Hello! I have a magical system in one of my stories and I wanted to get people's opinions of it. I also would love to hear about y'alls magic too if you are willing to share . A little backstory: This story is an angel/demon story where my angels and demons are different from normal conventions. I won't get too much into them, but they are able to wield magic, or at least some of them can wield magic. Their eye color deduces if they can use magic or not. They also have elemental magic which can be used by all demons/angels, and their specific element is genetic. Humans naturally didn't have magic, but pairing with angel/demon hybrids (nephalim) introduced magic into the human population. Therefore all humans with magic have angel and demon ancestors, even if they don't know it. The actual magic system: Magic is a birthright. The type of magic you are proficient in is many times what your parents are proficient in and so on. Some have more talent in magic than others, and therefore they are able to learn and be proficient in many different schools of magic. Your talent in magic also allows you to learn more advanced magic in that specific school. And example is one of my characters is proficient in Illusion magic. He has a high talent in magic, so he knows different schools of magic such as healing and spellswords (the summoning of a weapon unique to each person). Normal illusionists can only create images, but this character can give mass to his illusions. The only draw back is that it almost quadruples the amount of energy it takes to create that illusion. As for the cost of the magic, every being has a magical "well" that holds their magical energy. One is born with a certain size of well that is dependent on their talent. They are also able to increase that well through meditation and training, but their is a cap that they can hit where they can't make it any bigger. Every spell has a cost, and the more advanced the spell the more it costs. Energy is regenerated naturally through rest or eating. If they use all of their energy, they will pass out until at least 10% of their energy is regained. The last part is how it is cast. Their are no vocal castings, it is all dependent on feelings. The caster has to feel and manipulate the energy in their body to do what they want to do. As they train more, this becomes incredibly natural to them. Masters of their art can perform magic without lifting a finger or opening an eye. Magic can't be cast out of a certain range, but it can travel out of that range if the caster is able to sustain it for that long. Magic can also be used on accident if the emotion that they are tied too is too high. An example is that explosion magic would get out of control if the caster gets incredibly angry. Their are magical resistances. Beings that have a larger magical well than you can resist your magic. Depending in how wide the gap is, they could resist it without even trying. They can also see through magic if they are higher. An example is illusion magic. To those who have lower magic than the caster, the illusion would look completely real. To those won't high magic, the illusion would be slightly translucent. I believe I covered all the basics of it. If I missed anything I'll make sure to add it later. I can't wait to hear y'alls thoughts
Hi @dragonflare137 and welcome to the forum. I'm glad you're passionate about your work I don't think I'm good at generating constructive opinions (off the cuff) when faced with the complex magical structure of another writers work. Don't take anything I say too seriously. I am a man of meager mind. Your structure sounds pretty cool and interesting and I'm sure you can build an entertaining world based off the things you have shared above. Personally I do much better offering feedback when presented with small excerpts and/or specific questions rather than formulating and communicate my general opinion about something as potentially complex and diverse as a magical structure for an entire world. That doesn't mean your stuff isn't fantastic and wonderful; it just means my mental resources are limited and often real life time constraints win out over immersing myself into other writers creative material. I am curious about how much of the stuff above is just for you to know and how much stuff you will want your readers to know? Best wishes
Hmmm. Do you want the magic to relate to the problem and solution? You have to think of how much you want to reveal. Think lord of the rings vs the mistborn trilogy. One is soft magic, with little explained, but magic never really progresses the plot a ton. Meanwhile in mistborn with a hard magic system laid out as the character is learning of their own abilities, it revolves around the magic for the big picture. I like the idea, it just depends on the length of the story. Do you plan for the main character to have strong magic? Weakness is what we can relate to as readers. It seems like a good system that takes strong influences from other systems which can help smooth the understanding. I use a magic system where people bond to plants, granting them some nature magic. If the plant dies they die.
Ah thank you so much I completely understand about feedback thing, I'm the same way. As to your question, most of the information the readers will mnow, but they happen in short passing. Like when the main character uses too much magic someone tells him to stop or he will pass out. I will never go into super detail on these rules, they just get mentioned once and are sorta implied any other time. The only things they don't know are the human lineage and the talent. They just find a magic they like and work it regardless of if they have a talent or are proficient in it. I hope that answers your questions well enough XD
Thank you for the feedback it really helps me. Also I really like your magic too it's really interesting. I would love to read more about it! As for your questions, yeah magic is super important in the scope of the story. All of the characters who can use magic do, and that's about 80% of the main cast. It's a means to an end, and the main for of fighting for most of them. The main problem is, to put it simply, war, so it is used a decent amount of time in the narrative. As for the main character, no she doesn't have strong magic. In fact her magic isn't a fighting magic at all. Her magic is the magic of memory. She finds a way to use it defensively, but it's not intended to be used that way. Again thank you for your words, and I wish you well on your projects
Welcome to the forum! It sounds like you've put a lot of thought into this, which is good. On the flip side of that coin, I'd like to warn that sometimes being too caught up in the magic system can hinder your story itself. As @Arcadeus mentioned, the magic system does not drive the plot, but it can be centered around it for the mechanics of the story. Everything here sounds just fine, there's nothing wrong with it at all as far as how it works. So long as you have rules that don't conflict, and that there's a reason why some magic users are extremely powerful for example, there's no problem. I will say that you don't want to have an infodump, that is, you don't want to explain all this stuff in the story all at once. You don't necessarily have to spell out what's happening when magic is being used, don't be vague, just use words to describe what's happening, not how it happened, if that makes sense. I will say this about your magic system, I mean no offense, but it seems a bit typical. Ultimately that doesn't really matter in the end, your story is what matters. I am just saying that for me at least, I do get a bit tired of "schools" of magic unless it's a game or something. This kinda sounds like it's engineered more for a game too, actually, but again that's an opinion. In the end, it doesn't matter, you need to do what you feel is best and take people's opinions with a grain of salt, but still keep them all in consideration going forward. That's what I do.
Welcome to the site! There's not a lot I can see that hasn't already been addressed, but: Do we ever see a character pass out from trying to do too much? If every time we see a character try to do magic, we see it work, and if every time magic wouldn't work, another character simply says "don't do more magic" and they don't, then the impression will be that the author is arbitrarily deciding that the character isn't doing something that they would otherwise have been capable of. Which you are, obviously, but that's not what the impression is supposed to be Seeing magic fail one time makes it more viscerally clear that it could fail again if the characters aren't careful Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden messed up a warding spell in one book when he was trying to protect himself from a fireball. His hand was busted for books before he'd healed well enough to use it again as effectively as he'd been able to at the beginning of the series. (You may or may not want to take it that far but the basic principle still stands.)
