forum How do I incorporate elemental magic along with other types of magic into my universe without it being.. off

Started March 18, 2018 by THATDAUGHTEROFATHENA

tune

I'm confused on this someone please help me

perhaps people just are better at some kinds of magic that others, maybe it depends on their personalities. like a very moody and reclusive person might be very good at shadow, and one that is very exhausting to be around might be good at fire. or perhaps the more you do certain things with magic, say, healing or telekinesis, the easier it is to do similar things.

'Genres' of magic are often the case in these situations. Some characters can only use one genre each.

Genres include:
Elemental- Fire, Ice, Water, Air, Earth
Material- Metals, Wood, ect.
Spiritual- Manipulation of the mind, telekinesis, telepathy, future vision, ect.

You could phrase it more like super powers, ex: pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, and then pair it with other mental related magics.

Here's the thing that always helps when me and my Roleplay partner who are cobuilding our world hit like a "how do we do this" in terms of magic. Ask yourself the rules of the magic in your universe at it's core level. The way's it's manipulated, how it's manifested.

In our world you have Classes which are the primary form. But then you have Blessings that come from Gods (A character has Ice powers from his Goddess in addition to his classes). But we took the time to ensure that we understood the driving force of magic and the different ways aether (that driving force) is wielded.

@Zeland you could also do with the opposite of their personaality. Like a fisherman's daughter -who spends all her time at the ocean - can control fire. Or someone who is really afraid of dogs after being bit by one as a small child finds out that they can talk to animals

Elemental magic is just another form of magic. In one of my worlds there is both innate and learned magic, innate being abilities you are born with and learned being magic controlled with runes and spells. Innate magic is almost exclusively for the beastfolk, so demons, satyrs, centaurs, etc have innate abilities like telekinesis or elemental magic (control of an element) or blinking (short distance teleportation). The thing is everything fits under the same rules (kind of). Innate magic can be controlled at will and can be improved with use, but is not absolute. Learned magic falls under a different system, but it's the same in that the rules are consistent. Everything requires anchor runes and a spell to work. (Kind of like the alchemy in fullmetal alchemist, where you need the transmutation circle but it can come in any form, and then you need to know what you want to do.)

So think about the way your magic works, and the other things you can do with your magic. There are many schools of magic, elemental magic is far from the only one. There's also medical magic (healing and removing curses or whatever) and summoning and necromancy and golemancy which is still under summoning and utility magic like telekinesis or levitation or whatever. The elder scrolls series mixes a bunch of schools of magic well, so you could look at the spells and their classification from the series.

@Evelena good idea.

I had this same problem in my own story, and I broke it down like this: there's four main 'branches' of magic with their own names. They balance each other out, and correspond to Life and Death, and Body and Mind. For example, 'Life' is druidism, based around the earth and it's energy. Lot of green magic and earth-manipulation here. Elemental magic (aside from earth, obviously) in my book falls under 'Body', or Corporeal Sorcery.

What I was thinking for my story was having magic be based on parentage. All of the fancy non-elemental magic can go to pretty much any creature (besides wyverns and humans), and elemental "Bending" (as I so classily stole from Avatar) is the more general magic that even humans can learn to use. However, they would only be able to use it to a much smaller degree compared to other, more magical creatures (humans could lift small stones, create small fires or gusts of air, etc. while dragons could cause volcanos to erupt given enough training).

In my world it's all a game of lineage and chance, for example, the more people in your family have leaned toward nature (medicinal herbs, loving camping and hiking, etc.) Then you will show signs of elemental magic, but you can dabble in little bits of most magic

In my world you have an 'affinity' an element you can summon at will. Then you have spells, for other elements, and to make your affinity stronger. Spells can also do 'miscellaneous' things like lifting things, and growing plants.

I like how a WebToon called UnOrdinary does this. Each person has a magical ability. How strong they are however is based on a few factors. The ones I can remember are heredity, general strength, and mastery. Heredity you can't change. If your parents are powerful, chances are you will be too. General strength is based on ability. Mastery changes based on how much you use your ability. These factors get you a score on the ability meter. 0 being no powers, 10 being basically invincible. These scores also changed where you fit in society. Each ability has these attributes to it: speed, defence, power, and recovery. Each ability is different in these aspects.
Most importantly, magic is just normal. It's a usual thing to see and that's just how their world works.