Possible magic sightings?

[Godskook]

Ok, we all know that we've seen(I'm talking about in a functioning way):

Croakamancy(Wanda)
Healomancy(Elves)
Dirtamancy(Sizemore)
Thinkamancy(Maggie and Charlie 'n' Archons)
Foolamancy(Jack)
Lookamancy(Misty, as Eyemancer and Wanda, 'Scruby' spell)
Findamancy(Wanda, 'Scruby' spell)
Mathamancy(Parson, artifact calculator)

Magic that has been used with unknown effect:
Luckmancy(Parson's breakfast)

Possible sightings that I know of:
Carnymancy(Stanley)
Dollamancy(Cloth golems) - I believe DevilDan suggested this
Hat Magic(Jetstone tophats)
Predictamancy('Scruby' spell, possible, but not for sure)

Magics with that I don't remember seeing used in the comic:
Turnamancy
Wierdomancy
Changemancy
Dittomancy
Flower Power
Signamancy
Date-a-mancy
Shockmancy
Deletionism
Rhyme-o-mancy
Moneymancy

Can anyone else think of one of these being used in the comic?

[DevilDan]

Hypothetically or outright unwarranted speculation:
Changemancy - Turning walnuts into birds and vice versa
Flower Power - We know one effect, the dilation of time. And we know that hippiemancy can be used to end conflicts.
Rhyme-o-mancy - Wanda's poem?

Here's a link to the magic Klog entry, by the way:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0040.html

[Godskook]

Changemancy - Turning walnuts into birds and vice versa

Thats a first. Normally, we seem to attribute that to Carnymancy. Does add a bit to the speculation possibilities(and remove some certainty of the hammer being carny-alligned).

[DevilDan]

Thats a first. Normally, we seem to attribute that to Carnymancy. Does add a bit to the speculation possibilities(and remove some certainty of the hammer being carny-alligned).
It is uncertain whether arkentools can only operate within one school of magic in the first place.

It's even possible that the arkentools, as artifacts of the titans (meaning that they possibly preceded the creation of Erf and may have even been utilized to create that world), transcend the physics/systems of Erf.

[MirEgal]

Rhyme-o-mancy - Wanda's poem?
This is quite an interesting idea. Maybe dance fighting is also some kind of natural rhyme-o-mancy.

[DevilDan]

This is quite an interesting idea. Maybe dance fighting is also some kind of natural rhyme-o-mancy.

Nor do we know whether natural abilities fall within specific magical schools. Regeneration could be a type of healomancy, but what magic would flight be?

[Godskook]

Nor do we know whether natural abilities fall within specific magical schools. Regeneration could be a type of healomancy, but what magic would flight be?

Wierdomancy?

[DevilDan]

I should mention that some have suggested that the healomancy of the elves is a natural magical ability rather than casting, particularly since they would have to have many healomancers. I don't think that it is unreasonable for them to have many healomancers; it isn't something that would give that elfbrand a completely unbalanced advantage.

[Alexei P]

Magic that has been used with unknown effect:
Luckmancy(Parson's breakfast)


Are we sure that was real magic? I took it simply as the spell giving Parson a final tap on the shoulder - "G'luck, d00d, there's nothing more we can do for ya". Previous breakfasts have given Parson tools he needed to do his job, but never to the point of rigging the odds in his favor - just stuff he needed to know, plus warlord abilities he needed to have - compensating for his limitations, but never actually helping.

[DevilDan]

Are we sure that was real magic? I took it simply as the spell giving Parson a final tap on the shoulder - "G'luck, d00d, there's nothing more we can do for ya". Previous breakfasts have given Parson tools he needed to do his job, but never to the point of rigging the odds in his favor - just stuff he needed to know, plus warlord abilities he needed to have - compensating for his limitations, but never actually helping.

I was ambivalent on this, as well. We do not know this for certain, but just for the sake of thoroughness I'll quote the box (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0118.html):
Luckamancy Charms
They're tragically malicious
Contains a full day's supply of Luckamancy
Eat up, dood! You're gonna need it!

I always believed that everyone who suggested that the Luckamancy Charms had any actual magic effects was jumping the gun. After all, the stupid meal didn't make him stupid.... I'm no longer so sure that they have no luckamancy properties.

[Winged One]

The Stupid Meal didn't say it was going to make him stupid, though.

[DevilDan]

The Stupid Meal didn't say it was going to make him stupid, though.

I just find it suspicious that no other meals had any magical effects.

[kreszantas]

I just find it suspicious that no other meals had any magical effects.


No it was a plot hook meal to make his Luckamancy and Mathamancy to work together to tilt the battles in Parsons favor, a one time / one day shot.

[DevilDan]

No it was a plot hook meal to make his Luckamancy and Mathamancy to work together to tilt the battles in Parsons favor, a one time / one day shot.

I can't make up my mind either way, frankly.

[SeraphRainy]

I have to say I sit firmly on the side that the Luckamancy-Charms were simply entertainment. Every other meal, and everything in erfworld for that matter, has been just a cutsy and hilarious similitude to something in our world.

Also if nothing else look at it this way. When cereal says, "Its part of this balanced breakfast" they don't mean it. Because no child ever gets a balanced breakfast they all load up on three bowls of chocolate frosted sugar bombs(with extra sugar) and run out the door. So saying full suply of luckamancy is like, "Whoo-hoo you may or may not have good luck today."


The meals have been poping with what Parson desparaitly needed but that seems to be within the reach of what the city provides. Remmeber that at dawn they are cleansed, their food pops, and they heal. It is not out of the realm of possibility for those helpful things to have just been the intrinsic magic of the city giving its units what they needed.

And my final and most disturbing theory. (Also my personal favorit.) Is that the meals are just taunting Parson. The first day it called him stupid. The second day it tells him exactly how many alliance units hes up against, the third day it says exactly what he has left since Stanley stripped him of his Dwagons and the best knights. Today its just saying good luck there because only luck will get you through this day. It may be helping ihm but I sense a bitter note from the ironic meals.

[DevilDan]

And my final and most disturbing theory. (Also my personal favorit.) Is that the meals are just taunting Parson. The first day it called him stupid. The second day it tells him exactly how many alliance units hes up against, the third day it says exactly what he has left since Stanley stripped him of his Dwagons and the best knights. Today its just saying good luck there because only luck will get you through this day. It may be helping ihm but I sense a bitter note from the ironic meals.

Before, I considered that the luckamancy charms had no actual magic effect particularly because none of the other meals suggested magic, but, come to think of it, every meal has been helpful to Parson. Even the RCC unit totals, something that could in theory be obtained through the eyemancers, is a useful summary of the RCC members and their individual strengths. Each meal has helped to prepare Lord Hamster. Only the last one doesn't provide intelligence or explanations of rules, so now it seems to me less of a stretch for the charms to have a magic effect.

[Aquillion]

The thing is, we have no indication that there's anything 'flashy' about luckamancy (and no indication otherwise, but it's logical to assume it just makes you lucky.)

In that case, the debate will likely never be settled -- unless someone in the strip goes out of their way to point it out (and there's no real reason why they would, as far as I can tell), there's no way we can ever tell if he's been lucky because of actual luck, or magic. It might not even be clear to Parson himself.

My guess? It's really just a small balancing act on the part of the authors. It makes anything that Parson pulls off this time seem a bit more believable to skeptics (because he may have had magical luck), without being a clear or certain enough advantage to detract from the drama. I doubt it will ever be referred to again; it's just there so people who wouldn't otherwise believe that Parson could win will have some explanation to fall back on.

But I could be wrong...

[quindraco]

Luckamancy could work in any number of ways only detectably statistically; for example, suppose when I attack you, I roll a d20, and if I roll a certain number or higher, I hit you. Suppose that you have a certain number of luckamancy "points", and you can spend a point to reroll a miss. This means that anything you couldn't hit before, you still can't, and anything you would have hit anyway, you still hit - detecting the presence of the luckamancy from the outside would require an analysis of hit probabilities with and without the luckamancy (if we can pull your theoretical accuracy out of a hat - such as by looking at your stats and knowing how the rules work - then we don't need to observe you without the luckamancy). There are many other ways it could work.

Since Erfworld doesn't give us those sorts of numbers, much less in sufficient size to correctly work out the effect, I don't think we can possibly understand luckamancy until it's explained to us.

I'm curious as to whether or not mathamancy accounts for luckamancy; one way to make luckamancy interesting would be for it to explicitly alter outcomes in ways which mathamancy spells/effects can't account for.

[Godskook]

I'm curious as to whether or not mathamancy accounts for luckmancy; one way to make luckmancy interesting would be for it to explicitly alter outcomes in ways which mathamancy spells/effects can't account for.

I doubt mathamancy accounts for luckmancy. Numbers, luck and fate are all mentioned as equals by Sizemore, so each must be equally influential or possibly R-P-S(If they were, I'd say Numbers > Fate > Luck > Numbers).

[DevilDan]

A side note: the one use of luckamancy mentioned in the comic, when Sizemore talks about kings who use mathamancy and luckamancy together, suggests luckamancy mechanics that involve conscious thought and application, not some hidden automatic system. There could be multiple manifestations, if you will, of luckamancy, of course.

[Aquillion]

I thought that just meant 'use luckamancy in those key battles', not anything more specific than that. So it could still just be a 'hit button, get lucky' thing.

[DevilDan]

I thought that just meant 'use luckamancy in those key battles', not anything more specific than that. So it could still just be a 'hit button, get lucky' thing.

The description is as brief as you remember: "Predict the crucial battles... then tilt them in your favor." But if you can just use luckamancy for an entire turn, why would you need sophisticated mathamantical analysis? Even an inept warlord can figure out on which day a crucial battle will take place, which leads me to believe that luckamancy is at least most effective when used in a more precise manner.

[Aquillion]

The description is as brief as you remember: "Predict the crucial battles... then tilt them in your favor." But if you can just use luckamancy for an entire turn, why would you need sophisticated mathamantical analysis? Even an inept warlord can figure out on which day a crucial battle will take place, which leads me to believe that luckamancy is at least most effective when used in a more precise manner.I dunno. The whole idea of Predictamancy and Mathamancy (from the way they've been described) hints to me that Erfworlders might simply suck at analysis.

Also, in a major war, it's not necessarily so easy to predict the key battles. After all, that's a huge part of real-world strategy -- knowing where and when to commit your forces, and trying to trick the enemy into committing them badly. It would be easy to do the same thing with Luckamancy -- feint one day to force the enemy to waste their Luckamancy reserves (or however it works), then attack for real later on.

[DevilDan]

I dunno. The whole idea of Predictamancy and Mathamancy (from the way they've been described) hints to me that Erfworlders might simply suck at analysis.

Also, in a major war, it's not necessarily so easy to predict the key battles. After all, that's a huge part of real-world strategy -- knowing where and when to commit your forces, and trying to trick the enemy into committing them badly. It would be easy to do the same thing with Luckamancy -- feint one day to force the enemy to waste their Luckamancy reserves (or however it works), then attack for real later on.

Again, we don't know enough. I would add that we've possibly encountered two different types of predictamancy, a grander prophecy such as that mentioned by Jillian regarding Faq's fall, presumably many turns in advance to the actual projected fall, and a more modest type that was used by Faq to predict which Faq city would need to be veiled in a given turn, suggesting some capacity for predicting unit moves.

[Fjolnir]

predictamancy probably falls into two distinct categories prophecy, and the ability to see what is preplanned on someone's Turn (that is, unit waypoints and production orders) before their turn comes up in the day making it a fairly useful power though the second is also attainable partially by a mathamancer (but only via probability) hoewever Prophecy is probably only attainable in high level/master class predictamancers with any sort of real accuracy (loaded or yes/no predictions/prophecies probably coming easier than those that actually bring forth results of substance)

[DevilDan]

predictamancy probably falls into two distinct categories prophecy, and the ability to see what is preplanned on someone's Turn (that is, unit waypoints and production orders) before their turn comes up in the day making it a fairly useful power though the second is also attainable partially by a mathamancer (but only via probability) hoewever Prophecy is probably only attainable in high level/master class predictamancers with any sort of real accuracy (loaded or yes/no predictions/prophecies probably coming easier than those that actually bring forth results of substance)

That's a fair bit of reasonable speculation. I would add, for the sake of thoroughness, that we've never read of predicting city production, we've seen only what seems to be a very narrow, if powerful, application of mathamancy, we don't know what the effectiveness/accuracy is for various "levels" of mathamancers, and that the word "prophecy" wasn't used in the comic.

Finally, "real" accuracy is a very vague term. The usefulness or usability of a particular prediction would depend on many factors and would probably change from case to case.

[DevilDan]

With page 124, we've now seen a healomancy scroll used, though off-screen.

It seems as if we'll get to see shockmancy pretty soon as it's one of the scrolls in Wanda's private reserve. Shockmancy is Erf-axis Naughtymancy. We actually know a fair amount about some of the applications of Erf-axis magics: dirtamancy, lookamancy, hat magic (?), and luckamancy. Well, we know some compared to other magics, anyway. We've seen a lot of one other naughtymancy, croakamancy, but seen nothing of deletionism.

Not surprisingly, naughtymancy seems to describe what could be termed "dark arts," which is were we'd normally place necromancy, Earth's version of croakamancy. Naughtymancy is a bi-elemental class, involving Motion and Matter. I admit that I don't really know what shockmancy will turn out to be.

[dr pepper]

With page 124, we've now seen a healomancy scroll used, though off-screen.



A whole phase of the battle was also off screen. But i bet we see it all in the UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT-- FEATURING 43.227 MINUTES OF NEVR BEFORE SEEN FOOTAGE!

er, i mean in the eventual printed version.

[hewhosaysfish]

It seems as if we'll get to see shockmancy pretty soon as it's one of the scrolls in Wanda's private reserve. Shockmancy is Erf-axis Naughtymancy. We actually know a fair amount about some of the applications of Erf-axis magics: dirtamancy, lookamancy, hat magic (?), and luckamancy. Well, we know some compared to other magics, anyway. We've seen a lot of one other naughtymancy, croakamancy, but seen nothing of deletionism.

Not surprisingly, naughtymancy seems to describe what could be termed "dark arts," which is were we'd normally place necromancy, Earth's version of croakamancy. Naughtymancy is a bi-elemental class, involving Motion and Matter. I admit that I don't really know what shockmancy will turn out to be.

Shooting Force Lightning from your fingers would explain the "shock" in the name and would fit with the "Dark Side" theme of naughtymancy (at least, given the whole "built out of pop culture references" thing Erfworld has going on) as well as making sense for something that Wand a might have in her private stash in the dungeon... but it seems a bit limited in scope for a whole sub-section of magic.
Not sure.

[Chicken Little]

I expect Shockamancy to be similar to Evocation type magic. Explosive forces, if you will. Not sure why, just gut instinct

[DevilDan]

If we look at Wanda's interrogation of Jillian (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0030.html), it would seem that Wanda employed a fearsome-looking spell. Was it a thinkamancy spell? Or was it shockmancy, perhaps something more related to inducing emotions than thinkamancy?

Hmmm... electricity, torture by nerve induction? Just idle speculation.

If shockmancy is about electricity, was Stanley's "van de Graaf" attack shockmancy? I guess I'm one of the few that thinks that it's possible for the arkentools to have powers associated with several magic types--that is, if they don't just function at a deeper level than Erf's magic system seeing as they have a connection to the ur-reality of the demiurgic Titans.