Details
- Level: 10
- Category: Exploration
- Component Cost: 200 gp
- Market Price: 1,000 gp
- Time: 10 minutes
- Duration: 2 hours
- Key Skill: Arcana
- Source: Dragon Magazine 366
Description
You enchant a stack of paper or a book to capture the words spoken around it, recording them as a faithful and infallible stenographer. There is no apparent writing implement, just a slight scratching sound as the words appear. The component costs include 5 gp for ink the ritual exhausts; a ritual caster who wishes the transcription to be of higher quality should replace this cost with that of higher-quality inks. The phantom scribe does its best to correctly record what is said in its hearing (its Perception bonus is equal to your Arcana bonus) and properly attribute each statement.
It cannot attribute words from a creature it does not know. Depending on the caster’s personality, a scribe might name unknown speakers colorfully, as the “Dark Stranger” or “Breathless Guest”; or simply, with labels such as “Unknown Speaker One.” If such a speaker is later identified, the scribe records that.