I’m going to be starting my first campaign with a sorcerous character soon, and I was wondering how you guys deal with characters gaining access to new spells. My thoughts were:
[ul]
[li]Allow players to buy “spell scrolls” in character burning for half cost. They have to learn the spell in play, which means they won’t have access to it right off the bat, but they will also be able to use an otherwise too expensive spell (especially with 3-4 LP characters).
[/li][li]As loot when defeating a powerful/significant sorcerous enemy (read: someone they have a belief about). It would be a spell they were using/would have used against the players. The spell or spells found are GM dictated
[/li][li]Let players make a graduated Research test when finding a library/tome of spells (advantage dice for a library as opposed to a book). Successes over the obstacle can be used to buy one or more spells (successes equal to the obstacle of the spell must be spent). GM can restrict the element/impetus of spells allowed (The Fear is not going to be in a tome of Fire magic, nor will Sparks be in a tome regarding the use of magic in court). Meeting the obstacle or getting 1 over the obstacle isn’t enough to buy a spell, so instead they find instructions to cast a spell they already know (or some insightful scribbled notes in the margins).
[/li][li]A Resources test. I would probably price the spell based on obstacle, but this will likely be much larger than the sorcerer’s Resources attribute. Help and linked Circles tests are a must! I don’t like this option as much – it feels like the easy way out. I want my players to go searching for lost libraries and defeat (or befriend) powerful wizards to gain new spells, not to buy them in their spare time.
[/li][/ul]
A while back, I burned up an illiterate witch for a game that never got off the ground, who had as a personal effect a spell book that she stole from her abusive aunt full of spells that she couldn’t read.
That campaign was still-born, so we never got to see how it would work in play, but the plan was that after my character had managed to teach herself to read, she could then make a series of research and symbology tests in order to locate and decipher spells for her to learn. Failure on either of these would mean that either the book didn’t have the spell she wanted, or only had a garbled version, or she couldn’t make heads or tails of it, or whatever other penalty the GM decided on.
Alternately, she could always go back to her aunt and try to get instruction from her, but that would be an adventure entirely in itself.
That was my original idea for the “character finds a tome/library” situation, but I nixed it in favor of the version above because it doesn’t mesh with Let it Ride in my mind. I feel like you should test once for reading the spellbook, not one test after another as you check “is this spell in the book? No? How about that one then?” I was also gunning for having a DoF roll after each test (maybe only after the first successful test) to make sure you can’t check every magical tome for every spell.
There are rules about learning new spells, which I fully intend to use as written (although I saw a thread about shortening the times required for first and second readings, and I might do that if months of downtime isn’t appropriate to the scenario), but BWG has nothing to say about acquiring “a written copy of the incantation” (obviously Circles would be used for finding an instructor). As I said before, Resources is the obvious answer here, but I don’t like it that much; I’d rather access to spells come up organically, as a reward for the players’ actions (finding a lost tome of knowledge makes for a good belief).
I have used beliefs about recovering researching lost spell books and rediscovering ancient spells from the previous empire.
I’ve also used wises and research to bring such things into being, circled up instructors, joined mages guilds in burning (gangs, & crews, reputation, property, workshop, and relationship).
There are lots of ways to do it if the game world is magic friendly, less if it is not.