So once upon a time, Adam Koebel posted a suggested move for making castable #Wizard #scrolls that triggered like this:
When you imbue a special scroll with one of your prepared spells spend 1 XP and roll +INT. On a 10+ choose one, on a 7–9 choose two:
* Only you can release the magic from the scroll.
…
This seems like awesome thing that I want my Wizard to do, but instinctively I want it to be something that takes hours to do, concentrating intensely in solitude at a worktable in my Tower. *That* means that it is most likely to be played during the downtime between adventures, or at least between scenes. Given that, two of the proposed consequences from the original move don’t feel right: forgetting the memorized spell is no penalty, because there’s lots of time to Prepare Spells again, and taking –1 forward doesn’t make that much sense when you’re not in the middle of things.
It feels a lot to me like the consequences of partial success here should affect the quality of the scroll, not the current state of the Wizard. So, this is what I’ve got:
When you imbue a special scroll with one of your prepared spells spend 1 XP, 20 coins of ink and vellum per spell level, and roll +INT. On a 10+ choose one, on a 7–9 choose two:
* Only you can release the magic from the scroll.
* Poor penmanship: take –1 whenever casting from it.
* Spilled the ink: spend an extra 50 coins on ink and vellum.
* Misspelled a word: there’ll be an unexpected side effect when cast (DM says what).
So I can see this working out, but the options seem a little dry. Anyone have better ideas?
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The cost in coins is somewhat superfluous alongside spending an XP, and coins aren’t exactly magical.
How about this:
* Only you can release the magic from the scroll.
* You use up an expensive reagent making the scroll, and cannot write any more scrolls until you resupply.
* You misspelled a word; there’ll be an unexpected side effect when cast (DM says what).
* It takes much longer than you expected to write the scroll.
Peter Johansen, that cost in coins is not superfluous in my current campaign, and would (for higher-level spells, anyway) be more limiting than the xp spend. But I like your phrasing of “use up an expensive reagent” better than mine.
Nice!