Words of Power Arcanist - What would you allow as a DM?

[DarkOne7141981]

I was considering the Words of Power alternate magic system recently and had a thought: how amazing could an Arcanist using Words of Power be?

Then I realized that the Arcanist was still a "prepared" caster, which IMO makes WoP less exciting to me (I find the WoP Sorcerer to feel more spontaneous than your standard Vancian Sorcerer and like the feel of that). However, would you as a DM allow an Arcanist to use WoP as if he were a spontaneous caster? He could theoretically learn all words eventually (like a wizard) but only prepare certain ones for use in a given day, giving them the best of both worlds!

Would you as a DM find that to be too powerful? Or, since Word Casting has so much less splatbook support would it be alright?

[Eltacolibre]

heh I would allow all the words that sorcerer/wizard can learn. The only thing that I would request is to be ready on the table and not spend half a hour reading through the words during combat. It is already pretty slow with people reading through simple spells, don't want to waste anymore time with someone trying to make the right combo of words.

[What's in the box?]

My understanding of the system would state that an Arcanist would be capable of learning all of the words, but would be limited by the word strands that they combine and set into their prepared slots and could choose from those word-combinations what they cast as spells as described in their # of spells per day by level.

It doesn't seem any more or less limited than the default spell system.

If you are asking: Would I allow an Arcanist to spontaneously cast spells like a Sorcerer with the learning capacity of a Wizard. No. I would not allow that for any type of magic as their is no class which seems to be designed for that. Although... that could be exciting.

[LazarX]

I wouldn't allow Words of Power at all, for any class. Simply too dam exploitable and i"m not interested in trying to make houserules for al of the possible abuses I've read about on this board, much less the one's I've missed.

Pathfinder magic is simply too powerful to be implemented on a Noun/Verb basis.

[ZZTRaider]

Out of curiosity, what abuses do you have in mind?

[Create Mr. Pitt]

I was under the impression that in addition a lack of splat support, words of power is fairly weak rather than incredibly exploitable. It always seemed like the spell levels would be super high to pull off the neater tricks.

[LazarX]

ZZTRaider wrote:

Out of curiosity, what abuses do you have in mind?

The ability to cast the equivalent of spells with huge expenses normally attached to them for no expense at all, for one thing.

Look up past threads on the subject on the boards.