"Types" of magic

[Blackrook]

Magic in role playing games is far too powerful to use in a fantasy story. I think a good rule for magic is, the less the better.

In The Hobbit, Gandalph makes very minimal use of magic. He defeats trolls with a ventriloquism spell, which is the equivalent of a 1st level spell in Dungeons & Dragons.

In Lord of the Rings, Gandalph doesn't teleport around, he rides a horse.

When a character is too powerful in magic, it is too easy for him to solve his problems. Instead of using smarts or skill, he casts a spell and the problem goes away.

[Tobytwo]

Overall, I agree. Making Gandalf a walking machine-gun would have become very dull. I feel obliged to add "unless you're a brilliant writer" to the end: after all, if you're good enough you can get away with almost anything. But you do have to be very, very good.

A wizard who can solve everything with magic is actually quite damaging to the tension of the story. Readers need to have a rough idea of what the limit of the wizard's power is - what can we expect from him? Although it's not his best book, I thought Stephen King did this quite well in Firestarter.

Personally though, I find books that set out the "rules of magic" too clearly a bit hard to get. It's easy to make the impossible-by-definition seem rather prosaic. I suspect it's a bit of a balancing act.

[Precise Calibre]

The more powerful the magic, the more accountability should be placed into the world. If an arcanist is capable of conjuring monumental forces to down his enemies, the cost should be dire to say the least.

The magic in "Chronicles of the Necromancer" is developed quite well as far as this system is concerned, though I feel like the overall risk involved is downplayed somewhat by the predictable storyline.