Goodman Games

How do 1st level Wizards learn their initial 3 spells if they don't have the spell Read Magic? is Read Magic required to learn new spells?

On a side note, the forum's search engine wasn't helpful on this issue.

"The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words:

read magic spell

You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards."

I interpret "Read Magic" as being a tool wizards use to determine the nature of a scroll without actually using the scroll. I don't associate it with learning new spells at all.

The problem with scrolls is that when you read it, you fire it. "Read Magic" gives you the chance to peek at it but save it for later.

I always just take this spell out, its pretty dumb to make a wizard not be able to ready magic at will, its like a sharpen sword skill for a fighter.

The read magic spell in DCC is for reading magically created writings (scrolls), magical alphabets (such as the runes created by the runic alphabet spells), and at high levels of potency also allows reading of mundane language.

It is not at all required to learn new spells though - there is a table of ways a wizard could pick up knowledge of the existence of a spell on page 315. After knowing of the spell in one of those ways (or another way the Judge allowed) the wizard basically makes the spell for them self by experimenting until they get it to work, which is why you make a spell check to learn a new spell and then have a manifestation and mercurial magic effect that sets your version of the spell apart from everyone else's.

I do the same. Requiring a wizard to cast a Read Magic spell to examine magical writings is about as much fun for everyone as keeping track of how long your torches will burn.

I suppose, but failing a Read Magic roll can be kind of fun as the spell goes off right away instead of when it's needed later on. Kind of a cool thing.

It's kind of like the rule about thieves reading scrolls from OD&D (and probably other editions) where there was a certain percent chance that the exact opposite of what was intended would happen.

You could treat a Read Magic error as thinking the scroll does one thing, while in reality it does another. In a game system where magic is somewhat whimsical, Read Magic provides another means of mixing things up a little.