Is the Mettle ability open content?

[tejón]

Working on some original material and I have a class which gains the Mettle ability (as per e.g. Hexblade), but I don't know if that was ever printed under the OGL. Not a big issue, I'm already using different wording (same effect, just a cleaner description) and can rename it if necessary, but it's nice to use familiar terms when possible.

[James Risner]

tejón wrote:

Working on some original material and I have a class which gains the Mettle ability (as per e.g. Hexblade), but I don't know if that was ever printed under the OGL. Not a big issue, I'm already using different wording (same effect, just a cleaner description) and can rename it if necessary, but it's nice to use familiar terms when possible.

I thought only the PHB, DMG, MM1, and XPH had open content.

No other WotC books contained any open content.

Am I wrong? What makes you believe otherwise?

[Gorbacz]

Unearthed Arcana and domains from SPC are open content as well. But anything from Complete... series, Hexblade included, certainly is not.

[tejón]

I know Complete Warrior isn't OGL, but I also know Mettle has been printed in other places. I just don't know what all of them are; there's the possibility that something OGL has had it, thus the question. :)

[Zurai]

James Risner wrote:

I thought only the PHB, DMG, MM1, and XPH had open content.

No other WotC books contained any open content.

Am I wrong? What makes you believe otherwise?

Perhaps that other books do have open content?

In addition to the Spell Compendium and Unearthed Arcana, as mentioned, a significant portion of the Epic Level Handbook is also open content.

EDIT: To answer the original post, a search for "Mettle" on the hypertext SRD produces zero results. Looks like no OGL classes or creatures have that ability.

[Matthew Morris]

There's a prestige class in KOBOLD Ecologies—Volume 1 that has a mettle-like ability. And it is open content.

[tejón]

Set wrote:

Shape Spell would be significantly less good than Scult Spell, which more than doubles the area of some spells!

Are you kidding?! The Archmage gets an ability which is a pale shadow of this in exchange for permanently losing a 6th-level spell slot. A larger area is peanuts compared to control over which squares are affected!

I honestly don't know how to price something this good. My initial guess would be +3... shaped maximized fireball seems roughly equivalent to the new meteor swarm, balancing utility against power. Could be up or down by 1, though... it's the kind of thing I'd playtest extensively before making any decisions!

[James Jacobs]

Mettle is not open content. If you wanted to have a class with a similar ability, you'd have to name it something else and perhaps give it different flavor.