How to mash different power systems together.

[NotaNuffian]

Get lost is not a good author fo an example.

Like mashing martial arts in magic oriented world, the thing always feels clunky as one is talking about how their body is hard as metal and another is going all fire manipulating.

In the end, everything boils down to the highest damage dished out and taken.

Similar to guns versus dragons, the latter is a giant lizard (in most of the case) that can fly, shoot fire and has strength proportional to its size even though square cube law should be in place. This analogy is poor, because in some sense, bigger guns for bigger dragons. Once you throw magic in, it is suddenly power of caliber fired must be greater than going through thick skins and muscles plus an energy field of sorts.

When writing such works with different power systems, the hard magic system ends up downscale a lot of things and boils everything into an universal theme of who can outphysics the other person. The magic in Harry Potter becomes a programmable sequence and xianxia's over the top shits become quantifying with nuclear warheads. These are all without taking into the account of BS like memory control, soul extraction and formation forming that disrupts the ebbs and other BS.

 

[Cipiteca396]

The key is to actually mash them together instead of just letting them live alongside each other. Even if you can't do everything, being able to do a few tricks from other systems will go a long way to raising immersion.

For example, if every wizard and their mom knows a trick for making a lighter-sized flame, then let the tech savvy artificer use it to light their bombs or such. Let the mage use gadgets made by the artificer. Let the bard use martial arts techniques to improve his stamina- for performances, of course.

If the story is all about damage taken and given, then nothing will feel unique. It'll all just be 'Use this, because it has the highest DPS.'

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

Get lost is not a good author fo an example.

Like mashing martial arts in magic oriented world, the thing always feels clunky as one is talking about how their body is hard as metal and another is going all fire manipulating.

In the end, everything boils down to the highest damage dished out and taken.

Similar to guns versus dragons, the latter is a giant lizard (in most of the case) that can fly, shoot fire and has strength proportional to its size even though square cube law should be in place. This analogy is poor, because in some sense, bigger guns for bigger dragons. Once you throw magic in, it is suddenly power of caliber fired must be greater than going through thick skins and muscles plus an energy field of sorts.

Pretty sure the eternal Isekai did this well

 

[NotaNuffian]

Pretty sure the eternal Isekai did this well

I am giving it a go now.

Ps. Got my gears grinded at Chp 16, not due to the plot but the direct translation of ranks.

This is why I hate reading xuanhuan that direct translates from EN to CN.

 

[Alfir]

The difficulty in this is to stay dedicated to the logic of the world you are creating. There must be a common ground between them like how scientific railgun and magical index revolve around powers. Like how they make an analogy in Gate using the military perspective as the get-go of the story. Like how SAO is integrating sci-fi and game elements. Like how the magic system in Overlord is integrated into the world Momonga transmigrated to, with martial arts as a foreign power system. Like how plenty of fanfics always(cringe) involve cultivation to the OG power system of naruto.

For me, the power system is the most delicate part of an action-based story. And my favorite part to experiment. I hope this helps.

 

[PancakesWitch]

Honestly you should simply read more novels to find the answer. In my books there is always Ki, Mana, and Aether. Which are the three primordial energies that when merged togehter form divine energy which is the power of the gods. Mortals usually use all three of them separately, Mages usually use mana the most and Ki is not so important for them because they want to min-max magic power, Ki is often used for marital artists/warriors and so on, and it helps them strenghten their physical bodies beyond superhuman, alongisde mixing it with mana so they can unleash Techniques, and then there is aether, this one is not so used or widespread, but its the power of the soul, usually only very expereinced magicians or warriors can learn it, but it can enchant magic and techniques to a great amount. Becoming God means accumulating a large quantity of these three energies and converge them into divine energy, which can do ANYTHING... as long as you got enough energy for it

 

[K5Rakitan]

Carefully

 

[TotallyHuman]

I boil them, add a bit of milk and mash them

 

[NotaNuffian]

Honestly you should simply read more novels to find the answer. In my books there is always Ki, Mana, and Aether. Which are the three primordial energies that when merged togehter form divine energy which is the power of the gods. Mortals usually use all three of them separately, Mages usually use mana the most and Ki is not so important for them because they want to min-max magic power, Ki is often used for marital artists/warriors and so on, and it helps them strenghten their physical bodies beyond superhuman, alongisde mixing it with mana so they can unleash Techniques, and then there is aether, this one is not so used or widespread, but its the power of the soul, usually only very expereinced magicians or warriors can learn it, but it can enchant magic and techniques to a great amount. Becoming God means accumulating a large quantity of these three energies and converge them into divine energy, which can do ANYTHING... as long as you got enough energy for it

My (miscarriaged) work involved ether, the source for all types of power in my created world, it was then fracked for different users to use as no one can use its full potential. There is even the phrase "those who control the ether, controls the world".

I hated the concept because it sounded so cheap.

And also I placed psionics into the shit as well.

 

[CheertheDead]

When you want to mash multiple systems together, the easiest way is to use hard magic systems. Soft magic systems have no shortage of loopholes that you can never finish patching them.


You need to go with a hard magic system where you got a solid foundation to build upon.

From these foundations, you can start seeing where these systems intertwined, how they react to each other.

You can not mash ki, energy, mana when you couldn’t even imagine how each of them are defined or how they react to the real world.


Lines must be drawn on what each system can and can not do. For that to happen, you need a hard magic system. Soft magic system with its lubricative logic can not answer these questions and no conclusion can be made.

At least, that’s how I see it.

 

[Cipiteca396]

When you want to mash multiple systems together, the easiest way is to use hard magic systems. Soft magic systems have no shortage of loopholes that you can never finish patching them.


You need to go with a hard magic system where you got a solid foundation to build upon.

From these foundations, you can start seeing where these systems intertwined, how they react to each other.

You can not mash ki, energy, mana when you couldn’t even imagine how each of them are defined or how they react to the real world.


Lines must be drawn on what each system can and can not do. For that to happen, you need a hard magic system. Soft magic system with its lubricative logic can not answer these questions and mo conclusion can be made.

At least, that’s how I see it.

Nah nah nah, you use two or more hard magic systems, and a soft magic system to glue them together.

 

[AnUnknownMan]

1. Attach conditions to using different powers together.
2. Assign different restrictions on individual powers.
3. Growth: different powers should have different stalling points
4. Every power should have something it does better than any other.
Example: Using wizardry and martial arts halves progress I'm both. Early martial artists have near absolute advantage over wizards, especially in close quarters, but after a certain level, wizards surpass martial artists, gaining ranged superiority until martial artists gain access to protective abilities and ranged slashing capabilities. The highest level of combat leaves martial artists outranged and less versatile, but more powerful and resilient. However, if someone can overcome the penalty, reaching max level on both gets you a new type of energy better than either.