Spellpoints Compilation (2013)

From publisher blurb:

Welcome to Houserule Handbooks: Spellpoints Compilation, the first in a new line of compiled Houserule Handbooks. Each of these products is designed to present the full rules compiled from several Houserule Handbooks pdfs, introducing a set of carefully balanced, developed, and playtested houserules for campaigns using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook.

While the core rules present characters with two kinds of spellcasting – spontaneous spellcasters and preparation spellcasters – their core spellcasting abilities follow the same general restrictions. While tried and true, both of these spellcasting types don’t do a very good job of modeling how spellcasters tend to work in popular fantasy fiction. The vast majority of spellcasters in stories with magic almost never complain about not having prepared the right spell for a specific encounter, or whine that they are limited in how many spells they can learn by some unbreakable mystic limit.

Inside this humble 38 page volume of Houserules is a system to allow all spellcasters to fuel their spells with a pool of spell points, not requiring any spell preparation, and allowing a spellcaster additional flexibility by using a lot of spell points to fuel a few high-level spells, or gain extended staying power by restricting casting to a larger number of lower-level spells. Further, the system is designed only for actual spellcasters, ignoring the spell-like abilities of monks and other classes dissimilar enough from true spellcasters to not need the same kind of spell point houserules.