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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6010671" data-attributes="member: 54877">I believe that this has been the best progression historically when applying spell points to D&D spell levels. However, like all spell point systems it can break down across wide power levels, which is certainly present in D&D magic, from cantrips to wish.  A potential compromise solution would be to break the spell levels up into three or four tiers, allowing flexibility within each tier, but not across them. So for simplicity, let's say it's:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tier 1 (lesser) - spell levels 1st (or zero) to 2nd.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tier 2 (standard) - spell levels 3rd to 5th.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tier 3 (greater) - spell levels 6th to 7th.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tier 4 (supreme) - spell levels 8th to 9th.</li> </ul>You could break them up other ways, but I deliberately chose those because of the traditional extra oomph at spell levels 3rd and 6th. Obviously, if spells are adjusted, you can do it any number of ways. So now instead of slots, you get spell points by tier, probably derived from that 1,3,5,7,etc. progression. The old 5th level wizard with 4/2/1 slots would get Tier 1 points of 4+6=10, and Tier 2 points of 5. You might represent this in the whole format as 10/5, but that stays pretty simple even up into the high level casters, never having more than 4 numbers to track. I'm guessing that this is a happy medium on flexibility and power and cutting down on analysis paralysis. It's four categories to consider, but you don't have to get too bogged down into the details of 1st versus 2nd level spells when your 11th level wizard is mainly focused on Tier 2 and 3. When a caster first breaks into a new tier, they still have the traditional D&D limits of not being able to do very much with it yet, because they just got the points. That 5th level caster is still stuck with one 3rd level spell. By the time he hits 11th level, he's got all kinds of 3rd - 5th level spell options. He still can't break those down into unlimited invisibility or whatever. So it's possible to run out of the higher level stuff and still be scrounging with the utility effects. Finally, note that this division is independent of the method of preparation discussion, but I do think it solves most of the problems in a full spell points system, which would apply to the OP's suggestion.  (The remaining issues are at the margins, such as 1 point for 1st level spells being terribly cheap.  This can be handled by adding a small, common factor to the progression evenly -- i.e. even costs of 2,4,6,etc. or 3/5/7, etc. will work, though the numbers can get pretty big, fast, if you do that.  It's a trade off.)</blockquote>

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