Types of Magic

[goldgardian]

So I'm doing a little research on the magic we see in Twokinds (for a 5e D&D homebrew), trying to figure out what types of magic exist in the world.
so far I've seen a lot of the following
- a lot of elemental magic, tied to one of the traditional 4 elements (though earth magic is something I don't think I've seen)
- straight magical force, such as telekinesis or shields
- Magic that affects the mind, such as telepathy, and illusions that can fool multiple senses (not just the eyes)

I've seen less of the following, but know it exists
- Polymorphic magic that alters one's physical form, such as trace's Flawed Transformation spell
- Summoning magic? in this world is that taking mana and shaping it into a form of your choice? (trace's artificial dragon)
- Teleporting. both trace and Natatni seem capable of casting spells of this variety

Magic theory
- Necromancy, an old standby in fantasy that I've not seen in twokinds,
- Clerics in twokinds are just mages who specialise in healing magic (as opposed to worshipers who receive power from the gods), so what deities are there? are the masks (like Ephemeral) gods? or more along the lines of the daedric princes of the skyrim series?

what other varieties of magic exist in twokinds? what do you all think?

[aitaituo]

It doesn't seem like magic is formally divided into elements or schools like other fantasies. The only classification I can recall in the comic is between ordinary and black magic.

I wouldn't include summoning and necromancy as normal types of magic. We've only ever seen the former as a type of black magic, implying it requires an immense amount of mana, and the latter has only been alluded to as functionally impossible black magic.

The problem for clerics is that the masks aren't like ordinary gods. They're tied to the races that they created and they don't directly intervene in Mekkan under normal circumstances. I've never seen any indication of mask worship in the comic and I get the impression most people are unaware of them.

[Cpt.Obvious]

You can add Raine to the characters that has used teleportation.

Edit: I'm not sure about Natani though. Has Natani really used teleportation? I thought it was invisibility (illusion) and good old redirection, possibly also done by illusion.

[FrogSteaks]

You can add Raine to the characters that has used teleportation.

Edit: I'm not sure about Natani though. Has Natani really used teleportation? I thought it was invisibility (illusion) and good old redirection, possibly also done by illusion.

Yes, actually. Nat used it to evacuate most of Group A from the burning tavern to the Na Rella

[amenon]

You can add Raine to the characters that has used teleportation.

Edit: I'm not sure about Natani though. Has Natani really used teleportation? I thought it was invisibility (illusion) and good old redirection, possibly also done by illusion.

Yes, actually. Nat used it to evacuate most of Group A from the burning tavern to the Na Rella

And to evacuate Zen, demonstrating that the caster doesn't necessarily have to go along.

Magic that affects the soul might be sort of its own discipline, though how would one tell? There's Natani's and Zen's bond, of course, but also whatever Sirus did to the pendant that Trace gave to Flora.

Then there's the whole business with runes, like on the control collars and Raine's magic-inhibiting shackle. And we've also seen enchanted things that don't appear to be of that nature.

Whole thing feels pretty freeform and anything goes-y.

[Warrl]

Whole thing feels pretty freeform and anything goes-y.

Yeah, it feels pretty freeform... but is it?

Imagine a person with no knowledge of electricity dropped into our society and seeing how we use it.

"What makes this box cold on the inside?" "Electricity."

"What makes that box hot?" "Electricity."

"Why is that glass ball on the ceiling glowing so brightly?" "Electricity."

"What powers this device you're doing arithmetic with?" "Electricity."

"That machine you're trimming the grass along your walkway with - what powers it?" "Electricity."

"What makes that strange horseless carriage travel so fast?" "Electricity."

"What powers this device that told you I'm carrying a knife?" "Electricity."

What CAN'T electricity do?

And yet, there are in fact some very inflexible rules about how electricity works...

[LordWeirdo]

Whole thing feels pretty freeform and anything goes-y.

Yeah, it feels pretty freeform... but is it?

Imagine a person with no knowledge of electricity dropped into our society and seeing how we use it.

"What makes this box cold on the inside?" "Electricity."

"What makes that box hot?" "Electricity."

"Why is that glass ball on the ceiling glowing so brightly?" "Electricity."

"What powers this device you're doing arithmetic with?" "Electricity."

"That machine you're trimming the grass along your walkway with - what powers it?" "Electricity."

"What makes that strange horseless carriage travel so fast?" "Electricity."

"What powers this device that told you I'm carrying a knife?" "Electricity."

What CAN'T electricity do?

And yet, there are in fact some very inflexible rules about how electricity works...

Excellent analogy, in my opinion. Also makes me feel less bad about overregulating magic in my own fantasy universes. =P

[amenon]

And yet, there are in fact some very inflexible rules about how electricity works...

So is it your impression, then, that magic in the Twokinds universe operates with the rigor of physics?

(That is, real-world physics, not Twokinds physics. Which I would estimate to be about as freeform as the magic system is, appropriately enough.)

[Warrl]

And yet, there are in fact some very inflexible rules about how electricity works...

So is it your impression, then, that magic in the Twokinds universe operates with the rigor of physics?

I'm saying that the impressions we get from the brief glimpses we've seen - mostly by the hands of those either less than adept, or suffering from amnesia - are not a good way to gauge whether that magic has a rigorously-definable system.

Heck, even Tom may not know for sure. I.E. perhaps he's never devised a formal definition of the system, but maybe (or maybe not) such a definition could be devised that actually fits all the magic we've seen.

And even if he has a formal system, I'd recommend against publishing it. If it's unpublished, it's a lot easier to tweak. I get annoyed when people publish their magic systems and then blatantly violate them.

(As an example, in the back of one or more books of Katherine Kurtz's original Deryni trilogy there's an explanation of how Deryni magic ties in with genetics, and it can be passed from mother to all children but from father only to daughters - it's on the X chromosome. This was, I suppose, to balance against another sort of magic which is strictly passed from father to son, period, end of discussion. But neither restriction ever had any detectable significance in the series. Then in The Bishop's Heir there's a Deryni man who has a Deryni son on a non-Deryni mother. Bzzt, wrong, thanks for playing - but it would have been perfectly okay, if the genetic info were unpublished!)

[goldgardian]

Just wanted to thank Everyone for their thoughts, and clear up a little confusion. I'm not trying to group the magic in Mekkan into various schools or classifications, I'm just trying to figure out what spells in the D&D 5e players handbook to allow players to use. Still this has been enlightening, thank you all.