Why is Earth magic so criminally underrated in most systems?

Well in that case the fire mage can just immolate you from the inside out and the wind mage can explosively decompress you.

Why does there HAVE to be a healing element? And sheer masses of water (you know, tsunami) can fuck shit up too. Flash floods can carry cars with just a few feet of water. Ice can kill you. Acid can kill you. All of this water based stuff can off you quite reliably.

There are several mythologies where the first humans' bodies were formed out of clay or some other earthen material, so if the setting gives mortal races similar origins it might be symbolically appropriate to give earth magic healing and other body-altering effects.

Your body is not flammable. It would require ridiculous temperatures to ignite someone from the inside.

Meanwhile a water mage could just boil you. Or make your blood rip you apart. Or just destroy your heart.

>explosive decompression
>bad
that takes like 60 combat turns, user.
More, if you know how to deal with low atmosphere environments.
And all you really get is the bends and some tissue damage, then.

I'm pretty sure water killed more people than any other element.

Because healing magic is cool and we want healing magic.
Of course, there doesn't HAVE to be healing magic. But there also doesn't have to be offensive magic. Or magic.
Magic system makers want healing magic so they put it in water.

Plus it lets healzerkers be a thing.

>Not throwing rocks at unconscious people

>Plus, water in damage terms really needs to be hyper pressurised or over decades, neither of which work for battles.

>because niggas have never drowned in the history of ever

Assuming that they can directly affect water that is mixed in with all the other bits of a human and built around the setting's equivalent to a soul.
The thing that lets a mage do magic can also protect against magic, in many settings.

Fire mages can create fire out of thin air. Water mages would have like 20 times easier job considering 80% of you is already water.

And things like hydrokinesis should work on humans perfectly fine.

Try GURPS. Earth spells are excellent. If anything, earth college might be the best (or tied with Fire to be the best). Stone Missile is almost stupidly good, and more broadly useful than even Fireball (itself very good). Then you get the transmutation spells, often accused to be economy-destroyers.

Magic healing removes almost all consequence most of the time. What's the point of injury if you can heal? It ends up "Did it kill him instantly? No, back in the fight. Yes? Oh well moving on." or even worse "is he dead? REVIVE!".

Because it's pretty grounded.

Because real earth magic is chemistry.

Because it's OP.

Because it's vague. Are your powers just telekinesis and you throw rocks around? Do you only control rocks or also dirt, sand, etc? If you can control rocks why can't you control iron and metal in general? That would be overpowered.

Shut the fuck up, Carlos, you stupid spic fuck.

Usually earth magic actually also means metal control.

Fire healing as part of channeling divine fire of creation.

Earth healing with origins of earthly creation or flesh being solid in nature despite its fluid content.

Air healing in breath of life concepts, reviving those near death and giving them a second wind.

Not even clear what it is. In some settings it deals with plants, in others it's just the ground, in others it's a lot more.

Also, how would you make a concentrated earthquake anyway? You just can't make an earthquake near you that doesn't harm you.

Fire also has phoenixes and flames of rebirth.

Elemental magic it's shit

You make damn sure that you personally are in an empty field with no tall objects or steep ledges to fall under or off of before you launch your quake.

I liked how in Golden Sun, earth, water and fire all had healing spells. Elements are pretty fucking wide, they all should cover a nice amount of offensive and defensive options, including buffing, debuffing and healing.

Terrain manipulation.

That's why most systems include a series of tradeoffs that restrict the power of healing magic.

Earthquakes would be more dangerous to castles or cities.

In normal fights stuff like collapsing parts of earth to swallow everything standing there would be pretty deadly. Or turning areas into quicksand or muddy swamp.

Because most systems don't have aliens, and 'Welcome to Urf' only works on ayylmaos.

By that logic, life is also a breath and a spark.
All four classical elements should have access to healing or at least buffing.

Does fire count as healing if it's used to cauterize wounds?

Fire Opposes Water
Earth Opposes Wind
Ice Opposes Lava
Light Opposes Darkness
Lightning Opposes ???

Sounds good to me.

see

Rubber?

>That damned condom wuxia is beating my lightning dick style!

>Water doesn't suddenly make people conscious if they simply can't wake up right away.
Not true, actually. Your body has two basic sets of reflexive actions; normal and priority.
Normal reflexes respond to general or generic stimulus, such as being touched, movement, and other reactions where the stimulus isn't tied to a specific concept. This is the kind that the doctor tests by hitting your knee.
Priority, on the other hand, are selective responses to more narrow types of stimuli where the response is tailored to the specific, ingrained concept of the stimulus. These are the sort where simply flinching or moving away aren't sufficient responses, but the sensation needs to be immediately reacted to.
This sort of reflex is triggered by, for example, the feeling of water on your face (body assumes you are about to drown) or a bug crawling across your skin.

In short, throwing water on someone's face is in fact several orders of magnitude more effective at waking them up quickly than throwing anything else, because it trips the body's evolutionary response which assumes your sleeping area has been flooded and you are about to die.

Try dropping someone when they are asleep. They will be up before they hit the ground every time. Or they're drunk.

It's even more effective to put water directly into their mouth or nose, although then you have to deal with water down the wrong pipe.
If someone doesn't immediately come to when you pour water down their throat, they're dead or in a coma.

That's another priority reflex I should have mentioned. Good catch.

Slightly harder to implement on a sleeping person in most circumstances, though, unless they fell asleep near a convenient ledge. Otherwise you'd have to lift the up first, and if they wake up while you're holding them you've invited shitty harem anime cliches into your life.

>carrying someone is shitty haremshit

Bruh.

Force. Kinetic energy (moves matter) opposing electromagnetic (moves itself through matter).

>not wanting carrying your passed out bro to turn into an an ecchi shonen-ai series

>implying I have bros or friends

Gravity?
Lightning comes from the air, and gravity comes from the earth. There are many similarities between electric fields and gravitational fields.

The power of creation. Oh, a tornado, a tsunami? Cute. And you over there, playing with fire. You burned down the forest did you? I put my thoughts and my power together with the ground we all tread upon and presto, a castle.

Metal
Or Void, since electricity cannot travel without a medium without extreme energy

>Earth Spikes
>Petrify
>Stone Form(Str bonus and Damage barrier at a slighty slower MV? Why not)
>Forge(Non-Earth users and their having to worry about time modifiers. Hilarious)
>Detect Minerals(There's GOLD in them thar hills!)
>Earthquake
>Slowness
>Weight Increase
>Magnetic Shield
>Pass Through Solid Matter
>Reverse Gravity
>Gravity Destruction(STR check or squish, fags)
>FUCKING METEOR!

Anima is not most systems. Only drawback is usually a lack of damage against spectral beings, solved by the Metamagick Sphere Energy Control, which just ups the cost to cast by 10 points.

It'll be okay; I'll swing by, we can do whatever, then at some point one of us will say something that is an entendre or we'll have some kind of physical contact, and then you'll get a bit flustered and angry. Everything will work out.

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>reading compression
No, nigga, I'm saying that waking up to find you with your arms around them is going to look seriously weird, and "I was just going to drop you to wake you up, honest" is only going to sound even weirder.
Then they go "Kyaa!" and slap you.

But under the Eastern classical system of elements, Metal and Void are the same thing and are associated with lightning.

>people slap people instead of putting them down

You watch way too much anime, dude. Most people would just drop out of your grasp or ask you to put them down. Because if they slap you, you're going to drop them and they won't be in a position to land safely. People aren't that stupid. Mostly.

>webmshare.com/07GP1

I am reminded of an old World of Darkness game.

You have your four classic elements, Earth, Fire, Air and Water.

As usual, Fire opposes Water and Earth opposes Air. Then you have your "mixed" elements.

Lightning, Fog, Clay and Lava.

Lava = Fire + Earth
Lightning + Fire + Air
Fog = Air + Water
Clay = Water + Earth

Lava acts as opposition to Fog while Clay opposes Lightning.

>what is a joke

>implying anyone here has a sense of humor

>Metal and Void are the same thing
Nigga what. No. Just, no.

Void/Ether/However it translates is often seen amongst the classical four Western/Greek elements once you start heading eastward (India, Japan, etc.), but Metal is its own thing and a part of the Chinese cycle, which is totally separate and distinct from the Western four.

wut

>I also don't see why water would be healing.
Because water symbolizes life.
Also to stay healthy drink at least 2 liter water a day.

>DCSS
>iron shot as an all purpose damage dealer
>crystal spear for gigantic single target damage that can't be resisted
>rapid deconstruction to destroy any terrain you can see and deal massive damage to stone enemies

Don't think that's oWoD, think that's straight up how the quasi-elemental planes in D&D work, though between Earth+Water is ooze not clay, and steam was between air+water.

Well then. That was something.

we had an arcane archer once in a campaign. he would put earthen arcane runes on his arrows so that if he shot it into stone it would create a small pillar of the stone where the arrow hit. He'd use it to create cover at a moments notice or block passageways. it was pretty damn cool.

I know I'm not adding anything to the discussion just that it was relevant/cool enough to share.

Post cool earth magic

The body is 70% water.

From a mechanical standpoint, I think water makes sense as healing.

Being able to stanch bleeding, for example, would be a massive benefit towards preventing deaths, especially their ability to identify and deal with internal bleeding. You can easily work that into preventing and removing infection/disease as well, imagine a water themed mage who could extract harmful bacteria from your blood, or identify parts of the body that were having trouble.

Hell, imagine a water mage who could break up kidney stones or even deal with issues like constipation.

>Your body is not flammable. It would require ridiculous temperatures to ignite someone from the inside.

While this is true, raising your body temperature by even a few degrees will incapacitate anyone with a fever. A few more and they cook alive in their own juices.

Not as flashy, but quite effective.

Am I supposed to be aroused or laughing?

youtube.com/watch?v=I3BxvHhz4XQ

erf magic done right

Ever heard of the golden sun videogame series? Good earth magic there

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Rubber is more conductive than /air/.
If something is strong enough to pass through that, rubber won't stop it.

>most systems
do you mean only d&d?
It was the best magic path in Hero Quest
Stupid good in Heroes of Might and Magic
Can be broken like any other element in dresden files.
Toph kicked ass in last airbender.

>Toph kicked ass in last airbender.

Earth gets even more ridiculous in the sequel, Toph founds a whole police force of metalbenders, and then you have fucking lavabenders like Ghazan, who can do shit that the entire Fire Nation military couldn't manage.

youtube.com/watch?v=YECBvh4pv38

After this he destroys one of the Air Nomad temples by himself.

mediafire.com/download/o28mh6nv22w9ciy/Eldritch *ss Kicking Corebook.pdf

In terms of dielectric strength, rubbers rate several times higher than air, the fuck you trying to say

As you can see from pretty much every response in this thread it's because most people are tremendously bad writers.

>What?! Fifty zombies?!

Eh, earth magic is usually the best of the four element systems variety because it's the creation magic. Pretty much everything is made out of earth, and so it gets all the powers that deal with making and unmaking things.

Because the biggest benefit of Earth magic is that it can be used to create permanent objects, like walls or forts.

This is usually overlooked, as most systems are more concerned with the players going out and killing lots of enemies rather than sitting around constructing forts and waiting for threats to come to them. That tends to be why it loses out compared to the other types of magic, which tend to be better while travelling or on the attack.

There's also the fact that in a typical dungeon crawling game, Earth magic is usually restricted so the party can't simply burrow through all the walls and skip to the end of the dungeon. Basically it's a combination of Earth being better on Defense than Offense, and having its main offensive uses nerfed to make sure things aren't too easy.

It's not flashy enough and is straight up broken in terms of terrain control.

Waterboarding them doesn't fucking heal either.

Go away Tenshi.

Compare thickness. Meters of air between whatever's shooting lightning at you and some inches of rubber you'll be trying to hide behind.

In the classical Chinese 5 elements metal is associated with death .

China confirmed metal as fuck

Who is this semen demon?