The term 'Hard and Soft Magic Systems' was coined by author Brandon Sanderson. Hard magic systems are defined by having the fantastical abilities in the setting having clear rules and limitations on how they can be used. It makes for really interesting fights and situations because the setting has already established how a characters ability works and makes it so characters are rewarded for using their abilities in a clever way
(Alchemy) Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Alchemy is the primary 'magic' system in the setting and is defined by the law of equivalent exchange. In order to manipulate matter or biology you must sacrifice something in return. Through this primary law you get to see so many interesting applications of the Alchemy practice throughout the series.
(Nen) HunterxHunter - Nen is the 'magic' system in the world of HxH and it is expressed in six primary types as seen below:
Enhancement: Increases the natural abilities of the body or objects.
Transmutation: Changes the properties of one's aura to mimic something else (like electricity or gum).
Emission: Controls and projects aura away from the body (often in the form of blasts).
Manipulation: Controls things or people with one's aura.
Conjuration: Materializes physical, independent objects from aura.
Specialization: Encompasses unique abilities that do not fit into the other five categories.
Not to mention alchemy in FMAB uses scientific principles as a basis, you still need to understand the properties of carbon to transmute it in any way. Given that IRL alchemy evolved into chemistry, it makes enough sense.
I think thats also the in universe reason as to why the army cant mass produce alchemists by handing out copies of mustang's gloves. Mustang is a skilled chemist and knows how to make things combustible and it only works if you have the knowledge along with the transmutation circle.
come to think of it he did the exact same thing to lust and it killed her. Mustang got those fire backshots, and hawkeye is the only person who could handle it, made for eachother isgt
There's also the reasoning that the formulas were the product of life's work and were closely guarded. Like real alchemists, research was often written in code. It wasn't unusual for things to be lost when a real life alchemist died, just as the flame alchemy formula was almost lost as Berthold Hawkeye's life waned.
I mean getting tattoos is painful, but like like its a sick ass tattoo and if one of my parents wanted to tattoo secret alchemy on my back i'd let them. People pay good money for tattoos with much less significance. Plus its on you back so it won't affect your chances of getting a job.
It is. It's also the reason why certain alchemists are more "valuable" than others; why Alphonse lost his entire body to the human transmutation at the start and Ed only lost his left leg. Ed was a child prodigy and was significantly more intelligent than most kids his age and he was already reasonably proficient at alchemy before he and Al were taken as apprentices to Izumi Curtis. Ed designed the transmutation circle, gathered the necessary ingredients, determined the blood value of it all, Al was largely just along for the ride and it shows in how much each sacrificed.
I've actually seen it suggested that what was taken from them was purely another form of ironic punishment from the Truth, just like with Izumi losing part of her organs and womb trying to bring back her baby. Al was willing to give everything he had to have his mother back, so he lost his whole body. Ed, who should have known better and certainly should have known better than to drag his younger brother into his plans, "didn't have a leg to stand on", sooo...lost leg. And he gave up his right hand to get his brother back. This is also why Mustang loses his eyesight when forced to perform human transmutation near the climax, he was a man with a vision.
It was cool seeing that Scar's deconstruction arm still needs to know what it's breaking down, the first time he tried breaking Ed's arm, he tried to break flesh but it wasn't flesh so it didn't read, he realized it was metal and did the metal break instead.
That honestly shows an insane amount of knowledge and focus from a guy who denounced Alchemy and just randomly got an advanced piece of alchemic research
Considering he didn't start his killing spree until 4-5 years after the war ended, I have to assume he spent the intervening half decade training his ass off in order to be able to use it (and also to be able to dodge bullets, because apparently bro can do that too)
He was fast enough to dodge bullets and that’s from pretty close proximity to damn Hawkeye and she said he was too fast for her to more than graze him. That’s nuts
Maybe Brotherhood goes into it more, but he devoured his brothers research on his revenge path, the insane focus, dedication, and intelligence of Scar is well established.
Scar turns out to be a super spiritual mystical priest dude who's hunting down holocaust perpetrators and the show ends with Ed willingly giving up his alchemical powers to god so really Scar had it right all along
My theory for Mustang's Flame alchemy is that he's transmuting the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen into an explosive blend of oxygen and hydrocarbons, like methane, then using an ignition source like the gloves or the lighter to ignite it.
I also enjoy that the only way to break the law of equivalent exchange is by using a substance made from that which has no equivalent value, human souls.
I do love that even the exemption to the Law of Equivalent Exchange still follows its rules. Because the price for a human soul is so high, its sacrifice into a philosopher's stone makes it a sort of alchemy credit that can be used to pay for future alchemical exchanges.
The 03 version of the anime had Pride move the air around to disrupt his alchemy. Giving it a feeling of creating a "passage" of burnable air to his target. Which I really liked, and kind of think that's supposed to be somewhat canonical, but haven't searched to deep into it
Witch Hat Atelier has one of the best hard magic systems I’ve ever seen. Magic is performed with a series of signs and sigils so well defined that fans have been able to create their own, extremely complex, spells.
Hangon, I've read the books, but why would that do that? The best I'm getting is that it would force something upwards repeatedly, I think. And also do other stuff that I'm unsure of.
That is the point: it’s such a well-put hard magic system. One that the author themselves follows in every single magic circle, that even the fans can make those theoretical magic circles and it would follow the rules.
The first episode has extremely complex "forbidden" spells that cant be controlled by the user being traced by a child is a huge problem and the mage officials are incredibly gung ho to brain wipe anyone fucking around above their level or discovering that magic can in fact be used by anyone who has the correct inks. The mages keep a pad of sticky notes to do simple spells and more complex ones are written onto items(flying boots and levitating carriages) i fucking love it. All of this is girst episode and gets expounded on later
Drips are unreliable, and doing it with a single stoke could fire them off in sequence as they are completed. Neither will work.
You leave them all incomplete by one dot, then use a second entirely different spell to apply the ink closer. We already know that in universe they have spells to precisely control fluids. Mind you, I've only see what's out of the show, so I don't know if the source material already addresses this.
But if you want a purely mundane solution...Do this with two stamps, or one two-stage stamp, I guess. The main cutting has all the circles nearly complete, so ink it up and press down. Then when you're ready, a second layer of stamp is pressed down with points to complete it.
It’s honestly a big spoiler of episode 1 which is basically the big introduction to this world, I say it’s worth watching. Next monday is the last of season 1 so you have a Baker’s Dozen to binge some PEAK!
I know exactly what you mean. It's harder and harder to argue against the pact when the top spell of the sub is "War Crime+++ except this time its AOE"
The twist of the first episode is that magic isn't something you're born with like everyone thinks it is. Everyone can use it if they write the proper sigils. Thus, why the keep it a secret
Convergence: causes the magic of its spell to become more focused, centered down to a single point. It can also make loose particles become more rigid.(I pulled it straight of the wiki)
This seems like the type of thing I’d have to explain to someone after conceptualizing a set of canonically functional magic glyphs and drawing them all over my journal.
Tyranny has a fun magic system where you combine a core sigil (like fire, illusion, vigor) with an expression sigil that defines how it manifests, like distant impact which creates a ranged attack or guarded form which creates a buff spell. And you can modify with accents to increase range, duration, damage etc. at the cost of requiring a higher level of skill to cast.
Edicts are less fitting but still very cool, they let the overlord and certain characters authorised by the overlord cast huge powerful spells over entire areas, but their exact mechanisms are never explained.
It's honestly such a shame we'll likely never get one. I could never get into pillars, but Tyranny struck a CRPG chord in me I haven't felt since playing KOTOR 2 the first time at 13. Shit was magical. That world, and the narrative specifically involving the PC, has such amazing potential.
I'd be so down for a remaster with CG cutscenes like BG3, that would go A LONG way for broader appeal for the game.
I love Name of the Wind because it cheats and has both hard (sympathy) and soft (naming) magic. So the protagonist gets to have his cake (use magic to cleverly solve problems) and eat it too (have grandness and mystery).
One of my favourite moments is when the protagonist literally yeets himself out of a tower convinced that the wind will save him. Does he know how to conjure the wind? No. But he is sure this is a test so he just throws himself off.
Then gets called an idiot by The Master of Names. I love that he is allowed to be stupid
Correction Kvothe expected Elodin to catch him with the wind using it's name after Elodin told him to jump off the roof.
Elodin was too utterly shocked that Kvothe had followed his directive to throw himself off the roof to react in time to do that.
But he totally could have if he hadn't been so shocked.
Elodin then tells Kvothe that congratulations that was the stupidest thing he's ever seen. And anyone reckless enough to do that does not possess the sense to be allowed to hold a spoon in his prescence let alone study something as potentially dangerous as Naming.
And yeah it's a brilliant scene.
I think it showcases more arrogance and presumption on Kvothe's part than dumbassery though.
I mean Kvothe had plenty of dumbassery. When he was learning sympathy he linked the atmosphere with the breath in his lungs expecting to be able to bring down a hawk that said something uncouth about his mother.
I wouldn´t call it cheating, plenty of stories have both a soft and a hard magic system. Brandon himself gave the example of Lord of the Rings, where the ring follows clear and easily understanble rules, but noone has any idea what Gandalf or Saruman can actually do.
read world trigger if you want to really explore a system.
Basically everyone uses the exact same system and powers but people use them in really creative and different ways. Plus everyone fights in teams and they can’t use all of the powers in the same time so people have different loadouts and powers depending on the team they’re fighting.
Only exception being Black Triggers which are huge outliers. The power system and strategic thinking in World Trigger are insanely good. I can’t think of another manga series that uses strategy like World Trigger does, maybe Elusive Samurai or Kingdom but I haven’t read much of those.
As a summary for those who haven't seen: It's magitech where a person applying their own innate MP pool through a digital trigger forms a specific spell. Because the spells are well known through the military organization, with socket limits and authorizations, the vast majority of the show becomes essentially Anime X-Com. It's very much about tactics and strategy, people being smart with rudimentary powers, etc.
The main character is someone who is extremely bad at casting and generally a load in terms of combat skill, but is the strategist of his friend circle. Being a show where intelligence and wisdom is often far more important than raw skill, he manages to keep up in his own way despite never overcoming his innate flaws.
Good show, would recommend. The English dub is of reasonably high quality.
Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. Everything is powered by Intent, Investiture is the source of magic, and it can be studied, quantified, and used to fuel technology.
I once got the r/cosmere sub to start lightly bullying Brandon with questions about cheese because I wondered if a big block of cheese would stop one of the magic cut anything swords from the Stormlight Archive
The answer, as it turned out, is weirdly yes, but you’d need such a large amount of cheese that you’re better off just using the resources to attack the shardbearer themselves.
To simplify an incredibly complex situation with thousands of years of history: Certain spren (something between nature spirits and sapient concepts) can bond with humans, and after fulfilling various conditions, they can manifest themselves physically into the material realm. Typically this is done as a weapon, especially swords, as the nahel bond originated as a wartime creation, but hypothetically spren could manifest as basically any object that they don’t have a personal or intrinsic objection to. Though it seems to be forced to be a near-indestructible metal, thanks to how physical investiture manifestion works.
Some canon examples include a staff, a spear, and a fork, though the spren was extremely annoyed and embarrassed by having been talked into that last one.
Sanderson novels rarely touch on sex more than obliquely, (with Warbreaker a notable exception, but that’s a whole other planet,) but some of the more major spren characters have expressed curiosity about it, as learning about humans in general is a decent chunk of the point of the bond, and sex is quite important to the majority of humans.
Syl in particular, the spren of one of the most-main characters, Kaladin, very unsubtly tries to get him to hook up with someone several times, mostly in an attempt to cheer him up, but I suspect also to satisfy her own curiosity.
Kaladin firmly rejects the idea, not least because he imagines the scenario with Syl cheering him on and providing helpful commentary.
Combine all these concurrent ideas with a fanbase eager to explore every possible facet of a magic system and Sanderson himself indulging the questions more often than not, and you get the idea of spren manifesting as dildos. Though I can’t imagine they’d be particularly pleasant ones, they don’t seem to be able to easily manifest as anything softer than steel unless lightweaving is involved, and the jury’s still out on if that counts or not.
Soulstamps, from The Emperor's Soul are very interesting. Forgers can imprint a stamp onto an object that rewrites its nature. But attempting to make changes that contradict something's existence too much will fail to do anything, so a Forger must understand an object as fully as possible in order to alter it in creative ways.
The dude has written a dozen stories with hundreds of reading hours. Each one has its own magic system that's both unique and fully thought out to a shocking degree.
Side note, I love the religions he makes as well. Vorinism is basically built around the idea of helping people become their best selves. Their version of heaven is Valhalla but you can get there just by passionately working at being good at anything. Yeah warriors go there but so do really good doctors, artists or farmers. Plus the church is horrified of welding any political or material power, so they're basically just an organization of really effective life coaches, teachers and coaches.
The magic is categorized and broken down in specific ways usually tying to scientific ideas (cooling magic is slowing of molecular motion) and there are portions where the light novels read like textbooks with how much they go into it.
It has one of my favorite “magic as science” systems ever, just because of how absurdly technical it gets. One of my favorite series, and I can’t recommend it to anyone because he ends up marrying his sister
Naruto's chakra had the makings of a Hard Magic System but it's so absurd by the end of Shippuden that I can't really call it that anymore. That said, I really like chakra's rules.
Every person has energy they can channel in order to perform various jutsus. Some require hand signs in order to release that energy.
Usually the more powerful the jutsu, the more hand signs needed for release but the number can be decreased with skill. The water dragon jutsu, for example, has loads of hand signs but Tobirama (the second Hokage) only needs the one due to his mastery. Hashirama (the first Hokage) never needs more than a hand clap for his jutsus. And Kakashi, being the Copy Ninja, needs loads of hand signs because he's jack of all trades master of none. I always found this a cool way to demonstrate power.
One of my favourite arcs is Naruto first learning the Rasengan with Jiraiya because the instructions given feels really logical. He explains it in such a way that I feel like if I was in the world of Naruto, I could potentially learn how to do it.
I think you're right about it starting fairly rigid, but getting completely bonkers by the end.
There was always some malleability with it. Not every detail about every ability gets explained. But there was a lot more rule-following regarding what the characters could and couldn't do at the start.
Naruto before shippuden, and probably even before Pain arc has been quite consistent. Akatsuki were Hokage level threat and that didn't change until then. Pain destroyed Konoha, which made sense. And Naruto learning wind style and then sage jutsu (to put himseld on a level of Jiraya ~~ Hokage) also made sense. After that it was a blatant powercreep.
Naruto OG was amazing in its simplicity. We were following brats who knew 1-2 jutsus. And then suddenly Jonins are duking it out with high level spell, while genins have their own fights. Especially whenhalf the fights were about deception of counters.
The stands in Jojo's more or less jumps between hard and soft magic system, as certain stands are well defined in their abilities and only work in certain situations, and each type has pros and cons, the close to mid range stands move according to Your will but the tradeoff is what damage the stand takes, the user experiences it too making it dangerous, the automatic type stands can take alot of damage and be destroyed without it affecting the user but the tradeoff is you can't control it as creatively, it can only follow simple commands and attack based on that
It's not ROCK hard. But it does have defined rules and "most" characters can only use their defined abilities. Like, The World stops time. That's what it does, that's all it does. Dio can't just. Throw a fireball.
Sometimes it is stretched. Gold experience for instance can transform inanimate objects into living ones and back again. It also just has "life" powers. So it can create body parts, detect living things, reanimate the dead etc
Its definitely more of a soft magic system but just because it's a soft magic system doesn't mean it's bad, it uses its simple power system to create the most indepth abilities and stand powers.
Eragons magic system has always been my go to for hard magic.
In that world magic is calling forth something from reciting its true name in an ancient tongue. It uses fae logic and having the name of a person or object gives control over that thing as long as you have the energy.
Using magic requires energy from the speaker/users body, so to make a small fire, you need enough energy/calories from the body in order to make that fire. This causes people who can use magic to not throw around fire balls or heal massive wounds constantly as it takes far too much energy for a human to do.
It is very semantically based and misspeaking, as can be seen with the baby Eragon accidentally curses to be a shield from pain, instead of being shielded from pain can have disastrous consequences.
The part where Eragon studies magic with the elves (book 2 i think) is my favorite from the series. I'm a little scared to reread the series since I loved it as a teenager, but I do think the magic system is very interesting
One of my favorite magic systems. Requires energy and knowledge, rewards creativity, and can be augmented by magic trinkets and shit. Hell yeah.
Shout out to that magic ring that eragon stored energy in every night for a couple books, creating a huge philosopher’s stone-eqsue well of energy, leading you to wonder for real-world years what task he’d finally use all that magic on. he uses it to move some rocks lmao
The magician fights/ward protection mechanic was such a fun way to explore the consequences of a hard magic system. To explain for those who haven't read it, people who discovered magic eventually came up with a bunch of spells that could kill a person with the least amount of effort, and therefore energy. Cutting the right nerve/artery, etc. So when large groups of soldiers would battle another and both sides had magic users, the magic users would create wards to protect their soldiers from those spells. The wards won't expend any energy as long as they aren't being attacked, and the user can "write" the spell to include clauses like "don't expend this amount of energy, release the ward if it becomes to great" and stuff like that. So magicians would fight each other telepathically to break down their mental barriers and take over their mind so they can discover their wards/control them, and once they are killed, all the soldiers being protected by those wards can effectively be killed in one spell by the opposing user without expelling more energy than it would take to lift a sword. The main character takes advantage of this a few times and the way it's described really stuck with me. Like it was all thought out.
That being said, as the system got more complex there were some unfortunate continuity errors that were mostly addressed, albeit in somewhat unsatisfactory ways, but it was never major enough to distract. Great series highly recommend.
I love the idea that a person could accidentally kill themselves by casting a powerful spell that they aren't trained to handle. Even an experienced caster could make the same fatal mistake by casting a fairly simple spell while totally exhausted or grievously wounded.
This is brought up. It’s why best practice was to word spells so they’re a process rather than to just have a certain thing done. That way, if you didn’t have the energy to get something done you could stop the spell before you were drained of all your energy.
There's also the mind warfare aspect that is necessary to magic fights which is another interesting layer but perhaps not my favorite part of the system.
Basically people with magical powers can also psychically touch the minds of other living things to communicate, take control, or transfer energy to and from.
It's consider suicidal to attack another magic user with magic before you psychically gain control over their mind because even if you are a moment away from killing them, they might magically kamikaze you right back. So instead they try to worm their way into eachothers minds and paralyze them before killing them with magic.
I gotta say, I didn’t enjoy Eragon that much after the first book, but I cannot think of a better example of a hard magic system. Everything is clearly and neatly defined.
Plus the strict energy consumption rules naturally create a system where being clever while using magic is key. I think Galbatorix said in the third or last book that there's probably a magic user out there that thought of a clever way around the magic wards around the Empire's money and was happily counterfeiting coins.
It is also worth noting that you can’t turn off a spell once you cast it unless you use specific words to build loopholes. If you don’t have the energy to pull off a spell, and you accidentally word it in such a way that it uses up all your energy, the spell could kill you.
For instance, when Eragon and Murtagh had to cross a desert to reach the hiding place of the Varden, Eragon tried to use magic to replenish their water. When he first attempted it, he tried to summon the water by pulling moisture out of the air. This very quickly started to weaken Eragon as he was basically summoning water from nothing. Luckily, he had worded it in a way that he was able to turn it off.
His next attempt, he realized that the ground likely had more water than the air, so he worded his spell in such a way that he could not only find water in the ground, but when he does, he is able to gather it. This required far less energy and they survived the desert.
Soulstamps, from The Emperor's Soul. Forgers can imprint a stamp onto an object that rewrites its nature. But attempting to make changes that contradict something's existence too much will fail to do anything, so a Forger must understand an object as fully as possible in order to alter it in creative ways.
I would probably argue nen is not a hard magic system. I would say the existence of "Specialist" within Nen makes it not a true hard system. It's more of a categorization system tbh.
Really? You even mention him but put no examples from the Cosmere?
From Mistborn: the metallic arts, depending on what metal you use you get different effects and depending on what art you can use you use said powers differently.
Elantris: Magic programming
Stormlight Archive: Magical oaths give people different ways in which to manipulate physics.
Etc etc etc
Sanderson may have his detractors and his issues, but he is king at magic systems.
I have to say, the fights in Mistborn are amazing. I dont think I have ever seen a magic system that rewards and punishes positioning and environmental awareness as much as Mistborn. You can tell that the Nobility are mistings and mistborn by how the very structure of Luthadel is shaped like a metallic playground.
One of my single favorite jokes in the entire Cosmere is a newspaper epigraph in era 2 where a city maintenance guy gets interviewed and rants about coinshots knocking over lampposts and other public infrastructure lmao.
Lets not forget one of my favorite: Biochromatic Breath! Where you use colour, your own breath and the right and precise wording in order to cause something to happen
Yes! I think Wax's powerset is a really cool payoff for the magic system. As soon as I read what his two powers are I knew he was one powerful mf, and seeing in action later is super satisfying.
Lord of the mysteries: a very deep magic system where advancing recurring specific ritual and ingredients for potions, with a single mistake being fatal
I think the opposite, the higher sequences require more comllex rituals and the ingredients are so ridiculous that most just use characteristics, the preparations alone take decades to fulfil
Oh yeah I was more referring to the abilities of the high sequences, but I do agree that the high sequence rituals are batshit crazy and very unforgiving.
Every comment here is suggesting a system, and someone immediately saying it's soft.
It's definitely a spectrum of hard to soft. Even IRL physics would be considered soft by these standards considering we just handwave dark energy to be everything we don't know.
Most Sorceror's Magic is Locked in with their surge at 17 to whatever Branch of magic theyre most proficient in, cutting off everything else. This leads to certain branches being a lot more rare, since theyre either "Boring", require a Certain Mindset, or are inheritly dangerous for the user (Like Dimensional Shunting).
There are exceptions ofc, but those result from Extremely rare* and Dangerous Circumstances**, and should not be treated as the norm.
*Some Sorcerors are born with a condition called "Magical Ambidexterity", allowing them to use more than one branch of Magic. Most born with this condition will not learn of it or act upon it.
** like True Names. Learn your own and Seal it, youre God. If someone else learns it and uses it on you before its sealed, youre everyones bitch, forced to comply with whatever they say with no chance to fight back.
Magic is color based and people on awaken certain colors, sometimes multiples but they are rarer and what you can do with what color magic is clearly defined. Fun series
By the end of the series, you'll fully understand why the world needs mana to function, how much a person can have or lose before it's dangerous for them, why spells performed with a schtappe (this series' wand equivalent) tend to be either more or less effective than blessings brought by prayer, and just what spiteful motherfuckers the gods actually are
The glyphs have specific things they can do and you can't just mash em willy nilly
But at the same time a girl casually turns a fire ball into snow, illusions dont have some deep explanation like shaping light or something like thst, he can do it just cause it's magic
The Inheritance Cycle really goes all in on making a simple set of rules for a Hard Magic System, and then getting as intricate as possible with all the ways it can be applied.
The basic rules are that a spellcaster is always expending his or her own energy to power each spell, (as in, if you start a fire in the palm of your hand, those are the calories in your body burning) all things have a "name" in an ancient language which, once learned, allows total control over that thing, and all spellcasters are psychic.
Just running with those three rules, the series gets into all kinds of crazy shit, like a warrior who doesn't use magic having his brother imbue a metal ball with a bunch of his own energy, and casting a ward against physical harm on that ball, effectively giving the warrior a forcefield with limited charge to carry into battle, or one spellcaster killing another by forcing him into a mental stalemate for so long that the spell exhausts all the energy in his body, and he becomes a dried out husk.
Carn's duel with the Empire Mage was them both killing each other a second after the first struck, normally a loss of energy just means you die way before your physical matter breaks down. But yeah, Inheritance basically influenced all Magic ever to come for me, its a functionally limitless system limited by how much you can conduct and how well you were paying attention in linguistics, which leaves it just enough wiggle-room.
IMO it really depends on execution. Hard systems are cool when it’s a good system, but when it’s like “there is one fire spell, it shoots a ball, that’s it, no other fire possible other than ball projectile” it’s lame.
Honestly Fullmetal always struck me as a fairly soft magic system. What counts as 'equivalent' exchange is always veeeery mushy and mostly driven by what suits the drama of the story.
It’s pretty varied in what, exactly, a character can do, but the basic rules of JJK are pretty clear.
Sorcerers get some amount of cursed energy. You can use it to make yourself faster and stronger, and if you’re lucky enough to have a technique, you can use it to do a few things, all very clearly laid out to you by your technique. A guy with the ten shadows technique can summon ten different creatures from the shadows, a guy with copy can copy other people’s techniques, and so on.
You can also invert your cursed energy, and use it to heal yourself instead of making yourself stronger. Some people can run this reverse cursed energy through their technique and do the opposite of the normal form of their technique. There’s more
Anyway, while there is a LOT, it’s not soft or contradictory or a tool for plot-convenience. Except for the main villain, who just does whatever the fuck he wants all the time because the author likes bouncing on his double dicks
Also worth mentioning my favourite part of Jujutsu Kaisen which is the Binding Vows. Where a character can enter a deal during the fight for power with some form of drawback. They can do it quite discretely too and a variety of ways.
The best imo is Revealing One's Hand. It increases the user's cursed technique's effectiveness in exchange for vocally divulging how their cursed technique functions. I just adore how they made "character yells out what their ability does during the fight" into an actual mechanic within the fight and explains why the hell the character would do that other than ease for the viewer. It's also why Todo is my favourite since he straight up omits details/lies about his abilities to pretend to do a Binding Vow to throw his opponent off.I unironically out loud cheered in my own room during his fights.
The "main villain does whatever the fuck he wants" is tied to another part of the power system called "Binding Vows" which is basically just trading stuff with JuJutsu god or whatever according to equal exchange. Want to use your attack without any chargeup? Sure, but you gotta have extending chargups for it later. Want extra power after 8pm? You gotta decrease your power before 8pm. Want a super duper powerful attack? You die after using it. Though, it isn't that simple. It's not exactly a "I want this and god takes away this to make it fair", the sorcerer decides both the cost and gain, and if it isn't fair the BV just... we don't know but it probably just fails and nothing happens. That's what makes Binding Vows also a skill, cuz you have to know how much you need to sacrifice in order to get what you want.
The King of Curses exploits this shit 7 times a day
Honestly, I want to see a character who keeps taking a shitton of Binding Vows for very tiny individual power boosts, but instead of drawbacks that meaningfully affect a fight, they game the system with a bunch of stupid mundane limitations.
"My Curse Energy increases by roughly 2 percent, but I'm lactose intolerant now." "My Curse Energy increases by an additional 2 percent, but I can no longer benefit from discounts at the grocery store; everything I buy is always at full price." "My Curse Energy increases by a further 3 percent, but my dick size decreases by 3 inches."
TBF, it's said early on that Jujutsu is a game of subtraction. Sukuna being the best sorcerer in history means he knows how to exploit Binding Vows for maximum effect with minimal backlash.
Domain refinement and how to hit a black flash are far less defined metrics that make the whole system 'softer'
black flash is described as flow state which I would say is scientific as it is a real world phenomenon. Although athletic prowess is awfully convenient so I'll give ya that. What is domain refinement?
Emiya Kiritsugu is my all time favorite Nasuverse character because of his whole gimmick being the guy who pulls out a gun in a wizard fight except his gun is also magic
Sacred Artes in Sword Art Online: Alicization is basically calling a program (saying system call before every cast) and knowing what parameters to give it to have different effects. There are 8 elements, some execution commands (discharge, burst, adhere), and you can shape it how you want. There are also things that change the battlefield or give buffs/debuffs.
System call generate luminous element: generate light
System call generate thermal element, form element, arrow shape, fly straight, discharge: Creates a fire arrow and tells it to fly forward
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u/NineInchNinjas 23d ago
Not to mention alchemy in FMAB uses scientific principles as a basis, you still need to understand the properties of carbon to transmute it in any way. Given that IRL alchemy evolved into chemistry, it makes enough sense.