D&D 4E Material components and spell books? Get rid of them for 4e!

[Dragonblade]

As I see it, removing components completely would take D&D one step further away from itself and turn it into something else entirely. Making up an entirely different game and calling it D&D is not the same as working with what is already there and doing your best to make it better. Tossing out spell books and components is turning our game into something else that is only called D&D.

I would disagree because I have never played with a group that tracked components or spell books. So for me it has never really been a part of the D&D experience beyond being an annoying and ignored limitation.

 

[Rolzup]

You just need to shift your paradigm a bit.

My own wizard, the one in the story-hour thread linked to in my thread, uses a specially deisgned crossbow to work his magic. If he's disarmed, as sometimes happens, he's all but helpless. Effectively, it's one big spell component.

You can so that with damned near anything. Staves are traditional, and so are wands, but there's certainly a place for swords and other weapons.

 

[GreatLemur]

Spell components have never, ever been cool or interesting. They're a flavor component that doesn't fit with any flavor I'm interested in, and they're typically ignored to the point of being entirely meaningless.

Spell books are definitely cool, and are both a perfectly reasonable piece of flavor and mechanical limitation. However, I do think that the time and expense involved in scribing new spells seems both illogical and unnecessary. (At the same time, though, I've never really dug the two "free" spells that Wizards get with each new level. They should have to find or research everything.)

You just need to shift your paradigm a bit.

My own wizard, the one in the story-hour thread linked to in my thread, uses a specially deisgned crossbow to work his magic. If he's disarmed, as sometimes happens, he's all but helpless. Effectively, it's one big spell component.

You can so that with damned near anything. Staves are traditional, and so are wands, but there's certainly a place for swords and other weapons.

I dig this. Giving Wizards a Cleric-like "arcane focus" has the same mechanical effect of making them disarmable, is far simpler than myriad expendable material components, and is much better flavor (for most folks) than little bags of bat turds.

 

[Cadfan]

But they could have focuses. While they don't have as much overhead as components, they do have a certain amount of tracking.

In fact, I think I sort of like the idea of requiring "at will" abilities to have focuses. Not sure how it would work in practice,] but I do see a certain amount of flavor attached. Especially if limited to a handful of focuses (sort of like Monte's Magister).

I agree entirely. The idea of a fire elementalist, for example, who can only cast spells while holding his specially prepared fire opal, is awesome.

People complain that wizards are too powerful but continue to want to make it easier and easier for them to dominate a game.

... Not precisely. See, the old system was that wizards had incredible power, but enormous weaknesses. Specifically, they could lose their spell book and instantly become horrible, or a monster could actually hit them and they'd die. As weaknesses go, losing all your powers and/or dying is a little drastic. This meant that DMs often had monsters not be quite as smart as they should be, to avoid invoking killing a wizard or stealing all his powers. And having a weakness that's so big that the DM doesn't want to inflict it on you is an awful lot like not having a weakness, see?

So there's a drive to decrease both a wizard's power level, and his weaknesses, to bring him back closer to the norm. Not all the way to equilibrium, necessarily, just less extreme in both directions.

Tossing out spell books and components is turning our game into something else that is only called D&D.

I started playing in the original D&D edition, which didn't have components. So I can't really feel a strong emotional attachment.

 

[gizmo33]

Spell components have never, ever been cool or interesting. They're a flavor component that doesn't fit with any flavor I'm interested in, and they're typically ignored to the point of being entirely meaningless.

So if someone gets captured and gets their stuff taken away you still allow the casting of spells requiring material components in the rules? If a spell requires 100 gp of diamond dust you wave that away? There are many levels of material component rules in the game, in my game we just assume the presence of the common components when reasonable.

 

[Glyfair]

Spell components have never, ever been cool or interesting.

I disagree with this, for me. Spell components have the potential to be cool or interesting. The problem is, as with many things in D&D, repetition kills a lot of the flavor.

Take for example, the diamonds required for the Raise Dead spell. A lich ruler of a neighboring country starts buying, stealing or otherwise acquiring all the diamonds in the world. He plans on killing the ruler of the country the PCs have ties to and don't want to ruler to be brought back from the dead. No diamonds, no raise dead (or resurrection).

They stumble on one of his more shadowy parts of the plan to acquire the diamonds. Can the PCs deduce the lich is trying to get a monopoly of diamonds? Can they figure out the long term goal of his plot? Tune in next week....same D&D-time..same D&D-channel.

 

[Jer]

I started playing in the original D&D edition, which didn't have components. So I can't really feel a strong emotional attachment.

QFT.

I swear, sometimes I wonder if every grognard thinks that the game started with the 1e AD&D Players Handbook. There was a completely separate system from AD&D that many of us oldsters loved and played to death - it didn't use spell components AND you were supposed to give wizards new spells at every level (the DM got to pick which spells the wizard's master passed on to them), so please don't try to claim that doing these things makes a game that's not D&D - it makes a game that's not AD&D, which I'm perfectly fine with thank you very much. I'm actually quite emotionally attached to the idea that spells DON'T have to have fiddly components to cast them (though, again, I'm open to a decent rules system that makes it worthwhile to cast spells with components rather than tries to punish players for not tracking components).

(Grumble, grumble, grumble. Why do I feel like such a grump today?)

 

[sckeener]

I'd like spell components to change so that they ADD to the spell and no longer prevent it from being cast.

I'd like to see components suggested in the text of the spell that would up the effect of the spell....either higher DC or caster level or increased range/AoE or duration, or heck even the type of create affected!

 

[GreatLemur]

So if someone gets captured and gets their stuff taken away you still allow the casting of spells requiring material components in the rules? If a spell requires 100 gp of diamond dust you wave that away? There are many levels of material component rules in the game, in my game we just assume the presence of the common components when reasonable.

Oh, I shoulda clarified; I'd put the material components with a GP value in a completely different category from the miscellaneous-crap-you-find-under-your-couch components. They definitely serve a valid mechanical purpose in the game, as do XP costs. I still don't really dig the flavor they support, but no, I wouldn't just eliminate them.

I disagree with this, for me. Spell components have the potential to be cool or interesting. The problem is, as with many things in D&D, repetition kills a lot of the flavor.

Yeah, "so-and-so isn't cool" is admittedly always gonna be a personal preference thing. I've just always thought the whole idea of throwing sand at people to cast sleep wasn't really part of the kinds of fantasy subgenres I wanted to play. I like a really scientific conception of magic, so I can't really dig on the "eye of newt" stuff.

 

[Treebore]

I love spellbooks. I love spell components. However, for practicality purposes, I keep them completely in the background. IE I don't require keeping track of components, or even the cost of scribing new spells into the spellbook.

I would keep track of such things in a one on one game, though, if the PC is a wizard.