Help rounding out a magic system(Warning: Long)

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Atros, Oct 17, 2016.

  1. Atros

    Atros Well-Known Member

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    Okay, working on a game system with some friends for a world system collaboration. Trying to extend the variety while making "sense" in a scientifically intuitive though, being "magic", not painstakingly realistic way. Too many balls in the air and this isn't really the place to go in-depth with the universe and such, so I'll try to cut to the chase by going with examples and explaining their in-system limitations. For the sake of avoiding "But what really is wind/water/etc." arguments I will be going needlessly in depth on some of the readily-obvious and well known magics; if you've encountered a lot of magic systems you almost certainly don't need to read past the bold. No super genius minds able to do shit on an individual molecule/cell/supertinybullshit level so don't concern yourself with that overmuch.

    Magics cannot directly interfere with one another. A water controller already controlling all available water cannot have it "seized" by a stronger user; a fire user cannot boil water into air as it is being manipulated. Said fire user can set the unmanipulated air around the water on fire and release control of the heat to allow it to "naturally" boil the water as it spreads upon release.

    Everyone living has a basic "resistance" to magic; you can't fuck with the water in someones body, you can't rip the air out of their lungs, or directly set them on fire, without their conscious relaxing of this defense. Again though, you can directly increase the heat in their vicinity and let nature fuck them up, or manipulate a ball of water to cover their head and suffocate them. Strength of this resistance increases alongside training and mana growth. Basic "peasant" resistance can be overcome at the top 20-30% of power (extremely fucking rare), however being just a little trained (If we made an F-A ranking for magic users, an F rank is only this vulnerable to an A, and an E rank never is.) makes it functionally impossible. Range of every magic is power-dependant (increasing at range) unless specified otherwise.

    Existing "Earth" or "Natural" magics, defined as such because the manipulate existing matter, not "Concepts" or "Laws":

    Air - Basically the wind magic everyone has encountered; the ability to convert resource "Mana" into kinetic energy on air, resulting in wind, or to use said resource to manipulate existing wind. only valid on the manipulation of oxygen+carbon dioxide in a gaseous state; no boiling poison into a gas and calling it "Air", but existing gases can be dragged along when you move the existing air molecules within it.

    Water - Water magic everyone has encountered; the ability to convert resource "Mana" into kinetic energy applicable to water, or to manipulate already flowing water. Only valid for "H2O" water in a liquid state; other things in a liquid state are not water. If you move the water with stuff in it, it will attempt to flow around its other contents as you are only applying kinetic force to the actual pure water. If you manipulate said force in such a way that it has to carry its contents (or there's just so much of it in the way it can't all go around it in time) then it can, but it requires a stronger force to do so.

    Mineral - Earth magic everyone knows, but only with rock (at high levels of skill, heavier minerals (metals) are included. Does not apply to dirt. The ability to convert resource "Mana" into kinetic energy applicable to Minerals, or to manipulate existing kinetic energy (Ie you can still move falling rocks). Dirt is partially composed of stone, and the stone in the dirt can be manipulated, but the organic matter that makes it dirt cannot be directly manipulated, similar to water previously.

    Fire/Heat - Fire Magic everyone has encountered. The ability to convert resource "Mana" into heat, and to manipulate said heat. Limited manipulation of existing heat possible at higher levels of power, but this is not easy to do. "Blue" fire exists, and at obnoxiously extreme levels "White" fire exists as well, done by concentrating both existing heat and your own (As a result, both actually cool down the surrounding area until released, as they are ripping the heat out of the area).

    Druidic?/Plant?/Life? - Manipulation of plants and plant vitality. Resource "Mana" is used to effectively expand your mind and dominate existing plant life, as well as to convert into vitality and grow said plants. Expanding your mind does not grant said plants new senses; you cannot see with a fucking tree. It does allow you to manipulate plant limbs to attack and defend, the heavier/more rigid said plant is the harder it is to do. Does not heal human or animal life anything with something that would typically be considered a "mind" cannot be manipulated this way. Would work on a venus fly trap, for instance, but not a cockroach. Basically if you'd call it a plant, it works. Frankly would like some help picking a goddamn name for this that intuitively implies the limitations. Might just make the difficulty of pinning down exactly what it is and naming it a world plot point, though.

    Blood - Manipulation of "vitality"/"life" energy exclusively within your own species. "Mana" can be converted to vitality, but the exchange rate is shit; any degree of usable power has to come over a period of time shaving off your own energy (hopefully within recoverable bounds) or by ripping a shitton of it out of other people. A blood mage can drain a thousand humans and live for a ridiculously long time, or portion out that vitality to keep a few people alive for a ridiculously long time. Vitality energy can be used to keep a functionally dead person alive; if your heart is gone, a strong blood mage can constantly drain vitality from others to keep themselves or a recipient going. If the brain is gone, well you don't have a mind to manage said bodily functions even if energy is provided, so you're dead and it sucks to be you. "Effectively" allows healing, more that it can be used to concentrate energy to your arm and allow cells to multiply stupidly fast because they don't need to get it from nutrients, or just by keeping someone alive while their natural healing abilities work on the wound. Undecided if, and at what, ranged usage of this magic is possible, at what levels of power. Probably not though because oh my god.

    "Force"/"Aura" - Basically a catch-all for "Martial" magic; Direct manipulation of personal kinetic energy, initially only by enhancing or decreasing kinetic energy created by the user, but (with sufficient skill) kinetic energy applied to body externally can be forcefully redistributed across the body (or with incredible levels of power and skill, straight up redirected and applied to your own kinetic energy). You can use mana to directly increase the force delivered via a punch or kick or whatever, as well as to suddenly decelerate without the necessary strength to endure the force unleashed if it was purely physical. Applicable on weapons, but only while you still hold it, and only if you do it first; if a mineral manipulator seizes control of your sword before your "Force" does, then you're in for a bad time. If you throw a dagger really hard using this, the kinetic energy produced via mana directly on it ceases to apply upon release; on the other hand, if you flick/palm a dagger forward by increasing kinetic energy from your finger/palm into the dagger to throw it, the energy is "natural" and carries it forward.

    Gravity - Adds gravitational pull to things in any direction, but does not alter existing inertia or gravity. Weight can be effectively decreased by generating an opposite gravitational pull, or increased by generating a supplementary gravitational pull. Matching earths level of gravity is fucking hard, and is nearly the pinnacle power possible. Any direction is valid, but must be maintained. And yes, Ender, as far as your arrow is concerned the enemy is down if you make it. As long as it's within your range, at any rate. That said, since original gravity is still always there good luck with that. I love the idea of this magic, but the calculations to make it work from a creator and from a user perspective are fucking insane and I hate designing for it argh I swear to god I might scrap this as being available to players and keep it plot-npc's only or something.

    Space - *Special*, mana is constantly consumed (at a rate usually sustainable by the possessor) to sustain a personal pocket dimension, within which any non-living (even a virus can't go in, nevermind a living plant) material can be placed, and telekinetically manipulated within that space. Mana is required to put objects into space, scaling with size (large objects require an exceptionally powerful mage); retrieval is extremely minor even for large objects, though care should be taken in placement. Excess mana can be used to increase the available space, but said space has to be maintained, so must be increased cautiously, or the drain will outpace your recovery rate. If restoratives are used frequently enough, this can be used as an extreme training method for personal mana generation; if you run out of mana to sustain it, entire space collapses, and you die, strongly recommended against. Space is sustained for however long your life-converted-to-mana can sustain it post-mortem at which point the collapse spews out everything in effectively random directions from the point inside you the space is created (Going to make this either user-decided, or in the "dantian" as a nod to chinese power systems; undecided). Your life would typically be worth a few hours, but someone with ridiculous life force via a blood mage or some other bullshit would still die the moment mana ran out, but the space would exist independently for a long ass time. This magic can only be used to directly alter space outside of itself with extreme levels of power, and with extreme magical cost; you are basically a living backpack, you cannot teleport, you cannot seize things at range easily, and you can't seize things effected by someone else's magic or personal defense (their clothes/melee weapon) at all. Any of the typical "Space" magic bullshit requires power well beyond a lone mage. That said, you can view and telekinetically manipulate things in your space at will, with the manipulation scaling with size. Momentum is conserved (but relative to your own; the earths rotational inertia won't make anything you toss into your space crash into everything else at a speed that shatters it all) so at a mid level of power you can move a rocks worth of weight at about an arrows level of speed, and let that fly out of your space. Direction is an absolute struggle to learn and master with this technique, though, as your spaces position relative to "universal" space is constantly changing as the planet moves, so knowing which direction is "out" of your space is essential and constantly altering throughout the rotation and orbit of the planet. Practice with cotton or something.

    "Heavenly"/"High" magics directly alter laws or concepts of the universe, along the axis of "Ruin" and "Preservation"(eat me Sanders), and are usually more defined by their limitation. Not really looking for more of these as you can come up with shit more or less infinitely, and it's really a plot tool or "Major character" power; not every conceivable one will even be known or exist at any given time in-universe. That said, since this has gone on forever anyway, an example of Preservation/Ruin magic altering the laws of Time:

    Preservation-Time (Restoration) - Allows reversal or decreasing of time, reversing only a "Conceptual Thing". Can be used as a "Healing" method by reversing a wound, but matter outside the effects range doesn't magically reappear, so lost blood/flesh/etc. is still lost; the present materials will return to the state they were in, then do whatever they'd do naturally once the magic is released (bones with no connecting material would misalign, flesh with missing bits would bleed horribly, etc.). Works on people if they let it, works on self, works on objects, but very energy intensive in all scenarios. Rewinding an average adult an entire hour would require a Middle-upper level users entire strength, and the more mass you're restoring the harder shit gets, so you're not going to rewind the universe and fix your errors.

    Ruin-Time (Decay) - Allows acceleration of time, accelerating only a "Conceptual Thing". Can be used to make a plant grow faster, or used on self to increase speed in every meaningful way at a rate dependant on power (Scaling to a full doubling at pinnacle power, for about an hour on a typical adult human, scaling with mass).

    "Conceptual Thing" is just
    linguistic bullshit to limit munchkining; you can't speed up someones leg without speeding up the rest of them and just absolutely ruin their bodies harmony. You can't restore a persons leg without restoring the rest of them (well, unless their legs been gone outside the scope of your magic) so if within the time you're restoring them to they'd eaten something it's coming out. Sustainability of both scales horribly with increased mass; You can make a small plant experience time twice as fast for hours with middle level strength; doing the same to yourself can't last that long even at the absolute pinnacle.

    Exact details of the power required for everything is still up in the air, not really the focus of the thread; I'm looking for magic concepts. I'd be willing to add a poison magic, or virus, or something, if someone came up with a good way for it to work in a universe where the rest do. Magics that use mana to convert to an energy that effects things that "Exist" physically, instead of just conceptually. I'd be cool with more *special* magics that were a constant drain to do something unique, too, like space though.

    And I am so, so sorry for how long this got I actually expected this to be maybe three paragraphs when I started and hahaha wow not even close didn't really consider how much there was to say when talking about it to people with no context...
     
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  2. awesomedude2215

    awesomedude2215 Well-Known Member

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    Cool thread might come back later to help, but cant come up with things on the spot. What I can do is tell you that Im very inclined into reading whatever youre going to write with this so leave a name for your future work so that I know it comes from this.
     
  3. Ixcez

    Ixcez Intergalactic Xanthic Custom Error Zone

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    Seems I missread at the start so deleted the earlier message.

    However still wanna ask how magic cannot directly interfere is to work in your thoughts. Does for instance if I throw a fireball at your water ball make both magic become invalid or does the one with the stronger "mana" win
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2016
  4. Leachinator

    Leachinator [Jedi master general] Most Special Snowflake

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    Ok so first important question do our currently understood laws of physics still exist in your world?
     
  5. Crystalraven

    Crystalraven † Strawberry † Knight †

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    How bout lightning? Allowing mana to encourage frictional charging in an area to produce lightning sounds viable yeah?

    And that plant and space magic sounds useless.
     
  6. Nurman

    Nurman ( ಠ∩ಠ) [Retired Ton]

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    I think you should seperate Fire/Heat into the separate categories of Fire and Vibrations. Vibrations being heat (fast vibrations), cooling/slowing (slow vibrations), sound waves etc...
     
  7. Nurman

    Nurman ( ಠ∩ಠ) [Retired Ton]

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    Plant magic sound great for alchemy and who wouldn't want potentially unlimited storage?
     
  8. Simon

    Simon [The Pure One's Chief Steward][Demon Beast]

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    What rule system are you using for the game?
     
  9. Leachinator

    Leachinator [Jedi master general] Most Special Snowflake

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    If I assume that the laws of physics still apply and also assume that you want your system of magic to be both rational and internally consistent then I have some questions about your "elemental" magics. Air, water, mineral, and fire all seem to be just very narrow forms of telekinesis I.e. air only works with oxygen and c02, water only h20 then you get mineral which apparently works with ALL stone soooo... a shit ton of molecular compounds and elements (seems rather arbitrary compared to the first two) then we get fire which you say is the ability to transform mana into heat. Now I can only assume you mean thermal energy not heat as heat is actually the transfer of thermal energy from one region or object to another and you say that only really high levels can manipulate "existing heat" by wich I assume you mean manipulate and transfer the existing thermal energy in the environment creating heat. And given that Thermal energy is the kinetic energy present in the molecules of a substance that means that "fire magic" is the creation and manipulation of kinetic energy in molecules while the first three magics are the creation and manipulation of kinetic energy in certain specific molecules... it makes it all seem somewhat arbitrary and irrational.
     
    Last edited: Oct 18, 2016
  10. fanobody

    fanobody Well-Known Member

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    Read mother of learning
     
  11. fanobody

    fanobody Well-Known Member

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    Why are the people not resisting blood magic but resist wather magic?
     
  12. Arcturus

    Arcturus Cat, Hidden Sith Lord

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    I will post something about this tomorrow since I am too busy for the next 24 hours. Remind me if I forget
     
  13. SpearOfLies

    SpearOfLies [Lucky Dad][Has a lovely daughter]

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    Pls tl;tr what exactly you want cause I have not idea.

    I just give you what I thinking about your magics

    Air - Mostly useless
    Water - There are weakness?
    Mineral - Nothing to say
    Fire - Make no sense. heat =/= fire
    Plant - Poor descrition
    Blood - Need to deleted or chance to undead.
    Gravity - Why most people use gravity just as tool to annoying enemy when you as warrior can speed up yourself making your armor less heavy or make you weapon more heavy and deadly?
    Space - It's just a extra inventory based on how much mana you want waste.

    So the most powerful magic is water!
     
  14. Atros

    Atros Well-Known Member

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    H-okay gonna try to be brief in responses as I go down the thread; if I mostly ignore your post or don't clarify something, I'm doing so on purpose because either it isn't addressed in-house yet and I've taken a note of what you said, it has been addressed but the explanation is super long and I'll try to come back to it later, or I just don't have any meaningful response.

    @awesomedude2215 This is a game system not just a novel, developed as a hobby among friends. One of whom is a writer and will be doing a lot of the writing, but I'm not, so I haven't really got anything to say about related works appearing on the forum. It's less about building a story and more about a world to accommodate lots of stories right now, but once we get something novel-ish I'll try to get something out for you.
    @Ixcez internal debate about the specifics of this; First option: higher density of mana used wins (you can burn more mana to control the same amount of whateveryoudo, to give it an advantage against minimally controlled spells. That, or magic meeting magic cancels directly control of both and nature does whatever nature would do; in your water ball meeting fireball the heat dissipates and the water boils and loses its forward acceleration (though not momentum). Currently leaning towards the former, but a "tentative" grasp over all your spells once they collide sounds interesting too so not exactly known. A fireball thrown at a person would hurt them quite badly; once the magic concentrating the heat(thermal energy? I'm a security guard and a later post has me questioning my use of the word heat) energy reached within an inch of their skin control and direction would be lost; but that's still basically a thermal bomb.
    @Crystalraven Current thoughts on lightning are an offensive subset of air, which I like as a gamer but I have because... well it's basically a stupid twist on naruto's rasengan. A ball of air would be quickly rotated in a confined space as close to the user as possible and generate electricity, the direction of which would be aimed upon release based on its release. Lots of problems with in-universe logic on how wind would aim the lightning if now how it would generate it, though, so might end up its own magic. Thanks.
    @Nurman I might, honestly. Using the word heat was just a way to make fire more logical (it's a chemical reaction!) as a magic. You're not wielding "fire", per se, you're just manipulating heat in the area and because there's air there it ignites.
    @Simon Honestly probably going to adapt it to several eventually; our ideal if we had all the time is to introduce it as a video game someday, which we have a few game developers in the group so isn't entirely impossible? At a minimum gurps for in-house campaigns when we're done with it, though. It's entirely possible it'll never see the light of day, elsewhere, just because a lot of what we want to make available in it needs a GM to say "Haha, clever but no you don't get to ascend to godhood for outthinking the design."
    @fanobody Current design is they do. But not if they're mentally dead (you can stab a man in the head and he's dead, but his heart keeps beating; rip the vital energy out that way). So basically any blood mage has to be pretty stabby. Rough start, strong late bloom magic design; also our way of putting healing magic in while giving it a huge cost.
    @SpearOfLies Noted, and yeah I hate the plant magic description too. Basically you can control plants; whip people with vines and grow them and shit. Need existing seeds to grow or plants to manipulate, so effectiveness would vary based on location (if you're away from any plants you're crippled, if you're surrounded by thorny bushes woe to your enemies.) Gravity can be used the way you mentioned; the description was to explain the limitations so people didn't think they could just aim someones gravity up and whoosh off they go. As for space... well, at its most basic, yes. It's also the most terrifying merchant power ever fucking imagined though.

    @Leachinator left yours for the end didn't forget you! As for them being arbitrary, yup they are. They're an attempt at a logical explanation for elemental magics that have been an ongoing part of fantasy for ages. We just want them to work the way you'd expect them to in any RPG or what have you of the same concept, honestly; if you think about it most elemental magics do boil down to ridiculously specific telekinesis, so that's what we've got. I do dislike how broad "earth" is right now, but while water, air, and thermal energy (thanks for the fix there though I wish I had a single word for it) have their elements available in abundance (with regional exceptions) on an earthlike planet, if I limit "earth" down to a single element it turns shitty fast. So kindof a gandalf "Because it does" magic hand wave of why it works that way in favor of gameplay and trope consistency. Basically you move rocks; if you're really good you can move exceptionally strong and heavy rocks (metals). You seem more scientifically minded than I so if you've got a better way to explain that I'd be down. As for physics... uh, yes, but less intuitive ones are hand waved in favor of magic because if you have actual real world physics in your magical world shit gets weird sometimes. Like the more you head towards molecular physics the more arbitrary every human concept is so introducing "magic" to that while making perfect molecular sense is waaay beyond the scope of our game system. The goal is intuitive, not factual.

    Some things of note, though: Multiple magics in one individual are possible (though resource intensive), magics aren't meant to 1v1 balance in every combat scenario; they're not even strictly for combat (wind mages do great business sailing ships, for instance). Magic-less technology is medieval standard; gunpowder can exist, but no one has discovered it (will likely be a historical or scenario plot point at some point). Magic technology exists, but is prohibitively expensive to even research as special magic-conducting materials are required and very rare (a magic tool capable of a single, static action is relatively uncommon, but not rare. Enough material for a magic city or just household magic items, are non existent.

    Also for real, this things not even out of alpha I just want more "Natural" magics than 8 but nobodies come up with something cool that works in an intuitive way. For example "Shadow" magic is neat and comprehensible, stealth/illusions and stuff, but how do you justify that from a magic perspective? Like what is your mana actually doing to enable this. I just want more ideas of magic, at this point; balance and details are a future concern, this is meant to be a brainstorming thread. The feedback on the existing magics is handy so I'm game for more of that, but mostly want to solicit ideas rather'n feedback.
     
  15. craBebe

    craBebe Well-Known Member

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    Your signature is especially infuriating after this post.
     
  16. Atros

    Atros Well-Known Member

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    Haha, actually the quote is from someone talking about porn novels which is why I enjoyed it so much. To this day I'm not sure if their saying sects instead of sex was intentional, but I am amused regardless.
     
  17. craBebe

    craBebe Well-Known Member

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    I just found the "skimming wouldn't do" appropriate, since that's exactly what I started doing after the first two paragraphs :p
     
  18. fanobody

    fanobody Well-Known Member

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    So the resistance come from the mental? Why not just say that blood magic can sacrifice blood for power or other thing and by injecting his own blood into his victim he can nulify the resistance to magic? By tricking the vessel that it is his own magic that is affecting it.
     
  19. Leachinator

    Leachinator [Jedi master general] Most Special Snowflake

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    Stick to newtonian physics and ignor the esoteric stuff gotcha. As far as a substitute for the four elemental magics that are not immediately insensible but dont break game balance and would probably still be functionally very similar I would suggest manipulation over the four stages of matter. So instead of earth, eater, air, fire you would have solid, liquid, gaseous, and plasma (to be clear while it is popular in media to use plasma as some kinda super dangerous mega energy substance it obeys conservation of energy just like everything else I.e. the energy you put in is the energy you get out so it wouldn't be overpowered or anything. Every neon light you have ever seen is full of plasma and no one is useing them as deth rays to conquer the world lol).

    So as far as the arbitrary vs rationally explained systems goes you can definitely mix them but you have to do it with deliberate awareness and have some kind of internal reasoning that allows them to coexist without causing cognitive dissonance in a player/audience. A perfect example of this would be from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. In that he uses two completely separate systems of magic one called sympathy basically just slightly modifies our present model of physics by adding a new property or law of behavior called sympathy which sort of like taking quantum entanglement and powering it way up with an injection of an arcanists consious will. Every law of physics not only still applies but is necessary for sympathy to be at all useful its a perfect example of a rationally explained system that the audience can examine and interact with on an intellectual level. On the other hand you have the True Names or Names of Power system, why does it work? Because magic thats why. They are the complete opposite but they easily coexist because at no point does the author allow them to be conflated whether through explanation or lack thereof. In your system you seem to have some magic that aims for more rationality and some thats entirely arbitrary without declaring any sort of separation or difference between them. I would suggest separating them into different orders of magic that operate on different principles so that the player/audience knows not to apply the same reasoning to them.

    Another idea is that you could base simple straight forward magics on simple physical behaviors. Similar to how you could have magics based on the states of matter somthing like manipulation of mass/density would be pretty cool and somthing like entropy would be great as a curse magic I would also suggest that for some of the more creative/odd magics you might consider a combination of simple real world principles and the more symbolic metaphysical stuff. Take shadow for example this could be some kind of combination of spatial perception ability/skill and your more traditional shadow/darkness affinity which woild allow for both arbitrary explanations and more interesting indepth "scientific" explanations.
     
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  20. Acarnina

    Acarnina  

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    Ah... I finally see the actual question. At first it looked like a request for some possible designs but then you gave a full design, which made it seem like a request for criticism of said design... Okay I now understand what sort of things you mean.

    Alright, given the framework offered, here's a few suggestions:

    Light magic: the manipulation of electromagnetic waves through magic. Can blind opponents by diverting all light away from the eyes (or towards them), hide the user by bending light around them, change the colors of objects, etc. A very subtle system of magic, but also very powerful if used correctly. At high levels intense focused beams can be used for direct attack instead of support.
    -I have no idea why this isn't added yet. This is communication, invisibility, darkness magics, and so on.

    Transmutation magic (alchemy): the ability to use magic to weaken and or neutralize the strong nuclear force between nucleons, enabling one to reconfigure the elemental nature of matter. Can change lead to gold, iron to platinum, and so on. However, mass stays constant and only pure elements can be created or transmuted (aka one element to one different element at a time).
    -support mostly, but still definitely worthwhile. On the other hand, it crashes your economy if made too common.

    Electric magic: Lightning and magnetism magic, basically the control of those two forces. Accumulate charge to shoot a bolt of lightning, or create a magnetic field to weigh down an opponents metallic weapons. One beautiful fact about this is that by its nature it ignores magic resistance because you're technically changing yourself and physics is attacking your opponent, which makes it a wonderful sort of rule changing magic system.
    -already suggested but this is a bit more clearly defined.

    Runic or enchanting magic: delayed use magic through some sort of intermediary, which can produce the effects of any other form of natural magic with the proposer use of runes and power. Very useful if you want magic artifacts to be a thing, very unhelpful otherwise.

    Poison magic: a form of magic which forcibly causes chemical reactions in media to produce poisons and then directs them towards the target. By simply combining the elements in the air in the correct proportion and then allowing it to propagate (or directing it with wind magic, for a combination technique) one can make very lethal substances. Also could be used to create fertilizers and status effects such as paralysis, sleep, laughing gas, or suffocation.

    Summoning magic: ... Should be pretty obvious. Summon a spirit or something made of an element and it supports you with magic of that element. Not entirely sure this one fits in the framework you want, though.

    Metal, Crystal, and Salt magic: subsets of earth magic wherein you manipulate substances which are classified as metals, crystals, and salts (all of which are based on atomic structure). As you seem to want the basic elements to be 'limited telekinesis' it seems like this would help. Another suggestion would be to use the Chinese five elements instead of the western four, as wind, water, fire, wood, and metal make a much clearer set of limited telekinesis targets than replacing wood and metal with earth.

    Necromancy: animation of corpses. Input a simple magical program to keep them running, have a set drain in magic power required, and you're all set. Similar to summoning in that I'm not entirely sure it fits. If it doesn't, replace with bone magic or corpse magic wherein you basically puppet dead material; sure it's another limited telekinesis thing, but that seems to be the theme were aiming for here.

    Transcendent magic: you seem to have missed the possibility for this, so I'm offering it even though I'm pretty sure it won't be accepted. This is basically magic which works on magic; because it doesn't target anything in the real world, it doesn't run into those limitations on what can and cannot be affected. Boost and nullification magic are in this category, and something like anti magic shields or magic overdrives would also be introduced. It enhances or diminishes the magic power it is targeted at, and at even higher levels it can perform limited manipulations of its scope and direction.

    Alright that should be enough for now... Have fun with your game design.
     
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