How to Write Magic Types: Enchantment (Creative Writing)
The magic that used by heroes, villains and mischievous creatures alike. At least if you’re talking about the controlling side of Enchantment.
Yep, this magic type has two very different sides to it. The mind controlling side and the empowering side.
Both have their flaws and benefits, mostly benefits. Without further ado let’s dive into another type of magic.
Mind Control Enchantment
This side of enchantment is best represented by the amazing game D&D. This type of Enchantment focuses on the mind and all that entails.
It basically allows you to manipulate people for good or for bad.
You do this by using your mana like tendrils to influence the electrical signals in the brain.
That’s what I think happens anyway.
You can make people your slave or inspire them. The full spectrum of human emotion is your plaything with this magic.
This type also crosses with Illusion magic so you can make anything appear real in their head.
I’m gonna be real with you, this type of enchantment is extremely broken. All the benefits of illusions plus more.
If you don’t have defenses up against mental attacks then it’s pretty much an instant K.O.
That’s all for that type of Enchantment. Here’s a video that talks more about it.
Power-Up Enchantment
This side of enchantment is found in “Skyrim” and “Fairy Tail”. This type of enchantment powers up the body or an item(Includes potions) using the casters own mana.
All that magical equipment has probably been enchanted by a professional enchanter.
The types of power-ups include:
- Strength/Speed/Defense/Mana/Intelligence Enchantment
- Love Enchantment
- Flight Enchantment
- Elemental or Status Effect Enchantment
- Giving life to objects
- Climate Change
- Skill Enchantment (Gives or improves a skill like swordplay, theft, construction, charisma, etc)
- Fusion, yes, fusion is possible with this enchantment! It can be a weaker version of transmutation.
As you can see, this type of enchantment can cross with Alteration and Transmutation since it’s able to change the physical world.
Most of this can be done to the user’s body which can be extremely powerful depending on the verse. Look at the above list and imagine you can power up yourself in that way, it can get overpowered real quick.
You can make yourself into a physical God with enough stacked enchantments.
Another name for this type is Reinforcement.
If you want both types present in your world then use that term for this type of Enchantment.
Its power all depends on how far you stretch the meaning of Power-Up Enchantment.
Here is a video about how broken this type of enchanting can be, at least in Skyrim’s world.
Enchantment’s Role in World-building
Both enchantment types have unique problems and benefits when it comes to world-building. Let’s break this down.
Power-Up Enchanters in World-building
Power-up Enchanters are like blacksmiths.
There would be shops that would enchant your items for a price.
The price would be very expensive since enchanting items can significantly improve it. Only the government and the rich could pay for powerful enchantments.
Every army would have enchanted equipment, it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
If you don’t want that in your story, you could make the magic hard to get right or bloodline ability.
Enchanters would also work with blacksmiths by giving their weapons a power-up on the spot.
Finally, Enchanters would either be important pillars of society or Trans-human.
My idea is that some would see people who would enchant their body and skills as not really earning the power. These people would be like the naturalist.
Basically the Cyborg vs Normal Human conflict but fantasy. Just a thought.
Either way, if this type of enchanting is common and easy to get then this would be used by everyone.
Mind Control Enchanter World-building
The mind control enchantment, however, would have a negative effect on the world.
This type of magic can easily topple empires and drive a man insane. A consistent world would have to have many countermeasures against this magic type.
Many people would want to use this magic for many reasons, mostly bad. Thus, this magic would be forbidden or heavily controlled. There would also be a standard of defense for this magic type.
It would be like the modern problem of hackers vs cyber security.
To prevent this you can either make it really hard for this magic to work, make it rare or nerf it heavily.
Now of course there can be benefits to this type of enchantment.
It can help with peace negotiations or rally an army towards victory.
But, I’m thinking about the world at large and it seems that this type of magic is way too easy to exploit.
Conclusion
Overall this entire magic type can be very broken if there’s no mental defenses or if there’s no reinforcement limit.
Most verses I’ve seen nerf it and make it rare but what do you think?
Is there something I’m missing, how would you integrate this type of magic into your world? Comment your thoughts below.
