The Nuances of Magic: Balance and Limits in Storytelling

Show Notes

• No Wishing for More Wishes 
• Magic Systems 
• Bending 
• Allomancy 
• Bloodbending 
• Metalbending 
• Rational Magic
• Elemental Magic 
• Arbitrary Magic

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Leen. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris:  You are listening to The Mythcreant Podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle.  

[Intro]

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of The Mythcreant Podcast. I’m Oren.

Chris:  And I’m Chris. 

Oren: It’s just the two of us today. Bunny is off having her own adventures called “Fun Times with School.”

And today I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t Aladdin have been better if he’d just been able to wish for more wishes? 

Chris: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Oren: Just imagine the creativity, right? No rules, just whatever he wants.

Chris: I have to say I am outraged on Aladdin’s behalf because he wished himself to be a prince, and then everybody was like “you’re not a prince.” It’s like he spent one of his three wishes on that.

Oren: Is he a prince? 

Chris: He was a prince. He wished to be a prince. 

Oren: How does that work exactly? Did he become prince of an existing country? Is there a new country that was spontaneously created for him to be Prince of? I have so many questions. Is he not a prince at all? And like the genie just made him look like one?

Chris: I just feel like that would be violating the contract. He’s gotta be a prince of somewhere or something.

Oren: Did the genie just mind control everyone into accepting that he was a prince? ’cause it didn’t work on Jaffar for some reason. 

Chris: So basically he’s a prince by consensual reality.  

Oren: Yeah, I guess the genie made everyone agree he was a prince and Jaffar made his will save and he’s the only one.

Chris: except for everybody in the end agrees that he’s not a prince, so. Because they’re saying he got cheated there, not a very good wish. 

Oren: The genie switched like, controllers, and so that dispelled all of Aladdin’s previous wishes.

Chris: No, that’s an interesting limit, if all the wishes go away, you have to guard. You get three wishes, but you have to guard this lamp for the rest of your life because as soon as somebody else gets it, all your wishes are undone.

Oren: That’s all I got. That’s the best I can think of.

[Laughter]

Oren: But I wanted to talk about how to put limits on magic systems partly ’cause I wrote a post about that and it’s on my mind now and so you all get to deal with it.

Chris: Every time we talk about magic systems, we have to talk about this, right? So no matter what kind of magic system I’m giving people directions on, limiting is always a central feature.

And you know, how to limit it can vary depending on what you’re doing. People use magic in a lot of ways. We often think about an epic fantasy setting where we have all these different spells, but if you have superheroes, that’s a form of magic. It’s just defined by having people who each have one unique spell that can cast pretty much. 

Oren: Yeah, and their spell is punch 

[Laughter].  

Chris: And there’s also our elemental systems and other kinds of things. So different magic is different, but it all needs to be limited. 

Oren: Actually Chris, bending is not magic. They said so in the first episode, so none of your advice applies to bending. 

Chris: That’s how you limit your magic system. You just have a couple characters be like “actually it’s not magic” and then, done.

Oren: It’s not, it’s…

[Laughter]

Chris: You don’t have to limit it anymore.  

Oren: And then of course there’s the question of like, do you have to limit your magic system? ’cause other people don’t wanna do that ’cause they want magic to be free and unrestrained and magical and if you put limits on it now it’s just boring. Old technology. It’s boring.  

Chris: Yeah. So I guess we should talk about why we are obsessed with magic limits and when you should do it. 

Oren: The reason is that if the magic is gonna be a big part of your plot, then you need to know how it works. That’s really that simple.

If it’s not, then you know, who cares, if it’s like just some mysterious background stuff, it’s not that big a deal, whatever. Although you’d be surprised how quickly mysterious background stuff becomes important to the plot the next time you wanna write a sequel. It doesn’t hurt to figure that stuff out in advance.

Chris: Usually it’s most detailed if protagonists are gonna use it to solve problems. To a lesser extent if antagonists or if important side characters or protagonists are gonna get help from. 

But I will say that for instance, if your protagonist has powerful fight magic and they’re the best fighter ever ’cause of their badass magic at level 9,000,  but all of your conflicts are like social conflicts where their ability to fight doesn’t matter, right?

It’s to some extent that magic may not feel like it matters unless they can somehow use it in social conflicts. But at that point, okay, the magic isn’t actually being used to solve problems because the problems are happening at a different level.

Oren: If you’re doing a subversion of ‘the arch wizard has to do paperwork for a day’ and that’s the premise of your story, and they don’t really use much magic, whatever, it doesn’t really matter what their magic can do if they’re not using it.

Chris: or if the magic is just like a mysterious thing that’s out there and nothing is controlled, it’s kinda like a weather system right? You don’t necessarily need to have a magic system.

But as soon as you’re gonna have conflicts where people are going to be using the full extent of their magic in order to beat an opponent, then it starts to become pretty important what people can do, and having that consistent.

Oren: Right, defeat an opponent or achieve some other goal, right? To do stuff. 

It could also matter if you have a world that has a specific aesthetic and then you just have some magic that really goes against that. If you want to have a really gritty and realistic aesthetic, you probably don’t want to have something like magical clouds that rain bread, even if there is no specific bread shortage problems in your story. 

So now that we’ve established the ’when you need to limit your magic system’ it’s time for a cautionary tale. What happens if you don’t limit your magic system? 

Chris: I think something that often happens, and this can happen without magic too, but magic certainly accelerates this process, is authors who basically play a game of one-up mischief with themself,

where your protagonist ends up in a tricky situation; they’re backed up into an alley and they’re surrounded by enemies. They’re like “okay, cool.” They obviously… Cards are stacked against them, somehow I gotta get the protagonist out of this, and wouldn’t it be cool if they pulled out some flashy magic and got themselves out of this alley? 

It’s like, great, now they have the magical ability to defeat five opponents when they’re cornered outside. Okay, that’s great.

Now, next time you are like, okay, now I have to put them in another fix so that my story is tense, but I know they can beat five opponents [laughter]  So now what if they were surrounded by 10 opponents and one of them is a wizard? They’re like, okay, cool, now that’s threatening.

And then you pull out another bigger magic ability  and it just keeps going where you’re trying to invent bigger and bigger magic and then make bigger and bigger problems to counter the magic that you’ve invented.

And pretty soon the audience will be like “wait a second. If they had this super duper magic all along, why didn’t they just, why were they ever afraid of those people in the alley?  Why didn’t they just use that earlier?” you can’t make things tense anymore because no problem is big enough for the fact that you’re like ‘protagonist can pause time and then just punch people while they’re frozen’. And then pretty soon your protagonist just forgets that they have it. 

So that’s basically why putting limits on your magic, so that you are following, being consistent and not just writing your story and then ‘okay, here’s what I need right now’ and then inventing something that’s gonna make everything harder for you later, basically.

Oren: And of course, the alternative to this constant one-Upmanship, is that the author just acts like that power isn’t around anymore and hopes no one notices, which is a risky game, not one I would recommend. 

Chris: Mm-Hmm. Or comes up with like really contrived reasons. Antagonist can do this too, right? What you don’t want is an antagonist who has a magical power that would just instantly kill the protagonists, and then you have to come up with reasons why they don’t use it.

So the story can keep going. It’s like “oh, I gotta crush their spirit.” 

Oren: Yeah, and we’re mostly talking about magic, but this can apply to technology too. That’s the transporter, right? The transporter is so powerful and has so many uses that like every Star Trek episode, they have to give an explanation why the transporter doesn’t work this week, and it is just repetitive and boring. And I just desperately wish they had never invented the transporter. I wish I could go back in time to Star Trek…

Chris: and tell them that was a bad idea [laughter]  

Oren: Look Jean, I know that the shuttle craft set’s not ready yet. I am begging you to find another solution to get them onto the planet. Just cut them down to the planet and have them be like “well, the shuttle ride down here was very uneventful.”

[Laughter]

Oren: Just save so many problems later.  So then I think the next step would be to talk about how you limit your magic system. So how do you do that exactly?

Chris: Well, it depends on the system, but I think that the first thing, which is the most surefire method, because there are various methods we can talk about, and a lot of them have liabilities. So we’ve seen them in action before and not really working that well.

But the one that really works the best is what I would call ‘the theoretical limits.’ Where your magic just can’t ever in any circumstance do X, Y, Z, It just has a limited effect. 

And in a lot of cases, instead of defining your magic as a wizard, cast a spell, and like a classic wizard this could be absolutely anything, a spell could do anything. Having a magic system where magic can do specific things, not like everything under the sun. 

So for instance, if you have an elemental system and your mage can set things on fire, that can still be overpowered, but it’s definitely easier to deal with than magic that can do literally anything because a fire mage probably can’t turn people into animals, for instance, or go back in time.. Oh my gosh. That’s the worst [laughter].

Oren: This is especially difficult for people doing stuff like urban fantasy where there’s a kind of an expectation of very wide ranging magic if you’re including witches or wizards. But if you’re creating a world from scratch, then it is almost always better to start by thinking in terms of what your magic does as opposed to assuming it can do whatever, and then trying to define what it can’t do later down the road. 

Chris: And if you have superpowers, and so you’re making up a lot of individual powers for people – and I have a post about this – but it’s up to you to look at your list of superpowers and make sure that they’re smaller rather than bigger.

And I know it’s always tempting to be like “okay, but what if my protagonist is super special because they have the best, biggest superpower” But that gets out of hand really quickly. And I would just keep in mind that how powerful a character looks is often relative to other people in the story.

So if you give your protagonist a more powerful ability than others, they will look powerful to readers ’cause that’s what you’ve established in that context and so you can just take everything down a couple notches.

But you really do have to think about, at that point, every single one and how powerful they are. And a lot of times in these cases, if somebody’s writing a superhero story, they want to do what Marvel does and use the abilities that Marvel has or whatever stories they’ve consumed, and they already have an idea of all their superpowers in their head, and at that point they don’t wanna let go of them, and that’s when it becomes really difficult if we’re working with a client, for instance, and trying to tame their magic system.

Oren: I don’t know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that one of the reasons why superhero novels are relatively uncommon is that once you take it out of the movie format and put it into a format where people are more likely to ask questions, it just immediately falls apart.

And the only well-known superhero novels I can think of get by on some kind of major subversion, they’re almost never playing it straight. I think the reason is that superhero magic gets ridiculous pretty quickly if you are using the Marvel DC method of “all the powers, who cares what they do, just keep adding more powers.”

Chris: And also you can have a superpower magic system, but not have a superpower aesthetic. So people aren’t thinking of this as superheroes, but you still have one spell per person, for instance. It’s worth mentioning.

Oren: the way that I prefer. My favorite kind of magic system to do ’cause this is just easier to balance. Each group gets their own type of magic. That’s how I run urban fantasy settings. For example, you get “werewolves have this collection of powers and vampires have this collection of powers” and that’s easier to keep a lid on unless you’re doing the white wolf thing, where each group has to have 15 books worth of powers [laughter].

That’s a little extreme, but outside of role playing games that have to sell you more expansion books, that’s not usually gonna be a huge problem.  

Chris: I should also mention that if you’re doing that and you want to pile on miscellaneous abilities onto the same group, whether it’s as an elemental system or you just have different factions that each have, their abilities can also get outta hand really fast.

Like in Avatar: The Last Airbender, the choice to give water benders also healing pretty under wraps in Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I’ve definitely seen people start to do way too much of that, where then pretty soon water bender have these five different abilities that don’t seem correlated with each other, and then fire benders have these five different abilities and it can spiral out of control pretty fast. 

Oren: Healing is awkward, and then of course, in Legend of Korra, when suddenly blood bending can do 15 different things.

Less is more when it comes to magic and adding more powers is something you should be careful of and not just do when you want to get your character out of a problem. It is generally better to try to find new ways to use your existing powers than to just add more. Because the more you add, the harder it is to keep track of them. 

Chris: And if you want your protagonist to be special, one thing I recommend is choosing an ability that’s important for this plot, or for the events that are happening in the world, or is rare, instead of making it the most powerful ability because you can make them feel special without making them really, really powerful.  

Oren: Speaking of plots, this is actually a test that I have found to be very useful, which is to think about what kind of problems your character is going to encounter in the story, and then think of the most powerful thing they can do with their magic routinely, not something they need a special one in a lifetime event to pull off or whatever, what they can do just with the powers they have at their disposal. 

And see if that just overwhelms whatever the problem is they’re going to face. Because if it does, then the character is too strong. You’re going to need to either lower their magic or make their obstacles bigger. 

Chris: Okay. So theoretical limits are the most solid. Absolutely. Another thing that’s just worth talking about that can work well, but also sometimes does not work well, is any kind of resource limit where the magic uses up some resource that spell casters need when they use magic.

The nice thing about it is it’s very intuitive. It feels natural, it doesn’t feel contrived, but there can be issues with tracking those resources and being consistent about the usage of those resources. 

So fatigue is a big one. It feels, again, very intuitive and natural that a character uses some kind of internal energy that makes them more tired as they continue to cast more spells. 

But most authors just do not stay consistent about this at all, you can tell, and so it doesn’t feel like there’s any limit because every time the character would normally cast magic, somehow they’re not fatigued and then they continue to push past their limits and they can still cast spells and then they push their past their limits even further for the next conflict and they can still cast spells. And you’ve got almost like that one upmanship element again when it comes to just ignoring fatigue.

Oren: And it’s a question of how are they approaching it to start with, right? Are they approaching it with just telling you that casting spells makes you tired?

’cause swinging a sword makes you tired but that doesn’t really, in fictional terms, I don’t really have a limit on how many times my character can swing a sword, like it’s enough times, it’s just assumed that they can, unless something really unusual has happened. And magic where the author just says “yeah, they’ll get tired if they cast the spell enough” is the same way.

If they really wanna use fatigue as a limit, they have to come at it from the other direction. They have to be like “okay, I can cast this spell twice before I’m too exhausted to stand” and then maybe if you are careful and only do it a couple times, you might be able to have a special turning point where your character is able to push through and cast it a third time.

Chris: I think what happens with this one is, again, the storyteller is always looking for a way for a character to get out of a tight spot. And if they rely too much on magic, and they’re like “I don’t know how my character’s possibly gonna get out of this situation unless they use magic” they just keep their character using magic regardless of whether resources would realistically be used up. 

If you actually had a situation where you’re consistent enough with it, and sometimes, your character actually runs out, on a consistent basis, and when they would normally need it they actually don’t have it, and it’s not just a plot convenient way for you to have them get kidnapped because readers can tell, right?

I’m not gonna say that using fatigue is impossible. I think if you’re consistent about it – and I have seen this before but it’s pretty uncommon-  you can make it work, but you really have to be consistent and enforce that even when it’s inconvenient and be ready to have your protagonist fail to cast that spell because they’re too fatigued. 

Oren: I also think you can, if you want, like to have either a fatigue or a specific kind of type of component that is mostly there for flavor rather than a limit, that’s also fine as long as you balance the magic with that understanding.

So like for example, in the mistborn books, the theoretical limit on how often the characters can use magic is how much metal they have available. But I’m not keeping track of that, maybe Brando Sando is, maybe he’s got a spreadsheet.

Chris: I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. 

Oren: yeah, like it’s not impossible, but from the reader’s perspective, they have as much metal as he wants them to have, so that’s not a real limit. It’s generally assumed they can use their magic when they need to. And if the story is balanced for that, it’s not a problem, the metal is just an interesting bit of flavor.

Chris:  And the same goes for spell ingredients. Spell ingredients quickly become overwhelming, and therefore you no longer can track it.

Any resource limit should allow the reader to anticipate when the character will run out and what they can do and not do. And so if your protagonist has a dozen different ingredients in their bag, and the reader has to memorize what each and every one of them allows the protagonist to do, or you just don’t tell them, then it’s no longer giving the reader the ability to anticipate what the protagonist capabilities are, and at that point, it’s effectively whatever you decide it is. And there’s no real limit, again, it feels arbitrary. 

Whereas if you’re like, okay, your protagonists are on a journey and they occasionally collect one thing, it’s like “Hey, I got this feather. I can use this feather one time to fly” and you have three things like that. Then they could use them once each and that would probably be just fine.

Oren: Yeah, in my experience, readers can keep track of up to four or five components fairly easily, and more than that, you’re gonna start losing people. 

Chris: One thing I do like better is environmental limits, because a lot of times they’re easier to understand and more intuitive and less changeable. 

So if you have a water bender, you know, who needs water nearby, a fire bender, who needs things to catch fire, which means it has not been raining recently. That one, again, I would still say that’s a backup because it’s almost not flexible enough.

Oren: It’s a toggle switch, right? either they can or they can’t use their power.

Chris: But at least it’s, I think, simple and intuitive, which is, a lot of these other resource limits aren’t. 

Oren: Then of course there is the either “I haven’t figured out how to use my power yet” or “I have some kind of emotional block that is stopping me from using my power.”

This is a perfectly legitimate character arc to have, but it’s not gonna be an effective limit unless you’re never planning to tell any stories after the protagonist gets past whatever their issue is. 

Chris: There are some situations in which you can design magic that doesn’t feel like it’s a character arc, right?

Like the magic is just inherently wild. But I think that when people use this, they like it to be a personal trait that the protagonist has because then it creates drama and angst.  

And whereas if it’s just an inherent part of the magic. This is chaos magic. And so it always does a random, unpredictable thing then it doesn’t have the same drama element. And so I think that’s another reason that people are less likely to do it that way. 

Oren: But it’s like, if you have a power that is super strong, but your protagonist won’t use it because it’s tied to their lost loved one, and they are still so upset that they can’t bring themselves to use this power. Okay, that’s interesting. But what happens when they get over that? Or if someone else has that power?

Chris: Who will think of the sequels? 

Oren: Yeah, you do wanna think about this sort of thing. And it’s not like you can’t do this. Characters improve themselves all the time and they gain a new power or whatever, but it has to be a power you are ready for, needs to fit in the world and not break your plot once they have it. 

Chris: Another one, consequences and risk-taking can be really fun. It can add a lot of flavor and create more problems and plot-hooks, which is really neat if you have consequences for using magic. But the thing again, to keep in mind is that it’s not an effective limit unless the incentive they have to not use magic outweighs the scenario, their motivation for using it. 

And if you have a story where it’s always a matter of life or death. Whether they succeed or fail at any given conflict, then they have an extremely strong incentive to use magic, and that will usually blow past any consequences or risks.

So it can add plot-hooks and problems, but it’s not necessarily a limit on the magic at that point.  

Oren: Yeah, especially since you generally don’t want it to be so intense that they never use magic. That can be a problem. I see lots of stories that are the equivalent of “my protagonist will get magic cancer if they use magic too much.”

And yeah, that sounds dramatic and interesting, but if your protagonist is about to get eaten by a monster, they’re definitely gonna use magic to defend themselves, even if that increases their chances of getting magic cancer later.

Chris: You can also have time limits, which are useful if you specifically wanna stop people from being good at fights, but otherwise are not as effective. Even fights can get outta hand if you allow people to prep their spells in advance.  

So there’s a lot of magic systems where it’s like “no, you have to take the time to cast spells” but then they allow them to make a bunch of magic grenades and load those up.

At least at that point they have a limited number of prep spells, right? So that can be a limit. But then whenever the protagonist has downtime, there’s no limit. 

Oren: Downtime is something you wanna keep a real close eye on. You wanna really beware of powers that allow the protagonist to create permanent changes or permanent objects or whatever during downtime, because sure, in a fight, maybe those take too long to use.

If you’re writing a novel, you’re gonna have a couple weeks between tense short fight scenes. So if your protagonist can do something as simple as freeze water into ice. Okay. Are you prepared for a protagonist who can sell ice whenever they want to?

Because in some settings that’s very valuable and you won’t be able to have your protagonist have no money, which you might want. In a modern setting, not as big a deal, but in a low tech, medieval setting, man, that’s valuable. 

Chris: And then finally as a last resort, we have a set of limits that I just call “can’t touch this” [laughter] where you just arbitrarily say they can’t do specific things. And this is, again, it’s a last resort because it often comes off as very contrived.

But there are some scenarios in which you do wanna use it and it’s useful. The biggest one I think of is in an elemental setting when people control the elements and you just don’t want them to directly control people’s bodies because that would just be way too powerful and you also don’t want the type of setting where every water mage freezes or evaporates or whatever the water in somebody’s body. That’s just not the kind of setting you want. 

So then you just arbitrarily be like “yeah, no, you can’t affect somebody’s body, ’cause power of spirit et cetera, et cetera. Don’t look too hard.”

Oren: That was a problem that The Legend of Korra ran into when it made metal bending a thing that someone besides Toff could do. Because suddenly metal was now not only useless, it was actively detrimental to have metal in a fight, which was a problem because they also wanted to do steampunk stuff. And so their solution was “you can’t metal bend platinum.” “Why not?” “You just can’t. Okay?”

And you know, nevermind how terrible a building material platinum is. It’s fine. We made a giant robot out of platinum. 

[Laughter}

Chris: Yeah, so again, last resort, stated simply, don’t spend too long in it. Allow people to forget it. 

Oren: One limit that I think is underused but is potentially very helpful is specific places where magic can be used. ’cause you might wanna have an adventuring scenario where your protagonists go out and fight monsters and stuff, but you don’t want everyone bowing and scraping to them when they come back to town, which is what would happen if a group of level 10 D&D adventurers rolled into a regular village.

So instead you say, out in the Miasma Wastelands, you can do all this powerful stuff because you also can channel the Miasma that creates the monsters, but the towns are all built in places where there is no Miasma. So you’re just a normal person when you go there.

Chris: Yeah, that sounds like that would be very handy. 

Oren: Yeah, and that won’t balance your miasma powers when you’re out in the miasma. But in this case, the issue specifically is you don’t want your character to just be able to tell other people what to do anytime you want. ’cause you want to have some conflicts in the village. 

Chris: If you combine that with a long casting time so that you had something to limit the magic during fights. The fights that you do when you’re out in the wilderness within Miasma, then that would be a good combination.

Oren: All right. Well, I think with that, we will successfully put a limit on this podcast so that it doesn’t go on forever.

Chris: If you didn’t find this podcast too limiting, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants.

Oren: And before we go, I want to thank a few of our existing patrons. 

First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek.

We will talk to you next week. 

[Outro]

This has been The Mythcreant Podcast. Opening and closing theme “The Princess Who Saved Herself” by Jonathan Coulton.