Azurewraith
Explorer
Delericho,
In reality, D&D is like Monopoly, but moreso. It has the gradual accretion of gamer's knowledge of old versions (and the baggage they bring in), gamer's table rules from prior games, and gamer's levels of sophistication. D&D has always been a game involving houserules. So, *in practice*, the ruleset has only been the starting point.
Quoted for truth we have never used material components for spells since i began playing in 3e i have recently taught a new group the rules and one guy asked why Chromatic orb did a level 1 spell did so much damage my reply was "it needs a 50gp diamond to cast it as a component, oh wait ye some spells need components to cast most are covered by your casting focus or component pouch but ones with cost arnt but components aint cool so forget we ever had this conversation"