I've never liked the material components of spells. I understand the necessity of the ones that cost gp, but the others seem like pointless bookkeeping. So, I was thinking of changing the components to a single arcane focus ( my idea are different crystals, but I'm open to other sugestions), which would stand in for all free material components, foci(I'm thinking a concentration check based on how hard the focus is to get), and some would perhaps even provide a bonus.
I have no idea whether this is balanced or not, and more ideas would be nice, so here's the types I have so far (need names too);
basic crystal: Provides no bonus, the standard focus crystal for arcane works.
Crystals that provide between a 1 and 5 bonus on concentration checks, spellcraft checks, or save DCs
Crystals that allow a spell to cast with a certian metamagic feat for free 1-3 times/day.
Crystals that change all energy types to a certain one, and empower spells already in that energy type.
Crystals that give bonus spells per day.
as you can see, it's really basic. I still need names, prices, and a balancing veiwpoint other than mine.
You can steal metamagic rods for the free metamagic, use "slotless skill bonus" pricing for the skill bonus ones... boosting save DCs is costly, right?
Changing energy type could also be handled like the metamagic rods (there's a metamagic lvl 0 that does that.)
Unlimitless empowering is probably too good? (Restricting it to one energy type doesn't really limit it--barring immune creatures, a caster can stick to that energy all the time and deal +50% damage.)
Bonus spells per day is probably also handled by an item (rings of wizardry?)
As far as the basic one, barring fairly rare corner cases (you've been kidnapped and strip searched and thrown in jail) components don't matter. It's just a bit of flavor text that completely nullifies the arcane caster if it's ever removed.
thanks. I don't have the pricing formulae available to me, unless it's in the SRD...
You're right about the energy one, perhaps just an extra die of damage?
This sounds less like "doing away with spell components" and more like "replacing the standard PHB spell components with newer, more uniform ones."
Why not just actually abolish the requirement for material components/focii for spells, and keep the crystals on as a series of wondrous items, if you are really attached to that idea?
it is. specific formulas may need to be reverse engineered, which is always exciting.
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/magicItems.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#magicItemGoldPieceValues
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rods.htm#metamagicRods
Quote from: Luminous CrayonThis sounds less like "doing away with spell components" and more like "replacing the standard PHB spell components with newer, more uniform ones."
Why not just actually abolish the requirement for material components/focii for spells, and keep the crystals on as a series of wondrous items, if you are really attached to that idea?
perhaps, but I don't want to completely get rid of them, as I would almost have no choice but to keep the ones that cost money and exp for balance reasons, and that makes the thing look a little odd to me.
Now, if you have a method of clearing the costly and/or hard to get foci (planar jaunt, I think, is one of these cases) without throwing off the balance, I'm all ears.
One method that is suggested somewhere in an odd place (in the psionics rules? in some random PrC? anyway...) is to replace costly material components with an XP cost 1/5 their size. A focus component (are there any costly arcane foci?) could be replaced by a one time XP payment of 1/5 their cost. Costless material components and foci could then just be removed.
Example: casting arcane lock would cost 5 XP. No materials are used.
Túrin
"Costless" material components don't really require book keeping; if the wizard has their component pouch they're fine. I've seen a few cases where rogues have removed a wizard's spell component pouch via sleight of hand to gain an upper hand on them, but I don't know if that was an intentional part of the rules or not.
Psionics opperates perfectly fine without material components, so you probably wouldn't disrupt the game if you remove them. The crystals are a good idea, but you'll need to price them accordingly.
At least in early versions of AD&D, it was certainly the case that the various spell components (verbal, somatic, material) were conceived of as ways to limit spell casters, by stipulating circumstances in which those spells would not be useable.
As usual, this was an attempt to capture in the rules a particular literary convention, common to some books but by no means all, that you could disable a spell caster by binding or gagging them, or denying them access to their ritual components. Also as usual, little or no thought was given to whether this was consistent with all the other literary conventions they were trying to cram into the system. And of course, they selectively ignored conventions (like the common principles of contagion and similarity) that they just didn't like, or couldn't fit in.
If you find that the conventions of verbal, somatic, and/or material components don't contribute to your game, feel free to just ignore them completely. If you think XP costs work better for you, go that way. If you think you'd prefer to substitute GP costs, or some other cost, in place of XP, then that just creates a different set of conventions for your game.
I mean, there's nothing that says you can't decide that Wish spells always penalize the caster with temporary negative levels instead of gold or XP. That makes your world work a little differently from core; but if that improves your game, so much the better.
Quote from: snakefingAt least in early versions of AD&D, it was certainly the case that the various spell components (verbal, somatic, material) were conceived of as ways to limit spell casters, by stipulating circumstances in which those spells would not be useable.
As usual, this was an attempt to capture in the rules a particular literary convention, common to some books but by no means all, that you could disable a spell caster by binding or gagging them, or denying them access to their ritual components. Also as usual, little or no thought was given to whether this was consistent with all the other literary conventions they were trying to cram into the system. And of course, they selectively ignored conventions (like the common principles of contagion and similarity) that they just didn't like, or couldn't fit in.
If you find that the conventions of verbal, somatic, and/or material components don't contribute to your game, feel free to just ignore them completely. If you think XP costs work better for you, go that way. If you think you'd prefer to substitute GP costs, or some other cost, in place of XP, then that just creates a different set of conventions for your game.
I mean, there's nothing that says you can't decide that Wish spells always penalize the caster with temporary negative levels instead of gold or XP. That makes your world work a little differently from core; but if that improves your game, so much the better.
Very true and well thought out Mr. Crayon. Since I still like the idea of a single focus/component in place of the materials, I'll keep the basic crystal, make the ones with bonuses wondrous items/artifacts, and offset the costs both in the price of the crystal and with experience costs. Thanks.
I like these ideas, as I too (and whaterver groups I have had) have never enjoyed keeping track of material components for spells. It's just so annoying to stop game play to say, now what materials are needed for that spell? Do we have those materials? Do I really want to pay the gp/xp cost for that spell? It may make things slightly unbalanced, but at least the game runs a bit smoother.
The way I run games, I just use the component pouch as a spell focus for any spell requiring less than 1 gp cost. If a spell-caster doesn't have his pouch - not just any pouch, but one that he himself created and stocked, or at least had a chance to catalogue - then he has to role-play the search for a specific trivial-cost material component. This simplifies the day-to-day spell casting while still leaving room for the occasional drama of an imprisoned wizard frantically searching the corners of his cell for a random cobweb...