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Lord Iames Osari
2007-05-03, 09:35 AM
The fact that a caster can buy a single spell component pouch and never have it run out bugs me. Therefore, allow me to present...

Spell Component Pouch Depletion Rules

When you buy a spell component pouch, it contains 100 "charges". When casting a spell with a costless material component, you use up 1 charge per level of the spell.

When your spell component pouch runs out of charges, you can't cast spells with material components anymore until you get it refilled or buy a new one.
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I'm considering having it cost 1 charge per level of the spell slot expended, to make metamagic a bit less attractive. Thoughts?

jindra34
2007-05-03, 09:39 AM
The fact that a caster can buy a single spell component pouch and never have it run out bugs me. Therefore, allow me to present...

Spell Component Pouch Depletion Rules

When you buy a spell component pouch, it contains 100 "charges". When casting a spell with a costless material component, you use up 1 charge per level of the spell.

When your spell component pouch runs out of charges, you can't cast spells with material components anymore until you get it refilled or buy a new one.
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I'm considering having it cost 1 charge per level of the spell slot expended, to make metamagic a bit less attractive. Thoughts?
Seems good.

Triaxx
2007-05-03, 10:17 AM
Very nice. It looks like it'll go well with the new houserule I'm working on. But how do I refill it?

"Hey Mr. wizard, fill 'er up."

Maldraugedhen
2007-05-03, 10:27 AM
You should probably be able to scavenge for some of the materials with a survival check, or buy a new components pouch.

bdh5533
2007-05-03, 10:42 AM
Nice varient, you don't have to list out every component and how much you have, and you also have some accountability.

Me personally i'd make people have a quatity listed out of what they have in their pouch. :D (i find a lot of people actually take eschew materials when i apply this rule for some reason)

Pink
2007-05-03, 12:17 PM
I think that keeping track of components in some way adds a nice bit of flavor that is usually ignored, not to mention it makes more sense than the endless bag of bat guano. I also second the survival check to restore come components, not like they're rare or hard to find but it'd require some amount of searching and properly storing them so that they're effective.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-05-03, 12:32 PM
Very nice. It looks like it'll go well with the new houserule I'm working on. But how do I refill it?

"Hey Mr. wizard, fill 'er up."
I would put the cost of a refill at 4 gp - A new spell component pouch costs 5 gp, and an empty pouch is 1 gp, so the cost of the components themselves is the difference.

Triaxx
2007-05-03, 03:18 PM
Very nice. I'll have to finish that house rule.

Triaxx
2007-05-03, 03:19 PM
Very nice. I'll have to finish that house rule.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2007-05-03, 05:08 PM
Gah! Double Post Malfunction! I hate when that happens.

Triaxx
2007-05-04, 06:18 AM
Yes, me too, and it wasn't even my fault.

Maldraugedhen
2007-05-04, 07:26 AM
Anyway, how do we simulate the fact that there are some spell components you simply cannot scavenge for the survival check? Listing certain spells that can't be cast at all once the bag has been depleted once (and not refilled at a shop) would work, or make it so that you cannot use a survival check to add more than 20 or 30 spell charges to an empty bag.

KingGolem
2007-05-04, 12:31 PM
Cool variant rule! However, some of you have mentioned using "Survival" to gather spell components. It says somewhere that spell components are usually sold by alchemists, so maybe it should also include something with Craft (Alchemy). It seems to make more sense to me that natural objects must be treated or processed in order for them to be useful as spell components.

knightsaline
2007-05-04, 06:51 PM
so hang on, my wizard could buy himself an empty pouch and scavenge for spell components? saves me 4 gp so I can buy my wizard 4 more empty pouches so I have 500 "charges" in case I can't get to a town to refill my 5 pouches. couple that with a ring of wizardry I and I can cast magic missile twice as much.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-05-04, 06:57 PM
I wouldn't allow scrounging, mostly because of those things that can't really be scrounged. I personally would make my players buy their refills.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2007-05-04, 07:52 PM
I agree. Where are you giong to find bat guano in a desert?

KingGolem
2007-05-04, 08:40 PM
I agree. Where are you giong to find bat guano in a desert?

Why, in cave, of course! That wouldn't be a too farfetched terrain to find in a desert; especially of a rocky variety. But yeah, I get your point. All material components can be found somewhere, but not all can be found anywhere.

knightsaline
2007-05-05, 04:21 AM
why are we putting real world facts into a fantasy game? I can smell the shifters being fried as we speak. just make the DC go up like it is for poison making. if you need to find bat guano in a desert its at least a +4 for finding the guano out of the bats natural habitat. illegal to own bats inb the town out in the desert? another +4 for the substance being illegal. bats don't exist? +20 to the check on top of the +4 for out of habitat.

besides, wizards and sorcs don't have Survival on their class list. unless you have a sorcarian or a barbizard, you won't be scrounging for spell components.

Matthew
2007-05-15, 08:58 PM
Yeah, I like this idea. However, I do sometimes wonder if some Spells should benefit from Spell Components, rather than require them.