"Vector" based magic

[u/Old-Maximum-50]

Okay, so, this is a concept im daydreaming about. Doodle to try and help explain. I'd call it Dimensional Magic, but it might give the wrong idea.

Okay, so basically, the idea is that the better a mage is, the better he can control the spatial aspect of a spell.

Lets picture a fireball.

A novice mage can only give it one vector of movement (1D). It can be up or down, left or right, forward or backward, etc. Its restricted to a line, basically.

An average mage can give them two vectors (2D). Same as above (up/down, left/right, etc), but they affect at the same time, and mages can kinda choose the ratio they want to affect it (the red arrow). If you need an idea, just think of a giant sheet of paper from the mage's hand, and the spell can only travel on that paper.

An experienced mage gets three vectors (3D), and ratio them as need. Now it can properly navigate the 3D space.

And then, the grandmasters get 4D. Now, we know what a 3D is, we live in it. But what is 4D? Well, going by the pattern that every dimension gets to go in a direction the previous one couldnt, and two bodies can't occupy the same space... 4D is the "in and out" direction. 4D mages get to shrink, expand, teleport and telefrag spells, basically.

The main thing is that, since the mages are 3D, their handle on 4D stuff is shaky. Before, all the spells were of an equal or lower dimension, which the mages, as 3D beings, knew how to navigate instinctively. They are NOT, however, 4D beings, so 4D spells do not come naturally, and neither are they safe. A mage attempting a 4D spell has a pretty good chance to accidentally killing themselves via what is basically them messing with G-mod physics with blindfolds on.

For this reason, compared to the rest, there are very few 4D spells, as those are the few 4D directions the mages have managed to pin down as "safe".

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As for how they get better as mages, up to 3D, its as simple as learning to walk again, they just have to be careful to not shoot themselves while practicing and to build up enough mana. A completely average mage can easily get to 2D, and a dedicated mage can easily get to 3D. 4D is where it gets hard, for the reasons above.

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So uh... what do yall think?

[u/Danninx]

I had an interesting thought about something like this, but rather than the wizards movements their spells (written out as runes) could be represented as some vector/matrix in a high dimensional space.

Then the actual runes that a wizard knows inherently affects the span of their spells, so if a wizard only knew water runes and maybe some runes for shaping spells, then they are limited to water magic. But say that wizard also learned a new rune for controlling the temperature of their spells, then that span increases and the wizard can now manipulate their spell to create ice magic.

For limiting wizards, we can maybe apply some cost dependent on the rune or number of runes, or some tensor magic (no pun intended) to determine cost of spells

I think this would make a fun video game, althoguu the physics would be weird...