For those of you who like magic and like having a character with magic, what types of attacks would you like to be able to do if your element was fire or water or earth or wind?
I have some ideas and a few combos in mind (extra help never hurts anyone)
The magic in my world that deals with Fire, water, wind and earth is called nature magic.
Nature magic is known as Tier 1.
Tier 2 and 3 are other types of magic.
Magic in my world is a source, a thing that is all around, it’s alive but it is not sentient. Magic can’t feel whether a person is evil or good.
So how do you use magic?
Rule 1: You have to tap into the source that is all around. Once you do that, you have to ask the source to do what you want it to do, but because magic is not sentient, whether you’re doing something good or evil magic will simply have to trust you. For example: If there is a holy tree and your element is fire and you want the tree to burn, all you have to do is ask magic to engulf it in flames.
Rule 2: Magic can deal damage or heal or do nothing, but it all depends on the persons emotions. If you want to incinerate something but you don’t have dark emotions, the flames wont damage what you’re trying to burn. This part makes magic difficult because if your trying to do something but your emotions are not in it, it can really put you in a bad position.
Rule 3: Very important… It will be reveal in the story.
What about poison and mental domination magic? My problem with all magic being element based is that is no way credible. How in hell health magi could be water? or poison earth? And mental why is placed in air… Also why not more elements like Chinese or Japanese traditions. I think for elements only is just not enough. Good idea about emotions. Like Syths I suppose heal as evil would be difficult however, drain life force energy could be easier. Maybe just mana and emotions without elements? But I am a rogue bard type of player so no an expert in magic
It’s magic. I’d say elemental based magic system is every bit as credible as a different form. It just depends on world-building.
Poison could be water-based.
It could also be plant based.
It could be earth based with noxious chemicals.
It could be air-based if you want to make poisoned gas clouds.
It could even be fire based since carbon-monoxide’s poisonous.
As for mental domination magic, I think in this case it might be an issue. Someone with the power to control minds would be able to stop other magicians from casting their spells. They’d be able to tell what spells a magician could cast too. They’d be able to change their own emotions so they could cast any spells they wanted.
I always imagined that the type of magic you wield is more based on your temperament than anything else. Of course in the case of TLA there’s an overarching singular element that you can bend, but each element quite rightly corresponds to the temperament of each Bender much more often than not.
Hot and cold emotions are quite interesting; especially love which in the right circumstances would be interchangeable from hate in terms of the source of your power. They’re both extremely powerful emotions that (duh) draw on the power of your emotions.
Somebody who’s able to manipulate somebody else’s mind would have to be manipulative in temperament themselves, otherwise they couldn’t harness it very well. Although having to manipulate your own emotions to operate at peak efficiency seems extremely counter-intuitive and frankly doomed to fail.
Of course how you feel impacts how you use the magic, and more than likely how the magic manifests. Theoretical Life Magic is a good example; somebody moral would likely heal and give life whereas somebody immoral is likely to have their magic manifest as the inverse; diminishing and taking life. In many circumstances it’s also the other way around; your magic dictates how you are.
Although to be fair, elemental magic is highly underrated and underrepresented simply because it has to be; every single element is so intertwined with life and the planet that control over even one of them would be so ridiculously OP that there’d be no compelling story unless such powers are dramatically diminished. Just controlling Water means that you could control bodies of water, but also people, plants, the atmosphere and pretty much everything under the sun.
Mental domination is particularly interesting though; I’ve often thought it would take a particularly manipulative personality to be able to manifest their magic in such a manner, possibly bordering on psychopathic. Or maybe all it takes is the right circumstances and a little charisma.
EDIT: I apologise; my iPad kept posting the unfinished post for some reason.
Nah! In Avatar it seems based entirely upon where you happen to be born, and who your parents are.
I think of magic as determined by your personality is a flawed system. Although I can see people sorting students out based on their temperament, then insisting they can only learn one type of magic.
Or a lot of it’s just stylistic.
I think all the elements can be harsh.
Water’s generally framed as the gentle, healing element, but water destroys. Floods. Tidal waves. Torrential rain. People die from too much water, and from not enough.
Fire’s usually seen as destructive. But fire brings warmth, light, it protects us from the cold. It cooks food, it smelts metal, it cauterises wounds. Even wildfires are needed, they promote regrowth.
…okay, I definitely worded that worse than I could have.
I know that Avatar depended on where you were born; it’s one of my favourite shows and it demonstrated the point I was trying to get across; I don’t think that your personality dictates your magic, I think your magic dictates your personality.
TLA is a good example; people born in the Fire Nation are often brash, powerful and impulsive. But people born into the Air Nomads are peaceful, level-headed and quite jovial.
But not all magic is the same, and so neither are personalities; your magic may just dictate the base of your personality, but just as no two snowflakes are the same, no two personalities are going to be the same regardless of what you were born into. There’ll be a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences, as per human nature. It’s likely that these differences can cause different manifestations of how your magic comes out. Someone who bends fire and is loud and brash is likely to blast fire like cannonballs in a very aggressive manner, but someone who is more pensive and open-minded may find their fire flows and sweeps like a martial arts move. It would apply to many different magical elements and ideas outside of magic.
Exactly my point; but it would also kind of depend on you.
If you were aggressive, you’d be much less inclined to heal or to cauterise; you’d want to hurt, to destroy. And that’s how your magic would grow, just as your skill with anything grows after practice. And that’s how you would see your own magic; destructive. But somebody peaceful would focus on the inverse, and that’s how their magic would he powerful.
This is actually quite interesting; it reminds me of the Cruciatus Curse from Harry Potter. Harry had to genuinely desire to cause pain, and so he was unable to perform the curse because he wasn’t as sadistic as the curse required him to be. There’s a lot of plot elements that would work well with this.
@poison_mara Poison and mental domination magic. That would fall into Tier 2 which I’m calling Warrior Magic. Which is the magic that you would be able to use if you choose the political path in my story. I still don’t have that part down though. But basically Tier 2 magic has to do with the body.
A warrior who is experience can control someone mentally(mental domination magic) through blood lust. By controlling the blood lust of someone through your own. You could in theory make his brain do a hard shut down and put some orders for him to follow.
The poison magic would work like this. If the warrior wanted to have a secret arsenal of poisons he she could inject little doses of poison into his blood stream along with an antidote and then take control of his her cells and order them to analyze and reproduce that poison. When ever he/she wanted
Its a work in process.
I don’t put more elements cause I think that would get really complicated. You could in theory create another element by combining the existing ones. For example if you work on your fire magic you would be able to use an ability called HeatNessis which is a heat wave/energy that lets you move things threw the heat particles in objects. If you combine that wave with water you might be able to create thunder.
@FairyGodfeather Anger and hate and it also could be a happy emotion with the intent to kill. The emotion just has to be evil for you. Love is related to hot(fire) yes but not in my story. That emotion is usually use in water magic to heal people. However when the emotion of love is present while trying to do damage or heal through the power of nature magic, it totally cancels out the effect of damage or heal. Why? Because love is the domain of the Love goddess.
How ever, if you wanted to use love to do damage or heal, that is what Tier 3 is for (Divinity Magic also know as magic of the gods) You would have to make a contract with the love goddess then and only then would you have power over love and could kill someone from heart brake or heal them.
The thing with magic has that there are countless overs you could use, e.g Spirit and shadow are recently been decided as elements because Spirit is technically like phsychic powers only you contact the dead and shadows always been one it’s just because it has been recently added as a magic element in some places. In total, there is always more than fire, water, earth and wind.
But anyway to answer your question properly my element would be wind since my Zodiac sign is Aquaris the embodiment of the wind and sky.
I’ve always been partial to the seven element pattern, personally (Fire, Wind, Stone, Water, Spirit, Void, and Time). I really like the potential there for Elemental magic, because it can be combined in so many different ways, particularly if you can mix and match elements. Fire can burn, and Earth can imprison, but if you combine them you have a cage of molten lava.
What about an apathetic person? They can’t feel emotion(I think or they’re just not that good at conveying or perhaps not as excitable as a normal person)
Or a psychopath for that matter? Those guys feels all the wrong emotions at all the wrong situations at all time
Yeah, that’s why I usually NEVER use magic magic… myself . Magic never have sense because it’s not something we know from real world so make it realistic is really really difficult. However I like illusion magic because it goes well with rogues and makes me remember real mages tricks
well i like it when water magic can use blood or water in the body of another person to like blow them up from the inside. or maybe freeze someone not like parazyse but like deep freeze so they can shatter. maybe control mist enter someone’s lungs and suffocate them. thats about it that i can think of with water.as for wind i guess you could suck the air out of a space making a void could also work as suffocating someone by sucking out the hair from there lungs. with air you could put out fire just make a void so the fire wont get any air cant really think of that much creative stuff with air. as for fire you could do blue fire i’m guessing you might not understand what i mean with blue fire but if you ever seen a blowtorch you will notice that they have blue fire because of the heat so going around and spitting out fire that can melt and cut metal could become some sick magic spells other then that i can’t really think about anything else with fire, as for earth growing controlled vines could work and then bind the enemy in it and pull them down into the earth. other then that i cant think of anything hope i gave you some material to work with
Although I can see people sorting students out based on their temperament, then insisting they can only learn one type of magic.
