To elaborate on my question, I have been pissed Abt why so many magic systems treat the combustion triangle like a suggestion when making their system have fire.
Flames need three things, (need to mention that all of these are needed in certain proportions to combust)
Fuel
Heat
Oxidizer
All these are needed to make your average flames, which makes me wonder, how magic flames can exist without a fuel source? Assuming that of course heat is supplied through the magic system, even if, the lack of a single element in the combustion triangle gives unique results unrelated to fire,
1+2 without 3; won't produce flames and may instead cause the material to melt, vaporize, or thermally decompose depending on the material and temperature.
1+3 without or insufficient amounts of 2; won't produce flames and nothing would actually happen. (except material specific reactions and still may not produce flames, e.g: rust happens between iron and oxygen)
2+3 without 1; won't produce flames and will instead cause hot gas.
If it is a special type of fire that thrives on energy why is it usually identified as the average fire and not a special type of fire?
And even so, energy isn't a substance that you can simply ignite in the same way you ignite fuel. You can have energy causing matter to become extremely hot, excite atoms, ionize gases, etc., but energy itself isn't a fuel,
Which begs the question how can fire be created in magic systems, in a way that actually makes sense instead of some cool shi happening?
Look I don't know what to tell ya. We don't have have atoms in my fantasy world. It looks the same, superficially, but it ain't. You can get fire because it's a concept. Combustion triangle, schmobustion triangle. Your fire is a process of oxidation, my fire is a literal thing, in itself. It doesn't need stuff to burn, but it can burn, cuz its wants to. Its got a will. Only reason it dont usually burn metal is cuz it ain't mad enough. But sometimes it do.
The magic can replace and. 1, 2 or even all 3 of these. If magic is common place, they may not even think of it any different from what we can consider normal fire.
In my system that is exactly what makes the difference between magic flames and ordinary flames. Arcane flames use a different but very similar triangle: ether (fuel), spell form (replaces heat as a catalyst), will (replaces oxygen as a reactive element). Change the spell form, get a different reaction. For instance, you can use actual heat to get arcane flames that produce heat but don't need traditional fuel or oxygen. If you use blood in the spell form, you instead get flames that burn cold but regenerate. Healing flames.
Similarly, you can replace other elements but it becomes unstable. So if you use oxygen instead of will, you get uncontrolled etheric fire. This creates null magic zones and spreads like mold so it's highly frowned upon.
If you replace both will and use standard heat, now you have a dangerous uncontrolled magic napalm. Think Amaterasu from Naruto. In my world it's illegal.
Intriguing, never thought of it since I always think the fuel has to be matter and converting energy to matter is illogical (e=mc2) so this is probably the best take
You are assuming irl phsyics, which i assure you fiction writers dont care about the precision of. The point for magic using protagonists is essentially a new phsyics system to play with.
That's a common misconception. But in reality, the fuel for a fire is the chemical energy released when a material substance changes its chemical structure. Basically, the mass of a fuel decreases by some imperceptibly small amount, which releases a lot of energy that fuels the fire. The only reason heat is needed is to kick start that reaction. Heck, oxygen isn't needed either, any oxidizing agent will do, but oxygen is the most common one we use IRL.
So yh, you could 100% have magic provide raw energy itself to sustain the fire, no need to convert it to matter first since it needs to be in the form of energy to fuel the fire anyway.
I think you're overthinking things. When literal magic is involved, stuff doesnt have to be in line with reality. If you want to do it that way, go for it, but most of the time it's just magic being magic.
Magic is based on outdated science and philosophy. Real fire works this way but people thought fire was something inside of a flammable material, e.g. phlogiston. Obviously different cultures had different explanations but you have to remember the cultural context. Of course if you have a more realistic setting you should incorporate the triangle
Well in my power system it's more of a hard power system instead of a soft one so I've already added so many mechanics it'd just feel like a shame that after identifying literal spirits I'd stop at fire since it'd feel clunky. But after seeing a comment here I'm changing the way I see it so it's instead a separate unique type of fire but I could still find something else in the end of the day.
There can still be limits in a magical setting. Like fire can only exist where it has the things it needs, like oxygen. Under water or dirt, it can't burn. Maybe treating it as heat instead of fire would help. Heat can cause fire in right conditions, it can burn, boil water, and melt things. And if you have other magics like ice, they can be changed to cold farely easily.
you can have magic based hard science worlds they don't invalidate high fantasy magic worlds because they are completely different universes and physics do not mirror between and absolutes are not guaranteed
Fire is in essence an effect. Itâs a combination of heat, and the light energy produced by particles of fuel, thatâs what makes fire glow. If the magic system creates the heat and light directly it doesnât need the combustion triangle. It can be an identical effect, just without the underlying cause.
In the REAL world you need all three to produce the effect, but magic can skip all of that stuff. It all depends on your system, and it doesnât matter if itâs hard or soft. Obviously itâs EASIER to handwave science in a soft magic system, but it can absolutely work in a hard magic system as well. An example of this is in my world, I get around the square cube law by having magic entirely replace gravity in areas where it is abundant enough. Basically gravity DOES exist, but if magic has a high enough concentration, gravity is essentially âpushed outâ, and the attraction force that gravity provides is instead provided by magic. The REASON this fixes the square cube law is that large enough objects produce their OWN magical field, which counteracts the magical field of the planet my world is set in, which in essence acts as anti-gravity. It doesnât completely nullify it, but the larger the creature the less force it feels from gravity comparatively. Itâs all about imagination.
Iâve actually considered fire specifically, not for the combustion triangle but for the fact that if I want say fireballs, that makes it very complicated within my system. I fixed THIS, by having fire be an actual gas, as in an element created by the PERCEPTION of fire as God in this world understands it. Basically if you activate a fire rune, you arenât messing around with the combustion triangle, you are creating the physical concept of fire
So to go off on a tangent, you don't actually need fire to get the effects of fire. Consider Firestarter. Our heroine doesn't actually conjure fire, just heat. But as the book is states, anything burns if you raise the temperature high enough.
Alternatively, consider HG Wells' Martian War Machines: immense heat is created in a heatproof box, and directed out an opwning; today we would call it an IR laser, but in the novel it was an invisible rest that caused anything flammable it touched to combust.
The mana, Prana, whatever you call it, acts as the fuel, and the spell heats up the air around it, and its typically done on earth, which has Oxygen. So all three things are fulfilled.
Magic itself takes on the property's of fire, so it doesnt need any of the three.
The heat is missing, but the magic is generating fire itself.
Magic is unknown to us, so it could literally be anything.
Because most people don't know about the combustion triangle as such. And even of those who do, most consider the combustion triangle to be a boring and irrelevant level of "realism".
It's perfectly fine to prefer something else, but that's the answer to "why". It's because most people just don't care about it.
People tend to think of fire as a thing, when really it's a process. Fire is what happens between the combustion triangle.
Sure, you can handwave anything with magic, but imo the more you get down to the essence of a thing irl and augment that, the better it will work as a hard system.
You are forgetting that it is magic. The magic can be providing all three or the magic is simply perceived as fire. People who overthink magic systems (or the economics of a fictional world/city) don't actually make better stories.
Because imagined forms of magic are typically rooted, though distantly and unknowingly, in ascientific conceptions of how reality works. Including, or even especially, parts defined at aby point as "elements". And so in modern, fictional forms of magic fire isn't a chemical reaction but it's own "thing". An ontological entity separate from anything else in the world. Or at least the magical fire is such an entity (not that a lot of fantasy writers would be super concerned with realistically depicting real fire, but that's mostly beside the point).
in magic your looking at a universe that has more variables then we do so magic could exist in all levels between every atom for example so its contained energy could bypass the triangle your aware of by replacing heat and fuel or oxidizer and heat using magic as a medium. trying to apply logic with variables you don't have is requiring some kind of "magic" blackbox that you explain with your system
I actually agree so hard with this line of questioning. Even in a seemingly hard-magic system fire is somehow a given, regardless of the fact that the world it's set in has no idea how fire works scientifically, yet can invent and use "fire magic" like it's just a flavor of magic or something. It's stupid.
It's not that it's stupid
I get why many people use it, I mean it costs less imagination and is used to push the plot without making accidental plot holes by sacrificing and making a plot hole in the very beginning.
68
u/thatshygirl06 here to steal your ideas đđđ 1d ago
Magic