Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "limitations"
Rule Number Three of Magic: But At What Cost?
Magic is not free. Wizards cannot just fling their spells around infinitely, all day long. Otherwise the whole concept would soon lose its luster and wonder, render it an easy solution to everything and every time, and either nerf it to little firebolts and other simple replacements to the mundane, or make non-wizards sad.
Maybe they need to lug their thick heavy spellbooks around, flipping through them at a critical juncture to find what they need - and of course having to protect them from being stolen or harmed. Or they need to memorize their spells, and their poor little mortal skulls can only hold so many, putting a hard limit on how many they can cast before rest. Or they need some expensive material components or fuel - even live sacrifice, or the wizard's youth. Or they require complex maintained pacts and deals with things from some other realms. Or keeping an eye on the stars or something. Or maybe it tires them out, like physical exercise would, as the magic runs through their bodies.
Or maybe the magic is wild and uncontrolled, risking chaotic side-effects and wild surges if the wizard mucks them up under pressure, has no idea what he's doing, or is just really unlucky?
I like to mix and match all of these freely, and then any others I might come up with. It depends more on the spell in question, and the wizard casting it (as said in Rule One, the wizard makes the difference, not the world).
Melker prefers the Vancian way, stuffing all his spells into his mind and setting them loose when he needs them: his big brain can fit in a lot of magic, and whenever he does need to cast something he can do it without much further complication. Rime by contrast tends to either tire herself out, needs all those demonic pacts to have something to summon, or her spell just might go really wild at an inopportune moment. And both of them often require material components.
Both of them have gone through hell and high water to learn their craft even this well. If you try to do something half-assed, it will almost assuredly go terribly wrong. But that's more of a Rule Four thing.
Maybe they need to lug their thick heavy spellbooks around, flipping through them at a critical juncture to find what they need - and of course having to protect them from being stolen or harmed. Or they need to memorize their spells, and their poor little mortal skulls can only hold so many, putting a hard limit on how many they can cast before rest. Or they need some expensive material components or fuel - even live sacrifice, or the wizard's youth. Or they require complex maintained pacts and deals with things from some other realms. Or keeping an eye on the stars or something. Or maybe it tires them out, like physical exercise would, as the magic runs through their bodies.
Or maybe the magic is wild and uncontrolled, risking chaotic side-effects and wild surges if the wizard mucks them up under pressure, has no idea what he's doing, or is just really unlucky?
I like to mix and match all of these freely, and then any others I might come up with. It depends more on the spell in question, and the wizard casting it (as said in Rule One, the wizard makes the difference, not the world).
Melker prefers the Vancian way, stuffing all his spells into his mind and setting them loose when he needs them: his big brain can fit in a lot of magic, and whenever he does need to cast something he can do it without much further complication. Rime by contrast tends to either tire herself out, needs all those demonic pacts to have something to summon, or her spell just might go really wild at an inopportune moment. And both of them often require material components.
Both of them have gone through hell and high water to learn their craft even this well. If you try to do something half-assed, it will almost assuredly go terribly wrong. But that's more of a Rule Four thing.
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