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Author Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O  (Read 14840249 times)

Graknorke

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84885 on: September 07, 2015, 12:33:29 pm »

spells burn themselves out of your memory after casting.
Are you thinking of Discworld? Because I know that's a thing in those.
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Rolan7

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84886 on: September 07, 2015, 12:39:29 pm »

Is it?  It didn't seem to work that way in Lords and Ladies, Ridcully had to wait a while before having the energy to teleport again.  Same in Equal Rites, it seemed to be a matter of the wizard getting mentally exhausted from casting a lot.
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NJW2000

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84887 on: September 07, 2015, 12:41:27 pm »

Oh, and in sourcery it's to do with the amount of raw magic in the world, and how much is allocated. Pratchett is a dodgy example as he satires most fantasy. But if it's in Pratchett, especially early Pratchett, then it may well be a bit of  a trope.
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Rolan7

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84888 on: September 07, 2015, 12:49:42 pm »

Actually I guess what I meant is that they recharge their mental energy from the world's magic field?  Because in Sourcery the guy that didn't was... rather unique.
I vaguely remember something about living spells though, kinda like the living spellbooks.  Maybe there are also special spells which require extensive preparations between castings.
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Graknorke

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84889 on: September 07, 2015, 12:49:51 pm »

From 'The Colour of Magic':
"It takes three months to commit even a simple [spell] to memory, and then once you've used it, pouf! It's gone."
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miauw62

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84890 on: September 07, 2015, 12:51:34 pm »

most things in the first few books are retconned, though.
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NJW2000

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84891 on: September 07, 2015, 12:51:53 pm »

Pratchett bothered with character lore, not spell lore. Ridcully uses tons of spells when fighting Granny Weatherwax, who also uses the same sort of magic a bit. He did whatever was funny and convenient after a while.
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Graknorke

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84892 on: September 07, 2015, 12:54:00 pm »

most things in the first few books are retconned, though.
Well they're the only ones I've read so I think in this situation I am completely free of fault.

Also Weatherwax was a witch and that's totally different and therefore not at all comparable, checkmate atheists.
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Tack

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84893 on: September 07, 2015, 12:56:22 pm »

Meanwhile Rincewind is famous for having one spell in his head so terrifying that it scared away all of the other spells.
They keep him on retainer to Not cast it.


However, yeah, in other Discworld novels they've had people throwing around fireballs like nobody's business, and the excuse in some later novels is more like "magic's tricksy stuff, does more harm than good, s'right".
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Jopax

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84894 on: September 07, 2015, 01:05:45 pm »

I think it also might be something tied to a location? Like, the gods did put some tight regulations on magic and it's power because of that big war that messed up a lot of places. But you can still do crazy stuff in certain places where the magic abuse was pretty heavy, like say imagine dragons or something.
Unless he changed it later on, the general thing about magic was that it was a different way of doing things, not a better one. So the amount of effort and work had to be the same, you could just do it over time instead of instantly or something.
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Tack

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84895 on: September 07, 2015, 01:12:25 pm »

That part isn't magic, I think. It's more the purview of witches.

Though I remember Tiffany Aching pulling some serious magic when she goes all Black Aliss.
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TheBiggerFish

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84896 on: September 07, 2015, 01:20:43 pm »

That part isn't magic, I think. It's more the purview of witches.

Though I remember Tiffany Aching pulling some serious magic when she goes all Black Aliss.
Dammit, I'm going to have to start worrying about spoilers now!
Unless you meant the Hiver.


I'm pretty sure that The Colo(u)r Of Magic is kind of...Retconned a Very Lot.  It's the first book and Pratchett did not have any idea that he would be writing like forty books in this universe when he wrote it so I'm more willing to trust the interpretation that it's just mental fatigue of casting that's a cap on magic.
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Harry Baldman

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84897 on: September 07, 2015, 01:24:34 pm »

Spoiler: Magic v. Tech (click to show/hide)

It's just like me to finish a ramble when the thread's moved on.

It is a bit weird in Discworld, though, how magic works slightly differently in every installment, and I've only even read the first 5 books.
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sjm9876

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84898 on: September 07, 2015, 01:41:30 pm »

I kind of internally rationalised it as magic being a conversion of energy. The more complex the conversion, the greater the preparation time - for example, the falling of a rock to the rising of a person, can be done fairly instantaneously. A fireball would need to be prepared. Etc...

Course, it's likely just retconned, but I'm sure Pratchett would have appreciated the fact we try to fill in the gaps for him anyway :)
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NJW2000

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #84899 on: September 07, 2015, 02:46:34 pm »

I think he'd have preferred it if we tried to write our own versions of the Hedgehog song, actually :)

Or maybe not, a lot of people have done that.
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