What's the difference between a cryomancer and a hydromancer?

What's the difference between a cryomancer and a hydromancer?

Depends on the setting and the nature of magic.

In purely physical, 'scientific' terms, not much. Ice magic is just a permutation of temperature control 'fire' magic and the control of the physical mass, which could be water or earth depending on how the system allocates things.

If you're going for a more metaphorical, thematic magic system the distinction is much more pronounced. Water is a lifegiving force. It nurtures crops, it's necessary for survival, and it's long had associations with healing, purity and holiness.

Ice, meanwhile, is associated with harsh winters that kill crops, causing starvation and freezing people to death. The thematic links to it are a lot less pleasant in general.

The cryomancer has a cooler sounding name.

One mances water and the other mances cold.
It shouldn't be difficult to see why these two things would have some slight overlap, but still be their own seperate things.

A cryomancer divines information through reading the formation of ice crystals and flaws or impurities in them.

A hydromancer divines information through reading the flow of water currents or by how objects and particulates move through water.

Usually about 38 degrees.

Cryomancy is the removal of heat, and doesn't actually have anything to do with water in particular besides maybe condensing atmospheric water vapor. Their spells can be very destructive, and the utility they provide is generally not very subtle, with stuff like area denial through freezing floors, turning things into ice statues, and creating icy armor. Hydromancy is manipulating the motion of water, and whether that includes manipulating ice is up to you. Like says it can be used for healing and has more connotations involving positive things and thus has a wider spectrum of utility. Its offensive power is rather limited to things like waves or pressurized jets, but it is great at forced movement.

>using the actual definition of "mancer"
What a nerd!

>
>>using the actual definition of "mancer"
>What a nerd!

Since water drives most of the weather systems we have on a planet, this Mancer would be the closest you'd get to a Meteorologist.

>The Cryomancer says it's going to be a frosty -15 tomorrow, with a 40% chance of snow!

>Man, am I happy I subscribed to the Mancy Channel on my crystal ball, saves me so much time on the broom commute.

Making anything into a school of magic by taking a Greek (or worse, a Latin) root and adding -mancy to the end of it quite irritating, especially if one is trying to make a serious setting. Necromancy is a pre-existing word, originally referring to the conjuration of spirits of the dead for purposes of divination, from the Greek roots νεkρός (nekros, dead) and μαντεία (manteia, divination), but later generalized by séance magicians, fantasy literature, and eventually roleplaying games to refer to all magics related to life, death, or the dead.

"Pyromancy", "hydromancy", "geomancy", &c. are also words, but again, as suggests, they refer to _divination_ by observing fire, _divination_ by observing water, and _divination_ by observing the pattern in which objects fall on the surface of the earth. The generalization of the term "necromancy" is acceptable, because it has a precedent, but the use of, for example, pyromancy to refer to the throwing of fireballs, is uneducated pretension. The "-mancy" root does not mean magic. It means divination.

The "-urgy" root, on the pattern of "thaumaturgy", is likewise problematic. Thaumaturgy means "miracle-working." It is the "thauma-" root, meaning "miracle", that here contains the magical meaning. Thus, "-urgy" does nothing to suggest a connection to magic: "metallurgy" means metalworking, i.e. mundane smithing. Calling someone a "pyroturge" is akin to calling them a "firesmith". If that is thematically appropriate to your setting, go ahead and use "pyroturge". Or, for that matter, "firesmith"; Saxon roots are always an option, too!

If you could provide additional roots I would be grateful. Personally I just use a single word for the spell schools in my setting (eg Water, Time, Death, etc) but I'd like to explore additional naming schemes.

The meaning of words changed in how they're used. It's how language works, it evolves and changes as the meanings of words warp and twist. Trying to cling to archaic definitions and to insist that they're more valid than colloquial uses is pure academic circlejerking which serves no practical purpose and will have no real effect. Language changes over time, and even the largest and most organised attempts to control the development of a language like the Académie française have been laughably ineffective.

Pyrothaumatist.
Hydrothaumatist.
Cryothaumatist.

The problem with those, along with shit like 'pyroturge', is that they sound crap.

I'd prefer stuff that sounds cool over stuff that's technically correct by whatever weird standard you want to apply.

Irregardless, you can't just take people's opinions for granite. You could of started an argument.

Hydromancer controls water

Cryomancer controls temperature and molecular movement, specifically is able to DECREASE these forces.

>Irregardless, you can't just take people's opinions for granite. You could of started an argument.

Huge difference, mate!

Cryomancer manipulates energy; hydromancer manipulates water.

A point could be made that there's no difference between a pyromancer and a cryomancer, though: the only difference is the temperature they're working with, the premise is the same.

It's a well-established convention and it's not going anywhere. You better deal with it.

Speak for yourself, these sound pretty good to me.

Depends on the setting, but that's a shitty answer so I'll default to my own shitty campaign setting

There isn't one, really. Ice magic is just a slightly more specialised branch of water magic, though definitely a popular one since it fills a lot of the same roles as earth magic does, which means a good hydromancer can pull double duty in a pinch, though ice will generally be easier to break than stone created by even an amateur geomancer.

You need a good foundation in hydromancy before you try any ice magic, though.

'Cryomancer' is also the title of a significant NPC within the setting, a court wizard who bought down the walls of a famous fortress by standing in a river a half-mile away from the fighting, and then freezing it solid all the way to it's source, an underground lake beneath the foundations of the gates. The resulting expansion of ice caused the bedrock to fracture and a crevasse opened along the walls, which caused them to collapse along several key points.

That's just neatpicking.

Yer a git

I see what you did there.

cryo = ice
hydro = water

inb4 "aquamancers" fags

tempature

It's all in the crystallization.

Hydros go in for all that flow and shape and ebb shit. Cryos pick a starting point and just fractal out from there.

It's a mentality thing.

Do you have beef with -kinesis? Like Pyrokinesis?

>irregardless

Holy shit I thought people stopped saying this in like 4th grade

One's got a much more chill outlook.

Wait a second

I feel like a cryomancer would be more focused on temperature control, meaning a cryomancer may possibly be capable of heating things up as well as making them cold,.

Cryomancy is a specialist form of Thermomancy, that is the manipulation of Temperature. Cryomancy is the cschool of removing thermal energy and cooling objects around the weilder

Hydromancy is about the manpulation of water, or rather the manipulation of the cohesion and hydrogen bonds of the water, allowing you to alter its shape, movement, and pressure

>-kinesis
Not that guy but I've always been a big fan of just slapping -kinesis over -mancy when describing someone who manipulates a particular thing.

>setting where magic is a well known and studied field with enough methodical substance to sustain a dogmatic practice that allows for magic schools and universities to be formed
>it's still referred to as "arcane"

kek

calculus and trigonometry is arcane

One augurs using water as a medium, the other uses ice crystals.

One is cold, the other is not.

One uses Ice Magic, the other uses Water Magic.

It's not hard.

One lowers the temperature of water, the other lowers the temperature of water.

ignoring semantics for a bit

hydro = water
this implies fluid rather than solid, although using it to control ice is not uncommon, but the implication is that they will use water more than ice, lashing out with water whips and tidal waves more often than icicles

cryo = cold
this implies the opposite, control over solid water over liquid, and it is far more common for a cryomancer to not even consider controlling liquid. there is also the implication that you can freeze things without water, such as inducing frostbite, or rendering object brittle, or lowering the temperature of an object remotely without water being considered

Temperature.
One is a big viking man storming the seas, the other can be really any water themed profession, although most likely works in tropical places.