"We all realize that the concepts we explore here are mystic ones, with arcane-thinking required to understand them. Yet we insist on using words like 'paranatural' and 'parautilitarian' to create the illusion of a scientific structure; a tidy little system. The Bureau is desperate to stand with the close-minded cult of logic and data that has overrun our society. If a thing cannot be quantified, then we dismiss it outright. We live in an age that is openly hostile to faith in the veiled forces governing our reality."
— Control, "Research & Records: Tennyson Report"
In some settings, when magic faces science in a test of might, magic wins because it just straight-up cheats. Science is the product of rules and order and a whole lot of maintenance, while magic is an unquantifiable force that outlives logic and entropy. Even when magic has laws, don't expect these laws to overlap with the laws of physics or thermodynamics. When it comes to magic, you gotta fight fire with fire.
This often facilitates the need for a Token Wizard on the Super Team or an entire Supernatural Team, as more Mugglish heroes would have trouble facing against the Legion of Doom's Evil Sorcerer. It's the best set-up for the kind of shenanigans you see in a Wizard Duel.
When the threat is non-sentient in nature, like a location that doesn't conform to basic normalcy or a supernatural pandemic with no traceable pathogen, expect everyone to exhaust every rational method of cure or containment before calling in the Blue-Collar Warlock to clean up their mess. Expect the people who figure out the rational, simple, mundane -- and oftentimes violent -- solution is not going to work to become upset.
Sub-Trope of Takes One to Kill One. Compare Wrong Context Magic. Contrast Muggles Do It Better and Science Destroys Magic.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The Death of Doctor Strange: The Three Mothers took on the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four and did a No-Sell to all the heroes' attacks. The only thing that could stop the Three Mothers were for the various Sorcerer Supremes to perform a ritual to banish them.
- Defenders (2021): The Defenders go to the universe where they encounter science hero Taaia (mother of the future Galactus). Her world is in danger facing the Great Devourer, a Cosmic Entity / Eldritch Abomination. Taaia's universe is purely scientific in nature and the Great Devourer was the Sorcerer Supreme of the previous supernaturally-oriented universe. He was an Outside-Context Problem that was immune to the super science-based attacks thrown at him. So good thing the Defenders were led by Doctor Strange.
- Lanfeust of Troy: When Thanos starts to enchant Hébus in Volume 4, Lanfeust wants to intervene but Nicolède tells him that the only thing to do is to fight magic with magic and he tries to use his own enchantment to counter Thanos'.
- Vampirella: The Dark Powers: Has this as a major theme arc starting in this series and in follow-up series Vampirella vs Red Sonja and Red Sonja: The Super Powers. The Project is a super hero team composed of science heroes from various alternate Earths, their only members who have any supernatural abilities are Vampirella and a Witch-Marked Red Sonja. When the heroes fight against supernatural beings, they keep getting confused by what's happening and get curbstomped (some heroes even getting killed by demon mooks) until Vampirella and Red Sonja intervene. At one point Red Sonja even asks a superheroine how despite all their amazing powers, the heroes that investigated Hyboria couldn't beat an evil sorcerer. At the end of the theme, Sonja with some assistance from Vampirella becomes the Project's head instructor for defense against supernatural threats.
Fan Works
- With This Ring: Power rings are the greatest tool in the galaxy — when it comes to technology, at least. Magic, though, breaks the rules, consistently able to bypass Paul's shields, evade his detection, and generally bring him down to normal. He can fight space fleets from interstellar empires with just his orange ring, but in order to fight magic users, he has to commission special Anti-Magic ammunition and warding pendants from Atlantis.
- To the Stars has a downplayed example; technology is definitely a viable weapon against magical girls, but only by either destroying soul gems or exhausting all their energy by sheer attrition. In straight comparison magic can overcome any equivalent technology due to operating on its own rules rather than being limited by physics, and magical girls are understandably seen as outright superior to any other combatant.
Films — Animation
- Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost: After evil witch Sarah Ravencroft's vengeful spirit is released from her spell book, only Thorn (who has Wiccan blood) is able to defeat her by using a spell to seal her back in the book again.
Films — Live-Action
- Following up on WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is presented as an Invincible Villain, her Darkhold-enhanced chaos magic making her a Flying Brick with Reality Warping applications with no feasible way of beating her. When facing off against the Illuminati in Earth-838, she kills them all with no difficulty. The only times we ever see her struggle is when faced against other magic-users, Doctor Strange managing to evade her multiple times by the skin of his nose. While she still outclasses everyone she faces, she struggles in breaching Kamar-Taj's magical barrier with brute force, Doctor Strange's offensive spells — including trapping her within the Mirror Dimension — manage to buy him time and she struggles fending off the evil spirits Doctor Strange (while in possession of Defender Strange's corpse) attacks her with.
- SHAZAM! (2019): Shazam and Sivana can only be hurt by each other's magic.
Gamebooks
- This is common for Fighting Fantasy books and can be a case of requiring a magical weapon to harm an enemy or else magic is required to save you from an overwhelming supernatural force such as summoning an army of ghosts to fight an army of golems.
- In the Lone Wolf series, some enemies can't be defeated with mundane weapons. Hopefully you played Book 2 and got the divine artifact Sommerswerd. If not then hopefully Lone Wolf has some other magical artifact in his inventory, if not then there's the possibility that the creature maybe vulnerable to Lone Wolf's psychic powers...if he has the appropriate ones.
Literature
- In The Age of Misrule, the British army found this out the hard way. 21st century firepower has no effect on the Fomorians, it takes supernatural might to harm them. So in the fight between the two forces, the British army lost hundreds before retreating while the Fomorians weren't even scratched.
- In J.S.Morin's Black Ocean space opera series wizards use force of will to bend the laws of physics. This tends to break nearby technology as a side effect, and allows them to divert or reflect back tech-based attacks made from range. The only counter for a wizard is another wizard, either using a stronger force of will to magically defeat the first or reinforcing rather than distorting the laws of physics so regular attacks can get through. The latter is an easier win, but is considered very poor form by the wizarding community.
- Darkfall from Dean Koontz, has an evil Voodoo priest go to New York for revenge. His hated good brother was an investigative reporter murdered by the Mafia, causing the priest to lose face with his dark gods. So he's been conjuring Nigh-Invulnerable spirits out of Hell to murder mafiosos and eventually start Hell on Earth. Good thing the cop assigned to investigate the murders of these Mafiosos is aided by a good voodoo priest who invokes a Protective Charm from benign gods on the cop.
- Fate/Zero follows the same principle as the rest of the Fate franchise that modern weapons are practically useless against Servants... but then subverts it through Berserker, who has the ability to make any physical object that he wields act as if it was his Noble Phantasm, thus allowing modern weapons and tools to actually damage a Servant. This includes a telephone pole, guns, and even an entire F-15J fighter jet.
- Hangwire by Adam Christopher, has a Circus of Fear in operation since the Wild West when it's owner encountered an Eldritch Abomination from outer space. This operation has since been traveling Americ to modern times, devouring souls and causing various mass casualty disasters, with a plan to parasiticize a much bigger dormant Eldritch Abomination native to Earth. These beings are only stopped by the minor last gods remaining on Earth when the rest left to to reside permanently in their respective afterlife kingdoms.
- Hekla's Children by James Brogden, the ''afaugh'' was stopped in prehistoric times by a Bronze Age proto-Celtic tribe using a dark ritual to create a demigod to fight it. In modern times, the afaugh escapes and couldn't be stopped in its rampage until a young student is transported to the distant past and becomes a even greater deity before returning to the present and permanently killing the abomination.
- Needful Things has the supernatural being Leland Gaunt who was only stopped when Sheriff Alan Pang breaks out sleight of hand tricks and magic knick-knacks that become truly magical.
- The Night Warriors series from Graham Masterton has horrors that can reside and attack from dreams, making it impossible to deal with by mundane efforts. Luckily, there are people chosen by the god Ashapola and given special powers including dream travel to fight these unholy terrors.
- Serenity Falls by James A. Moore has a series of horrible supernatural events happen to this Town with a Dark Secret culminating in the coming a Circus of Fear. Innocent townsfolk are in as much peril as the guilty and nothing can save them until the supernatural being, the Hunter comes to the rescue.
- In The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village, youkai are immune to any kind of damage involving the laws of physics. Natural poisons and radiation do not affect them and even the weakest youkai could survive a downpour of nuclear missiles. As such, other magical and supernatural abilities are needed to defeat youkai, and Hishigami Mai needed to have her body thoroughly remodeled via extensive surgeries to develop superhuman abilities and the power to bypass a youkai's invulnerability.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Inverted. While magic can be used to bring back to life those who died by magical means, magically healing someone who died of, say, a gunshot wound, is not possible.
- Doctor Who: In "The Shakespeare Code", the Carrionite race, due to Clarke's Third Law, use what is essentially witchcraft through the power of words. William Shakespeare is able to use this against them by improvising a counter spell through his own power with words, which seals them away.
- Merlin (2008): Discussed. While King Uther believes that magical threats can be defeated by non-magical means (because he believes all magic and those who use it should be eradicated), Merlin's constant saving of Arthur from magical threats often proves that this is not the case. Creatures of magic in particular can only be killed by magic, as demonstrated with the griffin in "Lancelot". But because Merlin cannot take credit for these saves, Uther remains under this delusion.
- In WandaVision, S.W.O.R.D. tries and fails to take down Wanda Maximoff multiple times using their tech and resources, but all it does is piss her off. The only character who manages to make any headway is Agatha Harkness, who successfully binds her with magical runes and sucks up every magical attack sent her way. Of course Wanda turns the tables on her by using her own runes against her, stripping her of her magic before turning her into Agnes as an ironic punishment.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Depending on the edition, many monsters are immune to being harmed by non-magical weapons or mundane poisons or acid, making straight-up physical fighting almost useless (and in the case of the Rogue class, borderline suicidal). The easiest way to get rid of said monsters is to blast them to pieces with the magic-using classes' spells such as Magic Missile and Fireball. This was especially prevalent in AD&D and 2nd Edition but has become less common in more recent versions of the game due to attempts to reduce the Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards issue.
- In Games Workshop games (Warhammer, et al.), daemons are resistant (though not immune) to mundane sources of harm — only attacks of magical, holy, psychic or daemonic origin can deal full damage to a daemon. In earlier edition books such as the Realms of Chaos supplements, similar to intangible undead, daemons actually were immune to mundane physical attacks such as a club to the head (though high tech weapons had the possibility to harm a daemon or undead due to being considered "supernatural" since they're out of synch with the timeline and often a gift from the chaos god Khorne).
- Shadowrun: In earlier editions, summoned spirits were Immune to Bullets (and all other sources of non-magical damage) and required shadowrunning teams to have either a mage or an adept to deal with them. In fourth edition onwards, this is no longer the case (spirits are now only very resistant to non-magical damage), but there are still a whole gaggle of other magical obstacles (magical barriers, alarm spells and observer spirits, other astral defenses, and Counterspelling enemy magic, to mention but a few) that more or less require a team mage.
Video Games
- In Age of Wonders, there are units such as Fire Elementals that are immune to non-magical attack. If you do an auto-battle, these types of units won't take any damage at all during these fast-tracked fights.
- In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, due to the way magic and technology interact, highly-magical enemies can cause technology to fail (and vice-versa). There's also a college of magic specializing in countering magic.
- Chrono Trigger:
- At his highest level, Optional Boss Spekkio is completely immune to physical damage and can only be damaged by magic. Conversely, he only casts spells, so equipping Lucca with her Elemental Aegis makes the fight very long but almost unlosable.
- Magus' first battle is the Trope Namer for Barrier Change Boss, in which he takes very little damage from physical attacks and only takes damage from the element the barrier isn't reflecting at the moment (which changes with every attack made against him). No matter the party's composition (on the first playthrough at least), there will only be three elements out of four available to the party (two if you brought Marle as your third party member), ensuring a tough fight. Downplayed, in that, while physical attacks mostly do minimal damage, they do force him to change his current vulnerability, and the Masamune not only deals more damage but lowers his magic defense with each hit.
- In the future era, there are enemies called Shadows who are immune to your standard attacks and require techniques to deal with.
- Discussed in Control. The Federal Bureau of Control is a government agency founded to study and contain paranatural phenomena. While the Bureau's methods were more traditionally esoteric, by the time the Bureau was officially recognized by the federal government, its methods leaned closer to that of scientific research until it based all of its protocols on objective, empirical research. It's implied that this acts as more of a hindrance because paranatural phenomena are unquantifiable by design, being things that rely on subjective perspective.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, Merlwyb witnesses a Sahagin priest developing the power of the Echo and tries to shoot him dead. To everyone's alarm, the Sahagin is able to Body Surf into the bodies of his subordinates no matter how many of them she shoots. It's not until the Sahagins finish summoning Leviathan that the primal, a magical construct in the shape of the Sahagin's god, devours the soul of the priest completely that the priest stays dead for good. This is what inspires the Scions and Moenbryda to use white auracite to imprison an Ascian's soul long enough to blast it with a Blade of Light, an enormous surge of aether, to put the undying chaos bringers down permanently.
- In Tales of Phantasia, the Big Bad Dhaos is (supposedly) immune to physical attacks and requires magic to defeat him. This poses two problems, as (1) there are no more wizards able to cast magic (apparently Mint and Edward's White Magic don't count) and (2) even if there were, the World Tree that supplies the world with Mana to cast magic has been dead for years. So Morrison decides to send Cress and Mint 100 years in the past, where they find a summoner and a witch who can help them defeat Dhaos, as well as a way to keep said World Tree alive in the present so they can use magic.
- In Warhammer: Dark Omen, players will learn to dread their mercenary force yelling out "Our weapons have no effect!" when fighting immaterial undead. Such undead must either be blasted with a spell or attacked by a units with enchanted weapons.
Visual Novels
- In Fate/stay night, Servants cannot be harmed by modern weapons like firearms, as they're fast enough to Dodge the Bullet or simply disperse into spirit form rather than take the hit head-on. This is on top of most Servants being so much stronger than humans that going at them with a bat or a sword would be fruitless. As such, Servants are only injured and killed by other supernatural beings within the story such as other Servants, Angra Mainyu, magi, or people magically enhanced by magi. This is perhaps best shown in the Unlimited Blade Works route, where Kuzuki, enhanced by Caster's magecraft, manages to take Saber by surprise in hand-to-hand combat and defeat her. But when Archer murders Caster, Kuzuki bereft of said enhancements is only able to land one hit that Archer doesn't even bother trying to dodge before Archer cuts him in half, though both men knew it would only end one way.
Webcomics
- The Advanced Player of the Tutorial Tower: At the start of the series, Hyeonu is ridiculously overpowered in all stats... except Magic, which proves to be his Achilles' Heel, as his enemies quickly figure out that despite all his powers, he has nothing to counter powerful enchantments. He manages to survive the first few magical assaults through sheer luck and ingenuity, but it is not until he starts learning magic of his own that he is able to go toe-to-toe with other magic-wielders.
- In The Warrior Returns, Demon Lords are being so powerful that no manmade weapon in the modern day could possibly hope to defeat them. Only a Warrior imbued with power beyond that of man can possibly stand up to one. This is perhaps best shown when Minsu, now a Demon Lord, survives Russia's entire nuclear arsenal simply by wrapping himself in his cape.
Western Animation
- Courage the Cowardly Dog: An episode has the Monster of the Week, initially disguised as a stage magician, use black magic on Muriel to slowly turn her into just like him and eventually take her as his bride. When Courage asks the doctor for help, aside from his usual catchphrase that there's nothing he can do, he explains that "Magic must be fought with magic," which gives Courage some ideas on how he can solve the problem.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: Uncle is the Trope Namer; "magic must defeat magic" is one of his catchphrases, usually spouted whenever Jackie, Jade, or the rest of Section 13 try and apply a non-magical solution (usually involving guns) to fight a magical threat. If Uncle doesn't knock the naysayer unconscious first, he is usually proven correct when the magical threat curb-stomps the poor saps trying to gun down or kung fu it to death. Uncle even makes the whole of Section 13 recite this mantra in the Season 1 finale ("What have we learned?" "Magic must defeat magic."). In later seasons, Captain Black, the leader of Section 13, is shown as more open to the idea of magic (to the point of trying to learn a chi spell or two himself) and lets Uncle take the lead on any supernatural threats; part of the issue, though, is that Black's superiors treat his discussion of Demon Portals, superpowered animals, and monster-summoning masks as delusions, so he has to handle magical problems off the books.
- Justice League Dark: The standard Justice League is powerless to stop a series of supernaturally influenced murders caused by a trio of powerful demons and an evil wizard. It takes a team-up of independent supernatural heroes to deal with this threat and at the end, the Justice League encourages these individuals to become part of the formal team to deal with future magical threats.
- Tangled: The Series: Varian adamantly believes in Clarke's Third Law and refuses to consider the possibility that magic exists. When indestructible, black rocks start sprouting all over his town due to the Moonstone, he tries creating a compound to destroy them. Unfortunately, his experiments cause the rocks to turn into an amber-like substance and trap his father in an unbreakable crystal, with all of Varian's attempts to save him with alchemy failing. What finally frees Quirin is Rapunzel using the reverse incantation to magically melt the amber.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): When the Turtles and Master Splinter first face off the Foot Mystics in "Return to New York, Part 2", they're hopelessly outmatched against these magical foes that have Elemental Powers. Splinter has to resort to using the Sword of Tengu (which he says to be a potent mix of science and sorcery) to defeat the Foot Mystics with the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors tactic.
Donatello: There must be some way to fight fire with fire!
Splinter: Or magic with magic! [takes the Sword of Tengu from Leonardo] I believe that conquering our mystic foes requires a mystic weapon.
