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zengarMagic has a price.
This is necessary for a work of fantasy to be enjoyable.
Frequently, it also has limits, but those aren't required. All they do is add "creative thinking" to the list of prices as casters try to figure out how to accomplish their needs within those limits. Even when a character has Godly powers, such as the ends of several of Eddings' stories, they usually end up paying in some way, such as attracting the attention of others with equivalent or greater power.
A failure I frequently see is not applying this metric to all sides of the conflict highlighted in a given work. Occasionally it is a Gandolf figure, able to do what ever needs to be done when normal means fail, a transparent deus ex machina especially when they don't actually act at any other time. Some indication of why they only acted at certain times needs to be given or the read is left with a lingering sense of "well why didn't high mage Azathoth just go blow up the enemy army on his own? I mean he's able to bore a tunnel right through a mountain, so what was stopping him?"
Most commonly, however, this problem rears its ugly head with respect to the villains. Star Wars is a great example. Turning to "the dark side" makes a jedi much more powerful and what is the cost? As far as I can tell, just that they are "evil." So it's a cost paid by others, not by the individual in question. And that too is a common thread among stories where "evil" has unlimited magic. "Oh, evil mages spend energy just like we do, but they take it from unwilling victims rather than themselves." Not that there is anything wrong with that, but there needs to be some other cost that they take on instead. The time spent concealing their activities if nothing else. Or the need to shield themselves from their own allies first and foremost, and only after that working against the "forces of good." If there isn't something holding them back, why haven't they taken over the world?
On the other hand, the cost can't be too high either. If, as Terry Pratchet put it, "you spend twenty years studying to be able to cast a spell that make 7 red-headed virgins appear in your bedroom, but you're half blind from reading mouldering tomes and too addled from quicksilver fumes to remember what happens next" why are there any mages of power? Magic would be nothing more than a party trick, with no-one every having bothered to develop "great magics" if it takes two years to learn how to light a candle and only gets worse from there.
Either way, the reader is left with a nagging sense of unreality. A feeling that the history we are given is a lie and the world was created as-is. Otherwise, potential mages would have taken up professions requiring much less effort, having no way to know the power the might have had, and demons would rule the world because more power is only as far away as their nearest enemy.
This is necessary for a work of fantasy to be enjoyable.
Frequently, it also has limits, but those aren't required. All they do is add "creative thinking" to the list of prices as casters try to figure out how to accomplish their needs within those limits. Even when a character has Godly powers, such as the ends of several of Eddings' stories, they usually end up paying in some way, such as attracting the attention of others with equivalent or greater power.
A failure I frequently see is not applying this metric to all sides of the conflict highlighted in a given work. Occasionally it is a Gandolf figure, able to do what ever needs to be done when normal means fail, a transparent deus ex machina especially when they don't actually act at any other time. Some indication of why they only acted at certain times needs to be given or the read is left with a lingering sense of "well why didn't high mage Azathoth just go blow up the enemy army on his own? I mean he's able to bore a tunnel right through a mountain, so what was stopping him?"
Most commonly, however, this problem rears its ugly head with respect to the villains. Star Wars is a great example. Turning to "the dark side" makes a jedi much more powerful and what is the cost? As far as I can tell, just that they are "evil." So it's a cost paid by others, not by the individual in question. And that too is a common thread among stories where "evil" has unlimited magic. "Oh, evil mages spend energy just like we do, but they take it from unwilling victims rather than themselves." Not that there is anything wrong with that, but there needs to be some other cost that they take on instead. The time spent concealing their activities if nothing else. Or the need to shield themselves from their own allies first and foremost, and only after that working against the "forces of good." If there isn't something holding them back, why haven't they taken over the world?
On the other hand, the cost can't be too high either. If, as Terry Pratchet put it, "you spend twenty years studying to be able to cast a spell that make 7 red-headed virgins appear in your bedroom, but you're half blind from reading mouldering tomes and too addled from quicksilver fumes to remember what happens next" why are there any mages of power? Magic would be nothing more than a party trick, with no-one every having bothered to develop "great magics" if it takes two years to learn how to light a candle and only gets worse from there.
Either way, the reader is left with a nagging sense of unreality. A feeling that the history we are given is a lie and the world was created as-is. Otherwise, potential mages would have taken up professions requiring much less effort, having no way to know the power the might have had, and demons would rule the world because more power is only as far away as their nearest enemy.
