Blood Magic
You've learned how to draw power from your own blood and use your vitality instead of various magic ingredients.
Prerequisites: Eschew Materials
Benefit: Instead of using a costly material component to cast a spell you can loose 1 hp for every 10 gp of the component cost. These hp can't be restored by any means untill you rest or for as long as the spell lasts, whichever is longer.
Aleternatively you can replace a material focus by gaining a negative level.
Normal: You can't cast any spell without providing proper components or focuses.
Very interesting. I'll have to think about this one. The prereq means it costs two feat slots and while feats are cheaper in PF, that might still be reasonable.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks
Well, to tell the truth, I don't think that the prerequisite is that much of a problem, sorcerers get the Eschew Materials feat for free and many wizards take the feat anyway. It's much greater investment for clerics, but the ability to cast without having a holy symbol may be worth it (even if the cost for doing so is a negative level).
The point was to allow the arcanists to cast things like stoneskin a bit more often, but still forcing them to invest heavily (thus losing the hp for a long time).
I only wonder if the cost shouldn't be somewhat lower, like 1 hp for every 20 gp, as the casters tend to be laking in the hp department.
An issue you're going to have is that many spells with expensive material components are still going to be effectively unusable. Further, player wealth inflation will tend to make this a subpar option in most scenarios - either you're too low level and the HP damage is crippling, or you're too high, and can afford the materials anyhow.
Also, trading an effectively unlimited resource (HP, which comes back daily) for a limited resource (cash) can present a number of problems, depending on your setting and play style. Powerful spells cost gold to limit the number of times players can cast them in a game - you'd lose that control.
If you're okay with that, I'd still recommend going with something that scales up a little more reliably with levels. Perhaps 1 or 2 con damage for 10gp/level in material components.
I had something similar in 3.5, but only for certain Sorcerers, who all had EM by default. One HP per GP of material and you gain the square root of the HP lost to the spell's DC. The only limit was the Sorcerer's level. It was fun watching Sorcerers bleed themselves to death.
Love the Focus angle! Watching a Cleric revert to wimp status is a great idea.
Well, I must admit that my compaigns tend to be more than just a little treasurepoor sometimes, but what is really the point in that is that you don't always get the opportunity to buy the right resources. How many diamonds can there be in a city? And how may are willing to grind them to dust? I'm not usually allowing my players to play around places where just about everything is available.
I think that your suggestion with constitution would work even better Maeloke, thanks for the suggestion!