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Too Many / Too Few Magic Elements?

Rinzei

Troubadour
Hello all! I have a few stories percolating in the old noggin, but one of my first stories keeps coming back to me. Now that it's been a few years and I'm no longer 15, it's begging for new life with a revamp.


The story falls under modern fantasy. Basically, there are other angels that have fallen to Earth after Lucifer for centuries. As angels, they still retain some of their "divine" power, which could be passed on to mortal descendants.

My problem is that the original story went the whole elemental-shebang: water, fire, earth, air, mind, body, and time... And each had sub-categories even! Looking at it now, it just feels cliche and redundant to have all those elemental categories going on when maybe a handful would be better, and less like a school-time cartoon.

Once I've cut them down for the revamp however, I've found myself with only Mind, Body and Time and their sub-categories (which in turn have also been trimmed to a few each). My worry is that this makes it TOO streamline, compared to how broad the selection was before.

On one hand, I don't want there to be death-by-selection or come off as an 80's cartoon (
By your powers combined, I am CAPT-- ). But I also don't want there to be a lack of variety between the characters' abilities. I also want the magical elements to make sense with the Angels - looking back, it doesn't make a lot of sense for an angel to control water...


Can anyone give me some insights on this? I'd greatly appreciate it.
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
I also want the magical elements to make sense with the Angels - looking back, it doesn't make a lot of sense for an angel to control water...

Why not? Tolkien did just that with his Valar, who are essentially angels serving the one God, Iluvatar. All fourteen of the Valar had their specific provinces, and earth, air and water were three of them. (Not sure why he left out fire, but eh. Maybe that was the evil one's territory.)
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
It sounds like you are going through the same thing I did years ago. I too had elemental schools of magic, along with necromancy, demonology, and bunches more. Then I started actually writing, and these many subcatagories became a hinderance.

Ultimately, I ended up with something very close to your 'Mind, Body, and Time'. In my case, though, the connection stemmed from real world ancient views on magic, the more credible present day psi research, and a fair bit of Lovecraft.

I ended up with:

ESP - probably corresponds to your 'Mind', and is mostly mind reading, object reading, scrying, with a bit of suggestion tossed in;

Metabolic - probably corresponds to your 'Body', concerned mostly with healing and growth;

Psychokinetic - ability to lift / manipulate objects via the mind alone, including levitation;

Pyrokinetic - ability to start and manipulate fire.

To this I tacked in illusions (varient of the 'ESP' / 'Mind' magic) and Teleportation (combination of ESP and Psychokinetic).

Magicians in the ancient world were often obsessed with obtaining the 'true name' of a spirit or demon; they believed obtaining such a true name granted them power over said entity, which they could then order to work spells on their behalf.

Lovecraft had a variation of this in many of his stories, I thought it was nifty, so I incorporated it as well: there is a subcatagory of wizards who learn just enough magic to summon and bind a spirit or demon which they then order to cast spells on their behalf. When I thought about this I realized that the wizards in question were likely fools of the first order: they are mortal, with a mortals limited knowledge, while the entities with whom they dealt knew ALL the tricks. So ultimately, it is the wizard who ends up serving the demon here.

Might have rambled on a bit much.
 

Rinzei

Troubadour
Hmm, you've both given me something to think about now...

I am thinking of throwing Nature in there (with a better word for it) - ones that can help plants grow and converse with animals. Perhaps these angels are the Tenders of Eden because of their powers?

@Thinkerx: Your subcategories are similar to mine, actually! Mind is composed of Telepathy, Telekinesis and Clairvoyance. I think my Telepathy incorporates some of your Illusion as well. Body is composed of Manipulation (think Mystique from X-Men), Enhancement (like your Metabolic) and Healing. Time is Control - the ability to slow down, speed up, and pause - but no travel back and forth.

I think if I incorporate the old elemental categories again, I may just limit it to adding Fire and Water in addition to the above. I found it difficult to write about Flora (for offensive attacks) and Air the first time around, so almost no one had those powers.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
Rinzel, if you can find it, you might want to look up Katherine Kurtz's old 'Deryni' series, which employes a magic system very similiar to what I came up with and for similiar reasons (she pretty much admitted to taking the Psi research of the time and making it into magic). She went so far as to have a mass market paperback published that is pretty much a description of the magic system, no story.

(naturally, I didn't find this until long after creating my system, but I was amazed at just how similiar our reasoning was).
 

Rinzei

Troubadour
Thanks for the help, you guys. I'm still deciding on the details a bit, but I'm more confident in deciding-process and how to carry it out now.
 
Also, I don't see what is wrong with having a large system if you don't let it take people out of the story or hinder your writing. If you even mention this sub categories in passing your story will be more alive. One thing that you can do is focus on one-three for your story and then know about the rest mention them in passing and boom a rich and living magic system.
 

Rinzei

Troubadour
Also, I don't see what is wrong with having a large system if you don't let it take people out of the story or hinder your writing. If you even mention this sub categories in passing your story will be more alive. One thing that you can do is focus on one-three for your story and then know about the rest mention them in passing and boom a rich and living magic system.

One of my other stories is going to have quite a large magic system, but I think for this story, it's overwhelming and redundant. At the time, I think it was more an attempt to create diversity and served no real practical purpose. Now that I'm developing the characters a lot more to stand apart from each other, it doesn't seem necessary to have so many options.
 

shangrila

Inkling
Personally, I feel that simplistic is probably best. If it gets too complicated it's going to distract more than add to the story. That was probably my only complaint about the Mistborn series, and particularly the last book; I had to keep flipping to the end of the book to check what was supposed to be happening.

That said, so long as it makes sense, I don't think a large system would fail either. But then again you could say that for almost anything, right?
 
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