Second Look at my Elemental Magic?

So... It's been like a year or two since I've last been here. Got a lot of reading to do! As you have hard magic (explaining on how magic works) I found my interest, so I hope it's not a problem since the last response was in June :<

The problem I face when trying to think of magic systems is how to not create something ultimately overpowered. Will you explain how things can be countered?

1. When teleporting, will you remove the matter you're teleporting to? Can it only be air? What happens if you would teleport in to a wall, or a human?
2. Air/water manipulation, can't you stop someone's hart instantaneously/or remove air out of someone's lungs?
3. Speed, if you're able to up speed you can fire yourself as a bullet, would you need to increase your physique too? Incredible amounts of force on a body would make it snap. Look at Flash/Quicksiver (yes I know, dc/marvel...) forexample, as they can travels at (easily) 100 m/s (average human can run about 5 m/s --> 5*9 is already 45 m/s and also think about E=1/2*m*v^2)) the amount of force his body has to endure is insane, and therefor must be insanely endurable. This also straight away gives them very high strength.
4. How cold can it get, can they target this aswell? Freeze internal organs?

I like to think about stuff like this, but most likely are of the few. So I wouldn't elaborate too much as I believe the majority wouldn't enjoy reading that. I just like to point out that one shot killers are easily created and could be taught of during brainstorming.

 

I'm a Ravenclaw-Slytherin. I never pass up an opportunity to show off how clever and creative I am

(There's also a bit of Hufflepuff that just wants my ideas to make other people as happy as they make me )

And as a matter of fact, a different concern had come up when I shared this on Reddit a couple of weeks ago, and I just came up with a potential solution a few days ago that I was just thinking about anyway

• The basic Fire spell offers strong defense against extreme heat
• The basic Water spell offers moderate defense against suffocation and extreme temperature (hot or cold) when underwater
• The basic Earth spell offers a mild defense against all forms of external physical damage (heat, cold, impact/cutting, but not suffocation/drowning or poison/disease)
• ... The basic Air spell lets you fly

It was pointed out to me that the Air spell didn't mesh very well with the other three.

Now I'm thinking that in addition to the conjuring spells, each basic element will be associated with two personal enhancements instead of just one:

• Active Earth: sticking to stone/ground (like a weaker version of Crystal's anchoring spell, but which also turns you into Spider-Man)
• Passive Earth: resistance against almost all forms of external damage

• Active Air: flight
• Passive Air: resistance against suffocation and toxic gases (currently the Air/Tranquility spell in the Ice list, which I would then need to replace)

• Active Fire: ???
• Passive Fire: resistance against extreme heat

• Active Water: being able to move more easily underwater
• Passive Water: resistance against suffocation and extreme temperature when underwater

Now I just need to come up with an active personal spell for the Fire list and an Air/Tranquility spell for the Ice list, and I think I have this problem taken care of.

The big thing is just how long and hard it's going to be for my characters to progress beyond the "parlor trick" level, but more specifically:

1) I was originally thinking that teleportation would displace matter where you landed (or that you would land as close to your planned landing-zone as possible if there was too much matter for you to displace) and create a vacuum where you jumped from.

... but now I'm thinking about the ratio of advantage/drawback if I change this to "you trade places with the you-shaped chunk of matter that you 'landed' in."

2) Magic in my world is as much an art as it is a science, and this system of magic was explicitly designed by a character within the story. When bootlegging new forms of magic, you can make your magic more powerful by adding drawbacks which would not otherwise be natural consequences (though the natural consequences still play a role in addition to the artificial drawbacks), and I'm starting to think that the character who came up with this school of magic may have set up the rituals such that the spells you cast cannot be used to directly harm other people.

For example: you can conjure water to drown a person, but you can't manipulate the water that the person is made of.

3) Force is more about changes in speed than speed itself. If you were going a constant 100 miles per hour through the air, neither speeding up nor slowing down, then you would feel 100mph wind battering against you, but your speed itself would not cause you any problems. My speedster needs to mind his acceleration and deceleration, but top speed isn't going to be much of a problem.

This gets more complicated when my speedster character is running instead of flying, but not as much as you might think because his movements get much longer and more sweeping as he does them faster (if you take a video of somebody running and then slow it down, it doesn't look like they're walking on the Earth, it looks like they're walking on the Moon) so he doesn't have to worry about high-speed muscle friction and wear-and-tear as much as one might think he would.

4) The absolute grandmasters of Ice magic can bring large areas down to below freezing and small areas down to near Absolute Zero, but my Ice mage character is never going to advance that far because he has too much else to do in his life.

 

My characters all have a certain "element" (which I take rather broadly) on which they can do their magic, so there is no random teleportation. Most are capable of opening portals through their elements, which basically is like creating a wormhole. My main character's element is darkness, it allows her to dive into a shadow and crawl out from another, the displacement of air moves through those shadows too so it just acts as if she is just moving through space.

The closest I have to teleportation is an ability to do this to the entire universe. This character can create wormholes to everything and potentially go everywhere. But it is like a door opening, if there is a pole in front of the door it can't open. Even if it can open, you cant walk through it.

Bloodbending in the Avatar anime is an example of water manipulation to control the blood in one's veins. They can do it only during a full moon, if I remember right, when their powers are the strongest. Often times, people will call those things overpowered, but now say that you have a gun or a knife. You shoot a bullet into one's heart or stab the knife through it, why isnt that overpowered but a magical power that can kill by stopping bodily functions is?

I think the magic can indeed be able to kill, air out of the lungs I am not too sure as I am not sure what the lungs do exactly with the air. Just like in theory, water manipulation could kill someone by ripping the water out of every cell and leave the person completely dry. Magic can be killing, but you might want to make those the advanced options. Water in cells are tiny amounts, it requires precision. And all water in the body is basically behinda barrier, which could be limiting. Also there is a pressure in the body that would make it harder to really work with things inside the body.

The flash also once showed incredible strenght I believe, using his speed to match superman's punch.
Inverse also has an article going more in-depth on quicksilver.
https://www.inverse.com/article/10273-physics-proves-that-quicksilver-has-hidden-superpowers-beyond-speed

My ice-power character can go to absolute zero, but only on touch as it requires a lot of effort. He can also freeze internal organs but it is tough or takes a lot of time. Hug a freezing metal pole and count how long it takes for your organs to freeze. It will happen eventually, but you might die of starvation earlier. Getting something cold enough to make someone freeze will take a lot of strength.

My ice character does instead have a most powerful technique that creates ice that doesnt melt no matter how hot it gets. Naturally, this is a power that is not easy to master.

With magical powers, a lot of people feel like they go too overpowered. As long as the powers and the user have weaknesses, which also are being exploited by others, then killing someone with magic can be fine.
Bullets can kill in one shot too, as long as your aim is good.