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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7501222" data-attributes="member: 7006">When I've considered doing something like this, here are the things that I thought of as being necessary for making the system work.  First, every character class would already start with only the material components for the cantrips and 1st level spells they had prepared at the start of adventuring.  This mainly was for the divine classes, which by the rules says they can prepare any and all spells from their spell lists.  In order to keep things fair between them and wizards and classes with Known Spells... the divine classes would not get the material component for every single 1st level spell on their list that required them, even though the rules said they could prepare them.  Instead, the player decided what their initial 3-6 spells were going to be (bonus prepared spells included) at the start of the first session and any of those which required material components were the only spells for which they had them in hand.Second, it was assumed that before becoming 1st level spellcasters, every character had gone through training where they were given "component lists" from their instructors of the types of things they would need to acquire out in the world in order to cast the myriad of other spells available on their spell lists.  So even if a PC didn't start the game knowing how to cast Feather Fall, they would know that in order to cast it at some point in the future they would need a small feather or piece of down.  Which meant that as they started adventuring, the PC could start looking for any and all material components from their list which they would need down the road if/when they acquired the ability to cast said spell.  When it would become time to level up and acquire new Known Spells or new divine spells to prepare,  or new spells to add to their spellbook, you could only select from those spells on your spell list that either only required verbal and/or somatic components, or were ones that you had found the required material component for during the previous adventures.  If you found the material component, it meant you were now able to work out the magic and could now select the spell going forward.I think there were a couple other little rules in and around the system I was jury-rigging together, but at the end of the day I ended up not bothering with it-- mainly because I had a hard enough time for players to select wizards to begin with, and this material component system just made things even more difficult for them compared to other classes (since they now not only had to find new spells to add to their spellbooks from scrolls or enemy spellbooks etc, but they also now had to find the components as well.)  This doubling up of searching for stuff made the wizard even less desirable than it already was in my games.</blockquote>

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