Give a fact or two about your magical systems which make them unique

Give a fact or two about your magical systems which make them unique.
>Raw magical energy is released by living creatures and some materials as waste, similar to CO2 given off through respiration
>In recent years, wizards have begun formulating theories of elemental organisation that rely on a 'element field' framework. This is in contrast to older 'spirit/wave' models.

Its not exactly 'unique' so much as interesting. In my setting all forms of supernatural power are variations on the use of a single energy called Vimana, that is harnessed in multiple ways as enhanced physical abilities, the natural abilities of supernatural creatures [dragons, etc], traditional sorcery, psychic powers, and Anima [powers certain beings called Numeri can gain from fallen enemies].

The energy naturally radiates from the Psyche, or consciousness of sapient lifeforms. The above physics ties into numerous lesser details of the setting, such as the astral plane [a three-dimensional space that exists parallel to the physical world and overlaps it where everything is composed of Vimana]. Which in turn ties into other concepts, such as how teleportation is achieved by converting your body into Vimana, transferring it to the astral plane, traveling through that plane instantly, then returning to matter at your destination.

Do undead exist in your setting? What's their relationship to Vimana, or the Psyche?

It's not explained.

To be less of a cockhead; I just restrict magic "spells" that players get to support/healing magic. This doesn't meant they can't create magic items or cast rituals that do other things, but that's something everybody can do. I just prefer magic users not to steal the limelight from other classes so they get a good support role instead.

Mindless undead are automatons generated by magic, that lack Psyches. Vampires, Liches, etc still have Psyches and thus Vimana and supernatural power.

Ghosts interestingly enough, are what I'm playing as in the campaign. They are Psyches in the astral plane that use Vimana to generate a temporary physical body composed of 'astral matter'. Hence my posting Rukia.

Magic is fed in to the world by a hole in the universe that the gods used to peace out, and that hole looks like the sun.

It's Elder Scrolls.

I knew as soon as I read the word 'universe'. Good setting though.

Still not sure how to incorporate the sun and moon into my own setting. It's hard to beat 'the moon is the corpse of a dead god'.

Instead of casters having mana, the universe have mana.

Spells cost X mana, and universe has Y mana.
As long an spell is active the spell is costing X mana, universe get all the X mana back when spell become not active, thats the only way to the universe get mana back.

There is no, only very powerfull magic users can cast spells that cost X mana, or Z mana. As long you can cast the spell, the mana doenst matter, remember its not your mana, its universe mana

More stuff I forgot:

As long you do exact what is needed to be done to cast an spell X, you will cast it. Doing minor mistakes can cast an very similar spell that is almost equal, just a little different.

After you cast an spell, the spell need X turns to happen, the mana is used before those X turns.
When the spell become not active, the universe will get the mana back after Y turns.

The lenght X and Y, depend at the amount of spells active.

Prana (primordial element), souls, relationships, ley lines and gravity are related. I call it sacrophysics.

The sun is a living entity that feeds off of chaos, conflict and passion. It bestows abilities through energy manipulation to individuals who help create these things on the planets who rotate it. It holds no allegiances or favorites.

All "magic" in the setting comes from the soul because magic is about imposing your will upon reality. This applies to all form of magic from warriors and their superhuman abilities to mages.

However, in order to channel this willpower to such a force to affect reality requires extreme focus as such a system of "Signs and Rituals" was created to help accomplish this. All this means that everything from religious chanting to shadow boxing counts as a form of ritual to help focus the will to accomplish magic as well as the knowledge of the thing one is trying to do.

For example, the old wise woman who goes into the woods and collects various herbs and plants to create basic healing salves. she knows the right way to collect, cut, and prepare the various ingredents and the muttering she is doing is a mnemonic she uses to know how long to boil them for and how often to stir.

TL:DR

To do magic in my setting = Having a soul (and thus will) + knowledge of the thing you are trying to manipulate

I like this. What do relationships have to do with gravity?

All magic is contained in the blood, and rather than being edgy as hell it's just considered as a standard. Dragons will occasionally willingly give their blood away so that mortals can become sorcerers if they perform good deeds, undead have to be struck in the heart rather than the head to be killed, that sort of thing.

Skeletons are the single most powerful undead creature in the entire setting. Nobody can figure out how to kill them.

The spells are not actually magic, but convincing/tricking/making things do suff for you. You're not casting fireball, you're calling on an ancient pact made long ago by your ancestors/teachers/what have you with a dragon to borrow a bit of their breath.

This thread has some boring as shit magic systems. Nothing here is really that interesting, original, or engaging. It seems the majority of you are obsessed with the idea of magic following some kind of 'energy' or 'law of conservation' ideology, which sucks all the fun out of it.

So regal us with your ideal system of magic where it's so mysterious jazz handing is as equally possible of casting lightning as bending over and flapping your penis at your enemies

Muh vague hidden fairy farts bullshit taht requires me to go streaking naked covered in virgin menstrual blood and wasp stings under a full moon for aa 20% chance at unlocking a door is boring to me. It's almost like people have different tastes.

Law of Symbolism and Sympathy my dude.

You tie a blue ribbon around a branch from a tree struck by lightning and can call a single bolt of lightning from it, because it was once struck by lightning. There's no gay magical 'battery' or power source.

Trees hit by lightning multiple times? Taking multiple branches from the same tree? Other things struck by lightning? Those branches without the ribbon? Don't work. It's not science, it's magic.

They're not the same. Stop treating them like it.

>Muh vague hidden fairy farts bullshit

You called it

Funny enough, the arguments against the heroic fighter archetypes like herculies and Odyessius because they are half dieites pretty much works the same way for the archtypical magic users since the likes of Merlin, Morgan Le Fey, Abe no Seime, and Ceres were products of gods and demons.

Regardless, put your anti-fun police badge away and let us do our thing.

>Follows clear distinct laws with reliable results proceeding from the symbolic metaphysics of the setting

Sounds as scientific as everything else in this thread.

The thing I do that nobody else to is not over-explain gameist abstractions.
If you stare too long at the big picture, you'll lose sight of the important picture.

1/2

Prana is the primordial element from which all others are made. It is also know as life-force or soulstuff, because souls are self-contained and organized acumulations of prana. Any and all sentient beings have souls*, while animals have proto-souls. Having a soul in the first place demands that something has its own name, making it distinct enough that it may acquire spiritual links with other soul-possessing beings. Such links are called "ley lines", happening whenever one develops feelings of any kind upon something**. Prana flows through ley lines***.

The planet in question qualifies. Known as Ghara by most of its inhabitants, all of which either developed strong feelings upon it. Fondness of one's homeland, hating a war-torn kingdom, wishing to conquer your neighbors' lands, all this makes a ley line ultimately connected to the planet itself. The daily routine of one billion soul-possessing mortals sustains Ghara's Soul, which is further strengthened by being worshipped as a earth-goddess/father-god/Land Spirit by most of them.

Gravity is not an effect of mass, but of prana. Ghara's Soul is the greater concentration of prana other than the Sun. Its cosmic purpose is to make itself suitable for the living of soul-bearing creatures. Its own survival also depends on having souls linked to it.

That's why gravity is uniform throughout the crust: more living space to eventually house soul-bearing beings. Dwarfs are the most common example of this."

2/2
That's why certain asteroids and small planetary bodies have a gravity far greater than their mass, while some desert and dead planets have a pull as weak as the moon and are currently slowly disintegrating.

Theoretically, a nameless and unfeeling being could be free of gravity, but its metaphysical make-up would be so distorted as to make it dangerous. Ghosts such as the death cloud are posited by some scholars as proof of this.

*Except for demons and devils; their cosmical existence is parasitic, feeding upon the prana of existence. They favor souls because those are a concentration of refined prana, but some demons are known to engage in grand-scale draining of prana from the environment itself. Wastes such as the Unquiet Lands are places which never recovered from their invasion 500 years ago.

**This phenomena is also responsible for generating new prana which the ley web conducts into the stars, where it is refined and partially transformed into the other elements. Sunlight is refined prana.

***A soul can be thought of as a single ley line formed into a dense knot, whose arrangement is so unique as to codify the memories, personality and even physical characteristics of the corresponding being. It also takes the place of DNA.

Eh, I just kinda made it, and didn't think too deeply about the ramifications of it all.
>Spellcasting done through pulling out strong (and unstable) pockets of magic from area
>cannot be refined or stabilized, only attracted and then funneled into a specific direction (trying to do away with "why isn't magic in our lives more)
>Dragons have a lot of magic! (this is why all the legendary weapons were made with dragon remains)

>It's not science, it's magic. They're not the same. Stop treating them like it.
Scientific magic systems can be just as interesting and fun as symbolic, mystical magic systems.

>Law of Symbolism and Sympathy my dude.
So brainlet 2deep4u stuff that's either pretentious faux-art fart-huffing, or wyrd surrealist faggotry.

bump

Enchanters/illusionists need a sensual "hook" for their enchantment to work. The more elaborate the enchantment, the more elaborate the hook needs to be.

They need to get you to look into their eyes, at a hand sign they are making, but it doesn't have to be visual. It could be a song, or a particular perfume.

There's also a tradition that just punches/stabs people into madness, since touch is a sense.

Thinking about changing magic system.

Universe has 3 types of mana, mana X, mana Y and mana Z

Spells cost mana X, mana Y and mana Z. Any amount higher than 0.

After you cast the spell, if it dont fail, it will use mana X, mana Y and mana Z.

If the amount of mana X and mana Z is higher than the universe allows, the spell will automatically fail.

N turns after you cast the spell, the spell will become active. N is based at the amount of mana Y the unverse is using.
After the spell become active, the spell stop using mana X.

M turns after the spell become inactive, the spell will stop using mana Y and mana Z, the value M, is based at the amount of mana Y the universe had when the spell became inactive.

Okay, that's a lot of variables. Let's see if I can parse this:
Fluff:
So, there's three types of mana, which only exists in ambient form: Form, Flow, and Function.
Mages take these ambient forces and combine them into spells, requiring all three to cause a spell to occur.
All of the mana used in casting a spell, assuming the spell does not fail, is expended upon casting.
However, even if there is enough ambient Form and Function, only a certain amount of these two can be used at once.
Flow, however, controls the tides of mana usage, and can be applied freely.

Crunch:
Each area has a set amount of mana of each type.
Using a spell draws from the area's pool, consuming each type upon cast.
Each area's pool can only have a certain amount of Form and Function drawn from it (either X total Form + Function, or X Form and Y Function, I dunno, it ain't my system) per spell.
In a number of turns equal to the Flow used in the spell, the spell takes effect, and the amount of Form used is returned to the mana pool.
After the spell finishes and a number of turns equal to the current Flow in the area's mana pool have passed, the amount of Flow and Function used are returned to the mana pool.

Names pulled directly from the aether.

I can get behind this. Makes for a lot of ley-line, areas-of-power type of play. Reminds me of MtG.

>moon is the corpse of a dead god
Nonsense, everybody knows the moons are Ja-Kha'jay, the Lunar Lattice to keep Ahnurr out