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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Perun" data-source="post: 7969030" data-attributes="member: 6037">This theme on the thread made me go look at the various races in 5E that have spellcasting of some sort as a racial ability. I looked at high elves and drow, forest gnomes, tieflings, aasimar, svirfneblin, genasi and tritons. Of all of them, only the svirfneblin specifically don't need material components to cast nondetection (but they also require a feat to access their racial spellcasting abilities). Most other have at least one spell that requires material components, and unless there is a general rule somewhere that I'm missing, all mentioned races need to provide them.This was a bit of a surprise. I always (erroneously, apparently) assumed that racial spellcasting worked like spell-like abilities of previous editions, when in fact it appears to be actual spellcasting.I can't find a version of aasimar that says it doesn't require material components to cast light, but air and earth genasi in Explorer's Guide to Wildmeount do have this clause for their racial spellcasting. Oddly enough, water genasi don't, even though create or destroy water requires a material component.The racial ability of drow PCs (from the PH, I don't know of any other place they have been reprinted, and it hasn't been errataed, to th ebest of my knowledge) is different from drow monster entry in MM, where it says they don't require material components (both dancing lights and darkness require M components, faerie fire doesn't).On the other hand, psionic PC races, and I know of githzerai and githyanki, form Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, use psionics ('githzerai psionics' and 'githyanki psionics', respectively), and both explicitly say "When you cast them [i.e. spells available through this ability] with this trait, they don't require components."I can't think of any other PC races with psionic abilities (there are kalashtar in ERftLW, but they don't have any racial psionic spellcasting ability).So, racial spellcasting abilities are... confusing (at least the PC versions).</blockquote>

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