D&D 5E How do you deal with expensive material components in your campaigns?

[TaranTheWanderer]

I'm playing a cleric in Descent into Avernus and we are, currently, 12th level. There are a plethora of useful spells on the cleric list but many of them require materials like, "diamonds worth 1000gp", "rare incense worth 400gp" etc...

I'm not sure if other people have played this campaign, but we haven't had the time or resources to acquire thousands of gp worth of diamonds.

Meanwhile, in another homebrew game, my wizard needed to buy a 5kgp chest for Leomand's Secret Chest and the GM just hand-waived it. "Oh yeah, there's a guy in town who makes those

The frustrating part is, many spells are gated behind seemingly arbitrary component costs that require the GM's benevolence/judgement to grant access to a big part of your class powers.

In one campaign, I feel frustrated and my choices are limited meanwhile, the party monk has access to all his abilities all the time. I see it makes sense in the context of the campaign, though. What use do devils have for piles of diamond dust?

On the other hand, the game where my Wizard had free access to unlimited resource (provided I had the cash, obviously), my character felt much more powerful. Sometimes, too powerful. Wizards are probably more dependent on GM grace given their need/ability to copy spells.

I can really see a DM saying, "I'm happy to give them access to one use of Greater Restoration per level" or "1 raise dead per campaign".

In the occasional game I run, I like to drop it as part of treasure but I don't try to be specific: "In this lab, you can scrounge 500gp worth of material components." then I let the player decide what they find.

As a GM, how do you dole out components and resources to your spellcasters? Do they have to quest for them? Are they readily available? Do you even think about that?

 

[J-H]

Historically, I have allowed a straight GP-> Component conversion. This was mostly because it was my first 5e game, and the party was running around Castlevania Castle Dracula where there were no stores, but was plenty of treasure.

When I start my Baldur's Gate II game, I will have a few more substantial house rules and spell changes in place that buff arcane casters a bit, but will require purchase and possession of specific material components in advance, along with changing pricing around for everything to just mimic what's in the game. If they decide to blow $15k on material components, that's 30 fewer good healing potions, or one less +2/+3 weapon. It should cause the party to have to make more decisions around financial and resource management.
Anything that causes interesting decision-making and pre-planning is good.

 

[Weiley31]

Rogue looks at the audience and just smiles.

 

[Oofta]

I've never made it an issue as long as people have access to a larger city. Since I tend to have significant downtime interrupted by a few days of chaos, you can typically get components that you need during your downtime. In some rare cases it may take an actual side-adventure to get something, but I haven't done that for a long time.

But this is something that should be discussed in a session 0. Some people find the limitation annoying, others might find the challenge enjoyable.

 

[MNblockhead]

Depends on the campaign. Mostly I run it RAW. If there is a GP value to the components they need to find, buy, beg, borrow, or steal those components to cast the spell.

I do, generally, hand waive components without GP values and let casters use a focus. I have one campaign that has been incubating for years that would require the components listed for any spell with material components. But the whole campaign is based on a low-magic world and seeking components, spells, items, lost knowledge, etc. is the focus of most quests, tied into a number of possible plots and story arches.

 

[ECMO3]

I'm playing a cleric in Descent into Avernus and we are, currently, 12th level. There are a plethora of useful spells on the cleric list but many of them require materials like, "diamonds worth 1000gp", "rare incense worth 400gp" etc...

I'm not sure if other people have played this campaign, but we haven't had the time or resources to acquire thousands of gp worth of diamonds.

Meanwhile, in another homebrew game, my wizard needed to buy a 5kgp chest for Leomand's Secret Chest and the GM just hand-waived it. "Oh yeah, there's a guy in town who makes those

The frustrating part is, many spells are gated behind seemingly arbitrary component costs that require the GM's benevolence/judgement to grant access to a big part of your class powers.

In one campaign, I feel frustrated and my choices are limited meanwhile, the party monk has access to all his abilities all the time. I see it makes sense in the context of the campaign, though. What use do devils have for piles of diamond dust?

On the other hand, the game where my Wizard had free access to unlimited resource (provided I had the cash, obviously), my character felt much more powerful. Sometimes, too powerful. Wizards are probably more dependent on GM grace given their need/ability to copy spells.

I can really see a DM saying, "I'm happy to give them access to one use of Greater Restoration per level" or "1 raise dead per campaign".

In the occasional game I run, I like to drop it as part of treasure but I don't try to be specific: "In this lab, you can scrounge 500gp worth of material components." then I let the player decide what they find.

As a GM, how do you dole out components and resources to your spellcasters? Do they have to quest for them? Are they readily available? Do you even think about that?

In my games if you can't get to civilization to buy the component, then you can't cast the spell. There are plenty of great spells that do not require materiel components, enough that I think most Wizards will still outrun a Monk pretty easily even without components and without copying a single spell in their book beyond those they get automatically.

In most of the games I have played, my Wizard has rarely had downtime to copy spells into their book. I can only think of one campaign where I added more than 2 spells to my spell book, and in that campaign I was playing an elf with the trance ability and the DM let me use 4 hours of downtime per long rest while everyone else was sleeping.

On a side note, in Avernus though you should probably be able to find locals to trade soul coins for components, and I would think you could get them by cutting a deal with Maggie as well.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

On a side note, in Avernus though you should probably be able to find locals to trade soul coins for components, and I would think you could get them by cutting a deal with Maggie as well.

Soul coins??? What? Those super-rare things that we have scrimped together to power our Tormenter?

Seriously. We are dirt poor. I have been casting Create Food and Water since 5th level because we can't afford food (or want to risk eating what we can get.) We have 8 soul coins between the 3 of us and we use them as gas. When we get back to Maggie, I will try get components but we have nowhere near enough money to afford the spells I want.

 

[Longspeak]

I use an alternate starting gold and equipment. As part of if, each character gets "one of each material component with a listed cost for any spell is he capable of casting." And allow the purchase of more with starting gold.

When it's time to buy components, just a shopping trip during downtime and mark off the cost. if they're in a decent sized town or city. Or they're screwed if they're in a dungeon.

I've never really analyzed the components themselves, never really considered the why of it. But I do insist on them.

 

[Stormonu]

I hate tracking components overall, but I keep an eye out for spells that require expensive components, as those are generally meant as balancing factors to limit their usage. In previous editions I would have required the players to have the specific expensive component. However, since I have found that 5E works well without having to track down to the copper, I'll generally allow substitution or ignore the component in favor of a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly/once limitation in its place.

 

[Clint_L]

This is a really interesting issue to explore. The apparent design intent is to male certain spells difficult to cast willy nilly, thus raising the stakes on when to use them and lessening their effect. It's a clever way to balance spells, but it really gives a lot of power to the DM. I'm a bit of a cheapskate DM, so those spells are less accessible to my players than they would be if I kept them rolling in the Benjamins (that was weird to type; I'm Canadian, but it'll be a cold day in the lower planes before I type "rolling in the Charles's).