# Magical power-need ideas



## Anberith (Mar 20, 2013)

I'm working on a new idea and I have the basic plot planned. who they major characters are and who the opposing force are. I am having a little problem in deciding on the special magical powers the main characters have and it's central to the story.  
In the story there is a priesthood that believe that one day a person with this form of magic will be their destruction so through out the years they have been on the look out for anyone like that. 
A some of the priests have magical abilities and know what they are to expect when it comes to this person and the power he/she possesses. What I can't make my mind on is the power this person possesses, it has to be something that creates this fear in the priest so I guess it has to be powerful magic. Something that could threaten their whole existence.

I know that this is very vague but I would love some ideas to what this power could be.


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## Butterfly (Mar 20, 2013)

The power of the sun?

Light, fire, healing and... radiation. 

Sounds like you need something powerful with a dangerous side effect or by product. A double-edged sword and that must not be a power in the wrong hands. The sun's energy is all I can think of at the moment.


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## wordwalker (Mar 20, 2013)

Hmm, I was just about to start a thread on "Moste forbidden magicks." 

In general, I think of magic (and a lot of plotting problem-solving) as falling into four types:

Force, really including any attack, defense, healing, or just building things
Movement
Knowledge and deception
Persuasion

Personally, my two favorite picks for dread magic are the two aspects of _Dragon Age_'s blood magic: drawing power from other people's blood (so anyone can be an archmage if they're ruthless enough), and having power over bodies and minds-- especially anything subtle where people don't know they're being controlled. *That's* the one that ought to keep us all up nights.

In your story... you know, you didn't say if that person is a villain or a hero.

If the priests are corrupt, or at least covering up a shameful secret, any power that got at the truth would be the ultimate threat to them. Mind-reading, aura sight, seeing into hidden realms, and so on.

Or if they've locked something away, the power to dispel those wards-- or just squeeze through the cracks and get too close a look at what's there.

Whatever your society's weakness is, or just the priesthood's, there are magics that can bring that out. Maybe castes or races are segregated, and being a shape-shifter (or just a telepath) lets a hero realize everyone's human. Or maybe everyone's just learning to get along, and a villain can conjure up people's fears to stir up old feuds.

Especially, look at that magician and his own arc. If he's compassionate but naive, maybe he's a healer who ends up creating a plague; maybe he's a straightforward warrior whose magic lets him devastate battlefields.

Magic can take any number of forms. It's really about deciding which imbalance in the world you think the power could trigger; a different power goes with a whole different story.


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## Filk (Mar 20, 2013)

Check out the magic section here: Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

I've found some very useful guiding questions on this site. As to my own magic system, I am kind of making it up as I go and it is working out alright. I had the building blocks set up and now that magic has become a part of my main character's life I am developing it in full. I used to worry about my magic system being too bland and generic, but I am developing some interesting twists to the usual variety as I go.


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## TWErvin2 (Mar 20, 2013)

The power to see truth--to know when an individual is lying, or being half-truthful.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 20, 2013)

I'm working on a similar theme, with the dominant magical population (wizards) on the look-out for the return of more powerful wielders of magic (mages).  What I've gone with is this - there are many schools of magic, on both sides of the fence.  Sex, blood/pain, potions/poisoning, elemental, demonic sorcery, etc.  What makes the mages so much more powerful than the wizards is limitations.  

The wizards must draw from the, admittedly large, amount of power contained within their own bodies.  They are also only able to perform magic with the use of ritual, symbolism, and foci (wands, staves, spoons, what-have-you).  They are capable of some very nasty things, but only with the proper preparations.  A wizard caught with his/her pants down or out of juice is just as helpless and easy to kill as any human.

A mage, on the other hand, can draw power from their environment - the earth, the electrical grid, whatever their magical inclination - and are therefore able to access nearly limitless power.  They do not need ritual or symbolism to perform magic.  All they need is to focus their will and the universe bends.  A mage is physically just as easy to kill as a human, but you better catch them sleeping, or put them into a medical coma, and even then you're not guaranteed of safety - some mages are able to detach from their disabled bodies and still continue to affect their environments.

So I would look at what makes your priests so powerful, and then try to firgure out what sort of complimentary/contrasting magic would be so threatening to them.


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## ProjectZ (Mar 20, 2013)

In my story the main character is without power. By that i mean every being in this world has the capacity (they are born with it) to use magics. If taught to do so. However, his enemies do not want to eliminate him, they want to use him. In his lack of power he becomes powerful physically, not in the sense that he can lift things 10 times heavier, but he becomes more aware of his self. Without the veil of magic to cloud his vision, he sees things as they are and can react quicker and move faster. Of course he achieves this through training and close shaves, and improves every time he is not killed. 

I think you need to find, what in your world is different. Like in my case its the complete opposite of almost all the beings (he is not the first or the only one). I would assume you have an idea of the opposing forces agenda, if you do draw from that and you can find something that can foil them.

That being said, through thinking about this, and much to my own personal taste. Perhaps powers that affect the person's own attributes or something along the lines of enhancements that make lets say a practiced marksman be able to see things slower while still being able to move in normal speed. or be able to look into far distances. With of course a counter effect like becoming temporal blind once deactivated, so using the power will have to be a risk. or performed when confident of his surroundings.


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## advait98 (Mar 21, 2013)

Well, if you go the extremely simple route, it could be that the said magician is born in the watch of the priesthood's enemies, and has tremendous power since birth, ability to control every element, bla bla... You get my drift.

But of course, that is also an extremely well-trodden route, and won't be that original.

So for something more complex... like the others have said here, it doesn't have to be a breathtakingly powerful form of magic, it can be something simple like mind-reading, aura reading, the ability to see through a person, and the truth, the works.
Or maybe something else, that is not actually magic at all- Enlightenment. Morality. But I don't think that's what you really want, so let's get that out of the way.

Maybe, it's a form of magic that just cannot be withstood. A different energy, one that is foreign to their familiar forms of magic which they can't counter.

Well, that's all I can say right now. If another idea comes to me, I'll type it down.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Mar 21, 2013)

Anberith said:


> I'm working on a new idea and I have the basic plot planned. who they major characters are and who the opposing force are. I am having a little problem in deciding on the special magical powers the main characters have and it's central to the story.
> In the story there is a priesthood that believe that one day a person with this form of magic will be their destruction so through out the years they have been on the look out for anyone like that.
> A some of the priests have magical abilities and know what they are to expect when it comes to this person and the power he/she possesses. What I can't make my mind on is the power this person possesses, it has to be something that creates this fear in the priest so I guess it has to be powerful magic. Something that could threaten their whole existence.
> 
> I know that this is very vague but I would love some ideas to what this power could be.



Depends a bit on how these powers actually work. Is it an "X-Men" kind of deal where everyone has one unique ability, or is it more of a general type of magic were everyone has similar abilities but different individuals can have varying talents? 

Off the top of my head, I'd suggest to make it something that violates what these people consider to be the "rules" of magic - establish what is supposed to be impossible to do with these powers, and allow your character to do that. But by doing so, the character supposedly unravels the rules that hold their reality together, creating instability. Kinda like a person who makes holes in the walls of his house rather than use the door, until finally the house collapses.

Or perhaps it does strange things to magic itself, or actually damages it? Or maybe it just threatens to provoke an unpleasant paradigm shift - that is to say, something very important that this priesthood considers to be fundamentally "true" might end up being "not true", thereby undoing them in a figurative manner.

Be that as it may, it has to be something that's at least theoretically possible, since they were able to predict it. That means you have to establish a coherent magic system anyway. So start by laying down some solid rules, and then figure out the most interesting way to subvert them.


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## ThomasCardin (Mar 27, 2013)

It should be integral to your story beyond just being a magical ability. Say if the priests were worshippers of Nelgo the Firelord and the prophecied foe would be a man from whom the waters flow.

I have a healthy healthy dose of magical abilities in my work so I am familiar with what you are going through. Think cinematic or subtle...

I wrote a blog post about the weighing of these magical abilities HERE


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## Sheilawisz (Mar 27, 2013)

This could be a type of Magic that manifests itself for the first time with elemental style, in ways that the person developing the powers cannot fully control and so it constitutes a scary and dangerous experience:

Maybe the new Mage wakes up one day and when he or she touches a friend, a lightning discharge is released from the hand and leaves the other person knocked out or even seriously hurt... If that happened to me I would be afraid of accidentally harming my family, friends or some random person, and I would do my best to hide it!!

Another possibility would be to magically cause fires by accident, releasing waves of heat that you can see but are invisible to others, what do you think?


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## Zak9 (Mar 28, 2013)

Something extremely terrifying and powerful would be the power of persuasion. The character could say anything, and the victim's mind would be attacked and would do its bidding.
Another cool one is the power to change into any human, or altering appearance immediately. That has endless possibilities.


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## psychotick (Mar 28, 2013)

Hi,

In one of my current works I created an enemy that was devestating to priests, having made the priests the most powerful of all the casters. In essence it was simple, I made it so that the priests gained their magic / powers from their deity, and it was that connection that was essential. Then I created an enemy who could sever that connection, leaving the priests and paladins and any others who used such magic, completely powerless.

That would be frightening I think.

Cheers, Greg.


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## duelingsith (Apr 15, 2013)

This might be bad, but...

This
List of superhuman features and abilities in fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
is a site that I have bookmarked...when I'm searching for a magical ability for a character, I skim through some of the ideas and examples until I find one that fits the particular scene/plot etc.
*shrug*


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## Abbas-Al-Morim (Apr 16, 2013)

Don't want to be so gloom but isn't the point of worldbuilding and fantasy writing that you create your own world? I mean, I get people get stuck sometimes but I think it's a lot more fun to create your own magic system without letting others give you ideas to work with. That way, it will feel a lot more like your creation.

It's just an opinion and is in no way intended to be insulting, assaulting or condescending. Everyone can worldbuild the way they want to and there isn't a "right way". But I just thought I'd share that since I've seen similar threads all around.


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## Addison (Apr 20, 2013)

I know that in any fantasy, magic has three key necessities. More questions you have to ask yourself. 

Question 1: What is the D.C.S of the magic? S is for Scarcity, if there are twenty people in the room, how many are magical? How rare or common is magic? C is for complex, is it simple wave wand, say a rhyming couplet and POOF? Or is it drawing a big circle, calling a god and correctly pronouncing words?  And D is for difficulty. The complexity was for the magic itself, Difficulty is more about the magic-caster. How difficult is it for them to learn and master the gift. For all we know it could be more difficult to do the wand-poof magic than the circle magic. 

Question 2: What is the magic's limit? Everything has a limit; we have limits in physical exertion and emotional tolerance. Ice has a weak tolerance to heat, cars can only go so far until they need gas or a new tire. Magic too has a limit, nothing is free so what is the cost? Steven Harper covers this very well in his book, "Writing the Paranormal Novel". There are several limits, I don't remember them all of the top of my head but there is; energy, the magician puts his own strength and energy into the spells. When he's done he needs a recharge because, if he over does it, he could go into a coma or die or be too weak to do anything.     Pay the Piper, magic actually costs something. It could be money, food, clothes, who knows. (Like Rumplestiltskin) 
 Stir the Cauldron, magic isn't cast by hand, they have to be concocted with exact ingredients following precise recipes. 
You Want it When? This limit is under the pretext that magic is alive. It's not a powerful, invisible force that you can tap into inside or outside the body. It's alive and will help if and when it wants to. 
The most interesting one, in my opinion, is the one where magic only works if the magician is in the right circumstances. Maybe their magic, or certain magic, only works if they're in sunlight. If they're happy, if they're bleeding, if they're by a ley line etc. 
    Basically magic needs a limit, something that says "It works until then or unless this." 

Question 3: Magic needs an means of getting from the magician to its target. A tool. And these can be anything. Most used it wands, staves, occasionally hands and/or incantations. But these tools should have some way of showing if the character is having trouble with the spell, if the staff zaps him, the wands is shaking loose from his grip or his fingers are burning from the magical energy. It's your story so the tool can be anything and be used in any way. 

Really think about these things. Then, this works for me, fold it up into as small a square or triangle as you can and hide it. Or tear it up! You'll know how it works, the magic, but with the paper out of sight, it's out of mind, and you can write with ease with a better sense of wonder, which is key for fantasy.


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## Addison (Apr 22, 2013)

Woops, error. C is for Cost, not complexity. What does the magic cost? Life, blood, money etc. It needs a limit, that is the cost.


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## Grimmlore (Apr 22, 2013)

I think any priesthood would hate having their god(s) destroyed,.. so maybe not a power that can directly destroy a god but something similar maybe your mc has the power to communicate with the gods and can convince him her them to destroy the priesthood or something ha,... have you looked at greek or norse mythology?? there is all sorts of stories about gods and demi gods defying one another..


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## Addison (Apr 22, 2013)

....Okay I just had a flash back to Disney's Sword and the Stone. Remember the wizard's duel? At the end Madame Mim was a dragon and Merlin had turned into a Virus which made her sick and he won the match. Maybe a power like that. 

Speaking of magic I've been having a little quandary about my MC's powers. At first I saw him as having great powers but they were out of control (either too much for him to handle or he couldn't call upon them when he wanted) but now it's crowding everything else. Part of his character development is around him and his powers, mastering them and finding what they do, where they come from. Anyone have any ideas about power-character arcs, and power in general?


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