The cost of using magic

[Grim Portent]

In a lot of stories wizards don't use magic enough for it to become ordinary. If you only teleport once every decade and only after 20 years of learning how because it requires weeks to prepare and frankly isn't worth it most of the time then it'll stay pretty damn impressive even if you can do it.

[Traab]

Most of the sword and sorcery books I read (namely mercedes lackey and her valdemar books) magic is a form of internal energy. The cost is you get exhausted the more you cast. Yes there are outside power sources you can tap into, ley lines and the like, but even then there is a cost in mental fatigue and such to channel it all. And of course there is evil magic, blood mages who raise power from torture and sacrifice and agony and horror. Its basically like creating a giant battery for yourself fueled by the screams of your victims.

The belgariad series has magic being an application of your will, so again, exhaustion is the price you pay. The more you do the more energy it takes. His elenium series on the other hand has magic as literally answered prayers. The gods grant it if you ask in the right way, so aside from technically worshiping a god, there isnt really a cost. Though its possible for the god to refuse, though thats fairly rare as they generally dont focus too much on what one among thousands of their worshipers is currently doing.

The Obsidian Trilogy is another series by lackey with a very different magic system. There are three main schools of magic, the high magic which is basically the mages of this huge city siphon safe amounts of power from everyone as a form of taxation that they use to cast spells, that energy is the price, using your own power is horribly exhausting. The Wild Magic on the other hand works entirely off of what amounts to prayers, and the price is, the wild magic asks for something as payment. This can vary wildly from rescuing a cat in a tree, to forgiving an enemy, to being willing to sacrifice your life at some future date. The third is demonic magic thats all blood pain death and horror.

Yet ANOTHER lackey series the five hundred kingdoms, has magic being based off of tradition. Its a bit complex. Basically, fairy tales are real, they happen, and fate conspires to force these stories to play out over and over again. Those who can use magic are able to collect the excess power used to create these scenarios to fuel their abilities. Its why there is always a wicked witch whose garden will be robbed for rapunzel, princesses are constantly being cursed at birth for sleeping beauty style stories among others. The good magic users try to create happily ever after endings while the evil ones try to basically maintain the stasis as long as possible. Take sleeping beauty. Ideally for the evil witch, there will be dozens of princes trying to rescue her. So long as she can make them fail, she can continue draining power for her magic. Every time one fails, another will be set the task to rescue the princess and driven by The Tradition to do so. Meanwhile the good witches and godmothers are trying to grant the prince as many advantages as they can while following the rules of the tradition. Its actually pretty horrifying. If you are a girl and your dad happens to die after marrying another woman who has kids of her own, you are likely to end up a cinderella. Just because the setup sort of fits, the tradition makes it happen. However, just because you are cinderella doesnt mean a prince will automatically show up to marry you. One of the main characters started out that way, turns out the "handsome prince" is still only 7 years old. So obviously she wasnt getting married any time soon. So she was basically doomed to a life of eternal toil as a servant in her own home.

[Saintheart]

When people talk about how Dungeons & Dragons is totally different from Sword & Sorcery fantasy, perhaps the most common argument they make is that magic would have to have a price that makes it dangerous and damaging to use.

Does it?

What's the cost and danger of using magic in Conan stories? What about Elric? What about Fafhrd and Grey Mouser? Kane?

I read a lot of these most prominent series, and I don't recall there ever being any clear danger or cost to magic.

When people are making that argument, my guess would be that they're generally arguing without realising it Orson Scott Card's rules on writing sci-fi and fantasy. It's also Sanderson's First Law, but we'll leave that to one side. It's a concept or mindset that comes from allowing too much science fiction and too many mediocre writers' courses bleed across into the fantasy genre.

Essentially, it's this: if your magic is ill-defined, then you don't give your protagonists access to it, because its power to solve plot problems becomes way, way too great. Magic isn't well-defined in Conan's world, and for that very reason, he doesn't get to use it much, if at all. Tolkien also ill-defines his magic, and as a result, the main characters don't get to use it either. The only time they do get to use it - the One Ring - then it has basically one ability attached to it. And even using that, in time, costs you your soul. The problem that ill-defined magic presents can be wholly summed up in one image: Gandalf sitting on his butt doing precisely nothing during the climactic Battle Of The Five Armies, which might have been for fate, destiny, etc., but which anyone can see was done because Tolkien literally had no other way to keep him from upending the entire story.

This principle of storytelling is more apparent these days because we've gotten cynical and we think of fantasy more like a damn crime thriller, a puzzle to be solved, than a drift through a world of pure imagination. Magic gotta have rules, because if it's got rules then you can try and think of ways to use it or break the rules. Magic as dangerous to use is an expression of a cost to using it. Magic as damaging to use is another form of cost. Magic with a cost is magic that at least has some definition to it, which is easier for a writer to control. And magic with a price in moral terms -- Elric gets Stormbringer which allows him to overcome his drug dependency but has to consume the souls of intelligent beings -- is an easy way to lecture an audience on theme.

This problem with ill-defined magic is also apparent in D&D 3.5. The moment a spell breaks its defined boundaries, the game falls to bits. Wish on its own is a dangerous enough spell to give to players, which the makers tried to control by rendering it the highest level spell you can cast and requiring a big old slab of XP and an expensive diamond to boot. And then they left the back door open with Chain-gating Solars.

That aside, I'm astounded that people don't cite the rather more obvious difference between D&D and Sword & Sorcery. Namely, one is a roleplaying game, and the other is wholly narrative. Entirely different media.

[Bohandas]

When people talk about how Dungeons & Dragons is totally different from Sword & Sorcery fantasy, perhaps the most common argument they make is that magic would have to have a price that makes it dangerous and damaging to use.

Does it?
...
I read a lot of these most prominent series, and I don't recall there ever being any clear danger or cost to magic.

I agree, in fact I'd argue that D&D deviates because magic is TOO hard to use compared to most of the fantasy programs I've seen and read


*Harry Potter doesn't seem to have any limit on spells per day or maximum number of spells known

*In Discworld there's a choice between limits OR danger. It only drives people mad or opens rifts to other dimensions when used to excess, which is still more leniant that D&D, which doesn't have a goto option for bypassing spells per day or spell duration

*It doesn't really have a cost or limitation in Star Wars, even the Dark Side doesn't do anything mystical to you except for some minor premature aging. The erosion of the user's morals seems to just be the usual erosion of morals that comes with excessive power. Honestly Tarkin was more evil than any of the sith lords, Palpatine may have bankrolled the Death Star but at least he didn't repeatedly fire it off just to watch people die.

*In The Evil Dead magic has dangers but no cost that the user absolutely must pay. Furthermore most of the danger comes from how incredibly easy it is. In Evil Dead 1 the demons are summoned by a tape recording of someone translating the incantation who wasn't even trying to cast the spell.

more later when I think of them

EDIT:

*I don't recall it having a cost in the Spellsinger series

*Labyrinth is another film where the primary danger seems to be that it's so trivially easy you can do it without really intending to

*In Doctor Strange only certain abilities seem to have a truly significant risks or costs. There are plenty of spells that can be learned without having to tap into evil alternate planes, or sell your soul to a cosmic entity, or risk shattering reality

*In Star Trek you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone with supernatural, most of whom don't seem to suffer any serious side effects (the entire populations of the planets Betazed, Vulcan, and Organia come to mind). And even the power mad ones tend only to be they way because they are either literal children (Trelane, Charlie X, etc.), or just regular jerks with an enormous force multiplier to their jerkiness (Apollo, the Q who appeared to Picard, etc.)

[Lord Raziere]

I agree, in fact I'd argue that D&D deviates because magic is TOO hard to use compared to most of the fantasy programs I've seen and read


*Harry Potter doesn't seem to have any limit on spells per day or maximum number of spells known

*In Discworld there's a choice between limits OR danger. It only drives people mad or opens rifts to other dimensions when used to excess, which is still more leniant that D&D, which doesn't have a goto option for bypassing spells per day or spell duration

*It doesn't really have a cost or limitation in Star Wars, even the Dark Side doesn't do anything mystical to you except for some minor premature aging. The erosion of the user's morals seems to just be the usual erosion of morals that comes with excessive power. Honestly Tarkin was more evil than any of the sith lords, Palpatine may have bankrolled the Death Star but at least he didn't repeatedly fire it off just to watch people die.

*In The Evil Dead magic has dangers but no cost that the user absolutely must pay. Furthermore most of the danger comes from how incredibly easy it is. In Evil Dead 1 the demons are summoned by a tape recording of someone translating the incantation who wasn't even trying to cast the spell.

more later when I think of them

Thats because none of those are sword and sorcery dude. Sword and Sorcery isn't just any fantasy thing you can think of, its a specific genre with a specific atmosphere and focus, with specific types of protagonists and tropes. most of which you wouldn't see in popular media.

[Bohandas]

Thats because none of those are sword and sorcery dude. Sword and Sorcery isn't just any fantasy thing you can think of, its a specific genre with a specific atmosphere and focus, with specific types of protagonists and tropes. most of which you wouldn't see in popular media.

Discworld is. Or it is sometimes at any rate

[Saintheart]

I'm going a bit off-topic here, but:

*It doesn't really have a cost or limitation in Star Wars, even the Dark Side doesn't do anything mystical to you except for some minor premature aging. The erosion of the user's morals seems to just be the usual erosion of morals that comes with excessive power. Honestly Tarkin was more evil than any of the sith lords, Palpatine may have bankrolled the Death Star but at least he didn't repeatedly fire it off just to watch people die.

I just wanted to point out that in ROTJ the Emperor does precisely that. He orders the Death Star II to start shooting at Rebel ships, and the reason for doing so is solely to make Luke angry and make him despair at the massive loss of life. We know from an earlier scene that the Imperial Fleet jumps in with orders to just keep the Rebels from leaving because the Emperor has "something special planned for them." There's nothing in the film that says the fleet is having any problems handling the Rebels before the Emperor orders the DS II to start firing at will. If anything he has less reason to do that than Tarkin, whose motive in blowing up Alderaan seems to be to set an example for the entire galaxy, and whose earlier motives for firing it at entire cities seem to have been primarily to eliminate the guy who built it.

There's a wider debate about the nature of evil coming out of the post, but this probably isn't the thread for it.

[Bohandas]

I just wanted to point out that in ROTJ the Emperor does precisely that. He orders the Death Star II to start shooting at Rebel ships, and the reason for doing so is solely to make Luke angry and make him despair at the massive loss of life. We know from an earlier scene that the Imperial Fleet jumps in with orders to just keep the Rebels from leaving because the Emperor has "something special planned for them." There's nothing in the film that says the fleet is having any problems handling the Rebels before the Emperor orders the DS II to start firing at will. If anything he has less reason to do that than Tarkin, whose motive in blowing up Alderaan seems to be to set an example for the entire galaxy, and whose earlier motives for firing it at entire cities seem to have been primarily to eliminate the guy who built it.

The difference here is that the rebel fleet is, as Tarkin would put it, a military target.

(I suppose technically the base on Scarif was a military target as well but it doesn't count because it was on his own side)

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Agreeing with Bohandas here. The rebels are an enemy force actively trying to destroy his assets. And it turns out he really should have started shooting at the rebels sooner. Tactically not using the weapon was the stupid option. He has probably done plenty of super evil things, but if either the Emperor or Luke thinks this is just about spiting Luke then that's because they're lousy tacticians.

(Building the weapon in the first place might be a horrendous tactical blunder as well, but you have to use what you've got.)

[The_Snark]

Discworld is. Or it is sometimes at any rate

Discworld is occasionally a parody of sword and sorcery, but I think it's kind of telling that whenever it turns that way magic tends to become a dangerous, antagonistic force. (The first two books, parts of Sourcery, any bit that focuses heavily on Cohen or other barbarian heroes...)

[Sarethus]

In his far more famous work: The Dresden Files, magic interferes with technology (and used to make food rot, cause a variety.of skin conditions, etc). These "side-effects" of magic apparently change every 100 years or so, and are implied to be based on the mortal's collective subconscious view of magic...

Interesting.

I wonder if he ever played ARCANUM (Old Computer RPG). Basic world was sort of fantasy/steam punk. The basic system was that Science used & strengthened the laws of reality while Magic weakened the laws of reality.

So it got to the point that Strong Mages were forbidden from boarding trains (because as they were highly magical they would mess up the engines). Your shiney magic sword would stop working near a big factory etc or a Mage's fireball spell might not work on a tech guy who studied/believed in science and carried a lot of tech items etc.

[Rodin]

Essentially, it's this: if your magic is ill-defined, then you don't give your protagonists access to it, because its power to solve plot problems becomes way, way too great. Magic isn't well-defined in Conan's world, and for that very reason, he doesn't get to use it much, if at all. Tolkien also ill-defines his magic, and as a result, the main characters don't get to use it either. The only time they do get to use it - the One Ring - then it has basically one ability attached to it. And even using that, in time, costs you your soul. The problem that ill-defined magic presents can be wholly summed up in one image: Gandalf sitting on his butt doing precisely nothing during the climactic Battle Of The Five Armies, which might have been for fate, destiny, etc., but which anyone can see was done because Tolkien literally had no other way to keep him from upending the entire story.

I have to disagree with this argument. The Hobbit was written well before Lord of the Rings was, and Gandalf of that era had nowhere near the power level he had in LOTR. When encountering the three trolls, he has to use his wits and vocal mimicry to convince them to argue amongst themselves rather than go in fireballs blazing. During the journey through the Goblin caves he uses a few flashbangs and maybe a fireball or two - his main weapon is Glamdring. When cornered by the goblin Warg-riders, he's limited to tossing flaming pine cones at them and is about to suicide himself to create a bigger explosion so that the dwarves may escape.

In other words, Gandalf in the Hobbit isn't one of the Maiar and isn't one of the most powerful beings to ever exist - he's "just" a wizard.

We also aren't given the final battle in fine detail - it's quite possible that Gandalf had been fighting and then withdrew. Or maybe he was up on the hill because he was tossing fireballs at the bats. Bilbo speculates that he was preparing "one last blast of magic before the end", making me suspect that he had previously been using some. Other than the moment that Bilbo looks at him, we don't have a description of what he was doing during the fight.

Gandalf's lack of influence on the Battle of the Five Armies is much more an example of Early Installment Weirdness than it is a problem with the magic in the story. The Hobbit is a standalone story that
has some discrepancies as a result. For instance, Gollum originally gambles away the One Ring to Frodo, because it wasn't the One Ring at the time but instead a simple ring of Invisibility. When Tolkien came up with the idea to have be the Macguffin, he re-wrote the chapter Riddles in the Dark. However, he was unable to re-write the rest of the story without damaging it, hence why Bilbo uses the One Ring without consequence throughout. It's only at the beginning of LOTR that the idea of Bilbo getting corrupted by it was introduced.

[Morty]

Discworld starts out as a pastiche of sword and sorcery, but its depiction of magic changes a lot over the years. In later books, the idea isn't that magic is hard. It's in fact very easy, which is why a wizard or witch's most important skill is how not to use it. Because, to quote Archcancellor Mustrum Ridcully, if you sling spells like there's no tomorrow, there probably won't be. So it's not so much about cost but about severe consequences of overuse.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

In some sense there is a balance between how mysterious magic is, how powerful it is and how much sense the audience can make of it, how understandable the rules are. (There are other factors like writer skill, but let's ignore those for now.)

Lord of the Rings has magic that is both mysterious and powerful, so it almost has to leave things unexplained. Why didn't Aragorn command the undead army to crush the main armies of Mordor? Why didn't Gandalf use some magical way to get the ring to Mount Doom? There are things wizards cannot do or will not do, but we're never explained what the rules are. We just have to trust Gandalf is a good person and a competent wizard and is doing what he can. Any logical loophole you think you find, like "why didn't the eagles fly people around more?" is shrouded in enough of an air of mystery that we can tell there probably is a good reason for them, we just don't know it.

Harry Potter has magic that is powerful and understandable to the audience. We roughly know what kind of spells the characters can cast and what they can do with those spells. This means we can judge the wizards. Harry can come across as genuinly clever for finding a solution to his problems, because we could see the same puzzle he could but didn't think of the answer. But as a flip side magic is not a mystery here, it's cool but otherwise pretty mundane, and it does leave plot holes. If a time turner is a mundane enough thing to hand to a student who wants to follow extra classes, as an alternative to having her work on it in her own time, then those time turners should be used for a lot more things. There's no logical reason for it to be different. If Gandalf time travels ones but only ones we can let it slide because we don't know the rules, we can't do that for Harry.

Avatar has magic that is both mysterious and understandable. The rules are simple, yet it feels undeniably like magic, like a mystical force. As a trade off it isn't nearly as powerful as the magic in Harry Potter or Lord of the rings. And in this case that power comes in the form of versatility. Sure, they can move mountains, but that's because that's literally the only thing about a quarter of the magic users here can do. If a character in Avatar time travels ones and only ones it's not a plot hole, it's an ass pull.

Swords and sorcery often sits on the Gandalf side of the table. There is a cost, it's terrible, all of the universe balances out. You just never know how it will do it. There's probably a reason that guy got absorbed by his own wand. If we are told there is always a cost but we don't always see it we can assume it was payed off screen, or written down for collection in the future.

[Sapphire Guard]

A lot of these questions rely on assumptions.

Gandalf can do some tricks, but he's never been shown to be able to take an army on his own. And the powers he has are limited because they're flashy and he's on a stealth mission, he's angry when he has to light a small fire with magic on Caradhras because it's a giant glowing 'Gandalf is here' sign. He faces the Nazgul at Weathertop and is unable to defeat them. He's never been a 'solo an army' type of power, and if he was, the risk of that is enormous collateral damage like in the Silmarillion.

I expect it's not a good idea to use undead against 'The Necromancer'.

First conversation Gandalf has with Gwaihir in Orthanc.
"How far can you bear me?"
"Many leagues, but not to the ends of the earth."

A league is only about three miles, so he ends up taking him to Edoras from Orthanc, because it's close enough that he can manage it.

Time Turner's are not handed out to just anyone, Hermione had very special circumstances of missing half her previous year due to being grievously injured by a serial killer, who she helped catch, and is also extremely law abiding and cautious. She has a big speech about how amazingly dangerous time turners are to use, that people have written themselves out of existence by not using them carefully.

It's less about strict rules than 'is it plausible, given what we know, that this happens the way it does?' Readers feel cheated if the resolution is too neat.

[Bohandas]

Any logical loophole you think you find, like "why didn't the eagles fly people around more?" is shrouded in enough of an air of mystery that we can tell there probably is a good reason for them, we just don't know it.

That one was answered explicitly actually. The eagles won't go anywhere where there's hostile archers stationed

[Clertar]

In other words, Gandalf in the Hobbit isn't one of the Maiar and isn't one of the most powerful beings to ever exist - he's "just" a wizard.

I would disagree with that. First, no Maiar is one of the most powerful beings to ever exist, there is a big pantheon of beings way more powerful than the Maiar.

Second, at the time of writing who knows what Gandalf was thought to be, but the more powerful Gandalf that we see in LOTR is his returned self as Gandalf the White, after falling in the fight against the Balrog of Moria.

Gandalf the Grey in LOTR doesn't show higher levels of magic than he did in the Hobbit. Which doesn't mean that this version of Gandalf is not one of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth, which he was. Magic in LOTR is no joke, even something like just being able to make a fire or make a light and charm a pair of shoes so they put themselves away, while not world-shattering does make you more powerful than almost everyone else, since the vast majority of people and beings in Middle Earth can't do any magic at all.

[GloatingSwine]

That one was answered explicitly actually. The eagles won't go anywhere where there's hostile archers stationed

Also the Eagles are the direct messengers of Eru Illuvatar.

Floor people problems are quite literally beneath them.

I would disagree with that. First, no Maiar is one of the most powerful beings to ever exist, there is a big pantheon of beings way more powerful than the Maiar.

Well, there are about seven or so who actually descend to the world and so are available to act. Olorin was one of the more powerful of the Maiar, but the Istari explicitly gave up the majority of their power when they took the forms of men and went to Middle Earth, because they weren't there to fight power with power but to inspire and unite the peoples there to rise for themselves.

[Bohandas]

Also the Eagles are the direct messengers of Eru Illuvatar.

I thought they were the messengers of Manwe

[hamishspence]

I would disagree with that. First, no Maiar is one of the most powerful beings to ever exist, there is a big pantheon of beings way more powerful than the Maiar.

There are Maiar and Maiar. Some, at least, are immediate subordinates to Valar, and are treated as extremely powerful. Osse the Maiar, for example, is "Lord of the Sea" underneath Ulmo, who is Lord of all waters.

[GloatingSwine]

I thought they were the messengers of Manwe

Could be.

They're definitely Not Involved though. They only show up occasionally out of personal obligation to Gandalf, everything else is not their problem.

[The_Snark]

There are Maiar and Maiar. Some, at least, are immediate subordinates to Valar, and are treated as extremely powerful. Osse the Maiar, for example, is "Lord of the Sea" underneath Ulmo, who is Lord of all waters.

Not to mention Sauron himself, who is and was a fairly big deal.

Could be.

They're definitely Not Involved though. They only show up occasionally out of personal obligation to Gandalf, everything else is not their problem.

It's not personal obligation, I think, so much as that they're Not Supposed to interfere unduly. They can do things like show up to rescue Frodo and Sam from fiery death after they've completed their Quest, because that's not changing the outcome, just saving a couple lives after all's said and done; however, they can't ferry Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom, because that would be basically doing all the work for them. The people of Middle-Earth are supposed to determine their own fate, not have divine forces determine it for them. (This is arguably one of the chief things that sets Sauron - and Saruman, for that matter, and Morgoth himself if you look further back - apart from other Maiar/Valar: they want control.)

The Eagles' behavior in The Hobbit is stretching these rules a bit, but as someone mentioned before, that book was written before Tolkien had come up with the rest. He was writing them as a race of giant sentient eagles, not as divine messengers.

(Having said that, the Eagles arguably bend the rules a few times in the Silmarillion too, so maybe it's not uncharacteristic.)

[Saintheart]

In some sense there is a balance between how mysterious magic is, how powerful it is and how much sense the audience can make of it, how understandable the rules are. (There are other factors like writer skill, but let's ignore those for now.)

Lord of the Rings has magic that is both mysterious and powerful, so it almost has to leave things unexplained. Why didn't Aragorn command the undead army to crush the main armies of Mordor? Why didn't Gandalf use some magical way to get the ring to Mount Doom? There are things wizards cannot do or will not do, but we're never explained what the rules are. We just have to trust Gandalf is a good person and a competent wizard and is doing what he can. Any logical loophole you think you find, like "why didn't the eagles fly people around more?" is shrouded in enough of an air of mystery that we can tell there probably is a good reason for them, we just don't know it.

Harry Potter has magic that is powerful and understandable to the audience. We roughly know what kind of spells the characters can cast and what they can do with those spells. This means we can judge the wizards. Harry can come across as genuinly clever for finding a solution to his problems, because we could see the same puzzle he could but didn't think of the answer. But as a flip side magic is not a mystery here, it's cool but otherwise pretty mundane, and it does leave plot holes. If a time turner is a mundane enough thing to hand to a student who wants to follow extra classes, as an alternative to having her work on it in her own time, then those time turners should be used for a lot more things. There's no logical reason for it to be different. If Gandalf time travels ones but only ones we can let it slide because we don't know the rules, we can't do that for Harry.

Avatar has magic that is both mysterious and understandable. The rules are simple, yet it feels undeniably like magic, like a mystical force. As a trade off it isn't nearly as powerful as the magic in Harry Potter or Lord of the rings. And in this case that power comes in the form of versatility. Sure, they can move mountains, but that's because that's literally the only thing about a quarter of the magic users here can do. If a character in Avatar time travels ones and only ones it's not a plot hole, it's an ass pull.

Swords and sorcery often sits on the Gandalf side of the table. There is a cost, it's terrible, all of the universe balances out. You just never know how it will do it. There's probably a reason that guy got absorbed by his own wand. If we are told there is always a cost but we don't always see it we can assume it was payed off screen, or written down for collection in the future.

And hence what I was saying earlier: if your magic is not defined by clear rules the audience can understand, it generally is not a good idea to put that magic in the hands of your protagonist if you want the story to survive the scrutiny of a thousand cheerless pedants.

Harry Potter is the protagonist. He gets to have magic that is understandable but controlled; no wand, no spell (...mostly...); you have to know the spell to cast it; you have to cast it correctly, which takes practice if not some emotional focus. And even then, as said, the system leaves plotholes all over the place, not least of which is the Time Turner for much the reasons you point out.

Gandalf is not the protagonist; Bilbo and later Frodo is/are. Gandalf therefore can wield all the ruleless magic he likes for the reasons you've already stated - because we are left to assume There Are Reasons for why he doesn't use magic in a more obvious or flashy way. By contrast, when Frodo/Bilbo gets access to an item that allows clear, controllable magic - the One Ring - they are given only one power to use, you have to put the Ring on to use it, and the remainder of its suite of powers locked away behind the firewall of years of study, dedication, etc. -- as well as the interesting but amusing get-out that the Ring only affords power according to the measure of its wielder. This at least we can live with, though as demonstrated through the efforts of a million cheerless pedants over the years, it's a thin shield. In part - again as I said - because as a society we treat fantasy like a damn puzzle box than a romp through imagination. The latter is where the classic Sword and Sorcery genre hails from; from a better time.

[snowblizz]

And hence what I was saying earlier: if your magic is not defined by clear rules the audience can understand, it generally is not a good idea to put that magic in the hands of your protagonist if you want the story to survive the scrutiny of a thousand cheerless pedants.

I must say I really enjoyed that explanation. Made so much sense to me. And, hilariously enough, I immediately thought about Harry Potter as an example of rulebreaking and the audience pedantery following.


I would say The Giant struggles with this problem too. Many comments from him cover the challenges of writing an interesting story where magic is storybreaking. And where the audience can largely tell what is possible and what is not.

[Bohandas]

I agree, in fact I'd argue that D&D deviates because magic is TOO hard to use compared to most of the fantasy programs I've seen and read


*Harry Potter doesn't seem to have any limit on spells per day or maximum number of spells known

*In Discworld there's a choice between limits OR danger. It only drives people mad or opens rifts to other dimensions when used to excess, which is still more leniant that D&D, which doesn't have a goto option for bypassing spells per day or spell duration

*It doesn't really have a cost or limitation in Star Wars, even the Dark Side doesn't do anything mystical to you except for some minor premature aging. The erosion of the user's morals seems to just be the usual erosion of morals that comes with excessive power. Honestly Tarkin was more evil than any of the sith lords, Palpatine may have bankrolled the Death Star but at least he didn't repeatedly fire it off just to watch people die.

*In The Evil Dead magic has dangers but no cost that the user absolutely must pay. Furthermore most of the danger comes from how incredibly easy it is. In Evil Dead 1 the demons are summoned by a tape recording of someone translating the incantation who wasn't even trying to cast the spell.

more later when I think of them

EDIT:

*I don't recall it having a cost in the Spellsinger series

*Labyrinth is another film where the primary danger seems to be that it's so trivially easy you can do it without really intending to

*In Doctor Strange only certain abilities seem to have a truly significant risks or costs. There are plenty of spells that can be learned without having to tap into evil alternate planes, or sell your soul to a cosmic entity, or risk shattering reality

*In Star Trek you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone with supernatural, most of whom don't seem to suffer any serious side effects (the entire populations of the planets Betazed, Vulcan, and Organia come to mind). And even the power mad ones tend only to be they way because they are either literal children (Trelane, Charlie X, etc.), or just regular jerks with an enormous force multiplier to their jerkiness (Apollo, the Q who appeared to Picard, etc.)

Also Adventure Time. Adventure Time IIRC switches this trope around and makes madness and loss prerequisites of magic rather than the ingredients or results of magic. (as exemplified by how Magic Man and the Ice King lose their powers whenever they are restired to sanity and contentment)

EDIT: Also, planar travel in Adventure Time is more or less free of costs and remarkably easy to learn, as seen in the episodes Death In Bloom and It Came From The Nightosphere, in which Finn and Jake are immediately able to master the techniques for travelig to the land of the dead and to the Nightosphere (respectively)

[GloatingSwine]

And hence what I was saying earlier: if your magic is not defined by clear rules the audience can understand, it generally is not a good idea to put that magic in the hands of your protagonist if you want the story to survive the scrutiny of a thousand cheerless pedants.

Largely restating Sanderson's First Law of Magic. (An author's ability to resolve conflicts with magic is directly proportional to the audience's understanding of that magic). Which I'd even expand further and say that it's actually proportional to the audience's understanding of the limits of the magic. (And also applies to fictional technology).

If your magic is not defined by clear rules the audience can understand what it can and cannot do, it shouldn't be used to solve problems because the audience couldn't apply their knowledge of the magic to form an expectation about how it could or could not be used, and without that expectation the solution doesn't relate in their minds to the problem.

Protagonists can have magic that's as variable and wild as Gandalf or much more so. (See: Earthsea, one of the supporting pillars of the wizard fiction genre) But if they do their problems need to be the sort to which their magic isn't applicable, or be the source of the problems.

[Sapphire Guard]

I don't this is a specific magic problem so much as a general storytelling thing. If your private detective takes out a gun in the middle of the final confrontation, you have to have answers to questions like 'why didn't they do that sooner' 'where did they get that' 'Why were the guards not expecting it' and so forth.

'Eagles to Mordor' would never have worked. The 'crabain from Dunland' would have spotted them immediately.

[Traab]

Also the eagles would have been corrupted by the ring just like everything else on middle earth. While I honestly doubt there was much that sauron or sarumon could have done to stop the eagles flying hell bent for leather straight to mount doom, yes sarumon COULD have told sauron through the palatir (Or was that movie only? I forget) that his crows spotted the eagles carrying gandalf and crew towards mordor, but unless saurons ringwraiths were already there to get their shiny new flying mounts, and they werent, as they were out near rivendell after gandalf half drowned them, there was little he could do to block a group of giant eagles on such short notice. The ring itself grew stronger and stronger the closer it came to its birthplace and in the end, even our precious pure hero couldnt let it go. It would have spent the entire trip whispering in the minds of the eagles until one of them betrayed frodo and the others and tried to claim it for himself.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't this is a specific magic problem so much as a general storytelling thing. If your private detective takes out a gun in the middle of the final confrontation, you have to have answers to questions like 'why didn't they do that sooner' 'where did they get that' 'Why were the guards not expecting it' and so forth.

'Eagles to Mordor' would never have worked. The 'crabain from Dunland' would have spotted them immediately.

There is another layer when dealing with purely imaginative elements though.

If your private detective pulls a gun in the final confrontation, the audience knows what that means for the confrontation, they know how it changes the balance of power because they know what a gun does and doesn't do.

For a purely imaginative element, magic or made up technology, the author needs to make sure the audience knows what the gun does and doesn't do, because otherwise when the private detective pulls it out in the final confrontation the audience doesn't know how the situation has changed.

All those other questions get asked by pedants, but they don't cause the scene to break for the audience because they can have expectations about them.

[Bohandas]

What about Adventure Time? It's not 100% sword-and-sorcery but it's strongly influenced by that genre.

As I stated earlier, in Adventure Time the order is reversed; most magic is only practicable by people who are already damaged to begin with. And some magic is entirely without consequence, mostly magic having to do with planar travel (although for traveling to the Nightosphere or the Dead Worlds I suppose that the spell's intended effect is it's own drawback)