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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9769003" data-attributes="member: 2067">ADEU was over-used because it was the structure of EVERY class.Slots are probably over-used in 5e, but at least you CAN (if you are CAREFUL!) avoid them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Power points don't seem hugely distinct to me. They're just a more granular way to account for "do magic x/day." The X doesn't even really change - the class still needs to be capable of dealing roughly the same damage as most other classes. The Spell Points alternative and the existence of Sorcery Points that you can spend for slots shows how interchangeable these are. "Make it different" is a pretty good design goal, but when set against "make it usable for as many people as possible," the latter should typically win out, IMO. There's dozens of classes that have fallen by the wayside or that landed like lead balloons upon launch (many from 3e, several from 4e, and even 1e/2e classes). Classes are not something that players use a lot of (about 1/year for each player, maybe less). The more weird and unusual and different a class is, the more likely people are going to look at it and shrug and never play it. Rather than "make it different," I tend to prefer "make it distinct," and that's not so much about points vs. slots as it is about the verbs the class uses, especially during Combat (and, I'd argue, during Interaction and Exploration, too, though those tend to be a little less gamified in D&D). And the psion struggles with that distinction, though probably no more than, say, the sorcerer does. "Uses points" isn't narratively distinct. "Uses the power of the mind" isn't even narratively distinct, though it's at least a try.</blockquote>

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