What magic system fits this criteria well?

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1

It can be a preexisting magic system or a new custom one. Notes below.

  • It’ll be for something like a battle shonen.
    • I already like planned this to be my magnum opus. I don’t know why I’m dead set on this story being the best ever since 5th grade.
  • I preferably want it with some scientific explanations, mainly so I don’t have to do massive worldbuilding work explaining the new science.
    • If for example a magic system relied on vitalism being true, I would need to do some worldbuilding to develop the new medical science.
  • It should preferably be diverse or possibly allow you to do nearly whatever you want.
  • Preferably, the magic system should have lore as to how the world got it. Maybe it was a gift from the gods.
  • The world is most likely set with modern 21st century technology.
  • The goal is high stakes such as world domination or mass genocide.
  • The main characters will either be humans or winged people and are most likely special people.
    • This is a reference to a super old canceled series I made with friends called NumberLivez/Demigod Villains, where we were supervillains with special powers most. They shouldn’t be too overpowered though and I want them to still worry about at least a few even more powerful threats.

Horrendous < Low < Mid < Good < Great

Here are some magic systems I thought of that the story could use, both original and made by others.

Elemental Magic

Ah, good old elemental magic.

It’s possibly reliable with decent range of abilities, but it gets old fast. However, balancing can be fucked, like how water or wind magic would completely negate fire magic. Also blood manipulation or simply vacuum death.

Balance: Low/Mid
Calculation Easiness: Good
Diversity (among characters): Mid/Good (too broad, how many elements?)
Diversity (abilities possible from 1 character): Mid

Epithets (Epithet Erased)

Epithet | Epithet Erased Wiki | Fandom

The abilities are incredibly diverse, able to have great in-universe explanations for weird rules for people’s powers. It allows for nearly every power to be possible. Heck, someone could have kagune from Tokyo Ghoul and another could have stands from JoJo’s Bizzare Adventures, and it can make sense in-universe!

However, balance is very bad and calculations are insanely hard. It’s hard to set calculation limits on like how much force/energy someone has left with quantitative/scientific measurements. Balance is also fucked with the epithet you get. If you get “omnipotent” as your epithet, you just won the lottery. That’s peak mary sue.

There’s another problem which isn’t really in-universe but that’s translation hell. Epithet Erased would be extremely hellish for translation due to how it seems to be set mainly in the English language. For example, if someone’s epithet is “left”, in the series it would both mean leaving something and the direction. This doesn’t take into account the fact that in other languages, “left” (direction) and “left” (leave) would be different words.

My idea for fixing this translation hell problem would be to make an entire conlang or have the character’s epithets be words in some language of the gods.

Balance: Horrendous/Low
Calculation Easiness: Horrendous
Diversity (among characters): Great
Diversity (abilities possible from 1 character): Great

Quirks (My Hero Academia)

Quirk | My Hero Academia Wiki | Fandom

This has great diversity and decent balancing although lacks a bit of science in a way (oh god looking at you new order) and it doesn’t allow the character to theoretically do nearly whatever they want. Don’t worry, characters being able to do nearly whatever they want is secondary.

The balance in the actual anime is bad, like you can have a shit quirk. Luckily, I can resolve this by making the quirks balanced or making some canon in-universe quirk balancing system, maybe enforced by the gods?

I could probably remake some worldbuilding and say that quirks are a gift from the gods and to get one, you have to make some initial offering or be born with it. I’ll probably make it so the characters can change their quirk via the god. I’ll also need to come up with a lore explanation as to why the god decided to give quirks to humanity.

Balance: Mid* (solvable thankfully)
Calculation Easiness: Good
Diversity (among characters): Great
Diversity (abilities possible from 1 character): Mid

2500 kJ (Original)

The only rule is that anything you do must fit within a magical 2500 kJ budget/energy reserve.

There might be more rules, such as range from the mage. I also have to think about where the mages refill their energy reserve, but it’s probably going to be via metabolism. I also haven’t thought of how much energy you could release/use up in a certain timeframe. Can you use your entire 2500 kJ reserve at once or not?

The problem with this is that you can’t grow stronger in raw power, like to the point of being able to 1v100. This could be negated by giving this power only to the main characters.

Another problem is that the characters will be too much like glass cannons. Everything would be a OHKO.

Balance: Good* (OHKO problems)
Calculation Easiness: Great
Diversity (among characters): None
Diversity (abilities possible from 1 character): Great

Chemical Conversion (Original)

So basically controlling certain elements on the periodic table.

This system offers a diverse range of abilities, however one character (whoever controls carbon/hydrogen/oxygen/nitrogen/phosphorus/sulfur) would be extremely powerful compared to the others. This has a OHKO problem but it’s only really for that CHNOPS character.

Calculations won’t be too difficult because I can quantitatively measure mana/energy cost/usage.

Balance: Good* (except that CHNOPS character)
Calculation Easiness: Great
Diversity (among characters): Good/Great
Diversity (abilities possible from 1 character): Great

Elemental magic except it's different elements (Original)

I chose to base my elements off the 7 SI units… or not. Here they are:

  • Mass (kilogram, mole, ampere (ampere is actually mass because it’s made of electrons and they’re part of atoms))
  • Motion (joule, kelvin)
  • Time (second)
  • Light (candela)

This is quite good for diversity in abilities (except light because it’s gonna be trash in battle like you can blind your enemies and what else? you’d have normal human strength compared to them literal tier 8-C and can fly meaning you can’t hit them at all).

This has severe OHKO problems. The abilities are so powerful compared to the wielder’s fragile bodies.

Also, time is a bit tricky. It can stop motion right? But relative to what? Earth? The sun? Does it just stop inheriting velocity changes? If that, then the object should like slowly rise relative to earth because earth is rotating and always inheriting velocity changes from the sun’s gravity. If the gravity between the sun and earth were to disappear, earth would move in a straight line.

Balance: Horrendous
Calculation Easiness: Great
Diversity (among characters): Mid/Good
Diversity (abilities possible from 1 character): Good/Great

2

why do you need scientific explanations? It’s magic, the whole point is that there is no explanation for how it does something.

3

i need it more for worldbuilding logic (i’m lazy)

4

the necessary worldbuilding:
“yeah it just exists no we don’t know why”

5

i meant like how it changes society like the vitalism example i mentioned

also that kinda depends on how long it existed

6

Alchemy. That is, if you follow both real life chemistry and a bit of the fantastical beliefs of Europe’s alchemists. It’s grounded in legitimate science (kinda), and I’d you stretch it a bit, you can have some farther magics to strive for.

Remember the stories of turning lead to gold? Or creating the Philosopher’s Stone? All supposedly linked to alchemy.

7

just use physics at this point its kinda already magicky enough

8

Literally anything from Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere books could work. However I would suggest either Surgebinding from The Stormlight Archive or the metallic arts from Mistborn. Both systems are incredibly visual and powerful, as well as having incredibly detail lore on their origins applications and interactions with physics.

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9

try magic from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books

10

This is just for inspiration, but here’s mine from my own project.

Waterinfusion, Weaponbonding​, and Souls

How people got magic: Water started out as a sacred resource that races could only get if their gods bestowed it upon them. However, when one god created unbreakable chains that strung the continents together and three sibling gods collectively killed him, the chains wouldn’t be destroyed no matter what they tried. One of them, the middle child, convinced the other gods to give up their water to erode the chains. They did what they wanted and sent all their water down, creating bodies of water. Humans only discovered the magical properties of water when they drank it in a bottle of Soul Glass, the glass made from the magical sand of a currently unnamed desert continent along with a unique ingredient.

Souls: The core of magic is a soul. It’s the vessel for any magic they may gain in their life, but it’s vital that it doesn’t get destroyed. A soul is like a water balloon. It’s elastic, but it pops easily. Destroying someone’s soul erases them from all existence, including other people’s memories that aren’t documented.

Waterinfusion: Waterinfusion is the name for drinking water from certain bodies of water that’s under certain conditions. The ingredients need be in a container made of Soul Glass to properly waterinfuse. Once you Waterinfuse, you can use a certain element depending on the conditions the water you drank was under. For example, boiling the water gives you fire magic. However, Waterinfusing creates a string of water around your soul, putting tension on it. Waterinfusing twice is enough to pop a normal person’s soul, but a Sea’s Prophet, the person who a god chooses to communicate with, can safely do it twice.

Weaponbonding: By consistently using a weapon forged with Soul Steel, an alloy made from Soul Glass and iron, for extended periods of time, you can form what’s known as a Weaponbond. A Weaponbond lets you summon the weapon you bonded with and use unique skills with it. As an example, you could throw a dagger through someone and let it return to your hand, effectively hitting them twice. Weaponbonding encases your soul in metal, making it much harder to break at the expense of being unable to use Waterinfusion afterwards and your soul popping if you Weaponbond while you’re already Waterinfused.

That’s the idea, let me know if you have questions.

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11

Me looking at this with my OCs’ world having scientific reasons for magic existing:

I feel like Elemental Magic might make the world overall seem more bland and uninteresting, and using concepts from other media would make it seem like a small ripoff. The original ideas have more potential, but I might be biased because I’ve never seen those before. I’m mainly interested in the different elements type.

12

When your soul gets accidentally destroyed and you end up getting Catherine’d

13

Thankfully a person’s soul is kept and protected by their god. Or their god’s dead. Or their god extorts them to keep them in line.

14

call me a hater but I like it when magic is grounded on some logic

15

me looking up from the woven together player’s handbook:

allow us to introduce ourselves

16

(i am kidding, wt doesnt fit the criteria at all)

17

doesnt allow teens to 1v1000 other people and fight a military solo

18

That kid controlling anything necessary/dangerous to human life (oxygen, uranium, etc):
Also you could do variations such as how many electrons it has or something so you get radioactive potassium and normal potassium and stuff

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I would choose between the periodic table one or mha (overal stats are good and partially biased since I watched mha before. God the plot armor is insane)

19

should i modify it so that their power is a gift from the gods or something and make it so you could change/choose/reroll the power if you go through some hard trial or something

also this wont be set in the mha verse, just using its magic system

yeah that kid is a problem

20

The Nasuverse has an awesome (and extremely complicated) magic system that fits the criteria

It’s also a soft-magic system rather than a hard-magic system, meaning that there are only a few set rules that cannot be broken which makes for a very flexible magic system.

If you want more of an explanation, the wiki link for a “quick” rundown on Magecraft is here and the wiki link for a rundown on Magic should be here