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