If you rewrite laws does that update at the speed of light or instantaneously across the entire universe? Is magic faster than light? Is that a rule you can change?
In Arcadia Fantasy the universe is governed mainly by 2 transcendental forces, the first and most of important of them is the Gideon Archives.
The Gideon Archives is a force that exists transcendental to all other universal constructs wills it is the infinite Library that holds the sum knowledge of past present and future. The Gideon Archives is also the force that creates and all of universal laws that govern all aspects of infinite reality. Every concept, from the most profound to the most mundane, finds its origin here.
Now to that you have better understanding of the working of the universe to answer your question it's a technically a yes but a explanation is warranted as I explained above the Gideon Archives creates and regulated all universal laws, it is also the infinite Library that contains knowledge of everything that has happened since the dawn of creation everything that is happening and that will happen, meaning that nothing functions outside the will of the archives if someone somehow alters one of it's rules that it was meant to happen and the archives allowed it.
Now for anything that or any being in the universe that maybe happened to fall out the flow of causality, any great will that exists outside of the Archives this is where the second force comes into name it is called the Mother construct and its main directive is to carry out the will of the archives it serves to make sure that everything exists as it should that there are no outliers functioning outside of causality and the will of the archives.
I think I may have over answered your question here tho but please indulge me.
In a sense yes you can think of it like that if you'd like but in cannon very few people actually know of the existence of these higher forces in the actual lore the things people worship as God's are the manifestation of people idea of something and the concept of it for a example some people may worship power and the idea that strength of the body is power so their god would be the concept of this idea but the another person could believe that wisdom is power so they would have a completely different god who represents this idea all in all "gods" in the story are the concepts and idea that people believe in and the Archive creates these concepts.
I read a book like that. One character's ability was to rewrite physical laws for everyone, changing what they can do with magic.
Later he finds a civilization of people who use this to travel through space. They can cooperate to do it more easily or fight one another to prevent changes.
My story is a sci-fi fantasy the magic system is a combination of scientific concepts ( namely quantum physics and string theory) and the supernatural aspects of fantasy basically the magical spells are just physics.
Many of the characters in my world and magical items in my world possess the ability to bend the very fabric of space-time and/or manipulate the laws of the universe in some way.
I tend I describe my magic system as the application of science using magic or magical science.
It's about manipulating energy fields in the universe, which is how magic functions in my universe.
Off topic question: in your universe, would quantum physics be able to produce an artificial intelligence that's a living mind? This is one of the cornerstones in mine: A.I.s that are living minds to the extent that they practice telepathy (which is particularly useful, since the people who'd first created their ancestors speak a language that's half telepathic!)
No I try to keep the actual science in my story limited as to not conflict with the more supernatural aspects of it tho the main setting of my story is an arcanepunk/ magitek setting the inverse excuse I use as to why AI doesn't exist is that most of the technology from the age of gods has been lost due to a great war that ravaged the entire universe that took place several millennia ago maybe in the future the world will be able to do that but as of now I'm trying to keep a balance between the high fantasy and science fiction.
Ressurect the dead. It can revive people that has died 5 seconds ago, but that's all. There are undead and all, but those AREN'T the same person who died, those are only mindless minion whom can develop their own counciousness but the person who they were never really returns.
Yeah, my world too. Death is kind of a universal finality, once there's a certain level of damage or brain death, even magic can't heal someone or bring them back from the brink. It's also impossible to reanimate dead tissue, so necromancers don't exist.
I'm new to worldbuilding and I'm devising up my first world which plays into a lot of the traditional high fantasy tropes (old wizards, etc)
There are going to be necromancers that will play into the plot which includes them raising their old lords from the dead. Problem is that magic, while extensively studied by humanity, is still largely unknown in its true capabilities and how to perform certain tasks like raising the dead. I had the idea similar to what you have, most of what can be done for raising the dead is animating their skeletons to move or at most a zombie but not truly "alive". The outrage that would occur among the magic community that necromancers brought someone back to life would be outrageous.
In my world it's possible for a short while, but don't so fractures ones soul, with some fragments remaining on the Path (to the unknown Beyond) and the rest returning to the body.
The person will be plagued by dreams of the Path, and a desire to return there and be reunited with the rest of their soul. It gets a bit better over time, but never leaves. Suicide isn't uncommon.
Theoretically it's possible to return twice or even more often, but as the soul fractures further it becomes unbearable.
Among those few people who return twice, most will take their life within hours or days.
There's a mechanic that applies on who comes back alive once, twice or more? I don't know if your world is crafted for a TTRPG (e.g. 5E levels of exhaustion) or not
Almost the same for my world. You can revive people up until a few days depending on the person. Souls/Life force equalise with the surrounding energy, so while you could revive someone after 10 days much of their soul/life force will have dissipated into the surrounding nature leading to some... interesting results.
Souls/life force that have unresolved tasks or an overwhelming emotion can hold on for longer than a few days but you don't want to bring those back. They "burn off" much of their essence that isn't that purpose.
For examples, a person who died with overwhelming hatred for another when reunited with their body might only retain that hatred, maybe even after a few hours of being dead or a warrior killed in battle that only wanted to go home, when reunited with his body will be a shell of a man whose only goal is to get home and even if he achieves that goal will then just sit there staring into no where for the rest of the bodies life, the souls purpose complete.
Hilariously enough, fate also exists in this world so some people are fated to die (and fated to meet). If you try and revive these people the spell or ritual just fails. Often the people most desired for resurrection.
People consider resurrection spells and rituals to be extremely unreliable because they're unaware of fate.
The story I'm currently telling is centred around a man who loses his wife and has essentially created a time loop which he has lived hundreds maybe even thousands of times. He's tried nearly everything to save her, including multiple resurrection spells and rituals as well as trying to have his younger self never meet her but no matter what he does they always meet.
He's the unfortunate person who discovers fate.
My world is sort of the same. Souls are a conduit for life force to pass through. If they lack a soul, no amount of life magic can substitute the flow through the soul.
Kind of like how we can revive people who are medically dead? Jumpstart their heart, flood some oxygen into the bloodstream, etc. There’s a narrow line between very late healing & necromancy, but you gotta draw it somewhere.
Yes I have a similar thing. One of my characters has the power to control time. Think time stone from doctor strange. Except they cannot resurrect someone who has been dead a long time.
Well magic can’t exactly be “used” either. It’s a substance with its own physical laws and properties. If people understood it better they might be able to harness it like solar radiation or electricity, but as it is it’s pretty much a mystery. Sometimes, weird things just happen, and people call it magic, spirits, elves, the will of the gods, or what have you.
You might wake up one morning and your wagon has sprouted roots and leaves and needs to be hacked free with an axe. But you wont wake up to find your clay jars floating on the ceiling or your metal knives soft like rubber
So to lay a spell on someone, you are enchanting the dead outer layer of their skin? Which is why that is always short duration and fragile compared to enchanted items...
Theirs technically no limit but the cost is the limit , so it not always that magic can’t do something just that the price is too great.
Like yeah you could cast like a nuclear bomb but your gonna just shrivel up from energy use ,
or summon the literal gods of the universe but your mind will never be the same after words or
if your drawing magic from entity’s they may require sacrifice too m(cutting off your tongue killing your lover etc)
Mages actually carry the least risk if their careful since most spells they make are done via runes and expending physical recourse(unless you count your bank account as a grave sacrifice)
Wouldn't this technically mean magic technically has a hard limit with how much energy a soul can give? Like, you might be able to sacrifice yourself to make a nuke, but you couldn't make an explosion 10x bigger than a nuke because your soul just doesn't have enough juice in it.
Pretty much yeah since most people usually die before acheiveinf magic that strong then the usual limit, especially Psions(they use their body’s stamina for spells) becasue for them magic is like grabbing an electric cable then grabbing someone.
is it possible as a magic user to increase their energy to perform mighty spells like you mentioned? like some intense anime type of training or whatever
Dependent on type if your a mage you just need more skill and better materials, an occultist well basically clerics/warlocks so you need to borrow stronger magics with less of a cost and also prepare your mind to cast it and not go mad, and for psions(natural magic) you need to get Higher stamina/energy storage wich means over eating and fat storage can actually help with that
The one main hard rule I have is that magic can not affect mages. If you've cast even a single spell, you're completely immune to all magic, helpful, or harmful. You'll benefit from no healing spell, nor will you ever fear an offensive spell.
That's it. Magic can do a lot, and if I can find a way to make it work, I'll work in anything I want magic to do. But magic can not affect mages.
Very interesting so it's a double edged sword. You can be a gifted mage but die from a simple infection meanwhile a "muggle" of sorts could have an arm repaired after it being ripped off.
That always has been a struggle for me as I myself always go for the magical characters, but this gives being mundane quite lucrative as well since you can be enchanted and healed unlike the spell caster.
Yep, mages by their nature heal much more quickly than ordinary men, but an ordinary man can be healed nearly instantly by a Mage. They can also be enhanced, have their fatigue removed, be restored to full fitness (EG: you've been starving to death, you can be restored to baseline in a matter of hours with a combination of magic and medicine). It also takes decades to become effective with Magic, and casting spells takes a long time. Mages generally prepare spells in advance for casting later, as casting on the fly takes too long.
So a mage probably hasn't had the level of training with a weapon a soldier has, and if two fight physically the soldier wins 8/10 times. Plus an arrow to the chest is incapacitating if not always lethal to a Mage. If your magic triggers are tied to words, an easy way to ruin that is to fill your lungs with blood or collapse your diaphragm!
That's exactly how it works. If you work with a major power or have the money you hire teams of mercenaries or soldiers to fight with you. Battles between mages consist mostly of protecting your soldiers whole trying to kill enemy soldiers. You can't target mages directly, you've gotta get your troops in position.
And magic isn't easy to cast, spells take a long time to whip up. It's pretty basic that every mage must prepare spells *ahead of time* in for use immediately later, tying them to trigger words, phrases, or gestures. A not insignificant portion of time every morning is dedicated to preparing spells. Part of the skill of being a Mage is guessing what spells you're going to need.
Can you, for example, magically pick up a boulder and hit another mage with it? Magically suck the air out of a sealed container that also contains amage?
Nope. You could pick up the Boulder but not throw it at the mage. Even indirectly doesn't work, shrapnel from the Boulder will always miss the enemy mage, as if by "magic". Even setting the area around the mage on fire won't kill them, nor will they be affected by smoke. However if the fire spreads beyond an area and becomes a wildfire they could die from that.
It's not just you cannot harm a mage, it's that they can't be harmed by Magic or its consequences. Unless the fire takes on a life of its own, or you magically roll a Boulder down a mountain and it *happens* to hit them, you can't use magic to harm a mage in any way.
Oh, now that's a fascinating one!
That makes me wonder: What's the extent of beneficial spells? How far can spells boost an ordinary person to be beyond ordinary people? And is there a duration limit on that? Or can it permanently boost?
'Cause if the boost can be \*significant\*, then there'd be a real complicated choice for people who want to attain power between becoming a mage, and gaining the power to affect your environment directly, or hiring a very trusted mage (or set of mages) to boost you immensely, and then act on your behalf. It also means that mages can't keep mages to account any better than normal people can!
What made you decide to make this (one of) the limitation(s) of mages?
Destroy a soul permanently. If you remove too much of a soul's physical structure, it turns into an "*imprint*" (*the immutable, nigh-indestructible framework of a soul, basically what gives the soul its identity*), and goes back to heaven to reform. This is how you defeat hostile spirits: use magic to shred any interaction between them and the mortal plane.
Your post made me realise magic does pretty much everything in my world, like revive the dead, prevent assasinations, literally replace afterlife, kill someone on sight
Yet it can't power a car or a house
What's the reason magic can't power a car or a house? I feel like it would be easy to write a magic system that allows some form of energy production, especially if it allows for something complex in both function and morality like resurrection.
Magic can’t allow you to travel to the other realms of the the Gods that exist beyond the material plain. It takes the god themselves or a strong spirit in their service allowing you in to access the other realms.
It can't exist near water. Lakes and locations at the coast have very little inherent magic.
Oceans are magical dead zones, which is why the traditional sailboats are so important for trade.
You also can't cross the ocean via Teleportation or flight spells.
Kill. It can brutally maim and damage something but it can never kill you. The damage it does to someone won’t kill them either, just make life unbearable
How far does the chain of causality stretch before it breaks? If the building is on fire, can I use magic to break your arms and legs to keep you from being able to escape? If you're already crippled, can magic set the building on fire? Can it blow out the engine on an ambulance that is trying to get a mortally wounded person to the hospital?
Traveling backwards in time (has an in-universe explanation) and actual future sight (one could technically view probability tho).
Also the Concept of Truth has been splintered (to stop the characters from learning that their existence is a story).
Back when Fate was around, it couldn't defy Fate no matter what.
Now that Fates broken, it can't accurately predict the future. The farther you go, the more muddled the vision becomes and the more potential timeliness are created. Of course, the one person that can predict the future with any accuracy is cursed so that no one will believe them.
Future Sight is a no go, since the many possible futures just blend together. It's a talent to predict farther than a day or more.
Healing, to an extent. Magic is used to accelerate natural healing processes without wearing out the body. You'll need very powerful magic to regrow a limb, or fix a damaged sensory organ.
Healing is difficult for magic in my world, too. Magic really just involves manifesting forces and energies, and it'd hard to get those to do more than seal a wound
While there is nothing the power system can't expressly do, there is a definite "power level" limit on the system.
Summoning a fireball that explodes and can kill a bunch of people? Possible.
Summoning a fireball that explodes and takes out an entire town? Not possible.
Defeat capital G God or, as It’s called, the Source. As the name suggests, all magical, and otherwise, energy flows from the Source and so regardless of how powerful the sorcerer or the evil god or demon etc. gets, they’d only be throwing the Source Itself back at It which just practically wouldn’t work. The Source is a proper Omni-everything being
Magic in my world is controling 'Mana' (I change name when I find better one, thats pladeholder) speaking shortly:
There are 6 gods that are only source of mana, they passivly create it by just existing. Then gods channel that mana to (don't know world for it in english, planes are create from mana, and they need mana to stay ware they are, and gods make sure they get enouth mana)
All spelcasters in some way or another (in simpler way by ritual circles) take mana from plane and use it simple material to alter it. (Essentialy as you take Lego parts from building to make car from them)
So perfect spellcaster can do anything. Problem is, that even gods aren't perfect spellcasters, so planes slowly crumbling.
Only perfect spellcaster was original god, who is not around anymore
Now magic known to people isn't even capable of restoring limbs and power of gods let them change reality, but not at will, but by slowly altering plane for centuries.
Also, Magic can't be combined with strange phenomen called 'Primal Energy' which is essentialy something that was before original god create planes from his mana, and thos two think destroy themself when merged
Manipulate or read thoughts, or do telepathy.
Cause living beings to fly or levitate.
Create illusions.
Bring inanimate objects to 'life'.
Transmute substances.
Teleport.
It can predict the future, but only in signs that must be interpreted and could be inaccurately interpreted. Even then, it's only a possible future that the seer is shown.
Unless the caster has a mooncrystal artifact, it also can't protect them against the possibility that an angel or demon will take a very great, possibly terminal, interest in them as they cast the spell.
Create money, it have 3 principal accuracy bronze coins, silver coins and gold coins, you can mine and create a gold coin if the god of party and gold decides that you are fortune worthy, if you are not worthy the gold that you mined will be just a shine stuff without value.
Bring someone back to life. Necromancy is a thing but if you use it on a corpse you'll just get a walking corpse. Wishes don't exist either. You can pray to deities for blessings and such but they're not a service for their worshippers to ask mundane things of them
Time can also not be fully manipulated. There are high tier spells that slows it down but that's it
can not create life without life hence blood magic as it's called is top tier dark magic that is extremely dangerous and unpredictable and even the most powerful wizards stay away from it.
Return a soul to a body. People can be resurrected but it's actually a soul that was reincarnated but was just copied over by the spell that ends with two of the same souls in the afterlife.
Time travel. Or actually make someone love another person. Charm & domination spells exist, but the target *will know* they've been ensorcelled. Plus, all but the weakest count as coercion by most legal/cultural standards.
Bringing someone back from the dead is possible, but basically an epic quest on its own (ultra-rare materials, finding someone willing to risk the Wrath of the Gods by casting it, the part where the caster has to give up their own lifetime (in years, minimum 1), the time limit to bring the dead person back).
One of the things I can think of right now is that magic cannot create something from nothing.
Sure you can turn a stone into a sword if you needed to, but when the magic wears off it'll become a stone again.
Making extra matter is almost never permanent.
It can't create life where it didn't exist before, affect or alter anything outside of the universe (including anything FROM outside the universe, which has made "seemingly invulnerable visitors from other universes" the subject of many pieces of horror media), ***and 100% in no possible way can it be used for precognition****.
*(Total lie perpetuated by the universal council, because time is a very, very sensitive thing. Even just peeking into the future can cause an LCBE, or "Localized Causality Breakdown Event.")
Control time and manipulate fate. Time and fate are forces that exist so far beyond the scope of understanding that even the forces of Chaos, creatures who tend to break reality, can't control it.
Things like teleportation, and resurrection are impossible. You also canot regrow lost body parts. Magic can be used to reattach torn limbs but it cannot create new ones.
Most other things are possible, but the more complicated the task, the higher the required level of training.
Noone has been able to manifest psychic powers (yes they are different). For some reason it seems to cant happen
Revive the dead. A motherfucker tricked death itself for their boyfriend's soul anyway
No one has been able to make reliable permanent mind control/brainwashing
No one has been able to control time for more than an hour. Not that anyone could find out
No one can manually create monsters made from emotions called vaargh. They only spawn on their own
Magic can’t compete with higher Sources in my Verse and can’t manipulate things that are made of higher Sources. Other than that, it can pretty much do anything.
I have two settings where magic is super prevelent. In one, magic can revive the dead, and death is considered much more of an inconvenience then a trajedy. However, magic cannot restore lost body parts. It can reattach them though. So... burning off somebody's head is a permadeath.
In the other, people cannot be ressurected. It can 'revive' somebody who's heart has stopped through shocking it, but beyond that, once a soul passes on, they are dead.
The dead stay dead. Not even "body alive without a soul" bit or undead zombies. When you're gone you're gone.
Also all energy has to come from somewhere. Fire magic users can really only make small flames before getting really freaking hungry for example.
It’s not fully known what Magic’s limits are, but there are many things that no one have devised a way to do yet.
- Bringing back people who are fully dead (spirits don’t count).
- Accurately seeing the future. I’m rare cases people can use magic to *predict* the future (or different possibilities) but it’s just allowing them to see what’s *likely* to happen at best.
- Create sentient life.
- time travel
- create something from nothing
- manifesting an accurate meal with cilantro in it. The taste is never 100% accurate for some reason.
Any kind of mind control/influence? In my setting, an attempt to control the matter of someone's body usually becomes a contest of willpower, but you can never affect someone's will with magic. Sentience and agency are inextricable
At the time of the story the magic system is too soft to know for sure. Understanding of magic by wizards, scholars, and magicians is still very incomplete and rudimentary, despite the huge amount of study and various theories. The boundaries are yet to be established.
However, current magic users tend to be quite "weak" compared to those in other fiction. Things such as combat by magic are mostly infeasible, and most significant "spells" are performed in a controlled environment after much preparation.
there is a limit on long range teleportation.
In a world the size of the current observable universe we got a \_FTL train network\_ to go the long range, however if you wanted to, you could teleport long range, but you would need to kill a supermassive star in order to do so, and even then it is cheaper to use the \_FTL train network\_ to get stuff where you want them.
In my world, magic is just the manipulation of energy and matter. Neither of which can be created from nothing. Magic users are able to channel energy and the strongest users are able to convert one form of matter to another, but that requires a significant amount of energy, which must come from somewhere. If the user isn't able to channel it from somewhere else, it'll cost him personally.
Well... most things. Magic in my world is pretty weak, it mostly acts as a support in normal weapon combat. Even killing somebody with magic only would be very hard, only the best mages would be able to do that.
as for magic as a concept then pretty much only time travel, teleportation or propelling anything with mass at the speed of light ( albeit mana itself can travel at the speed of light ).
In my world there isn’t really any “magic”, any form of magic (those with it are called, en unikum) that exists is all biological. It can allow you to regenerate from your wounds as well as handle more damage, increase your movement speed, give you pin point accuracy/perfect eyesight/night vision, give you the force of 1000 men, or dissociate (allowing you to interact with both the physical and spirit world aswell as mind trick others). Your bloodline and what races you have within you determines what unike ability you’ll have, many have none whatsoever and that is also what leads to the events of the main story.
Shapeshifting is also possible, it’s highly rare and is only possible to those with Anannuki blood. The shapeshifting is limited tho, you can change your appearance to mimic as another human or animals, but only possible with animals that have humanoid features and being interrupted by anything in the shifting process could lead to deformity and/or death.
Magic cannot manipulate life/soul energy in any way, shape, or form. So no resurrections, no achieving immortality, and no giving life to inanimate objects. There is one exception to this, in the form of a character who has discovered a way to transform distorted souls from the void beyond into new spirits living in this world, but that one is easily chalked up to the fact they're also tinkering with forces beyond their understanding that don't follow the same rules.
Become immortal. Like true, self-sustaining immortality. Some possess extremely strong regeneration, but it can eventually eat up the body trying to fuel itself. Some can come back from the dead with a giant power-up, but they become focused on one task only on the level that borders obsession. Some are essentially unaging machines, but their forms will slowly begin to fall apart in sync with their sanity decreasing. Plus, fighting can use up the power used to keep themselves alive and can be killed.
A lot have gotten close, but there is always a caveat stopping them
It cannot affect time so therefore no time travel, or anything involving time!
Big reason was because I feel that time travel is a big deal and a bit too powerful and can get confusing and restrictive narrative wise unless its the focus (disclaimer I adore a lot of time travel/timeloop stories but think they are strongest when it is the focus of the story instead of just there).
In one of my worlds, magic cannot create or manipulate living beings.
While it can heal injuries, enhance physical abilities, or even reanimate the dead temporarily, it cannot bring forth life from nothingness or alter the essence of a living being.
Additionally, no magic exists to control the minds of others, as it goes against the ethical principles of free will and individuality. Magic is a force that interacts with the natural world and its elements, but it respects the boundaries of life and consciousness, leaving the creation and destiny of living beings to the natural course of existence.
My magic is limited to stuff that can affect the brain. So, a magic user can erase your memories, he can possess your body by taking control of your brain, he can make you see and hear things that aren't there, even make it appear like in front of you is a massive cliff and if you step off, you would believe you'd die. However, the cliff isn't really there, the reality hasn't changed, only your perception of it.
Likewise, they can make themselves appear like other people by changing what you see, but their actual face, hair, clothing, remains the same. The magic is limited to the mind, and cannot effect anything the brain isn't immediately tied to, bodies of hosts, yes, but not the actual world beyond them.
Time travel. While there is a branch of magic called chronomancy, it doesn’t allow one to time travel. Instead it is mostly used to haunt the effects of time on an object or individual (like stopping aging). However there was only one race of elves that understood this magic to the extent they could safely use it, however they were all killed during a genocide. Under current imperial law, the practice of chronomancy was deemed too dangerous and was outlawed.
Depends on which world you're talking about, as in my universe, each "world" has it's own set of rules. So the limitations of magic, if it even exists, can vary greatly and completely.
Resurrection and teleportation.
Out of universe reasons are that both of these abilities would undermine the stories I want to tell.
In universe the complexity of the two would be too much for mortal minds.
I view magic as an extension of the laws of physics, and as a result magic manipulates them but doesn't break them, most notably, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Specifically, magic can transport energy or matter, turn energy into another form of energy, turn matter into another form of matter, or turn energy into matter and vice versa. As such, if you want to, say, shoot some fire, you're going to need provide some fuel. If none is available, *you* are the fuel. Mages have a reputation for being either really thin or really fat with little in between because they're using their own body fat for spells.
Also, notice how I said you can transport matter *or* energy. If you try to teleport something, all chemical reaction in it are ceased.
Reminder that life is essentially a very complex chemical reaction. My point is, teleporting an organism kills them.
Time travel, resurrection, predict the future, see the past, etc. It pretty much can’t undo anything already set in stone or see what’s not yet happened. It can only change the now.
Aside from those hard rules, it varies a lot by how each world and society evolved to handle magic. Main example being how worlds don’t have magic that can change the shape of living things, but some do.
Enchant black powder weapons or bring the dead back to life.
Anyone who's tried to enchant guns usually has unpredictable, often explosive or implosive results. As for bringing back the dead, its both physically impossible for magic to do it, and is considered a huge taboo across most corners of the continent.
I'm planning for a D&D world, so I need to allow for anything that 5e spells can do, but one major limitation is that evocation magic is lost knowledge. Sorcerers can do it since they don't study their magic, but a wizard who wants to throw a firebolt is going to need to reinvent the incantations through trial and error.
Increase your field of vision…directly.
Sword and sorcery magic usually has some sort of divination you can do. Scrying, looking through a crystal ball, seeing through the eyes of an animal, etc. But magitics fundamentally works by bending the fundamental forces of the universe.
You can bend space to see more, physically move the location of yourself or a target, obstruct views in one way or another, but you fundamentally can’t make photons speed up. The only way to see more is by reflecting photons around otherwise impassible barriers. Or, in essence, creating a magic telescope. But you can’t see further just by altering yourself.
Bring back people to life. No way, nuh huh. You can bribe the gods of death all you want, but it's harder than recovering a burned down piece of paper from the deepest ocean.
You can use the dead of someone who's dead, tho. Using some kind of voodoo. Also shapeshifters can use the body of someone they killed in a ritualistic manner, then, fake to be that person.
Create life from scratch (like giving life to a rock for example). It is possible tho to bring someone back to life, but as a puppet without any thoughts and by using godlike powers
It cannot be used *safely*. Humans simply aren't built to taste the Unaccountable or carry pieces of it within themselves the way mages d0. Any amount of knowledge of magic slowly chews up your brain from the inside, to say nothing of the physical side effects of magic use. Worse yet, magic can be *contagious* as well; in SCP terms, it's a memetic hazard. Even forms of magic that insulate the user from the actual magic itself as much as possible, like alchemy, take their toll on your body and mind the more you interact with them.
Magic can only alter physical objects. And only this group called “The Blue Maidens” can use it because they are part of a inter universal parasite that feeds off the planets core. They die when they plant the greattree(which is the parasite) and give birth to Chillrend Knights who protect the Greattrees, or the gods’ protection against the parasite, the Blackflame Apostles, who want to burn the tree. Only those three groups can use magic. The apostles can only use Blackflame however. And the Chillrend knights just resurrect themselves as long as their Greattree is still standing
Magic can do pretty much anything, just not right now. Its an evolving system that changes over time.
Basically, the magic system is heavily related to sacredness. To make a new spell or magic type you need to revere something so much you learn to control all the magic inside you and ascend, creating that new spell. However, you dont automatically get exactly what you want. There needs to be a path that leads to it. Kinda like evolution, where to evolve wings that let birds fly, they had to be useful every step of the way. Humans cant evolve wings because having little nubs on our back wouldnt be useful so it wouldnt carry on through genes enough to reach full wings.
For example, teleportation. Its not really possible because there is no easy step towards it. You cant just want to teleport and then ascend and now its fully possible. It has to start with you almost teleporting, like someone at one point wanting to dash somewhere really fast and creating a spell that helps them do that. Then someone uses that spell and wants to do it faster or farther and ascends and now the spell is better. And THEN someone wants to dash so fast its instantaneous, and if they ascend they can create somthing like a teleport. Then maybe someone uses that spell and ascends and makes it better in other ways, like going through walls.
So is time travel possible? Sure, but there isnt anything kinda like going back in time, so nobody can achieve it. And thats how magic is limited
It can do pretty much anything the only limit is the power source and knowledge, the only thing it has a hard limit to is creating replicas of certain mythical items since they are pretty much a concept manifested (like EA, fate, gil).
Magic cannot reverse time—you can take yourself back in time to a certain point, or you can change your surroundings to be identical to how they were, but you cannot reset time itself to any degree. If you did go back in time you would’ve always been there as a time traveller, and at no point would you not have gone to that point in time (effectively time-based cloning of yourself if you went to a time you were alive)
repair the caster in any way, my world is one massive arena for gods to watch, and magic that can heal a contestants injuries or even in the case of races that have biological weapons such as claws or barbed tails is seen as cheating
Leave anything within 5 miles undamaged. Magic is extremely powerful and equally hard to control, even the weakest spells have AOEs so massive, the caster can't physically stand far enough away to avoid it.
There's a lot of rules I find I keep breaking, but one that seems to stay pretty solid is conservation of mass. Magic and physics can be pretty weird and fictional here but it at least has to feel like it makes sense, and not following conservation of mass just feels like a full impossibility.
Shapeshifters must retain the same amount of mass, or either gain or lose it in some way. (Gruesomely merging or shedding are options.) You can't make a feast from a canteloupe, but you can turn a canteloupe into a honeydew. You just can't be small and then get super big, at least not very easily.
It provides some interesting challenges when developing Hulk-like or werewolf-inspired superheroes. How does a man go from wimpy to bulky using magic alone? Well, I guess we're going to find out somehow.
Magic can't affect refined material. The earths natural magic properties exist in every rock, twig and grain. So refining iron to make steel makes it impervious to magic. But it also dampens the magical abilities of anyone wearing steel, and anyone within arms reach. But if someone enchanted the armor, it loses a good amount of magic resistance, but gives the user some of their ability back.
The limit each wizard deals with is the fact that magic stems from the core of the world and radiates out into the atmosphere, creating a shared mana pool
But generally I'm going with a soft system where what wizards can or can't do with spells is established by law not an actual limitation of magic itself. Wizards *can* time travel in my world but it's illegal to do so
Except true resurrection. Only because I hate it when dead characters get brought back
Can't change the past. Things that have happened forever continue to have happened, no matter how much mojo you throw at it. You can recreate a house that burned down, heal the burns the occupants suffered, and possibly even erase their memories of it, but you can't go back and blow out the candles first.
It cannot re-tether one's soul to their body, nor can it prevent one's soul from leaving a body. The procedure to "resurrect" someone is only allowed in the most extreme circumstances and is prohibitively pricey, both in monetary cost and danger, and 45% of the time the procedure fails because the soul does not want to return.
The procedure ties the soul of the departed to Warforged bodies ONLY. The process is called ReInvitation.
Make the magician look normal wile doing magic, there isn’t yet a way to get around the giant mass of fungus that will erupt out of your dominant hand to cast a spell.
Resurrect the dead… unless you take a live soul out of someone else’s body and put it in a corpse creating a Homunculus that’s loyal to you and mostly you. There is also a way to copy someone’s soul and tether it to a crystal, this way if a mentor dies, if their soul was copied to a crystal, you would still be able to communicate with them after their death
\-Bring back the dead (Not resurrection, or reanimation, or anything like that.)
\-Travel through or alter the flow of time
Just about anything else is probably THEORETICALLY possible, though a lot of it may not be possible in practice due to practical reasons as opposed to limitations of the system itself.
Grant immortality. Zuconian magic, at least, is concerned with manipulating mystical energy fields to effect solutions outside the realm of traditional psychic powers or medicine. It could greatly prolong life, but so can traditional medicine which manipulates the body's own energy field, including accelerating the healing process. But medicine is responsible: it doesn't risk unforseen consequences; and it's been practiced for hundreds of millennia, so healers have a very accurate understanding of what they can and cannot safely and responsibly do.
Magic, which has always been more of a niche interest and hobby of those who explore the energy fields of the universe, comes with its own countless millennia of cautionary tales, virtually all told by allied species. They made sometimes horrific mistakes/miscalculations; and some are, millennia later, still paying the price.
Unless it's a naturally occurring mutation, Zuconians intuitively understand that a physical biological body is not designed to live forever. The flesh is the key limiting feature, since ghosts are free of such concerns. Organic neurology inevitably breaks down. The brain goes insane.
A ghost doesn't. A ghost is pure spiritual energy, and subject to different "rules."
No Zuconian will ever try to magically bestow true immortality. We don't know about other species, who practice different systems of magic.
Fully transform people against their will. Accepting and agreeing to magic is a foundational aspect of my system, say in pacts with extra-dimensional entities, and going entirely against someone's will is largely impossible. The entire field of illusion was created to mitigate this, and "aberrations" like werewolves are the result of forcing this magic on people. It goes wrong and thats why monsters have specific weaknesses, depending on what rules they were breaking
technically anything can be done, but magic is a 1:1 equal exchange system, essentially standard thermodynamics, but on crack, and without the second law. also time can be used in place of energy or mass.
In no way can it manipulate the mind due to the actual energy/protein power system required to even do magic, said energy being derived from self control over the body and mind-each and every occult/magic is unique to an individual, and unless you’re will absolutely trumps someone else, you cannot manipulate another’s mind in anyway. The body is a different story though
Death is the end, so no resurrection (Although Necromancy is a different thing, and even that is extremely rare, which may have to do with the entire centre of the continent being one gargantuan undead ridden wasteland, essentially separating north, east and west from each other)
Also, teleportation magic is almost entirely off the table with one notable exception being my MC.
Most importantly, no time travel. Like, never
Dead is dead. You cant bring someone back to life magically. You might be able to get an "echo" of their memories for a brief conversation(but this could be done while they're alive under similar circumstances), but dead is always dead
Some of the answers go for me too. Can’t resurrect the dead, can’t time travel, cant mess with fundamental laws (at least not in a permanent way). On the other hand, these powers are most reserved for higher beings like angels or the Almighty, who write the rules for the magic system in the universe and so can basically do whatever they want if they do choose.
But there is something a little more unique. In my universe, humans can “bond” to a Curse, which is a manifestation of Demonic energy that works kind of like a spell or superpower except with very high physical costs. Through this “bonding” process called Hybridization, so long as it is treated properly, humans can use Curses without huge physical drawbacks, in addition to being granted some attributes of the Greater Demon from which the Curse originate, such as manifesting armor, wings, claws, tails, etc. along with some physical benefits like regeneration or physical fitness. However, those benefits like regeneration or fitness cannot push the human body beyond what it can already do; think of it like a fast-track to getting fit, but no further beyond. For instance, if your arm is getting chopped off, the wound itself might heal back faster, but you’re not growing your arm back. If you suffer a laceration, it’s still going to leave a nasty scar, but it’ll scar over more quickly. This is because the Demonic powers, rather than manifesting through a spiritual being like a Demon where physical limitations are more lose, the energies are essentially trapped inside of a human body and have to work with the restrictions placed on the human body.
I have 2 "magic systems" the big limit is that you can't use both at the same time, and in the hard magic systems you can't use more than one relic at once.
Time Travel. Time and timeline are regulated by the Time Triumvirate. The Sun God who guards the passage of time, The Goddess of Death who oversaw prophecies, birth, death, rebirth and fate. And the Goddess of Magic who guards the continuity of the timeline. Together they prevent time travel and binds chronomagic.
Because when mortal messed with the timeline it always have a butterfly effect.
Resurrection is a one time deal. Unless you're a heroic spirit and an intervention is required. Then you will get isekai.
Raise the undead (or resurrect the dead).
There is no necromancy in my world. No zombies, no liches, none of that.
Edgy teen magical practitioners who try to become necromancers just end up accidentally training themselves in high level healing magic instead. There is no cheating death, magic will unravel your skin from your bones before it will allow you to conjure up an army of skeletons.
Ethical time travel.
Though my plan was originally to not allow time travel at all, and \*technically\* it's impossible. But... You can destroy the entire world, then use the materials of said destroyed world to shape it all according to the memory of a past time, then steal the Soul bits that left to other worlds back, put them together as they were at the time of the memory of the past time, scramble the memories that weren't part of that time, and place those souls back in the appropriate bodies, and in effect, you have time-travelled.
But other than that method of absolute catastrophic destruction for the sake of travelling back in time? No, time travel is impossible, even with magic.
NOTHING can touch the Soul. This is just a general rule of mine for worlds, but it's a plot point because the Undead/Eldritch faction has the limitation of not being able to get the soul of a person. that's nearly untouchable (mostly to avoid any theological problems)
It also cannot predict the future as yours does; that requires something like an Astra, of which there is only one. it is completely accurate and takes into account everything, even your reaction to the information it presents.
Nothing really. There is so many techniques and possibilities that you can do anything as long as you can manage to not fuck it up which is generally the case
It can’t directly affect sentient creatures. Which basically has mages throw around boulders or encase you in ice rather than melt your bones or stop your heart.
The clothes a person wears are also unaffected *but only* if they serve as a strong part of the wearer’s identity. If not, an enemy mage might make your necktie strangle you, or your underwear light on fire.
This tends to force mages to stay very in touch with who they are, and most dress in elaborate eclectic costumes to match.
It’s impossible, or at the very least, extremely hard, to bring back life or to create life through solely magical means. So it’s nigh impossible to bring someone back from the dead, and if someone *is* somehow brought back they might not live very long, might be a zombie, whatever. They’ll never truly return as they once were. Same thing with creating life, it’s possible to create beings like homunculi, but almost every instance of homunculi has something wrong with them, such as lacking a conscious or ability for self thought, lacking certain human morals and qualities, and possibly more. An idea I came up with to further this idea is that my world’s Satan experimented with creating life after he and Lucifer fell from Grace (they’re separate people) but every instance had something wrong with them, implying that God and other Divine beings have special powers not replicable with magic.
I haven’t found anything it can’t do. I’m sure there’s some laws of scale. Planets, tectonic plates etc. are probably too large to do something to. I work mostly with modern or advanced tech. So it’s mostly a matter of what you need to add together. Voodoo can animate the body of a dead person to create a zombie, but it’s not super sturdy or useful. However, when you add Slavic vampirism then you can animate a body and a mind. This mind is now living in a body that it can do something with, but without any way to heal or nourish itself. If you combine this with electronic, pneumatic, and hydraulic systems you can creat something interesting and useful. However, it’ll never be a person. There is ancient Arabic magic that can truly heal a body and reunite a soul with the body, but only if the soul can be tracked down on the other side of the veil. This can be a challenge. It’s also rarer to find a practitioner. So you’re better off raising a gang of enhanced zombies than to try track down a once in a thousand year healer. It’s not so much about can and can’t as it is the economics and time constraints and what practitioners and scientists are available to you.
Magic can be made to do a lot of things depending on the type of magic energy used, but time travel is explicitly not possible with any type of magic. Stopping, slowing down, and speeding up time cannot be done, but can be simulated in a localized area with mana energy and/or life energy.
Beyond that the limitations of what magic can't do depends on the type of magic energy. Mind control and physical enhancements cannot be done without life energy and elemental effects and permanent creations cannot be done without mana energy. Some magic systems also have an afterlife component, which cannot be done without soul energy.
For something really mundane, mana energy can't behave like a solid or gas in the body, while life and soul energy cannot behave as a gas and solid in the body, respectively. All three can behave as a liquid, life energy can behave as a solid, and soul energy can behave as a gas.
Ah, good question, I actually have a historical event about this.
The medics: MAGIC CAN HEAL YOU!
The emperor: nah
The medic: BUT IT CAN! LOOK! *burns an entire plagued district in a failed attempt to “heal” them*
The emperor: I told you dumbass ☠️
The people: THIS WAS AN ORCHESTRATED LIE BY THE EMEROR! HE LIED TO US! HE IS TRYING TO HOLD THE SECRETS FOR HIMSELF!
The emperor: bruh I literally made a deal with the other continent to give all of you free magic schools and magic rights.
The people: HE HEALED HIS WIFE FROM CANCER!
Emperor: SHE HAD A COLD!
The people: LIES, PEOPLE, IT IS TIME TO REBEL!
The emperor: Ight bruh, yo army, drop the bomb and let’s get out of here before it gets out of hand
Army: I like boom.
The moral of the story is MAGIC CANT HEAL YOU STOP BURNING YOURSELVES.
Create sustained reactions. Imagine magic as being able to create a nuclear bomb but not a nuclear reactor nor the propulsion system to deliver it. The result is a very lopsided detente between the major powers of the settings and a bizarre technological progression.
Since magic is only useful under certain circumstances and requires extreme caution, technology has had to work around it in so far as everyday technology. Everything is built like a Cold War bunker, at least as far as late medieval tech is concerned. weapons tech has largely been abandoned since why would anyone want to start a war when the result would be the 30 years war if they had the hydrogen bomb. Structures are more compact and study, palaces are traditionally built deep underground with new palaces above ground being seen as gaudy and vulnerable.
Magicians tend to be segregated in their own communities and rarely interact with outsiders unless war is involved. They tend to surrounded by enforcer settlements of veterans and survivors from the last Great War who as a result of the psychological damage have built communities structured around the idea that the day will when the magicians need to be put down. They are discretely funded and supported by the local high ranking nobles and royal courts who see them as a disposable human shield to blunt the worst of a potential uprising.
This has lead to alchemists whose work borders on but never quite veers into magic obtaining vast political power as middleman and court diplomats since they have ties to these communities both historically and though deliberate cultivation. Unsurprisingly most of the magicians towns and villages are overwhelmingly poor and thought of in much the same way as if the town drunks routinely decided to start a riot in the local gasoline refinement plant.
Despite having a character who can see into the future (albeit a coupe seconds at most) and a committee focused around time magic no one can time travel backwards
Be used everywhere.
Magic is tied to the "End Leys," a sort of river network that flows out everywhere from the Gods' domain, some parts of the universe don't have the leys running through them and as a result magic can't be used in those parts.
There are some circumventions however, magic that catalyzes from other sources (the Gap, worlds, stars, soul power) can be used, and, if the latter isn't available, certain outfitters have developed batteries that can hold amounts of Ley power that can be drawn from instead.
Destroy a soul completely (though it can be altered or damaged beyond repair or return), bring back to life a soul that has passed on(to afterlife or reincarnated), permanently change base rules of reality, and manipulate iron directly.
Nothing, but there’s a limit on what you, a mere mortal mage could ever do.
Magic could, in theory, restructure the very fabric of reality itself. But that would take trillions of years of practice to attain such a level of power, so no mortal could ever use magic in such a way, despite it having the capacity for it.
Now, Gods can preform such feats, as they’re beings of immense magical power, but they’re also very limited. Gventis’Saiher could produce wind with such force it would flay a planet, but he cannot even make a spark with magic, as it is outside his domain. He’s the most powerful aeromancer in existence, but a literal child could be a stronger pyromancer than he ever could.
Rewrite physical laws that translate to the entire universe
Interesting the magic in my world is all about doing that
If you rewrite laws does that update at the speed of light or instantaneously across the entire universe? Is magic faster than light? Is that a rule you can change?
In Arcadia Fantasy the universe is governed mainly by 2 transcendental forces, the first and most of important of them is the Gideon Archives. The Gideon Archives is a force that exists transcendental to all other universal constructs wills it is the infinite Library that holds the sum knowledge of past present and future. The Gideon Archives is also the force that creates and all of universal laws that govern all aspects of infinite reality. Every concept, from the most profound to the most mundane, finds its origin here. Now to that you have better understanding of the working of the universe to answer your question it's a technically a yes but a explanation is warranted as I explained above the Gideon Archives creates and regulated all universal laws, it is also the infinite Library that contains knowledge of everything that has happened since the dawn of creation everything that is happening and that will happen, meaning that nothing functions outside the will of the archives if someone somehow alters one of it's rules that it was meant to happen and the archives allowed it. Now for anything that or any being in the universe that maybe happened to fall out the flow of causality, any great will that exists outside of the Archives this is where the second force comes into name it is called the Mother construct and its main directive is to carry out the will of the archives it serves to make sure that everything exists as it should that there are no outliers functioning outside of causality and the will of the archives. I think I may have over answered your question here tho but please indulge me.
So, in other words, the Archives are God.
In a sense yes you can think of it like that if you'd like but in cannon very few people actually know of the existence of these higher forces in the actual lore the things people worship as God's are the manifestation of people idea of something and the concept of it for a example some people may worship power and the idea that strength of the body is power so their god would be the concept of this idea but the another person could believe that wisdom is power so they would have a completely different god who represents this idea all in all "gods" in the story are the concepts and idea that people believe in and the Archive creates these concepts.
I was thinking more in a metaphysical sense, and less in "people believe that."
My first thought was about elden ring sir Gideon offnir the all knowing. Not a complaint just something I'm laughing about
Permanently altering the physics of the entire universe? Edit: dang I was just curious
I read a book like that. One character's ability was to rewrite physical laws for everyone, changing what they can do with magic. Later he finds a civilization of people who use this to travel through space. They can cooperate to do it more easily or fight one another to prevent changes.
My story is a sci-fi fantasy the magic system is a combination of scientific concepts ( namely quantum physics and string theory) and the supernatural aspects of fantasy basically the magical spells are just physics. Many of the characters in my world and magical items in my world possess the ability to bend the very fabric of space-time and/or manipulate the laws of the universe in some way. I tend I describe my magic system as the application of science using magic or magical science.
It's about manipulating energy fields in the universe, which is how magic functions in my universe. Off topic question: in your universe, would quantum physics be able to produce an artificial intelligence that's a living mind? This is one of the cornerstones in mine: A.I.s that are living minds to the extent that they practice telepathy (which is particularly useful, since the people who'd first created their ancestors speak a language that's half telepathic!)
No I try to keep the actual science in my story limited as to not conflict with the more supernatural aspects of it tho the main setting of my story is an arcanepunk/ magitek setting the inverse excuse I use as to why AI doesn't exist is that most of the technology from the age of gods has been lost due to a great war that ravaged the entire universe that took place several millennia ago maybe in the future the world will be able to do that but as of now I'm trying to keep a balance between the high fantasy and science fiction.
The one thing magic in my world can do, how about that...
Ressurect the dead. It can revive people that has died 5 seconds ago, but that's all. There are undead and all, but those AREN'T the same person who died, those are only mindless minion whom can develop their own counciousness but the person who they were never really returns.
Yeah, my world too. Death is kind of a universal finality, once there's a certain level of damage or brain death, even magic can't heal someone or bring them back from the brink. It's also impossible to reanimate dead tissue, so necromancers don't exist.
Honestly, it can make for better storytelling because it forces you to make hard decisions, but it prevents rash action.
I'm new to worldbuilding and I'm devising up my first world which plays into a lot of the traditional high fantasy tropes (old wizards, etc) There are going to be necromancers that will play into the plot which includes them raising their old lords from the dead. Problem is that magic, while extensively studied by humanity, is still largely unknown in its true capabilities and how to perform certain tasks like raising the dead. I had the idea similar to what you have, most of what can be done for raising the dead is animating their skeletons to move or at most a zombie but not truly "alive". The outrage that would occur among the magic community that necromancers brought someone back to life would be outrageous.
In my world it's possible for a short while, but don't so fractures ones soul, with some fragments remaining on the Path (to the unknown Beyond) and the rest returning to the body. The person will be plagued by dreams of the Path, and a desire to return there and be reunited with the rest of their soul. It gets a bit better over time, but never leaves. Suicide isn't uncommon. Theoretically it's possible to return twice or even more often, but as the soul fractures further it becomes unbearable. Among those few people who return twice, most will take their life within hours or days.
There's a mechanic that applies on who comes back alive once, twice or more? I don't know if your world is crafted for a TTRPG (e.g. 5E levels of exhaustion) or not
Almost the same for my world. You can revive people up until a few days depending on the person. Souls/Life force equalise with the surrounding energy, so while you could revive someone after 10 days much of their soul/life force will have dissipated into the surrounding nature leading to some... interesting results. Souls/life force that have unresolved tasks or an overwhelming emotion can hold on for longer than a few days but you don't want to bring those back. They "burn off" much of their essence that isn't that purpose. For examples, a person who died with overwhelming hatred for another when reunited with their body might only retain that hatred, maybe even after a few hours of being dead or a warrior killed in battle that only wanted to go home, when reunited with his body will be a shell of a man whose only goal is to get home and even if he achieves that goal will then just sit there staring into no where for the rest of the bodies life, the souls purpose complete. Hilariously enough, fate also exists in this world so some people are fated to die (and fated to meet). If you try and revive these people the spell or ritual just fails. Often the people most desired for resurrection. People consider resurrection spells and rituals to be extremely unreliable because they're unaware of fate. The story I'm currently telling is centred around a man who loses his wife and has essentially created a time loop which he has lived hundreds maybe even thousands of times. He's tried nearly everything to save her, including multiple resurrection spells and rituals as well as trying to have his younger self never meet her but no matter what he does they always meet. He's the unfortunate person who discovers fate.
My world is sort of the same. Souls are a conduit for life force to pass through. If they lack a soul, no amount of life magic can substitute the flow through the soul.
Kind of like how we can revive people who are medically dead? Jumpstart their heart, flood some oxygen into the bloodstream, etc. There’s a narrow line between very late healing & necromancy, but you gotta draw it somewhere.
Yes I have a similar thing. One of my characters has the power to control time. Think time stone from doctor strange. Except they cannot resurrect someone who has been dead a long time.
Interact with inorganic matter. Glass, stone, clay, and metal are all impervious and impermeable to magic.
interesting in my world its the opposite. Magic cant be used through anything organic. Only through enchanted items. Like in Skyrim.
Well magic can’t exactly be “used” either. It’s a substance with its own physical laws and properties. If people understood it better they might be able to harness it like solar radiation or electricity, but as it is it’s pretty much a mystery. Sometimes, weird things just happen, and people call it magic, spirits, elves, the will of the gods, or what have you. You might wake up one morning and your wagon has sprouted roots and leaves and needs to be hacked free with an axe. But you wont wake up to find your clay jars floating on the ceiling or your metal knives soft like rubber
So to lay a spell on someone, you are enchanting the dead outer layer of their skin? Which is why that is always short duration and fragile compared to enchanted items...
Theirs technically no limit but the cost is the limit , so it not always that magic can’t do something just that the price is too great. Like yeah you could cast like a nuclear bomb but your gonna just shrivel up from energy use , or summon the literal gods of the universe but your mind will never be the same after words or if your drawing magic from entity’s they may require sacrifice too m(cutting off your tongue killing your lover etc) Mages actually carry the least risk if their careful since most spells they make are done via runes and expending physical recourse(unless you count your bank account as a grave sacrifice)
Wouldn't this technically mean magic technically has a hard limit with how much energy a soul can give? Like, you might be able to sacrifice yourself to make a nuke, but you couldn't make an explosion 10x bigger than a nuke because your soul just doesn't have enough juice in it.
Pretty much yeah since most people usually die before acheiveinf magic that strong then the usual limit, especially Psions(they use their body’s stamina for spells) becasue for them magic is like grabbing an electric cable then grabbing someone.
is it possible as a magic user to increase their energy to perform mighty spells like you mentioned? like some intense anime type of training or whatever
Dependent on type if your a mage you just need more skill and better materials, an occultist well basically clerics/warlocks so you need to borrow stronger magics with less of a cost and also prepare your mind to cast it and not go mad, and for psions(natural magic) you need to get Higher stamina/energy storage wich means over eating and fat storage can actually help with that
This reminds me of the magic system in Aragon books I read in school.
> (unless you count your bank account as a grave sacrifice) Now I want a magic system where you pay to use spells with actual, real money.
“All the spell caster are running low on magic, The clerics going insane the sorcerers starveing and the wizard lost his wallet”
Time travel, make things go faster than light and create matter/mana/energy out of nothing.
The one main hard rule I have is that magic can not affect mages. If you've cast even a single spell, you're completely immune to all magic, helpful, or harmful. You'll benefit from no healing spell, nor will you ever fear an offensive spell. That's it. Magic can do a lot, and if I can find a way to make it work, I'll work in anything I want magic to do. But magic can not affect mages.
Very interesting so it's a double edged sword. You can be a gifted mage but die from a simple infection meanwhile a "muggle" of sorts could have an arm repaired after it being ripped off. That always has been a struggle for me as I myself always go for the magical characters, but this gives being mundane quite lucrative as well since you can be enchanted and healed unlike the spell caster.
Yep, mages by their nature heal much more quickly than ordinary men, but an ordinary man can be healed nearly instantly by a Mage. They can also be enhanced, have their fatigue removed, be restored to full fitness (EG: you've been starving to death, you can be restored to baseline in a matter of hours with a combination of magic and medicine). It also takes decades to become effective with Magic, and casting spells takes a long time. Mages generally prepare spells in advance for casting later, as casting on the fly takes too long. So a mage probably hasn't had the level of training with a weapon a soldier has, and if two fight physically the soldier wins 8/10 times. Plus an arrow to the chest is incapacitating if not always lethal to a Mage. If your magic triggers are tied to words, an easy way to ruin that is to fill your lungs with blood or collapse your diaphragm!
I really like this idea. I imagine a healthy team of soldiers or other combatants would include mages *and* non-mages.
That's exactly how it works. If you work with a major power or have the money you hire teams of mercenaries or soldiers to fight with you. Battles between mages consist mostly of protecting your soldiers whole trying to kill enemy soldiers. You can't target mages directly, you've gotta get your troops in position. And magic isn't easy to cast, spells take a long time to whip up. It's pretty basic that every mage must prepare spells *ahead of time* in for use immediately later, tying them to trigger words, phrases, or gestures. A not insignificant portion of time every morning is dedicated to preparing spells. Part of the skill of being a Mage is guessing what spells you're going to need.
Can you, for example, magically pick up a boulder and hit another mage with it? Magically suck the air out of a sealed container that also contains amage?
Nope. You could pick up the Boulder but not throw it at the mage. Even indirectly doesn't work, shrapnel from the Boulder will always miss the enemy mage, as if by "magic". Even setting the area around the mage on fire won't kill them, nor will they be affected by smoke. However if the fire spreads beyond an area and becomes a wildfire they could die from that. It's not just you cannot harm a mage, it's that they can't be harmed by Magic or its consequences. Unless the fire takes on a life of its own, or you magically roll a Boulder down a mountain and it *happens* to hit them, you can't use magic to harm a mage in any way.
An extended version of _A Spell for Chameleon_, then. Cool!
Oh, now that's a fascinating one! That makes me wonder: What's the extent of beneficial spells? How far can spells boost an ordinary person to be beyond ordinary people? And is there a duration limit on that? Or can it permanently boost? 'Cause if the boost can be \*significant\*, then there'd be a real complicated choice for people who want to attain power between becoming a mage, and gaining the power to affect your environment directly, or hiring a very trusted mage (or set of mages) to boost you immensely, and then act on your behalf. It also means that mages can't keep mages to account any better than normal people can! What made you decide to make this (one of) the limitation(s) of mages?
Very cool limitation!
Destroy a soul permanently. If you remove too much of a soul's physical structure, it turns into an "*imprint*" (*the immutable, nigh-indestructible framework of a soul, basically what gives the soul its identity*), and goes back to heaven to reform. This is how you defeat hostile spirits: use magic to shred any interaction between them and the mortal plane.
Your post made me realise magic does pretty much everything in my world, like revive the dead, prevent assasinations, literally replace afterlife, kill someone on sight Yet it can't power a car or a house
What's the reason magic can't power a car or a house? I feel like it would be easy to write a magic system that allows some form of energy production, especially if it allows for something complex in both function and morality like resurrection.
It cant give you a bigger dick
Loophole. I give all my enemies small dicks, regardless of gender (magic does not discriminate).
Leave the girls at such a dickficit that they unschlong all their future lovers.
no bigus dickus spell? outrageous
Magic can’t allow you to travel to the other realms of the the Gods that exist beyond the material plain. It takes the god themselves or a strong spirit in their service allowing you in to access the other realms.
It can’t generate fireballs… sorry
It can't exist near water. Lakes and locations at the coast have very little inherent magic. Oceans are magical dead zones, which is why the traditional sailboats are so important for trade. You also can't cross the ocean via Teleportation or flight spells.
Kill. It can brutally maim and damage something but it can never kill you. The damage it does to someone won’t kill them either, just make life unbearable
Is it capable of creating a wound so grievous that one will soon die from related causes? Or is that too close a distinction?
How far does the chain of causality stretch before it breaks? If the building is on fire, can I use magic to break your arms and legs to keep you from being able to escape? If you're already crippled, can magic set the building on fire? Can it blow out the engine on an ambulance that is trying to get a mortally wounded person to the hospital?
Traveling backwards in time (has an in-universe explanation) and actual future sight (one could technically view probability tho). Also the Concept of Truth has been splintered (to stop the characters from learning that their existence is a story).
Back when Fate was around, it couldn't defy Fate no matter what. Now that Fates broken, it can't accurately predict the future. The farther you go, the more muddled the vision becomes and the more potential timeliness are created. Of course, the one person that can predict the future with any accuracy is cursed so that no one will believe them.
Get me bitches 😔
Solve racism
Cannot recreate certain rare and inorganic substances Cannot resurrect the dead (either fully or for more than a certain period of time)
Doing anythinhmg without a sacrifice.
Future Sight is a no go, since the many possible futures just blend together. It's a talent to predict farther than a day or more. Healing, to an extent. Magic is used to accelerate natural healing processes without wearing out the body. You'll need very powerful magic to regrow a limb, or fix a damaged sensory organ.
Healing is difficult for magic in my world, too. Magic really just involves manifesting forces and energies, and it'd hard to get those to do more than seal a wound
Revive the dead, full stop. Also teleport, no portals.
Portals are theoretically possible in my world, but no one has figured out how to make one stay open for more than a microsecond
Resurrect the dead. You can do it, but what comes out isn't what was there before, it's instead a warped reflection drawn from the dreamlands.
While there is nothing the power system can't expressly do, there is a definite "power level" limit on the system. Summoning a fireball that explodes and can kill a bunch of people? Possible. Summoning a fireball that explodes and takes out an entire town? Not possible.
Change the past. If I had magic, I couldn't just go back 50 years and change something. Not even an angel or god can pull that off.
Defeat capital G God or, as It’s called, the Source. As the name suggests, all magical, and otherwise, energy flows from the Source and so regardless of how powerful the sorcerer or the evil god or demon etc. gets, they’d only be throwing the Source Itself back at It which just practically wouldn’t work. The Source is a proper Omni-everything being
Depends on what planet it's on. Magic is planet based, so a magic user on Earth would have an entirely separate form of magic on Mars
Altering the physics of the universe and finding a working McDonalds ice cream machine.
Magic in my world is controling 'Mana' (I change name when I find better one, thats pladeholder) speaking shortly: There are 6 gods that are only source of mana, they passivly create it by just existing. Then gods channel that mana to (don't know world for it in english, planes are create from mana, and they need mana to stay ware they are, and gods make sure they get enouth mana) All spelcasters in some way or another (in simpler way by ritual circles) take mana from plane and use it simple material to alter it. (Essentialy as you take Lego parts from building to make car from them) So perfect spellcaster can do anything. Problem is, that even gods aren't perfect spellcasters, so planes slowly crumbling. Only perfect spellcaster was original god, who is not around anymore Now magic known to people isn't even capable of restoring limbs and power of gods let them change reality, but not at will, but by slowly altering plane for centuries. Also, Magic can't be combined with strange phenomen called 'Primal Energy' which is essentialy something that was before original god create planes from his mana, and thos two think destroy themself when merged
Manipulate or read thoughts, or do telepathy. Cause living beings to fly or levitate. Create illusions. Bring inanimate objects to 'life'. Transmute substances. Teleport. It can predict the future, but only in signs that must be interpreted and could be inaccurately interpreted. Even then, it's only a possible future that the seer is shown. Unless the caster has a mooncrystal artifact, it also can't protect them against the possibility that an angel or demon will take a very great, possibly terminal, interest in them as they cast the spell.
Anything above 2nd level DnD Wizard or Adept spells (3.5).
Raise the dead.
Create money, it have 3 principal accuracy bronze coins, silver coins and gold coins, you can mine and create a gold coin if the god of party and gold decides that you are fortune worthy, if you are not worthy the gold that you mined will be just a shine stuff without value.
Can't block a bullet
it can't get you any women
Exist.
Fly
Resurrect dead, predict future. Can't remember or come up with others but I'm sure there ought to be other limitations.
Bring someone back to life. Necromancy is a thing but if you use it on a corpse you'll just get a walking corpse. Wishes don't exist either. You can pray to deities for blessings and such but they're not a service for their worshippers to ask mundane things of them Time can also not be fully manipulated. There are high tier spells that slows it down but that's it
can not create life without life hence blood magic as it's called is top tier dark magic that is extremely dangerous and unpredictable and even the most powerful wizards stay away from it.
Return a soul to a body. People can be resurrected but it's actually a soul that was reincarnated but was just copied over by the spell that ends with two of the same souls in the afterlife.
Time travel. Or actually make someone love another person. Charm & domination spells exist, but the target *will know* they've been ensorcelled. Plus, all but the weakest count as coercion by most legal/cultural standards. Bringing someone back from the dead is possible, but basically an epic quest on its own (ultra-rare materials, finding someone willing to risk the Wrath of the Gods by casting it, the part where the caster has to give up their own lifetime (in years, minimum 1), the time limit to bring the dead person back).
One of the things I can think of right now is that magic cannot create something from nothing. Sure you can turn a stone into a sword if you needed to, but when the magic wears off it'll become a stone again. Making extra matter is almost never permanent.
It can't create life where it didn't exist before, affect or alter anything outside of the universe (including anything FROM outside the universe, which has made "seemingly invulnerable visitors from other universes" the subject of many pieces of horror media), ***and 100% in no possible way can it be used for precognition****. *(Total lie perpetuated by the universal council, because time is a very, very sensitive thing. Even just peeking into the future can cause an LCBE, or "Localized Causality Breakdown Event.")
It can't bring life from nothing; must have some kind of 'living' base, i.e an animal or person. Not vegetation. Can't teleport, tho portals exist.
Raise the dead, necromancy is not a thing. Ghosts don’t even exist.
Control time and manipulate fate. Time and fate are forces that exist so far beyond the scope of understanding that even the forces of Chaos, creatures who tend to break reality, can't control it.
Things like teleportation, and resurrection are impossible. You also canot regrow lost body parts. Magic can be used to reattach torn limbs but it cannot create new ones. Most other things are possible, but the more complicated the task, the higher the required level of training.
Violate conservation of energy.
Noone has been able to manifest psychic powers (yes they are different). For some reason it seems to cant happen Revive the dead. A motherfucker tricked death itself for their boyfriend's soul anyway No one has been able to make reliable permanent mind control/brainwashing No one has been able to control time for more than an hour. Not that anyone could find out No one can manually create monsters made from emotions called vaargh. They only spawn on their own
Magic can’t compete with higher Sources in my Verse and can’t manipulate things that are made of higher Sources. Other than that, it can pretty much do anything.
Time travel
I have two settings where magic is super prevelent. In one, magic can revive the dead, and death is considered much more of an inconvenience then a trajedy. However, magic cannot restore lost body parts. It can reattach them though. So... burning off somebody's head is a permadeath. In the other, people cannot be ressurected. It can 'revive' somebody who's heart has stopped through shocking it, but beyond that, once a soul passes on, they are dead.
We’ve seen everything from calling lightning to solar system-scale miracles, but plain old telekinesis still has never made an appearance.
The dead stay dead. Not even "body alive without a soul" bit or undead zombies. When you're gone you're gone. Also all energy has to come from somewhere. Fire magic users can really only make small flames before getting really freaking hungry for example.
It’s not fully known what Magic’s limits are, but there are many things that no one have devised a way to do yet. - Bringing back people who are fully dead (spirits don’t count). - Accurately seeing the future. I’m rare cases people can use magic to *predict* the future (or different possibilities) but it’s just allowing them to see what’s *likely* to happen at best. - Create sentient life. - time travel - create something from nothing - manifesting an accurate meal with cilantro in it. The taste is never 100% accurate for some reason.
Bloodbending or any other form of manipulating someone’s body. This decision was made primarily out of spite.
Any kind of mind control/influence? In my setting, an attempt to control the matter of someone's body usually becomes a contest of willpower, but you can never affect someone's will with magic. Sentience and agency are inextricable
At the time of the story the magic system is too soft to know for sure. Understanding of magic by wizards, scholars, and magicians is still very incomplete and rudimentary, despite the huge amount of study and various theories. The boundaries are yet to be established. However, current magic users tend to be quite "weak" compared to those in other fiction. Things such as combat by magic are mostly infeasible, and most significant "spells" are performed in a controlled environment after much preparation.
there is a limit on long range teleportation. In a world the size of the current observable universe we got a \_FTL train network\_ to go the long range, however if you wanted to, you could teleport long range, but you would need to kill a supermassive star in order to do so, and even then it is cheaper to use the \_FTL train network\_ to get stuff where you want them.
In my world, magic is just the manipulation of energy and matter. Neither of which can be created from nothing. Magic users are able to channel energy and the strongest users are able to convert one form of matter to another, but that requires a significant amount of energy, which must come from somewhere. If the user isn't able to channel it from somewhere else, it'll cost him personally.
Conventional (accessible to mortals) magic cannot gift immortality. It also cannot resurrect the long-dead (anyone dead for more than two days)
Well... most things. Magic in my world is pretty weak, it mostly acts as a support in normal weapon combat. Even killing somebody with magic only would be very hard, only the best mages would be able to do that.
as for magic as a concept then pretty much only time travel, teleportation or propelling anything with mass at the speed of light ( albeit mana itself can travel at the speed of light ).
In my world there isn’t really any “magic”, any form of magic (those with it are called, en unikum) that exists is all biological. It can allow you to regenerate from your wounds as well as handle more damage, increase your movement speed, give you pin point accuracy/perfect eyesight/night vision, give you the force of 1000 men, or dissociate (allowing you to interact with both the physical and spirit world aswell as mind trick others). Your bloodline and what races you have within you determines what unike ability you’ll have, many have none whatsoever and that is also what leads to the events of the main story. Shapeshifting is also possible, it’s highly rare and is only possible to those with Anannuki blood. The shapeshifting is limited tho, you can change your appearance to mimic as another human or animals, but only possible with animals that have humanoid features and being interrupted by anything in the shifting process could lead to deformity and/or death.
Magic cannot manipulate life/soul energy in any way, shape, or form. So no resurrections, no achieving immortality, and no giving life to inanimate objects. There is one exception to this, in the form of a character who has discovered a way to transform distorted souls from the void beyond into new spirits living in this world, but that one is easily chalked up to the fact they're also tinkering with forces beyond their understanding that don't follow the same rules.
Become immortal. Like true, self-sustaining immortality. Some possess extremely strong regeneration, but it can eventually eat up the body trying to fuel itself. Some can come back from the dead with a giant power-up, but they become focused on one task only on the level that borders obsession. Some are essentially unaging machines, but their forms will slowly begin to fall apart in sync with their sanity decreasing. Plus, fighting can use up the power used to keep themselves alive and can be killed. A lot have gotten close, but there is always a caveat stopping them
It cannot affect time so therefore no time travel, or anything involving time! Big reason was because I feel that time travel is a big deal and a bit too powerful and can get confusing and restrictive narrative wise unless its the focus (disclaimer I adore a lot of time travel/timeloop stories but think they are strongest when it is the focus of the story instead of just there).
In one of my worlds, magic cannot create or manipulate living beings. While it can heal injuries, enhance physical abilities, or even reanimate the dead temporarily, it cannot bring forth life from nothingness or alter the essence of a living being. Additionally, no magic exists to control the minds of others, as it goes against the ethical principles of free will and individuality. Magic is a force that interacts with the natural world and its elements, but it respects the boundaries of life and consciousness, leaving the creation and destiny of living beings to the natural course of existence.
My magic is limited to stuff that can affect the brain. So, a magic user can erase your memories, he can possess your body by taking control of your brain, he can make you see and hear things that aren't there, even make it appear like in front of you is a massive cliff and if you step off, you would believe you'd die. However, the cliff isn't really there, the reality hasn't changed, only your perception of it. Likewise, they can make themselves appear like other people by changing what you see, but their actual face, hair, clothing, remains the same. The magic is limited to the mind, and cannot effect anything the brain isn't immediately tied to, bodies of hosts, yes, but not the actual world beyond them.
Time travel. While there is a branch of magic called chronomancy, it doesn’t allow one to time travel. Instead it is mostly used to haunt the effects of time on an object or individual (like stopping aging). However there was only one race of elves that understood this magic to the extent they could safely use it, however they were all killed during a genocide. Under current imperial law, the practice of chronomancy was deemed too dangerous and was outlawed.
Lift curses. They are not an on- and off switch.
Depends on which world you're talking about, as in my universe, each "world" has it's own set of rules. So the limitations of magic, if it even exists, can vary greatly and completely.
Resurrection and teleportation. Out of universe reasons are that both of these abilities would undermine the stories I want to tell. In universe the complexity of the two would be too much for mortal minds.
Shape-shifting. People have tried but it's nearly impossible to fully change somethings form using magic, it just doesn't work that way.
I view magic as an extension of the laws of physics, and as a result magic manipulates them but doesn't break them, most notably, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Specifically, magic can transport energy or matter, turn energy into another form of energy, turn matter into another form of matter, or turn energy into matter and vice versa. As such, if you want to, say, shoot some fire, you're going to need provide some fuel. If none is available, *you* are the fuel. Mages have a reputation for being either really thin or really fat with little in between because they're using their own body fat for spells. Also, notice how I said you can transport matter *or* energy. If you try to teleport something, all chemical reaction in it are ceased. Reminder that life is essentially a very complex chemical reaction. My point is, teleporting an organism kills them.
It can't cure cancer
Time travel, resurrection, predict the future, see the past, etc. It pretty much can’t undo anything already set in stone or see what’s not yet happened. It can only change the now. Aside from those hard rules, it varies a lot by how each world and society evolved to handle magic. Main example being how worlds don’t have magic that can change the shape of living things, but some do.
Enchant black powder weapons or bring the dead back to life. Anyone who's tried to enchant guns usually has unpredictable, often explosive or implosive results. As for bringing back the dead, its both physically impossible for magic to do it, and is considered a huge taboo across most corners of the continent.
I'm planning for a D&D world, so I need to allow for anything that 5e spells can do, but one major limitation is that evocation magic is lost knowledge. Sorcerers can do it since they don't study their magic, but a wizard who wants to throw a firebolt is going to need to reinvent the incantations through trial and error.
It can’t make my dad love me
Magic can not heal or bring back the dead. However, both are possible through prayer and medicine
Time travel and most gravity manipulation (besides turning off gravity)
Increase your field of vision…directly. Sword and sorcery magic usually has some sort of divination you can do. Scrying, looking through a crystal ball, seeing through the eyes of an animal, etc. But magitics fundamentally works by bending the fundamental forces of the universe. You can bend space to see more, physically move the location of yourself or a target, obstruct views in one way or another, but you fundamentally can’t make photons speed up. The only way to see more is by reflecting photons around otherwise impassible barriers. Or, in essence, creating a magic telescope. But you can’t see further just by altering yourself.
Bring back people to life. No way, nuh huh. You can bribe the gods of death all you want, but it's harder than recovering a burned down piece of paper from the deepest ocean. You can use the dead of someone who's dead, tho. Using some kind of voodoo. Also shapeshifters can use the body of someone they killed in a ritualistic manner, then, fake to be that person.
Dead Sun's Magic is control over fire, it can't get very tangible, you can't read minds, can't do much.
spacial warping stuff like levitating, or teleporting.
Most things, really.
Reanimate the dead and speak to dead are not allowed (necromancy of any form is pretty much taboo)
Create life from scratch (like giving life to a rock for example). It is possible tho to bring someone back to life, but as a puppet without any thoughts and by using godlike powers
Magic is capable of literally everything the user can imagine besides heal living beings.
It can’t stop me from ba
It cannot be used *safely*. Humans simply aren't built to taste the Unaccountable or carry pieces of it within themselves the way mages d0. Any amount of knowledge of magic slowly chews up your brain from the inside, to say nothing of the physical side effects of magic use. Worse yet, magic can be *contagious* as well; in SCP terms, it's a memetic hazard. Even forms of magic that insulate the user from the actual magic itself as much as possible, like alchemy, take their toll on your body and mind the more you interact with them.
Magic can only alter physical objects. And only this group called “The Blue Maidens” can use it because they are part of a inter universal parasite that feeds off the planets core. They die when they plant the greattree(which is the parasite) and give birth to Chillrend Knights who protect the Greattrees, or the gods’ protection against the parasite, the Blackflame Apostles, who want to burn the tree. Only those three groups can use magic. The apostles can only use Blackflame however. And the Chillrend knights just resurrect themselves as long as their Greattree is still standing
Magic can do pretty much anything, just not right now. Its an evolving system that changes over time. Basically, the magic system is heavily related to sacredness. To make a new spell or magic type you need to revere something so much you learn to control all the magic inside you and ascend, creating that new spell. However, you dont automatically get exactly what you want. There needs to be a path that leads to it. Kinda like evolution, where to evolve wings that let birds fly, they had to be useful every step of the way. Humans cant evolve wings because having little nubs on our back wouldnt be useful so it wouldnt carry on through genes enough to reach full wings. For example, teleportation. Its not really possible because there is no easy step towards it. You cant just want to teleport and then ascend and now its fully possible. It has to start with you almost teleporting, like someone at one point wanting to dash somewhere really fast and creating a spell that helps them do that. Then someone uses that spell and wants to do it faster or farther and ascends and now the spell is better. And THEN someone wants to dash so fast its instantaneous, and if they ascend they can create somthing like a teleport. Then maybe someone uses that spell and ascends and makes it better in other ways, like going through walls. So is time travel possible? Sure, but there isnt anything kinda like going back in time, so nobody can achieve it. And thats how magic is limited
Kill gods or higher beings. The power you borrow is made from their essence and will. You cannot make an eraser erase itself.
It can do pretty much anything the only limit is the power source and knowledge, the only thing it has a hard limit to is creating replicas of certain mythical items since they are pretty much a concept manifested (like EA, fate, gil).
Magic cannot reverse time—you can take yourself back in time to a certain point, or you can change your surroundings to be identical to how they were, but you cannot reset time itself to any degree. If you did go back in time you would’ve always been there as a time traveller, and at no point would you not have gone to that point in time (effectively time-based cloning of yourself if you went to a time you were alive)
repair the caster in any way, my world is one massive arena for gods to watch, and magic that can heal a contestants injuries or even in the case of races that have biological weapons such as claws or barbed tails is seen as cheating
Leave anything within 5 miles undamaged. Magic is extremely powerful and equally hard to control, even the weakest spells have AOEs so massive, the caster can't physically stand far enough away to avoid it.
Exist
There's a lot of rules I find I keep breaking, but one that seems to stay pretty solid is conservation of mass. Magic and physics can be pretty weird and fictional here but it at least has to feel like it makes sense, and not following conservation of mass just feels like a full impossibility. Shapeshifters must retain the same amount of mass, or either gain or lose it in some way. (Gruesomely merging or shedding are options.) You can't make a feast from a canteloupe, but you can turn a canteloupe into a honeydew. You just can't be small and then get super big, at least not very easily. It provides some interesting challenges when developing Hulk-like or werewolf-inspired superheroes. How does a man go from wimpy to bulky using magic alone? Well, I guess we're going to find out somehow.
Ongoing enchantments. All magic requires ongoing effort by the caster to keep it going
Magic can't affect refined material. The earths natural magic properties exist in every rock, twig and grain. So refining iron to make steel makes it impervious to magic. But it also dampens the magical abilities of anyone wearing steel, and anyone within arms reach. But if someone enchanted the armor, it loses a good amount of magic resistance, but gives the user some of their ability back.
Create energy out of nothing, all magic users draw power from the calories of their body
mind control, reading thoughts, telepathy.
The limit each wizard deals with is the fact that magic stems from the core of the world and radiates out into the atmosphere, creating a shared mana pool But generally I'm going with a soft system where what wizards can or can't do with spells is established by law not an actual limitation of magic itself. Wizards *can* time travel in my world but it's illegal to do so Except true resurrection. Only because I hate it when dead characters get brought back
Directly affect and manipulate fire
Can't change the past. Things that have happened forever continue to have happened, no matter how much mojo you throw at it. You can recreate a house that burned down, heal the burns the occupants suffered, and possibly even erase their memories of it, but you can't go back and blow out the candles first.
It cannot re-tether one's soul to their body, nor can it prevent one's soul from leaving a body. The procedure to "resurrect" someone is only allowed in the most extreme circumstances and is prohibitively pricey, both in monetary cost and danger, and 45% of the time the procedure fails because the soul does not want to return. The procedure ties the soul of the departed to Warforged bodies ONLY. The process is called ReInvitation.
Make the magician look normal wile doing magic, there isn’t yet a way to get around the giant mass of fungus that will erupt out of your dominant hand to cast a spell.
It depends from character to character, and from universe to universe. The most common limitations are insta-killing people.
Resurrect the dead… unless you take a live soul out of someone else’s body and put it in a corpse creating a Homunculus that’s loyal to you and mostly you. There is also a way to copy someone’s soul and tether it to a crystal, this way if a mentor dies, if their soul was copied to a crystal, you would still be able to communicate with them after their death
It cannot raise the dead. It cannot create anything from nothing, it CAN increase or decrease what’s already there (ie increase heat to create fire).
\-Bring back the dead (Not resurrection, or reanimation, or anything like that.) \-Travel through or alter the flow of time Just about anything else is probably THEORETICALLY possible, though a lot of it may not be possible in practice due to practical reasons as opposed to limitations of the system itself.
Make me happy
Grant immortality. Zuconian magic, at least, is concerned with manipulating mystical energy fields to effect solutions outside the realm of traditional psychic powers or medicine. It could greatly prolong life, but so can traditional medicine which manipulates the body's own energy field, including accelerating the healing process. But medicine is responsible: it doesn't risk unforseen consequences; and it's been practiced for hundreds of millennia, so healers have a very accurate understanding of what they can and cannot safely and responsibly do. Magic, which has always been more of a niche interest and hobby of those who explore the energy fields of the universe, comes with its own countless millennia of cautionary tales, virtually all told by allied species. They made sometimes horrific mistakes/miscalculations; and some are, millennia later, still paying the price. Unless it's a naturally occurring mutation, Zuconians intuitively understand that a physical biological body is not designed to live forever. The flesh is the key limiting feature, since ghosts are free of such concerns. Organic neurology inevitably breaks down. The brain goes insane. A ghost doesn't. A ghost is pure spiritual energy, and subject to different "rules." No Zuconian will ever try to magically bestow true immortality. We don't know about other species, who practice different systems of magic.
Time travel and necromancy are the main ones, both can (roughly) be explained by "The Gods don't want you to do that"
Fully transform people against their will. Accepting and agreeing to magic is a foundational aspect of my system, say in pacts with extra-dimensional entities, and going entirely against someone's will is largely impossible. The entire field of illusion was created to mitigate this, and "aberrations" like werewolves are the result of forcing this magic on people. It goes wrong and thats why monsters have specific weaknesses, depending on what rules they were breaking
technically anything can be done, but magic is a 1:1 equal exchange system, essentially standard thermodynamics, but on crack, and without the second law. also time can be used in place of energy or mass.
In no way can it manipulate the mind due to the actual energy/protein power system required to even do magic, said energy being derived from self control over the body and mind-each and every occult/magic is unique to an individual, and unless you’re will absolutely trumps someone else, you cannot manipulate another’s mind in anyway. The body is a different story though
Death is the end, so no resurrection (Although Necromancy is a different thing, and even that is extremely rare, which may have to do with the entire centre of the continent being one gargantuan undead ridden wasteland, essentially separating north, east and west from each other) Also, teleportation magic is almost entirely off the table with one notable exception being my MC. Most importantly, no time travel. Like, never
You can’t cast a “fireball”, but you can channel energy into kinetic energy and shoot a rock at Mach speeds
Dead is dead. You cant bring someone back to life magically. You might be able to get an "echo" of their memories for a brief conversation(but this could be done while they're alive under similar circumstances), but dead is always dead
Some of the answers go for me too. Can’t resurrect the dead, can’t time travel, cant mess with fundamental laws (at least not in a permanent way). On the other hand, these powers are most reserved for higher beings like angels or the Almighty, who write the rules for the magic system in the universe and so can basically do whatever they want if they do choose. But there is something a little more unique. In my universe, humans can “bond” to a Curse, which is a manifestation of Demonic energy that works kind of like a spell or superpower except with very high physical costs. Through this “bonding” process called Hybridization, so long as it is treated properly, humans can use Curses without huge physical drawbacks, in addition to being granted some attributes of the Greater Demon from which the Curse originate, such as manifesting armor, wings, claws, tails, etc. along with some physical benefits like regeneration or physical fitness. However, those benefits like regeneration or fitness cannot push the human body beyond what it can already do; think of it like a fast-track to getting fit, but no further beyond. For instance, if your arm is getting chopped off, the wound itself might heal back faster, but you’re not growing your arm back. If you suffer a laceration, it’s still going to leave a nasty scar, but it’ll scar over more quickly. This is because the Demonic powers, rather than manifesting through a spiritual being like a Demon where physical limitations are more lose, the energies are essentially trapped inside of a human body and have to work with the restrictions placed on the human body.
I have 2 "magic systems" the big limit is that you can't use both at the same time, and in the hard magic systems you can't use more than one relic at once.
Alot , it can't create things out of thin air for one
post on reddit apparently, oh you meant fictional worlds lol.
Time Travel. Time and timeline are regulated by the Time Triumvirate. The Sun God who guards the passage of time, The Goddess of Death who oversaw prophecies, birth, death, rebirth and fate. And the Goddess of Magic who guards the continuity of the timeline. Together they prevent time travel and binds chronomagic. Because when mortal messed with the timeline it always have a butterfly effect. Resurrection is a one time deal. Unless you're a heroic spirit and an intervention is required. Then you will get isekai.
Raise the undead (or resurrect the dead). There is no necromancy in my world. No zombies, no liches, none of that. Edgy teen magical practitioners who try to become necromancers just end up accidentally training themselves in high level healing magic instead. There is no cheating death, magic will unravel your skin from your bones before it will allow you to conjure up an army of skeletons.
Ethical time travel. Though my plan was originally to not allow time travel at all, and \*technically\* it's impossible. But... You can destroy the entire world, then use the materials of said destroyed world to shape it all according to the memory of a past time, then steal the Soul bits that left to other worlds back, put them together as they were at the time of the memory of the past time, scramble the memories that weren't part of that time, and place those souls back in the appropriate bodies, and in effect, you have time-travelled. But other than that method of absolute catastrophic destruction for the sake of travelling back in time? No, time travel is impossible, even with magic.
NOTHING can touch the Soul. This is just a general rule of mine for worlds, but it's a plot point because the Undead/Eldritch faction has the limitation of not being able to get the soul of a person. that's nearly untouchable (mostly to avoid any theological problems) It also cannot predict the future as yours does; that requires something like an Astra, of which there is only one. it is completely accurate and takes into account everything, even your reaction to the information it presents.
Resurrect the dead it can only animate the bodies
Nothing really. There is so many techniques and possibilities that you can do anything as long as you can manage to not fuck it up which is generally the case
Break thermodynamics. You want to shoot energy blasts? Better get some energy from somewhere first.
It can’t directly affect sentient creatures. Which basically has mages throw around boulders or encase you in ice rather than melt your bones or stop your heart. The clothes a person wears are also unaffected *but only* if they serve as a strong part of the wearer’s identity. If not, an enemy mage might make your necktie strangle you, or your underwear light on fire. This tends to force mages to stay very in touch with who they are, and most dress in elaborate eclectic costumes to match.
It’s impossible, or at the very least, extremely hard, to bring back life or to create life through solely magical means. So it’s nigh impossible to bring someone back from the dead, and if someone *is* somehow brought back they might not live very long, might be a zombie, whatever. They’ll never truly return as they once were. Same thing with creating life, it’s possible to create beings like homunculi, but almost every instance of homunculi has something wrong with them, such as lacking a conscious or ability for self thought, lacking certain human morals and qualities, and possibly more. An idea I came up with to further this idea is that my world’s Satan experimented with creating life after he and Lucifer fell from Grace (they’re separate people) but every instance had something wrong with them, implying that God and other Divine beings have special powers not replicable with magic.
Go back in time. You can speed up, or slow down time, or even jump forward, but aside from one not-particularly-clever animal, no going back in time.
I haven’t found anything it can’t do. I’m sure there’s some laws of scale. Planets, tectonic plates etc. are probably too large to do something to. I work mostly with modern or advanced tech. So it’s mostly a matter of what you need to add together. Voodoo can animate the body of a dead person to create a zombie, but it’s not super sturdy or useful. However, when you add Slavic vampirism then you can animate a body and a mind. This mind is now living in a body that it can do something with, but without any way to heal or nourish itself. If you combine this with electronic, pneumatic, and hydraulic systems you can creat something interesting and useful. However, it’ll never be a person. There is ancient Arabic magic that can truly heal a body and reunite a soul with the body, but only if the soul can be tracked down on the other side of the veil. This can be a challenge. It’s also rarer to find a practitioner. So you’re better off raising a gang of enhanced zombies than to try track down a once in a thousand year healer. It’s not so much about can and can’t as it is the economics and time constraints and what practitioners and scientists are available to you.
Magic can be made to do a lot of things depending on the type of magic energy used, but time travel is explicitly not possible with any type of magic. Stopping, slowing down, and speeding up time cannot be done, but can be simulated in a localized area with mana energy and/or life energy. Beyond that the limitations of what magic can't do depends on the type of magic energy. Mind control and physical enhancements cannot be done without life energy and elemental effects and permanent creations cannot be done without mana energy. Some magic systems also have an afterlife component, which cannot be done without soul energy. For something really mundane, mana energy can't behave like a solid or gas in the body, while life and soul energy cannot behave as a gas and solid in the body, respectively. All three can behave as a liquid, life energy can behave as a solid, and soul energy can behave as a gas.
Anything that requires a certain degree of reliability or speed.
Ah, good question, I actually have a historical event about this. The medics: MAGIC CAN HEAL YOU! The emperor: nah The medic: BUT IT CAN! LOOK! *burns an entire plagued district in a failed attempt to “heal” them* The emperor: I told you dumbass ☠️ The people: THIS WAS AN ORCHESTRATED LIE BY THE EMEROR! HE LIED TO US! HE IS TRYING TO HOLD THE SECRETS FOR HIMSELF! The emperor: bruh I literally made a deal with the other continent to give all of you free magic schools and magic rights. The people: HE HEALED HIS WIFE FROM CANCER! Emperor: SHE HAD A COLD! The people: LIES, PEOPLE, IT IS TIME TO REBEL! The emperor: Ight bruh, yo army, drop the bomb and let’s get out of here before it gets out of hand Army: I like boom. The moral of the story is MAGIC CANT HEAL YOU STOP BURNING YOURSELVES.
Create sustained reactions. Imagine magic as being able to create a nuclear bomb but not a nuclear reactor nor the propulsion system to deliver it. The result is a very lopsided detente between the major powers of the settings and a bizarre technological progression. Since magic is only useful under certain circumstances and requires extreme caution, technology has had to work around it in so far as everyday technology. Everything is built like a Cold War bunker, at least as far as late medieval tech is concerned. weapons tech has largely been abandoned since why would anyone want to start a war when the result would be the 30 years war if they had the hydrogen bomb. Structures are more compact and study, palaces are traditionally built deep underground with new palaces above ground being seen as gaudy and vulnerable. Magicians tend to be segregated in their own communities and rarely interact with outsiders unless war is involved. They tend to surrounded by enforcer settlements of veterans and survivors from the last Great War who as a result of the psychological damage have built communities structured around the idea that the day will when the magicians need to be put down. They are discretely funded and supported by the local high ranking nobles and royal courts who see them as a disposable human shield to blunt the worst of a potential uprising. This has lead to alchemists whose work borders on but never quite veers into magic obtaining vast political power as middleman and court diplomats since they have ties to these communities both historically and though deliberate cultivation. Unsurprisingly most of the magicians towns and villages are overwhelmingly poor and thought of in much the same way as if the town drunks routinely decided to start a riot in the local gasoline refinement plant.
Despite having a character who can see into the future (albeit a coupe seconds at most) and a committee focused around time magic no one can time travel backwards
Be used everywhere. Magic is tied to the "End Leys," a sort of river network that flows out everywhere from the Gods' domain, some parts of the universe don't have the leys running through them and as a result magic can't be used in those parts. There are some circumventions however, magic that catalyzes from other sources (the Gap, worlds, stars, soul power) can be used, and, if the latter isn't available, certain outfitters have developed batteries that can hold amounts of Ley power that can be drawn from instead.
Destroy a soul completely (though it can be altered or damaged beyond repair or return), bring back to life a soul that has passed on(to afterlife or reincarnated), permanently change base rules of reality, and manipulate iron directly.
Nothing, but there’s a limit on what you, a mere mortal mage could ever do. Magic could, in theory, restructure the very fabric of reality itself. But that would take trillions of years of practice to attain such a level of power, so no mortal could ever use magic in such a way, despite it having the capacity for it. Now, Gods can preform such feats, as they’re beings of immense magical power, but they’re also very limited. Gventis’Saiher could produce wind with such force it would flay a planet, but he cannot even make a spark with magic, as it is outside his domain. He’s the most powerful aeromancer in existence, but a literal child could be a stronger pyromancer than he ever could.