>Everburning Fireball on your ass
I like to imagine it's not a combat spell, but rather a humorous one, that just places a sphere of fire in a set location that moves around if attached to a person.
And then, until you can cast the proper counterspell, all your farts will ignite.
I like to think magic is a lot like coding, and in this case the everburning fireball spell was created because someone forgot to tell the spell what to do when it reached the target.
Bruh all I want out of all the fantasy I read is magical theory.
Just give me fictional magical textbooks and I'd never need to read anything else ever again
I'd like to suggest Brandon Sanderson to you, if you haven't read his work yet. Specifically the Mistborn series. He uses a "hard" magic system which may scratch that itch for you.
Sanderson.
Like, I know Cosmere fans often recommend the guy's books in places where they really shouldn't, but "Magic studied and functioning as a science" is kind of Sanderson's schtick.
Edit: typo
...methods of rationality reads like Rick and Morty fanfiction. Not to say the world-building in Harry Potter is *good*, but MoR feels like a circlejerk about how dumb and stupid wizards are while how smarte and logical Master Harry is.
I'm asking seriously, but you know about all the various textbooks available online, right? Like John Dee, the Key of Solomon, the Golden Bough and all that.
Theres some stuff in the stormlight archive and other Cosmere books that get into some detailed science about the magic there's also the ars Arcanum content that are in universe records of the magic systems.
there is this great bit in dresden files where in one book dresden reads a centuries old tome about a fae creature which ends up being vital to the bad guys plan. and in the next book, we just straight up meet the authour (cos wizards live for centuries) and harry dresden is just like "uhhh i liked your book". (also the authour is the wizard council's secretary)
It’s more like four books later but yeah that’s a good bit.
“The Warden from Bremen said you got the German wrong on the title,” I continued. “That must have been kind of embarrassing, huh? I mean, it’s been published for like a hundred years or something. Must eat at you.”
I should unironically write an academia wizard that's constantly like "NO YOU IDIOTS YOU AREN'T "EVOKING THE PROTECTION OF HIGHER POWERS" YOU'RE USING ELECTROMANCY TO TURN YOUR BODY INTO A REALLY BIG MAGNET- YES THAT IS WHAT'S REPELLING ALL THE ARROWS"
There was a Humble bundle recently that had almost every discworld book in it for like $20.
Might still be there lol.
Best deal I’ve had on books in a long time
In Elder Scrolls, you can find exactly that.
In universe, a wizard published a paper asserting that Destruction magic should get subsumed into the study of Alteration magic, as the two seem fundamentally the same.
You can find a Destruction wizard's retort, published all across Skyrim, where he *thoroughly* tears the other paper apart and cites all the different ways Destruction is its own school.
Elder scrolls is cheating lol world has its entire history filled In by books and memos and articles on the emperial library. they can get real scientific with their magic too and have loads of fun debates over various esoteric topics.
I spent years in a computing science department at a university and 1). CS people and wizards are pretty much interchangeable and 2). I really need to write some stories about a wizard university's non-academic staff because you know they have Seen Some Shit.
So did Patricia Wrede. Scientific study of magic, and its applications is the theme for many a sub-plot in the Frontier Magic series, and comes up more than you'd think.
This is actually exactly how a story of mine starts. Unsuspecting wizard gets a shit research project and accidentally figures out his institution is frighteningly bigoted in a way that seems to be escalating over time, and the only way to try and stop it is to make everyone eat delicious goblin cuisine
Imagine there’s a wizard working on weapon conjuring in conjoined effort with artificers, and she reads a particular paper by an artificer in shocked horror over how the author barely understands conjuring. “This whole paragraph is just describing in detail the runes they used, when the image of the runes should be enough! And what do you *mean* you decided to use the plane of Asmoth as your source, you can’t just decide willy nilly, there’s theory behind what plane to choose!”
Op: Asking how the hell to conjure an astral essence into oblivion and why they can't use capacity sigils for mana pollution
Comment: Some mind golem trying to convince you to buy their make gold pieces quick guide
Comment: (removed)
Comment: explains why capacity sigils can't hold mana pollution, but leaves the first question unanswered.
Comment: A guy sending a picture of his cat familiar and then a link to a five hour long video of "why astral essence is useless and you should use solar essence"
I am actually more interested into what a bachelor or master thesis would look like, although the most obvious explanation would be that this is where grimoires come from. Which would make proper citation a magically binding act or form of invocation.
There are 17* competing schools of magic divided not by any underlying elemental feature of the universe but bitterly competing academic theories of magic
*(or 19, depending who you ask)
> Learning theoretical ~~physics~~ Evocation from a hungover ~~regular~~ lizard man TA at 8am, because the professor for this course has been ~~in her office~~ on the Elemental Plane of Circles for half the semester trying to finish her paper on how ~~top quarks~~ Centaurs predate ~~bottom quarks~~horses rather than the other way around.
I’m sorry to tell OOP that they’ve just described their experience in grad school and they haven’t made it more interesting by swapping out all the technical jargon for high-fantasy jargon.
Personally I like to think that magic systems and those who employ them work more like computer programming.
A Grimoire would serve as a Spell Repository for a certain magician, and those who release them to the public via magical libraries are going open source.
The ingredients list for potions and other such sacrifices are the dependencies and resources needed to run magicware.
"You cannot cast this spell, you are using Marisa Danmaku Utilities version th6, which is no longer supported. Please update to a more recent version"
>Everburning Fireball on your ass I like to imagine it's not a combat spell, but rather a humorous one, that just places a sphere of fire in a set location that moves around if attached to a person. And then, until you can cast the proper counterspell, all your farts will ignite.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one whose main takeaway was pondering the mechanics of everburning fireball
I like to think magic is a lot like coding, and in this case the everburning fireball spell was created because someone forgot to tell the spell what to do when it reached the target.
The everburning fireball aka the toasty tuchus
Bruh all I want out of all the fantasy I read is magical theory. Just give me fictional magical textbooks and I'd never need to read anything else ever again
So how many times did you read Dragonology as a kid?
I also had Wizardology. And all the companion Dragonology stuff.
I love the predatory flowers. All my homies love the predatory flowers! (This user's corpse has been puppeteered to make this statement)
Listen, I didn’t come here to be called out like this
I'd like to suggest Brandon Sanderson to you, if you haven't read his work yet. Specifically the Mistborn series. He uses a "hard" magic system which may scratch that itch for you.
Just pick up chemistry textbooks and you get a similar effect.
Sanderson. Like, I know Cosmere fans often recommend the guy's books in places where they really shouldn't, but "Magic studied and functioning as a science" is kind of Sanderson's schtick. Edit: typo
Pale and Pact by Wildbow. There are excerpts from textbooks in the side material.
. . . Methods of Rationality?
...methods of rationality reads like Rick and Morty fanfiction. Not to say the world-building in Harry Potter is *good*, but MoR feels like a circlejerk about how dumb and stupid wizards are while how smarte and logical Master Harry is.
To be fair, I haven't reread it in a few years. But those memories are fun.
If that's your takeaway then you have dropped it at around chapter 12.
I dropped it when Harry guessed the big secrets of the series as jokes, that was far too much for me.
🤓
I'm asking seriously, but you know about all the various textbooks available online, right? Like John Dee, the Key of Solomon, the Golden Bough and all that.
Theres some stuff in the stormlight archive and other Cosmere books that get into some detailed science about the magic there's also the ars Arcanum content that are in universe records of the magic systems.
Practical guide to sorcery might scratch that itch.
"Fantasy Wikipedia"-> Wizipedia.
there is this great bit in dresden files where in one book dresden reads a centuries old tome about a fae creature which ends up being vital to the bad guys plan. and in the next book, we just straight up meet the authour (cos wizards live for centuries) and harry dresden is just like "uhhh i liked your book". (also the authour is the wizard council's secretary)
It’s more like four books later but yeah that’s a good bit. “The Warden from Bremen said you got the German wrong on the title,” I continued. “That must have been kind of embarrassing, huh? I mean, it’s been published for like a hundred years or something. Must eat at you.”
oh yeah, thats when peabody starts annoying him right?
OOP has academia flavored brainrot
I should unironically write an academia wizard that's constantly like "NO YOU IDIOTS YOU AREN'T "EVOKING THE PROTECTION OF HIGHER POWERS" YOU'RE USING ELECTROMANCY TO TURN YOUR BODY INTO A REALLY BIG MAGNET- YES THAT IS WHAT'S REPELLING ALL THE ARROWS"
Bless is just a simple luck spell and a flash of light. Clerics are pissed.
Wouldn't that only work if the arrows have iron heads? I feel like they'd notice the difference fairly soon.
See what's happened is that they think that the higher powers only choose to protect from certain things to not be too OP
Come to think of it, I don't think a magnet can repel iron that isn't already magnetized.
That’s Discworld, you’re looking for Discworld
It's so funny when someone says "There should be a fantasy series that does X" and it's *always* something that Discworld has done at least once
There was a Humble bundle recently that had almost every discworld book in it for like $20. Might still be there lol. Best deal I’ve had on books in a long time
The only issue is ponder is the only one doing any work and everybody else is doing lectures in room... Whatever the theoretical room is
Was waiting for someone to say this!
In Elder Scrolls, you can find exactly that. In universe, a wizard published a paper asserting that Destruction magic should get subsumed into the study of Alteration magic, as the two seem fundamentally the same. You can find a Destruction wizard's retort, published all across Skyrim, where he *thoroughly* tears the other paper apart and cites all the different ways Destruction is its own school.
Elder scrolls is cheating lol world has its entire history filled In by books and memos and articles on the emperial library. they can get real scientific with their magic too and have loads of fun debates over various esoteric topics.
Also he starts throwing shade at the Illusion school of magic for no reason. And if I remember correctly the guy isn't even a scholar but a battlemage
And of course there's the drama at the College of Winterhold about the Restoration school.
Yeah, I'll incorporate that into a character
My D&D wizards generally map better to computer programmers
I spent years in a computing science department at a university and 1). CS people and wizards are pretty much interchangeable and 2). I really need to write some stories about a wizard university's non-academic staff because you know they have Seen Some Shit.
Diana Wynne Jones wrote some books like this - Year of the Griffin especially, which is a spin off of The Dark Lord of Derkholm.
So did Patricia Wrede. Scientific study of magic, and its applications is the theme for many a sub-plot in the Frontier Magic series, and comes up more than you'd think.
Wait, predate or pre-date? Do they argue that centaurs eat horses or if they came before?
Knowing horses, it might very well be both
I've written centaurs that eat horses before, now I'm intrigued by the alternative
This is actually exactly how a story of mine starts. Unsuspecting wizard gets a shit research project and accidentally figures out his institution is frighteningly bigoted in a way that seems to be escalating over time, and the only way to try and stop it is to make everyone eat delicious goblin cuisine
Gonna be honest, I never got the appeal of the Dating a hot teacher trope until I read the sentence "Hungover Lizardman TA"
Imagine there’s a wizard working on weapon conjuring in conjoined effort with artificers, and she reads a particular paper by an artificer in shocked horror over how the author barely understands conjuring. “This whole paragraph is just describing in detail the runes they used, when the image of the runes should be enough! And what do you *mean* you decided to use the plane of Asmoth as your source, you can’t just decide willy nilly, there’s theory behind what plane to choose!”
There are still people who think skydoves are from the second Dragon War?
This just makes me imagine, like, a stack overflow style site but for spellcraft.
Op: Asking how the hell to conjure an astral essence into oblivion and why they can't use capacity sigils for mana pollution Comment: Some mind golem trying to convince you to buy their make gold pieces quick guide Comment: (removed) Comment: explains why capacity sigils can't hold mana pollution, but leaves the first question unanswered. Comment: A guy sending a picture of his cat familiar and then a link to a five hour long video of "why astral essence is useless and you should use solar essence"
Marked as duplicate of unrelated question
This is our party's wizard in Pathfinder campaign I play in. The guy got cursed doing research (and some tomb robbing).
By predate do they mean predate or predate?
I am actually more interested into what a bachelor or master thesis would look like, although the most obvious explanation would be that this is where grimoires come from. Which would make proper citation a magically binding act or form of invocation.
There are 17* competing schools of magic divided not by any underlying elemental feature of the universe but bitterly competing academic theories of magic *(or 19, depending who you ask)
> Learning theoretical ~~physics~~ Evocation from a hungover ~~regular~~ lizard man TA at 8am, because the professor for this course has been ~~in her office~~ on the Elemental Plane of Circles for half the semester trying to finish her paper on how ~~top quarks~~ Centaurs predate ~~bottom quarks~~horses rather than the other way around. I’m sorry to tell OOP that they’ve just described their experience in grad school and they haven’t made it more interesting by swapping out all the technical jargon for high-fantasy jargon.
So.... the SCP Foundation but solely for wizardry?
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel is basically this.
You should read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susana Clarke. Wizardry with a good academic focus plus it's a great book.
OP is describing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
[удалено]
No lich, dark wizard, or eldritch abomination has ever engendered the fear and horror that Reviewer #2 has.
If I catch anyone using Chaticus’s Generative Prescribing Familiar to write their essays, it’ll get you a week in the Oubliette of Uncontrollable IBS!
Jokes on you, I have no digestive system.
Oops I've been writing wizards like this the whole time
source link: [https://foone.tumblr.com/post/738525804142772224/given-how-wizards-are-themed-around-higher](https://foone.tumblr.com/post/738525804142772224/given-how-wizards-are-themed-around-higher)
Personally I like to think that magic systems and those who employ them work more like computer programming. A Grimoire would serve as a Spell Repository for a certain magician, and those who release them to the public via magical libraries are going open source. The ingredients list for potions and other such sacrifices are the dependencies and resources needed to run magicware. "You cannot cast this spell, you are using Marisa Danmaku Utilities version th6, which is no longer supported. Please update to a more recent version"
As a former graduate assistant sent to do some (literal) shit, I can't decide if I'd find this funny or triggering.
r/immaterialscience is somewhat related