Writing Critique My Magic Systems

EngineGear

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 7, 2021
Messages
69
Points
58
Ambiance:

Ambiance, in a sense, is the art of creating, manipulating, and shaping the invisible etheric phenomenon known as "aura", produced by a person and surrounds them with spiritual and life energy. Depending on the user, the Ambiance can resemble blazes, power, smoke, waves, tornadoes, and light. Every living being has access to Ambiance. Soulless beings cannot use Ambiance, because of their absence of life energy. It is common knowledge that to unlock Ambiance, one needs to prepare through concentration and intercession to sharpen their abilities.

Seven Combat Styles:
  • Augmentation: This combat style allows the user to enhance their abilities, even going beyond their limits.
  • Elemency: This combat style allows the user to manipulate elemental energy for defensive and offensive purposes, essentially becoming a literal force of nature.
    • Red: Earth
    • Orange: Ice/Snow/Water/Steam
    • Yellow: Fire
    • Green: Air/Sound
    • Blue: Electric/Light
    • Indigo: Darkness
    • Violet: Space-Time
  • Manifestation: This combat style allows its users to transform their Ambiance into physical constructs, which they can manipulate in varying degrees.
  • Infusion: This combat style allows its users to infuse their ambiance with objects and other people.
  • Metamorphosis: This combat style allows its users to use their Ambiance to alter or transform matter into anything.
  • Cognition: The mental capabilities of Ambiance. This class is the most difficult to master, from telepathy to creating illusions, requiring lots of focus and meditation.
  • Randomization: The most unpredictable and esoteric form of Ambiance.
Other Abilities

  • Kōgeki: The offensive part of Ambiance.
  • Bōgyo: The defensive part of Ambiance. Creates an invisible beehive-like barrier surrounding the body.
  • Genshitsū: An Ambiance technique used to generate phantom limbs from the stump area.
  • Meisai: The art of concealing your aura to avoid detection.
  • Kenshutsu: The art of detecting surrounding aura.
  • Kakuchō: The art of expanding one’s aura outside their body, creating a field of aura.
  • Wana: An Ambiance technique that allows the user to trap others within their aura.
  • Tenka: An Ambiance technique used to light one's Aura, radiating an unstable sensation. This custom is disapproved of, if not prohibited in different countries, due to unexpectedly harming or murdering off unpracticed users who can't handle their quickly streaming aura, consequently annihilating them truly and profoundly.
  • Hibana: The safe way to activate someone else’s Ambiance. Requires mediation and an invocation: We stand together, united, Forever unbroken; Arise, Warriors; By the power bestowed upon us; We will be victorious; We will never stop; We never tire; We are immortal; We are eternal; We fight as one; We have awoken!
  • Iyashi: An Ambiance technique that helps with healing the receiver.
  • Seikitai: An Ambiance technique that permits the user to extend an astral type of their soul. The drawback is that it leaves the user's actual body defenseless against assault.
  • Seiryoku: An Ambiance technique that can squash, annihilate, or repulse anything inside the encompassing territory. Any approaching assault would be refuted or would not take effect.
  • Shōten: An Ambiance technique that allows its user to read other people's auras, including their unconscious thoughts and feelings.
  • Dairokkan: An Ambiance technique that warns users of incoming threats.
Limitations

  • Using too much Ambiance can cause fatigue and/or death.
  • If the aura nodes are blocked in any way, shape, or form, the aura cannot flow properly.
Krafts

Krafts are extraordinary abilities that certain people have, ranging from mundane to powerful. In the present time that the story takes place, around 50% of the world's population has Krafts. 25% of the world population are regular people who have the potential to pass down the Kraft Gene. The remaining 25% are just normal people.

Kraft Types:
  • Standard: People with basic superpowers. (i.e. Flight, Super Strength, Super Speed, Durability)
  • Assist: People with supportive-like superpowers (i.e. healing, peak condition, extrasensory perception)
  • Builder: People with the ability to create constructs out of anything, everything, or nothing.
  • Hybrid: People with two or more powers mixed.
  • Kinetic: People with a certain ability to control various elements and objects with their minds.
  • Mythos: People with esoteric and unpredictable powers.
    • Proxy: People who gain Kraft abilities through different means; Accidental, deliberate, mystical, technological, etc.
Rule of Redundancy
The more redundant one's Ambiance is to a user's Kraft, the more powerful said user becomes. (Ex. Elemency Yellow Fire with Pyromania)
 

Biggest-Kusa-Out-There

Futanari Enjoyer
Joined
Apr 30, 2021
Messages
350
Points
103
Feels like a parasitic gacha game that's going to ask me for premium currency at every turn.
You need to do a shit ton of info dumping and remind your audience every few chapters of what is what.
I wonder how much story, char development/interaction is going to be consumed and posponed to explain the system.
Sounds like a kids card-game manga where literally nothing oustide of it matters.
Outside of those critiques, it looks amazing and shows a great deal of care and motivation you have, and I hope you don't get discouraged by my comment.
Keep it up! Love the original concept!
 

Darkcoif

Active member
Joined
Sep 6, 2019
Messages
2
Points
43
So here’s what what I’ve got for my thoughts on it after reading through all this:

Ambience
1] Augmentation and Infusion read as two sides of the same coin. Assuming that they mechanically operate in similar fashions to perform their different functions, they could be fused into a single style. The only reasons I can see to separate them is that they are mechanically different enough or there are relevant story elements that necessitate the distinction.
2] Manifestation and Metamorphosis also read as mechanically similar but to a lesser degree. Not too concerned about this but a greater distinction could help.

Krafts
1] Proxy should probably be it’s own Category rather than a sub-type of Mythos. This would essentially mean that the distinction between a “Natural” Kraft and an “Artificial” Kraft would be more clear since that is what I’m getting from Proxy.

General
1] Mythos and Randomization feel too arbitrary when next to their counterparts, especially when Ambience seems to be derived from the user’s ability to control their aura/life energy. These two feel like they are artifacts of a given story’s setting rather than something that should be a concrete part of the system.


Aside from what I pointed out above, the rest of this feels rather well thought out. The descriptions give a better idea of what exactly you intend for each part to do and how it would fit in a setting.
 

Cipiteca396

More Gasoline 🎶
Joined
Jun 6, 2021
Messages
2,177
Points
153
Your color choice for the elements is a little weird, but something that a reader could maybe get used to given time. That's sort of how it always goes, I guess.

Similarly, using Ambiance and Kraft as names seems a little weird without some extreme justification.
-In real life, Ambiance is sort of the Aura of the world or area you are in. Relating it to a specific person's Aura is like describing a single person's heartbeat as 'the drumbeat that shakes the world'.
-Kraft sounds like Craft. Which makes me think of a magicraft, enchanted item, magically created construct, whatever. Just having it be a name for super powers is slightly confusing.
-Having all of those non-English names in the other abilities section makes it hard to remember or care about all of them. It makes sense if the characters speak another language, but it would be nice to have a translation for the reader.
 
Last edited:

darkpikacha

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 25, 2020
Messages
43
Points
58
I do like the magic system. But how are you going to balance all of this? Like how are you going stop someone using metamorphosis from snapping their fingers. Then splat Your brain is now a pile of goop.

-Also what is Kogeki. You already have combat styles. Telling us it's offensive Ambience is not very descriptive.

-When you say
Every living being has access to Ambiance.

Does that include also animals. Like a dog awaken his Ambience(somehow) and now can use it to breath fire. Unless I am reading too much into this and me writing this in 3:46 Am in the morning was a very bad idea.

- So Krafts are based on generics? So does that mean you can in theory fuse them/bioengineer in . Like 1 guy has super strength and one girl also have super strength. Does the child has a chance to get a stronger variant of it? Unless this counts as a hybrid Kraft.

-feels like randomization is there to introduce a established a new fighting style. Like draining people's aura.

ok enough internet for today. I sleep
 

atgongumerki

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 26, 2019
Messages
250
Points
103
aside from agreeing with prior commenters:
A) good system
B) randomisation and mythos seem out of place
B1) it sounds like either some overpowered ability
B2) or it having random effects whenever invoked, making every use a gamble
C) colour scheme is weird

I don't understand tenka:
does it illuminate the aura; does it ignite the aura? why do people using it just randomly fall over and die?
 

EngineGear

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 7, 2021
Messages
69
Points
58
Your color choice for the elements is a little weird, but something that a reader could maybe get used to given time. That's sort of how it always goes, I guess.
The color choice is intentional. Relates to the seven auras in Hinduism.
-Kraft sounds like Craft. Which makes me think of a magicraft, enchanted item, magically created construct, whatever. Just having it be a name for super powers is slightly confusing.
Kraft is Swedish for "power"
 

SakeVision

Sama/kisama
Joined
Jul 30, 2021
Messages
1,013
Points
128
Since you are going with japanese theme, you might wanna replace kraft with Japanese word like chikara or noryoku
 

SakeVision

Sama/kisama
Joined
Jul 30, 2021
Messages
1,013
Points
128
Ambiance and Kraft are two separate magic systems.

oh, that's not what I meant

For example, in the very earliest conception of my current story, originally there were supposed to be two different cultures-the Japanese themed north, and Chinese themed south. However, I realized that such a world wouldn't be internally consistent. There is no reason why one region would use Japanese terminology and the other use Chinese terminology if they are right next to each other, have been in contact with each other for a long time, and speak the same language.


your system uses Japanese names, and then suddenly swedish word like "kraft", and then suddenly a greek word like "mythos". Unless your story is taking place in meiji era japan and they really want to prove they are very modern by randomly incorporating western words into their system, it just looks out of place.
 

EngineGear

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 7, 2021
Messages
69
Points
58
Unless your story is taking place in meiji era japan and they really want to prove they are very modern by randomly incorporating western words into their system, it just looks out of place.
Let me correct myself
My story has a post-modern setting. So, Not really out of place.
 

Biggest-Kusa-Out-There

Futanari Enjoyer
Joined
Apr 30, 2021
Messages
350
Points
103
Let me correct myself
My story has a post-modern setting. So, Not really out of place.
But why would they juse Japanese words in the first place? Languages evolve to use the most simple word for a concept, especially if they're loan words. It does feel out of place in-world, especially for a system.

Imagine you're working on your math homework and go, "Ah, yes, I need my калькулятор to do πολλαπλασιασμούς, otherwise the Sensei will be enojado at moi."

Get it? People will sound like that when talking about the system.
 
Top