Wizards Spell Book Alternative
by Sean MeaneyWhat if your Wizard didn't come with a spell book - what if he/she came with an empty Wand of Spell Storing and the memory of how to cast read magic?
So here you are a first level wizard with the ability to cast read magic (which apparently you don't need to write in any spell book because you can cast it from memory) and a Wand with a spell storage capacity. So your master enchants your Wand with a Spell that might keep you alive in the world and cuts you loose in the big wide world with a student loan.
You go adventuring and you stumble across a scroll with magic missile - so you use read magic and now it is a spell in your 'spell book' (which basically now consists of the ability to pull read magic from memory and a single spell scroll). This is fortunate because you were down to your last three Protection from Evil spells on your wand - having used many of them on your adventuring companions. So you camp in the Inn in the local village for a week and cast magic missile into your wand until it is full. So now you have a full magic missile wand, and the ability to memorize a spell which you figure you can fill with a magic missile just because you have nothing else.
There you and your adventurers are - in a village - when a Young Wizard calls you out to personal combat in the street. The Wizard laws require you accept the challenge and fight him alone (despite the fact he might be level twenty and looking for the six experience points you seem to be worth to get him to level 21) - he wants your wand having lost his own - and screams 'I'm gonna cook you with my fireball'. So you unleash a magic missile and kill him before he can utter all the words to his 'fireball' spell off his spell scroll.
Your companions think that is impressive - and you search the corpse and find a bundle of papers in his underwear - A Warlock named Thrn the Black has demanded the dead guy kill Freznip the Awesome's Apprentice (Freznip was the name of your teacher so this would mean this guy wants you dead). You pop out to White Tower just outside the village where your teacher Freznip resides and ask him about the nasty Warlock who wants you dead. He says 'We had a falling out...over a woman.' and good luck with this guy because 'shit happens' but he thinks Thrn might be somewhere near the Town of Hammerfall (they make this kind of paper there - points to the hammerfall watermark) - and collects some of your gold coins to pay your wizardly schooling debts.
So now you have a powerful enemy who wants you dead because your teacher stole his girl...
I thought of this looking at the Wizards in the Shady Dragon Inn Accessory where every Wizard from Level one has a wand that seems chock full of appropriate level spells that you can memorize at their level.
Starting Wizard kit: Wand of spell Storing (6 Slots), Read magic Spell.