Geometric, or runic magic types that rely on intensive preparation?
Perhaps alchemy, being concerned with recipes and substance-compositions, and suchlike.
Otherwise, maybe something more focussed on raw energies—a study of the fundamental magical forces, and how they might be precisely manipulated and framed into complex effects.
Or, conversely, a magic focussed on magical automata and other such artificing.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 21st 2022 at 9:59:42 PM
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Ritual magic. It tends very strongly toward the "Magic A is Magic A" that an engineer would gravitate toward.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Summoning of creatures from other planes would be a possibility if available in the world. You'd have to very precisely set up summoning circles to not just guarantee your own safety, but also that of the creature you're summoning. Doubly so if the creature is a demon, where you need extensive "legal" preparations for laying out a contract. Knowing which demon to summon would also be important, involving lots of research and reading through old (possibly unreliable) demonology tomes to learn the names and properties of certain demons.
Creating artificial constructs like golems would be another thing that requires precision, magic can only do so much to ensure the stability of a golem, the body itself needs to be designed with structural integrity and ranges of motion in mind.
So I created a character for a superhero RPG that’s basically a “mix-and-match” mystic. Rather than focusing one one specific style of magic, he tends to pick and choose stuff from various schools (Voodoo, Elemental, Chaos Magic, Druidic, etc).
I’ve decided to create a twin sister for him, who tends to treat magic as more of a science. “No, the summoning symbols need to be at 46.3 degrees, and written in BLUE chalk, not green!” Etc.
Rather than a mishmash of spells, I decided to have her focused on one specific branch of magic (a master of it, but not so great with the others). Any “school” recommendations for a mage that’s more engineer than artist?
Now, I'm going to ask you that question once more. And if you say no, I'm going to shoot you through the head. - John Cleese