Replacing FP costs to cast spells

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by 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.

Seeing as the real world has quite a few people willing to take what amounts to HP damage twice every week* (and often only restrict themselves to that because they are forced to) for a rather small paycheck (~$30-$60 per session) via plasma donation, there would absolutely be people willing to learn magic, even if it requires you to suffer Injury to use it.

*As an aside, the FDA's limit of twice weekly with 48 hours between donations maps decently well to each donation causing 1 HP of Injury - 48 hours gives two chances to recover the 1 HP, meaning anyone without particularly poor HT is likely to have recovered between the two donations, and the twice a week limit gives a good buffer so folk with bad dice luck or low HT have a very high probability of recovering before the next session.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Seeing as the real world has quite a few people willing to take what amounts to HP damage twice every week* (and often only restrict themselves to that because they are forced to) for a rather small paycheck (~$30-$60 per session) via plasma donation, there would absolutely be people willing to learn magic, even if it requires you to suffer Injury to use it.

*As an aside, the FDA's limit of twice weekly with 48 hours between donations maps decently well to each donation causing 1 HP of Injury - 48 hours gives two chances to recover the 1 HP, meaning anyone without particularly poor HT is likely to have recovered between the two donations, and the twice a week limit gives a good buffer so folk with bad dice luck or low HT have a very high probability of recovering before the next session.

Giving plasma does not require any special advantages and/or special training (unlike spells). If the average person had to spend three years to train to give blood, they would have to pay $600 a session to get anyone to 'give' plasma. Anyway, plasma is not even 1 HP of injury, as red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelet are returned to the body.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

casting a spell costs HP
..
does not penalize the roll

How about this perk for you?

Magery 0 (Trigger: Injury -15%; Can't Use External Energy -15%; Injurious Magic -50%) [1] ?

There are perks you can get to offset the skill penalty for burning HP but they're probably overpriced compared when you can just buy a level of magery for all the spells.

Originally Posted by Whitewings

ceremonial magic will be very popular

Why? Spending a long time doing prep spells in locations where you're not at risk of death from the lost HP?

[AlexanderHowl]

I really doubt that anyone would practice enough magic to accumulate skill 15. Anyway, it is going to be a lot harder to convince people to give up HP instead of FP.

[Prince Charon]

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?

Is there a way to spend another creature's HP (animal, plant, other humans...)? If so, it becomes much more plausible that the number of magic-users will be high enough for would-be magic teachers to be able to find students, and for people to practice magic enough to have useful skill levels.

[Mister Negative]

This seems like it would set up quite a different magical idiom.

Is HP the only way to pay for spellcasting (no powerstones, etc?). That's going to restrict enchantment and large spells right out of the gate.

High ST and high HT become attractive for mages, which is very different from most traditional magic systems. The points for things like a magical Energy Reserve get redirected to HP (and ST, since there's a limit on HP over ST in most games).

With that high ST, heavier armor become more attractive to mages, who previously might have been more worried about encumbrance.

Magical healing from spells becomes much less popular, but healing potions become MUCH more popular, as they are, effectively, dual purpose paut.

Lots of minor magical protections become markedly less desirable, as the minor protection from a small Armor or Shield spell isn't as desirable when it directly impacts the HP you were trying to protect.

Magical use in combat goes into a pretty ugly death spiral. You want to avoid losing your HP, but all of your spells also cost HP. A spell that fails to protect you is doubly costly, as you used HP to cast it, and lost HP anyway.

It seems very weird to me, but I'm not sure what the setting is that you are trying to emulate or evoke, so it might be less wonky-sounding to me if I had a better grasp of the intended feel. I can see a Conan-like Hyborian age evil sorcery that uses blood magic, but that would generally use someone else's HP, and the wizard wouldn't generally hurt himself to use magic except in extremis. That setting wouldn't produce a demand for high ST mages, either.

[Inky]

Originally Posted by Varyon

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.

The shape of the spell is literally burned into the mage?

It seems to me that such a high price would mean that people wouldn't be using small spells a lot, magic would only be worthwhile for big things and things that there was absolutely no other way of doing.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Now, an interestingly dark option would be to have Corruption as the default energy source and have burning HP without penalty as an alternative.

That's a good idea.

[Whitewings]

Magery 3 and IQ 15 mean that 1 CP in a spell equals skill 15, enough to avoid HP cost. I suspect ceremonial casting would be relatively popular because it allows the spreading out of normal cost over many people, so no single person is seriously injured. Enchanting is still possible with S&S, but Q&D is a no-go in practical terms. I’m currently assuming powerstones or something like them are possible. Interestingly, Major Healing is a net gain if cast successfully upon oneself, as the caster loses however many HP, but gains back twice that, so comes out ahead, especially if the caster has skill 15+. I’m not really trying to evoke a specific setting so much as I’m exploring the impact such a rules change might have on any setting.

Healers would certainly triage cases very carefully, and use a lot of large ceremonies to power more costly spells.

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

One thing that would probably see a lot of research (successful or not), would be any transformative ritual that can grant some degree of rapid healing.

In this world, the nature of an ancient war between trolls and elves might be quite disturbing...

[AlexanderHowl]

People with IQ 15 and Magery 3 should probably be around 1:30 million, so they should not be used to determine the impact of a rule change. Instead, let us examine a character with IQ 12 and Magery 0, which is likely 1:250. Such a character would need to spend 16 CP to get skill 15 with a Hard spell.