Variant Rules

Below are a few variant rules to make scribing a scroll a special occasion, more difficult or cost more gold and time or to limit the amount of scrolls a single character can craft.

Special Materials In order to craft a spell, you must first gather the required ingredients (Ink, Parchment and a Quill) and one of those ingredients must have something to do with the spell in some way. If you wanted to scribe a flesh to stone spell scroll, you would need to find a special quill made from a cockatrice feather or use ink from a basilisk eyeball. Other special materials would be based on the spell you wish to create, a few ideas are provided below. You can only use the material once per spell scroll, if you wanted to create multiple flesh to stone spell scrolls, you would have to have multiple cockatrice feather quills. This could reduce or replace the cost of a scroll as a trade off. Example Special Materials for Spells Spell Special Material arcane eye goo from a hag eye [ink] barkskin one, unbroken piece of bark at least 1 foot per spell level [parchment] blade ward a buckler [parchment] blink venom of a phase spider [ink] catnap eyelash of a sphinx [quill] cone of cold black ice from Plane of Ice [quill] enlarge/reduce roc feather [quill, enlarge only]

milk from aphids [ink, reduce only] feather fall chicken feather [quill] fireball liquid fire on the Plane of Fire [ink] identify ash from a burned down library [ink] insect plague blood from your first born son [ink],

leg of a grasshopper [quill] mage armor leather armor [parchment] maze a minotaur's horn [parchment] meld into stone stone tablet [parchment revivfy, resurrection one, unbroken strip of necrotized flesh at least 1 foot per spell level [parchment] rope trick woven silver chain at least 1 foot per spell level [parchment] speak with dead skull of a dead humanoid [parchment] thorn whip thorn of a rose [quill] tongues tongue of a humanoid who spoke a number of languages per spell level [quill] water breathing poison from a blowfish [ink] zone of truth a liar's tongue [quill]

Xanathar's Guide to Everything Xanathar's Guide to Everything provides alternative pricing and the amount of time needed to scribe a spell scroll. Consider their alternative if your campaign takes place in a low magic world or create your own between the two provided spell scroll costs. Xanthar's Guide to Everything also provides their own rules for spell scroll creation found on page 133. Spell Scroll Costs Spell Level Scribe Cost Time Cantrip 15 gp 1 day 1st 25 gp 1 day 2nd 250 gp 3 days 3rd 500 gp 1 workweek 4th 2,500 gp 2 workweeks 5th 5,000 gp 4 workweeks 6th 15,000 gp 8 workweeks 7th 25,000 gp 16 workweeks 8th 50,000 gp 32 workweeks 9th 250,000 gp 48 workweeks

Enhanced Spell Scrolls Some spell scrolls could be crafted so well that you can store their energy in the parchment and have it ready to go off at the slightest word. This would allow a scriber to create the scroll in such a way that a spell that normally requires an Action to cast could be cast as a Bonus Action instead. In order to do this, a scribe must spend twice as much time as normal and spend twice as much on material spell costs as well as the scribe costs. After every 8 hours of work, the scribe must succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check with the DC being 10 + the level of the spell. On a failed check, the spell scroll is destroyed by the arcane energies, as well as losing all spell component materials and a portion of the spell scroll material cost per the DM's discretion.

Scribing with other Abilities A DM may decide that a scribe can use their main spellcasting ability to determine the level of spells that they can scribe and make spell scrolls for. This would mean a cleric or druid could use their Wisdom score in place of their Intelligence score to determine what level of spell scrolls they can craft.