So I've always liked weird magic users, anyone wanna talk about them?

So I've always liked weird magic users, anyone wanna talk about them?
I've always liked magic puppet users, sorta like that idiot from naruto.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiraiya
youtube.com/watch?v=28ySSYp8fnQ
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There was that dude from Vash the Stampede who used human puppets as well, though they weren't as magical.

Weird magic is always interesting though, generally anything that tends to bypass the norm.

Sasori is mai husbando you little shit.

Masks or anything involving biology is fun, manipulation of bones and blood is great.

Had this idea for awhile for a necromancer in a science fantasy, mixed with like a rave DJ after seeing the game Necrodancer on steam called it a Graveraver.

Basically a minionmancer with buffs and aura abilities names like
-Dancefloor Macabre (main class ability)
-Mix Mortis (ability to combine two auras)
-Bonechilling Bass
-Terrifying Treble

Unfortunately while the group loved the idea it fell apart and I stopped working on it. Thought it was pretty nifty and hope I get the chance to make and play it some day.

>Magic that requires the physical augmentation of the body to perform
My favorite kind of setting

I've always like the concept of plsmids and vigors for that reason.

Im my mind an example would be you grow a large patch of skin on your arm and your palm opens and has spiral grooves inside of it. You can absorb air and then blast it out with great force.

Or turning your arm into a living hive and having short lived hyperviolent insects that you can control born from it.

I like the concept that magic is not reality, its the distortion of it.
The human body is a manifestation of this reality's laws of biology, physics, chemistry, etc.
So when you perform magic you are channeling unreality and warping the fabric of the natural laws with your being, and therefore your being is gonna get a little bit...weird.

Agreed. THat's why I like things like the biotics from Mass Effect because they needed special augmentations to use their biotic powers. I always like to imagine science fantasy settings where to do actual wizard shit you have to have these sepcial arcane implants so it sets you apart in a way and makes them unique

There is bloodbending from Avatar. I actually had an idea for two earthbending techniques. Glass bending which is like sand bending but more lethal and bone bending.

Glass bending could be possible, crystal bending is a thing, But IIRC glass is technically a unique form of matter.

>bone bending
What exactly do bones have to do with earth?
Glass bending I get because sand is just tiny stones and glass is fused sand.

So a firebender/earthbender offspring could probably pull off glassbending just like one could pull off lavabending

Also something bothered me in Avatar.
Bending is a genetically heritable trait. Why don't people breed the fuck out of benders?

>Lavabending

I'm currently running a mystery campaign for a couple friends, and one of the characters has a type of magic that he doesn't fully understand. Basically, his mystery is just trying to narrow down and eventually solve his magical side.

His magical domain is physics, and the alteration of the laws that apply therein. He's an engineering student with a passion for science (smart as all hell too) so I made his power match that. I can't wait to see what kind of shit he does with it.

>What exactly do bones have to do with earth?

Indirectly. Bone is calcium and earthbenders can presumably bend calcium majority rocks.

Necromancy+Puppetry=Enya

JoJo has a lot of good magic which you can easily rip-off.

A currently airing show, Re: Creators features a couple characters from not!persona, one of which has a summon which attacks out of reflections. His entire combat style has to do with breaking glass and smearing his blood on stuff to allow him to solo-flank opponents with his summon.

I always liked josuke crazy diamond, would it be a form of time manipulation or juts a simple repair spell.

>Why don't people breed the fuck out of benders?
I will probably never be able to takes a series that calls people "benders" seriously

He can choose "how" the item is repaired. Which sounds really confusing because it is but.

Okay let's say there's a broken vase. Josuke can fix it, but he could also change the shape of the vase while doing so

Based on what he did to Angelo, I am thinking it is repairing/reconstruction and no time manipulation.

I still wanna know why people weren't like, "Hey, I'm gonna partner up with one of these people that can manipulate the world as it is an extension of their soul and have super powered kids"

True, still a good power.
One of the best stands is just echoes in act 1 and 2, creating effects from sounds is a great power.

...

They aren't reliable heritable, Hell if I'm remembering correctly the creators went out of there way to disprove a direct genetic basis by having a pair of identical twins where only one was a bender.

plus the fact that a bunch of normal people randomly gained airbending after the thing in season 2 of korra,

I'm fairly into specialising in niche forms of magic.
I mean, the elements and basics are fine i suppose, but they're so bloody contorted to be either bland or unendingly OP. Utilisation from simplicity is what i like.

For example I'm mad for Mud bending, but not for earth bending, I enjoy the inbetween bits and kept as a speciality.

I'm kind of a big no-no for general "He knows Arcane magic" too, I mean WHAT DOES THAT FUCKING MEAN?!

Language. Real, magical language. Not shit like "oh verbal components." I mean shit like runes that you draw in the air to shape the Earth with the wisdom gleaned from Odin's sacrifice. I mean shit like the Thu'um, where you Shout in the language Time itself speaks and Time listens and smacks the universe in the face. I mean shit like the Speech from Diane Duane, where all creatures and all things know it instinctively because it's so integral to the existence of the universe that if you fuck up spelling your own name in the Speech you not only fuck yourself up irrevocably, you'll never even know you did it.

I have a massive boner for magical languages, and there'll never be an RPG that does them well, and that tears my soul apart inside.

I was thinking of the fag connotation, but that works too.

Naruto had some fun magic. I kinda loved the dude who's power was manipulating plastic explosives

Someone is a Patrick Rothfuss fan

Deidara? yeah he imbued clay with explosive chakra, but I'm pretty certain the author was going for the plastic explosive angle.
The akatsuki members who modified themselves were always the most interesting, deidara, sasori, kakuzu and such.

Actually no. I liked the first book but I couldn't stand the second half of the second. Pretty much as soon as the "muh proud warrior race waifus" showed up I started rolling my eyes and losing my patience. I also just didn't care that much about his setting - whatever neat ideas he has keep getting submerged in an overwhelming vat of boring.

Plus the only character worth a damn in the whole book is the not-Dumbledore guy who, you know, actually does fucking magic. I do like that guy, though.

Samefagging this, but Rothfuss is basically exactly what I rail against - people who go "oh yeah language magic, super powerful" and then it's just regular fucking magic. If you fuck up with the wind I don't think it tears you to shreds, or if it does, it's never been demonstrated and we just keep hearing about how dangerous it is from Kvothe's rambling narration and Not-Dumbledore being Not-Dumbledore-Cryptic.

I'm talking about shit with real consequences, where words have power, not namby-pamby truename horsefuckery that only works on one element. Stuff you can string sentences out of to create effects, stuff where if you get mad and throw it around it has real-ass consequences not just for you but for everybody around you. The Speech isn't a truename deal - fucking up your name is dangerous because the Speech is EVERYTHING'S truename.

How would you go about this?
Like if one fucks up a word in a sentence it backfires in some way like 'I summon a inferno' but you left out the 'and I do not get burned?
I have not read rothfuss.

If you're speaking words that are fundamental to reality, it's about pronunciation and precision more than the words you leave out. Language is hyper-varied, with tons of inflections and tons of little tiny differences in pitch and tongue position that can completely change the meanings of words. English-speakers don't think about it that much, but it's there - think about bow, bow, and bough - a bow in your hand, a bow you take, and the bough of a tree. Those are all basically the same word.

Now imagine that you are standing in a forest. A bunch of bandits are after you. Imperiously, you raise your finger and declare "strike my enemies with your boughs!" The trees all swing around and beat them to death with their branches.

Now imagine you say "strike down my enemies with your bows!" The whole forest bends over at the midpoint, probably cracking in some really awful ways, and half the forest falls down around you.

Now instead of playing word games with English and trees, imagine you're playing with fundamental forces of reality and multiple different syllables only some of which are meant for human tongues, and you're REALLY hoping the word for Thunder isn't the same word as the word for Boulders because if you bring down a torrent of rain and boulders you're gonna get your ass killed.

I don't like that. Wizard is a job or profession like any other. Most magic is small and helpful, with only really strong Wizards mastering more powerful spells and magic.

Wizards exist in all levels of society, and they are not especially distrusted or hated. Everyone is magic, including Fighters and Thieves, and all of them can become as equally powerful in different ways as all the others.

Samefagging again.

Even worse, imagine you *stutter* the word for Thunder. What happens? What does mispronouncing a new word into existence do? Something related to Thunder? Something unrelated? This isn't language that evolved naturally, this is the fundamental underpinnings of all things. What does stuttering in that do?

Or you bite your tongue, and the word is never finished. But you still spoke syllables of the Great Tongue, and those syllables probably have a word floating around somewhere between them.

It shouldn't be as simple as waving your hand and going "oh I know the name of the wind so I can control wind." It should be constantly wondering if this time you're going to mispronounce the word "wind" into "explosions" and accidentally conjure an explosion tornado.

Have you read the Earthsea books by Le Guin?
Her magic involves some amount of natural talent and autistical memorization of true names for just about anything. If you want to summon a bank of fog somewhere, you better know the right words for "fog", right words for the place you're at, right words to define it explicitly and so on and so forth.

When things backfire, they really do backfire. The protagonist in 1st book tried to summon the spirit of some long dead broad and he got maimed by an eldritch shapeshifting clone of himself that stalked him for years.

I've tried a couple times when I was younger. I should give it a try nowadays. Currently I'm working through T.H. White's Once And Future King cycle, so maybe I'll pick up Earthsea after that.

I like magic that is not strictly old dudes studying magical spells and instead are more 'make it up as you go.' Think avatar stuff where they know how to bend an element but what exactly that means is up to them to come up with. Might be throwing pebbles, might be seeing with your feet, might be creating an avalanch.

Usrula Leguin did it first. And mythology before that.

She is pretty old school, but I've always enjoyed her novels whether scifi or fantasy. At the very least she's got some pretty cool world building in Earthsea and Left Hand of Darkness.

For example:

A whole culture of people living on rafts in the open ocean, who tie their boats into massive floating temporary cities when the currents bring them together.

A world where civilization survives on a narrow band across the planet's equator, surrounded by great glaciers and permafrost that no sane person would even try to cross.

Yeah, it's part-biological pasrt-spiritual. Not everyone with the genetic potential to be a bender actually is one. That's supposed to be why the Air Nomads were all benders, because their spiritual lifestyle meant they all wound up awakening the gift. The fact that they had small numbers and therefore the airbending genes could spread throughout the entire population probably helped, too. Hooray for inbreeding!

OP here, what about manipulation of something like sand but used in interesting ways, like one can sense things through one's sand so it's nigh impossible to sneak up through them?

First three Earthseas are pretty neat, the Ged trilogy.
Wizard of Earthsea is super comfy.

I liked Naruto back when it was lots of weird styles all clashing at once. It was hard to say who was really better but it was really cool to look at.

I like the idea of Binding as a main form of magic. You bargain and make pacts with elemental spirits, fiends, angels, and other to use their innate magical essence.

Just about anyone with a little bit of skill and knowledge would be capable of binding a minor fire spirit and gaining the ability to enact minor fire-based effects. These elementals are simple-minded and limited, requiring only a symbolic sacrifice during spell preparation.

A low level fire spirit might let you light a campfire without a flint and tinder by letting you borrow it's essence of fireness, or even throw a fire bolt at someone. A greater elemental would let you manipulate bigger amounts of fire in more impressive ways, and so on.

The big players in the ethereal world won't really pay attention to you until you are powerful enough, and even then they might be more capricious and choosy.

Folklore and plain good common sense shows that when a binder manages to get into an unfair binding with a spirit, bad things happen so these things are not common. It's the classic scenario of someone selling their soul to a demon for great power and then getting screwed over by said demon. Fiends tend to be receptive to these kinds of deals, Angels reject them almost outright, elementals and spirits tend to deny or have major stipulations.

I'm hype with this too. Binding is a great system. It needs to be present in more games.

The spellbook as a prop and a class feature just pisses me off. A wizard is a learned one, he might carry a book of rituals and useful things like names of angels and demons and elemental lords and such, but tying it directly into spellcasting doesn't feel right.

I liked Binding so much from 3.5 (one of the few things about 3.5 I unambiguously like) I backported it to older D&D, pushed it into M&M2e, and threw it into a bunch of other places.

I love making deals with strange things for power as a magical concept. I also love the idea that a wizard's spellbook isn't full of magic spells - it's a fucking rolodex.

"Okay, I owe Yhor'magant the King of Flames three turns around in the morning when the sun comes up or I lose my ability to shoot fire..."

"I'd better make sure I set some honey out for Whuu the wind spirit if I want to keep my dramatic cloak-blowing breeze..."

"Shit, did I ever get back to that nymph? That could be trouble."

The idea that every spell is actually a debtor and every debt is a potential plot hook tickles me.

Naruto's world is actually rather interesting, at least from a westerner's standpoint, as it is Japan-flavoured fantasy.
Too bad Kishimoto never really explored it that much. Maybe the anime filler did something, I wouldn't know.
It's type of magic did lend itself to a variety of very intriguing characters and powers. Even the eyehax, despite that ultimately being what caused the massive powercreep, but then again what battle shonen doesn't creep up.

>"I'd better make sure I set some honey out for Whuu the wind spirit if I want to keep my dramatic cloak-blowing breeze..."

Any wizard unwilling to bribe wind spirits for an eternally-blowing dramatic cloak breeze is also unfit to be a wizard, and that's a fact.

>not just summoning it a few times to study the dramatic wind and replicate it yourself?
do you even wizard?

Same, binding is by far my favorite thing about 3.5. It scales thematically into whatever setting you might want to place it in, and it removes all the silly questions about where spells come from and how can I make a custom OP spell in game.

Mortal races don't do such things. Magic is a part of the background and unless you bargain with the magical beings or pray to a god that sort of serves as a middle man, you're not getting anywhere.

>wasting magical energy on something I could bribe somebody else for
>not studying the power, then choosing to keep bribing it so I can bend the power into something more magnificent and let this menial work be done by something else
>not showing off to all your friends how easily you purchased the wind spirit's services
>not wanting to demand "MY CLOAK-BLOWING BREEZE!" loudly to a crowded room and have them oo and aa in mundie awe as the ladies-in-waiting squirm at this mind-shattering display of command over the elements

What are you, a sorcerer in disguise?

The only way a mortal can make wind is by eating an awful lot of dried peas and similar foods. It will not be enough to billow your cloak.

I still hold the opinion that despite the quality of the Naruto story, it had one of the more interesting magic systems derivative of 'chants and spells'

Was this fight the final highlight of Shippuden before it started going to shit? Excellent animation, Sakura being useful, 5D chess between the two opposing sides instead of just constant power creep and energy beam spams?

I dunno, kakuzu and hidan were fun as well

Someone make a "Lets create a magic system" thread with all the ideas from here in it

Naruto has all kinds of interesting jutsus to get ideas from.

Shikamaru's shadow jutsu, Shino's insect manipulation, the sound jutsus that were used during the chunin exam arc, the hidden gates, etc.

It's just a shame it ended up being overshadowed by NINJA JESUS LMAO and Sharingan nonsense.

Yeah the peak of what a ninja is capable should of been when the 3rd Hokage fought Orochimaru and the dead hokages after the Chuunin Ark

Watch the fight back, it was great but Naruto eventually went the route of DBZ which was just bigger beams basically.

God I wish Naruto as a protagonist had a skill set that meant he actually had to act like a ninja rather than just some idiot that outnumbered and overpowers his enemies.

That's one of the few things the Inheritance Cycle got right. Early on in the series the protagonist who has at that point no fucking clue about the grammar of the ancient magical language he's using attempts to bless a child - but instead of her being "shielded from misfortune" he turns her into "a shield from misfortune" - basically fucking up her entire existance.

Sharingan was cool at the begining, the problem is that got too many free powerups, like for real, the only thing Sasuk had to do was just be, and boom, powerup

I have that for specific not-nerubian spellcasters.
They use magic imbued silk to manipulate puppets and molts for the nicer but still creepy ones, corpses or even livings beings (with additional sleep magic... or not) for the nastiest ones.
They are a specialised tradition of the more general silk based casters the not-nerubians have.

May throw one manipulating innocents villagers at players if I get the opportunity.

>what a ninja is capable
>had to act like a ninja
Naruto was never about ninjas. They were always japanese fantasy battle mages, and it's pretty clear when you think about it beyond that they're called "ninjas".
Some abilities they had were lent from stories about ninjas, since the setting was japanese inspired.
This isn't some rationalization in defense of Naruto. Kishimoto wanted to do a manga about wizards and magic and shit, but editorial decisions from Shonen Jump forced him to change the flavor
Their abilities were, however, still always in the realm of magic. Jutsu are spells, and Naruto's ninjas utilize these spells and rely on them far more than they rely on physical attacks, which are more a compliment to their repertoire of spells. And this has been true since the first arc of Naruto.
Kakashi and Zabuza duking it out with spells rather than simply going hand to hand and supplementing hand to hand with some spells (though that happens too in the fights)
The amount of jutsu Kakashi knows is pretty much legendary. He's notorious for his spell knowledge and stealing techniques.
Saucegay learning a fireball so easily is seen as a show of great aptitude.
Sharingan
Chakra control is the crux of doing anything.
It always was about magic and magical aptitude rather than ninjas doing ninja stuff.

I enjoyed a lot of the following fights, especially Pain vs Konoha. Things went south after the 5 Kage Summit, IMO. Danzo vs Sasuke was the last fight I truly enjoyed, though I stopped watching when the boat filler started.

I was just reading about the Sha'ir in D&D, who do magic through contract with genies. Expend that with other spirits and that's pretty much what you're talking about.

>This isn't some rationalization in defense of Naruto. Kishimoto wanted to do a manga about wizards and magic and shit, but editorial decisions from Shonen Jump forced him to change the flavor

Do you have any evidence of that? Naruto was originally supposed be a shef and a kitsune, and then a ninja, but never a wizard.

>In 1995, Shueisha released Karakuri, a one-shot manga by Masashi Kishimoto that earned an honorable mention in the Hop Step Award in 1996. Kishimoto was unsatisfied with his subsequent drafts for a follow up, and decided to work on another project.[1] The new project was originally going to feature Naruto as a chef, but this version never made it to print. Kishimoto originally wanted to make Naruto a child who could transform into a fox, so he created a one-shot of Naruto for the summer 1997 issue of Akamaru Jump based on the idea.[2][3] Despite the positive feedback it received in a readers' poll, Kishimoto was unhappy with the art and the story, so he rewrote it as a story about ninjas.[4]

The idea of using magical handsigns to cast spells is something that was present in actual ninja folklore.

Yeah its pretty obvious its just battlemages but still there needs to be a cap at what the characters are capable of and Kishi went waaaay over it.

It's what I remember reading. That Naruto wasn't supposed to initially be about explicitly fantasy "ninjas". I don't think Kishi ever really fully specified just what kind of wizards and magic it was supposed to be.
Really in the end it doesn't make much difference considering how the magic turned out to play a part in the story anyway. Only now the term "ninja" has the burden of Naruto on it.
>The idea of using magical handsigns to cast spells is something that was present in actual ninja folklore.
Yes. As I said Naruto utilized the abilities that ninjas had in stories. Hand seals, throwing knives and shit, great agility etc. etc.
It isn't much different than when you conceptualize a western fantasy styled battle mage. They'd wear some form of armor, use conventional western weaponry like one-handed straight swords and shields. Ninja is just inherently more fantastical, unlike a bog standard swordsman.

I dunno, I think you're being kind of harsh. There's a lot of the sort of shit you're talking about in universe in Kingkiller Chronicles, but it doesn't really show up because nobody remembers how to do it. Naming-of-the-elemental-variety itself is a rare art that casuals don't know about, the real naming is basically mythical. Kvothe clearly does it when he mindbends that fae sex queen. Story seems to be building more towards that sort of naming though.

Also, there's plenty of misfires. It's implied that the reason the university has so many insane people is because of how mindfucking the process of learning and using names is. See: Auri.

I personally like yogsothothery magic with space lasers and meteors that you summon through specially prepared and preserved body parts and various exotic slugs from other dimensions.

The 3 sannin were lifted straight from a story.
except in the story Jiriaya was the lover of tsunade IIRC, orochimaru also was there.
They all practices magic related to toads, slugs and snakes like in the show.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiraiya

That just made me realize how Rock Lee's entire character arc was about Martials vs Casters.

And yet Rock Lee and Might Gai were better than any martial could ever hope to be.

Well yeah, because they were in a system where martials are allowed to have nice things. It's not 3.5e

True.

Even Sharinogan nonsense could be cool used in interesting ways. Like that one guy that had a bunch of their eyes surgically implanted in himself so he could do it, but every time he did it an eye closed forever and he couldn't use it anymore.

Jesus Christ I'd hate to be the twin that got stiffed.

I love the sorcerers of the Crippled God in the fifth Malazan book, as they use their power they grow twisted and corrupted from the decaying energy their God grants them.

it's just a feel good cartoon that has nothing to do with reality, and the sequel is more about preaching politics than telling an actual story

>it had one of the more interesting magic systems derivative of 'chants, arm movements and spells'
FTFY

This is gonna sound dumb, but anyone know how to create a "mememagic" character?

Just play a charisma build that's good at spreading rumors and take some minor reality warping to turn those rumors into a reality as the populace believes and spreads your rumor.

>but never a wizard.
He was supposed to be a shugenja

I agree with you entirely, but I wanna bridge off of it. Magic Language is fantastic.
Magic Language Singing is the absolute shit though.
Good example (And the only one I've really got)
Hymnoss. World ending magical power being channled through songs about birds. Sang in a language that confused the shit out of my latin professor when I explained it to him.

youtube.com/watch?v=28ySSYp8fnQ

Holy shit I am gay for this nonsense. Anyone have other examples of Magic Music being a feature?

Do you know good books with magical language?

Imho a convincing magical system needs a logical base.

Thats either a pact system where people get their powers from supernatural entities. The best mage is the one that brokers the best deals or is a favourite of the supernaturals.

Or ist a math/physics thing like in Sandersons worlds.

The language of creation/magic/existence itself is an interesting third way. Clerics and mages essentially do the same. Mages just try to understand the basis of the language and they try to find the right words for an individual situation. Clerics on the other hand memorize hymns etc. that are very powerful but are limited in their flexibility. Ultimately mages have more potential because they try to get the whole picture while clerics use certain words and sentences without understanding the big picture.


As a thought:

I always found Mana to be a retarded limitation for mages. I would propose something else for a magical language:

The language is far more complicated than any human could ever truly grasp. As a consequence most mages use a very bastardized and simplified way of speaking the language. This still achieves the effects but the recoil of abusing the divine language damages the caster.

So someone with a perfect understanding (essentially only the gods) could use magic without limits.

The cruder your understanding gets the more you are limited in your use.

Easy things that only need easy sentences with few words do less damage than complicated things that need multiple complex sentences.

>Puppets is magic
Wrong, it's an impossible weapon.

The RPG that does this is Greg Stolze's Reign, using the supplement with the alternate setting "Nain"

But before you even start thinking any further about this concept go and read A Wizard of Earthsea right now, it's very distressing that you apparently haven't heard of it.

You;re splitting hairs. Trust me on this, my magic is to perfectly split hairs no matter how fine.

Truthspeakers in the Mechanical Dream RPG are a kind of Echo (magic user) that can manipulate belief and, yes, memes so that they are more widely acknowledged and they can even become reality if you affect enough people. They're pretty okay, but as Echoes go they're probably Tier 3 or lower.

DCC

The Goddess from the Lunar series (Saturn/PSX era JRPG that's actually pretty good) does all her magic through song and it's powerful enough that she's the one keeping the half of the moon facing the Earth capable of supporting life.

Exalted 2e is a bit of a dumpster fire mechanically, but you're looking for Infernal exalted. One of their subtypes has hilarious charms like Chirality Prohibition Index which lets you rearrange the landscape in such a way it fascinates people and randomly forms a cult with certain taboos and obligations that the Infernal chooses.

Like some previous anons have said; magic that requires a modification to your mind and/or body to even be usable, like biotics or plasmids, is pretty neat. One of my favourite examples of this is psy/psionics from sci-fi. There's just something really neat about it.

I also like magic based around rituals; magic that's just conjured up by training and force of will never struck me as that interesting.

This is why Warhammer Fantasy gets magic right