Wizard spellcasting to cost gp

[Eraamion]

I feel a desirable balance shift could be achieved by having wizards spend gold to cast spells.

E.g. casting a circle 1 spell would take away 1 gp. If you do not have the 1 gp, the spell would fail, emulating the missing reagents.

A circle 5 spell would take away 5 gp. We are talking about approx. 100 gp cost for a high level wizard to cast all his spells within a rest cycle.

This would introduce a reasonable but not overwhelming gold sink in a class that may welcome it, especially as long as the crafting feats can be purchased.

Spells cast for crafting purposes and counterspells would not be affected by the change, nor spells cast from items.

Such a change could cause sorcerers to become uncomfortably powerful, but this can be ofset by their own power level tweak, such as by a small chance of their spells causing some unpredictable effect.

[Diabl0658]

I don't want to be punished for using my class features, please don't do this. We have a mechanic to keep wizards in check, seam sickness, but it needs to be ramped up as it does nothing right now.

[Don Nadie]

If there's a desire to slow down wizard's casting infinite spells, I'd say increasing Seam Sickness is a better choice than the groat-cost. It is good to have something that makes the PC consider things more carefully, not so great to have a mechanic that introduces complete failure of class features.

With higher seam-sickness wizards would be encouraged to carry more foci or spread their spells more (maybe?). This I dont dislike because it feels thematic and cool :D

I also dont think, admittedly, that wizard is in an op place right now. I mean, it's one of the strongest classes (it always has been) but there are means to deal with them, specially when caught unprepared.