Describe Your Magic System in a Few Sentences

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Edited by FlowingCotton on Oct 12th 2020 at 2:24:41 AM

There are several type of magic in my space fantasy/(not sure which)Punk.

1.is the inner which is divided into paths Psyche and Somata. Through their devotion to a set of quasi-mystical practices an individual can train themselves to take conscious control of all mental and physical faculties even the hidden ones. And eventually push themselves into a nigh on super human state.

2.is divine magic the channeling of the numinous power of the gods. The gods, which are in fact just very big and immensely powerful souls, so powerful in fact that should one that physical reality rejects them. The gods dwell in a plane closest to the axis mundai,so closet in fact that the gods influence all the lower planes without even trying. Some people have figured out how channel this influence deliberately,anything connect to a god even if it's only symbolically carries some masseur of that gods power. Many more draw upon the gods without even realizing it. All that do so manifest subtle abilities related to that god.

For example there was an unknowing channeller of a god of artifice who found himself held prisoner;so he built a revolutionary power-plant and a suite of poweredarmor from scarps while in a cave and preceded to escape.

3. Is the magic inherent to the demons/Fae and their crossed breeds. The Fae are to native a surreal and mercurial realm where the physical and the spiritual were never separated. In their world they have no magic persae, they simply interact with the environment in accordance with their natures and strength;which a includes the ability push back against changes to their environment as a kind of defensive mechanism. In the mortal world the Fae's natural physiology manifest as a form of highly specialized reality warping,each unique to that particular species of Fae.

4. is Adeptery the magic available to the mortal races. Reality beneath the solid surface is an incomprehensibly vast collection of vibrating-patterns that are composed ofprimus . This great vibration collection of vibrating-patterns is referred to as theMusica universalis. Reality is music Adeptery works by retuning that music. An Adept has by training or birth roused the latent primic-force in their beings and generates an aura or force field with which they can use to tune the cosmic music. This aura will naturally be either limited the Adept's person(microcosm) or extended beyond them into the environment(macrocosm) rare is the adept that can do both naturally; in the case of the most powerful Adepts their aura can be projected out to many miles. While theoretically omnipotent in practice Adepts find their ability to tune the music of the spheres quit limited. The effects they produced are the common psionic abilities.

edited 12th Sep '14 10:42:42 AM by fomar

I'm currently working on a magic system based on colour, as each person's soul has a particular "prime colour" out of a possible seven that it is attuned to, with different colours lending themselves better to different magical areas. Mages tap into the colour of their soul in order to perform magic, the catch being that raw colour temporarily (or sometimes permanently) affects temperament and personality; an untrained or foolhardy caster may become addicted to magic use or driven mad by the after-effects of using too powerful a spell etc.

For example: Those with Red as their prime colour are best suited to elemental spells, and also have reasonable talent for most combat-oriented magical arts. The primary temperaments/traits associated with Red are passion, determination and curiosity. A Red mage will get fired up easily when "in colour", refusing to give up or back down, which can make them pig-headed or take small things too seriously. They also like to try new specialisations allowed by combining powers or attempting to solve complex problems with long thought-out magical solutions. The colour Red is most likely to fall to Lust as their passion and curiosity will push them into very questionable situations and vices should they be unable to control themselves.

edited 12th Sep '14 12:34:44 PM by Gilliam414

your magic system remained a little of the Black Prism's Chromaturgy and Magic the gathering.

i can certainly see what you mean about similarities to Prism's Chromaturgy, especially a type of addiction for Brown mages which is close to becoming a colour wight, involving either fusing enchanted items to the body or treating enchanted armour like a second skin by making it easier to wear for long periods of time, due to their primary temptation being Sloth.

The rules of magic overuse are somewhat less restrictive, with simple meditation being key to regulating colour control, though effective methods vary depending on colour and how far gone they are.

P.S. I like your example of your second type of magic, it made me think of a Paladin-style Tony Stark

“There Is Nothing New Under The Sun”Ecclesiastes 1:4-11

I wanted divine magic to be subtle yet powerful and the Avatar magic from Unknown Armies was bases for that. The first type of magic is inspired by the image of the ascetic mystic in the middle of nowhere. Along with Wuxia movies and many action-adventure manga/anime. It also gives in universe justification for the enlightenment superpowers and the badass normal tropes....and if we were to be honest many a badass normal is for all practical purpose a superhuman.

edited 14th Sep '14 5:01:53 AM by fomar

Running a cross between a Gothic horror game and a gritty geopolitical intrigue game. Several different flavors of magic exist (although it's not doable everywhere - some areas are just dead magic zones).

a) standard "workman" magic, where magic is present in the background as mana, and people learn how to shape it as any highly specialized skill (though some spells are required as prerequisites). This uses up some personal energies.

b) psionics - using the personal energies directly to create changes in the world. These are mostly tied to mental processes, although it can change a few physiological things.

c) clerical magic - using energies from faith, channelling it through oneself. This allows some pretty impressive casting but once it reaches a certain level, reality starts warping and the chance of a blowback is much higher.

d) pact magic - this is where the caster has an agreement with a powerful being (an actual outsider) and they cast magic for him. This builds reliance, addiction, and dependency.

e) semantic magic - very powerful, but slow. The caster can define desired effects, and then has to exercise his craft to bend the cosmos to his will. For all but the most powerful practitioners, this is the slowest and most failure-prone.

edited 22nd Sep '14 6:24:40 PM by enixine

Magic is the art of harnessing arcane energy to manipulate reality at fundamental levels. It is powered by mana, a spiritual energy that exists in nature and all living beings. The ability to use magic comes from study, practice and experience, as well as the magician's own innate power. While anybody can use magic with proper study and practice, those from families with long magical bloodlines possess a natural affinity for magic.

Magic encompasses many different powers and abilities including astral projection, telekinesis, teleportation, elemental manipulation, and metamorphosis. It also includes the practices of many cultures, nations, and religions, as well as many books and writings from ancient times. Magicians have experimented upon and explored magic throughout the ages, with their findings written down and further comprehended as time went on.

Magic has many limitations. The first is that using too much magic drains a mage's energy reserves, which can lead to severe exhaustion, fatigue and even unconsciousness. Second, magic is bound by natural law; it cannot create something from nothing, it cannot revive the dead, it cannot enable time travel, and it cannot create human emotions, only mimic or enhance them (like true love).

My magic system is based on magical crystals ("magivyra") that grow near interdimensional gateways that only open during total eclipses (solar or lunar). They are edible, but they also slowly eat you. There is healing water that has magivyra-eating bacteria, but it is only found on a planet called Meleti. They can be combined to use different powers, such as how fire and shadow crystals can transfer a soul stored in a wooden totem back into a body.

If somebody does not use the magivyra up completely, then they will transform into a crystallized statue—that is, unless they are close to a gateway, where they will transform into a Guardian. Guardians cannot leave the vicinity of a gateway, nor can they travel through it; but, if they bite somebody who is traveling through, the dominant form of magivyra they were made of will grow on the bite mark.

I created an entire thread devoted to explaining my magic system: A Universal Magic System Based on Historical Folklore

The magic system I created for the Serpent's Coil project is based around various forms of imitating the creator god of the setting. Their are numerous established ways of casting magic, with the most prominent being described below.

The first way is to tell a lie to reality in the same language that the god speaks. The innumerable realities that exist are the result of the god lying to itself and sinking deeper into self-delusion that its lies eventually gained form. The greater the effect intended, the longer and more elaborate the lie must be. This can result in sorcerers taking several decades or even centuries to cast spells that affect a whole reality.

A variation of the above comes in the form of telling stories. In many ways, the Lie (as the created reality is called) also acts as a living narrative. Skilled storyteller magicians can alter the narrative on small scales through short stories, allowing them to induce the outcome they want.

Alongside being a falsehood told by the Liar, the Lie is also the entity's layered dream at the same time. Every time the Liar tells a new lie and sinks ever deeper into madness and self delusion, another reality is added on top of the last one. The laws of the realities above the base one become less coherent as one moves up, until there is only swirling chaos and madness at the top. Certain bold magi can have their souls travel outside their body while they dream, allowing them to ascend these realities and bring pieces of the upper layers down to the lower ones to cast the effect they want. Practitioners of this style of casting must be proficient navigators, as it is not unknown for souls to be lost, never to find their way back to their body. Alongside this, the soul may also have to fight off unwanted hitchhikers who may ride the soul to the lower layers or attackers who may strike at the soul itself.

The last form of casting is a form of lucid dreaming. To be able to perform this style of magic, a person has to become partially aware of the nature of themselves and reality, that being a falsehood given form by a god's delusions. A full realisation of this truth, however results in a 'zero sum' whereupon that person is utterly erased from existence. Using this dream logic, people are able to warp reality through acts of will. There is a heavy downside to this style, however; practitioners of this style of magic must confront the aforementioned truth with self delusion (that they exist against all evidence of the contrary) every time they use it. For smaller effects, the effort required for this delusion is relatively minor, though the effort increases as the scale and potency of the effects go up. It is not uncommon for users of this magic to suddenly erase themselves from existence by casting effects that were out of their range.

My "magic" for one story uses technology to bring out the magical energy stored in the cells of an Eldritch Abomination whose corpse they harvest. Depending on the interface of the tech, it will perform a certain action, create a certain object, or cast elemental spells. They also have neurotransmitters so that there is some thought-based protocols to make the casting smoother.

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Edited by GoosefromWikipedia on Jan 20th 2024 at 9:03:41 AM

When the two being are linked together, which one is in control?

Also, "Symbnoium", seriously? Consider creating a name that will be somewhat easier to pronounce.

I think they may have meant "Symbonium."

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Edited by GoosefromWikipedia on Jan 20th 2024 at 9:04:22 AM

A type of magic I've thought about is essentially reality-warping, based on belief and metaphysics. It's all about weakening the fabric of reality and bending it to your will however you might want to. Because magic is also based on belief, none of the rituals and whatnot propagated by wizarding schools and religios orders is actually necessary for the magic to work, but it helps them to focus properly on reality-bending. Needless to say, magic is highly dangerous and it is very easy to lose control of it. A good magician can weaken the fabric of reality just a fraction to get the desired result, without causing any actual damage. But someone not as attuned to magic might force it to happen, which depending on the strength of a spell can cause either small tears or huge rifts to form.

On the other side of these rifts exists the Metaphysical Plane, which is entirely based on what physical beings can imagine and will believe in. There exist the various afterlives, good and bad, as well as all of the gods and demons and bogeymen we believe in. While this understandably makes people want to limit all use of magic, there are also entire schools of magic based on summoning these things from beyond. While otherworldly beings can escape through rifts, the magical energy seeping through even the smallest tears does have worrisome effects. In this way magic functions like radiation in a 50's B-movie, causing all sorts of mutations to appear.

In Onyx, magic is the scientific study of the elements ( harmony, eternity, truth, fate, psyche, time, illusion, luck, flesh, and discord ) and the art of influencing their behavior by using the occult languages known as Goetia, which are the languages of devils ; a magical procedure and its effect are both called an enchantment - every enchantment is defined by an element, an effect, a range, a duration, a cost, and a manifestation ~ once an enchantment is completed, it fades from the memory of the mage, unless they happen to be a devil.

There are five "simple" enchantment effects : creation, alteration, preservation, revelation, and mystification ; there are five "complex" enchantment effects : connection, duplication, extension, infusion, and negation - a connection enchantment combines two other enchantments, a duplication enchantment creates a copy of another enchantment, an extension enchantment doubles the range and / or duration of another enchantment, an infusion enchantment transfers one enchantment into another, and a negation enchantment cancels out another enchantment.

A level 1 enchantment has a range of one yard ; a level 2 enchantment has a range of two yards, a level 3 enchantment has a range of four yards, a level 4 enchantment has a range of eight yards, a level 5 enchantment has a range of sixteen yards, and so on up to a level 10 enchantment, which has a range of five-hundred and eighteen yards.

A level J enchantment has a duration of three seconds ; a level I enchantment has a range of six seconds, a level H enchantment has a range of twelve seconds, a level G enchantment has a range of twenty-four seconds, a level F enchantment has a range of forty-eight seconds, and so on up to a level A enchantment, which has a duration of fifteen hundred and thirty-six seconds.

The cost of an enchantment is measured in "sigils" ; the cost of an enchantment is equal to the level of the enchantment ( a level 1-J enchantment costs two sigils, while a level 10-A enchantment costs twenty sigils ) - each sigil is paid for with a sacrifice of some kind ( three drops of blood, three seconds of clarity, three nights of life or undeath, etc. ~ a sigil is a noun and a verb in a Goetia ( for example, a sigil might mean "eternity be created" or "create out of eternity" ).

I wanted the magic system of Onyx to resemble what I liked most about Locke & Key (2020) and Old Kingdom: magic items.

Edited by nekomoon14 on Oct 3rd 2020 at 2:38:16 AM

Roman Gods were real. Roman Gods had children. Those children had children.

Years later, some are descended from Gods and have aspects of their divine heritage that can manifest in different ways. For example, Neptune's children may have his aspects of the sea, with their powers ranging from swimming well, breathing underwater, or controlling water.

Most of my magic systems are basically elemental powers. Nothing much, really.

I suppose a regional gimmick counts as a magic system. Here we go.

When the local creator deity awoke, it gave the place life... and its Heartbeat. It created three smaller deities to manage this power, and went back to sleep.

The Heartbeat works by reacting with things to cause strange phenomena to happen. Sometimes people get caught in these reactions and end up with superpowers. While this does happen naturally, it is also possible to force it. Doing so is generally a very bad idea.

in my Nialkin setting magic a pretty broad subject, mainly categorized by its source and fuel:

• metabolic: the weakest type of magic due to how quickly the fuel source can run out, often leaving the user weak and impotent as a consequence. Still, its got extremely broad applicability, being used for all sorts of things from daily conveniences to warfare. Primarily the domain of the devil-kin, though the beast-kin, demi-kin, sea-kin and humans from across the sea are all capable of it too.

• lifeforce: The heavy-hitter; lifeforce fueled magic is very potent, and is overall more efficient than using your metabolism as fuel, though only the long-lived prefer to use it. its more limited in how it can materialize in comparison, and the dragon-kin seem to use it exclusively to bellow flame and lightning from within. (in contrast, the dryad-kin capable of such magic exclusively manifest it from a distance)

• soul: by far the strongest type of magic, as the soul is inexhaustible. only in extremely specific circumstances could a soul ever manifest its own type of magic, and that magic is determined by the experiences that shaped that soul, scarring and staining it. it could manifest in any way, but only in that way. While the fuel is inexhaustible the 'container' is not and a common result of overuse is the breakdown of that container. This type of magic is almost unique to dryad-kin and the Oni, who by design fulfil every condition for soul magic to manifest.

aside from their fuel source, magic can also be loosely categorized by whether it is from 'within' or 'without';

• one of the most infamous uses of metabolic magic was to expend the entire reserve of energy all at once as a catalyst in order to 'pull' a cataclysmic amount of magic from another source— typically the the spirits of the environment surrounding the caster— in what amounts of an elemental nuke of sorts. this would be 'without'.

• similarly, the dryad-kin burn their endless life-force to communicate and prod the spirits of nature into acting. conversely, the dragon-kin are only able to cast magic from 'within'. they are blind and deaf to the spirits and can only take from themselves.

• the same could be said for the oni, who are entirely incapable of ordinary magic and cannot pull from an outside source. however, its entirely possible for the soul to manifest magic in a way that emulates the other types of magic, it just requires the soul to be scarred in a particular way.

I tried not to distract myself too much with the magic system, though as usual a tremendous amount of my attention when worldbuilding goes towards how souls function, so soul magic was inevitably given more attention than the rest. I did still want to give the various races distinct approaches to magic, though for the time being I've lumped a bunch of them in with metabolic.

Edited by Tarsen on Oct 15th 2020 at 3:57:11 AM

Seems to me that metabolic could beat soul, depending on the circumstances. Do energy drinks improve magical power? How about amphetamines?

Edited by DeMarquis on Nov 21st 2020 at 5:45:14 AM

Sorry for the double post, but this thread has been inactive recently. Anyone develop or know of a magic system based on voodoo beliefs?

Harness the gods themselves to obtain exotic matter and start saying fucking you to the last laws of physics the laws of thermodynamics. Traverse realities. Attempt to go back in time to fix the meat planet incident. Discover time travel within the same reality is still impossible. Start figuring out how to break the laws of time