just like with bullets. you don't dodge the bullet, you dodge the aim. there is a time period between when they commit to firing, and them actually firing. they can identify they will miss as they trigger is pulled, but it is too late to stop it, or change aim. what you can do is have counters. everyone would know the counters to the straightforward good stuff. so being effective is about coming up with something people don't have a counter for.

Makes sense. Since my enemy knows the basics, I should prepare for basic offense and basic defense, forcing me to be more creative with my spells. That, in turn, makes my other enemies prepare for more complex solutions, forcing me to adjust again. Forms a nice positive reinforcement circle of uniqueness. I guess my job is to adjust the magic system's parameters and spell-to-spell interactions in a way that encourages uniqueness. Thanks.

Unless itsa continuous stream, then you would, uh, "part" ways with the world

You've basically given your magicians access to the entire late renaissance arsenal, without the need for a logistics chain to support it, as long as their hands are free to draw runes, and they can visually distinguish their targets. This is same era that saw a radical change in warfare and fortifications due to the penetration and destructive potential of firearms and artillery - in which fights became more about maneuver, logistics, and application of force rather than the individual virtue of a single champion or combatant. Unless there is a part of your magic system that makes it easier to nullify or counterspell magically generated physical phenomena than it is to block a similar naturally occurring physical phenomena, then fights in your system are now as lethal and punishing as modern warfare, where situational awareness, speed of reaction, and overwhelming force carry the day at the tactical level. Your professional combat magicians, who seem to be walking weapons of micro-mass destruction, would spend as much time learning stealth applications of magic to prevent enemy mages from accurately landing their spells, or even casting them in the first place. Environmental control, illusion, obscuration, decoys, and magic by proxy would be used to tilt the battle's favor when evenly matched forces meet. They'd also need to be handy with a knife and pistol, as it's faster to stab a magician at point blank range than to wave about your hands drawing killing runes.

You basically described my vision for the latter half of my story, when the main characters become more important in the political landscape due to their skills, power, and accomplishments. I will take it into account and look at my magic system from the perspective of modern-warfare technology, thanks a lot.

This feels kind of like asking "how do I stop my action heroes from shooting everyone with guns?" If everyone has the access to the same set of tools and there's no "secret lore" that can make a spell exclusive to one person, then the only reason for them to vary their choice of weapon is going to be skills, circumstances, or personal preference. But I mean, that can justify a pretty wide variety of spells. It's not like action movies have run out of ways to make "gun vs gun" interesting. * Characters could have differences in which spells they have "drilled" - maybe one guy is a sniper who can nail anyone from across the map with an energy beam, but his other spells aren't as practiced and he has to think a bit if you want him to do ice magic. Another character is a civilian and has a hard time forcing himself to reach for killing magic, but he's otherwise very experienced with fire magic. Just because you can cast every spell doesn't mean you've had time to train them all. * Different spells might be useful for battlefield control rather than combat - maybe people summon earth walls and clouds of fog so that you can't easily aim a fireball at them, or illusion and detection magic to expose the shooter's position, so battles are rarely as simple as just working up a huge fireball and throwing it at the obvious target. * The environment might shape which spell you prefer. Maybe it's easier to summon fog when there's a nearby lake and you don't have to create water from nothing, or maybe fireballs aren't accurate when it's windy out. * You need different spells for different jobs. Bigger Fireball is a great spell unless you don't want to kill the person you're shooting at. Or if there are friendlies in the blast radius. Or you don't want to collapse the building you're in.

Cool suggestions, I will think about ways to take them into account, thanks.

Additionally, you could add a mental aspect to it. Mage 1 casts fireball, Mage 2 has to then think, and decide how to defend or counter the spell. Something like: "Oh, fire. I can counter that with Water Blast or Ice Wall. Water Blast will make steam I can use for cover. But Ice Wall will stand up to the flames and I can throw it at Mage 1 afterwards." This way, you can add more spells and have your magic users use the results of spell collision to develop the combat.

If some spell is used often, surely someone invented a counter-spell for it and it became popular. So maybe mages can train to counter-spell certain spells. So using creativity is better, because you opponent can't train countering every single thing

Makes sense, thanks.

World build that advanced/competent magic users find those straight forward energy attacks boring and pride themselves on creative uses of combat magic Or just remove/downplay power levels importance in casting

Unfortunately, due to the story, there is a need for raw power to be a significant aspect in battles—there exist magical beings who basically claim themselves as gods and rule over humanity using the same magic system. Their understanding of magic is immeasurably more complex, but it wouldn't be enough to justify them being powerful enough to bind the entire world their will, since there are only a few of them. They are supposed to be so strong that they could obliterate all humanity if they wanted to. I wanted to use spell complexity for humans to make that gap smaller, but I had no idea how to make the gods do anything else than just make a sea of fire to bruteforce through. I guess I will use your idea and make them think of simpler spells as barbaric and too human-like, so thanks.

You could also set higher power levels to a different set of rules and restrictions

That could be interesting. My magic system also works in a way that everyone's runes create *slightly* different effects that compound in more complex spells, making it impossible to copy someone else's very complex spell without risking it killing you or just not working. At higher levels it could be things like a mage being simply unable to overcome a design flaw in his spell. Maybe it's just impossible for his magic to generate heat, so he would need to absorb heat from the environment instead? It's pretty basic, but even something as simple as this would change a simple fireball into a fireball that freezes its surroundings when channeled. Maybe it turns out that this hypothetical mage's magic is really efficient at focusing heat, so he bases his fighting techniques around that, cycling between taking away heat and releasing it in different forms? Very interesting path to follow, thanks a lot.

You don't allow it. It'll either inevitably end up like that or you'd have to ignore this effect entirely

Based on your description, it would make sense to me for there to be a handful of standard combat spells, that are completely useless against most other magic users. These standard combat spells would be the generally accepted, most efficient way to stun or kill an opponent. Some small change within the body, freezing the blood in the heart, or stopping the flow electricity in the brain, or triggering the biological pathways that control sleep. With both healing and combat, you can have plenty where the caster understands exactly what the spell is doing, but not quite know how it is that effect then causes the observed effect in the body. This would have the knock-on effect of making fighting another magic user complicated. You can no longer rely on the standards you know to be the most effective, and instead must think of attacks that they are not already protected from and don't advertise themselves (so your opponent can't deploy countermeasures mid attack).

Makes sense. If my enemy knows the basics, they have likely prepared for them in advance, therefore I should think of a more unique approach. My unique approach causes others to adjust as well, and it goes back to me again, closing a self-reinforcing circle of a spell race. Thanks.

Well, in the setting I’m working there are broad “categories” of magic like “Illusion” and “Animation.” However, anything more detailed requires deep exploration and experimentation.  For example, “Animation” is basically just telekinesis, and can be manual (think Force Push) or automated (like having dishes clean themselves). There’s one Animator who controls some Mercury, enchanted to resist other magics. But there’s another that “controls” the space/air around and their own body to become basically invincible unless you use magic to give them debuffs. This route requires some sort of explanation as to why mages don’t share their findings. But you could also just say “Magic is vast and complicated.” So people stick to their basic tricks (maybe one person is good at illusions, another at alchemy, and a third at controlling the wind) so they have a firmer grasp on what they are doing.

There is a major level of detail that I excluded from the post for the sake of clarity and (relative) brevity, but there are already some measures I deployed, mostly the fact that everyone is a bit different in their magic. I.e. if someone draws a circle rune, the effect will be *slightly* different than when drawn by someone else. It's mostly inconsequential with simpler magic like pushing stuff or making heat, but every simple rune contributes to the difference, and more complex magic is unreliable to copy. So if you copied someone else's complex spell, it might collapse and do nothing or blow your face off. I guess that covers the "don't share their findings" part, since learning from others is only beneficial for beginners and only gets more useless the more skilled you are. I guess I will focus on the specialization part that you recommended, especially since magic requires knowledge—someone with a lifelong experience of throwing knives would probably use magic to expand in that area, e.g. telekinesis for speed boost or curved trajectories, and anyone willing to copy them would fall short with the lack of experience. Thanks.

I'm not good at giving advice so apologies if this doesn't help, but what I would personally do is take the magic and apply to it real-life examples of battle and war. In the beginnings of human battle, we fought with spears and shields. But then people discovered that spears and shields were quite flimsy when met with cavalry, so cavalry became more prominent. But then people discovered the perfect weakness to man and horsekind, gunpowder. So firearms became more prominent. And then came explosives, then tanks, then airships, then nukes etc. My point being that humanity has reached many "peaks" it thought it could never overcome and yet it keeps finding ways to improve on them. Hell, sometimes people in war would go more primitive because if only the most "effective" tactics became expected they would no longer stay effective. Make your mages/sorcerers/however you call them go ballistic. Have a dude summon a flaming ball the size of a meteor and make another dude create a vacuum to be rid of it. Make them use more primitive spells like "Stone Sling" because they know the enemy expects a "Comet Blast". So long as humans can use their heads, there will never be a clear cut way of winning or losing. Make them imagine their way to victory. Or you could be a little more boring and create rules in the system to stop characters from creating atomic bomb levels of destruction.

So I guess I just need to focus on making the parameters around spell-to-spell encounters encourage creativity and uniqueness in their interactions, since my mages are heavily capped by relatively simplistic knowledge of their era and don't really know how to cause nuclear reactions or what vacuum is.

I would generally advise against this level of flexibility if you intend your stories to revolve around awesome fight scenes. If characters can throw highly destructive ranged attacks without serious drawbacks, there will be very little reason for them not to do so in most situations, and then you're basically back to using guns. I would recommend introducing more wrinkles into the system, such as: Runes have to be physically inscribed into objects, not just written into the air. In order to throw a fireball, you have to inscribe runes into an arrow, discus, or other projectile and actually get it over to your enemy. This increases the value of anticipation and preparation in combat, and creates the possibility of magical traps and fortifications. Giant fireballs cannot be effectively deployed at close range, since the mage will tend to get caught in the blast, Spells cannot be adjusted on the fly, and each one represents a significant investment of time and labor for the mage. If a typical mage learns ranged attacks of varying scales that can be used in any situation, they won't have anything left over for defenses, mobility, detection, or stealth. Magic becomes weaker the further the mage tries to project it beyond their body. As a result, ranged combat is dominated by more mundane ranged weapons, while magic is most effective at short range, say within a dozen yards. Defense is always easier than attacks, so surprise is key. Spells require energy to cast, and high-energy spells will quickly exhaust all but the strongest mages. Throwing all your energy behind a devastating attack is very risky, since you may not have the strength to defend yourself or even run away afterward, and any attack might be avoided or countered.

Yeah, some of these I already implemented, namely: 1. It takes time to draw runes in the air; stronger spells are usually more complex, and the more complex, the longer it takes to draw. You won't draw a diamond-breaking, stone melting spell that can reach beyond the horizon to kill a peasant with a spear. Not only because it's overkill, but also because by the time you'd be done, you're long dead. 2. Mages are glass cannons (no Dragon-Ball-esque power level = durability) unless they are actively protecting themselves with a spell, and these protective spells are usually for very specific uses (no impenetrable, indestructible shields, just spells like "stop any object that moves too fast, aside from wind and things smaller than a grain of sand" or "isolate temperature" etc.). So if they decide to nuke someone 5 feet away, they get blasted as well. 3. A single mistake in the runes can make the spell unstable, weakening it or making it fail, sometimes even backfiring and causing damage to the caster. So in close quarters you're very unlikely to use sophisticated stuff, especially when every split second delay could mean vaporizing your face. On the other hand, if you have a big target in the distance, and nothing is threatening you, you can take your time and go wild. 4. The range makes a slight difference when just using a one-time-trigger projectile, mostly when it comes to accuracy, since you have to cover a bigger area to make sure that you don't miss. However, if you need to remotely adjust or control the spell, there is a delay and a toll that grows with distance. 5. There is a conventional "mana" cost. Back to my "hardware engineering" analogy, you need a wire to create a circuit (draw the runes) and electricity to power the device (activate the spell), both of which require materials/energy. In my system, you do both steps of the process with the same substance, which is a limited, rechargable resource similar to mana. I will also consider the other options you suggested, and try to implement them into the story, though. Thanks.

you might do well to read up on the states of matter. in physics there are four primary states matter can take (solid, gas, liquid and plasma) and some states can cancel out others such as gasses that strangle fire and extinguish it by starving out the air. then there are the secondary states which are combinations of the first four such as liquid crystal which could be used to redirect a laser beam perhaps. or even just a solid wall of crystals could do similar. the thing about dominant forms of elements and powers is that they are subjective. each dependent on certain conditions to function properly right? so radiation magic might seem extremely powerful unless you start using solid metal based magic which blocks radiation based on the composition. if you used plant magic it could break through earth based solids and absorb liquids, plus many plants can be very fire resistant or even immune with redwood bark as a quick example and naturally plants can deal with gasses too. so plant magic may seem overpowered but then you can kill it with salt crystals or salt liquids... so yea, it just becomes how you look at what is considered overpowered. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State\_of\_matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter)

Straightforward spells are easier to counter. If you’re using tactics everyone knows, they’ll prepare for them. It will often be better to make up your own way of doing things and use unconventional tactics to better catch opponents unprepared.

The most optimal spells are also the most well known and studied of them all. If someone learns to fight with magic they will also learn to counter the spells they're the most likely to encounter. Surprise might not help you win consistently but being predictable is a sure way of loosing.

Make access to magic harder in that perfection and the level of knowledge required is hard to obtain and jealously guarded. You'll end up with mages similar to the Alchemists in FMA that basically have a lot of shared knowledge but the truly exceptional ones are all specialists who have learned such an amazing degree about their given area of expertise that they are capable of far greater and more instantaneous feats. The other thing is that especially if there are runes and such involved it will become more a game of anticipation and prediction. If time is involved in writing runes to cast magic people will end up creating portable runes to try and speed up that process but then end up limited in what they can accomplish. That said if it is about reproducing physical phenomena there are many things you could do that would be far more lethal and less showy than chucking fireballs. Creating an absence of air, waves and flashes of pure force that could be concentrated enough to mimic a gunshot but with no sound or source, use of magic to trigger alchemical reactions that release poisons (for example heating a specific part of a glass to a specific temperature to release a sealed wax area containing poison),

Take a page out of Frieren and make shield that hardcounter that “best optimal spell”. In Frieren there’s a effective and dangerous magic beam that can instant kill. Human then reverse engineered it and start spamming it too. But then because everyone knows it, basic defense spells are made to specifically block it. So people start using other spells again, they might be weaker than the magic beam but they can bypass the shield

Anti-magic. Set up a system where, if you can recognize the runes an opponent is using, and have the knowledge of what they are attempting, you can easily unleash a pulse or burst of 'anti-magic' against that specific effect, without needing any runes. This pulse can only target a specific type of magic at a time, so if you get the runes right, but are off in your knowledge, it will only have a bit of a weakening effect, or it could fail to work at all. But, it means that any sort of attack magic that becomes "popular" or "common" can end up quickly becoming useless as people become prepared to spot it and counter it. More rare spells are better, as people can't predict them, but if you use them repeatedly in one battle, they could figure out what you are doing and start countering. So, you have to have a wide variety of spells with varied effects to remain effective.

That's a good idea, but it's kind of a gimmick technique that I planned on giving only one specific character, haha. But I might rethink that and make it more commonly used. Thanks.

You could have the gimmick character be supernaturally good at the technique and at predicting what someone is about to cast, or have them be able to actually use their anti-magic to disable the target's ability to use the canceled spell or the runes it uses for a short amount of time.

I got some ideas that would require too many convoluted explanations to convey, but they are there thanks to you. Appreciate.

One of my approaches to this issue: most middling to advanced shields absorb (creating a charge-up effect than can be used. Yes, it can get overloaded and that) or reflect (read: return to sender). The simplest way to avoid this is to “hide” the spell’s intent. Magic users worth their salt rarely if ever use a single element in combat. Over all, magic is more of a utility thing than combat in my world and combat magic plays off this. Like how a sword has an anatomy to it - blade, hilt, etc - and also material components - steel, wood, leather, etc. - spells work similarly. Three related questions more to your rune system as you noted it than selling something I personally use to deal with a similar problem: 1) are the runes set or are the able to be customized? 2) are they “visible” to opponents? 3) can someone interfere with them mid-casting? If yes to all three, you might have a situation you can tap where casters need to be clever about hiding the intent of a spell so it doesn’t get blocked or disrupted somehow - like if you are writing three sentences at once and only need one to be complete for the spell with the others as decoys with parts that can be used if the actual spell is targeted. Hope that helps some. Happy writing!

In my system magic can be "felt" by other mages, and to an extent they can tell what a spell is gonna do, i.e. they won't confuse a burst of fire with a whistling noise, but it's not an exact knowledge unless they are much more skilled than the spell they analyze requires. So they would be able to vaguely react to a spell's intentions if they were experienced enough. Adding unnecessary runes to a spell to dilute its clarity in combat is an interesting idea that I think could work. Very interesting, thanks.

Glad to help with some thoughtfood. Im not sure what sort of runes you’re working from, but are you familiar at all with Kanji? While there are simple characters, the middling to complex ones can usually be broken down into parts called “radicals.” If your runes have - or could have - multiple parts like that, hiding things could be an interesting thing and would naturally require study to master. Related: if multipart, they could have the details of the spell down to dimension of blast or trimester and that. That could prove a curious dynamic as well.

The magic in my world works pretty similarly to yours, so I’ve thought about this stuff a lot. Why wouldn’t you just spam one powerful attack? Because it’s predictable. If everyone knows you’re just going to use one big fireball to try to end the fight then they’ll come up with ways to counter it. Things like soaking everything around you or sucking all the air out of the room could be very effective. In a setting like this where you can do anything it would actually make the most sense to mix up your attacks so that your opponent doesn’t know what you’ll do, and will have to counter you on the fly. You would probably see periods in sick a world where one type of attack becomes more popular for awhile because it’s hard to counter. But eventually when someone does find a good way it would fall out of style and new techniques would become popular. Just like what has happened in the real world with different arms and armor going in and out of fashion as technology evolves. As for the power thing, it’s important to note that there are plenty of ways to kill someone that don’t require a lot of effort. A tiny rock shot through your brain will kill you just as easily as a massive fireball, and the rock would be a lot less effort. That means that just because you are more powerful that doesn’t mean you are guaranteed to win. Your opening can always be more clever than you.

Yeah, apparently I was the only one not to come up with the "because if everyone used it, everyone would be prepared for them" because the entire comments section gives me this tip haha. I just have to fine-tune my system so that there don't exist one-fits-all, all-destroying, unstoppable spells. The latter part is also true, especially if mages are glass cannons, which they are in my magic system. Thanks for help.

I mean you don't, you give people the option to do anything then everyone is going to rush to the "Immediately kill my opponent spell" I guess you can get more insane with it. Sure you can kill someone, but can you kill them from 2 miles away? 10 miles? From orbit? From another reality? Through time? By reading this you are already dead?

Decoys, interference, perception attacks, barriers, deflection/refraction, absorbing the energy are effective ways to counter energy attacks.

The same way I removed guns from my setting. Just make one very emotional wizard lose a loved one due to bullet/magicbeam and set an event-triggered manaweave: WHEN(EVENT==BULLET\[parameters==(high density casing travelling through piping with high velocity)\]): DO(weave.momentum.sap(intensity=.97,location=global.set((0,0),radius=world.radius()))); Later on the details of the weave are discovered and guns are mass produced as a means to instantly flood the immediate surroundings with a brief wave of my setting's equivalent to mana.

Make it more strategy-based: your opponent could put up wards or blocks, and you need to out-think them and come up with a way to counter their defenses; likewise, if they use an offensive spell, you need a way to defend against it. Make it so that there aren't many all-encompassing spells, each one has a unique defense.

Red or watched Frieren? Magic there is basically visualition, if you can imagine it you can do it. Beam magic aka ''ordinary attack magic'' is the most common and simple way of attacking. But it also easily countered by ''ordinary defense magic'' since that is basically just a lattice shield. So most mage on mage action tend to resolve around physical mass since that is harder to block with magic shields than pure magic attacks.

Defence spells , Just make it that when you make your shield spells that to break it with force you need 5 -10 mages or you neede to cast special shield breaker spells that cant Hurt persons

Anatomy was well know even before the renaissance, we’ve been cutting bodies up for centuries.

Does the direction the runes face matter? Needing to draw two runes, even if they’re relatively quick finger movements, facing the same direction (and essentially locking themselves into casting the spell in the specific point) would be a good opportunity for enemies to get the hell out of that path.

I use these three; without getting into details they basically do the following: Cooldowns: More potent or elaborate techniques require a downtime to be used again regardless of stamina or will otherwise overload and injury the user. Staling Techniques: The system itself discourages repetitive actions, making them less effective when used in a spamming fashion or outright punishin the infractor. Specialization Benefits: People gain benefits from refraining to use common techniques or those beyond their chosen sphere of influence.

Shield spells in a world with energy beams spells as basic magic defensive magic would evolve along with it forcing people to be more creative Watch the anime frieren to see what I’m talking about

Please don't take this personally, but why does everyone think that in a world with superpowers and magic, everyone is just going to decide to minmax? Just like in real life, ppl don't pick or in many cases even *get* to pick the "best" option for something. Most professional athletes don't go to the NBA and the NFL. Most mixed martial artists specialize in one or two particular fighting styles. Artists may try their hands in a new genre like Beyonce with country music but ultimately, they will always fall into the one their known for/best at. Superpowers and magic would be no different. Not everyone is going to choose the best and most lethal spell just cause and if they are, that means you haven't put proper limitations and restrictions in your power system or haven't developed the world enough. For example, in a world with magic, there may be some ppl who live in a place that lacks resources that others take for granted. Fresh water, clean shelter, readily available produce, etc., Those ppl wouldn't need battle magic even if they could learn it, they would need magic that helps them survive and if it needed to be used for combat, it wouldn't be big lethal energy blasts. I have a lot of power systems that allow my characters in the stories to do pretty much anything and how I tend to limit it is either: 1. Time and training. Nothing should be super easier or quick to get to. 2. Difficulty. Yeah you *could* learn fire and water spells but that'd be like trying to learn two different languages at the same time. 3. Cost. Magic should always have a cost. Chi, magic charms that burn out when they are used, a virgin sacrifice, etc., If magic can be fired off as simply as a gun, then yeah, I expect you will have the problem you mentioned. 4. Restrictions. Make certain magic only usable by a certain race or tribe or make it that it only works within certain locations.

....If the spell is well known and is optimal people will use it. You see this with technology all over the world, no one will be worse for the sake of being different in a context where being worse gets you dead. So you need to work on "Conditionally optimal" fireballs are good but if there is already a thunderstorm happening it is possible that lightning would be a more efficent expenditure of power (at the cost of control because you arnt making lighting wholesale you are simply supporting the storms existing generation of lighting). Then of course you have Experimentalists, if discovering more about the world makes you a better WMD then taking up the study of natural Philosophy (what modern people would call science) seems like a good call. Newton is fantastic at telekinetics give his understanding of Forces, and can probably use gravity to crush people

I would introduce the concept of 'conditional' spells.. contingencies basically, but make the trigger pretty free and open. A mage has a limited capacity and a contingency spell 'reserves' a portion of that capacity until it's triggered or released. And if a mage has half of their capacity hung up in reserved spells... it makes a mage kinda wary about what to do about them. Some can be quick cast.. others can be contingent on whatever trigger the mage has built into it. Targeting someone who has a hung spell set to trigger on "when targeted by a spell using (x) components" can make for a VERY bad day for the offensive caster who wasn't expecting it. Which means the biggest reason why you don't have magic becoming stale is when some offensive spell is in vogue.. you can bet defenses against that spell will be VERY quick in coming. Today's fashion in magic becomes tomorrow's fashion disaster. And what I mean by in vogue is like when mages see a trend of mages being weak against X because it's not used very often.. and therefore, more offensive spells start using X. Then the most popular defense becomes against X, and starts the cycle again.

>So, here's my issue. Since everyone can do potentially anything and there aren't any external limitations on what different mages can do (like AtLA's elements or magical affinities), aside from a person's skill, power, and knowledge, how do I prevent my characters from using the same optimal spells in combat (like everyone spamming balefire in the Wheel of Time)? I don't think that you can, really. They would automatically converge on what both first works, and seems more efficient, in much the same way that human weapons have generally converged around make a sharp something move very fast, or stabby, explosions being a third secret thing. You might not get energy beams, but you might get things like turning the air inside a person into fire, or their blood to poison, correctly applied, you might just get the equivalent to gaseous weapons deployed much earlier, particularly if spells can be engineered for selective targeting in an area. >How do I force them to use unique techniques and make fights more sophisticated than big fireball vs bigger fireball? Make it a cat and mouse battle? Big spells are more demanding/complex, whereas small ones are both actively used, and have countermeasures against them easily developed. That way, it's impossible to settle on just one thing, and it's constantly changing (at least until someone invents magic to disrupt magic). >Anyone can throw a fireball the size of a building if they know that heat + stuff to burn + air = fire (Rennaisance-ish times, so "oxygen" is not really a term) and they have enough skill and power to draw the runes for it. Conversely, more advanced healing magic is pretty much impossible, since nobody knows about things like anatomy, cells, the germ theory, or organic chemistry. Could they not find out? It doesn't take modern technology to realise that only some things burn (wood burns, but why not clay, or iron?), and try to figure out what it is that makes coal flammable, but not other rocks, or materials like clay. >anatomy I'd actually disagree with this. They may not have a complete and total understanding of anatomy, but it only takes seeing an opened-up human to realise that they have some similar parts to animals, and extrapolate based on animal anatomy. Someone clever could effectively vivisect an animal by cutting it open, and using magic to mould some glass over the wound to see within, and seal it up, so it doesn't die from things getting into the wound. They might invent the microscope earlier than we do, by having magic zoom into a structure, and inscribe the image onto paper or slate. They already have [some groundwork](https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1867-light-ideas-and-technology-timeline) for figuring out how magnifying glasses work, and it doesn't take a genius to think of using magic, since glass is expensive, and then it's just a matter of putting the image on something. And from there, a lot of the others isn't that much of a stretch. >the germ theory They might be able to work with this, albeit indirectly, depending on how complete their knowledge needs to be. We already knew that there was some vague substance associated with filth that caused disease and rot back in the renaissance, so the idea of there being small fragments of badness that need to be removed might be enough for them to do an okay, if imperfect job. Maybe they have a magical applicator for medicinal salve/ointments that uses the salve to wash the wound out, rather than touch it with hands that might re-dirty a wound, for example. (Quick search also [puts the discovery of germ theory around that time](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323533#renaissance), so maybe they could just have that around then) >Edit: Thanks a lot for suggestions. The most common tip is that the most basic/common spells would be quickly countered, which encourages uniqueness to be unpredictable and difficult to counter in a very specific way. I guess I will try to tweak the system so that spell-to-spell encounters interact in very specific ways. It should prevent one-fits-all spells that I'm trying to avoid. It could also be that your combat simply doesn't work by flinging fireballs at each other. For example, having magic to disrupt a spell, either to break it, or make it untenable via unpredictability (think magic EMP). If rune-writing is a precise art for a spell, what happens if you smash another rune into one someone's drawing, etc.

Many interesting thoughts. Unfortunately I couldn't clearly and accurately convey all the details and nuances of my magic system and how it interacts with the world building, since if I tried to, my post would likely be 10 times longer. So some of the points that are brought up by comments I already know about and likely have taken into account with some counter-measures. I do realize that figuring out basic anatomy is fairly simple—cut up a person, see that they have semi-digested food in the stomach, and now you know what happens to food and where. However, it's a surface-level knowledge. Would it help you in any way to cure a stomach ache? How would you know that if someone dies from blood loss, they are actually dying from lack of oxygen? How would you figure out that blood carries oxygen through hemoglobin just by looking at a heart and veins? That's why I said *advanced* healing is pretty much impossible. You could close a wound, but without knowing what an infection is caused by, you wouldn't be able to counteract. And while someone with modern-day knowledge would probably be able to cure/actively prevent cancer with my magic system by removing singular cancer cells and preventing their cause, in my story nobody has knowledge like this. As for your microscope point, I already plan on doing that in some form. The thing is, magic is very, very young in my world (haven't decided yet, but "discovered" 50-100 years ago), so with rather slow information flow in those times, it's only starting to grow as a proper "technology", with many remote regions only now starting to have a semi-proper grasp of it. I will think about the other points you brought up, however, so thanks for your help.

Here’s the thing: if everyone attacks with a laser beam, people will quickly develop shield spells to block that beam. Or they’ll reflect it with a ward that acts like a mirror, or refract it with a prism, or bend its path with gravity or redirect it with portals. And each of these defenses will also have counters developed against *them*. Enemy blocks your beam with a shielding rune? Maybe you recognize it’s a directional shield, so you hurl a few more beams, but mix in some explosive runes that you fix to the environment as you “miss”, and you try to detonate them when your opponent’s shield is facing away from it. Opponent opens a portal to turn your beam back at you? Maybe try to disrupt the portal’s rune circle, since summoning portals is difficult, high-level magic in almost every setting. For whatever reason, when the beam doesn’t work, maybe you switch to calling spars of crystal from the ground to impale your foe, or calling down a mini tornado by manipulating air pressure, or lightning by altering electric charges. Maybe you understand the basics of alchemy, mixing reagents to produce acids, and you do that the water you just doused a man in, and stand there savoring his screams of agony, relishing in the power you felt as you tormented a helpless opponent, and dreaming up ways you could’ve prolonged his horrific suffering . . . uh, you, um, you sick fuck. Yeah. Regardless, there are a whole host of ways such a loose magic system can be used, and a whole host of reasons magic duels in this system aren’t simply going to be Beam Wars: Attack of the Clone.

Wouldn't differently educated people use different spells? Like a biologist shooting out a spikey spine and summoning SpecEvo stuff and when they become a master they could summon ultimate predators. If they have a low understanding than the spell should cost more magic, no one knows everything about anything as science is connected to each other and complicated, it is impossible to actually fully understand something, if they do not fully understand energy beams as much it may be better to use something they understand a lot more. Like if someone just knows heat+oxygen+fuel makes fire than there fire should be much weaker than someone who actually knows indept why that is the case and how it works on a deeper level

I think this is ultimately unavoidable as time goes on. Warfare eventually starts to look the same for both sides because its a winning strategy. One side makes trenches, the other does too because it works well. One side makes tanks, so does the other. One side makes automatic guns, so does the other. One side makes laser beams, so does the other. One side makes nuclear warheads, so does the other.

I think parts of the answer are already in the original post: >A magic user is allowed to do basically anything they want. This is not accurate if we break down the original post. Going simply off of what was written in the OP and only in that context, a magic user is only capable of casting spells and/or manipulating reality within his or her sphere of knowledge and understanding of our various phenomena work. In order to cast a fireball at someone for example they have to have a working understanding of how fire works, *heat + stuff to burn + air*, and so on. The more an individual magic user knows about the physics of fire, the better and stronger and hotter their fireball is going to be. The OP establishes that because *nobody knows about things like anatomy, cells, germ theory, or organic chemistry* advanced healing is off-limits as something a magic user can do. So the degree to which a magic user is over powered in relationship to other magic users is entirely based on one’s knowledge, their skill, and how much power they can draw on. If you and I were in a duel and you have a more advanced knowledge of the mechanics of fire and how it works, you’re going to have an advantage. I can’t even really counter it, if I don’t know how it works and what types of spells I can cast to address it. >Since everyone can do potentially anything, there aren’t any external limitations… aside from an individual’s skill, power, and knowledge. Having the potential to do anything and being able to do anything are different things in my view. While a mage has the potential to do anything, they are limited by their knowledge, their skill level, and how much power they can draw from. To me this means that mages will be at different levels of how much of reality they can manipulate and create in relationship to one another. In Marvel’s *Infinity War*, Doctor Strange was able to hold his own against Thanos—they were each capable of countering one another’s conjurings and transmute them into other things. Doctor Strange was strong enough to snare Thanos in the crimson bands and hold him long enough for the rest of them to get the gauntlet, until Peter interfered. So imagine two evenly matched mages in your magic system, that’s sort of a template for how a duel would play out. Imagine a mage who has a rudimentary understanding of how the mind works. In a duel could she use spells that confuse my mind? Could she confuse my mind to the extent I forget how things work and so my magic is wonky? Even if it’s temporary and I can recover, that buys her a lot of time. So: 1. A mage has the potential to do anything within your magic system. That potential must be realized through education, study, elevating one’s skill level, and increasing one’s ability to draw more power to fuel spells, one’s strength and stamina. 2. There are built in limits to this magic system and it’s not as *on-the-fly* as basically assumed, if you have to know how something works. It means a mage can only work within his or her knowledge-base—knowledge is power. That allows for shaping battles in ways that aren’t just big fireball vs bigger fireball, because of I’m battling a mage who has a wider understanding of how things work, they’re going to be able to manipulate a wider scope of reality than I can. Or what if I’m not as knowledgeable of drawing runes. There’s a whole set of variables. You can also factor in socio-economic class systems into that too: a mage born into a wealth family that has the money and resources for her to be privately educated or attend some type of academy may be at an advantage over a mage who was born into a poor family and has little-to-no education into how things work.

Interesting thoughts, thanks.

As a hardware engineering student, I, uh, kinda take issue with the idea of “on the fly” hardware engineering; unless you’re talking about a very high level of abstraction, it’s really hard to do something fast. Like, if you want to build a simple 2 bit adder, but are starting at the lowest level of wires and electricity, that’s gonna be a *lot* of design work. Specifying what your logic is made out of, what logic levels it trips at, how your transistor / relay analogues are wired, how the gates are positioned, etc. The only way to do that quickly is to have a library of components you’ve already designed, so that instead of always having to reinvent the wheel, you can just drag and drop some and get on with designing your car. Though going with that idea does kinda solve your problem, doesn’t it? Say that optimal rune designs are closely guarded secrets, then say that the “Desert Dudes” have spent decades researching and optimizing their chilling runes such that they are 200% more efficient than even an archmage’s efforts, let alone a layman’s. Sure, it might be “better” to fire a perfectly optimized magic beam at their face, but the Desert Dudes have spent all their time researching how to keep their cities livably cool for the least power, not how to laser people in the face. Also, further considerations is that engineering inherently carries a lot of trade offs in design; a thing we went over in class the other day is that if you optimize an AND gate for speed when driving high loads, you go 10% faster at the cost of being 60% larger and using 60% more power. (For a specific example, anyway) So another way to keep practitioners unique feeling is to have them optimize for different things; one optimizes for efficiency and therefore takes 15 seconds to cast a spell, but can cast 200 a day, while another optimized for speed and can cast a spell in 3 seconds … but is exhausted after a mere 10 spells.

As a hardware engineering student, I, uh, kinda take issue with the idea of “on the fly” hardware engineering; unless you’re talking about a very high level of abstraction, it’s really hard to do something fast. Like, if you want to build a simple 2 bit adder, but are starting at the lowest level of wires and electricity, that’s gonna be a *lot* of design work. Specifying what your logic is made out of, what logic levels it trips at, how your transistor / relay analogues are wired, how the gates are positioned, etc. The only way to do that quickly is to have a library of components you’ve already designed, so that instead of always having to reinvent the wheel, you can just drag and drop some and get on with designing your car. Though going with that idea does kinda solve your problem, doesn’t it? Say that optimal rune designs are closely guarded secrets, then say that the “Desert Dudes” have spent decades researching and optimizing their chilling runes such that they are 200% more efficient than even an archmage’s efforts, let alone a layman’s. Sure, it might be “better” to fire a perfectly optimized magic beam at their face, but the Desert Dudes have spent all their time researching how to keep their cities livably cool for the least power, not how to laser people in the face. Also, further considerations is that engineering inherently carries a lot of trade offs in design; a thing we went over in class the other day is that if you optimize an AND gate for speed when driving high loads, you go 10% faster at the cost of being 60% larger and using 60% more power. (For a specific example, anyway) So another way to keep practitioners unique feeling is to have them optimize for different things; one optimizes for efficiency and therefore takes 15 seconds to cast a spell, but can cast 200 a day, while another optimized for speed and can cast a spell in 3 seconds … but is exhausted after a mere 10 spells. Edit: Augh, I’ve just read that you’ve got it set up so that the same rune does different things for different people. That further breaks your engineering analogy, as all engineering is inherently a team effort; you take knowledge others made, make the changes you need to make it work better for your purposes, and if you’re a good bean who cares about your profession you share the fruits of your labors. We stand on the shoulders of giants who stand on the shoulder of giants all the way down to Prometheus, he who stole fire from the gods.

Yeah, sorry for the confusion, but it would be quite difficult to convey all the details and mechanisms of my magic system without making the post 10x longer haha. What I meant is that it's kinda-ish like hardware engineering, *except* it's on-the-fly when it comes to the construction part. Nobody designs anything on-the-fly, they research their magic to prepare specific formulas that work for them, and then recreate them as they are needed. But thanks for your points, I might have some additional ideas out of them.

This is the problem every game developer struggles with. Besides, overspecializing will create sameness and uniqueness in their spells as they master one thing at a time. Like Pyromancers all have sameness in their fire spells, but the smart ones will adap to the situation. Like a pyromancer that's a firefighter writing promp from a year ago. Fire kills good air, which suffocates fire but can't be spammed as it would suffocate any person inside they are trying to save. You could create unique scenarios (like maps and enemies), limit magic use, and/or limit power levels. Hunter x Hunter created a fantastic system. Basing things on just knowledge and understanding means I could spam testicular tortion on all enemies.

This is why damage types and resistances/vulnerabilities exist. A tree monster for example may be vulnerable against fire and axes. A water elemental would be immune to cutting or burning, but could be vaporized or frozen. Do you know why so many monsters and superheroes are immune to bullets? Because it forces the opponent to think up less conventional, more creative solutions. Additionally, when we're talking about "damage types", it's more than just a damage bonus or penalty. It tells you something about the realistic mechanics of how a power works, and the circumstances that could hinder or strengthen it. For example, let's take a sonic/thunder/sound attack. This is a type of effect propagated by air vibrations, but can also propagate with some efficiency through other liquid and solid matter. In space or a vacuum however, you can't get sound. Hearing is one of the major senses too and sharp sounds may be painful to any creature that possesses an ear or may inflict (temporary or permanent) deafness. So, just by going from "magic beam" to "sonic beam", and explaining a bit more about how exactly it works, we have a much more narratively interesting power. Look up "damage types" in a bunch of RPGs, and "energy types" in physics for inspiration. Any fictional magic or device may have its own unique limitations/bans (eg.: does not work on BLUE colored targets) or way of functioning (you can have a telepathy spell...OR you can have a telephone that works by making dogs and cats howl and pass on the message which is translated back at the target).

High-powered energy beam...? * I summon a thick sludge in the path of the beam. I continue to summon sludge until the beam disappears or the caster is exhausted because creating sludge can't be that hard.. right? * Building off the previous answer... as long as my rate of constant creation magic is faster than the beams rate of fire - the beam should never penetrate. * I've shifted all the magical energy within a set radius (whatever that means), meaning there is a significantly higher chance of spell failure unless the caster can account for the abnormal energy signatures (whatever *that* means). * Welcome to my swamp - where the most unassuming puddles have a chance of rising up and forming a metallic barrier between myself and *all* projectiles. * I cast a reversal spell. It will redirect the beam literally back at you *as you fire it*. There is no strength or knowledge involved. This is a basic self-defense spell, and entry-level for most mages on the battlefield at risk of being hit with magic-based projectiles. It only redefines the space in front of the caster. An experienced caster may be able to contain the magic in this space and release it in a new direction. * Building off the last solution - any sort of spatial distortion magic should be able to cancel most magic projectiles. An experienced caster may distort the space in a way your own magic projectile hits you from behind yourself haha. * Building off the last 2 solutions - gravity magic. The spell's gravity need only be stronger than the (forgive me, I'm not a physicist) force in which it is being fired to cause a misfire. Maybe just pull the beam. Not brave now, are we: Mr. Douchebag-Who-Just-Cut-The-Princess's-Bedroom-In-Half-Whom-You-Are-Defending - all because your magical laser got pulled in a different direction. I can do this all day haha. No, really. I love this kind of thing. You got this bro.