scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/6vb11c.md

## [D] What categories/elements could a science-based magic system have?

* Author: u/Carduus_Benedictus *
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6vb11c/d_what_categorieselements_could_a_sciencebased/
* Score: 10

* Created: 2017-08-22T13:33:00

### Post:

There's so many ways to divide out reality that when it comes to gamifying it, it makes for a challenging prospect. Most magic systems with 'schools' or 'types' of magic tend to have between 3 and 10 of these. However, most logical divisions I can think of leave something to be desired in terms of balance, in terms of 'reality', or in terms of scope overlap. Ideas I've had:

1. The four forces. This has the problem of some having lots of uses and some having very few.

2. Existing scientific divisions. Physical/Formal/Social sciences? Physics/Chemistry/Biology? Many of these seem very difficult to balance or find 'spells' for. 

3. Elements. Doing the classic 4-5 of medieval times is fairly unscientific, but 120 is way too big. 


What are your thoughts?

### Comments:

> **u/Chosen_Pun** [+9]  *The Chosen Ones* (2 hours later)
> 
> Three major schools: Matter, energy, and information
> 
> Subcategorize matter into phase states, and energy into kinetic, heat, chemical, potential etc.
> 
> As each concept is discovered, so is the corresponding branch of magic. So in the distant past, the only magic available *was* the classic elements, because those three Matters and one Energy were all anyone understood intuitively. As more accurate models are developed, more powerful wizards arise who are capable of using them properly. The recent discovery of a particularly revolutionary mage class could drive a plot pretty well, too.
> 
> edit: To get higher-order magical effects, like a Biology or Social manipulation, you'd have to combine the three fundamental schools in proportion, the same way reality does it.

>> **u/None** [+4]  (3 hours later)
>> 
>> > Three major schools: Matter, energy, and information
>> > 
>> 
>> Or manipulation of the four fundamental forces, though that's probably broken af.

>> **u/Carduus_Benedictus** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>> 
>> Interesting! So how logically would these things combine together to create spells? Heat and gas make sense as an offensive thing, but chemical and solid doesn't seem as intuitive.

>>> **u/Chosen_Pun** [+2]  *The Chosen Ones* (4 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I was thinking individual spells would generally work along similar lines as Unsounded, The Beginner's Guide to Magical Site Licensing, or any number of similar HF systems that have passed through this sub. Mages would shift or reinforce physical properties individually or in concert to change reality based on their knowledge of how it *does* and *could* work. A Solids-focused mage would probably be best at enchanting effects, e.g. making solid armor and weapons "more solid" by increasing hardness without respect to brittleness, or sealing a door by drastically increasing its inertial mass. A Chemical energy manipulator could reduce or negate the need for certain catalysts à la Eschew Materials, or change the rates of natural reactions to, say, decay an enemy's equipment.
>>> 
>>> Ultimately, since all anyone is really messing with is entropy through its various expressions, any mage could indirectly replicate the most obvious effects of any one school using any other school creatively enough; e.g. a solids user can generate electricity with a perpetual motion flywheel by selectively increasing the wheel's gravitational mass on the downstroke. It's just that if a mage has the physics knowledge required to construct that flywheel in the first place, then they already have the physics knowledge required to manipulate Kinetic and Electrical energy directly, unless other restrictions on who can do what are added in, vis à vis Mistborn or A:tLA.
>>> 
>>> edit: To expand on my previous edit as well, accomplishing something like telepathy or mind control with Information magic should actually be possible, but would first require the caster(s) to use advanced Information magic (itself requiring the kind of theoretical and practical knowledge we don't currently have in the real world) to bootstrap their ability to use Information magic, either by directly enhancing their own brain's (or possibly mind's) ability to process data, or networking the same with those of trusted colleagues.
>>> 
>>> The costs and consequences of such an undertaking are left as an excercise for the reader, though again, many of them have been previously established on this sub.
>>> 
>>> edit2: Not sure how/if Political or Economy level effects could be acheived under this system. Maybe with a large enough group, but they would all have to have the same true knowledge base to work with, at which point they may well be capable of achieving their goals within that system through mundane means *anyway*...

> **u/EliezerYudkowsky** [+6]  *Godric Gryffindor* (7 hours later)
> 
> Calculus, linear algebra, category theory, topology, and probability theory.

>> **u/TheLegendofFredDurst** [+4]  (13 hours later)
>> 
>> Bit of a limited viewpoint. I'd say you can distill those into subsets of:
>> 
>> Analysis, Algebra, Topology, Combinatorics.

>> **u/Carduus_Benedictus** [+1]  (7 hours later)
>> 
>> Ooh, interesting blend. Are you *the* Eliezer Yudkowsky?

>>> **u/GaBeRockKing** [+15]  *Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857* (11 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Nah, he's the other, inferior Eliezer Yudkowsky.

>>> **u/Solonarv** [+2]  *Chaos Legion* (11 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Serious answer: yes.

>>>> **u/Carduus_Benedictus** [+1]  (12 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks! Only reason I ask is because on my (admittedly) limited reading of rational fiction, he's like just under Sanderson in authority on the subject.

> **u/alexanderwales** [+5]  *Time flies like an arrow* (an hour later)
> 
> I've done a number of computer science magic systems that do logical divisions. [This one](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicbuilding/comments/1ziaoz/a_crud_magic_system/) might be of the most interest to you, in part because it wouldn't be terribly hard to adapt that to something more scientific like [chemical reactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_reaction#Four_basic_types).
> 
> I think my favorite splits might be within physics, looking at various SI units and thinking of each of them as being at the core of a kind of magic. The SI divisions are all very logical, and a magic system that has "liters" at its core is going to be much different than one which has "grams".

>> **u/Carduus_Benedictus** [+1]  (5 hours later)
>> 
>> Fascinating. That'd fit really well into a Matrix-style setting.

>>> **u/alexanderwales** [+3]  *Time flies like an arrow* (6 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I was doing a weird fantasy thing with it where all the wizards are explicitly programmers except in the sense that they're using their minds instead of a computer or IDE. The protagonist, James Elsethen, was a guy who had defected from the wizard collective, with a hallucinatory sidekick who spent most of the time insulting him. The antagonist was a wizard who hunts wizards, whose mind was swiss cheese from too many queries. It got away from me though, I think because I liked the protag chapters to be in first person and everything else in third person, and the viewpoint shifts got a little off-putting.
>>> 
>>> Another one of those projects that I put too much time into without thinking it through.

>>>> **u/DaystarEld** [+2]  *Pokémon Professor* (11 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Have you read Webmage? It's a short and fun bit of urban fantasy that has a very similar premise.

> **u/ulyssessword** [+4]  (3 hours later)
> 
> Don't have natural divisions at all, just have social ones.  
> 
> For a real life example, look at a battery powered flashlight.  The anode/cathode/electrolyte reaction is "chemistry", the electricity flow is "physics", heat dispersal is "thermodynamics", the lenses are "optics", etc.

> **u/PeridexisErrant** [+4]  *put aside fear for courage, and death for life* (13 hours later)
> 
> [Elements of a scientific magic system](https://xkcd.com/965/)

> **u/retsotrembla** [+3]  (an hour later)
> 
> 3. You can use the [group names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_sets_of_chemical_elements) - they sound magical: actinides,  lanthanides, pnictogens, chalcogens, halogens, the transition metals, and the noble gases.

>> **u/Carduus_Benedictus** [+2]  (6 hours later)
>> 
>> Those *are* awesome names, but it'd be tough to figure out what to do with them as a spell.

> **u/Yama951** [+3]  (a day later)
> 
> One way on rationalizing the Four Elements is basing them on the Four States of Matter. Fire-Plasma, Air-Gas, Water-Liquid, and Earth-Solid. It could be used as a backstory, a better understanding of the four elements results in the discovery that it's about the four states of matter, then the discovery of other states of matter and the resulting research frenzy on their potential uses.

>> **u/vakusdrake** [+3]  (a day later)
>> 
>> That works except for the fire-plasma bit, since only a relatively tiny amount of the material that makes up a fire is actually ionized and it just generally seems as though manipulating/creating plasma would just not resemble firebending in nearly _any_ regards.               
>> Still that's not a bad thing since it makes the system unique. More realistically plasma control would potentially look very similar to electricity control in many regards since you can do a lot of stuff like that with relatively little creation of plasma. Of course if you allowed significant amounts of plasma to be created then plasma control seems as though it would have destructive potential vastly exceeding the other schools, though that might depend on the specifics of the other schools and in what ways you want them to be balanced.
>> 
>> There's also the question of to what degree the schools should operate differently. For instance plasma can't work just by manipulating existing plasma so it must be capable of changing some amount of existing matter into plasma. However if you allow that with plasma then it opens up a slew of new applications in the other schools and to some extent gives them control over the other elements insofar as it involves turning them into other phases of matter and _any_ form of matter can be turned into any other with the right temperature/pressure manipulations.         
>> Plus of course there's questions about what types of manipulations can be performed, since you obviously need to be able to control temperature to make plasma control workable but if you want consistency you would have to do the same for the other elements in addition to large scale kinetic manipulation (plus of course you need temperature manipulation for many phase changes mentioned prior).
>> 
>> So my point is that even without modern scientific knowledge a system based around phases of matter will be much more complex and extremely different from one based around your "standard" elemental control _especially_ if you don't arbitrarily make the type of ways you can manipulate your "elements" different for each element.          
>> Also you're likely to get more than 4 elements pretty quickly depending on what kinds of pressure and temperate control can be mustered through your magic. For instance temperature control is likely to produce super solids and super liquids relatively easily (though those elements may be less useful) and exerting enough pressure ought to be able to create electron degenerate matter though using a strict definition of stages of matter you aren't likely to get too many more unless your magic can exert force with staggering precision or can generate truly apocalyptic amounts of energy.

>>> **u/Flashbunny** [+1]  (4 days later)
>>> 
>>> That could be a plot point though - the misunderstanding leads fire to be maligned as hard to control and good for nothing except destruction, until the discovery. Then the entire system is turned on its head, and now instead of four equal elements it's actually three lesser elements and one greater one that's much harder to control and work with, but allows you to do almost anything the lesser elements can do - though in almost every case it would be easier to manipulate the sub-element directly. Alternatively, the greater plasma element can't be properly interacted with without making use of the others.

>>>> **u/vakusdrake** [+1]  (4 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> It's unclear what specifically you're referring to in my comment. For instance I said plasma control would never look anything like firebending so i'm not sure what you mean when talking about fire being a lesser element version of plasma.              
>>>> The reason for this is that there's only really a tiny amount of plasma in fire and controlling it isn't going to really let you control the large scale phenomenon of fire because the plasma is just a side effect of the fire. Plus there's going to be some microscopic amount of ions ie plasma all over the place not just in fire due to all kind of chemical reactions and UV ionization so fire's not even _that_ special as a source of ionized matter.

> **u/puesyomero** [+2]  *The Culture* (2 hours later)
> 
> Energy, matter, and transition (from one to the other)
> 
> Why not have all science magic on the same category but rank the mages by processing power? In flops or by complexity level

> **u/None** [+2]  (4 hours later)
> 
> I once did a science fantasy story where the classical elements were just the ways that the fundamental forces expressed themselves magically. The electromagnetic force was associated with classical fire, gravity with water, the strong nuclear force with earth, and the weak nuclear force with air. This allowed magic to have a scientific feel while preventing the magic schools from feeling too imbalanced - even though the weak nuclear force has nothing to do with flight in reality, the magic side of it did because it was *magic*. I still made it so that fire was immensely powerful compared to the other schools and that water was weak, requiring patience to use effectively.

> **u/vakusdrake** [+2]  (16 hours later)
> 
> I don't think anyone's actually mentioned just doing the fundamental forces normally because they don't seem balanced, but I think that's just a result of thinking about it the wrong way. Simply make magic something which necessitates significant specialization (provided people don't have forever to keep learning new types).                         
> So while electromagnetism is the most broadly useful force that doesn't matter because nobody can specialize in _all_ the uses of that school.                    
> So nobody's actual specialization would be in just "electromagnetism" it would always be more specific than that, which means there's no reason the forces need to be balanced against each other unless you are requiring people only pick specialization from one force. Hell even then I bet you could still balance 3 of the forces in utility (I still can't seem to get a good answer anywhere on what the weak force _does_) given a limited number of applications one can select.

>> **u/cae_jones** [+2]  (a day later)
>> 
>> The Weak Force is never well explained in any way other than "it transfigures one particle to another". So my uses for it, whenever it comes up, is dependant on range, etc. On the one hand, a Weakmage who can reach cosmic rays can mess with their decay rates/paths, and then you have to figure out what happens when you have an abnormal amount of Lambda particles or Muons in the atmosphere. (For similar such uses of manipulating Weak decay, check out Qntm's "How Destroy The Earth" list.)
>> 
>> A rather stranger thing happened when I decided I wanted a world with souls to reassign the Weak Force to Soul duty. This world has gods to keep things from falling apart as a result, but then I wondered what would happen to a person from that world if they should appear in ours, ceterus paribus. My first executive decision was that Soul stuff has to have a slower decay rate, maybe due to the Weak Force something something stronger in the middle, otherwise, they'd become a person-sized cloud of Mesons or Neutrinos or something in a fraction of a second, and the best case for the surrounding area would be a big burst of Cerincov[sic] radiation. A giant Weak field like that would, if it doesn't decay immediately, probably do fun things to matter that gets close to it. I mostly just think of it as "block the neutrinos or you'll get Soul Cancer!".
>> 
>> For most practical purposes, control over the Weak Force probably looks like a much less efficient, horribly imprecise version of control over electromagnetism. At best, someone might be able to bruit force it to transmute atoms, but IIUC, the reason that doesn't happen anyway has some to do with the Strong force overpowering the Weak within nuclei. But, as said earlier, the Weak Force is hard to find sufficient explanations for so as to clarify that.

>>> **u/vakusdrake** [+2]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> You could just combine the weak force into the electroweak force and have it serve as a mediocre version of some application of the strong force, or something similar. For mages who are more specialized in electroweak specializations.             
>>> Combining it with soul related stuff does seem like kind of a bad idea, because it only really serves to remove the weak force and replace it with something else similar only in name. In fact _any_ fundamental change to the weak force that would make it more relevant in this sort of context would always by necessity make it no longer the weak force, so I'm more in favor of lumping it into an electroweak school for magical purposes.

> **u/everything-narrative** [+2]  *Coral, Abide with Rubicon!* (a day later)
> 
> A Hero's War does some interesting things with thermodynamics and kinetics as the base forms taught to new mages. It's a little complicated, but very well thought out in a scientific manner.
> 
> A delight to read.

> **u/Llihr** [+2]  (8 days later)
> 
> I've thought about this for some time, and though ive come up with a nice split, the aftershocks of this throughout society are hard to gauge.
> 
> My split is matter/energy and space/time the four are distinct enough to be their own brands but are linked in strong ways which can lead to interesting effects. 
> The real question for me is whether this is a programmable system, add heat here, take it from there, Or an intelligent one ala harry potter, maybe a bit of both, spell engines using shifts in energy to mimic logic centers that you can reference in massive spells to manipulate large forces carefully?

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