Replacing FP costs to cast spells

[Whitewings]

The idea is simple: casting a spell costs HT. Period. However, spending HT does not penalize the roll. The idea here is that “unformed” mana is basically incompatible with human biology, which means that spellcasters can and do do themselves injuries when they cast spells. Some consequences are obvious to me: casters really want to have high skill levels, they’ll far scarcer, apprenticeships will be longer, and healers are going to be very respected. And ceremonial magic will be very popular, comparatively speaking. But what other consequences might there be?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

The idea is simple: casting a spell costs HT. Period. However, spending HT does not penalize the roll. The idea here is that “unformed” mana is basically incompatible with human biology, which means that spellcasters can and do do themselves injuries when they cast spells. Some consequences are obvious to me: casters really want to have high skill levels, they’ll far scarcer, apprenticeships will be longer, and healers are going to be very respected. And ceremonial magic will be very popular, comparatively speaking. But what other consequences might there be?

Do you mean Hit Points? There's a limitation for that called Blood Magic in Thaumatology. -30% I think.

Expect healing potions (if they exist) to be in high demand.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Anders

Do you mean Hit Points? There's a limitation for that called Blood Magic in Thaumatology. -30% I think.

Expect healing potions (if they exist) to be in high demand.

Yes. I should have written HP instead of HT. And the demand for healing potions is exactly the sort of consequence I’m looking for.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

Yes. I should have written HP instead of HT. And the demand for healing potions is exactly the sort of consequence I’m looking for.

Would potions be as plentiful if they had to be made with the pain and blood of the creator?

[talonthehand]

Does the HP cost have to come from the caster, or can they sacrifice others? If the latter, it'll set the tone for how any mage would be viewed.

If not, I'd expect someone to try to find a loophole - I'm away from my books, but are there any spells that leech hp's from a target? If those cost less than they gain, I'd expect mages to either have some inconceivably loyal minions following them around to offer their blood, or be perfectly willing to do dark things.

[AlexanderHowl]

The primary issue is that magic becomes quite infeasible to learn. If someone must spend HP to practice a spell while learning it, that effectively increases the time to learn a spell by 100x, meaning that it would take around 10 years to put even a single point in a spell. There is really no spell that is worth taking decades to learn, especially considering that more advanced spells require dozens of prerequisites.

Now, you could use healing potions to make up the difference, but that becomes phenomenally expensive. If we assume that each point in a spell would require the expenditure of 1200 HP during training, that would mean that a character would need an average of 343 healing points, which would cost $17,150 (assuming $50 per healing potion). Therefore, a character that spent 40 CP on spells, they would need to have spent $686,000 on healing potions.

[Refplace]

Very Rapid Healing will become a staple for mages.
Esoteric Medicine, Herbalism, and Alchemy will see a lot of growth and development.
Races that heal faster or have more mass (hence HP) will tend to be better mages, including high ST warriors.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The primary issue is that magic becomes quite infeasible to learn. If someone must spend HP to practice a spell while learning it, that effectively increases the time to learn a spell by 100x, meaning that it would take around 10 years to put even a single point in a spell. There is really no spell that is worth taking decades to learn, especially considering that more advanced spells require dozens of prerequisites.

Now, you could use healing potions to make up the difference, but that becomes phenomenally expensive. If we assume that each point in a spell would require the expenditure of 1200 HP during training, that would mean that a character would need an average of 343 healing points, which would cost $17,150 (assuming $50 per healing potion). Therefore, a character that spent 40 CP on spells, they would need to have spent $686,000 on healing potions.

It may be possible to learn magic with very little actual doing of magic. There may also be ways to practice magic in a controlled environment such that you aren't wounded. Honestly, we have to assume the above is true anyway - characters with Recover Energy or FP Regeneration or whatever don't learn spells any faster than those without such, indicating time recovering from casting magic (and thus FP spent on magic, which would translate to HP in the proposed system) must be only a tiny fraction of the time involved, small enough to not make a difference. Even without the above being true, you can simply assume that, in a setting where casting magic always costs HP, people can learn a spell with far fewer castings per point.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Very Rapid Healing will become a staple for mages.
.

Very Rapid Healing will become a staple for everyone and no one will bother to play mages.

Or at least not adventuring mages. Protecting yourself with magic has become oxymoronic. You might see non-adventuring mages who had some way to use magic to make lots of money.

[AlexanderHowl]

Pretty much. Now, you could have mages tapping into HP without penalty as an option, probably something like as an alternative to accumulating tally in a Threshold-Limited system, but I would really not expect anyone to bother learning magic under a system where HP was the only source of energy. Now, an interestingly dark option would be to have Corruption as the default energy source and have burning HP without penalty as an alternative.