Are the Mage Scribe spells too slow . . . 750 hours to copy the Bible?

[Agent 333]

Your word count's a little low on the ol' Bible, too. Try 750,000 words. Still, that's 750 minutes, or 12.5 hours. Still, that ain't shabby.

That's what he said . 100 pica, each pica being 7,500 words.

Yeah, math. Right. I thought that number seemed a bit small...

[LordKruelos]

My question is this -- how often would this happen outside of downtime anyway?

[Krensky]

Anytime the PCs need to copy something under a gun.

Espionage, stealing info from a secret library, coping it from a doomed temple, etc.

I can think of all sorts of situations where Mage Scribe I would get use outside of downtime.

[LordKruelos]

But to the extent measured in the tens of hours? It'll happen, but it probably isn't too much of a stretch to assume that it's going to move at the speed of plot more often than not.

[Sletchman]

But to the extent measured in the tens of hours? It'll happen, but it probably isn't too much of a stretch to assume that it's going to move at the speed of plot more often than not.

I can't think of any serious application that would take tens of hours.  At 1000 words per minute, 99% of the spells actual use* will take a minute, or less.  Military reports, troop deployments, maps, contracts, legal papers (such as release papers), and any of dozen of other things I can think of a use for having a copy of will all take about a minute.  If the GM rules that by saying 1000 words/minute it produces ~100 words per round - many of these will take a couple of rounds, not tens of hours.

If you want your character to invent Graphic Novels as a medium, that is surely a downtime action.  If you want to write a 1000 page memoir of your time as an adventuring wizard, that's a downtime action.  But even without magic you'd be doing this stuff away from adventures anyway, so that doesn't change.


*As in stuff that will take place during a real game session, as opposed to thought exercises taken to the extreme.  Does anyone seriously have a GM that makes them go and duplicate the entire Bible as an adventure?

[LordKruelos]

I can't think of any serious application that would take tens of hours.  At 1000 words per minute, 99% of the spells actual use* will take a minute, or less.  Military reports, troop deployments, maps, contracts, legal papers (such as release papers), and any of dozen of other things I can think of a use for having a copy of will all take about a minute. 

Right, that's basically my thought as well. Then again, I would have never have believed in a dramatic sewing scene before The Three Amigos.

[Bill Whitmore]

*As in stuff that will take place during a real game session, as opposed to thought exercises taken to the extreme.  Does anyone seriously have a GM that makes them go and duplicate the entire Bible as an adventure?

No, it wasn't originally scripted as part of the adventure, but that damn librarian wouldn't let me take the actual texts, so I had to make copies of anything I wanted to bring.  Luckily I happened to have time on my side, so several thousand books, a portable hole, thousands of Amanuensis spells and about a year and a half later, my copy of the library was complete and in my portable hole.  Thank god Faerun didn't have the RIAA equivalent for written texts!

[LordKruelos]

But if they did, think of the enforcement mechanism!

[Mister Andersen]

Would it be as awesome as the Dwarven Marriage Trek (now there's an old school reference for ya)

[LordKruelos]

Would it be as awesome as the Dwarven Marriage Trek (now there's an old school reference for ya)

I always kinda liked the metaphor of marriage as a death march...