need some help with developing a working magic system

[Lord Revan]

ok people, I've been trying to develop an orginal fantasy world (well as much orginal as you can with fanstasy) and I've come up with a slight problem, since this a world where magic does exist I need a rules for the magic to not make magic users overpower the story (and thus make it unintresting) especially since there's at least one character who's a warrior/mage hybrid (not unique for the world but whether other people like him appear I've not desided yet).

these are the rules I've come up with so far

1. for wizards/mages/sorcerors (or what ever you wanna call them) it takes time to lear their spells so the really powerfull ones tend to be either from long lived species or crippled by old age and more complex the spells the longer it will take (blowing a door of it's hinges would simple and quick to learn but picking the lock via magic would take years if not decades to learn)
2. due to rule 1 the warrior/mage would have only limited "inventory" of spells related to fighting since it takes to time to learn spells and they have to learn weapon skills too (and also due to the time it takes to learn the spells their weapon, tactical and strategic skill would be less then those who don't have the magical abilities)
3. also due to the first 2 rules said warrior/magi start training early (as in 4 years old or so)
4. there's so called "dark arts" that allow great power faster but with a price (generally turning the person into more "evil")
5. priests can also learn "spells" (aka favors from their divinities) but those are a) generally weaker then the magical abilities of the magi, b)governed but complex set of rules given by the divinities

now I'd like you (serious) comments and suggestions on how to make this work so that it prevents characters with magical abilities from becoming too overpowering to make an instresting story or causing people with no magical abilities to be redundant for the story.

[Broomstick]

Some other things to consider:

- does it take concentration to do magic? Perhaps part of the difficulty is in developing one's powers of focus and concentration, requiring that one not only master it to begin with but one must also maintain a lifetime of discipline, practice, and meditation to continue to use one's skills. Pain, loud noises, bright lights might all be sufficient to break concentration and cause a spell to fail or misfire. The more adept the magic user the harder it is to break his or her concentration.

- is magic something everyone can learn to use, or is innate talent required? If it is available to everyone then everyone, or nearly so, might cultivate some minor ability for convenience or comfort? Perhaps an easy spell to keep your morning coffee or you dinner soup warm, as an example, but nothing more. Or a solider might go to the effort to learn a spell to keep his socks and boots dry. Perhaps it is analogous to music - just about everyone can learn to carry a simple tune, but only a few become professional musicians. Or perhaps one must be born with magical ability, which will limit significantly how many people have it.

- can magical energy be stored, either in objects or in people? That might allow a magic user to "charge up" before a battle or a really big spell, or to use an enchanted object as a battery of sorts for extra power. Obviously, such a charged object would be extremely valuable, particularly if storing up power was difficult or time consuming. How you get power is also important - can an hour a day of chanting magical spells work, or do you need human sacrifice?

- Is paraphernalia required? Does the magic user require wands, rings, various potions or powders? If so, then the ingredients required might severely limit what one can do, either because of rarity or expense.

[Lord Revan]

here's some ideas I've been toying with but I've not settle with yet.

- does it take concentration to do magic? Perhaps part of the difficulty is in developing one's powers of focus and concentration, requiring that one not only master it to begin with but one must also maintain a lifetime of discipline, practice, and meditation to continue to use one's skills. Pain, loud noises, bright lights might all be sufficient to break concentration and cause a spell to fail or misfire. The more adept the magic user the harder it is to break his or her concentration.

I've been thinking that the "energy" used to cast the spells of wizards/magi is somewhat hard to control and has a chance to backfire on the user (harming or even killing him) and the more powerful and/or complex the spell the harder it's to cast. Divine magic wouldn't have this limitation due having ask the gods for favors.

- is magic something everyone can learn to use, or is innate talent required? If it is available to everyone then everyone, or nearly so, might cultivate some minor ability for convenience or comfort? Perhaps an easy spell to keep your morning coffee or you dinner soup warm, as an example, but nothing more. Or a solider might go to the effort to learn a spell to keep his socks and boots dry. Perhaps it is analogous to music - just about everyone can learn to carry a simple tune, but only a few become professional musicians. Or perhaps one must be born with magical ability, which will limit significantly how many people have it.

varies from species to species but for humans mages (especially powefull ones) tend to be rare apart from few notable exceptions as few people have the needed mental capacity and the inherent potential (the warriormagi I mentioned come from a nation, that due to small population and isolated location (read small genepool) tend have higher consentration of people with magical potential then humans typically have (it's the reason that nation even exists)).

- can magical energy be stored, either in objects or in people? That might allow a magic user to "charge up" before a battle or a really big spell, or to use an enchanted object as a battery of sorts for extra power. Obviously, such a charged object would be extremely valuable, particularly if storing up power was difficult or time consuming. How you get power is also important - can an hour a day of chanting magical spells work, or do you need human sacrifice?

I've not quite figure this one out, I might have magical items or not really depends if I can do it so that they don't become too powerful or common.

- Is paraphernalia required? Does the magic user require wands, rings, various potions or powders? If so, then the ingredients required might severely limit what one can do, either because of rarity or expense.

I've been thinking that while staves, wands or such aren't truly needed, they're generally used as focus points for your spells and magical incantations are to help you consentrate and one the tasks magi must learn is how to cast spells without needing those incantation (for example so that they won't announce their location by screaming "magic missile!" or something like that in a battle). I've also been thinking that some really powefull spells might need regents and/or a ritual to be used.

[Stuart]

ok people, I've been trying to develop an orginal fantasy world (well as much orginal as you can with fanstasy) and I've come up with a slight problem, since this a world where magic does exist I need a rules for the magic to not make magic users overpower the story (and thus make it unintresting) especially since there's at least one character who's a warrior/mage hybrid (not unique for the world but whether other people like him appear I've not desided yet).

these are the rules I've come up with so far

1. for wizards/mages/sorcerors (or what ever you wanna call them) it takes time to lear their spells so the really powerfull ones tend to be either from long lived species or crippled by old age and more complex the spells the longer it will take (blowing a door of it's hinges would simple and quick to learn but picking the lock via magic would take years if not decades to learn)
2. due to rule 1 the warrior/mage would have only limited "inventory" of spells related to fighting since it takes to time to learn spells and they have to learn weapon skills too (and also due to the time it takes to learn the spells their weapon, tactical and strategic skill would be less then those who don't have the magical abilities)
3. also due to the first 2 rules said warrior/magi start training early (as in 4 years old or so)
4. there's so called "dark arts" that allow great power faster but with a price (generally turning the person into more "evil")
5. priests can also learn "spells" (aka favors from their divinities) but those are a) generally weaker then the magical abilities of the magi, b)governed but complex set of rules given by the divinities

now I'd like you (serious) comments and suggestions on how to make this work so that it prevents characters with magical abilities from becoming too overpowering to make an instresting story or causing people with no magical abilities to be redundant for the story.

Something that might be worth thinking about is using stress as a seriously negative factor. If somebody is in a highly stressful situation, then their ability to use magic drops dramatically and their ability to use complex - and therefore more deadly - spells degenerates to almost zero. What this does is that it gives non-magical characters a "suppressive fire" capability. By keeping the magic user under attack, ie dodging slingshot rounds or arrows, he can effectively prevent that magic user from doing anything too deadly - after all who is going to stand there reading a complex two-page spell while a screaming lunatic runs at him waving a battleaxe? In effect, this makes magic an ambush weapon and evens the field considerably. It also makes non-magical warriors rather useful in that they can cover the magic user while he does his thing. Opens up a whole new range of possibilities.

[Eleas]

First, to sum up, you have a magic system that:

1. Depends on a hereditary ability, without which the user cannot perform magic.
2. Channels a variable amount of power into or through the thaumaturge.
3. Produces effects that vary in efficacy according to 1) the amount of raw power and 2) the skill of the thaumaturge in employing said power.
4. Requires extreme time to learn in order to develop the skill needed to cast spells well.
5. May be perverted and abused by a thaumaturge so as to secure greater amounts of power. The drawback chiefly consists of damage to the thaumaturge's sanity.
6. Ties some way into a subset form of magic employed by priests.

Given that, a number of questions immediately come to mind:

1. Is the affinity for magic (or, to put more bluntly, the capacity for channeling energy) a set value? Is it binary, or do you have an Anakin-type Chosen One come by once every when?
2. What happens if this power is channeled but not "shaped," as it appears you intend to portray? In other words, if a thaumaturge is preparing a fireball and I stick a dagger into him, will he burst into flame, even detonate? Hell, you can take this further - in the Black Magician trilogy, dead mages go practically nuclear when all the energy they contain breaks free.
3. Why is skill so important, if power can substitute for skill? Perhaps magical power is hard to come by, or perhaps the energy efficiency of spells drops sharply for unskilled users.
4. This is a most interesting point. Given this, and given that magic, no matter how you slice it, will be more powerful and/or versatile than a sword or a bow could ever be, and is dependent on studious practice, why practice swordsmanship at all? Being a master swordsman or archer is a lifetime commitment, something to which some fighters devoted the majority of their waking hours in order to excel. Your thaumaturges are going to wear an awful lot of hats, being simultaneously strategists, hand-to-hand fighters, and users of magic (which in itself might comprise as many additional roles as you'd like). This does sound a bit far-fetched to me.

This is just barely scratching the surface, mind. There'll be plenty of questions yet, because the particulars of magic is is essentially undefined until you've narrowed it down a lot more than you have. So far, it sounds like a fairly generic power-point system, with a dash of Nietzschean übermensch training thrown into the mix. But we'll see.

[Lord Revan]

May be perverted and abused by a thaumaturge so as to secure greater amounts of power. The drawback chiefly consists of damage to the thaumaturge's sanity.

actually loss of self will would be more closer to what I intend as the so called "dark arts" involve packs with demons and other evil creatures that allow use of more powefull magics by the casters but eventually they become puppets or slaves to those creatures, I probably should have been more clear with that.

Is the affinity for magic (or, to put more bluntly, the capacity for channeling energy) a set value? Is it binary, or do you have an Anakin-type Chosen One come by once every when?

it's not binary and there's levels to the ability though if there's a "chosen one" he/she wouldn't appear in the stories, the "genes" allowing being quite common, it's just that few people have the potential to actually wield magic in any meaningfull way (general population being limited to using magical talismans and potions or something like that).

What happens if this power is channeled but not "shaped," as it appears you intend to portray? In other words, if a thaumaturge is preparing a fireball and I stick a dagger into him, will he burst into flame, even detonate? Hell, you can take this further - in the Black Magician trilogy, dead mages go practically nuclear when all the energy they contain breaks free.

I'd say explode or fizzle out depending on the spell, but if a really powerfull spell is used it's probable you won't wanna be the person that fails the cast or for that matter be too close.

Why is skill so important, if power can substitute for skill? Perhaps magical power is hard to come by, or perhaps the energy efficiency of spells drops sharply for unskilled users.

well why skill is important is partly answered in my "dark art" explanation/clarification, but I intend that chance of spells backfiring on the users (perhaps even with leathal effect) depends on the skill of the caster so that a talented mage might able disperse the energy safely even if the spell fails but a novice might end up blowing himself up or worse.

This is a most interesting point. Given this, and given that magic, no matter how you slice it, will be more powerful and/or versatile than a sword or a bow could ever be, and is dependent on studious practice, why practice swordsmanship at all? Being a master swordsman or archer is a lifetime commitment, something to which some fighters devoted the majority of their waking hours in order to excel. Your thaumaturges are going to wear an awful lot of hats, being simultaneously strategists, hand-to-hand fighters, and users of magic (which in itself might comprise as many additional roles as you'd like). This does sound a bit far-fetched to me.

actually I was planning the warriormagi to be a) an elite force of a single nation b) a compromice due to not having enough conventional soldiers or powerful enough spell casters to remove the need for a conventional army c) a jack of all traits, master none being neither powerful mage or warriors just good enough in both to make attacks against said generally not worth the effort.

hope that clears out a bit

[Setesh]

- can magical energy be stored, either in objects or in people? That might allow a magic user to "charge up" before a battle or a really big spell, or to use an enchanted object as a battery of sorts for extra power. Obviously, such a charged object would be extremely valuable, particularly if storing up power was difficult or time consuming. How you get power is also important - can an hour a day of chanting magical spells work, or do you need human sacrifice?

I've not quite figure this one out, I might have magical items or not really depends if I can do it so that they don't become too powerful or common.

I've seen a few ways to do this that make sense. The first way is every spell a mage casts is still connected to them, so a 'magic item' is only semi-permanent at best. When the mage dies the power in the item fades over time until its just an object. This can also allow for Excalibur class items that are permanent, the skill and power needed to do so is simply beyond anything without a lifespan measured in thousands of years.

Another way is that creating magical items are purely based on skill rather than power. This turns them into a balance point between skill and power. A weak but very skilled mage can create items that work a very long time while a more powerful mage that uses shear power to achieve the same result might make a more powerful item that falls apart after only a few uses/years. This also keeps the demand down as a powerful item coming undone might have apocalyptic results on the immediate area.

Alternatively it could require a very specialized skill set that makes normal casting impossible. This would make those who have the skill as valuable as iron workers in a bronze age culture. (dammit I'm trying to help you but I'm giving me ideas)

Then again you could just make the energy costs so prohibitive no one sane would try unless there was no choice, this could also be a plot point for 'dark side' magic, as part of what makes them 'evil' could be the ability to steal other people's power to fuel spells or magical item creation. I remember a book that did this in a way. The dark sorcerers carried around alters that absorbed the life energy of anything killed on them. The sorcerers would march into a town, kill all the women and children on the alter and use the energy to enslave the minds of all the menfolk to use them as more cannonfodder soldiers to protect the fanatic elite soldiers.

All these keep the scope of item abilities down as either the skill needed or the power needed exponentially increase as extra abilities are added.

[Feil]

You may be going about this the wrong way. Another angle to take is to first identify how you want your world to look, act, so on. What is the technology like? How do people make war? How are battles fought and armies composed? How are secrets kept? How is politics carried out? What is medicine like? Hygiene? Life expectancy and literacy rates?

Once you know all that, magic is going to have to fill one of two - and probably both - of the following: magic that enables the world to act like it acts, and magic that can exist without disrupting the way the world works.