The Nine Disciplines

[Xcarthan12]

I've been agonizing about not having a very good magic system for my novels, but several months ago, that finally changed. Below is a set of guidelines and lists for my magic system, known as the Nine Disciplines. This is the magic system I am using for the epic fantasy trilogy I am writing, The Proanadi.

The way it works is thus: any known magic-user has access to one, several, or all of these Disciplines. All "magic" as people know it derives itself ultimately from the Nine Disciplines. Where magic-users differ is WHERE they get their power from--their power source. There can also be differences in areas of focus, and ways that they use the different disciplines (because, the possibilities within the Disciplines are almost unlimited).

Here are the Nine Disciplines below, grouped as they would be commonly, with three groups of three:

Material
1 Physical (change in physical matter)
2 Sensory (change in perception)
3 Elemental (manipulation of the elements)

Ultramaterial
1 Influential (change in feeling)
2 Intellectual (change in thought)
3 Essential (manipulation of life energies)

Supernal
1 Continuous (disruptions in space or time)
2 Creative (creation of new energy or matter)
3 Potential (manipulation of force)

Examples of something being done with each Discipline below:

Physical: Enhances your (or another's) strength
Sensory: Tricking another individual's perceptions, making you effectively invisible
Elemental: Shooting fire from your hands
Influential: Providing a morale boost to your comrades
Intellectual: Tampering with someone's memory
Essential: Bringing someone back to life
Continuous: Teleportation (space) or slowing time (time)
Creative: Creating food and water out of nothing
Potential: Throwing up a wall of pure force

Now, there are many different limitations and tricks associated with each Discipline, and points where they overlap, but different Disciplines work better in different situations. Please feel free to comment with ideas for changes, possible abilities within each Discipline, or discrepancies as you see them.

Where the line is drawn between the different types of magic-users in the world comes from one major thing (though there are other, less important differences): Power Source. Where do they derive their power from?

Below is a list of some D&D classes (not all of these are actually going to be used in the books, as that would kind of be plagiarizing, but it provides a good example for how different magic-users get their power) and some other magic-users and their power sources:


Wizards – Power through learning (words and rituals that channel the energy)
Clerics – Power through prayer*
Sorcerers – Power through lineage (having some form of magical creature’s blood in your DNA)
Favored Soul – Power through divine connection*
Dragosamns (reptilian humanoid shamans) – Power through dragon totems (similar to Stewardic power)**
Roshi (short reptilian humanoids) – Power through Chaos**
Druids – Power through natural connection and energy
Talir-Knights (though the original users of this form of power source are many of Serragon’s “monsters”, such as dragons) – Power through one’s own energy
Demons – Power through destruction (breaking down of matter or energy)

* Both Clerics and Favored Souls gain their ultimate power from the Stewards (gods). Only the means are different.
** Although both Roshi and Dragosamns gain their abilities through their dragon blood, their actual power sources come from outside their bloodline, unlike sorcerers.

If you have any questions about who or what these types are, feel free to ask.

That is the extent of it, I guess. There is much more to nail down, obviously, but that is why I post this on here, FOR IDEAS! Thanks for all of your time, and God bless!

[Thought]

What are the costs associated with using magic?

What are the limitations of the magic system itself?

Why are there those limitations?

 

Generally speaking, being able to do something is less interesting than being unable to do something. So, I'd like to know what barriers there are that magic users would have to work around, to make things interesting.

[Observer]

Is there a clasdic D&D limit to how many times a day you can use magic, is it infinite, or is there a "magic pool"?

How powerful can this get? (Can power directly affect life? If so, what about telefratricide and mind screws?)

Erm...how can you create new energy and matter?

 

How has society adapted to this? When your memories and  thoughts can be manipulated, what do you do? Is there a way to shield yourself from that kind of magic? If so, what good is it?

 

With essential magic, how will you avoid cheapening death? Is this a society where people just don't die?

 

Well, that's my two cents on this. Try thinking on how this changes society, as that usually makes for something interesting.

[Xcarthan12]

The biggest limitation on the magic system is that most people can't do anything major. There are many people with the potential to use the Nine Disciplines (to be one of these people, you need to have a certain blood type) and if you can use one, you can use all of them. Some people have a greater affinity for one particular Discipline, but they always have the potential to use them all.

 

The problem with the Nine Disciplines is the fact that it takes a good amount of talent or training to be able to do much with them. There are plenty of people in the world who can use the Disciplines, but they only use them lightly, and never get any better with them. E.g. A person who has an affinity for the Physical Discipline uses it every once in a while, but can only make themselves a bit stronger or faster--not enough to make them "magic-users" as the term would be in a D&D setting.

 

In essence, the Nine Disciplines are mostly used as another "skill set" along with knowing how to use a sword, or being able to play a lute. There are definitely exceptions to this--people who are either naturally more skilled with magic or spend a lot of time training with it--and they are considered the clerics, wizards, and druids (per se) of the world. 

 

(Now that I think about it, maybe I should come up with a specific reason why some people are better with it and others aren't... I'll have to think about it...)

 

Also, using the Nine Disciplines in any way tires a person--and they get tired slower or faster depending on how skilled they are and how much they've trained with them. 

 

It CAN get pretty powerful, but no where near to the extent of some D&D settings (Forgotten Realms springs to mind). These individuals are few and far between, however, and so it's not quite so dangerous as one might think, just reading the description of what the disciplines can do. Most of the examples I put in there are actually sort of on the extreme end of the spectrum--some of the more potent things you could do. 

 

How much you can use magic sort of depends on what power source you are using. For example, clerics are limited to "spells" that would line up with their deity's personality and values--not really a "forbidden" thing, but rather an "impossible" thing. A cleric of the god of peace just CAN'T kill someone outright with any sort of magic, their god won't give them the energy to do that. Wizards are limited to the spells they know/have with them, since their power comes from specific words, phrases, or incantations. And so on and so forth...

 

The only thing I can think of to shield mind manipulation is having access to the Nine Disciplines yourself (or having a friend who does). But most of the time the people who can use it are few and far between, so there's not a general problem of people messing with your mind. 

 

One of the things about magic-users is that you HAVE to have a power source. You could go your whole life and never know you have the ability to use magic, simply because you don't have a power source. That's why most magic-users are in specific groups--because only those groups have access to the power source and can give the knowledge of that source to other potential magic-users.

 

And about the Essential Discipline--once again, the majority of the time, there just aren't that many people around who can bring people back to the dead, mostly because it's stinkin' hard to accomplish.

 

I am definitely thinking a bit more about this, and I'm going to go through each of the Disciplines and specifically state things that are more or less impossible or almost impossible to do with each group of magic.

 

But yeah--thanks for your input!

 

Oh, and yeah... I guess you're not creating new energy or matter... more like using the magical energy to create something.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Xcarthan12

[Observer]

A bit better with the clarification, but it's still easy to say something like "I have a power source from the god of murder, and I just teleported your heart a little bit to the left, disconnecting it from your veins/merging it with something/moving it outside of you, instakilling Mr. Importantdude. Also, merging with Brandon's thing on rare griffon feather potions, if it's at all possible to bring people back to life or heal spinal injuries, there's probably somebody out there making a killing off of it.

[Xcarthan12]

That is a good point. I'll have to think about this a little bit. I definitely don't want someone to be able to teleport someone's heart like that and kill someone, but I'll think about a good reason why you WOULDN'T be able to do that. 

 

And as for the last thing--yeah, I'm willing to have that sort of thing in my book. The world is pretty messed up at this point, as so anyone who DID have that sort of ability would probably end up selling his skills.