Wizard: School of Scrivenation
Magic of the book—that’s what many spellcasters call wizardry. The name is apt, given how much time wizards spend poring over their spellbooks, penning theories about the nature of magic, and exploring the farthest recesses of libraries.
While every wizard values their spellbook, a wizard in the School of Scrivenation dedicates themself to magically awakening their book, turning it into a trusted companion.
Scrivener’s Quill
When you choose this tradition at 2nd level, you can magically create a quill in your free hand as a bonus action. The magic quill has the following properties:
Ethereal Ink. When you write with your Scrivener’s Quill, it produces ink in a color of your choice on any surface.
Specialty. Choose a school of magic. When you use your Scrivener’s Quill, the gold and time you must spend to copy a spell from that school into your spellbook are halved.
Pocket Full of Magic. When you attune to nonwearable magic items, you dismiss them into a pocket dimension and access their abilities through your Scrivener’s Quill.
Compliant Weapon. In a pinch, the Scrivener's Quill can also serve as a magical dagger or be commanded to grow into a magical quarerstaff as a bonus action.
Arcane Focus. You may use the Scrivener's Quill as an arcane focus for your wizard spells.
Your Scrivener’s Quill disappears if you create another one.
Enchanted Spellbook
Also at 2nd level as part of joining this tradition, you learn the wizard spells Find Familiar and Mind Sliver. If you already know these spells you learn another first level spell and a cantrip from the Wizard spell list. You always have Find Familiar prepared and it doesn't count against your number of prepared spells
When you can cast Mind Sliver on your spellbook, the pages of your spellbook come alive with an arcane sentience as a fragment of your mind is embedded in its pages. When you cast Find Familiar with this enchanted spellbook, the pages containing the spell leap from your spellbook and fold into the form of your familiar. You may choose this form and the material is determined by the material of your Spellbook Familiar from the Spellbook Material Options.
This creature is a construct and its game statistics can be seen in the the Spellbook Familiar stat block which uses your intelligence modifier and proficiency bonus (PB) in multiple places. In combat, this Familiar shares your initiative count. Your familiar acts independently of you, but it always obeys your commands. Some of it's actions require your action or bonus action to command. If the Spellbook Familiar drops to 0 hit points, it disappears and the Find Familiar spell reappears in your spellbook.
If you cast Mind Sliver on a new spellbook, your familiar’s consciousness is summoned into the new book along with all spells from your previous spellbook. If the previous book still exists, all the spells vanish from its pages.
Spellbook Familiar
Tiny Construct, Any Alignment
- Armor Class 12
- Hit Points 1 + your Intelligence modifier + your wizard level (the spellbook familiar has a number of Hit Dice [d4s] equal to your artificer level)
- Speed 30 ft., fly 30 ft.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 4 (-3) 15 (+2) 12 (+1) 10 (+0) 10 (+1) 7 (-2)
- Saving Throws Dex +2 plus PB
- Skills Perception +0 plus PB × 2, Stealth +2 plus PB
- Damage Vulnerabilities See Material Options
- Damage Immunities Poison, Psychic
- Condition Immunities Exhausted, Poisoned
- Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10 + (PB × 2)
- Languages understands the languages you speak
- Proficiency Bonus (PB) equal to your bonus
Easily Mended. The Spellbook Familiar regains 2d6 hit points if the mending spell is cast on it.
Constructed Resilience. As a construct, the Spellbook Familiar doesn't need to eat, drink, or breathe; it is immune to disease; and it doesn't need to sleep and magic can't put it to sleep.
Telepathic Bond. While your Spellbook Familiar is within 100 feet of you, you can communicate with it telepathically.
Actions
Share Senses. As an action, you can see through your Spellbook Familiar’s eyes and hear what it hears until the start of your next turn, gaining the benefits of any special senses that the familiar has. During this time, you are deaf and blind with regard to your own senses.
Psychic Shock. As a bonus action, you can command the Spellbook Familiar to rend the mind of an enemy. Ranged Weapon Attack: your spell attack modifier to hit, range 30 ft., one target it can see. Hit: 1d4 + PB psychic damage.
Familiar Strike. As a bonus action, you can command the Spellbook Familiar to tackle or slash at or bite an enemy. Melee Weapon Attack: its strength modifier plus PB to hit, one target within 5 ft.. Hit: 1d8 + Str bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage.
Reactions
Channel Magic. The Spellbook Familiar delivers a spell you cast that has a range of touch. The familiar must be within 100 feet of you.
Spellbook Material Options
Different spellbook materials gives the Spellbook Familiar a vulnerability, a boon (or 2 if it can't fly) and a bane. Here are the five most common Spellbook Material Options:
Paper Familiars
Most spellbooks are, well, books with pages made from paper that can easily fold into an origami creature. Other plant-based spellbooks, like cards and fabric, have similar effects.
Damage Vulnerability: Fire
Boon: Flyby. The flying speed of paper familiars increases to 60 ft. and doesn't provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of an enemy's reach.
Bane: Biodegradable. If a paper familiar is submerged in liquid, it loses its flying speed, its movement speed is halved, and it makes all ability checks with disadvantage until it is dried. It will dry naturally after one hour, but can be dried more quickly with certain cantrips.
Leather Familiars
Some wizards find the paper spellbooks too ephemeral so they carve their spells into scraps of leather or leather scrolls. These hides can magically assemble into a monsterous form.
Damage Vulnerability: Necrotic
Boon: Waterproof Armor. The heavy hide of leather familiars increases their Armor Class to 13 and protects them from water. They gain a swim speed of 30 ft.
Bane:Undead. As leather familiars are made from the hide of a formerly living thing, their creature type becomes undead rather than construct. The are healed by mending as normal, but they avoid holy places and magic.
Stone Familiars
Wizards who use stone or metal tablets as their spellbooks in particular may prefer carve the find familiar spell into a stone and awaken it into a large animal form.
Damage Vulnerability: Thunder
Boon: Powerful Build. Stone familiars' Strength and Dexterity become 15 and 4 respectively and they gain the ability to absorb stone over 1 minute to grow to a large stone creature with a speed of 50 ft. to serve as a mount.
Boon: Heavy Natural Armor. The thick stone construction of these familiars grants them an armor class of 15, but make it impossible for them to fly.
Bane: Dense. Stone familiars sink and, while in their mount form, they have disadvantage on stealth checks.
Ink Familiars
In the wizarding world, inkstained hands are a sign of a day well spent. For some, ink marked skin is preferable to other spellbooks and this ink can become an extension of their will.
Damage Vulnerability: Cold
Boon: Liquid Form. The body of ink familiars is amorphous so it can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing and hide with advantage.
Boon: Spider Climb. The liquid body of ink familiars make them incapable of flying, but excellent climbers. They can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.
Bane: Freezable. If ink familiars take cold damage, it partially freezes and has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of its next turn.
Spirit Familiars
There are spellcasters who eschew the traditional storage techniques who instead store spells within the minds of magical crystals or other technologies. These wizards prefer to manifest their familiars as an expression of a mage hand.
Damage Vulnerability. Radiant
Boon: Incorporeal Movement. Spirit Familiars can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. They lose their ability to walk, but double their fly speed to 60 ft as it hovers. They are undetectable and blind while inside of objects.
Bane: Ephemeral. Spirit familiars are only half real and thus have disadvantage on all checks to physically interact with objects and drop anything they carry if they are harmed.
Arcane Entanglement
When you reach 6th level, your connection with your Spellbook Familiar has become so powerful you can call on the mind within your spellbook to protect you and expand your power. You learn a psychic form of the 3rd-level cleric spell Spirit Guardians called Psychic Guardians. The modifed version of this spell requires its targets to make an intelligence saving throw or suffer psychic damage as described in the spell Spirit Guardians.
In addition, whenever you cast a wizard spell that doesn't require concentration, you can cast it from your familiar’s space, instead of your own, using its senses. You can do so a number of times equal to your intelligence modifier and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Psychic Guardians
3rd-level conjuration
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: Self (15-foot radius)
- Components: V, S, M
- Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
You call spectral pages to fly from your spellbook and fold themselves into tiny creatures that flit around you to a distance of 15 feet for the duration and protect you from harm. When you cast this spell, you can designate any number of creatures you can see to be unaffected by it. An affected creature’s speed is halved in the area, and when the creature enters the area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, it must make a Intelligence saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes 3d8 psychic damage. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 3rd.
Master of Letters
By 10th level, you can trace spells from your spellbook onto a spectral page with your Scrivener's Quill, creating a spectral spell scroll. This tracing takes a number of minutes equal to the spells level. You can make any number of spectral scrolls per day, however, the maximum total level of spells in these scrolls must be less than equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of 1). For example, if your Intelligence modifier is +3, you can take 3 minutes to make one third level scroll or 3 first level scrolls or a second level scroll and a first level scroll. This limit is reset at the end of a long rest as unread scrolls dissolve into silvery mist.
Once in the scroll, the spell’s power is enhanced, counting as one level higher than normal. You and any person whose name you write on the spectral scroll with your Scriviner’s Quill can cast the stored spell by reading the scroll as an action. The scroll is unintelligible to any other creature as though under the effects of the Illusory Script spell.
One with the Tome
When you reach 14th level, your soul becomes entwined with your Spellbook Familiar. When either you or your Spellbook Familiar drops to 0 hp, the other can choose, as a reaction, to take 1d6 damage as a reaction while the other regains an equal amount of hit points. Once you use this feature you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.
In addition, you can use an action to command your Spellbook Familar to unfold and surround you in arcane paper granting you one of the following benefits for 1 hour:
Paper Wings. You gain a fly speed of 60 ft. When this effect ends, you harmlessly fall as the wings disintegrate.
Paper Claws. You can make two melee spell attacks as an action dealing 1d8+Int. magical slashing per strike . You also have advantage on any climbing checks for the duration. You can also add your intelligence modifier to strength checks.
Paper Plate Armor. Your armor class increases by your intelligence modifier and gain resistance to force damage. While in this armor you have disadvantage on stealth checks.
Paper Boots. You gain a speed of 60 ft and can dash as a bonus action. As an action, you can make a melee spell attack to kick dealing 1d8+Int. magical bludgeoning damage. You can also add your intelligence modifier to dexterity checks.
Only one of these effects can be present at a time as your Spellbook Familiar holds concentration on this effect for you. However, this concentration is unaffected by damage.
Once you use this transformation, you can't transform again until you finish a long rest.
Credits
Created by /u/StoneBringer.
Artist Credit
- Legacy of the Crane by
Johanna Rupprecht
- Familiar by Andreiaugrai
