DESIGNING MAGIC SYSTEMS

August 6th, 2023

Magic systems have a number of unique features to consider in as much or little depth as you want! In this article I'll cover:

• limitations
• limit ceilings
• cost

LIMITATIONS

Limitations define who (or what) can use magic and how. I would consider this the foundation of the magic system as it is the base framework of rules it follows. Limitations exist to keep characters, or complete magic systems, from being OP and also so the characters (you) must find more creative ways of overcoming challenges. You are already familiar with many different types of limitations, even if you don't recognize them as such. Here are some subgroups:

• Skill Limitations: The most obvious one, limits based on physical or magical prowess. If magic is a dangerous thing that requires much knowledge and specific training, naturally not many people will be able to do it. This is a softer form of limitation as skill is usually not clearly defined enough for us to tell who exactly can do what. You should establish a limit ceiling on how powerful a magic user can possibly be, or at least have the reader be able to infer that knowledge. Otherwise, the classic shounen problem of power creep starts showing up and loosening the belief your readers have in your character's ability to lose.
• Obtainment Limitations: How did they even get the magic? The most common two solutions are that someone is born a magic user, or they learn it through training. Obviously a lot of fantasy uses a combination of these two, but there are more answers than these: for example, someone who wishes to use magic might need to get the direct permission of a deity, or one becomes a magic user via possession of a macguffin, of which a finite number exist. To get it, they might steal, buy, or seduce it out of someone else, or just *happen* to find it. There is also a spin on the genetic type where a specific magic gland controls a user's magic output (as is the case in Dorohedoro). Non-users could simply.. alter or remove these parts and transplant them into themselves. I really think fantasy needs more organ trafficking. Related to obtainment is…
• Type Limitations: These apply if you use a type-based system of magic, eg. people are naturally sorted somehow into the kinds of power they can use. The usual limit ceiling here is that a type X can't become a type Y, unless you establish that early on in the series. Avatar is an example of this, where anyone who can use magic can only use one type of element, for example a firebender cannot start bending earth. The established exception is the Avatar, who can access all four types of magic. Since this is a fundamental part of the premise, it doesn't disrupt suspension of disbelief in the same way it would have if introduced halfway through.
• Usage Limitations: A lot of limitations come baked in to the method magic is deployed; eg. casting methods that are more preparation intensive, like alchemy or sigils, need more time and materials to cast than magic using hand signs or voice. Similarly, magic used via an instrument, such as a wand, necessitate a working instrument, and able and unfettered hands, fingers and arms to use them. The quality of these instruments or materials might also come into play if you wanna be a hardass, eg. Linden trees create the best wands for fire magic users. (Following this example, you can expand a limitation into having greater impacts on the worldbuilding: how would this restructure the economy? How would this affect the places where linden trees grow, who would labor in wand-making, and what real-life situations (eg. rubber) might mirror this?) Also, coming up with unconventional instruments to use magically (something besides a wand, musical instrument, or weapon) is a good way to add unique qualities to your magic system.
• Social Limitations: Not all limitations come in the form of hard-and-fast physical possibilities. A wholly different arena that is just as important to consider are the social, moral, cultural, and legal limitations of magic in your world. The stigma for certain kinds of magic could come from it being a legitimate danger, eg necromancy or blood magic, or from being associated with a wider stigmatized group.
• Location Limitations: Either because of a deliberate boundary or not, does magic only work in a certain place, or does it have stronger effects in one place than another? Common examples of this include sacred sites or ley lines. This could be played either as a specific, named place or a category of place. Maybe someone prefers to do their magic in mountains because it somehow works better at high altitude, or in a crowded city due to the overlapping sounds, sights and smells. Maybe your characters have heard of a mythical place with really strong magic that they set out to find. Maybe one empire learns of a really powerful ancient site in a small neighbor country and decides to wreak havoc. (Hey, this would really easily work into a colonialist allegory..)

Limitations are not things to overcome but work around! Limitations are synonymous with the stakes here; if you remove them, the character is annoyingly OP and has no chance of losing or possible vulnerability! It is fine to have certain types of limitations lessen or disappear during the course of a character arc (these are usually in the form of a skill limitation), but other types of limitations should stay rigid.

LIMIT CEILINGS

Limit ceilings are a hard limit that the magic can NEVER exceed, regardless of skill or plot armor. For example, magic can not be used to turn back time or resurrect, or a magic user born type X cannot suddenly become type Y. If you break these limits, the story loses stakes! If part of your plot involves making an exception, it is best to either introduce this as early as possible, or to allude to it either by comments or showing characters exploit similar loopholes in the magic. The worst thing to do here as far as suspension of disbelief is to explicitly state a limit ceiling, and without any foreshadowing or hint of something else, break it. Exploiting a loophole’s not the same thing as outright breaking an established rule.

COSTS

Costs are the energy costs that it takes to do magic. Magic would exhaust these in order to run, or needs them as part of a larger cycle. Some ideas include:

• Materials (usually alchemical ones)
• Batteries
• Kinetic energy (magic systems using some type of martial art use this. it could also be used by large structures, sorta like windmills)
• Qi/mana type life force. A lot of magic systems use this, if anything to vaguely cap how much any character can do in a given sequence
• Elemental energy
• Time! This would work well for a large, passive magic system. It could also work where you bargain time off your own lifespan for powers

Limitations and cost are closely related, and choosing one will define the other.

MY OWN MAGIC SYSTEM

For the sake of example, I'll say what I've done with my magic system in Oracle Bone. The magic system is, along with the lore, animist: everything alive is imbued with the spiritual force of czi. The natural world uses this in everyday phenomena, and the world around people lives or dies the way humans do. In other words, magic has an ecological response to human activities, and events like war or mass death can have very long term consequences on the environment. Artificially, magic is primarily sigil-based, meaning that in order to use it, you will need writing or printing materials to produce spells. The reprintability means basic spells are commonly sold for home use by those with no magical training, but to modify them or even create your own will require a lot of skill the average person won't have, similar to a lot of consumer goods on Earth. There is no obtainment limitation other than getting the education necessary to do this, which exists mostly in informal settings. Sigils work in a near-computational way, giving them a very wide range of effects and power; although there are hard limits on what they cannot do (resurrect the dead, create perfect illusions, and predict the future), they can create effects that are similar. A plot point is the amount of energy sigils exhaust, which keeps them from being the only thing society relies on and drives a need for manual engineering as well as the production of quick power sources.

Tailoring a magic system to a narrative is a complex thing only you can truly figure out for yourself. Ideally it will not just provide unique ideas and visuals, but drive the history of your world, create character motivations, and be intertwined with the cultures it exists in. Woah, that's a lot of humanities buzzwords. But buzzwords are all I have time for at the end of an article.. Maybe later on I'll expand on how I go about this.

SOMETHING I'D LIKE TO SEE MORE OF

Environmental magic: Not as in earth druids or w/e, as in adding a magical element to ecology, without humans necessarily being at the center of it. Instead of people being at the top of the magical pyramid, they are only occupying another type of notch in the ecosystem. I have tried to do this with Oracle Bone, but I’d love to see more. Other bio nerds need to GET ON THIS!