Can I plug a loophole in my magic rules without rewriting the whole novel?

The intriguing thing about magic is that you can imagine being able to do things that you cannot do in real life.

But characters that can do anything are exceedingly boring. What drives a plot for me is the limitation that the character has to work under. The story of an all-powerful god would be boring and short:

"He did anything he wanted."

So you do need a limitation to make magic interesting. And that limitation must not be a random "plug to a loophole", it must be constructed as a foundation of the world and a defining element of the plot.

(The story of the all-powerful god might have an interesing sequel: "After centuries of this he got bored and killed himself / gave up his power to life as a human / turned mad / ..." The limitation here is boredom. This gives the story something that makes us interested.)

posted almost 11 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

System‭

3226 reputation 147 215 553 0

Religion, time and blackmailing

Have your world feature a religion that forbids the use of certain kinds of magical practices that would use your loopholes. The in-universe explanation would be that the church or whatever institution you want feared that people were too powerful and therefore uncontrollable, so they invented reasons to not do this thing.

They also changed the education so that new mages wouldn't find out about this or are trained to avoid situations that would lend themselves naturally to exploitation of this loophole. If every authority you knew said "Don't do this, you will die!" then you won't do it - even if it wouldn't change a thing.

If someone still tries to do this and succeeds he will probably talk about his great discovery. Which will lead to someone important hearing about a wizrad that will soon be uncontrollably powerful. Powerful people don't like people that are far more powerful than them and not under their control by other means. Either they will swiftly be executed or you could blackmail the wizard into following the standard rules and keeping quiet about his discovery if he doesn't want his family to suffer.

I first heard about this method in The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan.

The wizards have a certain school that teaches everyone little magic tricks that use their life force. Wizards are problematic because their life force violently explodes when they die. But for some reason there are very, very old graves nearby and nobody knows what that's about, because there is nothing left after a wizard died.

Later you find out that somewhere else people still know how to absorb the life force of other people. Basically the master teaches the student and therefore gets a regular supply of their life force, absorbing parts of their magic through open wounds/their blood. This way they become incredibly powerful, especially if they have a lot of students.

Normal mages are nothing against these people and once they find out that the first group has forgotten how to use this magic because they thought that "absorbing other peoples life force is dangerous and cruel" they quickly attack - and nearly wipe out the first group. Except for the main character of course.

By using a method like this you can explain the loop hole and even use it for social interactions about why someone uses this loop hole or not and what the problems are with it. It gives you more variations and always an easy way out like "Don't do it - you will get more problems than you can solve". Which the main character does not necessarily have to follow, leading to the next story arcs where he has to figure out how to clean up the mess he created by using this loophole.

No need to close the loophole - just place something in front that says "Loophole ahead - be careful!" and let your main character/villain/... be everything but careful.

posted over 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Secespitus‭

550 reputation 9 193 104 11

The same solution as every decent DM has to Pun Pun.

You Are Not The First Who Thought Of It. And the one who did think of it first really doesn't like competition.

They are a background god, one who avoids spotlight and acts following own motives, rarely heard of. You rarely hear of them in particular, because the moment you think of a viable way of gaining means to beat them, you draw their focus to yourself, and die a very gory death. So, my advice is, don't think about it.

posted almost 11 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

SF.‭

540 reputation 8 40 103 0

Why plug it? Have the loophole pointed out or discovered in the epilogue. It can be discovered by the bad guy, or by an innocent who is easily captured/corrupted by the bad guy. Presto: instant sequel!

posted almost 11 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

Consequences.

That something is possible within a system doesn't mean it's a good idea. You can drive your car 180MPH on public roads (if the speedometer labeling is accurate), but if you do you'll soon be getting used to a bicycle. You can subsist on nothing but Big Macs and Coke for a year, but you may face medical problems. You can make a deal with the devil for great reward in this world, but you'll probably find yourself on the receiving end of an exploit and you'll be handing your soul over much sooner than you planned.

In the case of your magic system, then, the following could be used to prevent use of the loophole (or make for interesting stories when people do it anyway):

• an authority that will do something bad to you if you try it
• a great personal cost (health, sanity, related magical powers, a curse, whatever)
• a correction factor in the magic system itself; magical forces will compensate for the loophole exploit in a way that will make the exploiter unhappy

posted almost 11 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Monica Cellio‭ staff

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