Magical limits

[Draconian]

Hi, I'm new and was wondering what magical limits should I have for my story.Like should I have an unlimited magical power source or should I have something that prevents them from using other peoples magic?
Currently magic in my world can only be used by a select few and certain descendants of a magical race.They mainly can do stuff like heal the swords wounds or broken bones and maybe poison. They can create fire or shoot lighting from their hands. They also can freeze and heat stuff too, along with create gusts of winds. Very large groups of mages can also distort space and open portals to other places. Along with that I have a sickness that only magically gifted people can contract. So i'm eager to see your rules or limitations for magic and what magic can do in your world. So feel free to post me your ideas and feedback.

 

[Black Dragon]

Welcome Draconian!

Your idea of a "sickness that only magically gifted people can contract" sounds promising. If you approach this in an original manner, it may yield great results.

I always lean towards avoiding an unlimited magical power source. By creating limits you are creating obstacles, which forces the characters to find ways to work around them. If handled correctly, this can make for clever storytelling possibilities.

 

[Derin]

When I use magic, I tend to use a sort of energy that moves through everything. Living being generate it and it likes to collect in certain materials (like water), and people can learn to manipulate the energy to make things happen. (Yeah, I use magic circles and soforth.) This is effectively a near-unlimited power source, but it raises the issue of control. The more power you manipulate at one, the harder it is to manage, and like computer programming, one error can ruin your spell or make it do something unpredictable. It's quite easy for overambitious magic-users to kill themselves by accident.

 

[Draconian]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that in my world their is a device with a huge amount of magical power but the device can't be used properly by mages and the only ones who can use this device properly are descendents of its creations and even then the device often causes bizare and often dangerous side effects like the magic sickness or the user going insane or being killed or going into a coma. By the way the device can create rifts in space to other dimensions and also it created a whole race of magical beings. The most terrify thing of all it can do or i should say did is basically cause a very large land mass to be reduced to nothing but sand and rock (killing all life and evaporating the water in and under the land leaving the land worthless and uninhabitable).

 

[Hans]

I normally have a "magic is dangerous" setting. Everyday people will not have everyday magic. That's just not my style.

In one setting magic is very susceptible to side effects. From a theoretical point the world can be seen as a swinging structure and magic directly influences these waves. That spreads in all directions, not only the wanted one. Also it has some very technical limits like the energy needed does with the square of distance and so on.

In my other world powerful magic is demonology. Demons try to get independent from their summoner. Then they have their own urges. Like transforming the world into something they like and where very few "normal" live can survive. Or eating that tasty living flesh. It's not that they want to be evil, they just don't care. They are evil in the same sense a man eating tiger is evil.
And of course a more powerful demon is harder to control.

 

[TWErvin2]

I agree with Black Dragon, that there should not be unlimited magic. It can really distort a story and cause endless plot problems and the creation/resolution of conflict.

Draconian, you appear to have the basics established, but you should really have them refined--how and why a user of magic contracts the sickness. The cause of rifts opening. Although the reader may not end up being privy to the knowledge, having such will keep the world and the way magic functions consistent.

Revealing how magic 'works' is something that can be presented over time in the novel, as needed for the reader to understand. It's often something readers have an interest in, and will keep them reading to find out more.

In the world contained within my novel Flank Hawk, users of magic take on/suffer effects based on the magic they use and how powerful they become. Seers, for example, lose their physical sight as they increase in magical strength/skill. Enchanters are more susceptible to magic used upon/against them, and often hide their identity/fact that they are an enchanter. How 'fun' would it be to become a powerful necromancer?

 

[Draconian]

I think I figures out how magic works in my world. Magic users have a certain amount of magic in them to use in their bodies and going over the limit causes you to age because the
magic will use your lifeforce to fuel a spell. You do recharge the magic in your body by resting or eating or sleeping and over time you will have more magic in your body. However their are other sources to use for fueling a spell such as another magic user or certain magical tools like magic circles or amulets or crystals. Basic magic like making a fire doesn't really have any side effects but doing something more complicated can result in many different side effects if you make a mistake. Along with that there is often many different ways of doing the same thing. I still haven't figured out how my magical sickness or opening rifts work yet though.

 

[Derin]

Sorcery sickness is a common theme, so you have a lot of background material to work with. In some stories, people get a horrible fever and can die if they overstrain themselves. In others, magic weakens the body and merely makes them susceptible to other infections. Some mages go insane over time. In Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, seers that overwork themselves go temporarily blind.

You could have a certain amount of latent magical energy necessary for stabilising reality, and monkeying about with it too much in one place causes possible tears. This would require magic to be regulated, as magicians need to work together as far as magical consumption goes or risk damaging reality. Combined with a sickness based on how much magic you do, illegal magic could end up with somebody severely sick being found out by their illness and fined or jailed.

 

[SeverinR]

In my world,
The individual energy a mage uses is limited but can use a mage battery for extra. Possibly a device to unite several mages energy. Energy is based on ability, experience, and race of the mage. (or is it more efficient use of the set energy a person has?)
Ancient dragon mage would have alot more energy then a 17 year old apprentice human mage.

When they use to much of their energy, they act similar to a low blood sugar in a diabetic. Dizzy, disoriented, lose conciousness, etc. There is the possibility of magic pulling to much energy from a person that they die.
This applies to Arcane and mental magic, spiritual magic uses some bodily energy but most is from the god bestowing the power.
But this magic is limited by fear of drawing the gods attention for abusing the magic bestowed.

I do like the idea of a magical disease. D&D had a magical creature that if you used a lot of magic would draw them to the spell user. Maybe a magical parasite?

 

[BeigePalladin]

my magical limit works a bit like the desiese:

magic is a naturally building energy that things can tap into (though in most places it's so weak that casting anything worthy would take about 10 minutes), but 'mages' are capable of storing magical power in their own bodies.

the downside is that each mage has a limit, and there's no way to stop the energy from accumulating, so eventually , if they go too long without casting, they start to suffer effects ranging from illness, to uncrontroled magical outburst, to death at the worst case - and the stronger the mage the more catastrophic the effect.

 

[Robdemanc]

Magic should be limited I think. Or it should cause problems for the user whenever they use it. That makes a more interesting story. If magic was unlimited then there would be no conflict.

 

[SeverinR]

It would limit non-magical problems,
but magical conflict could still occur.(mage vs mage/mage vs natural(magical reactions)/Mage versus self(weakness, megalomania, self doubt)
Kind of like superman and Kryptonite, very limiting.

 

[Taytortots]

In my world, there are a few limits. If there are no limits and those with magic can do anything, well, first of all what's the fun in that? and second of all, there aren't many obstacles if the Warlocks can do anything.
The first limit I set is that magic can't effect health or death. GASP! I know, most people find this alarming for some reason. If the illness or wound is magic itself, it is possible that it can be healed. For example, say there's a poison made from magic, someone may be able to create an antidote with magic. But if someone is stabbed in the stomach, it can't be healed, and nothing can be done above what regular humans could do.
The second limit is less a limit and more just the way magic works. Each person has an affinity. It could be elements, conjuring, whatever you can think of. They are the best at this thing, and very powerful when using this type of magic. They can use other types of magic, and in fact are free to attempt any of the different types, however they are not nearly as powerful, and some things are near impossible to do unless the Warlock is very powerful.
Above that, if you use magic too much you will get exhausted and possibly faint. Depending on how much magic you use it could make you sick from the strain.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Hello Draconian!! Your Magic sounds pretty interesting, I think your stories must be very good =) In my stories, my Mages are awfully powerful and they can do great things: They can fly at tens of thousands of miles per hour without effort, they can cause reality warping to get any effect or tricks that they can think of, they can make things appear out of nowhere, they can travel to other universes/realities and their weapons are so powerful that they can nuke cities easily and annihilate the souls of their victims.

The conflict in my stories comes from Mages vs Mages conflicts and wars, but they have indeed some limitations: When people die, it's very easy to give life back to dead bodies (or create new living bodies from nothing) but the Mages cannot guarantee that the souls of dead people will return to such bodies... Another limitation is about the way that Mages die when they get hit by their own soul-killing weapons, and other limits are about their travelling system between different realities =)

Also, people killed by their stuff remains dead, annihilated, soul destroyed forever!! No way to bring them back...

Apart from that, Magic in my stories is an unlimited power that comes out of nowhere and my stories work fine with it.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Limitations depend on the source...

CELESTIAL POWER: ability to manipulate the energy formed in "The Celestial Sea," the space between the planets Pyros and Cryos when the two planets drift close enough to share an atmosphere

What is done with this energy varies, as do the limitations.

Stopping time: if time is stopped, the "caster" and those who are in the time-stop bubble will be able to casually walk around during a paused moment in time. There is only so much air in the time-stop bubble. Lose track of time, and while your gasping for breathable air you may not have time to end the time-stop and save yourself.

Using celestial energy is also rather taxing. My telekinetic character tends to push himself to the point that he starts drooling profusely. This is followed by heavy bleeding, loss of bowel control... and if that humiliation isn't enough to stop him, the next symptom is death.


DEMONIC MAGIC: power granted by the forces of Hell

I don't need to explain that this magic is powerful, and in order to obtain this power you have to do really bad things, and that you make a deal with a powerful demon who will own you when you eventually die and go to Hell.

Less obvious: it's possible to become a "protected." If you're a "protected," this means someone made a deal with a demonlord and needed you to get in on it. A "protected" is usually a weakling who, in the long run, is of no use to the demon anyway. The "protected" only serve one purpose for demonlords, which is to give false hope to those who sell their souls.


DIVINE STRENGTH: a gift from God

Healing is an ability used by angels and at least one mortal in my story. The Angel of Death can heal with the touch of a finger. She can also end a mortal's life just as easily.

A mortal with this blessing must be a pacifist. Even if he wanted to hurt someone, he'd need a weapon anyway. A punch would do more good than harm to the target. The big, muscular healer in my story literally can't hurt a fly. (There's a scene in which he swats a mosquito, and it flies away unharmed.)

The Legendary Sidekick accidentally breaks an ancient sword that will make its wielder "stronger than any other mortal, man or beast." He seems to absorb the weapon's power, but it turns out this is a divine gift. The catch: he is not allowed to take a human life. He may use his physical prowess to slay demons or use his tank-like body to protect humans. In a battle between factions of mortals, he must not kill, nor can he assist others to kill. His divine strength can be taken away in an instant if, for some reason, he proves that God was wrong about his ability to accept such a power without being corrupted by it.


CYBERNETIC ENHANCEMENT: the scientific method of slowing time, obtaining superhuman strength, and cheating death

Not everyone can manipulate celestial energy. Not everyone is interested in Heaven or Hell. There are other ways to become powerful. The price: a cyborg can still function without a human soul, so most cyborgs are dead people with metal and wires.

The Immortal Emperor uses cryogenic sleep to prevent aging, and a device on his spine pumps adrenaline into his body to slow time (from his perspective) and increase his strength and speed considerably. However, he is a stone-faced man and the drugs and long-term sleep make him paranoid. Every few decades, he tends to kill those in his inner circle for fear they are plotting against him as his father's most loyal men did 1300 years ago.

 

[ThinkerX]

Legendary Sidekick-

Your system sounds interesting. More like SF than fantasy, in some respects.

Do psionic abilities - telekinesis, ESP, exist separately from your other types of 'magic'? What psionic abilities do exist in your system? pyrokinesis? teleportation?

Aside from the 'time stop' bit, just what is possible with the Celestial magic? It sounds like something that could be used maybe only a few times a year.

Cyrogenics and cybernetics are usually found in SF. Is this some sort of far future dystotpia? Just asking, been toying with an SF tale or three myself with some characters possessed of psionic abilities.

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There is a 'quirk' - actually, more like a major element - in my system I didn't bring up in the other thread. For a long while - as in millenia - magical events and people being born with a talent for magic was linked to the so called 'Demon Star', a asteroid (?) sized body with a highly erratic orbit that would occasionally bring it very close to the world. When that happened, magic happened. The number of people born with magical talent would increase three or four fold. Usually, the Demon Star would make a close pass every twenty to fifty years....but at the time of my current tales, it has not been seen at all for nearly a century and a half. Instead, the world has been subject to the annual 'Nights of Power' corresponding to the fall and spring equinoxes, when multicolored lights appear in the sky.

Some of those born during the fall equinox (Demon's Night, Ghost Night, Hell Night, ect) are born with the talent for dark sorcery and find it relatively easy to commune with dark (lovecraftian) spirits and creatures. They have no moral qualms about inflicting nightmares and illness, conjuring ghosts and (lovecraftian) demons. They are commonly called 'Darkborn', `Demonspawn' and similiar unkind terms. By the time of the stories, many of those born during this period in the empire are put to death as infants (yeah, its harsh). Others are confined to monasteries far from anywhere. Some of those outside the empire are seen as weapons...

Some of those born during the Spring Equinox (God Night, Angel Night, ect) have a talent for magic that is the polar opposite of the Darkborn. These people (Lightborn, Godborn, Angelborn, ect) can work wonders of healing, channel positive energy, and commune with 'angels' (which do exist in the lovecraftian sense, though with a twist). In the empire, they usually end up getting drafted into church service and eventually become traveling faith healers. Some Godborn, under certain conditions, *can* take a human life as a last resort, but it is often a traumatic experience, and sometimes cost them their powers...for a while or for good.

The church holds that the Nights of Power came into being because the True God banished the Demon Star and replaced it with the Nights of Power by way of showing his supremacy. They account for Demon Night being the way it is because of hmanities fallen nature and demonic influence, but some factions believe those born on Demon Night are not inherintly evil, merely 'possessed' (hence the monasteries). However, this brings up another question for those willing to risk a potentially lethal charge of hearesy: if those born during Demon Night are not inherintly evil, but merely possessed, then might not the same be true for those born on God Night? Might not their 'goodness' stem from 'possession' as well, and if so is it truly ethical?

Of course, the situation is not what it appears at all.

Anymore, though, Darkborn and Lightborn are seen as the dominant types of magicians. The others, sometimes called 'goetics' or magicians, are seen by many as lingering relics of the past, whose magic simply is not as potent as that of the Godborn and Darkborn. Indeed - with some justification - many are seen as little more than frauds or 'one spell wonders' - people who have a little magic, which doesn't work all that well, so they spice it up with alchemy and slight of hand.


+

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

ThinkerX,

Thanks for asking (though you may be sorry you asked)! Actually, our systems of magic may not be all that different, judging by the asteroid and references to angels and demons. Though using "good" or "evil" magic sounds like an accident of birth, which adds an interesting moral dilemma to your story.


To answer your questions:

Celestial power basically lets you manipulate time and space. My telekinetic* uses the energy to move objects, while his older brother* can slow, stop, or travel time. The time-travel is where the genre-hopping comes in, so there's a mix of sic-fi and fantasy in different parts of the story.

*(You can see these guys in action in this Christmas-themed 1300-word story.)

The main character also has a celestial power... but all he can really do is see the energy. The upside to this: he eventually obtains enough (divine) strength to literally smash his way into the energy field and open a time rift. But the downside to seeing this energy is that his view may be obscured by bright, iridescent waves of light which are invisible to nearly everyone else.

As for how often the power can be used: it's when the planets Pyros and Cryos are close enough to share an atmosphere, which happens every 666 years. They stay this close for no more than a decade until an event that occurs in the year 2019 stabilizes the distance between planets. Thus, the Brothers Thyme (who were born in the 2080's) spent their entire lives mastering celestial power.


Also, some abilities are not limited to one source. The Angel of Death's ability to heal or kill with the touch of a finger is similar to the Deathwish enchantment, which allows the wielder of an enchanted blade to instantly kill a target... unless he does not wish the target to die. In that case, the target would exist on another plane (spirit plane? - I never bothered to name it), then carve his way out using his own enchanted blade. The enchanted blade is usually referred to as a "suicide blade" or "suicide sword," since those who use Deathwish often stab themselves in order to teleport.

My cultist character can also use a type of telekinesis.


There is also a limitation that makes writing time-travel fun: a soul cannot be erased from existence. What this means: if you go back in time and knock someone up, that can't be undone. If someone else goes back in time to kill the mother when she was an eight-year-old girl, he's doomed to fail.

Also, if someone travels to a time in which he already exists, his soul can only occupy one body at a time. Either the younger or the older self will fall into a coma and "dream" of his counterpart's experience. Those who travel time, die, and are reborn in the future may occasionally dream of a past life.

 

[ThinkerX]

Thanks for asking (though you may be sorry you asked)! Actually, our systems of magic may not be all that different, judging by the asteroid and references to angels and demons. Though using "good" or "evil" magic sounds like an accident of birth, which adds an interesting moral dilemma to your story.

That is a issue that the more astute of my characters wrestle with. They note that some Darkborn are not psychopathic spell slingers...not exactly upstanding citizens, but not monsters, either. Likewise, some of the Godborn...attempt...to act in a 'thuggish' manner now and again. Church propaganda - at least within the empire, though, doesn't really allow for such.

There is a 'circle' of mages in my world which ended up in extremely serious trouble with the church because they were experimenting with combining the abilities of Darkborn and Godborn (the circle incliuded both Darkborn and Godborn). The results were...interesting. (and had the more paranoid elements of the church hunting around for firewood).

A nation neighboring the empire made it a point to recruit all the darkborn they possibly could for their invasion (the war in the background of my stories) which left deep scars all around.

There is also a limitation that makes writing time-travel fun: a soul cannot be erased from existence. What this means: if you go back in time and knock someone up, that can't be undone. If someone else goes back in time to kill the mother when she was an eight-year-old girl, he's doomed to fail.

Also, if someone travels to a time in which he already exists, his soul can only occupy one body at a time. Either the younger or the older self will fall into a coma and "dream" of his counterpart's experience. Those who travel time, die, and are reborn in the future may occasionally dream of a past life

Ah...paradoxes. Pesky things, those...

 

[Sheilawisz]

Two planets that drift close enough to share an atmosphere?? I like that =) Your Magic system sounds very good and different to many others Legendary Sidekick, I am trying to imagine what the sky would look like in your planets when they are that close and I bet that it would look superb!!

In my stories, planets are very likely to exist in the Celestial Realms (what my characters call the stars) which is the space full of stars and other celestial bodies about a million light years above the endless sea... this starry sky is endless too in all directions except down and up, since above the stars there is nothing but unlimited darkness frozen forever- The worlds that appear in my stories are actually huge islands in the endless sea, they have their own system of moons and a little sun and my Mages have never seen what a planet is =)

About time travels and paradoxes, I really dislike that in any story and I do not include such things in my Magic (in my opinion, if they have reality warping then time-related magic is not needed) the reason that I give in my stories for my Mages not travelling to the past is that the past is not there, it does not exist, it's not a place that you can travel to or change in any way... My personal theory is that if you travel to the past you would actually be travelling to a separate universe/reality that would be identical to the past of your own universe, and so anything you do would not affect your universe at all.

The immortality of souls seems to be respected in every Fantasy story that I have heard about!! Anyone else here in Mythic Scribes has included soul-killing magical weapons in your stories??

 

[sashamerideth]

My magic is a bit more subdued,it isn't the main focus of the story, nine is about character development, what happens when someone not used to power gets power, and what power friends and those we love hold. Sure, a Mage can obliterate a city, if they knew how, but reading about the destruction of a million people jst doesn't have the same impact as the sudden, unexpected death of a character that the reader has grown to love.

As for the last question about a soul destroying spell or device, in my story, anything will do that; no souls, no spirits, no afterlife, once you're dead, you are dead. Sure many of my people are superstitious and have a belief in the afterlife, there just isn't one.

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