JDJblatherings said:
D&D spell aren't written for a spell point based magic system. ... spell point systems with D&D spells = more magic missles, more sleep spells (in the old days at least), more invisibility and more fireballs.
On that, I totally agree. I tried a magic point type system using the base spells back under 2nd Edition. I gave spellcasters a number of magic points equal to the total number of spell levels they could cast in a day. It was brutal. (At least on the non-spellcasting monsters.) I only used it for one campaign and then never touched it again.
I admit that under the modified "Elements of Magic" system I use, most of the spells cast are either damage based or healing based. Although there is a lot more variety in spell types than I generally see under the core spells, mainly because different magical elements have different special effects and other uses so a Fire Strike is different than a Void Missile, I fully expected to see the damage causing and damage healing spells be the most common spells. From a tactical standpoint, at lower levels, those are the most effective spells a caster can use.
Within the system, the spells are relatively balanced against each other. Magic Missile is not the ultimate attack spell, because there is no such thing. You choose to cast from an element you know, you set a spell's range, duration, area of effect, and number of dice of damage and these determine how many magic points you spend. The element can determine special effects, so there can be some min/max there (Fire lets you start things on fire, Lightning lets you stun opponents, Death lets you cause afflictions, Life lets you do subdual damage), but overall the spells are still far more balanced and far less corner-case than the ones in the PHB.
The really nice thing about the flexibility of the system is that the spellcasters have the option to do far more. As an example, in one early adventure the party had to "rescue" a niece of a powerful noble who may have been kidnapped by her love's family or may have just run off with her love in order to avoid an arranged marriage. The party located her in the small keep of the uncle of the love, and the uncle was also nobility. They simply couldn't go in guns blazing. It was near the end of the day and they couldn't legitimately hang around the area for a second day because they were already drawing notice. Under core rules, the spellcasters would have been screwed because they wouldn't have had any corner case spells prepared.
Instead, what happened was the players came up with a mildly bizarre (at least for them) plan and executed it perfectly. The plan hinged on magic which they were able to have access to because of the flexibility. They sneak up on the keep. One of the spellcasters conjures up some ladders. It's moat and bailey, with a dry moat. They have a really big fighter capable of moving the ladders around quickly and quietly. They drop one ladder down the outside of the moat and climb down. They lean the second ladder against the other side of the moat and up the wall. They drop the third ladder down the other side of the wall. They run the fourth ladder up the side of the keep. They go into they living area through a balcony door and through the window of the lady's room (go halfling Expert). They managed to get spotted by only one guard. (There were only two on duty. It was a very peaceful area.) The other spellcaster used a Compel signature spell to make the guard cower for the next minute. The party ran like the wind, all the way through the village, and onto their waiting ship, which was already weighing anchor. By the time the guard inside the keep awakened the uncle, the ship was already sailing and the uncle's fishing boats could catch up.
Best of all, the ladders faded away after the spell expired, so there was no evidence of how they'd even gotten in.
This is just not the type of thing a set of typical second level casters could have pulled off without plenty of time to prepare just the right spells.
