Currently there is no downside to Hemalurgy in the mod. You can give yourself as many spikes as you want and there's pretty much no reason not to do so.

We want to keep track of the current spiritweb integrity, with spikes lessening this value. The lower this value, the more likely you are to have various negative effects. This may include, but is not limited to, basically any vanilla bad effect (poison, blindness, darkness, damage). Other mods in the suite may also want to check this value, such as surgebinding so that spren can evaluate worthiness of a hemalurgist.

One way to increase spiritweb integrity would be an appropriate linchpin spike. A balancing pass will be necessary, as adding a linchpin spike is not difficult to do and will mean the gameplay may end up being largely the same. We could restrict the linchpin to very specific hemalurgically charged spikes, such as:

• A steel spike charged with allomantic pewter, to imply a strengthening of body.
• A feruchemical gold charged spike, to heal the spiritual damage.
• Different powered spikes would provide different integrity bonuses. Feru gold or allo pewter powered spikes for example should be better than say a spike charged with allomantic tin.

This would gate a hemalurgist's easy path to power behind getting these specific powers. Whether that is actually a good gameplay decision or not is still to be determined. We may swinging from too easy to too grindy, forcing players to just spend long hours with a villager breeder just to get the power they want.

Inquisitors needed more food and sleep because of the spikes right? Maybe have hunger drain increase and passive regen decrease as spirit web integrity decreases