I've been wanting to come up with a fighting power system but I end up with something weird like Delusion system from Baki which feels like if schizophrenia was a martial art or with a warrior mage deal similar to Naruto.

I've been thinking about a power system that activates only when you're going to fight. For example, a fighter can use their chi/ka/aura or whatever to shoot fireballs like they're Ryu from Street Fighter but only when they are in a fighting stance. The fighter cant randomly shoot fire whenever they want. What do you think?

I’m reworking a manga-style power system and trying to tighten the logic before I go any further. The basic idea I have right now is that Gloom is a cursed or demonic pressure source, and Blood Seals are inherited marks on the body that let witches process and use that Gloom. Powers are tied to bloodlines and something I’m calling a Law, meaning the specific rule or principle that a character’s Blood Seal expresses in combat. The problem is that even though that sounds organized on paper, I still feel like it can drift into random powers being explained by lore afterward instead of feeling like a truly solid power system.

What I’m trying to build is something with clear rules, a logical connection between the source of power and how it gets used, enough flexibility for creative fights, and enough restriction that abilities don’t just feel random. I also want the combat to make sense in real time, because if I lean too hard into blood, seals, and rituals, it starts feeling clunky in a fight. If I simplify it too much, then it starts feeling generic. So I’m trying to figure out what usually makes a power system feel coherent instead of just well-labeled, how people make blood- or seal-based systems work in fast-paced fights, and what the missing piece usually is when a system has lore and terminology but still doesn’t feel mechanically satisfying. I’m not asking anybody to build the whole thing for me, I’m more trying to figure out where the weakness is so I can rebuild it better.

I call it Thaumatics, or just Thauma, its kinda based on Nen but I wanted it to be different enough, the basics of the system are as follows:

Thauma exists everywhere as a particle, but especially around living beings. It's in everything but more dense in people, animals, and plants.

There are 3 methods of casting spells with Thauma

Somatic Casting (hand signs or movement in general)

Verbal Casting (incantations or in some cases just a noise)

Written Casting (glyphs or sigils)

And there are 3 types of spells you can cast

Alchemical (effecting inorganic material)

Noetic (effecting minds or energy)

Vital (effecting organic material)

There is a triangle in which casting a specific type of Thauma is inefficient with a specific casting type

Somatic is good for Alchemical and Vital but bad for Noetics

Verbal is good for Alchemical and Noetics but bad for Vital

Written is good for Noetics and Vital but bad for Alchemical

You can use any casting type for any thauma type, but most who specialize in one casting type tend to not use the inefficient thauma.

Anyone can create their own spells and there are common spells people learn, but more complex spells with conditions tend only be used by their creator.

My example of a Thaumaturge with a specific spell is a character with the spell 'The Pristine Cut' (shout out to the Slay the Princess fans out there).

The spell is Somatic and has an Alchemical, a Vital, and a small Noetic effect. The person has a knife in a sheath on their belt. When they unsheath the knife, they target a specific area where a Noetic glowing red line appears. When they resheath the knife, the targeted area gets cut along the line, both organic and inorganic material are effected by this. The conditions are that the spell wouldnt work if the blade is damaged and the cut becomes stronger the longer the blade is out of the sheath.

Let me know if this system makes sense and if theres anything I should change about this. I'll try to answer questions the best that I can.

Warning: long(no seriously, it's like 6 pages and nearly 3k words)

Tentatively calling this system sifrmancy. Much of it is technically still subject to change and additions but most likely big concepts like sifr particles annihilating will remain the same while I might change my mind about them emitting light

I like to think of this system as very "fair" in that maybe despite first appearances most abilities are relatively balanced against each other and nobody really gets an inherent advantage over others due to fortunate circumstances

This technically began as a modification of nen, but I will save that for a comment that I'll try to get pinned

**Day zero**

One day, exactly 1 second after 2pm coordinated universal time, the laws of physics changed in event that came to be called "day zero". Many of the differences were subtle or quite noticeable, but the biggest and most immediately apparent change was the appearance of 2 new subatomic particles found exclusively in oxygen atoms

**Sifr particles**

The new particles are nearly identical to each other, with the only difference being one has a negative mass equal to the possitive mass of the other. These two particles are most ofter referred to together as mana, rei, null or the eventual favourite sifr, after the arabic word for zero(I think sifr is pronouced like a shortened "see fur" or similar to cipher, based on google translate so if anyone speaks arabic I'd be happy to be corrected on this), with positive or negative referring to their masses added when differentiating between them

Sifr exist in quantum orbitals around the nucleus of oxygen atoms, when both positive and negative are removed from these orbitals another pair spontaneously appear/are created in their place, similar to the theory of separating quarks creating a new pair as the energy required for separation is greated than that required for creation

Sifr can be moved and controlled by muscles through a mechanism that is not yet fully understood but causes strain and exhaustion in said muscles similar to when they're flexed. This mechanism is very intuitive to use in the most basic of ways as people began doing so immediately after day zero and virtually all animals can use it

When separated from oxygen atoms sifr in motion produces a small amount of visible light, somewhat similar to electrical arcs but nowhere near as bright

When positive and negative mana comes into contact with an equal quantity of each other both particles cease to exist similar to matter and antimatter, except the annihilation of sifr can produce a wide variety of effects depending on numerous factors, however the simplest result is a small burst of photons in the visible spectrum, these bursts of photons are usually simply called sparks

Sifr does not interact with most atoms and passes through all oxygen free substances without resistance and only an exceedingly small portion of sifr annihilates when passing through oxygen

**Universal applications**

While most applications of sifrmancy have certain prerequisites, there are some that are at least theoretically possible for any user

Strength enhancement: sifr can increase the force exerted by muscles with no identified upper limit, however doing so exhausts a user essentially as much as if they were to exert the same total amount of force without sifr. Mathematically, if one can lift X without sifr and becomes Y tired, using sifr to lift 2X makes them 2Y tired

Durability enhancement: I'll be honest I don't know how to properly explain this in scientific terms but they can make themselves tougher such that if they spend an equal amount of energy/sifr to someone punching them with strength enhancement, they take as much damage as if there was no magic at all

**Day Zero**

On [the day sifr appeared] almost everyone noticed immediately, it is quite obvious when you start making sparks all around you, some even did it in their sleep

Pretty quickly people started to figure out strength and durability enhancement and a very small number of people with medical expertise were able to do fast healing

There was a lot of initial panic and anxiety but not too much chaos as the powers everyone had were quite simple and seemingly all identical... the next day was madness

**abilities and categories**

Most abilities in this system are locked behind what I'm calling categories, if you have no category you can gain one simply by thinking about which you want and if you don't change your mind on that for 24 hours that will become your primary category, this applies even if you don't know what the categories are, just think of an ability you want and you will end up with the simplest category capable of performing that ability. So only a little more than 24 hours after sifr appeared so did many not so unique abilities like flight, fireballs and mind reading

The 4 categories are:

- Creation(both creation things from nothing and deleting things but often will be transforming/transmuting things because it's more efficient)

- Control(combination of telekinesis and mind control, though the latter is quite difficult to use on people)

- Teleportation(mostly teleporting things far away to yourself or teleporting things near yourself far away, you can teleport yourself but there is a reason not to that I don't want to get into)

- Perception(bullet time, x-ray and telescopic vision or the equivalent for other senses. Often used in heavy combination with the universal abilities)

Once you have a category it's very simple to create abilities using it, by default you can simply think of what you want to do and how and it'll become an ability of yours. However to prevent characters inventing new abilities in battle constantly, once created an ability will be somewhat inefficient for a time until it has been broken in.

In addition to your primary category you can also have a secondary category, however secondary categories are 50% efficient, meaning abilities using them either require twice as much stamina or are half as effective for the same amount of stamina as if you had the category as your primary

To get a secondary category requires not changing your mind about which you want for a week, or for 24 hours in which you don't use your primary

Alternately one can forego a secondary category to specialise in a single category making it 125% efficient, specialising takes the same week or 24 hours of not using your primary

One's category(ies) needn't be permanent such as if one came to believe they'd made the wrong choice, many felt this way shortly after day zero as the deadliest ability was quickly determined to be teleporting someone's vital organs outside their body, you can at any time "zero yourself" resetting you to having no primary or secondary category, much like respecing a character in an rpg.

All of this, as well as increasing the durability of your internal organs making it hard for them to be teleported out, was figured out in the month after day zero, with people discussing online and experimenting, recording trends between what they could and couldn't do based on what abilities they focused on wishing for

**Meta abilities**

Is my term for abilities within a magic system that directly relates to the magic system itself, this is counter spells, copy abilities and that sort of thing. I am trying to be very careful about using them so they don't overwhelm the rest of the system which seems very easy to do

The following meta abilities are technically all universal abilities, they just weren't relevant when I explained universal abilities earlier.

Catching is using your own ability to move sifr particles to prevent sifr sent to you by an opponent from colliding, this makes it nigh impossible for opponents to have sifr only collide extremely close to you which would make it extremely difficult to tell what it would do. However your influence over sifr weakens with distance and can become a tug of war when very close, so it's common practice to collide sifr close to one's self and allow the resulting attack to travel to an opponent(be it fire made with creation or a rock thrown with control). It is also possible for particularly strong individuals to send sifr particles with extra force making them hard to catch without similar strength, but catching becomes easier the closer sifr get before colliding, additionally you can't catch what you're unaware of so sneak attackers don't have to worry about catching

Nullifying is the act of intercepting an opponent's sifr with your own, sending positive to negative and negative to positive, the collision resulting in harmless photon burst sparks. Doing so actively is extremely difficult, like shooting bullets out of the air by firing your own, so active nullification is effectively exclusive to users of the perception category. The benefits of using nullification when you can over catching include:

- increased range, as you can send sifr to intercept wherever you like as long as you can predict where your opponent's will be

- ignoring force, there is no amount of force sifr can be sent with that it cannot be nullified

- efficiency, depending on the purpose sifr may be susceptible to nullification by a smaller quantity of sifr, though only nullifying with the minimum necessary is also risky as the opponent may be using more sifr than necessary

In addition to activate nullification as above, there is also passive nullification which doesn't require any category to use. Passive nullification is quite simple rotating sifr particles around one's self, usually in bands of positive and negative, doing so causes incoming sifr particles to collide and spark with the rotating sifr rather than the intended sifr and producing an actual effect. The simplest method of passive nullification is a sphere, however due to [the hairy ball theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy\_ball\_theorem), there will always be at least 1 but usually 2 blank spots(ie the top and bottom of the sphere) where sifr can be slipped through. A more advanced method is to create an aura just above the skin with much less predictable blank spots. The benefit of passive nullification is it offers some defence from threats you're unaware of

There are counters to nullification, colliding sifr inside your own body in an ability like fire breath for example

**Efficiency, elements and conditions**

In addition to strength and stamina, having finesse is important to ensure your sifr particles don't collide prematurely and spark rather than your desired effect

For most abilities you can essentially use as much mana on an ability as you want and it'll produce a proportional result, however by placing restrictions on abilities they become more efficient meaning the same results can be achieved with less mana or the same amount of mana can be used for a bigger result. For example using one of the four elements(water, earth, fire & air) adds a 50% boost to efficiency, using electricity adds a 25% boost and when use against each other (I'm aware this isn't exactly how irl physics works, day zero changed physics) if they counter the opposing element the element can double in efficiency

Elemental counters go:

- water beats fire

- fire beats wind

- wind beats earth

- earth beats electricity

- electricity beats water

So a fire ability that is typically 150% efficient simply due to the elemental efficiency, would become 300% efficient when used against wind

Combining elements doesn't add extra efficiency, instead the efficiency boosts of the elements are averaged out as well as the counters. So lava as a combination of fire and earth is weak to water, strong against electricity and neutral to wind

There are other ways of increasing efficiency, such as conditions, though the numbers for them will not be precise as they will be greater or smaller depending on contextual factors

For example explaining an ability will add around 20% efficiency, but more complex abilities will gain more efficiency from explanation while simpler abilities will gain less. Similarly calling out the name of an ability will add about 10% depending on the length of the name. Things like palm sized glyphs or magic circles, chants besides the name and arm movements add rougly 5% each

All of the above percentages are given assuming these conditions are optional, if mandatory a condition's efficiency boost doubles. Additionally the boosts of conditions are addative within the same category and multiplicative across categories, so an arm movement and a chant will add ever so slightly more efficiency than 2 arm movements. Also different languages count as different categories, including sign language and signing can count as arm movements in addition to another category. Conditions being mandatory or optional doesn't change their category

The efficiency boost of conditions is also affected by how difficult they are, so losing an arm will increase your boost from arm movements and repeating the same condition over and over will reduce the boost each time until some mimimum value

When you create an ability you also define what conditions, if any, it has. You can change it's conditions any time you like but doing so will require the ability to be broken in again, though not as much if the changes are only minor

If you're thinking you could outsmart the system by having many abilities all with the same conditions, allowing you to focus on practicing those conditions and hide what ability you're using from opponents. That would result in a random ability being used rather than always being the ability you want

Other conditions are possible there are just what I've thought of approximate numbers for. Like I have a character who has limited themself to only using a single element but I'm not sure exactly how much more efficient that makes them, also it probably took at least 24 hours to establish that limit and probably would need 24 more to remove it

**Teleportation in detail**

Teleportation abilities require sifr particles to collide either on the object being teleported or at the location it's being teleported to, so a teleportation archer might shoot an arrow and after it has barely left the bow collide sifr on it to teleport the arrow right to a target, or when out of arrows collide sifr in their quiver to teleport arrows they know the location of to them

When an object is teleported it's orientated can be altered, so an arrow teleported can point any direction and if just shot will continue to fly in the direction it points

When teleporting one's self it is briefly effortlessly for you, or parts of you, to be teleported by others, even if your whole body is being made extremely durable. This makes teleporting around a battlefield extremely risky unless you know there are no other teleporters around

**Creation in detail**

With the exception of oxygen(just to avoid any weird infinite loops) and fissile nuclear material, creating matter takes far less energy than it would irl

However it still takes quite a lot and so is often made easier with the condition of transmuting one material into another

This category is also responsible for erasing matter, which theoretically takes just as much energy as creating it but in practice often takes more due to countless subtle details about objects being deleted whereas created objects are made perfectly uniform without unnecessary energy spent on tiny details

Creation can also make things beyond typical possibilities like near indestructible materials, however inanimate objects like these gradually lose their supernatural properties over time unless maintained by a creation user, although animals with these properties can maintain them by themselves by diverting a portion of sifr to it.

A major breakthrough around 4 months after day zero was the discovery that creation could modify muscles to repeat a specific use of sifrmancy when provided sifr, even in a human after zeroing themself. Although the modded muscle couldn't contribute to gathering sifr particles, including catching, and it was less flexible with things like variable environments, it allowed for people to easily have access to 1 extra ability or so outside of their primary and secondary, completing a few strategies that were previously sub par. Also if the modded muscle's sifrmancy ability was anything other than creation it would be 75% efficient and require the use of that category in conjunction with creation

For quite a while creation was considered the least effective category for fighting, with the other 3 forming a triangle of effectiveness as teleportation easily dealt with perception users, control outlasted teleporters and perception could nullify control users. However once it was realised empty space not only could be created but had almost no energy cost, things had to be reconsidered

I feel like control and perception are pretty clear, maybe it's worth mentioning any sort of time stop ability would likely require control but stopping all the time in the universe would require an utterly insane amount of energy, but feel free to ask about them or anything else you'd like to know more on

If the explanations alone aren't enough for stuff like nullification I may at some point make posts with diagrams drawn in paint and link them back to here

basically in the magic system I'm making people can use alchemy as a way to manipulate the world around them, in order to start using it they first need to learn and study everything about the elements they want to manipulate, so if you wanted to manipulate gold for example you would need to know things like their atomic number, valence, so on so forth.

Then, when you have full understanding of the elements you want to manipulate, an alchemist can, with an Alchemy circle, create mixtures using their elements and manipulate them however they choose, for example if an alchemist knows how to control hidrogen, carbon, chlorine and sulfur they can create mustard gas, and manipulate it.

And that's kinda basically it, so far I've only got the foundation and I would love to get some ideas on how to expand this system, mainly so it doesn't end up being a full metal alchemist cheap copy even though I love that show😭

Psychic Influence is a bizarre phenomenon that occurs within the mind and flows through the eyes. All of humanity and any form of sentient life holds some degree of Influence and some means to exude and intake it.

For humans, simple eye contact exudes subtle psychic pressures upon others. But this pressure is also impacting them as well. Influence is gentle in its power of suggestion and impossible to detect regularly.

However, there is a way to strengthen one's power of Influence over others. The best known method is to deprive oneself of sleep in a rhythmic fashion to damage one's own Psychic Resistance, the factor of one's mind that reduces the flow of influence.

What this means, however, is that one must be cautious about the power they gain as it will adversely effect their ability to resist Psychic Influence.

In time, smaller groups and hidden organizations have developed a means to mitigate this consequence. Namely prescription glasses that can amplify one's Psychic Influence or Psychic Resistance. Though they cannot do both.

There are three distinct powers a practitioner of this magic can access.

Power: Convey as mentioned before is the ability to alter another's mind, be it warping memories, changing opinions, or even keeping an object concealed from sight by altering their perception of it.

Consequence: With a low psychic resistance, one risks being manipulated by other practitioners with little to no defense from their power.

Power: Comprehend is the ability to draw in information from your surroundings and process it quickly, be it seeing in all directions, reading the intention of written language through psychic residue, detecting life through the psychic influence coagulating around all living creatures.

Consequence: With a low psychic resistance, one processes information even more rapidly, but they risk sensory overload that can be debilitating.

Power: Conduit is the ability to pull on dead psychic influence to essentially become a medium for the dead to communicate or to learn from their memories.

Consequence: With a low psychic resistance, one typically can communicate with more dead individuals at once, but risk taking on personality traits from those individuals.

I’m working on a magic system where magic has its own language, often referred to as the language of nature.

In different cultures, this language is understood in different ways, but the core idea remains the same: everything that exists has a nature, and that nature can be addressed.

Magic isn’t about forcing control. It’s about speaking in that language and convincing what you’re addressing to follow your will.

This applies not only to natural elements, but also — at more advanced levels — to objects and constructs made from those elements.

So mastery comes in two parts:

• understanding and learning the language itself
• and developing the ability to be truly persuasive within it

The more convincing you are, the stronger and more stable the effect becomes.

I like the idea that magic here feels less like domination, and more like negotiation.

I’m still exploring the limits of it though.

What kind of weaknesses or boundaries would you expect from a system like this?

El sistema de magia es parte del worldbuilding, pero nunca se debe olvidar que un sistema genial no nos salva de personajes planos o una historia aburrida. El atractivo de tu mundo depende sobre todo de cómo se narra la historia. Por eso dejaré una serie de pasos para esta primera guía.

1. Escribe sobre lo que entiendes (o investiga).

Si tu magia se basa en la pesca, pero no sabes nada de pesca… vas a tener problemas. No necesitas ser experto pero sí investigar el tema.

2. Define base y raíz.

Base: ¿De dónde obtiene el poder el mago? ¿Es energía interna, mana del ambiente, pactos con entes, emociones, memoria, sangre? La base es el combustible o el mecanismo inmediato.

Raíz: ¿Cuál es el origen mítico, cultural o filosófico de esa base? ¿Por qué el mana existe? ¿Qué creencia o mito sostiene que las emociones generan magia? La raíz da profundidad y coherencia al mundo. Por ejemplo:

Base = la sangre de criaturas ancestrales tiene o da poderes

Raíz = un mito de creación donde esas criaturas murieron y su esencia quedó latente, con alguna inspiración en la realidad.

3. La magia necesita un TEMA y un CONFLICTO

¿Qué tema quiero explorar? (poder, sacrificio, equilibrio, corrupción, fe, libertad)

¿Qué conflictos genera mi sistema? (¿los magos son perseguidos? ¿usar magia cuesta años de vida? ¿la magia falla si dudas?)

Un sistema sin conflicto es un adorno bonito pero inútil para la narrativa.

4. Cuando la base es abstracta, estudia su raíz cultural.

Si tu magia es "energía pura" o "espíritu" apóyate del folclore, la religión o la filosofía. La fantasía siempre bebe de raíces culturales (reales o inventadas). Por ejemplo:

Magia basada en nombres verdaderos → raíz en mitos egipcios y nórdicos.

Magia de pactos → raíz en el folclore europeo de demonios o hadas.

No necesitas copiar una cultura entera, pero inspirarte en sus lógicas internas hará tu sistema más orgánico.

En resumen: para empezar un sistema de magia desde cero:

1. Prioriza personajes e historia.

2. Elige una base (el "cómo" inmediato).

3. Crea o investiga una raíz (el "por qué" mítico o cultural).

4. Asegura que el sistema genere temas y conflictos relevantes para tu trama.

Tomando esta idea de base + raíz, ¿qué ejemplos se les ocurren para sus propios sistemas? Los leo.