u/RowbotMaster

It's been a while since I read it but I have some thoughts on the magic in skulduggery pleasant. This may be a bit of a ramble, feel free to comment without reading past this

Some details established early on seem to hold up relatively well, like elemental magic being the most common, not because I counted the number of characters who use it but because other magics seem either very limited or come with big downsides. Bone breaking both only works through fingertips and needs skin contact, energy throwing needs 2 hands and honesty seems no better than a fireball, necromancy is pretty versatile but requires an item you can be separated from, but elemental magic, no Achilles heel and 3 decent tools you get access to with earth mostly being a last ditch panic button unless you have the same kind of character privileges that let you learn how to fly

There are other details that clearly get retconed, namely Tanith's lock picking ability was all but stated to be related to her wall walking and incompatible with elemental magic, but it was later explained as an optional thing pretty much separate from whatever magic you choose to stick with, so an elementalist could totally have that lock picking ability(unless it was clarified at some point I didn't get to) it wouldn't surprise me if other stuff like making magic clothes were similar optional magics that didn't conflict with your main magic, the second elementalist in the series was a tailor after all

(Not a quality judgement) the power level of the magic seemed relatively low, enough that picking up a second gun can be presented as a significant power up, as well as hand to hand fighting being a pretty constant feature and not even magically enhanced hand to hand aside from Tanith confusing people by fighting upside-down. Though I think after the end of the last main book I finished I wouldn't be surprised if some power creep began to occur

This may be that I just misunderstood at the time but the exact strength of the fodder soldiers called hollow men seemed a bit inconsistent, mostly in that they actually beat a couple cleavers(magic super soldiers basically) like sure a cleaver probably isn't as strong as a main character but they're still something the main characters run from, so I don't see how they could be beated by something weak enough to be taken out by a teenage girl whose only combat skills comes from watching some adults for maybe a week

Also I hope there isn't some controversy with Derek Landy

I've been thinking about my system's teleportation lately and my current working numbers are that an average person teleporting themself or an identical volume(teleportation in my system cares about distance and volume but not mass) any distance takes as much energy as running that distance across flat ground

Similarly I'm thinking that telekinetic abilities can move an average person's mass at a given speed with the same energy as that average person riding a bicycle at that speed

As you can probably see the resource in my system is a person's physical stamina. Though there are ways to improve efficiency in my system, usually at the cost of casting time/difficulty, allowing for the same effects at lower energy costs

I think the go to thing is to tie the character and their power together(applies to chosen power systems too but arguably less so) so do you make characters first and figure out powers for them or make interesting powers then figure out what kind of characters fit them?

Do you decide on their role in the story first? Like "I need a mentor character" or do you make them and figure out the role they can take? Like "I have all these characters, now let's see, yeah they can be a mentor"

Do you set standards of power/complexity for most of your powers or just make what you want and say some people are just luckier?

The way teleportation works in this system is you need to apply mana to 1 side of the teleport, you could for example apply mana to an object in your hand to teleport it far away or apply mana to empty space above your hand to teleport a far away object to your hand

The mass of what's being teleported is irrelevant, mana expenditure is determined by volume as you need your mana to cover/fill the space of the teleportation target/the space the target is teleporting into

A particular aesthetic or vivid descriptions?

Certain mechanics or tropes?

Examples of possibilities within the rules?

Personally I look for some level of non-combat utility, some option for healing otherwise permanent damage, and one's power and destiny not being ultimately decided by the circumstances of their birth

So my system kinda makes it exceedingly difficult for governments to maintain a monopoly on minting money, this caused most economies to crash a while after magic began(my setting was normal modern day until magic just became a thing one day) after that people began using barter but it soon became apparent that the most valuable goods were magic items(also called impossible items) and the most valuable service was maintaining those magic/impossible items(because the magic degrades with both time and use) this lead to the development of items that restored other items and the use of said restoration items as the medium of exchange

These magic/impossible items gradually standardised into small pieces of corundum in various colours and geometric shapes to denote their value, with the pieces reshaping themselves and changing colour when they degrade below the threshold of a given denomination

The denominations of corundum are:

- 0, transparent and flat(could be a disk, square or any other 2d shape, mostly exist for visually impared folk to know when one is used up)

- 1, green tetrahedron

- 5, blue cube

- 10, white octahedron

- 20, red dodecahedron

- 50, yellow icosahedron

- 100, black sphere

The greater number of smaller faces on larger denominations is intended to reduce the chance of fractures shattering large sums of money(also you could legit play d&d with your money)

Other materials like different crystals or shapes are used, but also once these denominations were standardised the then struggling government began taking them as taxes which stabilised them and added reason to preference this system. I am speaking about the government of the country in which my story takes place, others have additional denominations like orange triangular bipyramids or rhombic triacontahedrons as 2 or 200 denominations respectively or some variety of grey or metallic colours

As stated the government doesn't have a monopoly on minting, anyone can make money on their own if they so choose, you might think this would cause uncontrolled inflation or nobody would work but remember they're also used to essentially power any other magic/impossible item. This money can be used for almost anything with the right item which uses it up deflating it in addition to it's natural decay over time and the people "not working" are essentially performing the service of maintaining these other items

Also the reason I keep mentioning impossible as an option for the name of items is because the way they're made requires the person doing so to think about what they're doing defying physics or being "impossible" but magic is also not wrong as a description

What type of crystal minerals would be best for a currency?

I'm doing some fantasy world building and I want to use some kind of crystal for a currency in the world, using different colours for different denominations(yes, strongly inspired by the zelda rupee)

I'm been thinking of corundum because I know it has a wide variety of colours, but really because I already knew it's mineral name

The main thing I think needs considering is probably durability, I've heard beryl(specifically I heard this about emeralds but you know) are very fragile so I assume not very good for day to day handling, and diamonds too I understand are very hard but brittle, though I'm not sure if a drop from waist height to pavement would chip or shatter them, but is that just something all crystal minerals suffer from? Are there any crystals that are particularly resistant to both drops and scratches?

If it changes anything I'm thinking of the crystals being roughly coin size, but understandable if they can't be that shape. Bonus points I guess if they can be lab grown because that's basically how they'll be made in setting(I assume most if not all can be with only a few colourations we haven't figured out yet)

Either give an original idea or name and describe one from pop culture and I'll do my best to replicate it in my system. However a couple things

1. No abilities that relate directly back to their magic system of origin. So no abilities to copy other abilities or counterspell or anything, those aren't a thing in my system outside certain emergent details of my particle physics and kinda the creation category

2. If what exactly the spell/ability does is too unclear I'm likely to ignore it because it could probably be done many ways. Like how does harry patter's killing curse kill? Stop the heart/brain? Does it do something to the soul? Does it liquefy a target's insides?

And so you're not completely lost, what's necessary to know here is that everyone in my system builds powers from four categories, with the option to specialise in just one or pick one to be their primary and another to be their secondary. Those categories are:

Creation: making stuff from nothing, but also deleting stuff into nothing or transmuting things into other things

Perception: super senses like x-ray vision and bullet time

Control: both of minds and inanimate objects which can be moved with telekinesis

Teleportation:... teleporting stuff

Examples of some pop culture abilities:

Most benders from atla would just be control specialists with the exception of firebenders who would probably have creation as their primary and control their secondary as they most often create fire already going where they want, not much turning a fireball after it's thrown or anything like that

Terraria's spelunker potion would be a perception effect, though creation the potion itself would require that and creation too, also in my system the potion could lose it's effect if not consumed soon enough

Cyclops from x-men could be done a few ways, he could simply be a creation specialist just creating punch beams, he could also have creation and teleportation to combine them into making portals to the punch dimension. He could also just have modded irises to do either of these without being locked into creation or teleportation

Suppose you were given a button that when pressed would make your magic system real, if only some people can use it a number of people on earth become capable with about the same commonality as the people in your setting. So if 1 in 10 people in your world could use magic 1 in 10 on earth could too, if only elves can use magic those people are turning into elves

People capable of using magic will be aware of their new capabilities and able to use the most basic aspects immediately

Also does your answer change if you are assured you'll be one of the people with magic or not?

Edit: if everyone in your setting can use magic everyone on earth can now use it too, I thought that was obvious

So one of the powers in my system is the ability to create things, like objects, physical matter. Most things don't take too much energy to create with two exceptions, oxygen for system reasons, and fissile nuclear materials because I don't want street fights to immediately be drgaonball level with casaba howitzers flying around. The issue is I can't think of any reason someone couldn't just conjure a pile of perfect counterfeit money

In my story this magic system is being introduced to the modern world without anything else, so there isn't any material that categorically can't be created that came with the system or anything

I already have the powers able to incorporate oxygen from the environment into the things being created, like to make water they just create hydrogen and combine it with the air. So even oxygen being part of the currency(which I suspect is already the case for paper money) wouldn't stop it

All I can think of is the government issuing a ton of new money that incorporates a specific amount of fissile material, but even besides the radiation and mass destruction issues with that, would counterfeiters not be able to just replicate those amounts of fissile material? Even if they need to get it from smaller denominations, unless the amount of material corresponds to the value in which case isn't the fissile material the real currency then?

What would be the consequences of this?

Edit: I mean the consequences of either radioactive money or not having money, those I see as the 2 possibilities