How to write magitech.

Hello everyone, after spending a lot of time in worlbulding I have devop some ideas and I want to discuss with you about it.

So let start.

As the trope said, magi tech is every tecnology that is move or have magic as a basis, from let said a pistol that shoot fireball to a magical elevator and so own and own. For start we should get that magic as fictional element do was the author said, tech use by magic is in a way a shortcut, a way to bypass physical limitations in order to do unlimited things.

This means in order to do magic tech(or a very least a heavy worldbulding on it) it must invold your magic system, since you are build a whole arm of tech sustain by it, any weakness and power your magic sistem have will efectly bleed in the tech. So if you magic can be disperse or counter, those this means the same tech animated by it?

This bring us to a a simple advise about magi tech: Magic use to create magic tech have to be clean, safe and reliable. Dugeons and dragon magic who is usually very safe to use can in theory produce huge breakthought in magics while the same cant be safe of warhammer were magic is dangerous, unpredictable and bizarre. Who what the limit of it can and cant do is probably in order, it can also start giving you idea of what you can do about it.

Since unless you are creating protypes, the advantage of tech(and is close cousin, industrialziation) means you mass produce thing at rate it cant be done, this pretty much break the paradigma of the lone wizard who handcraft thing by hand into a new one. which bring another question and is how much you want the mundanization of magic being throw around, nothing of this is bad but it mostly thing of what you, as author, what to see.

Another element I need to bring up but less important is mostly how form it will take your magi tech, it can range from the incredible like a maggic airship power by fire elemental to what I call mundane replacement were comon everyday irl have a magical counterpart like magic laterns and the like, this is related mostly to other question and usually take care of itself in general.

In a way this is the first of many advice I want to write, if you have any other and more I will thanks to any feedback in general.

So a major borderline in magitech is "Can magitech cast it's own spells." Once the device can do magic on it's own then the device has no need of a mage and can be entirely autonomous. This can be good and bad. Good in that someone without innate magical ability can now compete with the magically gifted. On the other, it means that a magitech device can cause untold trouble. Even if it works exactly as designed it can have far reaching socio-economic effects such as putting mages out of business. When it doesn't work as intended it could run wild with the full power of your magic system. That could be anything from an army of undead/golems or just casting omni-directional Avada Kevada spells every 5 seconds.

Good or bad, it's a real rubicon to cross.

That gives me an idea:

While a magitech device is imbued with spells, it cannot cast them on its own. It must have a wielder who can channel mana into it and actually activate the spell.

This, of course, brings up another question:

Do all people, muggles included, have mana, or spiritual energy or whatever, but only mages can channel it without the aid of magitech devices?

Or do only mages have mana, and therefore, only they can use the devices?

Edited by Count_Spatula on Apr 12th 2024 at 3:24:44 PM

I usually go with "everyone has mana; maybe 1-in-(arbitrary number) can use magic." This also usually goes hand in hand with "magitek uses mana as fuel" as a starting point. Ergo why anyone can use a magic sword (or magitek gun). Essentially, a Power Crutch.

I just give the "magic" component in the magitech a will of its own and let it alter whatever it infests in accordance to its own desires and maybe according to what the user of it needs depending on how nice they are to the magitech in overall.

Had a short story where all of humanity had magical capacity but no magical ability. It was actually a major issue because non-human species could use humans as Human Resources. On the other hand, anybody could make a magical device and humans were very compatable with them.

The story was more about Vampires which were essentially fantasy supersoldiers created to counter non-human aggression.