First, love these boards. I've ready many-a-brilliant idea here and want to say thanks.
Ok, to my question:
In my game (we're in the middle of SWW right now), the group consists of a rogue, a swashbuckler, a marshal, and a wizard/cleric. They've also managed to "reform" Diamondback and have her accompanying them as party of the "party."
The player of the wizard/cleric has asked me to consider letting him run his PC with the Spell Point Variant as presented in Unearthed Arcana. (LINK).
Now, I am aware that allowing him to suddenly switch to this will give his character a bit of a boost. However, there are really no ranged combatants in the group, otherwise. I don't think that giving him a bit of a boost would necessarily be a bad thing, for him or for the group. They've managed to get by so far, but it's only going to get more difficult once they reach the Isle.
I'm thinking that I may allow it with a feat. I'll call it "Adaptable Caster" and it'll have prereqs of Know: Arcana and Know: Religion of 8 ranks each. He can take that feat when he reaches 6th level and be able to use it then.
In the meantime, before he gets there, I can have Liamae have her "religious experience" a little early and talk with him about it. Her favored soul levels plus sorcerer levels could help explain how he "figures out" how to cast in this new manner.
All in all, I typically don't like to just say "no" to players when they pitch ideas to me, but I want to make sure I'm not about to open up a big can of worms.
Any thoughts?
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How optimizing is your group? A player who's just attracted to some apparently suboptimal choices for RP reasons/inexperience could use variant rules to keep pace with the path. A player whose apparently suboptimal choices are always just the hoops to jump through en route to an optimized PrC is going to find ways to min/max a variant in ways you'll regret.
The major can of worms I foresee is mystic theurge. If you make it clear that the spell point pools will be distinct for wiz and cleric, PrC or no, that should be OK.
I agree strongly, and I think tav_behemoth here is keying in to something. You say this player has a wizard/cleric. The only reason I can see doing that, with all the obvious restrictions that would entail, is if he gearing up for Mystic Theurge.
If I may take a relevant tangent, I’d like to soap-box momentarily on the evils of rules-layer meta-gamers. I don’t know if this applies to your player or not, and I mean no offense to you or him, but this kind of thing, when I see it, so annoys me. Unless the whole group is really into the rules and enjoys nit-picking to massage the mechanics to have the most powerful characters possible, then it can get really frustrating when there’s just the one guy doing that. Again, I don’t know if this is the case, but I’m going with a gut impression here. I’m guessing he took wizard/cleric because he can’t stand that he has to choose between healing and fireball. I mean, maybe tav_behemoth’s speculation is correct: Maybe there’s a good role-playing reason for it. Is he a good role-player? Has he handicapped himself for the story? If so, yeah, I’d give him every consideration and try to help him out. My guess, however, in the absence of evidence either way, is that this isn’t the case. The test, I think, is if he is planning on Mystic Theurge. Well, really the test is how’s he role-playing? Actually, I’d be vary curious how the religious end of the character looks. He must be a priest of a god of magic?
Anyway, I know I’m not really being fair and I’m making a lot of assumptions. If it doesn’t apply, just ignore me (I’m used to it). If I’m hitting close to the mark, though, then I’d really consider whether the player deserves a rules variant you haven’t been playing with previously.
I've had extensive experience with the spell point variant in a long running 1 to 20 campaign, so perhaps I can tell you of my take.
The spell point system seems to offer versatility, and it does. But way too much of it. In said campaign, I was a wizard. The ability to cast certain spells over and over again becomes unreasonably powerful. The cost of certain spells does not match up with how powerful other spells can be. Consider: fireball now costs 1 spell point per 1d6. Reasonable, yes? He would have to spend 10 points just for a 10d6 fireball. Seems fine. But what about the powerful or useful spells that do not scale? Do you want your player casting haste as much as he wants for 3 points each? How about fly? How about Greater Teleport for a measly 13 points per use?
In my campaign, I ended up using Greater Teleport excessively. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. The mechanical problem behind it is that even if you give the enemies this system, they never will utilize it properly because they'll be dead before they can blow their points.
He's a cleric, do you want him casting divine power over and over every fight, for 7 spell points each? How about Heal for 11? How about Miracle for 17? When you have 300+ spell points, 17 spell points is nothing.
If you wanna talk truly ridiculously broken, let's talk metamagics.
In the system, any metamagic the player has can be applied to any spell just by increasing the price of the spell points by 2 per slot increase. This becomes extraordinarily powerful. 4 more points just to empower that fireball? 2 more points to silent or still any spell I know? 6 points to maximize this Disintegrate?
Then there's Quicken spell. *sigh* For 8 points (which is at least, significant until later on) you can quicken any spell you know. Freely. Just spend 8 points. I'm ashamed to admit that I abused this excessively. I was quickening haste every battle. He's a cleric, how about quickening any curing spell? By high levels, I was quickening spells in every round of combat and no spell I fired that did damage was without empower or maximize.
Now, I'm not saying this will happen. I know I could have probably handled things a little better. But these are the kinds of things this system can do, and do it easily.
If you'd like somewhat of a limit on things consider the following:
Only allow him to spend as many spell points as he has Caster Levels, like Psionics does. For example, instead of spending 14 points on an empowered fireball at Level 10, he could only spend 10 points, forcing him to reduce his fireball by 4d6 to get the benefit of empower.
Still, in the end, the non-scalable spells will get you. Haste for 3 points a pop; you'll see it every fight. Heal for 11 will really get to you. It's these non-scalable spells that make the variant excessively powerful. Be prepared for troubled waters. :)
Hmm...after hearing those concerns, I think that I'm going to tell the player that I don't want to incorporate the spell point variant. He is planning on going the Mystic Theurge route, although I was under the impression that he'd still have to keep track of his spell points separately for each class.
Still, I can see how it breaks down at higher levels and could become problematic. Thanks for the pointers!
You know, I’ve taken another look at the rules option and, although my (indirect) advice was to not to allow it, I do want to mitigate one thing. Since this character is dual-classed, the high level spell problems pointed out here would be less severe. After all, he would still be handicapped by the level of spell he has access to. You also have the option of not allowing metamagic application of the points. Metamagic works just like it always has.