Logistics

[dr4b]

I drove to Northgate in the morning and parked in the Target/BestBuy garage for the day, taking the 41 bus downtown to work. This was so the cupcakes I baked for D&D could sit in my car and not bake even more under the sun, and then I could go to the gym after work and then D&D... except the pool at the gym wasn't open due to like, the roof tiles falling or something, so we didn't actually go swimming, and I stayed at work until like 6:30pm instead.

D&D was good though, and the cupcakes survived being in the cool car pretty well, and I frosted them at M&J's house. Also, I think spell focus items can be really obnoxiously stupid. There's no reason for the focus for Mordenkainen's Sword, seriously, and Justin agreed with me and allowed me to cast it without.

"King Felix" Hernandez started the M's-Tigers game in Detroit today (and sadly got the loss). He was the youngest pitcher to start a Mariners game since like... 1984. I started working on a filk song about him, of course, to the tune of "Prince Ali" from Aladdin, an' I posted it to Marinerds but I won't bother posting it here until it's done. Or something.

I'm almost done reading Pam Postema's book about when she was a minor league umpire for the late 70's and early 80's. It's really goddamn good.

Whee, happy birthday eub, yo.

Comments

[danno-san.livejournal.com]

For spell components and focii, I've always used the rule that if the componants or focii cost less than your level squared x100 gp, for levels higher than 3 then you're wealthy enough that it should just be assumed that you have it.

I mean, the 100gp pearl for identify is actually pretty hefty at level 1 and 2, but by level 10, that's not even really worth writing down.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I think your PCs must be a lot richer than mine--I just came out of a long-running game with two mages in the party, and due to a combination of a goodly proportion of incoming wealth being received as magic items that were directly put to use rather than sold, learning new spells, and item enchantment, the mages only very rarely had more than 6000 gold in the bank, even at level 13. When the 300gp components for True Seeing or Antimagic Ray or whatever are 5% of one's liquid assets, one feels compelled to keep track of them and doesn't usually have very many on hand.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Focus items help pull down the spell level a little by making it more expensive to learn, and they occupy a hand when casting so that you can't also use a dagger or something. They're not particularly worse than expensive material components.

Whether an expensive focus is necessary for the level-adjustment of a particular spell is nearly complete opinion.

[dr4b]

Well, here's the problem. We're playing City of the Spider Queen. We're pretty much *trapped* in a drow castle for the next while, until we defeat Her High Holy Bitchiness or whatever. We cannot teleport out, nor use any other planes because we're in a Forbiddance. (We could leave the Forbiddance but that'd basically be akin to punting the adventure.) We just levelled while in the castle.

I get two more 7th level spells, but almost all the ones I would want to take have a ridiculous focus or material component.

We looked at some though... the one that requires a 1000-gp gem? Okay, fine, that's there for a reason. The one that requires an ivory statue of yourself? Yeah, sure, that makes sense too. But Mordenkainen's Sword, which is basically Spiritual Weapon++++? The focus is a "small 250-gp dagger made out of blah blah blah", so Justin decided "You have extra weapons. You have a ton of cash. You can doctor a sword to work as your focus."

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Arguably its purpose is the one you were hitting against--disallowing learning of the spell except in a city.
Considering your position of having plot-related unusual lack of access to a city, the GM allowing a makeshift focus seems fine. I might've given you a -1 attack penalty on the spell until you can get a real focus, but I'm mean. :)

[eustacio.livejournal.com]

I'm not terribly familiar with D&D (any d20 game tends to make me twitch). Does it require spell components for everything now? Even the quick and dirty spells (fireballs, minor alterations to something, etc...)?

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Technically yes, however every caster is provided with a "Spell Component Pouch" which is assumed to contain every component they might ever need that doesn't have a price listed in the spell's description. Consequently, the question of posessing a material component or not is pretty much ignored, unless either it's very expensive or the caster loses their pouch.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Thanks.