Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.
Are you here to participate in a specific proposal? Click on the proposal tag (with the dark outline) to see only posts about that proposal and not all of the others that are in progress. Tags are at the bottom of each post.
Post History
I'm imagining a sort of magic that only manipulates probabilities. That is, you cannot achieve something that's against the laws of nature (for example, you cannot create energy out of nothing), bu...
#1: Initial revision
by
celtschk
·
2024-10-03T10:01:03Z (15 days ago)
What are reasonable limitations for probability-manipulating magic?
I'm imagining a sort of magic that only manipulates probabilities. That is, you cannot achieve something that's against the laws of nature (for example, you cannot create energy out of nothing), but you can make unlikely events more likely and likely events more unlikely (as a simple example, you can cause dice to fall on six far more often than they should). The strength of a wizard is then given by how much he can bend probability; with sufficient strength a wizard can do "thermodynamically impossible" tasks like heating up stuff without a heat source. Now I imagine that those with the ability can do it just with the power of their mind (maybe some quantum consciousness thing). This however raises two questions: * If you can do it with your mind, then why can't everyone do it, and why are there wizards with inherently different strengths? * Any magic should come with a cost (or else it would be overpowered). What would be a reasonable cost for this type of ability? It would be nice to find "natural" answers to those questions (that is, answers that don't seem arbitrary, but intrinsically linked to this type of magic).