[3.5] Spell component pouch RAW discussion

[Phelix-Mu]

Spell component pouches. They get mentioned a lot, often in a semi-serious, TO fashion, but I've read enough to worry me. I am looking to clarify RAW to determine if I need to rewrite the item description.

So here is discussion about them. I will quote my view once I dig up the post I made 10 minutes ago.

[Zaq]

Um, they exist?

Not sure what you're looking for, here.

[Phelix-Mu]

My opinion on the RAW, but I'm not well-informed, please feel free to correct or discuss.

I find this use of spell component pouch [to draw out components like artifacts, a god's eyelash, etc] to be weird RAW. Without price means not available for purchase, not without value. Artifacts have value (since you can probably sell one to a specific buyer, and an Appraise check won't result in a value of nil), but they have no price because no one is selling them by default. Any DM that isn't aware of a distinction between "price" and "value" is not interpreting the rules in a realistic manner.

Just checked, Appraise does refer to "value," but never mentions "price" (so the concept of value exists in RAW). Allowing a PC to draw items that don't have price but do have value from the spell component pouch seems extremely unwise.

[Karnith]

Well, the problem arises from this line:

A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn’t fit in a pouch.
(Emphasis mine)

You would probably get buyers who would give you something for them, but since artifacts never (so far as I know) have a specific cost assigned to them, by RAW they're fair game to be in spell component pouches, since there are spells that require them.

[Phelix-Mu]

Well, the problem arises from this line:

(Emphasis mine)

You would probably get buyers who would give you something for them, but since artifacts never (so far as I know) have a specific cost assigned to them, by RAW they're fair game to be in spell component pouches, since there are spells that require them.

So, looking for a RAW loophole, may the DM rule on specific spell components? "Assumed to have" is not particularly iron-clad.

Again, "cost" is another term entirely. "Price" is never mentioned in the artifacts section of the DMG, from what I could find with a quick search. The problem is .....

Oh, well, lol. "Price" and "Cost" are even less defined than I had assumed. DMG uses price for magic items in a similar way to how PHB uses "cost." *facepalm*

[Chaosvii7]

Oh, well, lol. "Price" and "Cost" are even less defined than I had assumed. DMG uses price for magic items in a similar way to how PHB uses "cost." *facepalm*

That's because Players have to pay out of their imaginary pockets while DMs can mass-produce any potion of snake oil or +5 vorpal squeaky hammer to try and sell to the players.

I see what you're saying though, but it's easier to think of costly materials not as random things you throw in a cloth bag but particular arcane focus items. Throwing filet mignon into a beef stew still makes it beef stew, after all.

What else are you looking for in RAW for using spell components?

[Phelix-Mu]

.
What else are you looking for in RAW for using spell components?

I was just discussing the not-abuse abuse of spell component pouch that comes up a lot in optimization discussions. I guess I need to formalize a definition of "Price" and "Cost," and probably just use one term, since they seem to mean the same thing: the default amount of money a player must spend to buy x from a vendor that has x in stock.

"Value" is a more abstract term, and the problem that I was highlighting was that, if someone can draw an item that is without cost, but with value, from the spell component pouch, then that is a problem. "Value" however, apart from an English definition, is poorly-defined, and thus not a good argument.

In the end, I will just re-write the item description for the spell component pouch, but I wanted to see if RAW really allows what people say it allows.

I could find no reference to artifacts as being "without cost." It seems clearly RAI that they aren't available for purchase, but that isn't covered in the spell component pouch description. Aghhh..... I also find that most material components don't use the term "cost" either, instead using "worth" or "value," implying a vague interchangeability (the kind of vague interchangeability, by the by, THAT SHOULD NEVER BE PART OF GAME DEFINITIONS).

/rant.

[Psyren]

If you're thinking of rewriting it, a better description would be something like this:

"A number of spell components consist of materials that could be reasonably judged to be readily available in the world with a small amount of foraging on the spellcaster's part - bits of spiderweb, fragments of bone, iron filings and the like. With DM discretion, the spellcaster could be considered to always have such common materials on hand for casting spells, so long as they maintain possession of the spell component pouch.

This should not extend to any material or focus components with a given gp cost, nor should it extend to components whose nature or description implies them to be rare, unique or otherwise requiring special effort to obtain."

Such a description would be exclusive rather than inclusive; the DM decides what is in the pouch. rather than what is not. It also covers things that have no market value yet should nevertheless be excluded from the pouch, like an artifact or a deity's toenail clippings.

[Phelix-Mu]

If you're thinking of rewriting it, a better description would be something like this:
...snip

Such a description would be exclusive rather than inclusive; the DM decides what is in the pouch. rather than what is not. It also covers things that have no market value yet should nevertheless be excluded from the pouch, like an artifact or a deity's toenail clippings.

Thanks, I may have to slightly plagiarize this.

I was trying to establish that artifacts/deity's toenail clippings and such do have market value, even if it's not listed. I am looking for a place where it says that artifacts have no value. I expect it's in the SRD, but my ranks in Knowledge(SRD) are quite sub-op.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The RAW is clear, albeit poorly phrased; unless an item has a listed price/cost/value it's assumed to be in there. This really only works in TO discussions though.

No DM running an even semi-serious game will fail to realize that the intent was that the contents of the pouch are without -value- to anyone other than arcane spellcasters and that even they can find the vast majority of those contents for themselves with a bit of effort rather than needing to purchase each and every single item inside.

I'm even inclined to think that the 2gp is for the actual pouch itself rather than any of its contents. A normal pouch is 1gp and a component pouch has pockets and flaps to keep it organized and its contents easily accessible. It's perfectly reasonable for the component pouch itself to be worth twice what a normal pouch is worth.

Things like a god's eyelash or a minor artifact are assumed to be there by RAW but you'll certainly almost never hear of that being the case in actual play, and I'd flag any player that tried to insist on it as a potential problem-player on the spot.

[Carth]

Out of curiosity, what components do you have a problem with besides artifacts? I can think of lots which would be annoying as hell to carry around, like live spiders, but does a spell out there actually require deity eyelashes, nail clippings, or something? The spell heroics (Spell Comp.) requires a piece of armor from a level 10 fighter, which could be annoying.

[Phelix-Mu]

.... The spell heroics (Spell Comp.) requires a piece of armor from a level 10 fighter, which could be annoying.

Yet that armour is also strangely in the pouch (since "piece" was so vague). Theoretically you can take the armour out piece by piece, and end up with the armour of a 15th level fighter, since pieces of armour have no value (though many types of armour can be taken apart with little impact on the functionality of the item).

In short, spell component pouch is just a dumb item. I'm tempted to rewrite it that wizard gathers an arbitrarily large number of worthless/without value spell components each morning as part of his/her hour of memorizing, such that the pouch is really only useful for storing the components in an organized manner.

Otherwise, I generally agree with Kelb. As a DM, I would never allow such silliness, but I am also a player with a DM that has a penchant for allowing anything that works by RAW, and I wanted to suss out just what the RAW is.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Other than the artifact for apocalypse from the sky, which is painfully obvious, I'd have to look at them on a case by case basis. It's a simple matter of what is considered reasonable by the DM.

Your example of heroics component is a good example. If it's being cast infrequently I don't see it being a problem but there certainly shouldn't be enough in there to spam the spell several times per day, every day. That pushes the abstraction to the point of breaking suspension of disbelief. If you're going to use the spell that often you'll need a work-around; a wand, a "fighter"* ally or aquaintance willing to sell you his armor padding on-the-cheap from time to time**, eschew materials, etc.

*I'd assume "fighter," in this case, to mean any character who is primarily a user of weapons and weapon-related feats; as opposed to someone who relies on skills and precision damage or spell-casting.

**This is the solution I'd go with, being both a simple and elegant solution; given that your caster will most likely have at least one "fighter" in his party or that he'd find himself in civilization often enough that it wouldn't run out between visits.

[Jeff the Green]

Your example of heroics component is a good example. If it's being cast infrequently I don't see it being a problem but there certainly shouldn't be enough in there to spam the spell several times per day, every day. That pushes the abstraction to the point of breaking suspension of disbelief. If you're going to use the spell that often you'll need a work-around; a wand, a "fighter"* ally or aquaintance willing to sell you his armor padding on-the-cheap from time to time**, eschew materials, etc.

Or once a couple of fighter buddies reach level 15, they can retire, hold a few friendly boxing matches in padded armor every day, and then sell the armor. Let's say "a bit" is at least a gram. That's 9000 g per match. Voila, no shortage.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alas! The horrors of RAW!

I'm going to start a new thread. People with expertise (actual, imagined, or otherwise) in temporal physics, quantum mechanics, and conceptual engineering are welcome to contribute. The Goal: to make a time machine. The Secondary Goal: fix the RAW, once and for all!

Hmm, should that all be in blue text? Not sure I'm being sarcastic....:smallcool:

[Jeff the Green]

What, my reply? Honestly, heroics is nice, but it doesn't seem like one of those spells whose material components are supposed to be more than a bit of fluff.

[Phelix-Mu]

What, my reply? Honestly, heroics is nice, but it doesn't seem like one of those spells whose material components are supposed to be more than a bit of fluff.

No, sorry, I posted at approximately the same time as you. I was remarking in general. I am pretty talented, language-wise, but hardly as qualified as, say, one of the English majors that was no doubt doing some kind of editing somewhere at WotC sometime during development. How said qualified person was employed and/or working while also apparently not reading over half of what was eventually written confounds me on a daily basis. I love this game, far more than is prudent, and yet it reads incredibly poorly for something that ought to have been done is systematic and consistent manner.

/rant? Ah, I shouldn't be so judgmental. I'm sure it all seemed reasonable at the time.:smallamused:

[Carth]

So, are you considering changing things like fighter armor pieces in such a way that they would no longer be affected be eschew materials?

[Kalaska'Agathas]

No, sorry, I posted at approximately the same time as you. I was remarking in general. I am pretty talented, language-wise, but hardly as qualified as, say, one of the English majors that was no doubt doing some kind of editing somewhere at WotC sometime during development. How said qualified person was employed and/or working while also apparently not reading over half of what was eventually written confounds me on a daily basis. I love this game, far more than is prudent, and yet it reads incredibly poorly for something that ought to have been done is systematic and consistent manner.

/rant? Ah, I shouldn't be so judgmental. I'm sure it all seemed reasonable at the time.:smallamused:

It shouldn't have been an English Major - they needed Law students.

[Kelb_Panthera]

So, are you considering changing things like fighter armor pieces in such a way that they would no longer be affected be eschew materials?
If this was directed at me; no. Beyond the casting of this spell a "bit" of armor has no value. (I'm assuming a "bit" is a fragment small enough to completely enclose in one's fist or about 1/4 the area of a post-it.)

It shouldn't have been an English Major - they needed Law students.

Honestly, it should've probably been done by people with degrees in both subjects to stand up to the kind of scrutiny its recieved in the last 10 years.

This is actually why I borrow a convention from the practice of law: precedence. The intent of a rule or rule-set, especially when that intent is fairly clear, as well as the consequences of certain interpretations of those rules in the context of comparing them to other rules is just as, if not more important than the specific parsing of the rules as they're written.

[Carth]

English majors frequently become law students, so if you get a bunch of law students chances are you'll get at least couple English majors anyway.

[Kelb_Panthera]

English majors frequently become law students, so if you get a bunch of law students chances are you'll get at least couple English majors anyway.

I was unaware of this. I'm not doubting your statement, it certainly makes a certain amount of sense, but is that an anecdotal observation or do you have numbers to go with that statement?

[Carth]

I was unaware of this. I'm not doubting your statement, it certainly makes a certain amount of sense, but is that an anecdotal observation or do you have numbers to go with that statement?

Entirely anecdotal. My college had a law school also, so I met a lot of people that planned on going to law school there after finishing their undergrad work there. Even after finishing school, I've met several people that have gone to law school and corroborated that it's an undergrad major that's looked upon very highly during the admissions process.

[Psyren]

I can think of lots which would be annoying as hell to carry around, like live spiders, but does a spell out there actually require deity eyelashes, nail clippings, or something?

Ice Assassin from Frostburn requires hair/flesh of whoever you're attempting to duplicate. The most common use of this spell in TO discussions is to copy deities, thus gaining full access to their considerable powers and obedience. So a TO enthusiast would simply assume Boccob's eyelashes are in his pouch and go from there.

[TuggyNE]

Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, but the most effective way to fix spell component pouches is to eliminate the "non-magical" magic that powers their endless supplies and remove all 0-cost spell components from the game. They're jokes, and generally stupid ones; they have next to no relevance to the rules, except for corner cases like being slower to retrieve in grapples or Chained shatter to destroy all a caster's pouches at once.

This solution avoids the problems with wording, removes weirdness, and prevents DMs from trying to make things "gritty" in various ways by messing with SCP rules.

And, of course, like all the best fixes, it technically involves rewriting nearly every spell. :smalltongue:

[Carth]

Ice Assassin from Frostburn requires hair/flesh of whoever you're attempting to duplicate. The most common use of this spell in TO discussions is to copy deities, thus gaining full access to their considerable powers and obedience. So a TO enthusiast would simply assume Boccob's eyelashes are in his pouch and go from there.

Your example also applies to less extreme things like regular ol' scrying, come to think. It seems like the easiest solution would simply be to make those things a focus, rather than a component, and therefore they wouldn't be covered under even the ignore material components epic feat, let alone the 'ignore costless components' rules clause. Edit: ack, focuses also have a 'ignore costless' clause too.

For things like heroics I agree with tuggyne, though.

[Rukia]

I simply give all casters free eschew materials and only make them worry about any spells with an obvious costly or rare material component. I personally find the pouches to be absurd in almost all ways.

A level 1 wizard can move 30 feet while dipping into his component pouch to grab the exact item(out of 100's) required for his spell, then somehow cast said spell without even having to make a concentration check all within seconds... but the level 10 fighter can't move 10 feet and swing his weapon more than once.

My suspension of disbelief is busted beyond all repair on that one.

[Andezzar]

I simply give all casters free eschew materials and only make them worry about any spells with an obvious costly or rare material component. I personally find the pouches to be absurd in almost all ways.The problem is that rarity is not the checked property for deciding whether a component is covered by Eschew Materials. It is only price. So any wizard could have basilisk's eyelashes and other rare components as long as no price tag is attached to them.

Introducing rarity as a criterion would devalue Eschew Materials and would make spellcasting a lot more difficult for players who don't want to optimize their characters and probably won't hinder the optimizers much.

[Jeff the Green]

Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, but the most effective way to fix spell component pouches is to eliminate the "non-magical" magic that powers their endless supplies and remove all 0-cost spell components from the game. They're jokes, and generally stupid ones; they have next to no relevance to the rules, except for corner cases like being slower to retrieve in grapples or Chained shatter to destroy all a caster's pouches at once.

This solution avoids the problems with wording, removes weirdness, and prevents DMs from trying to make things "gritty" in various ways by messing with SCP rules.

And, of course, like all the best fixes, it technically involves rewriting nearly every spell. :smalltongue:

Personally, I prefer replacing SCPs with a focus unique to each caster: a wand, a bracelet, a charm, etc. I think it's more fun for players and keeps the rules pretty much the same.

[Andezzar]

Personally, I prefer replacing SCPs with a focus unique to each caster: a wand, a bracelet, a charm, etc. I think it's more fun for players and keeps the rules pretty much the same.A spell component pouch can be replaced more easily than a unique item. It is also too easy to destroy a non-magical item to render the wizard (more or less) a commoner.

[Greenish]

A spell component pouch can be replaced more easily than a unique item. It is also too easy to destroy a non-magical item to render the wizard (more or less) a commoner.I think that's the point.

[Psyren]

Your example also applies to less extreme things like regular ol' scrying, come to think. It seems like the easiest solution would simply be to make those things a focus, rather than a component, and therefore they wouldn't be covered under even the ignore material components epic feat, let alone the 'ignore costless components' rules clause. Edit: ack, focuses also have a 'ignore costless' clause too.

For things like heroics I agree with tuggyne, though.

Making them foci has problems of its own. Foci aren't consumed, so a single fleck of skin or an eyelash will let you clone an army, or keep tabs on someone for their entire life. The idea behind such spells is that they have to keep you captive or follow you around to get an inexhaustible supply of your DNA.

[The Viscount]

Out of curiosity, what components do you have a problem with besides artifacts? I can think of lots which would be annoying as hell to carry around, like live spiders, but does a spell out there actually require deity eyelashes, nail clippings, or something? The spell heroics (Spell Comp.) requires a piece of armor from a level 10 fighter, which could be annoying.
Some rather notable material components come from BoVD and HoH. absorb mind and absorb strength require portions of a creature's body. The descriptive text mentions that one eats them, despite them being foci.:smallconfused: Anyway, both are clearly supposed to be harvested from the corpse of the body, but as they have no cost, could you be assumed to have them before you even fight said foe?
There are other various material components that are added to make the spells more unsavory. These are all without cost, but I don't think you should be assumed to have the hearts of children, the tongues of murderers, entire corpses of unspecified creatures, and severed hands of good aligned humanoid clerics in your spell component pouch. Who do you buy these from? Where do you get them?



Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, but the most effective way to fix spell component pouches is to eliminate the "non-magical" magic that powers their endless supplies and remove all 0-cost spell components from the game. They're jokes, and generally stupid ones; they have next to no relevance to the rules, except for corner cases like being slower to retrieve in grapples or Chained shatter to destroy all a caster's pouches at once.

This solution avoids the problems with wording, removes weirdness, and prevents DMs from trying to make things "gritty" in various ways by messing with SCP rules.

And, of course, like all the best fixes, it technically involves rewriting nearly every spell. :smalltongue:

This is probably the best solution to material component pouches I've seen, which is pretty sad considering.