Great Agimimnon, sagacious font of eldritch wisdom, grand purveyor of satire, sacred sentinel of sobriety, and steadfast guardian of grammar and lucidity, hearken unto these words from a most humble supplicant. I would beg your indulgence for my long-winded nature. I shall attempt to be as brief as practicable. My question is one of balance and flavour in my campaign. The problem lies in how Wizard spells should be administered. In 2nd edition I had a rather workable method of book rules and house rules; however, 3rd edition has befuddled me. I shall preface this question with some few clarifications. While Wizard is not my most common class choice as a player, the times I have played it the pursuit of new spells has been one of the most exciting things. In my time as DM it has also been something to both help flavour the campaign as well as keep a measure of control and excitement. I believe I understand the book rules in 3rd edition for gaining additional spells. PH pg 155 seems quite clear on the matter, 2 spells per wizard level are gained, in addition copies from spellbooks and scrolls may be made with appropriate materials and costs as described there. My quandary lies in the ease of which spells are available for wizards. I have no problem with 2 spells per level, Copying from spellbooks is either a matter of PC - PC interaction which is encouraged if its proper RP, NPC - PC interaction which I have control over (at least mostly), and spellbooks as treasure items (which I have near absolute control over). Scrolls however seem to have been my downfall. DMG pg 137 clearly states that most items normal or magical below a certain gp value are available. The low price of scrolls make them quite readily available. I can only go so far with "This [village/town/city] has no scrolls available until it becomes obviously a ploy. And playing in the Greyhawk setting, if I allow that scrolls are available for sale at all, it is lunacy to suggest the major cities wouldn't have them. I have carefully considered the following remedies for my campaign.

Not allowing scrolls as 'for sale' items at all. This is rather unattractive to me as "decrees from on high" such as this don't suit my 'subtle' approach. Increasing the price of scrolls for sale.This also fails, as then PC's can (and indeed will) make quite a windfall by creating their own scrolls and selling them.

Increasing the cost of spell ink. This is unappealing as I do wish to encourage PC's to share spells, and I like giving out spellbooks as treasure items, increasing ink prices would in the former tend to discourage, and the later make the 'sharing' of spellbooks rather less attractive among PC Wizards.

Not allowing Wizards to copy scrolls into their spellbooks.As odd as it sounds this is the one that seems most viable to me at the moment. It leaves scroll prices alone, allowing PC's to buy scrolls to bolster their power (which I can easily balance with more challenging encounters). It makes the prospect of selling scrolls for profit unattractive (where is the fun in being a shopkeeper!), and it allows me to more closely control and make exciting the acquisition of new spells. DMG pg 175 gives me some credibility in this in its description of spell completion items. To sum it up, a scrolls is a sort of 'black box'. Ready made for use. Only the very final gestures and utterances need be made. Given that a spell in a book requires 2 pages per spell level to record, it seems reasonable that a scroll, which can be completed in a 6 second turn, would not contain all the needed information for recording in a spellbook. Finally my questions In your opinion, do you think this is a fair and reasonable change? If not, do you have any suggestions for me to help this issue?

Of course, any answer I give must be tempered to fit with your game world; however, I will give you a possibility that you may not have previously considered. Before I get to that, let me say that disallowing spellbook scribing from scolls is not a radical or particularly unbalancing idea, as long as you provide the other stated means of learning spells. Keep in mind that most wizard players will not like having one of their traditional abilities nerfed.

Instead of making all scrolls unavailable, why not make certain spell knowledge very rare? Many of the spells listed in the PHB can be considered common knowledge, easily available to all wizards. Other spells would be the secret knowledge of those mages who possessed them, or they could be lost to the depths of history. Wizards with access to these restricted spells would be very careful to guard their secrets. When mages write out "classified" instructions, they ensure that the scroll or spellbook erases itself, self-destructs, is concealed with illusions, encrypted, trapped, or otherwise protected from prying eyes. Doing more than reading the title of an unidentified scroll becomes a risky prospect indeed. Also, the most powerful, useful, or esoteric spells become sought after knowledge that is not cheaply (or even legally) available. Using my suggestion, you don't significantly reduce the wizard's ability to learn spells from scrolls, and you keep the tasty game flavor of spell research and discovery.

You could even model spell access after software licensing in our world. Of course, the public domain/proprietary idea could be carried too far . . .. Do you really need a Micromancy (R) corporation jealously instilling every Scroll of Magic Missile (C), (R), (TM) with the latest copy protection? Or a Bill's Gate spell? Uuuuh!

-Agimimnon the Great, On the Phone with His Lawyer