Magic systems please!

[MSadiq]

Sword: speed, power, and range are well balanced. However, this means that sword users are only most effective against other sword users, as well as in one-on-one combat, and are on less than equal ground with the other weapons.

I have to question this, as swords aren't all the same length or weight, especially if you're dealing with multiple periods, if your world is period-agnostic, or multiple cultures that have different swords, unless you're saying that all manifested swords are the exact same length, weight, and shape, then this is a non-factor.

Dagger/short spear: amazing speed, but lacking in both power and range most effective against spear users.

I have to question this, too. Someone with a knife has almost no chance against someone with a spear. The range is just too different. However, if this is a fantasy world with what's basically super humans, then this also won't matter as much, but still, spears, realistically, shouldn't lose to daggers, but it's fantasy, so why not have daggers beat spears?

Great weapon: excellent power, and average range, but suffers horribly in speed.

Idk how BIG are your great weapons, but, for example, a great sword isn't that heavy; you could balance it on the tip of your finger. Also, they're not slow by any means. Sure, no dagger fast, but quite nimble in good hands.

• Magic is tied to one of their eyes, so it's harder to lose. If the eye is taken out, it grows back over a week. During that time, magic is unusable.
• The linked eye is a distinct color

Would be interesting to see a ring user create an item that hides someone's eye color for a bait or something like that.

Enhancement/imbuement: the strength, durability, or speed of the magical creature is used to enhance your own, or the energy of the beast (same energy as projection) is imbued into a melee attack. Ex: an ogre bound could make himself as strong as said ogre, or a summer fae bound could imbue a physical strike with radiant magic.

This is really interesting, but might annoy some people if some user have it suddenly reveal that his bound creature has this life-saving ability in the last moment.

Overall, it's a good system with parameters that can create high stakes, but I think the best part is that it's categorized, yet it doesn't have me question it in the way categorized systems do because the exceptions are defined. If there's something that's can be seen as a negative, it's the parameters; they make fights more predictable, depending on execution.

 

[MSadiq]

As for my magic system, I'll just post what I've posted already because it's p much a done magic system.

he power system is a quasi-elemental magic system that relies on the senses of words—their denotations and connotations. These elements are fire, earth, wind, ice, lightning, sand, diurnal, and nocturnal (not simply dark and light because they cover the larger concepts of day and night and what's in day and night)

In this world, Tilmun, people essentially speaking two languages: Arabic and English, basically. Those that speak "Arabic," mainly humans, call it Tamtheel—representation, acting, analogue, simulation, and modeling. The "English" speakers, who are a race called Lykins, call it Shaping.

The powers of Tamtheel are split into two kinds. Attributes, which are quite self-explanatory. Each person has only one attribute, usually, and these are: fire, earth, wind, ice, lightning, sand, light, and dark. The second kind are simahs or manes, as Lykins call it; they're inherent abilities that creatures are born with and are separate from attributes, and where a person can only have one attribute, he has access to all the simahs of his race, like the jald, jass, hidayah, and muhakah of the humans, or the dimming, latting, bremming, and bying of the Lykins.

The thing that activates Tamtheel is ma (water)/might. But there's a key difference in activating simahs and attributes. Attributes require the Mumathil's/Shaper's own ma, while simahs only require the ma that exists naturally everywhere, but attributes have no physical effects on the Mumathil, while a simah drains his stamina.

This difference in naming, produces a difference in perception between humans and Lykins, and the difference in perception produces differences in effect. To humans ma sensed through jass is sometimes is placid like a puddle after intense rainfall, or a raging whirlpool, or a gentle wave. or a crashing one. To Lykins, might sensed through latting is a glowing abstract shape of pure power: sometimes it is barely giving off any light, or it might be blazing like a miniature bluish sun, or like a raging turquoise fire. Also, both experiences are separated from the usual senses. A Lykin won't go blind nor a human get crushed from its intensity. They're senses that exist on a separate plane, so to speak.

Moreover, the manes of Lykins are quite different to the simahs of the humans, as the Lykins' manes all manifest physically or in a physical-like experience. The word mane comes from the old word mægen, which is where we get the word main, but mane has retained its old denotations and connotations of bodily strength and physical power. So, while they both can sense ma, as I have stated above, humans can't see it nor hear it; they can only feel it pushing on them, like you can feel the wind.

A common ability amongst light mumathils is enlighten, an ability that makes the person it is used on less rash, more logical, and more comprehending. This only works because light, metaphorically, is perceived as informing or inspiring. You can even summarize it in phrases like light is knowledge, light is perception, light is clarity, and so on. These perceptions of light makes it possible to create abilities that reflect these perceived qualities of light.

Lykins, who speak English, for example, have the phrase "to plant one's feet in the ground," which means to be firm and insistent, and so when earth mumathils literally plant their feet in the ground, they become resolute and determined, making them harder to intimidate. Humans don't have this idiom, and so this effect doesn't manifest.

The difference in perception, and therefore in effect, isn't exclusive to wider perceptions. While the difference in simahs between individuals of the same race are quite minute and almost imperceptible, as they're hard-baked into them, the difference between individuals that have the same attributes grow more pronounced as a mumathil gets more experience, and his attribute grows more unique to him.

For example, two people can have a fire attribute, but if for some weird reason, the other can't feel heat, but experiences burning, his fire won't be hot, because doesn't know what hot is, and it won't be producing the pain associated with fire, but it will produce the effects of burning in his victim. Or if a wacky fire mumathil think his if his fire gets hot and big enough it will push people, then it will literally push people physically when he feels like his fire is big and strong enough.

This is also why there's no water attribute while there's ice. Humans already perceive themselves as using water because they use ma. I.e., water, while the Lykins are a relatively primitive in Tamtheel and haven't had the time to manifest it nor is water major enough in their culture for there to a pressure to make it manifest.

Because of the effects of perception, lexicographers, rhetoricians, and grammar have worked very hard to document language to prevent semantic shifts in words and keep the connotations of words as consistent as possible, making teaching an attribute to a new mumathil quite easier, especially as education became mandatory 360-ish years ago.

All mumathils that have the same attribute learn the same basic abilities, but it is up to them to develop these abilities and create new ones. For example, some mumathils lean on the more abstract aspects of wind, and so you see a wind mumathil who interprets the ability swift step as himself becoming light like the wind, becoming faster, while another manifests wind that propels him off the ground, and he glides on the earth. With experience, the former might only become faster, while later, his wind get more intense and develop into an entire new ability that lets him fly.

And that's about it without getting into all the details. There's more to this, as well as a secondary power system, but this gives you the flavor.

 

[mr_clean]

I have to question this, as swords aren't all the same length or weight, especially if you're dealing with multiple periods, if your world is period-agnostic, or multiple cultures that have different swords, unless you're saying that all manifested swords are the exact same length, weight, and shape, then this is a non-factor.

I have to question this, too. Someone with a knife has almost no chance against someone with a spear. The range is just too different. However, if this is a fantasy world with what's basically super humans, then this also won't matter as much, but still, spears, realistically, shouldn't lose to daggers, but it's fantasy, so why not have daggers beat spears?

Idk how BIG are your great weapons, but, for example, a great sword isn't that heavy; you could balance it on the tip of your finger. Also, they're not slow by any means. Sure, no dagger fast, but quite nimble in good hands.

Would be interesting to see a ring user create an item that hides someone's eye color for a bait or something like that.

This is really interesting, but might annoy some people if some user have it suddenly reveal that his bound creature has this life-saving ability in the last moment.

Overall, it's a good system with parameters that can create high stakes, but I think the best part is that it's categorized, yet it doesn't have me question it in the way categorized systems do because the exceptions are defined. If there's something that's can be seen as a negative, it's the parameters; they make fights more predictable, depending on execution.

I do understand weapons, I have also seen spellsword arts, but there needs to be some kind of ballence system, so think of the stats as more the stats of the magic used, as opposed to the weapon. Does that make sense? I feel I worded that weird, sorry.