I’m currently trying to work out cost and limitation of a magic system ... that is t really magic; it’s the idea of technological powers that appear like magic, but my collab group is using as if it were a sort of magic system. As such, it would be best to have a cost to keep it interesting. For those not familiar, “cost” would be the negative effect; I.e those using the One Power in Wheel of Time get fatigued, those using power in Stormlight Archive must harness Stormlight, and in Dune there is an expensive economic cost to Spice. The ability to harness the technomancy in our universe is based upon the users personality; certain personalities can use certain forms. Our overarching theme is “what defines humanity” and “where is humanity going in this universe?” So I was wanting to make the cost related to a loss of humanity, or a loss-gain; i.e. user loses a specific emotion or has it nullified unless they are using their “magic,” or something to that effect; the main creator decided that making a hard rule was too restrictive, but agreed that making it relating to humanity and having a pool of costs, so now I’ve been set the task of thinking of what this pool of costs could consist of. Ideas?
If your magic is personality based, then I'm assuming that if you studied in one form then your personality changed, then you'd lose your abilities as a magic user. This means that to remain proficient, that a user would have to keep literally the same personality that they had when they started studying magic. Sounds simple but peoples personalities change all throughout their lives and magic users would actively have to stop this. There would be no personal growth or plot arcs for them. They would never be able to feel love or grieve a loss. They would never be able to heal old wounds or find closure and they would have to abandon ever becoming a self actualized human being.
Go with this. The more you use the magic, the more you become... immersed in it, for lack of a better word, the more humanity you lose. I don't know if you're ever played Shadowrun, or are at least familiar with it, but there's a rule wherein you can add tech components to your body (implants, prostheses, etc.) but doing so reduces your Essence (essentially, how human you still are). In your world, this could lead to all sorts of interesting things - anything from a lack of emotion to outright physical changes like parts of the body gaining circuitry or becoming metallic. It all really depends on your magic system.
The personality-basis is a little more leniant than that. Being that it's technologically based, really anyone can "do" any sort of technomancy, they just won't be proficient in it; by the history of it, some forms like Nanomancy were never considered Technomancy because "it's just people controlling nanites," but it was found to be more efficient with certain personality types. However, you bring up a good point: Loss of proficiency due to altering personality is totally a thing, and actually happens to my MC; after a major plot development, he finds himself becoming less and less proficiency with his gravimancy and manages to pick up another form that he is now more tuned to. This is kind of what we had in mind - but exactly what that "essense" is in our system would be rather vague. However, we had been thinking to make it less a "loss" of humanity and a more controversial, questionable change in humanity, begging the question of "what is humanity?"
Ofcourse it's a widely discussed topic especially between believers and non-believers. But my idea towards it is that any norm and value is subjective to those around you and how one is raised. I believe murder would be normal if a child would've had to murder people as a normal activity and if it wasn't frowned upon. However I can't provide any empirical data for this. In the lesser it's very obvious, look at what's normal today and what you could've been stoned for in the middle-age. Since it might be the loss of emotion, together with the fact humanity is something rather abstract, I don't think anyone would notice these changes immediately and only over a length of time. Having these feeling reappear during the use of magic might actually be detrimental and might distract you extremely; rapid fluctuations of emotional status could lead to unpredicted behaviour due to their emotional dysregulation. Having it lose emotions might make one not care about the loss. With total lack of emotions you'd lose any sense of passion or interest and hit an extreme depression. If you also would be able to have people lose abilities like ampathy they could become narsistic or psychotic. All in all, I believe this would be an overly strict rule as it would have major psychological consequences.
This is really interesting, actually. One of the aspects of the magic system I'm working on currently is that a mage is required to feel a certain emotion to be able to use their magic, to the point where it consumes them (anger, sadness, happiness, etc). Now, what you're looking for is somewhat of the opposite. Have you ever seen Darker than Black? On the assumption that you haven't, I'll explain real quick: there are people called Contractors, and they have supernatural abilities, for a price. They lose their emotions. There's another price, but that's not important. The problem is there's no depth to these kinds of characters. You mentioned a loss or nullification of an emotion. Is this caused by the character or the "magic" itself?
The cause is the overstimulation of the part of the brain that controls that emotion, like a drug. The emotion ties into needing to use that technomancy efficiently, so the implant forces the emotion to occur. As the user uses more of the power their brain gets used to not producing that emotion without being told to.
Sounds to me sort of like a drug effect. I don't know if you've ever been a smoker, but when a smoker wakes up the first thing they think about is getting a cigarette because it gives them a happy feeling of satisfaction. They function normally but are always checking their watch for when they get another smoke break, which would be the same downside for your magic. They are always seeking an excuse to use, trying to use it, always wanting more to satisfy that increasing need for that feeling. There is no hard set rule because everyone reacts differently. Maybe some people can handle it, some go off the deep end. That "loss of humanity" you are looking for as your loss is the increasing difficulty to hold back, that constant distraction and preoccupation.
You mentioned "loss of humanity". Are all the characters human? Dragging this through the psycological spectrum for a min, you loss of humanity could be played out any number of ways honestly. Its all dependant on what you(and more importantly your general population of humans in said work) have defined as humanity. I.e. if using a certain form of technomancy requires competence in channeling anger, without bleeding over into their normal lives, could it be possible that the more often such tech is used, the less they can control the bleed-thru, as it were. To the point where if used enough, they will at somepoint be masters of the tech yes, but also be considered social pariahic in most instances.
All characters are human. We decided that using the emotional aspect was too restricting on character development, and moved that to being a consequence of using technomancy if your brain wasn't "adept" at it. (~10% of all people in our universe are considered adept). Non-Adepts could still use the gear, but would not be able to be as good at it as well as suffering the emotional symptoms. For other costs, we decided to do a Trait system with a Give & Take, with currently 3, aiming for 5 Pro v. Con traits; i.e. being able to overload your gear with your body suffering physically afterwards, or over-focus your implants but suffering migranes afterwards, et cetera.
