Need help with a electricity based magic system

[NiightLiight]

Hey all, I am curious on what ideas can be associated with electricity, and what kind of magic system can come from this theme. Please share if you have any ideas! Thank you!

[Quantus he/him]

Starting thought (and a general pet peeve of mine): Electricity and Magnetism go together, so being able to manipulate one should include some level of manipulating the other.  Magneto should be throwing lightning and other plasma attacks a lot more.  If you want you system to specialize, consider making Magnetic Field Control, Voltage Differential Control and raw heavy lifting Current Control.  If you're open to group casting magic and like the idea of visible science behind the scenes, consider making the magic practitioners used "advanced" spells that amount to acting as individual Circuit elements such that they can do very complex things (up to and including stuff like Radio communication) that is accomplished via complex group ritual magic.  

 

[NiightLiight]

3 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Electricity and Magnetism go together, so being able to manipulate one should include some level of manipulating the other.  Magneto should be throwing lightning and other plasma attacks a lot more.  If you want you system to specialize, consider making Magnetic Field Control, Voltage Differential Control and raw heavy lifting Current Control.  If you're open to group casting magic and like the idea of visible science behind the scenes, consider making the magic practitioners used "advanced" spells that amount to acting as individual Circuit elements such that they can do very complex things (up to and including stuff like Radio communication) that is accomplished via complex group ritual magic

Wow, these sound very interesting! I'm not planning to go into too much science on electricity, since it is a little too complicated, but I agree that electricity and magnetism should definately go together, and it can make very interesting uses.

I was thinking about something related to a person having innate abilities to manipulate and generate lightning, since living beings already sort of generate some electricity. An immediate thought from this is that maybe people can sense living things from the electricity or spark within them... I am also trying to think of other things related to electricity, like maybe people can use it like telekinetic abilities because of magnetism and all. 

Please let me know if you think of anything interesting from this, I can feel lots of potential in this theme (pun intended)

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

Yeah so I’d go with various electromagnetic abilities, like an electromagnetic sense, a generation and manipulation of electric currents and magnetic fields, things like that. You could to powerful magnetic fields to move objects, and maybe even manipulation of the electric signals within the brain to do all kinds of things, even though that’s a super broken mechanic unless you limit it greatly. 

[NiightLiight]

8 hours ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

Yeah so I’d go with various electromagnetic abilities, like an electromagnetic sense, a generation and manipulation of electric currents and magnetic fields, things like that. You could to powerful magnetic fields to move objects, and maybe even manipulation of the electric signals within the brain to do all kinds of things, even though that’s a super broken mechanic unless you limit it greatly. 

Yea, I can see lots of possibilities with this. What about electric themed psionic magic? Like telekinetics with maybe magnetic fields to move objects like you said, and manipulating or reading electric signals within the brain, sort of like telepathy or similar. I can already picture characters who throw lightning at each other, but all in all the biggest problem is coming up with limitations or costs, like Sanderson's third law states. Thanks for the ideas

Additionally, after some "scientific" research I realized that electromagnetic abilities include the EM waves spectrum. That means manipulation of light and stuff, which might be broken if people can just start shooting gamma rays out of their hands. Do you have any ideas on how to possibly limit this with a limitation rather than a cost? I cant think of any atm...

Edited June 22, 2024 by NiightLiight

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

58 minutes ago, NiightLiight said:

Yea, I can see lots of possibilities with this. What about electric themed psionic magic? Like telekinetics with maybe magnetic fields to move objects like you said, and manipulating or reading electric signals within the brain, sort of like telepathy or similar. I can already picture characters who throw lightning at each other, but all in all the biggest problem is coming up with limitations or costs, like Sanderson's third law states. Thanks for the ideas

Additionally, after some "scientific" research I realized that electromagnetic abilities include the EM waves spectrum. That means manipulation of light and stuff, which might be broken if people can just start shooting gamma rays out of their hands. Do you have any ideas on how to possibly limit this with a limitation rather than a cost? I cant think of any atm...

Well an easy limit for light is to keep it to the visible spectrum and maybe a little bit into the infrared and ultraviolet, just to prevent hurling gamma rays through random people’s DNA. You could also make it require a sort of understanding of electromagnetic fields around the person. Like instead of just making electromagnetic fields and doing whatever you want with them, the magic works by letting people feel and manipulate electromagnetic fields around them. They can make them stronger or weaker or move them around but they can’t make them at will. That lets more powerful applications require skill and understanding of the magic system, and still allows for the telekinesis and things like that. And then the light spectrum can be its own deal but still related. This comes from my limited understanding of electromagnetism so it’s not perfect.

[NiightLiight]

40 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

Like instead of just making electromagnetic fields and doing whatever you want with them, the magic works by letting people feel and manipulate electromagnetic fields around them. They can make them stronger or weaker or move them around but they can’t make them at will. That lets more powerful applications require skill and understanding of the magic system, and still allows for the telekinesis and things like that. And then the light spectrum can be its own deal but still related. This comes from my limited understanding of electromagnetism so it’s not perfect.

Ohh ok so make the power and manipulation of electromagnetic fields based on knowledge? Btw I just did some research on Elecrtomagnetism and apparently it is a fundamental part of physics.. I think that would be very interesting for worldbuilding, similar to how Sanderson took the concept of action and reaction in his magic systems. People also generate electromagnetic fields around them too, which is super cool. 

I think ultimately I will just have to limit exactly which aspects of Electromagnetism I am focusing on, and maybe don't use so much science... honestly the more I research the more confused I get, because everything has electromagnetism involved. 

Back to the magic system itself, 

40 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

And then the light spectrum can be its own deal but still related

This could be a cool idea of how I can make the idea of electromagnetism into different divisions, such as people who can manipulate radiant energy for illusions or similar (but some can figure out how to manipulate higher or lower spectrums), those who can manipulate electrical currents like shoot lightning, I am thinking about also people that can enhance themselves (speed, strength, etc) by strengthing their electromagnetic fields, and also those who specialize on neuro electricity or smth like that where they can do cool psionic stuff like telepathy. Right now I am just wandering if there are other divisions i can create... >_<

Edit: Ferrimagnetic metals would be interesting here, since people that can move objects maybe requires this to amplify or smth with their powers. Still thinking about how this works tho
Here is a cool link from Wiki about Electromagnetism.

Edited June 22, 2024 by NiightLiight

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

9 minutes ago, NiightLiight said:

Ohh ok so make the power and manipulation of electromagnetic fields based on knowledge? Btw I just did some research on Elecrtomagnetism and apparently it is a fundamental part of physics.. I think that would be very interesting for worldbuilding, similar to how Sanderson took the concept of action and reaction in his magic systems. People also generate electromagnetic fields around them too, which is super cool. 

I think ultimately I will just have to limit exactly which aspects of Electromagnetism I am focusing on, and maybe don't use so much science... honestly the more I research the more confused I get, because everything has electromagnetism involved. 

Back to the magic system itself, 

This could be a cool idea of how I can make the idea of electromagnetism into different divisions, such as people who can manipulate radiant energy for illusions or similar (but some can figure out how to manipulate higher or lower spectrums), those who can manipulate electrical currents like shoot lightning, I am thinking about also people that can enhance themselves (speed, strength, etc) by strengthing their electromagnetic fields, and also those who specialize on neuro electricity or smth like that where they can do cool psionic stuff like telepathy. Right now I am just wandering if there are other divisions i can create... >_<

Edit: Ferrimagnetic metals would be interesting here, since people that can move objects maybe requires this to amplify or smth with their powers. Still thinking about how this works tho

Yeah so with electromagnetism being a fundamental property of particle physics, you can accomplish just about anything. Everything has an electromagnetic presence, so you can definitely work with it. I like the idea of specialization in the magic. I think neurological is the most complicated but also the most abundantly useful. You can do things like mind reading and even mind control if your user understands the electrical signaling properly. Also, you can have people strengthen themselves musically by forcing muscle fibers to fire more than they normally would, which would increase strength and speed output. Self protection would be more complicated and would require magnetism, like a force field. You could use ferromagnetic metals as a way to allow for telekinesis, just by having users use the metals to key electromagnetic fields to what they want them to do. Again, limited understanding of electromagnetism, but this seems plausible. 

[NiightLiight]

2 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

You could use ferromagnetic metals as a way to allow for telekinesis, just by having users use the metals to key electromagnetic fields to what they want them to do.

I think the options for telekinesis would be these:

• Manipulation of the movement of ferrimagnetic metals, similar to how it is done in Mistborn with iron and steel, or
• Using ferrimagnetic metals as a medium to move other objects by attaching the user's ferrimagnetic field to the object's field

5 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

Self protection would be more complicated and would require magnetism, like a force field.

This just gave me an awesome idea on how I can make this entire thing sound less sciency and more magical,

Since scientifically people and objects have this "electromagnetic field" around them, I can make this like an aura based thing, so telekinesis becomes more like using the aura to pick up, push away, or otherwise influence objects without touching them. That means for force fields, people can just strengthen their "aura" to make it harder for other objects or people to hit them, similar to shields. I think scientifically this is also behind why we can't just phase through things? I am not entirely sure, but something about it being the fundamental part of physics. 
 

12 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

I think neurological is the most complicated but also the most abundantly useful. You can do things like mind reading and even mind control if your user understands the electrical signaling properly

Yup, definately the most complicated but could turn out to be extremely cool, but I think overall I still have a problem with limitations, and I want to create a unifying kind of limitation, similar to how metals are needed for a misting or a mistborn to use their powers, or how casting spells in Harry Potter requires a wand (mostly). 

I'm still struggling with implimenting some limitations of this kind of power... like something these users need to have in order to manipulate electromagnetic fields...

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

8 minutes ago, NiightLiight said:

I think the options for telekinesis would be these:

• Manipulation of the movement of ferrimagnetic metals, similar to how it is done in Mistborn with iron and steel, or
• Using ferrimagnetic metals as a medium to move other objects by attaching the user's ferrimagnetic field to the object's field

This just gave me an awesome idea on how I can make this entire thing sound less sciency and more magical,

Since scientifically people and objects have this "electromagnetic field" around them, I can make this like an aura based thing, so telekinesis becomes more like using the aura to pick up, push away, or otherwise influence objects without touching them. That means for force fields, people can just strengthen their "aura" to make it harder for other objects or people to hit them, similar to shields. I think scientifically this is also behind why we can't just phase through things? I am not entirely sure, but something about it being the fundamental part of physics. 
 

Yup, definately the most complicated but could turn out to be extremely cool, but I think overall I still have a problem with limitations, and I want to create a unifying kind of limitation, similar to how metals are needed for a misting or a mistborn to use their powers, or how casting spells in Harry Potter requires a wand (mostly). 

I'm still struggling with implimenting some limitations of this kind of power... like something these users need to have in order to manipulate electromagnetic fields...

I’d use the second option for telekinesis. You could run with an electromagnetic magical aura, as long as you come up with a cool name for that. That would allow all of this to work well and could let your setting not have to be scientific, as magic users understand the magic as an aura and not as electromagnetism.  As for limitations you could go the genetics route to limit who can use the powers, having abilities be hereditary. You could also have powers be granted by some being or something like that. As for limiting the actual use of magic, I’m at something of a loss. You could have it require some extra source of power, but that defeats the whole point of the aura. Metals for external manipulation works, but that doesn’t apply to the internal mechanics and things like that. Perhaps overuse of the magic weakens the body and mind temporarily by wearing out the aura and soul. This all depends on how you have souls and gods and whatnot working in this world, if you have them at all. 

[NiightLiight]

3 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

As for limiting the actual use of magic, I’m at something of a loss. You could have it require some extra source of power, but that defeats the whole point of the aura. Metals for external manipulation works, but that doesn’t apply to the internal mechanics and things like that. Perhaps overuse of the magic weakens the body and mind temporarily by wearing out the aura and soul. This all depends on how you have souls and gods and whatnot working in this world, if you have them at all. 

I am toying with the idea of a conduct right now, but I am not sure whether the users themselves are conducts or do they need a tool acting as a conduct (metals like copper and zinc, etc). This could be a sorce of limitation but like you said it doesn't really apply to internal mechanics that well... Also, i am worried that using metals would be similar to Mistborn... Yea I am also at a lost of what kind of limitations I can impose. 

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

2 minutes ago, NiightLiight said:

I am toying with the idea of a conduct right now, but I am not sure whether the users themselves are conducts or do they need a tool acting as a conduct (metals like copper and zinc, etc). This could be a sorce of limitation but like you said it doesn't really apply to internal mechanics that well... Also, i am worried that using metals would be similar to Mistborn... Yea I am also at a lost of what kind of limitations I can impose. 

So you could use a specific metal keys the electromagnetic aura of a person to a specific ability, and that would allow for the specialization while also providing limitations. It could be one metal at a time and things like that. Using metals for a magic system is completely fine, as long as you don’t straight up copy from Mistborn. I have a metal magic system that’s way more similar to Mistborn than this and it’s pretty much fine. Might have to tweak it a little bit but it’s okay. This isn’t problematic at all if you run with it right. 

[NiightLiight]

30 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

Using metals for a magic system is completely fine, as long as you don’t straight up copy from Mistborn. I have a metal magic system that’s way more similar to Mistborn than this and it’s pretty much fine. Might have to tweak it a little bit but it’s okay. This isn’t problematic at all if you run with it right. 

I am still worried about the problems of originality though, because people are going to associate magic of metals with allomancy in Mistborn... So definately no eating metals here lol. I was thinking about something related to the sun, where I combine the idea i had in my previous post about the sun generating power for people because the sun itself is a god (or Daemon) called the Dawnbird. Since the sun produces electromagnetic radiation, this might make more sense. So when people "absorb" the light or whatever energy the Dawnbird creates (maybe Solfire?), people can utilize this investure in different forms of electricity etc...

As for the metals, perhaps that can be the medium of how people channel the light. So basically different types of ferrometals can do different things, like gold being used for neuro electric currents and steel and iron used generally for weapons, or some other types of metal such as zinc and copper can be used for generating more precise electrical currents to move objects (telekinesis). 

So sunlight becomes the limitation, and maybe people can only recharge their abilities with sunlight, and while using moonlight is possible it is slower and weaker than sunlight since it is only a reflection of the sun. It is also possible to use starlight or light from fire and auroras, but I will need to think about how this works and maybe come up with a better name for sunlight instead of Solfire...

[NiightLiight]

If I made people gain power from storms, is it copying stormlight archive? I am so worried about originality...

[TheSurvivorofDeath]

9 hours ago, NiightLiight said:

I am still worried about the problems of originality though, because people are going to associate magic of metals with allomancy in Mistborn... So definately no eating metals here lol. I was thinking about something related to the sun, where I combine the idea i had in my previous post about the sun generating power for people because the sun itself is a god (or Daemon) called the Dawnbird. Since the sun produces electromagnetic radiation, this might make more sense. So when people "absorb" the light or whatever energy the Dawnbird creates (maybe Solfire?), people can utilize this investure in different forms of electricity etc...

As for the metals, perhaps that can be the medium of how people channel the light. So basically different types of ferrometals can do different things, like gold being used for neuro electric currents and steel and iron used generally for weapons, or some other types of metal such as zinc and copper can be used for generating more precise electrical currents to move objects (telekinesis). 

So sunlight becomes the limitation, and maybe people can only recharge their abilities with sunlight, and while using moonlight is possible it is slower and weaker than sunlight since it is only a reflection of the sun. It is also possible to use starlight or light from fire and auroras, but I will need to think about how this works and maybe come up with a better name for sunlight instead of Solfire...

Using the sunlight is a great idea, and metal to key it would work well. 

8 hours ago, NiightLiight said:

If I made people gain power from storms, is it copying stormlight archive? I am so worried about originality...

People could gain power from a storm. It’s not unoriginal to be inspired by something. Fantasy works because authors take inspiration from each other’s works. If you had magic that had people swallow metals for powers, that would be copying. But using metals or using storms is not unoriginal just because someone else did something similar. Half of everything any author has ever done was done by someone before them, it’s just about making that idea your own. It’s inspiration, not plagiarism. 

[NiightLiight]

8 minutes ago, TheSurvivorofDeath said:

People could gain power from a storm. It’s not unoriginal to be inspired by something. Fantasy works because authors take inspiration from each other’s works. If you had magic that had people swallow metals for powers, that would be copying. But using metals or using storms is not unoriginal just because someone else did something similar. Half of everything any author has ever done was done by someone before them, it’s just about making that idea your own. It’s inspiration, not plagiarism.

Okay thank you... I think I was just getting way to caught up in the concept of originality here haha