Order of Scribes

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

From magical highschools full of broomstick sports and charms classes to ancient colleges wreathed in mystery, wizardry and study have become intertwined in pop culture. Prior to Order of Scribes, you never really had an option that fully embraced this. Most of the wizard archetypes basically can ignore all the components of their spellbook outside of preparing and adding spells to it on level up and will do just fine. Order of Scribes really digs into the idea of a scholarly mage, a student or teacher who’s dedicated to learning, and using their learning to craft spells.

As far as power goes, there are a ton of interesting ideas here that do come with some great applications. On top of that, each feature is dripping with flavor, making it a spectacular option to fulfill the fantasy offered.

2nd Level: Wizardly Quill and Awakened Spellbook

Wizadly Quill is an adorable little feature that brings just a bit more magic to how you write in your spellbook. As far as ribbons go, this one has next to no actual applicable uses. That being said, having a magical everflowing quill that never runs out of ink and magically erases your mistakes fits the bookworm wizard archetype perfectly.
Awakened Spellbook defines the mechanical benefits you play Order of Scribes for. The biggest boon will tend to be the hasted ritual cast. Beyond that, replacing damage types helps dodge resistances, and more importantly, lets you make a character entirely around a damage type that may be less supported. A psychic damage Fireball can feel like a unique spell to your character that comes with an opportunity to present the spell’s flavor however you’d like. You have to figure out how the spell that still ignites stuff not being worn or carried now is dealing brain damage, but that puzzle can lead to memorable, exciting, and hilarious spell creations you can use over and over again to define your character.

These two features aren’t setting you up to do a lot of busted stuff, but both present a fun array of flavor and nifty options to customize your character exactly as you’d like. When you’ve got wizard full-casting, this is entirely reasonable.

6th Level: Manifest Mind

Manifest Mind predominately lets you cast spells with risky ranges up close with a phantom scroll or scholar. Its sensory benefits are valuable as well, but less so than a familiar’s tends to be because it lacks tools to interact with physical objects like doors and latches. It's harder to spy with a glowing floating head than it is with a tiny rat or spider chilling above a lamp.
Most of the time, this thing is going to stick around for most of your adventuring day as long as you keep it within range. 300 feet is ample space. Its 30 ft. “speed” does limit where you can go with big movement options like Dimension Door, but that isn’t the end of the world. Most of the time, you’re sticking this closer to enemies to get better positioning for Lightning Bolts and Burning Hands in combat, and out of combat using it to scout shortly ahead of you. All in all, a great tool to have.

10th Level: Master Scrivener

Master Scrivener functionally provides you with a 2nd or 3rd level spell slot alongside making you slightly better at crafting scrolls. The latter of these features will range in utility from table to table, especially when you factor in needing formulas given out by DMs to craft each kind with their cost then equalling their rarity which ranges with spell level.
A free up-cast 2nd level spell is entirely fine. I wouldn’t really consider a stellar 10th level feature, especially because of the limitations restricting only you to be able to cast the spell with it. You can’t ever have more than one at a time, either, as they’re created at the end of a long rest, and are destroyed at the end of your next long rest.
I’d really recommend working with your DM prior to this point to get spell scroll formulas flowing if you want it to be a larger element of your character, otherwise this feature is going to feel like getting a 4th 3rd level slot and not much else.

14th Level: One with the Word

One with the Word caps off Order of Scribes with a bizarre defensive ability that leverages however many spells are in your spellbook as a shield that can prevent all damage dealt to you. That effect can be ludicrous; going from taking 135 Fire Damage to 0 as a reaction is insane. The question then is how valuable are spells in your spellbook, and is 3d6 a fair price? TLDR: Absolutely.
By 14th level, you have a minimum of thirty-two spells in your book; six starting, and two per level level beyond that times thirteen levels. You also are working with up to 7th level slots. Additionally, you can only prepare your level + your Intelligence modifier spells at a time, usually nineteen, leaving thirteen total spells in your book you can’t prepare.
Scribes also care a lot about ritual spells; we can include some common options as other spells you don’t want to burn for defense- Detect Magic, Find Familiar, Phantom Steed, and Telepathic Bond. With these four factored in, we’re left with nine “unused” spells in the spellbook.
Assumptions and Optimization. Figuring out what levels these remaining mysterious nine spells are is tricky. Usually, you’re going to add spells of the highest level you’re able to on level up to your book, and will tend to prepare up to however many slots you have available. To optimize this feature, you’re going to want to always add the highest possible level slots to your book, which we’ll assume happens.
If you prepare one 7th and 6th level spells for their single slots, we’re left with potentially three 6th level spells and one 7th unprepared. With four 5th level spells in the book, and two slots, preparing two 5th level spells is reasonable, giving us two additional 5th level spells unprepared. Three 4th level slots results in one unprepared 4th level slot, and the same goes for 3rd and 2nd level spells, totalling one 7th level spell, three 6th, two 5th, one 4th, one 3rd, and one 2nd level slot we can feed to One with the Word as a shield. It gives us roughly 44 spare spell slot levels to work with per 1d6 (three and a half) long rests.
3d6 averages to ten and a half spell slot levels; at 14th level, you can mitigate damaging effects without losing access to anything meaningful once every three and a half long rests (ish). Roughly, with no other context, you can use this feature safely once per long rest with little risk.
Should you add additional spells to your spellbook, you can inflate these numbers even higher. Seems nuts!

All Together

Order of Scribes first and foremost is a flavorful win for the studious wizard archetype. All of the base spell-school based Arcane Traditions don’t bring the same level of attention to writing and crafting spells as this archetype does. That being said, prior to One with the Word, there isn’t a ton of raw power here. Everything you get does at least offer you some new stuff to try out and play with.

Awakened Spellbook paired with Manifest Mind can give you the feeling of crafting custom spells that are using different damage types with different placements on the map, giving you a lot of control over exactly how your damaging and ranged spells function. Master Scrivener and Wizardly Quill both play with a system that isn’t that well supported, but do offer enough beyond that for their level that even without engaging with spell scrolls or spell copying, you can still feel like a scribe with them. Ending with One with the Word as a tool to use your copied spells as a shield is inspired design, and while it can require a bit of messing around with to juice to its fullest, will absolutely save your life from high CR damage bursts.

If you’re looking to make the nerd wizard, the bookworm who adores studying and wants to field test their knowledge, Order of Scribes is by far the best option in the game for you.

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