Energy Based Magic System!

[Raptor]

So I thought of a magic system earlier today that involves different forms of energy. It came to me when I thought of Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 which essentially means, for those of you that don't know, that anything with mass is physical energy. I thought how neat would it be if we could harness physical energy and return it as different forms of energy. This is what I came up with.

This is all work in progress.

So far I have 4 different things you can do with this energy

1. Return the energy as another physical object(Ex: Take the energy from a chair and return it as a sword)

2. Return it as heat energy. Potentially lighting things on fire.

3. Electromagnetic energy. This is where things get kinda complicated. When I say electromagnetic energy I am mostly referring to returning the energy as light or other forms of waves(haven't decided yet). They can emit a constant flow of light or all at once like a flash bang. I also had the idea that the characters that can return it as electromagnetic energy can also see outside the visible spectrum(Ex: Seeing in infrared).

4. The last one is motion or kinetic Energy(and for all you physics people I know electromagnetic, heat, and motion are all already forms of kinetic lol) So returning energy to an object which will launch it forward. The bigger the object the more energy required.

Now the way to harness this energy is by absorbing an object by touch and it disintegrating and absorbing the energy into your body. Here is my dilemma. Those of you familiar with E=mc2 know that a 1 gram pebble is thousands and thousands of joules worth of energy. I need a reason for it disappear or come up with so kinda of material they can only absorb.

This magic system also has a draw back. It can only be done with the left hand(haven't gone into depth why yet) and the more they take and return energy the blacker their left arm becomes starting with the fingertips and going up the arm. Once the blackness reaches all the way to the heart they die. Though when the arm starts to become black it does not effect mobility. Now I am open to new ideas about the draw back but I like the idea of it reaching the heart and dying.

Thoughts???? =)

[FlashWrogan he/him]

It seems to me that you have an interesting idea for a very potent and versatile power that doesn't seem to have a lot in the way of limitations. What I see so far is that you can take any amount of matter, convert it into any other matter (perhaps just shape, you didn't talk about changing materials), or transform it into any other energy form. Your only limits are perhaps the ability to use only one type of material and a lifetime limit on the power usage.

Bottom line, it sounds promising but it needs more limitations. Brandon's second law essay has a lot of good stuff that will be useful for you (link). Your lifetime limit thing isn't bad, but perhaps you want to do a bit more with it. Brent Weeks does something similar in his Lightbringer series that you may want to look into (link). His is a sacrifice of the mind though. Some other ideas for limits might be a loss of energy during conversion (if you converted one object into another it would weigh less), some kind of immediate penalty to prevent a magic user from using up most or all of his allotment in one go, boundaries on how specifically you can form objects or direct energy. If you are going to write something this fleshed out, you really want to give the characters a narrow path to follow on what they can do with the magic, then see where they go with it.

[Thought]

I have one word for you, just one word: radiation.

 

Using magic gives the user ARS, while leaving the area "dirty," with all the implications there of. Of course, use too much, and you just die instantly instead, with the flesh essentially melted off your bones.