Essence Investment

[jwoodward48ss]

This is a cost for spells/actions that basically not only reduces your power (MP) but also, temporarily, your magical "essence" (max MP). When the spell is ended, whether on its own, by your hand, or because it has been dispelled by an enemy, the max MP is returned, but devoid of power. It must be regenerated to be full again.

How is this useful? Any of three flavors:

1. You invest essence in the spell.
2. The spell requires constant concentration and magical energy to be kept working.
3. The summoned/created thing uses the essence to do its things.

Both summons and illusions (a suggestion that I'm currently developing) could be seen as flavor 1 or 2, while magical summons like Iskenderun's Battlesphere could use flavor 3.

I know that it is possible to permanently drain MP, so this suggestion should be possible.

[ontoclasm]

It's certainly possible, it's just not an amazing (or new) idea. Sorry. One problem is that MaxMP costs are irrelevant for many characters, since they rarely reach low MP anyway. Anyone who relies primarily on melee is in this category, naturally, but also stabbers/Hexers, evokers, ranged users, Charms casters, and others. Even conjurers and summoners can easily end up in this situation later on; though they need a lot of MP, losing a few points from a pool of 50 or more won't matter, especially if you have channeling and such to get back what you spend. That's a lot of characters for whom this "cost" doesn't actually cost anything important at all.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

But the exact same argument applies to current MP costs: CurrentMP costs are irrelevant for many characters, etc etc. Sometimes it's a meaningful restriction, sometimes not. Should we eliminate the MP cost for summoning spells because of this? Current MP costs may be problematic too, but I don't see anything that palliates them more than max MP "Investment", which is even easy to display a-la rotting and e.g. white/blue/gray MP bars next to each other signifying invested/current/spent MP. I mean, if you're gonna argue against max MP costs like that, might as well denounce current MP costs.

[ydeve]

What does adding this do to the game, and where do you propose to add it?