But that also means that magic must be a part of the world. Mages running around doing all-powerful stuff. *crosses eyes*

I admit it. I dislike Zed in Wizard's First Rule and Pug in the Feist novels. (Not trying to start an argument, just stating a personal taste) Why bother to do anything when you have mages so powerful they can snap a finger and solve any possible problem?

So I am trying to figure out a useful, yet self-limiting magic system. I'm not the first to have this problem, but I'm a bit stumped. I don't like the "do magic and you lose a finger or have to make a human sacrifice" systems just because they seem like arbitrary, externally imposed ways of limiting the magic instead of intrinsic to it.

Yikes. So that leaves-- *pounds head on keyboard*

I have to figure this out. I should have before I started writing but I knew I could put it off for a while. Now I have to before I write another word. Any suggestions?

You can cast short term spells only? Love potions that work for two days and only magic a sword to deflect blows for five hours or until sunset or sunrise?

Magic savings accounts? You have to work up some energy(?) that you can then use to do small stuff? Big stuff is only for hermits who spend a lifetime building up to one big, huge, tremendous single action? I bet they'd be real cagy about spending that lifetime's stored energy.

1. Design the limits of your magic so that they are linked to the power inherent in your character, then have the effort required to generate significant magic become exceedingly difficult as the impressiveness of the magic conjured increases. Example - Lighting a candle with your finger requires an almost insignificant amount of power. Lighting a campfire, slightly more. Launching a fireball? Nigh impossible, or so costly that even the most skilled users could only cast one or two. Maybe set a terminal limit on magic too - if you over extend yourself, you fall into a near coma, you risk permanently retarding your abilities, death by power-drain, etc.

2. Limit the magic in your world to local-to-the-user. No casting fireballs, but if I touch you, I can burn you. I can't read your mind from across the room (let alone across the world), but if I touch you, I can see into your psyche. That would limit the usefulness of magic in terms of combat, at least to a certain degree.

3. Limit the number of magic users available in your world to some very low number - a dozen, let's say, strictly regimented through a caste-like system. They control the magic available in the world, allow others to learn the secrets of their power, but your MC received this knowledge (at least a rudimentary knowledge) by accident, and spends the rest of the book figuring out how to use it.

I'm sort of confused by your question, though. Basically, you're writing a story about a character who obtains powerful magical abilities, in a world where magic is present enough to be a significant part of the tale. But you also dislike powerful magical characters? I'm a little lost. Anyways, there are three ways to limit the magic available in your book.

There is a rather big difference. The magical ability my MC received is powerful in a fairly low magic world--magic exists and affects life though. It is nowhere near all-powerful nor does it make her even close to invincible.

There are many books where the magic user is powerful but limited in some way. Well, there are times when being god-like is appropriate.

In Godslayer by Jacqueline Carey, for instance, Sartoris is god-like because he is a GOD. No one else has this kind of power except the other gods. And even he eventually exhausts his power.

In Fesit's Pug books, I don't recall Pug ever exhausting his power. In Goodkind's books, Richard even comments that he doesn't have to bother to learn to use his sword because of its all powerful magic, and I won't even go into Zed.

Edit: There are, of course, a number of ways of limiting magic. The idea that the magic kills the magic user is one that has been around for a while. However, magic, for instance, can require a lot of education that is hard to get. It can require rare materials that are expensive or controlled by mages who don't want to share them. It can be given by the gods who don't give it to many people (the choice in my last two novels and I want to do something different).

One of my favourite magic systems is to have the 'potential power' available in the world but it requires practice to take that potential and to convert it into something you can use. So a mage who is still an apprentice and has only been studying a short time is still unable to grasp that power and use it at all. A mage with a few years experience can take enough for a medium sized spell and use it but is still unable to take enough for a large spell or for more than one medium sized one. An old mage who has spent his life practicing and learning can do mutiple spells, but even he can only do so many before he reaches the limit of his expertise. (all the above can be per 24 hours, or until he next sleeps, or anything you like)

To accomodate your idea of your character becoming powerful in this magic without training you can have the potential for certain individuals to be born with an innate power to use the the magic without training. These special ones are natural mages and while still having a limit to how much magic they can use in your set limit are still better than the most experienced normal mage.

Like i say that is just one way but it is a favourite of mine.

Just to add. If you want the character to start the story as a non-magic user and then gain the talent just have these 'natural mages' develop the talent after puberty (or later) like robert jordan did in wheel of time series.

If everyone that used magic did so at the cost of their sanity, it work a number of ways:

The easiest way to put controls on the magic is commonality, only a small portion of the populace has the spark for manipulating mystical energies and discipline/knowledge.

If only 1% of the population can perform magic and to control it you need extensive training and discipline then you have already weeded out a good bit of flotsam.

I would say the study of magic and it's use would be just as involved as a specialized degree in medicine. So your looking at 12+ years of schooling, followed by a period of apprenticeship etc.

For the actual application of magic and it's cost I have always endorsed the mage is forcing reality to shift to satisfy the mages will, which would be mentally draining.

Starting a small fire, by exciting the atoms of the air to generate a spontaneous combustion is relatively simple, doing it at a distance would increase the difficulty, increasing the size of the combustion would likewise multiply the drain and so on.

The idea that an untrained or wilder mage could inadvertantly kill themselves or render themselves catatonic when they lose control of the forces they are manipulating fits right in.

I know if some short pieces I've written I kept the same underlying paradigm for how magic worked, but each society/school had it's own methodology for manipulating it. One group may use arcane language and incantation to help "focus" there will and increase there chance of success, over time groups trained that way would be psychologically dependent on those "spells" and "incantations" for performing their magic.

George RR Martin had a character called the "Turtle" in his Wild Card anthologies. The character had exceptionally powerful telekenisis, but because he had always operated within a floating vehicle, that he mentally flew, he developed a block where he could not use his powers outside the shell.

Pavlovian tendencies can give you some additional control in what works and why it works the way it does for some but not others.

Quite the contrary. The particular skill she acquires is totally outside the norm of magic and magic itself is not common in the society.

She acquires an ability that was developed by a certain mage to fight the particular "evil" that is coming about, but she was never intended to get it. Then through stuff happening (after all, it's a novel and stuff happens) and she ends up with this kind of "wild card" ability. Although it has to develop, the only real cost for this one particular ability is that it marks her very clearly and makes her a target for their enemies.

It is totally different than the other magic. Now I would find it absurd for her to be the only one with some form of magic. My inclination is toward developing some form of alchemy, but I can't quite put together an alchemical system that makes sense.

Your character has not shown signs of magic, has not had the training and has no idea how to control the magic. When her magic suddenly appears, she has no control over it. It does as much damage as it does good.

I would have it where magic tends to be extremely powerful when it appears. The mage has to learn how to suppress the power to use it. She does not have that training, so she has no control over it.

One sets limits on what their magic can do. I just realized that my discription of magic could be like a spirit creature that attaches to the person and does "work" for them once they gain control but that is not really what I am thinking of.

One cannot bring things to life. One cannot teleport. One cannot send things to one of the thirteen hells, One cannot conjure demons. Just keep deciding what you don't want the magic to do and that will tell you what they can do.

Peirs Anthoney's Pern series might give you an idea of what powerful magic can do, but also cannot do. Of course, in those stories, the magic the person has is just the wrong kind for the mission they find themselves doing.

The mage has only so much energy. It's depleted by lack of sleep, physical exertion, lack of food, illness, etc. just like any person's ability to do physical work. Energy is restored by rest and nutrition. The mage has to balance energy intake with both physical and magical use of energy. That applies in both the short and long run. A fat mage has more stored reserve than a smaller person for both magic and physical exertion.

There's some potential for a quick boost in an emergency, like a shot of adrenalin, but the toll is worse. The body, and likewise the magic, use energy less efficiently when its adrenalin-driven.

Piers Anthony? I hardly will turn to Piers Anthony for learning a magic system, and I never said I had never read any work with magic in it. And Anne McCaffrey wrote the Dragonriders of Pern series. (Puns--I hate puns. I know someone who was mentored by Anthony though, and he's nice about helping out new writers, I hear.)

Well, I'm still leaning toward some kind of alchemical system, and maybe it could be difficult to learn, a bit like learning linear algebra--My downfall--and take many years to do. It might take a natural ability, just as higher math does and yet not be some kind of thing that you suddenly get at puberty, wild creature kind of thing, seems to me to be over-done.

I'm thinking anyone might learn it if they're willing to spend many years studying, but some would find it much easier than others and most might "flunk out" finding it about like taking calculus.

How does that sound? And then if it is alchemically based ingredients might be difficult to come by.

But I'm a bit vague on how you would use the alchemical stuff once you made it and what it would logically do.

Maybe your MC accidentally finds some equivalent to the philosopher's stone, allowing her access to a particularly difficult and tedious branch of the science that masters need to work for decades to master? Does that work?

In my mind, though, alchemy has never been quite the equivalent for magic - it seems more like mystical chemistry. I guess if you crafted a new alchemical science, it could be more active in nature.

So long as you are comfortable playing a little loose with the physical properties of the chemical universe, you could just as easilly have chemistry developing many of the more fantastical properties that were believed when it was still Alchemy.

That a strong theme in the Gregory Keyes Age of Unreason novels (Newton's Cannon, etc.). For a more grounded approach where it's still alchemy and seems almost mystical, but is actually just basic chemistry check out Neil Stephensons Baroque Cycle novels (Quicksilver, System of the World, etc.)

Making it alchemical puts additional limiters on it as well. For costs you now have material availability, preparation time and fragility.

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So long as you are comfortable playing a little loose with the physical properties of the chemical universe, you could just as easilly have chemistry developing many of the more fantastical properties that were believed when it was still Alchemy.

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(Forgive me if you know the following, I didn't 'cos I don't read fantasy 'cos unlimited magick annoys me. I hope sharing might help.)

Have you tried googling 'herbal alchemy' or 'online grimoire'? I think you may find some useful research lines there. For example, I learned that old magick books use animal parts as an esoteric code for herbs, e.g. bat's wings are holly leaves.

I love the word 'grimoire', apparently it means a kind of grammar for magic.

Also, it seems that better mages craft new spells for specific combinations of factors, e.g. rather than a generic spell for making us into fabulous million-seller writers, there'd be a spell specifically crafted for JeanneT and another, slightly different, for TaleSpinner. While the learning mage would use a generic with limited effect, the virtuoso would craft something special and more powerful for each of us.

Another grimoire suggested that herbs must be harvested with tools of the right material, gold for example, presumably to preserve the magical properties in the same way as tea made in a china pot tastes way better than tea made in a plastic one.

And also there was a suggestion that the alignment of the moon, planets etc matters.

Thus the limits appear to come from knowledge and learning, innate ability, availability of the right herbs and materials, time of year, etc.

There would perhaps be an interesting limit from a plot perspective in that the strength of the magic could depend on the mage's knowledge of the person or people that the magic should affect, forcing her to get to know them. She'd have more influence over someone she knows well, less over a stranger and very little over the masses.

It's very nifty stuff and even if you decide to have magic in your story that is nothing like the real stuff; learning little about the history of chemistry would be beneficial to showing how regular people in your world react to this magic of yours.
(I would try looking 'alchemy' or 'history of chemistry' or 'phlogiston')

Greek fire was a product of "alchemy" adding esoteric and hard to find materials would also provide plenty of fodder for performing unusual effects.

Japanese and chinese herbal remedies are worth looking into, holistic medicine and other non traditional "alchemical" disciplines.

In you world adding a teaspoon of bile from the stomach of a sea lion with powedered narwhale horn, ground with an ivory pestle and dissolved in a pregnant cows first milk (i.e. colostrum) provides a temporary immunity to poisons and purges poisons already in someones system. Performing the same ritual on the Winter solstice while at a junction of two or more ley lines produxes the opposite and you create a poison which can only be cured by the non poison version of itself. You see where I'm going with this.

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Speaking of Robert Jordan, he did have an interesting concept that was never fully explored (and limited to just the men): with power comes madness.

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Actually, my recent novel has a similar concept. One form of magic is called witchcraft, where one has to open themselves up to possession by spirits, which eventually leads to madness, along with the risk of permanent possession. It has to do with the mind being opening up to the psyche of a completely alien being.

Sadly, the the magic isn't full explored in the novel. I plan to go much deeper into it in the revision.

Heating molecules in the air, and starting a fire? Easy.
Moving something by telekenesis? Easy.
CREATING a single atom of hydrogen, or anything else, out of nothing? Requires as much energy as an atomic bomb. I don't think so.

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You don't have to have magic if you have chemistry, if you study the history (Sorry chem minor speaking here)You see for most of the history of the world chemistry was seen as 'magic' people believed all sorts of things, like phlogiston (The thing that makes fire burn) and that one could make one element change to another. They had only four elements (a fifth one added later)and they categorized everything into those groupings. . .all good concepts if you want to create a magical world based on chemistry.
It's very nifty stuff and even if you decide to have magic in your story that is nothing like the real stuff; learning little about the history of chemistry would be beneficial to showing how regular people in your world react to this magic of yours.
(I would try looking 'alchemy' or 'history of chemistry' or 'phlogiston')

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Maybe you are the one that needs to do a little research. What do you think Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton studied? Guess what--it was alchemy. Get off your high horse. the "history of chemistry" is irrelevant.

And thanks so much for suggesting I do research. I would have never considered doing something so basic.

But then you're a chem major, rather than a chemist. Youth probably explains a bit.

Talespinner said: "I didn't 'cos I don't read fantasy 'cos unlimited magick annoys me."

Hold on there, hoss. Not all fantasy has unlimited magic. I don't read Sci/Fi because it has unlimited techno-babble. *grins*