XP instead of costly material components

[GreatLemur]

I've had similar thoughts, just because I hate the whole concept of material components. Thing is, spending XP--even in small amounts--always sounds really harsh to me, especially since it would logically lead to the spell casters being a little bit behind all the other characters in the party over time.

Sounds like a fairly straightforward variant of Death Knell. Trade the standard bonuses for a pool of 5xp/hd that can only be used for XP components...

You know, I dig that a lot. Sounds a little bit more like a class feature than a spell, really, but that's no problem. Actually, I can imagine coming up with a variety of different ways to recharge the "XP component" pool, representing different types of spellcasting. That could be extremely cool, and a good venue for flavor-heavy mechanics.

 

[Deekin]

Psionics already does something similar to this, in that psionic versions of spells with costly material components eat up EXP instead.

It makes sense if you think about the power that would normally come from the expensive components instead uses the soul of the caster for power.