D&D 5E What is a petrified eye of a Newt?

[Charlaquin]

All components are consumed on casting, unless the spell says otherwise

It’s the opposite actually. Components are not consumed unless the spell specifically says they are.

and spell component pouches hold multiples of each spellcasting material and it is assumed that in down time, or during rest time while on adventure, that you are freely able to replenish the materials used during the day. That is why there is not a cost for them.

Edit: I may have mixed a little house rules into that, but even so, what is in a component pouch is not infinite, so either scrounging for refills or buying multiple pouches is necessary.

Yeah, I could be wrong but I don’t think there are any spell components that are said to be consumed and don’t have a specific cost. So one could decide to narrate components with no cost as being consumed and being replaced during downtime, either through foraging or as part of lifestyle costs. Functionally it’s the same, just a difference in how you explain the lack of cost narratively.

 

[MGibster]

I'm reading through this and I can't help but think, "Wait, you guys actually use spell components?"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The audience at the time didn't have CVS - they used herbal remedies on a regular basis.

Poor country folk would have used herbal remedies (under a wide variety of different names) on a regular basis. But they where not the audience for Shakespeare's plays.

When Macbeth premiered in 1606 the Renaissance was in full swing, along with the professionalisation of medicine. City folk who went to plays would have visited an apothecary.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"Blind worm" may actually be a reference to "Slow worm" a legless lizard that can shed its tail to escape predators. Slow worm - Wikipedia

They still are called blind worms in the West Country, where they tend to be found. They are actually kind of cute.

And saying that it is against witches actually argues that the language could be deliberately chosen to misrepresent the actuality of women who happen to know a bit about herbalism.

You would be hard put to make a case that Macbeth was pro-witchcraft!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To find an actual petrified eye of newt would be like finding a mosquito, in sap, with dinosaur blood.

But maybe they just mean dehydrated eye of newt. One that has been out in the sun for a while.

Gygax (I think it was he) was probably thinking of of a petrification well, such as Mother's Shipton's Cave.

Not that he ever visited Yorkshire so far as I know, but similar places are found elsewhere in the world.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Except my Rogue just leveled up to level 4 and picked up the spell with Fey touched but she has no spell components, does not have enough money for a component pouch and is not in a civilized area. So she has to find an eye of a newt. She has a feather and a bit of fleece for her other spells that require a component.

Try to Tasha it away: you're allowed to change flourish aspects of your spell for thematic reasons ; replacing a costless component by another has no mechanical impact, so you could say that your Urban Rogue character never heard of Shakespeare and associate the idea of being hexed to not copying a letter to 10 of his contacts explaining that failing to do the same will bring lots of misery in his life... (I read somewhere that these letters predates emails...) and write one in a pinch? That's... stretching it, I know.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Though Shakespeare - also probably not an herbalist - was either familiar with all these names, or by some tremendous coincidence happened to only pick animal parts that were also the names of herbs. I think the former is far more likely, and if his goal was to present witches as horrible, it seems an odd choice to only list nasty things that could also be read as herbs to have the witches list as ingredients.

I suspect that those were fairly common names used for those herbs at the time, not ones only herbalists would have known, and Shakespeare was deliberately using double-entendre.

Best guess: people still knew the witch's names for a lot of these plants, even if they didn't tend to use them. It wasn't that long before that witch = village apothecary, and slang gets remembered for quite a while after it falls out of use.

So people knew 'eye of newt' etc. was a herb of some kind. But put together with all the other stuff (some of which might not have been herbs) and you get a nasty-sounding gumbo recipe.

 

[jmartkdr2]

It’s the opposite actually. Components are not consumed unless the spell specifically says they are.

Yeah, I could be wrong but I don’t think there are any spell components that are said to be consumed and don’t have a specific cost. So one could decide to narrate components with no cost as being consumed and being replaced during downtime, either through foraging or as part of lifestyle costs. Functionally it’s the same, just a difference in how you explain the lack of cost narratively.

As far as I know, there are two consumed, uncosted component in 5e thus far:

Protection form Evil and Good consumes holy water, but doesn't say how much. I generally say a whole vial (listed at 25 gp in the equipment chapter) because it's a dang good spell, but ruling that it's a drop and simply owning a vial is good enough is also fair.

Summon greater demon uses a vial of blood (no market value) that's consumed if you make circle as part of the casting. If you don't make a circle, presumably the blood is not consumed and can therefore be replaced with a focus/component pouch. (Although a vial of blood form a humanoid killed in the past 24 hours seems like an odd thing to include in every component pouch...)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Best guess: people still knew the witch's names for a lot of these plants, even if they didn't tend to use them.

I don't know why people find these so difficult to accept:

* Most people who lived in London didn't know common names for herbs because herbs did not grow wild in London, which was already an urban sprawl;

* Herbs had many common names, depending on where you lived, not just one;

* Shakespeare and King James where both much more widely read than most people of their age;

* The point of an "in-joke" is to flatter the ego of the person who does understand it - it doesn't work if most people get it.

 

[ECMO3]

Try to Tasha it away: you're allowed to change flourish aspects of your spell for thematic reasons ; replacing a costless component by another has no mechanical impact, so you could say that your Urban Rogue character never heard of Shakespeare and associate the idea of being hexed to not copying a letter to 10 of his contacts explaining that failing to do the same will bring lots of misery in his life... (I read somewhere that these letters predates emails...) and write one in a pinch? That's... stretching it, I know.

Well I presented the colloquialism to my DM and he ruled dried mustard seeds was ok, then I proceeded to gather components:

We came upon a village - talked a local spice peddler into parting with some dried mustard seed (Hex) and a bit of copper wire (whisper) for 7sp, got a feather (Tasha's laughter) from the kitchen of a tavern where chicken was being served and scraped some sap off a tree and pulled out one of my own eyelashes and molded the sap around the eyelash (invisibility). With the fleece I started the game with, I now have all the components for my Racial, Feat and Rogue spells.