Disciplines of Magic

Officially they are, clockwise from top: Evocation, Conjuration, Divination, Transmutation, Necromancy, Abjuration, Illusion and Enchantment, but these names work too.

We all know Magic A Is Magic A, but that doesn't mean all magic in a particular setting has to be exactly the same. One common way of distinguishing different magical users or adding a bit of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors into the story is for different magical schools to exist. These schools each specialize in a type of magic, and each type of magic has different, unique qualities and traits. They are usually Elemental Powers, but the distinction is that characters can often choose what magic to follow, may be able to learn more than one discipline, and will fit into a niche that goes beyond "fire beats grass".

They may each be distinguished further by having their own Magical Sensory Effect, will often be Color-Coded for Your Convenience if not outright Color-Coded Wizardry, and are often balanced enough to not make one school of magic outright better or worse than the others, except where their specialties are concerned. For this reason, they add some Competitive Balance in games; no one class of magic will have the upper hand in every situation — this makes this very popular in Video Games and Tabletop Games. This is the natural result of there being two or more Whatevermancies.

See also Black and White Magic, Functional Magic, Mutually Exclusive Magic, Our Mages Are Different, and Unequal Rites^note of which this is a supertrope since that trope revolves around the different types of magic having rivalries with each other.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Familiar of Zero: Magic is divided into five schools of magic: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and Void. Mages who know Void can learn no other discipline of magic, but those who specialize in others may be able to learn the other three non-Void disciplines.
• Lyrical Nanoha: Mages in the franchise tend to practice one of two distinct schools of magic, Midchildan and Belkan (the latter of which is further broken up between Ancient Belkan and Neo/Modern Belkan). While there is no visible difference between the two apart from the shape of their magic circles (Midchildan being a circle and Belkan being a triangle), on average Midchildan mages prefer ranged combat and Belkan knights prefer close combat.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: In the series, there exist two different disciplines of magic, western magic and Eastern magic.
  • Western magic is based around Europe's cultural sphere of influence. Western mages use mana as energy and require spells, incantations, and catalysts to activate their magic, the two languages of incantation that Western mages use are Latin and Ancient Greek, the former is more commonly used for casting spells while the latter is used solely for high-level magic.
  • Eastern magic is the general term for sorcery practised in the Asian world and utilized by Eastern mages. These mages use Ki to cast spells. They emphasise the mage as a lone operative with many of their spells intended to confuse and disrupt the enemy rather than directly engage them in battle, as well as summon demons to assist the mage either by attacking the enemy or defending the mage that summoned them.
  • Mages in the series can also form a Pactio or contract between a Magister and his Minister. The Pactio allows a Magister casting the spell to transfer some of their magic to the other person involved in the Pactio, improving their natural abilities by an average of ten times than normal capacity. Another advantage to forming a Pactio is the ability to summon a magic artifact.
• Naruto: Ninjas have three main branches of magic. Genjutsu, the ability to cast illusions and at the extreme end warp reality, Taijutsu, which is, ostensibly, not magic at all, just hand-to-hand combat, but even this has advanced techniques that grant superhuman strength and speed, and Ninjutsu which is any other magic, everything from Pure Energy, Healing Hands, Elemental Powers, etc. Elemental Powers themselves can further complicate matters as they are unique to each individual's potential but may be more commonly shared among bloodlines, clans, or nations. And speaking of bloodlines, there are Kekkei Genkai, which can be any of the above as long as it's passed down genetically and can't be learned by normal means otherwise. Separate from all this are the actual ninja schools that may teach specific fighting styles, philosophies, and traditions.
• Slayers: Magic is divided between Black, White, and Shaman magic. It combines Religion is Magic with Personality Powers. Black magic comes from Mazokou (anglicized to "monsters" in the English dub), White magic comes from the gods, and Shamanism comes from neutral nature spirits. To harness it, one needs a mindset similar to one's patrons. Hot-Blooded and ill-tempered Lina has an easy time using black magic but can't use white. Amelia specializes in white due to her fierce and all-encompassing belief in truth and justice, and there's an episode of season 1 showing how difficult it is for her to use black magic. Calculating, grim Zelgadis specializes in Shaman magic but dabbles in black. Outside of the main party, white mages are peaceful, kind, priestly sorts while black mages are boisterous and arrogant (and have a penchant to zap first and wonder why a mazokou-lord can No-Sell a spell they themself power).

Fanfiction

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Different types of magic are sorted into categories that are associated with specific symbols, like the "necromancy skull" and the "teleportation squiggle", but also the alchemy beaker, Metallia dark sun, and space-warping spiral.
• Elementals of Harmony: Due to multiple -mancies: Pumpkin Cake is an ontolomancer. Laughter magic is also called thaliamancy. Honesty magic, a.k.a alethiomancy.
• The Palaververse: The First Stitch mentions "chronomancy", a.k.a time magic, and "Treasures" has shown that there's magic to make glow-on-command alarm clocks, which is totally different from chronomancy, other than dealing with clocks.
• Oversaturated World: Oversaturation: Equestrian magic leaks over to the human world, and that brings with it Harmony magic, and its opposite, Chaos / Disharmony magic, for those suited to it, and they appear mutually exclusive. Harmony magic itself is implied to be split into domains such as fate, dreams, and force fields, which people can have varying amounts of innate talent in.
• Past Sins: Glimpses 2: "Day": A pair of magically talented sisters don't have the same talents, because being equally good at magic on average doesn't mean there's not variation in ability per subject:
  That was one place where the sisters had always differed. Nyx excelled in barriers. Helia was far more talented at levitation.
• Quizzical: There are different types of magic, for instance, Quizzical is really good at illusions, but not teleportation.
• Triptych Continuum:
  • Cutie marks being tied to what a pony can do with their magic, and the wide variety of cutie marks, means that there are almost as many disciplines as there are marked ponies.
  • For racial magic, a basic split is whether a pony deals in making enchanted objects made by their race, or whether they're more common and deal in a kind of Mundane Utility, like a business pony with an internal magic that somehow makes it easier for them to come up with good business opportunities.

Literature

• The Asterisk War: There are three primary schools of Genestella fighting arts. "Normal" Genestella typically use "Meteor Arts", which pump their mana and prana into bodily functions and/or into their weapons. Stregas (female) and Dantes (male) are akin to the Squishy Wizard, able to cast actual spells. The wild card is the seisenjutsu practiced at Jie Long Seventh Institute, which appears to hybridize the other two forms.
• A Budding Scientist In A Fantasy World: Luliv's types of magic are only limited by what concepts can be understood. Well, and for some reason preventing some Outside-Context Problem-ness by locking out non-native concepts such as atomic physics.
• A Certain Magical Index: Magicians usually focus on one religion/belief/myth/folklore as their source of magic, except for very generally usable things, like the Christianity-based anti-flight spell, but knowing that there's only one foundational theory that underlies how nearly all human magic works, means they can change replace the source of their magic if they're willing to put in the work since it's the same theory underneath it all, they'd just be using it differently.
• Cinnamon Bun: On Dirt, concepts are the foundation of magic. If someone wants a magic focused around a concept strongly enough, then they'll make it happen.^note Yes, the planet is called Dirt.
• The Dark Profit Saga: "High" magic is divided into Solamancy (fire, water, light, and life) and Noctamancy (air, earth, shadow, and death). Most mages can only channel one or the other; the rare "Omnimancers" are commonly stereotyped as insane, and not without reason.
• The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk: The world contains several very distinct sources of supernatural power, such as Oathkeeping that grants increasing Super-Strength and Super-Speed as participants keep vows of chastity, silence, etc; Mentalism that allows practitioners to organise their own thoughts and enter other minds to plant suggestions; or Dark Magic that uses sacrifices to attract help from spirits. Rowan finds a way to combine mentalism with dark magic, sacrificing memories in order to make mental constructs more powerful, but pillaging one's own mind like that has nasty side effects.
• The Darksword Trilogy: Magical study is divided into no less than fifteen different paths, one for each of the classical elements, one for their evil counterparts, Life, Death, True Death, Soul, Time, and Shadow. A potential mage falls into a path at birth. Which path you fall into dictates the abilities you have as well as what jobs you'll be suited for. With the exception of Life and Death (and possibly True Death), this is less a restriction than it is a specialization, with abilities related to other paths being available but at a reduced effectiveness. At the start of the series, fully seven of the paths have become extinct (with another being hunted to extinction) due to their practitioners getting genocided, but one is apparently making a comeback at the end, via the main character's wife. It should be noted that the final book in the "trilogy," The Darksword Chronicles is actually a gamebook that gives rules for character creation along this route, as well as samplings of how to play most of the mages.
• Dragon Lance: Being based on Dungeons & Dragons, the setting has the traditional arcane schools of White, Black, and Red magic, and said wizards become known respectively as White Robes, Black Robes, and Red Robes, each influenced by a different moon of Krynn's. There is also clerical (divine) magic derived from whatever god you're currently backing. There were other minor forms of magic, but the two that rose to prominence after the War of Souls were Wyld Magic (magic that was powerful but unpredictable) and Death Magic (magic gained with the help of dead souls gathering it up for the caster). The different Robes have been known to seek out and destroy wizards who are not one of the Robes.
• The Dresden Files: Some types of magic that have been described are evocation, a.k.a close combat magic, illusions, and thaumaturgy.
  "As above, so below. Make something happen on a small scale and feed it enough energy to happen on a large scale."
• Discworld seems to divide its magical knowledge along gender lines, with men going to Unseen University to become wizards and women taking up a sort of apprenticeship to become witches. The two differ in that wizardcraft requires a certain level of analysis and precision while witchcraft utilizes more common sense practices and observational ability. Played with in that Equal Rites seems to indicate there isn't really any rule separating the two other than the more powerful practitioners of each not wanting to share their secrets with the other side. (Equal Rites has Eskarina Smith becoming the first female wizard in recorded history, while the unfinished final novel The Shepherd's Crown hinted that a boy in it might likewise become a male witch.)
• In The Evermen Saga by James Maxwell, magic is shown as utilizing a mystic substance called Essence to achieve various effects with each nation specializing in different applications. One nation uses essence to make enchanted objects, another uses it to animate golems for heavy labor, yet another uses it to create soldiers from the dead.
• Gate: Several different types of magic are displayed with conversations implicating that they are of differing disciples.
  • Elves such as Tuka seem to rely on Elemental magic, With Tuka's father Hodr using wind magic to accelerate his arrow used to blind the Flame Dragon, and Tuka herself is able to call lightning against the same dragon, later.
  • Rory seems to rely on soul magic, channeling the spirits of the dead through her body, which causes virtually orgasmic pleasure. She can heal from any injury perfectly, and can, by taking in someone's blood, bear the burden of their injuries herself, sparing them the pain and damage of otherwise fatal wounds.
  • Mimosa states that Lelei's sister, Arpeggio, specializes in gemstone magic, allowing her to "bypass the laws of physics" at will by using gems as catalysts for her spells.
  • Lelei herself seems to be a Jack-of-all-trades, able to replicate spells by studying them, and able to enhance the effectiveness of her own magic by applying things she's learned about physics, chemistry, and other sciences from Japan, working within the natural order for maximum effect.
• In the InCryptid/Ghost Roads universe, there are several different types of magic-users, all implied to be innate rather than a skill that anyone can learn. Routewitches gain power from distance traveled, trainspotters do something similar with trains, ambulomancers gain power specifically from travel on foot, sorcerers are born with innate magic usually based around an element, and umbramancers draw power from the twilight, with powers relating to ghosts and precognition. Runic Magic appears to be usable by anyone, even a Muggle with a Degree in Magic.
• The Legends of Ethshar has six major types of magic users (like wizards and warlocks) and dozens of minor ones.
• Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy is set in a world with five magical systems: Thaumaturgy (Sympathetic Magic), Alchemy (magic potions), Magic (creation of new Ancient Artifacts), Sorcery (Mind Manipulation), and Wizardry (Summoning Ritual). It's initially believed that no one person can become proficient in more than one system, but the protagonist ends up learning all five (and then has to combine them to save the world).
• Otherverse: The various Practice groupings in PactDice are separated into five major schools of Conflict, Deals, Material, Immaterial, and Divine, with sub-schools of Conjure, Prices, Tools, Realms, Interaction, Lore, and Protection for each one.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Magical Incantation seems to be common to the two human magic systems initially seen, but witches rhyme all the time for theirs and in the Common Tongue, while Druids use their Language of Magic to define their spells, whose magic makes so only they can remember the sounds.
• Rivers of London: It's been established in the series that multiple nations have their own traditions of magic:
  • The British tradition was formularised by Sir Isaac Newton and thus everything is in Latin. Due to politics in the 18th century, when they chucked out all their female members as part of their efforts to transition from a lose social club into an official state-supported organisation, it split into two similar but distinct sub-traditions of the Society of the Wise and the Society of the Rose respectively. With the Society of Wise styling themselves as official British magic, unaware of the Society of The Rose's existence, its members developed their own traditions which they passed down their family lines.
  • There is likewise a third more distinct British sub-tradition, the Sons of Weyland who whilst sharing the Newtonian basis, were also greatly influenced by Pre-Newton magic techniques brought to the country by Spanish Jews and French Huguenot practitioners who fled to Britain in the 17th century to escape persecution. Holding their own base up in Manchester, with their magic revolving greatly around working mysticism with crafting and blacksmithing, it being them who held the secrets of creating the powerful Silver Magic Staffs. Whilst formally part of the same organisation, the Sons of Weyland held tight to their independence and always held a level of suspicion towards the Society of the Wise. To the point they hid the fact their organisation and its traditions survived World War II from their counterparts.
  • It's been confirmed there are likewise American, Russian, Dutch, French, German, and Chinese traditions, each vastly distinct, however, not too many exact details are known due to the practitioners closely guarding their secrets. The German version at least shares similarities to the British incorporating several Newtonian principles due to the close relationship between the Cambridge and Cologne Universities, although developed its distinctions by the practitioners of the White Library. Likewise, two Chinese traditions are known, the one practiced by Madame Teng, which is seemingly inspired by Taoism and based in magical writing rather than spoken incantations, and the one practiced by Michael Cheung the Guardian of London's Chinatown, which is based around using magic to enhance the bodies physical abilities enabling practitioners to perform superhuman feats.
• Thanks Truck Kun For Making Me A Trader: The LitRPG system has multiple types of magic, as revealed by the first description of a person's magic section of their stats screen, but only void-magic's name is narrated:
  There was a section for different types of magic, which made my heart beat faster. Magic was real here? Cool. [...] Though most of my magic was one or two. Except for void-magic. Whatever that was. It stood apart with thirteen.
• To NPC Or Not To NPC: A brief passage in the book suggests mutually exclusive elemental paths:
  An initiation rite to one of the four elemental paths of magic. It involved some knobby stick and pretty much poking things corresponding to the element one wanted to choose. Like a little scavenger hunt for the right object to poke. Kilby found it a little lazy on the creative aspect, but no one asked him.
• At first, The Wizard Of Whitechapel seems like an aversion as Thaumaturgy is the only magic practiced on an After the End version of Earth where society has been rebuilt thanks to Merlin (yes THAT Merlin). The plot of the series kicks off with the resurgence of another form of magic, Necromancy, which is the domain of Eldritch Abomination bad guys who once ruled mankind. The two differ in that Thaumatic magic draws its power from the (replenishable but limited) energies of the caster while Necromatic ones require sacrifice (preferably of the human variety) to power them. Ironically, Thaumatic magic is derived from Necromatic magic thanks to a subgroup of the same Eldritch Abominations rebelling against their fellows.

Mythology & Religion

• Norse Mythology: Magic was split into two categories, there was Rune magic (which involved spells to heal wounds and weaken the weapons of enemies) which was deemed to be male, and prophecy magic which was deemed to be female. These rulings applied to all beings, even the Vanir, Aesir and Jotun. The only one who could do both was Odin, due to him hanging himself for nine days to learn the secrets. This led to him occasionally being mocked by Loki behind his back for using women's power.

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica: The unified magic theory used by the Order of Hermes (and the Spell Construction rules) fails to explain a lot of older magical traditions, ranging from Magic Music and Runic Magic to skinchanging and divine invocations, each with its own supernatural Virtue and related Ability. Learning more than one magical paradigm is extremely difficult, but some Mystery Cult initiation rites facilitate it.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • There are eight types of magic, and there are specialists for each of them, which lets them prepare more spells of that school and learn them easier, but they usually had at least two other schools prohibited to them. Each school has its own suite of spell effects, although there is some overlap (see below). Arcane casters, particularly Wizards, are usually the only casting classes who care about the distinction; while Divine spells are also given what type of magic they are, the casters usually care instead what their god allows them to use. This effectively means that every god has their own magic discipline. Fifth Edition, meanwhile, had specialists as subclasses that still allowed the wizard to learn their school's spells easier, giving them some abilities that work with or are themed around that school, but now with no prohibited schools. Due to every class in this edition having its own subclasses, any class with extensive magic effectively has several disciplines represented by each subclass. The schools of magic are:
    • Abjuration: defensive spells and Anti-Magic
    • Conjuration: summoning both creatures and objects; teleportation (both intra- and inter-planar)^note on the basis that sending something away is the reverse magic of bringing it to you
    • Divination: discovering information inaccessible to the regular senses^note as in, separated by time (in either direction), space, or limitations of the senses such as the inability to read minds or directly sense magic
    • Enchantment: manipulating the mind, or its connection to the body
    • Evocation: the creation of energy, both harmful and healing^note Evocation includes most damaging spells; those it doesn't usually involve either summoning something physical and harmful (and are thus Conjuration), or the manipulation of necrotic energy (and are thus Necromancy)
    • Illusion: spells which fool the senses^note and occasionally the brain enough that it takes damage
    • Necromancy: manipulation of the forces of life, death, and undeath
    • Transmutation: changing one thing into another
  • Different settings in D&D may change how their magic works. Canonically, Maztica, Kara-Tur, and Al Qadim are in the same world as the Forgotten Realms, but while the Realms use the standard disciplines of D&D, these spinoffs have different disciplines, usually divided among the primal elements such as earth, wind, fire, water, and possibly plant and/or animal.
• Earthdawn is a Prequel in the Lost Age to Shadowrun in which all PCs are Adepts following "Disciplines" that fill in for the standard Fantasy Character Classes.
• The card game Epic Spell Wars has 5 different schools of magic: Elemental (pure damage), Dark (High-risk, high-reward spells that are often Cast from Hit Points), Nature (effects that can both harm opponents and heal you), Illusion (gimmicks such as being able to choose who your spell targets and duplicating spell effects) and Arcane (gathering treasures that give you a passive boost as long as you control them).
• Exalted: Magic is usually divided into sorcery and necromancy but, since the game has ties to the Old World of Darkness, magic disciplines such as Oneiromancy play minor roles.
• GURPS:
  • GURPS Fantasy gives options like Craft Magic, Master of the Trade, Oaths, and True Faith
  • GURPS Magic has the option of Alchemy
  • GURPS Powers has Psionic Magic.
  • GURPS Wizards promoted itself as having 28 different types of Wizards, althro only a third of them would normally be considered wizards in other game systems.
• Ironclaw: In addition to the various religiously-based forms of magic, there's Elemental magic (including Dunwasser college's secret Star magic), Mental magic, Thaumaturgy, the forbidden school of Necromancy, and Kyndranigar's lost Virtue school, while Zhongguo has Taoist, Purity, and Changes magic.
• Mage: The Ascension: Magic is separated into nine spheres, and each of the nine Traditions specializes in one of them: Entropy, Forces, Life, Matter, Mind, Prime, Correspondence, Spirit, and Time.
• Magic: The Gathering's color pie is built around assigning different effects to its five colors of magic (White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green). There are no explicit restrictions on mixing and matching colors in a deck, but spells of a given color require mana of that color — if a player can't produce the right color of mana for their spells, then they can't cast those spells.
  • White: Civilization, Morality, and Order
  • Blue: Water/Air, Artifice, and Thought
  • Black: Amorality and Death (in the early days it was Evil, but was changed to Amorality later)
  • Red: Fire/Earth, Chaos, Destruction, Rashness
  • Green: Nature and Life
• Pathfinder is derived from Dungeons & Dragons and thus the magic system has strong similarities.
  • Like D&D, there are eight schools of magic: abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, and transmutation. Every spell falls under one of these schools, but it usually only matters to Wizards, who need to specialize in one school.
  • There are also four primary magical "traditions" and a number of minor traditions that relate to the source of the magic. Some spells are found in multiple traditions; for instance, "Heal" can be divine or primal. Additionally, in 2nd edition traditions act as spell lists shared by multiple classes, instead of each class having a unique spell list that has to be updated with each new supplement.
    • Arcane magic is the type used by wizards and maguses, and is typically derived from the use of material components or written incantations. It tends to focus on powerful rearrangements of physical nature, such as explosions, transmutations, and the animation of non-living matter.
    • Divine magic is the kind used by oracles and clerics. Its power is granted by the divine entity its user worships, whether this is a deity, nature, or a more abstract force. It tends to be less dramatic than arcane magic and often focuses on healing and protection.
    • Primal magic is the type utilized by druids and rangers, as well as by elementals and the fey. It is particularly linked with instinct and the elements of nature.
    • In 1st edition Psychic magic is derived purely from one's own mental or spiritual faculties and could be used without physical foci, components, and gestures. 2nd edition instead has the Occult tradition, based around attempts to understand the unexplainable and categorize the bizarre, and makes bards the most prominent practitioners, though psychics also use Occult magic. In either case, the spells focus around Psychic Powers and communing with the dead.
  • However, it's implied that the distinction between the four great magic traditions may be less fundamental than it appears and that it may be more an artifact of how Golarion's people practice and study magic than anything else. High-end mythic spellcasters can learn to effectively ignore their divisions, and the legendary wizard Old-Mage Jatembe is known to have been of the opinion that the four schools were not strictly divided in nature; many of his writings focus on the similarities between arcane and divine magic, and the Wizarding School he founded still teaches arcane, divine and primal spells side-by-side to this day.
• Early editions of Shadowrun had a hard distinction between Hermetic Mages and Shamans, however later editions introduced the Unified Magic Theory, reducing Mages and Shamans to merely two of several "paradigms" that differ primarily in fluff.
  • Hermetic Mages could bind elemental spirits to amulets and call upon them on a moment's notice, by Sixth Edition that practice has been banned and they have to summon like Shamans. They could also perform alchemy and create enchanted items, which are no longer exclusive to Mages.
  • Shamans call upon nature spirits in the moment, with a chance of failure or draining them, which is now the only means of using spirits in Sixth. Mentor spirits were once not only exclusive to Shamans but mandatory, this is also no longer the case.
  • Adepts were introduced in Third Edition as an alternative form of magic user who didn't cast spells but instead channeled their mana into amplifying their physical abilities. Later Mystic Adepts could mix and match spells and adept powers.
  • Technomancers technically don't use magic, but rather something... different that essentially works like magic with Matrix-connected devices.
• Starfinder: being the aforementioned Pathfinder game but set in the future, the disciplines of magic have changed to reflect the setting. Mystics draw their power from a "connection" to a higher power, similar to clerics but their connection can be to an impersonal cosmic field instead of a deity. Technomancers combine magic with technology. Witchwarpers replace bits of reality with counterparts from alternate universes. While Precogs are living temporal anomalies.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: There are several magic disciplines a Cainite can learn. Three come easily depending on which clan the vampire belongs to; learning another discipline requires more effort.
• Warhammer: Magic, which originated from the realm of Chaos, enters the physical world as eight distinct, colored Winds — Light, focused on manipulating literal light and purging evil beings; the Heavens, focused on astrology and fortune-telling, as well as weather, electricity and the occasional meteorite; Metal, generally focusing on alchemy; Life, a mostly passive, healing-focused lore with a number of more offensive spells that directly manipulate plants; Beasts, which controls animals and makes allies stronger and more aggressive; Fire, very direct pyromancy; Shadow, focused on illusions and obfuscation; and Death, which manipulates entropy and withers living things.
  • Attunement to a Wind strictly limits a wizard's ability to access other Winds and prevents use of the lore of high magic, which weaves the Winds in a more harmonious whole, and the lore of dark magic, which wields them as a raw, unshaped mass still tainted with Chaos. This can be highly dangerous for creatures not attuned to magic, however, hence why the Elves who funded the Imperial Colleges of Magic made sure that they would each focus on only one discipline, as human minds and souls couldn't handle the full force of high magic. Dark magic is a somewhat different story, as some humans can wield it — most forms of necromancy are described as dark magic with a particular focus on the Wind of Death.
  • Besides the main winds, which are accessible to more or less all factions, there are a number of lores and traditions unique to specific groups. These include the runic magic of the Dwarfs, which is less powerful but safer than other forms and binds magical effects into specific carved patterns; the Lores of the Big and Little Waaaagh!, used by Orc and Goblin shamans respectively by channeling the psychic power of greenskin hordes; the ice magic of Kislev, which can only be used by women; the Gut Magic of the Ogres, which works by its user eating something and casting a spell related to the thing they consumed; and the Lore of the Wild, used by the Beastmen, which is essentially a corrupted form of the Lore of Beasts.
  • Religion is Magic and each deity offers a unique set of powers to its priests. These magics are mutually exclusive because mortals, though they might pray to various gods according to the situation, can only draw magic from one patron god.

Video Games

• Arcanum:
  • There are 16 spell colleges of 5 spells each (the four elements, necromantic white/black, nature, force, summoning, mental, etc.). Obtaining mastery of all spells in a college lets you cast the spells at half cost, and learning new spells increases magical aptitude, increasing the effect of some spells.
  • Technological disciplines function in the same way (8 disciplines and 7 ranks), although they're used to create items, weapons, and armor with various effects rather than cast spells.
• Avencast: Rise of the Mage: The titular Wizarding School teaches the Pure Magic-based path of the Soul and the Magic Knight path of Blood. It's possible to train in abilities from both paths at once, but the Point Build System makes it easy for such a build to slip into The Red Mage.
• Chantelise: There's 4 elemental lines of magic, corresponding to the 4 types of elemental gems, Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, that can be harvested from the environment. Spells are made by consuming sequences of gems, up to a max of 4 gems, with the primary element for spells determined by what element is first and the rest used to raise the spell to the next form of that element, or modify it, if it's the same or different color, respectively.
• Destiny: There are many different types of magic in the Destiny universe, each having different strengths and drawbacks.
  • The ahamkara are ontological predators that feed off deception. They make use of wish-magic to sense the desires of others and make them reality. They are essentially the genies of destiny, but without any limitation on wishes.
  • Guardians often use the Light, which they can use as a wide range of Elemental Powers. It also provides them with immortality via their Ghosts, the conduits to the Traveler. If a Guardian's Ghost dies or they otherwise lose their connection to the Traveler, they lose the Light and all its powers as well.
  • The Hive have their magic based off of the Sword Logic, survival of the fittest taken to the extreme. They gain power by proving their right to exist instead of others by killing them. If you were killed, then you were not worthy of existence.
• Devil May Cry 2: There are Pyromancers, Auromancers, and Brontomancers; the three types of wizard demons that use fire, wind, and lightning magic, respectively.
• Dragon Age: The official Four Schools of Magic are divided between Primal, Creation, Spirit, and Entropy. As well as other Sub-Classes, which are typically specialized offshoots of one of the Four Schools.
  • The School of Primal is also known as the School of Power, one of the Schools of Energy, and the most recognized School of magic. It's the School of Magic that governs over the Elements and the most combative of all spells. When the average Muggle thinks about magic, they picture the Primal School.
  • The School of Creation is also known as the School of Nature, one of the Schools of Matter. It's the Spell class that offers the most support, with Healing Magic, Status Buffs, and Glyphs. It's also recognized as the most difficult school to master.
  • The School of Entropy is also known as the School of Negation, the other School of Matter and the opposite of the School of Creation; mages skilled in one are often incapable of using the other. It's the school of Entropy and Chaos Magic, using Curses, Status Effects and Life Drain.
  • The School of Spirit is also known as the School of Mystery, the other in the School of Energy, and the opposite of the School of Primal. Instead of using visible elements, the School of Spirit uses invisible energies. This school has both the manipulation of Mana, be it draining, burning and negating. The school also involves Psychic Powers.
  • There are also other subclasses of magic, some of which that aren't officially recognized by the Chantry, and by recognized we mean legalized^*To the Chantry, Magic itself is basically a Sin.. The Classes that are recognized by the Chantry are the Spirit Healer, Knight Enchanter, Battlemage, and Force Mage Classes. The ones that aren't recognized are the Shapeshifter, Arcane Warrior, Keeper, Rift Mage, and Necromancer Classes.
  • The Blood Magic School is technically recognized by the Chantry, but it's the Forbidden School of Magic. Meaning this type of magic is explicitly illegal. As practitioners tend to practice Human (or Elf, Dwarf, etc.) Sacrifices, Mind Control, and Demon Summoning.
• The Elder Scrolls has seven unique schools of magic, and players can choose to focus on whichever ones they like.
  • Alchemy: The school of potion and poison brewing, it's considered its own unique branch of magic. Every ingredient in the game has multiple effects when brewed properly, and the higher a player's alchemy skill, the more effective balms and salves they can make.
  • Alteration: The school that directly affects the physical world. It's mostly used to create status buffs for the player—the ability to walk on or breathe underwater, or carry more treasure—but can also be used offensively by burdening enemies and making them unable to move.
  • Conjuration: The school that pulls various objects and monsters from different planes of reality. It's best known for calling various creatures to fight alongside the player character, although it's also possible to get temporary equipment with it.
  • Destruction: The most physical school, it functions as the series' form of attack magic. The three major forms allow players to blast fire, ice, and lighting from their hands.
  • Illusion: The school that alters perception in both a physical and metaphorical sense. It's exceptionally handy for stealth, as it can turn players invisible; it also allows players to charm others and make them more agreeable.
  • Mysticism: The "and the rest" school, it doesn't have any one particular specialty, although it leans toward skills that would be considered psychic in other games. It's used for everything from telekinesis to soul-trapping to providing Aura Vision.
  • Restoration: The school of healing and fortification. It's mostly used to restore players' health, but can also extend to allies in need. More powerful Restoration spells can even cure diseases instantly.
  • In Oblivion, seven of the game's nine cities (the Imperial City and Bruma are the exceptions) specialize in one of the above schools, and the initial branches of the Mages' Guild questline involve going to each city's Guild Hall and learning that area's skill to earn a recommendation from the head of that particular group.
  • In Skyrim, the College of Winterhold seems to have something of a rivalry going on amongst students of the individual branches to determine which school's spells are best.
• While each entry in the Final Fantasy franchise tends to have its own take on how magic works and how it's categorized, it has established a few broad categories of magic that it uses fairly consistently:
  • White Magic is magic that tends to directly benefit your own party: it includes spells that heal or revive teammates, spells that bolster attack and/or defense stats, spells that treat status conditions, and so on. However, White Magic does include a very small number of offensive spells, historically specialized at destroying undead creatures.
  • Black Magic, in the Final Fantasy universe, is generally purely offensive magic meant to destroy enemies. While there are some spells that benefit party members, they still tend to be crouched in harming the enemy, such as draining an enemy's HP and giving it to the caster.
  • Summoning is the ability to summon magical creatures into battle for a large, impressive-looking spell. Summons can have offensive, defensive, or healing properties. Summons tend to have much higher MP costs than other types of magic, which may or may not reflect how much more powerful they are than standard spells.
  • Blue Magic is a broad term for "magical abilities learned from monsters or other enemies." The spells in this category tend to be exclusive to Blue Mages, and they can be either offensive, defensive, or healing spells.
  • There are other, lesser types of magic, like Time Magic (which affects time and the pace of battle, naturally) and Green Magic (mostly concerned with status buffs and ailments). However, these tend to be limited to individual games or subseries and don't appear consistently throughout the franchise.
• Fire Emblem has featured the following magic types.
  • Anima or elemental magic is the most common form of offensive magic in the game. As its name implies, it harnesses Elemental Powers to attack.
  • Dark magic is another type of magic, which has been variously characterized as ancient magic (like in the Elibe games), or a form of Magitek as seen in Three Houses. In games with a magic triangle, it typically wins over anima magic but loses to light magic.
  • Light magic is invariably portrayed as a divine form of magic, wielded by clerics and priests rather than mages. In games with a magic triangle, it loses to anima magic and wins over dark magic.
  • Magic staves and utility magic tend to fall under another umbrella, providing both healing and spells like Warp and Rescue. In most games, they tend to be wielded by light magic users (and many light magic users tend to use staves as well), while in Path of Radiance and Three Houses they are even governed by the same skill.
• Hearthstone has seven spell schools: Arcane, Fel, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, and Shadow; that said, not every spell falls into one of these seven schools.
• Heroes of Might and Magic:
  • The third game splits magic into disciplines based on the four classical elements, earth, air, water and fire.
  • The fourth game splits magic into five types and makes each type associated with one of the factions (except the might faction, who are an Anti-Magical Faction) — Life magic for the knights, Nature magic for the elves, Chaos magic for the Asylum, Death magic for the demons and undead, and Order magic for the wizards. Each faction has two other factions it sees as allies and two it sees as enemies.
  • The fifth game split magic into Light (buffs, healing and Holy Hand Grenades), Dark (curses and "evil" buffs like "lifesteal"), Summoning (creating things to help your army), and Destruction (using the four classical elements to kill your enemies).
  • The sixth game splits magic into seven elements based on the dragon-gods that act as caretakers of the world — fire, water, earth, air, light, dark and arcane.
• Magic The Gathering Microprose: Each traditional color of the card game is represented here by an archwizard, and all their particular minions must use the color of their particular archwizard.
• Magical Diary: From Horse Hall, as Professor Potsdam says during the opening speech:
  At Iris Academy, we teach spelling using the pentachromatic system.
  Red magic is forceful, but not necessarily violent. Blue is the color of transformation and change. Green is the color of life, and the world of plants and animals.
  White magic affects the mind and spirit, and black magic is contained within physical objects.
• MapleStory:
  • Explorer Magicians can branch into one of three schools: Fire/Poison magic, Ice/Lightning magic, or Holy magic, each with their own specialties. For instance, Fire/Poison mages can deal massive Damage Over Time damage while Holy magic users (better known as Priests) have powerful party-wide healing and other support tools.
  • The Cygnus Knights divide up their Magic Knights into five corps each corresponding to a different element: Dawn Warriors, Blaze Wizards, Night Walkers, Wind Archers and Thunder Breakers.
  • The Legends/Hero class group has two Magicians on their roster. Evan and Luminous, whose playstyles differ drastically due to their different power sources.
• Nodiatis has Life Magic, Death Magic, and Psych Magic. Additionally, there are six colors of magic, each falling under one of the domains — white and green under Life, red and black under Death, and grey and blue under Psych.
• Prince of Qin: Has five schools of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors magic and items classes relying on a relationship between water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. For example, wood feeds fire, making creatures linked to wood very susceptible to fire spells. Conversely, water puts out fire, so water-based spells are effective against flame creatures. Flame spells, however, don't do much against water creatures. The game shows these relationships using lines on a five-pointed star, which you can see on every loading screen.
• Runescape: Magic is one of the core combat skills. In both Runescape 3 and Old School Runescape, there are various "spellbooks" that focus on different types of magic. The Standard Spellbook has a mix of combat and skill-focused spells, while the Ancient Spellbook is more combat-focused with the ability to hit multiple targets, and the Lunar Spellbook is mainly focused on utility spells, such as baking pies and stringing jewelry. Exclusive to OSRS is the Arceuus Spellbook, which focuses on Necromancy, while RS3 has Necromancy as its own separate combat skill, introduced in 2023.
• Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Multiple types of Whatevermancy are mentioned, including Enchanted Tomes' Arithmantic magic and the White Mask Hiemancers' Winter magic.
• Wizard101: There exist multiple classes of elemental magic, which perform different roles in the card-based combat system. A player can choose two: A main class and a support class. They are:
  • Fire, which specializes in damage over time.
  • Storm, which does heavy damage but lacks in accuracy.
  • Myth, which uses minions to heal, buff, and defend.
  • Ice, which has weaker attacks, but higher hit points and defenses.
  • Life, which is known for healing.
  • Death, which is a complicated and advanced class with many capabilities through the use of combinations and traps.
  • Balance, which has a wide variety of spells, including those from other classes.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Mages can spec into the Fire, Frost, and Arcane schools, which all focus on single-target or area of effect damage to different degrees. Frost spells put special emphasis on Crowd Control with their slowing abilities and Arcane has a variety of utility spells.
  • Priests have the Discipline, Holy, and Shadow schools. Discipline balances healing and damage with defense spells, Holy increases healing prowess, and Shadow priests are damage dealers through and through.
  • Shamans can specialize in Elemental, Enhancement. and Restoration trees. Elemental shamans bombard enemies with the elements from afar. Enhancement shamans bludgeon foes with elementally-infused melee weapons, and Restoration shamans focus on healing and support.
  • Warlocks have Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction trees. Affliction warlocks drain the life from their foes and use shadow magic to inflict damage over time, Demonology warlocks summon demons to their aid, while Destruction warlocks bring down fire and shadow bolts for maximum carnage.

Visual Novels

• The Elementalists: The Penderghast University teaches several subjects to its students, one for each. Each one learns to control some element naturally and the others, he has to learn from each corresponding teacher.
• There are 7 schools of magic in Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane: Evocation, Transmutation, Conjuration, Divination, Abjuration, Necromancy, and Illusion. It's common for a mage to know spells from multiple schools, even if the game's character description will only depict one of them (for example, it says that Beatrice Frega's Arcane Art is Illusion, but she also knows Necromancy and Conjuration spells). Necromancy itself is the least studied discipline because there is a stigma about raising undead armies, but healing spells are known by many mages and classified as Necromancy too. The implication is that Necromancy is the discipline of both life and death, like two sides of the same coin.

Webcomics

• In Erfworld, there are eight major magic classes defined by their combination of the three elements of Life, Motion, and Matter. Those eight classes are subdivided into three disciplines, based on their alignment to one of three axes: Erf, Fate, and Numbers.
• This is apparently how magic is learned in Trigger Star, at least according to Team Mage Breadbun Poppyseed, who is from the panda school of black and white mages and specializes in offensive and healing magic. The series also has Richard the Pink Mage, who specializes in fertility (and related) magics.

Western Animation

• The Dragon Prince: There are six primal sources of magic: Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, Sky, and Ocean. Magical creatures have a natural connection to one of the primal sources, from which they draw their power. There's also dark magic, which uses the Life Energy of magical creatures.
• Hilda: Witches and trolls use different types of magic. When Hilda turns into a troll, Frida asks Kaisa for help, but Kaisa says "witch magic doesn't mix with troll magic" and all attempts to mix it go fruitless when Frida defiantly attempts a spell.
• The Owl House: Magic is divided into nine different disciplines (Abomination, Bard, Beast Keeping, Construction, Healing, Illusion, Oracle, Plant, and Potions), and witches are divided by covens, each dedicated exclusively to one form of magic, and are magically forced to suppress all other forms. Only those who belong to the Emperor's Coven are allowed access to all forms of magic. Eda, one of the main characters, has never joined a coven and is able to use the full magic spectrum, which is the primary reason she's wanted by the authorities.

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