IQ points, talents, spells, XP

[Chris Goodwin]

I keep wanting to veer off into house rules territory out there, so I thought I'd start a topic in here for open discussion of how the general readership would house rule it.

I'm thinking of something even cleaner than my other house rule: characters start with 44 (or 46, or 48, or however many...) character points. Out of those character points you buy your attributes, talents, and spells. If you're a hero, spells cost 3 points per, and talents cost their listed cost; if you're a wizard, spells cost 1 per, and talents cost double, with exceptions as listed. If you go above 34 total points in attributes, any attributes above that cost double for each point above 34. In other words, that 35th point would cost 2, the 36th would cost 4, etc. It's possible this threshold could be 32 (or "however many").

So you could go attribute heavy, if you wanted to spend the points; you could go attribute light and talent or spell heavy; whatever combination you wanted.

You would be allowed to buy spells or talents that you don't meet the prerequisites for; you just wouldn't be able to use them until you do.

XP would buy you character points at a flat rate of 100 XP per character point. The cost progression for total points in attributes above 34 (or whatever the threshold ends up being) continues to apply. Talents and spells continue to have their regular cost.

That means "racial talents" and "special abilities" would come out of your initial however many points. For instance, the Silver Slime just has Lightning as a species ability; the writeup for that monster even specifies that it works just like the spell, including ST cost.