scrape_r_rational/data/cache/6vb11c.md

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

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:

  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:

    > Three major schools: Matter, energy, and information
    > 
    
    Or manipulation of the four fundamental forces, though that's probably broken af.
    

• u/EliezerYudkowsky:

  Calculus, linear algebra, category theory, topology, and probability theory.
  

  • u/TheLegendofFredDurst:

    Bit of a limited viewpoint. I'd say you can distill those into subsets of:
    
    Analysis, Algebra, Topology, Combinatorics.
    

• u/alexanderwales:

  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/ulyssessword:

  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:

  [Elements of a scientific magic system](https://xkcd.com/965/)
  

• u/retsotrembla:

  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:

    Those *are* awesome names, but it'd be tough to figure out what to do with them as a spell.
    

• u/Yama951:

  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:

    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/puesyomero:

  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:

  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:

  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:

    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:

      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:

  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:

  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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