Can you use Awakened Spellbook to replace a 3rd-level spell's damage type with piercing damage via Summon Fey?

Question

The Awakened Spellbook feature of the Order of Scribes Wizard states that under certain circumstances when casting a spell, "you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook".

The Summon Fey spell is accompanied by a stat block template for Fey Spirit that includes "piercing damage" (in the creature's shortsword attack). Does the stat block template "appear in" the Summon Fey spell, or is it separate from the spell and is merely referenced?

Asked another way, if the only spells in your spellbook were Fireball and Summon Fey, could you cause Fireball to deal piercing damage?

Answer 1

Within the narrative, you don't have stat blocks in your spell

Other answers here have capably described the rules regarding how the Awakened Spellbook works with regards to damage type. I think it is also worth at least considering how this would function on a narrative level. We know that the spells in spellbooks are complicated lists of formulae, gestures, and sounds of power:

From 'your spellbook' sidebar in the PHB:

Copying that spell into your spellbook involves reproducing the basic form of the spell, then deciphering the unique system of notation used by the wizard who wrote it. You must practice the spell until you understand the sounds or gestures required, then transcribe it into your spellbook using your own notation.

Within the narrative, we can understand how the Awakened Spellbook could take an arcane symbol representing fire damage in one spell and draw on it to replace the rune representing the force of cold in another spell so as to alter a spell when cast.

We can understand how a spellbook might contain the ritual words and acts needed to summon and bind a fey creature to one's service.

But even within a playstyle where the characters in-game are aware of many game mechanics as such, it seems incongruous to expect the arcane formulae of the spell to come with a section saying 'here is the statistics of the fey you are summoning'. While I can imagine a wizard annotating their spellbook with a description of the effects of a spell, in Common, and even noting that the fey summoned typically come with arrows, such an addition would not be contained within the spell itself, and thus would not fit the condition of (emphasis mine):

you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook".

It is difficult to see how such non-arcane marginalia in a spellbook could be used by the Awakened Spellbook to allow another spell to do piercing damage.

Answer 2

No, stat blocks are separate

The stat block template does no "appear in" the Summon Fey spell. It is separate. The rules for spells (p. 201, PHB) say:

Each spell description [...] begins with a block of information, including the spell’s name, level, school of magic, casting time, range, components, and duration. The rest of a spell entry describes the spell’s effect.

Stat blocks are not included here, even though many of the spells can conjure or create creatures that have stat blocks (e.g. animate dead can create skeletons, that does not make the skeleton stat block part of the spell description). So stat blocks do not "appear in" the description.

The reason that a stat block for the fey is provided along with the spell is that there was no pre-existing stat block for a Fey Spirit, but that does not make it part of the spell description.

This is also supported by this highly upvoted answer to Does "resistance to damage from spells" reduce damage caused by summoning spells?

Answer 3

Summon fey does not deal damage, a summoned fey does.

Summon fey the spell does not have a damage type. It does not deal damage. There is no damage type appearing on the spell. This should not be a surprise, since it’s a summoning spell. It summons a creature from the Feywild. There is no damage type in the spell to choose from, since it is not a damaging spell. The creature it summons can deal damage, sure, but that’s not the same thing as the spell having a damage type.