Building a Magic System, Part II

Why You Need a Master

You may not need someone to gain your powers, but you need someone to help you get better at using them. You can be a student or an apprentice, or even have a spirit guide; you just need someone to show you how to use your abilities. While there are some really great themes attached to this (membership, corruption, nostalgia), the important part from your perspective is that it gives you a way to explain your magic system or just develop some sort of teacher/student relationship; it can even be used to seduce the mage down a particular path. In essence, it's a great way to deal with some exposition and/or develop the character, as well as possibly throw some conflict into the situation.

Why You Don't Need a Master

Of course, some do learn on their own, or only have spellbooks for company. Some go off on their own, living in a cave or deserted island, or even disappear into the forest, and come back with magical skills. While this is great for stories on self-reliance or self-discovery, it is sort of relationship-free. You can also have someone with inherent abilities learning how they work as they go, making for some really interesting stories where they need to use those abilities responsibly (or at least so they don't get caught). Some mages may even need to spend their initial years on their own, proving they can make it before they are forced to attend some form of instruction.

[This is also good if you're making the system up as you go.]

The Scholarly Background

Obviously, not all magic-users need to come from a scholarly background; most shamans don't, for example, or some hedge mages. Most mages, however, do spend some of their time hitting the books or exploring libraries; these mages become not only experts in magic, but also science, history, and other academic pursuits. Some are required to as part of their academic education, while others do so because there was nothing else for them to do but explore the library. Others are just curious about everything.

This does two things for you: First, you get a natural way to deal with exposition. With an academic background, the character is admirably set up to either give your other characters the information they need or research it. The other is that the character is going to have access to more spells than other characters, allowing you to have some fun with spells in your stories (these types tend to like the weirder and more utilitarian spells, like bubble storm and clean clothes) as well giving you an excuse to pull spells out of their butt ("Of course, I know the spell for killing lots of snails!"). It may seem like a cliché, but it's because it works so well.

Why Only Staves & Daggers?

There are actually three good reasons why most mages learn simple weapons, as opposed to the full range of weapons, as a warrior do. These are: 

• The weapons take long hours of practice to learn, hours most wizards spent learning how to cast spells, which is arguably more useful anyway. 
• It's a style thing: They would just prefer to not get their hands dirty with physical combat, preferring to send a fireball or demon in their stead. 
• It's a balance thing, giving them a limitation in situations when they are facing magic-resistant targets or have run out of spells. This gives the other non-magical characters a better chance to shine.

You should not feel bound by this, as there are plenty of exceptions, such as Gandalf, and even D&D has a number of ways for wizards to learn the harder-to-learn weapons. For an interesting exception, consider the climactic scene of the movie "Wizards."

What about Stage Magic?

There's no reason they can't come from a stage background, and it would definitely give their spells a certain additional flare. There are some interesting skills to learn, such as escapology, lock picking, and even seduction, not to mention numerous performance skills, due to their constant exposure to non-academic situations and stage training/experience. For those looking for a way to pick up some additional coin, it's not a bad career. Better yet, it offers a great way for those looking to hide their magical abilities.

[Few stage magicians can cast real spells. While it's an interesting background, especially if you're looking for a good combination of fun yet tragic traits, it doesn't come with the ability to use REAL magic.]

Artifacts and Other Magic Items

Some mages do create magic items, while others spawn on their own. There are also likely to be powerful items from eras past, and some deities throw artifacts around to cause chaos and teach valuable lessons. However, there are three considerations when debating how item-heavy your stories are going to be: contingencies, conveyances, and sizzle. The sizzle is the obvious one: For some, it just doesn't feel like magic unless you have magic items; wizards need their staves and witches their wands, after all. Other mages use items to convey their magic to their targets, either through potions, food, or even weapons; hedge witches in urban realism stories are just as likely to use potions as their cupcakes or chocolate as the vehicle to affect their targets.

Contingencies are where it gets weird. Some mages will create items for themselves and friends to make them better at fighting their opponents, while others will create items that they can use if they run out of spells; the wizard's staff is often such an item. You also see plenty of items that are used to cast spells the wizard has a use for but doesn't want to waste time memorizing, like cleaning spells, or are too expensive to cast, like a lot of transportation spells. These items are good for when the mage just doesn't feel like casting spells, he can't cast spells, or the casting is problematic.

[The Conan stories add another wrinkle to this: Load-bearing wizards. It's not that uncommon that if a wizard dies his spells die with him (i.e., if he changed a person into a frog that person changes back to human when the wizard becomes worm food). However, the Conan stories take this one step further: When a wizard dies, any items he created lose their potency (the love philter is now just rosewater).

This gets really bad when you realize that wizards in those stories love raising towers to demonstrate their power. The tower, linked as it is to the wizard, crumbles when he dies, necessitating a rapid escape before those inside are crushed as the tower returns to the sand or stone it came from.]

* * * * *

As you can see, designing a magic system has a lot of moving parts and it's up to you to figure out what those parts are and how they work together. However, don't look at this and go, "I just wanted something simple!" One of the cool things about this methodology is that you can go as simple or as complicated as you want; if you just want magic to be there when needed, can't really be predicted, but does what it needs to do, and that's fine; that's how most magic realism works.

The important part is that you need to decide how magic works best in your stories. For me, I tend to like systems with lots of details; this is partially because I like rules, but it's also because it allows me to have forensic mages and do some world-building. It also gives demons and other powerful entities something else to bargain with, allowing for some additional conflict (you can spells and/or magical power, but are you willing to pay the price?). Others just like their chocolate to make others feel good or heal faster; it's all up to the needs of your story.