This is another thought from my ultimate magic system. How should metamagic (magic that affects other magic) work? In one way this is about what a spell is, to be able to effect spells with spells every spell has to be an object with properties somewhat like other objects. The properties a spell could have (that I can think of) are position/target, ''health''(or something like that) and effect(what the spell does). What is the position of a spell? 1) A spell has the postion of it''s target. This means that a spell with an area effect or which effects several enemies would have several positions or it could split into one spell at each position. If a spell can have several positions (I''m thinking tiles), should you have to target the whole spell to cancel it or could you dispel it by doing dispel in one of the spells positions? 2) A spell''s position is the same as the position of the caster. 3) A spell has no position. What could you do to a spell? 1) You could dispel it, ie hurting it until it''s ''health'' is 0(zero). This should be rather easy do design. 2) You could change it''s target. Possible to do. 3) You could change it''s effect. More difficult. It is hard to make a magic language that can express changes to other spells. What do you think about when pondering metamagic? "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

On "Magics that can be affected by other magics":

I don''t think I fully understand the nature of your magics, but here are my thoughts:

1. Physical components of magics:
The effects of your magics propagate like bullets that obey physical laws. For example, when you shoot a fireball, each element of the fireball combusts (create additional smaller damaging elements) according to surrounding temperature (approx), and are affected by wind. Effects: when a targeted mage uses a vortex shield, the fireball is affected as it hits the shield, and starts to circle around the mage instead of hitting her. When a mage casts Frost to freeze the environment, a fireball''s combustion rate slows down, creating less additional elements, thus lowers the damage overall.

2. Friendly-Fire "on":
Fire mage vs wind mage: Fire mage shoots fireball while wind mage counters with concentrated, directional vortex. Fireball hits the vortex, stalls, mixes with it, and ends with reversed velocity.

3. Altering agents property:
Each agent has several physical property such as absorbance water content and conductance. Lightning mage vs Earth elemental: suppose the conductance of Earth-elemental is 0.01, such that lightning normally does no damage to it, while its absorbance is 0.90, and water content is 0.30. So comes along a water mage who shot the elemental with water attack, which increases the water content proportional to absorbance, and conductance increases due to increased water content, increases the damage due to a lightning attack.
"when the water content of something is high, is it easier to freeze or harder to freeze?"

You forgot the most important question:

In your system, what is magic (or what is a spell)? And how is it used? (Is it a force to be manipulated? to be channeled? to be coaxed or commanded?)


1) It''s natural energy

This one rather defies the concept of magic, but lets just say for a moment you were to choose this one so that you can see what I''m talking about before I get into it deeper.

The wielder of a natural energy magic probably channels or manipulates this energy directly.

How then can natural-energy magic be affected? By direct physical intervention with other energies. For details, take a Physics class.

2) It''s Ethereal energy (Ether)

This involves the concept of "life energy" that some people believe exists in (or just outside of) the physical world.

To use this type of "magic" the energy''s behavior might be directly related to concentrations of life in some way, and/or it might act based on adjustments to the wielder''s psyhce. Meditation becomes very important in such a system.

Alternatively, it might be something that can be commanded or coaxed by special words or by a psychic amplification of will.

I suspect this theoretical form of energy could be altered by changing the strength, shape, concentration, and/or speed of the flow of this energy. It could be dispelled by acting upon the psyche of the wielder, or forcing the "magic" to depart. By effectively taking control of or, in a sense, subconciously reasoning with the magic, it''s behavior might altered.

3) Divine/Good/Evil energy

Involving a deity or being of power supplying a unique flow of energy proportional to the wielder''s faith, obedience, and fealty. The greater the wielder''s belief in and adherance to the will of the deity, the greater his/her power.

Note that instead of a deity, another "Source" might be sufficient -- a good example is Sauron in LOTR. You might say Sauron was so powerful simply because he was so evil, and thus the source of his power was Evil itself. Hardcore LOTR fans may disagree with me and quote the Silmarillion, but hopefully you can see my point here. Suffice to say there must be a Source.

This type of magical energy could be altered by the deity or by the intervention of another deity.

4) Divine Intervention

Same as 3, but the wielder is never actually given any power at all, they simply call upon their deity or source to act for them. Acts are still likely to be proportional to the wielder''s belief.

This type of magical energy could also be altered by the deity or by the intervention of another deity.

5) Elemental magic

Quite simply, this magic is a manipulation of the elements. The wielder never actually channels or phsyically acts upon elemental magic (its kind of silly to think of someone channeling fire or water), but the elements themselves (fire, water, wind, earth, etc) respond to commands by the wielder.

Elemental magic is adjusted by increasing or decreasing other elements in the spell''s structure. An equivalent concentration of an element''s opposite (i.e. fire vs. water, earth vs. wind) would dispel the action.

6) Psionic energy

A dramatic amplification of brainwaves to act upon the physical world. It is pretty obvious how psionic energy is used -- it originates in the wielder''s mind.

It could be strengthened by fine tuning either the mind, or by tweaking the psionic amplification after the fact. It could be countered or dispelled by another psionic wielder or by some kind of physical construct designed to block amplified brainwaves.

7) Arcane magic

This is really the most difficult, because Arcane magic (in modern systems) doesn''t actually come from anywhere or have any source or origin, it just IS. It''s not energy, although it can and almost always does generate energy during the execution of a spell. In fact, excess energy is often dispersed through what is commonly known as "spell effects" or "magical auras" (these would be the pretty lights we see during spells in computer games).

Arcane magic, for all intents and purposes, does not exist . And I don''t mean in the sense of real life, I mean that even in fantasy magic is not an ambient factor in the world -- arcane magic is created from nothing at the moment of its use.

Thus, it is difficult to ascribe properties that can be manipulated. I suspect this is why Spells have such drastic importance when it comes to arcane magic -- Spells are a convenient way to refer to the creation of magical energy for a targeted purpose. Material components, somatic components, and verbal components are all ways to help the user focus on the creation of that magical effect.

So if we look at it in this light, all arcane magic-users are actually magic-creaters; they either learn or have a natural ability to create magic. The only way to manipulate it is to affect that creation process or change the effect of the magic that is created.

Dispelling arcane magic should be relatively easy, since magic itself is temporary in nature.

----

Hope this little essay helps you some. Of course these are all just my personal ideas, but maybe they''ll give you some insight into thinking of magic practically.


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Brian Lacy
ForeverDream Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@foreverdreamstudios.com

"I create. Therefore I am."

I didn''t want to describe my whole system, because it would take
to much place, it may influence your thinking(it is nice to hear
the thoughts of someone who doesn''t know exactly how the system
works) and because I don''t want to make it public until it is
finished. But I will give some information:

Magic is the art of influencing the powers which guide the laws
of nature, you kind-of change the laws of nature locally.

Spells are created from small parts and combined with several
combinators, the more parts and combinators you have the more
flexible spells you can make. You might see it as a mathematical
language or as a small program in a special computer language.
A spell is in principle a target and an effect, the target can
specify certain coordinates, all enemy units etc, the effect
describes the changes done to all objects which match the target.


The problem with metamagic is to find an intuitive way of looking
at it that can be expressed in a not-too-complicated way in
the language of magic. A language that can express changes to
itself.

If you use magic to create something, a fireball or a dragon,
you might be able to cast a spell that simply destroys these
things, but if you cast a lasting spell, say a trap which
kills everyone which comes near it, there is nothing physical
to affect, there is only the spell.

A spell in my system which protects you from enemy magic could
look like this in code (magic mirror):
target:
all spells which hurt, with coordinates mx,my
effect:
for(duration)
changetarget(ex,ey)
where mx,my = myCoordinates and ex,ey = enemyCoordinates

This is possible to do, although the magic language will get
slightly more complicated. But if I want to change the effect
of a spell it will get even more complicated and I don''t
want to have a lot of special cases in the magic language,
the basic parts should be as few as possible.

I want to be able to express almost anything with few symbols
in a way that makes sense, oh well, maybe I just have to high
goals.


"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are
always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

quote: The problem with metamagic is to find an intuitive way of looking at it that can be expressed in a not-too-complicated way in the language of magic. A language that can express changes to
itself.

Rather like English, you mean, or any other human language?

If I were to say to you, "You''re cool," you''d know I was complementing you (or being sarcastic).

Now lets say you were feeling insecure, and you responded with a cheesy comeback like, "Yeah, well it is winter, after all."

You just changed the meaning of my statement by interpreting the word "cool" differently.

Perhaps the same kind of thing could apply to your magic system using a sort of spell "attachment." If I form a spell statement from a combination of syllables, you might respond by "attaching" a few syllables of your own, thus changing the meaning of the spell. The downside of "attaching" might be that when you attach, you take over the spell, and thus no energy is expended by the original caster, but instead all the energy needed to cast the spell is expended by the Attacher.

If I execute the spell quickly or forcefully enough, you may not have a chance to attach anything to it.

As for dispelling -- thats another issue -- you can''t really attach something to a spell thats already been completed. But perhaps you could cast a counter spell. If you want it to be more difficult to dispel, then casting a spell on another spell might be require the Dispeller to break some sort of spell difficulty barrier.

Blade Spirit Spell: "Summon Spirit of Spinning Blades" (target location)
Counterspell: "Summon Void" (target blade spirit)

****************************************

Brian Lacy
ForeverDream Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@foreverdreamstudios.com

"I create. Therefore I am."

Berg - the system you are developing seems very similar to the system that I am working on. I''m working on a turn-based fantasy strategy game which will hopefully also include "meta-magic" (I called them "meta spells", and haven''t thought of a better name yet).

Meta spells in my game will affect the attributes of other spells. I don''t think I''ll have any that change the effect of the spell directly - if I did I would encode the effect as a series of variables (attributes) and allow the spell to affect it directly.

My system design is almost fully complete (although I need to do a lot more implementation work on it), and once yours is done perhaps we could do a comparison?