[Steve Plambeck]

I'd use extreme caution if I were to decrease the cost of Staff Mana. Remember every point of Mana is equivalent to a wizard increasing their ST attribute by 1 (for purposes of spell casting only) under the old rules. Sure the extra "ST" taken as Mana doesn't increase your physical damage capacity, but offensively things are going off the scale when you start seeing 40 "ST" wizards, especially younger starting ones.

As I rewrite my future house rules, I'm decoupling Staff Mana from XP altogether, making wizards learn to increase it in other ways. In part because I hate these "tax shelters" for XP as they just feel gamey, and in particular with Staff Mana storage there are more realistic ways to do it.

For the same reasons I'm not fond of the notion of "buying" talents with XP, much preferring the learning system from original ITL. IQ going up should still increase room for adding spells or talents in my book.

I fully agree though that the new XP table costs are way too steep. Capping PCs at 40 Attribute Points feels like a real downer -- long term characters are desireable, and they deserve a bit more to hope for.