Confession Time: I’ve always found myself to be very fond of Spell Components, even though tracking such things is often a bit too fiddly for the tastes of most tables. Rather than making them a necessary requirement to cast a given Spell these days, I find that they can still serve a purpose if used in conjunction with standard casting by boosting the effect, duration, range, or modifying other mutable parameters of an appropriate Spell. By making them desirable instead of mandatory, players seem to enjoy amassing and keeping track of them a little more. They also serve as a great hook for potential Adventure: If rumors swirl about a particularly powerful ingredient for augmenting Magical Might, some Wonder Workers will immediately start scheming towards its acquisition. Knowledge of these also makes for a handy Treasure or Reward for Referees to dispense occasionally.
Another use for these that we’ve adopted is tying these elements to Magical Research and Manufacture. I usually handle this by offering a discount on either Time or Cost if the appropriate additive is applied during the process. If Spell Acquisition in your game is limited to Mentors/Magical Research Only, this provides a pretty powerful incentive for a Magic User to consult those Tired Tomes and Stuffy Sages in order to identify that certain special something that might make this process swifter or less expensive. Some Magical Items also receive similar reductions in outlay if the proper Reagents are used during the creation process: Scrolls, Potions, Wands, and other sundry Wonders that incorporate these constituents are more easily produced.
To create some of these materials, I often use some of my generators: Magical Herbs & Plants or even feathers from one of my Remarkable Birds, but one of my favorites is having them harvestable from Monsters, because this makes them more of a byproduct of play for the entire Party and less of a goal for an individual party member.
Here’s a list of One Hundred Monsters with some of their Parts of interest, alongside some potential Thaumaturgical Interactions. As an added wrinkle, not all require butchery to acquire. The keen eyed may notice a glaring omission in the form of the Monster who directly contributes to the namesake for most of these games, but fret not: I intend to devote an entire table just to them with 100 Uses for a (Dead?) Dragon.
I think we talked before about learning spells by adding them as treasure on a hex map. Learning spells by haruspexy would be dope.
ReplyDeleteYeah! Still working on that Hex (as in the magical verb/noun, not the shape) Crawl idea, but dweomers via dissection would definitely be an interesting spin!
DeleteTying it all together is also interesting to me (Magic User wants to learn Magic Jar, I hear there might be an Ettin Graveyard/Encampment over there, etc.)
This table is such brilliant inspiration for adventure! Thank you for sharing!
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