Thaumaturgy is old, and there is no concrete knowledge of where it got started. Thaumaturgies are the practice of learning, but never actually understanding, the very fabric of the universe, and learning ways to manipulate the fabric to bend to your will. It is often considered to be dangerous, and requires constant study, refining, and learning.

Thaumaturgies have a much broader range of effects than other spellcasting types, but also require much more devotion to the craft in order to learn and cast. All casters of thaumaturgies must find and scribe spells into spell books; the complex formulas contained within including their own bodies and souls therein. Thus the spell book of one Thaumaturgist cannot be used by another without significant magical research.

The most common caster of Thaumaturgies is the Wizard, and it is sometimes called “Arcane Magic”.

Thaumaturgy Spell Books

Magic is not the domain of mortals. Those who are able to cast theurgies have inherited that power. However, there are mortals who have decided to make magic their domain. The mortal mind was not meant to be able to manipulate the fabric of the universe, but through practice, dedication, and willpower, practitioners of goetic magics and thaumaturgy can make it so.

However, part of this means they require spell books to prepare spells from. Spell Books are different things to different spell casters, but at the end of the day, a practitioner of goetic magics and thaumaturgy must prepare their spells out of what’s called a “Valid Spell Books”

Valid Spell Book

For Thaumaturgy, a valid spell book is a magical book that contains the directions and rituals used to prepare spells into your magical mind. Unlike Goetic spells books, your body and soul are part of the formula to cast these spells, thus a spell book is yours, and yours alone. Another character picking up your spell book cannot prepare spells from it.

When you create a character who can cast Thaumaturgies, as part of the character creation process, you will gain a spell book that contains a few spells, which spells are in it are randomly determined based on your class.

As you adventure, you will come across other spell books. Although rare, a spell book can contain both Goetia and Thaumaturgy spells in them. Note that a spell book could contain a Thaumaturgy spell that is not on your class spell list, and if this is the case, you cannot prepare it.

Validating a New Spell Book

If you come across another spell book, you cannot understand it. In order to figure out what spells are in it, you must first validate it.

To validate a new spell book, you must spend a total of 48 hours reading a spell book to figure out what spells are in the spell book. If you have the read magic spell prepared, you can cast it and read the book. Each hour that you spend reading a spell book with Read Magic prepared counts as 8 hours of reading (that is, you can read an entire spell book in 6 hours instead of 48).

Once you know what spells are in the spell book, you can begin the validation process. This process takes a number of days equal to the highest level of spell located inside the book multiplied by the spell circle that the highest level spell belongs to. You must validate the entire spell book to use it, and once a spell book is validated, you can prepare spells from that particular spell book (so long as the spells are in your Class Spell List).

Note: You must validate every spell book you wish to use, even if all you intend to do is copy spells from it. Every spell book’s notes are ever so slightly different, even spell books written by the same caster. Even if you have all of the spells in other spell books, you must validate a spell book in it’s entirety to use it. There is no cost associated with validating a spell book.

Adding Spells to a Spell Book

There are many different types of spell books, that all take up various weight. One way practitioners of Thaumaturgy get around this is creating multiple spell books, and storing certain spells in certain books. Often times, this leads to spell casters preparing a certain section of spells ahead of an adventure, then carrying a traveling spell book or two with them as they adventure to refresh spells from. Additionally, these casters may wish to add a spell they found from a scroll to a spell book. You can only add\copy spells that are on your Class Spell List.

Copying a Thaumaturgy spell from one spell book to another requires a number of days equal to the 1/2 the level of the spell, and requires 50 Silver per spell level times the circle the spell is in.

As magic is finicky, this gold and time cost doesn’t just represent time copying the spell from one book to another, but rather the time, materials, and research you must do to account for the subtle differences recording a spell from one book to another. Spells are not like a mathematical formula that never changes. Subtle things like the age of the paper, the leather used to bind the book, the ink, your body and soul, or even the time of day you work on the formula all account into re-writing the spells, and you need to figure this out when you copy a spell.