Realistic Magic in RPG's

[Grek]

Over the course of 5 minutes of chanting, turn a half-pound nugget of lead inside a carefully drawn rune circle into gold.

Could you also turn other elements into other elements? Because then you could turn oxygen into sodium, hydrogen to helium, iron to gold or other similarly painful effects. If it is only lead to gold, than I have to ask what is so special about those two elements.

Also, I don't think turning invisible objects purple can be directly deadly.

If you are making the material non-interacting with photons, then you have caused all of the chemical bonds in their body to break down into a pile of cations and free electrons.

Bending the light isn't much better, as A] you can blind people on demand and B] bend the light into a focused, high intensity, beam of light which could easily set someone on fire.

Causing something to glow faintly is pretty hard to make deadly except in very specific situations.

Can you choose the wavelength of the object/person's glow? If so, set that shit to "mircowave" and watch their skin boil off.

Another physical effect: turn the transfats in a chemically inert object into less unhealthy fats.

Only trans fats? That sort of violates the "no arbitrary restrictions" rule.

[老子]

Only trans fats? That sort of violates the "no arbitrary restrictions" rule.

All his examples violate the no arbitrary/unexplained restrictions clause.

[RandomCasualty2]

Only trans fats? That sort of violates the "no arbitrary restrictions" rule.

All his examples violate the no arbitrary/unexplained restrictions clause.

I don't really understand the arbitrary restrictions clause. Magic doesn't exist, therefore any capability or lack thereof, is going to be arbitrary. It's just like saying that the restriction on sound being unable to pass through a vacuum is arbitrary.

When you're creating new rules of reality, then those are the rules and they can be anything. Arbitrary in an RPG sense simply means "The rules are dependent on the DM interpretation." they don't mean that the rules have restrictions.

[老子]

Because we already have magic defined in terms of specific unexplained effects with unexplained restrictions, and the premise of this thread was that that was "unrealistic", and that it would be nice if the methods by which the effect was brought about were described. To describe how the effect was brought about requires one to describe capacities or abilities, not specific effects.

[Ice9]

Could you also turn other elements into other elements? Because then you could turn oxygen into sodium, hydrogen to helium, iron to gold or other similarly painful effects. If it is only lead to gold, than I have to ask what is so special about those two elements.

I think the five minutes required would be more of a limiting factor. If you can get your foe to stand still for five minutes while you use magic on him (which is not necessarily going to be invisible), then you probably could have just cut his throat instead.

That said, what does it even matter that magic can kill people? A pointy stick can kill people. Show me a case where magic is better at killing someone than a gun, without granting magic "auto-aiming" powers or perfect precision, and I'll take notice. Even then, that doesn't guarantee insta-win, but without that step you're not even close.

[老子]

BTW, I'm essentially done with this thread because I think it has demonstrated in an obvious way that the following three components constitute a trilemma:

Realistic magic
Balance between magic & non-magic
Magic that can do shit

Every suggestion that manages to marry the first two throws the third out the window. Like Ice's suggestion. With 5lbs of force you may be able to lift a 5lb object, but you can' then move it. You can only lift and move, at a gentle pace, object of lesser weight. And god help you if those objects are moving first or are small (as nearly every object of that weight is), because then it would require "too much precision". In other words, you have magic, but it can't do shit, and you might as well not have it.

[Avoraciopoctules]

In response to the comments about my example effects being too specific / lacking technobabble explaining why they are so specific:
Fair enough. If you are looking for something with more versimilitude, how about the following:


Through psionic projection (which itself is enabled when a human has ingested enough elerium to stimulate the growth of specialized organs in the brain) of energy into nearby ethereal space, the mage can draw the focus of the humanity's collective unconscious to a particular place. This creates enough mental energy that effects can be produced which are far beyond the relatively trivial abilities of most unaugmented psychics.

However, getting the collective unconscious to release this energy is difficult, as it needs to be channeled in a way that is comprehensible to the built up memories of countless generations. "Magic" has been believed in for long enough that making what you are trying to achieve look like a supernatural effect with decent brand recognition is generally successful. The energy also generally takes time to be released, and this means that most spells will take minutes to invoke.

After a spell has been used, the latent psychic energy in an area will need to replenish over time. Depending on the location, this can take between minutes and days.


One of the earliest and easiest forms of spell is the transmutation of lead to gold. This is present in enough myths that it is fairly easy to coax the akashic energy into yanking a bit of the nucleus off of the atoms that make up the lead.

[Ice9]

Magic that can do shit ... Like Ice's suggestion. With 5lbs of force you may be able to lift a 5lb object, but you can' then move it.

Where the fuck does the 5 lbs of force thing come from? That was definitely not my suggestion. Hell, the (very vague) system I was talking about would have mages that were fully capable of levelling a building, turning the air into neon, or ripping someone's spine out of their body. They just can't do it trivially easily. And the fact that they can kill people doesn't generate an auto-win any more than "guy with a box of grenades" is an auto-win. So your "trilemma" is based on misreading, I guess.


However:

Balance between magic & non-magic

This could probably be thrown out the window with no loss. In a "realistic" setting, where magic is a known and usable force, "balance between magic & non-magic" is like saying "balance between using technology and being a caveman". Magic is one of the things you can learn/aquire, and doing so is obviously advantageous, just like aquiring wealth, power, kung-fu grip, and incredible charisma are obviously advantageous. We're not talking D&D-style classes here.


And furthermore, since when does "effective" only mean "kills people"? In anything resembling a realistic setting, mind-reading and scrying would beat the hell out of fireballs as far as potential to rule the world.

[Ice9]

The power of magic is entirely variable, because you can set it anywhere between "requires hours of concentration to bend a spoon" and "turning a continent into solid gold and all its inhabitants into your minions is trivially easy". That's not even a factor.

What I was stating, was that you could have the usefulness of magic mostly relate to the difficulty in a meaningful way, by including precision in your difficulty calculations and not giving it "auto-aim" ability. This was in counterpoint to the whole "magic is inherently unbalanceable because 5 lbs of force in the right spot can kill someone".

Basically, my entire point is that you can have a "realistic" magic system where Finger of Death is higher difficulty than Mage Hand.

[violence in the media]

Or you could just approach things from the standpoint of not making magic a mysterious, unknowable, untraceable force. If killing someone with mind-bullets is potentially something that could be traced back to you specifically, then people will think twice about actually doing it. If using magic isn't an invisible surprise, but recognizably obvious, then you won't have people trying to stealth mind read all the damn time.

Basically, you'd want magic to largely replicate things that are doable with technology, only it is able to pull them off without complex machinery and external power. For example, cell phones let you communicate over a distance, but you need two phones, power for both of them, cell service, and the appropriate code for the other phone to do any of that. Magic will let you do the same thing without all that bullshit, but you might have to stand still and look constipated while holding your hand up to your ear and speaking aloud to do it.

[MartinHarper]

If it is only lead to gold, than I have to ask what is so special about those two elements.

Something boring to do with the nuclear structure, just like Uranium-235 is the most practical isotope for sustainable nuclear fission, and Carbon is the most practical element for building life. If the game is set prior to the invention of the periodic table, nobody actually knows.

[Avoraciopoctules]

If it is only lead to gold, than I have to ask what is so special about those two elements.

Something boring to do with the nuclear structure, just like Uranium-235 is the most practical isotope for sustainable nuclear fission, and Carbon is the most practical element for building life. If the game is set prior to the invention of the periodic table, nobody actually knows.

Actually, I think I rather like the reasoning I used in my last post in this thread. With the limitations that your intended effect must seem plausible to a fairly idiosyncratic power source and it has to fit in as something archetypical psychic powers might be able to do, you can throw some fairly hefty restrictions on what someone can do without seeming entirely arbitrary.