So I was reading Brandon Sanderson on the topic of building magic systems here. Brandon Sanderson is famous for the originality of his magic systems, but at the same time I feel that this originality is somewhat skin deep. The content is different, but the underlying dynamics, and the way it sits in the story as a whole, is the same: very traditional fantasy stuff, influenced by tabletop RPGs. Sanderson is actually a prime example of this, as his worldbuilding reeks of balanced character classes.

So I felt the need to write something against it. Something praising an entirely different kind of magic system, one completely divorced from the tropes and conventions of RPGs. And, of course, the Harry Potter magic system was a prime example of this. It's actually been about 4 years since I wrote anything long about the HP magic system (other than Canon+, which was more about fanon than canon). Anyway, without further ado:

In Praise of the HP Magic System


I disagree with almost everything written by Sanderson on this matter. I think following these rules will lead to boring magic systems. They might look original on the surface (e.g. Mistborn system) but in the end they rely on the same kind of dynamics rooted in tabletop RPGs - that of ability and cost, and almost always oriented around combat abilities.

It was for this reason I loved (and love) Harry Potter so much. JK Rowling clearly comes from a different background to most fantasy writers. She's not a tabletop RPG player. As such, her magic system is totally different - not just on the surface, but in the underlying mechanics, and the role magic takes in the story.

For me, the Harry Potter magic system is the paradigm for good story writing, not tabletop RPGs - despite its bad reputation for being vague and contradictory. I think the greatness of the HP system comes down to three parts:

One: Magic cancels Magic

Sanderson outlines how magic should be used to create and resolve conflict. And while the advice he gives may be good to reach that end, I think he is mistaken to identify that as a desirable end in the first place. Conflict, and resolution of conflict, shouldn't emerge from the rules of magic or the world.

Conflict should come from characters - their choices, their beliefs and opinions, their different skills. Resolution should accordingly follow from the interaction of characters. It is wholly unsatisfying for a stipulated rule of magic to bring about conflict resolution. Especially as more often than not, this is a random value attached to a character, often from birth. There's absolutely nothing interesting about someone who was just born more powerful than others utilising that power.

Harry Potter captures this idea perfectly. As a principle of fantasy writing, one character explicitly outlines it at the start of book six: "The problem is, the other side has magic too." The magical characters, while they can use magic to solve all mundane problems non-magical people struggle with, cannot use magic to solve magical problems - because magic is also opposing them. Rather, magical problems must be solved by the human factor - by choices made by people.

It is in this way that Rowling gets away with having a magical system that can apparently do anything (with the arbitrary exceptions of creating gold, food, and 3 other unknown things - I suspect souls, and knowledge, and magic itself), in terms of breaking everything we know about physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. A single, competent, HP wizard in a world of Muggles could get away with anything, and could do anything. But in a world of wizards, they exist to cancel out each others' powers.

This is also why I feel the end of Deathly Hallows isn't as bad as some people say. Lots of people see this as the worst kind of Deus Ex Machina. And from a world-building perspective, they're right. But from a character perspective? From the point of view of character, the end of Deathly Hallows is the perfect culmination of the series. And given that conflict should be about character, it makes a satisfying resolution (at least for me).

(Incidentally, one has to sympathise with Rowling on the Deus Ex Machina front. It was a Catch-22 situation. If she had broadcast the method of Voldemort's defeat in earlier books (and with the level of attention the books received, someone would have figured it out), the ending would have been predictable and unsatisfying. If she pulls a previously unknown aspect of the world out of nowhere to solve the issue *cough*wandlore*cough* it looks like a Deus Ex Machina. No-win scenario.)

Two: Skill and Power

Which brings us to point number two. Whatever the surface features of a magic system, almost all traditional fantasy follows one kind of pattern: the use of magic is decided by two factors: inborn power/innate ability, and learned skill. More often than not, the protagonist falls into the "magical brute" category: someone born with great power, but lacking in subtlety or delicacy.

Not only is this "power + skill" system now awfully dull, I believe it yet again points the story in the wrong direction: towards arbitrary parameters and away from human factors. How many conflicts have you read which revolved around a character having a set amount of magic at their disposal, and running out/tiring? For me this is very dull. It would be like having a car chase decided by one guy having more gas in the tank than another. No. We want a car chase to be decided by the driver with more skill, or guts, or cunning enough to cheat the situation and tilt the odds.

Once again, the Harry Potter series is extremely aware of this situation. I am convinced that one of the causes of Harry Potter's enduring popularity is its focus on character. No magical fight is ever resolved by a character tiring or running out of magic. Nor is it ever solved by one simply having more gas in the tank than another. Rather, Harry prevails because of his characteristics - a stubborn refusal to give up, a frightening level of hardiness, a strong moral core, and more often than not friends and allies he has made.

Moreover, the Harry Potter system is much more aesthetically pleasing. In contrast to the "raw ability decided at birth" system of mainstream fantasy, in Harry Potter ability with magic - and thus, power - corresponds directly to skill, which itself is a result of intelligence and hard work.

In almost all fantasy you have a division between the warrior class - the dumb brutes - and the academic class - the clever subtle ones, who lack raw power. A leftover of RPGs, I guess. But Harry Potter breaks this convention. In Harry Potter, magical ability is a direct result of mental prowess, knowledge and hard work. The academics inherit the earth. The thinking characters have the greatest ability with magic: Dumbledore and Voldemort are geniuses, Hermione Granger is pretty smart. So was Snape, and Lily Potter, and the Marauders are said to have been pretty inspired in their time too. Meanwhile, Harry, despite his heroic attributes, is only slightly above average in his actual use of magic - in contrast to most fantasy, where his raw willpower and pluck would translate into powerful but inelegant magical ability.

Once again, this aspect of the world allows Rowling to get away with magic that can do almost anything. While magic can do almost anything, it takes skill to use, and is very difficult. Magic can provide almost everything a person needs: warmth, shelter, clothing, transport, security/defence, water, food (though you can't create food from nothing, you can use it to acquire food, and you can also use it to expand and change food you already have), even entertainment and communication. However, while magic can do these things, most wizards cannot. People are restricted in their mastery of magic, having specialisations, thus necessitating an economy. Only the skilled/intelligent are able to do all these things for themselves.

Three: Costless Creative Magic

And that brings us to the third and final point. In almost all fantasy magic is mainly destructive in use. Magic is a powerful force, but what do all the wizards and mages and sorcerers use it for? Well, they primarily use it to solve the problems created by the existence of magic in the first place! Namely, evil magical beings/creatures and magical people who use their power unscrupulously. The bad guys use magic destructively to try to conquer, the good guys use magic destructively to resist the bad guys. Occasionally you might find a sense of wonder with magic, but this is almost always religious in nature - magic as a gift to be used wisely and only seriously, not for frivolous ends.

This is tied up with the idea of cost. Almost all magical systems involve a cost to using magic. Why must magic be used wisely and seriously? Because it is tiring to use and can only be used sparingly. Magical abilities are like slot machines: pay the price, get a magical effect. And why do you need a cost? Well, otherwise all these people using destructive magic could use it endlessly and without limit, and the world would end!

Right?

This focus on destructive power and cost is another thing overturned by Harry Potter. In the HP world magic is used for everything, and mundane things at that. Washing up, sending messages, entertainment, transport - everything. Moreover, its use in combat is really a very small part of its use in general. We get a slightly twisted view, as we only see the adventures of Harry and then a war situation, but magic in general is used not to destroy but to create. It's useful. And, in what I think is a great unification, the same magic that is useful and creative can also be used powerfully in combat (Dumbledore, for instance, fights Voldemort with only one directly offensive spell - the rest is what you might call "general magic" - charms and transfiguration). In this way HP wizards aren't magical slot machines: magic is unified, understandable (by wizards, not readers), and knowledge, understanding and skill are what backs up magic use, not the ability to pay the price and kick out a spell.

That takes us to what is perhaps the most different part of the HP magic system: the absence of cost. No wizard in the series ever tires from the use of magic, not even massively repeated use of powerful magic. The only cost involved in HP magic is the time and work it takes to acquire skill in its use. After that you can use it as much as you like. And this is necessary for a world in which magic is ubiquitous and necessary for everything. Further, the HP wizards are stunningly blase about their use of magic. It's not a treasured gift. It's not something to be used wisely. For them, it's just a fact of life - a tool. How refreshing.

And once again, we see how you can have costless magic and not break the world. Once again, it comes down to two things: both sides have costless magic, cancelling each other out, and the use of magic is limited by skill, which not everyone possesses. With a few extra limits built into the world (such as a severe limit on the range of wizards - no one's going to be summoning the moon any time soon), the world remains balanced, even though you have a system without limits of the kind Sanderson speaks about.

Thoughts?

So, there's my defence of the HP magic system, and by extension other systems like HP. There is more to be said on this matter, I feel, especially on the linguistic focus of the HP system, as opposed to the physical focus of others.

For example, people often say "how could you cast a spell that effects Muggles but not Squibs, if Squibs and Muggles are physically, biologically and magically the same?". This is a problem for magical systems based on a physical conception of magic, but not for one based on a linguistic idea. You can cast spells on Squibs but not Muggles because we can make the distinction with our language. Even though it's a social factor, you can still cast a spell on it. Just like a job position.

Similarly, when people discuss the shield charm we often see comments discussing what specific things the shield charm can and can't block, like a filter. I remember a discussion about using shield charms to protect from nuclear bombs, once. An argument was made that the shield charm isn't opaque, so it doesn't block light. Therefore a wizard couldn't use a shield charm to protect himself against electromagnetic radiation. This is an argument made on the physical conception of magic: the shield as a physical filter. "X can go through, Y can't". But under the linguistic conception of magic, the shield charm is much more flexible. It simply blocks that which is harmful. The incantation translates to "I protect", and I'd say that's exactly what it does. It stops harmful things, whatever they may be (obviously, its ability to do so depends on how well it is cast - Harry's shield charm varied a lot over the years).

But that is perhaps a different discussion - the nature of HP magic in-world, rather than its use as a storytelling device. Which is why I didn't include it within the main argument.

Anyway, do feel free to share your thoughts on anything I've written here, or anything Sanderson wrote.

 

I love Sanderson's books, and his power systems are undeniably awesome, but with the arguable exception of Elantris (and possibly the Stormlight Archive, since we still don't know that much about it yet), I don't think he's written anything that I would consider magic. I don't think of Kelsier, from Mistborn, as a wizard anymore than I do Luke Skywalker.

The flexibility of the HP magic is both a gift and a curse, to my mind. While it is pretty original, and allows for more invention and wonder than a lot of fantasy, it does also allow for the kind of asspulls that we do see from time to time in canon (and much more so in fanfiction); character gets into a situation, then does some magic and it's resolved. However, that's more a problem with the writer than the magic.

 

Completely agree. That is while I love Dresden Files, the magic in the series doesn't feel..well, magical. It is balanced, logical and etc, but ultimately, dull.

 

I think you're giving JKR a lot of credit where it isn't due, and I think a lot of the praise you're giving her work is based on your own experiences with HP fanfiction rather than her work itself.

As a magic system, I think that Harry Potter's is absolutely terrible. It makes no sense, and was never really meant to. What magic can and can't do seems completely arbitrary. There are no why's or how's to speak of, despite the fact that the main body of the Harry Potter series is based around children going to school to learn magic. If we're speaking of magic systems, then it seems an incredible failing that despite this setting we as readers, at the end of it all, still have absolutely no fucking idea how magic works, or even how most spells work (barring a few like the Patronus).

Magical power is again completely arbitrary in Harry Potter. I disagree almost entirely with your praise of how JKR handles this. The only difference between her story and the other fantasy stories you mention is that her protagonist isn't a powerful character. However, characters like Dumbledore and Voldemort clearly fall into this category of "born with it" magical power. In that sense, Harry Potter is no different than any other series.

In the real world, things happen for a reason. This is why most authors building a magic system use a sort of cost = effect reasoning. It makes their magic system understandable, because we can compare it to our own real world experiences. JKR didn't do this, and I don't really see it as a strength of her magic system. Again, it makes her system inexplicable. If magic is so easy, why can't everyone be good at it? Why can't everyone use every spell? What's the point of knowing lots of magic if just one strong spell used over and over again will get the job done (killing curse)?

You can argue that JKR shows us why knowing lots of magic is good in fights like Voldemort vs. Dumbledore, but I would reply that she simply tied both their hands in that fight to make it more interesting. When there are spells out there that an idiot like Pettigrew can cast capable of blowing up a whole street, what's the point of learning how to trap someone in a water fountain when there is a spell to blow up half the atrium? Especially when that trapped individual can just escape?

JKR barely had a magic system, and it went something like this: Magic does what I want it to do to suit the plot. The whole "costless creative magic" that you're talking about was never taken to its logical conclusion in the stories. If magic can do just about anything, then why didn't we see wizards doing just about anything? Instead they're sitting in classrooms or offices doing paperwork and going about their humdrum lives much like the rest of us.

Was the Harry Potter series better because its magic system was so flighty? I would argue that yes, it was. It's not a very cerebral tale, but it was good nonetheless.

Does the Harry Potter magic system lend itself to providing lots of opportunities for fanfiction? Absolutely. This site is just a bit of proof of that.

But I really don't think we should be giving JKR a big pat on the back for creating a breakthrough in fantasy magic. "Wave a wand and it happens, because" is not really a system at all.

 

There are a couple different points in there.

One of them, which is I think an irreconcilable difference, is a disagreement over what the HP magic system contains. No, I don't think Dumbledore or Voldemort have any more magical power than Neville Longbottom. I think the difference between these people is entirely mental, just as the difference between Isaac Newton and myself is purely mental. Mental characteristics are sufficient to explain differences in brilliance.

But like I say, I suspect this will be an unproductive point of disagreement. So let's focus on other things.

1. You say that JKR's system fails because it is incomprehensible to the reader. This is, I suppose, Sanderson's position too. The point that I was making is that it doesn't matter. Magic serves plot and character. It's not an end in itself, but a part of the greater story. Now, you want to avoid contradictions and so on, as they destroy reader immersion. But should the reader be able to understand magic as the characters do?

No. Magic, in the Harry Potter world, is a massive body of knowledge such that it takes 7 years of education to become competent. From references to magical laws and so on, we are supposed to imagine it equivalent to Muggle sciences in its complexity, difficulty, and breadth. Not only would it be impossible for an author to create an imaginary world in the same level of detail as our understanding of the natural world, it would also be terrible storytelling to turn your book into a kind of "magical physics" textbook.

The important part is not that the reader understands magic. Even in the most detailed stories this isn't true - we just get a glance. The important part is for the reader to feel that the characters understand magic.

2. The second point of disagreement may be another one which is impossible to navigate, as it comes down again to a disagreement over the contents of the HP magic system. Mainly, you think HP magic is easy.

In Philosopher's Stone, we're told that magic is a lot more than incantations and waving of wands. We hear about magical theory - not in detail, but there are references to it throughout - all the time. These references are intended to build up an impression of a complex theoretical subject with practical application, like engineering. All the people who are best with magic - Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, Hermione, etc - are marked by their intelligence and their understanding of magical theory. I think this is more than enough evidence to point to the idea that a) knowledge of magical theory is essential for the casting of magic and b) this theory is difficult to understand, and requires intelligence.

So that's why not everyone is Dumbledore.

3. Why can't wizards do anything if magic can do anything? Already discussed - because magic is hard, and not many wizards are of the ability where they can do anything. Further, your discussion of why magical fights weren't more, for a lack of a better word, epic: you bring up Pettrigrew's spell. A big explosion - very nice. But an explosion is just fire and force. Mundane physical things that magic can deal with easily. Big explosions are not good ways to deal with wizards. You need to fight magic with magic. I much prefer that the most powerful magic is subtle.

 

I'll say this: I still appreciate the Harry Potter series in spite of its magic system, not because of it. Magic systems like the One Power in The Wheel of Time or Dresden magic are far more appealing to me.

 

I never said that they had more "magical power." As has been discussed on these forums again and again, no such thing is ever said to exist in the books. However, there is something that makes Dumbledore and Voldemort inherently better at magic than the average man. Call it whatever you want, they're not the greatest just because they kept their head stuck in a book all day and practiced waving their wands around more than anyone else.

This doesn't really describe a system of magic though. Yes we know there is magic. Yes we know they go to school to learn it. Do we know how it works or why? What can we describe of Harry Potter magic with any real certainty? This hardly seems a system at all to me.

It serves the purpose of the Harry Potter story, but again, I don't think JKR should be receiving high praise for coming up with this sort of blanket deus ex machina plot device.

If any witch or wizard can learn to do magic, then yes, it is easy. I'm not sure what you define as easy. Clearly our definitions differ.

But why? Why do you need to deal with wizards with more than just explosions? Quirrel tries to drop Harry off a broom to kill him in PS. How magical is that? And the thing is, we're led to believe it would have worked had Snape not stepped in to stop him.

JKR uses magic to suit the needs of her plot, and nothing more. Taure, I think your magic system is much better than JKR's but they're just not the same. JKR didn't write it like that, you did.

 

I don't think you can reasonably claim intelligence has anything to do with control of magic when Tom Riddle was actively and maliciously using it before he turned 11. He might have been smart, sure, even a genius, but he was still just a kid - and one with literally no magical education whatsoever.

 

I just don't see how that argument works at all <_<

Obviously it's a kind of scale. The more complex the magic, the more intelligence required to understand it. That 11 year olds can use some magic doesn't mean that 11 year olds could use any and all magic.

Which relates to this:

The ability of all witches and wizards to perform the simplest of magic (though the existence of the Kwikspell course points to this not being strictly true) says nothing about their ability to perform more complex magic.

Most wizards and witches are incapable of correctly performing OWL level magic, from what Fred and George said about them. Which goes along with the OWLs-GCSEs analogy: a very large percentage of the population get lower than C grades at GCSEs.

 

I'd say the very opposite. We are given no indication of anyone able to consciously control the onset of accidental magic bar Tom Riddle, whose greatest trait is his brilliance.

On top of that, the onset is almost all he's able to do. All the examples he gives of what he can do are vague things resulting from specific desires. Despite his great mind, without knowledge, experience and a wand he's still basically nothing.

 

So HP magic is like becoming Olympic athlete? Every human can become one but only very few can actually do it. Instead most people struggles to run 1 mile.

 

More like becoming a physicist.

 

I think the main problem with HP magic can be seen in all the problems we have just discussing it. We simply have no idea exactly how it works, we have a basic idea of what its limitations are (we only get 2 of 5 though) with regards to conjuration/transfiguration, but for the rest of magic we really have no idea.

Now I know that it doesn't make sense for JK to turn her books into text books on how exactly magic works, but at the very least she could intersperse through times in the classroom/studying some of the more fundamental details of magic. Taure in relatively small essays is able to give a detailed account of magic and its inner workings. I don't see why JK couldn't have squeezed similar details in fits and spurts throughout her seven very large books.

As for the claim that using HP magic is all about being a genius and jumping through mental hoops to do something that doesn't mesh with canon incidents such as Harry's use of spells from Snape's textbook without any study or understanding of the supposedly incredibly complex theories behind magic.

The other main problem I have is that the society that we are shown does not seem to me at all related to such a powerful, versatile, and most importantly, cost free magic system. So many of the things done in HP could be done better with a little creative use of magic. That's not even getting into the whole problem of economics in a world where you can practically do or create anything you want. You might say to this that only really smart people can do magic and just like most people suck in high school so do most people suck at OWL and NEWT magic, but that fails because as most know, people do not suck at high school or college through lack of brains but rather through lack of effort.

Personally I think JK never cared or thought about her magic system or the consequences of it, because she was writing a character driven story. I actually agree with many of Taure's points on why a magic system like HP's could be good. The keyword though is "could", while this may inherently be a good magical system, I feel it falls flat on its face in the implementation phase

 

Harry Potter's magic system is great BECAUSE it's vague. It leaves room for personal interpretation. There is nothing better, in my opinion, than coming across a fic with original magical quirks that don't contradict the canon system.

 

Meh. I don't think you can call Harry Potter's magic a 'system'. It's about as much a magical system as Doctor Who's 'science' is a 'system'.

That is, whatever JKR happens to need at the time, can be achieved, if only the characters work out that it can be done. Oh look, here's Hermione to the rescue again.

 

The biggest problem with the HP magic 'system' was that it was pieced together as each new book was written. JKR didn't sit down and plan out any kind of system to her magic; she just made it up as she went along, which is why the magic introduced in the later books tends to form plot holes in the earlier ones.

Also, the introduction of the slashing spell Sectumsempra in Book 6 shows that there is no magical theory behind casting most spells. You simply say the words, wave your wand, and poof: magic happens. In HBP, we learn that Harry has no idea what the spell does before he casts it at Draco. The sum total of information in Snape's book is a caption "For Enemies" and the incantation itself. There is no other information, not even any wand movements, and Harry notes that he needs to test it out to see what it does. Then, when Harry and Draco are duking it out, Harry just waves his wand wildly, screams the word, and Draco gets sliced by an invisible sword. This seems to suggest that most magic use is about how good your memory is, not about how intelligent you are. Maybe creating new spells is about being smart, but doing magic is easy as Abracadabra.

 

Except by the time of Half Blood Prince Harry has had five and a bit years of magical education, so knows and understands a fair amount about magic. He may not be a genius, but he's still an above average student. On top of that, his best area is Dark magic - which the Sectumsempra spell falls into. In the area of DADA, he's better than Hermione. He knows and understands the theory behind the Dark Arts quite well, I would imagine.

I dare say Harry could do exactly the same wand movement and incantation at age 11 and nothing - or something very different - would occur.

 

I do not play RPGs, and I do not read Fantasy (except for Tolkien and HP). The kind of role playing that HP utterly fails is Stanislavski's "Не верю!" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislavski's_system#Magic_if). When I read the HP canon, if I put myself into the place and time of any character, knowing only as much about the future of the story as that character knows and being able to do only as much magic as that character was shown to be able to do, I see that character completely changing Wizarding Britain in a week, tops. That world cannot exists the way it is described because it's nuts. So either it must be completely different, or, as soon as you introduce a single not crazy character into it, it changes: everyone looks down, realizes they're running on air, and falls. There absolutely isn't a Watsonian explanation for the way Wizarding Britain is. There isn't supposed to be. It's Wonderland. It works because all the characters are nuts. The dissonance is caused by them being described as human. They're not any more human than Humpty Dumpty.

Richard Branson's nephew receives a Hogwarts letter. He goes to Diagon Alley, and take a look around. He tells his uncle. His uncle loans him an advance on his pocket money for the next year. Gary Stu buys, lock, stock, and barrel, all of Wizarding Britain, a horrifically inefficient economy, ravaged by war, consisting of only a thousand adults, most of whom cannot create much value or reach any significant market. He pays his uncle back a week later, after having a wizard use a little transfiguration on some pencil cores.

 

As an aside, I think we actually do know a lot more about HP magic than we think we do.

Certainly we've never had Harry Dresden speak directly to the reader and explain it. Nor can we explain the nature of HP magic in one paragraph, from its source to its use, like you can with the magic of other fantasy books. (I actually consider the latter an advantage, as it avoids both painfully bad pseudo-philosophy and makes it more like the real world, where you can't give a nice neat one-paragraph explanation about the world).

But we do know a lot by examples. I mean, consider the issue above of magical theory affecting spell outcomes. Nowhere in the books do we have anything like the statement "General understanding of magical theory impacts spell outcomes". And yet, we have a surprising number of facts:

1. Magic is difficult, with many wizards not able to master intermediate magic, and advanced magic being only used by a few.

2. We're told that magic is more than wand motions and incantations.

3. All the greatest wizards in the books are described as intelligent, and all intelligent people are capable of more advanced magic.

4. Stupid people are bad at magic. There are no stupid people who are good at magic.

5. If you practice a spell, you get better at it. Further, a class can spend weeks practising just a single spell.

6. There is a massive library devoted to magic.

7. Classes focus a lot on magical theory. Hermione, who is described as understanding the theory, is more able to cast the spells than other students such as Harry, who understands the theory less.

8. When a student is described as struggling with the theory of magic, their spellcasting also struggles - an example being Hermione in HBP, who we're told was challenged by NEWT level Transfiguration.

The inevitable conclusion of all of this seems to me to be that your ability with magic is directly related to your understanding of it, and that that understanding is difficult to obtain and involves a large quantity of knowledge. I can think of no other hypothesis to unify all this evidence. So through showing us all these individual facts, Rowling has communicated to her readers that understanding of magical theory is a crucial part of spell casting, without ever having said so.

That's a classic example of show vs. tell.

Of course, some readers just see the absence of an explicit explanation and assume there is none. Thinking that magic is just incantations and wand movements, yet seeing that some people struggle with magic, they declare the system incoherent.