Any tips on how to include power ups in a good/smart way?

So I've found myself in a bit of an impasse. I am working on a story with a pretty much done world setting and plot, but I am a bit stuck on how to progress with how the characters should grow stronger. For one I am a bit of a number, stats and information freak. So I've found myself a bit drawn to LitRPG style of writing or one's that explain the powers and such in detail.

At the same time I am unsure if this kind of writing will actually fit in the kind of story I am writing.
To give a short summary, the story is going for an old European setting where world at least at first is split between two factions, the nordic style one and the christian styled one, more might be added later on but that is at least for the first part. Might be the whole story depending on how I feel about including other things or extending the story to far. But anyhow the story will play on the fact that in the time of the vikings, being a warrior, farmer, blacksmiths was seen as being good, on the other hand being weak, girly or dabbling in magic (only girls were allowed to really study or use magic) could get you called unmanly which could result in anything from loss of honor, to banishment or even death. So going with an LitRPG style would be kinda weird I think, unless I include someway to choose their class and all the guys choose warrior or crafting classes. But I feel it will feel a bit off.

On the other hand I really like Wheel of Times which also is heavily inspired by nordic legends, it's magic system for one is based on one of the three types of magic that was "used" by the viking magic users, or user of seiðr as it was called. In which a person in let's say vol 1 can use basic magic then a time skip simply happens in vol 1 - 3 and then they can use mid tier magic etc etc. Simply the author just uses time skips and then the ppl in the story have a greater pool of mana, have learnt more complicated spells or can use them much better in combat. Which is the type of story I've been thinking of writing but it feels kinda off as well for me when I imagine how I will have to do it.

Lastly is to do something similar to cultivation novels where I add some kind of stages or levels that people have to climb. Also if not apparent yet the MC would be a male magic user.

On a side note in seiðr there are three types of seiðr so to speak.

Weaving: With this type a user of seiðr would weave the tapestry of fate/reality so to affect the world in different ways. Mostly it would be used in ways of affecting fate. This is the magic system Robert Jordan bases his magic in Wheel of time with. Though he changes it so everyone can only use certain strings to weave depending on their innate elemental affinity.

Chanting: This one would include anything from a simple word of lightning enabling someone to throw a lightning bolt, to greater magic or effects requiring a long chant or retelling of a tale, mostly it would have to be done while singing and many would wear female clothing while doing it for a better effect. This is the type that is a big reason for the unmanly stigma of seiðr.

Runes: In the nordic belief words or well runes held power in themselves, so even if someone had no talent for seiðr simply by engraving something with runes would/could have a magical effect. For instance one of the most famous hero stories includes a part where a labourer who has only basic knowledge of runes wants to help his mistress by engraving a large horn with runes of blessings. While he wants to write something like "May Agda never be unhealthy" he somehow messes up the never part and somehow only the "May Agda be unhealthy" part is correct and thus it turns into a curse instead.

Any tips or suggestions on how to make it work would be much appreciated.

 

You see the best way here is to give status like powerups in a cultivation world to the mc but if you dont like that then just go with either depending on the plot of course but just dont give freakish powerups through long time skips. You can also use small timeskips to give little powerups like skill level ups or something along those lines for litrpg style.
Good luck for your story. I would look forward to a great story coming on.

EDIT : Also for cultivation novels use a good cultivation system and dont mess up things about how rare the powerhouses with xx level of power are and then later in the story instead of being rare they pop up like cabbages.

EDIT 2 : Sorry for not reading the summary of the story before replying. And so with your story based like that then a mix of status and cultivation or a system along the lines of martial arts master fits good. Of course you can also go with either system depending on you.

 

cultivation system where the lvl bariers are blurry are the best (if done correctly)
and by blurry bariers I mean that every mob can kill a mob that is x lvl higher
or maybe just do and old style shounem style ''system''
mc at some point is stronger than x mobs but the big enemy is stronger than mc->power up->enemy is still stronger->power up->fck that enemy is strong but I think I can maybe deal with it->win?

 

I don't really recommend using stats or the cultivation system in your case, as both kinda feel off.

I think "bigger axe = stronger man" in your setting, unless your MC is dexfag/caster. So you could go with describing how easy the MC feels lifting his weapon is, and how exhausted he gets from fighting and use that.

If you get OCD about wanting to know the exact strength of your MC, you can have an entire state sheets for your character and plan how to immersively write that in.

 

Pivot of the sky has a power system you should take a look at to get inspiration. It has arguably one of the best fleshed out power systems I’ve ever seen

 

Use whatever style you feel you are comfortable with to evade future complications like being stuck at some point with no idea how to go back back or forward, meaning, if you feel like you can explain better your powerups with litRPG then use that else you can use a combination of them to keep ways for future development albeit that can turn out a bit complicated if you can't keep track of how you set up your system

 

not really clear on your question.

if you want to show the power up of a char , why not just do a simple comparison. before and after. or compare to a normal person.

 

The Escalation problem
When you go from breaking bricks with one punch and
breaking a skyscraper with a punch
then breaking a planet with a punch then you know you have screwed up




You could go to the low fantasy route : The strongest person can at most break a brick with his punch.
Let skill and technique determine strength instead of having One Punch men
or like solo leveling/ I alone level up: obsession with large inflating muscle.

A protagonist with a blade laced with a paralysis poison defeating 20 people is more effective than one who is so fast no one can see him.
focusing on physical traits is boring.
You can go for elemental powers, the elemental route,
using lightning to short circuit the nervous system and paralysis or knock people out
instead of having a protagonist who can release fireballs large enough to burn down an entire city

 

So first of all always follow the KISS principle.
Keep It Simple Stupid...please ignore the last word.

Your Story already has an answer to it IMO. Its Old European meaning its like an ancient history with somewhat fixed view on magic being sissy and farming/hunting being what a man is. so i do advice you go with a simpler classification system and magical discovery as your character uses his new found power to subvert and finally gets appreciated for his power( and loads of conflicts in the middle )
go for a more ancient method of cultivation..like a much much more simpler version and then add more and more as the story progress and as your character discovers more and more knowledge. i'm saying this on the basis that your character is born on the current era, not a reincarnator or a transmigrator. dig deep into the character and avoid the more specific LitRpg or more advanced cultivation method with specific barriers and such.
and this will allow you to come up with new runes and and strange magic though the downside is it might inflate your character to be too op or undermined but if there is anything that writing has taught me is that the answer to what you want is usually already there. just give space for your subconscious mind to give you a perfect answer.
PS/ the subconscious part might not be easy, heck it might be annoying since lets be honest writing is hard but a pushing through it always pay in the end. Good Luck writing and i cant wait to try it out.

 

This won't help much but pretty consistent with everyone else in my advice here.

Firstly, pick whatever you like best and then seriously flesh it out, you need to really know what the end goal is with your power system and how you are going to quantify it. If it is levels, whats the cap? Cultivation - Whats the final stages? If it is not something completely defined, like an arbitrary title, get a rough idea of what you want that power level to look like - e.g. if they are a demigod what does that mean in the context of thier abilities, can they destroy mountians? Planets? Universes?

Secondly, Consistency is always key, if xpowerlevel is so powerful then you need to make the poeple who have achieved it scarce and there needs to be a much longer route to achieving it- don't just do some big timeskips that skip multiple important levels. After the initial powercreep it needs to be slow and sensible. (For a good example of this done well in a cultivation novel - the earliest parts of I shall seal the heavens is pretty spot on- got a bit more rapid a the end). If it takes the MC only 1 year to achieve something it can't take everyone else 100 years and theres thousands of people who are all geniuses.. Thats stupid.

Thirdly, Simplicity is always key - the fewer the levels and the clearer the system the easier it is to keep track. You might like reading the stats but most poeple will skip a wall of maths and number. Make sure its simple to keep track of what is going on.

Fourthly - Time skips and powerups need to make sense. No the mc suddenly becoming twice as strong halfway through a fight is not interesting. Unless you have set this up far in advance and there was a lot of foreshadowing. No one likes desu ex machina my friend. If you want to power them up make sure the timeskip is appropriate for the level you want them to acheive and bear in mind that extended lengths of time skipped will impact the world of the story around them. If you skip 10,000 years then no one will remember what the mc looks like or really know what they did. Bear that in mind and factor it in.

That said, dope idea writing and hope it all goes well for you. Happy to read and discuss via message any ideas if you found my shit helpful. Peace. Wolf.x

 

Okey first of all thanks for all the responses! Secondly this might be a bit of a wall of text, but I am giving a response to most of you

Thanks for the thoughts and yes I am kinda of not a fan of the whole while MC is weak everyone else is weak then when MC is strong everyone is strong, reason? MC was in newbie town before and moved onto main area town now.

I totally agree with your thoughts the only problem is that if I am keeping true to how the viking communities was back then, which I will be trying to do to a certain extent, it would be almost impossible to study or practice magic in an easy way since basically every village would have their own magic user who mostly knew spells or incantations that was passed down in that particular village/city. The only part streamlined would be runecraft which was known and used by a large part. The other two types would basically be done in a way that the MC learns a small amount of them and then he would either need to travel from village to village and slowly gather knowledge or "luckily" stumble across a book made by someone doing something similar or someone who has been doing that to teach him.

Which I personally feel is a bit well strange since this kind of knowledge from my research was closely guarded, where the magic user would usually at most pick one disciple to teach and only that disciple was given an insight into the deep knowledge. Which is why I have been thinking of doing the LitRPG way etc as an easy/lazy way out and to not make the MC keep doing the same thing all the time. One way I have thought of is to make the MC gather ppl knowledgeable in it and start some kind of exchange or learning center to expand and strengthen the magic among the populace.

For at least this story I don't really want the type of story where X person is invincible unless Y person is lvl Z, instead while for instance the MC can defeat an army if clever or perhaps even 50-100 ppl in a straight up fight, even a farmer could kill the MC if he was being stupid. I will be including mythical beings however who can on the other hand kill everyone unless you fight them the right way, or also kill everyone unless a certain amount of strength is gathered. For instance a giant could flatten a village even if the farmers tried to fight back, they might wound it but there would probably be less then a 0.00001% to kill it, but most of them could probably run away. While if fighting a wraith unless you had a weapon made of a certain material or magic you could never kill it but if you have the weapon even a 10 year old could at least in theory kill it.

I actually totally missed doing such a simple solution to it xD

I've read that one quite a while ago but I am gonna have to check it out again, thanks for the tip.

Heh true there should be a reason for the system as well.

This explanation might get a bit long I tend to write to much at times
My thoughts on power lvls is that basically at first, MC is hit with sickness which leaves him a feeble/weak body compared to the average male. While hunting he can't even defeat a wild boar with a spear, later on he starts to learn magic, eventually he is challenged to a duel losing the duel he eventually uses the magic. At this point his magic could be compared to throwing hard punches at a distance or what I am thinking of doing having the other persons shield catch on fire, not a great engulfing flame but still a considerable fire, but one that the person will have time to throw of the shield and only receive light burns. Eventually his powers will grow to the stage were he could fairly easy if protected be compared to 50-100 armored fighters in a battle but no blowing up mountains. He might be able to set one on fire if given enough time, probably a day or so.

But some of the strongest spells I am thinking of is for instance, changing fate so as a large area has no rain because it moved to another area, perhaps causing a flood in that other area. Or casting if given time a great thunderstorm that will rain down thunder strikes over a large area, the thunder would at most kill 1-2 ppl per strike but would more knock people down or cause deafness/disorientation and/or the biggest fireballs could engulf a few ppl at most or explode in the size of a grenade.

Magic in the viking era was never really the be all end all, or having super high destruction. As an example, Odin who was one of the greatest users of seiðr knew 18 spells, the amount Freya knew is unknown I believe and she was the greatest.

But anyhow the 18 that Odin knew was, this is a bit of my interpretation, since the spells are explained in short stories but with no exact specification of what they did.

1. A spell that protected against fear
2. A spell that healed
3. A spell that fettered, made weapons blunt and made him immune to weapons (specified as bladed, weapons and blunt, my guess is physical dmg)
4. A spell of freedom (any fetter or chain on him would be made undone)
5. A spell that enabled him to freeze objects he could see/follow with his eye (basically an arrow shot at him could be frozen in the air if he could see it)
6. A spell of reflection versus other peoples harmful spells
7. A spell that can control flames but also protect against them
8. A spell that brought peace and "friendship" (basically if two warriors were to fight because of hate he could cast it and they would lose their hatred and stop fighting)
9. A spell that could control the winds and currents of water.
10. A spell that forced someone to be stuck in their current shape or unable to return to their bodies if their soul/spirit had left. (This one is a bit weird since it literally is explained as if a witch has transformed into another shape he would make them stuck in that shape or if they had left their bodies they would be unable to return to them)
11. A spell of safety (this spell basically made warriors enter, fight and return from battle safely, my guess is it would work in a way to bend fate to "favor" the warriors so that enemies would trip, miss their attacks etc)
12. A spell that gave life to the dead (It is unclear if they would come back to life or become the walking dead, but they could walk and talk with him after using it)
13. A spell that gave endurance and courage
14. A spell that made one see the truth of a person (In short with it Odin could see if a person was an elf, human, aesir, dwarf etc)
15. A spell that gave wisdom and knowledge
16 + 17. Are spells that enchanted females. (Both spells pretty much worked to make any woman fall in love with Odin the spells are similar but also different but I can't directly understand the difference )
18. The last spell is never really explained or revealed as Odin wants to keep it secret and only reveal it to the women closest to him, my guess is that it is actually a spell of fertility.

So if you bothered to read all of them, you'd notice that the spells Odin knew with him being a warrior but also one of the greatest male user of seiðr, they are fairly varied but not overly powerful, though some of them are pretty OP like bringing ppl back to life. My guess is that it was temporary in a way that a person brought back to life was used by Odin to gather information after which they would go back to being dead. Unless they were brought into Valhalla, but that was done by bringing their spirits not giving life to their bodies again.

My thought is to keep the magic in this way that it would be mysterious and magical with special effects instead of being something like making a person a living breathing tank that shoots rockets from their hands and can drop a meteor on an army.

Thanks your answer really brought some thoughts to mind. Yeah the character will be born in that world/era no previous life memories/reincarnator, summoned hero or transmigrator. There will be conflict quite a bit of it, most will likely happen when a mercenary band of sort is made but I at least at the moment don't want the end game to be the MC becoming a king/emperor instead they will simply at most carve out their own little piece of heaven.

I haven't really thought about the final stages to be honest. To be frank in norse mythology the "gods" or rather aesir are not invincible or immortal. It is kind of inconsistent in how powerful they are kinda like superman in that in one case Thor is only strong enough to lift a car and in the other he is strong enough to lift the moon. Still overall an aesir would be about 10 times stronger then a human male but would almost always have a couple of special powers and perhaps know a few spells. So aesir will be fairly few in number but will be much stronger and with special abilities compared to humans. The nordic sides humans will be overall stronger then the christians side both innately and for the fact that warriors would engrave runes on themselves and equipment which grants higher strength. But also because of warriors like the berserker who in their rage in some stories could defeat 20-50 people alone with ease because of their raging strength and for the fact that almost the only way to kill them was to decapitate them during their rage. While the christian side would be more orderly, have greater numbers and use blessings/prayers. In short overall vikings = quality christians = quantity.

The christian "god" will be an actual god so to speak or well perhaps it would be better to describe it as a force of order, while the "devil" is a force of chaos. None of them are inherently good or evil, and I'll be using the old kind of christianity where if a wife was unfaithful she and the one who slept with her were to be stoned to death. In short the order side would well bring order and focuses quite a bit on the seven virtues, while the chaos side would bring chaos and focus on the seven sins. Chaos worshipers would be oppressed. But yeah two forces compared to aesir would be more like a cosmic force, and they can't directly interfere with the world but could work through a conduit (a worshiper), for instance a priest could through their prayers or belief perform miracles (magic), the cosmic forces will have servants or creatures from old legends connected to them appear in the world. The forces could also for a veeeerry short period of time posses a person, this would need to be someone special and that person would because of being possessed by a cosmic force die within seconds/minutes but during that short period of time they could perform extremely powerful miracles, like bringing a group of people back to life, or bless an entire army with courage while the opposite army is struck with fear or perhaps inflict a large part of a city with the plague (this part could also be done by normal magic though the strength, infection rate or the amount of ppl infected would differ greatly example a magic user could infect the water supply, while the cosmic force could instantly infect ten thousand ppl). Pretty much they couldn't destroy the world but the person who is literally burning their life away could wield power greater then anyone else.

Getting way of course here me thinks, but in short the MC is never meant to reach the lvl of the force of order or chaos, at most they could reach the lvl of the aesir and while the characters might gain long lives not even the aesir have eternal life and have to eat golden apples that gives them youth and extends their lives.

Lastly I agree on the stupid part. Don't remember the name of the novel but in it the MC falls into a pool of water and is then able to cultivate super fast and easy. So at first what takes him 1 year takes other 10 years, then 1 year = 50 years, then 1 year = 200 years and so on. The MC is pretty much at a cultivation lvl when he's 20 years old when everyone else has to be 80+ and then when he turns 22 everyone else has to have spent at least 200 years in cultivation and so on. That kind struck me as stupid and I much rather have my story portray my MC as using his powers in a smart or innovative way, though I will most likely eventually make him be one of the greatest magicians even at that point it's not gonna be like he can just instantly kill anyone or no one is close to his strength. However because of the whole setting of magic being frowned upon I will try to make it very rare especially at the top lvls, or well there will be quite a few users of miracles but this kind of magic will almost solely be used in a positive effect. I am thinking of adding a kind of inquisition type of magic/miracle that will be more deadly and focused on slaying/fighting heretics and chaos worshipers.

I am at the moment working a bit on a spell book list for the different sides but for now at least I want them to be varied and special, and not be spells like Ice element: Tier 1 Icy touch, Ice breath Tier 2 Ice spear, Ice armor etc etc. There will be some similar to this type, but mostly I want spells at least in chanting to be like this.
"The fire now came alive
The fire burnt the wood in hand
The fire grew with fuel alight"
This would be one of the earliest spells used in a duel by the MC to put the shield of the one he duels on fire. In the norse mythology like many others 3, 6 and 9 were special numbers and it was believed that to repeat something 3, 6 or 9 times would increase the strength or have a magical effect. In short this spell would be a kind of general low tier fire spell, where the first part would probably always be the same while the last two would or could be similar but could also be changed if it was to target something other then a wooden shield or have a different effect, like burn brightly as to blind an enemy. While a mid tier spell would repeat the fire part 6 times and a high tier would repeat it 9 times. A spell like this would take about 7-10 seconds to cast but a longer sentence could have a greater effect. I'd probably write down the whole of a spell but in the story I'd probably never use the whole spell and instead only include something like the shorter one's or parts of the longer one's.

I feel I am at the moment perhaps putting a bit to much effort into explaining how the powerlevels/strength/spells are gonna work so as to explain the power creep and power escalation without there being a need to so just gonna drop it here

 

Tying power stages to your world building is a good way of making them relative and actually mean something. MC joins the military and from that ends up affecting the world somehow because they have a certain level of power or ability. Or rather than an mc just happening to encounter stronger cultivators in the next random place in their wanderings, a higher power/ability can potentially mean a new way to influence the world further and gain stronger enemies because of natural plot happenings.

The best stories are those that flow naturally and the best way to accomplish that in these types of novels is making sure your story is plot driven and not power or cultivation driven (it's hard to exactly define this by example but you can tell if the direction of your story feels natural or not). Even if it's one we may not rate the best in literary terms, Coiling Dragon is popular for a reason.

 

I will use an example from my own setting which has an extensive magic system.

The lowest level is the average peasant. Stage zero or one, meanhing he can only feel the presence of magic on a limited scale and maybe use a few minor tricks. Healing a small cut, lifting a few dozen pounds with telikenesis, lit a fire etc. Most important feature is the fact that they can use magic tools. Aka the settings main technology. The upper scale are the paragons. Their might is pretty much the unquestionable peak (As a saying goes: A paragon only has 3 enemies: Folly, hubris and another paragon.). They can use strategic class magic in the stream mode. Aka rapidfire nukes. Lower classes of mages need to flare or even nova to achieve these results (flare causing minor to major self harm, nova straight up killing the user if his energy pool was above the 33% treshold). These guys rule the setting. Even an emperor can't do much to them.

As the example I will use the currently awakening Luana "Moonlight" Starwing (as the other paragons are at peak power for a long time already). Luana is the average spirit fox-kin (3 total over the course or ~40 millennia). 1.65 tall (or rather, tiny given that the average elf woman is ~2.01), main elements (out of 11) are light, darkness and water. Maximum origin force capacity (aka how much passive energy she can carry at a time) is about fifty million units. Size, or rather mass, is important as it affects the mages energy pool. A rank one mage has maybe 10 units worth of energy. If he is very talened he might be able to carry 30-40. A non- immortal paragon might have around 10 million units. Using magic requires activating passive energy, which harms the users body if it bypasses his innate resistances. And magic is on a timer during cast as the spell structure is quickly detoriating if there is no physical array present. Stream, flare and nova stand for how much active energy to resistance is being used. Anything sub 100% is stream, up to ~130% is flare and anything past that point is nova. Luana is capable of streaming about 1 M units per minute. Thats enough to nuke a city. Her best friend Liliana is a grand master (stage seven) and can stream about 20k. Bloodlines and race are pretty important for this but there is an external factor as well which is determined around the 7th month of pregnancy.

tl;dr: fluff and some crunch

During the early stages of the novel her power increases rapidly. It takes her about 3-4 weeks to step into stage two, which is a fairly impressive time. Not for her race, but rather the average. A blacksmith might need a decade or more to reach this, and he might never go past stage three. Even reaching stage four won't take much longer than three months for her however. On the other hand the fastest paragon to ever reach stage four is the ancient elf known as "Wiseman". Legends say he managed to do it in less than two months.
Now this rapid growth comes with a disadvantage. She is using magic almost exclusively on instinct, and not knowledge. Her spells are inefficient and consume way more power than they should. They are also not quite as strong as they should be. And that is despite the fact that she is (ab-)using her terrifying energy pool to train for more than ten hours a day. Even when she is just out for a stroll with her best friend she is streaming anti-gravity, physical reinforcement and barrier magic (basically jumping trough the forest with 15 meters a step.)

tl;dr: Her brutal innate advantages only magae to even out the backlash of the rapid ascensions. Which she then has to get rid of over time. Her powerups, so to say.

Big powerups happen either when she gains new runes (as they are not only passive spells but can be actively used during casting for a moderate speed and efficiency boost) or she gets the hang of one particular trick or aspect of casting. Or she transforms the quality of her energy pool. Using liquid instead of gaseous force boosts casting speed a good bit. Mage stages refer to the quality of the origin force pool and thus skipping ranks isnt particulary rare. Someone with a high innate magic resistance can burst a mage with a higher capacity down before he can act by flaring, or going nova at a low energy %.

tl;dr: some things happen in burst, but the growth via practice and time beats these bursts

This happens when Luana attempts to break trough to stage eight. Her energy already transformed to stage eight, but when she is about to use this power to upgrade her body she gets ambushed by a "friend". This friend is strong for a grand master, very strong in fact. She herself already has paragon powers but her body cannot withstand them and since her ascension was interrupted she is on a timer. She has a choice: Flare, risk moderate damage in the hope to destroy her enemy, and instantly begin strengthening her body or stream, and risk massive damage due to the moderate strain on her body over time due to the failed ascension. In the end she decides to burst and ends up in a healing capsule for a week and is then bedridden for almost a month. Her opponent at that point had twice the magic capacity of since Luana could not fill up to her new maximum before the fight. On top of that her powers are about as strong as Luanas due to the limitation on the girls body. In the end she is forced to risk her life in an attempt to destroy the enemy asap..

tl;dr: Example for a rather high end'ish fight in which one side has an innate advantage and the other a tactical advantage.

Yes, overral ranks dont mean much in a 1 vs 1. They represent the power total someone has, and no actual combat ability. They do however represent magical endurance and are very well of strategic important on a battlefield where you do not fight a 1 vs 1. This is fairly common in fiction since a 1 vs 1 follows totally different rules than a battlefield.

 

Ah I just got another idea take inspiration from the Witcher series where magic isn’t isn’t exactly all powerful but a nice inclusion

 

It is an absolute gamebreaker in witcher. It is very very strong, and in fact almost everyone with a good deal of power wields magic. Its just that monsters like Yennefer and Triss are rather rare for various reasons.
Examples include the portals, which are a godsent for intelligence networks. And the battle at Kaer Mohran demonstrated how broken they are as artillery. Qwen or Axii are also really really stupidly powerful, and thats supposedly dumbed down and weakened magic.
Sure, its not vaporizing mountains, but it still outclasses everything else by a landslide.

 

Spent most of today to work on the magic and power part and think I've decided on how to do it. Your post gave me a bit of an inspiration so thought I would share what I came up with. In the runic language there are 34 or more runes, 34 are the amount I've been able to find . Each rune has on average 3-6 words associated with them, some runes overlap, for instance five runes have the word strength associated with it, but only 1 rune has the word sun associated with it. At the same time each rune can be written in reverse which will make the rune have the meaning of the opposite for instance Wunjo which can be associated with Joy would mean Sorrow if written in reverse.

My thoughts at least at the moment is that at first the MC will chant with the common language (written in English) then fairly early on he realizes that if he instead chants the runic language the effect will be much greater and it will drain him much less, basically chanting in the common language is just a shoddy way of using magic and the true magic is done through the runic language. So the power-creep will be in the way of gathering the different runes and learning their different meanings. For instance at first he will know 3 runes, but he will only know for instance that the runes, Uruz, Cweorth and Gar means Uruz = Strength, Cweorth = Fire and Gar = Spear. Because of that his magic will be limited until he fairly early on learns that for instance Uruz = Strength, ox, energy, courage, untamed potential, speed, sexual desire and in reverse frailty, rashness, violence, lust, physical weakness, loss of energy, fear, slowness which gives a much greater use of the single rune. So in short the power-creep is finding the rune and how to pronounce it, then find all the meanings the runic word holds and lastly trying to make up chants with them (this is pretty much a small part of it). The major part is finding the runes and their meanings.

Except that there will also be small words or sentences of magic that are famous in viking lore, I might add some that perhaps were made up after the viking age, like the icelandic spell book that is fairly famous but has no reference as to were the spells were found or how the author came across them. Amongst the most famous of these from the Poetic Edda is Aegishjalmur that is a special magical rune and word that could give protection, irresistibility in battle or an aura of fear. These will basically be short words or chants with much stronger effect then the basic runic words. For instance Til ad vekja upp draug would mean To invoke ghosts and evil spirits, if you ever played skyrim you'd recognize "draug" which was the viking word for ghost, evil spirit and undead basically.

Lastly I will try to add the weaving part in someway though I haven't decided exactly how to do that yet, doing it the way it was done in Wheel of Time feels a bit like stealing and would perhaps overshadow the other part I am trying to create. Perhaps it would be best to not include it, but I always thought the way of weaving fate/reality into a tapestry and gain a magical effect sounded kinda cool just not sure how to add it in a interesting and fun way.

 

Well. My own setting does have chants, but these are more a mental support than anything else. Words have no power over magic by themselves, but they help focus the mind. A mage could call for a waterball and another mage uses the exact same chant to summon a tornado. They do however have special runes on the back of their hands which have somewhat of a magic pen effect. They permit the drawing of one-time use runes on any surface, material, whatever. Even works midair.

What your system does is boost power by versatility, which isnt bad. Just make sure that he suffers early on due to this lack of versatility.

Kinde like the grappling hook in Zelda. You suddenly find a spot where you cant get past because you havent upgraded to the double hook yet.

 

I would agree on that it would be easier that way but trying to stay true to the source as mentioned there are three ways of magic, rune carving, weaving and chanting.

Rune carving is kinda straight forward you carve/engrave runes to stuff. Which would result in a magical effect

Weaving as mentioned is more strange since it’s main power was in the fact that, the norns weaved the tapestry of fate, basically everything is already set in stone. But a person skilled in this part of magic could change small parts weaving in or reweaving certain parts of the great tapestry, which could in turn have greater effect on fate but it couldn’t change the great picture. Like it couldn’t prevent ragnarok. Vikings believed everything was predetermined and any change of this could only occur through magic.

And chanting is like rune forging kinda straight forward in that a chant would have a magical effect. Galdr which is the name of this type of magic can basically be explained as words have power or words of power. If I have understood it correctly. Often if the spell involved fire for instance the word for fire would be repeated multiple times with how I previously mentioned a fire spell I was thinking of using early on.

But anyhow yeah gonna have to limit things like that and try to have it increase with his increasing knowledge since fire for instance can be seen as something that burns, gives of a bright light, heat, smoke etc as well as simply being a fire amongst other things. Hopefully it will be interesting and flow smoothlty.

My thought is to write it something like this.

"The fire now came alive"

As the chant was spoken a small flame came alive atop his right hand.

"The fire burnt the wood in hand"

With the second line the flame flew in a straight line towards the shield in Mats hand. Even when he tried to dodge it seemed to follow his movement and easily struck the shield in his hand.

"The fire grew with fuel alight"

The flame quickly started to engulf it as Erik finished his chant. Panicking at what was happening Mats removed the shield with haste and only suffered a small burn because of his quick action. The shield did not fare as well and it was quickly consumed in the fire leaving only ash and some iron parts.

Or something like, hopefully a bit more fleshed out and detailed

This would be the "basic" form of casting while if he used the word for fire,

"Cweorth now came alive"
"Cweorth burnt the wood in hand"
"Cweorth grew with fuel alight"

The effect would be greater, and it would be even greater if the sentences were made up entirely of runic language.

Would be something like

"Cweorth Berkana" = Fire Alive
"Cweorth Eihwaz Mannaz" = Fire wood man/the self/human
"Cweorth Ac Sowelu" = Fire growth sun/light

Since I am not an expert at the rune language and cant bend them outside of the base word as I show in the = part what I will write won't be exactly the same and I'll take some author liberties with how the sentences are formed xD

 

A nice and simple magic system. Imo it fits your setting quite nicely. And yes, with that you should definitely go with the growing by learning and amassing knowledge approach.

My setting is just much more focused on magic. Heck, half the cities wouldn't even work without it. Hence my system is a little bit more complicated to avoid any possible plot hole or logical error in the world building.