Tell me Veeky Forums, how do you do magitek?

>infuses a small army of human test subjects with magical abilities
I hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure it was just Kefka (went insane), Celes (could absorb/negate magic but not cast it), and Leo (actual warrior-mage).

If I'm mistaken, I'll go put on the dunce cap.

The ability to "code" spells into magic items has always been a thing but the strength of the magic would constitute how long the item could last. most really powerful items were one use things that would have to be re-created because the circles and runes in them would be burned out the regents used to initially make them were used up.

Two major discoveries helped to change this:

1. By joining runes and circles into a certain way you can create a "circuit" that not only allowed you to chain togeter spells but low level magic would last much longer without breaking.
2. Since it was discovered that the sun was a giant ball of magic the refinement of certain materials (namely specially bred trees and plants) enabled magic items to essentially be recharged by sitting out in the sun.

So magitek in my setting is solar powered and runic circuitry helped paved the way for analog and eventually digital technology.

Sci-Fi tech is lost technology from the last age, and magic only became wide spread a few thousand years ago. Certain groups have imbued old technology with the new magic. Results vary

I have always found it rather lazy when people use magtek as basically regular technology except now it does magic stuff.

Take OP's magtek power armor. It's literally just regular power armor except magic is the power source. Add any enchantments to technology? Well that's not Magtek, that's just straight up Magic. Magtek guns? They shoot magic bullets instead of regular bullets. If magic was real, it wouldn't be a one-way relationship. Magic wouldn't just make technology better, technology would make magic better.

Something that was a surprisingly interesting addition to the world of Naruto was the Kote, or some sort of hand device that allows you to cast Ninjitsu without the hand signs by preparing the signs beforehand and then sealing the Ninjitsu into a tiny scroll. The Kote not only uses the pre-existing 'magic' of the universe as its power source but creates a new way to use the magic as well. Magtek should be Magic * Technology not Magic + Technology.

not makin a whole lot of sense there, bud

>I hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure it was just Kefka (went insane), Celes (could absorb/negate magic but not cast it), and Leo (actual warrior-mage).
>If I'm mistaken, I'll go put on the dunce cap.
Those were the three generals, but if I recall correctly, there were "monster" soldiers you fought during random encounters that could use a few types of magic.

Also Celes could cast Ice before she got any magicite.

God, I love this setting so much. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with me being 14 when FF6 came out for the SNES.

user > Equip > Dunscap

You're definitely right about the Ice now that you mention it, so I'll take your word on the mobs.

I know what you mean about the age thing, too. It and Secret of Mana hold a special place in my heart for that reason, and the latter was my first exposure to "This fantasy world? It's TOTALLY OUR WORLD IN THE FAR FUTURE, DUDE!"

Blew my goddam mind.

They're saying that they like the idea of magi tech as tools that assist magic too instead of how magitech is often just normal technology/tools enhanced by magic
Something like you're talking that I really like is the Mega Ten franchise's classic example: the devil summoning program. Basically that magic spells can be recited with code. And that adds a lot of convenience to said magic, such as it being able to be easily used by people who have no skill in magic. Normal people in many of those games can just summon demons and cast spells from a handheld computer (smart watch, palm top, phone via an app, etc.)

It has to retain the weird and occult side of magic while using it in modern stylings.
For example, a carriage that is propelled not by corpses, but with live human sacrifice.
It fills the same function as technology, but it's definitely magic.

>Take OP's magtek power armor. It's literally just regular power armor except magic is the power source.
And its weapon. Magitek Armor can shoot magic spells in ray form. It can shoot the classic fire/ice/lightning beams, cause confusion among its enemies, even repair damage with healing rays.

If you leave the tool unexplained, how is it any different from magic dolled up as technology; and if you explain the tool, how is it any different from technology dolled up as magic?

Tools that use stimuli to tweak the body's capacity to create or control magic. Drugs, contact lenses, ridged insoles, even as far as bits of metal placed in your guts to deliberately grind against muscle or bone.

Tools that mimic certain spells in order to take the load off certain spellchains. Magnetic containment chambers, spell circle creation, rifling and rails for accuracy.

Magic taking over or warping certain processes due to much higher efficiency. Energy stored as magic, bulk conversions of energy done through spells, and soulbond LAN connections for minimum noise.

Actual output looks like regular magic done with incredible speed, control, or complexity, regular technology done at impossible efficiencies or sizes, or the rare fusion that looks explicitly like magitek ie. elemental beams.

I use a science fiction supplement, and then I provide different fluff for the gear.

I played the warcraft d20 game for a bit and made a character that used magic to boost technology, stuff like skeletons endlessly moving cranks to build up electric energy

rarely.

That is to say: in the setting, mages are kind of rare. They're a one in one hundred thousand in a world where the entire sapient population is maybe eking over a hundred million spread across an archipelago with a total landmass equal to the North American continent and most major capital cities boast impressive populations of ninety thousand.

It's not that magitech is 'hard' per-say, indeed, enchantment is one of the easiest schools to learn since it basically involves tying something abstract (magic) to something rooted in the material and comprehensible (an item).

It's just that finding a mage skilled enough to do full on magitech is kind of rare because mages as a whole are rare and a bulk of them tend to live secluded in the woods and ruins of older civilizations (and thus, might not be familiar with the tech you're presenting them)

Prayer wheels and music box style voice synthesizers.

Ever since it was found that you could get thousands of prayers-per-second by spinning the wheel, mechanized mages because extremely popular.

I had an idea for a world with Magitek western. Basically revolvers and gun casings were made from a special material that could be charged with spells that would be activated when the gunpowder was ignited. Revolvers are supreme since they make it easy to police the brass where the spells are etched, while most firearms eject spent brass instead.

So do we ever find out if Omega is regular or magitek?

I fucking love that omega weapon vs shinryu in ff14 cutscene.

>omega weapon
The upgraded recolor of Ultima Weapon?

This is the cutscene, it'sa bit rough since its done in the ingame engine.
the pic is ultima weapon in ff14
youtube.com/watch?v=ecMSU6BiE8Q

I don't like it as just an excuse to have robots/scifi or some steampunk bs, but magic!

It should really have a MAGICAL spirit to it seeming to work based on magical laws and concepts rather than mundane scientific ones.

That's just Omega.

This is now a Shinryu thread.

Like they did in FFXII:
>airfighters dogfighting in the sky and skyships exhanging broadsides
>while poor fuckers on the ground have to do with fucking spears and arrows and chocobo cavalry, not using firearms for reasons
>in short magitek is just modern technology but instead of steam or electricity it's powered by magick and has applications that bend the laws of nature, like gravity for instance.

Leo was not a Magitek Knight like Kefka and Celes. He refused the procedure. His abilities were techniques he developed himself. Besides Celes and Kefka a number of imperial officers underwent magitek enhancement. That is why you see a number of normal humanoid enemies (Templar, General, Rider, etc.) cast spells you can learn from magicite later.

Omega actually predates Ultima Weapon in FF history. Omega appeared in FFV, while Ultima Weapon first showed up in FF6 (originally translated as Atma Weapon)

many of my settings have lots of it around, but often what keeps them from becoming fully universal in nature is that quite simply the simpler the technology the easier it is to enchant, so by the "Modern" period the game is set in(which is often in a vague late 19th century to early 20th century equivalent), it's fairly simple to enchant a sword or a regular suit of armor in a mere day or two in ideal conditions, but enchanting a Machine Gun can potentially take weeks, at least for anything permanent(which is one reason why if someone is using magic through a gun, it's much more likely that the bullets are what's enchanted rather than the actual gun)

this is one of the reasons why you still have Adventurers using comparatively archaic equipment much of the time

Omega Weapon and Ultima Weapon look similar

Omega is its own thing

Ultima Weapon and Omega are in FFXIV

Do DragonMech, here are the books for it
dropbox.com/sh/73vtn49c15785sn/AAABs8UzZ87L8L1CTsYQgd8za?dl=0

you can find a little kid who was given heal via magitek
so it looks like there are varying degrees to being magitek abilities implanted in them

i want to introduce a sorcerer to my party, who was given his magical spark artificially via magitek

>tfw no self repair magitek armor

...

Digging deeper into the backstory, espers were originally humans mutated into magical monsters by the three goddesses in their war to use as slaves. When those goddesses realized they did something wrong, they sealed themselves in statues and let the espers live free with the remaining normal humans.

Later on, humans jealous of espers developed a method to enslave espers and thus gain the ability to use magic and summon those espers, and those people were called magi. This way between humans and espers lead to the espers sealing themselves in a pocket dimension, and leading to the 'modern' state of affairs where nobody knew what espers or magic was until the invention of magitek.

So strictly speaking, there are actually THREE instances in time when humans gained the ability to use magic.

Eberron, alround is a pretty good magitek setting for D&D. Mainly because it doesn't go steampunkish, but because it is a world where people apply the rules of magic of D&D. You can find there even "after-life insurance cults" where you can get a place in the perfect haven for you, since planes and "deity powers" can be created and harnessed by mere faith, and not gods by D&D standards.

For me? I ran once a fantasy tech campaign with different levels of technology depending upon the region. One of the countries, getting the advantage of innate magic capacities, developed their technology around those arcane powers. Since we are talking about low-level sorcerer/oracle spells and powers, you couldn't cheat totally your way into technology, but create a totally different base. Since you could cheat the laws of thermodynamics with fire magic, spin objects and move light parts with universal magic or cheat your way about aerodynamics with air elementals and air magic, the need of some kind of engine was just relegated for too big artifacts like airships, or things with way too many moving parts. While "simpler" things like authomatons was your traditional animated golem, and your elevators just simple floating platforms. Using low-level electric spells you could make a lot of electrical simple applications like electrical lights or low voltage circuits.

Because of the fact that you could cheat with magic some of the main problems to generate the inertia/energy/heat necessary to make something to work, most of the culture wasn't about how to move things with an engine, but about how to tapper the necessary power to make such technology to work. Looking for renovable sources of magic because, just extracting raw magic from the universe would leave an empty husk of a world in a very short period of time. So, yes, it was a culture of ecologist technology and "clean" artifacts where the inhabitants uses different ways and application to awaken their "inner magic" in the daily life. It was a really nice place to live in the setting, ... if it weren't by the fact that most of that nation and race was kinda of a jerk towards the rest of "undeveloped countries and species."

Of course, since my players have such a boner for Final Fantasy, I introduced for their delight Magitek Armor. Funny enough, those armors weren't from that magitek country, but from the steampunkish human Dominion. But the results of reverse engineering magitek techonology during the conflict of both nations. Since the Dominion didn't care (neither knew) about the consequences of fucking up the magical enthropy of the universe, those Magitek Armors could put in the field extreme destructive power but, unfortunately, it had a really high costs. First, you needed a trained pilot with innate arcane powers (something very, very rare in the Dominion) and, second, enough of the scarce arcane power sources they could use.

The dying nobility of the Dominion approved and financied the initiative of fielding these huge magitek armors, seeing in them the return of the supremacy in the battlefield of a very few riders against the plebeian infrantry. Not in vain, Dominion magitek pilots were organised into knight orders and their relationship with their patron was a clear reminiscence of feudalism and the Knight's Code.

In term of rules, this campaign used a heavily modded and refflufed Pathfinder ruleset. For example, the magitek pilots were (in term of rules) were like sinthesis summoners geared with several refflufed magic wands and scrolls, which were described as crystalised (and limited) arcane power cells to fuel your different weapons and armor capacities. Powerful, scarce and unreliable if you didn't get the correct UMD rolls. What I looked for those armors.

I would post all the mods I had for that setting, but they are all written in Spanish, sadly.

I'm currently trying to make my own setting centered around magitek so this is relevant to my interests.

I was working on magic existing anyway, although not incredibly prevalent, until someone creates devices that are effectively bags of holding that draw in and compress elemental forces.

For instance, if you leave a small marble sized one in a fire it will retain enough heat and light to act as a torch or release a plume of fire. Use of magical conductors can transmit the stored energy from one place to another.

You've got basic elements as you'd expect, then stuff like sunlight as 'life' energy or cold temperatures allow the devices to act as cooling devices etc.

It's production is lost technology though as it turns out if you compress too much elemental energy in one place you get pissed as hell elementsl spirits condensing and basically going on a rampage.

Skies of Arcadia/Laputa kind of setting mixed with DnD.

Lost technology from an old age, most of it powered by once-living souls or inhabited by minds/husks/etc as the lost civilization used magic to accelerate towards the technological singularity, then abandoned pretty much all of the physical world.

A lot of remnant machines or technology are carryovers from earlier attempts at different forms of immortality. Lots of failed cyberlitches, etc.

I don't, because the vast majority of "magitek" just boils down to recreating modern technology, but having it run on magic bullshit.

It's so lazy and boring.

Isn't that pretty much just Doom? He just uses modern technology to use magic, but better. He's just super fucking pragmatic.

Stop watching anime

Pretty much, but I was in a what if mood.

>pic
*GONKGONKGONKGONKGONK*
R-R-R-R-R-Regirock.
*GONKGONKGONKGONKGONK*

>Humans are just figuring it out.
>Elves were really good at it. Emphasis WERE.
>Dwarves prefer non-magical alternatives.
>Goblin magical arms dealers are infamous.
>Orcs love anything flashy and dangerous.
>Lizardfolk prefer alchemy.
>Giants can't turn around without some magical doodad getting made,
>There's an entire species of sapient constructs.
>The two-headed sorcerer-king of the ogres has a living palanquin.

Warmech is here

Made in a long ago era by a forgotten empire and now only ruins

while not all the machines still work many still domand they are a major danger to any who disturb them with their strange weapons, heavy armor and even magical attacks

Scholars and sages study them and while progress has been made with light repair and maintenance and even control of lesser ones is possible

no one has figured out how how to make any or control the more powerful of the machines

sorry do and

not domand

Observe everything that Final Fantasy does, and then do the opposite of that.

Japanese Magitek is utter trash.

Technology so advanced for the common folk that it looks like magic.

the rest is cosmetic.

The vast majority of "modern technology" is about focusing on anything we find difficult, and making it safer, easier, and more effective, using any means available to us. We want to move faster, so we invented cars. We want to kill more effectively, so we invented guns. We want to share information from great distances, so we invented phones and television.

All these things are things that humans desire, and we use technology to achieve them because that's what we've got. In a setting with magic, it's no surprise if "magitek" is used to achieve the same results.

This. We need shit taste here.

That's not magitek, that's just technology

fpbp

Exactly. We need to see something so we can do exactly everything bad. We must see the success if we seek the failure.

pic related

Magic came first. Industry emerged to automate and package magical phenomena, which everyone technically had access to but not everyone had the talent for, or the mind to learn. In essence technology exists to make magic more convenient and accessible. This makes a lot of old school wizards REEEEEE about the entitled masses because it makes them feel less special.

I'm gonna post some updated M-Tek Armor sprites.

...

I always loved the way Magitek Armor looks in-game. I never much liked the Amano concept design that everyone else seems to wank over.

These are from some phone game called Brave Exvius.

Make it semi believeble.

And here's the FFVI sprite for good measure.

>Observe everything that Final Fantasy does, and then do the opposite of that.
Okay, so instead of having machine-looking things that can produce magical effects, we'll have magical-looking things that serve the role of machines.

And instead of being powered by sucking the magic out of dead and crystallized creatures, they'll use it to pump magic into crystals in order to create monsters.

And instead of the monsters being created by ancient deities as slaves, they're being created to fight evil gods who are threatening the world.

And instead of being used by an evil world-conquering empire, it'll be used by the heroes to protect the world!

And instead of a new innovation based on ancient magic, it'll be a lost ancient art that has only recently been rediscovered!

This is actually going pretty well. It would make a great plot for a Final Fantasy game!

...

It's really perfect how that works.

isn't this revenant wings?

The Kingdom of Zeal with more elaborate golems and magic spell grenades.

>Also Celes could cast Ice before she got any magicite.
She would also continue to learn strong ice magic spells if you didn't use magicite to teach her, as well has a handful of other spells.
Terra was the same way.

...

Most the really crazy magitek in my setting is salvaged from pre cataclysm tech found in millenia old ruins. Different nations have varying views on it. The human empire gobbles up anything with a glow. They are have diesel punk aesthetics. Flying WW1 battleships and revolver rifles. The Caliphate to the south has 7 living gods that pump a ton of elemental magic into things. Furnaces that never go out, sails that are always full, an oasis that never empties. Religious reasons keep them from combining these into novel machines though, lots of beheadings. The rhakshasa like the historical significance of pre-calamity tech, but think over use will cause another apocalypse. They aren't wrong. Lizardfolk and the necromatic scarab people nations both shun most of the prewar tech that they can, while sitting on treasure troves of the stuff. Bugs collect it and sell it off, Lizards seal it away. The last main civ is just a loose collection of mutated elves that are full native and ignore all that shit.

...

go play skies of arcadia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skies_of_Arcadia

youtu.be/VIxywDwObV8?t=2
youtube.com/watch?v=fJf4zjEfojY

I love that game so much. It's my favorite.

Complete with insane queen powering the whole thing by sucking the energy out of a dormant, world-eating alien life form!