Let us speak of "darkness/shadow-elemental" magic. Why is this the most incoherent type of elemental magic in fantasy?
Other types of elemental magic try to keep to what each element can physically do: air can buffet, earth can bash and erode, fire can burn, light can be as a laser or distort optics, lightning can jolt, water can drench and apply focused pressure.
And then we have darkness/shadow-elemental magic, which tends to be a nebulous form of sorcery that can do whatever the writers want: drain life force, act as a destructive and entropic form of energy, grapple people with tenebrous tendrils, create or sustain undead, create shadow replicas of other things, allow teleportation through shadows, etc.
Why is this so disconnected from actual darkness/shadow? I understand that "real" darkness is simply a lack of light, which makes it difficult to work with compared to other elements. Still, what could be done to make it more thematically coherent while keeping to the actual, physical qualities of darkness?
Well, first you need to decide is it ''darkness'' or ''dark'' or ''shadow'' as all these have differing implications.
Furthermore, it needs a niche. What will it do that is unique to it? Thats usually an issue if you want to be realistic because Light then already covers stealth quite effectively, yet there often isn't too my other uses for Shadow.
Personally Ive always liked the idea of being able to use it to blind enemies and snuff sources of light and such
>>44149800
Because it's the obviously evil element, and as such, writers feel compelled to make it stronger than the "normal" elements.
The point is to give a sense of challenge, the protagonists are fighting a foe infinetely stronger than they are individually, and win through the power of friendship and all that.
Alternatively, the author just want his special evil snowflake to be stronger than anyone else.
>>44150086
Well, shadows travel faster than light.
If you had a light bright enough to shine at something really far away like the moon, it would take it a few seconds to actually light up, but if you blocked or turned off the light it would go dark immediately.
Or so I've been told. I'm not an astrophysicist or whatever.
>>44149800
The problem lays in associating it with elements.
Thus i call my magic x-type attribute.
Darknes can then include everything from death domain, stealth to toxic stuff to fear effect and so on.
>>44149800
>Other types of elemental magic try to keep to what each element can physically do: air can buffet, earth can bash and erode, fire can burn, light can be as a laser or distort optics, lightning can jolt, water can drench and apply focused pressure.
Even that is rarely true. Fire for example is generally not JUST about burning/heating things and it often includes elements such as cleansing.
>>44150129
Yeah but thats not because shadows are fast but rather because you block the light.
But having it as a counter to Light magic could be interesting I guess.
>>44150129
Completely wrong. We're still receiving light from stars that died ages ago, because said light is still en route. Turning off a light doesn't annihilate any photons which were already eminating from it.
>>44150151
That's why there should be room for some minimum overlap.
Look at what the author of Coiling Dragon did with his elemental system.
Fire for example is excelent in both physical and spiritual offense but sucks at defens and is only slightly above average in speed.
Wind is full blown speed, slow effects, and material attacks with weaker spiritual attacks.
Water is great in both material and spiritual defense and healing but is only good at spiritual attacks.
Earth Is only good at material attacks and defense and has great support abilities.
>>44150129
My understanding is that covering a light does not instantly remove it form vision. There are dead stars we see in the sky because the light from when they were alive takes many years to actually reach us, and in that time the actual star would be observably dead if we looked at it from a much closer location.
>>44149800
Well, if darkness is just the absence of something (light), then why not make Darkness Magic about removing physical properties / the presence of things?
>>44150433
>while keeping to the actual, physical qualities of darkness?
>>44150471
Well then you're pretty much just stuck with removing light from a given area.
In a Pathfinder game I used a mix of the Umbral Weaver Bard archetype, which switches out inspiring songs for a penalty-imposing shadow aura, along with trading out spells for Maneuver progression, focusing on the Veiled Moon school, which gives lots of nifty tricks built around illusion and darkness. Taken together, it created a pretty unique and flavourful shadow-elemental ability set.
>>44150471
"Darkness" doesn't HAVE actual, physical qualities because it's not a thing into itself.
>>44150433
That's an interesting idea-- i can imagine someone removing their weight for a feather fall spell, this sort of thing
>>44149800
I mean what do you want it to do? Thematically I'd say you can tick off stuff like:
>blindness and other sensory deprivation
>confusing or misleading people, occluding thoughts or presences
>manipulation of darkness/shadows and increasing their solidity
>summoning things through shadows/areas of darkness
>transport/teleportation through shadows or areas of darkness
Bigger than that, I would say darkness can be your anti-magic. If the other elements are about creating or increasing something, darkness is about decreasing it. It's entropic. If fire conjures flame and increases heat, darkness extinguishes it and decreases heat. If earth conjures rock, darkness ages it to dust. You could use darkness as a kind of countermagic that mainly has utility value on its own, but is capable of subverting other elemental magics to destroy their users.
