What are the most general categories of magic? I'm thinking about how to make a magic system and for that I need to figure out what the general categories for magic would be and then specialize downward. Here's what I've got so far
Attack: Simply any spell that is designed to cause direct damage to the target. Lighting bolt, fire ball, that sort of thing
Enhancement/buff: Any spell designed to confer positive attributes or effects to the target. Stone skin, healing, etc
Curse/debuff: Any spell designed to confer negative attributes or effects to the target. Fear, touch of weakness, etc.
Manipulation: Spells which change something about the target that isn't inherently positive or negative. Such as location, color, make up, etc. teleportation, transmuting into gold, etc.
Summon: Creating something, or theoretically bringing it into being from some other plane of reality.
There's also the manner of how the spell works, ie the form it takes:
Projectile
Self targeting
AoE
Instant appearance
Can anyone think of any spell that wouldn't fall under this or any category I'm missing?
>>44432799
not a single reply.
Depressing.
>>44432799
Try GURPS thaumatology and GURPS powers. Both give a wide array of different options for categorizing your magic.
>>44435161
Probably because they can't think of anything that falls under those categories. I, personally can't.
Or they just aren't interested, I'm not one to judge.
>>44432799
>Can anyone think of any spell that wouldn't fall under this or any category I'm missing?
Yes.
Any kind of magic that doesn't fall under the Vancian-style strict and defined magic with numbers, mechanics, defined affects that treat it more as an esoteric science then magic found in many stories breaks your mold and types apart completely.
>>44435596
wanna give an example?
>>44435591
Anything that doesn't or anything that does?
>>44435559
>GURPS thaumatology
I'll look that up
>>44435731
Try Powers, too. There's a lot of thematic information on building and classifying powers, and balancing them in a campaign setting.
Basically here's the different ways you can slice the onion:
Power Source (eg divine, arcane, spiritual, demonic, holy, chi, psi)
Power Mechanic (eg costs energy vs difficulty to cast vs number of powers vs flexibility of power vs channelled vs corrupting) By this I mean how powers are balanced against one another: strengths and drawbacks. Chi might be very low-power/low-risk/low-cost, while psi might be powerful but risky, and sorcery powerful and not terribly risky but you're limited in how many powers you can buy
Magical tradition, either broad (eg elementalism, mentalism, abjuration), or narrow (fire, water, mind reading, mind control, force shields, countercurses)
Spell action (spells that create vs spells that alter vs spells that protect-- the "verb" part) D&D's schools are the best example of this.
These obviously can be mixed. In D&D, you have spell actions for wizards vs spell traditions for clerics. Arcane then gets divided into three separate spell traditions (wizards, warlocks, sorcerers). In 3.5, the turning mechanic for clerics was broadened to do other things, essentially creating a second tradition that coexisted with the spells.
Most other games don't get nearly this sophisticated about mixing and matching. MtA manages to have an incredibly flexible system with only division by traditions. Ars Magica does even better with just two (tradition and action). GURPS can handle all of this, but most current GURPS settings only use the default system which divides by tradition.
GURPS Sorcery gives us a new magic system with spell creation rules based on the existing rules for Powers. In other words, you can make a new power or take one from psionics, cybernetics, or whatnot, remove the old power modifier, insert the Sorcery modifier instead, and you're done.
>>44432799
Magical School and Spell Class are probably the most general "types" of magic.
In D&D and offshoot systems these are, respectively:
Spell Classes:
Arcane
Divine
Nature
Psionic
Third Party Bullshit/OC Donut Steel nonsense
Elemental magical system are often just variations on the class based categories, often prone to heavy redundancies and reproductions of actual spells, so each class will have some way to do direct damage in vaguely similar ways, some way to heal, some way to buff or debuff people etc...
Magical School:
Abjuration
Conjuration
illusion
Evocation
Transmutation
Good
Evil
Neutral
Necromancy
Mysticism
Invocation
Alteration
Baklava
Enchantment
Systems with anything like the "disciplines" or "spheres" and their various equivalents in WoD games work like these, often with much more exclusivity in spell effects and types and much less redundancy than "class" based magics
There's of course alongside the "attack type" you mention OP (e.g. Touch spells, ranged spells, sympathetic spells etc...), there was also the even crunchier kind of classifications though, in AD&D you could also class spells according to what sort of saving throws they prompted, so you had:
Save types:
Save Vs. Death
Save Vs. Wands
Save Vs. Petrification
Save Vs. Fear
Save Vs. Will
Save Vs. Reflex
Save Vs. Fortitude
These would generally be available to any of the prior schools or classes just so none of them had a monopoly or could be easily/reliably countered if an enemy specialised in a particular school or class.
From this there is finally the "damage type" of direct damage spells, which are often just ported over from the main non-magical damage system, so you've got things like:
Damage type:
Necrotic
Fire
Blunt
Peircing
Aggravated
etc...
While sometimes there's things in these damage types that seem like they would be linked to specific classes or elements or schools, this is rarely ever the case.
>>44432799
Divination. Wish spells don't fall in any of those categories either.
Sense
Strengthen
Restore
Control
Destroy
Create
Transform
>>44432799
my group essentially just ripped off the Elder Scrolls games' magic when we were fleshing out the skillset
>>44432799
Divination seems to be the big one missing. I guess you could shoehorn it into Enhancement, but it's kind of a stretch.
>>44432799
>The three primaries
Creation
Destruction
Transformation
>The three secondaries
Preservation
Observation
Communication
>>44432799
>Can anyone think of any spell that wouldn't fall under this or any category I'm missing?
Transmutation: converting a target into something else. it's not an enhancement when you turn thoughts into objects or vice versa
>>44443723
>Manipulation: Spells which change something about the target that isn't inherently positive or negative. Such as location, color, make up, etc. teleportation, transmuting into gold, etc.
>>44439179
Wish spells are manipulation spells that basically target the entirety of reality.
>>44432799
Magic exists. Mage's cut it up into schools to help focus on one aspect, but magic itself is not separated into schools. It just exists.
The schools have overlap, they have gaps between schools where spells exist that are related to known spells but are fundamentally outside the known school system. There may even be entire schools as yet undiscovered that exist in the great pool of magic.
Elder Scrolls gets it pretty right. Mage's are natural philosophers. They're doing their best but they still don't have the objective answers to classification and make mistakes. But they're still sort of right.
>>44444964
Ok.
>>44444906
That's really any spell. Why not consider it a metamagic spell that lets you improvise any spell effect you want. The effect might fall into any of several schools depending on what it is.
>>44444906
How so? Spell grant you wish but doesn't fit any of the categories itself. Manipulation is defined too mechanistically as any change that doesn't affect hitpoints or stats. For example, alchemy regarded transmutation of iron into gold as positive change of metalic quality.
>>44432799
>most general
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
or, if you want to go even more general:
>Spells (targetted magic)
>Rituals (untargetted magic)
But that's almost too hazy and can create a lot of arguments.
Magic can be diveded up into where it comes from, which depends on the setting. From yourself, from the enviroment, from the various gods.
In the end though, all magic does one of 5 things: Create, control, change, perceive, destroy.
after that...things can get weird, depends on the setting.
