Casters and material components?

[Sillybird99]

I get it being a game balance issue, but it doesn't make any sense that sorcerers need material components. Dragons don't need them. Sorcerers are basically magical mutants. Their casting is innate, not some studied semi-alchemical formula. Thinking of it, it's weird that wizards can use an arcane focus. What are they even focusing? It's a formula. They don't have innate arcane power to channel through an object. I understand divine foci. Arcane focus makes sense for warlocks because they are basically doing the same thing as clerics and paladins. Aren't all INT casters basically magical scientists needing compounds and arcane maths?

This was a bit of a rant, but 5e magic doesn't seem to make much sense (as if magic should lol).

[PhoenixPhyre]

I get it being a game balance issue, but it doesn't make any sense that sorcerers need material components. Dragons don't need them. Sorcerers are basically magical mutants. Their casting is innate, not some studied semi-alchemical formula. Thinking of it, it's weird that wizards can use an arcane focus. What are they even focusing? It's a formula. They don't have innate arcane power to channel through an object. I understand divine foci. Arcane focus makes sense for warlocks because they are basically doing the same thing as clerics and paladins. Aren't all INT casters basically magical scientists needing compounds and arcane maths?

This was a bit of a rant, but 5e magic doesn't seem to make much sense (as if magic should lol).

Components are resonant keys or catalysts (my wording) necessary to cause the spell (patterns) to take shape no matter how you learned it. That bit of sulfur for fireball? Has some form of "catalyst" needed. Even a draconic sorcerer, while they may have the knowledge in their blood, can't wield it like a dragon does. They aren't, themselves, magic. So their knowledge is innate, but the magic itself is not innate. Similarly, wizards learn the spells (patterns) through study, but the spells themselves are identical whether cast by a sorcerer or a wizard or heck, even an arcana cleric. Foci are worked objects that can replace the material components for minor catalysts, but can't provide the fuel gained from a consumed catalyst or the major charge gained from a costly one.

So your spellcasting type says how you learned the spells, not anything about the spells themselves. Those are set by [the universe|the god(ess) of magic|mathemagical formulae|whatever] and are independent.

That's how I see it, anyway.

[Composer99]

I don't think it breaks anything if sorcerers can get by without material components (the ones that don't cost money). When I'm playing a wizard, though, I loves me the material components. (Especially the ones that are subtle jokes - sesame seeds for passwall, for instance).

Thing is, leaving aside components with specified costs, it's not even really much of a balance issue since you can either use a spell component pouch (which does not have any requirement that it be refilled), or an arcane focus.

All that said, I think an arcane focus works for wizards, too. You're not channeling your innate magical power through the focus, you're channeling the ambient magic around you through it.

And components for sorcerers work fine. PhoenixPhyre has a pretty good take on one way why that might be.