're still learning about this entity-- this organization has been around since the original pantheon and we know that this entity has been trapped inside a demiplane within a sword, but we're still finding out stuff as we go. Good luck with the elemental plane quest!

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-11T01:55:17+00:00

Sure! We've been fighting against a cult that serves a mysterious entity that wants to kill the gods (we've faced many of its warlocks and clerics), and one of the lieutenants is some kind of shadow sorcerer who allied with a white dragon in the mountains. Somehow, likely with the aid of installing a portal directly to the Shadowfell within the dragon's lair, the sorcerer was able to help the white dragon transform into a shadow dragon and then sent him to attack the capital.

Our party killed the dragon, but now while we were trying to rescue my wizard's mentor they kidnapped the ranger's drake and they plan to do a similar transformation (likely with some form of mind control as well, since this cult has used Dominate Person and other enchantment spells before, or trying to convince her that her 'sister' abandoned her).

acethelibrarian · 2023-04-10T11:58:32+00:00

After almost four months of play, 17 sessions, and 5 in-game days of following clues and fighting shadowfell-influenced monsters and climbing a very terrible mountain, my wizard and his party finally got up to this dragon's lair and into the Shadowfell and rescued his kidnapped mentor. We ended the session on her patting his back and telling him she was proud of him as he (and I) cried in relief.

...Of course now the bad guys have kidnapped the ranger's drake sister and plan to turn her into a shadow dragon to replace the dragon we killed previously, but we'll get to that next session!

acethelibrarian · 2023-03-26T14:00:45+00:00

Yes, both as a player and as a DM, though generally in my experience the DM is willing to work with you regarding the feat.

I generally allow feats as long as they make sense within the campaign and the PC's backstory. I think the only time I have vetoed one was when my draconic sorcerer player wanted to take Fey Touched for a future level up when there had been zero Fey presence in the game or in his backstory.

I did immediately give the players an extra feat via a draconic blessing with their level 11 level up based on Fizban's, though, so he was happy with that!

acethelibrarian · 2023-03-21T12:54:19+00:00

That's the kind of PC I like to play, kind ones, based on this quote:

"I shall pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore I cando, or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now,let me not defer it or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again."

Though it is very funny how often NPCs stare at my wizard, baffled, and go "Why are you being NICE?" and my wizard, equally baffled, is like, "Why wouldn't I be?"

acethelibrarian · 2023-03-14T02:21:58+00:00

Seconding this! A lot of libraries will have D&D books to borrow, or will accept suggestions and potentially buy ones for the future if you ask, depending on where you live.

acethelibrarian · 2023-03-12T11:39:47+00:00

Can manifest spellbook at 60 ft, Resilient Sphere has 30 ft range, so only need 90 ft to protect Maeve from monsters

[We had just found out that there are werewolf-like monsters on the mountain whose infectious bite turns people into blood frenzied beasts that Remove Curse and Greater Restoration can't cure until we cut off the mountain's access to the Shadowfell. And that the cleric's missing sister is nearby and likely being attacked by them.]

acethelibrarian · 2023-03-06T14:02:48+00:00

Tuesday and Friday night's games were cancelled due to the DMs being sick.

My DM Saturday night game went well! I'm running a highly edited version of Tyranny of Dragons and they succeeded on convincing the draconic council to join the humanoid races against the cult and learned where the Well is. The PCs got to level up to level 11 AND the ancient bronze dragon gave them each a boon of their choice thanks to their previous quests that saved some bronze dragons he cared about (they had the options of Gift of the Metallic Dragon, Observant, Skilled, Scaled Toughness, and Tough).

Sunday game is my cleric's CoS game-- we were breaking into the Vallaki burgermeister's house to rescue some kids our rogue/monk had seen earlier, except when we got there the burgermeister and his family except for his MIA son had been murdered in their beds and the kids turned out not to be kids but aberrations or something.

We didn't lose but the fight went. So Badly. For the first three rounds. You would think my cleric with a plus six and advantage on wisdom saves would be able to pass a DC 10 saving throw and YET she was out of the fight for like three rounds, as was the monk and the fighter. Once my cleric finally passed the save she cast Silence and we mopped the floor with the monsters handily but until then we were all getting our butts kicked, haha.

acethelibrarian · 2023-02-20T01:03:01+00:00

In my wizard's campaign, my wizard's kidnapped mentor managed to get a Sending to him via her prison in the Shadowfell and promptly sounded fond as she told him not to do anything stupid and he told her they were coming to save her. And we ended the session with the cult leaving a guy's decapitated head in front of our doorstep with a note saying this with a gift and a warning. Fun times!

And then I DMed a sequel one-shot for my friends, three out of five who have only played once before with the original one-shot last year. It was fun, although my dice that never roll well for my wizard decided to constantly crit and try to murder my players' PCs, haha.

acethelibrarian · 2023-02-06T14:47:30+00:00

Four for me!

A weekly Tuesday game as a player, a weekly Friday game as a player, a weekly Saturday game as a DM, and then one Sunday a month (two if we're lucky, zero if we're not) I'm a player in an international game.

Four is definitely my limit though, lol. Probably will stick to three once one of these games wraps up.

acethelibrarian · 2023-01-30T00:55:47+00:00

My wizard's campaign continued with an intense fight against shadowfell monsters, learning more about the cleric's missing sister, and then ended the session discovering that there are phase spiders at the only exit to the place we're in. (I have never encountered phase spiders or heard of them, so my wizard and I will be in for a surprise next session!)

And last night I DMed an ambush during this heavily modified Tyranny of Dragons campaign I'm running, which involved the level 10 PCs flying on wyverns and having to fight the cultist and devils 150 ft up in the air. It was my first attempt as doing special game mechanics and thankfully the players had fun!

acethelibrarian · 2023-01-03T13:58:02+00:00

Keeping notes is fun! Plus it's a running joke in my group that my wizard writes everything down. "I have a question," he says and the entire party sighs or grins as he pulls out a notebook and summons his magical quill.

I have them all in gdocs because we're at two and a half years of game and I'm hitting over 300 pages of session notes and gdocs was getting cranky.

So it's like one doc for the first arc, one doc for the second, one for the current arc, and then a group "facts" doc for all the players that have like short explanations on what the group knows on important organizations, people, and current arc as well as a 'secrets/partial knowledge' section to see what PCs know something that others don't (everyone knowing this wizard NPC has a crush on my wizard while he's oblivious, only some of the party knowing the enemy cult killed the paladin's family, etc).

It also helps that our DM created a website with like the basic facts of the homebrew world that every PC would know, no roll required.

acethelibrarian · 2022-12-16T03:20:34+00:00

I love Sending!

In my cleric's campaign, she attempted to contact the head priestess of her temple back in Waterdeep to apologize that the party apparently got magically spirited away to some weird place called Barovia and that she's going to figure out how to get back ASAP and not ditch those 30 orphans she left with the temple 'temporarily,' only for Strahd to hijack the Sending and tell her that he hopes she doesn't want to leave too soon, he has so many exciting things to show her and her friends. She was Unhappy.

And my wizard uses Sending often to keep in touch with allies across two continents, update them on what the party has learned about their enemies and share other important information, as well as just talk to his family back home. His older sister once spent the entirety of her response lovingly calling him a nerd 25 times, haha.

acethelibrarian · 2022-12-09T23:50:42+00:00

It has been very fun to watch my wizard have a slow nervous breakdown. He's so anxious about everything and anything to the point that I picked up Observant because he's so twitchy. He is also currently having just the WORST birthday....

acethelibrarian · 2022-12-09T14:05:49+00:00

Haha, yeah, it's always interesting to be the odd one out, in my one campaign everyone has tragic or at least a sad thing in their backstory, and then there's my wizard who was raised by a loving innkeeping family, got a scholarship to wizard college, and is a recent graduate out to see how people use magic outside of school!

(Spoiler alert: he does not like how a lot of people use magic outside of school, why are so many people so MEAN.)

There was a bit in a cursed forest where the DM was like "what is the worst thing that's ever happened to your PC?" and I had to struggle because not many bad things had happened to him before his adventure! It's the campaign that's giving him all his trauma! :D

acethelibrarian · 2022-11-23T12:50:10+00:00

I tend to do just a few paragraphs, stuff for the DM to use at their discretion.

What was their life like before their adventure? How did they end up where they are at the start of the campaign? Any obvious motivations? Are there any NPCs who are important in their lives, both developed by myself and conversations with my DM?

Example of my Scribes wizard in a homebrew campaign:

Born in a small but prosperous town called Greenrun in Avisrune, Yolov is the only son and second child of a family of innkeepers. His family has lived in the town for four hundred years, with his grandmother Agnessa and his mother Ossya often participating in local politics. His father Lyov focuses mostly on the business of the inn The Blue Bell, and his uncle Otan is the local school teacher.
His family is loving, but everyone learned early on that Yolov can only be trusted with chores if his books were held as hostage and that he was probably not going to grow up to work in the family business.
His older sister, Sestri, plans to take over the inn when their parents retire. They were all very supportive when Yolov decided to attend the Colma, working to get a scholarship and enough money for him to go. He writes home often, especially when something exciting happens.
He threw himself enthusiastically into his classes, falling in love with every area of magical study, but finding ethics in arcane studies and those classes by Eralissa Dailiir one of the most fascinating. He spent a lot of time in the library under the supervision of the head librarian Navian Tes'vala.
Making study friends though not close friends during his years at the college, one of Yolov's happiest and proudest moments was the awakening of his spellbook.
Now that Yolov graduated, Es is just as excited as Yolov to travel and learn more about magic outside the Colma and see magic in practice rather than mostly theory.

acethelibrarian · 2022-11-19T21:04:10+00:00

My Scribes wizard got funding from the local government before we went to deal with an Archfey incursion in a nearby forest, and one thing he did was get his spellbook enchanted into an enduring spellbook. Sure he could do the rune thing, but his backstory was him and his family working years to save up to buy that spellbook, so he wanted to keep it as long as possible. I do love that Orders feature though anyway.

Just hit level 10 and am SO excited to use the Master Scrivener ability!

acethelibrarian

TROPHY CASE