Classifying Magic: Calling RPG Nerds

[Cavouku]

So, I was trying to think of ways to classify magic (d'jya see that coming?), and I get stuck sometimes. It's hard, eh? I've been working with a few different models, but I keep bumping into problems. So *deep breath* heres what I got. The "schools of magic" I'm working with.

Thermal: Control of temperature itself. The unleash of extreme heat, forming fire and lightning in the most intense form, and on the apposing spectrum freezing the air and people as pure solid forms.

Luminescent: The control of light, either through restriction or liberation. Causing illusions, hiding in shadows, blinding with bright flashes, or utter darkness. (I'm not particularly attached to this school as of yet)

Telekinetic: The control of force itself, in naked form. Moving anything that can be "gripped" by the invisible hands one possesses, sending force in great form, or precise pinpricks to carve or pierce. With enough training, one can grab time and space itself, though such control is required over these arts it is usually used only for extreme circumstances. (This is the school I'm worried about, as I'll explain in a bit)

Corporeal: Telekinetic power may be able to "grip things, but it will never control them from the core. One can master their own body to the point that one's shape need not be one form, or also control the outside world, bending the plants, the bodies of the willing or unwilling, or creating life itself.

Spiritual: Magic that touches the realm of spirits deeper than any other. This magic can intrude far deeper than anyone would like it to, reading your mind, searching for lies, beliefs, altering feelings and concepts. It can also bring spirits back from death itself, or mend the soul to keep it alive.

So, my main problem came up when I was thinking more about the Telekinesis school. I was basically making two paths for each school, one end or the other. Easiest example; thermal. Hot and cold. For telekinetic, I was using "blunt force", which is the side that could alter space, and even time with enough devotion, and "precise force", which in its strongest could dissipate matter into scattered pieces, or even split an atom.

I think I got carried away with the sheer magnitude of telekinetic's capabilities. See, I was also at the point, in the precision direction, where one could cause vibrations, namely to make sounds. And then I though "Oh shite, wouldn't that also make heat?", and then got into some issues with corporeal, and maybe luminescent.

Can I get some opinions on how these should all be classified? Maybe what you yourself have come up with, or if I'm missing something (I'll be sure to find some way to classify it). I was also wondering if lightning has the right to be in the thermal spot, as I wasn't sure on the specifics of its conjuring.

I think that'll do. I'll just sit here and watch what happens. Oh, and yeah, I tried the IRC, but not much luck, and I figured maybe this would go over better here.

Thanks for any input, regardless.

 

[OutforEC]

I've always tried to divide magic up in the same way science seems to be split up. For example, Thermodynamics (Heat, pressure, etc.), Relativity (Time, motion), Electromagnetic (Light, electricity), and everything else (Supernatural or 'spiritual' as you put it) is lumped into Quantum.

$0.02

 

[Cavouku]

I've always tried to divide magic up in the same way science seems to be split up. For example, Thermodynamics (Heat, pressure, etc.), Relativity (Time, motion), Electromagnetic (Light, electricity), and everything else (Supernatural or 'spiritual' as you put it) is lumped into Quantum.

$0.02

I was trying to think a lot like that, and at first I was going with electromagnetic, but my problem was the whole thing with electricity generated as heat or as charge, and what's a plasma, etc.

That system does pretty much cover everything though, I just feel myself drawn away from it. Like I want to be in both the realm of scientific classification, and magical wonderment, where the forces of magic do as they do.

I'm having trouble finding the overlap, but thanks for the input. I'll mark that up with mine as one of the choices. If I used yours, I'd probably add my li'l "corporeal" school for controlling things, but in a different way than relativity/telekinetic.

 

[Cavouku]

Try answering these questions first: What kind of setting are you doing this for? What do you ultimately want the magic to be like?

Do you want magic to be something subtle, that ordinary people rarely see -- or do magically-powered horseless carriages trundle down the streets? (Closely related: how powerful do you want it to be? Do you want the real story of civilization's advance to be about magic rather than technology as we know it, or is magic something that occurs in the shadows of history and of the real world, a "secret history" coexisting with a normal-seeming society?)

Is the world full of workaday shysters, illusionists and conmen with the occasional appearance of the truly fantastical or inexplicable, or are fireball-wielding sorcerors standard issue for any military worth the name?

Is magic predictable, the kind of thing you can experiment and produce consistent results with -- or is it capricious, inexplicable, mercurial, controlled and serving forces beyond human understanding?

Is magic tameable, the kind of thing that ordinary people can interact with regularly and have nary a second thought -- or is it wild, disconcerting, frightening, the kind of thing that irrevocably changes people who encounter it and live with it?

In a sense, everyone can use magic, but to attain any noteworthy skill in it requires devotion, and the stronger the spellcasting, the more extreme this devotion. For instance, to have any hope of controlling time, it'll take a few decades of practice, at least every 6/8 days, for the majority of the waking hours. Even after that, the training has to be kept up, or it'll atrophy just as much as physical skill or memory.

It's present almost anywhere, and even people without much skill can use it as ritual. Magic's influence is strong, but it is not the sole binding force of the world, and many people can go their whole lives without doing things involving magic.

But some fun questions, thank you.

I like the standard D&D method of 'schools' of magic, simply because it classifies based on result, not the means used to do it.

Abjuration: Spells that protect, block, or banish.
Conjuration: Spells that bring creatures or materials to the caster.
Divination: Spells that reveal information.
Enchantment: Spells that imbue the recipient with some property or give the caster power over another being.
Evocation: Spells that manipulate energy or create something from nothing.
Illusion: Spells that alter perception or create false images.
Necromancy: Spells that manipulate, create, or destroy life or life force.
Transmutation: Spells that transform the recipient physically or change its properties in a more subtle way.

That is ever-so tempting, but I simply cannot stray from the thing I've walked into now. I'm too deep as it is, but I think I will keep this list on hand.

 

[RelexCryo]

So, I was trying to think of ways to classify magic (d'jya see that coming?), and I get stuck sometimes. It's hard, eh? I've been working with a few different models, but I keep bumping into problems. So *deep breath* heres what I got. The "schools of magic" I'm working with.

Thermal: Control of temperature itself. The unleash of extreme heat, forming fire and lightning in the most intense form, and on the apposing spectrum freezing the air and people as pure solid forms.

Luminescent: The control of light, either through restriction or liberation. Causing illusions, hiding in shadows, blinding with bright flashes, or utter darkness. (I'm not particularly attached to this school as of yet)

Telekinetic: The control of force itself, in naked form. Moving anything that can be "gripped" by the invisible hands one possesses, sending force in great form, or precise pinpricks to carve or pierce. With enough training, one can grab time and space itself, though such control is required over these arts it is usually used only for extreme circumstances. (This is the school I'm worried about, as I'll explain in a bit)

Corporeal: Telekinetic power may be able to "grip things, but it will never control them from the core. One can master their own body to the point that one's shape need not be one form, or also control the outside world, bending the plants, the bodies of the willing or unwilling, or creating life itself.

Spiritual: Magic that touches the realm of spirits deeper than any other. This magic can intrude far deeper than anyone would like it to, reading your mind, searching for lies, beliefs, altering feelings and concepts. It can also bring spirits back from death itself, or mend the soul to keep it alive.

So, my main problem came up when I was thinking more about the Telekinesis school. I was basically making two paths for each school, one end or the other. Easiest example; thermal. Hot and cold. For telekinetic, I was using "blunt force", which is the side that could alter space, and even time with enough devotion, and "precise force", which in its strongest could dissipate matter into scattered pieces, or even split an atom.

I think I got carried away with the sheer magnitude of telekinetic's capabilities. See, I was also at the point, in the precision direction, where one could cause vibrations, namely to make sounds. And then I though "Oh shite, wouldn't that also make heat?", and then got into some issues with corporeal, and maybe luminescent.

Can I get some opinions on how these should all be classified? Maybe what you yourself have come up with, or if I'm missing something (I'll be sure to find some way to classify it). I was also wondering if lightning has the right to be in the thermal spot, as I wasn't sure on the specifics of its conjuring.

I think that'll do. I'll just sit here and watch what happens. Oh, and yeah, I tried the IRC, but not much luck, and I figured maybe this would go over better here.

Thanks for any input, regardless.

Electrical is not thermal. Electricity and heat are two different things. The difference is the quality of the conductor that the current passes though. You could have electrical, and use positive and negative charges, for stealing energy, and projecting it.

 

[Lunaras13]

im just gona reference my game idea http://lunaras13.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-01-26T01%3A06%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=7

the ways to cast magic are physical, mental, spiritual, and soulful. All of these made up a human so thats why magic was more prevalent in us than animals(and if the world had dwarves and elves and what not, then them too)

the body produced mana to feed the soul, but some just escaped to the world floating around like air. physical and mental magic used that latent mana everywhere, while spiritual and soulful used the mana in ones own body.

physical was runes, glyphs, seals, and things which forcefully caused mana to do as you wished.
mental was coercing the mana naturally without every forcing it, and was mainly chants and things like that
spiritual was tapping into the magic of our body, and barely required anything more than though
soulful required you to work with a higher being such as a deity or demon, because accessing the power of you own soul was much too hard for a mortal, but also yielded more powerful results than spiritual


thats just HOW you did it, the types of magic were divided into elements and schools

first off like the periodic table of elements i came up with a magical circle of elements

the inner circle is cut in half, divided into light and dark magical element
the outer circle is cut into 4, fire water air and earth, earth and water are right outside darkness because the more there is the darker it gets(underground and underwater) while air and fire are outside of light
i never really drew the thing and came up with a finalized format, but there was also a heat(fire to water) and weight(air to earth) circles, and then there were combos like magma, steam that kinda stuff


the schools are to varied to really list. To reference WoW, things like a druid or a sorcerer wouldnt be schools, they would be jobs, while the schools are things like shape shifting, restoration, demonology, etc.


essentially there would be no limit to what magic could possibly do, only a limit of what a person could make it do.


i kinda got mixed up half way through so if i didnt answer something or contradicted myself plz tell me and ill try to answer/correct it, and the blog thing is just a place i list things ever since i lost my old wordpad full of ideas you dont have to look through it, its just how i would set up an mmo class system with this type of magic

 

[2xDouble]

The Guild Wars Asura [http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/asura/] have a very interesting take on classification of magic in their Arcane Colleges. They are incredibly broad, but interesting categorizations. I consider these the "Kingdom" level of classification, compared to the more specific distinctions.

Statics: Things that are; the state of being. This would study transformation and mind/body manipulation magic, as well as life and death-based. This also covers analytical magics that reveal the "true nature" of things (among many other subjects).

Dynamics: Things that move and the movement of things. Dynamics studies more or less everything in "traditional magics", fireballs, lightning bolts, rock throws, etc. Of particular focus, Dynamics studies that which are affected by movement like ice and thermal energies, weather-based spells, among many other things.

Synergetics: Interaction, the combination of things to create new things. This one is a little harder to define in traditional terms. Synergetics studies the inner workings of things in concert and includes the painfully overlooked meta magic (manipulation of magic itself: interruption, mana burn, disabling spells, etc).

These also correlate to real-world physics:
Statics can refer to the study of forces on a system in static equilibrium, meaning that components of the system are not accelerating.
Dynamics can refer to the study of motion, especially its causes and how it changes over time.
Synergetics can refer to the study of geometry and thermodynamics (the study of energy conversion between heat and mechanical work).

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

I like that corporeal school, I like the idea of mastery of physical form being the reason for telekinetics.

Beyond that, when in doubt on metaphysics look to the game Unknown Armies for inspiration. Their schools of magic are defined by the crippling delusions had by the different mystical philosophies.

 

[darth.pixie]

Hm, reading your post, they do sort of overlap. That's physics for you. You could make branches that intersect, say combining Telekinetic with Thermal.

Something to consider...Thermal, more to the point, making fire is hard if not impossible. You would need the initial spark to make it. Pyrokinetics is explained as accelerating particles to the point where something bursts into flames. That's not possible. You need the spark.

Accelerating particles just turns something into charcoal directly, immolating them but not burning them.

I'll write down the Magic from the World of Darkness, Mage: The Awakening, maybe it will help.

Prime
Mind
Death
Fate
Spirit which are drawn at the edge of a pentagram where they combine and become

Death+Prime=Matter
Mind+Spirit=Space
Mind+Fate=Time
Death+Spirit=Life
Prime+Fate=Forces

This is the "creation" or "invocation" cycle, associated with magic that brings things into existence or that nurtures existing things.

Death Purview: Darkness, decay, ectoplasm, enervation, ghosts, soul stealing

Fate Purview: Blessings, curses, destiny, fortune, oaths, probability

Forces Purview: Electricity, gravity, kinetic energy, light, physics, radiation, sound, weather

Life Purview: Disease, evolution, healing, metamorphosis, vigor

Matter Purview: Alchemy, elemental air, elemental earth, elemental water, shaping, transmutation

Mind Purview: Communication, hallucinations, mental projection, mind control, telepathy

Prime Purview: Hallows, illusions, magical imbuement, Mana, resonance, tass

For more explanation: Prime is the light that burns without heat, the energy that defies description. It is the power that courses through all things in material existence and which serves as the skeleton on which all willworkers hang their magic.

Space Purview: Conjuration, scrying, sympathy, teleportation, wards

Spirit Purview: Exorcism, the Shadow Realm, soul retrieval, spirits, the Gauntlet (Veil)

Time Purview: Divination, prophecy, temporal acceleration/ deceleration

That was a lot to write. If you need more clarification on these, ask away.

 

[Lunaras13]

too add to BobDobolina and Cavouku's conversation, you can think of the world as a computer, and magic as programs. The average person can turn on a premade program, while a mage can use C++ to tweak a spell from its most basic functions, and an archmage can program with pure binary language and therefor has little limitations no matter what kind of magic he uses. Actually if you think of it this way, there are no schools of magic, just what you decide to make, there would just be the jobs like conjurer, scryer, pyromancer, etc.



edit: and to add to whoever was talking about matter and what not, you can use the magical elements as the forms matter takes, air=gas, earth=solid, water=liquid, fire=plasma(a bit of a stretch but not incredibly)

 

[Cavouku]

Electrical is not thermal. Electricity and heat are two different things. The difference is the quality of the conductor that the current passes though. You could have electrical, and use positive and negative charges, for stealing energy, and projecting it.

That was probably just from me watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. Plus,

"...Thermal, more to the point, making fire is hard if not impossible. You would need the initial spark to make it. Pyrokinetics is explained as accelerating particles to the point where something bursts into flames. That's not possible. You need the spark."

Which is why pyrokinetics and cryokinetics both require a further mode of dedication (I didn't get into it, but I feel I should now)

A rune, basically. Though anything to make a spark would suffice, the average user of fire magic would have some sort of rune to summon the energy required, and essentially "summon spark". The fire that's burning isn't burning off of just air, it's fueled by the energy being channeled by the rune. The ice, in cryokinesis, isn't even ice. It's also energy channeled by the rune.

But I'm straying. Basically, my line of thinking was that since fire needed a spark, and electricity is (sorta) a spark, I'd group them together. I would maintain the incredible difficulty in controlling lightning, however.

Still, I was aware going in that this would prove problematic, putting lightning in there and whatnot.

too add to BobDobolina and Cavouku's conversation, you can think of the world as a computer, and magic as programs. The average person can turn on a premade program, while a mage can use C++ to tweak a spell from its most basic functions, and an archmage can program with pure binary language and therefor has little limitations no matter what kind of magic he uses. Actually if you think of it this way, there are no schools of magic, just what you decide to make, there would just be the jobs like conjurer, scryer, pyromancer, etc.



edit: and to add to whoever was talking about matter and what not, you can use the magical elements as the forms matter takes, air=gas, earth=solid, water=liquid, fire=plasma(a bit of a stretch but not incredibly)

Essentially that's it. Anyone can "cast" magic, like spells, but most people would not. It requires too much time to learn along with all the other basic lifeskills necessary.

But then there are "shortcuts", the rituals, and such. In fact, some things can only be done through rituals, and the appropriate apparatus. Contorting space can only get you so far, and no magicker would have the power to essentially teleport more than, say, five feet. For macro transportation, one has to do a ritual.

I made a simple, z-axis chart of elemental and spiritual aspects of the universe. Hopefully it will give you an idea of how to apply spells along each axis. Elements at each pole are in contrast, but all 6 are necessary to life. I tried to not apply good or evil aspects to any of these things as good and evil are arbitrary concepts that do not apply to every situation.

Enjoy.

[/QUOTE]

This was my original endeavour. In fact, my original schools were along the lines of "Fire/Spark", "Water/Ice", "Earth/Metal", "Air/Sound", "Light/Dark", "Space/Time", "Nature/Bio" and "Spiritual/Pure".

The complications came up with the earth, water and air thing. With air, I determined, the same results could be ascertained with telekinesis, and I abandoned it. I decided earth/metal was also too much like telekinesis, and same with water. I said "one could just control these things with telekinesis, there's no need to make them exclusive."

Ice (and sound, in a way) were a bit different however. I stopped looking at ice as frozen water, and thought of it more as the result of controlling the frigid belows of thermal energy itself. Something will freeze, when cold enough, I decided. Eventually I chose to make it so a rune was required, so as to emit the substance as physical "will" (as magic in this game is one's will being transferred through the "spirit world", here called the "Lani", and into the physical)

This was the same thing fueling fire, and when used as an energy instead of a substance, it could manipulate things, like in telekinetics or luminescents.

*whistle* I shouldn't make big big posts like this. One sec.

 

[Cavouku]

im just gona reference my game idea http://lunaras13.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-01-26T01%3A06%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=7

the ways to cast magic are physical, mental, spiritual, and soulful. All of these made up a human so thats why magic was more prevalent in us than animals(and if the world had dwarves and elves and what not, then them too)

the body produced mana to feed the soul, but some just escaped to the world floating around like air. physical and mental magic used that latent mana everywhere, while spiritual and soulful used the mana in ones own body.

physical was runes, glyphs, seals, and things which forcefully caused mana to do as you wished.
mental was coercing the mana naturally without every forcing it, and was mainly chants and things like that
spiritual was tapping into the magic of our body, and barely required anything more than though
soulful required you to work with a higher being such as a deity or demon, because accessing the power of you own soul was much too hard for a mortal, but also yielded more powerful results than spiritual


thats just HOW you did it, the types of magic were divided into elements and schools

first off like the periodic table of elements i came up with a magical circle of elements

the inner circle is cut in half, divided into light and dark magical element
the outer circle is cut into 4, fire water air and earth, earth and water are right outside darkness because the more there is the darker it gets(underground and underwater) while air and fire are outside of light
i never really drew the thing and came up with a finalized format, but there was also a heat(fire to water) and weight(air to earth) circles, and then there were combos like magma, steam that kinda stuff


the schools are to varied to really list. To reference WoW, things like a druid or a sorcerer wouldnt be schools, they would be jobs, while the schools are things like shape shifting, restoration, demonology, etc.


essentially there would be no limit to what magic could possibly do, only a limit of what a person could make it do.


i kinda got mixed up half way through so if i didnt answer something or contradicted myself plz tell me and ill try to answer/correct it, and the blog thing is just a place i list things ever since i lost my old wordpad full of ideas you dont have to look through it, its just how i would set up an mmo class system with this type of magic

I appreciate the input. In a sense, for this game, spirit and soul are the same thing, but you have the right idea. Mental in this sense would be the halfway between physical and spiritual, and then there's physical.

I made another post about the traditional elements, but I'll reiterate, I don't want to make you have to read everything I say: I decided earth and water, being existing things, less than energy, were a little too much like specific telekinesis, and I dropped that. I suppose someone could specialize in it, but that's a choice. As for air, I decided the results and affects of controlling air were similar in most ways to telekinetics, so I decided to basically do that.

Fire (and ice, apposing) I felt were different. I didn't look at them as the physical things they represented, but rather, as the extremes of temperature. I guess that was the Dragon Age II getting to me there.

Corporeal would be like a "deeper" kind of telekinetics. More assured, but only working on the living. Someone with telekinesis could essentially be "blocked" by a strong-willed person's "barrier", because telekinetics can only affect something from the outside, but corporeal can affect something from the inside out, essentially making defenses nill. I decided that was enough for its own school.

Spiritual is basically direct control of the ethereal. In the game, everyone has a sort of "magic network", you could think of it like the chakra in Naruto, but it's less like veins, and more like a veil, somewhere between muscle and skin, I suppose. It affects healing, and offers protection, but it can only take so much before it goes "dormant". This is essentially a person's "healthbar" in game, but one can also be measured by the amount of blood they've got left before they black out or bleed to death. Essentially, try not to get hit, especially when you've lost your magic network. You're as vulnerable as we are, you and I.

Spiritual magic can not only heal all that, but also can affect the mind, in ways corporeal cannot. Corporeal does contain the hypnotic spells, and the toxins (including the aphrodisiacs and other chemical manipulations), but spiritual can tap into someone's soul and mind, and find out for certain if they're lying, or what happened to them. Maybe delve deeper into their minds than they have. It's also the school for buffing, hexing, and etc.

Hope that helps with some understanding. I'd have posted it right away, but it seemed like a turn-away for anyone coming into this.

 

[MagnetoHydroDynamics]

Hm, reading your post, they do sort of overlap. That's physics for you. You could make branches that intersect, say combining Telekinetic with Thermal.

Something to consider...Thermal, more to the point, making fire is hard if not impossible. You would need the initial spark to make it. Pyrokinetics is explained as accelerating particles to the point where something bursts into flames. That's not possible. You need the spark.

Accelerating particles just turns something into charcoal directly, immolating them but not burning them.

I'll write down the Magic from the World of Darkness, Mage: The Awakening, maybe it will help.
-sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip-

I was going to suggest exactly this, but there is one thing I don't like about M:tA, and that's the pentagram.

But yes, there can be multiple ways to do something. With the Telekinetic sound creation you can and will make heat. But it takes more skill than just heating stuff.

In M:tA you can open a locked door in, like, twelve different ways, and extinguish a fire in about twice that many ways.

Door is locked?
Fate: No it wasn't
Space: This other door leads where we are going
Matter: I'll make a new door.
Death: *door crumbles to dust* What door?
Forces: *kaboom* What door?
Spirit: I'll awaken the spirit in the door and command it to open.
Time: The door will be gone in a billion years... Which I'll make pass in a second.
Mind: There's a guy on the other side who will open it for us.
Life: I'll break down the door with my hand.
Prime: Doors aren't impervious to divine fire.

Fire is burning you?
Matter: No Oxygen
Forces: No Heat
Time: Burns out in a second
Death: Dies out
Mind: The fire department will be here soon
Fate: The fire department is already here
Spirit: Command the fire to extinguish

And so on and so forth. Basic principles shouldn't overlap, but it doesn't matter in the high levels of mastery.

 

[Cavouku]

In a sense, everyone can use magic, but to attain any noteworthy skill in it requires devotion, and the stronger the spellcasting, the more extreme this devotion. For instance, to have any hope of controlling time, it'll take a few decades of practice, at least every 6/8 days, for the majority of the waking hours. Even after that, the training has to be kept up, or it'll atrophy just as much as physical skill or memory.

Okay, got it. So the average person might use a "canned" ritual to, say, heat up their hot tub or their sweat lodge or something. A part time dilettante might be able to light a cigar or impress people with neat tricks at parties. But to control fire in any more sophisticated way you'd have to be a full-time student of the thermal arts, and to do the truly unexpected or the truly mind-blowingly freaky with fire you'd have to be a person of almost saintly (or at least fanatical) commitment. That about it?

If so, here's my suggestion. Make classification a populist preoccupation. The mark of mastery, of true power, should be the ability to see the hidden unities and connections between different magical disciplines. So, for example, ordinary people will have different rituals for "telekinetic" activities like rearranging their rock garden, "pyrokinetic" activities like heating their jacuzzi, "electromagnetic" activities like storing up power in their reading lamp, "spiritual" or "mentalist" activities like mentally linking with the wife to tell her you're staying late for work, and so on. People at a higher level of expertise will be able to see that telekinesis and pyrokinesis are at root the same thing, excitements of molecules. At a higher level yet they'll see the connection of the energy that excites and manipulates those molecules to the energy that manifests as electrical charge, or that propagates as photons. At a higher level yet they'll understand all of this as being about changes in quantum information and ultimately a subset of what's going on in "spiritualism" or "mentalism" or whatever.

As for the specific system of classification: if classification is a relatively populist, labor- and thought-saving shortcut tool, this should tell you a little bit about what classifications would be most useful and familiar in day-to-day life. They won't necessarily be relevant as scientific categories. For example, people may have classifications for cooking rituals, cleaning rituals, sexual and fertility rituals, information-seeking (divinatory) rituals, medicinal rituals, cursing rituals and personal protection rituals, and so on. One level up, the amateur or semi-professional user, might then classify things more "scientifically" into alchemical rituals (about the transmutation of substances), illusion rituals, et cetera. The low-level professional user might have a more rigorously "scientific" system yet, something like what @mojodamn suggests. Beyond that, classification would get more and more superfluous.

You're a fun guy. While this whole world takes place in fantasy setting, pre-1500's, give or take some tech, yeah. If this game took place in the modern world, that'd pretty much be how spells work.

The classification is more so for "magic schools", to make it easier for the students. Pick a profession, study it, practice it. All magic is basically the same, but the way it's represented changes.

Keep posting. I am thoroughly entertained with your analogies.

 

[Cavouku]

I like that corporeal school, I like the idea of mastery of physical form being the reason for telekinetics.

Beyond that, when in doubt on metaphysics look to the game Unknown Armies for inspiration. Their schools of magic are defined by the crippling delusions had by the different mystical philosophies.

Well, corporeal is physical, telekinetic walks the line. The force is physical, emerging directly from the "spirit plane", but telekinetic can only affect things from the outside, corporeal can do things from within. Think, as a good example, Blood Magic, like in Dragon Age.

As for Unknown Armies, I did a quick Google, but had not the patience to go looking for their classification system. If you bring me the direct link to that part I'll oblige. Thanks.

The Guild Wars Asura [http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/asura/] have a very interesting take on classification of magic in their Arcane Colleges. They are incredibly broad, but interesting categorizations. I consider these the "Kingdom" level of classification, compared to the more specific distinctions.

Statics: Things that are; the state of being. This would study transformation and mind/body manipulation magic, as well as life and death-based. This also covers analytical magics that reveal the "true nature" of things (among many other subjects).

Dynamics: Things that move and the movement of things. Dynamics studies more or less everything in "traditional magics", fireballs, lightning bolts, rock throws, etc. Of particular focus, Dynamics studies that which are affected by movement like ice and thermal energies, weather-based spells, among many other things.

Synergetics: Interaction, the combination of things to create new things. This one is a little harder to define in traditional terms. Synergetics studies the inner workings of things in concert and includes the painfully overlooked meta magic (manipulation of magic itself: interruption, mana burn, disabling spells, etc).

These also correlate to real-world physics:
Statics can refer to the study of forces on a system in static equilibrium, meaning that components of the system are not accelerating.
Dynamics can refer to the study of motion, especially its causes and how it changes over time.
Synergetics can refer to the study of geometry and thermodynamics (the study of energy conversion between heat and mechanical work).

Indeed, after all this input, what'll probably happen is that there'll be "magic", then it'll be divided, than those divisions will be divided until they're satisfactory. I'll keep that whole "Static, Dynamic and Synergetic" idea on hand, though.