[Veilside]

RJ - Ever since reading that one book in which Rand makes the sky "rain lightning" I just thought "holy shit that's cool". It's in no way balanced, no magic users have no protection against it, but it just hits all the right "cool" buttons.

[agreedwarren]

I think the Tolkien derivative (which borrowed hugely from norse mythology) approached a system of magics or magically imbued artifacts, which are in effect more reliant on the elements or the artifacts themselves for power and you could say they have been derided in contemporary fantasy.

It is a relatively traditionalist approach which has since been dissasociated for more contempoary or unbridled stylizations, where the weilder draws from inner sources or rites of power in order to manipulate his or her enviroment

Thus low and Hi fantasy in full effect. Im a fan of the former.

[Paran]

Bakker's system rocks - gives us the mage "songs" and the "science" behind it.
SE's is definitely awesome and extremely varied - keeps me guessing and intrigued.
RJ's - the first awesome one. Rand taking down all those Trollocs in the Stone with Callandor (Callad Bog!) in The Shadow Rising was pure money. Elemental!
Sanderson's in Mistborn - just loved the allomancy and the combinations.

[Bl!zz]

Just mentioning the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud again. I thought it had a lot of interesting ideas. Summoners are common in the world and that is pretty much how important people get things done. The better the summoner, obviously, the stronger the demons you can summon. The strength scale varies from puny little demons that can barely do anything, good mostly for spying and such, to huge demons who bend reality. The one thing that just makes everything interesting to me is that the demons are all just pieces of one entity. Big demons are basically just a really big piece. When they are existing in their natural stat, in their own realm, there are no boundaries of self. Everything sort of melds together. Not super-duper amazazazing, yet it is also a young-adult book. The ending was sad, too...lol

[Falcdragon]

RJ's system's probably my fav seeing it holds together nicely and interacts with the Wheel and Weave well. And because of Balefire

Erikson's is also rather impressive, though somewhat overly complex with multiply layers of reality to it, Warrens > Krul's Blood/Veins > Alternate Planes/Universes > A Dream etc. Though the power it's self in somecases seems like it might be the result of the interaction of two different universes, rather than just the contents of each warren.

Also Eddings word and the will is a nice simply clean system that alot less "science" like than many of the others. Also his Sparrowhawk magic system is always amusing when you realise it's just prayers to the Gods, and that all the Church Knights/Paladins are effectively praying/worshiping to an additional God that they're not actually supposed to believe in to preform magic when if they'rd sorted it out properly there own God probably could have provided them with their Magic.

Gordon R. Dickson Dragon Knight's magic system has to be one of the most amusing being based on a simple formulaic system + Energy. The best feature about it is the amusing "Accounting Office" which keeps track of all the magic and make sure it balances. While seeming to spend a good part of it's time arguing with the magicians, when not punishing them by docking there magic account or similar!

[Zanth13]

Falcdragon;243901 said:

Gordon R. Dickson Dragon Knight's magic system has to be one of the most amusing being based on a simple formulaic system + Energy. The best feature about it is the amusing "Accounting Office" which keeps track of all the magic and make sure it balances. While seeming to spend a good part of it's time arguing with the magicians, when not punishing them by docking there magic account or similar!

yes I loved the Dragon Knight magic system...

picture
Water ----> Beer
inside your head and bam

genius

Was thinking about it today because of the fantasy weapon thread so
I gotta through Xanth magic, very simple but I love the the first 3 books and the whole born with a power at birth, some people are magician caliber and most are not....

~I would love to have Trents power, though most of the magician caliber powers would be nice

[Morgoth]

Falcdragon;243901 said:

RJ's system's probably my fav seeing it holds together nicely and interacts with the Wheel and Weave well. And because of Balefire

I dunno.. Balefire would have been fun if he'd actually been consistent about it.. In the begining one killed by balefire is removed from the weave completly and all their past actions are erased. Yet when Rand ballfires a forsaken, nothing of the sort happens. He is merely destroyed..

At least that is how i remember it. Made me pretty disgusted with the whole thing it did.

[Falcdragon]

Morgoth;245823 said:

I dunno.. Balefire would have been fun if he'd actually been consistent about it.. In the begining one killed by balefire is removed from the weave completly and all their past actions are erased. Yet when Rand ballfires a forsaken, nothing of the sort happens. He is merely destroyed..

At least that is how i remember it. Made me pretty disgusted with the whole thing it did.

He was consistent about it, but how far back the actions were removed was dependent on how strong the balefire was, and in the books it's never used any where near it's users full strength.

As for the forsaken, those he actually balefired and hit are dead and gone and have not comeback. Those that he was throwing balefire around but who died due to some other reason were free to come back.

[agreedwarren]

Paran;240601 said:

Bakker's system rocks - gives us the mage "songs" and the "science" behind it.
.

hmmm. Dont think they are actually mages, or based on principals of "songs" or "science". Maybe the tekne has scientific foundations, have to read up on them again, its been awhile here

[Darkwatch]

They are mages weilding the energy is the cosmos. The Anagogic school's cants do infact sound like song, hence why they're called cants not spells.
But the philosophical ancoring behind the system is very well thought out, which is what I think Paran meant. The Magic system is based on reason and intellect except for the Psuke, but even then a cunning mind is sure to be of good.

[Mentalist]

Darkwatch;251487 said:

They are mages weilding the energy is the cosmos. The Anagogic school's cants do infact sound like song, hence why they're called cants not spells.
But the philosophical ancoring behind the system is very well thought out, which is what I think Paran meant. The Magic system is based on reason and intellect except for the Psuke, but even then a cunning mind is sure to be of good.

umm..

Spoiler

not really, after all, Moenghus is as cunning as they come, and he's practically useless in Psuke

[Darkwatch]

Indeed, since it is a passion based magic system.

Spoiler

But as he said he was better at the more subtle aspects of the art like the cants of calling that he used to call his son. And an intelligent normal (passionate) person would be very powerful in the cishaurim.

[Tarcanus]

The only magic systems I've ever really tried to understand are RJ's, GRRM's, Cook's, Bakker's, and Erikson's.

RJ - neat because of the elements and how you could become more powerful simply by using the elements in varying weaves. It left room for invention.

Cook - His instrumentalities magic system is bit confusing since the most powerful mages are so secretive about it. All we know is that they can use the Night. I want to know how, and why the Night accepts being used.

Bakker - I don't like this nearly as much as the rest of you. I know the systems were vaguely described, but not enough to please me. Everytime someone started castings it just seemed like a surge of power with no control or thought beyond 'destroy'. While that's cool and all, I'd like to know more on the 'how' they're able to do that. The main thing I got from it was that Gnosis trumps SS and Cishaurim.

Erikson's is spectacular. I know many complain a bit about how there seem to be few rules, but when you consider how rigidly the system seems to be set up, the rules pale in comparison. SD as root, and the others branch from it. Then the main branches eventually 'evolve'(for lack of a better word) into the derivatives that the humans can use. Erikson built a magic evolution that feels natural to his world - which is amazing.

GRRM - neat, especially because only 2 or so characters have been seen to use it - the Warrior Priest guy with the bandits and the Red Lady. I don't know where everyone is getting the idea that GRRM's magic is all mysterious. I'm fairly certain that it's stated in one of the novels that magic was disappearing because dragons are the source of magic. Now that a few dragons are back, magic is starting to come back and will only become stronger as the dragons grow.

[Mentalist]

hmm, no offence, but there's more to GRRM that that
There are the wargs, the Greenseers, Coldhands... not to mention the house of the Undying, and hte magics of the East.
oh, and the Others...

[Giles]

il mention it because i dont think anyone else has.
but i think the magic systems in the james Barclay books are quite good.
in the raven books you've got the slight differences between the four colleges and it seems to be an understandable system (iirc its about the shaping of mana but i havent read them in a while so i may be wrong there)
The magic system in the ascendants is ok as in the people with magic are essentially more evolved people, but it does seem to get so that people without magic have absolutely no chance at all.

[Kithar]

If I had to pick a favorite it would have to be RJ's system. There is so much you can do with it, and it makes for some great magic battles. Although anyone without the power is pretty screwed(cept Matt), that fact has lead to many of the "wow thats cool" moments of the series. IE the whole "Asha'man Kill" sequence in Dumais Wells, and Rand yelling "I AM THE STORM!" while blowing everything to bits with Callandor in hand.

Robin Hobbs skill magic is one of the more original and interesting magic systems out there. I love all the pitfalls and traps to the unwary or untrained user. I wish she would do a back history series when skill coteries were more common and more was known about the magic. Maybe focus a series on a particular skill coterie, it's formation and training, and feats they later did.

The Inheritance books magic system is not very original at all(neither is the series), but I like the way it is put together. It is somewhat of a cross between Earthsea naming magic, and other more conventinal systems. I like the fact that a new practitioner needs to use lots of words and spell out what he wants clearly or there could be dire consequences, while a master can do many things with a single word.

The rune system from the Death Gate Cycle is also pretty cool, and the fact that SE's warren/hold system is awsome goes without saying, but I'll do it anyway

[Goblin]

Dagger;212602 said:

Glen Cook's Black Company books have an interesting, if vague, magic system. I like the fact that the two under-powered wizards are consistently finding ways to win against the big guns.

This is one of my favorites also. I liked it because there was no real system that the reader could define, it was always a mystery. But we know that there were different types, ie: Silents was different than Goblin and One Eye's. But over the series, you could sort of discern that the magic was almost like doing incredibly difficult math. And that only the really insanely driven (The Ten who where Taken) got really good at it.

[Cause]

Morgoth;245823 said:

I dunno.. Balefire would have been fun if he'd actually been consistent about it.. In the begining one killed by balefire is removed from the weave completly and all their past actions are erased. Yet when Rand ballfires a forsaken, nothing of the sort happens. He is merely destroyed..

At least that is how i remember it. Made me pretty disgusted with the whole thing it did.

No it burned the weave backward from time of death proportional to its power. It for instance can behave like killing a forsaken 5 minutes 5 days 5 years ago. Resulting in his actions being erased back to those points.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

kud13;251583 said:

umm..

Spoiler

not really, after all, Moenghus is as cunning as they come, and he's practically useless in Psuke

Not quite true, my friend. Recall the very firt book, where Cememketri says that

Spoiler

Mallahet is econd only to Seokti in the Psukhe, and many even dispute that. The only reason he is not grandmaster (well, the Fanim equivalent) is that non-Fanim aren't allowed to be. In TTT, we learn that Mallahet = Moenghus. Therefore, there is a discrepancy in the books; meaning that either Kellhus' educated guesses were unfair to Moenghus, or Cememketri was dead wrong. Considering that Cememketri was Grandmaster of the school closest to the Fanim, and most often at war with them, and also considering that he lived in the regular world his whole life, while Kellhus was out there for a couple of years... well, considering all that, I think it's safe to assume that Kellhus didn't get the whole picture. It should also be noted that "the whole picture" was pretty much irrelevant at the time. There's more to Moenghus than we know about, that's for sure. He may not be a godling with the Psukhe like Kellhus is with the Gnosis, but whatever. He's hardly a magical wimp.

That said, my favourite system is RJ's, simply because it's the only one with explicit, clearly-defined rules--it's a real system, and allows the reader great room to theorize and so on. Bakker's comes second, because I'm a philosophy major and I see so many echoes of the tradition throughout his books--and because the magic system is so novel. As far as originality goes, I think Bakker's is at the top of the list. It's just got a lot of grey areas.

[Cause]

No practioners of the pushke are priests first sorcerors second. Moenghus earned great respect by being able to provide insight into peoples thoughts feelings and so ppear to be brilliant as a priest but he was a failure in controlling the pushke itself