Hard magic systems follow consistent rules that readers can understand and predict. Brandon Sanderson popularized this approach with series like Mistborn and Stormlight Archive. When magic has clear limitations and costs, it creates better storytelling opportunities than vague "anything goes" magic. This template helps you design systems with the logical rigor readers now expect from fantasy.
What Are Sanderson's Laws of Magic Systems?
Sanderson articulated three principles that guide effective magic system design. These laws are not absolute rules but guidelines that produce satisfying reader experiences.
First Law: Your ability to resolve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well readers understand that magic. If magic is mysterious, you cannot use it to solve major problems without feeling like deus ex machina. If magic follows clear rules, readers accept magical solutions because they understand the logic.
Second Law: Limitations are more interesting than powers. What your magic cannot do creates better stories than what it can do. Unlimited power eliminates tension. Constrained power forces creativity and difficult choices.
Third Law: Expand what you already have before adding something new. Explore creative applications of established magical abilities before inventing entirely new powers. Depth beats breadth for reader comprehension and satisfaction.
According to Sanderson's own essays, following these principles creates magic systems that enhance plot rather than undermining stakes. Readers trust authors who play fair with magical rules.
What Is the Energy Source for Your Magic?
Every hard magic system needs defined power source. Where does magical energy come from? Common options include:
Internal energy: Magic draws from user's life force, stamina, or willpower. Casting exhausts the user physically or mentally. This creates inherent cost and prevents overuse. Example: using magic might shorten lifespan or require days of recovery.
External energy: Magic pulls from environmental sources like ley lines, magical crystals, starlight, or specific locations. Users must access these sources to cast spells. Limitation comes from geography and availability. Control over power sources becomes strategic resource.
Consumed resources: Magic requires physical materials that get used up. Herbs, gemstones, rare metals, or blood. The rarer and more valuable the resource, the more powerful the magic. Economic systems emerge around magical component trade.
Stored energy: Magic users must prepare spells in advance by storing energy in objects, tattoos, or their own bodies. They have limited capacity and must choose what magic to prepare. Creates interesting tactical decisions about spell selection.
Granted power: Magic comes from external entities like gods, spirits, or demons. Users must maintain relationships with these entities through worship, sacrifice, or contracts. Power can be revoked, creating moral and relational complexity.
How Do You Define Access and Aptitude?
Determine who can use magic and why. This decision shapes your world's social structure and conflicts.
Universal access, varied aptitude: Anyone can learn magic, but natural talent varies. Creates meritocracy where dedicated practice matters more than birth. Allows protagonist from any background to develop magical ability through training.
Bloodline inheritance: Magic passes through family lines. Creates aristocracy of magical families. Those without magical heritage face barriers. Enables stories about hidden heritage or mixed-blood characters navigating two worlds.
Random manifestation: Magic appears unpredictably in random individuals regardless of lineage. Society must identify and train these people. Creates tension between magical and non-magical classes. Protagonists discover abilities unexpectedly.
Conditional access: Magic requires specific circumstances like initiation rituals, divine selection, or traumatic awakening. Not everyone wants to pay the price for power. Explores themes of sacrifice and choice.
Technological interface: Magic requires constructed devices or tools. Anyone with the device can use magic, but devices are rare, expensive, or controlled. Shifts focus from innate ability to resource access.
What Limitations and Costs Should Your System Have?
Strong limitations make magic interesting. Choose 3 to 5 constraints from these categories:
Energy costs: Magic drains the user physically, mentally, or spiritually. Overuse causes exhaustion, illness, or death. Forces users to ration magical power and rest between casting.
Resource requirements: Spells need rare materials, specific locations, or favorable conditions. Limitation creates logistics challenges and economic systems around magical components.
Time constraints: Magic takes significant time to cast or requires lengthy preparation. Prevents instant solutions and creates tactical vulnerability during casting.
Knowledge barriers: Magic requires extensive study and understanding. Natural talent alone is insufficient. Creates educational systems and knowledge-hoarding conflicts.
Moral corruption: Using magic erodes empathy, sanity, or ethics. Power comes at psychological cost. Forces users to balance magical ability against becoming monsters.
Physical requirements: Magic requires specific body motions, verbal components, or environmental conditions. Cannot cast while restrained, gagged, or in wrong location. Creates interesting tactical scenarios.
- Choose limitations that create interesting story problems
- Make costs proportional to power level
- Ensure limitations cannot be easily bypassed
- Create exceptions only when they serve story purpose
- Show consequences when characters push magical limits
How Do You Design Specific Magical Abilities?
Create 8 to 15 specific magical effects possible in your system. For each, document:
Effect: What the magic does in concrete terms. "Telepathy" is vague. "Allows surface thought reading within 10 feet for up to 5 minutes" is specific.
Cost: What using this magic requires or drains. "Causes severe headaches lasting 1 hour" or "Requires crushed sapphire worth 50 gold."
Limitations: What this magic cannot do or conditions under which it fails. "Cannot read thoughts of magically trained individuals" or "Requires line of sight to target."
Learning difficulty: How hard this magic is to master. Basic abilities most users learn early. Advanced abilities require years of practice or exceptional talent.
Counter-magic: How this magic can be blocked, dispelled, or defended against. Creates tactical depth and prevents any single ability from being overpowered.
What Determines the Scope of Your Magic?
Decide how much magic can accomplish. Can it create matter from nothing? Bring back the dead? Alter time? Each capability you add must come with proportional limitations.
Low magic: Magic subtly enhances natural abilities or provides minor conveniences. Cannot reshape reality. Keeps stories grounded while adding fantastical elements. Easier to maintain consistency.
Medium magic: Magic significantly affects individuals and small areas. Can fight with magic, heal serious injuries, communicate over distances. Cannot alter fundamental reality or affect entire nations instantly.
High magic: Magic reshapes geography, resurrects the dead, creates permanent magical constructs. Society revolves around magical capability. Requires careful limitations to maintain stakes.
Higher magic requires more detailed limitation systems. If your magic can destroy cities, establish why characters do not constantly use that power. Physical, moral, or social costs must scale with capability.
How Does Your Magic System Interact With Technology?
Define the relationship between magic and technological advancement. Do they coexist? Compete? Merge?
Magic replaces technology: Societies with powerful magic never developed advanced technology. Why build roads when teleportation exists? Creates medieval-level tech alongside incredible magical power.
Magic and technology separate: Magic follows different principles than physics. Technology develops normally in non-magical fields. Creates interesting hybrid societies with magical healing but mechanical transportation.
Magic as technology: Magic is understood scientifically. Magical engineers design spell-powered devices. Blurs line between magic and science. Creates industrial magical societies.
Magic hinders technology: Magical energy interferes with complex mechanisms. Technology does not work in high-magic areas. Forces societies to choose between magical power and technological advancement.
What Social and Economic Impacts Does Magic Have?
Magic fundamentally shapes society. Think through practical implications:
If healing magic exists, how does it affect medicine, life expectancy, and warfare? If only the wealthy access healing, what does that do to social inequality?
If communication magic enables instant long-distance contact, how does that change politics, military strategy, and personal relationships? What prevents everyone from having this ability?
If magic can create food or resources, how does that affect economics? Is scarcity real or artificial? Who controls magical production?
If some people have magic and others do not, how does that create social divisions? Do magical and non-magical people have equal rights and opportunities?
Working through these questions prevents worldbuilding holes and creates richer story opportunities rooted in logical consequences of your magic system.
How Do You Document Your Magic System?
Create a reference document with these sections:
Section 1: Core Principles
Energy source, access requirements, fundamental limitations
Section 2: Specific Abilities
Detailed effects, costs, limitations for each magical technique
Section 3: Learning and Progression
How users develop magical skill, training methods, mastery levels
Section 4: Social Integration
How magic shapes economy, politics, warfare, daily life
Section 5: Exceptions and Mysteries
Elements of magic not yet fully understood by characters, reserved for plot developments
Keep this document updated as you write. Add new abilities that serve story needs, but ensure they follow established rules. Use tools like River's writing assistants to maintain consistency across books. Reference your magic system document regularly to avoid contradictions.
What Common Mistakes Should You Avoid?
Do not create magic that solves every problem. If your protagonist can teleport anywhere instantly, travel-based plots become impossible. If healing magic works perfectly, injuries create no stakes. Build limitations into your system from the beginning.
Avoid adding new magical abilities whenever convenient. Readers feel cheated when characters suddenly develop convenient powers to escape danger. Establish all major abilities early and solve problems through creative application of known magic.
Do not forget about your magic system's costs. If you establish that magic drains life force, consistently show characters exhausted after major casting. Abandoning your own rules undermines reader trust.
The best hard magic systems feel like discovery rather than invention. Readers learn the rules alongside characters and feel satisfied when magic follows logical consequences. Build your system carefully using this template, and you create the foundation for series that readers trust and recommend.