It looks like Mindunbound, Scrolls of the Masters, and Myth Realized still use Lore counters. While counter space isn't particularly limited, I didn't want to throw out a new counter type that didn't do anything itself while wanting a name more flavorful than "charge." If I do change the counter name type, I'll go with wisdom counter.

For those reasons, I think a more obvious template would be "T, Remove any number of lore counters from ~: Return target creature card with mana value X from your graveyard to your hand and you gain X life, where X is the number of counters removed this way." You're fighting for text space though with that reminder text

I think it's suboptimal to use the same counter type as sagas. They errataed a handful of older cards to stop using lore counters for that reason

This appears to just be splice from graveyard, which should be supportable in the rules just fine. I'm not sure what unintuitive corner cases might come up

That would allow the spell to be cast, which means it's independent. That's a different flavor than what I was going for. But, there are numerous issues that could I arise that I did not anticipate. The penalties far outweigh the flavor I was going for. You are right. I will change the mechanic to your suggestion SecretInfiltrator.

Yep. Forcing the card to the top prevents the game state from advancing and keeps the opponent from seeing new cards, which also keeps them from finding solutions to soft locks you could build with this kind of effect.

Before WotC came up with their solution I made up a handful of cards that made up for the difference e. g. "Put on top, that player may mill N" or "Put on top, that player may scry N" (which with N=1 is a long-winded way of doing WotC's wording, I suppose).

Adding "effects" to another spell is quite subtly complicated. Couldn't you just give this "Whenever you cast a instant or sorcery spell, you may <insert flashback reminder text>". That's well-trodden ground.

I know the use of X is a red flag for commons.
While a red flag, that does not mean it cannot happen. My reasonings were as follow.
1.The ability itself is slow enough that it should not be of much relevance. Unless this is being played against onedrop.dec, the ability won't go off too often. This will lead into the next point. 2.Low-power. In all liklihoods, this could hit a single, larger target and bounce back a somewhat or frequent small targets for a little life that could be inconsistent. As for the body's stats, they're pretty weak.

I was having trouble remembering the name of cards using similar effects and my attempt to search for similar effects didn't go well. I was able to get Spin Into Myth and Whirlpool Whelm, and went off of the wording there. It does seem that the current use gives the owner the option instead of locking the card's owner to the card on the top like those older cards.

Should this be a Misleading Motes?

I get the sense it would make sense to combined the two last abilities into some "Enchanted permanent has 'Whenever..., untap this permanent and scry 1.'" as having different but very similar clauses are very prone to having people make mistakes.

Originally this was going to be , but I felt the ability looked better as mono-w.

Also, I'm straight-up just naming this part of a line from "Maypole Song" because I can't come up with a better name to describe the idea (with the implication of a Tree as "life" [which is a stretch])