Elemental Magic

[Prince of Spires]

There's a whole genre out there that focusses on power levels and characters improving, called Progression Fantasy. The biggest, and best, example in it is probably the Cradle series, by Will Wight. It's a great read if you're into that sort of thing. A 12 book series, where the first is decent and the rest is great.

 

[Finchbearer]

I'm intentionally using video game aspects. It acts as a common ground that the audience can anchor their expectations in, and there's video game mechanics that would have some really interesting world building potential if taken literally. Consider your average PC character in an MMO or the player character in something like Skyrim or Fallout. They only sleep to pass the time, only eat to heal and never get exhausted even if they walk from one end of the continent to the other. Sure, in the games this is just because (outside of survival modes) it'd be a pain if the player had to deal with that, but put someone like that in a traditional fantasy story and they'd be a super soldier.

Things feel jarring when they're arbitrary. My goal has been to avoid that and make it so that everything feels like it flows from one thing to the next.

That makes perfect sense for your inspirations and your style of writing.

For me it *could be too linear and restrictive. A character who doesn’t have basic needs like sleeping and eating (and other things) doesn’t make any sense to write a character like that - unless they are a robot. Even orcs I assume have to do basic ablutions. It’s not like I’m writing ‘such and such a character went for a ’ but it’s such a different way of thinking.

Those who find solace in numbers and hard magic systems probably are also attracted to a gaming structure where there is a clear goal, whereas for me my magic system is far more driven by the narrative and by the characters; sure I have set limitations, it’s not poorly thought out, but I’ve left far more open to what the story needs rather than ‘here are the rules and I shall not deviate from them’.

 

[Finchbearer]

There's a whole genre out there that focusses on power levels and characters improving, called Progression Fantasy. The biggest, and best, example in it is probably the Cradle series, by Will Wight. It's a great read if you're into that sort of thing. A 12 book series, where the first is decent and the rest is great.

There’s a genre for everyone.

 

[Prince of Spires]

There’s a genre for everyone.

Yes there is

 

[Queshire]

Cradle is a great example of a setting with an elemental magic system to the point that I've struggled to only be inspired by it rather than ripping off parts wholesale.

 

[Fyri]

It’s not like I’m writing ‘such and such a character went for a

There was a phase in my writing journey where I was like "Yeah! Why don't we talk about these very normal things in fantasy novels?" and included mentions in my drafts. A bit jarring and unnecessary now. XD

I like my magic to be hard magic for some reason—I think stemming back to wanting kids to be like me as a kid and be able to wonder if a fantasy story/world could really be secretly real, so I want to show how it is plausible given irl realities. Then, I also want my world and story to be as realistic as possible, but there is where I must find a balance between "I don't need to say when and how a character is going to the bathroom (They are in the wild and have few previous survival skills)—unless it is pertinent to the goal of the story (character growth or plot progression)."

Cradle is a great example of a setting with an elemental magic system to the point that I've struggled to only be inspired by it rather than ripping off parts wholesale.

Have never heard of this, but am now looking it up.

 

[pmmg]

Somethings i dont need in my fiction. Ill just assume bathroom breaks happen.

 

[Fyri]

Somethings i dont need in my fiction. Ill just assume bathroom breaks happen.

Are you sure you don't need to know how Wizards in HP series magic poop away? Do vampires pee? These are important questions. XD

 

[pmmg]

If it comes up, ill put it in the story.

Which would be strange cause harry potter is no where near my tale.

 

[Finchbearer]

Haha okay, I think realistically there has to be a balance, and of course it’s also about storytelling styles and preferences, along with a target audience. I’m not here writing about when my characters go to the toilet, but for example I have a scene where two characters set out on a unexpected journey (no I’m not writing Hobbit fanfic) and so they need to gather supplies like you know, food and water, oh and saddle up the horses, and whilst that happens it gave me an opportunity to have something else happen. Another example is my two characters, one a nobleman’s daughter, the other a peasant. One will have water brought to a wash station in her room and the fire will have already been lit by a servant before she wakes, she’ll then get undressed and dressed by a servant - a peasant by contrast will have to collect firewood, water and not just dress themselves but make their own clothes from scratch - I’ve just included some of those little details which can be a. an opportunity to tell parts of the story, and b. Imbue my story with a bit of realism and give the reader more of an idea of the world in which they exist.

*Actually now I think about I do write about when some of my characters go to the toilet. For one character it is very dark and cold and she can’t find the wee pot.

 

[Queshire]

Classes in my setting come down to training to use your Mana in a certain way.

For example, a Warrior trains to stuff their mana into their muscle, arms and armor in order to empower them. They can use regular spells, but they'll get better results from arts that take advantage of all the mana infused into their body like magical martial arts or sword styles. A Wizard trains to use their mana to command the ambient mana of their surroundings. If they're in a hurry they can fuel a spell using just their own personal mana, but if they take the extra casting time to mold the ambient mana into an effect they can get a bigger boom for less mana since it's the ambient mana that's doing the heavy lifting.

Classes that have a specific element related to them generally need that element to shape things like they want. A Necromancer either splits of chunks of their own spirit or collects chunks of spirit left behind after slaying a monster and they use that to animate undead or give a semblance of life to their other spells (Imagine being chased by a fireball with a face.) One of Darkness mana's major aspects is looking inward. It's the mana of dreams and madness. Death mana which is often refined from Darkness mana is, well, Death mana. They're going to be the most versatile and useful elements for an aspiring Necromancer.

I've also got stages & levels. Honestly, the level is just a measure of how far you've progressed in the stage you're at. For convenience there's ten levels to a stage. Going up a stage represents a big power boost.

Spoiler: Stage 1-5: the Mortal stages

Stage 1: Gaseous Mana. Mostly civilians and those just starting out at a guild. There isn't a problem with mixing elements in your mana pool. Inborn talent, an inborn elemental affinity and being born into a family able to afford training & gear primarily affects how powerful someone is in this stage. It's stuff that you're born into, have no control over, but as the first stage it's also the least important in the grand scheme of things. (Nature)

Stage 2: Liquid Mana. Proffessional adventurers. What you think of when you hear the word "Knight," "Ninja," or "Priest." The understanding of the different elements in your mana pool needs to be linked. I mentioned this before; someone with sword and ice mana could link them through biting cold that cuts you to the bone, but training in a class also provides a convenient way to link understandings. You could link them through the image of a knight in icy armor with a frozen broadsword for example. It's not a hard rule, but someone that's trained in the techniques of a class, studied under a master, attended an academy or studied special techniques passed down through their house will be the strongest in this stage. (Nurture)

Stage 3: Solid Mana. A crystal of solid mana condenses in the center of the mana pool and grows as one advances through this stage. Hope you're happy in the elements you focused on since they're now set in crystal. You can add to it, but if you want to retrain your affinity you're going to have to completely shatter the crystal first. In addition at this stage you've exceeded the amount of mana that the human body can actually hold. Progressing requires taking a step away from being human; to become magical instead of just using magic. This involves weaving essence through your body to transmute it. It requires a clear self image and a clear understanding of the essence you're using. It causes physical changes that can vary. One metal specialist might gain metal gauntlets that are part of their flesh and they can never remove. Another might have their bones, teeth and fingernails turn to iron. A wood specialist might gain a pair of antler-like horns made out of branches and a fire specialist have hair that transforms from a limp gray to a fiery red when they get heated up. These changes are often elementally based, but don't have to be. A mage that specializes in creating scrolls and scribing rune circles might develop a circle of glowing runes in their iris. (Self image)

Stage 4: Core Formation. By condensing the crystal of solid mana in the center of the mana pool even further it eventually reaches the state where it cracks and transforms into a miniature star of mana. Hopefully you've woven enough essence into your form in order to not explode. The elements have the greatest effect on progress in this stage. In order to progress in this stage you need to increase the purity of the core and to increase the purity of the core you need a purer fuel. It isn't enough to simply refine fire mana into a higher level element like hellfire. You need to be able to refine fire mana itself; to gain enlightenment of one of the Truths of fire and weave that into yourself. Then you need to keep doing that for either other elements or to try to gain enlightenment of other Truths of fire.

Notably at this stage your core's "gravity" can affect ambient mana in the form of a Domain. This can be used to reinforce your own spells or be used to create spells purely by manipulating ambient mana. With enough practice you can fly by manipulating air mana, turn invisible by twisting light mana or create a TK effect by manipulating the ambient mana around the object. None of these effects are as good as someone who has a dedicated technique for the effect and they don't have the reach that a Wizard who specializing in controlling ambient mana would have at reaching this stage. Still, very useful. (Image of how the world works)

Stage 5: Nascent Soul. Reaching this stage involves forming a second soul around your core. This acts as a second life if you're killed, but the primary effect is having the second soul focus entirely on controlling your power so that your primary soul isn't distracted while trying to, ya know, fly and fight and move. I'm taking the name Nascent Soul from the Xianxia genre, but I like Final Fantasy summons so I'm using those for forms. You can transform into your Nascent Soul form to fight or summon it directly if it, say, takes the form of a tree or a bell or something. Forming your Nascent Soul requires looking at yourself with no blinders or excuses. You need to acknowledge your motivation, desires and your approach to life. Even though the Nascent Soul can take an elementally influenced form this is the stage where the elements are the least important. (Drives)

 

[Queshire]

Stages part 2 (did you know there's a character limit to posts?)

Spoiler: Stage 6-10: Immortal / Demigod stages.

Stage 6: Immortal Ascension / Demigod. This stage combines everything up to this point to bootstrap yourself into becoming a new divinity. If there's contradictions between how you see yourself, the image you have of how the world operates and your drives (The focus of stages 3-5) then the greater the risk of injury or death in trying to reach this stage. Of course as a brand new divinity those who reach this stage need to be a god of something. This is known as a Law in my setting. Sometimes this is the same as an element they specialized in before ascending like someone specializing in Sword mana becoming a Sword Immortal, but not always. That same Sword mana specialist could possibly end up as Death Immortal instead and act as a shinigami. (Yes, I'm ripping off Sages from Cradle here)

Stage 7: Instead of just infusing specific spells or actions with the strength of your Law reaching this point requires being able to infuse the entirety of your Domain with your Law. Being able to fill an entire area with your Divine Authority is, ya know, pretty good in a fight, but it's also a risky stage At that point your own Law starts coming into conflict with the natural Laws of the world.

Stage 8: Overcoming the risk from Stage 7 requires refining your Law. Most typically this involves manifesting a divine title. Rather than just being a Sword Immortal you might wind up as the Merciful Blade or something. Narrower scope, but more power.

Stage 9: Another round of refinement. You need to work on either weaving things into your Law if they fit ("Swords as a symbol of duty" would fit something like the Merciful Blade,) or utterly remove them if they don't ("Swords as a symbol of slaughter" wouldn't fit something like the Merciful Blade.) To put it another way, these last few steps are about someone starting out as a War (demi)God deciding if they want to be closer to Athena or Ares.

Stage 10: Full adoption. You need to dissolve the entirety of yourself into your Law and maintain enough of a hold on your existence that you can pull yourself back out instead of completely dissolving into the cosmic principle of the Sword or something.

Spoiler: Gods and above.

Stage 11-15 Godhood.
Gods create. As something of a refence to racial D&D gods like Lolth or Gruumsh a Stage 11 god can create and sponsor a race of people. A stage 15 god is a demiurge capable of creating an entire alternative universe. Given free reign a god can create miracles like a tree that gives those who eat from it immortality, space gates that cross the galaxy or behemoths of flesh the size of a planet. The previous generation of Titans were a bit too excessive in taking advantage of this and that was used as one of the justifications for the divine revolution that earned the setting the name "Burned Heavens." Now gods are a lot more restricted in what they can do on the mortal plane. Since a god can create as much energy as they want out of nothing dealing with one requires conceptual powers. A sufficiently powerful Ocean god could summon up enough waters to drown a planet, but a similarly powerful Sun god could fire a beam of pure, evaporating sunlight that cuts right through it.

Stage 16 Pillars of Reality
If someone reaches this point they stop relying on reality to support their existence, but instead their existence props up reality. If you try traveling back in time and stop a Pillar from being born it won't matter. Their present will unfold a new past to support them. They're capable of traveling through the Void outside reality and using that to travel to other realities. When the Heavens Burned it set off a cascade failure that threatened to undue all of reality. The few early Pillars around at the time were forced to take up the burden of ensuring reality.

Pillars still have a concept or element associated with them. You've got a pillar of creation, death, war, fate, time and probably a handful I haven't thought up yet. If someone could reach beyond that restriction and become truly boundless they would reach a theoretical Stage 17.

 

[Fyri]

Stage 3: Solid Mana. A crystal of solid mana condenses in the center of the mana pool and grows as one advances through this stage. Hope you're happy in the elements you focused on since they're now set in crystal. You can add to it, but if you want to retrain your affinity you're going to have to completely shatter the crystal first. In addition at this stage you've exceeded the amount of mana that the human body can actually hold. Progressing requires taking a step away from being human; to become magical instead of just using magic. This involves weaving essence through your body to transmute it. It requires a clear self image and a clear understanding of the essence you're using. It causes physical changes that can vary. One metal specialist might gain metal gauntlets that are part of their flesh and they can never remove. Another might have their bones, teeth and fingernails turn to iron. A wood specialist might gain a pair of antler-like horns made out of branches and a fire specialist have hair that transforms from a limp gray to a fiery red when they get heated up. These changes are often elementally based, but don't have to be. A mage that specializes in creating scrolls and scribing rune circles might develop a circle of glowing runes in their iris. (Self image)

I really like this idea of progression to "Self Image" and how you start to become the element. Reminds me of alchemy too.

However, I'd look for a different example for the fire specialist. Changing simple color to red sounds a bit lazy/cliche/underwhelming compared to the other examples. Perhaps your hair is constantly frizzy now as if recently being burnt. Or your breath smells like smoke, or you are warmer to touch than average. I like this idea of slowly turning into your mana of choice. It appears that you have a certain glow around you at all times, as if the shadow of fire was constantly embracing you.

 

[Fyri]

Stages part 2 (did you know there's a character limit to posts?)

Spoiler: Stage 6-10: Immortal / Demigod stages.

Stage 6: Immortal Ascension / Demigod. This stage combines everything up to this point to bootstrap yourself into becoming a new divinity. If there's contradictions between how you see yourself, the image you have of how the world operates and your drives (The focus of stages 3-5) then the greater the risk of injury or death in trying to reach this stage. Of course as a brand new divinity those who reach this stage need to be a god of something. This is known as a Law in my setting. Sometimes this is the same as an element they specialized in before ascending like someone specializing in Sword mana becoming a Sword Immortal, but not always. That same Sword mana specialist could possibly end up as Death Immortal instead and act as a shinigami. (Yes, I'm ripping off Sages from Cradle here)

Stage 7: Instead of just infusing specific spells or actions with the strength of your Law reaching this point requires being able to infuse the entirety of your Domain with your Law. Being able to fill an entire area with your Divine Authority is, ya know, pretty good in a fight, but it's also a risky stage At that point your own Law starts coming into conflict with the natural Laws of the world.

Stage 8: Overcoming the risk from Stage 7 requires refining your Law. Most typically this involves manifesting a divine title. Rather than just being a Sword Immortal you might wind up as the Merciful Blade or something. Narrower scope, but more power.

Stage 9: Another round of refinement. You need to work on either weaving things into your Law if they fit ("Swords as a symbol of duty" would fit something like the Merciful Blade,) or utterly remove them if they don't ("Swords as a symbol of slaughter" wouldn't fit something like the Merciful Blade.) To put it another way, these last few steps are about someone starting out as a War (demi)God deciding if they want to be closer to Athena or Ares.

Stage 10: Full adoption. You need to dissolve the entirety of yourself into your Law and maintain enough of a hold on your existence that you can pull yourself back out instead of completely dissolving into the cosmic principle of the Sword or something.

Spoiler: Gods and above.

Stage 11-15 Godhood.
Gods create. As something of a refence to racial D&D gods like Lolth or Gruumsh a Stage 11 god can create and sponsor a race of people. A stage 15 god is a demiurge capable of creating an entire alternative universe. Given free reign a god can create miracles like a tree that gives those who eat from it immortality, space gates that cross the galaxy or behemoths of flesh the size of a planet. The previous generation of Titans were a bit too excessive in taking advantage of this and that was used as one of the justifications for the divine revolution that earned the setting the name "Burned Heavens." Now gods are a lot more restricted in what they can do on the mortal plane. Since a god can create as much energy as they want out of nothing dealing with one requires conceptual powers. A sufficiently powerful Ocean god could summon up enough waters to drown a planet, but a similarly powerful Sun god could fire a beam of pure, evaporating sunlight that cuts right through it.

Stage 16 Pillars of Reality
If someone reaches this point they stop relying on reality to support their existence, but instead their existence props up reality. If you try traveling back in time and stop a Pillar from being born it won't matter. Their present will unfold a new past to support them. They're capable of traveling through the Void outside reality and using that to travel to other realities. When the Heavens Burned it set off a cascade failure that threatened to undue all of reality. The few early Pillars around at the time were forced to take up the burden of ensuring reality.

Pillars still have a concept or element associated with them. You've got a pillar of creation, death, war, fate, time and probably a handful I haven't thought up yet. If someone could reach beyond that restriction and become truly boundless they would reach a theoretical Stage 17.

I will say, this is where I would potentially, personally, lose interest. Being able to start out as a peasant and anyone like me can choose to train hard enough to become a god becomes severely unrelatable to me. I think there are definitely ways to make this still connected to the human experience, and clearly there are many people who enjoy this kind of trope, but I'm not interested in power levels that can allow multiple persons to really become a god. Perhaps it is just the way it is casually laid out here, where there are blueprints, so obviously enough people have done it.

In world, perhaps this is more like unknown possibilities that no one has actually achieved, but it is there if someone were ever to really go that far. Like, becoming a god is unheard of and a super novel one time thing for, likely, the antagonist, and is not done again ever after. Otherwise, it would just remind me of DBZ and I'm not into that kind of anime, but I'm only one person. XD

I shared this elsewhere recently, but it might be useful for this conversation!

 

[Prince of Spires]

I will say, this is where I would potentially, personally, lose interest. Being able to start out as a peasant and anyone like me can choose to train hard enough to become a god becomes severely unrelatable to me. I think there are definitely ways to make this still connected to the human experience, and clearly there are many people who enjoy this kind of trope, but I'm not interested in power levels that can allow multiple persons to really become a god. Perhaps it is just the way it is casually laid out here, where there are blueprints, so obviously enough people have done it.

Read the Cradle series. There you have the same sort of powerlevels, from peasant to immortal god.

There are a a few things that make it work in this series. The first is that most characters surrounding the protagonists are roughly the same level. There are a few higher and lower, but in general the characters interact mostly with their own level and slightly higher. Which means that there's always a challenge for the characters to face.

This also means that when the series starts out, the highest tiers aren't even known, and when they do become known they start of as these very distant, mythical beings that would never have anything to do with characters that far beneath them. Only slowly are the higher levels introduced.

Then there's the pyramid system. Each level has fewer occupants than the one below it. In Cradle, at the top you have only 8 top ranking characters (and a god tier above that), with maybe 2 dozen on the level below that. From there it gradually expands. But there are natural barriers at each stage, which means that not everyone can advance. And that you have to work hard and be gifted enough to advance (which is part of the whole progression part of progression fantasy).

And then the problems the characters face scale together with the powerlevel. At the start of Cradle, even climbing a mountain is an issue, as is facing wild animals and the like. Gradually these are replaced by more difficult challenges, which slowly also become more political and less about the raw strength someone can wield.

It works, but I agree that it's a fine line to walk.

 

[SirenSon117]

XD Yeah, I started it out with the idea of just exploring and sharing elemental magic, but someone branched out and my ADHD brain was like, "Nah, that's cool. Follow that train too." XD

To add to this and include non-anime, even though I am constantly depressed about the author's choices and day by day, the series gains a less positive hue, Harry Potter's go-to spell was always "Expelliarmus" to disarm, not attack or harm.

And now we're discussing how signature moves/fight styles reflect a character!

I'm torn about how to describe one of my characters' martial arts style. I think it is both graceful and cunning, a small highlight to his secret love for a special form of traditional dance, (which is connected to a softer side of himself that he is trying to burn in a fire but also protect at all costs), as well as a call back to his sharp, calculative personality.

Also! Aang from ATLA having the element of air has been mentioned as connected to A) His culture of peacefulness, B) His evasive fight style, and C) The ultimate end development of wrestling with the decision to directly kill or not kill the fatherlord--ah, firelord.

However, in that same universe, you get an air bender who flips this expectation on its head. Same with how Katara can both heal and bloodbend with the same element.

So, not only can the magic system serve, inform, and reflect your characters, but also specifically how they use it can tell more about them.

And only now am I thinking about it and I guess ATLA doesn't really use any ranking system for elemental prowess, at least not for our characters to know. Mostly just... bender and master. Hmmm.

Proof that many of the greats don't need power levels or even power scaling. I'd argue Kentaro Miura's Berserk is a great example of very subtle "power storytelling". The beauty of Berserk is that Guts is both OP and the Underdog by virtue of his situation. Of course I'm only three volumes into Berserk but my point still stands. Sports Shonen and "Non-Battle Battle Shonen" like Yu-gi-oh also don't tend to use power levels, although I've read one sports manga and that would be Prince of Tennis. My point being, power levels are great but are they necessary? With that out of the way, let us kindly return to the topic of Elements.

 

[SirenSon117]

I will say, this is where I would potentially, personally, lose interest. Being able to start out as a peasant and anyone like me can choose to train hard enough to become a god becomes severely unrelatable to me. I think there are definitely ways to make this still connected to the human experience, and clearly there are many people who enjoy this kind of trope, but I'm not interested in power levels that can allow multiple persons to really become a god. Perhaps it is just the way it is casually laid out here, where there are blueprints, so obviously enough people have done it.

In world, perhaps this is more like unknown possibilities that no one has actually achieved, but it is there if someone were ever to really go that far. Like, becoming a god is unheard of and a super novel one time thing for, likely, the antagonist, and is not done again ever after. Otherwise, it would just remind me of DBZ and I'm not into that kind of anime, but I'm only one person. XD

I shared this elsewhere recently, but it might be useful for this conversation!

Here's how I handle it. There's a specific set of conditions you need to become a God, and most "Divine Spirits" aren't Gods. Mortals can't even use the full spectrum of Supernatural Phenomena(Magic and related things) because their bodies and souls will be torn to shreds if they try. There's a series of increasing smaller bottlenecks the higher up the power scale you go, the more effort a person has to put in. People have "mortal limits" which vary based on Species. An Elf can do more Magic than a Human can, and a Dragon can do more Magic than an Elf can for example. The more "magical" you are, the closer you are to Godhood. Therefore, the Cosmos and it's Representative, Sophia, puts restrictions on the literal fabric of reality that prevent people from committing "The Sin of Apotheosis". There are people who still try, and they usually fail. My world is a world where there is always a bigger fish. ALWAYS.

 

[Queshire]

I really like this idea of progression to "Self Image" and how you start to become the element. Reminds me of alchemy too.

However, I'd look for a different example for the fire specialist. Changing simple color to red sounds a bit lazy/cliche/underwhelming compared to the other examples. Perhaps your hair is constantly frizzy now as if recently being burnt. Or your breath smells like smoke, or you are warmer to touch than average. I like this idea of slowly turning into your mana of choice. It appears that you have a certain glow around you at all times, as if the shadow of fire was constantly embracing you.

That's just one example. Weaving fire essence into your being could have as small an effect as changing the color of your eyes, or as great of one as replacing your heart with a living furnace.

I will say, this is where I would potentially, personally, lose interest. Being able to start out as a peasant and anyone like me can choose to train hard enough to become a god becomes severely unrelatable to me. I think there are definitely ways to make this still connected to the human experience, and clearly there are many people who enjoy this kind of trope, but I'm not interested in power levels that can allow multiple persons to really become a god. Perhaps it is just the way it is casually laid out here, where there are blueprints, so obviously enough people have done it.

In world, perhaps this is more like unknown possibilities that no one has actually achieved, but it is there if someone were ever to really go that far. Like, becoming a god is unheard of and a super novel one time thing for, likely, the antagonist, and is not done again ever after. Otherwise, it would just remind me of DBZ and I'm not into that kind of anime, but I'm only one person. XD

I shared this elsewhere recently, but it might be useful for this conversation!

Heeeeeeeeey, Hello Future Me, I've seen his videos before. I've also bought the first two books on writing advice he made.

So part of the point of planning things out all the way to godly levels is to create a power ceiling that I'm not tempted to break. I can also (hopefully) avoid the same kind of problems like Naruto have by having a clear idea how things will be handled at the high power levels and working backwards from there.

I've also aimed to make this a character arc based power escalation that's generally harder than normal. In stage 3, yeah, you're actively weaving essence into your body, but figuring out the best way to do that comes from taking a look at yourself and what kind of role you want to play. That's where the character arc part comes in.

(As a side note; one thing I wanted to avoid was to essentially have someone at a higher level be just the same dude they were at a lower level only they can do more things. Character development leads to power, but power changes character. You start to step away from humanity.)

Frankly, I don't know if I have the chops to pull it off, but one of my key focuses here is that whether or not the protagonists can do something isn't as important as what they choose to do.

Read the Cradle series. There you have the same sort of powerlevels, from peasant to immortal god.

There are a a few things that make it work in this series. The first is that most characters surrounding the protagonists are roughly the same level. There are a few higher and lower, but in general the characters interact mostly with their own level and slightly higher. Which means that there's always a challenge for the characters to face.

This also means that when the series starts out, the highest tiers aren't even known, and when they do become known they start of as these very distant, mythical beings that would never have anything to do with characters that far beneath them. Only slowly are the higher levels introduced.

Then there's the pyramid system. Each level has fewer occupants than the one below it. In Cradle, at the top you have only 8 top ranking characters (and a god tier above that), with maybe 2 dozen on the level below that. From there it gradually expands. But there are natural barriers at each stage, which means that not everyone can advance. And that you have to work hard and be gifted enough to advance (which is part of the whole progression part of progression fantasy).

And then the problems the characters face scale together with the powerlevel. At the start of Cradle, even climbing a mountain is an issue, as is facing wild animals and the like. Gradually these are replaced by more difficult challenges, which slowly also become more political and less about the raw strength someone can wield.

It works, but I agree that it's a fine line to walk.

Well I would say that the absolute highest tiers is introduced to the audience early in the form of the Judges and that absolute power ceiling is never broken. However, that lets the author set the local power ceiling lower and raise it from Underlord > Sage/Herald > Monarch as needed.

Proof that many of the greats don't need power levels or even power scaling. I'd argue Kentaro Miura's Berserk is a great example of very subtle "power storytelling". The beauty of Berserk is that Guts is both OP and the Underdog by virtue of his situation. Of course I'm only three volumes into Berserk but my point still stands. Sports Shonen and "Non-Battle Battle Shonen" like Yu-gi-oh also don't tend to use power levels, although I've read one sports manga and that would be Prince of Tennis. My point being, power levels are great but are they necessary? With that out of the way, let us kindly return to the topic of Elements.

Sure, they're not necessary in the grand scheme of things, but they can be useful.

 

[Fyri]

I think ultimately, this all goes into final product execution. A concept is neither good nor bad. Merely it depends on how it is implemented/written.

Progression fantasy may not sound appealing to some until they see it written really well. I think making sure choice over ability is part of it is a good move. Mostly, is the character more than their given level?

Is a character more than their given powers? Oftentimes, we see elements being connected to emotions or personalities. Fire elementals are commonly angrier, feistier, or more wild and passionate, for example. This is an effective way to symbolize a person's development or inner struggle, though I find it tiresome/cliche.

In that vein--the story changes depending on how well a character is developed regardless of their "power level" or given magic ability. Do we lean on cliches? What are cliches for "super high level" or godlike characters? How are we twisting cliches in our elemental/magic systems to make our characters personal and interesting?

Useful things to think about! ^_^

 

[Prince of Spires]

Heeeeeeeeey, Hello Future Me, I've seen his videos before. I've also bought the first two books on writing advice he made.

Completely off-topic, but I've liked plenty of his writing videos. He talks a lot of sense on plenty of topics. How are his books on writing?