I have a player who wants to take the Snowcasting feat. But before he does he wants to know how I will rule on the matter.
Snowcasting (General)
You add ice or snow to your spell's components to make them more powerful.
Prerequisite: Con 13.
Benefit: If you add a handful of snow or ice as an additional material component to a spell when you cast it, the spell gains the cold descriptor. This does not actually change the nature of the spell you cast; a fireball cast with this feat still deals fire damage, but since it also carries the cold descriptor, it can be augmented by a number of feats listed in this chapter, such as Cold Focus and Frozen Magic.
If you add a handful of snow or ice as an additional material component to a spell when you cast it and that spell already has the cold descriptor, you increase the effective level of the spell being cast by +1.
Adding this additional material component requires you to spend a move action immediately before the spell is cast to gather fresh snow or ice from the surrounding environment. This snow or ice can be magically created by a conjuration spell, but no other ice manifested by a spell will do. You may take no other action between gathering the snow or ice and casting the spell (Frostburn, p. 50)
Here are my concerns
- Very little if any of the campaign will be in a snowing region and it will be mostly indoors. He is okay with making a small open container made of Blue Ice to get snow from, that he has made. I'm not sure this will work though due to this line, "Adding this additional material component requires you to spend a move action immediately before the spell is cast to gather fresh snow or ice from the surrounding environment.". This leads me to believe a Blue Ice container wouldn't work. Is this correct?
Eschew Materials (General)
Benefit: You can cast any spell that has a material component costing 1 gp or less without needing that component. (The casting of the spell still provokes attacks of opportunity as normal.) If the spell requires a material component that costs more than 1 gp, you must have the material component at hand to cast the spell, just as normal.
- The main arguments against using Eschew Materials goes like this..."From a RAW point of view, I would also say no. The Snowcasting feat mentions requiring a move action to gather the snow/ice, and specifically defines it as an "additional material component". The wording also says "if you add a handful or snow or ice" you get the effects described. By eschewing materials, you are not adding a handful of snow or ice. The Eschew Materials feat, meanwhile is worded to say you are able to cast a spell with material components less than 1gp without needing them. As the spells being cast do not require snow or ice to be cast, but do require them to be augmented I would interpret that as meaning that Eschew Materials does not allow you to augment a spell without the requisite component, but does allow the spell to be cast as normal." (Doc Holiday, post at rpgcrossing.com)
Would the Eschew Materials feat let him ignore the requirements of the Snowcasting feat or is Doc Holiday's interpretation correct?