Rare spell foci

[MyTThor]

Came across this issue in our current campaign.

I was attempting to cast Plane Shift to return to the Prime Material from what was essentially a created demiplane. The focus for this is a forked piece of metal attuned to the plane of travel. While I understand the general idea that a material component or focus like this that doesn't have a stated value is assumed to be in your component pouch, how do you guys play it in a situation like this where until you were there, you didn't know the plane existed?

My thought was that you just have the forked piece of metal handy and the knowledge of the spell would allow you to know how to "attune" it. Any suggestions?

[MrSin]

Well the spell components are mostly flavor in the case they have no cost. Its cool when you know what it is and you add it to the spell when you describe what happens, but when you start to care about each and every item in your pocket and trying to figure out how you got it you really bog things down and make it more of a resource management game. You carry anything from butter, to bat guano, to demon blood in that pouch and in a seemingly limitless amount.

Best not to worry and just to ignore it for anything more than flavor. I think anyway.

[Dasrak]

Quote:

My thought was that you just have the forked piece of metal handy and the knowledge of the spell would allow you to know how to "attune" it

This is definitely how I'd handle it. Since the material component has no cost associated with it, this would imply that attuning the metal to the desired plane is trivial for a wizard of sufficient skill to cast the plane shift spell.

[Loren Pechtel]

This is one I would treat differently. I would say that knowledge of the spell would give you the knowledge to make the forks for the standard planes.

Thus making the fork for the prime material would be no problem. Making the fork for the demiplane, though--my inclination is that if you're there and study it for a bit you know how to make the fork. Likewise, someone can teach you, or you can examine a fork you recover from somewhere. Without any of these sources you could try high level divination spells. Beyond that, forget plane shift, you'll have to go with gate.

[Banalitybob]

You could say that different metals are attuned to different planes (like brass is the plane of fire and silver is the plane of ice and whatnot) and just say you have a, I dunno, unobtanium fork in your pouch. It's just a matter of telling your GM, "this plane is a very surgical steel feeling place, so I use the surgical steel fork."

[LazarX]

MyTThor wrote:

Came across this issue in our current campaign.

I was attempting to cast Plane Shift to return to the Prime Material from what was essentially a created demiplane. The focus for this is a forked piece of metal attuned to the plane of travel. While I understand the general idea that a material component or focus like this that doesn't have a stated value is assumed to be in your component pouch, how do you guys play it in a situation like this where until you were there, you didn't know the plane existed?

My thought was that you just have the forked piece of metal handy and the knowledge of the spell would allow you to know how to "attune" it. Any suggestions?

Plane Shift is one of those special exception spells in which I do tell players that they need to have specific tuning forks in their inventory. It's a component that's a bit more significant than bat guano. If it's an arcane version of the spell, I assume that any Wizard who goes to the trouble to learn the spell will get a tuning fork for the Prime Material plane, and one other if I'm feeling generous.

[Ughbash]

Also notice it is NOT a material component but a FOCUS. So you can not get around it with Eschew Materials.

We have generally said that it takes some material from that plane to attune it and a simple (dc 15) Spellcraft check to make it.

Now you could perhaps BUY a fork for a plane that you have not been to, I would suggest Knowledge Planes to make sure it is attuned properly adn you are not being scammed. But unless you buy a tuning fork, you can not planeshift to a plane unless you have been there or hav somematerial from it.

Though rereading the text I can see an arguetn tht a Knowledge planes should allow you to attune any forked metal rod to that plane. We ahve just assumed that each rod was attuned to a single plane sort of like a key.