Anime Element Magic (SOP)

[Saffron-sama]

Nevermind I am starting to see why my gM refuses to use forums for advice now

[exelsisxax]

I was going to say "use spheres of power", but you're using it already. Since you are finding it insufficient, you need to clearly describe what you want to be able to/not be able to do. Your OP does not coherently describe a problem to address.

[exelsisxax]

SoP isn't skill-based, and nothing you describe is. You need to elaborate.

This is highly counterintuitive and needlessly complex. Separating water and frozen water is a good idea based on what? You're splitting/lumping illusion into how many different elements? "holy" has 4 whole spheres but destruction gets split 17-however many ways why?

Why are you doing this? You haven't answered my original post. Where is the problem you are trying to address?

[exelsisxax]

Anime/manga is a visual style, nothing more. As such, there is no such thing as "anime style magic". Stein's Gate doesn't have magic at all - does that mean you should ban all magic? Please explain what you are actually trying to accomplish. If you really just want to use PF in a specific setting just say it and clarify the setting requirements.

Honestly, save yourself a TON of work and just give people the elemental focus drawback, or replicate it with restrictions on destruction descriptors. The spheres are already spheres, attempting to chop them to bits and force them together is foolhardy. For example:



illusion is because a visual illusion could be done in a heat shimmers, ice or water vapors catching light

No, no it really doesn't. You're trying to hard to force this to work and it doesn't. Illusion can't be turned into a classical element, nor can healing, death, or the idea of fate.

[JNAProductions]

Nevermind I am starting to see why my gM refuses to use forums for advice now

I sense unneeded amounts of salt in this post. Word of advice-take critiques with a smile. It might feel bad at first, but ultimately, accepting critiques and working to make your project better than just ignoring everyone else.

[Saffron-sama]

I sense unneeded amounts of salt in this post. Word of advice-take critiques with a smile. It might feel bad at first, but ultimately, accepting critiques and working to make your project better than just ignoring everyone else.

Its not salt or anger at the critiques. I have just recently found forums for gamers serm to point out their games common sense not a genres.
The post above just makes me understand that I will not get advice here since the other poster has appearently never seen the all to common element magic in many fantasy manga and anime. These are usually heavily influenced by japanesse mmos in most cases in these they add light and dark to the list of elements and they tend to have life and death magic in them.

[JNAProductions]

Its not salt or anger at the critiques. I have just recently found forums for gamers serm to point out their games common sense not a genres.
The post above just makes me understand that I will not get advice here since the other poster has appearently never seen the all to common element magic in many fantasy manga and anime. These are usually heavily influenced by japanesse mmos in most cases in these they add light and dark to the list of elements and they tend to have life and death magic in them.

Which anime? Cowboy Bebop has no magic. Bleach magic (if you want to call it that) is vastly different from the magic in Madoka Magica, which is similar to but not the same as Lyrical Nanoha.

[exelsisxax]

Its not salt or anger at the critiques. I have just recently found forums for gamers serm to point out their games common sense not a genres.
The post above just makes me understand that I will not get advice here since the other poster has appearently never seen the all to common element magic in many fantasy manga and anime. These are usually heavily influenced by japanesse mmos in most cases in these they add light and dark to the list of elements and they tend to have life and death magic in them.

Yeah, and every single one has a different set of rules, limits, expectations, power level, etc. than the last. They are NOT mutually coherent. I am trying to get you to explain what you want so that advice can be offered. You have so far failed to communicate your problem and your baseline assumptions. Nobody in the world can give you good advice without that kind of information; i'm just shotgunning here because you haven't told us what you want, so I may as well throw something back at you to try out.

[Saffron-sama]

I explained what i was looking for when I edited the post the first time.
When I was saying that all to common anime element magic I was talking about magic in the shows / manga like (Kaze no stigma, the familiar of zero, isekai shihai no skill taker, world customize creatore, the mage will master magic efficiently i his second life & isekai wa smartphone tomo ni) (I did not do a large amount of searching just pointing out the ones in my recent memory, I have seen this style of magic alot over the last 4 or 5 years)
I am not going to bother try to edit the post back my gm and I are just going to use a soft system over anything crunchy like sop or vancian.

If you dont look at the said manga / anime essentially magic is broken into 4-8 elements (usually air, earth, fire, water, light, dark, ice, lightning, sound, spirit, wood, metal, void or aether)
Also several anime / manga have that one fire, ice or water mage who says something a long the lines of they create illusion using a mirage, or vapor or ice prism. (Two that come to mine A certain magical index and sekai no owari no sekairoku)

[grarrrg]

If you dont look at the said manga / anime essentially magic is broken into 4-8 elements (usually air, earth, fire, water, light, dark, ice, lightning, sound, spirit, wood, metal, void or aether)

The jist I'm getting is that you want a "more than 4" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElementNumberFive) element based magic system.
This has little/nothing directly tying it to manga/anime.
If you wanted to peg a specific show/universe, then that's different, otherwise it doesn't seem inherently anime-esque.

[Saffron-sama]

The jist I'm getting is that you want a "more than 4" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ElementNumberFive) element based magic system.
This has little/nothing directly tying it to manga/anime.
If you wanted to peg a specific show/universe, then that's different, otherwise it doesn't seem inherently anime-esque.

Having more then four "main" elements is usually an eastern thing then a western thing since its usually manga / anime / manwa that use a more then 4 element system. While there are western media that do use it they are rare and usually tied to wicca (which uses Spirit as the fifth element).
I will say its not anime exclusive just used more in eastern media. Which is why I called it anime magic.

[Becca Stareyes]

I've only seen a few episodes of Familiar of Zero, but came off very much as 'Japan does Western Fantasy', which is a genre but distinct from things like Fushigi Yuugi[1].

For something like Fushigi Yuugi, the inspiration seems to be in Wu Xing, a Chinese five-element system. I know at least some of the East Asian-flavored D&D 3.x material uses this. I'd say there's several flavor differences between a traditional Greek four-element system[2]:

The elements include metal and wood, and lack air.
That than opposition (Earth opposes Air, Fire opposes Water) you have a sort of rock-paper-scissors cycle. Several in fact -- there's a supporting cycle (wood feeds fire, fire makes ash/earth, earth bears metal, metal collects dew (water), water nourishes wood) and a limiting cycle (water floods earth, earth holds onto wood, wood exhausts metal (like blunting an axe), metal limits fire (it's not flamable), fire evaporates water.)

You can also see echoes of this in Sailor Moon -- the powers of Sailors Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are those of their planet's element, which is why some of Sailor Jupiter's moves are plant related as well as lightning.

For something like Slayers, that is a lot closer to D&D as seen through the lens of both a different medium and culture -- there was white magic, black magic, and shamanic magic (the latter was just the elemental magic). I think the creator later retconned that there was a distinction between white magic and holy magic, and the former was just astral-elemental magic. The main thing I'd call out is that the divine magic is presented more as 'creative' or 'destructive' rather than good and evil, and lacks the alignment restrictions -- protagonist Lina Inverse isn't evil but has no problems casting spells that call on evil beings without risk to her soul. (Just her reputation and her wallet if she doesn't skip town before people start asking her to pay for their destroyed buildings.)

Most of the examples I can think of from anime include a lot more of characters with a few magical abilities versus dedicated spellcasters. I recall Bleach had a magic system the shinigami used (kido) but few people were experts or even bothered with many moves from it. And not a lot of them explains what they are doing in terms of systemic magic. (I also did stop following Bleach well before it finished so I could be wrong.) Those would best be modeled by all the classes with Supernatural or Spell-Like Abilities, without the flexibility of spells.

[1] I got into anime in the early 2000s, it really colors my choices of examples.
[2] Though thanks to spread of ideas, you can find Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Aether/Void as far East as India. I couldn't even tell you who influenced who.

[KillianHawkeye]

I was talking about magic in the shows / manga like (Kaze no stigma, the familiar of zero, isekai shihai no skill taker, world customize creatore, the mage will master magic efficiently i his second life & isekai wa smartphone tomo ni)

I know I've been out of the anime game for a while, but I've never heard of any of these! :smalleek:

[SangoProduction]

I know I've been out of the anime game for a while, but I've never heard of any of these! :smalleek:

They are basically all isekai anime/manga. Essentially, person gets blown up in the real world, and are reincarnated in the fantasy world. Like those threads about "what would you do if you woke up in Golarion" or whatever. The first answer is always "be a wizard, harry". However, the magic systems even between those are fairly nondescript "because magic", iirc.

But, the OP has given up within the first question of clarification, so I think this thread should probably be closed.

[A.J.Gibson]

It probably too late, but I was going to say that each magic type (assuming you could only have one) could each have their own magic tradition, with the skilled casting drawback. From there, you could simply put 'you can't have X' on each and you're done.

[Serafina]

Spheres of Power is really easy to adapt into a specific setting, or for specific styles of casting: Just restrict what spheres you can take, under what circumstances, and make good use of casting traditions.

A simple example would be Avatar-style bending.
Casting traditions are simple - all bending is somatic, with rare exceptions. You can throw in more stuff like strenuous casting, or draining casting, if you like.
Then you just restrict everyone to their element - which is very simple for Creation, Destruction, Nature, Telekinesis and Weather (there's even appropriate drawbacks for each).
Then, you consider each remaining sphere: Alteration doesn't really fit with any element here, so you can't take it. Conjuration works if you want people to be able to summon elementals, otherwise, leave it. Dark doesn't really fit, so leve it. Same for Death. Divination can work for some senses, talk that through with players. Enhancement can work. Fate doesn't really, so leave it. Illusions aren't really a thing - in some other setting, they might fit with water or air, but here they don't. Life fits with water here, so only waterbenders can take it. Light could fit with firebending. Mind isn't a thing, outside of bloodbending, which would be restricted to certain talents. Protection can work if you make it fit. Time doesn't, but War might. Warp doesn't again, so it should also be prohibited.


Apply a similar process to whatever elements are able to do in your setting. I can't give specific input here without knowing specifics about the setting.
But suppose you have a fifth element - say, metal.
That's simple for some spheres, such as creation, destruction, nature, and telekinesis - just restrict the player to the appropriate element via drawbacks*. But it might also be a good idea to just give each element a distinctive sphere. Maybe Earth gets Life and Death because it's assosciated in your setting, Water gets Protection because that fits with wards and barriers and also gets Illusion, Fire gets Light and Dark, Air gets Warp and Divination, and Metal gets Enhancement and War - each sphere can only be taken by it's respective element. Or some other combination, obviously.

*Don't be afraid to spread what a drawback allows - if you want people to be able to manipulate both water and ice, then treat that as the same element. If you don't, don't.