XP Cost for Casting

[Sado]

What is the rationale behind having to lose experience points in order to cast some spells? How does practicing the skills of your field cause you to lose experience? It seems like you should gain experience for casting spells.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

You're not "losing" XP. You're "spending" them. You're investing part of your life's energy in the spell you cast or the item you create. A semantic difference, true, but a meaningful one in my opinion.
XP do not just represent experience and practice. They also represent personal power or life force (negative energy gives negative levels) and "hero status."
Typically, you will come out ahead, spending small amounts of XP to overcome challenges that result in you earning larger amounts of XP.

 

[andargor]

As you may know the universe is in balance (so is the game system, for that matter).

To create some wonderful effects that last permanently, or that have an effect greater than the sum of the available energies at the time of casting, has a cost. Some might say these effects need a source of power to sustain themselves, a source of life.

Without the ability to give of yourself to your magical constructs, you would miss out on strange and wonderful possibilities, such as the very fundamentals of magic (Epic spells).

Poetic enough for you?

EDIT: less poetic: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch

Andargor

 

[dcollins]

What is the rationale behind having to lose experience points in order to cast some spells? How does practicing the skills of your field cause you to lose experience? It seems like you should gain experience for casting spells.

These are spells which "tax" the user spiritually in some way. In previous rulesets, there were different penalties for these spells, usually aging some number of years, permanently. Which would you prefer?