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The Price of Magic

Rkcapps

Sage
I'm pondering the price of magic. Other than exhaustion, can you think of anything else? I know The Shannara Chronicles had the stones burn into Wil's hands but there are no "conduits" in my world.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
The cost could be in disfiguration of the spell caster, I think that is somewhat common. Sinbad had a witch with a leg permanently transformed into a birds leg. Glowing eyes, and ruined face, like the cost of using the dark side of the force for little Ani and Palpatine. Could be the cost in materials used. If you need and owl feather to work the spell, the owl feather could be consumed. The cost could be the corruption of ones soul, similar to Frodo using the ring. The cost could be the weakening of magic energies of the planet as a whole, too much leading to a cataclysmic type event.
 
Physical symptoms: exhaustion, nausea, fainting, weight loss/wasting away the user, inflicting just about any unpleasant effect. Magic being extremely painful.

Using magic causing hallucinations, decay of sanity or mental health.

Magic being difficult to control and accidents being common, hurting people around the user.

Magic slowly corrupting those who use it.

Magic being dangerously addictive.

Just a few ideas...
 
I don't particilary like magic systems with high cost.

Imagine the following scenario - two magic users. One of them use his life force to fuel his powers and his healt and\or apearence detiorate each time he use his powers and the other use external renueble power sorce ( Nature, cristals, other people life force , gods, demons , spiritual etc). The one with the external power sorce will be much stronger. Also the one with the external power sorce will have a much higher chance of reproducing and passing on his gennes.

Also if your magic is less impresive and way more unpractical than guns , catapults and other weapons that existed in real life
, why not use conventional weapons. They will be cooler and the rule of cool is important in fantasy.
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
I don't particilary like magic systems with high cost.

Imagine the following scenario - two magic users. One of them use his life force to fuel his powers and his healt and\or apearence detiorate each time he use his powers and the other use external renueble power sorce ( Nature, cristals, other people life force , gods, demons , spiritual etc). The one with the external power sorce will be much stronger. Also the one with the external power sorce will have a much higher chance of reproducing and passing on his gennes.

Also if your magic is less impresive and way more unpractical than guns , catapults and other weapons that existed in real life
, why not use conventional weapons. They will be cooler and the rule of cool is important in fantasy.

Well, if your protagonist has to pay a high cost to use magic and your antagonist doesn't, well that's an easy peasy way to increase the difficulty of the task for your protagonist innit? Tension increases, blah blah. If this isn't how you're using it, the question becomes why? Why do you have more than one magic system in your novel?
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The cost can be in magic. The more you use, the less effective it is (over some set period of time). Or the more erratic it becomes.

As others have said, the possibilities are endless. When I do this kind of calculus, I proceed from the other end. That is, I leave everything up in the air as I write my story. As I get to specific situations, I let the story set the constraints. By the time I have a few scenes written, I begin to get a feel for how magic behaves. Over quite a long time, I finally have a system that underlies all my stories. I am quite certain I would never have been able to build this in the abstract and have fit my stories into it.
 
What role will magic play in your story? Who will be using magic – MC/hero? Villain? Only side characters?

I'd approach the decision on the basis of these questions.

Cost itself can play different roles.

Cost can be used to limit access to magic or use of magic in the world:

  • If many expensive ingredients or rare ingredients are required to perform magic, this type of cost will mean few have the opportunity to use it.
  • If using magic even half well requires years of study, decades even, this sort of cost also will limit access and use within the world.
  • If the physical penalties are always extreme, this may also limit its use because fewer people will be willing to go blind, become deformed, whatever.

Cost can be used create conflict for a main character:

  • Extreme physical penalties will create the questions, Do I risk it? Yet, I must do it! But...the cost!?
  • If the world might be greatly threatened, possibly destroyed, the MC might ask those same questions.
  • If the society abhors magic use, then the cost of becoming an outcast will weigh on an MC's mind and may limit the MC's ability to accomplish other things (because he'll be alone.)
  • If the MC must kill others and use their blood and body parts to work magic, this cost may lead the MC to suffer a great moral dilemma, wrestle with saving/losing his soul, possibly lead him to insanity.

There may be other roles cost plays in your story, and these might overlap somewhat.

IF you want to create conflict for a main character, I'd begin by asking what that main character values most. Think of three or four things he values. Then set up your cost so that it threatens one or more of those things.

Now, we all value our own health, so things like exhaustion, deformity, and possible deadly explosions centered upon us are common types of cost. Exhaustion is overused in stories, probably.

But what if your MC values his family and village community? Maybe the cost in that case could be ostracism–magic is abhorred, he'll become an outcast even with his family–or, maybe in order to use magic he must put dear ones in thrall and siphon their life force on a continual basis.

What if your MC values his image and propriety? Heh, maybe the cost of magic is that he can't touch cloth without being severely burned by it, so finding clothing is difficult. Or maybe magic causes him to let loose very smelly farts throughout the day. (These are a bit extreme and maybe silly, but you get the idea.)

If your MC values his own intellect, maybe every use of magic causes him to lose some bit of knowledge.

And so on and on.
 
Well, if your protagonist has to pay a high cost to use magic and your antagonist doesn't, well that's an easy peasy way to increase the difficulty of the task for your protagonist innit? Tension increases, blah blah. If this isn't how you're using it, the question becomes why? Why do you have more than one magic system in your novel?

I have only one system.
By the way if You really want to increase the tension, you shouldn't give your mc magic.
 

Annoyingkid

Banned
I have only one system.
By the way if You really want to increase the tension, you shouldn't give your mc magic.

On the other hand, one has to be careful because a gap that's too wide between hero and villain will limit storytelling options and make it so they can't meet each other until the end and even then the villain only loses because of their own stupidity. Aka Eragon and Galbatorix syndrome.
 
D

Deleted member 4265

Guest
Also if your magic is less impresive and way more unpractical than guns , catapults and other weapons that existed in real life
, why not use conventional weapons. They will be cooler and the rule of cool is important in fantasy.


This assumes the only use for magic is combat, but there are many other ways magic could be applied and still be worth an immensely high price such as healing, mind-reading, seeing the future, controlling the weather and thus preventing (or causing) drought, communing with the spirit world, telepathy, ect.
 

TheKillerBs

Maester
I have only one system.
By the way if You really want to increase the tension, you shouldn't give your mc magic.

Magic can itself be a source of tension, so no, not necessarily. And if you only have one system, then the scenario you painted would never happen, so it's a moot point anyway.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
If you want to look at various ways cost has been used, I'd suggest looking at Brandon Sanderson's magic systems.

One of the most interesting costs of magic I found was in the shared world novellas by Tobias Buckell and Paolo Bacigalupi, The Executioness and The Alchemist.

Taken from an iO9 article.
Every time somebody casts a spell - whether something huge that will create a floating city, or something small that will heal a child's cough - it feeds the "bramble." Bramble is a plant that chokes off farmlands and kills everything in its path, including the humans for whom it is poison.
 

Rkcapps

Sage
Thanks, everyone, you've definitely helped honed my magic system, especially Fifthview :) I love the discussion, it helps tease out the finer points to a cost. Time to write more!
 
This assumes the only use for magic is combat, but there are many other ways magic could be applied and still be worth an immensely high price such as healing, mind-reading, seeing the future, controlling the weather and thus preventing (or causing) drought, communing with the spirit world, telepathy, ect.

Depen on what you you meen by immensely high price.
 

RedAngel

Minstrel
I honestly do not know how I feel about the price or cost aspect of magic. I think many people are hung up on the idea that it has to be detrimental in some way or have a drawback worthy of keeping the general populace from using it all the time.

I watched Sandersons class in which he spells out the price of magic. It really does make a lot of sense that you need to keep magic at a distance to make it seem special and to instill a sense of wonder when the writer decides to put it into play. I get that.

On one hand you have a world that magic should be second nature in. Depending on how you plan to use magic you need to allow your MC or supporting chars the time to not only discover magic but also to hone and master it in segments in which to overcome some kind of obstacle. On the other you have to show the impact it has along with the risks of using it.

I am not personally too much of a fan of doing detrimental damage to my MC every time he decides to use magic. Price or cost aside the story would go nowhere if every time magic was used people went mad, passed out, died, or injured everyone around them.

I think those events are all worst case scenerios for when magic goes horribly wrong and not every time you use magic. If anything it is a slow degridation that is not immediatly occuring but over a long period of time or a lifetime of using magic or specific types of magic in general that are combative or detrimental. I can see if the character is interrupted in mid cast assuming your magic is not instant. The other premise of magic is the fact that it can change many things but magic can also be used to undo just about as much as was caused.

As an example you don't see athletes getting injured every time they play their sport. What you do see is over exertion and them pushing their limits until their body fails or some freak incident they have done thousands of times and this time it does not work. I don't think magic is much different and is more like a spiritual muscile than a physical one. A muscle that requires excercise and trinaing to reach your max potential. Do too much too soon and you will either burn yourself out or you will injure yourself. You do not just decide to run a marathon out of the blue you need to train for it. Likewise the lucky will never suffer such injuries though over the years they will take wear and tear on their bodies and have arthritis or other ailments that nag them but they can still compete.

I think the real danger of magic comes in the form of awakening magic, skill level, distraction, interuption, physical injury, the time it takes to cast a spell, emtion, intent, moral uses, environmental condition, and the event unfolding before the MC. There are probably many more factors but to me those are the main reasons why detriment would even come into play if it is improperly cast in the first place.

I think a person's adrenaline plays heavily on the cost of magic. I think that if a person is calm magic would be much easier to cast then if you were running for your life or scared to death pinned into a corner.
 
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Rkcapps

Sage
I like your interpretation RedAngel. A question then in your analogy, couldn't a person under pressure also be forced to practice (an innate) magic? Like in the same situation we are all put in at one time in a job ... either sink or swim. So a mage learns by encountering hard stuff that they can do something hard they never considered trying?
 

Ruru

Troubadour
I've used a system where it is a moral standpoint that restricts magics use, among other things. In the race that can use it, everyone can use it, but with varying aptitude and usually only though training. Normally it is used for healing, but it can also be turned to a destructive end (it is more of a non-specific energy than a 'magic' which can be used for spells or curses). The race is normally a peaceful, easy going culture, and their abhorrence to killing is such that even in a tight spot, they don't want to use the power. So there is an avoidance of the destruction and death that it can cause that restricts how it is used, sort of a last resort feel. There is also a physical cost: raw energy even in the body of the wielder is quite harmful.
 

TWErvin2

Auror
In my First Civilization's Legacy Series, spell casters require aptitude and training, especially to advance.

As they advance, they begin to take on 'aspects' of their craft. Seers begin to lose their physical sight, Enchanters become more and more susceptible to magic used against them, sorcerers become more physically twisted and disabled, healers become unable to harm others, necromancers...well, not pretty, etc.
 

RedAngel

Minstrel
I like your interpretation RedAngel. A question then in your analogy, couldn't a person under pressure also be forced to practice (an innate) magic? Like in the same situation we are all put in at one time in a job ... either sink or swim. So a mage learns by encountering hard stuff that they can do something hard they never considered trying?

It was Hellen Keller who said "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strenghtened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
 
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