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In my last game, the players defeated two wizards, and captured their spellbooks.
The party wizard crowdsourced gold from the other players and copied the spells he wanted onto his own spellbook.
Now, they want to sell the captured spellbooks.
Assuming a buyer can be procured, how to calculate the worth of those spell books?
The books:
1st x10, 2nd x5, 3rd x4, 4th x2
1st x12, 2nd x6, 3rd x5, 4th x3, 5th x2
All the spells are of common availabiltiy (only from the PHB).
Related but for 3.5e
As a general statement, the worth of an item is based on the amount of time and money put into it. As such, the spellbook's cost of production is
100 (the two spellbooks) + 50 * 101 + [the wizard's hourly rate] * 101 or
100 + (50+HR) * 101
This varies based on the rate your average wizard charges per hour.
However, this is not considering the other side of the coin, which is the harder side to judge. This is:
Keeping in mind a few things, I'll take a shot at it.
Spell scrolls are priced like so (half of a normal magic item):
Common: 25-50 gp
Uncommon: 51-250 gp
Rare: 251-2500 gp
Very rare: 2501-25000 gp
Legendary: 25001+ gp
A scroll's rarity depends on the spell's level:
Cantrip-1: Common
2-3: Uncommon
4-5: Rare
6-8: Very rare
9: Legendary
So what does this mean? It mostly depends on how flooded the market is with spells. I've played in many settings where there was just a library with a bunch of spellbooks. Spellbooks were at that point worthless. I've also played in settings where there was little to no magic and spells were a commodity.
Assuming your setting lies somewhere in the middle, I'd rule that a spell will sell on the market for roughly 1/5 of a spell scroll's cost or 1/2 (remember, consumable) the cost of putting the spell in the spellbook (including time effort), whichever is lower.
TL;DR: for this arrangement of spells, that puts the spellbooks worth about:
1st: 10gp * 22 ----- Based off spell scrolls
2nd: ~35gp * 11 ----- ||
3rd: 50gp * 9 ----- ||
4th: 100gp * 5 ----- Based off spell book (does not include time taken)
5th: 125gp * 2 ----- ||
After doing all this math, maybe it's just better to give your players that 5150gp. They'll like you better.
But I'd recommend that you charge more or less based on how generally valuable new spells are to wizards in this edition. (The books may be worthless in the short term, see below). Magic as used by wizards is, in general, rare in D&D 5e:
... practitioners of magic are rare, set apart from the masses of people by their extraordinary talent. (PHB, p. 8)
Since the players are selling it, you as the DM can add modifiers to that basic cost based on how hard to get spells and spell books is in your campaign, or even how easy.
1st x10, 2nd x5, 3rd x4, 4th x2 + 1st x12, 2nd x6, 3rd x5, 4th x3, 5th x2 = 101 spell levels
Copying a Spell (PHB, Wizard, Your Spellbook sidebar) For each level of the spell, the process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp. The cost represents material components you
At a minimum it costs 5050 in GP1 cost to have copied them into the books in the first place. Toss in the basic cost of a spell book, 50 GP each (Basic Rules, Adventuring Gear, p. 48) for 5150.
A point on the specialized knowledge that is required to even create a spellbook in D&D 5e, which has magic as a fairly rare thing(PHB, p. 8). The value of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Consider the price of college text books (OK, I'll not begin a rant on that) or consider a piece of meat:
Cast 2: prepared at a fast food chain
The wizard is more like the gourmet chef. The act of creation adds value.
Arcane Traditions
The study of wizardry is ancient, stretching back to the earliest mortal discoveries of magic. It is firmly established in the worlds of D&D, with various traditions dedicated to its complex study. (PHB, p. 115)
With all of the above in mind, this is a golden opportunity for some role play if you and your players like to negotiate and work deals as part of the game.
Who needs spells, who wants spells, and who makes the highest offer?
How discrete do you need to be, in this campaign, when letting the market (overt or underground) know that a valuable and magical item is for sale?
Is arcane magic illegal in the kingdom? If yes, now you are trafficking in contraband so the price goes up, and so does risk.
Are they worthless? Consider this situation: nobody within a hundred miles is interested, since nobody within a hundred miles is a wizard. The party just killed the last two wizards in the region. They are worth zero for the time being. Travel to the next major settlement may change that.
How rare is each spell in your setting?
Uncounted thousands of spells have been created over the course of the multiverse’s history, and many of them are long forgotten. Some might yet lie recorded in crumbling spellbooks hidden in ancient ruins or trapped in the minds of dead gods. Or they might someday be reinvented by a character who has amassed enough power and wisdom to do so. (Chapter 10, Spellcasting, What is a Spell?)
If some of those 4th and 5th level spells are comparatively rare, the price for those spells alone can massively swing the price of the book(s) upwards.
These books have significant magic in them; it might be more fitting to try and trade these tomes of magic for a magic item in the rare to very rare category, if such can be had. This is another opening for a mini-quest or adventure to find and negotiate a trade with a special NPC.
1 Using the description in the PHB, it had also cost at least 202 hours of time for someone, but how to measure that in terms of value is an open question.
The original wizard who wrote a spellbook incurred the following monetary expenses to produce it: 50gp to buy the blank spellbook, plus an extra 50gp times the spell level for each spell copied into it (which excludes spells gained at 1st level or by gaining a level and disregards any school discounts).
However, that's only the monetary cost spent by the original wizard, not counting time and effort. The spellbook is worth more to another wizard than the original wizard spent in money to fill it. If another wizard buys the spellbook, they are benefiting not only from the original wizard's monetary expense when copying spells into the book but also from the original wizard's expense in time and effort for gaining those spells that came only through study (level-up spells).
Thus, it would be reasonable for another wizard to pay as much for the spellbook as it would cost them to be able to buy a blank spellbook and replicate the original, disregarding their own school-specific discounts (since they aren't putting in the time or effort themselves to copy it). Under these assumptions, the book is worth 50gp, plus 50gp times the total spell levels of the spells contained in it in order to replicate it. This is the book's opportunity cost.
For your particular spellbooks, this cost would be as follows.
It's then up to you decide whether that opportunity cost is the appropriate market value of such a spellbook. Note that another wizard's spellbook is of limited use (see this question on using another wizard's spellbook), but whether that affects its market value is something only you as the DM can decide based on the setting of your campaign and how you might allow such a spellbook to be used (as discussed in your companion question).
