RecSLRXIII
Ceilin Salamander
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What is the most powerful and/or versatile magic system you know of? Please include examples, the work(s) it has appeared in and if possible videos/wiki links.
Most powerful form of magic
- Thread starter RecSLRXIII
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Ryven Razgriz
I need a Gun and I'll let you know 'What's up?'.
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Planeswalkers from Magic: The Gathering. 'Nuff Said.
True Magics from Type-Moon. Appeared in all Type-Moon series (Fate-series, Notes, Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai, Mahou Tsukai no Yoru)
EDIT: Just in case you ask, I left the 4th True Magic as is because that's literally all it. There's no info about it whatsoever.
True Magics from Type-Moon. Appeared in all Type-Moon series (Fate-series, Notes, Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai, Mahou Tsukai no Yoru)
- 1st True Magic - Denial of Nothingness - Creation Magic, basically. "Let there be light" and all that jazz.
- 2nd True Magic - Kaleidoscope - Operation of Parallel Worlds. I think most SVers knows what Kaleidoscope Magic is and Zelretch for that matter.
- 3rd True Magic - Heaven's Feel - Cup of Heaven (Ten no Sakazuki), Materialization of the Soul. Complete revival Magic basically, also infinite magic powers. Calling Heroic Spirits. Again, I assume most SVers knows this as well.
- 4th True Magic - -
- 5th True Magic - Magic Blue - Revolving around the concept of consumption and extinction. Also time travel too.
EDIT: Just in case you ask, I left the 4th True Magic as is because that's literally all it. There's no info about it whatsoever.
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- Location
- Somewhere
Possibly D&D Chronomancy. When you can set of a contingency of "I always have a year to prepare for any given situation after I've already seen how it works out without the prep" combined with the rest of d&d magic, chronomancy is broken.
Grey Rook
Genuine Nerd
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- The Quantum Foam
I'm inclined to say Mage: the Ascension, which includes a high degree of control over whatever Spheres you have which expands as you gain experience; at high levels, it amounts to something that's very close to omnipotence in scope.
Well, I've read that the bad guy once extinguished half the stars in the universe just to make a point and the protagonists manage to fix that pretty quickly so... yeah?
Nobilis Miracles, if you count those. Kinda blow everything out of the water- though nobilis also has proper 'magic' which is a lot weaker. Then alchemy, which can be used to do miracles....
For being magic about time, it's unexpectedly balanced with other D&D magic and not that OP. It's not as strong as Gold Digger Time Magic or such, and there's no "I always have a year to prepare" spell. Temporal Shell is 9th level, gives you 1 round/level to prepare stuff, and you can't leave a 5 foot radius zone from where you cast it. Or there's major paradox, which I'm guessing is what you're thinking of, and it allows you to change one important event up to a year in the past- you don't have a year to prepare, but you can retroactively put in one single preparation. Strong, but not overpowering- and it takes 1d4 hours to cast. And has a 50% chance of attracting a time elemental or such to get up in your business as a result.
So yea, Chronomancy? Surprisingly mild and balanced. You can get away with a lot more with normal 3ed magic.
For being magic about time, it's unexpectedly balanced with other D&D magic and not that OP. It's not as strong as Gold Digger Time Magic or such, and there's no "I always have a year to prepare" spell. Temporal Shell is 9th level, gives you 1 round/level to prepare stuff, and you can't leave a 5 foot radius zone from where you cast it. Or there's major paradox, which I'm guessing is what you're thinking of, and it allows you to change one important event up to a year in the past- you don't have a year to prepare, but you can retroactively put in one single preparation. Strong, but not overpowering- and it takes 1d4 hours to cast. And has a 50% chance of attracting a time elemental or such to get up in your business as a result.
So yea, Chronomancy? Surprisingly mild and balanced. You can get away with a lot more with normal 3ed magic.
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AD&D Chronomancy. Should have been more clear. The "Paradox" series (minor, normal, and major) of spells allows you to reset decisions from a point, with Major being the "year", and this being AD&D, you can make it contingent. This same school also allows you to separate yourself from your own timeline, becoming essentially acausal. You can even pull an Aku and chuck someone hundreds of years into the future
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Yes, that was the spell I was talking about. Like I said, you don't get to set a whole year, you get to set one thing up to a year ago. Like learning a different spell or crafting a different item. Which is nice, but I think you'll agree is far less powerful than a full year's prep. And it still has the 'gets an elemental on your case' effect.
Also, the 'pull an Aku' spell, the 8th level Timereaver, is 5 years per caster level (so 100 max- still pretty good), and has a range of one yard and effect of a 10-foot radius- you gotta get pretty close. Save negatives it too.
And those are the 8th and 9th level spells, the levels that are supposed to be as OP as heck. Meanwhile, there aren't that many chronomancy spells, a lot of which are just focused on avoiding the side-effects of others or doing stuff on the temporal plane, there's a fair number of timey-wimey restrictions, so they really are not all that flexible in what they can do, they lose summoning, abjuration, and necromancy, have a harder time learning non-chronomancy magic in general, and Haste doesn't work on them.
I wasn't saying Chronomany is 3ed- indeed, it's 2ed only- it's just that you can often pull a lot more with 3ed magic in general, there's so much hax there. Even in 2ed, a chronomancer doesn't have much scry and die advantage.
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That "one decision" can be "instead of having breakfast today, I will begin preparing for this situation in the future"
Edit: also, there's EXP tables for wizard up to level 100 in AD&D (I wouldn't push it beyond the 32 in the Complete Wizard's Handbook though)
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I like some systems where some overtly powerful thing is 'overpowered' by simple seeming magic.
Like in one story I read where some super powerful godlike reality warper, with seemingly limitless range and the ability to do anything.
But could not do anything or see anything in this small 2 km space made by a person who had the power to make flowers bloom in a 2 km radius, and the flower person couldn't control their power well either.
Creative authors find interesting ways to make their systems work, writing in exceptions, stretching suspension of disbelief, and other things.
Like in one story I read where some super powerful godlike reality warper, with seemingly limitless range and the ability to do anything.
But could not do anything or see anything in this small 2 km space made by a person who had the power to make flowers bloom in a 2 km radius, and the flower person couldn't control their power well either.
Creative authors find interesting ways to make their systems work, writing in exceptions, stretching suspension of disbelief, and other things.
Young...
My go-to example for how broken YW is the Mobiles' no-more-entropy spell (which they didn't use, since it would essentially mean the universe would be frozen forever), but that's the Mobiles, they're broken even by the standards of the setting.
Hey, how does planetary Kernel manipulation (when you're changing the local laws of physics) stack up?
Ah, phooey.
I...don't remember this, but I often forget things. For example, I had to be reminded of the time on of 'em whipped up an anti-supernova shield on the fly, for example.
My go-to example for how broken YW is the Mobiles' no-more-entropy spell (which they didn't use, since it would essentially mean the universe would be frozen forever), but that's the Mobiles, they're broken even by the standards of the setting.
Hey, how does planetary Kernel manipulation (when you're changing the local laws of physics) stack up?
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That's really not how the spell is set up. Like a lot of D&D spells, it's written to be fairly narrow.
I mean, it's still time magic and thus reasonably solid, but as time affecting magic goes it really is surprisingly modest and not all that versatile.