WriterDude

I'm currently writing a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid, and one of the main races are based almost entirely on magic. They use magic for everything, like building houses, farming the land, fighing enemies and so on. But when it comes to combat magic, I'm tired of all the "fireball, lightning bolts and freeze rays" we have seen since D&D was first released. (and partly even in Lord of the Rings waaaay before that). I want something new. I've come up with a few "schools" of magic and written down a few spells for each to give you a general idea what each is about. Which work, and which don't? And either way, how they be improved? I don't want magic to be all-powerful, but keep in mind they are fighting a race of high-tech warriors using shotguns, machineguns and flamethrowers. The magic should just as powerful, although used differently. The wizards are far more stealthy than the warriors, and I think the magic should reflect that. Anyway, here we go:

Blood magic: (note: all the blood used are from a corpse, enemy or vial unless said otherwise)
* Blood Golem: The wizard use blood to create a living being. This being is made entirely from blood, so it can't be hurt by regular weapons (how do you shoot liquid anyway?) and can merge with other blood golems to increase in size and strength. However, they are very vulnerable to flames, heat, ice and so on like being shot with a flamethrower. Naturally, it takes a lot of power and blood to create and keep a golem, so the wizard can only have one at any time.

* Boiling blood: A wizard can "target" an enemy and make his or her blood literally boil while he or she is still alive. Naturally, this would slightly painful for the victim, who dies in matter of minutes. The drawback is the wizard can only target one at a time, the enemy can still counterattack until the pain is too much and the wizard has to stand still while chanting the spell. This means he is very vulnerable while the spell works.

* Blood spear: The wizard form a spear from blood and throws it at an enemy. The spear doesn't hurt in it's own, but the enemy is covered in the stuff. The wizard then chant a little spell causing the blood to stick to the enemy, slowing him down. If lucky, the blood sticks around the enemy's face, chocking him to death. Alternatively, the bone spear can be thrown at a blood golem to heal it.

* Exploding blood: A variation of boiling blood, this makes the blood literally explode. Can be used in combination with blood spear. Only a very powerful wizard knows this spell, and it takes longer to use than boiling blood. As a bonus, the exploding blood can hurt (or even kill) nearby enemies.

* Blood control: The ultimate blood spell. This grants the wizard control over the blood itself, so he can control an enemy to do his will like killing other enemies or commit suicide. The wizard needs to chant the spell the whole time, or it will be broken.

Elemental Magic
* Control element: The wizard takes control over a small part of the elements. He can suffocate an enemy by closing the air around him, levitate by forcing the air to life him (or an enemy) and so on. He can walk on water by making it more solid under his feet, and even sink small boats by making the water lighter. (maybe not the correct word, but you know what I mean). The drawback is it only works on a small scale and constantly drains him of his power.

* Fire/Ice golem: Simply creates a golem (like the blood golem) from fire or ice. Rumours has it two wizards working together might be able to create a golem made from both fire and ice at the same time, but it is not confirmed yet.

* Whirlwind: The wizard can create small whirwinds about 1 meter in height. While not doing much damage, they are mainly used to confuse the enemies, cause a small sandstorm, block their view and so on or even just cause a distraction.

Plant Magic
* Plant golem: You saw this one coming, of course. Don't tell me otherwise. Creates a creature from various plants, so if you remove a part (even head, as it only mimics a humanoid/animal body) it just attaches it again. Vulnerable to fire or being chopped to pieces, almost invulnerable to anything else.

* Control plants: Very useful when fighting in the forest. This makes all plants like grass, trees and bushes fight for the wizard. Imagine ten soldiers chasing a lone wizard into a dark forest, when suddenly the whole forest literally comes alive and fights back! ("alive" as in they are still rooted to the ground, but still).

* Plant spies: The plants listens to anything that goes on around it, and this spell lets the wizard hear what they hear. Every plant is a potential spy for the wizard.

* Crown of Thorns: The wizard creates a crown full of thorns and puts it on his head. This crown can shoot the thorns at the enemies, hitting them where it hurts. Poisonous throns are even more effective.

* Adapt Poison: The wizard can adapt some of the poison from various plants. This lets him use poison in close combat, like creating a poisonous cloud around an enemy, grant poison to a plant golem and so on.

Necromancy (note; this dark form of magic is banned, so only a handful practice it)
* Transfer Life: The wizard creates a body from various body parts and transfers some of his own life energy. They will be linked, so the necromancer hides his own body and lives through this abomination. If this creature dies, the necromancer will be vulnerable for a while until his life is restored. The creature can look like anything. Only the necromancers imagination is the limit. Even animals can be used.

* Merge species: The necromancer can merge two creatures into one and shape it as he wants. Examples are rats with bat wings, wolves with eagle wings, snakes with feet and tail from a scorpion etc. Rumours has it even humans have been used, but surely that is only a rumour?

Werewolf At Will: Creates a creature part wolf, part human. Unlike "our" werewolves, these guys can change at will and can live as humans for years until the time is right. Right for what, you ask? You'll just have to wait and see.

Daylight Vampire: Like a real vampire, but without the drawbacks. They can live in sunlight, are not allergic to garlic and aren't even pale. Like the werewolves, can pass as human for years if they want to.

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Shifty

A few quick notes because I have to leave real soon

- First of all, I think this is really good stuff. Each category has a lot of potential for some inventive scenes.

- Is the race evil? I dunno about other people, but the Blood Magic sounds pretty wicked to me.

- I bet you could have a lot of fun with the plant concept, but IN MY OPINION IN MY OPINION IN MY OPINION I would enjoy it more if it was more abstract, sort of like "Control Plants" and "Adapt Poison," but not with specific spells. Don't know, just seems right to me.

- The other two forms of magic (necromancy & elemental) both look good, but "Transfer Life" seems a little bit too video-game to me.

- I think the last two, Werefolf and Daylight Vampire, should have some sort of drawback. The whole catch for vampires is weakness to light. Are you sure you want to eradicate this?

Good luck!

WriterDude

Thanks for the tip. The race is pretty much neutral, as I haven't really thought about alignments at all. Are humans good or evil? Exactly, so why should an entire race be "good" or "evil" just because it's fantasy?

These spells are just a few examples and work in progress. I wanted something different than the standard, stereotype wizard with fireballs, lightning bolts and all that crap.

Blood magic evil? Not really, or at least not any more evil than running around with a gun and shooting enemies are evil. Besides, they could use some healing spells as well, perhaps. If someone is poisoned, a blood mage could extract the poison from the blood itself and so on. Not entirely sure how it would work, but again, this is just work in progress.

As for "Transfer life", it was because necromancers are generally weak physically and prefer to stay in the background. This way they could simply transfer some of their life essence into another (dead) body and live through it. This also means a necromancer can life for hundreds of years though the abomination, and if the abomination dies, only the temporary body dies. It might sound a bit videogame, but at least it's better than fireballs.

Werewolves that change at will and vampires that live in the daylight should of course have weaknesses, but I'm not sure what exactly. Maybe they simply are less powerful than usual? You don't need silver bullets to kill a werewolf, even a regular one will do. Likewise, a vampire can eat a lot of garlic all day long if he wants to and doesn't mind a crucifix more than anyone else (he can even go to church if he wants to), but he's just as vulnerable to bullets as everyone else. Of course, what makes him a vampire then? Not sure. He's faster and stronger than the average people. Maybe I could combine vampires and blood mages? Vampires still require blood, but not in the traditional way. This could also mean a vampire can drink someone else's blood to heal himself. It can be discussed if a blood mage automatically turns into a vampire or if only vampires can be blood mages, but the truth is all blood mages are vampires and all vampires are blood mages. The extra speed and strengh comes from the blood magic, as well. Maybe the werewolves can be something like that? Instead of turning into wolves at will, they can turn into any animal at will. Werebears, wererabbits, werebirds, weresnakes, you name it. The drawback is that they always have to turn into their regular form when changing from one form to the other, so they can't go from werebear to wererabbit, but instead werebear to normal form to wererabbit. The "were" part means they always stay humanoid, but change to part human, part animal. (not that they are humans to begin with, but it's just an example.) A werebear are stronger than regular people, but also a bit slower. A werewolf are faster and hits harder than regular people, but not as hard as a werebear. A wererabbit suck at fighting, but are great at running and jumping. (could come in handy). But if so, should they be able to turn into fish and birds, or would that make them too powerful? And instead of Werewolf At Will, I'll call them Lycanthropes or something like that. It's the "technical term" for were-creatures anyway.

As for the plants, I still don't know if any of the schools use spells at all. It could be more like in Star Wars, where they just use the powers just by thinking about it. I did say some needs to chant to make the spells work, but maybe they simply need to concentrate. A chant could help them concentrate as well, so it looks like they are casting a spell even if they don't. If they don't need specific spells, anything could happen at any time. The trick then is to make it believable and never take the easy way out by inventing new spells on the fly. If someone are stuck in a very dangerous situation, I can't just let them use a spell we haven't heard about before and save themselves. This would be tricky, but it could perhaps work. I've been working on an encyclopeida to make sure everything in the setting matches everything else (so a dragon for instance has it's strength and weakness before it even appear in the story and so on) and could use it as an appendix afterwards. This could also mention the most common spells and some of the rare ones (even a few extremely rare spells found in legends), and these again are the only one I allow myself to use in the story. It might sound odd to you, but I think it would work. Kinda like you already know all the D&D spells before you even start reading a D&D book or playing a D&D game. Same here. First write down everything no matter how insignificant, then write the damn thing afterwards.

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Faustling

Sweet, you went for the all-magic approach. One kind of magic that I feel is waaay underrepresented in fantasy is ritual magic. You could still choose one of the "schools" (or all of them) but instead of casting spells by waving your hands and saying wierd pseudo-Latin you have to preform some sort of ritual. Depending on the desired result a ritual could take everything between minutes and days. For example, something relatively easy like plant spies might be a two-minute ritual of jumping around and chanting while something like creating a blood golem could take days of detailed dances, chants and other stuff.

Oh, and about the golems. I'm not really a fan of the concept all together but if you end up using them, consider calling them something else then "golems". People will either associate it with D&D or Judaism and I don't think either is really good in this case.

WriterDude

Definition of a golem: golem: Definition and Much More from Answers.com (and it's not even Wikipeida)

But that said, "golem" is just a name. I could as well call them servants, or something like that. Guardians, even. Or do I even need to tell the reader what it is?

"They ten soldiers charged ahead at the four wizards, thinking they were an easy, defenseless target. They raised their weapons, prepared to fire... and froze in horror as a creature apparently made from blood itself rose behind the wizards. The soldiers looked in horror as the thing slowly took the form of a giant and slowly walked towards them.
"Fire!" Sargeant Kang yelled, and the nine rifles fired at once at the thing in front of them, but to no use. The bullet hit their mark, but went straight through the strange creature without as much as slowing it down.
"Flamethrower!" Kang yelled out in despair, and Garn knew it was up to him. If only the damn thing would start! He squished the trigger over and over, but to no use. If he could... ah, the safety was on, he remembered.
"Come and get it..." he said low and stepped in front of the others. He gently pulled the trigger, and the flames sprayed out in front of him. The blood creature didn't even slow down. Garn kept firing at it, and smiled as the blood seemed to darken. The creature slowed down and looked down at it's feet where Garn sprayed the fire.
"It is working!" Kang yelled triumphantly.

See? No need to mention that the blood creature was in a blood golem. (I did mention this is part fantasy, part sci-fi, right?)

Anyway, rituals are very underrated, I agree with that. The problem is how you add it in a novel. If a ritual takes days to complete, how will the reader know what the ritual is? I can't just keep the ritual going and going and going, ignoring everything else that's going on. Maybe they have a seriously powerful ritual that takes days to complete and requires a lot of wizards to work together, so the others (main characters) have to protect them while the ritual is going on? Or maybe we switch to the other side (the sci-fi race) for a while. Yes, the cyborg bears with their cyborg elephants, sniper dolphins and ninja monkeys (in ninja costumes, of course).

Come to think of it, the ninja monkeys could be part of an Animal School or something. The wizards can control the animals like a queen ant controls her hive, so the ninja monkeys have a will of their own and at the same time works for the wizards. The monkeys are regular monkeys, but "know" they have to help the wizards and are smart enough to be trained as ninjas. But if the sci-fi race has cyborg elephans and sniper dolphins, what should the wizards have except ninja monkeys? They need something else as well, and preferable nothing too big. The sci-fi race are big, physically powerful and suck at stealth. The others are smaller, physically weak and experts at stealth. (both with and without the help of magic). So elephants and dolphins vs monkeys and...? (btw the wizards are humanoid foxes, so it doesn't make sense for them to train regular foxes). Eagles, perhaps? Eagles dropping bombs on the sci-fi race? And if so, what kind of bombs? Unlike the sci-fi race, the wizards are primitive and live in a medieval world. Eagles with crossbows mounted on their backs? Eagles with monkey riders? Gotta be small monkeys, but still. Eagles with parachuting ninja monkeys? Imagine the sight.

"We are under attack!"
"From where?"
"Up there!"
Guy looks up and see three dozen parachuting ninja monkeys slowly falling towards him.

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Faustling

(You get a suprising amount of hits when googling "ninja monkey".)

WriterDude

(um... what's up with the frog pirate? Frog Pirates of the Caribbean?)

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Faustling

According to the site where I found it it's actually a monkey pirate-zombie-ninja.

WriterDude

Of course it is.

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JollyMinstrel

May I chime in? How about a passive spell. One that the caster can set on 'hold' until needed. In other words, the pump is primed, all he needs to do is pull the plug from the faucet. For instance: He knows he is going into a combat situation, but enemies are not evident yet. He can invoke a spell to defend himself or protect himself from a certain type of attack (melee, magic, etc.) and when he perceives himself to be under attack, completes the incantation by muttering "ghay'cha'! nachwIjDaq betleH tu'lu'!" or something like that. At that time, the spell goes into effect protecting him while he can conjure the attack spell he needs. The 'auto' defense spell will only be effective for a fixed time, so he would have to act quickly to go on the attack. Hope I've made a little sense here. It sounds like you have a great project going.

Well, tata for now.


(the phrase above means, "Oh my god! There's an axe in my head." in Klingon, lol.)

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WriterDude

Hm... a defensive spell? That could work. It would have to be a really short spell that expires in a few minutes, but to compensate makes the wizard invulnerable. This means he can survive pretty much anything for a few minutes, but he will need to know exactly when to use it. He can't cast the spell instantly either, so no saving himself just when he needs to. He would need to finish the spell just before getting into danger, so what if danger never comes? Or what if the enemies learn the trick and tries to stall him until the spell expires? And how many wizards should know this spell anyway? Every person in the race are wizards or some sort, although there are different schools. I'm not sure which school should know this spell. Elemental wizards, perhaps? The spell could work by gathering air around himself, making it more or less solid. Maybe draw the muisture from the air and create a watery shield, but at the same time making the air itself very dry. (thus preventing fifteen wizards using the spell at the same time to create an invulnerable army).

Thanks. I will most likely use this spell somehow, but need to think about the details. Got more ideas? Keep 'em coming!

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WriterDude

Maybe even have an entire Defensive Magic school. These wizards focus entirely on defense, and are very valuable to any army. They can create small shields around several people at once, heal the wounded to some degree and things like that, but as a drawback, they are very vulnerable themselves as each spell has to be maintained for it to work. While the wizard doesn't have to chant, the chanting could help him relax and focus on the spells. This also means he's the weakest link in the army, so kill him and the entire army suffers from lack of protection. He will need to be protected at all cost, which again means the army focus less on offense and more on holding their ground. Maybe the wizards hold their ground, but some use defensive shields and other the gol... servants to attack, and the rest do everything they can to protect the weak wizards.

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is coming along great! Now I just need to write the damn thing soon.

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WriterDude

After a lot of thought, I think I have come up with a system that really works for me. There simply won't be any magic. At all.

Well, sort of. The magic race (humanoid rats, called Ratichi) all learn how to draw magic from the nature at an early age. But even so, they don't think much of it and take it for granted. They don't think more about that than, say, how to breathe or walk. Of course this could make them extremely powerful, but in reality they are much weaker than a traditional wizard. Each ratichi have a traditional "job" like farmer, fisherman, ninja, soldier, blacksmith and so on. What this means is the ratichi focus on using magic to improve his work, kinda like we humans use machines to improve ours. A blacksmith can use magic to keep the fire warm, and a farmer can make the soil more fertile and grow better food. A ninja uses magic to turn more or less invisible (think Predator invisible, so the air will be a bit blurry when the ninja moves), guide his arrow so it won't loose speed and always hits the target if he concentrate (it won't work if he's under attack or otherwise disturbed) and so on. This means magic is a way of life for them just like breathing and walking, but at the same time they have very little offensive use of magic. Their four "combat classes" include regular soldier, elite soldier (samurai), ninja and battlemage. The last one depend heavily on magic during combat and can cast some offensive spells (like the blood magic and so on), but it takes a lot of time and effort to be a decent battlemage and many just don't bother.

Does this work? There could still be necromancers, blood mages, plant mages and so on, but there are no schools or spells. Think about The Force from Star Wars. A jedi never thinks about how to use the Force, he just uses it. The ratichi are like that. They just use magic to enchant their daily life, and don't care how it works.

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