Houserule Handbooks: Spellpoints

Houserule Handbooks: Spellpoints

Welcome to Houserule Handbooks: Spell Points, the first in a series of products presenting some of the houserules used at Super Genius Games. Each of these products is designed to introduce a carefully balanced, developed, and playtested version of a popular houserule for campaigns using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. Houserule Handbooks aren’t for everyone, and should always be considered “alternate” rules, only for use if a GM and players all want to add something different to a campaign. In the case of Spell Points, the alternate rule is a system to allow all spellcasters to fuel their spells with a pool of spell points, not requiring any spell preparation, and allowing a spellcaster additional flexibility by using a lot of spell points to fuel a few high-level spells, or gain extended staying power by restricting casting to a larger number of lower-level spells. Further, the system is designed only for actual spellcasters, ignoring the spell-like abilities of monks and the infusions of alchemists as dissimilar enough to not need the same kind of spell point houserules. These considerations drive all the design decisions that follow, so if the system as described doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, this product likely isn’t for you.

The Author

Owen K.C. Stephens is an experienced and well-known game designer, with credits dating back to the late 1990s for games that focus on fire-breathing lizards and laser swords. He has worked with numerous role-playing game companies, has more than 250 RPG credits, and is currently the Lead Developer of Super Genius Games.

Spell Points

Spell points are a resource used to cast spells, as opposed to using the normal rules of spell slots and spell preparation. Rules are given for spell points in general, and then specific rules for each spellcasting class. Every spellcasting class can use spell points. A campaign may only use spell-point characters (at the GM’s discretion), or both spell-point and normal versions of classes may exist (in which case the decision to be a spell-point spellcaster must be selected when the first level in a spellcasting class is taken). A character cannot take levels in both a spellpoint and non-spell-point version of the same class (treat using spell points as a kind of archetype for spellcasting classes).