What CAN’T Magic Do?

TurbulentMuse

Muse
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 16, 2021
Messages
56
Reaction score
6
Location
Dallas TX
In my current writing project there are only three limitations of magic. It can’t create life, it can’t bring back the dead, and it can’t directly change someone's thoughts, feelings, or memories (although magic can put someone in an altered state of mind similar to certain drugs). I’m curious, what can’t magic do in your stories?
 
Last edited:

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,643
Reaction score
14,867
Location
Massachusetts
I’m still working that out as I write, to be honest. :D

I’ve opted to place a different kind of limitation on my magic users: Use of it can have a high physical cost, that depends on the type of magic and how it’s used — a sort of squishily-defined “magnitude of effects” thing. Use magic to terrify an approaching army into fleeing? You probably shortened your life by months. Use magic to try to kill that army? You’ll die trying.

Additionally, I’ve made these magics be enabled by imbibing substances, many of them very addictive to the user with harmful side-effects of their own.
 

pharm

profoundly de minimis
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 21, 2019
Messages
283
Reaction score
48
WIP 1: Magic can do nearly anything up to and including creation ex nihilo, but its secrets are zealously guarded by the demigod-like religious heads of a world-spanning empire. So what it can't do is be accessed by the rest of humanity it's been stolen from.

WIP 2: Magic can heal, sustain, and transform living things to a limited degree in the vicinity of its source. Or it can be destructively harvested as a singularly powerful industrial and agricultural fuel source. What it can't do is both at once.

WIP 3: Magic is genetic superpowers fueled by a consumable resource. So it can do basically whatever the X-Men or a Brandon Sanderson protagonist can do. It can't do anything once you run out of the juice or burn too much of it at once.
 
Last edited:

InkFinger

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 15, 2020
Messages
4,296
Reaction score
1,566
Magic consumes power/energy, so the limitation is the ability to collect and consume power.
 

TulipMama

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 28, 2020
Messages
170
Reaction score
113
Location
Canada
In my current WIP, my magic system is based on having a contract with an extra-planar creature. These creatures (from religions and mythologies across the globe) are sentient ‘ideas’ and have purviews that the magic user can tap to make magic happen. Make a contract with a Salamander or Pheonix, then you can very easily do fire magic, for instance.

It’s an urban fantasy, so the system is based on real world physics, and has subsequent limitations. Sure, you can lift that truck, or shoot lightning with the right spirit on board, but you need to be able to supply the energy to do so.

The user is limited to what the spirit is based on, but if they ‘believe’ a spell should work hard enough, it’ll stretch the spirit’s abilities to accommodate. This is chiefly how spirits get stronger and the main reason they bother to contract with human magic users in the first place. A Salamander may start off with the purview ‘flame’, but if the user is creative enough, they could broaden that out to ‘heat’ or ‘light’ or go really wild and extend it out to flight (in the same manner as a rocket, or using updrafts eg).
 

Sage

Currently titleless
Staff member
Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 15, 2005
Messages
64,562
Reaction score
22,367
Age
43
Location
Cheering you all on!
Technically, there is no limit to what magic could do, but the ability to do (much less maintain) anything that is considered "unnatural" is harder and harder the more unnatural it is, requiring more ingredients and a bigger cost (though not necessarily by the person doing the magic), and only requires the removal of a condition of casting or the cost to go back to normal.

"I know exactly one thing about the way the occult works. No matter what forces we manipulate, the universe always wants to put things back the way they were."
 

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,083
Reaction score
10,778
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
I suppose magic can do anything the writer wants or needs it to do, but the more powerful the system, the harder it can be for the reader to understand why (say), if a magic user can teleport at will, they must go on a long, dangerous journey. Or if magic can cure any disease, then why have plagues ever been a problem for this society?

Of course, one can come up with limitations and rules, whether they be terrible costs imposed on the caster or are dangerous to cast (maybe teleportation spells themselves have a real probability of landing the caster six feet underground at their location). Or maybe magi powerful enough to use these spells to their best effect are so few and far between they can't possibly put a dent in a serious pandemic, let alone stop or prevent one. I remember reading a book once where healers worked by taking their patient's injury or illness on themselves then healing themselves of it. This was a hard thing to do, so magic wasn't used for trivial things. But really catastrophic illnesses and injuries that would likely kill or incapacitate the mage before they could self heal were also out of reach.

One way some writers limit magic is to have magic users be very specialized. Or they could be very weak individually and only produce powerful magical effects in groups. In these kinds of systems, it makes sense for magi to have colleges where they work together.

Or maybe the society in question fears magic, even if it knows it is also useful, and imposes strict limitations or penalties on magic users (like mages being restricted to circles guarded by magic-resistant templars in the Dragon Age games, or the system of each mage having a "falconer" used in Caruso's Tethered Mage books) who are deemed too dangerous to be free. This system, of course, encourages magi to hide their powers and operate as renegades outside the law, but the need to hide one's magic would definitely limit its use in many circumstances (I love the Dragon age Games, but I had to chuckle how your apostate mage character in the second game could walk around town with a staff, casting spells right and left, and somehow none of the Templars figured it out, even though their oppression of mages was a major plot element).

Introversion also mentioned some possibilities, such as magi having the option to use substances or items to amplify their skills, but those come with a cost too.

It really comes down to what you need magic to do in your story and what you can't have it do (without rendering conflicts and obstacles trivial).
 

TurbulentMuse

Muse
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 16, 2021
Messages
56
Reaction score
6
Location
Dallas TX
You all have some really fascinating magic systems! I’m especially intrigued by TulipMama’s.

In my WIP magic is limited by the amount of power the caster has (all humans have the same power level, it’s just a matter of how efficiently they can use their energy. Magical creatures work different) but the three things mentioned before are impossible no matter how powerful you are (good luck convincing the main antagonist that though lol)
 

ChaseJxyz

Writes 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 and 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 accessories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2020
Messages
4,524
Reaction score
6,203
Location
The Rottenest City on the Pacific Coast
Website
www.chasej.xyz
What I think is more interesting to create than what magic can't do is what magic users won't do (or believe they can't do). Different species (and cultures) in [birds] approach magic differently and that greatly affects what they can do. I guess you could split it between "facts" and "feelings:" cultures with formalized education like the high elves teach you the "science" behind magic so you get predictable, repeatable results and you can draw energy from all sorts of sources (theoretically no upper limit), while cultures where you learn on your own or a master/apprentice type situation you do things by "feel," so you can do things like illusions, telepathy, and changing your form, but you usually can only draw from your own energy. The mind is incredibly complex, and the High Elves are sure that they can figure it out, but in a world without computers...good luck with that. Like all things, people use a blend of both (healing is a good example, you can "push" the body to do what it "knows" to do to put itself back together, but you still have to do some things "manually" so it'll heal right, like lining up broken bones), but they usually can't get over the "limits" based on their approach to things.

The High Elves can "see" magic like one can see the colors of visible light, but only one "color" of magic, which are based on real-world physics/chemistry (4 fundamental forces, ATP cycle, different bands of light etc). The one thing they cannot "see" is gravity, so, obviously, it doesn't exist. They believe it's actually a subset of [strong nuclear force] since that's in and affects all things. Since no one can see multiple colors, they think that they're all separate things, even though there's a lot of overlap/interconnectedness (so many things are, ultimately, just electrons going around). [Electricity] and [magnetism] are separate things, and they absolutely are not [UV], [IR] or [gamma rays]. Since they made most of the scientific discoveries, people just believe them. I mean, wouldn't you believe the people that can actually see this stuff? Why would you even think to do something like the Cavendish experiment? You're literally going in blind and you have no objective way of knowing you're right.

For [next project] I want to really limit the magic, since its about monster hunters. I want things to be more about alchemy/materials science/biology; a unicorn's horn has some sort of compound that neutralizes poison, a thunderbird's feathers discharge static electricity etc. Things should be as "magical" as a chameleon changing its colors: there's a reason it can do it, and its an innate ability of the creature (which can then be harvested and turned into a "potion" or "magic armor" or something). But I also am going to have werewolves that can go back and forth so....I know I got some work still. I'll have to find that balance of "shhhh it's magic" and realism.

Can you tell I was a chemical engineering major for a little bit (and was planning to be an exotic vet most of the time growing up lol)
 

Maxx

Got the hang of it, here
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 26, 2010
Messages
3,227
Reaction score
202
Location
Durham NC
Magic consumes power/energy, so the limitation is the ability to collect and consume power.

Since magic tends to violate basic physical laws (such as entropic energy distributions, conservation of energy, and spacetime), any magic sufficiently powerful will essentially begin to destroy the universe. so:
a) can a universe protect itself? How? More magic? Sure. Why not?
b) what would very powerful beings want to do anyway? Evil Villains don't really explain this area of need.
c) would a universe-protecting AI have a different view of the dynamics of magic? Why?
and that leaves...
d) any powerful magical being that wants to destroy the universe has a good probability of succeeding unless some process stops it
So...
e) Magic will tend to be limited by other magic once it reaches extreme levels -- perhaps successfully?
f) so magic in surviving universes would tend to be limited by other magic
g) or else no universe and no magic
h) right?
 

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,643
Reaction score
14,867
Location
Massachusetts
Since magic tends to violate basic physical laws (such as entropic energy distributions, conservation of energy, and spacetime), any magic sufficiently powerful will essentially begin to destroy the universe.

Unless the physics are different in the story universe, I suppose?

And, let's be fair, if we require all spec fic to rigidly follow actual physics, there wouldn't be much of it. :poke:

e) Magic will tend to be limited by other magic once it reaches extreme levels -- perhaps successfully?

I've always enjoyed fantasies where magic is constrained to follow rules. "Alt-physics", if you will. And/or, when there's a limited supply of it. (Much as I enjoyed the Harry Potter series, there's not really any method to its magic -- most characters just yell the equivalent of "Accio Do The Thingio!" while wand-waving and it works.)

Anyone else remember Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" shorts collection? In it, a wizard lives long enough to realize that if he stays too long in one place, his powers diminish. Eventually he recognizes that this is because there's a finite supply of "mana" in a place, and that it's not renewable on human timescales. So he invents (and eventually uses) a sort of last-ditch defensive weapon against malign magical beings: A bronze disk that he's spelled to 1) spin, 2) grow stronger the faster it spins, and 3) accelerate as it grows stronger. Set it off, and quickly all the mana in that region is exhausted. If your magical opponent requires mana to exist, poof.
 

Maxx

Got the hang of it, here
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 26, 2010
Messages
3,227
Reaction score
202
Location
Durham NC
I can't think of any fantasy stories off hand where basic physics doesn't work as a rule -- fires heat things, hot gases rise, gravity functions, water flows downhill and so on, people have to eat and drink to live etc.. So apparently most fantasy stories assume that -- outside of magic -- conservation of energy works, entropy happens as expected, spacetime is mostly just plain spacetime and there are apparently plants and metabolisms and so on. The whole point about magic -- what makes it magic and not physics -- is that it violates basic physics, but not (generally) most of basic causality.

Of course you could propose magic that doesn't need any energy and/or doesn't displace anything or interact with anything in a destructive way BUT wouldn't that magic be completely unconstrained? On the other hand, if magic can potentially interact destructively with the "real" (physical world of basic physics) and its power has some impact on whatever sustains the natural world, then potentially the magic could run away and destroy the universe. Given that we are talking of a limit to magical potential -- in such a case magic would need to face some magical mechanism to constrain it at least in universes that are not destroyed by run-away magic.
 

ChaseJxyz

Writes 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 and 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 accessories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2020
Messages
4,524
Reaction score
6,203
Location
The Rottenest City on the Pacific Coast
Website
www.chasej.xyz
So apparently most fantasy stories assume that -- outside of magic -- conservation of energy works, entropy happens as expected, spacetime is mostly just plain spacetime and there are apparently plants and metabolisms and so on. The whole point about magic -- what makes it magic and not physics -- is that it violates basic physics, but not (generally) most of basic causality.

A lot of what we "know" about the laws of physics is what we think we know: we do not know things 100% of the time in 100% of situations. The physics and math that was used to build the pyramids thousands of years ago was "correct," but it didn't take into account things like relativity or quantum mechanics. But just because the Mayans and Egyptians didn't know about quarks or radioactive decay doesn't mean that the science/math they knew was wrong: it was as much as they needed to do what they had to in their situation. When electrical engineers first started creating semiconductor circuits, they weren't thinking about quantum mechanics, but now they do since we've made circuits that small.

So a wizard making a fireball doesn't need to worry about the laws of entropy the same way you don't think about it when you light the burners of your stove. The universe's rules run in the background, regardless if you know how they work or not.


Of course you could propose magic that doesn't need any energy and/or doesn't displace anything or interact with anything in a destructive way BUT wouldn't that magic be completely unconstrained? On the other hand, if magic can potentially interact destructively with the "real" (physical world of basic physics) and its power has some impact on whatever sustains the natural world, then potentially the magic could run away and destroy the universe. Given that we are talking of a limit to magical potential -- in such a case magic would need to face some magical mechanism to constrain it at least in universes that are not destroyed by run-away magic.

You can make the same argument about atomic energy. People believed that the universe might implode when we turned on the Large Hadron Collider. Who knows what the "laws" of physics even looked like when the universe first came into being?

Full disclosure: I do believe in the metaphysical aspects of my religion, which you cannot prove objectively 100%. But you also can't disprove it. Hawking's final paper discussed the possibility of multiverses existing, but we can't prove or disprove it, but if it does exist, it will exist regardless of what we think we know. There could easily be a big flaw in our understanding in any of the laws of physics because of assumptions: how could ancient mathematicians know that g would be different by a black hole or on a different planet? But what they knew worked for their applications and situations. What we currently know about how the universe works is based on our current measurements, senses, and abilities; it can and will change as we make more discoveries, but it doesn't mean that those rules don't exist/apply until then.

Anyways, back to magic. The "scientific definition" that I have for it in [birds] is "the application of one's will/intent on energy in a manner that causes it to deviate from its natural processes." (With enough time/patience/bananas) you could train a monkey to strike flint and steel and make fire, as the "rules" of the universe are running in the background to cause the physical/chemical changes/reactions to start a fire. An object will not spontaneously ignite without something entering/changing its system. But if you psychically/telepathically create fire with magic, you are doing something with the rules of the universe, but you probably don't know what, you just know that if you think [x] then you get [y]. To the monkey, the flint and steel are magic, too, because it doesn't understand what's going on. It's introducing something into the natural system that isn't normally there.

Zero Escape discusses a lot of metaphysical concepts that I think are relevant to your questions. If you gave a caveman a wireless computer display, if they open it and start to cut wires, they would think "ah, these cause this device to work. Something about these connections cause this device to think." But we know that's not true, the display is just showing information that is being calculated/rendered at a computer somewhere else, which is being transmitted wirelessly to the display. The caveman only destroyed its ability to receive/display those signals; the main computer remains unchanged. What's to say that our consciousness/souls don't exist somewhere else and our brains are just the receiver/renderer of the signals? The energy of the signal can be in an energy or form we cannot see our measure, just like how a caveman cannot see/measure Wi-Fi. But It Just Works.

Why doesn't magic tear the universe apart? Who knows? Does it matter? Unless the character is a theoretical physicist and they're trying to answer these questions, it doesn't matter. A universe that "evolved" (and/or was designed, depending on the cosmology) with magic/energies/laws that don't exist within our own has checks and balances, just as ours do. Magic in fiction is magic to us because we aren't familiar with it. People used to think the wireless communicators on Star Trek were "magic" sci-fi tech, like how we think of teleportation today, but we all own multiple wireless communicators that fit in our pockets. Atomic energy was "magic" for quite awhile, and still is in some cases (looking at you, super hero origin stories).
 

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,083
Reaction score
10,778
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
I can't think of any fantasy stories off hand where basic physics doesn't work as a rule -- fires heat things, hot gases rise, gravity functions, water flows downhill and so on, people have to eat and drink to live etc.. So apparently most fantasy stories assume that -- outside of magic -- conservation of energy works, entropy happens as expected, spacetime is mostly just plain spacetime and there are apparently plants and metabolisms and so on. The whole point about magic -- what makes it magic and not physics -- is that it violates basic physics, but not (generally) most of basic causality.

I can think of some fantasy stories where the setting is so surreal and bizarre that I actually find it hard to relate, because I spend the whole time trying to figure out what is happening, why it's possible and why it's important anyway if the rules are so alien to me. But some people love stories like this.

Magic obviously violates laws of physics as we understand them, but it's possible to give a nod to things like conservation of energy and so on if the magic system posits that the order being artificially created by the magic user or magical device requires an input of energy and/or is coming at the cost of greater disorder somewhere else. What that greater disorder is, and what it means for the caster and others who share their world, of course, is limited only by the imagination.[/quote]

Of course you could propose magic that doesn't need any energy and/or doesn't displace anything or interact with anything in a destructive way BUT wouldn't that magic be completely unconstrained? On the other hand, if magic can potentially interact destructively with the "real" (physical world of basic physics) and its power has some impact on whatever sustains the natural world, then potentially the magic could run away and destroy the universe. Given that we are talking of a limit to magical potential -- in such a case magic would need to face some magical mechanism to constrain it at least in universes that are not destroyed by run-away magic.

I suppose magic that doesn't actually interact with the real world, aside perhaps from the perception of the caster and those witnessing it, magic that is entirely illusory, could be a subject unto itself. Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamorist books are set in an alternative regency England setting, where magically talented people can weave impressive and persistent illusions, which are highly valued art forms and status symbols, and as it turns out, there may be some utility to them after all.

I suppose illusions could still be useful, even dangerous, if most people are unable to tell when they are real and when they aren't, or if they can be used to hide things or alter one's own appearance and so on. But even illusory magic in stories typically required a certain amount of energy on the part of their creators to create and considerable skill and time to weave.

Really, though, magic can be whatever it needs to be for the story it is in. But magic with no rules at all, and no limitation or costs to the casters that occurs at a story's center could certainly make conflict rather trivial, unless the whole point of the story is how normal people survive in a world where insanely powerful deities are (or sorcerers who might as well be gods) are in constant conflict with one another, or if godlike beings are simply changing the nature of reality whenever they please.
 

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,643
Reaction score
14,867
Location
Massachusetts
I can't think of any fantasy stories off hand where basic physics doesn't work as a rule -- fires heat things, hot gases rise, gravity functions, water flows downhill and so on, people have to eat and drink to live etc.. So apparently most fantasy stories assume that -- outside of magic -- conservation of energy works, entropy happens as expected, spacetime is mostly just plain spacetime and there are apparently plants and metabolisms and so on. The whole point about magic -- what makes it magic and not physics -- is that it violates basic physics, but not (generally) most of basic causality.

Fantasy is not really the genre I primarily read in, so I'll take your word for it that most F novels tend to obey "everyday physics" like fire heats things. (Might be fun to try to imagine a world with just one such physical law behaving very differently?)

I've read SF where the laws of physics can literally be quite different -- not that people use technology to side-step them, but that space itself has different physics. One that springs to mind is Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", where fundamental physics behaves differently in our galaxy depending upon how far from our galactic center you are.

Of course you could propose magic that doesn't need any energy and/or doesn't displace anything or interact with anything in a destructive way BUT wouldn't that magic be completely unconstrained? On the other hand, if magic can potentially interact destructively with the "real" (physical world of basic physics) and its power has some impact on whatever sustains the natural world, then potentially the magic could run away and destroy the universe. Given that we are talking of a limit to magical potential -- in such a case magic would need to face some magical mechanism to constrain it at least in universes that are not destroyed by run-away magic.

I guess so. Or perhaps that magic has its own physics -- it's equivalent of inverse-square laws & such that prevent universal destruction? Or, perhaps each universe is just one in an infinite multiverse, and so species are blowing up themselves (and their universe) all the time, but there "more where that came from"? It's all up to the author, I guess.
 

Maxx

Got the hang of it, here
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 26, 2010
Messages
3,227
Reaction score
202
Location
Durham NC
Clearly it's not easy to separate the idea of magic from some range of cultural contexts (and these would seem to actually pile up in fantasy since you as a person who might know about molecules might be writing about a world that doesn't particularly care about molecules). For example, a Priest of a temple in the the capital of the Aztec Empire in say 1490 would be happy to tell you that his work in sacrificing several hundred people a year on his altar is a natural part of how the world works an not really magical at all but a religious necessity to keep the universe running. At the same time the priest would be aware that there were people considered to be magicians who could produce unnatural effects by other means that did not involve human sacrifice. Moreover, neighboring towns would have priests who would be just as sure that their god ran the universe without requiring human sacrifice on quite the same scale or on the same calendrical intervals. We might think that something "magical" must be involved in how all that blood was supposed to keep the sun moving properly. And this is a fairly simple example. In Mesopotamia and neighboring Persia there were a lot of magical practices -- so diverse that modern scholars wonder if the term "magic" really works for the whole range of manipulations -- and this is from the area where the term "magic" (ie what Persian Magi could do to manipulate the cosmos and read cosmic signs) originated.

Anyway...to keep it simple, I was thinking of fantasy magic as any way of harnessing transformative power from outside the normal "background" range of possible transitions. I used the term "basic physics"...but probably "background" is better. So ...thinking of this fantasy magic as abstractly as possible:
a) nothing limits it
b) except that -- given it can transform anything in any way possible -- it might well overwhelm the "background"
c) therefore in places that have a coherent "background"
d) there should be a magical means of limiting what magic can do
 

frimble3

Heckuva good sport
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
11,574
Reaction score
6,396
Location
west coast, canada
I suspect this might be part of why magic is more common in simpler or more basic cultures, or indeed, children. The less you know about how things work, the more you seek an explanation, or a way to control things.
'Magic' is a way to understand the world, in the way that 'science' is another. As is religion. It's all a way of processing information.
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,977
Reaction score
4,511
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
I suspect this might be part of why magic is more common in simpler or more basic cultures, or indeed, children. The less you know about how things work, the more you seek an explanation, or a way to control things.
'Magic' is a way to understand the world, in the way that 'science' is another. As is religion. It's all a way of processing information.

Dunno about magic being more common in "simpler" or "more basic" cultures. Magic beliefs (or what seem essentially to be magical beliefs, ways to predict the unpredictable or control the uncontrollable) seem persistent today, in our decidedly non-simple civilization. People have a way of adapting/rationalizing beliefs down through the ages.

Sort of like how you get modern scientists talking about quantum states and uncertainty-until-observed, and almost immediately you get someone else deciding that's "proof" for manifestation being a thing...
 

frimble3

Heckuva good sport
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
11,574
Reaction score
6,396
Location
west coast, canada
It might have been better if I had used the phrase 'less technological' times and cultures. Before we could see stuff not visible to the naked eye, and the more 'theoretical' could be brushed off as idle speculation.
Give it to our ancestors, this is why arithmetic and mathematics started early - they were physical enough to 'prove', while allowing room for exploration.
And, in the form of architecture, was self-proving as many poorly designed archs failed, while the pyramids last.
 
Last edited: