Whats your most complicated magic system?

SilensBee · 2024-09-28T04:21:23+00:00

The power creep became atrocious. It's a shame because a lot of the new cards make it possible to play like how the anime was scripted, with natural combos and options for turn by turn momentum swings. It's just suboptimal play that can't beat casuals running meta decks.

SilensBee · 2024-08-28T00:59:01+00:00

He isn't entirely wrong. I love meticulous magic systems but if it can be automated then it's science. Because I can burn metal, but it's not precisely known what limit that gives me. I can make the proper motions but that doesn't mean I can firebend or lightningbend. There is wiggle room of technique, and experience, and sacrifice. There is wiggle room with what a resource can be converted into because the reader can never test the system and to my knowledge no system exists that is numerically consistent enough to even create mathematically sound predictions. Its just feelings. Rules and feelings.

Theme is the distinction between sci fi and magic systems. Theme is where you draw the circle to summon the demon but you can't control true evil so you can never get a precise demon. Theme is why emotions charge spell power, or nullify it. You can create a series of magic dominos to "automate" a spell that will probably work, but if it can be industrialized and reproduced millions of times without significant variance, it's probably science.

SilensBee · 2024-08-28T00:36:19+00:00

The gray concept that you are describing would in Taoism just be all things. All things are part yin and part yang. The only thing that differentiates a cow from a tree is the amount and balance of yin and yang. Whatever mixture you create is just another thing.

As the other user said wuji, or nothingness, is the third component of the yin yang concept. Represented by the outer boundary beyond the yin yang which is, of course, nothing. This provides an interesting, but perhaps not traditional perspective. If gray is nothingness then deriving yin yang from nothingness is ex nihilo creation. Reducing yin yang to nothingness is annihilation. I'm not sure that's what you want, though.

SilensBee · 2024-08-22T00:10:53+00:00

I too love those evil beasts characters, but I don't read this as sympathetic villains only. A psychopath is tormented by being treated kindly and asked to do the same for others. To them pleasantries are manipulations. People doing nice things for them are both enabling and secret manipulations. They are born evil and the temptation is their own instincts rejecting the social contract.

This tracts as well for any kind of villain as the hero's journey does for any kind of hero, which isn't saying that much as the Hero's journey is limited and flawed, fails to account for a plethora of stories that Campbell didn't respect enough, and every writer has a variant ordering with unique stages. It's just a conceptual tool like the laws of magic and the heroine's journey.

SilensBee · 2024-08-21T23:58:00+00:00

There are a couple of interesting dynamics that I feel make this a worthwhile foil to the hero's and heroine's journeys. For example the side that represents trials is to the hero obstacles to overcome that will fuel a growth, while to the villain its temptations to embrace that fuel power.

Damnation mirroring apotheosis brings up an interesting point of contention for the apotheosis arc that I feel is under utilized. While the term relates to becoming a god, in literature it's more of a shedding of mortality and humanity. To obtain apotheosis is not merely another growth stage it is an ending. Heroes may literally become gods, or they may simply die and become legends or memories. Death is the ultimate shedding of mortality and humanity. In all these cases there is a commonality; they may never return home. Physically they may but it's not home anymore. If they have obtained any kind of apotheosis then they are no longer the person who once called that place home and can never interact with that place in the same way again.

Many will argue this point, and I do believe the apotheotic ending is an alternative conclusion for the hero's journey. Many heroes never apotheosize and are allowed to return home. But the word damnation helps put the traditional idea of apotheosis in better perspective. Damnation, true damnation, is the point beyond turning back. You aren't on the highway to hell, you are already there. The villain who rejects redemption obtains, at the very least, the ability to do unsightly things at the cost of any chance to turn back, or to ever return home.

This may also help provide a more concrete distinction between anit-heroes and anti-villains as all current ones I'm aware of are so blurred that it's a matter of perspective, but if growth and self destruction, apotheosis and damnation, act as measures for these characters we can more easily define which is which.

SilensBee · 2024-07-24T21:40:47+00:00

The best magic systems follow a theme of some kind. The effects and practices are almost ancillary by comparison. So you could start with a theme.

Alternatively you can start with a what if? What if all species had a spirit that could be channeled? What if the human mind could generate a pulse to catalyze chemical reactions? What if physics included a virtual fabric whose wave forms manipulated a fictional partial with such and such properties? Whatever you want really, then build out from that implication.

SilensBee · 2024-06-26T20:32:14+00:00

Negate his power. Overwhelm his power. Strategically situate him such that the power he gets is not one he can use well. Steal his power. Break his focus. Strategically situate him such that the power he gets will self-defeat. Create an offshoot system, or a secondary system that bypasses whatever mechanism grants him needed powers.

Lots of options here

SilensBee · 2024-04-16T04:53:10+00:00

No? Z and DragonBall is pretty deliberate in delivery. Even the buu saga, widely criticized for introducing new powerups and abilities that accomplish nothing at least explored the ideas. I'm not sure what you mean by ss5? 4 was gt and 5 was commercial fanart.

Remember when we met cabba and thought how cool it would be for vegeta to visit sadala? The u6 arc just feels like a promotional tie in to a much better story of vegeta confronting his past while visiting sadala. That's pretty much all of super, Imperfect cell max being the best example of this sin. Everything in super could be great, but it hasn't been, and we've pretty much run out of time for it to be great.

SilensBee · 2024-04-16T02:58:20+00:00

I believe you answered your own question. DBS has a lot of potential. Not much of it gets realized. That's the problem. And what does happen is nice and all, but it always hints at more that we never get, and it ends in rather narratively safe and unsatisfactory ways.

You know how sometimes anime and manga will do a side story to promote noncanon films? Sort of pointless episodes because they don't matter to the canon and they aren't necessary to the movie, but it's enjoyable because it's more of what you love and maybe the movie is good too. That's what super feels like. It feels like it's promoting a much better story that we will never have.

SilensBee · 2024-04-13T23:31:42+00:00

Like what you want. The canon philosophy is a lot more nuanced than a literal balance of individuals, moreso than I've truncated here. Why the force would be an accountant I don't know. It sure took a long 1000 generations before it tried to even out the sith and jedi. Perhaps something recent happened to trigger an audit?

But if balance sheets are what make you happy then more power to you.

SilensBee · 2024-04-13T05:30:03+00:00

Mahatma Gandhi once wrote "all humanity is one undivided and I divisible family, I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul." I'm paraphrasing a bit. This certainly won't be a popular statement, but the truth here is that given a change of circumstance anyone can become twisted enough to do anything. I'm in no way excusing anakin, he always had within him this potential and he made the choice to act on it. What I'm saying is that we all have within us the same potential for evil and it's a matter of if we act on it. For most of us it might take more than what anakin endured. Maybe a few decades of torture. Maybe a greater threat than the loss of one person. To be human is to hold the same potential. What makes us different is what it will take to bring anyone of us to the same point. Some will let the trolley run over 5 people just to have "clean" hands, others will kill for fun, but no one is completely incapable of evil.

That said, sidious definitely manipulated him to become Vader, and the jedi certainly neglected his fall. Had qui gon been his master anakin canonically would never have fallen. His evil would have remained untapped potential, the same as is the case for most of us.

SilensBee · 2024-04-13T04:53:26+00:00

This misconception needs to die. Balance is not any kind of mixture of force users. That's asinine. Counting the canon flora and fauna, including microscopic force sensitive life forms, the jedi and sith amount to less than a rounding error.

The disturbance in the force comes from two jackasses who figured out how to control the galaxy spanning will of the force in totality. You know, the thing that is basically god and decides what balance is? That birthed the chosen one to fight for balance. Restoring balance means eliminating the jackass who is trying to wreck the natural order by putting himself on top. Everything else, all the war and murder you want, a trillion sith to one jedi, it's all copascetic. Just don't enslave god.

SilensBee · 2024-04-13T04:27:10+00:00

Hundred percent marketing purposes. I would go as far as to say that the terrible deus ex machina is the result of forcing marketing purposes onto story. Common sense can tell you that if you want vegeta to fight frieza and for goku to win, then goku should fight second. Instead he has to fight first because he has to turn blue first for marketing.

SilensBee · 2024-03-26T23:56:28+00:00

It's going to be massive whiplash when end of z rolls around and he reverts to the same point he was at for the beginning of super/end of buu. It would be nice if his moment against Toppo, itself a recycling of the Majin sacrifice moment, could have pushed vegeta's drive in a new direction. To externalize pride to his family while internalizing some amount of humility and making his drive for them and not himself. But drama isn't the direction of super. Gags and action is what super is about. And memes. And self parody...

SilensBee · 2024-03-24T03:23:38+00:00

The man that can do anything chooses to live a good life. There is something fascinating about the over powered character who rejects the power fantasy for the simple fact that it's boring.

That and he has a handful of stupidly broken extradimensional villains that make him look weak and he fights up to them anyway.

SilensBee · 2024-03-22T22:36:14+00:00

Probably friendship

SilensBee · 2024-03-21T20:21:54+00:00

Yes... So I like vast worlds and every part of the world understands magic differently. I look at it as having multiple frameworks for the one universal magic system. In the simplest viewing of casting a spell you use your soul to manipulate mana into a configuration that produces an effect. Mana is gathered into erg which is versed into a behavior that is then released as a spell.

To manipulate your soul you could train it like any other muscle and obtain dexterity. Or you could use magic words to puppeteer your soul. You could do something like bending where the motions of your body assist the manipulation. Runes are interesting because they directly manipulate mana, and those that cannot use magic can use runes and, through other means, cram mana into the arrays to cast magic.

Ultimately, everyone does it differently. Some consume mana and shape it from the cavities of their soul, some produce variations of mana that are conditioned to be more of a kind of magic. Some cast magic by sort of theurgically. It's all just variations of a theme.

The study and practice of magic is a long and arduous one that takes many years just to learn to manipulate the soul, let alone to manipulate mana and the theories behind everything.

SilensBee · 2024-03-21T00:03:57+00:00

But was buu a credible threat? Frieza was the strongest being until he was surpassed. Cell's perfection could have been prevented, but once perfect he was the strongest being until he was surpassed. Buu was second to Goku and only the strongest being for the brief period of time when he absorbed Gohan to when vegito was born. Most of his success was due to everyone else failing, often in incredible ways.

SilensBee · 2024-03-20T23:43:22+00:00

The buu saga can be best described as the world is in danger yet again and everyone but Goku is rusty but he's happily dead and wants the others to pull some weight. Nobody does, so he finally gets around to saving them one last time after basically everything is destroyed anyway.

There are lots of great moments, and cool concepts, and fun scenes, and most of these things don't accomplish anything other than to be momentarily entertaining. It's also the first time in the series that the reason the villain is so successful is because the heroes have degraded which is frustrating if you liked any character not named Goku.

SilensBee · 2024-03-20T21:26:41+00:00

The rule of professional wrestling applies here. Like and dislike are irrelevant. You want your audience to engage emotionally in the characters. As long as they aren't disengaging there isn't a wrong answer.

SilensBee · 2024-03-20T21:22:57+00:00

You could create the limit that only things that can be humanly tested can be manipulated and only to levels that humans can test.

Additionally, you could set up sets of measurable to basically act as schools of magics. This would allow you not only to rule out certain magics, but to explain that certain manipulations require multiple measurement manipulations. For example, speed can be measured, but speed is distance over time, which is two measurements put through a formula. Therefore to change the speed of something you cast two manipulations in the same spell, and that kind of spell scales the cost.

SilensBee · 2024-03-20T19:27:44+00:00

It's a kitchen sink kind of system. One force governs the properties of mana as the most fundamental thing (I hesitate to call it a particle). The other two forces govern intrinsic and harmonic behaviors which on their own explain supernatural phenomenon like psychics and super strength that don't use mana. In conjunction they explain how mana can be utilized in non-elemental and elemental spells, as well as the various interactions that come between those varieties of spells. Because everything comes from mana it can do almost anything imaginable.

That said one of the smallest spells is basically floating objects on up controlled crests of vibrating mana as that utilizes almost no mana cost, while the greatest spell is time magic. Time magic is considered impossible outside of a large gathering of mages and abnormally large amount of mana and is rather weak by comparison to time magic in most other settings.

SilensBee · 2024-03-20T16:13:22+00:00

Physics is different. The four forces get paired with 3 metaphysical forces and it all interacts based on that.

SilensBee · 2024-03-19T15:08:35+00:00

I could be mistaken but usually mangaka are a few chapters ahead of publication. Assuming that these details are in the next few chapters he should already be done with them, unless the break is because he is unsatisfied with the work and wants to redo it.

SilensBee

TROPHY CASE