Tell me about Spellpoints

[juton]

I've never been a fan of Vancian casting, on a Wizard it may be appropriate but a Cleric asking for 2 Divine Powers and a Righteous Might has always struck me as odd. The SRD (and UA) give rules to allow casters to use spellpoints instead of the normal vancian preperation. On the face of it spell points seem much more powerful than regular prepared casting, basically you cast like a Psion except you get to swap out your spells every day. Has anyone played with spellpoints, in actual play do they bump up a casters power by a lot, a little or not at all?

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Spellpoints are brokenly overpowered.

That's the long and the short of it.

[SorO_Lost]

Spell points are less broken than power points, though that's not saying much. It does give spellcasters the nova effects of casting their highest level spells more often in exchange for not casting the lower level ones they don't use.

The main difference is the wizard gets to spontaneously cast a set of wizard spells that he can swap out daily. That means his list of spells known is about one or two shorter than the sorcerers and the wizard gets to change his list every morning. Wizards really don't need even easier access spontaneous spell casting.

Make everyone play a sorcerer. Or hell, make the sorcerers use the spell point system and force the wizards not to.

[Paradox]

Spell points are more broken than power points

fix'd

[pfooti]

Yeah, spell points are far worse than power points. I'd say that the psionic system (excepting the erudite) is pretty well-balanced. But with a spell-point wizard, you get all the benefits of spontaneous casting, but get a near limitless number of spells known. Spells cast by spell points also scale by CL for free.

Fireball: 5 spell points, CL 10: 10d6
Energy Ball (Fire): 5 power points, ML 10: 5d6. Want 10d6? Spend 10 pp.

Granted, psions get more power points than spellpoint wizards, but it's not enough to make up for it. In terms of flexibility and potential damage per day's worth of spells, the plain wizard comes out ahead of psions. Making the wizard more flexible and better-able to nova is great if you like wizards.

[dougch]

[juton]

Spellpoints are brokenly overpowered.

That's the long and the short of it.

That was my gut feeling, but I was hoping I was wrong. There's just somethings you shouldn't bring to the table, and I think a spell point Archivist is one of them

[pfooti]

yeah uh that is wrong

Yikes. You're right. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm#castingSpells

I still contend that if you want spontaneous casting, use a sorcerer. If you want points-based casting, use a psion. The basic spell-point system in Unearthed Arcana is a quick, 3-paragraph hack of the vancian system that's bound to lead to balancing issues (but that's my general opinion of a LOT of UA- quick rule hacks that lead to balance issues which the designers never really thought through).

For the record, though - if you're going to point at something like that, I suggest using links to www.d20srd.org, since spell points are part of the SRD. Your post is formatted as if you copy-pasted from unearthed arcana; if it's text from a PDF you're copy-pasting, that's probably also a no-no (since the text is usually copyrighted, although in this case it's not a problem because UA is part of the SRD).

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Of course, no spell point wizard is going to be using fireball by the time the CL drop matters.  He's going to be chain casting all highest level spells, all the time.

The difference between 5 each of ninth and eighth level spells per day (level 20, 30 int), and 20 ninth level spells per day, is so ridiculously large that it doesn't bear contemplating.

[dougch]

yeah uh that is wrong

Yikes. You're right. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm#castingSpells

I still contend that if you want spontaneous casting, use a sorcerer. If you want points-based casting, use a psion. The basic spell-point system in Unearthed Arcana is a quick, 3-paragraph hack of the vancian system that's bound to lead to balancing issues (but that's my general opinion of a LOT of UA- quick rule hacks that lead to balance issues which the designers never really thought through).

For the record, though - if you're going to point at something like that, I suggest using links to www.d20srd.org, since spell points are part of the SRD. Your post is formatted as if you copy-pasted from unearthed arcana; if it's text from a PDF you're copy-pasting, that's probably also a no-no (since the text is usually copyrighted, although in this case it's not a problem because UA is part of the SRD).

shush damnit you be quiet