Basic Trope: A character becomes hungrier after using magic or other supernatural powers.
- Straight: Bob is a wizard and becomes hungrier after casting a spell.
- Exaggerated: Bob starves to death after casting a single fireball.
- Downplayed:
- Bob mentions that he's a little hungry after a big battle where he casts a ton of spells.
- In a video game, eating food grants magical characters extra mana.
- Justified: The energy emitted by spells needs to come from somewhere.
- Inverted:
- Bob can only use magic when he's hungry, and becomes full after casting a few spells.
- Amount of energy consumed by high end spells would need to convert multiple human bodies into TNT equivalent. Mages consume their calories when "recharging" mana from Extradimensional Power Source.
- Subverted: Bob is ravenously hungry after fighting his way out of a dungeon. It turns out he was starving before and the power was drawn from his magic crystals.
- Double Subverted: However recharging the crystals does take his own energy so he needs to feast afterwards.
- Parodied: Alice, a Vain Sorceress, studies magic solely as an alternative to dieting.
- Zig Zagged: Wizards can learn to use many different power sources for their magic. Calories are just one of them.
- Averted: Bob can cast as many spells as he likes without getting hungry.
- Enforced: "We need something to limit Bob's magical powers."
- Lampshaded: Before delving into a dungeon with magic-vulnerable foes, the other party members complain about how many extra food supplies they need to carry for Bob's sake so he can cast all the spells they're going to need. One of them wonders why exactly the mystical needs to run on calories.
- Invoked: The goddess of magic, facing waning supplies of free floating mana decides to change magic to draw upon calories to prevent magic from fading away entirely.
- Exploited: The heroes manage to defeat an evil wizard by dodging his spells until he collapses from hunger.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: All magic users also happen to be Big Eaters, even if no connection is explicitly mentioned.
- Deconstructed: Lack of food supply makes magic a morally dodgy prospect and makes them unpopular. Their existence directly causes many to starve to death. When mages eat as much as ten knights and food is scarce they get viewed as a wasteful and inefficient and hated for it.
- Reconstructed: Facing the justified complaints, mage work to improve farming infrastructure with things like irrigation canals, granaries, and refrigeration to ensure that even the poor can afford to eat adequate and nutritious if boring food - a copper piece gives enough to afford a day's worth of oatmeal. The mages are forgiven for their role in the past starvation as they have brought an end to hunger and in turn forgive their transgressors.
- Played For Horror: If Bob uses this spell too many times, he becomes a Flesh-Eating Zombie.
Back to Cast from Calories
