Making Magic Systems: The Only FOUR Types of Magic

magic magic magic magic magic magic magic magic magic it's not magic it's water bending today we are talking about magic and more specifically magic systems and how the heck you craft one first of all what even is a magic system well it's any Supernatural element to your story that is different than our own world this can be an ability that your character has the rules that your world just abides by or even a super advanced technology sometimes magic systems aren't even considered magic in this case they're treated as the science of this world something that the characters understand and can teach others but on the other end it can be ridiculous and can be so Whimsical it makes no sense at all magic systems are what distinguish fantasy and sci-fi fantasy from just regular fiction it can make the world that you're building unique it can help tell stories in a way that's never been done before and they're just all around really fun to read and learn about so how do you go about creating a magic system well if you're familiar with a book to World you'll know that lots of people have opinions on what makes a magic system good and I'm including myself here but it's good to know that these are just opinions even the wildly accepted sanderson's three laws of magic doesn't apply to every magic system and every story they're just suggestions I'm not saying rules are bad and people's opinions are bad these are actually really good tools to use they are guidelines that help you develop your magic more thoroughly but what if you don't even have a full grasp on your magic system yet what if you have no idea what your characters can even do and that's what this video is kind of for I don't want to give you rules necessarily I want to give you inspiration because that's where magic systems are born so today in hopes that I might be able to help you create your magic system we are going to discuss Magic's four most common forms and how stories use those uniquely these four magical forms are spells magical items divine intervention and enhancements let's start with spells so for the purpose of this video my own personal definition of spell is the willful activation of personal magic so a spell is basically whenever your hero Wills something to happen into the world and it does yes I know this is a bit Broad and almost every story uses this type of magic but let's be honest shooting fire from our hands is like a lifelong dream and don't you dare pretend that it's not I'm sure for a lot of us when we hear the word spell we think of Harry Potter or Merlin the Wizard but spells can come in many shapes and forms from Percy Jackson summoning a huge wave to Ang's air bending to Spider-Man's web flipping the Toby Maguire one where the goo is like actually in his body and not just a device on his wrist that is a magical item and we will get to that later now you may be saying that web slinging is a science and yes you're right it is a science but like I said before a magic system can be a science where you have to draw the correct symbol with the blood of your grandma's toe the one that tingles when it storms and chant the right words hogly booly and then on Undead Army of kittens appear the absurdity of the situation doesn't change the fact that it has a specific recipe and a repeatable outcome but also magic can be as simple as someone thinks Fire and Fire appears but that brings me to the subcategory of spells spell activation because how your characters activate their magic can actually make your magic system vastly unique from someone else let's look at Dumbledore and Zuko for an instance weird combination but trust me so Dumbledore from Harry Potter can cause a crazy fire tornado with his wand and it can look very similar to the fire bending powers from Avatar the Last air bender but if you've seen these two films you would say their magic is vastly different and that's because how they activate their magic is different in the Harry Potter Universe you have to say a specific word and wave your W just the right way to produce the right spell unless you're like a really powerful wizard and then suddenly the rules just don't apply to you anymore anyway in avatar The Last air bender only fire Benders can produce fire and they have to do so with the correct move movement of their bodies and control of their breath and emotions because they simply activate their magic in two different ways their magic looks fastly different and it's cool and it's Unique that way there are many varieties of spell activation from body movement to hand movement to hand gestures to spoken word to rituals the list can go on and on Spider-Man has to do this for some reason but why does this matter why does it matter to your story whether your character activates their spells with words or body movements well because it can make your world and Magic feel much more alive avatar The Last Airbender ties its magic directly into martial arts each bending type based off different styles because of this it gives the audience an easy way of watching their progress as they get better instead of them just sitting down watching a pond of water and focusing really hard we see them moving their bodies repeating forms training we can visually see Ron getting better at casting spells as he swishes his wand the right way this can also add unique limits if your magic system is completely based off drawing what if your character doesn't know how to draw and they have to get better at basically art in order to do their magic if it's based off words and your character is dyslexic does that hinder their magic if your magic system is word-based can people that are mute still use it these things are just kind of fun to think about and incorporate into your world and it makes your world just feel more alive and more real because now the magic system directly impacts how your characters learned things and how they would go about their lives if you have to learn martial arts in order to bend the elements then naturally lots of people would be learning martial arts in that world and maybe you don't want a unique way to activate your spell maybe you just want them to will it into the universe with the use of their mind this is great and you can still make your magic unique by getting creative with its magical source mbor is one of my favorite books in Magic systems and there's no specific movement or work words it's all controlled with their mind but their magic comes from literally eating metal and then they burn that metal in their stomach to have powers and different Metals cause different abilities this again is another way to make your magic and your world feel connected how do they get that metal is it sold on the market are the metals rare like they are on earth so people who need to digest gold to have power actually don't use their power as much because it's expensive what happens when they run out or use too much and you can take this in different directions some magic systems need blood some magic systems need specific ingredients that the character has to go retrieve some magic sources are used as the currency so do you use that currency to buy food or do you use that currency to use your magical abilities lots of different options here to make your story unique and different than others also having a common source for your magic helps tie in your different magic types together if you have a vast variety in mbor their powers range from being able to push and pull on metals to being able to control emotions or see really well these Powers have nothing in common other than eating different types of metal causes you to have these different types of powers next on our list is magical items a magical item is an object that does something Supernatural to the person wielding it or something to the world I'm not talking about wands here at least not the sticks that Gandalf and Dumbledore wave around these are just objects that are used to direct the character's own magic so it's still a spell feel like this is going to be a fidget toy I'm going to need to put it down now I'm talking about objects that have magic specifically tied to it the most popular of these is potions those little bottles of colorful juices that when drunk or poured causes Supernatural things to happen potions are basically the medicine of magic so it makes sense that they appear in tons of stories they usually lean towards the more Whimsical side of magic allowing the hero to wield something that they couldn't usually obtain with spells for example Harry getting a vial of liquid luck that he can only use once or making a poly juice potion that allows you to look like someone else for a short period of time sure JK rolling could have just given Harry a spell that could make him look like anyone he wanted to but that would have been way too overpowered making it a potion added limits to the magic so we can use it in a more fun way now Harry needs certain ingredients like the hair from the person you want to turn into and he also needs time to brew that potion so our characters aren't just constantly turning into different people whenever they need to we can take this a step further into the science side of things and have the magic be about applying the right amount of ingredients in the right order in the correct way Full Metal Alchemist does this with the use of their Alchemy in order to create or repair something you need a specific amount of each ingredient placed correctly on the transmutation circle sometimes it's not about the ingredients and the struggle to create the potion but more about who has the knowledge to make said potion the easiest example of this is a mysterious witch in the middle of the forest who your hero just so happens to run into and has a potion turning people into animals to Turning Pirates into an undead skeleton army to being a ring that makes you go insane and usually these plots all circle around the idea that our hero needs to lift the curse by the end of the story Pirates of the Caribbean actually does a Twist on this idea and instead of Our Heroes being cursed our villains are the ones cursed and the story is about them trying to lift said curse using Our Hero's blood other than potions and curses you also have just plain all Enchanted items these can be items Enchanted by Mortals like a flaming sword or a door that opens when you put your hand on a specific Rune this usually appears in stories where magic is more like the technology of the world so it's more common and easier to get these Enchanted items for example Percy Jackson has a sword made out of a certain metal that is Enchanted to not harm humans and every half blood has this type of weapon it's not rare you can also have items Enchanted by Divine beings and these items are usually treated as a rarity and can even come with some sort of Prophecy like Excalibur or a Meer whosoever holds this Hammer if he be worthy shall possess the power of thought back to Percy Jackson anabeth has a hat that can turn her invisible something no one else has in the story because it was given to her by her mother who is a goddess a Divine Enchanted item doesn't have to be some prophetic rare item that makes you king of Europe it can also just be a hat that doesn't have much plot relevance and the audience will be okay with that now speaking of gods and divine beings our third form of magic is divine intervention divine intervention is any type of magic that is controlled by something or someone beyond the Wilder okay let me explain divine intervention is one of those Magics your hero may be able to use by befriending a spirit or praying to a god you can see this in form of Summoners where your hero would have to make a deal with a demon or a Spirit in order to use its powers Arcane Ascension by Andrew row actually has a character with this type of magic she makes deals with monsters in the series and then she can use her Mana to summon that monster into existence that monster then has a mind of its own but has to act on her will obviously in this scenario the bigger the monster the more of her Mana that it uses so she has to be careful with what monster she summons during what situations divine intervention can also act like a character with its own will choosing to act when it sees fit usually in this scenario the Divine that is intervening is pretty powerful and we don't want to give all that power to our hero at once so we have this outside force that controls it and then the story becomes more about your hero learning to trust themselves or the Divine entity in order to use their magic instead of training in order to master their power this would be like Moana she can ask the sea to help her but the sea can say no but the other way around the sea can also help her without being asked the sea is its own character Percy Jackson in the Olympians is also an example of this Percy is a demig God who has to pray to his father posiden for help and trust that his father will help him now as Percy gets older he starts being able to control water without his his father's help and this is obviously more like spells but these are loose terms here I don't expect all of these to fit into these categories perfectly and this is actually a good example of how you make divine intervention work like a spell but Percy has another form of divine intervention prophecies prophecy is a vision of what's to come but I'm also going to use this term to bucket in visions of the past and present it's any Vision that our hero has that gives them information that they wouldn't have otherwise authors usually use this to show the audience and the character what is happening on the bad guy side like I mentioned before Percy has dreams of what is currently happening whether that be with his enemy Kronos or his friend Rachel or Annabeth Percy can't really control what he sees or when he sees it it just kind of happens by some divine power or connection and the same goes for Harry from Harry Potter Harry has dreams about Voldemort and sees what he is currently doing there is a small reasoning for this that part of Voldemort is still in Harry so they have this connection honestly usually these types of Prophecy don't really have logical reasonings behind them and that's okay readers expect prophecies to be a loose type of magic because our characters don't have control over that magic there is a prophecy based magic system in the series Remnant Chronicles by Mary E Pearson where prophecies come more like voices in the wind and if it's strong enough they come as Visions people with the gift can sometimes hear the voices or feel the odd feelings that may warn them of danger but in this story you can practice at hearing the voices and understanding what they mean but you still can't control when the voices speak overall Divine magic is usually uncontrollable and because of this if this is the only magic system in your story you might want to lean to your character struggles being more of an inner change accepting who they are rather than training with the magic to get better but knowing this it could be really interesting to see if you can take a divine intervention magic and make it controllable can your characters control the prophecies that they see and if they can can they also control the future and how would that impact your world lastly we're going to talk about enhancements enhancements not enchantments don't get them confused they are different enhancements are abilities that your hero either gets or are born with that is just innate to them how is this different than a spell well it's a little wishy-washy okay but just bear with me there is no waving of hands or wands because they are just born strong or born fast they are different than spells because they don't require activation like spells you're not telling a fireball to appear in your hand you're just naturally strong so you might break something when you push it too hard you do run into a problem like is Spider-Man's wall crawling a enhancement or a spell because he can turn off his stickiness at will well in my own opinion I would say it's an enhancement because he is just naturally sticky and then he learns how to control it but that's not the point here this isn't about sticking to arbitrary definition conditions no pun intended it's about getting your own ideas flowing seeing how other magic systems use this type of Magic by separating these from spells we can see that enhancements are really used a lot in superhero stories especially the superhero stories in a modern world and that's because you don't really have to change Earth's physics in order for the superpowers to work you don't have to have Mana flowing through the air in order for your character to summon fire their body just has an enhancement in order to do that superhero Thing whether it be stick to walls or turn into a green monster but it's not just superhero stories that use this there are other fantasies just not a lot Hercules is born with super strength vampires would be included here I would even say that M reading goes in here as long as it's not a spell you have to do to read someone's mind and it's just something you naturally hear at all times unlike spells enhancements aren't usually learned or developed with time usually the hero starts off with all the powers they're going to have throughout the story Captain America never gets any stronger Spider-Man never unlocks new abilities but this doesn't mean Your Heroes can't grow in their enhancements the story will usually lead to the hero adapting to their new power learning how to control it and not take it too far but I'm not telling you this so that you think oh my superhero character needs enhancements instead of spells I just think it can be useful to see the repeated process among stories and figure out why it's repeated and why it works and then see if you can break those rules can you create a super superhero magic using only potions can you create a prophecy magic system that your character can control can you apply the spell activations to your magical item magic there is a limitless amount of combinations you can make here to create your own magic system and do unique things with it and I'm sure there are lots of other forms of magic these are just kind of the main four that I see in a lot of stories obviously there are more forms out there that I did not touch on so if you can think of any that are repeatable in stories please let me know in the comments I can already think of one uh time magic I did not include that so if there's multiple that I see in your comments I will definitely be making another video talking about those forms of magic but next video is going to be about soft magic and hard magic so if you're into this and you like magic systems please like And subscribe I can't thank you guys enough for the likes and subscribes you've given me already I am so close to a th000 and yes it's like it's a tiny number compared to other people but I am I am so excited and so thankful so thank you guys I hope you guys have a great day and I will see you guys next video [Music] bye

Channel: Moon Angel

Views: 109,497

Keywords: moon, moonstudios, moonangel, studios, magic, systems, creating, avatar, the last air bender, spiderman, harry potter, forms, four, writing, fantasy, books, stories, full metal alchemist, kronk, potions, spells, magical items, enhancements, moonstudio, worldbuilding, divine intervention, emperors new groove, fullmetal alchemist, moon angel 97, angel

Id: LzHcnnX4wWE

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024