Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
I really do not see people learning magic under that system unless they are masochists of the highest level. Do not get me wrong, I am not objecting to replacing FP costs, I am not a fan of FP costs myself, I just think that a magical system that depends solely on personal HP will only be a curiosity. There would likely be only a handful of magicians within the average nation, and they would likely have issues finding willing students.
Of course, it could be an option to allow nonmages to use magic outside of high and very high mana areas and for mages to use magic in no mana areas without any penalty. Instead of losing FP due to channeling ambient mana, the character would lose HP to create and channel personal mana. In that case, it would provide an interesting option for magicians.
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You're coming at it from the wrong end. The OP wasn't asking "will this system work", but "assuming this system does work, what would the consequences be".
You can come up with any reasoning you want for how the mages are able to cast spells - maybe aliens landed one night and straight up implanted them in their minds. It doesn't matter - we're just exploring consequences.
Steal Vitality is the spell I was thinking of the other day - using this the mage can cast with impunity as long as they have either loyal subjects waiting to take the hurt from them (apprentice system, maybe the mage is worshipped as a god and these are fanatics, maybe it's college students paying off loans), otherwise the mages would need to have captives to restore their HP.
If you're allowing new spells to be developed for the setting, you might have someone come up with a spell that allows these to be cast on livestock or other non-sapient subjects to get a literal sacrificial lamb feel to it, it would give mages a chance to not be so, yknow, evil.
You could also create a Secret Meta-College Spell that would let you skip the middle-man and drain the HP of other people around you while casting spells, or another that lets you drain the HP of many people at once rather than just one. Kind of reminds me of how mages work in Dark Sun - it's absolutely something that would create a dead zone.