What about Pheonix animagi? Does no one ever think about Pheonix animagi anymore?

 

That your second animagi form is a Pheonix is irrelevant when your third and fourth is an Hydra and a Basilisk

 

So I asked this question because I was planning a story where I change the functionality of magic. To explain my changes I will go off an analogy that Taure already drew- cars.

Magical Core: the Magical core would be like a gas tank. Your core will contain all your magic and determines how much magic you can have at any given time. However, the magical core can act like a muscle. The more you practice strenuous magic, the more it will grow. That being said, some people have a stronger base and a higher ceiling that their magical core can rise to.

Wandwork/Incantations/Intent: this would be the wheel of our hypothetical car. The wand movements and incantations control how the magic functions.

Emotion: Emotion would be the engine or, more precisely, the horsepower. This determines how powerful each individual spell can be. This is where I think that my idea of magic would differ from other magical core ideas. Each spell in my story will derive its power from the emotion used to fuel it. With the exception of a spell like the Patronus that uses a happy memory, all spells will be fueled by the emotion the caster chooses. The stronger the emotion, the more powerful the spell. For example, Voldemort might choose hatred and he powers his spells by his hatred for others. Dumbledore might choose guilt and he fuels his spells with the guilt he feels for Ariana's death.

Efficiency: This is like the MPG of a car. It determines how much magic you can cast in relation to magic power. Magical efficiency will be something you can practice and improve on.

So let's see how this works. Let's take two wizards and give them some hypothetical numbers to make this more clear.

1. Ron: 100 Magical Core, 10% efficiency, emotion: envy
2. Hermione: 75 Magical Core, 40% efficiency, emotion: discovery

So let hypothetical say that casting a stunner requires 10 Magic Power. (That's absurd I know but lets use this for the sake of round numbers.

Hermoine will cast the spell at the expense of 6 Magical Power. Ron will cast the spell at the expense of 9 Magical Power. Now despite the fact that Ron has more magic, Hermoine's superior skill allows her to overcome her disadvantage as she can cast 12 stunners where as Ron only 9. Let's say that Hermoine's 'discovery', or love of discovering knowledge, overpowers Ron's envy, then if the two spells clash, Hermoine's is more powerful.

The emotion will not alter the energy required to cast the spell. Emotion only alters the potency of the spell.

This is only a fledgling idea so I am open to DLP's notorious criticism.

 

Catharsis - Nuhuh.

I believe the whole premise was to write a fic full of cliches, that was the one fic that actually convinced me it's not the terrible ideas that are bad, it's the terrible writing that almost always accomplishes them.

I tend to prefer to blame bad writing for bad fics, as opposed to bad ideas.

Edit: Ryz, I think the point you are missing here is that magic is magical because it is mysterious. The minute you have it fully understandable, it loses its charm. A good question to ask yourself is, what does this magical model do for your fic? How does it make it better writing?

 

Look up. All the criticism you were looking for is in all the posts that followed the opening one. :facepalm

 

Ryz, your take on HP magic is bad and your math is worse. There are eleven nines in one hundred, not nine, so Hermione is only ahead by one.

 

...the emotion thing is pretty bad. Don't do that, man. It's too simplistic. I know power of love is a thing in canon, and so is the Patronus, but those should be the exception, not the norm.

The math, the magical core...why? What are you trying to accomplish with this? Or is this just a rationalization of JK's kinda vague system and a way to fill a couple hundred words with neat math?

 

Magical cores, Hermione wank, Ron bashing and an emotion called Discovery. All the makings of a modern-day classic this one is.


Rowling's magic system isn't all that vague imo. How good/powerful a wizard/witch is, seems to depend on how well they understand a particular spell(Harry with the patronus), branch (McGonagall with transfiguration or Voldemort with the dark arts) or just magic as a whole in general(Dumbledore and even Harry to some extent). The deeper the understanding the better the results.

 

Vague in the sense that there are spells like, IIRC, the summoning charm that have entire books dedicated to them, and we have little idea what is written there.

Why the wand movements are important? There are some pretty good theories in DLP, but it went unspecified in the books, just as which of them were good for one type or another of spell.

The understanding part is obvious, but what is supposed to be understood is vague.

 

JK never mentioned magical cores pertaining to a person. You are either born with magic or not. Your "power" in my opinion, depends on your will mental strength (will, focus, and imagination), how attuned you are to magic in general ( how much you use it and how long you have been using it), and knowledge.

In FF, a magical core is like chakra for naruto. A well of power to draw on, and when use up it drains your physical strength and health. I hate stories where harry is passing out every other chapter from "magical exhaustion" or core becomes the size of merlins'.

 

Any time an author gets into an explanation where they try to manufacture some sort of scientific system of how magical power works and why someone is so much more powerful than everyone else the story just stalls. It's become the new shopping trip/Gringott's stop.

 

Well, I always thought of it as magical capacity rather than power level. Magic just is, you don't have to question it since it's the opposite of logic and is based more on belief.

If I were to get into scientific textbook definition I'd summarize it like this:

Magic is an energy that surrounds us. It is a renewable resource that gets stronger in areas where it is used often, thereby making muggle technology in the area weaker.

But if magic can be given a textbook definition it doesn't really count as magic does it?

 

The biggest problem I see here is just how boring your magical system is. Magical cores? Seen it. Wandwork, incantations, intent? Seen it. Powered by emotions? Seen it. Efficiency? Now you're just pulling from Naruto.

As others have mentioned, how all of this plays into your story is more important than the actual mechanics of the magic.

It's seems far more pragmatic to just use what JKR already has (as vague as it, to some degree, is), and build from there. With that you can just assume the reader knows how the magic works, and focus on developing an interesting plot.

What you've come up with isn't particularly revolutionary, or interesting, so why bother shoehorning it into your story? Obviously, if there's a reason plot wise that you need this system, I can understand, but otherwise...

 

this is literary my first post since I registered here, which was a while ago. I'm terrified.


I actually like the idea of magic being like a muscle. This however is also not particularly novel (However, it's been a while since I've read a story that used this if at all).

I think if anyone wants to make somebody exhausted and too tired to cast magic properly as a plot point in their story wouldn't it make more sense to make them mentally exhausted? Some things can be pretty tiring and trying to a mental state of a person.

Other than that, if you really want to go through with this, I will advise not to put actual numbers into your story.

Edit: What I mean by that is using it as a background explanation for yourself rather than putting an actual theoretical explanation into the story.

(I think by using discovery as an emotion you mean curiosity/thirst for knowledge?)

 

How are wizards going to be able to tell the difference between the 'size' and the 'efficiency'? Especially if E is just E% discount off of the cost of the spell?

I mean, a wizard with a core of 50, but 50% efficiency can cast an equal number of spells as a wizard with a c100 e0. It makes things extra complicated, and doesn't seem like it would add much except a several paragraph long explanation from Hermione. Probably about how Purebloods tend to have a larger core, but muggleborns have a higher efficiency rating, and therefore they are all as good as each other and nobody is special after all!

Also, whilst I like the idea that someone could specialise in spells that require a certain mindset (hope, envy, discovery), rather than a certain class (transfiguration, hexes, charms), I don't like the idea of hard-coding it into each wizard. It becomes very easy to slip into character bashing - of course Ron's best emotion is Envy, rather than bravery (following a classic hero and a witch everyone lauds as the best thing since sliced bread into danger, repeatedly, because they are his friends). Of course Dumbledore's would be 'manipulation'.

I don't actively hate cores as an idea, but I'm not sure they're needed, and they aren't canon.

I don't know about you, but when I started learning to drive, I'd come home, have the sandwich I made before the lesson, and go and pass out. The mental exertion of having to concentrate that much for two or three hours at a time completely wiped me out.

'Magical exhaustion' could be similar. It isn't that your magic has ran out, but that you're tired from doing it. Your wand motions start to get sloppy, you don't picture things perfectly in your head, and you don't use perfect pronunciation.

 

I've always been sceptical of mental exhaustion as a replacement for magical exhaustion, mostly because with a few exceptions (such as the Patronus) there appears to be no (active) mental component of most spells. Magic is mentally exhausting to master in the first place, requiring intelligence, discipline and dedication, but once you've mastered a piece of magic you appear to be able to cast it effortlessly.

 

What about Hermione and her patronus charm? She definitly knew the spell and probably understood it. However in DH she is shown to have trouble casting it.

 

Fair enough, what you've said is reasonable, and doesn't break canon.

But still, I don't think it would be unacceptable to say that extended, high level casting would tire you out. Going back to my driving analogy - I can now drive without having to sleep for several hours at the end. But I still wouldn't want to do a two hour commute before and after work, even though I was nearly on that with public transport. If you look around on the motorway, there's signs up reminding you to take a break every hour or so.

But just driving around town, going to the shops, dropping a letter off, I can get home and carry on like normal. Much like you would with spells - the housework, and your daily job spells wouldn't be too extreme. But you go out and cast spells you wouldn't normally, for several hours, and you might want to go and sit in a quiet room for a while.

Learning the patronus did take it out of Harry. And whilst that might not have purely been the spellwork - the pretend dementor's aura and the fainting might have had something to do with it too - he did only have a few goes each time. I don't have book 5 with me, but does anyone have anything on Harry teaching the patronus to the DA?

 

I tend to explain exhaustion from casting as plain old physical fatigue. While the wand is focusing the magic, the wizard is still acting as a conduit for it. The more magic you channel, the more fatigued you become.

----

And magical cores are easy to explain: You lick a magical person, and they taste one way, but when you've worn away the outer layer, the core is a different flavor.

It's like a gobstopper... that can beg to be freed, and might display accidental magic when you don't untie it.

 

I don't see why it needs to be as specific as physical fatigue. I think I agree with Taure that it's mentally exhausting to master, but I don't see why it's not mentally fatiguing to continue.

It's a pet peeve of mine when (cores or otherwise) magic is described as blackout inducing but I don't think it should be something that doesn't make you tired. Tiredness should be a perfectly valid and perfectly normal part of magic use. I think of it in the same way that driving is for a muggle. After a while yes it's relatively effortless, but if you spend your whole day driving you're going to be pretty tired at the end of it, especially if it's not what you're used to doing all day.

Likewise, a magical fight should be shattering. Just like a physical one would be, due to the emotional burden and adrenaline. In Taure's first post he talks about cores being analogous to a muggle using up their muggleness, or thereabouts. And I really like that. It stands to reason that things should be tiring for wizards like they are for muggles and it's the circumstance/behaviour that'll make a wizard tired - you can just remove the actual magic from the equation.

It's not always so simple to factorise it into whatever categories: physical, mental, emotional etc.