Magic Systems

[Merrickz]

So I know this topic isn't Brandon or Cosmere related in the slightest, but I thought this is probably the best place to ask considering the type of community this is.

What magic systems or individual powers have you had that you think would be fun to explore or just cool to see? 

I ask this here because I'm kinda bored of the same powers like shooting giant fireballs, flight, etc and I would like to know if there are any unique magic powers, like the ones Brandon creates, that any of you have thought of.

Thanks for any input, 

Merrickz

 

 

[Silverblade5]

Anything that works within the laws of physics. Like Sympathy for example. 

[King Cole]

23 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

Anything that works within the laws of physics. Like Sympathy for example. 

Sympathy is awesome

[ryshadium90]

Hm, well I have an extremely underdeveloped one that has to do with things more on the atomic level, though I guess it could be seen like bending in Avatar. The simplest explanation would be a vibator, which is a person that basically can cause things to vibrate and depending on their skill can cause earthquakes or a flower to lose its petals. That kind of went with another part where a person can manipulate a material into a gas, solid, or liquid using a precious stone (think birthstones) as a gateway and depending on where you had a scar indicated how quickly you could make the change. These were ideas from quite a few years ago and are pretty rough, but if anyone wants to build through these feel free.

[Yuoaman]

The current one I'm working on for a project is very similar to sympathy, where practitioners manipulate energy using will, but with risks more akin to those that male channelers experience in The Wheel of Time. I'm still fairly early, and a lot of the background mechanics would spoil huge parts of the underlying mythology and history of the setting, but I definitely want it to feel unique. For example, practitioners have an additional sense that allows them to detect various forms of energy, similar to electroreception in some aquatic organisms.

Not to shill, but I've gone over a good chunk of this in a thread elsewhere on the forum as well.

[Draginon]

I thought of one where the properties and aspects are based entirely on skin color. Like red skin would give fire and heat related spells, white skin Ice and cold related magic, green skin healing magic, etc... I thought of this system because I wondered if there was a way to be legitimately racist because if one skin color gave that person extremely dangerous magic. It would be a catch 22 situation since those with that magic can control it if trained, but no one will train them and thus they can't control their magic and that in turns causes potential teachers to pass them up.

I was kind of inspired as well by the different systems Brandon uses like the geography base of Elantris, the stamps of the Rose Empire, the breaths/colors of Nalthis and the unseen sickness magic and wondered about physical appearance being the trigger.

[StrikerEZ]

A very interesting one I've been thinking about is the existence of the Mirror Realm. This has been a little dumb idea of mine for ages now, but I've always thought how cool it'd be if you could enter into a mirror and find a whole new world on the other side. The basic idea behind this power is that there's a hidden world that exists layered and mirrored on top of our own. Some people have the ability to touch a reflective object and enter this weird, mirrored world. It's possible to do this with things that aren't mirrors as well, like a shirt or something, but it's a lot harder and it's easier to just use a mirror or some reflective metal or something.

Also, one that is less developed that I've been thinking about is where there are people who can use magic to sort of fuse with animals and become half-human/half-animal hybrid creature things. It's still a work in progress, but I like the idea.

[ryshadium90]

10 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

A very interesting one I've been thinking about is the existence of the Mirror Realm. This has been a little dumb idea of mine for ages now, but I've always thought how cool it'd be if you could enter into a mirror and find a whole new world on the other side. The basic idea behind this power is that there's a hidden world that exists layered and mirrored on top of our own. Some people have the ability to touch a reflective object and enter this weird, mirrored world. It's possible to do this with things that aren't mirrors as well, like a shirt or something, but it's a lot harder and it's easier to just use a mirror or some reflective metal or something.

Hm, kind of reminds me of Doctor Strange. Cool!

[StrikerEZ]

3 hours ago, ryshadium90 said:

Hm, kind of reminds me of Doctor Strange. Cool!

Yeah, that helped push the idea of how the Mirror Realm behaves, but the idea existed long before that movie was even announced for production.

[Calderis]

14 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Also, one that is less developed that I've been thinking about is where there are people who can use magic to sort of fuse with animals and become half-human/half-animal hybrid creature things. It's still a work in progress, but I like the idea.

I had an idea for this type of system years ago. 

In human form they gained some sensory benefits from the creature they had merged with. 

In their animal form they retain the instincts of the animal with their human mind. 

Transitioning between is dangerous. The animal mind that is displaced surfaces and tries to fight for control. The more alien the mind, the harder it is to control or get past. Mammals are safest, some people, but not many can manage birds and reptiles. 

My story opened on a monster that was a person who had attempted to merge with a Mantis. The relentless assault of the almost mechanical mind of an insect is too much to overcome, and the animal took total control. 

[StrikerEZ]

5 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I had an idea for this type of system years ago. 

In human form they gained some sensory benefits from the creature they had merged with. 

In their animal form they retain the instincts of the animal with their human mind. 

Transitioning between is dangerous. The animal mind that is displaced surfaces and tries to fight for control. The more alien the mind, the harder it is to control or get past. Mammals are safest, some people, but not many can manage birds and reptiles. 

My story opened on a monster that was a person who had attempted to merge with a Mantis. The relentless assault of the almost mechanical mind of an insect is too much to overcome, and the animal took total control. 

Dang...that's way better than what I'd come up with. I just liked the idea of person being able to fuse with like a spider or wolf or something lol.

I think a story like this would be hard for me to write because it would work so much better visualy, in my opinion. It's hard to describe how I imagine the fusions appearing. Plus, the world I'm tentatively setting this magic on doesn't have normal Earth-like animals. There are definitely similar ones, but they just aren't the same.

But I wish I had come up with that idea of the animal's mind and the human's mind competing for control. 

Edited July 24, 2017 by StrikerEZ

[Draginon]

In the story I'm writing there's a sort of duel magic system going on. One is the magic the people can use that is pretty limited to stuff like fire and healing. Healers aren't that common since to make Healing work the healers body has to be in tip top shape, meaning they themselves can't be sick, have injuries either present or ones that left evidence of one, have cancer or missing any limbs/organs.

The other magic is far more unpredictable since it's the magic of the Goddess Herself emanating from the planet. You could have a swordsmith make 1000 swords exactly the same but the magic would cause one of the blades cut anything like butter. It caused a mutation in a species of creatures to become a minor race of the planet that no one knows where they came from. It even affected the main characters hair to never settle on one color so he always wakes up with different color hair. But this magic is dangerous if anyone managed to tap into it because a planet is barely able to contain it so if a human try to use it, the magic would flow through them and not stop until it destroyed everything since only a deity or their planet can harness that type of power. The magic the races use is a safe trickle off-shoot that the Goddess put in them so that they can take care of themselves.

[CarolaDavar]

A half-baked magic system I have been working on includes music. 

Imagine having things like classical music or dubstep control the real world. By writing a song, you can literally change the world.

Things like rap battles or battle of the bands would be closer to war than one would think, and knowing how to direct a band or orchestra could put you in the place of a General.

With these effects music has, imagine how it would be to use ear buds or headphones? They Change how you see things. And if you use them for too long, and then take them out you could be very hurt. 

It is a pretty halfbaked idea, but I have had so much fun thinking about it, being a musician myself, and knowing how music effects people. What do you think?

[Draginon]

1 hour ago, CarolaDavar said:

A half-baked magic system I have been working on includes music. 

Imagine having things like classical music or dubstep control the real world. By writing a song, you can literally change the world.

Things like rap battles or battle of the bands would be closer to war than one would think, and knowing how to direct a band or orchestra could put you in the place of a General.

With these effects music has, imagine how it would be to use ear buds or headphones? They Change how you see things. And if you use them for too long, and then take them out you could be very hurt. 

It is a pretty halfbaked idea, but I have had so much fun thinking about it, being a musician myself, and knowing how music effects people. What do you think?

Sounds interesting and different. Makes me think of rhythm games where the music is practically magic, but on a grander scale.

[Silverblade5]

3 hours ago, CarolaDavar said:

A half-baked magic system I have been working on includes music. 

Imagine having things like classical music or dubstep control the real world. By writing a song, you can literally change the world.

Things like rap battles or battle of the bands would be closer to war than one would think, and knowing how to direct a band or orchestra could put you in the place of a General.

With these effects music has, imagine how it would be to use ear buds or headphones? They Change how you see things. And if you use them for too long, and then take them out you could be very hurt. 

It is a pretty halfbaked idea, but I have had so much fun thinking about it, being a musician myself, and knowing how music effects people. What do you think?

I think it would make more sense to have conductors as lower ranked officers, like lieutenants and captains, while making the generals the composers. Section leaders would be the sergeants.

[CarolaDavar]

5 hours ago, Silverblade5 said:

I think it would make more sense to have conductors as lower ranked officers, like lieutenants and captains, while making the generals the composers. Section leaders would be the sergeants.

Ooh yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. That is brilliant.

(ooh maybe I could have a main character who really wants to be a composer. . .)

7 hours ago, Draginon said:

Sounds interesting and different. Makes me think of rhythm games where the music is practically magic, but on a grander scale.

Glad to hear it! Also, has been something I have been working on for sometime now with a few of my gamer siblings so that might have been influenced in that direction

[Silverblade5]

1 hour ago, CarolaDavar said:

Ooh yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. That is brilliant.

(ooh maybe I could have a main character who really wants to be a composer. . .)

Glad to hear it! Also, has been something I have been working on for sometime now with a few of my gamer siblings so that might have been influenced in that direction

How would you describe something that's designed to constantly emit a sound at a certain frequency and volume? For example, a buzz saw cutting through wood. Another example: a favorite scare tactic of the Nazis was to attach extra propellers to their planes, with the idea being that the noise would scare enemy troops and disrupt formations and order. How would something like that apply to this magic?

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, Silverblade5 said:

How would you describe something that's designed to constantly emit a sound at a certain frequency and volume? For example, a buzz saw cutting through wood. Another example: a favorite scare tactic of the Nazis was to attach extra propellers to their planes, with the idea being that the noise would scare enemy troops and disrupt formations and order. How would something like that apply to this magic?

Is the magic purely in the sound? Or is it in the creation and flow of the something more that differentiates sound and music? 

[Leiasqz]

16 hours ago, CarolaDavar said:

It is a pretty halfbaked idea, but I have had so much fun thinking about it, being a musician myself, and knowing how music effects people. What do you think?

If you want to read someone else's take on a magic system based on music, there's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellsong_Cycle .

Your system seems to include more music genres though, and sounds fun

[Draginon]

Most of the magical worlds I've got brewing in my head are in the process where magic is going by the wayside but there are still bits and pieces in most. I already posted on the magic on my main epic fantasy story so I'll put the others here.

One is where magic is genetic and shows up strong in women but weak in men, it has to do with the Y chromosome being a damper on magic so men have to work very hard to do a simple spell, but every witch needs to find their trigger to make their magic work. One activates her spells and potions by tapping the focus item, one can't do her spells without the color pink in her presence and the main characters grandma needed roses. If they do a spell without their trigger the effect comes out weird, like a spell to grow your garden faster might make any plants planted burst into flame once they are ripe.

Another magic was very prominent but by the time the story takes place it's just a substitute for wifi so no one really practices it anymore, but it's the only thing keeping a whole race alive so if the magic ever went away then this one race would go extinct. There is another race where magic permanently changed them because eons ago a group of men let their dicks do the thinking so a sorceress cursed them by making their dicks become their heads, just imagine a head down there, and oddly enough they started breeding until every single member of their race became crotch heads. They still have a head on their shoulders but it's just for extra memory storage at this point.

Then I have one for a parody story where wizards and witches are trained how to do magic to help assist an assigned knight since in this world it's meant to be a stereotypical fantasy world where knights and wizards go saving damsels, slay dragons and other stuff of the like. Pretty much they just need to say the incantation and do some associated movements. Well the main wizard of the story has a stuttering problem so his spells come out quite weird, like when he and his knight go to slay a dragon instead of the spell immobilizing the dragon it fuses the dragon and knight into one!

So you can see that my magic systems are all over the place, but I think more about what the world is and then how magic is used there because most of my fantasy stories are post medieval period so they go anywhere from the Victorian/Edwardian era to even a modern world where by these periods magic is about as mundane and exciting to them as physics and chemistry is in the real world. Some even show magic on the way out as people go more for technological replacements instead, like using telephones instead of a scrying mirror or whatever they use.

[Straw]

Shouldn't this be in the Creator's Corner?

[CarolaDavar]

On 7/29/2017 at 9:47 PM, Silverblade5 said:

How would you describe something that's designed to constantly emit a sound at a certain frequency and volume? For example, a buzz saw cutting through wood. Another example: a favorite scare tactic of the Nazis was to attach extra propellers to their planes, with the idea being that the noise would scare enemy troops and disrupt formations and order. How would something like that apply to this magic?

Good question. You see, in this world, some people are born with the "gift" to use this magic. Of course, they can only use it after training and practice, so if someone with this "gift" had some practice I think they could probably use something like a buzz saw to create "music" that would give a desired effect, however, since that may count as its own genre it would probably work very strangely when compared to other music genres.

Maybe I can find a better way to explain. Example: someone who has trained for a while on tha violin could grab any violin and use it to make music, whereas someone who has never before touched a violin couldn't make music, but simply "sounds". Some would call it music but it would have a very different effect on one's hearing. So in this world, when is comes to something like a buzz saw, someone could train in order to make "music" out of it, but it would take plenty of time and effort, and most likely would have the right effect. Like if someone who plays the Cello all of their lives is told to play the Saxophone may understand a few simple concepts to it, but cannot fully make music with it with out practice.

I hope that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't

On 7/30/2017 at 3:46 AM, Leiasqz said:

If you want to read someone else's take on a magic system based on music, there's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellsong_Cycle .

Your system seems to include more music genres though, and sounds fun

This looks like a really good story. I feel like I may have heard of it before, but I am definitely interested. I think the magic I have made is going to be slightly different, but they are both based around, I believe, similar concepts

[Draginon]

@CarolaDavar so to compare it's like sword fighting where you're trained to use a long sword but when using a great sword the results won't be right since the handling is different. I would think the buzz saw stuff would be similar to someone using an unconventional weapon, like a frying pan, in battle. It would be interesting to figure out which weapons would be the equivalent to the instruments along with how genre battles work, like a classical player versus a rock n roll band cause that type of fight would be interesting to see who wins.

[Hemalurgic Headshot]

But I suppose someone accustomed to unconventional instruments would have a greater variety of random things at their disposal. If they can jam with a buzz saw, then a drill, chair, chandelier, no problem!

[CarolaDavar]

12 hours ago, Draginon said:

@CarolaDavar so to compare it's like sword fighting where you're trained to use a long sword but when using a great sword the results won't be right since the handling is different. I would think the buzz saw stuff would be similar to someone using an unconventional weapon, like a frying pan, in battle. It would be interesting to figure out which weapons would be the equivalent to the instruments along with how genre battles work, like a classical player versus a rock n roll band cause that type of fight would be interesting to see who wins.

Yes indeed. You seem to understand it spot on.

I really hope I get to writing this story. One thing I want to try is having a character who is a  outlaw for his use of Dubstep. In the current war going on, this character lived in the place where classical music is how they fight. Using things like pianos, violins, and stuff like that. However, the people of this country doesn't think that the classical musicians and the jazz musicians and the tech/rock musicians should mix. There is basically a three-way war going on between these groups, so if you are born in the country of classical music but you have powers for music's like dubstep or rock they either kill you, banish you, or force you to stop using that kind of music.

11 hours ago, Hemalurgic_Headshot said:

But I suppose someone accustomed to unconventional instruments would have a greater variety of random things at their disposal. If they can jam with a buzz saw, then a drill, chair, chandelier, no problem!

Yup. If you imprison one of these kinds of people, they may find a way out simply by scratching the walls. However, it is seen as strange to do so, but it is worth it to be that powerful.