Concentration-Bound Magic

Ciri: How long will [the spell] hold?
Mousesack: As long as I hold.

—The Witcher (2019), "The End's Beginning"

Many conceptualizations of magic — or superpowers or whatever else you call it — center around mental energy. Wielding it requires continuous focus and effort. Magic may be likened to holding a thought in your mind, or pulling on a rope. Within such a metaphor, there's also the possibility of "letting go" and ending the spell.

This makes multitasking near impossible. Any Distraction Trope may break the person's focus. The concentration is commonly taxing, and even without interruption, one's stamina may fail eventually. It's also vulnerable to a Psychosomatic Superpower Outage.

It may be visually depicted with a Pstandard Psychic Pstance. A Psychic Nosebleed may be used to underline the exertion.

Logistically, this is one way to constrain magic and make magical characters less overpowered. It's mid-tier in The Law of Power Proportionate to Effort. This feature is particularly important in games, where it takes on a mechanistic or enforced role.

It co-occurs with Magic Is Mental, Thought-Controlled Power, and/or Cast from Stamina. It may also be part of an Imagination-Based Superpower. The inverse is Power Incontinence, where restraining one's powers is the thing that requires effort. See also No Ontological Inertia, where something stops existing when its creator does, but without ongoing effort required.

Sister Trope to Psychoactive Powers, where the power depends on the wielder's emotional energy rather than mental focus, and Clap Your Hands If You Believe, where it's the power of belief. There's a good deal of overlap between them, however, since minds, emotions, and faith can interact in many ways.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?, this is established as one of the three factors in the world's pseudo-magic: the nanomachines that make "magic" work rely on the strength of one's "thought-pulse", it's stamina, and its clarity. This is particularly noticeable in standard storage magic, as normal magic users have to concentrate on creating an artificial space and maintain that thought for however long items will be kept. This is part of why Mile's "Inventory" gains such regular shock: her power accesses an existing universe, so her spell doesn't create and maintain a space, it just moves objects to and/or from, eliminating essentially all limits on the technique.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero: In episode 13, Myne attempts to slay her younger sister and Naofumi as they travel through a mountain pass. She first tries fire arrows, but these are blocked. She next tries to drop a huge fireball on them, but Raphtalia teleports behind Myne and skewers her through the brisket with a spirit sword. This doesn't kill Myne, but it does break her concentration, which makes the fireball disappear.

Comic Books

• The Glass Looker: Treasure digging has 3 basic pieces involved: 1) using magic to identify the location of buried treasure, 2) the physical work of excavating it, and 3) using magic to counteract the magical protections guarding the treasure. During Luman Walters' treasure dig, he demands silence from all his diggers. When Joseph interrupts them, Luman complains that this broke his concentration, which in turn broke the spell.
  Luman: Damn kid broke my concentration. The treasure's sure to have moved!
• Green Lantern: A Green Lantern's Power Ring is described as the most powerful weapon in the universe, capable of creating literally anything so long as the user has the imagination and concentration to do so. However, the more complex the construct, the more effort and concentration it takes to maintain. Should the user's will or concentration falter, the construct can shatter or dissipate. The other members of the Emotional Spectrum have a variation: each Ring is fueled by a different emotion (Red—Anger, Orange—Greed, Yellow—Fear, Blue—Hope, Indigo—Compassion, and Violet—Love), and the user must concentrate fully on that emotion to utilize their powers (if a Blue Lantern feels hopeless, for example, the Ring won't work).
• X-Men: After being wounded by a supervillain in the Mutant Massacre arc, Shadowcat's powers changed so that she was intangible by default and had to concentrate in order to maintain her solidity.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: "Staff Difficulties": Ami gets distracted by an embarrassing joke while casting what's typically a long-casting time, three-person spell, by herself, and fails the casting and has to try again:
  "Careful, Mercury!" Snyder'[s] voice came from the left, alerting her to the fact that the summoning circle was wavering.
  The teenager, her blue hair waving in the wind emanating from the fiery diagram, chided herself for letting her mind wander, and redoubled her concentration on the spell.

Films — Animation

• Onward: The growth spell requires all the focus one can muster on the object one wants to grow. If you can't focus, you shrink something — or someone in Barley's case.

Films — Live-Action

• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Simon's illusion spell requires him to concentrate or the illusion will break apart, as demonstrated when he creates an illusion of Edgin to distract some guards. When his foot gets stuck in a pothole, he loses his focus which causes the illusion to distort and eventually vanish.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: During Harry's first quidditch match, Hermione and Ron suspect someone is interfering with Harry's effort to capture the golden snitch. They notice that Professor Snape is muttering something, and watching Harry without blinking. The two students deduce that Snape is casting a spell of some type, and conclude he's the saboteur. It turns out Snape was casting a spell — but a protective one, as he'd detected magical interference before Hermione and Ron did.
• Star Wars: The Force is often depicted as requiring focus and a calm state of mind in order to be used most effectively.
  • A New Hope: When training Luke, Ben Kenobi urges Luke to connect with the Force by reaching out with his feelings instead of relying on his senses. Later at the climactic battle at the Death Star, Luke must tap into this power to make the one-in-a-million shot, during which he turns off his targeting computer and directs all his attention to the Force to tell him when to fire.
  • The Force Awakens: When accessing the Force for the first time, Rey noticeably struggles when her emotions overtake her but improves when she calms herself. When trying to do a Jedi mind trick, Rey's first attempts fail when she gives the order while stressed, but succeeds when she tries in a calm, focused tone instead. Then in her duel with Kylo Ren, Rey gets the upper hand by taking the time to compose herself in the Force, soothing her fears and allowing her to overpower Ren who is still emotionally off-balance from his murder and injuries.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past: Shadowcat has the ability to send the mind of someone back in time to inhabit their younger body. This only lasts so long as she is in proximity to the person and concentrating, so usually she only sends someone back a few minutes. However, when she has to send Logan's mind back decades it's a real strain. She has to maintain her concentration for a few days. In the theatrical cut, this is handwaved away, but in the Rogue Cut, she's able to get a reprieve by having Rogue steal her powers temporarily and take over the connection to Logan's body.

Literature

• In The Belgariad, the first time Garion tries to intentionally do a spell (moving a large rock) he at first finds himself distracted by little things around him, preventing him from completing the spell.
• Carrie's telekinesis is reliant on her concentration (at least until she gets significantly more powerful right at the end). This is how a few people manage to survive the Black Prom, as she gets distracted watching people burn to death and suffer, and they manage to slip out of the one free door. She realizes her mistake, severs a few people's fingers, and doesn't make the same mistake again.
• In the world of the Deryni, all spellcasting requires concentration for as long as the spell is in effect. Anything that disrupts that concentration — a painful injury, extreme fatigue, a concussion, being drunk — makes spellcasting harder or impossible. The anti-Deryni drug called merasha blocks Deryni powers partly by making the individual so dizzy and disoriented that they can't focus enough to do anything. Specific examples:
  • In Deryni Rising, Morgan has to use his new-found Healing power on himself, after he was seriously wounded in a duel. He needs the magickal support of his cousin Duncan McLain to do it because the wound is deep and extremely painful.
  • In The King's Justice, King Kelson and then Alaric Morgan have to use their powers to make some enemy archers miss their target. Much is made of the fact that they're in the middle of a battle, and neither can summon up the necessary concentration while they're fighting for their own lives.
  • In The Quest for Saint Camber, Kelson has to undergo a vision-quest for Camber's spirit, which involves sealing him inside a cave with a volcanic spring that emits hallucinogenic gas. Once he's sealed in, he has to hurry to create a protective ward around himself, because the gas is rapidly befuddling him.
• In The Inheritance Cycle, magic is the application of the magician's will upon energy to do things they otherwise wouldn't be able to or accomplish them much faster than would normally be possible. Intent is very important and getting distracted can cause the magic to have an entirely unwanted effect. Originally, all magic was non-verbal, but the Ancient Language that magical incantations are said with was created to make things easier. Non-verbal magic is still possible, just considered very dangerous if one isn't well-practiced at magic. Even with the incantations, intention still matters a lot and the same word or words can have different effects based on this. For example, brisingr, the word for fire, can be used to actually set something on fire, but can also be used just to create a light that follows the magician around. A duel between wizards is considered especially dangerous and generally a spellcaster won't even attempt to use magic against enemy magicians unless they've taken control of their minds first, which in turn involves guarding their own mind against magical intrusion.
• The Kingkiller Chronicle:
  • Zigzagged with Sympathy. Forming a sympathetic spell requires mental focus powerful enough to bend reality, a state called "Alar", so practitioners hone their concentration with various mental exercises. However, once formed, sympathetic links are often lingering, sometimes undesirably — a young Kvothe nearly dies when an ill-considered spell immobilizes the air in his lungs.
  • The magic of Naming requires a unique, intuitive, almost meditative state of Hyper-Awareness. Kvothe has a very difficult time achieving or maintaining the mindset, so he's only able to use Naming in a few rare situations.
• Rai Kirah: Exorcisms require an Aife to maintain a portal to the victim's Mental World while a Warden fights the demon within; if the portal closes, the Warden is lost forever. At the climax of Transformation, Ysanne holds a portal open for three days, an "unthinkable" feat of endurance, skill, and willpower.
• In The Spirit Ring, Abbot Monreale (a sorcerer as well as a Christian clergyman) attempts to cast a spell of "deep sleep" on the villain and his own sorcerous henchman. The enemy sorcerer, Vitelli, is able to turn the tables and instead send Monreale into a coma-like state of unconsciousness, but Vitelli must make some continuous effort to maintain this sleep spell. He is able to "divest" the spell, at least temporarily, by using a form of Device Magic — a piece of silk cloth over a small gold crucifix, over which Vitelli briefly concentrates while murmuring some incantation — allowing him to turn his concentration onto other matters. When this "spell-set" is forcibly disturbed, it not only breaks the spell, but also clearly causes Vitelli some degree of pain.
• The Wheel of Time: Channeling the One Power takes focus and stamina. By default, maintaining a spell relies on the channeler to feed it power, though it's less taxing than actively casting a spell. Zigzagging in that there's also an option to "tie it off" and make it self-sustaining. Because concentration is so important, the Ultimate Final Exam to become Aes Sedai is a sequence of 100 difficult spells in chaotic, dangerous environments.

Live-Action TV

• The Witcher (2019): In the pilot episode, the castle at Cintra is being attacked with overwhelming armies they cannot hope to defeat. As a final line of defense, Court Mage Mousesack creates a magical barrier around the moat, which he can maintain only so long as his energy and focus last.
  Ciri: How long will it hold?
  Mousesack: As long as I hold.

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: Under the Spell Construction rules, the easiest non-instantaneous spells are those that end as soon as the mage's concentration is broken. Any distraction forces a dice roll to avoid losing the spell, and almost no one can maintain the necessary focus for longer than an hour or two.
• Deviant: The Renegades: The "Concentration" Scar causes its entangled Variation(s) to have a chance to shut down or be harder to activate if the user's concentration is broken in some way.
• Dungeons & Dragons: A repeated motif of the game is that all spells require concentration in order to be cast in the first place, and some (but not all) spells require concentration to maintain their effects.
  • In Basic Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, casting spells is considered to require at least some form of concentration, where taking any damage would disrupt the spellcasting. ^note All spells had casting times, which is how much chanting and gesticulating would be necessary to actually bring the spell into being, and all weapons had a speed factor, which is how quickly they could be swung or shot; weapons could interrupt spells with a higher casting time than their speed factor, so a dagger is a fantastic anti-mage weapon while a BFS is a terrible one. Some spells are also designated as requiring concentration, preventing the spellcaster from taking other actions or casting more spells if they are active.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition removed casting times, but made all spellcasting provoke attacks of opportunity (and are vulnerable to Readied Actions). The Concentration skill became necessary to maintain spellcasting under stressed conditions, and the skill is considered pretty much mandatory for all spellcasting classes. Like second edition it also has a few rare spells designated as requiring concentration, such as the Implosion spell, which require an action to use each turn. Spells that require concentration preclude any further spellcasting while active, and if you're damaged you need to make a Concentration skill check to keep the spell going.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has some powers, whether spells or martial abilities, with the sustain action, allowing them to last longer than required — the effort required to sustain varies based on the power itself, and no longer prevents using other sustain abilities. Also, some effects types (such as zones) will only persist as long as the caster is conscious.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: The Concentration mechanic limits the number of non-instantaneous spells that a caster can have up at one time, whether those be simple self-buffs or massive damage spells that blanket an entire battlefield. Two Concentration spells cannot be performed simultaneously- the moment someone starts to cast one while already concentrating on another, the first one ends automatically. Concentration doesn't require an action, but if you take damage, you have to make a Constitution saving throw to prevent the spell from ending.
• Mage: The Awakening: Concentration is a Yantra, a type of magical shorthand Awakened used to make casting spells easier. Mechanically, it adds two dice to the spell's dice pool (increasing its chance of success by roughly 10-15%) with the tradeoff that if the caster is hurt or takes any other action the spell ends. It is not, however, mandatory, and spells can be made Indefinite (permanent barring dispellation) without ever resorting to the Concentration Yantra.
• Magic: The Gathering: As the game represents a Wizard Duel, Concentration allows you to draw additional cards, adding to your power. Meanwhile, Broken Concentration counters an opponent's spell, representing that you've, well, broken their concentration.
• Pathfinder:
  • 1st Edition inherits a minority of spells from D&D 3e that have a duration of "Concentration up to (limit)", which require the caster to make a Concentration check every round. Concentration is no longer a skill, however: instead the modifier is the sum of the caster's caster level and the modifier for their spellcasting ability score.
  • 2nd Edition dispenses with Concentration checks, instead requiring the caster to spend an action each turn to maintain the spell.
• Shadowrun: All spells that do not resolve instantly must be concentrated on by the caster to maintain them. This does not cost an action, but concentrating on more than one spell at a time causes a cumulative penalty per spell to all actions done by the mage. This includes casting rolls, so concentrating on any more than two to three spells at once makes the mage pretty much useless for anything but to keep concentrating. Specific totems or the Quickening power can be used to maintain free concentration on spells; both are extremely expensive and rare.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Some spells require ongoing concentration instead of having a set duration. For example, "Reaping Scythe" allows a Will Power test each round to prolong it past its base duration, and "Throttling" consumes a half-action every round and precludes any other spellcasting.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Sigrid is a young girl who possesses Reality Warper abilities that can make any aspect occur when she focuses on it, and the effect can be amplified if she performs enough focus to build up her power. During the final fight against C, Sigrid spends time focusing on the full extent of her ability while Ann is defending her until she builds enough power to weaken C and disgorge his Nidhogg form from his body.
• Dodgeball Academia: The game has special moves called "focus abilities", which only work if the player can "focus" for a certain amount of time.
• EverQuest: The psychotic prismatic dragon Kerafyrm was held for countless millennia inside the Sleeper's Tomb by four dragons who swore to their Goddess Veeshan to keep him in stasis for all eternity. As long as the four Warders concentrated, Kerafyrm would never wake. Ultimately, it was mortal adventurers whose meddling and greed would kill all four warders and wake Kerafyrm from his slumber.
• A downplayed version is used as a mechanic in Dungeon Crawl:
  • Certain offensive spells can be extended across extra turns — becoming stronger on each turn with significantly less mana cost than a full recast — provided the caster remains completely still. Taking any other action will reset the spell; being involuntarily moved (via teleport or knockback) will do the same.
  • Amulets of the acrobat (which, although unrelated to the spell magic system, do work by means of an enchantment) dramatically increase evasion as long as the wearer is standing still or traveling, but don't function while the wearer is busy with any other action.
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: During the final boss fight, Zelda needs time to focus her magic in order to reveal the enemy's weak spot, and Link must protect her from the enemy's attacks until her spell is ready. If Zelda gets hurt, the spell fails and she needs to start over.
• Midnight Suns: Captain Marvel is able to 'Go Binary' after playing three of her cards, and can maintain this Binary state, which massively enhances her attack power, for as long as she has points of Block (essentially a second health bar that acts as armor) available.
• Pokémon: Implied. The Zorua line has the Illusion ability, which disguises them as the last Pokémon in your party. However, it breaks if they get hit, causing it to reveal itself.
• Shantae (2002): If the player gets attacked while attempting a transformation dance, she needs to start over.
• Warcraft III:
  • Channeling spells have a continuous effect (damage over time, healing or buffing allies, debuffing enemies, etc.), but render the caster immobile and unable to attack while it's active. However, if the caster is stunned or otherwise interrupted, the spell stops and can't be cast again until the cooldown resets.
  • When summoning Archimonde the Destroyer, Kel'thuzad doesn't let taking damage distract him from casting the spell, but he does need to stay alive (well, undead) for the duration of the spell.
  • Subverted in several campaign missions, where the caster is able to maintain a wide-range spell but still attack and cast other spells, only their death causing the spell to fall (such as the anti-undead field over Dalaran or the continent-breaking spell channeled by the Naga).
• In Warframe, some Warframes have abilities that can be continually channeled as long as you have enough energy to maintain it; however, if your Warframe intersects the bubble of a Corpus Nullifier or gets hit by a Scrambus field, those abilities can get canceled as your link to your Warframe is disrupted.
• X-COM:
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown: Psionic abilities require the entity using them to be conscious. Disabling a psionic enemy using an ability can have various effects. A regular Sectoid who's initiated a mind meld with another enemy will generate psychic backlash that heavily damages the mind meldee, and any mind control effects will instantly fade, granting you control of your troops once again.
  • XCOM 2: Sectoids are now capable of using an ability called "Mindspin" which can either confuse, panic, or mind-control an XCOM soldier, but once again, killing them results in the effect fading. Other psi-powers, such as the Rift produced by Codices, can persist after the caster is dead.
• YuYu Hakusho: Makyo Toitsusen (Genesis): Itsuki can use the "Yaminade Shou Kan" attack, that is, he can summon two neon blue spectral hands that attack the opponent. The attack lasts until the magic/mana meter depletes, the player dismisses them, or the opponent hits Itsuki, which causes the hands to disappear.

Visual Novels

• Many of the spells in Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane require extended concentration to work, like Conjure Water, Detect Magic, Feign Death, Sleep, Hold Creature, Anti-Magic Field, or Shape Liquid.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: Unlike most magic, the Soul Splice that gives Vaarsuvius an Hour of Power requires a focused will. They lose their grip on one soul due to the shock of a Wham Line from their spouse, and the other two to being bludgeoned with a chunk of wall.
• Unsounded: Any active magic only lasts as long as a spellwright or enchanted item maintains it — indirect effects remain, but the Background Magic Field clears up any Aspects of reality that are being manipulated by an unattended spell.

Western Animation

• In The Owl House, most forms of non-glyph magic require some level of concentration to maintain; Bard magic has to be supplemented by producing a musical tone of some form, while Illusions require an amount of concentration that is proportional to the complexity of the illusion being cast. Gus, the primary illusionist in the series, usually looks physically tired after maintaining something complex like an illusion over a whole graveyard or a body-swapping illusion that one party didn't know about.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: This is why Star Butterfly has a hard time controlling her magic. She is very impulsive and hyperactive, thus cannot concentrate on making her spells work the way they are supposed to. One of the most basic spells is "Levatato", which requires the user to concentrate and lasts as long as the user wants it to. Star is able to do a lot of spells, but she cannot do spells like Levitato because of her poor concentration skills.
• The Venture Bros.: Sally Impossible had only her skin turned invisible in the Freak Lab Accident that empowered her family. Her "power" is to make it visible, which requires concentration. If she loses it — such as being startled or turned on — it goes back to being invisible and making her look like she's been Flayed Alive.
• Xiaolin Showdown: The Tangle Web Comb is a Shen Gong Wu that can shoot hair to bind the intended target, but it requires absolute focus to work. If the user loses focus for even a second while using the Wu, the hair will instead bind the user.

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