You are actually touching on something that I've written a few paragraphs on -- to myself! -- regarding the handling of scrolls. What I am considering (and this is not to say I'm going to do it!) is making all magician-based scrolls castable (is that a word?) by all magician-based classes. So, if a magician stumbles upon a flaming missile scroll, he can activate the scroll, but he can't actually learn the spell. In a similar vein, all clerical scrolls could be activated by all clerics and their subclasses -- even monks, who do not cast clerical spells. More radical, I am considering the idea of anyone being able to attempt to activate a clerical spell, with step-increasing chances of failure/backfire for non-clerical types. Now, please don't hold me to any of these ideas -- just some stuff I've chewed on in recent times.

From a literary standpoint, and for great S&S tone and spirit, imagine the effects of a common man acquiring a raise dead scroll to bring to life a lost lover. What I fear, however, is "gaming the game" attitude with PCs walking around with stacks of clerical scrolls for all occassions (a thief loded up with barskin spells, for example), but a decent chance of failure/backfiring could remedy this.

I don't think I would allow a shaman to copy a magician's spell book, Handy
 

I don't think extending scroll use is a bad thing; they're one-use items, the more powerful scrolls are still pretty rare (although I have to run some numbers on that one), so most players won't use them unless necessary anyway.

What is more, it won't make the casters less powerful either for only they can make new scrolls.

I don't think that on average, if non-casters were able to use scrolls, more scrolls would be actually used by the party, for scrolls either need to be found or made, the former being the same (i.e. the Treasure Type tables don't recognise the difference), the latter being pricey.

(But it brings up another issue I would like to address properly in a forum post, but I'm only gonna write that tomorrow 'cause I'm quite exhausted.)

Odysseus wrote:

I have noo problem with non-casters being able to use cleric scroll. As I see it, it's mostly a matter of faith and devotion so, if a laic find a scroll in tune with his belief, I'd think he has some chances to make it work.

To take it a step further, I'm not evern sure "faith and devotion" should matter all that much. The image of Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness is hanging in front of my mind's eye, "Klatu. Verata... Nummmmhummmmngh! Alright then, that's it!"

Which is to say I'd let anybody try something. Whether or not they succeed is a matter of debate.

Last edited by NAJones (7/19/2014 9:35 pm)

I guess I just don't see any real upside to weakening the class perogatives of the cleric (or any class, for that matter), and the downside of letting players choose from class abilities a la carte is already well known from editions that have tried it: endless min-maxing and the blandness of characters that eventually resemble one another in many ways.  Plus, to be perfectly honest, players trying to eat their cake and have it too really frosts my buns.  If you want to pick locks, play a thief.  Don't play a fighter and then try to convince me that he should be able to pick locks too.  Sorry, he can't.  I guess you'll just have to bash the door down.

If non-spellcasters are ultimately allowed to use spell scrolls, or if spellcasters are allowed to use the scrolls of other spellcasting classes, I strongly urge that this apply only to treasure scrolls dating from ancient times and not to scrolls the PCs create themselves.  Otherwise, I have little doubt that mid-level spellcasters will load the packs of their companions with scrolls, severely reducing the cachet of these items.  (Sort of the way every third level fighter and orc chieftain in 3rd edition seems to have "masterwork" weapons and armor.  I guess "master" work isn't quite what it used to be.)  If the rule only applies to scrolls found as treasure, the referee will be able to easily control "scroll proliferation".

Last edited by Blackadder23 (7/21/2014 8:20 am)