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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9680722" data-attributes="member: 58172">The following UA Psion spells mention a Costly Material Component that can and should be trivially ignored.1: Identify.2: Magic Mouth.3: Clairvoyance, Nondetection, Summon Astral Entity.4: Summon Aberration.5: Awaken, Legend Lore, Scrying, Teleportation Circle.6: Find the Path, Programmed Illusion, True Seeing.7: Forcecage, Planeshift, Project Image.8: −9: Astral Projection, Shapechange.These Costly Material spells tend to organize into either transmitting information, acquiring an ally entity, or traveling. The intent of the Cost seems as if to avoid spamming, but most dont need to, and a gp expense rarely balances mechanically anyway. (Compare how old school alignment requirements failed to balance Paladin mechanics. Flavor can never balance game mechanics)InformationThe information spells tend to divide between spells that are worth preparing, versus rituals that are rarely worth preparing. The useful spells are: [Augury], Clairvoyance, Scrying, Find the Path, True Seeing, as well as Nondetection. Note Clairvoyance, Scrying, and Find the Path each additionally require Concentration, so cannot be simultaneous with additional such spells. The spells are worth their spell slot, dont need any balancing mechanism beyond spending a slot, and even spamming isnt a problem. They are either very specific or else have long a duration anyway. Delete these Costly Material Components.Relatedly, Detect Magic (which lacks a Material component) is a weird compromise between spending a spell slot and being always-on as a Ritual. It is worth its spell slot. It could have been a cantrip. As a slot 1 spell, it should cease to be a Ritual, but if spending a slot, its Duration lasts until the end of the next Long Rest with the intention of being always-on. It should normally see magical auras casually (which it does anyway with trivial Concentration for noncombat during the long durations of multiple Rituals). Then it should require touch and Concentration if articulate any more details about the aura. Identify is a near worthless spell because any character can already do it for free during a Short or Long Rest. 2024 should have deleted Identify from the spell list, thus quietly retiring it. It is bizarre to make such a worthless spell require a Costly Material Component. Note, in my own games, most of the cursed magic items activate from touch, so to use the Identify spell would in itself already trigger the curse.Numerous information spells are only situationally useful and can be done by a Ritual instead of a spell slot: Comprehend Languages, Identify, Speak with Animals, Animal Messenger, Locate Plants or Animals, and Contact Other Plane. These are nice flavor, interesting for the character concept to have ready, but need to be a separate Ritual design space that doesnt count toward the number of prepared spells. Legend Lore is little more than a History check, and its Material component safely be deleted. Magic Mouth and Programmed Illusion are more like information spells, where Programmed Illusion has little or no combat capability, and Magic Mouth is at most useful as an alarm. Both work better with the recent mechanic of casting daily for a year in order to make permanent.The concept of telepathy and the mechanics for it need rethinking, with updates for Message, Sending, Tongues, Rarys Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, and so on.Two spells organizing into travel require an unnecessary Costly Material Component: Planeshift and Teleportation Circle. Who cares if a character Planeshift several times a day? This is a high level spell when multiversal travel is common. Its slot 7 or use of 8 or 9, is a limited resource. A Costly Material of "250 gp" during these and higher levels of superabundant gp is trivial and moot. The Teleportation Circle already has its elaborate requirements to prepare ahead of time, requires a year of daily casting to make a circle permanent, and requires a minute to cast. Its Cost of "50 gp" serves no purpose at the wealthy levels when this starts to become available.All of the above Costly Material Components can be ignored. Done.The final category of organization relates to acquiring an ally entity. In these cases, there might be concern about avoiding spamming. Compare concerns about a Necromancer raising a "zombie apocalypse". The ally spells tend to subdivide between a temporary effect, versus a permanent creature who is fully autonomous. The fully autonomous creatures, such as via the Awaken spell, need the DM to take into account as if extra player characters, thus balance accordingly. The Find Familiar is like this but its contributions to combat are minor and more on the scale of a magic item. These autonomous entities dont need Costly Material Components. They are either a character (who gains a portion of the xp) or a quasi magic item. Both can make it difficult for the DM to balance a combat encounter, but the Costly gp cannot in any way help the DM toward encounter balance.The spells that create a temporary ally, such as a summoning, are what spell slots regulate. Each spell in this category in category is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all. The Material components dont help the DM to figure out encounter balance.Astral Projection forms "disposable" duplicates of the teammembers to roam the Astral Plane (whose Duration are unlimited "until dispelled"). However, according to 2024, if the duplicates exit the Astral Plane, their original bodies relocate to the new plane. The update is balanced, little more than a slot 7 Planeshift spell, and its Costly Material component is safely deleted.I was shocked to see the UA invention of the Summon Astral Entity spell go out of its way to include a pointless gp Costly Component. Vicerally, no. Probably this spell should be "Project Entity", being a part of the mind of the Psion. The form projected might appear spectral, aberrant, crystalline, or whatever. This spell requires Concentration so there can never be more than one at any given time, can only endure for an hour, and it spends a slot. The gp Costly Material is pointless. Summon Aberration is in the Players Handbook. It too requires Concentration and there can only be one at a time. Delete the Costly Material components.There have been complaints about Forcecage being used against non-spellcaster player characters. It is a high slot 7 and only lasts an hour, but can come across as disruptive to encounter balance. The 2024 update now requires Concentration which can be significant.Project Image allows a "disposable" duplicate of oneself, an illusion of oneself that can be a point of origin for spellcasting. It requires Concentration, thus can only be one at a time, while the original body is elsewhere, and the slot 7 spent is high. There is no need for a Material component.In sum, D&D can safely delete virtually every Costly Material Component from every spell. Most mentions of a gp Cost are trivially cheap at high levels, and pointless in the first place. Even expensive gp Costs cannot ensure encounter balance thus dont help the DM. Meanwhile, to spend a spell slot is already the way to balance a spell during combat, and limits the frequency. Then the 5e mechanic of Concentration already makes it impossible to have more than one, thus it is impossible to spam. Material Components with a gp Cost are intensely interferesome to psionic flavor, and serve no mechanical benefit. Delete every Costly Material Component.</blockquote>

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