Character Concepts & Campaign Info

What's your stance on material spell components, Octo? Mordred just got his spellcasting abilities at level 3, and he hasn't had a chance to go shopping for tarts and colored sand and whatnot.

What spell and which components do you need?

I'm partial to this tart component. Sounds tasty.

Yeah Mordred did you bring enough tarts for everybody?

I don't really understand the whole "material component" part of magic so have been quietly ignoring it. Hope that helps.

Tasha's Hideous Laughter requires "tiny tarts and a feather that is waved in the air," Color Spray requires "a pinch of powder or sand that is colored red, yellow, and blue" and Minor Illusion requires "a bit of fleece". I don't mind having to spend some GP every once in a while to re-stock, but I haven't realistically had a chance to do so during the course of this adventure. I guess we could say that he already had a few tarts in his rations, picked up some feathers and fleece in the woods, and... had some colored powder in his thieves' tools?

I am certainly not opposed to the "benign neglect" method of dealing with it, however.

My policy for spell components is going to be, if you can make up a reasonable justification for having a plausible facsimile of the components, you're good to go.

A wild blackberry smushed on a cracker? Sounds like a tart to me.

Sounds legit!

Alternatively, if you get the chance to buy a spellcasting focus or components pouch, those take the place of spell components. (with the exception of components that have a written GP cost in the spell description)

Yeah, that's what I would have done if I was starting out as a magic-user or he had leveled up in town. I probably should have thought ahead about his Archetype and just given him a components pouch from the beginning, but I'm just an unfrozen caveman D&D player, and your fifth edition ways are strange and frightening to me.

I'm pretty surprised they still bother with material components. I figured they'd be phased out by now.

I'm beginning the mourning process for all the interesting side-quests in the Badgerways I won't get to develop now...

I knew that faucet was suspicious!

none of you heard me screaming AWWW COME ON when you decided not to investigate Wormfellow

I was actually going to ask Everil about wormfellow hahaha

I feel so tugged by the need to find Zora, first because she was so far ahead of us, and now because she is so close. Just between us, is finding Zora going to "wait" if we do go off on a sidequest or two, or is there a timer on what happens to her? In any case, if I'm playing in character, it's going to be hard to convince Mordred to do anything other than chase after Zora headlong.

And I really wanted to get a neurotic kobold NPC in the party, so I was bummed Ghaman didn't come along with us.

I would say, with events in motion the way they are now, there would be consequences if you just sort of put looking for Zora on the backburner. Everil obviously has some weird designs on her and is hellbent on stopping her from getting to Hazard.

As a player, I was definitely intrigued by a bunch of the stuff we found in the badgerways... but as a character, there's no way I'd want to stop looking for Zora to check them out.

Octorok, having seen behind your DM veil previously, I am fully aware that every single unexplored clue leads to a something cool, and every NPC has an elaborate backstory, and if we weren't hot on the trail of a woman pursued by IG-88, I would totally stop and investigate them all! :)