Request: make all items referred to in spells as items in D&DBeyond

The request is very simply what it says on the tin; if there's an item referenced anywhere, such as spell components, resources, or loot, it should be an item in DDB.

Some obvious examples that would make everyone's lives easier:
- Diamonds for resurrection magic. 300+, 500+, 1,000+, and 25,000+ GP increments are the big ones. Rare oils (need: 1,000+) for the Druidic spell Reincarnate. 
- Wizard spell scribing components. 25 GP increments of these rare inks would make it much easier for wizard players to track how many spells they can learn.
- The charms you get from Bastions.
- All other material components with a gold cost. Chalices! Gilded skulls! Pearls! 
- Bonus points: material components without a gold cost. Feathers! Bat guano! Little clay pyramids!

As a software engineer myself, this feels like a very easy way for the DDB team to give all players a lot of convenience for not much cost. 

Then, once you have total coverage of these items, you can implement even more interesting features. You could, for example, have a character sheet option where in order to cast these spells you must actually have the item in your inventory, and the appropriate amount is consumed in the casting.This would be a huge help for situations where the player is overwhelmed, such as online, in your first campaign, or when your inventory gets really big. Now the DM doesn't have to ask the players if they have the diamond for Revivify; they do or they don't and the software enforces it.

The 'business case' for this feature is that the reason people come to DDB is the ease of use, and improving that ease of use in ways that are easier for DDB and harder for everyone else increases the 'moat'.

Quote from moose_cannon >>

- Diamonds for resurrection magic. 300+, 500+, 1,000+, and 25,000+ GP increments are the big ones. 
- Wizard spell scribing components. 25 GP increments of these rare inks would make it much easier for wizard players to track how many spells they can learn.

 
Diamonds are already a thing, in 5e basic rules. Just customise the value. Seems wholly unnecessary to create multiple copies of the exact same thing with different values, given we can just customise a value anyway.

And Wizards don't need "rare" inks for scribing. 5e lists "fine" ink, which means writing ink (remember that there's many ink types, fine ink is generally used as a term for ink used for writing). Bottles of Ink are already coded in. And 5.5e wizards don't use ink for scribing. It just says "For each level of the spell, the transcription takes 2 hours and costs 50 GP."

Quote from moose_cannon >>

- Bonus points: material components without a gold cost. Feathers! Bat guano! Little clay pyramids!

 
That's a lot of work for something few people bother with. Most just use component pouch or relevant focus and some tables don't even bother with those at all. If you are the type of player who wants to track that minutiae of details then go for it - the custom item system is there for you. 

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While I understand your point, it can make some tracking easier, I am unsure if it's something they need to code in. And forcing spells to need the item in inventory seems overkill. Some tables don't track even gold cost materials and just go with the retcon route: deduct gold, say you already had it. All but one game I've been in have had that rule. So forcing this will piss off a lot of players. So to avoid that they'd have to make a toggle system for it. All because the DM going "do you have X?" and the player checking is somehow too complicated for players? There's a thing about overcomplicating systems with too many menus and toggles and options. Adding another for a feature for a rule most people don't even follow seems actively detrimental. 

I can instantly add any item I can think of or need directly to my sheet using custom items - complete with custom descriptions, notes and everything and is super quick and easy. 

Also over relying on the software to handle everything is actually not good. It means you stop learning how to play the game yourself. D&D Beyond may not be around forever and you may need to go to a system, play in person, etc without it - and suddenly all that reliance on having the system remember everything for you means you're now struggling.  I've already seen this many times already in posts on here and reddit where people have relied on the Character Builder instead of learning how to make a character from the book and then get confused by things. 

I don't personally see this as worth the time, effort or costs to develop, test and implement. 

It's not a bad suggestion, by any means, I'm sure some people will find it useful. I just don't agree with it as a personal opinion. 

I'm going to reinforce what Cyb3rM1nd said. This seems like a lot of back-end work to make a vanishingly small number of very strict DM's happy. I get that some players do enjoy playing with DM's who require tracking food, ammunition, and spell component usage. They want to know the player is having their character buy incense and scoop up bat guano and all that. But I don't expect that micromanager style of DMing is common enough to warrant devoting backend development resources like this. I would argue against assuming it would be easy to implement; I'm sure you know your own software projects in-and-out, but I don't think that's solid standing for assuming a change would be easy to implement in somebody else's environment. And honestly, even if that style of DMing is common, the option already exist for players to add custom items to their inventory and name them whatever.

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >>

Diamonds are already a thing, in 5e basic rules. Just customise the value. Seems wholly unnecessary to create multiple copies of the exact same thing with different values, given we can just customise a value anyway.

 One clarification.  If you're playing a pure 5.5e game, and have turned off all Legacy rules, Diamonds, Topaz, Onyx, etc are NOT part of the available inventory options.  While I agree with the idea of only having one diamond and adjusting the price, unless you have Legacy turned on, that's not an option.