14 KiB
Original Magic System Munchkining: The Nine Arts
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Author: u/TwoMcMillion *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3dpkay/original_magic_system_munchkining_the_nine_arts/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-07-18T05:21:00
Post:
Howdy all. One thing I love about this subreddit is how magic systems are taken and munchkined and fleshed out. I've been impressed with the creativity of people here, so I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and see how people would (or abuse) this system I've been playing with.
System Basics
In this system, there are nine magical arts. Each art falls into one of three categories: the innate arts, the learned arts, and the granted arts. These arts differ in how they are acquired: you are either born with the innate arts or forever without them; anyone who is able to spend a few decades in study will eventually be able to make use of the learned arts, and the granted arts come suddenly upon individuals later in life.
There are three arts in each of these categories, one end-positive, one end-neutral, and one end-negative. This roughly refers to how energy is used in the arts- either increased, remaining unchanged, or being decreased. A background magic field, the Wurd, supplies any energy needed to power the magic.
There is no such thing as a difference in magical strength between individuals; all people who have access to a given art have exactly the same potential with it. Any differences are due to practice and creativity of application.
The Innate Arts
The end-positive innate art is called Tapping. Tappers possess superhuman strength, speed, endurance, toughness, agility, senses, and all around are really good superhuman athletes. All Tappers physically possess these elements in exactly the same quantities, regardless of age or sex, though some chemical substances can negatively affect their performance. As a rule of thumb, a Tapper can can deadlift around 1000 kg (2240 lbs), sprint at around 225 kph (140 mph), and with the kind of senses you'd normally only find in the animal kingdom. They can take more punishment than a regular person, but do not have any kind of accelerated healing.
The end-neutral innate art is Lightriding. Lightriders are able to control sound and light by first taking it from somewhere and "pocketing" it for later use. For example, a Lightrider might send some time shirtless in the sun, "pocketing" light as it touches his skin, and later use that light to weave a lifelike illusion. They might also store up many small sounds over the course of the day and then release all of the stored sound at once in a massive blast. Their signature ability, however, is the ability to make gateways between two points in space, allowing quick travel between areas they know, or to ward areas against the same. There is a limit to how much a Lightrider can have pocketed before the stored energy starts leaking out of them; in general, a fully charged Lightrider can keep a gate open for about ten minutes or so before needing to recharge.
The end-negative innate art is Binding. Binders have a supernatural ability to perceive bonds in things around them. This could be a physical bond, like the ones holding a table together, or a non-physical one, like bonds of friendship. Binders are able to alter these bonds, strengthening or weakening them. The signature ability of Binders is disintegration- a Binder is able to reduce anything they can see or touching within about a hundred yards of themselves to dust or muck basically instantly. Their second most commonly used ability is the ability to bind things together, such as causing two brinks to be bound together as if glued. There are other uses, such as strengthening bonds that make clothes stronger, but cutting bonds is always easier than strengthening them, and strengthened bonds tends to provide only a short-term benefit while dramatically weakening the bonds in the long term.
About 1 in 100,000 people are born with an innate art. A person can only be born with one.
The Learned Arts
The end-positive learned art is Naming. By studying something and coming to understand it on a fundamental level, a Namer is able to command it by speaking its name and imagining an action- for example, making a rock reshape itself, or fly across a room. The affected object must be within the sound of the Namer's voice, and the Namer must be able to concentrate and speak clearly. More concentration is required for larger tasks. On average, it takes fifteen years of study to come to understand a Name. Names cannot be taught directly; techniques for learning them can be passed from person to person, but names will be only gibberish to you if you do not already know them. Writing down names has no magical effects.
The end-neutral learned art is Alchemy. Alchemy takes essences of things in the natural world to produce short-lasting magical potions, powders, or similar items. For example, feathers might be used in a potion to temporarily reduce a person's weight. Alchemy cannot produce lasting effects, and the items created generally lose their potency after a while. The more powerful a creation is, the more ingredients and more complicated processes are required to make it function. Alchemists are capable, with difficulty, of a kind of transmution in which mass is conserved, but the transmution also conserves value- you cannot turn lead into more valuable gold without destroying something worth the difference in value in the process. The most potent alchemical creation is the elixir of immortality, which, if consumed regularly, will prevent the drinker from growing biologically older than about fifty. It is only effective for the person who creates it, and cannot be shared with others. At least thirty years of study is generally required before a person is able to create this elixir.
The end-negative learned art is Thaumaturgy. Like Binding, Thaumaturgy uses the physical and non-physical bonds that exist between things, but unlike Binding Thaumaturgy does not affect those bonds directly. Instead, Thaumaturgy focuses on exploiting the bonds and sending energy down them. For example, a Thaumaturge could take one of your hairs from your hairbrush, and, assuming it is not so old that the bond has faded, put the hair in a fire and burn you as a result. Binding is an effective defense against Thaumaturgy; in this case, a Binder could cut the bond between you and your hair, making it useless to the thaumaturge. A Thaumaturge could break a rock in half and cause one half to move when the other did- at a loss, of course. Moving one half with the other via the bond would actually be harder than moving the rock by hand while it was still whole, since some energy is lost. Thaumaturgy is by far the easiest of the learned arts to master; a person can begin performing basic feats with it after about a year of study.
The Granted Arts
The end-positive granted art is called Primalism. A Primal can call up elementals out of nearby earth, air, fire, water, metal, or wood. The elementals take the form of monstrous versions of normal creatures- winged snakes, six-winged falcons, oxen with massive roots growing from their backs, etc. An elemental is able to somewhat independently carry out commands from the Primal, usually verbal ones, but they can be mental if the Primal is skilled enough. They have a range of a few miles from the Primal, again, depending on the Primal's skill. How strong and how powerful the elemental is also depends on the Primal's skill and how much of the element is around, as does as how many can be active at once. Most Primals can only control one at a time; a few can control two, and none has ever controlled more than three. Elementals vanish if the Primal controlling them is knocked unconscious or killed. It is also possible for the Primal to lose control of the elemental, in which case they generally begin to slaughter indiscriminately around them. Primalism generally comes to those people who are strongly "lawful" on the scale of lawful vs. chaos.
The end-neutral granted art is Mindbreaking. A Mindbreaker is an empath, and, with some concentration, a telepath as well, able at their strongest to read thoughts, change memories, and exert influence on people's behavior. Mindbreaking is fairly short ranged, and works best if the Mindbreaker can meet your eyes or touch you. Mindbreaking seems to come upon people entirely at random.
The end-negative granted art is Taking. A Taker is able to temporarily steal the innate or granted arts from those that have them through skin-to-skin contact and concentration. Each second of such contact grants the Taker access to the victim's magic for about an hour, while the victim loses access to it for the same. The Taker will be able to use the victim's magic at up to 80% effectiveness, depending on the Taker's skill. Note that a Taker is not granted any exceptional skill with stolen magic- they must practice with it like anyone else. Taking generally comes to people who are strongly "chaotic" on the scale of lawful vs. chaotic.
Approximately 1 in 100,000 people will gain access to a granted art over the course of their life. No person can ever have more than one, nor can anyone born with one of the innate arts acquire one. A granted power can come to a person at any time, and at any age.
The Setting
Magic, in this setting, was not something that developed naturally. Instead, it was introduced by someone who appeared in the setting's equivalent of the late Bronze Age, already a master of all nine arts, who proceeded to begin conquering the world (or at least the known portions of it). This he succeeded at, and he continues to reign hundreds of years later as an immortal god-emperor.
So, my fellow redditors, what sort of neat tricks or abuses do you see here? Thanks for your opinions- I'm really looking forward to it!
Comments:
u/protagnostic [+5] (15 hours later)
Be a Binder. Learn Thaumaturgy. Use Binding to reduce the energy loss from Thaumaturgy by strengthening the bonds. If it weakens the bond long-term, so what?
Also, if you can only be born with one of the first three, how did nine-arts-dude sidestep this? Can he be imitated? Actually...
What are the limits on Naming? What kind of Names can you learn? How fine-grained are they? Eg, one rock's Name takes 15 years, or the Name of Rock takes 15 years and then you can control all rocks? If Names can be abstract, try to learn the Name of Naming, or your own Name. Also, the word "name" just became a meaningless jumble of letters to me, which is hilarious in this context.
Learn to make the Elixir of Life. Use your extra lifespan to study Naming, then do the things above. Even if names are super-fine-grained (eg a single rock, not all rocks), you should be able to learn your own Name, or failing that at least the Name of your body. Now you're an immortal alchemist with telekinetic control over your own body, shapeshifting powers, and possibly the ability to recursively make yourself smarter and/or more powerful. If you can recursively self-improve (eg does increasing your INT stat decrease the amount of concentration you need to control yourself), does that shorten the time to learn new Names? If so, self-improve up to some suitably ridiculous level, spend five minutes learning the Names of the nine arts, grant them all to yourself at max power, use the Name of Time to travel back to the Bronze Age and become nine-arts-dude.
u/Sagebrysh [+3] Rank 7 Pragmatist (47 minutes later)
So the God Emperor has control of the Magic Engine, though enough magic leaks out to connect with a few people here and there. Depending on the population of the world, magic might be very rare. The learned arts might be fairly common, but its pretty clear that those are effectively just people hacking the magic engine to get comparatively weak results out of it. If the God Emperor has control over who gets the Innate arts, and not just the 'lawful' granted art, then he really holds all the cards. If it's just flat out impossible for the average person to take full advantage of the magic engine, power is going to concentrate like crazy among the powerful magic users. Excepting for Binders, which in their most powerful form would be the equivelant of a tactical nuke, just...melting, everything around them, their abilities probably wouldn't assure them any victories, but a group of them could certainly swing a decisive battle.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (10 hours later)
Learn Thaumaturgy, because it's useful and marketable and easy and probably useful for Alchemy, then Alchemy, because immortality has infinitely more value than anything else any of the other arts can give you.
Since this is obvious to anyone with reasonable intelligence, it's probably really hard to get into to whatever organization controls access to Alchemy. Most countries are probably ruled by ancient Alchemists, either overtly or covertly. Any publicly available information about Alchemy probably doesn't contain whatever you need to know to brew the Elixir.
u/Gurkenglas [+1] (6 hours later)
What happens if a Namer applies his power, a recorder records it, and is then played back in a similar situation?
How viable is mass production of a single kind of elixier?
How does transmutation conserve value? Compare an alchemist of back in the day when salt or aluminum were figuratively worth their weight in gold with one of today.
What's the history? With a god-emperor to guide humanity, the moral/technological progression might've run differently.
u/Tirran [+1] (a day later)
The alchemical restriction of equivalent value is really easy to exploit, because value isn't an intrinsic property of matter. I'm assuming an alchemist could brew a potion to comvince themselves that a pile of dirt has functionally infinite value, and could use that to transmute dirt into however much gold they wanted
u/celeritatis [+1] (a day later)
The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear both play with something very similar to your Thaumaturgy, and might be worth reading to consider what from the series should be allowed and what should not be.