Author: Ellie

In THIS Economy? Revised Material Components, P-Z

(Part 1, A-F) (Part 2, G-N)

Planar Binding
Original: a jewel worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a 4-carat diamond, 6-carat emerald, or 15-carat ruby or sapphire, which the spell consumes
(Your DM may allow you to use other kinds of gems. I tried to keep it simple.)

Plane Shift
Original: a forked, metal rod worth at least 250 gp, attuned to a particular plane of existence
Equivalent: a forked rod, weighing 4 pounds if made of gold, 40 pounds if made of silver, or one ton if made of iron, attuned to a particular plane of existence
Revised: a forked iron rod, attuned to a particular plane of existence and inlaid with golden sigils representing that plane, one foot long and one inch in diameter
(According to the Trade Goods table, 250gp will buy you 2500 pounds of iron.)

Programmed Illusion
Original: a bit of fleece and jade dust worth at least 25 gp
Equivalent: a bit of fleece and 225 carats of jade dust

Project Image
Original: a small replica of you made from materials worth at least 5 gp
Equivalent: a small silver replica of you, weighing one pound
(Defining the material makes components much easier to decouple from the economy.)

Raise Dead
Original: a diamond worth at least 500 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a 2-carat diamond, which the spell consumes

Reincarnate
Original: rare oils and unguents worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: five gallons of rare oils and unguents, which the spell consumes
(Another component for which the SRD doesn’t actually provide a price! I will assume that rare oils and unguents – by the way, an unguent is a cream or ointment – have the same price as holy water, which is 25gp per pint.)

Resurrection
Original: a diamond worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a 4-carat diamond, which the spell consumes
(There’s a nice escalation between Revivify, Raise Dead, and Resurrection. I just noticed that.)

Revivify
Original: diamonds worth 300 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: one and a half carats’ worth of diamonds, which the spell consumes

Scrying
Original: a focus worth at least 1,000 gp, such as a crystal ball, a silver mirror, or a font filled with holy water
Revised: a glass or crystal globe eight inches in diameter and inscribed around its circumference with a magic circle, a silver mirror one foot wide and eight inches across with seeing-eye sigils etched around its rim, or a font filled with five gallons of holy water
(I had to do some fudging with the crafting costs. I’m not sure a diviner wants to lug around a 400-pound silver mirror.)

Secret Chest
Original: an exquisite chest, 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet, constructed from rare materials worth at least 5,000 gp, and a Tiny replica made from the same materials worth at least 50 gp
Equivalent: an exquisite chest, 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet, constructed from gold, ivory, and emeralds, and a replica made at 1:36 scale from the same materials
(These are an incredibly expensive components for a fourth-level spell!)

Sequester
Original: a powder composed of diamond, emerald, ruby, and sapphire dust worth at least 5,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a powder composed of 9 carats each of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires, which the spell consumes.
(I chose to divide the powder equally between each type of gem. If you’d like, you can make each type’s cost equal instead, which gives 5 carats of diamonds, 8 of emeralds, and 19 each of rubies and sapphires.)

Shapechange
Original: a jade circlet worth at least 1,500 gp, which you must place on your head before you cast the spell
Equivalent: a jade circlet weighing six pounds, which you must place on your head before you cast the spell
Revised: a jade circlet, carved in the shape of multiple animals chasing each other and weighing at least four pounds, which you must place on your head before you cast the spell
(I added some flavor in order to remove some weight. Even a T-rex doesn’t want neck strain.)

Simulacrum
Original: snow or ice in quantities sufficient to made a life-size copy of the duplicated creature; some hair, fingernail clippings, or other piece of that creature’s body placed inside the snow or ice; and powdered ruby worth 1,500 gp, sprinkled over the duplicate and consumed by the spell
Equivalent: …and 30 carats of powdered rubies…
(An aside: It’s interesting to notice the patterns that emerge in what’s required for spell components. Rubies explicitly show up in the original listings for Continual Flame, Forbiddance, Forcecage, and Sequester – spells that involve flame and force. In this case I think it’s metaphorical: the rubies provide the inner fire of animation and the force of personality.)

Stoneskin
Original: diamond dust worth 100 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a half-carat of powdered diamond, which the spell consumes

Symbol
Original: mercury, phosphorus, and powdered diamond and opal with a total value of at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: 1 ounce of mercury, 1 ounce of phosphorus, 3 carats of powdered diamond, and 3 ounces of powdered opal, which the spell consumes

Teleportation Circle
Original: rare chalks and inks infused with precious gems [worth] 50 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: rare chalks and inks infused with 40 carats of powdered sapphire, which the spell consumes
(Thank goodness, finally a “rare [something]” I don’t have to come up with a price for. I settled on sapphires for this because it’s what Instant Summons uses, so thematically they’re linked to magical movement.)

True Resurrection
Original: a sprinkle of holy water and diamonds worth at least 25,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a sprinkle of holy water and 100 carats of diamonds, which the spell consumes

True Seeing
Original: an ointment for the eyes that costs 25 gp; is made from mushroom powder, saffron, and fat; and is consumed by the spell
Revised: one ounce an ointment made from mushrooms, saffron, and fat, which must be applied to the caster’s eyelids and is consumed by the spell
(Saffron is surprisingly expensive. This is roughly equivalent, but I marked it revised because I changed the wording.)

Warding Bond
Original: a pair of platinum rings worth at least 50 gp each, which you and the target must wear for the duration
Revised: a pair of platinum rings which fit together when pressed together, weighing 1 ounce each, which you and the target must wear for the duration
(As with True Seeing, I changed the wording slightly, so I marked this as Revised rather than Equivalent.)

And that’s it! I have learned two things in this journey through de-economizing the D&D material components:

  1. It’s not clear to me that anyone’s actually thought about the costs or consequences of spells’ material components, like, ever. I was going to say “since first edition” but I’m pretty sure Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax just threw some stuff together and called it a day.
  2. The idea of a “spell components pouch” is laughable in the face of twenty pounds of powdered iron.

Thanks for reading – see you next time!

In THIS Economy?: Revised Material Components, G-N

In the first article in this series, I mentioned that some material components have a crafted portion in addition to the raw materials. I neglected to mention that the caster can perform the crafting themselves if they’re proficient in the tools necessary to create the component; to do so takes a cumulative number of hours equal to the level of the spell being cast squared – from 1 hour for a level 1 spell up to 81 hours for a level 9 spell – unless your DM says otherwise.

Gate
Original: a diamond worth at least 5,000 gp
Equivalent: a 20-carat diamond
Revised: four 5-carat diamonds, placed in a T shape; the portal aligns along the crossbar and the front is in the direction indicated by the foot, and the diamonds can be picked up without interrupting the spell
(We’ve established in Clone that diamonds are roughly 250gp per carat. In the real world, the price isn’t linear, since larger diamonds are more rare, but we’ll stick to the pattern here.)

Glyph of Warding
Original: incense and powdered diamond worth at least 200 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: 4 oz of incense and 3/4 of a carat of powdered diamond, which the spell consumes
(Again, let’s not let this be a huge amount of incense and a sprinkling of powdered diamonds.)

Greater Restoration
Original: diamond dust worth at least 100 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: 2/5 carat of powdered diamond, which the spell consumes
(Again, standardizing on “powdered diamond”.)

Guards and Wards
Original: burning incense, a small measure of brimstone and oil, a knotted string, a small amount of umber hulk blood, and a small silver rod worth at least 10 gp
Equivalent: …and a silver rod 1/2” in diameter and 7” long
(10 gp is 100sp, and 50 coins to a pound. A silver rod of these dimensions weighs about two pounds.)

Hallow
Original: herbs, oils, and incense worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: 75 pounds in combination of herbs, oils, and incense, which the spell consumes
Revised: one pound each of herbs, oils, and incense, soaked in holy water for the full casting time, all of which the spell consumes
(This is an enormous amount of herbs, oils, and incense even in the original – especially since, again, no prices are listed for any of these items. 1000gp will buy you five gallons of holy water… which has inspired the revised component.)

Heroes’ Feast
Original: a gem-encrusted bowl worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes
Revised: a cornucopia made of wood, eight inches long and four across at the mouth, traced with 8oz of gold and filled with 3 carats of diamonds, 5 carats of emeralds, or 10 carats of rubies and sapphires, all of which the spell consumes
(Being a little more specific limits the caster’s options a little, but adds flavor to the spell.)

Holy Aura
Original: a tiny reliquary worth at least 1,000 gp containing a sacred relic, such as a scrap of cloth from a saint’s robe or a piece of parchment from a religious text
Equivalent: a reliquary made of at least two pounds of platinum, containing a sacred relic…
(Real-world reliquaries are often gold. Platinum allows the reliquary to be smaller and lighter while retaining the cost equivalency.)

Identify
Original: a pearl worth at least 100 gp and an owl feather
Equivalent: a 110-carat pearl and an owl feather
(Rounding down for the sake of round numbers.)

Illusory Script
Original: a lead-based ink worth at least 10 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a 1oz vial of lead-based ink, which the spell consumes

Imprisonment
Original: a small mithral orb, a fine chain of precious metal, a miniature representation of the prison made of jade, a large transparent gemstone, or rare soporific herbs, worth at least 500gp per hit die of the target
Equivalent:

    • a mithral orb weighing one pound per hit die of the target
    • a fine platinum chain weighing one pound per hit die of the target
    • a jade miniature of the prison weighing two pounds per hit die of the target
    • a diamond weighing two carats per hit die of the target
    • 4 oz of rare soporific herbs per hit die of the target

(I had to guess on the herbs, but then, the DM’s going to be making a number up anyway. Jade is currently wildly inflated in the real world; I’ve used the value from before the bubble started.)

Instant Summons
Original: a sapphire worth 1,000 gp
Equivalent: a 675-carat sapphire
(Sapphire comes out to about 2 carats per 3gp at the low end. The DM may allow you to substitute a smaller sapphire of higher quality. 675 carats is a little over 5 ounces.)

Legend Lore
Original: incense worth at least 250 gp, which the spell consumes, and four ivory strips worth at least 50 gp each
Equivalent: 25 pounds of incense, which the spell consumes, and four ivory blocks weighing four pounds each
Revised: a block of incense, carved by the caster into a miniature replica of the person or object to be investigated, which the spell consumes, and four ivory blocks weighing four pounds each, placed around the incense, one facing each cardinal direction
(This is the spell that actually got me thinking about this topic in the first place: “how much incense can 250gp buy?”. It turns out the answer is “a lot”: 10gp per pound seemed reasonable for Find Familiar, but that leads us to 25 pounds of incense here, which seems ridiculous. I have to assume that the spellcasting simply destroys most of the incense rather than burning it. I’ve set the price of ivory at about 1gp per ounce, which was roughly its price in the real world before the global ivory ban. If you prefer the current value, cut the amount of ivory per strip/block in half.)

Magic Circle
Original: holy water or powdered silver and iron worth at least 100 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: half a gallon of holy water or 20lbs of powdered silver and iron, which the spell consumes
(Given the choice of four pounds of water or 20 pounds of metal powder, I know which I’d choose.)

Magic Jar
Original: a gem, crystal, reliquary, or some other ornamental container worth at least 500 gp
Equivalent: a 2-carat diamond, a 10-carat ruby, a 350-carat sapphire, a finely-decorated 8-pound gold container, or a finely-decorated 13-ounce platinum container
(The decorations account for about 20% of the cost of the reliquaries.)

Magic Mouth
Original: a small bit of honeycomb and jade dust worth at least 10 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: a small bit of honeycomb and 90 carats of jade dust, which the spell consumes
(I’m not actually sure jade is measured in carats, but it’s useful here since it needs to be a fraction of an ounce to make the prices match.)

Magnificent Mansion
Original: a miniature portal carved from ivory, a small piece of polished marble, and a tiny silver spoon, each item worth at least 5 gp
Equivalent: a miniature portal carved from ivory and weighing 5 ounces, eight ounces of polished marble, and an intricately-wrought silver spoon weighing 4 ounces
(I’m fudging the marble price here, and the crafting cost is most of the cost of the spoon. What I’m learning with this series is that D&D prices could stand to be revisited, and that if something appears in a material component list with a price next to it, it should have a price listed in the SRD. I have resisted the urge to provide a revised version of this spell’s components; it’s already so specific that I feel greedy changing it further. (Besides, one of my characters had this as a signature spell and I don’t want to tempt my DM, who also happens to run this website.))

Nondetection
Original: a pinch of diamond dust worth 25 gp sprinkled over the target, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: 1/10 carat of powdered diamond, which the spell consumes, sprinkled over the target
(I think this is the smallest unit I’ve run into yet. Diamonds are expensive!)

Next up: P-Z! (Well, P-W. Zone of Truth doesn’t have a material component.)

In THIS Economy?: Revised Material Components, A-F

So there I was, trying to buy a miniature platinum sword so I could cast Arcane Sword, when a messenger burst into the shop and exclaimed that a competitor down the road had dropped his prices on the trinkets – only 240 gold pieces! By the time I turned back around, the shopkeeper had sighed and marked down his price to compete, at 239 gold pieces. I didn’t know how they were doing it – they must be swimming in platinum to be able to discount like that – but now I was out of luck. The sword I needed had to cost at least 250 gold. Oh well. Maybe in the next town…

From a game-mechanics standpoint, having material components have consistent, fixed costs makes a certain degree of sense. A player always know what a certain spell is going to cost her, and the system is already built on the assumption that everything always costs the same no matter where or when you are.

But in a diegetic sense, why should magic care about the economy? If someone finds a new ruby mine and drives ruby prices down, why would spells suddenly require more rubies? If someone gets almost all the world’s platinum together and shoots it into space on a rocket (look, you come up with a reason to make your DM convert your game to Spelljammer), is the aforementioned Arcane Sword going to suddenly require microscopic trinkets to cast as the price of the remaining platinum goes sky-high too?

This is a set of alternate rules for material components that allow players and DMs to use set quantities of the components rather than set costs. It was originally just supposed to be a 1:1 conversion – “the spell as written requires X gp worth of materials, X gp buys Y amount of materials, now the spell requires Y amount of materials” – but as I went through the spell list, I realized that some of these spells have absurd material components – components that were selected for flavor and cost, but which would be ridiculously difficult to acquire or transport in their stated form. So I’ve added a third listing to some spells: a revised material component, which is reasonably acquirable without reducing the cost substantially.

Some of these spells require that their material components be crafted, as opposed to just raw materials. For each of these, I’ve made a judgment call about how much the crafting cost contributes to the final cost. On average, I’ve tried to keep the final cost of crafted components to about 80% materials and 20% crafting, but some of these take a lot of crafting in order to make the costs realistic.

For the most part, I’m using real-world price equivalencies at the time of writing, googled to the best of my ability. Also, I’m only addressing spells in the 5th Edition SRD; beyond that, you’re welcome to use this as a guide to perform your own conversions!

Arcane Lock
Original: gold dust worth at least 25 gp
Equivalent: 8 oz of gold dust
(Gold’s price is pegged to the gold piece per the game rules – 50 coins per pound – so 25gp is equal to 8oz.)

Arcane Sword
Original: a miniature platinum sword with a grip and pommel of copper and zinc, worth 250 gp
Equivalent: a miniature platinum sword with a grip and pommel of copper and zinc, weighing 6 oz
(Platinum is worth ten times as much as gold. Assume 20% of the cost goes to crafting.)

Astral Projection
Original: one jacinth worth at least 1,000 gp and one ornately carved bar of silver worth at least 100 gp per creature affected
Equivalent: one 2300-carat jacinth and one ornately-carved bar of silver weighing 16 pounds per creature affected
Revised: a statuette of a meditating figure, made of silver inlaid with jacinth and weighing sixteen pounds, for each creature affected
(A jacinth is an orange zircon; on average, assuming real-world equivalencies, zircon sells for about 2.3gp per third of an ounce. Silver is worth one tenth what gold is; 1000sp weighs 20 pounds. That sounds like a lot, but silver is quite heavy, and this figurine is only about half again the size of a pint glass.)

Augury
Original: specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens worth at least 25 gp
Equivalent: specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens with a volume of at least 1/2 cubic foot
(This is a weird one. 25gp is a huge amount to pay for the base materials, so it must be the crafting that’s important, and since that’s the case I can just basically make up a number. Half a cubic foot – about 15 liters – seems like a good place to set it.)

Awaken
Original: an agate worth at least 1,000 gp
Equivalent: an ornately-carved agate weighing at least 300000 carats
Revised: a mask in the shape of a humanoid face, with movable eyelids, carved from agate and weighing one and a half pounds
(…look, I’m not gonna lie to you: I’m not sure the designers of D&D ever actually priced gemstones. The most expensive agate I could find on the market was about $8 USD per ounce, compared to gold’s $53 USD per ounce (author’s note: I messed up here. Gold is $53 per gram. But since gold appears to be more common in D&D than in the real world, I’m gonna stick with the “per ounce” figure). An uncarved agate worth 1,000gp would weigh around 129 pounds and would be by far the largest gemstone ever found. So we’ll make it a carved agate, make the carving worth 90% of the gem’s cost – if you think that’s unreasonable, check out actual gem prices – and bring it down to a reasonable size.)

Circle of Death
Original: the powder of a crushed black pearl worth at least 500 gp
Equivalent: 4 oz of powder from crushed black pearls
(Finally, one that’s reasonable. Tahitian (“black”) pearls can be had for about 1gp per carat, and 500 carats comes out to a little under 4 ounces.)

Clairvoyance
Original: a focus worth at least 100 gp, either a jeweled horn for hearing or a glass eye for seeing
Equivalent: an ornately-carved glass eye about one inch in diameter (for seeing) or a ram’s horn set with at least four carats’ worth of tourmalines (for hearing)
(The web tells me that if I meditate next to tourmaline, it will improve my hearing.)

Clone
Original: a diamond worth at least 1,000 gp and at least 1 cubic inch of flesh of the creature that is to be cloned, which the spell consumes, and a vessel worth at least 2,000 gp that has a sealable lid and is large enough to hold a Medium creature, such as a huge urn, coffin, mud-filled cyst in the ground, or crystal container filled with salt water
Revised: a 4-carat diamond and at least 1 cubic inch of the flesh of the creature that is to be cloned, which the spell consumes, and a vessel that has a sealable lid and is large enough to hold a Medium creature, such as a huge urn, coffin, mud-filled cyst in the ground, or crystal container filled with salt water
(Should we assume that the Forgotten Realms have a DeBeers consortium? Sure, why not. As for the container – well, that’s why there isn’t an “Equivalent” on this one. I was with the 2000gp bit until I reached “mud-filled cyst in the ground”. I can do that in an afternoon with a shovel and a hose. There’s no way that costs 2000gp. So instead we’re going to transfer the cost to the diamond, which would otherwise only be 2 carats. This makes the spell slightly more expensive for repeat uses, since the chamber can be re-used but the diamond is consumed, which is why it’s not 6 carats.)

Contingency
Original: a statuette of yourself carved from ivory and decorated with gems worth at least 1,500 gp
Equivalent: a statuette of yourself carved from ivory and decorated with at least three carats’ worth of diamonds and emeralds
(D&D likes to be vague about “gems” and “jeweled” objects, but let’s be honest: a statuette with a 200-pound agate glued to it just isn’t going to work as well. Let’s keep it simple.)

Continual Flame
Original: ruby dust worth 50 gp, which the spell consumes
Equivalent: 1 carat of powdered rubies, which the spell consumes

Create Undead
Original: one clay pot filled with grave dirt, one clay pot filled with brackish water, and one 150 gp black onyx stone for each corpse
Equivalent: one clay pot filled with grave dirt, one clay pot filled with brackish water, and 3000 carats of black onyx stone for each corpse
(That’s a lot of onyx. I made it 3000 carats’ worth of stone rather than a single stone because onyx rarely comes that big.)

Divination
Original: incense and a sacrificial offering appropriate to your religion, together worth at least 25 gp, which the spell consumes
Revised: 4 oz of incense and a sacrificial offering appropriate to your religion worth at least the value of two oxen, which the spell consumes
(This winds up being a little more expensive than the original. Here’s my rationale: in many parts of the world, the ox has, historically, been a pretty basic unit of sacrifice. If you’re just looking to propitiate a god, you sacrifice an ox. But with this spell, you <em>want</em> something from the god to whom you’re appealing, so you give them more than the basics. “An ox and a cow” or “an ox and a chicken” is too wordy, and two oxen feels about right anyway. So whatever your religion’s basic “this is what you sacrifice to keep the gods happy” sacrifice is, double it. As for the incense, the original wording allows you to show up with to show up with a couple pounds of incense and a chicken leg, which seems silly (and you’re gonna be coughing too hard from all that burning incense to hear the results of the divination), so we’ll be a little more specific about how much you’re supposed to bring.)

Find Familiar
Original: 10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier
Equivalent: one pound in combination of charcoal, incense, and herbs that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier
(None of these items have prices in the core rules – even the “Block of Incense” item doesn’t have a cost associated with it! – so I’ve had to guess based on real-world prices for liturgical incense.)

Find the Path
Original: a set of divinatory tools— such as bones, ivory sticks, cards, teeth, or carved runes—worth 100 gp and an object from the location you wish to find
Equivalent: a set of high-quality divinatory tools — such as carved bones, ivory sticks, cards, inscribed teeth, or etched runes — and an object from the location you wish to find
(Here we fall into the same trap as with Augury. 100gp worth of bones looks a lot different from 100gp worth of carved runes. “Okay, I have my sixteen full cow skeletons, let’s get started.” Making each set of divinatory tools crafted allows them to be roughly equivalent without becoming absurd, and “high-quality” means you can’t just pick any old stuff up off the ground.)

Forbiddance
Original: a sprinkling of holy water, rare incense, and powdered ruby worth at least 1,000 gp
Equivalent: a sprinkling of holy water, rare incense, and 20 carats of powdered rubies
(If 50gp of powdered rubies is 1 carat, then 1000gp is 20 carats. QED. I can’t stop wondering, though: is the whole thing supposed to be worth 1000gp, or just the powdered rubies?)

Forcecage
Original: ruby dust worth 1,500 gp
Equivalent: 30 carats of powdered rubies
(As you can see from Continual Flame above, I’m trying to standardize on “powdered rubies”.)

Next time: G through O!