Magical Defenses - Writers Forum

Lord Raiden · 11-23-2005, 09:39 PM

Ok, on to another Q and A with all you wonderful people.

You're information has been quite useful to date. Now I'm onto a new problem. What's a typical set of magical defenses that'd be used by a mage or wizard? I'm fairly familiar with the offensive skills, but defensive I'm not totally sure about. I ask this because someone had mentioned a while back that when a battle started, the first thing a mage would do is raise a series of defenses before beginning his attack. So in short, I'm curious what those defenses typically would be. What kinds of spells? What would they ward against?

Any info is welcome.

Raith · 11-23-2005, 10:30 PM

magical shields.
deflections.
creating walls with earth.

CroZ · 11-23-2005, 10:44 PM

Haste - increase speed
Lull - Slows down attacker
Barrier - Raises magical sheild
Guardian - Summon an object in front of you to deflect (say) an arrow
Elemental - Weakens elemental attacks
Float - Protection from ground based attacks
Restore - Restore health after each attack.
Heal - Just restores Health
Pre-emptive life - Automatically revives you from death
Invisible - Can't be seen
Berserk - Strenght increases
Drain - Drains enemy health upon attack
Can't think of a name - Cast a spell to stop all above effects aflicting you.
Invincible - Can't be hurt for a short time
Sight - predict enemies next move
Evolve - Change form to become stronger

Damn me, I should be able to think of alot more that these.
Hope they helped anyway.

Lord Raiden · 11-24-2005, 09:52 AM

Yeah, they're a good help and should render plenty of ideas too.

jordanazor · 11-24-2005, 10:16 AM

I've always enjoyed the classic 'fire with fire' thing. You throw a spell at me, I smash it back at you with a bigger one and you get hit with both. That way you have the whole, western, fastest reaction time thing going on...

Lord Raiden · 11-24-2005, 04:07 PM

One thing I've found interesting is the use of magic in the anime "Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha" where magic acts like an advanced technology rather than real magic, yet has lots of traits of magic such as the scullgrams (like a pentagram, but much friendlier) and binding spells, shields in the shape of circules or scullgrams or some weird mixed design, and chains made of magic for sealing or locking something down.

Something like that, although not compatible with my story, would be interesting to use sometime.

On another note, would something like an illusion be considered a defense or an offense?

prabjit · 11-24-2005, 05:07 PM

it matters in what way you use it.. like if you use a illusion to distract an oppenent to get away thats considered defensive or if you use it to distract the opponent so you can atttack him, thats considered offensive.
if you attack with the illusion its offensive if not its defensive.