Your favourite kind of magic?

[MiskWisk]

Sealing and binding. I tend to love variations of these since in a lot of stories it is both complicated and mostly theoretical. Plus, if you get good, you can trap people in a fate worse than death in a lot of situations. Not to mention, when there are demons and elementals, it is also incredibly practical.

 

[Alcamonic]

I personally like frost magic the most, second would be nature (if it is the support and disease kind of nature).

 

[otakon17]

Transfiguration. Seriously, making one thing into another and back again is practical as all hell. Not only that but I could finally lose some weight.

 

[Weaver]

Going "traditional" I like lightning magic.
Going off the rails, sexual magic would be great.

 

[game-lover]

Shit, I don't know. They're all awesome!!

Um... well, when I really think about it, I always sort of aim to certain ones first.

Those would be... Wind magic or Nature magic--as opposed the Earth Magic. Where I talk to animals and manipulate plants and scary flowers and uproot trees to be my huge soldiers. Lightning too.

But I have no real preference. I'll use most any.

 

[Hazy]

Why Lesbomancy of course! It's the strongest magic of them all!

 

[Plasmadamage]

There is a depressing lack of Warrens being mentioned here! Omtose Phellack (ice, stability, stagnation and stasis) and High Rashan (Darkness)are my faves, although I am partial to Telas as well.

(Anyone assuming that i've just gone mad, you need to read the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Assuming that you've got a spare year to dedicate to comprehending it, of course)

Denaeth Rusen, elder warren of the sea...
Mockra, warren of mind is also badass, and sentient!

Not sure I'd trust a warren that could think for itself. I'd end up too paranoid to use it. At least with Phellack I can find a nice isolated continent, throw up a few glaciers to keep out the riff-raff, enslave the local humans and settle into my quiet life as a Jaghut tyrant.

But then you have to worry about being waged a genocidal war on by some race of fire magic users who'll even go to the exteme of becoming undead just to wipe you out.

But seriously, Ruse has some of the coolest spells in the books, and Denaeth Rusen is the elder warren it's based on, so...

Yeah, but Omtose Phellack's benefit has always been it's scale. A single Jaghut can easily rule an entire landmass with minimal effort; I mean look at Raest. The Imass legitimately thought that he was god for thousands of years (actually, I think that he spent most of that time thinking that he was god too)

Also,it took the entire Imass race and the first (and only) Jaghut army to dethrone Raest, and they still couldn't kill him. I always interpreted it that the Imass were effective at killing the Jaghut because they specifically didn't want to fight. The Jaghut were only interested in escape, not combat. I always thought that if they had stood their ground, they could have obliterated the Imass.

 

[Riddle78]

Telekinesis. The magic of motion. With it,I can emulate many other schools of magic,depending on just how controlled it is. Need something frozen? Hold the atoms in place. Need something lit up? Accelerate them,instead. Need to get someplace in a hurry? Fling yourself. Need to erase a town? Tear a few atoms in half.

The possibilities are damn near limitless.

 

[Sofus]

I will have to say that DnD magic (specifically wild magic) is my favourite kind. Not wanting to use spells unless it's absolutely necessary is exactly what a wizard should be like.

 

[Trollhoffer]

So the issue may actually come down to personal definitions. Your definition seems to be "abilities and powers dealing with the subjective interpretation of the world" while mine seems to be "abilities and powers dealing with energy and effect not contextualized by normal science" If this is the case, then i can see why we disagree on the subject of whether magic can be formalized. (It may also be that my view on magic is influenced by anime like Toaru Majutsu no Index which attempts to contextualize the magic in detail such as the ritual, original, and the like)

What I'm getting at here is that contextualising magic through completely consistent systems is a thought process created in an enlightenment-era world where sincere belief in magic had mostly passed out of academic consideration. In context of societies that actually believe in magic, it has very little formalisation. And I think one of the biggest issues concerning magic in video games (particularly) is that most of them adhere to a rigid, post-enlightenment stance that reflects contemporary scientific thought, not historical "magical" thought.

Or, to clarify further, most video games are thinking with science when they try to do magic -- they're not actually thinking with magic. That opens this discussion up to how difficult it is to create a system that doesn't feel like a system in games, but I think you get the point. Magic, as it "existed", wasn't bound by consistency or method, but by interpreted meaning. Most contemporary minds can't comprehend that style of thinking, so magic systems (primarily in games, but sometimes in other mediums) become rigidly bound by rules that make sense to us, but would make no sense to the likes of Richard the Lionheart, or Miyamoto Musashi, or other historical figures.

 

[Nosferatu2]

Five Magics.

Spoiler: Five Magics

On a more serious note I'v always liked "It's not really magic." I'm a skeptic by nature and I love seeing BS get debunked.

 

[Trollhoffer]

I think this Escapist article is worth a read. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/criticalintel/10302-I-Hate-Magic] It very neatly and intelligently summarises what I've been trying to say throughout my last few posts.

 

[Cerebrawl]

I think this Escapist article is worth a read. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/criticalintel/10302-I-Hate-Magic] It very neatly and intelligently summarises what I've been trying to say throughout my last few posts.

Yup, good article. Though it's more of a "I hate lazy developers doing generic magic in video games" sort of thing, though pen and paper RPGs can fall into this trap as well(D&D does it somewhat for example), while others instead excell at it(Mage: The Ascension, Ars Magica, Drakar&Demoner: Trudvang(swedish), etc). Heck I distinctly remember playing a gem mage in Rolemaster(aka Rollmaster or Rulemaster, so many tables!) many years ago and managed to get myself knocked unconscious and taken prisoner... all my gems taken away... spent days sifting sand looking for pebbles of minerals I could use to channel my power to escape.

 

[Rblade]

summoning always interested me as a specialisation. Just conjuring an army of creatures to do your bidding

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I think this Escapist article is worth a read. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/criticalintel/10302-I-Hate-Magic] It very neatly and intelligently summarises what I've been trying to say throughout my last few posts.

What, doesn't that sound similar to what Index uses for its magic: rituals and spells grounded in interpretation of scripture or folk lore?

regardless, we may be looking for different things. You want broad interpretation of the world while I want a more systematic approach

speaking of which, did you read the index wiki and some of the spells in it? it is kind of hard to explain what the spells are like without being too much of a fan.

 

[sageoftruth]

Divination for me. If any important questions come up, like "Where did I leave my keys?", "What will happen if I take this job?", "Which company should I invest in?", "Is the guy who cut me off a jerk or just having a bad day?", etc. I'd just divine the answer.

Entropy(manipulating probability) is just plain better.

"I'll find my keys in the next place I look.", "This is the winning lottery ticket.", "The robber's gun is going to stovepipe and he's going to slip and break his neck when he tries to pursue me."

It is, in many ways, but there's still some things that I'd feel much better just knowing. With the power of Divination, perhaps politics actually would make some sense. I could watch a debate and know exactly when people are lying for once. I can't use entropy to make my party win if I don't even know which party I want to win.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Divination for me. If any important questions come up, like "Where did I leave my keys?", "What will happen if I take this job?", "Which company should I invest in?", "Is the guy who cut me off a jerk or just having a bad day?", etc. I'd just divine the answer.

Entropy(manipulating probability) is just plain better.

"I'll find my keys in the next place I look.", "This is the winning lottery ticket.", "The robber's gun is going to stovepipe and he's going to slip and break his neck when he tries to pursue me."

It is, in many ways, but there's still some things that I'd feel much better just knowing. With the power of Divination, perhaps politics actually would make some sense. I could watch a debate and know exactly when people are lying for once. I can't use entropy to make my party win if I don't even know which party I want to win.

But then with divination you'd only know which one you'd want to win, and have no way of making it happen(assuming we're stuck with just the one type of magic).

And don't bring up mundane ways of manipulating the vote, the corrolary is that there's mundane ways of getting the information, like wiretapping, bugs, hacking email, etc.

Sidenote is that mind magic is better in this case as you can both find out what the politicians goals are, and affect them directly. Heck doesn't matter who wins if you can just make the winner do what you want them to.

EDIT: Oh and entropy: "the politician will think the mike is off when it's not and reveal his real intentions". / "someone will leak his backroom deals to wikileaks/news site".

 

[sageoftruth]

Divination for me. If any important questions come up, like "Where did I leave my keys?", "What will happen if I take this job?", "Which company should I invest in?", "Is the guy who cut me off a jerk or just having a bad day?", etc. I'd just divine the answer.

Entropy(manipulating probability) is just plain better.

"I'll find my keys in the next place I look.", "This is the winning lottery ticket.", "The robber's gun is going to stovepipe and he's going to slip and break his neck when he tries to pursue me."

It is, in many ways, but there's still some things that I'd feel much better just knowing. With the power of Divination, perhaps politics actually would make some sense. I could watch a debate and know exactly when people are lying for once. I can't use entropy to make my party win if I don't even know which party I want to win.

But then with divination you'd only know which one you'd want to win, and have no way of making it happen(assuming we're stuck with just the one type of magic).

And don't bring up mundane ways of manipulating the vote, the corrolary is that there's mundane ways of getting the information, like wiretapping, bugs, hacking email, etc.

Sidenote is that mind magic is better in this case as you can both find out what the politicians goals are, and affect them directly. Heck doesn't matter who wins if you can just make the winner do what you want them to.

It's settled then. We need a master of entropy and a master of divination to join forces. Together, we'd literally be God.

 

[Wyatt Wilkerson]

I would go with a sort of life death biology control type thing. lost in the woods i can grow a plant with my will alone, a person attacks me cleave their very cells causing massive gashes of dead flesh to form on their body.

 

[Fifty-One]

I was always impressed with the concept of Van Hohenheim's light transmutation from Fullmetal Alchemist. So I'd say magic that allows you to manipulate light.