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My Magic System

Noma Galway

Archmage
I just want to see if this sounds bad or not. Pretty much, it is a system of elemental magic with some "psychic" elements, I suppose.
First I want to make it plain that not everybody can use magic. I haven't quite worked out what determines who gets an element and who doesn't yet.
Each element has a major "power" set and a minor "power" set. Usually they just sort of influence the major element, because almost everyone with the elemental magic has two elements (major and minor).

People whose element is air are termed "airwalkers." They can teleport (kind of), they can fly, and they can actually create and control the wind. When a person has a minor element of air, they can still teleport, but there are three "spirit" powers, as air is closest to the spirit realm. If the major element is water, they can heal. If the major element is Fire, they can commune with the spirits (not sure if I am ridding myself of this later on) and release the spirit from the body. The opposition element for air is earth.

People whose element is fire are termed "firedancers." They can create actual fire. When held as a minor power in conjunction with earth, they can create heat. When held as a minor power in conjunction with air, they can create lightning. The opposition element for fire is water.

People whose element is water are termed "watershapers." They can pull water from a source (NOT create it) and use it in whatever fashion they wish. They can freeze it if they are skilled. They can't boil it, because that is the realm of fire. When held as a minor power in conjunction with earth, they can cool pretty much anything to a certain temperature. When held as a minor power in conjunction with air, they can control clouds and the weather, with the exception of lightning, which is, again, the realm of fire. The opposition element for water is fire.

People whose element is earth are termed "earthmolders." They can cause earthquakes and shape earth and stone to their liking. When held as a minor power in conjunction with water, they can create and control mud and clay, which doesn't sound all that useful but it can be when used right. When held as a minor power in conjunction with fire, the person can create near-volcanic effects.

That pretty much concludes the elemental aspect of magic. Far rarer are the "psychic" powers. These powers develop in people who have certain gifts or abilities naturally, or who possess certain qualities. There are four categories.

Those with a present-at-birth physical disability or handicap develop empathic powers. They get one ability and they also develop elemental powers, though they never develop a minor power in air. The three abilities are future sight (which pretty much means uncontrollable visions), emotional awareness (manifesting itself in the form of a visual sign on a person what emotional state they are in), and telepathy (just a quick, one-way image projected into the mind of another person).

Those with natural mental strength (like crazy smart) can work control over minds. They can either completely dominate a person's will (called possession, can only possess one person at a time), control the will (your basic mind-controlled zombies, but not undead), share the mind (coexist in equal shares in one head, thought of as a very pleasurable experience by many people), or influence the mind (make suggestions, give energy to a person). They can use all four abilities, sometimes at the same time, if they are very mentally gifted.

Two more develop later in life, when the qualities are shown:

People who are unnaturally beautiful can do three things. They can cause a distraction, magically, as if simply mundanely being around wasn't enough. They can summon people from far away, and they will come as soon as physically possible to the spot to which they were summoned (unless they have extraordinary willpower). They can cause someone to be friends with them. This one is a bit weird, but it pretty much just puts goodwill towards the person inside the target's head.

People who are extremely, extremely religious actually somehow managed to make contact with their deity (pantheon of three), and developed magic as well. These people do not have elements, typically, and if they do, they lose the elemental powers when they develop the magic from their deity. They can bless something, with an actual effect (I'm still working on this), curse something (like bless but opposite), and they can call upon a minor air power.

In addition to all of this, very very rarely a person is born with both elemental and psychic magic. If this happens, the person only has the minor ability and the power it grants to the major ability. For instance, if a person is a firedancer with a minor air power and also has the mind control aspect of psychic powers, the person can use lighting and ALL THREE minor air powers, but cannot create fire.

If you have any questions (or suggestions for the elementalist's names) please tell me :)

Thanks for getting through the post...I know it was long.
 

TrustMeImRudy

Troubadour
While this may sound somewhat cheesy, it is still true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in this instance I don't even mean inner beauty or any of that, but purely aesthetic outside beauty is also in the eye of the beholder. My friend and I get along very well and are very similar in a lot of ways, but sometimes I see an extremely attractive girl who he thinks is just plain, and vice versa. So what exactly constitutes a beautiful person that they would get such powers? Who's ideal of 'beauty' are they fulfilling?

Seeing as its psychic, my first thought was maybe that if they believed themselves deemed beautiful, like people always chasing them and telling them and so; i.e. the people always fawned over by the majority of their surrounding peers for their looks, perhaps they would unlock the power themselves, but that theory of mine would mean everyone has the power, it just cant be unlocked without certain beliefs. Assuming for the moment I am correct [and if I'm not you can ignore the following] what would happen to a beautiful person that unlocks the powers and then moves to another country where the idea of beauty is completely different?
 
Hi,

It's a little confusng and complicated for me. My thoughts would be that some of the abilities don't seem to fit too well with the realm. Teleportation and air? I don't see it. Fire and communing with the spirits? Again they don't gel well as far as I can see. Communing with spirits seems more psychic to me. And why does healing go with water? For my money it would fit better with either psychic or the physically disadvantaged.

As for fire and air giving you lightning, that goes against basic physics. Lightning comes from the movement of air against air and the ground building up an immense static charge. So maybe lightning should just be a part of the major power of air instead of teleportation.

Last the religious one. This is your priests and could I suggest that if they can commune with their gods then whatever their god's calling is that's the powers they should have. It would make for a complete wild card as they would then have magi completely at odds with all others.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, Greg.
 

Noma Galway

Archmage
Who's ideal of 'beauty' are they fulfilling?

I'm thinking I'm going to have the psychic abilities (and I don't really want to call them psychic, but there is no other word) be gifted by the gods. Whichever god's domain the qualification is grants the ability, if that makes sense.
Excellent question, by the way.

My thoughts would be that some of the abilities don't seem to fit too well with the realm. Teleportation and air? I don't see it. Fire and communing with the spirits? Again they don't gel well as far as I can see. Communing with spirits seems more psychic to me. And why does healing go with water? For my money it would fit better with either psychic or the physically disadvantaged.

As for fire and air giving you lightning, that goes against basic physics. Lightning comes from the movement of air against air and the ground building up an immense static charge. So maybe lightning should just be a part of the major power of air instead of teleportation.

Last the religious one. This is your priests and could I suggest that if they can commune with their gods then whatever their god's calling is that's the powers they should have. It would make for a complete wild card as they would then have magi completely at odds with all others
It's not actually teleportation...it is a form of air travel. I didn't have a name for it. Pretty much, it is an ability that makes something move very fast to where you want it to move, with the exception of killing someone (i.e. you can't drop someone into a pit of lava). You have to know where your target is and where your destination is. It isn't instantaneous, and actually it can take a while to happen.
The minor air powers came about because air is the closest to the realm of spirits, and a minor air power would fall under that category. The Communing with spirits and affecting spirits went to fire because it would both soften the power of major fire and increase the aggressive potential. Healing goes with water because so much of a human is water and to heal you should be able to manipulate the water.

With fire and air giving lightning, I know where lightning comes from, but this is magic and you cannot typically manipulate lighting. The lightning ability can be manipulated in several ways, and fire was the stabilizer here.

could I suggest that if they can commune with their gods then whatever their god's calling is that's the powers they should have.
Yes, yes you can. I thought about that after I posted because this is the first time I've realized that I have three deities. I think the abilities can stay the same, but maybe the effects should differ? I haven't worked out the pantheon yet fully, but as an example:
Lets say a priest of a god of nature blesses something. It would have a different effect than a god of death blessing something. Unless the god of nature is the same god as the god of death.

Thank you Greg and Rudy, that was a big help,
 

Fyri

Inkling
This all very intricate work you've done here. Kudos. I, for one, think that most of the elemental combinations make sense.
I agree, for the second half, the term psychic doesn't quite fit. You could pull it off as everyday readers aren't too sceptical of names as long as thy fit for the most part. Looking into it, not all of the powers of a psychic are truely psychic, huh? All of the psychic powers are gifted by a god, right? So, if you are looking for a different name, perhaps something like 'the gifted' might work. Or something to go with how they obtained their powers. Or lime you have elementals, you may also have magics/magicals(?). Elemental control is not always considered the same as magic.
 

Noma Galway

Archmage
True. I don't typically refer to the elemental control as magic, I call it manipulation. Gifted would work, I was concerned about it sounding like Sword of Truth, though.
 

Fyri

Inkling
:/ Well, it doesnt have to be gifted exactly. It could be granted, chosen, blessed, insert thesaurus here. Or since you say some of them are psychic because they were born with a disability, you could go along the lines of mercied, diseased(though its kinda negative), or something like that.. You might even be needing to simply seperate the psychics into two different genres since some are more holy than others. Eh, just suggestions from a lowly outsider. ;)
 

Noma Galway

Archmage
A lowly outsider with good ideas :) Chosen would be cool for the divine magics, but I'd have to work on it. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but that magic doesn't play a huge role in my story, so I'm not all that concerned at the moment.
 
Here's another thing: earth and fire make heat?

Heat and fire are the same thing-- okay, "fire" is a heat-caused process and all, but whenever we say "fire magic" what we're almost always thinking about is "heat that's enough to start fires." (And shows flames while you're using it, probably.) It's like calling a sword attack a blood-strike, accurate but not enough reason to say the two are separate things.

I've seen systems that call fire+earth "lava" or other things, and you might make this magic the point that's best at making things burn or go red-hot and stay that way (which makes it more precisely fire than "fire", hard to name), maybe less powerful than raw fire but less exhausting because the objects are helping to stabilize it. Or you might use Forging, finer control of materials under heat.
 

Noma Galway

Archmage
What I meant by this was that fire on its own is typically a burst of flames. There isn't much finesse to it at all. Earth with a minor fire affinity has subtlety. You're heating things, but you can't see where the heat is coming from. You can start a fire with it, but you can't control the flames. I do like the Forging aspect to it though, thank you :)
 
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