Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Agreed, but some baked-in meta elements kinda just come with the territory. This is one. Hit points, in many ways, are another.Part of the issue is that the entire vancian magic system works in the meta economy of spell slots and levels where you can cast X number of times per day.
Were it me, they'd already be committed to casting by the time the roll was made (in other words, the roll to succeed would come at the end of the casting process, at resolution, rather than at the start of it when the caster can still potentially bail out).I usually prefer magic as "skill" rolls/checks (e.g., Blue Rose, True20). Keep casting until you fatigue yourself. This would also be fantastic for a fail-forward or success-with-a-cost subsystem. So the caster could "fail" the ability check for the casting roll, but then force themselves to cast it no matter the cost to themselves because of its necessity to the mission.
This is how I do it now, in situations where successful casting isn't guaranteed.
Lanefan