Cast from Experience Points

"An ordinary Charm, Mr. Potter, can be cast merely by speaking certain words, making precise motions of the wand, expending some of your own strength. Even powerful spells may be invoked in this way, if the magic is efficient as well as efficacious. But with the greatest of magics, speech alone does not suffice to give them structure. You must perform specific actions, make significant choices. Nor is the temporary expenditure of your own strength sufficient to set them in motion; a ritual requires permanent sacrifice."

— Professor Quirrel, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Particularly powerful spells may semi-permanently weaken a caster, bumping them down a Power Level for years until they recover. RPGs, both cRPGS and tRPGs, have Experience Points as a ready-made resource for this kind of thing - and it's an especially useful trope there, since the game is likely to end long before the natural lifespan of the characters, meaning that from the players' perspective, Cast from Lifespan is consequence-free. XP, on the other hand, is something even a Munchkin cares about. ^note Actually, make that "something that especially a Munchkin cares about". Another common variant is to have important spells cost stat points (which then can be restored with XP or training, as per usual). The extra power of the spell is usually justified to be because of the sacrifice involved, making the XP cost a Necessary Drawback.

This trope sees particular use with abilities which are important to have around for plot purposes, but whose indiscriminate use would render the setting unrecognizable in short order.

Many Dangerous Forbidden Techniques in the Xianxia genre are cast from XP, something which neatly explains why martial artists don't launch their most powerful techniques right off the bat, but only use them when absolutely necessary.

Subtrope of Power at a Price. Compare to sister tropes Cast from Lifespan, where the caster can't recover (and in many cases aren't noticeably weaker), Cast from Hit Points, where the caster is hurt by the spell, but recovers as from a normal wound, Insert Payment to Use, for artifacts that requires a price to be used, Cast from Money, which is magic that requires a monetary expenditure to work, and Cast from Sanity, which is when magic is harmful to your mental health. The default is for spells to be cast from Mana.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Overlord, some of Ains' most powerful spells, such as Memory Manipulation and Wish Upon a Star, are noted to be cast from his EXP rather than his MP. This makes him reluctant to use them, as EXP is much harder to come by in the New World than it was in YGGDRASIL.

Fan Works

• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, several spells are powered by Sacrifice, including Fiendfyre, which permanently decreases your blood volume, and the Unbreakable Vow, which permanently decreases someone's Magic reserves (thus explaining why it's not routinely used to enforce business deals).

Literature

• In The Neverending Story, Bastian's wishing power turns out to require sacrificing memories of the human world.
• The eponymous protagonist of the Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk loses her memories when she performs magic. The greater the magic, the more memories she loses.

Roleplay

• This is the only method of casting available to Stella in Nothing Is Sacred. Since her Ba doesn't regenerate naturally like everyone else's does, she is forced to replenish it by dueling against powerful opponents. She is able to use her hard earned spiritual energy to materialize cards, purchase new cards, or acquire a powerful card from her deck via Destiny Draw.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The 1st/2nd Edition compatible supplement The Tome of Mighty Magic has a spell called divine retribution. If the spell fails, it drains a level of experience from the caster.
  • The 1st Edition spell energy drain. There is a 5% chance the caster will be drained of a level of experience.
  • Energy Drain returns in later editions as a debuff, in the form of negative levels. At first, energy drain inflicts a temporary negative level, sapping hit points and inflicting a 1:1 penalty to all rolls and statistics. If this level isn't removed, and the save against it is failed the following day, the negative level may become permanent, forcing the hapless character to earn their level back the hard way.
  • In 3rd and 3.5 editions, crafting magical items cost XP for the maker, in addition to stiff costs in gold. Many powerful spells are also costing XP when cast, the amount rising up with how game-breaking they are (in particular, the reality-altering wish and miracle). Not only this dissuade players to cast them too often if they want to progress in their class, but it introduces an additional limitation: the rule that characters cannot spend so much XP that it would bring them below the minimum for their current level.^note There are a few exceptions with XP loss able to reduce the character's level, like losing a familiar, but those are rare. This means those spells cannot be cast at all if a character can't invest enough XP.
• In Numenera, you can use unspent XP for temporary advantages. Interestingly, you can also gain XP by accepting disadvantages.
• Old World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness have Willpower points, which are effectively an expenditure of emotional strength and focus, as a common "currency" for supernatural abilities. Some abilities in both lines, however, demand Willpower dots - not just the expendable points, but the actual stat. This can be repurchased (at a varying cost in the former, at a flat rate of eight XP per dot in the latter), but until then your ability to exert your will is permanently diminished. Notably, Vampire: The Requiem requires a vampire who wishes to create another to sacrifice a Willpower dot in the process; several books in the line mention vampires who overindulged in siring new vampires and lost their minds in the process.
• In Exalted, Charms that give permanent upgrades to oneself or others tend to cost XP.
  • Form Fixing Method, used to give a Lunar their awesome magical tattoos.
  • Youth-Restoring Benison, used to restore a mortal to full youth, costs 1 XP if the effects are to be permanent.
• In Swedish RPG Trudvang Chronicles, the spell to make a permanent magic item costs 1 permanent Willpower, and the one to establish its own power supply (rather than drawing mana from the user) costs an additional one. On the bright side, Willpower increases get progressively more improbable, the more you already have (roll below 25-WP on a d20 after an adventure where you use your WP stat), which means that spending Willpower makes them easier to get.
• RuneQuest also requires permanent points of Power (the magic stat) to be spent when making permanent magic items, learning Divine Magic (the most powerful magic in the game), or when making a Fetch to become a Shaman. Like DoD, it's easier to (re)gain Power when the stat is low.
• The Projects System in Nobilis, which is the formalized way to measure your progress towards goals like "Freeing the Damned Souls in Hell" or "ousting Lord Entropy", is also the system you use to increase your own stats, meaning there's a more or less direct trade-off between having large-scale impact on the setting and getting an overpowered character. (Not that Nobilis characters aren't overpowered from character creation anyway...)

Video Games

• Late in A Dance with Rogues, performing a specific, particularly selfless act (freeing the fallen paladin Luciano from an eternity of enslavement by a powerful demon to give him a chance at redemption) costs you one tenth of all of your accumulated XP, potentially bumping you down a level permanently.
• The old DOS game Wizard's Castle has the Web spell which prevents an adversary from launching an attack for between one and five turns, but subtracts one strength point per use. There is also the Fireball spell, which delivers anywhere from one to fifteen points of damage. Fireball subtracts one strength point and one intellect point. One cannot cast spells in this game with 14 points of intellect or less.
• In Minecraft, experience points and levels are spent when enchanting items, repairing items, or automatically consumed by the Mending enchantment.^note If a weapon or armor piece with Mending has less than maximum durability, it consumes your experience to repair itself It should be noted that experience points in Minecraft do not make you stronger as you accumulate them - you're meant to expend them in this manner.
• Some of the hexes in Dark Souls II use up souls to cast. One uses all souls the player has, but when the count is 5,000 or higher the spell's power reaches One-Hit Kill levels. Since souls are both XP and currency, it's Cast from Money at the same time.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East, Zehir was granted by a Djinn the ability to summon fourth a flying town using a spell. It was only when he first summoned said town that he realizes the spell costs experience points to use instead of conventional mana (justifying Bag of Spilling when it comes to his levels).
• In Crimsonland, one of the perks you can choose lets you shoot your gun with an empty clip, at the cost of a hefty amounts of points for every shot. (Your score determines when you level up.)
• In El Sword, Lu was once a powerful demon, but she got sealed by other demons. In order to escape, she used most of her energy - and succeeded - but she turned into a little girl as a result.
• In Nocturne (RPG Maker), Reviel can focus all his might to destroy certain obstacles at the cost of experience points, allowing him to bypass certain puzzles. Given that the game has Low-Level Advantage and that experience points can be saved up before being spent on improving your level, you are likely to have more experience points than needed, making this example less severe than most others.
• In Before the Echo, you have to spend a certain amount of XP for Item Crafting, You can spend more XP to increase the chance of success (up to a maximum of 95%), but any XP points (and levels) you lose from crafting have to be earned again through battle.
• In Omega Labyrinth Life, the most powerful spell available is the Omega Slash, dealing massive damage to all enemies. Without using a consumable tome of the same name, it will cause your character's bust to shrink back to normal size and take the associated stat bonuses and special skills with it.

Webcomics

• The God of High School features a character who essentially does this, manifesting as aging in reverse when she uses her powers. Essentially she turns into a child, or could even de-age out of existence if she doesn't wait years between using her abilities.
• The Order of the Stick, a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPG Mechanics 'Verse, has occasional references to XP costs.
  • After the rest of the party dissuades Belkar from killing Elan for XP, by threatening to kill him for XP, resident wizard Vaarsuvius is disappointed that they're not actually killing Belkar because they could use some more XP for scribing scrolls.
  • Vaarsuvius lets Durkon believe that Vaarsuvius cast a spell with a high XP cost to gain an incredible Hour of Power, hence why it can't be repeated. In fact, the power boost came from a Deal with the Devil.
  • Redcloak refers to the XP cost of a gate spell as "draining a little bit of my soul."

Web Original

• In Against the Gods, Forbidden Techniques are fueled by Heart's Blood, something which typically causes the user's Cultivation Level to drop.
• In Maou the Yuusha, an overlord creates servants from their own essence, decreasing their own stats in the process. Most Overlords send their servants out to level, then reabsorb them, gaining a net XP increase.

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