Material Substitution

[Aleolus]

OK, here's a feat I thought up for people who play casters, and who actually go about with the Spell Components that are too expensive for Eschew Materials, but not really expensive (like the diamonds needed for Raise Dead).

Material Substitution
Prerequisites: Eschew Materials, Caster Level 6
There is nothing more embarrasing than attempting to cast a spell, and not having the right material components for it. When this happens for you, you have learned to improvise!
Benefit: When casting a spell which has a material component which costs less than 10gp, if you do not have the needed material component, you can choose to instead make a Spellcraft check (DC 10+the level of the spell). If you succeed, then you can substitute any other component for the listed material component, regardless of what kind of components the original spell needed.
However, a spell cast with substituted ingredients is not as powerful as a spell with the proper ones. Any spell cast with substituted ingredients suffers a -2 effective caster level penalty

 

[Claudius Gaius]

workable, but perhaps a bit underpowered given that most games don't really keep track of components at all. Secondarily, would it work with low-cost foci?

 

[Slapzilla]

How would the costs of potions, wands and scrolls be effected?

 

[Claudius Gaius]

Scroll and Potion prices might be lowered by up to 10 GP if the spell involved a moderately expensive component which would normally add to the price to begin with.

Wands and Staves could be lowered by up to 500 GP, presuming that the spell being used involved a moderately expensive component which would normally add to the price to begin with.

Of course, in either case, this modest saving would be swamped by the caster level modifier - take 3 off whatever you were paying for - and if you blew the roll on a scroll or potion, you wouldn't successfully imbue the item with the spell, and you'd have wasted your ingredients and possibly your XP totally. On a staff or wand it might either affect the specific charge or the entire item. If a charge, well a wand that fizzles once in a while might be entertaining, but its definitely going to have a lower price.

Overall, trying to use this in item creation would be disasterously inefficient.

 

[Aleolus]

Indeed. This was mostly designed for, as the description for it implies, times when you need to improvise because, for whatever reason, you don't have the right stuff. Maybe some rouge lifted your component pouch, or maybe you pulled an Absent Minded Proffessor trick and just plain forgot it. Either way, you don't have the right ingredients, so you have to make do without.
What about if I dropped the penalty to -1 or -2? This is supposed to be something that you don't have to worry about falling back on, but it's best if you can make do without.

 

[Claudius Gaius]

-2 would work nicely I think. The spellcraft roll is likely to be easy enough once you're past the first couple of levels.