to go a little far afield from the topic of the origonal thread -
how do publishers do that sort of thing? a few alternates in UA seem to have been around forever, but I think they were in other non-OGL products. How strict are plagerism laws in regard to "the idea behind this mechanic" even if the exact crunch is a little different? (obviously if they are in UA you can use them now, but before then I mean).
For example: my group had house ruled armor as damage reduction back in the day, if that had showed up in a non-OGL product (w/o being in UA) and I later published a product that used a varient based on the homebrew from over a decade ago, how would plagerism laws work?
back on topic -
I've played with spell point systems on and off for quite some time. Back in 2e we had one issue with a very rough spell point system we were using at one point (spells cost spell level in spell points, you total up the spells a caster could normally have, that many SP they have total).
The high level wizard figured out, "heck, for 1 spell point I can cast Magic Missile... I can do this all day long *cackle*" and I think it was nearly the best damage / spell point in the game, and *it never missed* (ouch).
Later, if I recall correctly, they had several wizards and they downed a fairly powerful dragon in a few rounds of magic missile-ing, at that point the spell point system we were using was declaired broken, or at least abuseable.
point of the story - spell flexibility from spell point systems can be pretty wonky.
I haven't played with it yet, and I'm sure there are abuseable parts, but I'm going to make another plug for Elements of Magic: Revised - on the surface it looks like a very robust and elegent magic system with a not-too-abuseable way of going about things. I haven't found many d20 products I really really like, but this is one
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I could also imagine that if a DM wanted to they could use it to build an extensive series of signature spells, ending up with guidelines on what can be created, and using the building blocks to construct a "spells per day" with "specific spells" like is in the PHB. Seems like a good tool kit for imaginative use of magic.
