Questions tagged [magic]
For questions that have to do with magic, as opposed to science/technology. Remember to explain any limits.
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What's the smallest change to physics required to allow magic?
Yesterday my 7-year-old daughter asked me:
Why can't I do magic for real?
I answered: because of the law of conservation of energy! And I briefly explained this law.
Thus she grumbled, "a ...
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What can be used as a money in a high-fantasy magic world where noble metals are in practical use?
Imagine a high-fantasy magic world where magic has the place of a science.
Noble/rare metals – such as silver, gold, platinum – have the ability to conduct magic energy, which is commonly used in all ...
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If accelerated natural healing were to occur, what would happen to the human body?
The Details:
The human body is capable of impressive acts of self-repair, but such processes take a lot of time, and can take a toll on the body. Infection or other complications can also develop, and ...
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If magic is real, can it be true that rational scientific thought should exclude it?
"Magic and science coexist." A tired phrase by now, because it's found in so much fiction. But can it make sense?
Assume a world broadly parallel to our own. It has experienced its Age of ...
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Must magic be tied to medieval tech?
Most settings with a magical component, whether this means wizards, magical races, or something similar, seem to be parked at a medieval level of development in terms of technology and society. Is ...
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If only the sun's light went out, how long would it take for all living things to die out?
If by some form of magic, the sun went out, but the earth was still warm a.k.a the Earth did not just freeze and kill us all, who would die first, and how long would it take for all terrestrial living ...
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A Most Subtle Magic
Rynn is not flashy at all. In fact, you would be forgiven to think she's a bit of an introvert. Sure, the people in the town are strangely reluctant to talk to you about her, but you are a newcomer, ...
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How Can a Creature With Focus Come to Exist?
Background: Alendyias is a world that was formed inside the Fracture of Reality, one that is still forming as the Fracture in Reality grows and absorbs other worlds in its path. Absorbed worlds and ...
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Wondering what would happen if magic was constrained by Conservation of Energy
Would throwing a fireball leave a trail of frost in its wake? Would transmuting too much lead into gold cause a small meltdown? Would collecting enough power to cast a really big spell like causing ...
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Preventing Dead Monsters From Spawning Undead
Background: My world, Alendyias, is more than a little interesting. As the Fracture in Reality grows and expands, it takes apart and reforms worlds inside itself, and over the ages, this has formed ...
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Explaining where energy comes from to power magic
I'm trying to create a realistic magic system, this may be a lost cause.
Imagine in our story we have a wizard who wants to cast a spell to start a fire.
In some magic systems there are magic words, ...
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How much can a magician lift if constrained by her own body's energy?
In Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle ( the Eragon books ), magic works in a very specifically defined way. A magician can only use magic as far as his own bodily strength would be able to take ...
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Realistic Airships
I'm looking for an answer concerning a steam powered airship. The steam is generated via coal burning. The ship is propelled by an X amount of steam engine propellers (think Besler steam plane). The ...
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How to defeat a nature Mage?
I have a Mage who wields more power than any other (think a hundred thousand normal Mages). He gathered an army of cat warriors from the Guderian forest to his banner and attacked the Kingdom. The cat ...
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What Weapons Would Benefit From the Rubberizing Enchantment?
This question is akin to Benefits of Boomerang Enchantment on Items and covers the Rubberizing Enchantment.
When an item kills a Plop, a slime-type monster that looks like a glob of sludge with a big, ...
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Would Rubberizing Benefit People and If So, How?
This is an extension of What Weapons Would Benefit From the Rubberizing Enchantment? and covers people instead of items.
Basically, when someone kills a Plop with an item, that item is Rubberized; ...
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Why would a magic world be stuck in medieval times?
This is related to Must magic be tied to medieval tech?, but not the same.
So the setup:
There are two worlds, one is Earth, as it is now, with all its history. The other is a magic world, with an ...
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Science, Religion, Magic: Can they be maintained in equal and parallel opposition?
This has been a burning question of mine for many years:
If magic is real, can it be true that rational scientific thought should exclude it?
In the course of discussing it, I've realized I need to ...
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Can magic BE or directly work as science?
So I have a couple of stories I'm writing (I find it helps brainstorming better) and am wondering if magic can function quite literally as science.
In one of my stories, I have a character who ...
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Would a magic-using society create living batteries?
Postulate
My world has functioning magic which is capable of exerting kinetic effect. (That is, move objects, or generate heat, since "heat" after all is just motion at the atomic level.) It can't ...
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Usefulness of Pyris Enchantment
Have you ever looked at something and went "Cool bro, but where's the fire?" or perhaps even "BRING ME FIAH!" Well, the magical forces in Alendyias did just that.
At that very ...
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How can a pacifist country protect itself?
Think of a more or less traditional medieval fantasy world: multiple races, magic, some alchemy/magitech that is of comparable power and reliability to ordinary magic.
And in this world there exists ...
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What would happen if magic was constrained by the second law of thermodynamics
This is a followup question to the question Wondering what would happen if magic was constrained by Conservation of Energy and it's related to this post. This question asks which sources of energy ...
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How to defend when attacked by an avian species?
Bird people are humanoid creatures with a wingspan of 4 meters, they are as tall as humans and the fittest of them weight 72 kilograms or slightly less, so they are quite lighter than the average ...
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Magic as Luck Control
Note: A fair bit of setting-lore is laid out in the more subtle magic question, so it might be worth paying that a visit, if you haven't already.
The sky is dark and gloomy in the swamplands, the ...
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How to promote nationalism for a multi-racial kingdom, against other such multi-racial kingdoms
So, I have an empire, many political notes about which can be found here, although I will put more relevant notes here as well.
There are many fantasy races, all of them some form of animal person, ...
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The role of anthropomorphic foxes in a medieval army
In my universe I am designing anthropomorphic foxes similar in appearance to the japanese mythological kitsune. For those who are familiar with the game League of Legends: Ahri is a good example of ...
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How to make the most wealth out of a single "Groundhogday Potion"?
Pennyless Joe, the broke archeologist, finds an old pawn shop selling something curious. A ceramic vial labeled "Groundhog Day Potion". It's a bargain for $1.99. (He buys it, because he is not quite ...
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How to escape a horde of worms using magic with minimal injury? [closed]
Background
An evil Nature Mage (named Erilius) resides in a tropical forest where he has abundant access to local life (of which all the flora and fauna except people can be controlled by him) and ...
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Unconventional Rebirth: Is It Checked?
In my last question, Preventing Dead Monsters From Spawning Undead, I realized a rather concerning loophole; if someone were to intentionally allow a large monster, like a mutant 'rex, to eat them, ...
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Men Protecting Themselves From Bewitchment
Alright, while trying to figure out the cultural impact of my (Dnd-style) class system, I realized that there was a problem with the Dancer Class:
Bewitching Dance-This dance only works on a small ...
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How do I protect my shop from teleporters?
I live in a world where magic is common. Most people have enough magic to do simple tasks like lighting a candle or healing minor injuries. Higher magic is very rare, and those individuals mostly ...
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Why would a staff increase the magic power of a mage?
Similarly to the question How would it make sense that spellbooks or grimoires teach only one spell? I was thinking about typical RPG games and how to design the magic system therein.
While thinking ...
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How do you assassinate someone who is protected by precognitive people? [duplicate]
The US government is desperate to kill the superhuman rebel leader, but the man is surrounded by "precogs". They can see any attempt on his life before it happens. What plan will the government form ...
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How to conceal my immortality without hiding for a hundred years?
In my story, I have this character that cannot die and cannot grow old. She got this from a curse. When ordinary people see her, she probably looks like 20 or so.
How can I make it so that nobody ...
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How to keep mages from taking over the world?
In my world anyone can use magic with the proper training. There are two levels of magic users:
The first level is apprentice (someone with 4 to 8 years of magic
education). They can move people and ...
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In a world with magic, who would govern?
In our non-magical reality, feudal nobility is postulated to have evolved from warlords - an armed man in charge of a group of armed men. Since they can intimidate less-well armed or trained people, ...
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Magivore - designing a magic 'eater'
Yes, magic means I can say 'make it so' and it is. But I see too many options and not sure which ones would make more sense. I'm picking one idea that I've never seen in a book.
So a Magivore is ...
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Why would magic and science be split?
As previously noted, magic would most likely be able to be studied by the scientific method. Indeed, science would likely at least try to understand magic, if not incorporate it. My question is, what ...
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Horses for Absolutely Everybody, how it came to be
Suppose that I have a fantasy kingdom, built on a magical land, and the thing is that horses are so cheap and plentiful in that land, even the poorest peasant would have at least a horse to their name....
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Alynn the Scientific Mage: Keeping it Secret
Flopping down at the gates to Rolhelm after 5 exhausting days in the forest, Alynn felt a small sense of victory. She'd had to create new lives for herself before, so she could do it again here. Get ...
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To build a space elevator
One fine day, magical space aliens arrived and launched and harpooned an extremely long(100,000 km) and thick(100km radius) spear into somewhere in equatorial Africa, which buried and anchored itself ...
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Why would an antigravity abyss exist in a deep cavern?
[Here's some writing. It will explain some aspects of the abyss in a way I can't otherwise.]
"It's beautiful", uttered Ivan, in a rare moment of appreciation. "Rocks and platforms and chunks of ...
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Magic and physics with human power output
I had a look at this question, and though about magic and the human body's energy output.
I remember calculating the energy require to walk up a 3.4m staircase quickly in a school physics lesson once....
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Are These Adventurer's Bags Unbalanced?
Okay, so when a regular Class holder (like a Rogue or Warrior, perhaps even a Dancer) is Chosen as an adventurer, they gain the mysterious Respawn ability (gaining two additional lives) and an ...
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How can I meaningfully define the energy cost of magical levitation?
In the world I'm building, there is a form of "magic"¹ that effectively amounts to metabolism-powered telekinesis. In particular, there is a maximum power limit of approximately 20 W/kg relative to a ...
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How can wizards do such powerful things running on pure human metabolism? [duplicate]
In fiction, we often see magic used for very flashy effects (like, say, fireballs). But human metabolic output doesn't seem powerful enough to account for things like this. Is it possible to build a ...
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Swords more effective than guns [closed]
In our beautiful little world there are guns like pistols and rifles and for simplicity sake let's say they are of the Old West variety. In this world there also exist many beasts different and ...
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Would Calcification Benefit People and If So, How?
This is a question in the series of Enchantment Benefits for Humans, the successor of Would Rubberizing Benefit People and If So, How?.
When an item kills a Chomper (you can see link one or link two ...
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Impact of Chaos Sense
Monsters are creatures who lived in a world that was absorbed by the Fracture in Reality ; this exposed these once-normal animals to Chaos Energy that mutated them into fantasy-style monstrosities. ...
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