Magic System - Does this make sense?

But you don't like stories that ignore it's own magic system's costs. I'd call shenanigans if the author said his Mc just got lucky and escaped serious heart damage unlike everyone else who tried. You can't have a cost like permsnent heart damage and not follow up when a dude learns all 13 schools. If not dead, the MC would be like this:

 

Then maybe the most successful mages are the ones who work the hardest to stay physically healthy and who get medical attention the most frequently?

Kind of like the trained fighters who would get hurt in normal ways from any other form of fighting?

Non-magic unrealistic: a fighter doesn't get hurt getting attacked

Non-magic realistic: a fighter gets hurt getting attacked and has to get himself taken care of

Magic "unrealistic": Magic supposedly hurts the user, but not this one

Magic "realistic": Magic hurts the user, and he has to get himself taken care of

 

So basically exactly like the dude I linked above?

 

I was thinking more along the lines of soldiers needing to get patched up between fights.

Would it make sense to say "nobody would go to war because they would get hurt or killed in battle"?

 

What do you mean specifically by "getting patched up" with regards to permanent heart damage? All modern medicine can do is install a pacemaker.

The idea in war is to use your training and not get killed though.

 

But you still get hurt. Maybe the burnout starts out as "serious, but treatable" and only becomes untreatable if you let it go for too long?

Kind of like any other damage from combat?

 

Oooo I like the concept! The only opinion (at the moment) I have is that instead of the element bonding with a person, what about there being a resonance. This is more of a two-sided relationship for deeper growth vs. a one-sided relationship that is bonding. This naturally creates differences in the depth, usage, and potential.

 

Again, permanent heart damage is not treatable barring transplant. So all the symptoms of creating a burnout are not treatable unless he retcons that part. Or invents some fantasy treatment...Which basically the same as a retcon.

 

Exactly.
In the Wheel of Time users lose their sanity from using the magic. Orson Scott Card invented a system where you lose a limb (and in that society, it's fashionable to have lost limbs) if you use the magic.

Phil, it seems that you're caught on damage to the heart, which I guess is where I'm just not seeing it as you are. People smoke, drink alcohol, eat fast food, drink energy drinks and even stay at stressful jobs which all contribute to heart damage, but people keep doing it. I guess, I see heart damage as an inevitability in life. I don't see the magic as any more damaging than a heavy smoker or drinker.

 

What do you mean by resonance?

 

No, they contribute to atherosclerosis/cholesterol plaque. That's clogging, not damage. Clogging eventually causes damage by blocking blood flow, and kills heart cells, which is permanent damage, but when it gets to that point, people either stop the bad habits or they die very soon.

 

Ah, I get it. So chronic magic use is what causes serious problems. That's an interesting take on things. I like it - it's like magical energy is corrosive to life force. Oh, and as someone who's suffered repetitive injuries, trust me when I saw that you can never fully recover to 100% - even if you fully heal, each time you reinjure something, it gets a little weaker and a little harder to heal again.

I forgot about the "bonding" part - what does that mean, exactly?

I have no problem with there being side effects/drawbacks - that's a good thing, IMO. My issue is that your MC is going to be using a lot of magic if he's going to master every discipline, which means he's not probably going to live very long. If that's your intent, then great - go with it. Show us the sacrifices he has to make to achieve whatever goal he has to achieve, and that magic has a price. We don't often see an old, broken-down mage telling his grandkids that he looks 50 years older than he really is because he used too much magic.

 

A feeling of rightness. Almost like a limb that you didn't know that you had is working properly right of the bat/a new piece of yourself vs. learning to control a power. This is if you don't want to give the element human-like emotions.

On the other hand, you can have a range from working with your element like partners, to your element just being a tool for use. This resonance, would be if you and your element had a high compatability rate.

 

That's really interesting. I'd hadn't thought of the element as its own character. Might be a cool bit to add in a later book.

 

Let me know what you think! I really really enjoyed the series.

 

Really, you guys are debating a logical magic system?
You know what inevitably happens, you write yourself into a corner... and magic your way out.

 

I completely disagree.
I think it's lazy writing to use magic (the mystery rules) as a deus ex machina to get yourself out of a corner (the Force, Spider-Man: One More Day, Heroes, Lost), and instead to have set rules on what magic can and cannot do and to use the it creatively to get out of that corner (most science fiction, anything by Brandon Sanderson, the Avatar series, almost all super powers (except when it's not)).
I'd rather have a set number of things that magic can do, and play with that in a consistent, but creative way.

 

But how is it that this magic exists at all?.. is it organic magic, or empowered by some supernatural force? If it's a more organic magic, say, like the Harry Potter books, then I don't know how it can be anything but convoluted. If with a wave of a wand, a wizard can strike someone dead, well, placing limits on that magic is sort of convenient.

 

I believe it all how the writer sees his world and how that aspect plays a part in it. It is not something that the reader has to know, it is something that the writer needs to know in order to show. Let's say that I'm writing a story with tanks in it. Now, its a drama and a love story. People fight with tanks ,but, the scenes are small and serve the purpose of providing a little action. The story is about the drama and the romance. Now, lets say my story is about the 'last tank driver'. The kingdom is threaten by hordes of goblin tanks and my MC and his friends has to get their tanks up and going to save the day. At this point, the tanks become a main element of the story so I now need some kind of 'tank system' so I can make their use at the very least immersive. I wouldn't want the reader to say, "hey, last scene the tank blew up a mountain and now it can't shoot through a wall?" I really do hate plot device armor, weapons or anything that is used to patch up a lack of work on the writer's part.
Godspeed!

 

It's really all about proper foreshadowing of the magic you're doing. Harry Potter didn't have a lot of hard and fast rules about magic, but you knew what a Patronus was and what it did, you knew about hexes, charms, potions, some of the spells and even some of the other items (brooms, Quidditch (sp), wands, flumes, etc.). This way, when it was all used later in the story, it seemed totally natural and it followed the rules that had already been established. (Of course, Rowling did have some stuff that came out of nowhere, like the giant statues defending Hogwarts... but that was stuff that Harry wasn't going to be taught.) On the other hand, Heroes established the rules and then made stuff up whenever it was inconvenient.

I like what you said about the origin of the magic. And in some cases, I believe that's a story all on its own. But I also believe that any world where magic is common, users would test it out and determine its limits. I think it's human nature to determine what our boundaries are and to try to break them. Doesn't mean it can't be awesome.

Here's a good video about Dr. Strange using Sanderson's Laws of Magic: