What Is Magic?

The entirety of this post is in-character.

What is magic?

To be quite honest, this isn't really the right question, but I'll answer it anyway. Magic is merely the specific application of natural forces through the conduit of a person. This application of force is not physical, and beyond a certain point it is rarely intuitive.

What do I mean by this? Magic is merely the name for the process by which talented individuals take power from their environment and convert it to suit their needs. There is a point up to which individuals can do this without thinking about how to do it, but beyond that point there must be a specific focus. Furthermore, the unguided application of this process is likely to bring unintended or unwanted results and side-effects.

A much better question is:

How is magic learned and used?

There is a distinct process that my colleagues and I have developed for making it easier to teach the skills required to control the application of magic. It should be noted that this process is general, and each step may be performed in many different ways, depending on the person using the magic.

The first step is simple; the individual must have the requisite talents involved. These typically include the talent for the internal manipulation of force and the talent for seeing metaphysical forces (so that they might be manipulated).

How individuals access these talents is dependent on how they view their world. In general terms, it's easiest to consider the subject in terms of metaphors. By what metaphor does the magic user access her talents?

An extended example would be that of music. First, if the person is ill-suited to music, there is little that can be done. Similarly, if a would-be wizard cannot see or manipulate metaphysical forces, there is little that she can do.

The next step requires a magic user develop their metaphysical senses. In the musical example, this would be analogous to learning to read musical notation. If a wizard cannot quickly and carefully identify the presence of metaphysical forces and the particular metaphysical forces present, the manipulation that is to follow cannot possibly be as skilled as a that of a wizard that can. Similarly, if a musician cannot quickly read and understand the musical notation, her playing will suffer.

Thirdly, a magic user must develop a fine control over her manipulative talents. If a musician could only play three notes, he is likely to be much less successful than one who can play an entire scale. In the same way, a wizard who lacks fine control over the manipulation of metaphysical forces will be limited in the types of weaves that are available.

Fourthly, at the same time as the first three, a would-be wizard must enlarge her repertoire of basic and complex weaves, practicing each. Enlarging a repertoire allows for a greater knowledge of what possibilities exist, which is important for both wizard and musician. Furthermore, the practicing of such pieces assists in the developing of senses and fine control, as well as providing practical demonstrations of theoretical concepts.

How, then, does a wizard use magic, once her talents have been developed?

There are three steps to successfully creating a weave at its most basic level. Each of these steps has its own sub-steps.

1. Concentration
2. Visualization
3. Manipulation

Concentration: without it, a wizard is nothing. Without the ability to concentrate on what she is doing, a wizard is likely to cause great harm to herself and her comrades. There are many different methods for concentration, often related the metaphor through which a wizard accesses magic. My personal metaphor is language, and I have associated a particular phrase with a state of concentration, and I am able to enter a state of concentration simply by uttering the phrase and making a slight effort. A musician might strike a chord before beginning to play, to centre her mind.

Visualization: This is the stage where the wizard takes stock of what is. Accessing metaphysical senses, she quickly visualizes what metaphysical forces are possible assets, and which are possible distractors (though these are typically few). She also takes note of what weaves already exist in the area. This step is deceptively important. Without taking the moment to establish how metaphysical forces interact in a given area, using magic can produce unintended results.

Manipulation: This stage is the actual use of the forces to create a weave, and subdivided into many steps. This is typically done through reasoning from intended effect. That will make more sense in a moment.

1. First, a wizard must decide what the intended result of the magic is. This can be as convoluted as "I must nudge the currents of spiritual earth power so as to remove the negative effect from the nearby water supply", or as simple as "Protect me!".
2. Next a wizard must decide how best to achieve the effect. Though, in practice, this often takes the form of any weave which achieves the desired effect, regardless of efficiency.
3. Once the manner of affecting the effect is decided, the wizard must reach out to the necessary forces and manipulate them into a weave, often tying different threads of power together to create specific effects.

This concludes the lecture.

This lecture was given to seven students of magic by Eladrine Darkweather, the current Mistress Chronicler of the Dusk Citadel. At the time, she was working with students and assisting Brix Lagander with research.

Magic System Complete (Revised)

The Magic System document can be found here. Comments here will be restricted, please post your comments in the first Magic System post.

Edit: Thanks to the excellent work of Killer Shrike (for all things Magical [in the Hero System, at least], check out his website!), my magic system mechanics have been overhauled and cleaned up. Comments in the first post, if you please.

Magic System Revisited

I've made a decision that is logical, but probably isn't going to make many prospective mages happy.

In a multi-element weave, the affinity and skill used in the creation of the weave are those of the lowest-level element in the weave that the character possesses.

There's just not an un-awkward way to word that, so I'll explain by way of example.

Take a simple, two-element weave like an illusion. This requires both Fire and Air.

Elena, looking at her character sheet, sees that she is at an affinity of five in Fire, and four in air. She also sees that her skills for these elements are 13- and 11-, respectively.

She can only pull up to 40 active points, and rolls it at an 11-. Her skill with Fire is not the issue for this weave. Logically, if we test the weakest link in the chain, we can assume that the rest of the chain will hold.

Hold up, I can hear the groans. "Why would anybody have less than exactly equal points in each of the elements?"

Here's the thing. I think, at least with the players I'm considering playing with, that this will encourage more creative use of elemental energies, so as to stay within the characters' strengths.

I'm going to consolidate all of the necessary information into a single document and post it here later on this evening. It's the Holidays, I'm taking things slowly.

Comments in this post are closed. Please post your comments in the first magic system thread.

Magic System

I'm going to be up-front about this: Much of my magic system is poached from the popular Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan. I won't be giving the same treatment to gender as he does, nor will I be recreating the culture surrounding channeling, but I am stealing the basic idea. Interspersed around Jordan's ideas are my own, so if you get confused because you've read his work, that's why.

Magic is channeled by taking the raw elements themselves and weaving them together in various ways to produce various effects. The elements are the five classical elements: Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Spirit.

Fire also represents light, heat, and power. Earth represents firmness and stability. Air represents change, Water fluidity and receptiveness, and Spirit is sort of a meta-element, thought it also involves animation. Each of the elements also relates to the physical (or metaphysical) aspects of the element, weaving fire can bring light, but it can also create or manipulate fire itself.

These elements can be woven together: Fire to create light, and Air to change (invert, in this case) the light makes invisibility. At some point in the future, I'll be building a list of common weaves as examples.

Though magic is drawn from the world itself, the process has no appreciable effect on the world around the characters. Not even the greatest wizards of the ancient age were able to draw enough elemental power at once to note any negative effects. It should be noted that such experiments were limited in scale, out of fear of possible negative consequences.

It would serve for novice wizards to learn some simple weaves, and simply use them. Adjusting weaves "on the fly" to create unique effects is difficult and dangerous, and could possibly kill the wizard. The lure of power is great, however, and sometimes a wizard cannot prevent him or herself from drawing in too much power at once.

A powerful wizard can shield his opponents: This is not defensive, as it might sound, but rather offensive. A shield of this sort prevents a wizard from taking control of the elements around him. In game terms, this means a sufficiently powerful wizard can shut down his opponents. I strongly recommend that all wizards provide themselves some sort of mundane option, in case this happens. However, as magic is rare, it is reasonably unlikely to happen, at least at first.

Warning: Crunchiness Ahead

This crunchiness is all related to the Hero System. If you're interested in adopting this material to another system, feel free, but this section probably won't help much.

Elemental Affinities
People suited to magic are stronger in some elements than in others. The five classical elements are bought on scales of up to ten, though this cap represents the extreme end of human ability: Most of the greatest wizards did not have an affinity reach that level.

Affinities are bought on an increasing scale, in this way: The first level of affinity costs 1 point. The second costs 2 points, in addition to the first, for a total of three. Each level is bought in this way, so to reach a 10th level affinity in one element costs a total of 55 points (A little simple math shows that full points in all elements costs 275 points: 125 points more than a starting character with full disadvantages gets).

An affinity does not represent training: It represents raw power. Now, as training increases, so does the character's ability to draw more power, but the last few levels of affinity are difficult to attain (Well, the point values aren't actually very high, but the GM should stress balance).

Training is represented by a skill, which is a standard (3/2) ego-based skill. As with affinities, there exists one with each element. Now things get really crunchy.

Each level of affinity ups the maximum Active Cost of a power channeled by 10 points. So a first level affinity in an element could not produce more than 10 points of active cost of any power. The Real Cost limit is decided by the skill-roll. Each level of affinity (Active Points / 10) used is a -1 on the roll, which is a control-roll, and the number of points the roll is made by increases the real-cost cap by 10 points.

Example, because if you understood that, I'd be impressed.

Rhea has affinity 5 in Fire, and affinity 3 in the other four elements (total cost to character, 39 points). Looking at a single element weave, and at fire, Rhea could channel up to 50 points worth of active cost.

Looking at her skill-roll, she has Ego 18, and the basic skill level, which is 13- (the minus sign after the 13, for those not in the know, means thirteen or less). She spent a few points on her control skill, raising the skill level to a respectable 16-.

If she wants to channel 50 points worth of active cost, this will reduce her skill roll by -5, meaning that she'll succeed on an 11-. That's about as close to a 50/50 shot as the Hero system gets, so this is probably unwise, but we'll do it anyway.

If she rolls a 12 or higher, she fails. It happens. Channeling near your limit is extremely difficult. The character still looses endurance (1 END/5 AP = 10END -- ouch).

If she rolls an 11 or lower, she succeeds. On an 11 exactly, she gets a maximum of 10 points of real cost to play with, which means she'll need a total of -4 in limitations on the power: Probably impossible. BUT, this doesn't mean that the power necessarily fizzles. If stuck for points, the character can reduce the number of Active Points in the final power. Let's say she reduces the Active Points to 20, requiring only a total of -1 in limitations. However, the character actively drew 50 Active Points worth of power, and must pay full END cost for those points. The rest of the points are simply unused.

It gets better, though, as rolling an 8 gives the character 30 points of real cost to play with, and a 7 gives 40 points. So the secret is to balance your affinities with your skills.

Note: A character does not have to channel at his or her limit. In fact, it is recommended that you don't, except in dire circumstances. The less power you channel, the easier it is to make your skill rolls. If the above character had only tried to channel 30 Active Points, she would only have been at a -3 on her skill roll, and would have broken even (no limitations required) on a roll of 10-. Still a little less than 50/50, but magic is hard.

It's okay if you didn't follow. The blog format doesn't do much to help this along, and I'll be formatting this into a google spreadsheet and linking it to the blog. I just didn't want people to think I wasn't working.

Next Time: Who knows? Maybe something about dwarves, or politics. If anybody IS reading, feel free to comment and let me know what you want to see next.

The Tone of Magic

I'm posting this early because it's extremely important: Mostly because it's really, really different from vanilla D&D, which is the fantasy most people associate with RPG. The post is in-character.

Magic in this world is rare. Extremely rare. There have been perhaps a hundred great wizards in the history of the world. Most magic-users are hedge magicians, those who know enough magic to help the crops grow, and to improve the healing qualities of herbs. Ancient stories tell of a race of wizards, but we have never had a reason to believe they ever existed.

As for the dwarves, the elves, and the gnomes; who knows? They keep to themselves, mostly. Stories of these old races exist, even contemporary sightings and meetings. A young man, four years ago, told me that once he had been trapped in the mountains when a storm hit, and he fell off the edge of the path and was knocked unconscious. He was nursed back to health by a sturdy, stone-grey man: A dwarf, as I have come to know them in my researches. An old woman, after the death of her husband, was unable to farm her fields, but she awoke one morning to find her seeds sown and all her wine missing. She followed a trail into the forest, and found the remains of a wild revel around a campfire. Though I do not know for sure, this sounds to me like the elves.

These sightings and other magical events have been increasing in frequency every year. Perhaps magic is returning to the world. Perhaps the ancient wizards have returned. Perhaps the elves and dwarves are becoming less frightened of our mundane world. I cannot explain it, but I will continue to study it for as long as I live.

--Erich Maartens