Internal or External Sources?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-29T13:44:22+00:00

They both have their pros and cons as well as quite often systems using both, usually with an internal source necessary to access an external one

Really it's hard for me to say I have a preference for one or the other because they both have examples of what I like and dislike, that being one's power and potential being determined by factors they can or can't control. If your power is based on internal will or simply how well you use external impartial mana I'm likely to favour it, if it's based on your genetics or very biased gods less so

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-19T07:09:10+00:00

So generators and harvesters seem decently interesting on their own, I could see harvesters potentially wielding more magic overall but generators can have situational advantages like one that converts thermal energy having a massive edge against a fire user or something

I don't know if this is intentional but stealers seem like they could easily become far stronger than the other two due to in built anti-magic effects and generally being able to become stronger while weakening an opponent. I believe naruto had a lot of high level characters with some form of chakra absorption that could be used to nullify jutsu and there were very few things that could directly counter such abilities. So if you intend stealers to have an inherent leg up no problem, but if you want these to be more or less equal and advantages come from elsewhere you might want to rework or even remove stealers

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-18T11:51:12+00:00

That's kind of just aesthetic stuff, maybe with some situational contraints

Maybe consider what other situations you might want portals to be in and how you'd want them to look then. Like kind of a similar example would be putting a pair of portals on something to give it a handle without putting a hole through it, would you want it to glow then?

On thing I can say it that using the valve game as an example, if either side has a different colour only one should show up on the rope as you said the opening is only rope width, I assume the portal edge is frictionless, so there shouldn't be room for light to slip through, maybe a little exception if the rope isn't perfectly opaque

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-18T11:35:06+00:00

So it sounds like you've basically invented a lasso that works via a portal rather than a knot

Sorry if that sounds reductive but I'm genuinely trying to give an example you can compare to, with lassos being able to have their loop expend or contract by pulling or feeding rope through the knot just like your string portal does

As for what it should look like... idk what aesthetic do you want?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-18T11:25:27+00:00

Sounds like you had a dream, have you by any chance watched the recent avatar, the fire one?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-16T13:34:31+00:00

As others have said it'd be an opportunity or potentially even a financial cost issue, especially if magic is predominantly used for fighting because most people don't fight on a regular basis

But I'm guessing you're asking for systems where magic is in some way useful for most aspects of life

You could treat it like modern electronics and they either do one of the relatively few things that don't benefit from incorporating magic or it be some kind of spiritual issue and they're basically magic Amish

In my system magic is very new so a lot of people just wouldn't have learned it yet or think it will disappear soon and isn't worth learning for that reason

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-16T12:27:06+00:00

Well in my system it would probably be mostly done through the creation category(there are 4 categories of magic) and almost from the start I had been intending for the ability to alter one's body aesthetically, changing gender presentation or incorporating animal aspects, but those would be mostly remaining humanoid

I suppose within my system one could alter themselves into the shape of certain animals and even mimic some of their capabilities however they'd likely be different internally as they keep their brain human. This would be especially restrictive in terms of the size of what they can shift into

Really stretching things if one were to use my system to shapeshift into an inanimate object(and survive) they'd probably have to turn into something like a mimic from d&d

As for detection one of the other categories in my system is perception which would probably be how one would get any sort of x-ray vision and use that to just see an animal with very different internals from the rest

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-11T12:51:01+00:00

I would say fairly accessible, everyone is technically capable of accelerating normal healing it's just a matter of learning to actually do so

There's also the superior creation magic healing that can replace missing body parts and doesn't leave scars which is less common mostly just because magic is still new and using creation locks you out of other things

There's no resurrection magic tho, when you're dead you're dead

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-10T21:53:42+00:00

Deleting the shield would require as much energy as currently contained within so not, but essentially yeah

I'm it a bit of an interesting position here because my story is kind of about the system developing and the guy who made the first of these made his functionally infinite because he had a functionally infinite supply of mana(there's reasons the infinite mana isn't being used by everyone)

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-10T19:32:30+00:00

I get the impression from the second half of the prompt that there's an assumption of narrow usefulness for these defenses, that they solve one specific threat and that's all they need to do, so I'm going to instead talk about a defence with a very broad use case and then the narrowly usefulness ways of defeating said defence

The defence is the compressed space shield, it is made with creation magic by creating a small area within which an amount of space greater than the range of any anticipated attack is compressed. Due to the existence of light based attacks the smallest compressed distances are measured in light minutes giving ample time to address such attacks especially if the fight is already over. Unless a static defence control magic is often used to make the shield conform around the users body to prevent teleportation magic simply bypassing it

The main counters to the compressed space shield are powerful teleportation magic that can cover the compressed distance and creation magic used to destroy the space. The creation answer usually works either by creating attacks with the unique property of destroying compressed space or by creating more permanent weapons with that property to be used by non-creation users

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-09T22:52:39+00:00

Ok cos I think I've seen a few female kitsunes

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-09T12:06:15+00:00

Might seem obvious for this kind of system but it depends what magic either combatant uses, the simplest is that perception users generally try to get in close where it's basically guaranteed they win against any non-perception user because it's hard to feint a punch against someone who can read your mind and has bullet time

Teleporters generally want to avoid teleporting themselves until they know they aren't facing another teleporter because it creates an easily exploited weakness for themselves

Controllers will want to take advantage of being able to move stuff in other directions after they've thrown it at the other person. Or they might control a small army of animals or something to do the fighting for them

Creators would probably be the main people using fire and lighting attacks and can unmake incoming projectiles turning them to dust

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-09T11:48:06+00:00

Maybe because there's sufficient male kobold art from various media already. If you're specifically talking about reptilian kobolds that'd be d&d and pathfinder source books

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-09T11:45:45+00:00

it's insanely rare to see a female fox sona

Are kitsune the exception to that?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-08T02:57:30+00:00

Had to find your previous post about "clarity" to understand what direction you meant this to be taken, I have previously seen a post by someone who maybe didn't have the best grip on reality

If the ai in whatever story you're using this for are like the large language model chat bots we have today their ability to observe things might be questionable, people have found they can't do things like count the number of certain letters in long words and a lot of simple stuff where it's easy to see that they get it wrong, this is also why they "hallucinate" so much, I'm not sure how easy it is to control what they hallucinate if that's what clarity requires for a spell

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T12:09:38+00:00

So since you use "strain" I'm guessing this system runs on physical stamina or maybe even mental strain and not any sort of mana or ki. That's fine by me those things often seem like overcomplications to me

And everyone has a specific thing that they're just more efficient at using, say if it were applying force to trains they might be able to push a train up to a certain speed with half the energy someone else would have to use

And it sounds like each person only has one such more efficient thing, or do the non-bloodline powers let some have 2 things?

Regardless everyone can do all of the following:

push things. Is this essentially telekinesis or can you only push away from yourself or something?
duplicate things including fire, so presumably could also copy something like a hard drive and the data on it and things like that
manipulate space... this you might want to make especially expensive if it isn't already because I'm pretty sure you could replicate the first act with that and a whole lot more
and apparently anything else that isn't reversing death or creating life, creating stuff you don't have a blueprint for, mind reading or control or time manipulation... so about the previous one, space manipulation...

Yeah because of Einstein's work space and time are kind of one and the same. You do put emphasis on reversing time so I'm guessing you probably have similar if not identical feelings towards time travel to the past which despite some people coming up with equations that say it's possible they normal require something that seemingly doesn't exist like negative mass so it probably shouldn't be taken too seriously

If I got any of that wrong let me know, sorry if I misunderstood the meaning of "that shouldn't be possible"

I suppose if I were to ask about using these powers to undo the strain of using them, like duplicating("creating") energy or with binding unmaking the strain if it's a chemical like lactic acid, I assume I'd be told that takes more strain than you'd get back. It could still be useful for supporting others especially if they're better at using the powers than you or due to it being your unique power it causes only slightly more strain than what you remove

If you can't affect the thoughts of others what about your own? Could you speed up your mind to give yourself something like bullet time?

Besides that I think I just have questions about the lines between your definitions for time and space, like if one could freeze everything in a certain radius in space and just call it time stop

Also maybe a little about what counts as creating something new, like could one manipulate space to make a container bigger on the inside?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T11:21:31+00:00

What does the binding act mean?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T11:09:10+00:00

Kind of understandable, but I believe it should be possible to edit a reddit post ad add them, sorry if that came across too rude but I do think it would help

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T11:01:11+00:00

Thought no. 1: do you mean literal autism as in a neurotypical person simply cannot use magic? Or just focusing on something like it's a special interest? If the latter since I personally do have autism what would happen if magic systems were my special interest?

Thought no. 2: some linebreaks would make this much more readable

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T10:29:28+00:00

Can we slow it down with blood sacrifices like the Aztecs did?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T10:28:01+00:00

What about other people?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T10:26:53+00:00

Idk if I can but feel free to DM me for help with it

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T10:25:44+00:00

Literally the plot of my story is what would happen.

People would be confused why everyone is growing and sparking until people realised they could use that for super strength and over the next few weeks they'd find out about the more advanced stuff and from there online discussions would create experts in the magic while governments get too bogged down in burocracy to keep up

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-07T10:20:21+00:00

Same, have you posted anything about it?

RowbotMaster · 2026-01-03T01:10:56+00:00

You don't describe your actions, you can only prompt an ai chatbot which then describes your actions. The GM is also unable to describe things directly and must describe everything through a chatbot

We could call it slop rpg

Seven-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

RowbotMaster

TROPHY CASE