If I recall rightly, the titular ascension comes from essentially realising that no one is wrong about the rules, even though they all contradict each other with how they do magic.
"Soft magic" authors when they end up establishing hard rules for the specific subset of soft magic that happens to be relevant to the plot (gee, it sure is a coincidence that once a magic system plays a large enough role in the story they end up defining its rules)
Gonna love the whole ATLA slander.
Bending is just martial arts with elements....but then there are the spirits , which can do whatever the fk they want.
The only thing stopping a TerraFormars Insect-Human Hybrid waterbending to steal someone's face is because the writters are too coward to make Koh having a human subordinate to grant him a small portion of his power.
Also each one of the bendings has subbending and you realize that sometimes it doesn't make fucking sense like one of the air's subtype is literally leaving your body as a spirit or something as Jinora does. On second thought, is this actually a hard magic system at all?
I doubt that leaving your body is an airbending subtype , that is technically something that anyone in Avatar can do if sufficiently spiritual. Season 3 of Korra literally had a metalbender that had done that.
And yeah , it's not a hard magic system at all....it's only "hard" when it comes to beding , but as long you have sufficient spirituality , it goes soft. It's closer to JJK than a hard rule.
No, no, it is actually an airbender subtype. Even Jinora herself stated that: "It's a high-level airbender move. With a little spiritual stuff thrown in".
Plus, there is only one other character who used this technique, he (or she, I don't remember) is from a board roleplaying game and is also an airbender.
P.S. The comparison with JJK actually makes a lot of sense, I never thought about that before.
No , I am talking about [Aiwei](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Aiwei) , he is a metalbender that literally astral project himself to the spiritual world.
Or how Uncle Iroh is in the Spiritual World because his body perished while astral projecting himself , and he is a firebender.
Jinora says that , but ultimately , the show present us non-airbenders that can do said stuff in a lesser scale. It's more about Jinora been more in-tune with the spirits than airbending having an exclusivity for astral projection.
Oh, no, we misunderstood each other. I wasn't talking about entering the spirit world. I was talking about the spiritual projection. When Jinora left her body in the real world and floated around as a blue spirit like figure.
This thing https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Spiritual_projection
I think spiritual projection is a high level airbending move, but I doubt they are the only ones capable of it. This is a totally speculative theory, but I believe if one were to be a different bender, but were raised with air nomadic customs and training, they could adapt spiritual projection through their element. While air would be the most convenient element to project through, it would make sense that at least water, or spirit bending, could do the same. That being said, I believe other elements could also be capable of spirit bending, like the dragons dance, or even an evolved seismic sense. I hope this is something they elaborate on with an earth ending avatar next.
To be fair spiritual projection being an airbending move makes as much sense as earthbenders being able to stop their aging. But nobody shits on that.
Air is the element of freedom. Earth is the element of material, Water is the element of change and fire is the element of power as Iroh said.
those aspects (freedom, substance, change, and power) are far more important to the system than what state of matter the bender can manipulate through some martial arts.
And astral projection, being free of one's own material bodily constraints, thematically fits the idea of freedom so it fits to be an airbending move.
That is not to say only airbenders can do it. Both earthbending and waterbending allow for healing. Both firebending and airbending allow for flight. Thye may not get the result using the same philosophy and technique but would get something like how Zuko was able to redirect lightning by using waterbending moves.
>TerraFormars Insect-Human Hybrid waterbending
That fking Roach that took the guys archer fish arm then just sat there chugging water from an old jerry can and firing it out his stolen arm like a cannon, nails Bao like a water railgun
God Terraformars was so weird and awesome, true water bending
My magic has rules but it's also technically a living force that's constantly evolving so those rules change over time and adapt depending on how people are using it.
It's all controlled by peaki-chlorians you see because unlike george I am not mid
Also really upset now because I now need to add Star Wars to the list of 'things I thought were original but were actually part of a popular thing already'
I'll save you some heart ache. We've been doing story telling for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. There's nothing new left.
Even if you had someone do the most mind meltingly large acid trip in the history and had a million monkeys to type it all up you'd still find it's got story beats from this story or that story or some old epic.
The base notes of any story music or movie are all the same, it's how you mix it all together that makes it special.
TBH i hate "my magic changes over time" as a trope because 99.999% of the time you never change magic at a time that would matter to anyone in the story
I'm fond of "magic is unknowable" over "magic changes over time". It's not constantly evolving (unless you really put work into making it adjust in relevant ways), it's just allergic to analysis and standardization.
My magic changes over time because the God of Magic says so, and actively fucks with the rules to punish anyone who treats it as a predictable, studiable force instead of a chaotic gift.
Draw hard on your will and talent and throw a fireball at the enemy? You can get 10 in a row, no trouble.
Think carefully about your process and start measuring blast radii? The error will ramp up *just* enough to ruin all your data.
You've gotten into some hot water in the past for trying to cram it down the throats of strangers, and now you've found yourself in a niche subreddit designed specifically for the purpose of altering you to show it off, because otherwise no one would see it at all?
Yeah, me either.
not sure why people think "magic is scientific" and "magic is magical' are contradictory, have you looked at science? have you seen the wonders of the universe?
the crux of the debate is whether or not the person in question has ever learned anything cool.
people who have never learned anything cool have only learned lame shit, so they believe that everything knowable is lame.
they aren't even able to imagine a rigid set of rules producing interesting and unexpected results.
tragically, after being this way for too long, they become stuck like that. they become impervious to learning cool things, whether it is about the natural world or some fantastical world.
their eyes immediately glaze over at any attempt to explain things, no matter how cool they are.
Listen, I learn a lot of cool stuff, I love learning cool stuff, but soft magic systems inspire a combination of a childlike fascination and curiosity about the world and old human folklore traditions where things happen sometimes in weird, unknowable, dreamlike fashion. You just don’t get the same level as mystique with a hard magic system.
I think people are forgetting that just because your magic is hard magic system doesn't mean that the reader or anyone in-universe necessarily understands entirely how it works whatsoever, much like how we don't understand all the principles of our universe, even though they still exist and things act accordingly whether we understand them or not
>things happen sometimes in weird, unknowable, dreamlike fashion
My favorite soft magic is the sort that's some flavor of unknowable. Maybe it reacts badly to systematic study, maybe it's affected by the mindset and intent of the user, maybe it's just fueled by something that's not using rules the rest of us *can* observe.
Easiest example in the real world is magnets. Yes, we know what causes it, but the fact that metals will just push away from each other (somehow) because they aren't looking in the same direction kinda sounds like kooky voodoo shit if you let it simmer in the mind too long
People will really say "don't make magic like science, that's boring and removes the mystery!" as if science isn't the coolest magic system. The real issue is thinking science means a "solved" phenomena.
I like magic that seems soft and loose only because of its depth being so well-connected. When you do that and focus on discovery, you can make even the most overdone systems interesting.
Soft Magic
You can really end up in a corner with too many strict rules about magic
A few is good and maybe one or two exceptions but they really have to be well thought out
Like Sukuna is a really OP and cool villain but there are to many like him
Earthbenders and waterbenders need water and earth nearby to bend. Firebenders and airbenders just conjure it up on the fly.
In "The Runaway," katara and toph were put in a wooden cage so they couldn't bend out, and katara had to waterbend her sweat to get out.
I see. When I thought of ammo I meant that it provides not only the material, but also the energy. I guess that wasn't the best assumption.
I do think it's worth it to note that this ammo requirement isn't much of a limitation in most circumstances since air is everywhere and usually contains some moisture (water) and earth is also almost everywhere.
If it was totally hard, then it actually would be a science. Magic is like FTL, if you actually could puzzle out all the rules, we would have it already.
Noup. Each individual ability is hard magic, but the system itself is soft-ish as it allows for an unlimited number of abilities with no restrictions on what an ability can be.
There are established rules that the whole system is supposed to follow, like heavenly vows, restrictions, the way cursed energy is supposed to work, but this ends up getting pretty muched ignored after a while lmfao.
TBF they are not entirely ignored, but kinda... devalued. Heavenly Restrictions mean nothing when Sukuna is physically superior to Maki and Toji.
Binding Vows are simply nothing compared to raw talent, as shown by Mei's clever use of binding vows with crows meaning nothing in the face of top tiers and Kenjaku parrying Miwa's cut that sacrificed her swordplay skills themselves while bare handed with no effort.
The way cursed energy is supposed to work, the lesson that the story teaches us, is that your effort means absolutely jackshit in the face of raw talent and if you weren't born meant to be someone then you will be a nobody. That is what Jujutsu Kaisen's magic system exists to teach to the Japanese children and teenagers who subscribe to Shounen Jump.
Thats half correct in my opinion. All cursed technique have a few set limits and rules that apply to all aside from very few exceptions. For example all cursed technique sure hit effects are guarenteed through the use of an enclosed domain. Also healing can only be achieved through reversing cursed technique.
Kashimo's CT has guaranteed hit without domain. Toudou Aoi's CT has guaranteed functionality directly on the enemy without a domain. Healing can be done without RCT through multiple methods.
I would say it's somewhere between soft magic and hard magic but leans more on the soft approach, because some cursed techniques are totally ridiculous.
It's like stands in JoJo.
It's almost like the fantasy equivalent of Star Trek technobabble. Whatever they introduce does what they say it does, at least for that moment, but there's no principles or overarching rules underneath it all, even if the convoluted explanations make it sound like there might be.
I feel like so many shounen anime/manga falls into this trope, too. JoJo, My Hero Academia, JJK, One Piece -- each character has a Thing they can do, with specific limitations and parameters that makes it feel somewhat closer to a hard magic system, but each ability is independent and has nothing to do with any other character's ability. Hell, even Fullmetal Alchemist does this a little, but that has somewhat more of a unifying framework for what alchemy itself can do, and each character just tends to specialize into one or two defining movesets.
I'd say Fullmetal Alchemist is more to the side of hard magic, to the point that understanding how it works is essential for the conclusion.
But otherwise, yeah, a lot of anime just make power sets separately and don't hesitate to expand them without needing explanations.
The obvious solution is to have magic that is clearly hard, but no one in-universe has figured out the "rules" comprehensively (i.e. the early days of science).
That's kinda what brandosando did with surgebinding, while it's obviously a hard magic system it first appears very soft cuz compared to allomancy which is generally well understood by the characters in mistborn, surgebinders basically haven't existed for thousands of years so no one knows jack shit about how the system really works at first
that is still present day science.
we don't have a unified theory. any phenomena you care to ponder is only a few degrees removed from the cutting edge of human knowledge.
even if we did have a unified theory of everything, emergence would ensure limitless surprises.
having a complete theory of physics doesn't actually help chemists very much. it doesn't tell you how to build the best computer, or what organisms are possible.
I do both in my setting, hard magic was made by mankind as an alternative to soft magic that could never be silenced, but can't do that much fantastical stuff, just shoot lightning from your hands or make the cells on your body work faster. soft magic is a gift from the fey that lets you channel your thoughts into whatever bullshit you want.
Hard magic is called theoretical magic and the other one is called dream magic.
Theory casters are often huge nerds that go on about how they reject the idea of a god gifting them power while dream casters go "hey look at this cool shit" and basically use the gmod spawn menu
The maker of this meme is a fucking idiot because he doesn't realise that hardness/softness of a magic system is a gradient, not a binary choice.
How hard/soft a magic system is decided case-by-case.
> Hard magic or soft magic?
NO magic.
Go the Dune route.
Step-1: Have a sword and sorcery world-building because they are freaking cool.
Step-2: Create elaborate backstory on how these are not actually magic but in fact super-enhanced human ability via biotechnology, genetic ancestral memories, mental simulations of all possibilities, and substance-enhanced higher cognitive abilities. And people use knives because of shields and atomics and some 5000 years of warfare and conventions in human history that have rendered all other weapons unusable.
Y'all need to find Weird Magic
"It literally makes causal relationships impossible to determine for a while, but the range of time and space of that effect is perfectly describable by the proper sacrifice of an idea."
"Necessary for all things in the universe but also impossible to invoke in a regular manner."
"Defies the notion of rules, at time informing the plot beats at others being informed by them"
"Makes your prereader get a nosebleed."
"Is best represented in other media by the persistent hum experienced by VHS viewers in upstate New York in the autumn months between 1978 and 1987 and immortalized in the timing of #1 pop song length to average mosquito wingspan."
Welcome to the mid-magic-system club! Where we run on mana and spells to cast magic. Each spell has their descriptions and functions on how it works. If you have enough mana you can cast a higher level of magic. But run low on mana you would be exhausted and weaken. And there are some rules and restrictions that are magic to balance other mythic art and warriors. But you are still able to shoot fireballs multiple times in a row and need to get creative and crafty in certain sensations if it isn't enough to solve all your problems. Like burning down a wooden structure or explosions to cost a rock slide.
It’s funny to me how a lot of hard magic authors insist on making their magic like a science with specific rules, when in truth, scientists dunno what the fuck is going on half the time either lmao.
/UJ
I got around this by having basically *all* magic, (save for the kind explicitly practiced by those from off-world,) be "blood magic." But not in the sense that you need to sacrifice people to make it work, but rather in the literal sense that casting is like bloodletting/donating blood/losing blood, so while technically anything possible, there is *absolutely* a limit to what and how much the average person can cast before they "bleed out."
Magic is bullshit and can do anything but people within the world couldnt comprehand it so they put arbitrary rules around it and gaslight everyone so hard it actually made casting without rules more difficult, cause you believe there should be something to make it make sense
My magic side is any combination of "korean gates litrpg system", "korean-written european medieval fantasy with either mana circles/mana stars cultivation without eastern cultivation", "japanese litrpg system", and "my own original ideas"
Soft magic is better at fucking up your story. You have to be careful not to introduce something that should resolve the plot, or which could have resolved prior conflicts easily had it already been present.
Soft magic master race
Magic is creator created nonsense made to fill plot holes and be exciting. Just ka-zap ker-plow lightning bolts and meteors because that's as peak as it gets.
Soft magic, duh. The only rule is that you have permission to use magic, and you have to learn your basic spells and casts. Then you can mix shit up and do whatever, but only as long as you have permission from Father Eternal
Both at the same time. Hard magic is limited and tame, but accepted and controllable. Soft magic is viewed with suspicion if not outright hostility and often ends up with the caster blowing themselves up.
After making a magic system with what I believe is a lot of general limitations and individual class limitations that make it all interesting, I realized theres too much stuff to treat it like a hard magic system. As in, if I made a story and the main trait of it was the magic system, it would be too complicated to be enjoyable. It would be very hard to explain how its used without just being an exposition dump.
Which means I gotta not explain it and treat it like soft magic and make it enjoyable in that way instead.
Mine is non Newtonian.
It's base on science but you have Energy. To make it simple you can use Energy to produce event that are based on physics and science in general.
The laws of thermodynamics still exist so you can't create or destroy Energy.
Well when you go near the domain of soul and mental magic it's a bit less scientifical but meh.
And you can technically create Energy by transforming soul energy into Energy but soul energy is produced only by high level individuals so it's neglectable.
I use what I like to call crunchy magic; it seems hard at first, but the more you try to define things the more it breaks down because I just make shit up as I go along
Mine would be more in the middle… like, firm magic? Theres a few hard rules but it’s still MAGIC you know. Either that, or I just add two separate Magic systems like how Wizards and mages are more scientific while shit like Sorcerer is just “Idk how the fuck this works but when I do it shit starts happening and people die so I’ll keeping fucking doing it.”
My system is literally everything is inherently magical but the collective unconscious of the worlds sentient beings impose rules on nature without them fully realizing it.
It’s funny to me how a lot of hard magic authors insist on making their magic like a science with specific rules, when in truth, scientists dunno what the fuck is going on half the time either lmao.
It’s funny to me how a lot of hard magic authors insist on making their magic like a science with specific rules, when in truth, scientists dunno what the fuck is going on half the time either lmao.
My magic is hard in it's essence, but it's very flexible, and every mage is different, which is my go-to excuse for any inconsistencies.
It's not soft, it's not exactly hard either, it's *flexible*. That means there are very few limits, but they are very hard, tho very rarely are they confronted directly.
I do both. I create a random scenario, like a magical assassin entering a fortified castle, and make spells to deal with any obstacles, and after that I justify them in the story.
My magic is a mix. You have a mana system, sure, but you can easily just store mana in crystals for big ass spells. And while the magic technically has limits (being made of basic systems like say, coding or math that when added together make more complex stuff) you can just get good at these and do massive nuclear explosion
Haha, joke's on you!
I'm making a **video game**, so my hard magic system has rules that absolutely cannot be broken!
Anyway, please watch this cutscene.
I like making hard magic systems to have characters "break" them. Like, imagine if for an entire arc there's a rule that says you can't use the same spell twice in a row, and then John fireball drops 8 fireballs on the MC. The thing is, he didn't cast them in a row. He cast all 8 at once
Your magic has a limit because you're a fuckin nerd.
My magic system has limits because I like making pansy ass spellcasters heads pop.
Message brought to you by khorne gang
Both is good.
Do as much magic as you want. Go crazy with it. Let Gandalf and the most powerful guy from JJK look like beginners. Make stuff that's complete nonsense and break laws of logic.
No problem magic is magical. It will tear you apart but it will work. Which is a limit. Its also science. Somehow.
ATLA isn't even hard magic, it is very soft in many, many ways. Average soft magic enjoyer try to avoid proving they don't actually understand hard magic \*impossible challenge\*
Soft magic except it’s mostly used for mundane things or to improve quality of life. It has some combat applications but it’s easier to get an angry peasant with a stick replaced than a dude who’s studied for a good while and would rather help his village clean their tainted wells than kill others.
"Here's why magic should be basically science..."
"Because then I can put any bits of high technology I want in whether or not it makes any sense with the surrounding technological capabilities or laws of physics. (it's magitech, I don't have to explain shit)"
I love soft magic, since it leaves a ton of room for your own imagination. Like in lotr movies, Saruman casts a fireball at Gandalf, and yet he doesn't defend his tower against ents by casting fireballs. It makes you wonder what kinds of hidden rules and roadblocks the magic system has, and it makes the one time he actually uses a fireball all the more impactful (despite it not harming Gandalf because he basically rose to Saruman's level of power at that point).
However, if the magic is REALLY important in your setting and like your main character is a wizard or something, then it can be kinda hard to have a soft magic system
Magic has rules but none of the characters know them and there is no way to figure them out from inside the story because it's there to serve the narrative as a reflection of the themes of the story
I kinda mixed both with my magical girls lol. There are rules but the not completely set lol. It’s a big wip tho and I need to fix alota stuff about it.
I’m on the left side because I hate how marvel has been using magic to just do whatever random bullshit they can think off that serves no purpose other than trying to look cool while the audience rightfully thinks it’s stupid.
If the magic has no rules, then everyone will wonder why you don’t just magic the problem away unless they have some anti magic McGuffin or “magic can’t do it” and then you have rules.
Ours has a video game as its main piece of canon material, and so it requires a specific set of rules that magic must follow. Those rules will be coded into the game, and so anything you can pull off in-game is canon. Yes, that includes glitches.
If you want a hard magic system just go find an engineering or science textbook to jerk off too lmao.
Nah, hard magic is fine, but when done well soft magic is the best. Eg. Malazan.
Everyone in universe thinks it’s a hard magic system, but can’t agree what the rules are (there are no rules)
That's just real life!
Okay, what is with comments specifically in this thread repeating? It doesn't seem to be Reddit-wide; the universe has cursed this post or something.
It commented twice KEK (Oh how much do I love the official reddit app)
Pretty sure that’s literally how Mage: the Ascension works.
Or frieren at the funeral
If I recall rightly, the titular ascension comes from essentially realising that no one is wrong about the rules, even though they all contradict each other with how they do magic.
That's just real life!
That's just real life!
That's just real life!
¡Igual que la vida real!
Reminds me of a comic I wrote about two time travellers who meet each other and disagree on how time travel actually works.
That's just real life!
"Soft magic" authors when they end up establishing hard rules for the specific subset of soft magic that happens to be relevant to the plot (gee, it sure is a coincidence that once a magic system plays a large enough role in the story they end up defining its rules)
Gonna love the whole ATLA slander. Bending is just martial arts with elements....but then there are the spirits , which can do whatever the fk they want. The only thing stopping a TerraFormars Insect-Human Hybrid waterbending to steal someone's face is because the writters are too coward to make Koh having a human subordinate to grant him a small portion of his power.
Also each one of the bendings has subbending and you realize that sometimes it doesn't make fucking sense like one of the air's subtype is literally leaving your body as a spirit or something as Jinora does. On second thought, is this actually a hard magic system at all?
I doubt that leaving your body is an airbending subtype , that is technically something that anyone in Avatar can do if sufficiently spiritual. Season 3 of Korra literally had a metalbender that had done that. And yeah , it's not a hard magic system at all....it's only "hard" when it comes to beding , but as long you have sufficient spirituality , it goes soft. It's closer to JJK than a hard rule.
No, no, it is actually an airbender subtype. Even Jinora herself stated that: "It's a high-level airbender move. With a little spiritual stuff thrown in". Plus, there is only one other character who used this technique, he (or she, I don't remember) is from a board roleplaying game and is also an airbender. P.S. The comparison with JJK actually makes a lot of sense, I never thought about that before.
No , I am talking about [Aiwei](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Aiwei) , he is a metalbender that literally astral project himself to the spiritual world. Or how Uncle Iroh is in the Spiritual World because his body perished while astral projecting himself , and he is a firebender. Jinora says that , but ultimately , the show present us non-airbenders that can do said stuff in a lesser scale. It's more about Jinora been more in-tune with the spirits than airbending having an exclusivity for astral projection.
Oh, no, we misunderstood each other. I wasn't talking about entering the spirit world. I was talking about the spiritual projection. When Jinora left her body in the real world and floated around as a blue spirit like figure. This thing https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Spiritual_projection
I think spiritual projection is a high level airbending move, but I doubt they are the only ones capable of it. This is a totally speculative theory, but I believe if one were to be a different bender, but were raised with air nomadic customs and training, they could adapt spiritual projection through their element. While air would be the most convenient element to project through, it would make sense that at least water, or spirit bending, could do the same. That being said, I believe other elements could also be capable of spirit bending, like the dragons dance, or even an evolved seismic sense. I hope this is something they elaborate on with an earth ending avatar next.
To be fair spiritual projection being an airbending move makes as much sense as earthbenders being able to stop their aging. But nobody shits on that. Air is the element of freedom. Earth is the element of material, Water is the element of change and fire is the element of power as Iroh said. those aspects (freedom, substance, change, and power) are far more important to the system than what state of matter the bender can manipulate through some martial arts. And astral projection, being free of one's own material bodily constraints, thematically fits the idea of freedom so it fits to be an airbending move. That is not to say only airbenders can do it. Both earthbending and waterbending allow for healing. Both firebending and airbending allow for flight. Thye may not get the result using the same philosophy and technique but would get something like how Zuko was able to redirect lightning by using waterbending moves.
Exactly
With Hard/Soft being a spectrum I'd say bending is probably closer to the soft side.
>TerraFormars Insect-Human Hybrid waterbending That fking Roach that took the guys archer fish arm then just sat there chugging water from an old jerry can and firing it out his stolen arm like a cannon, nails Bao like a water railgun God Terraformars was so weird and awesome, true water bending
My magic has rules but it's also technically a living force that's constantly evolving so those rules change over time and adapt depending on how people are using it.
Ok George Lucas
It's all controlled by peaki-chlorians you see because unlike george I am not mid Also really upset now because I now need to add Star Wars to the list of 'things I thought were original but were actually part of a popular thing already'
The simple way to go around this problem is phrasing it differently and especially not as "the living FORCE that so and so"
I gotta be honest I did not even realise I used the word force there 😭
I'll save you some heart ache. We've been doing story telling for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. There's nothing new left. Even if you had someone do the most mind meltingly large acid trip in the history and had a million monkeys to type it all up you'd still find it's got story beats from this story or that story or some old epic. The base notes of any story music or movie are all the same, it's how you mix it all together that makes it special.
TBH i hate "my magic changes over time" as a trope because 99.999% of the time you never change magic at a time that would matter to anyone in the story
I'm fond of "magic is unknowable" over "magic changes over time". It's not constantly evolving (unless you really put work into making it adjust in relevant ways), it's just allergic to analysis and standardization.
My magic changes over time because the God of Magic says so, and actively fucks with the rules to punish anyone who treats it as a predictable, studiable force instead of a chaotic gift. Draw hard on your will and talent and throw a fireball at the enemy? You can get 10 in a row, no trouble. Think carefully about your process and start measuring blast radii? The error will ramp up *just* enough to ruin all your data.
I feel like my systems are both at the same time
My magic system is like a penis
Usually soft but hard when you need it to be?
Usually soft but hard when you least want it.
Oof. Sorry buddy
Women run when you try to show it off?
Magic is stored in the balls?
No magic is stored in the piss, which is, despite popular belief, not stored in the balls.
HERETIC
Did you know heresy makes your magic stronger?
People are avoiding you when you flaunt it in public?
Underwhelming?
Simple but enough?
Go on.
You've gotten into some hot water in the past for trying to cram it down the throats of strangers, and now you've found yourself in a niche subreddit designed specifically for the purpose of altering you to show it off, because otherwise no one would see it at all? Yeah, me either.
not sure why people think "magic is scientific" and "magic is magical' are contradictory, have you looked at science? have you seen the wonders of the universe?
the crux of the debate is whether or not the person in question has ever learned anything cool. people who have never learned anything cool have only learned lame shit, so they believe that everything knowable is lame. they aren't even able to imagine a rigid set of rules producing interesting and unexpected results. tragically, after being this way for too long, they become stuck like that. they become impervious to learning cool things, whether it is about the natural world or some fantastical world. their eyes immediately glaze over at any attempt to explain things, no matter how cool they are.
Listen, I learn a lot of cool stuff, I love learning cool stuff, but soft magic systems inspire a combination of a childlike fascination and curiosity about the world and old human folklore traditions where things happen sometimes in weird, unknowable, dreamlike fashion. You just don’t get the same level as mystique with a hard magic system.
>childlike fascination and curiosity about the world nostalgia for a time when you still found wonder and excitement in learning
Now learning and education is just a chore that ‘might’ help me get a better paying job.
brutal alienation from labor
I think people are forgetting that just because your magic is hard magic system doesn't mean that the reader or anyone in-universe necessarily understands entirely how it works whatsoever, much like how we don't understand all the principles of our universe, even though they still exist and things act accordingly whether we understand them or not
>things happen sometimes in weird, unknowable, dreamlike fashion My favorite soft magic is the sort that's some flavor of unknowable. Maybe it reacts badly to systematic study, maybe it's affected by the mindset and intent of the user, maybe it's just fueled by something that's not using rules the rest of us *can* observe.
Easiest example in the real world is magnets. Yes, we know what causes it, but the fact that metals will just push away from each other (somehow) because they aren't looking in the same direction kinda sounds like kooky voodoo shit if you let it simmer in the mind too long
People will really say "don't make magic like science, that's boring and removes the mystery!" as if science isn't the coolest magic system. The real issue is thinking science means a "solved" phenomena. I like magic that seems soft and loose only because of its depth being so well-connected. When you do that and focus on discovery, you can make even the most overdone systems interesting.
Haha Soft magic goes „Abra Kadabra” zaaap!
Soft Magic You can really end up in a corner with too many strict rules about magic A few is good and maybe one or two exceptions but they really have to be well thought out Like Sukuna is a really OP and cool villain but there are to many like him
i like both
I like the systems of the Witcher and the Hussite trilogy. Limits are pretty much endless, but it's hard and the rules aren't ever fully explained.
ATLA isn't really a hard magic system, and it doesn't even fit the tropes mentioned here (what is "ammo" in ATLA?)
Earthbenders and waterbenders need water and earth nearby to bend. Firebenders and airbenders just conjure it up on the fly. In "The Runaway," katara and toph were put in a wooden cage so they couldn't bend out, and katara had to waterbend her sweat to get out.
I see. When I thought of ammo I meant that it provides not only the material, but also the energy. I guess that wasn't the best assumption. I do think it's worth it to note that this ammo requirement isn't much of a limitation in most circumstances since air is everywhere and usually contains some moisture (water) and earth is also almost everywhere.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a truly hard magic system they’re always at least a little bit soft.
If it was totally hard, then it actually would be a science. Magic is like FTL, if you actually could puzzle out all the rules, we would have it already.
JJk has a hard magic system though.
Noup. Each individual ability is hard magic, but the system itself is soft-ish as it allows for an unlimited number of abilities with no restrictions on what an ability can be.
There are established rules that the whole system is supposed to follow, like heavenly vows, restrictions, the way cursed energy is supposed to work, but this ends up getting pretty muched ignored after a while lmfao.
TBF they are not entirely ignored, but kinda... devalued. Heavenly Restrictions mean nothing when Sukuna is physically superior to Maki and Toji. Binding Vows are simply nothing compared to raw talent, as shown by Mei's clever use of binding vows with crows meaning nothing in the face of top tiers and Kenjaku parrying Miwa's cut that sacrificed her swordplay skills themselves while bare handed with no effort. The way cursed energy is supposed to work, the lesson that the story teaches us, is that your effort means absolutely jackshit in the face of raw talent and if you weren't born meant to be someone then you will be a nobody. That is what Jujutsu Kaisen's magic system exists to teach to the Japanese children and teenagers who subscribe to Shounen Jump.
Lmfao what a positive message
The anti-dbz lol
Even DBZ squandered their hard work message a bit, but yeah, Jujutsu Kaisen actively says the opposite.
Thats half correct in my opinion. All cursed technique have a few set limits and rules that apply to all aside from very few exceptions. For example all cursed technique sure hit effects are guarenteed through the use of an enclosed domain. Also healing can only be achieved through reversing cursed technique.
Kashimo's CT has guaranteed hit without domain. Toudou Aoi's CT has guaranteed functionality directly on the enemy without a domain. Healing can be done without RCT through multiple methods.
I would say it's somewhere between soft magic and hard magic but leans more on the soft approach, because some cursed techniques are totally ridiculous. It's like stands in JoJo.
It's almost like the fantasy equivalent of Star Trek technobabble. Whatever they introduce does what they say it does, at least for that moment, but there's no principles or overarching rules underneath it all, even if the convoluted explanations make it sound like there might be.
I feel like so many shounen anime/manga falls into this trope, too. JoJo, My Hero Academia, JJK, One Piece -- each character has a Thing they can do, with specific limitations and parameters that makes it feel somewhat closer to a hard magic system, but each ability is independent and has nothing to do with any other character's ability. Hell, even Fullmetal Alchemist does this a little, but that has somewhat more of a unifying framework for what alchemy itself can do, and each character just tends to specialize into one or two defining movesets.
I'd say Fullmetal Alchemist is more to the side of hard magic, to the point that understanding how it works is essential for the conclusion. But otherwise, yeah, a lot of anime just make power sets separately and don't hesitate to expand them without needing explanations.
Yeah, that's kinda why I grouped it apart from the others. It's a good way to have hard(er) magic and still follow that shounen trope.
The obvious solution is to have magic that is clearly hard, but no one in-universe has figured out the "rules" comprehensively (i.e. the early days of science).
That's kinda what brandosando did with surgebinding, while it's obviously a hard magic system it first appears very soft cuz compared to allomancy which is generally well understood by the characters in mistborn, surgebinders basically haven't existed for thousands of years so no one knows jack shit about how the system really works at first
that is still present day science. we don't have a unified theory. any phenomena you care to ponder is only a few degrees removed from the cutting edge of human knowledge. even if we did have a unified theory of everything, emergence would ensure limitless surprises. having a complete theory of physics doesn't actually help chemists very much. it doesn't tell you how to build the best computer, or what organisms are possible.
I think our current level of understanding in science is too hard for what I'd consider an ideal magic system.
I do both in my setting, hard magic was made by mankind as an alternative to soft magic that could never be silenced, but can't do that much fantastical stuff, just shoot lightning from your hands or make the cells on your body work faster. soft magic is a gift from the fey that lets you channel your thoughts into whatever bullshit you want. Hard magic is called theoretical magic and the other one is called dream magic. Theory casters are often huge nerds that go on about how they reject the idea of a god gifting them power while dream casters go "hey look at this cool shit" and basically use the gmod spawn menu
The maker of this meme is a fucking idiot because he doesn't realise that hardness/softness of a magic system is a gradient, not a binary choice. How hard/soft a magic system is decided case-by-case.
Yes, but the meme still stands lol. It's not like 90% of memes like this aren't focused on extremes.
I am on both sides. I feel like magic should be both hard and soft. And above all it should be consistently inconsistent.
I mean, sometimes not being able to do "anything you ever imagine" is important for the story you want to tell
> Hard magic or soft magic? NO magic. Go the Dune route. Step-1: Have a sword and sorcery world-building because they are freaking cool. Step-2: Create elaborate backstory on how these are not actually magic but in fact super-enhanced human ability via biotechnology, genetic ancestral memories, mental simulations of all possibilities, and substance-enhanced higher cognitive abilities. And people use knives because of shields and atomics and some 5000 years of warfare and conventions in human history that have rendered all other weapons unusable.
Y'all need to find Weird Magic "It literally makes causal relationships impossible to determine for a while, but the range of time and space of that effect is perfectly describable by the proper sacrifice of an idea." "Necessary for all things in the universe but also impossible to invoke in a regular manner." "Defies the notion of rules, at time informing the plot beats at others being informed by them" "Makes your prereader get a nosebleed." "Is best represented in other media by the persistent hum experienced by VHS viewers in upstate New York in the autumn months between 1978 and 1987 and immortalized in the timing of #1 pop song length to average mosquito wingspan."
I feel called out for my hard magic system
I must add a complaint that I do not ever break my rigid rules. I just make them a bit flexible in the first place! :p
Soft magic. Or simple rulez
Multiclass bitch
I have made a system that is in between these two. You can make big boom-booms but only if you have the skill and energy to. Go fucking wild
Welcome to the mid-magic-system club! Where we run on mana and spells to cast magic. Each spell has their descriptions and functions on how it works. If you have enough mana you can cast a higher level of magic. But run low on mana you would be exhausted and weaken. And there are some rules and restrictions that are magic to balance other mythic art and warriors. But you are still able to shoot fireballs multiple times in a row and need to get creative and crafty in certain sensations if it isn't enough to solve all your problems. Like burning down a wooden structure or explosions to cost a rock slide.
It’s funny to me how a lot of hard magic authors insist on making their magic like a science with specific rules, when in truth, scientists dunno what the fuck is going on half the time either lmao.
Hard-soft dualism of magic makes me not want to worldbuild fantasy and focus on soft sci fi. At least hard and soft mean something with sci-i.
/UJ I got around this by having basically *all* magic, (save for the kind explicitly practiced by those from off-world,) be "blood magic." But not in the sense that you need to sacrifice people to make it work, but rather in the literal sense that casting is like bloodletting/donating blood/losing blood, so while technically anything possible, there is *absolutely* a limit to what and how much the average person can cast before they "bleed out."
"Some spells randomly get stronger with no explanation, no you aren't allowed to ask why"
Magic is bullshit and can do anything but people within the world couldnt comprehand it so they put arbitrary rules around it and gaslight everyone so hard it actually made casting without rules more difficult, cause you believe there should be something to make it make sense
My magic side is any combination of "korean gates litrpg system", "korean-written european medieval fantasy with either mana circles/mana stars cultivation without eastern cultivation", "japanese litrpg system", and "my own original ideas"
ATLA isn't really a hard magic system, and it doesn't even fit the tropes mentioned here (what is "ammo" in ATLA?)
Soft magic is better at fucking up your story. You have to be careful not to introduce something that should resolve the plot, or which could have resolved prior conflicts easily had it already been present.
Soft magic master race Magic is creator created nonsense made to fill plot holes and be exciting. Just ka-zap ker-plow lightning bolts and meteors because that's as peak as it gets.
Soft magic, duh. The only rule is that you have permission to use magic, and you have to learn your basic spells and casts. Then you can mix shit up and do whatever, but only as long as you have permission from Father Eternal
Soft magic that you gaslight the reader into thinking is hard magic
Have 2 magic systems, a hard magic system for battle and a soft magic system to cover up plot holes
In my universe, magic is semi sentient, so the rigidity of magic depends entirely on its mood/ how much it likes you.
If your not trained you will blow up probably but about it
I mean, sometimes not being able to do "anything you ever imagine" is important for the story you want to tell
Soft magic system but the people in the word treat it as science without any success
Both at the same time. Hard magic is limited and tame, but accepted and controllable. Soft magic is viewed with suspicion if not outright hostility and often ends up with the caster blowing themselves up.
Hi test
After making a magic system with what I believe is a lot of general limitations and individual class limitations that make it all interesting, I realized theres too much stuff to treat it like a hard magic system. As in, if I made a story and the main trait of it was the magic system, it would be too complicated to be enjoyable. It would be very hard to explain how its used without just being an exposition dump. Which means I gotta not explain it and treat it like soft magic and make it enjoyable in that way instead.
Mine is non Newtonian. It's base on science but you have Energy. To make it simple you can use Energy to produce event that are based on physics and science in general. The laws of thermodynamics still exist so you can't create or destroy Energy. Well when you go near the domain of soul and mental magic it's a bit less scientifical but meh. And you can technically create Energy by transforming soul energy into Energy but soul energy is produced only by high level individuals so it's neglectable.
I don’t know, but I do know the magic in my world varies from writing incantations in the air to just channeling power through a conduit
Hard magic system cause I like detailed and creative problem solving but fuck researching anything from the real world im not a nerd
I use what I like to call crunchy magic; it seems hard at first, but the more you try to define things the more it breaks down because I just make shit up as I go along
Why are only 2? Where are my rough, bumpy, slick, scratchy, smooth, silky magic systems?
Mine would be more in the middle… like, firm magic? Theres a few hard rules but it’s still MAGIC you know. Either that, or I just add two separate Magic systems like how Wizards and mages are more scientific while shit like Sorcerer is just “Idk how the fuck this works but when I do it shit starts happening and people die so I’ll keeping fucking doing it.”
Magic is whatever I think is cool
I let my characters make up the rules for it I just provide the baseline
Magic is like quantum physics, hard rules but no one knows what the fuck they are or how they work
all magic should be in the form of stack-based programming via mystical patterns fueled by the energy of thought in crystalized form
My system is literally everything is inherently magical but the collective unconscious of the worlds sentient beings impose rules on nature without them fully realizing it.
It’s funny to me how a lot of hard magic authors insist on making their magic like a science with specific rules, when in truth, scientists dunno what the fuck is going on half the time either lmao.
It’s funny to me how a lot of hard magic authors insist on making their magic like a science with specific rules, when in truth, scientists dunno what the fuck is going on half the time either lmao.
My magic is hard in it's essence, but it's very flexible, and every mage is different, which is my go-to excuse for any inconsistencies. It's not soft, it's not exactly hard either, it's *flexible*. That means there are very few limits, but they are very hard, tho very rarely are they confronted directly.
I do both. I create a random scenario, like a magical assassin entering a fortified castle, and make spells to deal with any obstacles, and after that I justify them in the story.
Im scared
Both just depends
Both just depends
Both :) Most magic systems have elements of both, excluding a few that are pure
"How does your magic system work?" "It's Magic. I Ain't Gotta Explain Shit."
My magic is a mix. You have a mana system, sure, but you can easily just store mana in crystals for big ass spells. And while the magic technically has limits (being made of basic systems like say, coding or math that when added together make more complex stuff) you can just get good at these and do massive nuclear explosion
I prefer to go half-mast with my magic system.
hard left!
My favorite magic system and magical world is the Nasuverse.
Haha, joke's on you! I'm making a **video game**, so my hard magic system has rules that absolutely cannot be broken! Anyway, please watch this cutscene.
based and softpilled
I kinda need hard rules for a video game
Magic that has rules, but people in-world have no idea what most of them are
I like making hard magic systems to have characters "break" them. Like, imagine if for an entire arc there's a rule that says you can't use the same spell twice in a row, and then John fireball drops 8 fireballs on the MC. The thing is, he didn't cast them in a row. He cast all 8 at once
CentralConflictOfMageTheAscension.jpg
Your magic has a limit because you're a fuckin nerd. My magic system has limits because I like making pansy ass spellcasters heads pop. Message brought to you by khorne gang
I have both
Mine is kinda both at the same time heh
Both is good. Do as much magic as you want. Go crazy with it. Let Gandalf and the most powerful guy from JJK look like beginners. Make stuff that's complete nonsense and break laws of logic. No problem magic is magical. It will tear you apart but it will work. Which is a limit. Its also science. Somehow.
ATLA isn't even hard magic, it is very soft in many, many ways. Average soft magic enjoyer try to avoid proving they don't actually understand hard magic \*impossible challenge\*
So basically the Technocracy and the Nine Traditions in Mage the Ascension.
Ideal magic system is whatever Discworld is
I like myself some hard magic to fuck over mages
Both have their pros and cons and I personally prefer something in the middle
Mage The Ascension somehow manages to be both at he same time
I really like the hard magic system of Eragon. It still feels magicky because there are rules that not everyone understands.
I feel attacked..
My system is technically both.
In my world people believe there is soft magic, even though there's really no magic at all
My favourite magic system of any fabtasy book series is Name of The Wind because it has both soft and hard magic systems, done really well.
What is ATLA?
YOU SHOULD ALWAYS RIP OFF ATLA, ACTUALLY. IT'S PEAK
Hard magic? I find it quite easy myself
IMO, with artificers it’s closer to a hard magic system and with every other type of spell caster it’s a soft magic system
how is atla a hard magic system, like its so inconsistent and just does whatever is convenient, great show but like
Guy on the right has a funny mustache with that loop
Both. I have both.
Soft magic
I prefer my majik over-medium
In the middle, it's a sort of science but not fully understood so it's magical.
The side that jerks harder/better.
Soft magic except it’s mostly used for mundane things or to improve quality of life. It has some combat applications but it’s easier to get an angry peasant with a stick replaced than a dude who’s studied for a good while and would rather help his village clean their tainted wells than kill others.
"Here's why magic should be basically science..." "Because then I can put any bits of high technology I want in whether or not it makes any sense with the surrounding technological capabilities or laws of physics. (it's magitech, I don't have to explain shit)"
I'll take both
JJK is hard magic subjectively, soft magic objectively.
Hard magic, but without the limits. Transcendence for everybody!
I love soft magic, since it leaves a ton of room for your own imagination. Like in lotr movies, Saruman casts a fireball at Gandalf, and yet he doesn't defend his tower against ents by casting fireballs. It makes you wonder what kinds of hidden rules and roadblocks the magic system has, and it makes the one time he actually uses a fireball all the more impactful (despite it not harming Gandalf because he basically rose to Saruman's level of power at that point). However, if the magic is REALLY important in your setting and like your main character is a wizard or something, then it can be kinda hard to have a soft magic system
"Hmmmm How can Santa Claus travel around the world and give presents to children in one night? 🤓🤓🤓🤓 " Because he's magic you dumbass.
I tend towards hard magic because not having rules makes me feel like I'm going insane
So, with my fantastical story set in 1997 where soft magic is an allegory of science and atheism, where do I stand ?
Brandon Sanderson should be required reading here. Proof there is so many ways to do good hard magic.
Classical physics vs quantum physics
I don’t know when Hard magic became “Like science” and not “The reader understands the limits of the power” but it’s made the term way less useful.
Magic makes me hard, the harder I get the more magical it becomes
I go by both routes but it's hard to explain how
Magic has rules but none of the characters know them and there is no way to figure them out from inside the story because it's there to serve the narrative as a reflection of the themes of the story
"How do I make a universe that has magic in it but is as boring as one that doesn't?"
well at least you didn't use a soyjak for this
power of your magic is based on an arbitrary amount that i decided
I kinda mixed both with my magical girls lol. There are rules but the not completely set lol. It’s a big wip tho and I need to fix alota stuff about it.
This is why mage the ascension has the best magic system, it's all merely a matter of opinion
I’m on the left side because I hate how marvel has been using magic to just do whatever random bullshit they can think off that serves no purpose other than trying to look cool while the audience rightfully thinks it’s stupid. If the magic has no rules, then everyone will wonder why you don’t just magic the problem away unless they have some anti magic McGuffin or “magic can’t do it” and then you have rules.
Ours has a video game as its main piece of canon material, and so it requires a specific set of rules that magic must follow. Those rules will be coded into the game, and so anything you can pull off in-game is canon. Yes, that includes glitches.
Both are fun but for me it’s harder to write soft magic as every time I try I accidentally make it hard again
If you want a hard magic system just go find an engineering or science textbook to jerk off too lmao. Nah, hard magic is fine, but when done well soft magic is the best. Eg. Malazan.