The spell point and powers thread of confusion!


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells


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I searched for a thread about just this but I don't see one dedicated to the confusion between 'Spell Points' and 'Spells' and heck also with 'Powers' being so closely associated with 'Spells' that they're listed together.

I would strongly suggest renaming 'Spell Points' to 'Power Points'. Power Points don't sound any more 'gamey' than Spell Points and have the advantage of being far less confusing. Power Points are far more obviously tied Powers and clearly delineated from 'Spell Slots'.

As a bit of organization it would also be helpful to separate Spells and Powers from each other in the alphabetical list of Spells and Powers. The fact that they use the same format is great but it's odd to be hunting for a Monk ability in the middle of a gigantic list of spells.

Having 'Powers' act in pretty much every respect like 'Spells' and have the same format is great, but separating them from each other would not only cause less confusion but also would have the added benefit of making them more thematically distinct from Spells. I'm sorry but it feels really offputting for my mystical Monk build to be associated so closely to spellcasters.

The bit of thematic distance would also allow 'Power Points' to be used for a possible Stamina Trick system that Paizo would want to come up with for pure martials in the future without it feeling incredibly jarring. Or use a version of it for Grit/Panache Points just as a version of it is already being used to replace Ki Points.

I like the mechanics of the concept, but I strongly feel that separating it a bit from traditional spell casting will do wonders for it both in terms of understand-ability and theme both in the core rules and as a base to build off in the future for martials as well as spell casters.

Thank you for reading!


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I advocated for just this before the playtest dropped. "Power Points" are what we should use if those points are used to activate something called "Powers". Even if the Powers are a special kind of Spell.

Thus, Cantrips are at-will, you use Spell Slots for Spells, and Power Points for powers. Boom, much simpler.

And I agree, they should be separated. Ideally they should be in the Class Feat section, instead of writing a gazillion variations of "You can use X Power for Y Power Points." as a feat. But if you can't do that, then please, please, separate them from normal spells.

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