Short version: My setting has magic, but magic that mostly just manipulates physical laws. (So less 'Sword and sorcery' style, where you could just conjure stuff from thin air or make random crazy things happen.) I want a spell that could quickly or immediately knock someone out without any chance of doing lasting physical harm, but can't think of a good way to do it without at least a small chance of hurting your victim. (For an example of how magic works in other circumstances: If you wanted to instantly kill someone, you couldn't just cast a 'Death' spell, but you could cast a very precise spell that would pop some blood vessels in their brain, causing massive hemorrhaging and quick death, or you could use a bit more energy and just cause a small explosion inside their skull.)
There's a point in the neck, which when constricted will cut off the blood supply to the brain resulting in loss of consciousness. Maybe the magic can target this point? But I'm a little confused. It's seems like you're asking how magic could render someone unconscious, but without actually using magic.
Yeah, I'd say squeeze the carotid artery. Or is it the jugular? Mm. I forget. It's basically painless and isn't going to cause lasting damage, but it's not going to knock anyone out for a very long time, either. You could also constrict the windpipe, but that's more likely to have some adverse effects / damage the windpipe a bit, I think.
The magic can manipulate physical forces, it just can't completely ignore the laws of physics. So you can use magic to, as suggested, squeeze the carotid artery and make someone pass out, but you can't just cast an 'unconsciousness' spell to make them suddenly pass out for no physical reason.
Massive changes in bloodflow can cause unconsciousness. What about a sudden g-force? It only takes about 15 Gs for a few seconds to knock someone out. Check out some astronaut training technology.
Would physical laws include chemicals and hormones? Figure out which naturally occurring chemical in the body can induce a coma/unconsciousness and increase/decrease that. This could in effect be an extreme version of a "calming spell". Aside from restricting blood flow to the brain, there's also restricting airflow, like spells that simply stop the heart, stop the lungs, without actually damaging anything physically. (Though I don't know what effects non-physical temporary restrictions of blood or oxygen will do). Spells could also force the target to stop breathing, like forget how, rather than stop the lungs themselves. The lungs would begin to burn and they'd pass out. If they remain asleep, the lungs would/should work again, keeping them alive. But fainting is less reliable. Better to figure out how to induce a coma using a body's own chemicals.
You don't need to explain the process. Just use a spell that makes your body go numb and puts you to sleep
In some cases, explaining the process is half the fun (and interest). Especially in cases where the character is learning how to use the magic. I absolutely like to read (and write) about the mechanics of spells and how magic actually works rather than just being literal dumb magic. And even if explaining the magic isn't going to be in-depth in the text, the creator of the fictional world should know these things about their world.
Well, by technicality, your magic innately defies the laws of physics just by existing, since it implies that there is a formless power with no mass or volume that is still able to apply force. Outside that technicality, I think anything related to blood flow that has already been mentioned would work. In fact, anything to do with knocking someone unconscious usually involves the brain being deprived of oxygen in someway, or the body going into shock from extreme pain or stress (which it seems you are trying to avoid). The only other way I could think of is some sort of application of drugs or manipulation of body chemistry, but I don't believe that falls under physics or physical force, nor am I qualified to confirm any specific technique... The way it seems to me, your magic is some sort of underpowered "Force" (as in Star Wars), in that it can enhance and extend physical capabilities and feats, but nothing along the lines of mental manipulation or lightning generation.
Go Star Trek. Don't explain what it does--just make yourself a silly analogy and pretend to take it seriously. I had a magic device that did something like this once in a space opera I worked on through most of high school. The concept I went with was that consciousness is similar to a candle flame: you can blow it out with the right gizmo. (Or, you know, the right spell.) However, it's usually also like one of those trick 40th birthday candles: it relights in a bit.
Yes, they technically could, but recombining molecules in someone's blood/body or else creating those chemicals out of raw energy would be far too precise for most practical applications - Not impossible, but really, really difficult verging on 'Not worth the effort of trying', especially since a minor mistake with chemical imbalances can easily prove fatal. Hormones could work better in terms of 'I'm going to agitate (such-and-such gland) in order to cause X reaction', but I'm not sure that would be quick or effective enough in a combat situation. In this case, I actually need to have a specific reasoning, because it plays into a later story beat - Character #1 knocks out an enemy, and then Character #2 is able to accurately predict how long it'll take for that enemy to wake up, because Character #2 is very familiar with what magic/techniques Character #1 is familiar with. I don't want to go with a more "You always use the same spell," I want to demonstrate that Character #2 has a specific understanding of Character #1s magic. That would definitely work, but 15 Gs is (lemme do some math here) a metric crap ton of energy, which makes it an inefficient, if doable, process. (Not to mention that some precision would be required to exert 15 Gs without just sending the target flying backwards.) Mental manipulation doesn't really exist (at least not in Star Wars levels), but lightning generation totally could. It's expensive in terms of how much energy it consumes, but fairly simple - Not as simple as 'I shove this thing really hard', but still a fairly basic force of nature. Illusions, mental manipulation, stuff in that range generally happens by either manipulating physical forces or with really precise brain chemistry that can't happen out of what amounts to a lab setting. Making an illusory person who looks totally real isn't possible, but making an area darker or brighter, influencing shadows or exaggerating/minimizing movement is possible. (For the record, healing magic also exists, but requires the practitioner in question to effectively have a medical degree if they want to do anything advanced - Barring that, they need a spell that is incredibly focused and precise.)
For what it's worth as far as setting background goes: Since magic follows fairly practical principles and rules in my setting, it's also starting to be used for simple machinery and technology. Sorcerers already use runes and sigils in order to direct and focus magical power, so people with engineering backgrounds have figured out how to directly harness that power and use those runes to control it, cutting out the sorcerer entirely. (It's still in the 'Not very efficient or precise' stage, but it's getting there.)
So as I gather from your info, magic works as extra energy applied to existing forces to ones will ( kinda exactly like mine ). I can understand you can do this at distance and you're able to change basically everything, but the more elaborate the more difficult it is and can more easily cause mistakes. Others have mentioned reversing bloodflow by using g force, you don't have to do this on the entire body and not needing an metric ton of energy. Basically you only need to push blood out of the head for a few seconds and they'll pass out,but they'll wake up very soon again too. You can block off the nerfs in their neck for x amount of time. In general induce a block of electrical currents of specific areas (so block the nerfs in a different way)/ or something similar how anesthesia works. You can move their brain against the skull, to give them a concussion (most give some after affects though ) With more elaborate you can induce carbonmonoxide, which would lead to reduced oxygen intake and could lead to them passing out if used the right amount (too much and they'll die of suffocation. How does your magic work in general though? Can everyone just do what they want? What kind of limits are there?
I'm glad you asked that! So, in my setting, there exists a nebulous force of energy that is created as a byproduct of sentient, conscious life, which is called 'Spirit'. This spirit exists in all humans, but is generally difficult to extract, and can be obtained in one of four ways: A sorcerer can directly convert their own 'energy' in order to create spirit. (They burn calories and exhaust themselves, basically.) This is the least powerful, but also the least costly. A sorcerer can also destroy their own memories, which is very efficient and powerful, but runs the risk of driving them mad or destroying memories they didn't want to - Since memories can often be intermingled and fuzzy, this is a huge risk and not a popular choice. It can be extracted from fresh blood, or blood which was carefully sealed in an insulated container. (It doesn't have to be a sorcerer's blood.) This is more powerful than direct energy conversion, but less efficient than memory. It can be extracted from a person as that person is killed, which is the most powerful source of Spirit by a longshot, but is also not particularly useful unless a massive spell is being cast due to how much energy is being released. (The last two can also be done without the intervention of a sorcerer, using modern machinery/technology, but it's not as efficient at the extraction.) Sorcerers are simply people who have the ability to sense Spirit and manipulate it directly. They have a 'sixth sense' allowing them to control spirit, move it from one place to another, or convert it into other forms of energy. In order to cast a spell, Spirit has to be channeled into a vessel of some kind which has runes carved, marked, or written onto it. (Usually a staff or wand is preferred in combat, depending on the spell in question. Books are also popular, simply because so many runes can be written into a book that they can be incredibly precise.) Certain objects are better at conducting spirit than others - Most hardwoods are good choices, silver and gold are both excellent (as is electrum,) salt and iron will both ground out magical forces in the same way that rubber will stop electricity. Once the vessel has been filled with Spirit, the sorcerer thinks about what they want the spell to do, and then says magic words describing the spell in question. The Spirit is then 'filtered' through everything, and creates a tangible result that is reflective of those filters. For example, if you have a staff carved with the runes for 'Fire', and you think to yourself, I want this spell create a ten foot wall of fire blocking off that courtyard, and then you say the magic words for 'Fire wall', it'll create a wall of fire that's not actually ten feet long, but instead would be whatever you think ten feet looks like, in approximately the spot that you wanted it to go. (Assuming you pumped enough energy into the spell to actually create a big enough fire, and to fuel it for any length of time if there's no normal fuel nearby.) However, if you instead had a staff with the runes for 'Ten foot wall of fire', and thought the same thing, and then said the words for 'Ten foot wall of fire', then the wall would end up being precisely 120" from tip to tail. You could NOT, on the other hand, have a staff carved with the word 'Fire', and then think to yourself, I want to make the room darker, and then say the words for 'Darkness'. The filters would contradict each other, and the spell would fizzle out. You could possibly use 'Fire' runes to create a light, or heat the air in order to create a burst of wind, but that'd require creative workarounds and a lot of effort. As such, general tools are preferred in combat, since they're more flexible, while incredibly precise tools (or virgin tools and a sorcerer who is fluent in runes and able to mark down whatever runes he needs, on the fly) are preferred for specific, complicated tasks. (As a side-note: There are other sentient, conscious species besides humans, (Dragons being the most prominent,) but they don't really interact with the story much, so it's not very relevant. (There are also dragon sorcerer-equivalents.) In the case of knocking someone out, that would be something that the sorcerer already has prepared - A method of knocking someone out in a quick, nonlethal manner that would work universally on most people without variation or specific changes needed.
How about if the sorcerer crafts a rune from a material which acts as a transducer and converts Spirit energy to electrical energy? If directed to the correct part of the victim's brain, the electrical energy could induce a seizure, resulting in unconsciousness. It would be quick, and harmless to most people (as long as the sorcerer had sufficient control so as not to use so much electricity that it burned the victim's brain, or stopped their heart, or if they had a pacemaker etc.).
Cool system, one question though, if you have a water/blood wand, would you be able to “bend” blood of other casters? Or in general, do sorcerers have the ability to prevent magic from other users? Because I think there are only three ways useful without injecting stuff, because with your system described I think it would be impossible to have a molecule-changing-wand and make different chemicals to knock someone out. So you’ll have either, give them a concussion, do something to their spine, or bend their blood that they pass out. Bending blood would most likely only be very temporal like how pilots lose consciousness when taking too much G, and as soon as they are in less they get it back. Giving them a concussion would leave after marks, and if done wrongly could kill them; you described something isn’t done precisely so like aiming a gun to not kill can still easily kill or either miss (unless you have a put-pressure-on-spine-wand?). And thirdly, putting pressure on their spine might actually only paralyse them, so they would be fully aware what’s happening around, and this could go wrong and permanently paralyse them.
Not sure if this would be useful in your setting or not, but... In my own series, the 3 primary characters are wizards (each using a different type of magic). While magic can be the classic D&D style of aim a wand, chant some words and POOF wild stuff happens, only very few, very ancient, very advanced wizards have ever learned to do that sort of thing. Most wizards are similar to our real world Hoodoo Rootworkers and Voodoo Conjure Doctors. Meaning they do a lot of mixing roots and herbs with salt or cornmeal or honey or oil, anointing said mixtures on candles or doorways or crossroads... that sort of thing. The world they live in is set in something equivalent to 900s, so almost no tech, and no medical knowledge, and thus things that we see today as being herbal remedies, are seen in their time as mystical and magic. That said... Magic in this setting is often as simple as mixing together some herbs and brewing a tea. Thus... for the type of end result you are seeking, to occur in the setting of my own series, a person seeking to knock someone unconscious, would go to a wizard seeking a potion for that effect. The wizard would select herbs that induce sleep (such as Opium Poppy, Camomile, and Lavender) and mix them together. The person would then dump that into the victims tea, when the victim wasn't looking... or bake the victim some treat to eat, and put the herbs mix in it. So, that's a less dramatic, very simple way of achieving the result you are seeking. That said... The magic used by the advanced wizards, is very similar to what you have described in yours. Some differences being, that energy is not sentient in mine, but rather everything contains energy, and the wizard can meditate to draw energy out of something (plant, tree, rock, mountain, water, etc) or someone (people, animals, etc) and manipulate that energy to do specific things, depending on the amount of energy vs the wizard's training and skill vs the amount of focus and meditation used. They can then direct that energy into wands, staffs, knives, swords, crystals, pendants, bottles, gloves, etc in order to store the energy for use at a later point. For example my MC is an advanced wizard, and one of the few who has a "multi use" wand. It's known as "The Rainbow Wand" because it has stripes of rainbow colours on it. At each band of colour he can load a different energy source. Then later, saying the name of the colour, releases the spell embedded in that band. Magic however, in my series can not be used for combat, because of the intense amount of meditation required to use the spell. It can take hours for a wizard to focus his mind, enough to them use the spell in his wand. He can't just point the wand and boom the spell happens. He has to meditate first on his intent, before he can cast the prepared spell. As a result, this makes wizards a liability in combat, because by the time they've focused the spell, the enemy has had time to slaughter the wizard. Also, the energy source, goes not just through the wand, but also through the wizard, thus is drains them physically, and they can not cast more than 1 or 2 spells a week without doing serious physical and mental damage to themselves. So, while magic is very powerful and very effective, it's also very difficult to wield and is often deadly for the magic user. Many wizards are killed by their own spells. Trying to cast a fire ball, will burn them if they are not wearing specific gloves and robes made to repel fire for example. Also because wizards use their bodies as a conduit to power the energy of the spell, drawing energy out of other things... the spell is short rage, only around the wizard himself for a few feet. He can't cast a spell and have it manifest 100 feet away, for example. Also pulling energy out of a living thing (plants, people, animals) weakens or even kills that thing, so peaceful wizards are limited to using fire, earth, rocks, and water for sourcing their energy. (Thus you have wizards who use Life Energy, generally seen as evil, vs wizards who use Elemental Energy, general seen as good.) Anyways... All that said... Seeing how you have a very similar sort of system in your own book, it's possible you could use something similar to how my wizard does it? If he wanted to knock someone out, he would meditate to harness the energy of the wind, put a wind spell into his wand, then cast it on the victim. The force of the wind energy, now narrow focused on a single target, casts a large blast force that would knock the person off their feet, and were they standing close to say a brick wall, the force would be strong enough to knock then out on impact. It would be like a sudden blast of hurricane winds suddenly hitting them full force. I would assume your rune system has a wind rune that could be used in this manner. This method would not require altering the person's blood or anything, because it would be the wizard altering the wind with enough force to cause the person to hit their head on something and be knocked out that way. Not sure if that would work for your story setting or not, but that's how I'd do it in my own setting.
That wouldn't really work, mostly because it's a very tense situation where they can't just get their opponent to drink some tea. (Also, that wouldn't be instant enough.) In short: Yes, that's entirely possible and pretty easy, but it doesn't work at all for my purposes due to the whole 'Safely' part of the 'Safely knock someone out'. Giving someone a concussion by smashing their head into a wall with hurricane-level winds is not going to reliably knock them out without also being strong enough that it could possibly crack their skull, break their neck, or otherwise cause potential death or permanent injury. (Also: If that was on the table, my character could just hit them over the head with a big stick.)
