Okay I'll try this again, a thousand questions. No idea here is personal or Sacred. (or at least I think that's what I'm supposed to say)
So what is the cost of magic?
Posted by Jaina (Member # 2387) on :
Well it's free if you're born with it, but that only happens once a generation. Otherwise, it's going to cost your sight and your hearing, and you have to rely on your magic and your sense of touch to survive in the real world, which makes you more dependent on magic, which saps your sight and your hearing more, which makes you more dependent on magic... it's a vicious cycle. Unless you get really good at relying on touch, in which case you're scorned by other magicians because you're not very good at magic.
Posted by RavenStarr (Member # 2327) on :
I tried to answer this, but then realized that my mind may have been overly influenced by card cames...
Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :
Well, traditionally the cost was loss of ability to work with metals, especially iron. Some people say that the powers which control magic dislike iron, but I suspect it has more to do with magnetic qualities, as modern magicians lose much of their ability to work with electronic and electomagnetic machinery.
(The question of whether magical power is intrinsic to us or a gift from deities remains open, but the cost remains the same regardless.)
The cost is subtle at first, a disk erased or a telephone's redial memory lost, but the more magic you use the less control you have over more and more basic processes until you have trouble using computers or power appliances. It finally gets to the point where you can't work a microwave oven or start a car with electronic ignition so you have to give it up or you starve.
Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :
Other people's memories of you. At first, only passing acquantances forget little things about you, like your name. Then they forget your face, finally that they ever knew you at all. As you become more adept, people who are closer to you forget things about you as well, until by the time you are a mage no one will ever remember you at all. A lonely life to choose, but one that allows great power.
Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :
Wow. These are all good ideas. Now I'm afraid a few years from now I'll come up with an idea that I think is mine, but that I'm subconciously remembering...
The core of one story I'm working on is that, of course it taps the vitality of a person, feeds off there energy. Overuse causes loss of conciousness. Of course, that's not a new idea.
But the cost, I've worked with is, well... lets say there are people with superhuman abilities? Where are they? Why don't we see them using it? Why are they being so secret about it?
Thus the cost is, using thier Ability, draws unwanted notice. Its like lighting a match in a dark room. It brings the wrath of Those Who Watch...
And why does it bring wrath from this watchdog? Because early in man's history, when many ran amock with Ability, it nearly brough mankind's destruction. So Those Who Watch would seek to control and regulate such power.
Simiarly to say, nuclear power. Rogues are watched, feared and eliminated...
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
Taking autumnmuse's idea further: it *used* to be that the cost was other people remembering you, as if you were being forced out of our world a little with every spell. But now, a wizard has developed a way to fuel his magic by forcing *others*, who may not even be magicians, out of other's memories. He's thus developed a way to have magical power *and* political power -- at the cost of ruining the lives of others. He prefers to use the unloved, so it will be harder for people to catch on to what he's doing, but it's also an effective way of eliminating enemies.
And now it's happening to *you*.
Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :
To drain a day of life from the person you love the most, for every spell you cast.
Posted by Isaiah13 (Member # 2283) on :
Only the most compassionate are born with it, and they feel compelled to use it whenever they see a person in need. Problem is, it kills a little bit of their conscience every time they do. It also weakens every time it's used. Eventually, the most powerful and compassionate become the most powerless and morally corupt.
Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :
Magic is power, raw power. Neither good nor evil, and the cost depends on its usage. Lighting a candle requires little power, and the cost is minimal to those who can shape it. Pulling down a castle wall so a beseiging army can enter will cost the user more dearly. Leaving them weak and hardly able to protect themselves. Of course it would also depend on the abilities of the user. Some would be able to use greater amounts with ease, while some would have to strugle for the simplest spell.
Posted by JBSkaggs (Member # 2265) on :
Awesome intelligence is required to understand what you are doing. Pulling down a wall could be easily down by analyzing the structure and weakening key points. The more ignorant the magic user the more raw power would be required and the more likely failures, backfires, or miscasts will occur.
A master merely nudges the wall at a key moment load while a novice tries to melt granite.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Black Mage's level 9 Hodoken is powered by love. Every time he uses it the divorce rate goes up
Really, the cost of magic is that then you have wizards and witches and crap like that running around, and hunting them down and killing all of them gets to be a full time job. Oh, and the pay and benefits suck.
Posted by benskia (Member # 2422) on :
About £10 for the first go. But the price goes up. As does the addictiveness of its use.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
Let me see if I can help this project along by summing things up a bit. If I summed your idea up incorrectly, feel free to let me know:
1. Progressive loss of sight and hearing. 2. Progressive inability to work with metals causing modern tech to go wonky. 3. Progressively, those who knew you forget about you. 4. Need to avoid notice. 5. Drain the life of the person you love most. 6. Magic in a person can be depleted and cause moral corruption. 7. Energy....more powerful spells make magic user weak. 8. Intelligence and wisdom.....you have to spend a lot of time learning what you're doing. 9. Higher divorce rate. 10. Witch hunters. (Apparently they get low pay and benefits.) 11. Money and addictiveness. (Much like a drug.)
Oh there...now I think I know what people said. If I simplified yours a bit more than you meant, I apologize. Keep in mind, though, that at this early stage we're not creating whole worlds we're just throwing out some rules for magic. The next step, when someone chooses to take it, will be to ask what kind of person would pay that price and what kind of world would it be in?
I suppose I should add my own to be fair....
12. Ugliness. 13. Fear. 14. The ability to reproduce. 15. Another force takes over your mind. (I'm thinking nanites, but there are many ways to go here...)
I guess I'll stop there.
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
Mages would pay heavily from the point of view of relationships... they would be generally regarded with suspicion and distrust by the general population. Who would trust someone who wields extraordinary powers and possibly cavorts with demonic elements? Even people who know them well, parents, best friends... even those people will be appalled at times with what the mage can do (unless, of course, they have similar skills). It would create a feeling of alienation.
Posted by Jaina (Member # 2387) on :
So there would probably be whole mage cities, separate from non-mage cities. And there wouldn't be a lot of communication between the two unless a non-mage needed the help of a mage, which would be pricey, or someone decided to switch (not train as a mage and move to a non-mage city, or train as a mage and move to a mage city). That would create some serious trust issues, and a lot of potential for conflict.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
Hmmmmm....it may be time to go on to the next step.
Step 2 is picking a price and asking the following question:
Who would pay that price?
I am going to pick one at random and answer them:
Let's say the price of magic is number 11: Money and addictiveness. Who would pay this price?
1. Someone who has a lot of money. 2. Someone who hates their life and is desperate for an escape. 3. Someone pressured into it by friends. ...
Feel free to add to this one or answer the question for another price.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
My second one is more along the lines of what Elan said about it impairing your relationships...if having complete strangers hunt you down and kill you falls under that rubric.
There are the traditional costs, like having to kill your best friend in a blood ritual or selling your soul to Satan (these can sometimes be connected). Or perhaps magic is a scarce resource which you must fight to aquire and keep.
I really like Faustian bargain magic myself.
Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :
This one is harder to explain but I['ll have a go at it to see if it makes sense. Part of it is cadged from Carlos Casteneda, but part it from emperic observation of mages and wizards at work.
Magic occurs only when you are distracted by solving the problem by non-magic means or just distracted in a fugue state or in abnormal emotional tumult (sad/angry/euphoric/in love/frightened). It comes either from a state of concentration or a state of emotionality which is not normal and which cannot be recalled by your normal person.
So you can't do magic in your normal state of being and if you do too much you risk never coming back, like Casteneda described in Journey to Ixtlan. Sometimes when you do it you wake up halfway thorough and you wonder how you did it, but most of the time you don't so you don't know if you're doing it.
[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited April 12, 2005).]
Posted by JBSkaggs (Member # 2265) on :
For the trully powerful you lost the ability to lie.
Not that you can't lie- just that whenever you try reality changes to match the lie with very disturbing unanticipated consequences.
"I din't kill Bob!" lied Marvin. "Nancy, you did."
Marvin felt it, the world rolling shifting around him.
Then he knew it. Reality had shifted. Now Nancy had killed Bob. She would soon see the chair for it.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
No no, my bad. We're following money and addictiveness.
I think that we need a couple of answers before we can ask who's buying. For one thing, who's selling, and what, exactly, are they selling?
For instance, is the product here literally a drug, one that enables the user to control magic while under the influence? Or perhaps the magic is in the form of spells written on specially prepared scrolls, and the spell is released when the scroll is read/burned/unrolled. Does the cost go up because you need more of the drug each time to work magic, or does the cost go up because using magic is addictive so those who sell it charge more once you're hooked?
Do the sellers of magic have to be magic users themselves, or do they never touch the $#!*? Are they even human, or are we consorting with demons to use magic. Is magic legal?
There is a lot to explore here, I think.
Posted by Stormlight Shadows (Member # 2471) on :
JbSkaggs could you explain more, please? On the condition that it seems to me that it isn't a cost more of givening them power except for the ones who don't want to be evil.
The cost of magic would be the spell that is used. And the Gods or God gave the ability to humans but it is there choice wither to be evil or good magicians, and both have conseqence. Their might be a good God and an evil God or some human that challenged the Gods and in all of creation got the every detail power of evil and he spreads it to his subjects but since he also hates his subjects he slowly kills them and put a poison on magic even for the good magicians that the more powerful the spell the more it takes from the soul of the person or the mind.
[This message has been edited by Stormlight Shadows (edited April 13, 2005).]
Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
Costing money mean it costs gold specifically, the gold dematerializes when the magic is used. So as more magic is used the less there is of it, meaning it costs more as time goes on. The people who use magic are almost always corrupt, since it is addictive. I'd see it with the mafia or governments. Or most everybody uses it thinking there is more than enough.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
No, that doesn't work. Gold is a standard of currency because it is imperishable and can be purified very easily. If it could be literally destroyed in this manner, it wouldn't be a standard of currency. It would be intrinsicly valuable, but mainly because of it's practical utility. So any resource (non-renewable is an interesting idea, though) would work just as well without destroying the foundation of the typical fantasy economy. Perhaps gems of a certain type and quality are used (gems, though valuable, are not typically used as currency because they can be destroyed)
But the scarcity issue really comes to the point if magic is going to be addictive. By the way, just how addictive is it? Do you explode if you can't keep casting magic, or do you just really really wish you could get your hands on more juju?
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
pish-posh about gold.... MY mages feel the flow of magic moving through their bodily energy system (the chakras and meridian points), like Kundalini Rising.... for them there is a sexual stimulation they become addicted to!
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
I think I'll file that under...well I'm certainly not going to file it under "will explode" Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
I don't think you would explode, that would make the addiction hopeless. But I think the longer you use magic the more you will do with magic, like sweeping the floor, and soon you won't be able to do that without magic. Eventually you will have surrendered even your body functions to it so that when the magic runs out I guess you will explode. Now if everybody reaches that point when the magic expires it's the end of the world.
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
If using magic is addictive, then it probably also causes tolerance (i.e., the amount of magic necessary to produce the same level of "high" keeps increasing.) That would progressively raise the monetary cost of achieving a sufficient high.
It might also cause magicians to look increasingly stronger spells to cast. Eventually only spells of apocalyptic magnitude will do.
Alternatively, if the magician's subjective feeling of the high is related to how much he can do with the magic, then increased tolerance means the magician must actually use more magical power to achieve the same magical effect.
For example, a newbie might need to use $5 worth of magic to create a simple glowing ball of light, but a hardcore magic addict would need to use $100 worth to cast the same spell.
Posted by keldon02 (Member # 2398) on :
I would think that magic would be painful to use rather than addictive.
Posted by Stormlight Shadows (Member # 2471) on :
Going along that pain it would be easier for someone to manipulate you into doing magic but with all things a pain would not be in physical pain other than seeing an image of someone you love, (parents for example if loved) being tortured in someway and everytime the person uses the magic he/she sees the agony of others whom they love!
Posted by DragonfireEast (Member # 2498) on :
I read the question, but haven’t gone over the replies so not to be influenced in my answer, or just in case someone already stole my idea, I rather not know about until after.
To understand what magic costs, you have to know where magic comes from. Cost is just part of the system. In a world I have thought up, magic is part of creation, a residual of divine possibility left over since the Beginning.
Humans, or whatever intelligent race you deem worthy, still has a vestige of the creative power within them which allows a connection with the creative forces still left in the world. This connection allows for the manipulation of these forces, or magic. Once long ago, when the energies of creation where still fresh, it was easy to change them at whim, but as time went on, the forces faded away and the connection weakened to almost nothing. Now magic only dwells within ancient relics, broken enchantments and to a small amount, in the spirits of men.
Those who use magic are either the highborn, who harvest the magic of lesser men either through sacrifice of victims or the harvest of magic through "worshipers". Or so called trinket mages, who search out the lost artifacts and faded dweamors to collect magic like a desert traveler collects the dew off cactus.
So in all this, what does magic cost? Magic itself. In a land where it is so rare and precious, some would rather die then use a spell to protect themselves, it is a precious commodity that many believe is more important then life itself. More people are always born, but each spell just brings the world closer to the end of Creation.
[This message has been edited by DragonfireEast (edited April 15, 2005).]
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
That's an interesting answer. It doesn't quite fit with the direction we later took things, but it could, particularly if we imagine the channelling of the energy of creation to link up with Elan's thought about why magic would be addictive and infer that the scarcity and difficulty of getting it made it expensive (and illegal, at least officially).
Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :
I like keldon's example. Very pretty and fitting. Also feels very Ravenloft-ish.
Posted by Stormlight Shadows (Member # 2471) on :
In Dragon's statement that is the best explanition that I have found for the cost of magic because in the world I've created (with help) magic is born and found with in children who are raised in it and the cost is magic itself but there is no cost. The wizards were looked up to until one decided to take over the world and turned the wizards agaist everyone but the slight cost is that the magicains now study and study that they sight of the social life and dont know how to cope with others because of the lack of communicating!
Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :
So let's say magic is illegal, who on earth would try to arrest a magician?
Posted by Jaina (Member # 2387) on :
Another, stronger magician, which kind of doesn't work... maybe magic is only illegal for certain classes?
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
quote: who on earth would try to arrest a magician?
Answer: People who are afraid of them. Shall we review the Salem Witch Trials?
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited April 19, 2005).]
Posted by Jaina (Member # 2387) on :
Perhaps the better question is, "Who on earth would be able to arrest a magician?" At least, I think that's what Pyre was aiming at.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
You don't arrest them, you hunt and kill them. Very few magicians are actually invunerable to ordinary weapons, and when you factor in Hunters and whatever they bring to the table (immunity to magic isn't even the best trait), it becomes obvious why secrecy is a big deal for magicians.
Posted by TheoPhileo (Member # 1914) on :
The cost of magic depends on the current rates. Right now, in my area, the utility company charges about $2.50 per watt-hour of mana, but the rates tend to drop in the summer.
If I simplified yours a bit more than you meant, I apologize. Keep in mind, though, that at this early stage we're not creating whole worlds we're just throwing out some rules for magic. The next step, when someone chooses to take it, will be to ask what kind of person would pay that price and what kind of world would it be in?