D&D 5E Joke Material Components

[pemerton]

Having a default that can be dropped without consequence

If that's the threshold for inclusion, then there's a whole lot of stuff that is being left out for reasons I don't understand.

 

[KidSnide]

So it's actually the same joke as fur-and-amber (you're doing simple magic tricks that anyone can do, and fooling people into believing you're a wizard), with the added bonus of also being a lame pun (it's a spell that makes multiple people temporarily insane, with a material component of "a couple of nutcases"). Not bad. If we sneak in another meaning, it might actually become funny.

I don't understand the joke at all with fur and amber. You take some components that, in real life, generate a little static electricity and then -- with the power of magic -- you shoot a lightning bolt. That's not a joke. It's magic.

I assume that most people will ignore material components just as (IME) they have in the past. But if they are going to have material components in the rules, they should some sort of metaphorical connection to the spells for which they are used. As I look at more examples, they seem less like genre violations and more like good design.

-KS

 

[urLordy]

In which case it should be in a sidebar, or something similar - not built into the fundamentals of the presentation of the spell mechanics.

I don't agree. An empty space that needs to be filled isn't as useful for folks who just don't want to think much about it. Having a default that can be dropped without consequence gives us both something that people who don't think much about can use that is solid, and something that is easy for anyone who wants to think about it to change. A component pouch fixes it.

If a rule is in a sidebar, it can means two things: it's not a core element, or it's core world-building but isn't core to PCs.

D&D Next's core setting could assume that the average NPC wizard uses spell components, and (for the sake of plausibility) spells that require material components take longer than a round to cast in combat. Whereas, the default rules could assume that PC wizards are talented enough that they don't require material components which are mostly for lesser mages that need those trinkets to help focus magic and aren't casting spells in a rush in the thick of combat. Then it's just an optional rule that any PC wizard uses material components for whatever reason (and IMO good luck rationalizing how they manage all that in 6 seconds of fast furious combat.)

C'mon, that's got to be a good and fair compromise.

 

[Cyberen]

Pemerton, I think you convinced me material components don't belong to the core, because they confine arcane spellcasting into too narrow a niche.
Actually, the elephant in the room here are not MC, nor warlords : they are CLERICS. They are definitely a DDism, that strain immersion a lot, and divine healbots put so much pressure on the rules and on world-building at large that the compromises made to accomodate for them are the one of the main source for teeth gnashing, hair splitting and flame warring on these boards.

 

[Starfox]

A component pouch fixes it.

Repeated ad nauseum:

...the point of play - for many people, at least - is that you create the story of your PC, both backstory and in play. Working out his/her idiom of casting is plausibly a part of that: one player has read A Wizard of Earthsea and casts spells through a staff; another has read LotR and calls upon the powers of Valinor; another has seen the cover of (the original) Unearthed Arcana and has a wizard carrying pouches and pockets of wacky components.

I don't see that the game needs to prescribe these things.

I am with Pemerton in this. The issue here isn't convenience, or rules. It is style. If a player doesn't WANT a spell component pouch cluttering his style and making him smell like a lab rat, and said component pouch has no function but style anyway, why make it mandatory? Why force everyone to look like the Unearthed Arcana wizard or 3E's Mialee?

In short, style is a part of the "Golden Box" that player should have exclusive control over - his own character, it's personality, and style. Sure, the rules set a framework for this - classes, races etc - but they should not do this "just because". The framework is the crunch of the game, the rules that gives the game structure and empowers the PCs and monsters. The framework should leave style alone as much as possible.

 

[Alzrius]

In short, style is a part of the "Golden Box" that player should have exclusive control over - his own character, it's personality, and style. Sure, the rules set a framework for this - classes, races etc - but they should not do this "just because". The framework is the crunch of the game, the rules that gives the game structure and empowers the PCs and monsters. The framework should leave style alone as much as possible.

The problem, as I see it, with this is two-fold:

First, magic is not part of the "golden box" - it's a facet of the entire game world, not just a player's character (I'm also not convinced on the idea of a player having absolute control over what sort of character they play).

Secondly, when it comes to magic, "just because" is usually all you have to rely on. There's no realistic basis for building a magic system; moreover, fantasy fiction wildly reinvents magic in most of its presentations, so there is no universal standard for D&D on which to draw - it just has to pick one and make do. Even worse, said fiction doesn't usually try to present a cohesive picture of the how's and why's of magic. It's enough to simply give it the narrative showcasing that it wants it to have, and that's it, which is fine for fiction but poor for an RPG.

So saying that the rules should leave "style" alone when it comes to magic is kind of an impossibility - the very nature of how it does and doesn't work is going to invalidate some styles right out of the gate.

 

[pemerton]

there is no universal standard for D&D on which to draw - it just has to pick one and make do.

I don't see why it has to pick one. On the assumption (which seems fair to me) that most of these material components are not contributing to mechanical balance, but are simply tone and flavour, presumably the game can support multiple options. 4e supports multiple options (within an admittedly modest range) - wand, staff, orb, tome - even though these do contribute in modest ways to mechanical balancing.

Even worse, said fiction doesn't usually try to present a cohesive picture of the how's and why's of magic. It's enough to simply give it the narrative showcasing that it wants it to have, and that's it, which is fine for fiction but poor for an RPG.

I don't see why an RPG needs a cohesive picture of the "how's and why's" of magic. You have the PC build rules, and the action resolution rules. Why does the game need anything more than that?

 

[Alzrius]

I don't see why it has to pick one. On the assumption (which seems fair to me) that most of these material components are not contributing to mechanical balance, but are simply tone and flavour, presumably the game can support multiple options. 4e supports multiple options (within an admittedly modest range) - wand, staff, orb, tome - even though these do contribute in modest ways to mechanical balancing.

I'm speaking to elements of "style" in terms of the game allowing for magic in the vein of a particular piece of fiction. Quite simply, it's going to have to pick one and go with it simply because there's no way to allow for a system of magic that has universal applicability where style is concerned (short of offering multiple magic systems within the context of the game itself and/or allowing for a high degree of tweaking).

I don't see why an RPG needs a cohesive picture of the "how's and why's" of magic. You have the PC build rules, and the action resolution rules. Why does the game need anything more than that?

Because there are points where the game rules must intersect with what's happening in the context of the game (e.g. not all dissociated mechanics are bad, but it is inevitable that there are going to be associated mechanics somewhere). Given that magic has no particularly universal aspects to it across all of its depictions (that is, in any media that features magic), any such rules are going to necessarily speak to how magic functions in the game world (e.g. magic resolution rules will virtually always necessitate associated mechanics).

If you state that magic needs only verbal and somatic components, for example, with no material components of any kind being necessary, then you're going to have a hard time portraying the allomancers of the Mistborn series of novels, or the wand-based magic of the Harry Potter novels, for example.

 

[pemerton]

I'm speaking to elements of "style" in terms of the game allowing for magic in the vein of a particular piece of fiction. Quite simply, it's going to have to pick one and go with it simply because there's no way to allow for a system of magic that has universal applicability where style is concerned (short of offering multiple magic systems within the context of the game itself and/or allowing for a high degree of tweaking).

Whether or not this is true in some abstract sense, it doesn't really seem apposite to the particular discussion - namely, there is no reason why the game can't support the sort of variety [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION], I and others have mentioned: some casters using staves, some using words of power, some using bags of weird components, etc. That does not require "multiple magic systems". It just requires a sidebar. Burning Wheel even gives an example of text for such a sidebar (though I'm sure WotC are up to doing this without cribbing).

If you state that magic needs only verbal and somatic components, for example, with no material components of any kind being necessary, then you're going to have a hard time portraying the allomancers of the Mistborn series of novels, or the wand-based magic of the Harry Potter novels, for example.

Why would you state such things? The whole point of a sidebar is to leave those things open.

Because there are points where the game rules must intersect with what's happening in the context of the game (e.g. not all dissociated mechanics are bad, but it is inevitable that there are going to be associated mechanics somewhere). Given that magic has no particularly universal aspects to it across all of its depictions (that is, in any media that features magic), any such rules are going to necessarily speak to how magic functions in the game world (e.g. magic resolution rules will virtually always necessitate associated mechanics).

B/X didn't say much about how magic worked. Nor did Gygax's AD&D, other than making vague references to the positive and negative material planes. I don't see why most of this stuff can't be worked out by a group in the context of it's own play. Or, again, sidebars (which is what, in effect, Gygax's referene to the energy planes amounts to) can offer examples.

 

[Quickleaf]

I can just see the players stumbling on war plans in a Mage College, finding a military requisition form:

200 lbs of bat guano
13 cubic yards of mongoose fur
4 lbs. of amber cut to small pieces
Three trees worth of nut shells
1 barrel sesame seeds

The rest of the players go: "WTF?"

The wizard player looks horrified: "An army of flying intangible wizards is going to fireball and lightning bolt our beloved kingdom to death!"

The rest of the players go: "How'd you--?"