[OOC] Magic A is Magic, eh?

[robkelk]

Or, how do the various magic systems in the Metacontinuity interact?


Some characters have magic powers or spells that are defined in terms of their own works of fiction, rather than being defined in real-world terms.

How do they interact with each other, and with the systems with capabilities and limitations defined in real-world units?


Here are a few suggestions to start the discussion; feel free to tear these apart and use them to build a more robust system.

First: Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make Lyrical Nanoha's magic systems not only self-consistent, but also consistent across the Belkan and Midchildan systems. And it appears that TYPE-MOON used the same system for Fate/stay night.

Which means that Yuuno cannot force Saber to teleport, since his rank in the spell is B+ and she can ignore all magic that's less than rank A. He can, however, catch her in a Struggle Bind.

Since two works in the Metacontinuity appear to use the same system already, shall we use it as well for our baseline?


Second: The Sailor Senshi are shown to be among the most powerful spellcasters in their world, and most of them have four attacks. I propose, if we're going with the Midchildan/Belkan/Fate system, setting their first-season attacks at rank A, their "Ail and En" arc attacks at rank A+, their later-second-season attacks at rank AA, their "Infinity"/S attacks at rank AAA, and their SuperS attacks at rank S. As a counterpoint to starting with powerful magic, they do start with the "stand, pose, and call the attack" limitation on these attacks.


Third: There's a second, more powerful type of magic that Caster calls "True Magic", that always defeats normal magic. No matter which story a mage is from, spells cast from the heart are intrinsically more powerful than spells cast from the mind (as far as I can remember), so that's a decent starting point for a definition of True Magic. Magical formulae are (usually) easier than raw Will and Word, so there isn't a lot of True Magic out there.

Particular cases: The Clow Cards weren't True Magic, but the Sakura Cards are. True Sight is not, but Glam Sight is. Moon Spiral Heart Attack isn't, but a Ginzuishou effect is. Starlight Breaker usually isn't, unless Nanoha is pouring her heart into the spell (as she did at the end of StrikerS).


And that's as far as I've gotten, so far. If this is the approach that we want to take, then seelie, Crowleyan (both Rental Magica and Academy City versions), Cephiran, Yggdrasilian, and Remnantian magic needs to be integrated with what's given above. (And when Arc 2 comes around, Forcelian, Orarian, and Claire Bible magic will also need to be incorporated.)


Thoughts? Additions? Bouquets? Brickbats?

[Bob Schroeck]

It sounds like reasonable start. Feel free to use the Unified Theory of Magic from my works if it makes things easier or consistent.

[Black Aeronaut]

Which means that Yuuno cannot force Saber to teleport, since his rank in the spell is B+ and she can ignore all magic that's less than rank A. He can, however, catch her in a Struggle Bind.

I feel it should be stated clearly that this does not mean that Saber can automatically no-sale a less powerful spell - that an actual, conscious effort is required.  Albeit not much of one, but it would still require that one pays attention to their surroundings.

Particular cases: The Clow Cards weren't True Magic, but the Sakura Cards are. True Sight is not, but Glam Sight is. Moon Spiral Heart Attack isn't, but a Ginzuishou effect is. Starlight Breaker usually isn't, unless Nanoha is pouring her heart into the spell (as she did at the end of StrikerS).

Hue-hue-hue-hue...  Get ready to shit your pants.

That wasn't a Starlight Breaker back there.

That was a Devine Buster.

Albeit, a very much powered up version of the spell, but still.  The thing is, the reason Starlight Breaker is so powerful is because it doesn't rely on its caster for all of its power.  Instead, it recycles residual magical energy in the area leftover from spells that had been recently discharged in the area.  This is why whenever you fight Nanoha, you're in a race against the clock.  Because the more magical spells get tossed around, then the more powerful Starlight Breaker will be once Nanoha decides that enough is enough.  (This is also why it was always a challenge for her to go up against Fate - because speed is Fate's trademark.)

At that time in StrikerS, Nanoha wasn't able to use SB because being that deep inside of the Saint's Cradle, with it's uber-power internal anti-magic fields (a measure to protect the Belkan Saint King and the royal family), there was no way to properly power-up the spell.

In short, that was 110% Nanoha Takamachi right there and then.

Also keep in mind: technically, Nanoha's linker core is crippled during the timeframe of StrikerS.  It was a permanent injury that she suffered off-screen during what was called "The Gadget Drone Incident".  In other words, that Devine Buster at the end of StrikerS is not even the full potential of what she had in her youth.  And this crippling injury will not be occurring in TNB.

The only person in the Ben's group that will truly be able to overpower Nanoha will be Hotaru.... And maybe Hayate.  And only if either of them don't care about the collateral damage.

It sounds like reasonable start.  Feel free to use the Unified Theory of Magic from my works if it makes things easier or consistent.

You'll have to refresh my memory on how that one works.  Isn't it similar to AdmiralTigerCla's interpretation in Sleeping with the Girls?

[Dartz]

Given that 2-3 people here might have some passing familiarity with computers and architecture - maybe the paradigm of basic turing-theory, system architectures and instruction sets, operating systems, programming languages and applications could be used.

And then you have Magicsoft with the whole, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish approach to cross-compatibility.

[robkelk]

Particular cases: The Clow Cards weren't True Magic, but the Sakura Cards are. True Sight is not, but Glam Sight is. Moon Spiral Heart Attack isn't, but a Ginzuishou effect is. Starlight Breaker usually isn't, unless Nanoha is pouring her heart into the spell (as she did at the end of StrikerS).

Hue-hue-hue-hue...  Get ready to shit your pants.

That wasn't a Starlight Breaker back there.

Well, no, it wasn't a Starlight Breaker. It was five Starlight Breakers.

The one you're thinking of was Divine Buster, yes, but that was just Nanoha doing her job, nothing special.

[Bob Schroeck]

It sounds like reasonable start.  Feel free to use the Unified Theory of Magic from my works if it makes things easier or consistent.

You'll have to refresh my memory on how that one works.  Isn't it similar to AdmiralTigerCla's interpretation in Sleeping with the Girls?

It boils down to "every magical system/school is the equivalent of a high-level programming language with its own specific strengths, weaknesses and limitations that runs several levels of abstraction above 'real' magic, which is the equivalent of machine language or perhaps bare-metal." The differing grades could be measuring how much closer one system is to "bare metal" than another is.

Oh, and it makes it possible to "decompile" a spell from one system into a universal notation from which you can then "translate" it to another. You want to run a Divine Buster on the Ginzuishou? The UTM gives you the tools to do so.

[Black Aeronaut]

It sounds like reasonable start.  Feel free to use the Unified Theory of Magic from my works if it makes things easier or consistent.

You'll have to refresh my memory on how that one works.  Isn't it similar to AdmiralTigerCla's interpretation in Sleeping with the Girls?

It boils down to "every magical system/school is the equivalent of a high-level programming language with its own specific strengths, weaknesses and limitations that runs several levels of abstraction above 'real' magic, which is the equivalent of machine language or perhaps bare-metal."  The differing grades could be measuring how much closer one system is to "bare metal" than another is.

Oh, and it makes it possible to "decompile" a spell from one system into a universal notation from which you can then "translate" it to another.  You want to run a Divine Buster on the Ginzuishou?  The UTM gives you the tools to do so.

Yeah, this was pretty much what ATC was running with, only with the added bene of there being a universal notation system to decompile everything into so it can be ported over into a different system.  And I like the idea of "bare metal" - that would perfectly explain the "True Magic" and why it's so effective.