What would you do with magic?

[Curiosity he/him]

I would use my power to "eyeball" measurements.

Don't have a measuring cup for flour? Oh well, I'll just use a couple of psionic handfuls. It's close enough to 2 ½ cups.

I don't know if I can lift that barrel, but if I steelnudge… OK, it budged a little bit. I think I might be fine, but I'll get someone to help me just in case. 

Or maybe I just know what the measurement is. That pot is filled with 4.06L of soup at 82.3^oC. My extra 0.74L of broth is at 19.7^oC… It should heat up in time for dinner if I combine them now. 

[Sir Jerric he/him]

In any case, it'd be nice to be able to access the memories, skills, and mental states of your possible world counterparts.

 

Another idea: it might be interesting to have time-traveling powers restricted in specific ways. Think about being counseled through your mid-life crisis by your future self!

Fun concepts there. The second one, I've read a short story on Tor.com that used a sci-fi construct with that kind of power. It was a creepy story, though. I'm sure there would be a way to make a pleasant story with that idea.

 

Simple: Jump to the front of any queue with either mind-control or physical force.

I'm too patient to want to bother with that application myself. But depending on the implementation, there may be some other useful things to do. Also, that sounds a lot like something from the third book of a certain boy wizard story.

 

Magic that changes the weather to how I feel, or in a few specific cases, want very strongly. Of course, if everyone's giving suggestions to the clouds, whoever has the most emotion and/or willpower behind their request is going to come out on top - so, take emotion-altering drugs, gain specific kinds of weather control?

Now that's is a different way to limit weather control. Interesting.

 

I would use my power to "eyeball" measurements.

Don't have a measuring cup for flour? Oh well, I'll just use a couple of psionic handfuls. It's close enough to 2 ½ cups.

I don't know if I can lift that barrel, but if I steelnudge… OK, it budged a little bit. I think I might be fine, but I'll get someone to help me just in case. 

Or maybe I just know what the measurement is. That pot is filled with 4.06L of soup at 82.3^oC. My extra 0.74L of broth is at 19.7^oC… It should heat up in time for dinner if I combine them now.

Thanks for the ideas. I suppose I could put volume measurements on the mystic knowledge list alongside weights and locations. I probably could do temperature and velocity as well, come to think of it.

Should I call them Metermagi? =)

[Swimmingly he/him]

That would be cool. Add being able to intuitively solve equations and move in such a way as to deliver precise amounts of force, and you could, say, derive the exact force and direction needed to knock someone out with a stone at fifty metres or the exact amount of force needed to produce sparks from a rock. Not spectacular, but very useful in certain circumstances. It would make a good counterpoint to a showy or mystical kind of magic, and would probably be absolutely deadly in the right hands.

[Wyrmhero he/him]

Helpful uses for Necromancy (in D&D terms)! (seriously, why did it take us this long to consider it when we have Warbreaker?)

 

Simply get a load of dead bones, pump them full of magic, and set them to do all the boring tasks you don't want to do. Cleaners, mechanics, cooks, anything that can be done by rote can be done by a load of old bones that no-one was using. There are so many uses that they can be put to. They could also do work in dangerous situations were you don't want people there - disaster areas, underwater, terraforming worlds... Robots without the need to study how to make them move or act - The magic would take care of that.

 

All it requires is for someone to leave their body to science magic when they die. Even better, supplement the magical programming with a modern a understanding of programming, and get them to do even more complex tasks! Not only do they not need paying, but they only require the hire of a necromancer as a purchase cost. They don't even need electrically charging. You just need to ensure your necromancer has a steady supply of magic, something which shouldn't be too hard.

 

Don't like skeletons or zombies in your home? Then why not try another spell school, and summon a demonic servant, or a conjured elemental instead? The benefit of a demon (and some forms of elemental) is that they're actually intelligent, and don't require precise orders. You could even use a golem instead of undead, if you have a large enough house and don't mind broken floorboards.

 

Not only can necromancy drastically reduce manpower costs, you can also use it in the medical profession. You could stave off death with a few applications of spells as an EMT process, or use it to supplement scientific or other magical aid elsewhere. Necromancy could easily identify diseases by the same sort of magic, since that is usually the province of the spell school as well.

 

The other main area in D&D that necromancy applies to is curses, usually. Not quite as handy, but they could be used to non-lethally restrain people such as criminals or prisoners. They could even cause death without pain, if necessary.

 

Necromancy usually gets a bad rap, with all the power-hungry mages out there, but it could be rather useful in the modern world.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Wyrmhero

[Curiosity he/him]

Only people you might get a problem with are those who believe that the dead are sacred/cherish the remains of their ancestors. 

[Gabriele she/her]

I have some necromancer characters in Kings and Rebels. One uses the skill for asking a victim who killed him, for example. And for historical research - interviews with dead characters can be so much fun. The other keeps some undead bodyguards around because she doesn't trust her scheming half brother.

[Left he/him]

I would hire myself out as party entertainment for really really really really really really really rich people. Then I would probably run and hide before the government could find me. Because they'd probably do creepy stuff to me.

 

If I wasn't on earth, and was on a traditional fantasy planet.....I would probably find some way to combine magic with normal science stuff. Thinking of Mr. Weasly.

[Cstryon he/him]

Actually, I have another one I'm just going to throw out here. Any one familiar with the (philosophical) concept of possible worlds? (It's mostly just a tool to be able to think about modality in a way that doesn't drive people nuts, but some people, like David Lewis, who pioneered that concept, think those are actually real things.) I guess our closest analogue would be the idea of alternate universes.

In any case, kind of like burning gold (but not very much like it)--it'd be nice to be able to access the memories, skills, and mental states of your possible world counterparts. Need to fix your car but not sure where to get started? Sure. Just access the skills and memories of the counterpart who was an automechanic in a presumably distant possible world. [Edit: I do mean Allomantic Gold. Kind of like having the gold shadow who can advise you on how to do it, and you can kind of access their memories, but not in the Forgery sort of way.]

 

Another idea: it might be interesting to have time-travelling powers restricted in specific ways. Think about being counselled through your mid-life crisis by your future self!

HAH. As I was reading the thread and thinking of what I would do with some kind of magic, I was starting to think something very similar to this, and then I read your post!

I would like to be able to go back in time in such a way where I could have myself make a different choice, and live out that outcome. Rather than jumping back in time, I would actually turn the clock back, there by not having a future and past self both being in the same time frame, but having all the time that has already happened after the event, not have happened at all, so I could choose to do something else.

There are plenty of times when I think back to an event where I think things might have been much better if I did C rather than B or A. I guess that's similar to The Butterfly Effect, but my thinking is that after you go back and choose differently, you then have to live through life from that point on instead of being able to jump back to the "present".

[David Coppercloud]

A good place to look, I think, would be at the behaviour within MMORPG's. Not that I am making any comment about people who play them, but they are systems where people are given powers beyond those that you would expect in conventional reality. In realms with their own rules an consequences. There are a number of interesting articles, about some of the antics that go on in these realms on Cracked.com.

Though they are lists of "the biggest dick moves", and most are what you would expect, especially the elaborate corporate backstabbing in EVE online.    http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/

But some are hilarious in a lighthearted way. Like Fansy a polite, low level player from EverQuest, who repeatedly steam rolled a community of trolls on a no rules server by taming the dungeon boss.   http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-most-elaborate-dick-moves-in-online-gaming-history_p4/

And Belan the Nobel Looter from Ultima Online, who would steal people stuff, in the nicest possible way, and sell it back to them at a discounted rate. If they were polite.   http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-spectacular-dick-moves-in-online-gaming-history_p4/    

It might not specifically demonstrate what people would do with magic. It does show how people act in a new paradigm, with a new set of rules and abilities.

Edited July 10, 2014 by David Coppercloud