Magic-users employ a greater variety of material components than do other character classes employing spells, i.e. clerics and druids. Some of the required components will be difficult to find and/or expensive, but alternative spells can always be chosen.

The relatively short casting time for those spells with a material component assumes that the magic-user has decided upon which spell he or she will employ, and the material or materials needed are at hand in the numerous pockets and folds of the magic-user's garb. If this is not the case, there will be a delay commensurate to the situation. It has been recommended to the referee that actual time relate to the game time in such situations if at all possible. If it takes 6 seconds to decide on which spell to cast, 1 segment of the round is gone. Having to search through a pack to locate some component is as good as wasting 5 segments - 30 seconds.

Substitute materials might be allowed. This is up to your Dungeon Master. It should be noted that such substitution could affect spell range, duration, area of effect, effect, etc.

In general, reversible or multiple application spells require the magic-user to determine which form he or she is memorizing prior to the adventure. Consult your referee in this regard.

Cantrips are the magic spells learned and used by apprentice magic-users and illusionists during their long, rigorous, and tedious training for the craft of magic-use. An aspiring magic-user or illusionist may use 1 cantrip per day as a 0-level neophyte (-2000 x.p. to -1 001 x.P.), 2 cantrips per day as a 0-level initiate (-1 000 to -501), and 3 cantrips per day as a 0-level apprentice (-500 to -1). Cantrips must be memorized just as higher-level spells are. 

Most cantrips are simple little spells of no great effect,  so when the individual becomes a 1 st-level magic-user, the knowledge and information pertaining to these small magics are discarded in favor of the more powerful spells then available. However, a magic-user may opt to retain up to four cantrips in place of one 1st-level spell. This assumes that the magic-user has, in fact, retained his or her book of cantrips - a tome as large as a good-sized book of higher-level spells.

All cantrips are 0 level, have a 1 “ range, have a generally small area of effect, require only soft, simple verbal and somatic components, and are cast in a very short time (VIO to VZ segment). Only those which involve living creatures afford any saving throw. Individuals in a state of extreme concentration (such as when casting a spell) do not have that concentration broken by person-affecting cantrips. The effects of cantrips, and the people and items affected by them, radiate a very faint magical aura.

The Casting of Cantrips:

Cantrips are basically cast the same way that spells are cast. Note that despite their simple components and short casting times, only two cantrips can be cast during any round by a single magic-user or apprentice. Furthermore, the segment of the round in which the cantrip is cast is dependent on the usual factors: surprise, initiative, and so on. After the first of the two cantrips is cast, the magic-user must roll a four-sided die to determine how many segments later he or she will be able to cast the second cantrip (if so desired). It is not possible for a magic-user to cast both a spell and a cantrip during the same round, no matter how short the casting times are. Cantrips are grouped according to general effect or purpose into six categories - useful, reversed, legerdemain, person-affecting, personal, and haunting-sound - plus a seventh available only to illusionists, minor illusion cantrips. Any magic-user or illusionist has the potential to know cantrips in all of the categories