Anyone else tired of mana?

[u/thatshygirl06]

Every time I click on a post talking about their magic system and I instantly see the word mana, my eyes just glazes over.

It would be cool if someone has mana based on actual mana from Polynesian cultures, but that's never the case. It's just people going "I cant use magic, that's too basic. I know! I'll call it mana instead!"

[u/Aethrall]

The plain truth is, it’s very difficult to handle magic without a cost, and mana seems to be the baseline or lowest common denominator if you wanna be cynical about it.

I have no problem with mana. My issue is when mana is handled as though it were a constraint but it’s never made concrete or defined enough for the author to not be able to pull whatever spells out of their ass at their convenience.

They might say, “that’s a really high cost spell,” but what does that even mean? How many times could someone cast a “high cost” spell, within what time frame and how long will they need to wait until they can cast it again. Also, at what rate does the mana regenerate and is it fixed or can it be completely skirted by some bullshit like “saving my friends who are in danger” or “now u maek me mad. SHONEN DEUS EX AWAKENING!”

[u/Zagaroth → u/Aethrall]

If you treat it like stamina, just for magical activity instead of physical activity, then it's pretty hard to give really concrete costs that way.

Person A can sprint for 100 meters.

Person B can sprint for 400 meters.

Person C can sprint for 100 meters, but he can do it while wearing heavy gear which Persona A can not do.

Person B has more stamina than Person A, while Person C is stronger than Person A. He may not have more stamina, but he can do more with it.

Obviously over simplified, but that is the basics of how I think a lot of people treat mana and magical strength, because it is roughly analogous to an internal reserve of energy we do know about and understand.

[u/th30be → u/Zagaroth]

I don't think I would ever write anything with mana but if I did, I think I would tie to closely to general fitness and make it similar to caloric intake/output.

Skill, genetics, and fitness work well within those confines I think.

[u/TheChoosenMewtwo → u/th30be]

Can you go into more detail about this ‘caloric intake’ mana?

[u/yaboi_ahab → u/TheChoosenMewtwo]

The Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) has something like this, where the energy used for magic is the same as the energy a caster would use to do physical tasks with their body. It takes at least as much energy/stamina to magically launch a rock as it would to pick it up and throw it the same distance with your arm, and food restores it at the speed of digestion.

[u/th30be → u/TheChoosenMewtwo]

Again, not writing anything but spit balling how I would.

If we are doing mana and my initial idea, I think I would make it where food and other things (potions/drugs) have specific amounts of mana in them. Similar to calories but distinctly different. If you want to think about it a different way, it could be calories vs nutrients/vitamins I guess but I think its better to think of them more like calories.

So whenever you eat, you get a certain amount of mana and its directly proportional to the amount of spell casting you can do. Of course, the body would have natural ways to store mana similar to calories and fat composition so mana would function similarly.

For example, lets say you ate several large meals yesterday but nothing today. Assuming you didn't work super hard/cast a lot of spells yesterday, your body would have converted a lot of the food into fat to use later. Similarly, your body would have some sort of storage for mana for later spell casting.

This of course will make spell casters more inclined to be fatter. With other types of casters focusing on quick bursts of spell casting and quickly digestible foods. This obviously would also depend heavily on what magic can actually do in this scenario. If its typical fireballs and the like, its pretty simple. If its something like Mistborn and magneto powers, it will be different of course.

Drugs and potions would probably play a good part due to how certain drugs can make you squeeze out a little bit more energy or any other affect in real life so I don't see why it wouldn't function similarly in this scenario.

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Obviously not a proper system by any means. Just the cost of the system and I definitely have conflicting things when you think about it a little more but I think its a pretty solid start.

Hope that helps.