How to Make Elemental Magic Fresh Again

There's nothing wrong with having a classic archetype like elemental magic in your story. If you want to better understand the trope and explore ways to make it fresh and unique again, this video is for you!

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TV Tropes

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Chapters
Intro - 00:00
What is It? - 00:43
Change It? - 02:13
Change the Scope - 03:14
Change the Source - 05:58
Alter the Interactions - 06:52

[marilynhunt-dvvk]

I made a magic system based on foods, where the elements are the flavor and each flavor represents one element, so different meals are like spells or potions, to cast magic you have to eat a specific flavor or meal. the more complex the meal the more specific the magic. This causes family recipes to be even more important.

[redsisco_]

love the contributions from seamus, he provided a lot of useful insight and made me think about elemental magic in new ways

[JohnSmith-ukwh]

When you started talking about elemental magic coming from the magic user themselves, I immediately thought of a system where the elements come from the human body. Imagine a world where the elements of magic are Blood, Bone, Skin, Muscle, Nerves...

Hmm... I'll have to file that one away for later.

[orionar]

I'm curious how the dog is involved

[topazdrake]

I love the idea of people having access to more then one element, and had the idea of someone who can use the elements but they connect to the energy of them, so they can easily create tsunamis and tornados and can cause earthquakes and Volcanos to erupt if they want to, but creating a gentle breeze or a causing a river to swell would be something that they would have difficulty with, while someone else might have no trouble with those things and be able to have the flowers around them bloom, but struggle with causing an entire field to bloom

[morganeclipse]

I've tried running a game with magic based on other alchemical elements humans have posited in history, such as mercury and sulphur, which were once believed to explain why some things are metallic and why some things burn, respectively.

[DamienZshadow]

I am using an elemental system of four states of matter with fire, air, water and earth with four forces in between such as lightning, ice, bios, and magma. The subversion of this trope is so necessary!

I love the idea of having a specific source. The elements in my story can be manipulated or summoned. I call them Casters and Sorcerers. Casters can manipulate a puddle of water in front of them into a variety of different shapes. A Sorcerer can only summoned from a source that they have cast a circle around ahead of time but they can then summon that anywhere they happened to be allowing only that element to pass through the portal so they can go to a lake which they have cast a circle and later drain into a desert.

[thatnerdygaywerewolf]

I’m currently playing through Chrono Cross, and one of the things interesting me is the way elements are divided. Rather than an “element” being a specific substance, it is a color that has multiple substances under it (the reasoning being that the elements used are actually forces of nature more than substance). So Yellow has earth and electricity, Green has wind and plant, Black has shadow and space, etc.

In terms of how I would make an Element System, I often think about it in terms of manifesting magic energy into a substance, rather than controlling the real thing. So an “earth mage” just creates solid mana constructs, while a “water made” would make a fluid mana construct. Each would have some additional power as well (like water allowing for shapeshifting).

Though one time I made an element-esque system based on Seasons instead. Summer was associated with wind, water, and sailing, Fall was associated with decay and fire, Winter with ice and time, and Spring with plants and healing.

[remor]

What I quite enjoy doing is come up with creative applications for the usual types of elemental magic.
Passive effects, especially when the user can swap between elements are a neat thing, for instance with added drawbacks. A protective coating of ice comes with the side effect of being uncomfortably cold. The permanent jitteriness of having electricity course through your systems may grant speed at the cost of being unable to sit still and so on.
For active applications, stuff like the big old fireball may be pretty bland, considering how often it is used, but how many times have you seen somebody sleight of hand up a cluster of flashbang style firecracker embers, which may serve as a momentary distraction for an opportunity attack or a neat party trick?
Similarly, one may put a subversive twist on fairly well known elemental effects like, say, a shield of ice. Let it act as a trap instead of just simple protection by detonating it in a flash freezing blast, as if it were frigid, reactive armor.

This sort of ingenuity can best be achieved by just imaginarily sketching up a random character and put them in some sort of precarious situation, then figure out how each element may be able to help out in that situation. Sure, some will be better suited for the job than others, but generally none of them will turn out to be entirely useless, given enough thought.

[singingcrow]

I am going to be honest.
I didn't hear a single word you said. I just saw the good boy and that's about it.

[teldd]

I remember reading a book which contained the five elements of life(plants and animals, mostly) death, earth fire and water. Every mage has two elements, although unfortunately there was no mixing going on, at least not much. There's also light, but most people don't even know it exsists.

The interesting part though, or at least one of them, was that the mages can't actually use the elements around them, nor produce their own, not without a lot of skill.

Instead, they 'condense' a bit of that element into a cube, like a small blue cube of condensed water, or a red cube of fire, that kind of stuff. The process of making such a cube requires having a bit of that element on hand to draw the magic from, it takes a while and isn't viable in a fight. It doesn't conserve matter though, you can get infinite water cubes from a single bucket, what you're condensing is the magic.

In order to cast spells in this system, you use a cube per spell, and 'expand' or 'uncondense' the cube to cast, unleashing a bunch of that element at once.

The element you unleash isn't exactly under your control, at least not in the Avatar kind of sense where you can affect the trajectory of things, instead you can decide HOW it's unleashed, and there's a bit of leeway in what counts.

So, the main character, with his affinity for water, could throw out blades of water or spikes of ice, or make ice walls. That kind of stuff. Anything you can think of that involves solely water (or any other element), no matter how complex, up to making illusions by bending light using water particles, or making tidal waves - although a single cube probably can't do that last one.

The relation between the element and the effect doesn't even have to be entirely physical, it can be a mental connection, like how a life mage once made himself 'as light as a flower' which, in conjonction with a large conjured leaf, allowed him to float.

Anyways, this system of using cubes creates an interesting dynamic, where a character who uses a lot of magic will eventually run out of cubes, so all the characters constantly have to pay attention to how many they have left, and in what way they can use their cubes to maximise the cost-effectiveness of their spells. Kind if like DnD spell slots.

Another limitation of that magic, which is another neat concept, is that whenever you cast magic, the magic goes through you, and this can be harmful, on a mental level, which can break concentration, or even knock you out.

For the main character, this mental effect manifests as feeling as if his lungs gradually filll with water the more he casts water magic, which, after too long, drown him. Although, that's hust a feeling, an entirely mental effect born from the fact that he's casting water magic specifically.

Greater skill can alleviate the effect, in the form of achieving a specific mental state (since this is mostly mental) where you let the magic flow through you without harming you... Although that's probably a water mage thing, now that I think about it. A pyromancer might have to imagine themselves as though pleasantly warmed by a nearby hearth instead of burned to death, in order to alleviate the effect of overcasting.

Another neat thing is that the fact that you don't actually need cubes. I said before highly skilled mages can forgo the cubes and use elements around them. The REALLY neat part, the one that could be the basis for a whole magic system on its own, is that while this is true, using the surrounding elements instead of cubes comes with its own kind of limitation, one so extreme that even experienced archmages will almost never use this ability :

Whenever someone, say a life/plant mage, draws magic directly from the environment, say from the grass around them, the object or element they just drew magic from will instantly turn into a special kind of completely indestrucible and immovable stone. This rock isn't even affected by gravity, it's THAT immovable.

So, locations where archmages fought to their fullest are littered with these little patches of petrified terrain; blades of indestructible grass that will harm you if you step on them, a cliffside that will simply ever move or be moved ever again, animals or even people turned into perfect, unicolored statues. That kind of thing. It's an incredibly cool concept, and very well exploited in the book.

This aspect of magic, this frequent and irreversable alteration of the landscape, is actually the reason why mages were almost all killed in that world, but, if I went down that road I'd be sitting here talking about this incredible series or books all day. And well, while I do WANT to do that, you probably don't, so...

Anyways, this was a great video. Thank you for making it, and also thank you for spending your time reading about me ramble for so many paragraphs. It is appreciated.

Also, the book is in french, and I'm fairly certain it was never translated.

[issacthompson]

I once made a elemental system with Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, and "Void". How it worked is all Mana is attuned to an element in the process of a spell being cast with the rare exception of Void users.
What a spell does is based on 3 factors. The shape of the Mana, The Volume of Mana, and the Element of the Mana. Anyone can change the Shape with enough skill and Volume with enough Mana but people were born with one Element and that is all they can use. On top of that there is an interaction where combining Elements will cause spells of different Elements to occur.
I brought up Void users as an exception earlier due to the fact they don't attune their magic to an Element and are thus able to artificially attune their Mana to other Elements but the most powerful thing about Void users is the lack of element gives access to very powerful and strange abilities.
Please note that what you can do with this magic system is more inspired by JRPGs as that is what I wanted the story I made this system for to be in. Not that I made it in the 6+ years it has been rattling around in my head.

[blahblah-gygk]

I personally find genshin’s element system to be amazing, their magic will always form differently between each character

[leonmitas]

I am building an elemental magic system, that is based on the being one with the planet. So, Mahgy are synchronizing and ordering salts, of which planet is covered with. There are 4 winds, and each create various effects throughout the terrain of planet. Tuners synchronize with planet and winds to manifest different effects in the sands (it happens when sand takes specific shape because of the exact sound frequencies, on which the written scrypt of languages are based on). Catch is that when you synchronize or unite with the planet or the wind the salt or elements in you also manifest somewhat similar effects in you, so it can get very dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. There is one people who can manifest all 32 effects (8 for each wind) with only their yogis and voice, and another culture that does similar thing but with whistle, so there is nothing supernaturally magical going on with them. Other cultures manifest sand effects through different rhythms such as flutes, drums and metalic sounds

[Andrewtr]

The magic system I'm working on for my story uses the elemental system as its core. The magic users are not limited in just controlling the element nor their assigned element. Each caster has one element that they are most powerful with (though power level varies) but they are still able to use spells of other elements (but they are weakest with the one opposite their most powerful). Which is how the magic system works; each spell corresponds to one of the four elements (though, I'm considering breaking some up) and thus, different casters excels with different areas of magic. For example, earth and fire elements may both excel at metallurgy whereas water elements excel with brewing. Some will overlap while one element might be the best for a type of magic. This doesn't mean that another elementals can't perform that magic, they can, it's even possible for them to excel at it but they are at a disadvantage compared to other elements (ie fire elementals won't have the easiest time performing necromancy compared to an earth or air elemental).

That part of the system I have worked out really well but there are still areas with holes. One of those is working the religion into the magic system. Well, the multiple religious practices that exist in the magic society (most of them are based around the patronage of different gods).

[dljcs]

I have an idea for an elemental system that has 4 basic rules:
1) the amount of substance you can control is based on your weight, age, and mental acuity.
2) Everyone can only control 1 element.
3) every element requires a source, or in other words users can't conjure their Element.
4) the more you manipulate a particular source, the "smarter" it gets. If you carry around a bottle of water like Katara does and use it repeatedly, over the course of the day that source of water will grow into a sentient life form that can move freely, and it won't be too happy about being controlled while it was "sleeping."

[clown-chan]

Somehow I come up with a system after watching your video, so thanks in more than one way, haha. Mine is not so much changing the elements or the source, though, but more...the inspiration for the system, maybe? Not sure how to put it honestly.

So, my elemental magic system is like languages. As a baby, everyone has the potential to learn any elements. But, the environment they're in, the social interactions they have, and other factors caused them to have an affinity to just one of it. For example, beach-dwellers will have an affinity to water and someone from a carpenter family will have an affinity to wood. And of course, as with languages, everyone's eloquency with their elements is different based on their training and natural talent. Not all people can alter the state of their water or control the heat of their flame, for example.

I used affinity to describe people's connection with their elements because, again as with languages, anyone can learn any elemental magic if they want to. Obviously the closer an element with someone's native element is, the higher the chance that they will be able to use that element. I still have to figure out the details of the element's relation with each other, but one obvious example is Water-native will have a hard time learning fire magic, and vice versa. Learning elements will be harder than learning languages, though, as it is more abstract.

Yes, someone can lose their affinity if they don't use it in an extended period of time (as in language, but maybe faster), and they have to relearn it to be able to use that again. Most polyelementalist also can't use two different elements at the same time as they have to first tune their affinity to the element they're going to use. Having said that, the majority of people don't bother to try learning another element as it's said that it's mentally taxing.

Well, there are still a lot to do with this system as I'm still mostly in the idea generation process, but overall I'm quite excited with this system myself. I think likening an elemental magic to language like this can create a lot of interesting settings, like what if someone is born to two different natives? Will there be discrimination if someone have an unusual affinity in their area? How their idiosyncrasies reflect in their magic? How about different dialects? and so on.

[me-yhkb]

A cool retake could be using the fundamental forces of particles in leu of traditional elements (Gravity, Strong particle interactions, electromagnetism, and weak particle interactions).

[Coralsys]

This’ll be super useful for assisting me in building the common magic of my world as much of it is very elemental. People have the ability to learn whatever they want but as a result of the culture, environment, and schooling they have growing up, most people who learn some magic only learn a few spells of 1 element. Commoners don’t typically learn any and soldiers are often taught a single spell as part of their training because magic training takes time and individual attention, something the armies cannot give to each soldier, but can to knights

[mr_indie_fan]

I use five elements when writing elemental magic: ice/water, fire, air, earth and electricity.

While electricity and fire are both plasma, they are just different enough to be considered different elements. (Leading to some unique ways to use electricity)