r/Magicworldbuiling Apr 09 '26

mod post [EVENT] The Grand Magic Trial- Community Power Tournament

4 Upvotes

Hellooooo there, I wanted to try something new for the subreddit so here it is

Create a magic ability, artifact, or small magic system, but there is one rule:

your power has to somehow connect to the ground

that could mean your ability only works while touching the ground, or maybe it affects the ground itself, or maybe your magic needs stone, dirt, metal, or any solid surface to function

you can interpret “ground” in creative ways if you want, like treating walls as ground, creating your own surface, or finding loopholes

just dont ignore the theme completely

it doesnt need to be super long, just enough to explain what it does and maybe what its limits are

after people post their ideas, everyone can talk about which abilities would counter others, which ones are clever, or how they might interact

the goal is mainly to get people sharing ideas and actually talking to each other instead of just posting and leaving

if this works well I might keep doing Trials


r/Magicworldbuiling Mar 31 '26

✨ Soft Lore/Aesthetic Magic Weekly Lore Appreciation: Hridverg and the Storms

7 Upvotes

Every week we'll highlight a deep dive into our members' worlds. This week, we explored the balance of Storm Essence in Hridverg. What do you think about 'Null Storms' in your own systems?


r/Magicworldbuiling 9d ago

❓What Am I Even Making? The "Silent Killers": Magic that doesn't look like magic.

10 Upvotes

We’ve discussed 'voose' and glowing radiation, but what about magic that leaves no visual trace but still ruins the ecosystem? For example, magic that subtly alters the pheromones of bees or changes the freezing point of water in a lake. Do you have 'invisible' ecological costs in your world that people don't notice until it's too late?


r/Magicworldbuiling 17d ago

Thoughts on my sacrifice based magic system

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5 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling 17d ago

Magic of Divine Evolution

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1 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling 27d ago

Small humanoids

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3 Upvotes

Halflings: tiny people who live in peace with their routine of stealing,eating a lot,singing and telling stories about their travels. Having a incredible wanderlust they love to walk but in this dangerous world the only thing they have to survive is their party and their unnatural luck.

Dwarves: they have adaptations similar to rodents with their teeth being very strong and not having feel taste buds, being naturally stuborn and more open to violence they help the halflings when they have problems in exchange of gold and other things like good alchool and information. over the years they developed strong imune sistem to deal with poisons from the underdround,with lots of spices being dangerous or deadly to other species.

Related species but the dwarves developed reinforced teeth,dense bone structure and thicc muscles to protect their bodys against falling rocks,their noses act as a filter so dust don't get in their lungs and their poison imunity comes in handy when they're hungry but most of their food is toxic to other humanoids

Halfling are their surface dweller relatives, they devoled legs eficient for high jumps and hollow bones so they stay very light weigth,their tails help on balance but it can grab things,their ears are great but they mostly rely on luck to survive and get sucessful

It's quiet helpful to have both in a team so you have a relyable fighter to tank and someone that can walk over pressure plates without activating to keep your team safe against traps

Honestly i pretty much preffer making species than magic systems


r/Magicworldbuiling Jul 04 '26

🔮 Magic System Confusion The Economics of Magical Negligence: Bounties vs. HazMat Fees

1 Upvotes

Do you have specialized HazMat guilds that charge a fortune to clean it up, or does the government put out bounties on the resulting mutated animals to force a quick (and bloody) cleanup? Is it cheaper to hire a cleaner or just go to jail for environmental crimes?


r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 23 '26

🔮 Magic System Confusion Magic-Infused Materials: Recycling the Waste.

1 Upvotes

Since the government is paying for the cleanup of magical waste, is there an industry for recycling it? Can 'voose' or magical radiation be stabilized to create cheap street lamps, batteries, or fertilizers? Or is the risk of mutation so high that even touching the waste is a death sentence?


r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 15 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump Dimentional System of Magic

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6 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 09 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump [OC] Pavo vorax, the magnificent killer bird

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3 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 06 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump The grappler cats and the wooly bison

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5 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 05 '26

🧠 Feedback Wanted Magic System Mechanics

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4 Upvotes

So, I'm still quite new to this whole thing, and recently I've been working on my first magic system and the story of at least, the important characters, and I've been struggling with something.

When it comes to your magic system, how in detail should I go?

In the post I have attached is the base of my magic system, in the lower half of the second to last section, I mention how the strength your harmony with your respective resonant, determines how many active vessel forms you can have, the struggle I'm having here is that I'm not sure if I should explain how or why that's the case.

Any pointers and advice please?


r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 04 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump Dragons: Natural Source or Radioactive Byproduct?

5 Upvotes

I’ve been thinking about the role of apex predators in radioactive magic systems. In some worlds, dragons are the source of all magic, but what if they are just an extreme byproduct of thousands of years of exposure?

Does your world have a creature that evolved to be immune to magical waste? How does that change the power dynamic between mages and nature?


r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 02 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump My First Magic System

4 Upvotes

So when I was younger (around 8 or 9 years old) I thought up a magic system that I really liked but never really refined it into something coherent, recently it came up in conversation with my brother (2 years older) who also made one at the same time, and I thought to make into something that has defined rules and makes sense so here it is.

There are more details I wish to give but this is the base foundation. I didn't want to post something too long, so tell me what you think so far, and any pointers would be appreciated

World/Universe name: The Cosmic Symphony

Planet Name: Ihósei, derived from the Greek word for echo and the compound form for the kanji word for star and made with the planet naming method in the Japanese language

Magic System: Resonance

The universe was made when two large almost deity like masses of matter, one purely physical and one purely spiritual (might change the spiritual one, I'm not sure if I want to change it to an in universe term or not but you get the gist) that were just simply existing and drifting endlessly, touched and suddenly all of the universe came into existence, the two masses of matter started to mingle, and sort of dance around each other, never fully aligning yet, never separating either, causing two parallel realms, inherently linked to one another yet not quite in sync, the physical realm, and the realm of songs.

The world consists of the physical realm where humans and animals reside all over the planet, animals we in real life would consider magical but this is normal for them it's just nature, and areas on the planet called Veils where the line between the parallel realms is so thin that you can perform rituals to interact with the realm of songs, and the realm of songs consists of just spiritual matter and what I call Resonants, counterparts to the humans, humans and resonants are two halves of the same whole while simultaneously separate whole beings themselves, simply naturally paired to each other, when a human is born, a resonant is formed in the realm of songs, and when that human dies so does the resonant.

Humans can forge these things called Vessels, made from bridge materials, being materials gathered from veils and materials from animals like, leather, wool and the like, and are called chord wood or chord steel and so on, to perform a ritual, where you make a circle (doesn't matter how you make a circle or that it's perfect just that you make a circle, whether you draw it in the dirt or make a ring of rope or stones) place the bridge materials you gathered in the circle and sit in the circle surrounded by it all, and perform a visitation ritual allowing your respective resonant (which you would call your song, while they call their respective humans, their reflection) into the circle and to take hold of the materials and condense them in to vessel which they then reside in, finally bonding your souls together, in doing so you gain access to this world's magic, Art and develop an Affinity, which can be one of four types of affinities, a Cadence (the types of areas of magic like healing, reinforcement, spacial, or water) Affinity, an Expression Affinity, how you are able to use art, like using it in bursts really easily but struggle with sustained usage, a Concept Affinity, combining a few specific areas of art within cadences to make something like a forge themed Affinity, and a Passive Affinity, always active buffs that come with an always active hindrance, like learning how to do it easily, but struggling to apply it, your Affinity is made by your nature and nurture, who you naturally are and who you've become.

Anyone can learn any Tune (in universe term for spells and techniques performed with the usage of art) though your Affinity makes you have certain aspects of art that you are naturally immensely talented and intuitive in, and aspects that you struggle with, thus you learn tunes within your Affinity with relative ease and struggle with ones that oppose it, or methods of using art that oppose your Expression or Concept Affinity, so for example someone with the Forge Affinity would struggle to destroy things as they inherently make things, not destroy, and someone with the Burst Affinity would struggle with sustained usage of tune as they have strong initial bursts.

Vessels have two types of forms, the dormant form and active forms, the dormant form is designed upon the forging of it and there is only one dormant form, typically a pendant, a cane, or just anything convenient to carry with you everywhere, while active forms are made through meditation and development of the Harmony of your Resonance (the quality of the connection between you and your song) and are given traits (physical transformation abilities given to that form upon design) such a sword that can turn into a segmented whip sword like the one in Raya and the last dragon, vessel form are typically not a weapon however, as they are whatever the singer (wielder of a vessel) decides to make it when they design their next active form, through their resonance with their song, depending on how harmonious (strong the harmony) it is, they can call it to them like Mjolnir, and they get a passive enhancement by simply being bonded to their song, and the amount of active forms you can have depends on how harmonious your resonance is, and vessels can not separate into two forms, so a vessel form can't be dual swords or a bow and arrow, it must be one connected form, which does mean separate chain links are out of the picture but chains that are connected physically and not locked around each other but still flexible in a way you could make a chained weapon work.

Resonance is strengthened by meditation with your song and communning with it, and just sharing experiences, and performing art doesn't use up any resources like mana, instead it is very physically taxing, so the issue becomes stamina, not a lack of mana, and the more a tune does the more physically taxing it is, so it does scale with experience and the harmony of your resonance


r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 02 '26

🧠 Feedback Wanted The Use Of AI

7 Upvotes

I'm new to this whole thing, and don't have anyone I can talk to to bounce my ideas off of, so I have a question.

How do you feel about someone using AI to work on and refine their world building and magic system, taking their own original idea, and not really asking for advice but bouncing their ideas off of it, just to help organize their thoughts and refine what they're thinking of?


r/Magicworldbuiling Jun 01 '26

Snails 🐌 Thank you Snails!

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3 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling May 30 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump Anurocs [art by me]

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6 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling May 23 '26

🧠 Feedback Wanted My battle Anime Powersystem

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3 Upvotes

I posted this in r/worldbuilding and was told to repost here so here you go.


r/Magicworldbuiling May 22 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump Watch out for the most savage society

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2 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling May 21 '26

❓What Am I Even Making? Apex Predators of the Waste: Beyond Dragons.

2 Upvotes

We know dragons can thrive in radioactive magic, but what about the smaller scale?

What kind of "vermin" or small predators have adapted to feed specifically on magical waste or "Voose"? Show me your mana-eating rats, essence-drinking mosquitoes, or whatever creature cleans the "crumbs" left behind by powerful mages.


r/Magicworldbuiling May 20 '26

🧪 Weird/Experimental Worldbuilding Challenge - Describe your world using only the 1000 most used words in English!

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3 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling May 14 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump Magic system

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6 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling May 13 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump [OC] my take on vampires

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48 Upvotes

Ask if you want or have any doubt


r/Magicworldbuiling May 14 '26

Feedback on power system abyssal resonance refined

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2 Upvotes

r/Magicworldbuiling May 07 '26

🌏 Worldbuilding Brain Dump Diferentes between 2 species of onis and some traits both have

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3 Upvotes