This question comes, essentially because I messed up. In designing his new character, one of my players made a wordcaster sorcerer, which I accidentally said I'd allow. The words of power system is something I'm absolutely unfamiliar with, but it's entirely my fault that I didn't hear him say "wordcaster" AND didn't notice it when I was looking over his character sheet. I just saw a sorcerer that didn't look particularly strong or particularly weak, and said the character was fine.
I've just noticed this now unfortunately, and we're less than a week from beginning the game (starting Jade Regent as my other group takes a break).
The player is very enthusiastic about his character, and knowing him, he's already thoroughly studied the words of power system and has a good understanding of it. He's also, of all my players, the only one I think is almost certain to be honest if I tell him that I'm leaving the understanding of his own character's mechanics up to him. And I'd feel bad saying "Oops, my mistake, the character that I told you was okay actually isn't."
What do you think? Should I allow (or rather, continue to allow) the wordcaster?
They are fine if the player understands the system if you think he can handle it then let them try it out.
Might let them know you made a mistake and for now they can run with it and if its an issue you may have to ask him to switch back.
Why not just be up front with the player--tell him you goofed, and ask him to explain the ins and outs of the wordcaster to you? Should take maybe an hour or so.
Plenty of players understand their own characters' mechanics better than their GMs do, and there's no shame in a GM asking for a primer when he sees something he doesn't understand.
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The player is very enthusiastic about his character, and knowing him, he's already thoroughly studied the words of power system and has a good understanding of it.[/b] He's also, of all my players, the only one I think is almost certain to be honest if I tell him that I'm leaving the understanding of his own character's mechanics up to him.[/b] And I'd feel bad saying "Oops, my mistake, the character that I told you was okay actually isn't."
You already mention that you kinda trust him.
So let him play it.However, you may want to confide to him, that you are 1) Unfamiliar with wordcasting and that you are 2) trusting him to not abuse the system. Make it clear that 3) IF he abuses it, you may require him/her to change his character back to a normal sorcerer.
By coming clean with him before the game, you can avoid the "bad feeling" later, if you do have to make him change his character. After all, you did place your trust in him, its his mistake if he breaks that trust.
Since you yourself say that you pretty much trust the players honesty on the matter, i suggest simply telling him you didn't catch the wordcaster part and only became aware of it recently, but you are willing to give it a run and see how it goes.
I'd also suggest that for his part, he be willing to change to normal sorcerer (or something else if that wouldn't be acceptable) if it ends up with you feeling that it is a bad thing down the road.
I think you should consider two important factors here.
One, the player wants to play a wordcaster. I get not wanting to have something you don't completely understand in your game, but really, such limits should be placed only when you've taken some time to at least once-over it first and decided it's just not for your game right now.
I think you do understand this, based on the fact you even feel you have a dilemma (which I respect), but this is definitely very key to your decision.
That leads me to two, which is based more around the player. [Disclaimer: take this with a grain of salt, I haven't seen a wordcaster in play, I have read the entry a few times thoroughly (almost made a wordcaster multiple times)] Spontaneous wordcasters are pretty balling, but it takes a little time to put together a word just right, especially if your player is creative. If you do allow it, it needs to be understood that he will need to plan his turn in advance and do his best to not take up too much time putting just the right spell together. This will get easier the longer he plays the character and can be helped along by lists of prefabricated spells he think he'll use a lot.
Anyway, you're definitely showing the right initiative, not just blowing him off, so even if you decide to disallow it, I think you'll probably still be okay.
Sidebar: the system is really sweet looking, but the trade is power for versatility, so if anything, as a GM, you're probably going to be looking at him coming up with stuff you didn't expect, not really him becoming a big problem. And learning it isn't difficult; it seems like a lot, but simply reading it slowly took me maybe fifteen minutes before I understood the basics of it.
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Alternativerly, here's the link to the PRD for it. As stated, it allows alightly more versatility, but most optimisers seem to consider it underpowered compared to normal spellcasting.