I was very sad when my mage reached his limit of 5th level spell. I really became very afraid of learning new spells with my others mages in later games. But guess what? I was collecting scrolls from the bookcase of Aerie to decide what spells I could still learn, then I decided to drink that marvelous (now more than ever) Potion of Genius. While I was retrieving them from Aerie to be read by my mage, I (by mistake) left Cloudkill in my inventory, and I READ it (surpassing my limit)! How is that possible? Is this a bug or some kind of cheat? I mean...is this going to affect badly my game?

As intelligence increases so does the limit of spells per level in your book. After you drink the potion you could scribe more spells for that level. It will have no adverse effect on your game.

That's what that Potion of Genius is for my good man. :)

Aces, you haven't met any Illithid, per chance?

And the whole point of quaffing the potion, learning spells and keeping them learned after the potion effect expires is unrealistic.
In pnp, you would lose those spells.

I've heard that there are monsters that zap your intelligence and you may even lose your spells.

Are they the Illithid? I hate those guys.
Hard to kill them fast enough before they can hurt you when they are in groups of 3 or 4. :(

I keep my lone Mage (Imoen) far from the front and she almost never gets targeted. She has that nice Gesen bow that needs no arrows. :)

Zvijher, Once a spell is scribed in your book, it's there!! I could see if the potion increased the spells you could actually memorize in one day, that would be unrealistic. To be honest, I've always felt that the PnP rule on a limit to the number of spells you could use was the unrealistic part. Limits on how high a level of spell you could cast (said limit being based on your intelligence); that makes sense -- some people can't understand the complicated stuff, but if you can memorize a concept of a particular complexity, why not a bunch of concepts of similar complexity.

An extract from the Player's Handbook:
The process of learning the correct procedure to cast a spell is difficult and taxing to the mind. Thus, a wizard must check to see if he learns each new spell (...). Furthermore, there is a limit to just how much of this strangeness--illogical mathematics, alchemical chemistry, structuralist linguistics--a wizard's mind can comprehend, and so he must live with a limit to the number of spells he can know.
As the wizard learns spells, he records their arcane notes into his spell books. Without spell books, a wizard cannot memorize new spells. Within them are all his instructions for memorizing and casting all the spells he knows. As the wizard successfully learns a new spell, he carefully enters its formula into his spell books. A wizard can never have a spell in his books that he does not know, because if he doesn't understand it, he cannot write the formula.

The higher the intelligence the higher the spells
I think 19 int grants you all spells

[ February 13, 2003, 22:01: Message edited by: Khelben ]

To get back on the quote from the players handbook (2nd edition I assume), the DMG has an optional rule allowing mages to research their own spells, ABOVE the maximum allowed for him to know! The spell has to be a totally new spell (no other spells like it, so no fireballs, if fireball was not known before reaching the limit, but an electric ball for instance could be allowed). This means that the mage CAN learn more spells than normally allowed by their intelligence.