Simplified Spellcasting

Tidal Wave Incantation: O mad and greedy waters, rise up and storm the very heavens... Tidal Wave!
Rita (in Over Limit): Blah blah blah... Tidal Wave!

— Tales of Vesperia

A lot of the time, Functional Magic is bound by formulas, parameters, and in-universe consistency and limitations. In a narrative context, the most common of these is having to perform a specific action to achieve a specific effect. Maybe a long chant is required to cast the spell, maybe you have to draw a circle in the ground, maybe you need to make some sort of gesture or hand sign. These are all potential openings, so you'd better hope Talking Is a Free Action.

And then a character shows up that seems to, at first glance, ignore the established system by being capable of Simplified Spellcasting. They can simplify the process to produce an immediate effect with little or no Spell Construction.

This ability is generally the product of either years of experience, a rare talent, resourcefulness, possessing Wrong Context Magic, having learned the magical arts under very unusual circumstances, or being in possession of rare equipment that can assist spellcasting. In any case, expect the caster's opponent to call him out for cheating. Sometimes, however, this advantage carries a price or drawbacks inherent in the method, such as making the spell weaker than it would be with proper Spell Construction, carrying higher risks, or substituting the cost of opportunity for something else such as rare reagents or the user's own life force.

It can add an element of unpredictability by allowing the spell to be cast without Calling Your Attacks. It can also lead to I Am Not Left-Handed, when an opponent assumes that the caster has been neutralized because the usual methods have been suppressed.

Note that if casting spells without any prerequisite is normal in-universe, it does not count as this trope. However, the normal requirements do not have to be completely foregone, merely reduced. Also, this is a fantasy trope. It is a subtrope of Thought-Controlled Power when no Spell Construction is required. Limited-Use Magical Device is a subtrope for when it's done through an item. Instant Runes is for when special effects immediately do the Geometric Magic needed.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• In Bleach, casting a Hadou or Bakudou spell without an incantation is considered a sign of skill, though the spell is also weakened significantly if performed as such. Still, it's useful since the incantations are so absurdly long. If the user is skilled enough, they can also remove the number and type (such as Hadou #31, Shakkaho), saying only the name to maximize their casting speed at further cost of power.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, "normal" transmutation is achieved by manually drawing a complex circular figure around whatever raw material is being transmuted. Various characters initially appear to violate this rule by achieving greater levels of enlightenment regarding the principles involved.
  • The lowest degree involves drawing out the formula, which in theory anyone can do with enough reference material.
  • Highly skilled alchemists don't need to re-draw formulae they've mastered each time and can 're-use' a circle: Roy Mustang and Alex Louis Armstrong have gloves equipped with alchemy circles, and Solf J. Kimblee and Scar have them tattooed directly onto their bodies
  • Alchemists who have attempted human transmutation, which involves seeing the Gate of Truth (essentially a gnostic revelation) understand the fundamentals of the process to a much greater degree, to the point that 'drawing' is a simple matter of forming a circle with their hands (by clapping and drawing the hands apart) then pointing it at the target to be transmuted. Convenient, but it can literally cost them an arm and a leg, or worse.
  • Possessing a Philosopher's Stone, essentially the essence of alchemical truth distilled into a physical circle (well, sphere) can bump the caster "up a level" of mastery, as seen with Kimblee and Alphonse.
  • Father, after absorbing Truth, was able to perform transmutations without moving at all. This is symbolically implied to use whatever circle is convenient and repurpose the associated 'formula' at will without having to symbolically 're-draw' it.
• Nanoha from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha learned to enter Magical Girl mode without going through the full chant on her second try, a feat that astonished Yuuno.
  • Reinforce inverts this trope, even adding incantations to spells she copied from others... and also increasing their power exponentially. This leads to an Oh, Crap! moment when she starts chanting something that's clearly a description of Nanoha's Starlight Breaker. After Hayate receives Reinforce's powers she uses them similarly.
• Negi from Negima! Magister Negi Magi masterfully uses "delayed spells" by uttering the chant beforehand and activating them later in the battle. He can't have an entire arsenal of spells at the ready constantly, but his ability to chant now and cast later allows him to have his spells ready when he needs them the most.
  • Jack Rakan actually inverts this trope by adding chants and poses to moves when they're not needed. Why? Because it's cool! It's debatable how unnecessary they are, as Rakan is a veteran fighter who is Obfuscating Stupidity. Word of God from the notes of how the magic work states that Negi calling Rakan's poses 'idiotic looking' is a sign of inexperience.
  • After deciding to be a Magic Knight Negi focuses on Simplified Spellcasting, and no longer needs to prepare spells in advance. At least for a few simple spells.
  • Negi's father Nagi was able to skip over most of the incantation for the Thousand Bolts spell, only saying the final few lines and achieving the full effect. Negi completely outclasses him by the end of the series, though, able to double-layer the Thousand Bolts and absorb both using Magia Erebea just by sneezing. Even if that was a case where he'd prepared before, he does the same thing during his 'graduation' fight with Eva using just ten words.
• Naruto:
  • Haku, one of the earliest villains, manages to make signs with only one hand, an unheard-of skill that proves useful in his fight against Sasuke. Just to emphasize how unique this is, the next character to perform this feat is the Fourth Hokage's Edo Tensei zombie—and even then, only after getting his other arm blown off.
  • The multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu normally consists of three Zodiac hand signs and one special hand sign. Naruto performs this technique with just one sign.
  • The Rasengan is also almost unique among ninjutsu for requiring no hand seals to form, which was a major component of the Fourth Hokage's Speed Blitz combat style.
• In Scrapped Princess, usually the more powerful a spell is, the longer and more complicated the vocals needed to cast it become. Raquel, a very powerful sorceress, can skip most of that and cast using a single short sentence that doesn't even have to rhyme. According to the light novels, spellcasting is actually triggering specific computer programs in the world; Raquel is constantly running an emulator, so she just has to "double-click" her spells.
• Claudia Dodge in Coffin Princess Chaika is able to use her gundr much more quickly and efficiently than Chaika can as her incantations are only a few syllables long instead of numerous words. This series was also written by the same guy who wrote Scrapped Princess.
• Slayers actually lampshades this:
  "Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood that flows... I'll skip the rest. DRAGON SLAVE!!!"
  • The point being that a full incantation is needed to use the spell's full power, but powerful masters can do with only the name. And only a few masters can skip even it, even for low-grade magic (and thus may misrepresent a spell, like Lina did in the first season). The most powerful sorcerers can actually just say the name mentally to cast the spell.
• In Bastard!! (1988) humans and other mortal races need to chant incantations for spells, but angels and demons (who were the ones who taught magic to humans and other races in the first place) don't need to, as they create magic as a natural consequence of their movements. The series' protagonist, Dark Schneider, eventually becomes a being on par with the angels and demons and gains this ability too.
• In Fairy Tail when fighting Gray, Lyon uses unusual one-handed seals. While using only one hand is a tad faster, Lyon's ice constructs are less stable and can't stand up to power of two-handed ice-makes.
• Super-Tier Magic in Overlord (2012) would be a Game-Breaker, if it wasn't held back by an absurdly long casting time. Said casting time can be reduced to zero, however, through the use of the hourglass, which can be purchased from the Cash Shop.
• Witch Hat Atelier: Magic is Geometric Magic, requiring the precise drawing of runes to define its effects and activated by enclosing them in a circle. Perfect circles being hard to draw, witches therefore carry notepads that have incomplete circles pre-drawn on every page. The circle makes it simpler to arrange the runes, and completing the spell just requires a single quick stroke to finish the circle.

Films — Live-Action

• Averted in Army of Darkness when Ash forgets the words that need to be said before picking up the Necronomicon. He tries fudging it, but it ends up unleashes a horde of zombies.
  Ash: Klaatu Barada N... Necktie... Neckturn... Nickel... It's an "N" word, it's definitely an "N" word! Klaatu... Barada... N... [coughs]
  Ash: [pause] Okay... that's it!

Literature

• James Stark has a knack for bluffing his way through magic, a talent that (combined with his personality) eventually annoy his "friends" enough to send him to hell.
• In The Chronicles of Amber, most magic is either card-based (for communication/transportation) or incantation based. However, Merlin has a way of "priming" spells for use. He basically gives the incantation but keeps the spell from resolving, allowing for use later. The spells only have a short shelf-life though, which makes this somewhat Awesome, but Impractical.
• In Discworld:
  • The complete Rite of AshkEnte (which summons Death into a circle) is ludicrously long and convoluted, so they almost always skip most of it. It turns out to be a comedic Inverted Trope: anyone with magic ability can perform the complete rite in five minutes with two bits of wood and a fresh egg. Since wizards are inveterate showoffs to a man they find this fact extremely distasteful, and unless pressed for time will add in lots of pointless chanting and dribbly candles to make themselves feel better.
  • Beneath all the showmanship, demon Summoning Rituals are powered by force of will, so Granny Weatherwax, Heroic Willpower incarnate, calls up a demon in a wash house with the materials at hand. When the demon sneers that her ceremonial "Sword of Art" looks more like a washing stick, she uses it to shear a sawhorse in two. It gets much more cooperative after that, albeit complaining about the indignity of the whole affair.
• In Harry Potter, it is considered a sign of talent and experience to be able to cast spells nonverbally. So even if you hit an opponent with a Silencing Charm, you can't feel too safe as long as they have a wand in their hand.
  • Averted in that young witches and wizards sometimes use magic accidentally, but it's implied that most forms of controlled magic are impossible without a wand, possibly even to Dumbledore and Voldemort.
    • In the first movie, Dumbledore changes the banners in the Great Hall, and in the third movie he is implied to save Harry from falling to his death without his wand, but these are movie-specific exceptions.
    • Voldemort is able to control his magic to some extent as a kid (he uses it to abuse the other kids and explore normally inaccessible caves), but it isn't clear how effective this is.
    • Lupin manages what is apparently a simple light spell (Lumos) both nonverbally and without a wand. It's unknown whether he's capable of anything more complicated.
• In Inheritance Cycle, magic is usually cast via the Ancient Language, but a sufficiently trained magic user can cast spells mentally. However, this comes at the cost of control; the caster runs a higher risk of the spell going wrong or backfiring.
• The Laundry Files: Magic is a ultimately just a very obscure field of mathematics, which means it's amenable to being made more efficient and streamlined. The series is predicated on the fact that computers in particular are devices for doing lots of math very quickly.
  • In The Apocalypse Codex, a summoning ritual that requires mass human sacrifice is noted to be "prodigiously wasteful" and "completely unoptimized" — good thing the cultists involved are doing it by rote and don't know any better.
  • In The Jennifer Morgue, the Bathory Cosmetics Corporation discovered there was truth behind the old story and set out to replicate it in their PaleGrace™ line of skin creams. Modern manufacturing techniques only require about ten parts per million of virgins' blood in the mix to apply the glamour; the only shame is that it still requires the real stuff, harvested terminally — they can't get the stress hormones any other way.
• Kelley Armstrong's The Otherworld series contains necromancers, who use relics of the dead to invoke their more impressive abilities. In No Humans Involved, Jamie Vegas raises the dead without using such a relic.
• In The Elenium (and its sequel series, The Tamuli), magic is usually accomplished through an intricate, ritualistic invocation, including somatic components. This can take a while, and is very hard to do when you're in the middle of a battle — not to mention requiring you to think and talk in at least passingly decent Styric, which is apparently a very, very difficult language. However, there are a few who have found alternate sources of divine power, and they can usually whip up some serious magic just with a quick word or gesture. Those that have attained a close, personal relationship with a Styric God are able to simply send a mental plea for help. The god in question still gets annoyed if they 'shortcut' too much, and insists that they go through the motions if there's time.
• Within Rick Cook's Wiz Biz novels, the protagonist finds a way to employ his programming skills to store and retrieve complex spells using counting daemons.
• In the Young Wizards series there are a few spells whose spell circle can be pulled up off the ground, stored away, and then put back down on the ground for later use without having to reconstruct the circle.
  • A spell can be almost completely cast and then stored in a wizard's mind, to later be released by saying the last word in the spell. However, only a limited number of spells can be stored this way.
  • For combat purposes, wizards will sometimes build a weapon made from words of a spell written in Hard Light and use the last word as a verbal trigger (or, in some cases, a fuse).
  • Nita has a special magical construct which she created under special circumstances, which can hold up to nine completed spells. The construct tangibly manifests as a charm bracelet, with each charm being a stored spell.
• Played with in The Courtship of Princess Leia: to the Witches of Dathomir, being able to command the Force without specific incantations is a sign of great power. To Luke and the Jedi, it's the normal way of doing things, and the Witches' spells are just a Magic Feather to help them conceptualize their Force sensitivity.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: "Spatial magic" is a class of quickly castable spells like Oliver's favored "Grave Soil" spell that don't require an incantation and therefore are much easier to use within the "one step, one spell" distance.^note A distance of roughly one pace where a weapon can almost always strike faster than any mage can cast a spell. The Necessary Drawback is that they're much less powerful than conventional spells (the general rule in the series being, the more Latin words in the incantation, the more powerful the spell), but they have significant utility in hand-to-hand combat, often being enough to create an opening for another attack.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons, spells usually have various components which include verbal (spoken magical words), material (essentially magical substances that are consumed by the spell), somatic (gestures), and the like which are needed to cast them. However, the metamagic feats can allow the "rules" of the spell to be ignored. These feats usually come at the cost of an increase in spell level, requiring the caster to use up his/her more limited high-level slots.
  • An example is the Silent Spell feat. If a wizard with the feat prepares the spell silently, it takes up a one level higher level but can be cast even in a Silence field (otherwise a great way of stopping a wizard). A sorcerer doesn't (and can't) prepare spells, but if they have Silent Spell, by spending a higher-level spell slot and taking a full-round action can pull off the same trick. Quicken Spell costs four spell levels and allows a spell to be cast very quickly (in the same round as another spell). Metamagic rods let a caster pull this off without spending the feat or spell levels, but only a few times per day and with other limits instead.
  • There are also inversions of this trope such as the Snowcasting and Primitive Spellcaster feats, which add more components to a spell to increase its power.
  • This is the main mechanical point of the 3.5 Shadowcaster class: When they start out, their fundamentals (their simplest spells, the equivalents of cantrips and orisons for other casters) are cast as supernatural abilities, while their mysteries (the equivalent of spells) are cast as spells. When they get access to the next tier of mysteries, their initial tier of mysteries begin to be cast as spell-like abilities, and when they get access to the tier after that the initial tier works as supernatural abilities and the second tier as spell-like abilities. Spell-like abilities^note except for the invocations of warlocks and dragonfire adepts, who are specific exceptions lack somatic components, and supernatural abilities are instinctual enough to use that it does not distract enough to allow others to get in opportunity attacks. They'd lose the need to use material components, verbal components, and foci as well, but none of the mysteries have them in the first place^note there are a few mysteries that require speaking, but the need is baked into the effect itself and isn't technically a verbal component — you're not saying magic words to cast magic, you're using magic to make your words magical.
  • In 5th edition, many spells require various odds and ends as material components. You could hunt down all the scraps of cloth, bits of stone, chips of ice, and plant clippings that your spell list might require, but to simplify things most magic-using classes can carry a spellcasting focus as a substitute. Wizards can wave a wand, Clerics and Paladins can raise a symbol of faith, Bards can play an instrument, and so on.
  • Pathfinder's psychic magic loses non-expensive material components and put things askew by exchanging verbal and somatic components for other, less externally visible, components (emotion — can't be affected by non-harmless emotion or fear effects, meaning they literally can be scared into being unable to cast some spells — and thought — requires building up a mental image, which means it requires more concentration unless they take a moment to center themselves first). The practical effect is that it looks like this to someone unfamiliar with psychic magic, but if you are familiar it is just as complicated as an arcane spellcaster with the Eschew Materials feat^note don't have to use material components costing 1 gp or less — just more difficult to shut down indefinitely without resorting to anti-magic effects.
  • Also from Pathfinder is the Qinggong Monk, who can use Ki Manipulation to duplicate certain spells as spell-like abilities. Even some spells with significant material costs, like Restoration, can be cast for just a few ki points.
• A Hero System mage can build his spells with "Variable Limitations", letting him change the requirements for spellcasting. The example in the 6th Edition rulebook is a mage who normally chants and gestures to cast a Teleport spell, but when he's captured (and bound) by brigands he changes the spell Limitation and teleports away.
• In Mage: The Ascension, this is the measure of a mage's enlightment. Most mages need some sort of focus, depending on how they learned their magic (anything from tarot to mad science) However, as they advance in power, they learn to skip the rituals more. The most powerful ones can perform Reality Warping by will alone.
• Mage: The Awakening:
  • Inverted by default: all that magic truly needs is an understanding of the Arcana being used, but mages can use rote mudras, dedicated tools, High Speech incantations, and even lengthy rituals to add power to a spell and reduce the chance of Magic Misfire.
  • Ritual Magic becomes much more efficient as a mage grows in Gnosis, the overall magical strength of their soul. A novice mage needs a minimum three hours to cast such a spell; at the Gnosis Cap, they can be done in one minute.
  • Archmasters can choose to cast Ritual Magic spells as an instant action instead, as their direct spiritual link to the Supernal Realms transcends many of the usual limitations on magic.
• 3E GURPS Technomancer. Mages start out needing to use words and actions in order to achieve the proper mental state, but experienced casters just need to concentrate.
  • As of GURPS 4th edition, magic works like this for all spellcasters. The better their skill, the fewer words and actions are needed. Run-of-the-mill casters need loud words and gestures, optimized casters need only a word or a gesture, and it is possible to cast without words if you are really good.
• In Ars Magica, a skilled mage can forego the usual incantations and hand gestures, but this makes spells considerably harder to cast. They can also invert this by casting a spell as a lengthy, convoluted Ritual for extra power and precision.
• In Monster of the Week, the Spell-Slinger can get a form of this for their combat magic. (Any player character in this game can try to use magic, but this is the explicit "wizard" playbook.) There are by default four "Tools and Techniques" required to get these combat spells to work as intended (gestures, incantations, a focus item and consumable material components), but the player gets to scratch off one of their choice right from the start leaving only three to actually deal with, can substitute specific alternate drawbacks for requirements the character cannot meet at the moment if desired and has a couple of options to reduce requirements further during advancement.

Video Games

• Rubick the Grand Magus from Dota 2 has a cast delay of 0.1 second, meaning all his spells are cast nigh-instantly. His default spells are also 'zap' type, so they hit instantly and cannot be dodged. This also extends to Stolen Spells, so Rubick would have much easier time casting spells from heroes with high cast delay. Of course, this brings another problem if you are used to the original caster's cast delay time...
• Caster from Fate/stay night, due to her High Speed Divine Language Skill. Rin was able to do this as well, but only because she was using magic jewels with contained high quantities of magic energy; once that source was exhausted, she had to recite her spells.
  • Spell Incantations in the Nasuverse are actually a form of self-hypnosis, and the actual words are not important so much as the MEANING behind them is to the user. Hence it's possible for a skilled or experienced spellcaster to easily shorten their incantation time and why most of Rin's spell sound like horrible German.
• In Tales of Vesperia, while in Overlimit mode, magic users will simply recite a short generic phase instead of a lengthy incantation and cast the spell almost instantly. Rita, for instance, simply says "Blah blah blah, *insert spell name*!".
  • In general, when humanoid bosses in this series have spells that are also available to player characters, they'll have a reduced casting time and a shorter incantation to go with it, or be able to skip the incantation entirely.
• In the Megami Tensei series of games, the long complex process of summoning and contracting with demons is simplified and shortened by programming the processes into computers and running the resultant Demon Summoning Program.
• We never see it done the long way but in DmC: Devil May Cry, Kat has studied wiccan rituals and spells, which has taught her that these sorts of things can take extensive preparation, possibly on the order of several days. So, instead of simply mixing ingredients and drawing seals when they're needed, Kat put pre-mixed spellcasting ingredients into spray cans and traced out her magic seals onto stencils, allowing her to instantaneously set up a spellcasting ritual without needing any preparation.
• In the Trails Series, Orbal Arts normally take a bit of time to cast, with the length increasing with more powerful Arts. However, thanks to personal customizations to his battle orbments to speed up the casting process, Toval Randonneur can cast high-level Arts near-instantly, earning him the title "Zero Artisan."

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive: For the longest time (we're talking centuries), the system of magic on Earth provided a significant amount of "handholding" to casters, which handled most of the minor details and generally covered Required Secondary Powers, and casting generally became intuitive for most users. Comes the magical not-change, which should allow more people to start using magic, but this comes at the cost of the training wheels falling off. Those who relied on spells, either innate, learned, or stored in wands, that assumed this handholding find themselves casting spells that don't do what they should, or backfire catastrophically. Those who were trained to cast spells by controlling every aspect manually find themselves exempt from this problem.
• Subverted in Unsounded: Duane appears to be able to use magic without the usual Magical Incantations thanks to his rare in-born talent of "tacit casting". Although it lets him cast spells quickly and covertly, he clarifies that he still has to think the exact same words in the Language of Magic that he would otherwise be speaking — an important restriction, since magic is very literal and prone to deadly misfires.

Web Original

• Phaeton has both long-form (more syllables, more power, longer to cast) and short-form (fewer syllables, less power, shorter to cast) magic.
  • Also using words and gestures are not necessary to use powers sometimes but always make it easier.
  • Spell scribes generally write on a piece of paper but can also cast by writing in the air.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, bending powers are typically accompanied by large, flashy martial-arts-like movements. The more powerful the bender, the less movement they need to gain the effect. Members of the Fire Nation royal family are sometimes seen to shoot jets of flame from their palms or mouth with little or no movement required, and King Bumi can perform impressive feats of Earthbending just by wiggling his nose or chin. We later see an assassin who can firebend with his mind, no movement required. As did an opponent in the third season of The Legend of Korra. Amon, the first villain in Legend of Korra, is capable of bloodbending without any movement at all, as was his father Yakone.
• In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021), magic can be performed through means such as spoken words or hand gestures. The most powerful magic users can perform their magic with only a thought, earning them the title of sorcerer or sorceress. With the Power of Grayskull, hand witch Teela dubs herself Sorceress because she is given that level of magical mastery. With the Power of Havoc, word witch Evelyn is equally able to cast magic with a thought as Evil-Lyn, though she still occasionally casts magic vocally out of vanity.

---