Something doesn’t seem quite right with the formulas for Special Components:
“Components are usually organs or blood from one or more monsters with a total XP value equal to the gp cost of the research.”
First off, the phrase “GP cost of the research” seems unclear- does this mean the full GP price of the item, or the cost of researching the necessary spell effects? Except that it’s heavily implied that you always need components, even though you don’t perform any research if you have a formula or sample or if you already have a spell in mind. So if I know Fireball, and I want to make a Wand of Fireball, I should price out the research-cost of Fireball, and then use that to determine how many squid livers I’ll need?
Even with the third option, I still don’t always arrive at the examples in the book. Hellhounds are worth 65 XP, so 20 of them would be worth 1300. Fireball would cost 3,000 to research. By the formula, it should take 47 (46? What if the XP value of the creature doesn’t fit smoothly into the GP price of the research, does one round up or down?) hellhound fangs to make the wand. Efreeti, meanwhile, are worth 2950 each, so four of them would be worth 11,800! This is to say, the two example formulas to craft a Wand of Fireball apparently require ingredients with a 1000% difference.
On examining the other example components, they don’t correspond to any particular pattern either.
For instance, the book suggests the blood of 1 troll (680 xp)to brew one potion of healing(500gp, which was presumably made using the spell effect of Cure light wounds, which would cost 1000 gp to research.
3 griffins,(1760 xp) meanwhile, are needed for a scroll of fly, which would cost 1500 to scribe and is based off of Fly, which would cost 3000 gp to research.
Finally, 150 stalkers, (165,000 xp!!!)are required to craft a ring of invisibility that would cost 33,000 gp, and is presumably based off of Invisbility, which would cost 2000 gp to research.
Between the two Fireball examples, plus the three other items, I’m completely baffled regarding the intent of the rules. (I’m also a little concerned about what to do regarding Monster Parts As Merchandise, since mass and XP value don’t always correlate, leading to odd situations. Imagine that a merchant arrives with ten big crates, and you describe them to the players, then roll, and discover that all ten crates combined actually contain a single efreeti ichor.)