The Problems with Transfiguration

[IsaaKc 1225]

As most of my forum posts are, this is going to be rather informally written and greased with a lack of structure. Additionally, this is a very opinionated post, and I intend for this thread to be used as a vehicle for discussion rather than uncivilized bashing and arguing. Please keep this in mind before you post a comment in reference to what I have written, or what anyone else has written.

 

Transfiguration, in simple terms, has been called the "utility magic" or "tool box" of Voidal Magics on the server. It's widely sought after by most newer and older Mages from an OOC and RP standpoint due to the very versatile possibilities that the lore offers, and are they wrong to think that? From the eye of one outside of the niche, the Magic lives up to its name as a toolbox. Transmutation, Enchanting, and Warding are all completely different concepts that allow for a multitude of possibilities, yet that's exactly the issue that I see with the Magic. Let's break down what exactly Transfiguration is on the server.

 

Spoiler

 

NOTE: although i am the current loreholder of transfiguration, it should be noted that the my current lore is pretty much a copypaste of Phil's original lore, which I will be referencing throughout this post. 

 

my lore:

phil's old lore:

booklight's magelight lore:

ttwestern's mana wire lore:

 

 

According to both of these lores, but namely Phil's, Transfiguration is defined as manipulation of natural Mana within the world and the pinnacle of alteration magic. At first, this is a vague phrase, but it makes sense—Evocation relies on the mental image of an element and drawing it into the world through using your own Mana, while Alteration is using the Void as a means to change the physical world, such as changing the shape of an iron bar, or creating "cuts" in the material plane to travel via Voidal Shifting.

 

Identity

Now that we've defined what Transfiguration is, let's address the problem—its a "toolbox" magic with no identity of its own, yet possessing a few decent concepts that are unfortunately very poorly connected to one another.

 

Transfiguration is a Magic with an identity crisis. It has several different things going for it, yet putting it all together in a single Magic just doesn't make sense and you end up with a hodgepodge of ideas and spells that have little connection with one another.

 

Let's list out all the current spells in Transfiguration (with some summarizing and abridging):

Voidal Feeling - use of one's own mana to discover the properties of magic and non-magical objects.

 

Transmutation (there's a lot of spells here, so bare with me) - essentially, you can alter the shape, temperature, color, and density of inorganic objects so long it follows the laws of equivalent exchange.

 

Magelight - the collecting/evocation of light into a floating orb to provide luminance

 

Enchanting - the binding of a spell to an object so that it may be summoned at will without the use of a mage's own concentration

 

Warding - an intangible shield that blocks spells

 

Abjuration - intangible projectiles that destroy spells

 

That's quite the arsenal of spells, is it not? Most of these spells aren't exactly bad ideas, but the problem with them is that they're all under the Magic of Transfiguration, all united under the concept of "alteration of mana within the natural world," which just simply doesn't work when you apply every spell to that phrase. Say what you want about Voidal Evocation being bland, but at least it knows what it is: study fire, cast fire; study water, cast water, and so on. For a Magic that has SO much going for it an SO much creative potential, it shouldn't suffer from such thematic inconsistency.

 

What makes this even worse is that the recently posted piece "Arcane Sculpting" (originally written by lhindir, revised by pundimonium), originally intended to be an independent feat that has transfiguration as a prerequisite, is supposedly being forced into transfiguration as a whole through a merge due to admin requests:

 

((this is not suppose to be a jab at Squak, as he didn't make this decision. there was concern with the magic being gatekept, which explains the merge. either way, i disagree with the course of actions))

 

This is much more harmful to the Magic rather than helpful. It only reinforces the idea that Transfiguration is a melting pot of completely independent ideas with no thematic consistency or underlying gimmicks that unite the lore into a satisfying, whole piece.

 

Issues with Spells and Abilities

Now that identity is talked about, I want to discuss a few problems I have with the content of Transfiguration's spells, disregarding the lack of identity in the magic.

 

Voidal Feeling - pretty much just a metagame spell. you can use your aura to find out an inorganic/dead organic object's phase-change temperature points, natural color, durability, hardness, toughness, etc. removes all potential with experimentation RP. I do sympathize with this spell, though. It was created as a flavorful way to skip over experimentation RP that no one ever did, but as a result, it removes all mystery from new minerals/alloys that are implemented into server lore when a transfigurationist gets their grubby aura into it. However, it may also be used to figure out the attributes of an enchantment, which isn't a bad idea in of itself, and can actually be beneficial to RP (e.i. if an enchantment's trigger/activation method is unknown, it could be discovered via voidal feeling). If I were to propose a solution to fix Voidal feeling, it'd be to turn it into an enchantment-reading spell, and toss out the material-meta bit of it.

 

Transmutation (all of its spells) - this one pretty much goes hand in hand with Voidal Feeling to a degree. It allows you to manipulate the physical properties of an object, such as color, temperature, shape, etc. This has a couple problems. Firstly, it allows virtually any Mage to become a smith through a few easy Magic emotes, and any sort of profession involving crafting for that matter. You'll find that I've red-lined those practices in my lore, but it doesn't stop people from doing it, as the concept itself is what encourages it. Second, in a similar vein to Voidal Feeling, it completely ruins experimentation RP with newer minerals/alloys/metals/whatever. There's no need to get samples and crank up your forge to experiment when you can just change a metal's shape on spot with little consequence. This has become such an issue/fear with metals that some minerals/materials have restrictions to this, such as Carbarum requiring a multitude of Mages to shape it, and a particular ore in Xarkly's nether eventline that flat out could not be manipulate with transmutation. If I were to propose a solution to this, it'd be removing the concept altogether from voidal magic. This sort of idea works much better in something like alchemy, where the law of equivalent exchange is a cornerstone of the practice.

 

Warding and Abjuration - the only remnants of an "anti-magic" sort of spell on the server, the transfigurationist, assuming that they have an MA in the magic, can create a sort of anti-magical net to cancel out a spell and return it to the void. the issue with these spells is that they're criminally underpowered in their current state. In Phil's old lore, if you mastered a Magic, you could ward and abjure, regardless of whether or not the MA you had was active (think of it liking maining a character in street fighter, learning in and out how it works, then moving to another character: just because you main a different character now doesn't mean that you forget everything about your old main—you still know its strengths, weaknesses, etc.) Things have changed now with the current lore (as per LT request). You must now have an active MA in the Magic to ward/abjure it, which pretty much killed the use of it. Warding and Abjuration was already scarcely used enough, yet still practical in the right situation, but the odds of fighting a Mage who has the same active MA as you is so slim that it might as well just be removed from the lore since it isn't ever utilized. To fix this, I'd say that Warding/Abjuration should be broken off from Transfiguration and fleshed out into an independent full slot Magic with formidable combative potential.

 

Conclusion

You must be thinking "but Isaac! if you're so dissatisfied with the current state of Transfiguration, why did you write it to be so sh*tty?" and to that, I say that my views have changed between now and last year. I wanted to point out some genuine issues with this lore that are unique to Transfiguration in comparison to every other accepted Magic on the server. It is my hope that this will encourage LT and players involved in Transfiguration to acknowledge the blatant issues with this lore and be more liberal to the passing of a rewrite that isn't in the fear of "the playerbase getting upset."

 

Credit to @Narthokfor bringing this up in story discord to spark me to create this post

Edited May 27, 2021 by IsaaKc

[Valannor 6344]

My familiarity with voidal magic is fleeting at best, given that I mainly only freshen up on it for dealing with problematic mages, but I think its a very mature take to look back on what most would consider to be your magnum opus and criticize it, and propose solutions to the issues raised. 

 

Good on ya.

[Sorcerio 4594]

Regardless of the other qualms with transfiguration, my biggest gripe is the fact that you require an entire two slots of magic to allow Voidal Magic any permanent effect on the world around it. Without transfiguration, the most you can do with Voidal Magic is flavor cantrips and DnD spell slinging, making it a rather bland magic otherwise with minimal potential for interaction. I personally think it would be ideal to open up Voidal enchantment, though not transfiguration as a whole, to the general player base. Not saying they need to have the ability to make large enchantments, but I think it would be much more beneficial for them to perform flavor enchantment without need for yet another few magic slots of dedication. Just my take.

[IsaaKc 1225]

Just now, Sorcerio said:

Regardless of the other qualms with transfiguration, my biggest gripe is the fact that you require an entire two slots of magic to allow Voidal Magic any permanent effect on the world around it. Without transfiguration, the most you can do with Voidal Magic is flavor cantrips and DnD spell slinging, making it a rather bland magic otherwise with minimal potential for interaction. I personally think it would be ideal to open up Voidal enchantment, though not transfiguration as a whole, to the general player base. Not saying they need to have the ability to make large enchantments, but I think it would be much more beneficial for them to perform flavor enchantment without need for yet another few magic slots of dedication. Just my take.

Good take. I don't know about opening up Enchanting to the entire Voidal Magic playerbase, but I think making it a teachable non-slot consuming feat wouldn't be a bad idea.

[Narthok 9213]

i take credit for this thread because of story discord conversation cheers

[IsaaKc 1225]

1 minute ago, Narthok said:

i take credit for this thread because of story discord conversation cheers

creditting you rn

[Shezept 304]

Transfiguation. The magic around manipulating mana and forcing yourself to stack MAs in evocation magics. This post is pretty good

[Malaise 1569]

Transfiguration is the only "mage" magic in my opinion. Everything else is, as said prior, flavorful cantrips and projectiles.

[DrakeHaze. 2481]

Alteration died for the sake of balance in a non-competitive gameplay loop. Went from a mystical all-rounder magic that benefitted from smart usage by players to a magic that makes items to sell on auction house. I say this as a teacher of the magic.

The wizardly magic will never be the same.

[ScreamingDingo 16792]