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<blockquote data-quote="JDowling" data-source="post: 1696371" data-attributes="member: 12596">to go a little far afield from the topic of the origonal thread - how do publishers do that sort of thing?&nbsp; a few alternates in UA seem to have been around forever, but I think they were in other non-OGL products.&nbsp; How strict are plagerism laws in regard to &quot;the idea behind this mechanic&quot; even if the exact crunch is a little different?&nbsp; (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.&nbsp; 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, &quot;heck, for 1 spell point I can cast Magic Missile... I can do this all day long *cackle*&quot; 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.&nbsp; I haven't found many d20 products I really really like, but this is one <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&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.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 &quot;spells per day&quot; with &quot;specific spells&quot; like is in the PHB.&nbsp; Seems like a good tool kit for imaginative use of magic.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JDowling, post: 1696371, member: 12596"] 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 :). 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. [/QUOTE]

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