Adventurer's League: Expensive Spell Components

[The Shadowdove]

Hey forum-lurkers,

Do players have to find special material components during quests or can they buy them between games?

Chromatic orb requires a diamond worth 50gp as a material component (not consumed upon casting). This is a more expensive than a typical Arcane focus.

How do you handle this? Perhaps there's a rule I'm not aware of. I'm fairly new to this and appreciate your expertise.

Thanks in Advance,

Dove

[StrikingViking]

The ruling I use is if they have enough gold on them at the time the spell is cast, they don't have to have gone and bought or found the specific item needed. Most players aren't into role-playing that much shopping for components, but if the group does like RP more than combat, make it a point to enforce.

Even though it's Adventurer's League, rules like Encumbrance are still usually ignored and tracking ammunition, food, and water is not done by any DMs except the most anal retentive ones. Buying components also gets left behind, since that's less time spent doing MurderDeathKills and getting loot. Adapt to your group dynamic.

[Dalebert]

You can always buy mundane things in between games. The general rule is you can buy anything with a listed price in the PHB in between games (so yes, an elephant too). So just log that you spent 50 gp on the appropriate gem and you're good.

There's a sort of encouragement not to buy things between games sometimes depending on the setting like if you're trapped in Barovia or the Underdark, just to maintain the flavor of that campaign that includes a serious scarcity of some things. But no one can enforce this if you choose to disregard.