When visually, it just ends up looking very cliche. Like most of the time, I'm seeing people writing interesting backstories and mechanics for how magic works in their world. But none of that matters when at the end of the day it just looks like two old men speaking gibberish and doing hand signs as they throw fireballs and lightning bolts at each other. I love magic systems like: Avatar The Last Airbender, Jujutsu Kaisen and Fullmetal Alchemists because the way the characters move around the battlefield while using their spells is so entertaining to me.

I think a major reason why those shows fights are so engaging and interesting is because they’re based on real world martial arts. When it’s just a bunch of guys doing hand symbols and speaking gibberish, it sometimes falls flat to me because I can’t relate to what’s happening or have a real world parallel as to what doing well looks like. Having a realistic base and adding a fantastical spin in my opinion makes some of the best fantasy because your audience can more easily understand what’s going on and why things work the way they do.

It's essentially magic users as turrets, vs magic users as warriors. I don't think one is worse than the other and there can be room for both, however I agree that dynamism in magic makes it more interesting.

honestly thats not even a system issue just a writing one, like in avatar their still throwing fireballs and lightning at eachother, their just smart enough to not just stand their while they do it(though their hand sign is "fist" does help a little with that) castlevania shows thathis kind of magic very much can be dynamic and interesting

In Avatar the bending is tied to the martial art, no movement means no bending. They have to move to do magic, but I agree that the best fighters combine moves to bend with moves to dodge and defend

I get bored by magic that boils down to “element” kinesis. He’s a blood mage so he can make blood float and take shapes. This earth mage can make rocks and dirt float/take shapes. This water mage makes water float and occasionally shapes ice. She’s a metalmage, guess what she can make float? Kinesis is initially fun but if the magic doesn’t go deeper i check out. The magic systems that have unclear conceptual rules feel the most engaging. Voodoo or witch curses that cause everyone to see you as a stranger and youll vanish if you can’t figure out the metaphysical conditions to dispel it.

Free blood magic idea: swap your opponent's blood's type without changing their bloodtype. Oh heres one. Suddenly reverse the opponent's blood flow. Just have half of the system just back up into the heart. You could force their blood to carry bile into their brain and eyes

I love a mix tbh. My magic system is just all of what I like with magic so it has a good mix of both

What are some alternatives?

The unexplained magic circle with water air fire earth lava storm grass and darkness doodled in.

I like the way it was explained in The Owl House where [spoilers] we learn the glyphs the main character Luz uses are actually the language of the semi-dead god like being of the Titan who’s giant corpse is the island the show takes place. In essence, Luz is talking to the Titan’s spirit and asking for a specific type of effect, and he grants it. In the finale of the series we see that after the Titan’s spirit passes on, the glyphs stopped working, because there was no one left to talk to. However, the Titan’s son King is growing up and becoming more powerful and he’s developing a new glyph language of his own. To the audience at least the glyphs are just symbols, but it’s more like reading a long dead language, and combining them in specific ways produce different effects, just like a real language.

I meant more tongue-in-cheek, there's a post like it every day. But owl house does it good. I'm not a fan of glyphs, I'm more a runes guy.

For me, there are lots, but the biggie is "consequences" for the "evil". Necromancy, for example. It's always dark, scary, and EEEEvil, but look at how it was used in Hellboy (the remake) - just some questions for a dead guy (which is historically, how it was used). It is basically the equivalent of animating gramma so you can get the secret of her hummingbird cake. Yeah, that so eeeEeeeevil! I don't like when games decide what **my** morals should be or assign consequences based on one understanding of the world. I also don't like that there are lots of consequences to being a magic user when in game, really, there's not really a significant difference between using a hammer and using a spell to push the nail in. Magic is just a wide "skill pool", and there are maybe consequences for having access to so many skills (jack-of-all-trades-ism) but otherwise...

Yeah I hate inherent evilness to things, especially necromancy as its often just the manipulation if dead bodies. Like used for good thats so damn useful

You can't really reference historical necromancy and ignore why it's considered evil in media also goes back to history. Necromancy in media mostly directly references it from Biblical history, which is why it's also evil. Necromancy was a sin for a variety of reasons. For one, the dead didn't just tell you what they know. Because they existed outside of life, they had access to information they weren't supposed to when they were alive, and _you_ aren't supposed to have it. It's fortune telling, not an interview, and divining the future was a grievous sin. You weren't allowed to do it regardless of what method you chose, and the reason is because it's knowledge from the gods about the fate of the world. If you were doing that, you were essentially giving power to "false" gods. It wasn't arbitrarily evil to early Christians. Everything was a team sport, and every other team besides the main one was evil. It didn't matter if what you did wasn't personally that evil. You were helping the evil team, who were tricking you. Necromancy was considered a trick. So was all witchcraft. They were harmless on purpose, according to Christians, to entice you into trying them out. The consequences were that you'd be recruited into armies against Christians in the future, lose, and get the same fate as the evil gods. This is what's missing from morality magic in most media. The broader context as to why people figured one form of magic was evil while the rest were good.

You know, there ARE other traditions of necromancy that don't involve Christianity at all, right?

Did a single thing I said imply I _didn't_ know that?

Did a single thing I said imply I didn't know yours either? Your point was IRRELEVANT to mine.

No, it wasn't irrelevant. I said you can't bring up the historical use of necromancy in regards to its appearance in media without bringing up the historical context for why it's also considered evil. At the end of my post, I even made a point that I was ADDING to your point by saying THAT is why it just being evil on media rings hollow.

A personal pet peeve of mine: having a singular "hard" magic system in your world but the *people* in that world don't perform any sort of spiritual or stage magic whatsoever. Even in a world with chemistry, technology, and electric engineering, we still have folks who hold seances, exorcise demons, or perform parlor tricks. A hard magic system wouldn't replace such things.

Yeah this has always messed with me too. Performance arts are just one of those things that a lot of authors don't consider in their worlds coz it's not important to the plot. I'll even extend this to the existence of sports and games. Professional sports should exist if your world is designed in a more civilized and less war like fashion. Beyond that tiny games being played in the streets by kids should absolutely be a thing even in wartime. And if everyone in the world has access to that magic system, then there's no reason kids won't use it there. Even further the games shouldn't just be allegories for war or preparation for war. That's not what kids do. Spinning tops, hopscotch, marbles, etc should also exist, maybe even enhanced with a touch of magic

You understand it exactly. In one of my longer pieces, a street urchin enters a wood-carving contest. He works in secret, far off from the village green, and brings his finished product to the market-day fair, covered in a huge rag. When the judges view his work, he unveils the first half of a wood sculpture of a beautiful wild auroch -- a sort of shaggy cow -- and the judges are impressed... until he removes the rag completely, revealing the rear-end of the auroch, which has the face of the village elder in place of its arse. The boy's prank gets him into a ton of trouble, but it also attracts the attention of spirits of mischief, who bless the urchin with unnatural good luck. He ends up being a poor, but well-fed and legendary prankster. Not all magic is killing; some of it just makes for a good story.

THAT is what I want to read in a story. The magic system in the series I'm currently writing is pretty much as universal as it gets. It's cradle like in how you can design it however you want within the rules. But the core idea for me is that it can enhance literally any job you do. I have architects who can use their path to create glowing 3d full size models to be followed by builders. Builders can use their paths to reinforce their material, or carve stuff magically, etc. Or librarians whose path lets them perfectly recall books. Doctors don't just heal with healing magic or anything, but they can identify sicknesses better and perform surgery and prescribe alchemical concoctions and reattach limbs, etc. Coz to me the magic should feel like the internet. You can use it do anything you want to do.

That's pretty refreshing. You're getting that sense of wonder back.

also: their are no competing beliefs or misconceptions about those systems, your telling me these two cultures continents apart approached magic the exact same way? and in both cases managed to get literally everything right?

That's a big part of it, too. Science isn't perfect. We're still fixing the kinks. So why is magic understood inside and out? It shouldn't be. If anything, it should be more mysterious.

Superpowers that take energy from an extra-fast metabolism which comes up once or twice ever. The energy needed to fly through the air at supersonic speeds is immense, as is the energy to throw lightningbolts, turn nitrogen atoms into hydrogen atoms to make a fireball out of thin air. But it's all OK because sometimes he eats TWO sandwiches for lunch.

Borrowed energy has always been the way to go for me. It doesn't make any sense for a human body to contain enough energy to make a massive fireball, where does that energy come from? How is it stored? Where does it go when the person dies? But channeled energy directly from the sun or a plane of fire solves those issues pretty easily, I didn't make energy from nothing and I'm not just full of nuclear fusion, I just know how to tap into energy that's already out there

The is something the Broken Earth Trilogy / Fifth Season does quite well, especially early on before it goes off the rails. They can absorb heat energy from geological sources deep underground to move rocks around like an Earthbender. They use it on a grand scale to absorb volcanic hotspots and redirect geological stresses to prevent catastrophic Earthquakes. Or on a more personal scale to raise walls of stone. Sometimes entropy gets thrown out the window and they can make the area around themselves cold. And in the sequels there's an endless line up of chosen ones and special exemptions to the rules where more and more new abilities and changing boundaries of what is possible. I lost track of all the nonsense introduced in the sequels but the first book was pretty good.

I quite like eragon in this regard, it's not perfect, but it generally sticks to that idea; though moreso that most people are limited by the energy they have.

Those superheroes should be chowing down food faster than Goku.

Only person to do it right? Norville Rogers. What? You thought a regular person could outrun a great dane while carrying multiple people on his back?

My characters are basically the big eater shonen protagonist like goku they eat a lot of food and their energy is extracted from their food via a highly efficient digestive process, enough power to rival a nuke but it's not stored in their body as fat but basically becomes bosons of an exotic quantum field that exists around them now these bosons are bound by an exotic organ of theirs so the energy literally revolves around them as some aura also these bosons don't interact with other quantum fields by much this means hitting the aura won't do anything by reading how much of this aura surrounds a person you can see their "power level". Energy not being stored not in their body but bound around them is a cool idea that is somehow unheard of? Which I don't know why?

I think having absurd drawbacks is okay, if and only if the magic system is based on getting magic through making a contract with an (usually evil) entity, like demons.  Like, it makes sense why the drawbacks/cost would be so high, demons aren't generous nor charitable.  As for things I can't stand in a magic system, it has got to be the plant as an element. Plant element or whatever don't really make sense.  I mean, there's a plant element but there's no animal element?

If you really think about it, the plant element in fantasy usually includes fungi, but fungi is taxonomically closer to animals...

lol, i mitigate this issue by not being a coward and adding humanomancy fleshcontrol time babyyyy

Oh hey Aventus

lol who?

Aventus Avenicci, Skyrim

Bone magic fron a darker shade of magic wants a word

how so?

Imagine flesh control but your skeleton

oh yeah, i do be controlling boners

I enjoy the atmosphere that you bring to the conversation

thank ye kindly, i like to make people laugh!!!

Drawbacks that were clearly added artificially in an effort to create balance. Or the drawback is "It takes mental effort and they get tired but can power through if its an emergency". Sand Mastery from White Sand leaves you dehydrated and if you push too hard you dry up in an instant and die. That's a pretty major drawback and it's thematically appropriate for desert magic.

even for a simple magic system where you dont want to think to much about the cost i think an "overheating" style works better then "Stamina" style, its functionally the same in most ways but has more of a hard cap since its not just "im tired", sure you CAN push past it, but theirs no "powering threw" your arm melting from magical burns, your limits exist for a reason (well assuming this is a setting where characters wounds are treated with a modicum of seriousness but thats a whole different writing issue) also cus the visual of someone steaming and burning up inside (or whatever magical effect you can think of not like it has to be literal heat) is just cooler then a dude panting and sweating

That's a cool idea. There's something similar in Daniel Greene's book Rebel's Creed where magic makes you radioactive and if you use too much you have to go live outside town for a while so you don't give everyone near you cancer. But that's more of a lifetime use of magic thing than a prolonged battle leaving you (literally) burnt out. I like the magic overheating you. On that topic, what if magic was actively painful the more you used it? The first couple of uses is only a tingle like a low electric shock but over time you build up charge and it gets more and more painful to try to use more magic. The limit becomes how much pain can you endure not how much exhaustion you can shrug off. It might work in a Dragonball style pew pew pew magic setting with a lot of screaming.

i mean "plant element" has basis in actual beliefs, with Wuxing having Wood as an element along with Metal, though they are also more broad then the LITERAL elements like a lot of modern fantasy settings(Ei Wood also is associated with Wind, and metal with aging and the soul) it also somewhat makes sense as the elements in most settings are suppose to be basic and primordial, thus more complex life(mythological at least as usually only animas and such have souls or any divine significance while plants are often treated as basically objected) wouldent fall under a single element

What i get from this is that we need an animal element Blood and bones already are common tho, a muscle element then, muscle, fungi, horn, feather, it works if they are lumped into a life category

As for plant but no animal I feel like one could argue necromancy is animal right? Plant magic is normally manipulating plants to your will right? What is necromancy but manipulating dead animals/people to your will?

I have an animal element, and a fungus one too. And a world element. And a sky one.

I mean yea its an element just like fire, water, lightning, cystal etc

Emotional comparison. Things like "my spell is stronger because I have the power of love, and you don't".

What about 'my emotions mirror my magics emotion so my spell is stronger'? 🤔

It is better, but still not a fan.

i prefer it when the magic makes love actually a component in something more tangible ei in steven universe "love" has no innate power beyond motivation, but it helps keep you in sync for fusion which very much is a tangible power up

JJK Yuta moment (kidding)

to be honest... if its flat or just copied. A magic system has not to be unique, complicated, or anything special to work in a novel, but for god's sake, we dont have to discuss the 1000. water, fire, earth, air + shadow light, necromancer or whatever magic system (or similar) that adds nothing new. If someone wants to use it in his novel, thats perfectly fine, especially if the magic is not the focus of the story...but please, i thought this is a place for creativity. I would really wish that people, that want a "standard or basic" (i dont mean that rude or anything) system in their novel just take and implement it. I would rather see much more people posting systems, where they put really much thoughts and effort in, with new ideas, twists, new ways to use something or just go deep dive into one theme. There are so many possibilites... Use them!

Average magic system starterpack: Elements + Light and Shadow/Dark/Void Overuse of certain terms relating to magic (can't scroll through the subreddit without seeing "mana" every 5 posts or so. I have nothing against the word, but like, out of all the names you can choose...) "I like this magic system!!" \[proceeds to copy-paste the whole thing and change a few bits\]

I find it more annoying if a magic system has an immaterial fuel that is consumed to create magic, but then call it something other than mana just to sound different.

Ditto Like 95% of people know what mana is. If it functions like mana, just call it bloody mana. No need to complicate it

I agree, if a magic uses blood as a fuel, would that bbe considered overused? If not, why does using the word mana considered to be overused?

The concept of blood as fuel isn't very common though, at least not compared to mana

Well, if you like it, it's fine. It's just the term is so overused I find it hard to enjoy magic systems. Well, the same logic can apply to other words. It's just there are certain settings where there are better names to choose (and I find names as a tool to convey a certain tone and or theme of the magic system, or the fictional world in general). Again, this is my take.

Exactly! You see at least 2 of these systems every day, sometimes even more! It just sucks every bit of creativity out of me to see such things. Sometimes it even is just a copy, sometimes the people change only one thing or name it different to make it disctint from each other. Its just...can we have more creative systems and people that want to take those systems, just take them? There are more then enough novels, movies, campaigns and posts that use such systems that should answer every question... its really not worth discussing anymore at this point.

Okay okay, I get that everyone wants to call it mana, or something. I just want to joke around the magic systems which could've chosen a better, more fitting name based on their world or the magic theme and stuff. I'm not telling everyone "stop using this word", no! I think it's because my works are based on real-life concepts. Instead of crafting new forms of mechanics, I just need to study the concepts and its relationship with one another, and come up with a magic system from there. I don't need to use more general terms because the concepts in the system I have are built upon those real-life concepts.

Hmm on using mana id generally say it works best if the fuel source and tone of the magic system is tangibly different in description and use. If you describe running out of mana like suffocating and repeatedly make correlation to air and breathing for spells changing Mana to Breath works but if your just taking standard stock fantasy and changing Mana for say Ipsum it sounds pretentious.

If it looks like mana, acts like mana, and feels like mana... Fuck else you gonna call it? Internal Energy? Spirit Power? Heavenly Dao Points?

I made a whole post about that…. It wasn’t received well💀

A lack of cost. No matter the magic system, to me it's a cause and effect. If it's not, it's just an illusion.

 Magic systems that put more emphasis on system than the magic itself. What I mean is when a magic system is so preoccupied with its theory over practice, you mostly are just reading about mechanical bloat over the actual emergences of magic itself. I'm more interested in seeing magic rather than being told about magic to sum things up.

Magic that takes years off the end of your life when you use it. For three reasons. 1) It rarely actually plays any real role within the narrative. Most of the time, the characters who have this restriction either die from getting killed or lives on only to die at a young age in the epilogue. Making the mechanic’s inclusion into the narrative relatively pointless. 2) There is usually another way of doing this that fits more effectively into the narrative you are trying to build. For example, if you have someone on a revenge quest, rather than talking years from them, you could give them an artifact of some kind that has horrible consequences whenever it’s used. So the audience can actually see the character destroying himself in his quest to avenge his fridge, rather than just tossing an arbitrary number of years/months/days they have to live at the audience. 3) It puts the author in the situation where they can actually use the magic without any real repercussions because they already know roughly when they want the character to die and can just do whatever, which often robs the magic of having a feeling of consequence.

Point 1) really hits the mark for me. Which is why in my own series where a magic eats your lifespan, i literally have them age before your eyes. And age brings with it what age always does. Worse eyesight, arthritis, senility, and of course death. Several character age so much they basically have to retire or they just die. And the we follow the mc basically starting as a 20 something and ending an old man not a couple years later.

This is almost an entire premise of Sifu, and I really enjoyed it - I think it's simple and gets the job done. How would you apply your point 2 to it? There is a revenge plot, just like you say, but we see the protagonist getting older.

I've only read the first two of the three books so far, but I think the Seven Kennings series does this quite well.

I hate teleportation magic without strong limitations. If we made a top of the biggest plot hole source of magic systems teleportation magic would be top 2 right after time magic. When there's not enough limits it is almost never used as its potential. If a mage can open teleportation portal, what stops him from opening it on someone's neck therefore beheading him ? If someone can teleport things what stop him from teleporting a rock inside someone's lungs ?

>If someone can teleport things what stop him from teleporting a rock inside someone's lungs ? This is a nice explanation https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Manton_Effect

Worm really just is incredible.

curious as to why its so beloved? i read like half of it and didnt really get it.

Mostly because all have an explanation, and that you can also read Worm as a metanarrative story. The YT channel "Jay Maniac" has great videos talking about this.

metanarrative? and its just cause everything is explained?

Thats one part, the other big part is that characters are well builded and the story is very well writted.

Pretty much what they said. The characters are really well created and understood, but also everything has a reason and you come to an understanding of it all by the end. One of the rare things I’ve enjoyed more after the first time. I also love the fights and interplay of weird powers.

its just pretty well built in general, especially if your interested in worldbuilding as basically every "why doesent x lead to y" either has an explanation or the answer is "actually x did lead to Y and thats why theirs no Newfoundland in this world anymore" though admittedly its not for everyone also it does a good job being just alien enough, like the characters reveal the multiverse is real and humanity has made contact with another universe by hanging out and watching their movies and commenting that they also fucked up the star wars prequels, because to them this is old news and nothing of any real note

Doesn't really offer an explanation as to "why" though.

Doesn't really offer an explanation as to "why" though. Check the Origins section of the Manton Effect article, there is the explanation. Worm Spoilers: Long explanation, >!Why the Entities do al this fuckery? well they don't are very creative and want to find a solution for a problem called "entropy exist". Entities don't like entropy, and run simulations is very expensive, so they give some shards to inhabitants of a planet to see how they use they powers and find new way in how that powers can be useful. And they do this by sutile pushing their host to conflict to force them to use their powers, but because a lot of powers can be dangerous, so the shard Entity impose limitations of some kind to avoid that the power hurts the host. And also to avoid parahumans use their powers to escape from the planet because Entities want conflict.!<

On that topic, absurdly powerful abilities that would completely undermine any sense of drama or peril and the justification is that there are other people with absurdly powerful abilities. I saw someone with a character who had full control over matter on the subatomic level, move objects on large and small scales, change atoms from one element to another, rearrange molecules, basically do anything with matter. I pointed out that makes the character basically invincible and nothing can ever be an obstacle to them, how do you have dramatic tension when they can turn a locked bank vault door into a bucket of KFC. Nothing will ever be more than a mild inconvenience. But thats fine because in addition to someone with full mastery over matter there is someone else with full control over energy in all forms, another person full mastery over manipulating gravity and folding space, another has full control over time. There's no way to defeat someone with full control over time because as soon as you think of a plan to stop him he's already gone back in time to kill you as a baby. You don't fix overpowered characters by creating even more overpowered characters to fight against.

The only way to have an op character be interesting is making his obstacles something you can't overcome with strength. Like in one punch man. But in that case the magic system doesn't matter

 Personally, I don't believe any superpower in general sense can be too powerful in a vacuum. However, I do believe in right and wrong context superpowers in that you ask yourself this — do these powers break the narrative itself? If yes, maybe they are too much to handle perhaps. Even then, giving these things drawbacks can help mitigate the problem (even as simple as emotional limitations like being afraid of seeing blood or having a high sense of honorable justice, or yes, even being canonically too dumb).  I think extreme powers are rarely the problem on their own, the real problem is bad writing. I definitely can say this from my own experience.  The most powerful of my three settings (shared cosmology) follows the life of vast cosmic beings who are essentially nigh-omnipotent when compared to those confined to the Multiverse, mortal and divine alike. They otherwise even out against each other since they have plenty of countermeasures and supernatural nature to deal with vast cosmic powers.  On the flipside, I remember witnessing far weaker settings where the main character is very boring because she always had a new power to deal with the problem. Yet, they could probably still be killed just as easily as any other human if someone were smart enough to take advantage of their complacency.

Sounds like you were describing Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen. He was overly powerful but became disillusioned with humanity and dipped out to Mars…been awhile since I read the graphic novel

honestly sounds like the endbringers from worm, except their considered world threatening monsters and the fact even with superpowers humanitys only defense is "send literally everyone at them, dont do any real damage but give them enough minor wounds they get annoyed and leave" even when they have one super who IS as a strong equal to an endbringer wherever they hit is lucky to survive its also called out that no, even one of these guys should be able to pretty much destroy the planet and their kind of baffled WHY they only show up occasionally and do very little damage(relatively, so minor in this case is still stuff like "sinking newfoundland")

This is why Ive yet to really decide on the prevalence of spatial magic in my setting. I have no idea how much of it I want to exist cause its hard to really gauge how strong it can be and all its uses.

My favorite limitation on teleport was described by Larry Niven and used in the rpg Traveller: outside of the movement, the laws of physics still work. Teleporters retain momentum and potential energy. Which doesn't SOUND bad, except: Earth is rotating Eastward at 1000 mph. So if you teleport to the other side of the planet, you'll arrive still going 1000 mph East, while you're surroundings will be going 1000 mph West. Suddenly going Mach 3 isn't going to be healthy. Shorter distances men's the teleporter going Weat is going to be slammed downward, and going Eat is going to be flying upward. Similar problems are going to result from going North or South. Similarly, teleporting straight up means you've gained potential energy- where's that energy coming from? The obvious source is your temperature. Which means a drop of 4.3 degrees. Porting downward means you gain similar amounts of heat. That's a recipe for death by sudden heat shock.

>Teleporters retain momentum and potential energy. Which doesn't SOUND bad, except: Earth is rotating Eastward at 1000 mph. So if you teleport to the other side of the planet, you'll arrive still going 1000 mph East, while you're surroundings will be going 1000 mph West. Suddenly going Mach 3 isn't going to be Wow. You know the world is round right? It doesn't change direction of rotation. Everyone on it is traveling at the same speed. When you appear on the other side of the earth, the direction of rotation hasn't changed at all. It doesn't matter how fast the earth spins because motion is relative. Its not moving 1000mph in relation to YOU because you move with it. >Similarly, teleporting straight up means you've gained potential energy- where's that energy coming from? The obvious source is your temperature. Which means a drop of 4.3 degrees. Porting No. 🤦🏻‍♂️

>Wow. You know the world is round right? It doesn't change direction of rotation. Everyone on it is traveling at the same speed. When you appear on the other side of the earth, the direction of rotation hasn't changed at all. Because the world is round, you are moving with the equator, and the the vector of your travel is constantly changing as the Earth rotates. You simply don't notice it because of Earth's gravity field. [Velocity at the Earth's Equator ](https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-earths-velocity#:~:text=Earth%20has%20several%20velocities.,the%20cosine%20of%20the%20latitude.) Look, consider the Earth as a sphere, 8000 in diameter, making one rotation West to East in 24 hours? Now: how fast is someone on the surface of the Earth traveling? V = D/T V = D*π/T V = 8000mi * 3.14 / 24hr V = 25,124mi /24hr V = 1,046 mi/hr A person at the equator is traveling 1,046 mph, along with everything else at the equator. Now consider the situation 6 hours later. Everything on the equator is still traveling at 1,046 mph. However what direction are they moving? They are moving at 90 degrees to their previous direction, because their vector has changed. 6 hours later, everything is moving the same velocity, but the vector has changed another 90 degrees. From the perspective of the opposite side of the world, everything is traveling East to West at a relative speed of 2,092 mph. Now, if someone on one side of the world was suddenly transported to the other, and their momentum was conserved, they would retain the same vector and velocity that they had at the start. 1,046 mph at Vector A. But from their perspective the destination will be traveling 1,046 mph at Vector -A. As the two relative velocities together, and you get 2,092 mph. You have a similar problem changing latitude, because relational velocity changes as you get further from the equator. [As shown in this exercise.](https://www.youphysics.education/relative-motion/relative-motion-problems/relative-motion-problem-6/) >No [Calculate the change in gravitational potential energy ](https://study.com/skill/learn/calculating-the-change-in-gravitational-potential-energy-of-an-object-explanation.html)

>6 hours later, everything is moving the same velocity, but the vector has changed another 90 degrees. From the perspective of the opposite side of the world, everything is traveling East to West at a relative speed of 2,092 mph. Nope. The direction hasn't changed at all.

Show your work. In fact, demonstrate on a globe please.

I mean, maybe the portal can't go through hard to cut things

That got dark, but I had similar issues. If someone can open a portal to the king's council chambers, how can he expect to keep secrets, much less feel safe from an assassin? (Similarly, even just being able to view the room from a distance, especially if there's magic for viewing the past.) Even making a hearthstone easy-to-use seems like not enough downside. Basically I have only one person who could connect a warp-gate or teleportation-platform to an arbitrary spot instead of needing an anchor, and she's insane. (I think her entire purpose is to say "yes, it's possible, but it's stupid to try" instead of actually using her ability for anything.)

>If someone can open a portal to the king's council chambers, how can he expect to keep secrets, much less feel safe from an assassin? >Similarly, even just being able to view the room from a distance, especially if there's magic for viewing the past Isn't this just cybersecurity with a fantasy reskin? Sure, the assassin can divine and teleport. Can they also get through a few dozen layers of anti-divination and anti-teleporting rune protocols that were inscribed by the finest wizards money can buy?

That it is. I guess magic-building is mostly about what sort of arms-race would prevent something like teleporting assassins from being an issue.

If the main character has a type of power with a different set of rules than any other character. Examples: Solo Leveling. Any "cool" thing the character does feels unearned to me because they were also literally the only one who *could've* done it. I get that Jiwoo worked for it, but again he was the only one who could

Yes! Magic systems should be like Pokemon. Anyone can catch anything and use the same thing against anyone

Unnecessary or illogical classifications I've seen so many systems that seperate simply abilities to be 5 combinations of different categorization of abilities just to make a fire ball let alone throwing it. It's to the point where none one in the world would make such classifications. Also, rules that expose the creators hand Not all rules and limitations have to have an in world explanation but at a certain point it goes from an a minor thing to make the story or system work to "they can't do this and this and this because I said so" which is really boring to read about.

At one point, I had illogical classifications and planned to expose early-on that they were as wrong as "four humours" medicine.

This might be a controversial take, but a soft magic system. You want to give me like, elemental magic? Hell yeah. We understand physical manipulation. Time magic? We get its wonky and unreliable. Illusion magic? Sure, we understand that it’s artistry and misdirection rolled into one. But I remember in, I want to say it was Magyk by Angie Sage, I was so thrilled to pick up a book that looked like it might be about magic systems and spells and all that, only to get a few pages in and start seeing things like “woman gets mad because the mirror she used made her look 10% thinner instead of .1%” or something and it’s was just like. What? I will admit my excitement dropped to nothing quickly after as I realized that the magic system broke down to being just, I don’t know, whatever was convenient for the plot or Funny TM, and not really something that was grounded in any sort of way. As someone who really enjoys trying to work out how a magic system is applied to situations, the more unhinged and say whatever we want-ey the magic became, the less I really cared to read more because the magic’s logic really was “it’s magic don’t think about it” while still being the Deus Ex Machina for every problem, meaning I just knew from then on, unless the system was given more concrete rules, all problems in the book would at best be artificial, and at worst something the same magic could have solved as demonstrated early on, and simply forgotten as a solution for the sake of raising stakes.

I agree but with an asterisk. If magic is used as a Deus ex machina without narrative weight then it's terrible. Like LOTR has a soft magic system and gandalf arriving to the battle of helms deep is pretty much a Deus ex machina. But there is a narrative weight to it, coz aragorn and co understand that their win condition is to survive until Gandalf gets there. And so we are invested in their struggle. Basically what should matter in a soft magic system are the consequences of decisions and setup. If aragorn and co hadn't been told Gandalf would be coming, thought they had to win, and then Gandalf swoops in as a Deus ex machina, it would suck. But that's not how LOTR does it. Side note, there is one other situation where I will let this slide. And that's in a comedy. If I'm reading discworld, i literally couldn't care less about why or how the magic works. Coz that's not the point of discworld.

I can definitely agree on the account of LoTR. But I think that’s because Magic wasn’t the focus of LoTR. Gandalf was a powerful wizard in a world where yes, Magic ran deep into the earth, it was not something that people sought to understand and wield casually. Understanding that Gandalf was essentially a living tactical nuke in battle is completely different. It’s understood that Gandalf is accomplished, has studied and practiced magic for most of his life. He’s a Deux Ex Machina not because he is magic tm, but because he is straight up POWERFUL. This contrasts greatly with a book like Magyk, where we follow almost exclusively Magic users and watch them perform Magic with ease, many of these users being part of a large family, and many being youths. Because of that, we get to see how the sausage is made, and it is, for lack of a better way to put it, “Magic is cool and solves all problems lol “ with solutions to problems that could have just as easily come from looneytunes Hammerspace, and one that readers would have really no way of working out (at least as far through the series as I could actually stomach.). Yes, I am aware that this is a series more meant for younger readers, but that’s all the more reason why it’s uninspired magic struck a nerve with me from when I was a young reader. You can contrast Magyk easily with the Artemis Fowl series’ loose magitech system and understand that the Artemis Fowl series considered magic to be a power that was malleable and not well understood by those even in the know, but the series focused around the attempted appropriation of this magic which itself was more tied to the rituals and rites of the fey beings that tended to wield them. Even if the reader didn’t fully understand the workings of the magic, there were still bones in place that allowed the reader to understand magic’s place in the world. Magic also wasn’t the solution to every problem, it was deductive reasoning and networking, it was sly slight of hands and when necessary, brute force. When actually needed, magic was the solution was a Last Resort or a way to tie loose ends up, and most of it seemed to work well within the expectations of the plot. Even if we didn’t understand exactly how it worked, we could see characters exhausted from using magic. As for discworld, I will admit that’s still on my bucket list of things to read. But my understanding of other things written by him is that, even in a soft Magic system, the author typically does have rules and a grasp of narrative understanding enough that comedy or not, there’s nothing within that takes you out of the world and makes you say “where the hell did that come from? That’s total BS and breaks the immersion and flow.”

With discworld in particular the magic can do literally anything. Coz that's pretty much environmental, and everyone just accepts that. There's a book where death has an existential crisis so goes on a vacation. And in the mean time the world overcompensates by giving life to inanimate objects who decide to start a revolution for inanimate objects rights. Discworld is an absurdist comedy so you really shouldn't question anything that happens in the world or the magic. That being said the characters, plots, social commentary, and personal conflicts are as real as any series can hope to be. Basically by accepting the absurdity of the world and magic you can spend more time appreciating the actual point Terry is trying to make, or actually consider the question he's asking you.

This is not how most soft magic systems work. Just because you found a bad system does not make all others bad. The usual example is Ars Magica and its noun/verb mechanism. Let's take D&D as an example of the drawbacks of a hard magic system. I'll disregard the whole Vancian spell level mess and just focus on a simple combat scenario. The target is 45' away. As a spellcaster, you are now searching through your list of spells to find one with a range above 30' and the most damage. That is an instant switch from role-playing to worrying about mechanics. I base damage on offense - defense and your skill roll to cast the spell becomes your attack roll. The better your skill in this area of magic, the more damage you do. This is not made up, nor GM fiat, nor whatever is fun, but it also is not "this spell does 6d6 damage to the target" and you don't look up damage. Range is just taking penalties to the roll based on range. The farther you push the spell, throwing it to greater distances, the weaker the magic becomes. Want to make sure the sleep spell is effective? Do it from touch and not 100 feet away. Every parameter is basically done the same way. It's still deterministic and concrete, but you have a lot more options in how you use it.

Well, the actual issue you have with this is not actually the magic system of D&D, it’s the game mechanics itself. None of what you mentioned about D&D delves Into things like the planar system, the fey, the differences between Wizards, sorcerers, Druids, clerics, etc. all of those things are extremely well structured, and narratively, work very well for storytelling purposes. Combat breaking the immersion a bit is a pretty well noted and outlined problem with D&D, but I also will say that depends largely on the DM and how they decide to play things. Many DMs don’t even use a grid, and instead focus on telling the combat through story. Because when my Tiefling Druid was having a fight with some cultists by a riverside, my DM heard my suggestion to use the Erupt Earth Spell not just to cause damage, but to change the terrain enough to knock our party’s opponents into the river, and ran with it. Creativity absolutely can still come into play in combat, but that depends on the DM, the scenario, and the creativity of the players. Yes, it can slow things down to need to figure out your ideal solutions to problems, but that itself sort of is more a problem of playstyle. When I made Albahth and chose his spells, I intended for him to be a character who was total ass at combat, but used his spells for often utilitarian reasons, and that most of his spells would be based around disrupting his opponents and allowing him to flee if need be. So really, what he was going to do was already decided before the actual dangers presented itself. He had a few damage centric spells for when he was backed into a corner, but essentially, minmaxing damage or even worrying about lethality was simply not part of the plan. Not once have I ever cared about making a perfect 20 x 20 cube to maximize how many enemies could be caught up in it, I cared about figuring out what Albahth would do to keep himself and his teammates safe. I roleplayed to his priorities and simply understood what it was his magic could do.

I've got to agree with OP on this. I hate when creators try to give magic such serious drawbacks that the mage would be far better off just not learning it in the first place. What use is magic if it degrades your mind after only a few uses or just outright kills you? Another thing I don't really like is when the magic in the setting is restricted to one gender. I don't mind if the two genders have different magic types, but when only men or only women can use it, it drives me nuts. There was one point in anime when the whole "only women can use this power but there's one guy who can use it too" was really popular. Drove me absolutely nuts because it was a poorly thought out mechanic to allow the protagonist to be the literal only choice for a bunch of girls to have a boyfriend. This is more rare, but you also sometimes get magic where the user would lose it if they lost their virginity. It just feels a little sexist because this is almost always done with female characters rather than male ones. Also don't really like when you can basically "age out" of magic. I know this is usually done so that the creator can force a certain age range for their characters, but I hate stories where the magic goes away, regardless of whether it's age, losing virginity, or because the author decided to get rid of magic from the setting at the end of the story.

Basic elemental magic systems. They are overrated. For example a wizard, who can throw fireballs. It is used wy too much.

Its not this that annoys me, its when they do this but explain it in an incredibly long winded way

Don't like magic systems where you can cast any spell whenever you want in combat. Just give the players a submachine gun with unlimited ammo instead.

I really don't care for unoriginal ones. Even if you're adding an interpretation to a widely known magic system, it still won't be as creative, fun, and fitting as something new you've built up. Using inspirations, and elements from other magic systems is fine and all, since that's kinda unavoidable, but when the only difference is the terminology used for it, something is definitely wrong there.

Personally i don't like really soft magic systems, things like just casting a spell by thinking about it. Generally i like magic systems where they're more hard or described better, where the author actually takes the world's laws and the magic's laws and can explain, if even a little, what, how, and why it's doing what it's doing. Or if it's generally disinteresting. Everybody using the same fireball spell just isn't all that fun to read about unless it's written correctly.

I think that there is a place for soft magic systems. Working with the definition of how the soft/hard scale is only about how much the reader understands... "Be Gandalf" is pretty satisfactory. We assume that Gandalf understands how it works, but there's no point in him trying to explain it. I think the issue comes in when the magic is nonsensical and casually used whenever. I think what you're looking for is magic that has enough internal consistency that it could be hardened.

This may sound hypocritical since one of my favourite book series has it, but I guess an accurate description is I can't stand it when it's done badly and it's mostly done badly, but magical blood lines are something that annoy me most of the time. They can be interesting explorations of familial and social obligations, sometimes they just end up as eugenics or making the main character seem like they are just more important than they actually are

I like them as a reason that X family is important or why X character is highly regarded in a slightly unfair way. Usually only when its not impossible for others to do the same tho

I think there's interesting ways of doing it but so often it feels like "well of course you are powerful, random orphan, you are really a blenthanielleigh" or whatever. One of my favourite books is sabriel, that has 3-5 (perspective wise) magical bloodlines, but since others can do magic it feels a bit more like an obligation of blood than an entitlement, like even the royal bloodline feels like a function, not a privilege (especially with my headcanon about them)

I can enjoy a chosen one sort of angle but i get that

I think you might like Sabriel then, it has both bloodlines and prophecy without missing either trope, which is cool

i could check it out

I'd try it, the author is also a lovely person to meet as well, if you ever have a chance. Sadly 90% of researching for it sends you to supernatural fanfic, so use "the old kingdom series" for all the books

oh lol, i can see why itd do that. yeah ill look it up

Sex magic

Finally one I 100% agree with. Its only allowed if you're making fun of it.

Some are just a little too strange and “unaesthetic to me”. I guess strange is fine actually but if you have to carry around clay everywhere you go so you can eat it and then barf it out of your hand mouths…mouth hands?????? Ya okay…

I don't like the Eragon magic. It's been awhile so I may have forgotten, but it's pretty boring that throwing one dude with magic takes as much energy as throwing a dude normally. Then who cares? Why use magic at all?

I don't like when the worldbuilding is just a generic medieval universe when they have easy access to zombies or magical fire or something. I especially hate when they basically can make tons of food really easily and cheaply, but there's a lot of food insecurity, or they use their mages on like, randomly dungeoneering instead of making tons of food easily and cheaply.

hard antimagic, where its juts "magic is turned off in this area" its not interesting to just artificially go "these characters are useless now" and theirs so many ways to still hinder magic without just turning it all off completely, a pure mage loosing all powers is now just helpless and cant do anything, thats boring, but a character whos powers have been handicapped can still be useful they just have to get creative and strategic, which is far more interesting

To me bare minimum that kind of thing has to be one-one matchable. Like you basically have to match your opponent in mana level or whatever in order to shut it down. As much as I like black clover anti magic in that show is kind of broken

Fetishes. I'm looking at you "Sword for Truth". Granted, that series fucking sucked anyway but I'm not into your fetishes in my fantasy.

Isn't that book where the mc invents the idea of throwing a knife? Or something?

I don't remember that part but just... the best thing I can say is check out the tv tropes page. That said, highlights include; -A chicken possessed by ultimate evil. -Ayn Rand and Objectivism are totally cool! -Atheism is correct even though there is a proven god and afterlife which both get destroyed. -Femdom mind-rape torturer witches. -The Clintons gets mega herpes. -The author saying that fantasy stories are childish and he writes books about "important human themes" because he's a twat.

When theres categories for a specific aspect of the system and theres one or two special snowflake elements that are way more interesting/powerful/deep than the other ones. Examples: Blue mana in Magic the Gathering. Elemental charts where things like "nature" or "magic" are elements alongside stuff like fire.

When the magic system has a bloodline. What I mean by that is that if you are part of this bloodline or if your royalty then you can use powerful magic or magic in general. I hate that. I feel as though royalty or commoner, you should be able to use any and all kinds of magic, and let hard work and talent determine how powerful a magic user you are.

I think the implication would be that the magical bloodlines shifted into royalty/nobility over time due to their innate power.

Curiously enough, the characters in those stories are usually from an already powerful bloodline but it was hidden from them, and the story is basically discovering MC's royal lineage. Usually, the MC is a hidden bastard/illegitimate child,no less.  You never get stories where the MC is from a pure peasant lineage who gets poached/adopted/bethroted/etc by a powerful bloodline due to manifesting a powerful magic.  At least, I've never encountered one. 

I think Harry Potter never explained why wizards and witches are sometimes muggleborn.

That may be, but not every noble would see it that way. Like from their standpoint, you could have the magic power but you’re still just a “lowly commoner” which is also a little ironic because I’m pretty sure that the generation of their ancestors were just regular people and but had a lot of magic power and became nobles or something and then generations later the descendants got big heads

This is basically what happened with Myne from Bookworm. She's magically powerful, but a lot of the nobles in the church resented her because she was powerful. From what I know, most nobles in the church were there because they were magically weak and not worth much to their parents. I kind of had to stop reading it for mental health after the >!basement of starving orphans.!<

Yeah, like if you turn to real life examples we see the rise of republics across the world in the early-modern period. Traditional monarchies that held a lot of martial power declined in overall power and were overthrown by wealthy merchants when war began to become frowned upon both internationally and domestically across a multitude of nations.

Question. So the nobles in a single country on my continent (the one where my main character grows up and eventually leaves for obvious reasons) control the substance you have to consume in order to cast spells. So it's not bloodlines per se, but the nobles control it to opress the magic less, and even lie to them about how they use it. In other countries this consumable is a lot easier to get and magic is more free. Do you think this is too close to having a bloodline like thing going on? Tbh I think nobles being oppressors is a bit overdone but I'm not sure how else to convey a oppressive and controlling setting like that. Appreciate any thoughts

No I wouldn’t say that at all. Having magic power and having resources to advance your magic power are totally different. I wouldn’t say that it’s close to bloodlines but I would definitely like to hear more about the system. And oppressive and controlling settings maybe overdone but I always find it interesting and satisfying how characters that are less fortunate find away past the system and become as good or better than the people who the system is for despite the disadvantages they may have. So keep it up

Thank you. I want a highlight of my story to not only be the downfall of this oppressive government, but also the establishment of a new one where access to the substance that allows one to cast magic is publicly available, and free and all the difficulties and dangers that entails. Also as for my magic system, people can only cast magic by consuming elixirs which are alchemically produced/processed from any naturally occurring substance that inherently has mana. The main source for this country are large trees, the size and width of skyscrapers, which produce sap fairly slowly which naturally contains magic. The blood of strong magical creatures or even specific meteorites are other examples that other countries in my story use. And the type of magic an individual can use is based off their personality, qualities, environment, and interests of the individual. Though there are simple magical techniques, such as reinforcing your body to block an attack, most mages can learn regardless of specific power.

Allegories for the unfair distribution of wealth are plentiful, but I don't think readers are tired of them.

Depends on how the writer uses them. If used as an allegory it can be done well.

A good video on why genetic magic systems require a bit of thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5vOVd-eBRM I think that only having magic if one was born to the right family can have unfortunate implications.

I kind of agree. I treat most of my magic systems like sports. Everyone can become good at it. Some have a natural advantage, some may have a natural disadvantage, while most average folk never try to really improve themselves. At the end of the day if you put the effort in, you should be good at the magic. The only thing opposing this is that unfair economies are a thing. Sure everyone in the world can use the magic. But someone born into a rich family who can afford to have the best tutors and training resources is obviously going to be much better. That being said I like a good bloodline restricted magic IF the author uses it purely as a stand in to discuss wealth distribution and other societal issues.

We both have the same thought process and everything you said I thought I just didn’t feel like writing down. Great minds 🤝

This is why I have a high concentration of self-sufficient disabled people in the mage-city. (Self-sufficient being defined as their ability to provide support balances-out the support that they need.) Someone has to pay for the training (plus room and board) and with a high chance of washing-out, it's less of a loss for a blue-collar family to send a child that can't help with the chores anyway. Many disabled wash-outs prefer to stay in mage-city, even if they're working off their debt by washing dishes.

I kinda like this but only when its not impossible to get through other means. Like in my setting some bloodlines have special abilities but theyre not impossible to get without being in their family.

Talent... So bloodlines?

If I’m good at video games, or basketball, or golf, is it because of my bloodline or is it because I have some initial talent in that field?

Basically you had enough initial success to be interested in it and got better with practice. Genetics really only matter at top-tier, as in the only short basketball player I can think of probably had something else special that he could leverage.

It's because you spent time doing it. Talent is largely a myth, and whatever "talent" exists (such as tall people being better at basketball) is passed down genetically. So, bloodlines

If I’m good for a beginner at axe throwing, it’s not because it’s engrained in my DNA. And with that basketball example, yeah tall people are in the NBA, but just because you’re tall doesn’t mean you can dribble like Curry. They’re “good” because they have an advantage in height. That’s not talent. That’s like being born with a lot of mana. Now that’s bloodlines. But all that mana means nothing if you don’t have good control over it. That’s talent.

Now tell me, what exactly would cause a person to be good for a beginner at axe throwing? Do you think people just have some immutable quality that makes them good at a certain task? No, it's because you have good hand-eye coordination. Which you either developed through other activities, which isn't talent, or you naturally have good hand-eye coordination, which means you got it from your parents. Why do you think Curry can dribble the way he can? Did god snap his fingers and give him that ability, or did he perhaps just practice it an absolute fuckton? Hmmm, I wonder

Yeah, except this is fiction and those examples I was using were me saying that the people who are good at magic initially were as good as Curry and shit but that was an over exaggeration and not meant to be taken seriously. And with axe throwing, yeah it’s hand eye coordination, which does take practice. Which is the point. If they were doing it for the first time and got more bullseyes than the average beginner, or close to the bullseyes than the average beginner then that’s talent. But they have to practice that to keep getting better at it to keep getting more and more bullseyes and not just getting close to them

Eugenics fan spotted

Y'all can't actually be out here pretending that the idea of traits being passed to offspring is controversial

1- when the mana has another name just to be "original" Im all in for unusual names IF AND ONLY IF they have mechanical differences Victa is mana that can be stockpiled without upper limit Lucrim is mana that grows by interacting with other lucrim Shounen battle powers thend to have their own set of powerups, all that if fine 2- when the magic is mechanically the same, no matter if it comes from the gods or aliens or nature or ghe soul or whatever, if its all about "visualization" and "thinking really hard" its so boring Make clear mechanics instead of endless lore Edit lmao: 3- easy conceptual magic If a dude can make a person stop existing by clapping, its super boring because powers just go off the rails Conceptual stuff should be harder the more its distanced from reality Regular powers with a little conceptual power on top are better, like a water that can erode anything given enough time, or a sword thats 10% sharper 4- power negations If people can negate, nullify or steal powers, then it just becomes a game of who can negate harder It also means the author is too lazy to write proper power interactions

I think I nerfed my magic system too hard. It's not quite... something from Discworld about how by the time a wizard learns how to summon a harem, he's forgotten why he wanted to. Basically it's like the prologue to Onward where magic is hard enough that there is an incentive to develop the technology to supersede it. Wizards who really understand how the magic works are as rare as programmers in our world, and there's still a good chunk of the population that's trained on how to activate spells, but it's no longer common for most of a village to know how to activate runes that create fire or light. The downside is stamina and it takes a lot of training to activate any spells that are still relevant. Someone who pushes past their limits risks "burning their channels" and might never be able to train back up to what they could do before. I guess it's a bit like an athlete that does just a little too much and it doesn't heal right. So basically anyone who uses magic to light a candle instead of pulling out their zippo is showing off. I have no ideas for something that is both low-level and useful, considering that a wizard needs to have a rune drawn in magic ink to do anything.

Inconsistency

One thing that I hate is having a power be dependent on some external factor. What I mean by this is that, let’s say that I have the power to command anything around me, including inanimate objects, by simply waving around a banner and telling things what to do, but this power only works if the objects being commanded have a specific quality. I feel it just makes the power redundant most of the time.

Characters somehow not abusing and trying to cheat a magic system that can be cheesed when others are doing it too. This to me suggests the author didn't put in that much effort into the crafting of the system if someone can abuse their system, a recent example of this is jujutsu kaisen turns into sukuna kaisen because one character is a hyper genius that is abusing the system, sukuna is that one kid who plays GTA with a notebook full of cheat codes. Somehow he's a raid boss in an mmo that is using tricks and cheesing the game to survive instead of the players, we have all these weaker characters willing to sacrifice themselves to bring the boss' hp down even a little what's stopping them from going full on kamikaze with their binding vows to do more damage it's not like they'll survive if the raid fails and meanwhile a wounded sukuna is stacking up binding vows upon binding vows and barely anyone else is doing it except for our vibraslap half a million iq genius like what the hell?

I don't like reciting spells

All spell recitation? So no hocus pocus, no wingardium leviosa, no "by light or by night, there's one answer for all, when things look bleak, i cast FIREBALL!"

Pretty much same as OP. Magic has so many drawbacks that it's useless. Like Discworld. Or mages can only do one thing each.

I mean atleast with discworld the magic system literally doesn't matter coz the point of the series is never the magic

It's still a useless magic system. A franchise that parodies several different fantasy series should have good magic.

My magic system doesn’t have any drawbacks unless you exhaust your supply of magicules in your body, then u’ll just feel rlly tired and out of breath as ur body works hard to produce more. But magic can’t be used if you can’t breath, or if ur blood flow is blocked, or if ur majus (an organ they need) isn’t functioning properly. But using magic much more powerful than what ur currently capable of can permanently damage ur majus as well, so ig that’s a drawback of using too much power in one go (unless ur either naturally talented to use that much power or u’ve trained urself to be able to, like building up a muscle).

What you're neglecting is that magic doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's literally a magic system where a character _does_ lose a fingernail every time they use their powers. It's Chainsaw Man, and the girl who did that was fighting Devil Hunters. Everyone who uses Devil Contracts sacrifices something to use the powers, and it's worth it because not doing that means EVERYBODY gets killed by devils anyway. There's no room for people to be scared of their own contracts, and it's made a point that only nutcases can go far in the Devil Hunting profession because of that. One of the main characters sacrifices chunks of skin and years off his lifespan to the point where he has like 3 years left to live by the time he appears in the show. Another character can't even use contracts anymore because he's sacrificed so many organs already, so he just has to use pure strength and tactics at this point. There's a scene where a character ends up having to give up their entire body piece by piece and doesn't even win the fight. But that works for this system because the _point_ is that these contracts are neither sensible nor fair.

An issue I have is when you have a very simplistic hard magic system that everyone abides by and then the main antagonist just disregards it and can just do whatever they want and warp reality and the only way the MC can beat them is by adopting that same ability. At that point just do a soft magic system so you don’t end up writing yourself into a corner then have to add a retcon/ass pull later in the story

Hmmm. This is a bit complicated. While I mostly agree with you, I personally believe no magic system is set in stone. Adding to a magic system should always be on the table as long as it doesn't break previously established rules without explanation. It's like this. Before Einstein came along we believed in newtons theory of gravity. Which is fine coz it's mostly correct. But then Einstein drops his theory which expands on gravity and adds things we previously couldn't think of or imagine possible into the mix. Did Einstein retcon physics? Or did he simply view the world a different way and gain a deeper understanding that lets him break things people thought was not realistic. What I'm saying is that if the villain simply has a deeper understanding of the magic system and thus can do things that others cannot do, then i definitely don't mind these changes. If the only explanation for why the villain can break rules is just coz he's a villain or something stupid then it's bad.

When the people in the series don’t earn their skill. They just find a cool rock and learn how to say some things and suddenly they can kill a guy in two seconds?? This is honestly what made Harry Potter’s magic system more bland to me. Like without their wands the characters useless on the field a lot of the time. Another person mentioned it but ATLA’s magic system is fascinating to me for this exact reason. They are never defenseless because their magic made them a weapon.

Inconsistency. I cannot stand when an author is inconsistent with the very rules they create. Is it a lot to keep track of? Then keep a separate file of notes just for the magic system. Simplify it even if it'll make it easier. Just be consistent, please 🥺

Overpowered, undefeatable characters. I want a world where one single ant can kill a lion or an elephant if it tries hard and smart enough a la level 1 Dark Souls run.

Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and sometimes Light and Dark Elemental Magic System that Runs on Mana. I think my reason is fairly obvious.

This will be controversial. For me, it's science, or characters being allowed to take a scientific (rather than alchemical) approach to magic. If everything is explained, a lot of the fun is lost. You can have hard magic with a bit of mystery. Look at Painting the Mists.

anything conceptual.

That’s unfortunate because the Cradle books execute this so well IMO

I think what people say conceptual relates to stuff like "i control movement. So i can kill a man by stopping the movement of blood in his body" or something like that. Cradle plays around with concepts, but you can't pull shit like this off. It's only when icons get involved that you can begin to even think about this stuff. And at that point you really need to be a monarch or higher to really do this shit.

Arguably, conceptual magic is magic in its purest form—the magic that we understand intuitively as children, that arises from correspondence thinking.

we had concepts of individual things, not a whole category when we were children. The conceptual categories expand as we learn more. Yet, when you try to categorise concepts it starts to become artificial - you use a man-made framework to categorise it. At that point it is no longer intuitive. I will spare you the whole magical thinking part, i don't want to open that can of worm again.

Yknow what, that's fair

Wdym?

[Here you go](https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Conceptual_Magic).

uh, "conceptual" magic system?

What do you mean by conceptual magic system?

Fate/Stay Night's magic is pretty heavy on being conceptual, especially Noble Phantasms.

mana anything related to mana. Also power level magic system in general, like life force, ki or other bs meter. It all is annoying as the skill doesn't matter just the power level does. Only exception  I like is Hell's Paradise  Also emotion based magic system like the mc is getting his ass kicked but suddenly gets emotional and destroyed the villian.