Playing with Fire is a common spell for just about any aspiring fire mage. While balls of fire, streams of flame, and columns of fire are all well and good, they often don't sell being on a significantly higher level on the Spell Levels rungs than the rest. So how can one make clear that the high-tier stuff is a cut above the rest? Lava Adds Awesome is something everyone respects so have the high-level fire stuff be gouts and plumes of lava.
While impressive, this does raise the logistical thought that fire itself is considered a state on its own, while lava is rock heated up passed its melting point. In reality, lava creates fires, not the other way around. Lava magic is the rightful domain of earth mages in many works, or at the very least those who can use both earth and fire. For that reason, the likes of a Magma Man inverting the trend isn't considered.
See also Ice Magic Is Water, which could be considered the water equivalent, and The Power of the Sun, which could be considered the natural conclusion of fire sorceries. Often a videogame trope, as levels of animation is much more a videogame staple, and making lava its own element type seems counterproductive and obtuse.
Examples:
- Kaze no Stigma: Ren Kannagi can generate and control magma through Enjutsu, as seen when he turns sand into magma during his fight with Yuuji Tsuwabuki.
- Pathfinder: The primal dragons are a family of dragons associated with the basic elements. The breed tied to elemental fire are the magma dragons, whose rocky skin is crossed by glowing fissures bleeding molten rock and with a Breath Weapon in the form of a jet of lava.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Many high-level Pyro and Fire elemental cards have lava themes, such as the Volcanic series.
- Chrono Cross: The Herd-Hitting Attack Red element spells that usually involve flame have magma and volcanoes as a part of their animations and names.
- Dark Souls: The pyromancy line includes the more dangerous Chaos pyromancy, that leaves burning chaos lava in its wake. The lair of the Chaos servants is a lava hellscape generated by one of their own being consumed by Chaos until he started spewing lava everywhere.
- Elden Ring: The high-level fire sorceries and signature skill, Eruption, of the Volcano Manor utilize powerful magma attacks. As no other fire spells other than the Magma Wyrm breath attacks utilize lava, this makes the sorceries used by them particularly unique and heretical to the Erdtree-worshipping Golden Order.
- Final Fantasy: Often recurring summon Ifrit's attack involves lava, such as VII and X. As there often isn't an ultimate fire spell, Ifrit usually has the buck in portraying high power fire attacks.
- Fire Emblem: Most A and S rank tomes have lava involved in their animations. Earth magic is rare and usually a specialty tome so the overlap isn't noticeable.
- Golden Axe: The first two games work with a 6-level scale for the fire magic user.
- In Golden Axe 1, amazon Tyris-Flare's magic of choice is fire. Her level 5 attack is a small eruption in the middle of the screen.
- In Golden Axe 2, Tyris-Flare reuses her fire attacks. This time, her level 4 magic attack is an inverted lava waterfall that appears in the middle of the screen.
- In the PS2 remake for Golden Axe, Tyris's level 2 magic has her summon small craters around her that spew lava and defeat the enemies.
- Golden Sun: Garet's highest-level fire-based Herd-Hitting Attack summons pillars of lava from underground underneath the enemy.
- The Legend of Dragoon: Dart's skills as the Red Dragoon of fire often have lava themes, like his Volcano combo and Magma Stream attack.
- Pokémon:
- Lava-based moves, such as Eruption, Lava Plume, and Magma Storm, are treated as part of the Fire type. Though one lava-based move, Earth Power is Ground-Type.
- Slugma, a Pokémon resembling a slug made entirely out of magma, is a pure Fire-type. Its evolution, Magcargo, is Fire/Rock, but that's because it develops a shell of solidified stone.
- Camerupt, a camel Pokémon possesses a volcano on its back with magma bubbling inside of it. It's a Fire/Ground type, and can learn most volcano/magma-based moves like Eruption, Lava Plume, and Earth Power.
- Skylanders: Various Skylanders of the Fire Element are themed around lava, such as Eruptor (lava monster) and Hot Head (fire golem who can create lava as a tertiary attack).
- Warcraft:
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft: Lava-based spells like Volcano
and Lava Burst are part of the Fire spell school, whereas purely earth-based spells are instead Nature.
- World of Warcraft: Lava-based spells, such as Magma Totem, deal Fire damage, in contrast to how earth spells deal Nature damage.
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft: Lava-based spells like Volcano
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Although lavabending is a special earthbending ability in canon, Zuko (a firebender) is shown lavabending in one of the non-canon Super Deformed Shorts.
