Sacred Cow Death Watch: Do you use material components?

[Kishin]

I pretty much fall in with the majority on this and handwave minor material components while keeping a record of rare/expensive items. I find having a player keep track of how many balls of bat guano they have on their person unnecessary, unheroic and in most cases irritating for that player. If you've have a spell component pouch, you have what you need, and I assume that you refill it as necessary when the opportunity presents itself.

 

[drothgery]

I put "essentially free eschew materials", but that's not really accurate. I make no effort to keep track of inexpensive components, and never buy replacements, but if a spell has an M component I won't try and cast it while grappling.

 

[Nomad4life]

I just assume that the characters have what they need on them in order to cast spells- It’s just a part of the spell preperation process. In short, I see spell components as little more than flavor cosmetics, and not something that should get in the way of the game.

From time to time, I’ve gamed with groups that take material components meticulously seriously. Personally, I'd rather play "Tax Return Forms And College Financial Aid Applications: The Role Playing Game" rather than waste time with that kind of book keeping. But no problem. I just don’t play spellcasters in such groups and have fun anyway.

 

[Mark CMG]

If a spell has a non-expensive material component, then the caster has to have a material components pouch. So... as RAW.

Same. And, of course, as implied, spells that require additional, expensive components need to purchase them. I generally don't make them too difficult to come by.

 

[EricNoah]

I only use pricey ones, and wouldn't mind seeing them all disappear.

In its place I'd love to see a flavorful set of optional rules for empowering your magic with additional components.

So instead of requiring 250 gp worth of diamond dust for stoneskin, don't require anything, and then allow me to make it better if I do happen to have an appropriate component on me.

Component casting should take more time -- a move to get the component out, and then the normal casting time after that.

 

[Mark CMG]

(. . .) but if a spell has an M component I won't try and cast it while grappling.

Maybe I misunderstood the question but I thought this was in regard to purchasing and having the components, not in regard to needing hands available to cast spells with the "M" (and the "S") components. (That's a given, too, IMC.) Were you, drothgery, just stretching the point a bit or am I not on the same page with the OP's question?

 

[Psion]

2.) They require too many what-ifs. What if the component pouch gets wet? What if it gets hot...does the butter melt? Does the rancid grease attract animals? Don't they get stuck together? How exactly do you retrieve a pixie's eyelash from a leather pouch in less than 6 seconds? Sure, you can hand-wave it all, but why bother in the first place?

I think maybe you're overthinking it. The rules never call for you to impose a percentage chance of losing components if the player is doused or what have you. It's reasonable, but unless you have a campaign reason to do so, I wouldn't bother.

3.) The non-pricy components seem to be arbitrarily assigned, rather than for game-balance reasons.

A perusal of the SRD will reveal this to be the case. Basically, non-costed components are functionally equivalent of making the spell component pouch a focus like the divine focus is.

 

[el-remmen]

I don't know, I like them and I find they add a dimension to the game that jives with my simulationist leanings.

When the Keepers of the Gate were going to leave on an overland journey that would take 2 to 3 weeks and the wizard Martin the Green was planning on casting detect scrying everyday, he had to figure out where he was going to get 14 to 21 minature brass hearing trumpets in the time before they left.

When you fall thirty feet and your a handful of your glass rods break limiting the number of time you can cast lightning bolt.

Gum Arabic (or Thrician Gum as we call it in Aquerra ) is not all the common a thing in certain places in the world - so maybe invisibility is not so common a tactic in the Northern Reaches, or how cool and flavorful is a scene where the party wizard casts his spell and reaches out and rips off the top of a reed before casting his water-breathing spell.

Playing a wizard, I love having a list of crazy items on my sheet and going through them and thinking about how I keep them all, from a jar of molasses for slow or wrapped up slices of giant squid tentacle for Evard's.

 

[cybertalus]

I've only had one DM who insisted that all spellcasters track their components for all their spells. It was a major pain. As a DM I will never put players of spellcasters through that. So yeah, it's essentially free Eschew Materials all around when I'm behind the DM screen.

I've even played around with raising the value of components that can be used for free as characters rise in level, but haven't been able to work out a progression that I like.

 

[VirtualWizard]

In the games I run, I don't use spell components. However in the case of spells with expensive spell component(s) (50gp+), the caster must pay 1xp per 5gp of the listed material component(s). I figure that some spells require the caster to expend a portion of their life force to work.