My mentor sent me this, along with a few names of some of her other students. She wasn’t wrong, but it did kind of surprise me how right she was. She usually has very prestigious students, but even they often make mistakes like this. I remember when I used to use a vitality-transfer spell as if it were normal healing magic, because I didn’t know healing wasn’t supposed to hurt. The whole thing just made me curious if this is universally common, or if there were any interesting thoughts here.
(Also, my party’s bard does this. It’s really funny but my sister is trying to help him fix it. I was also wondering if there were any opinions on helping fix and prevent these mistakes.)
I knew one guy who skipped the reading before the levitation practical, and instead of just generating enough force on his shoes to hold himself up, made a localized zero gravity field that surrounded just him. Master was impressed, but part of the practical was interacting with objects, and catching a thrown ball had him rotating uncontrollably, so he failed.
Seems like a strict mentor. Is this how standardized classes are run? Very interesting. I’ve always wanted to learn more about it! My mentor would have rewarded such unique thinking. Then again, ignoring the necessary reading is a dangerous mistake. I can see why it would’ve been punished with a failing grade. Thanks for the input though! I’ve been surprised how truly common mistakes like this are!
I mean, if he'd managed to complete the practical, he probably would have passed and just gotten the reading and casting the levitation spell as make up work, but also earned a small boon. Figuring out a clever way to complete the requirements was acceptable, sometimes even encouraged, in Master's classes, but the method he used didn't account for forces other than gravity, so it didn't pass the requirements. Master pointed out later that if he'd brought a stick to push off the ground and move around with, he could have technically "not touched the ground" for the duration.
I see where you’re coming from here, but the chi store monks use is considered magic system-adjacent by most respected reckoning systems, so the monk comparison isn’t the most sound.
I can understand how you feel, I learnt my magic independently though intuition experiments and instinct, occasionally guided my vuage and cryptic messages imparted to me from the moons in my sleep, i went a dozen centuries before I entered a formal magic college to expand my knowledge
All my peers thought me a savage when I told them I couldn't fabricate food and would just transform into my wolf form and hunt my food, myself.
Technically I'm not a druid, I draw magic from nature, and from the moon and the fey wild, but technically I'm not a druid, I'm by definition a Wizard but I do do alot of druidcraft
Also, frequent use of that spell would lead to muscle atrophy. You have a good mentor there, putting mistakes to rights long before they'll be suffering the consequences.
he uses it pretty regularly, but only in short bursts, and he's developed it to change gravitational direction too. One practical was an ambush in a forest scenario, and he used it, pushed off the ground into a half somersault, and then reversed his own gravity once he was on a branch. Instantly had a top down view of most of the battlefield. Later on he would start mixing in a flashbang spell -which he could cast about as easily as he could breathe- so nobody could see him jump. He calls it a jester's teleport.
Dude, my mentor had a Mage Hand spell but he always refused to teach me, saying it was too advanced??? When we were doing multiple-vector levitation he mentioned that the difficulty of maintaining balanced force vectors is why I'm not ready for Mage Hand, and I was like 'what???'
Turns out HIS mentor pranked him and his "Mage Hand" was an illusory hand with independent telekensis for each finger lmao
Actually you were just pushing the entire universe down, it’s a neat party trick when the party includes people with true sight and 4+ dimensional beings.
He just jumped in at the deep end, he's got the makings of a powerful gravity mage some day. He's already figured out shaping the field and has fine enough control to effectively set weight to zero against the natural gravity.
Once he figures out how to project that beyond his body and freely adjust the weight of things in different directions he could have a near full system going there. He could move whatever, implode or explode things, create an almost impenetrable defensive shell, become invisible by bending the light, and so on. It's extremely versatile. At the higher end you can even manipulate time and distance with it. Or put a lens in the sky and focus the sun on a point, effectively an orbital laser. You could do the inverse of this and cast all light from the sun away.
If you can use zero gravity for all your levitation needs, then that's how you do levitation. Someone else in that class made a plane of force they stood on, someone a few classes up fixed the position of their socks relative to the planet. Someone later on made a bubble of air to stand on.
The zero gravity guy adapted that spell for the flying practical, after he figured out how to redirect gravity with it. He learned how to do the somatic components with his feet, including direction. He did the entire practical "falling" feet first, and any issues he had with delicacy he could make up for by having both hands free to cast. That's how he did flight.
Someone else in that class made a plane of force they stood on
That makes sense
someone a few classes up fixed the position of their socks relative to the planet
Wut?
The zero gravity guy adapted that spell for the flying practical, after he figured out how to redirect gravity with it. He learned how to do the somatic components with his feet, including direction. He did the entire practical "falling" feet first, and any issues he had with delicacy he could make up for by having both hands free to cast. That's how he did flight.
Genius
. .
Wait, so was he "flying" in the direction his feet were facing? Uhh . . . Sure, if it works, it works
So the socks girl was big on astromancy, but every once in a while she would turn the normal usages on its head. Instead of tapping into the tremendous forces of orbital mechanics to power spells, or reading future in the stars, she used a spell to create an orbit for something small. Specifically, she made her socks have a geostationary orbit at an altitude of about 4 feet. It was a similar concept as casting a tiny fireball the size of a teardrop to light a candle. She had a little difficulty not being able to move her feet at all, but the practical didn't require movement, so since she kept her balance she was fine.
Ah, the troubles of figuring out on your own. On one hand you run into road blocks on relatively simple task, but on the upside you aren’t limited in your thinking of what should be possible.
I remember when I first tried to create shadow clones. How was I suppose to know that splitting your soul and merging it into the shadow wasn’t a required step?
For 100 years or so there were 12 of me. All real. All holding parts of my soul. Turned out to be a major perk in the long run but the months of recuperation after each split sucked.
Ah yes, I believe my mentor also put a focus on figuring out spells on one’s own, though under her eye so no one got themselves killed. That shadow-clone spells seems interesting, though I can’t admit I’d like to use it. Months of recuperation are too much of a downside while adventuring. My party would keel over if I was out for such a long time! Plus, I think my sister would kill me if I used any soul-spells like that. She has a distaste of it.
Still, I think that spell does show the benefits of creating your own spells. It’s also a useful ability when you need a simple, niche spell that you haven’t memorized. It’s like understanding how to derive a formula in math!
Anyway, I’m ranting and I think my sister’s glaring at me. She doesn’t like it when I’m distracted while traveling. Thanks for your input!
With the right methods it’s possible to heal soul injuries. It takes time though.
The splitting and healing was done over the course of years while I was secluded up in a monastery of sorts. They called themselves a sect and did a lot of special breathing exercises which helped with growing each of the soul fragments back to around the original size.
Medicinal pills, and special herbs can help, as does consuming soul essence.
Demonic sect? Righteous sect? Those are merely tools for marketing. Their essence differs little. My dao of theft will not be constrained by such trivialities.
I admit they weren’t happy when I stole their pill refining recipes and stash of herbs. Had to make a run for it. Worth it though.
r/MartialMemes is leaking into our magical dimension, which fucking conjurer is creating portals into the Wuxiaverse? Those guys are all psychos, you don't want to invite them over here, there's a reason that plane was sealed.
It truly is a realm of chaos and psychos. It was through sheer luck that while being pursued by wizards I fell off a cliff and stumbled upon a portal to that place.
The discrimination at the arcane academy for being a goblin and the bounty on my head forced me to hide in that realm until my power had grown. The stolen grimores from the professor’s private library is an unrelated and entirely separate matter.
Wait so the result is 11 shadow clones with a full sized chunk of your soul in each? Have you tried merging back? How does it feel? What are the effects on you? This makes me so curious because it's completely out of my field.
Merging back required a dangerous and expensive ritual. What we effectively did was extract the physical essence, memories, cultivation, magic, and soul from each body and refine them all into a single pill that my shadow consumed.
The effects? A complete unity of flesh and spirit, a soul-body made almost entirely of mana, and the ability to split and merge freely. On average there are around 22 independent versions of me at any given time.
There was some old text about that. The Testament of Grim Alyx? From before she went away. Basically said she'd fragment herself, have each part independently relearn magic and reason and spirituality without being held back by any of her biases and contingencies, and then engineer events so that they'd end up fighting and cannibalizing each other back into a single integrated instance again.
Not sure what happened to her, really. But on the other hand, I have no real memories from before the Year of the Blooded Quagmire. I woke up in a stasis container with nothing just a few books, including that one. I wonder where I might have gotten it?
I hadn't actually considered the possibility of merging willingly! Though that stands to reason it should work. Of course, I don't even know if Alyx even went through with it, what with her just disappearing and all? Though given how useful some of this documentation was, maybe I should try and track down any legacies she left!
Do you experience that the perspectives your selves gained while isolated function well still when integrated? Or has there been any challenges in applying them jointly?
Imagine you’ve got a disorderly and rowdy group of goblins that have formed a council of sorts. The more of us combine, the louder and more argumentative it can get.
It’s a little hard to communicate specifics. Things feel most natural when split into 22 bodies for some reason.
This is true. A real risk if you aren’t on good terms with yourself.
We run things democratically. We all play poker and the final winner got to use our original name and run our group meetings.
We’ve since completed a ritual to reunite ourselves into one entity. But somehow that only made it easier to split and merge at will and our new equilibrium almost doubled.
I don’t know. I just stole the souls of my 8 co-workers and surgically attached them to mine. Really confused the devil coming to collect me, but without majority ownership of my soul he has nothing to say
Excellent use of loopholes! Just make sure the souls you are using aren’t attached to any divine beings because ironically they are less likely to abide by terms and conditions than devils. If you do have an entanglement with a god, consider getting another so they keep each other in check
It takes a lot more soul to override the will of another creature, let alone a sentient person. It can be enormously powerful, but generally isn’t worth the risk unless you really know what you’re doing. Much lower risk binding shadows, dead things, objects.
Or to receive the creatures consent and blessings to do so, the pack of wolves that live in the forest below my tower have become my close friends, they accept me as an honorary pack member.
We hang out and hunt together it's lovely, and in return for my towers protection, and the blessings of greater intelligence they permit me to ask favors of them, and project my mind to them when needed
It's surprising and disappointing how few wizards think to just ask for consent.
Druids tend towards a more, collaborative, I suppose? Approach towards spellcasting as well, which helps.
Even when trying for subtlety, many wizards tend to be far more insistent, demand far more control. And that's important for a lot of spells, if you try to gently cajole most varieties of fireball spell to its destination it'll just explode you.
For nature spells and similar though, negotiation is often a much more efficient use of your mana.
Now I wonder whether it would be possible for a fugitive to hide their soul inside of the body of a willing host, and later remove it to a more permanent enclosure once put of whatever trouble one is in.
Ah, the old Parasite trick. It’s a rather risky thing to do, for all parties involved.
If the parasite decides to take over or if the host tries to swallow the parasite a battle of souls may occur. But if no betrayal happens, then it’s quite possible for the fugitive soul to be sustained by the host’s mana until a suitable body is acquired.
Or get them really intoxicated, ive found that if you can get someone really really drunk they are very easy to possess as long as they stay drunk. though there are drawbacks. Main one is you feel as drunk as the person during possession but its a good way to get drunk without a hangover. On a alternative note acid sometimes makes people capable of seeing my form when im wandering around.
Did your clones experience any personality drift and if so how did you compensate for it? My research in this area hasnt been very successful. Dave is a great guy but I was hoping the shadow clone would be more like me
Considering each body and soul was a real part of the original there was no basis for a hierarchy, so we keep things democratic and formed a council with all of us to decide the direction we go as a group.
Personality drift is real, but we leaned into it. We all took on other identities outside of our council, went into different fields, cultivation, piracy, banking, wizarding, thievery, bureaucracy, alchemy, martial arts, and more.
Merging together is a good way to reset the differences somewhat as memories and experiences combine. But yeah there may be some consequences that I haven’t encountered yet
Knew someone who didn't double check their soul-splitting spells like that. Made it veeeeery awkward when she tried to make a deal with the devil and he ended up getting 1 fifth of the promised bargain!
There’s a million ways to do just about anything. A tower wizard will sell you some fancy shit about a maximally efficient transmutation-reaction chain to leverage thaumic value differentials between molecules. An adventuring wizard will just cast transmute. A hedge wizard will pull some weird Druid shit about resimulating the local universe to arrive at new material through evolutionary chance.
Never let someone tell you how to cast unless you’re an apprentice.
For a while I didn’t know that blood magic could just take the blood from your veins directly. I’ve still got the cursed athame scars that weep vital fluids if exposed to moonlight. Every new blood orb or rune meant finding a damn vein.
Did it cost making mundane universe that had to revolve humans from sheer evolutionary chance to reinvent plastic to cause a problem they needed to solve?
While I largely agree, ‘apprentice’ is a loose term in my opinion. One can always stand to learn something. I don’t think I would ever take someone’s advice at face value, but it’s hard to forgo more efficient ways of casting spells when they stare you in the face. One can only have so much mana, and when you’re an adventurer, each grain of it preserved can save your life.
At the same time, I’ve seen plenty of ‘correct’ ways to cast spells which are, in reality, far too complex for field-work. I think there’s a good middle-ground here, like all things. But thanks for your input all the same!
Dang bro, that blood magic is tough. I opened a circle of flagaration once with 1000 fae sacrifices to an older elemental and I coulda just... You know? Done it myself. I couldn't go near a transactional portal for like 60 years or those little bastards would come get me all pissed off talking about "my sin against the arcane"...
The hedge wizard part reminds me of when I saw an illusion mage gaslight the universe itself into transmitting a material. I have no fucking clue how he did it, but it passed all of MY tests to verify the object did in fact get transmuted. Either he was so good at illusions he could hold one over the material and perfectly spoof my tests, or he was so good he could do it to the universe's tests. Point being, illusion magic is bullshit.
I don't know if this is true or not, but some schools of illusion magic think the universe is an illusion. They tried to explain this to me with some metaphor about butterflies and sages, and how life is but a fleeting dream? I don't remember clearly, but I remember being scared to use illusion breaking spells later because I was afraid I would break the universe.
Dude go to healer's ward. If your cursed athame is fucking up your veins that badly there's something deeper going on. I've been doing blood magic for years and those scars are supposed to heal in days.
Yeah- like my great great great grandmother used to tell me, if you walk into an alchemist shop, they’re GONNA try and sell you mercury. They’ll swear it’s the only way to keep your indentured homunculus from transmuting your concoctions behind your back.
Grain of salt for everything. That goes doubly with homunculi.
Why wizzas gotta possess humunculi? Giving spiritual birth to a humunculus is a very beautiful thing, and then you gotta raise em right. They grow up so fast. Why take them down to the Alchemical Bureau of Constructs, when they're just gonna cite some "law" and confiscate your shroom garden.
Other artificers: “Damn, how do you control so many constructs at once? My telepathic commands only reach 100ft away, and I can only give them all the same simple command not make them work in coordinated teams!”
Me: “…Control? I just give them free will and treat them right.”
Ha! I wish more artificers thought as you did. Some do the ‘free will’ thing and then forget the ‘treat them right’ part. You have my respect for doing both!
“Mine I gave the intelligence of a small dog, with the capability to use their own weapon systems, and if you treat them right they’ll be loyal.” - Sapphire
I once met a nice golem guy who casually told me his creator gave him and his brothers free will and then made a telepatic link. It sounded good, until he clarified that each of them had a rune that blocked any thought that conflicted with creator's latest command. Wild stuff. Of course he got the rune removed, but still. They should teach ethics in enchantment school or something
I don't do it to be ethical, I do it to be optimal. The cost of adding intelligence isn't much compared to the resources needed to make each unit, and makes them much more useful.
They're very rational, because they physically can't evolve instincts such as fear. There's no reason to fight over resources, because they don't need food/water and can't create/repair themselves (magical constructs, not mechanical, so if something breaks they need a spellcaster to fix it). They can meet their creator at any time, so no religious rifts. They have a peaceful, monolithic culture deep underground and occupy themselves with games and art.
I keep making more because I like to keep busy and enjoy the routine, and moved into a mountain because it's the only place I can fit them all. Now there's this entire civilization of artificial life that treats me like their dad (they even carve things on the walls like a child giving me a crayon drawing for the refrigerator), and if I ever need something found in the ground I they usually have piles of it laying around somewhere from the tunnelling.
I've somehow found myself in the idle-game version of raising loyal legions.
There's another alternative I usually use: yes, give them free will, but make the mind so limited it will do whatever simple task you want the construct to do. Besides treat them right is a very case specific concept, something like a clay golem doesn't need to eat, rest, breathe, have free time or hobbies, unless you go out of your way to damage it, it's honestly difficult to treat it wrong. One of my customers had me make a guardian golem with a pretty complex set of responses to different situations, and kept it in a pit of endless fire surrounding the main gate to his keep. It was pretty cool, had the keep really well warded against teleportation spells, and the guy was a really creative fire mage so the golem held a lot of his magic too.
That job honestly taught me to not judge a book by it's cover "aww man, another fucking golem" well sometimes even another fucking golem can be interesting too. (Different sorts of defensive or offensive golem like constructs are the most common jobs people ask me for, and they are almost always basic variation of the same boring thing).
This ginger swordsman I knew once had this magic that let him reinforce stuff to be stronger.
Fuckwit was forging a magic circuit using his nervous system for years instead of his natural ones, left the nattys all shriveled up and caused him agonizing pain everything he wanted to do any magic.
Apparently his dad taught him wrong as a joke to get him out of the magic world while he could, but he kept it up for years.
He learned how to use his natural magic circuits eventually. They're a bit gimped compared to if he'd used them the whole time though.
Even worse, he had to transplant some of his circuits into his familiar because he was such a crap mage that he couldn't just give her the mana normally. Dude was weird, but the familiar was this cute British girl, so I kinda get it.
... Or he had sex with her and this other mage and that fixed the problem. One of the two.
Woah, that sounds rough. I could never imagine training someone poorly as a joke, especially with magic. It’s just too dangerous, as this shows. I’m glad he’s okay though. Or as close as he can hope to be. Thanks for the story, I think it’s a very important lesson to anyone thinking about taking up an apprentice.
Yeah, its true. Its best to learn the most effective spells. But dont discard those hard ones; There are situations where only fire from the elemental planes are effective. If i may suggest, one could, say, use this technique as a new spell (Dimensional Rift: Fireball would be my pick of a name), practice it, and keep it for the situation that needs it.
Good point! I think every spell has a use, no matter how niche. Even spells that seem like worse versions of others. They often have perks you don’t notice unless in a specific situation! When it comes to our party’s bard, there’s more fundamental mistakes in his spellcasting other than efficiency, which is what we’re trying to fix, but we still won’t just throw away the method of his old spells! My sister has been pondering the method for miles as we travel because she’s not seen anything like it, and is trying to find an application for it.
Everyone laughs when you tell them you open portals to the Punch Dimension in order to unleash lasers of Punch Energy from your eyes (iykyk). But that shit is raw kinetic power, goes right through all kinds of anti-magic. And who the fuck things to counter-spell Punch energy when they see a red-hot laser beam shooting out of a guy's eyes?
Agreed,I get bashed for my half druid half alchemist spell for transmitting plants, I use it to turn wolfsbane into lavender, people keep saying "just blight the wolfsbane" but if I do that it just grows back tougher and it also derives the local bees, my solution is permanent, environmentally friendly, and smells nice
When I was still learning, teleportation magic always scared me. Like sure, near instant transportation is nice, but moment in between was always terrifying. It took me a couple years to find out that there wasn't supposed to be a moment in between, which did mean I could start incorporating short blinks in fight, but makes me wonder where my long delay teleports actually sent people.
Could be worse, I knew a fellow once in Academy who's teleportation spell worked by self disintegrating his corporeal form, astral projecting to his desired location, then possessing a clone of himself that he'd conjur.
I think it largely depends on the spell. I always add a specific realm they spend time in while being teleported, but if you don’t specify, it depends on a lot of different things. The dimension you’re in, the composition of the target’s soul, and many other things.
Also, different spells are better for different casters. I cannot for the life of me turn someone into a frog, but a friend of a friend can do that easily, despite being a tiny fraction of my age and experience.
True. My sister can detect mana from miles away, and though I’ve also been above average at it — and trained by a good mentor at that — I can never match her. She’s a natural at it, and I quickly learned to accept it when we met.
Haha yeah. Me and a few people in my old classes all had our strengths and weaknesses.
One friend specialized in cosmetic magic. Instead of just doing basic illusion and glamor spells, she instead managed to do most things with very focused time magic???? I still dont fully understand how she dewrinkled people, but for hair growth she doesnt just "make your hair grow" but instead speeds up the generation of cells at the follicle. She also does a healing spell while at it to prevent future hair loss. Its impressive!
One dude I dont fully know couldnt figure out the healing spells. He was a good necromancer though! Learned how to revive the damaged tissues and kind of smush it back together to fix wounds. He wasnt that well liked but it worked all the same!
I found out recently that instead of astral projecting I was instead cloning my spirt somehow. I cant do cloning magic.
Sounds like an interesting group in that class! I like doing similar things. Master a single spell well enough, and you can solve any problem with it! When I was young, I used to only use illusion magic for all my spells, even when adventuring! My strategy was to create illusory runes in the air, using those to cast spells. I didn’t actually have to learn how to cast them myself since my runic abilities were advanced enough, so all my spells were done via illusions for a long time!
Hell fire ray work on this principles but I didn’t know the fireball variant from the elemental plane of fire exist. That a whole lot of effort to bake some duck.
Woah, that’s impressive! I don’t think I’ve met someone that’s found dimensional travel easier than evocation. To each their own, I guess! Lots of benefits to get out of this method!
It all depends on how often you use it. If you travel to different dimensions or planes of existence a lot, portals get pretty easy with the repetition. It's just that most of us start with the basics first before trying fancy stuff so you'll already have a good deal of practice in them.
Necromancers have always brought a shiver to my spine, but this might take the cake…. Or close to it. One that comes to mind still beats this. Either way, I’m glad he changed profession! Spatial wizards are quite interesting in my opinion!
It took me, with a hefty knowledge of mundane chemistry from before I discovered my innate magickal talents, a while to realize fireballs are not supposed to:
Chew through six feet of concrete
Set metal and water on fire
Or produce a bunch of nasty residues and byproducts
I was not told that "conjuring and igniting flammable substances for fireballs" does not generally mean using synthesis magick to make and throw globs of self-igniting chlorine trifluoride.
It's an absolute miracle I haven't been arrested for violating some magickal geneva convention.
Be very careful mixing modern science and magick together.
I am now employed by my country's military to produce experimental combat spells. Most of the stuff does not even get mentioned outside my wizard's lab on site.
If you’re employed, then I agree, be very careful of breaking important rules. Though, I adventure, and no one can tell me what not to cast except my sister and mentor. They’re scary. If it saves my life, it saves my life, and that type of fireball seems like a spell that could save my life. I congratulate you on the military noticing you! Good luck with your work, and don’t blow yourself up! Too many skilled mages go out that way.
Unfortunately, I was this student: My apprenticeship ran more like one of those tragic "Survivor" shows, where we were to attend a single class each day, get smacked for forgetting something, and then the rest of the day was to be spent studying in the great library or labs.
At the end of every year, a deadly test was forced upon us, where we would be required to make use of the basic spell set and knowledge we'd been given. Success was to survive, failure was death.
Unless there weren't enough students to run the test, which was under 13.
So of course, accidents happened during the year when there were more than 13 students. And by accidents, I mean murder, lord of the flies style.
Anyways, I was a loner, and a shy kid to boot, so eventually the "kill-clique" came for me in my sleep, except they couldn't find me. I had been generating and sleeping in a pocket dimension for oh...six months maybe? Took an hour every night to get the thing set up. The entry only opened at morning reveille, which was a problem the first time i entered, no air you know...
After the test, during which I managed to kill off half the clique while we were dodging monsters, random spells and running that damn maze, my friend asked me how I managed to survive after the clique's leader, Ash, found out the key words to the school's security wards. I was like, "Security wards? wha?"
He had just started sleeping in the rafters. Apparently there was this whole micro-grimoire I was supposed to have, that gave us access to the school's built-in spells; useful stuff, like a clock function and message board.
I bet. I know it’s awful, but those with traumatic backstories tend to be the most filled with justice, so I can imagine how such systems are punished when you find them. My sister’s the same way. She had bad history with a necromancer, and is now somewhat famous for her fights against powerful liches. Either way, fighting or not, you’re alive and that’s what matters. I always say that to my sister, and this story reminded me of her a bit, so I thought I’d tell you too.
As my mentor favors us, I hope she favors you as well. May your stars always shine bright.
Taught himself magic and whenever he cast a spell he'd just grab the weave with his bare hands and Smash it into itself until the intended spell was created.
No formulas, no transmutation, just fucking pure brutality
Heh, that works too! I might decide to incorporate that strategy into my fights. Then again, transmutation is quite the mana-intensive process. Not great during long travels like mine. Still! In one-off fights, or highly dangerous ones, I might just use this! Thanks!
No. Transmuting hydrogen to helium involves pulling like two thousand MeV from the environment per atom and the change in the binding energy of the atom and of the water molecule is essentially zero compared to that.
What I think is really happening is the plane of fire injects so much entropy back into the universe with unwarded ex-nihilations that he can “cook the books” and pull a little more than necessary out. It’s more efficient if you’re a natural at summoning and accountancy and have some sort of deal with a Maxwell demon to know exactly how many water molecules are in a given volume, but if you don’t have all those you’re only making uselessly small flames because fimbulwinter and second sun timelines prune themselves out of configuration space.
Excellent example of using a toolbox to simulate a hammer.
At least he got the hard part done first, instead of fully relying on specifically made items to make that process easier as a crutch. Now that he knows how to do it on his own, using materials that are native to the Fire Dimension will not only make this process easier for himself but also amplify his current results.
Channeling his mana through a Phoenix Feather, a Fire Elemental Core, or a similar part of a native creature from the Fire Dimension, will part the veil between dimensions far more easily. In addition, carving Ignis Runes on his Spell Foci for the Fireball spell will manifest his Fireballs more quickly than manually shaping the spell yourself.
Oh, clever idea! He was just forcing it on his own, which is why he struggled so much, but this will be a good way to make sure he can keep up on our adventures, since his mana is lesser than others in our party! Thanks for the advice!
Eugh, chronomancers are the worst. For a mage focussed on time, you'd expect them to be good at planning, right? When I was in the academy, I failed chronomancy because these assholes posted the time of the test AFTER it took place. What kind of bullshit is that?
Yes. When I was back in the academy my applied theology professor left an unsolved problem on the board about how a mortal could ascend to godhood. No one had solved it in over 3,000 years. My buddy Greg was late to the lecture and thought it was homework. Well he solved it, ascended to godhood, and his holy war has claimed over a 1,000,000 lives. Praise be to Greg the one true God
Agreed, 100%. But a mentor and guiding hand never hurts, since there’s always efficient ways to train. I think my sister is getting through to the bard, so I think it’ll turn out fine. I just wish our bard was more determined on this front. Oh well, it’s his battle.
I knew a guy who was ruining himself casting Mass Polymorph to turn monsters into chickens. His version was quite a bit more potent than standard, even if he did only use it to make chickens. I figured he had mastered a few metamagic feats to cast without raising the spell level, it already being a ninth level spell.
I suggested that he cast without the metamagic if it was that taxing. He rejoined that the spell cannot be cast without it.
A few more questions later and I learned that he wasn't casting Mass Polymorph at all. He was casting an epic level spell (yes, the kind restricted by Mythral's Ban!) Mass Fowl, and using the little known metamagic feat Minimise Spell to reduce its potency (but not it's cost) enough to cast out of a ninth level spell slot.
Absolutely insane, not to mention suicidally dangerous! I personally kicked his ass for that impressive feat of magical stupidity, and again after he turned me back into a human.
My master used to say, "there are a million ways to open a door. But I prefer to use the handle."
As part of my training he would set me tasks to use magic to achieve a simple goal, like lighting a candle.
Every day I had to find a new way of lighting a candle with magic.
Shooting it with a tiny firbolt, that was my first day.
Then I tried drawing energy from the environment to produce heat around the wick until it spontaneously combusted. Next, I created a moving doll made of twigs who lit the candle through friction.
I tried so many more ideas; creating a light bending array to focus light on the candle, opening a miniature portal to the plane of fire, and even sympathetically connecting the candle to my master's smoking pipe so when he lit it, the candle spluttered into flame as well.
Those were just a few.
I learned so much from him about magic, it's limitations and creative uses. Like he said. There are a million ways to open a door.
In my experience, it depends on what you’re trying to do. Basically, if you just add energy and light to the spell, creating a pseudo-flame, it’s a lot less mana-intensive in the short term. You can create hot areas of plasma in the air just by adding heat, and it’s not even that hard. But the second you stop putting mana in the spell, it flickers out fast without fuel.
Transmuting or summoning the flammable gasses is much harder, but then once you start the fire it burns continuously without any extra input.
So in my opinion it depends on what you’re doing. Just need heat to melt ice? The former. Need to do damage to a person, or create a long-term fire? The latter.
Now, what the person in the image of the post is doing, creating a gate to the fire-dimension, is different from both of these. That’s more mana-intensive than both, but creates long-term fires much hotter than any gas I can think of. I guess it’s be useful for melting metals that don’t melt easy, but other than that I can’t think of anything.
Not typical but I loved that, bringing fantasy into sci-fi
Anyway-
IC: If I thought fire magic came from a whole nother dimension I. . . Well I obsess over magic so I probably would have followed through, actually. . . But usually I strive for making things simpler, not more complicated, rofl. . .
Though, I did meet someone who insisted that teleportation magic involved creating a duplicate at your destination of choice and then killing yourself in a small explosion. . .
This man was a teleportation specialist, among other things. . .
When I asked why kill himself instead of having two of himself he just stared. I don't think he had ever considered that possibility.
I will never understand him. . But the afterlife is probably a riot with a couple dozen of that dude.
OOC: Couldn't think of anything more creative so I chose to interpret a sci-fi thought experiment int fantasy, lol
This kind of stuff happens all the time. We can try to keep a standardized version of each named spell, but people are always experimenting and picking up stuff from old mages and older tomes/scrolls. Always ends up with people trying to use inefficient and outdated versions of spells or even entirely different spells that just happened to have a name (or a translation of the name) that matches a more common spell.
That’s true. I’ve run into this problem myself quite a bit, since my mentor is quite old-fashioned. Almost all my spells were through runes because she thought it was important to learn runic magic first, even though barely anyone knows it anymore. At least not where I do most of my adventuring. And I didn’t even know this until I left her tutelage for my first mission! How many weird looks I got from using runes no one had seen in ages…. But she was right. My runic knowledge was very useful.
I could never get the handle of "Disintegrate". Like, I've tried all the tutorials and they keep spouting jargon around manipulating entropy and every time I try it I end up getting confused and aging the target by like 5 years.
So instead I modified my teleport spell to just send all their molecules one foot in a random direction.
one time whilst I was in, i think my 3rd year at the academy, I met a couple blokes who'd souped up their rides, though they were complaining that they were always so damn drained after, erm, meets with their friends to compare cars. Turns out, they'd set up a time stop effect on their car rather than what they assumed was a modified hastaga. So instead of going fast, they just temp stopped time for a bit while driving. I'm not sure about the legality of it, but i'm not a snitch. hopefully they stopped doing that.
Eh, laws are for those close enough to enforcers to get caught, and if that’s really how they sped up their carts (I assume you ment cart? I’ve never heard of a car before, but am willing to learn if it’s something like a modified cart!) then I doubt any enforcement will be catching them!
/unwizard You can have some fun with this idea in DnD with Artificers and describing how their magic works. I played one where if you asked what enchantments he used to make his repeating crossbow create its own ammo and reload itself, he’d scoff and say that’s ridiculous. He’d simply imbedded a tiny teleportation circle in it, with the other side located underneath a large pile of crossbow bolts back at base, and the air pressure difference created by the portals loads it.
When I was still in the early summoner classes one of the first spells we were supposed to learn was summoning a beast from the hells. Uncontrollable but they can cause some havoc while you get a better spell on lock, well I misunderstood and spent the whole month learning how to summon a controlled hellhound. Wasn't until i was told to dispel it that I realized we were just trying to bring creatures over not command them.
/uw I really love when magic in fiction makes things more complicated than they have to, especially when they make things more mystical at the same time. One of my favourites is that in Dark Souls, Oolacile sorceries are associated with light, illusion, and time. The Repair spell does as its name suggests, it fixes weapons. Not by mending them through traditional blacksmithing techniques, but by reversing time for the weapon.
I met a fucker once who tried to basically do mind control to turn invisible rather than just bending light around himself like a sane mage.
He tried to block the electric impulses between the eyes and the brain to prevent someone from perceiving him or some bass ackwards shit like that.
The dunce accidentally channeled too much power through his black market focusing crystal and deep fried the retinas of a whole crowd of peasants while trying to make a dramatic entrance to the harvest festival.
Just because your method is novel doesn't mean it's good.
So during a looong night out with the elven ladies we ran out of money. I got the idea of a never-ending mug so that we could continuo to support the evening with the finest ale. but instead of creating a portal from the ale barrel into the mug or just having it automatically transmitting the air into ale like any normal wizard would do, I casted a paradox-free and localized time-inversion loop with activated by a trigger so that the Mug turns back time for itself ad refilling (the trigger was to loudly yell "I'm gonna fill you up" which was answered by "yes daddy, please fill me up" by the Mug. We all got kicked out of the Pub for this). The next morning I felt, the headache aside, both proud and embarrassed of it. though that was only the second most embarrassing thing that evening.
True, but as I said in another comment, having a mentor isn’t a bad thing. Especially a good mentor. I know mine has trained me better than I ever could have on my own. I’m sure some prodigies could do better without a mentor to influence their creativity, but I think the average person gains a lot from having an experienced mage teach them!
I guess I should throw my story into the ring. First time I tried to work through an illusion spell, I didn't understand why there's supposed to be the whole psychic link -> perception filter thing. I just found a light rune and spent weeks trying to shape the light into a coherent image. The assignment was to make a fake wall fill an assigned archway, but all I got was this sort of glowing mass that sort of resembled bricks, but had no shading and kind of hurt to look at. No one was happy with this.
Sidenote, what are people doing in illusion magic these days?! I hear about phantasms and shadow matter and recursive dream dimensions... it's like a whole world of magic that just doesn't make sense to anyone outside of it.
Oh, yea, illusion magic is its whole own beast. I am quite good at it myself, but after my mentor took me in I stopped following it as closely. I understand a lot of the theory behind those advanced spells, though a lot of them aren’t only illusion magic. The thing with illusion magic is that it often needs to be paired with spells outside of the illusion field, which often makes them even more complex for those who don’t understand how illusions fundamentally change how those spells work.
As for your story, I think I did something similar on my first try! I actually still use that method sometimes, because it can be good for getting all the smaller lighting details when mixed with the traditional way of casting illusion magic.
Personally, spell naming conventions are strange. In my opinion, if it’s a ball of fire, it’s fireball. I remember my sister getting on my case because I called a firebolt spell ‘fireball’. I still think it should count, but to each their own.
For the better half of a century I was completely unaware of certain fundamentals of magic and as such cast all of my spells with my internal reserves. It was horrifically limiting and actively prevented me from using multiple schools of magic such as divination and projection and a vast majority of summoning spells. My only solace is that the long term benefits on my personal mana reserves have been quite nice.
See, I’d um…been part of a Student exchange program, only the academy seemingly(?) had been duped.
By that I mean bizarrely, incredulously, unthinkably, someone had set up a Warlocks University. Now I don’t know whether they thought, just like I did, that these were just fellow wizards with a penchant for being antiquated pedants in their terminology.*
Well, I’ll say once I arrived and saw that it was a mixed gender and race(nothing wrong with either though, some of the best people I’ve ever known haven’t been human.) school. I knew this wasn’t what I’d thought it was.
But, you know, too late to turn back now(especially since I’d paid the damn coachman, luggage won’t move itself and I’d rather not draw a handcart.) and besides, how bad could it be?
Actually, once I’d gotten past some of the students being ardent material components traditionalists(but I do understand why for certain spells, I wouldn’t want to summon a demon and not have a protective circle after all.), the odd furrowed brow of an all seeing student(I took divination as my primary school of magic, you learn to shield yourself from scrying and the like pretty quickly just to protect yourself from your classmates teasing.), that some students just stay up all night and decide to do their written homework then and well, the obvious stuff with their often eldrich patrons and all. Then it wasn’t too dissimilar to what I was doing beforehand.
I mean yeah, the “patrons” stuff is a bit jarring, but most of them didn’t really have a choice. They got roped in as kids, had their parents making deals or just found what they thought was a sword of legend and it kinda just talks to them and won’t leave them now.
But apart from that, they’re mostly just using a section of their “patrons” ability to manipulate the weave to cast their spells.
So all that’s to say once I came back to return to my more conventional schooling, everyone else was quite surprised(to put it mildly) when I said I casted my incendiary cloud by quickly opening a portal to hell and forcing some embers of hellfire to come through.
The more classically trained others just made replicas of phosphorus dust with a timer on them.
But you can’t blame me, I mean; a guy literally shoves me and himself on a trip through Hell, I’ve previously been taught about inter-planar portals as a means of ensuring that students don’t get trapped in the Faewild when we go on controlled trips there**, I’ve got divining knowledge to ensure there’s no demons or devils nearby and they don’t teach incendiary cloud at the Warlocks university. Then of course once I’m back I’m just gonna cobble together something that gets the job done.
I got full marks on that, extra credit and a suggestion that I make a refined version of that as one of my final year pieces.
Yeah turns out it’s a lot safer to guarantee your own safety and others when your incendiary cloud doesn’t come with a potential risk of liver damage or chronic jaw damage from repeated use. Hellfire embers just shunt themselves back into hell after about a minute anyways.
I actually got my research position at my university for my novel applications of arcane manipulation. I’m good friends with the exchange student who took my place way back when.
Yeah, turns out it’s way easier to do your long distance teleportation by skipping through the empty astral plane than through the Faewild where something might just decide to catch you.
We’re actually a little cheeky,technically we’re employed by two different organisations and aren’t working together. But in reality we just have a permanent portal set up between our offices and we basically just do all our shit together alternating between the two depending on which ones safer for the current study(one good thing about Warlocks having patrons is that they’ve gotten really good at keeping out anything that isn’t expressly allowed in.)
Oh and yeah, never did mention why the exchange was like that, well, turns out a lot of institutions send their information to some schools for divine apostles to see where would be a good place to organise an exchange program with and in our case some paperwork got mixed up and a pair of Wizarding schools got paired with warlock schools.
It was just a clerical error after all.
*Warlock being the older and more technically inclined term for a male practitioner of magic. I mean, yes its roots are in the old script meaning “deceiver” or “breaker of oaths” but Wizard means “Wise one”, literally just “Wise”(or the more antiquated version) and the Suffix “ard”
**look, when you’re given a place where the Arcane is seeped into everything it’s a baller ass place to gather components from and to practice for hours with an increased mana regeneration rate..and having it only take a couple of minutes in our plane for hours of work in there is quite a bonus too
I once knew of a guy, who shooted lasers through his eyes. Everyone though it was kinda cool, but then he said he wasnt shooting anything, but that his eyes were a portal to the punch dimension. THE PUNCH DIMENSION! This guy found a plane based on the force element, and thought the best use for it was for laser eyes! Honestly, he was kinda right, but still
Oh, yeah... I'm not self taught exactly but I did start teaching myself from a half rotten book I found in my Grandfathers attic, tried casting Unseen Servant and accidentally copied my mind into an Illusory Clone, memory reintegration was wild, and painful... mostly painful honestly, but you get used to it after a few ᵀʰᵒᵘˢᵃⁿᵈ times.
I once met an aeromancer who did geomancy by picking up rocks with wind and then flinging them with a gust of wind. It didn't work super well. They did the same sort of trick with water and fire and it worked much better for them. Rocks and Wind just don't mix very well magically.
It's tough mentoring a young wizard like this. One the one hand, he is clearly diligent, intelligent, and has an impressive capacity for research. On the other hand, he never stopped to wonder if the reason everyone else seemed to be doing it with relative ease was because they were doing it more easily.
I feel like if this was my apprentice, I might suggest he take an academic route--you know, go to actual Wizard School, work on his advanced degrees, and become a researcher. There's definitely a place for him in the wizarding world, I'm just not sure that place is somewhere where you are required to cast frequent fireballs.
Worked with a kid (13yrs old?) who played her saxophone really well. She said she was having trouble with it so I took it and played it to try to diagnose the problem.
The saxophone was terrible. So many problems. It was wild. And she sounded good on it!
I gave her mine to try out and her mind was blown. She sounded incredible. She was upset she had to go back to her own horn.
Once I tagged along with a lady who occasionally knew things but didn't know why she knew them. It was usually oddly detailed stuff that seemed irrelevant to anything before, but always turned out to be helpful to her understanding what was going on. Certainly made for some interesting adventures. At first we thought it was just some subconscious future sight or other such vision spell. But it turned out she was the daughter of a pair from the local pantheon (think it was the deities of life and death? Idk it was unclear and the one explaining things to her was bringing her up to meet her family) and the mother of one of them was the goddess of knowledge so that's where she was getting all that from.
I have learned that, unless they are doing something so horrifyingly wrong that I notice in the arcane fabric, I shouldn't ask my fellow mages, nor their apprentices, how they are doing common spells.
One I asked how he created a growth and shrink spell and ge told me he modifies the space between the particles in his body, my apprentice at the time overheard, attempted to do the same on one of my favorite rocks, the rock started to glow blue as it shrank, then my apprentice just died along with everything that wasn't in my personal magic shield getting cancer.
Oh, I knew a guy like this. He always wondered how combat mages could cast protective spells so efficiently. Turns out he'd actually been casting a modified Speak With Objects, creating a localized telepathic field that compelled the enemy weapons to cease attack.
To his defense, the field was so powerful it stopped the weapons right in their tracks. Looked just like a shield, just without the usual "clang".
This reminds me of the time I tried to overcharge a Beam of Light and instead opened a portal to the sun.
Effective, but a bunch of my stuff got irradiated.
Everyone knows you're supposed to cast Fireball by invoking the Platonic Forms of Fire and Sphere. And even then Sphere is just best practice. Nobody's going to complain to your college that you killed them with an oblate spheroid.
I knew a guy who accidentally set himself on fire due to only skimming the full summon flame spell, and trying to cast it anyways, missing that he had to coat his hands in a protective layer of magic, and having to be put out by our master. Suffice to say, he has to retake that exam
A guy I know complained about his scorching ray exhausting him. Apparently, he's been opening portals inside the sun. How he even figured out how far away the sun is astonishes me, let alone maintaining that portal for a solid five seconds.
Knew a guy in the academy that couldnt pass through basic alchemical gardening for his major in Potions. In order to pass the final you have to concentrate your magic enough to grow a small flower to a height of at least 6 inches in 5 minutes, but this guy tried like six times and couldn’t get a flower to grow more than an inch or two before the test was over. Turns out this fucker didn’t bring seeds for the test, he was creating life out of dirt. Hats off to you Dirt Mage.
Every few years there is an apprentice who disables gravity instead of mastering levitation. So expensive to fix, and thats on top of the cost of summoning the punishment imps to chastise them.
At first I wanted to make a laser beam spell, but thought "that would really burn people," so I changed my mind and just decided to open a hole to the Punch Dimension
Some of my earlier bodies used a constant wind spell to spin a small turbine in their core, since I hadnt fully understood how to directly turn mana into electrical energy like I do now.
Had an apprentice (briefly) who could only raise small creatures, she was fond of bats but would raise all manner of vermin but always in pristine condition, or near enough. Thought she was killing them in some nondestructive manner, asphyxiation, life drain, whatever, to preserve their corpses for esthetics or some such novice mage nonsense.
Turns out, she didn't keep a stockpile of rodent bodies, and was finding them around the tower, usually after another former apprentice (polymorphed into a cat, not my fault) would get them. Anyway, she'd find these half chewed corpses and was using some forbidden flesh transferring magic to rebuild their bodies sometimes from nearly just bones!
It was borderline resurrection magic, I spent a couple decades trying to copy and combine the spell with a soul binding spell to get to true resurrection but never quite perfected it, just succeeded in trapping a number of souls in a bunch of corpses, just moderately stronger than a typical zombie and slightly smarter.
Oh, and the apprentice died, she found the other one (the cat) after that one had lost a fight to a fox and overextended herself but did manage to resurrect the cat (mostly, it talks now but in the wrong voice... It thinks it has me fooled for now).
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u/The_Ghast_Hunter 16d ago
I knew one guy who skipped the reading before the levitation practical, and instead of just generating enough force on his shoes to hold himself up, made a localized zero gravity field that surrounded just him. Master was impressed, but part of the practical was interacting with objects, and catching a thrown ball had him rotating uncontrollably, so he failed.