Candidate for closure: Is the brass brazier required for find familiar?
Candidate dupe target: What are the details surrounding the brass brazier required for the Find Familiar spell?
Is this question about whether or not the brazier is required a duplicate of the question asking about the nature of the brazier mentioned in find familiar?
Note, the candidate for closure has since been edited to definitely not be a duplicate. This discussion is now irrelevant.
Note 1: I don't understand why you would reopen the question that I as the author closed. Until this meta discussion is sufficiently argued, closed is as a valid state as open and I think as the author I should have the say in this until the community decided otherwise. But I will not start a close open war... I'm fine with either result anyway, I just want people to find answers.
Note 2: I copied the template from Thomas Markov answer, it is very nice, even if I don't agree with his conclusion
Question A: Is the brass brazier required for find familiar?
Question B: What are the details surrounding the brass brazier required for the Find Familiar spell?
We will examine these questions according to the three duplicate criteria
It's the same question, or Question A is already covered obviously as a subset of Question B. Obvious here means I can tell at a glance it's there.
At a glance one can see that both questions concern the same item in the same spell. That is already a strong connection. But Question B asks about the details concerning the brazier mentioned, however not specifically if it is required for casting the spell. Question A asks whether it is a required component for the casting. This seems different. However Question A only arises due to the details of the brazier, that it is used to burn the components, that it is big and heavy. Because if that was not the case, then this would be a duplicate of this question, but it is a special case because a brazier is big and heavy and doesn't really fit in a component pouch in any imaginable sense. Also because it is used to burn the other components, it is hard to imagine replacing it with the spellcasting focus. And those details that create Question A are asked for in Question B which makes them subsets.
That the details of the brazier are required to answer Question A is also shown in the current highest answer by @Thomas Markov, which mentions the oddly specific nature of this brazier:
This is oddly specific language for something that isn't required. The rules-as-written ruling is abundantly clear here: the charcoal, incense, and herbs must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier.
So Criterion 1 is definitely present, but I'm not sure if it is obvious enough to close the question as a dupe based on this. So let's go on to Criterion 2.
Question B has an obvious answer to Question A. Obvious here means I get a straightforward answer without hard searching — a couple of sentences buried in the middle of a post, or an answer which only sort of implies an answer to Question A, doesn't count as obvious.
Question B has an obvious answer to Question A. It is only one answer, but that is enough to satisfy the criterion 2 as stated. It doesn't matter that this is a poor answer. If you wish to improve the answers to Question B you are free to do so or even give your own better answer.
Note: This is exactly what I did for this question, which had poor answers by another question. In this case @Thomas Markov was arguing for closing my question based on the fact that the other question had answers for it. Which is kind of ironic, but not relevant.
Furthermore this also works the other direction, that Question B could be closed as a dupe of Question A. Any answers to Question A that argue that the brazier is not required, would be valid answers for Question B, as suddenly the details of the brazier would be irrelevant for the spell.
Criterion 2 is satisfied, therefore Question A should be closed as a dupe.
Also notably the "thurible" object mentioned multiple times in Question B would be a good explanation as to how one can be reasonably asked to have this "brass brazier". Because as mentioned before, Question A comes up due to the nature of the brazier, that it is big and heavy. But if those details are removed, Question A becomes a duplicate of this question.
There is not some strong compelling reason to covering Question A alone, separately from Question B. (If the above bullet points are met this rarely happens.)
This is a hard one. I see a reason to cover Question B separately from Question A. While they do concern the same object for the same spell, the lore answers in Question B are very interesting and have their own right to exist. When turned the other way around, I don't think that Question A adds much additional usefulness over Question B. Especially if one put a bounty on Question B that requires answers not backed up by Jeremy Crawford. This has been common practice around since his tweets are no longer official rulings.
In the body of the question, the asker states that they want to be able to cast Find Familiar while out adventuring. To this end, they wish to know how bulky a typical brass brazier (a component for the spell) would be to haul around.
The problem they present is how difficult is it to keep a brazier handy, but the real issue is that they wish to be able to re-cast the spell, and assume that a brass brazier is specifically required. The accepted answer already challenges this by stating that designer intent, per Jeremy Crawford, is that a brass brazier is not specifically required, only the herbs and incense (the other components of the spell) are required, and that anything can be used to burn the components in.
In question 2, the original draft (before it was removed by someone else's edit) stated that the intent was specifically to be a duplicate of Question 1, and asks more directly "Do I need the brazier?".
It's the same question, or Question A is already covered obviously as a subset of Question B. Obvious here means I can tell at a glance it's there.
The answer of "A Brazier is not required" fulfils they very first criteria as an obvious subset of the original question. "How hard is it to haul around this thing?" will naturally lead to the question "Do I need to haul around this thing?" And as such, this is a duplicate. Regardless of whether the question of "Do I need this?" is a "Yes" or "No", it's still a subset of figuring out the logistics of transporting it. The only difference is that if the answer is "No, I don't need this", then you can stop right there, as the logistics of moving it are no longer relevant.
Question A: Is the brass brazier required for find familiar?
Question B: What are the details surrounding the brass brazier required for the Find Familiar spell?
We will examine these questions according to the three duplicate criteria
It's the same question, or Question A is already covered obviously as a subset of Question B. Obvious here means I can tell at a glance it's there.
Question B asks several questions about the nature of the brazier mentioned - its size, weight, cost, requirements for crafting, among other things. But never asks if it is required for casting the spell. Question A asks exactly nothing about the nature of the brazier, only asking if it is required for casting.
There is no intersection to these questions. Criterion 1 is not satisfied.
Question B has an obvious answer to Question A. Obvious here means I get a straightforward answer without hard searching — a couple of sentences buried in the middle of a post, or an answer which only sort of implies an answer to Question A, doesn't count as obvious.
Question B has an obvious answer to Question A, but it is a notably poor answer in that it only cites a tweet from lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford and makes no attempt to consult any official written rules. Further, none of the other answers to Question B attempt to answer Question A.
That Question B has an answer to Question A is entirely incidental as it was offered as a frame challenge to Question B. Criterion 2 is satisfied, but not really.
There is not some strong compelling reason to covering Question A alone, separately from Question B. (If the above bullet points are met this rarely happens.)
There is a strong compelling reason to cover Question A separately from Question B:
They are entirely different questions. One asks about the nature of an item, the other asks if the item is required for spellcasting.
The answer on Question B that does happen to answer Question A is notably poor; it fails to cite any official rules material for support, and is not an answer to Question B in a technical sense, but is a challenge to the frame of the question.
"A brazier is required" is a valid answer to the new question, but it is not a valid answer to the dupe target. If an answer was posted to the dupe target that said "A brass brazier is required", it would (and should) be flagged and deleted for not answering the question. Closing Question A says, "no one is allowed to make this argument or take this position on this question". This is effectively censorship.
