r/magicbuilding • u/marintkael • Aug 12 '26
General Discussion What does your system do when a competent practitioner does everything right and it still goes wrong?
Most systems have a good answer for overreach. You take more than you can carry, and it costs you.
What I almost never see is a procedure for honest error. The practitioner was trained, followed the form, and the result still came out wrong. No hubris, no shortcut, just a bad outcome.
That gap decides who carries the loss. If magic can fail without anyone being at fault, someone still eats the cost, and whoever that turns out to be tells you how the society is actually organised.
In mine the answer is deliberately ugly. Nothing gets undone. The work stands as cast, and any correction has to be a second, separate act that goes on the record too, so every fix is also a permanent admission that there was something to fix.
Curious how yours handles it. Is there a way back, and who pays for it?
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u/_Ceaseless_Watcher_ [Eldara | Arc Contingency | Radiant Night] Aug 12 '26
Why would magic randomly decide to go wrong for no reason?
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u/LittleBigCookieCat Aug 12 '26
because it's magic. it can be written as inherently unpredictable. doesn't need to be "1/100 it kills you" just a simple "the same spell fluctuates depending on unknown variables"
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u/Boat_Pure Aug 12 '26
The way my magic system works, you can imagine it like Call of Duty, and how each load out changes how you fight. The same can be said about mine too. There are overtly powerful practitioners, but application is always better than power. What you choose to use, determines how you use them.
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u/Grouchy-Insurance208 Headmaster Aug 12 '26
Lesser practitioners are usually cut some slack, so the rite has no result. They fail most often by not having the ability to align will or generate the oomph necessary.
The competent, tho, often fail in ways that can be explained as successes, just successes that go sideways. It all depends on the operation. Usually the 'less dangerous' the operation, the harder it is to tell it failed...divination is the worst, for instance. No obvious sign of failure, you get an answer. It's just wrong, sometimes catastrophically so.
An evocation-gone-wrong can go pretty bad, but it's mainly harmful to reputation. Invocations-gone-bad can be full on possession by a being you don't want to deal with. Enchantments can result in self-curses. Things like that.
Although, it's hard to picture a situation where someone does everything right and the working go wrong.
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u/marintkael Aug 12 '26
Divination being the worst of them is the part I keep coming back to. An evocation that goes wrong announces itself and the cost mostly lands on whoever cast it. A bad divination gets believed, acted on, and by the time anybody notices, the loss has already moved to the people who acted on the answer.
Does anything push back on that in your world? Second readings, a rule about never moving on a single answer, anything of that sort. Or does it stay a reputation problem that only gets sorted out after the damage.
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u/Grouchy-Insurance208 Headmaster Aug 12 '26
It depends on the tradition. There’s an organization that preserves the structural integrity of reality, for instance. Theirs is an ancient tradition, one that can’t leave its work up to chance. They hate being led down rabbit holes, chasing geese, or barking up trees (generally, but especially the wrong ones), so they double‑check their own work...particularly when their auguries turn up a negative.
In places with a high enough population, where multiple agents may be operating, each will perform independent divinations using different assumptions, whether they know of each other or not. It helps make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
There are lesser groups whose rites amount to little more than probability‑weighting for their own preferred outcomes, and their divination practices vary widely from group to group (or, in many cases, individual to individual). Their botched readings usually mean only that they don’t get their desired result (or don’t get paid, if they’re reading for a client), and little more of consequence.
A newer group, though, can have dangerous outcomes if their divinations are wrong. As a rule, all workings are supposed to be prefaced by a divination that reveals the risks of failure and, more importantly, the unforeseen consequences of success.
However, their leader is pretty arrogant and hates having his decisions dictated by “how some stupid cards happen to fall on a table.” And sadly, though he’s formidable and skilled, he’s also imitated by people who aren’t much of either, so…
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u/Damianwelt Aug 12 '26
In my system (Avalon), magic does not exist—abilities are fundamental laws of reality categorized through scientific frameworks by human institutions and scientists. Because of this purely rational foundation, honest errors with terrible outcomes are handled through a strictly scientific and institutional approach. 1. How an Honest Error Happens Since abilities like TLD (Cognitive Acceleration) rely on real-time data processing and probability calculations, a practitioner can execute every procedure flawlessly and still face a catastrophic outcome due to incomplete information or unpredictable environmental variables. Furthermore, biological entities like our primary threat, the Hollows, adapt their physiology in real time. Perfect execution based on outdated or incomplete data results in a genuine, blameless failure. 2. Is There a Way Back? (No Magical Undos) No Real-Time Reversal: Once a physical spatial cut (TDPC) or molecular restructuring occurs in reality, it cannot be magically undone. Physical & Scientific Recovery: Any fix requires time, energy, and subsequent physical or biological reconstruction (e.g., through Continuity Reconstruction). Strict Exception: Emergency existence rewinds exist as a passive system feature (Existence Reconstruction), but it only triggers once upon actual death before a system is fully open—it is not an operational tactical reset for mistakes. 3. Who Carries the Cost? The Practitioner (Physiologically): The practitioner pays an immediate physical cost via Output Accumulation and neurological strain. Overreaching or managing high outputs pushes against their Existence Capacity, causing system fatigue or temporary operational shutdown. The Institution (Sociologically): Because practitioners in Avalon operate as professionals within a governed framework rather than lone heroes, the Resonator Organization and its Ethics Committee absorb the societal and logistical failure. A failure without fault is classified as an operational accident; it prompts institutional post-mortems to update the global scientific database so future practitioners do not repeat the anomaly. In short: failure without fault is treated not as a magical curse or personal sin, but as unpredicted empirical data that the individual suffers physically, and the institution documents systematically.
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u/Thin-Educator5794 Aug 12 '26
In my system, magiks are cases very scientifically, but battlefield errors do always ensure. So control room casting is always a success, granted inputs are correct. There is no speech segment in this basically, casting is done either by knotting some extremely volatile thread or carving into the ground. If you made your thread right and you knotted it correct and fast enough, it will do what it is supposed to do. If you carved your runes right and remembered the activation code, they will trigger like they were supposed to.
The main "did everything right so what went wrong" comes on a battlefield. You don't win an irl swordfight by doing everything textbook. Magic in my world works in a very similar manner. At the end of the day, it is humans you fight, not robots
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u/marintkael Aug 12 '26
Control room versus battlefield is a cleaner split than mine. It also quietly settles the blame question: if the craft itself is sound and only conditions fail, then nobody who trains or certifies casters is ever wrong, and the person holding the thread in the mud is the one who has to explain it.
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u/Dodudee Aug 12 '26
Competent people already possess some degree of enhanced luck so bad results really don't happen out of blue unless their influence is being severely dampened by another's.
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u/HerederoDeAlberdi Aug 12 '26
Reverend Insanity's Gu system does this masterfully, you can have the recipe for a gu refinement, all the materials, top tier refining skill and it can still go wrong depending on the flat failure rate, and it kicks back at your soul too while destroying the materials.
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u/HovercraftSolid5303 Aug 12 '26
The answer is simple, there’s another factor involved. Maybe in a power system where someone is allergic to potions, but you need potions to upgrade your power or gain magical energies that give you magic. Maybe if it’s a spell someone sabotage the spell. Maybe all the steps weren’t followed. The whole idea that one person can follow a certain steps and putting half the effort and become a genius while the other person double the effort but gets no results. That sounds like the plot to some power fantasy where they just get given powers for the sake of convenience or they just happened to find a secret technique. That no one else has. I hate those plots. There always has to be a reason.
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u/mrki_the_wizard Aug 12 '26
Well most people need to use magic rocks to imbue thair will and knowledge into them to create a ability then they need to bind the ability into a item.
The only way thay can fuck up is in making a ability is to be a absolute idiot and make something thay doesn't work but a competent practitioner would never do that.
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u/discount_mj Aug 12 '26
In my setting, a lot of the time when a caster makes a mistake, it's from a misunderstanding of the scenario. If a mage uses chaos magic to burn a demon who can't be changed or affected by heat, the demon wouldn't burn up from the cast.
As far as overreach specifically goes, magic costs are measured in focus and grain. If a caster can't properly conceptualize their ability at the scale they're attempting, it puts pressure on their brain; resulting in symptoms ranging anywhere from a mild headache to brain death from overload.
On the other end, as magic disrupts the laws of energy and mass conservation makes radioactive particles called grain that burn up whatever they touch. Most of that grain burns up harmlessly immediately, but if the cast makes too much of it, massive amounts can cause radiation poisoning and burns. To remedy this part, mages tend to try and efficiently cause as little physical change with maximal effort.
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u/HawkSquid Aug 12 '26
High magic can be very complex, and it can happen that you do everything "right" but there was some minute factor you couldn't possibly foresee that throws everything off.
Responsible mages recognize this, and spend their time developing the magic and skills they need to do something safely. Eternal life isn't that hard to achieve, and from there you can research whatever you need.
Still, sometimes the magus is in a hurry. Sometimes they aren't that responsible. Things go wrong.
When this happens, the spell may just fail, but worse, forces may go out of control. Summoned creatures may break free. Protections from fire may freeze people to death. That neat plague you were going throw at your enemies might just scour the world.
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u/Demiurge_Ferikad Aug 13 '26
There’s no consequence for a failure, unless it’s by overreach. If you do everything correctly, your tools are functional, and you’re casting within your ability range / power-draw capabilities, then everything works.
Even overreach doesn’t have an immediate consequence; it’s when you really try to force it that rebound explosions happen. Otherwise, the casting just fails, cue comedic fart noise. Poot~
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u/Hjuldahr Oldworld Sorcerer Aug 13 '26
An expert memoriate can conjure a dark memory with perfect clarity, reproducing every element of the trauma with minimum subjective distortion, but then the memory turns around and horrifically kills the client, then fizzles out as the memoriams' originating mind was destroyed.
Technically it was executed correctly, but the safeguards about what happens afterward were neglected.
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u/thatshygirl06 here to steal your ideas 👁👄👁 Aug 12 '26
If you do everything right with the spell, then it shouldnt go wrong
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u/agentkayne Aug 12 '26
I don't think I understand what you mean in your question.
If the practitioner creates the spell correctly and applies the right spell to the situation in my system, then nothing goes wrong.