mrpopstar
Sparkly Dude
'You must use verbal components or play an instrument to cast a bard spell' completely solves the bard's shield juggling, as well.
It simplifies a lot!
D&D 5E Somatic and Verbal - Value Added?
It simplifies a lot!
Hopsong
Villager
No. At a recent AL event a new DM questioned whether the spell caster had a certain component. "Of course! It's in my component pouch!" We picked the game back up again. Clearly the 5E designers put some work went into this *flavoring* but I miss the italicized spell descriptions in 4E that, for me, were more *tasty*.
CrusaderX
First Post
An Eldritch Knight would still be stuck with shield juggling though, wouldn't he?
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
mrpopstar
Sparkly Dude
Why's that?
We could just as easily say something along the lines of: You must use verbal components and wield a weapon to cast your wizard spells.
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Note, I would prefer the eldritch knight not to have to wield a shield, so I don't view the juggling as a problem. I'm just making an example.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
In fact, you can use spells or magic items which can cover gold to/from gems as both the implementation of the component handwave AND a way to rationalize a fantasy economy AND a mystery/part of a secret plan by giant blue giants to spur adventure and/or player paranoia.
The Tome of Magic in 2nd Edition had a first level spell for component conjuration, which is where I stole this idea from originally.
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Mercule
Adventurer
Are components worth the complexity? Yes, for a variety of reasons that have been pointed out. My personal favorites: 1) you can bind and gag the caster prisoner and 2) you can't just "sneak off" that meteor swarm.
Are separate, specifics V, S, M components worth the complexity? Meh, occasionally. I like that the wizard still has a couple of tricks if he's only bound, but not gagged. Over all, though? Not really. In 95%+ cases, there's no functional difference between "they can hear you cast" and "they can see you cast". Honestly, other than the power word spells, you're probably better off binding and blind-folding the caster than binding and gagging him. Almost all destructive spells need line of sight, IIRC.
The biggest rub I have with VSM is that I finally realized that what I used psionics for in prior editions would be better represented by a sorcerer sub-class that used different trappings than the new mystic class from UA (the mystic is a fine class, just a bit different). Going back to my first paragraph, how does one keep the same checks on a psi-sorcerer without using VSM? Ditto for "spell-like" abilities.
Are separate, specifics V, S, M components worth the complexity? Meh, occasionally. I like that the wizard still has a couple of tricks if he's only bound, but not gagged. Over all, though? Not really. In 95%+ cases, there's no functional difference between "they can hear you cast" and "they can see you cast". Honestly, other than the power word spells, you're probably better off binding and blind-folding the caster than binding and gagging him. Almost all destructive spells need line of sight, IIRC.
The biggest rub I have with VSM is that I finally realized that what I used psionics for in prior editions would be better represented by a sorcerer sub-class that used different trappings than the new mystic class from UA (the mystic is a fine class, just a bit different). Going back to my first paragraph, how does one keep the same checks on a psi-sorcerer without using VSM? Ditto for "spell-like" abilities.
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