Rare Material Components to boost spells?

[Cedric]

I am also iffy on the idea of adding more skills.

I had considered allowing any wizard to try it as an untrained int based skill to know and then a regular survival skill roll to extract.

Or, the wizard could spend a feat, to roll their Knowledge Arcana instead of an untrained skill roll. The feat would represent them having invested time and effort into learning the magical properties of these beasts.

And yes, I was going to limit it to magical beasts, rare and exotic herbs/flowers and gems naturally invested with magical energies.

I may go with an "effect" and a "greater effect". I think having three might wind up being too cumbersome and too much like accounting.

I definitely want the best effects to provide an edge that you just can't match with a metamagic feat. Something like adding the prepared ash (a condensing ritual maybe) from the remains of an Elder Fire Elemental (24 HD elemental) makes it such that any fire based spell does not allow SR or Saves, and can still be affected normally by metamagic feats.

I know that seems powerful, but at the point when you can collect ash from a 24hd elemental, you should be powerful.

 

[Psion]

One caveat I'd add to Frank's post, is avoid using 'critter bits' excessively, otherwise the PCs will start wanting to 'harvest' valuable bits of a monster.

I like the levin rules in Green Ronin's Advance GMs Guide for this. It is a critter bits system, yes. But the trick is that for every component type, you had to harvest it in a specific condition. This means that you pretty much have to know ahead of time and specifically mean to harvest the bit, so players don't start stuffing random critter parts in their stenchful portable hole in hopes for selling it to wizards or whatnot.

 

[GreatLemur]

stuffing random critter parts in their stenchful portable hole

Oh, that is beautiful.

 

[Cedric]

I like the levin rules in Green Ronin's Advance GMs Guide for this. It is a critter bits system, yes. But the trick is that for every component type, you had to harvest it in a specific condition. This means that you pretty much have to know ahead of time and specifically mean to harvest the bit, so players don't start stuffing random critter parts in their stenchful portable hole in hopes for selling it to wizards or whatnot.

For anything but the most basic stuff, they are going to have to have a special pouch for this. Think Hewards Handy Haversack with Gentle Repose built in.

Also, randomly collected parts will be worthless. They'll have to be collected by someone with the right skill to collect and either have the skill to know what to collect, or have the person with the skill there at the time.

So if I went Knowledge: Arcana and Survival, it could be two different characters. One to identify, one to harvest...but they "have" to work together or whatever they get will be worthless.

 

[Archade]

I really like Craft (reagents)! Necropsy is probably accurate, but reagents rings better.

But, if you don't want to add additional skills, you could always use Craft (alchemy).

 

[Cedric]

I really like Craft (reagents)! Necropsy is probably accurate, but reagents rings better.

But, if you don't want to add additional skills, you could always use Craft (alchemy).

I've thought about it more and I'm mostly leaning towards Survival for getting it out, but the Survival roll can only be made after someone makes a successful Knowledge roll to determine what and if you can harvest.

If you don't have the feat, it's an Int check, if you have the feat, it'll be a Knowledge Arcana check. Of course, obviously anyone could go with the mechanism that suits their campaign the best.