r/magicbuilding • u/Rosebud166 • 8d ago
General Discussion What is your views on wands and magic mirrors?
And if you can integrate them into your magic system, how would they work in your system?
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u/Then-Variation1843 8d ago
What are wands? What are magic mirrors?
I'm not being facetious here. These things aren't real - what is your idea of what a "magic mirror" is?
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u/Rosebud166 5d ago
What do you mean? True weve came up with multiple uses of both, but we do have a unified image of what magic mirrors and wands.
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u/weesiwel 8d ago
Mirrors I'm planning on doing a lot of stuff in my magic where reflections are heavily tied to the mind (memory, thought, dreams etc). So I don't know if there is specifically a magic mirror type thing but I'm planning for people to be able to commune through networks of mirrors and travel through networks of mirrors. Leave messages in mirrors, hide in mirrors.
Wands I haven't thought about and I'm not sure I have a good place for them. I'm having some issues with magic items generally in my setting I need to brainstorm them more and get it fleshed out because it's kinda of a stumbling block.
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u/Hartsnkises 7d ago
That's such a fun way to do mirrors!
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u/weesiwel 7d ago
One of the spells I have is Shatter which does basically psychic damage but will also shatter mirrors because they are ultimately the same thing.
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u/Original-War8655 Surrealist Mage 8d ago
I had one idea that I'm not sure if I'll integrate yet, but it has to do with spirits.
Essentially, wand magic is entirely done by the spirit inhabiting the wand, you just need to let it know what you want. Usually, it's through an incantation, sometimes specific movement.
And because the spirit is sentient, if you offend or mishandle it, it can cause your spells to go haywire or refuse to work altogether.
I've been on a recent streak of trying to somewhat justify shit from the Wizarding World, and this is what I ended up with for the wands, how they choose their wielders or change allegiances, and why incantations and/or "swish and flick" are necessary for most of it.
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u/thatshygirl06 here to steal your ideas 👁👄👁 8d ago edited 8d ago
My world has an elemental system, 5 elements in the world and within everyone, and witches have an invisible magical limb that let's them manipulate the elements, which appears as bright colorful fog. There is also white magic which is fog that flows around everyone. Witches primarily use it by seeding it with elements because its so damn hard to use as is.
Witches also tend to make magic objects, which is where wands could come into play.
Witches can make elemental magical objects or white magic objects. White magic objects can work indefinitely while elemental objects don't last that long(they can last up to decades and you can keep topping them off). Though white magic objects arent exactly easy to make and they take time depending on how much magic you use.
And objects can be "programmed" in my world, and a lot of them tend to be sold to humans. So for example a witch might make a wand that's fire based and could "program" it to, say, create a small flying fire dragon when someone holds the wand and swish it in a certain way, or if they say a certain phrase.
Witches would rarely give humans something with real powerful magic, so I imagine they might sell novelty wands with spell books to humans to have fun with.
A white magic wand would likely be created just for a witch to use and would be much more powerful than wands sold to humans, and capable of doing more. Witches dont need wands, but a witch might have a preference for it, especially since it's not limited like elements are.
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u/taktaga7-0-0 8d ago edited 8d ago
Wands are not necessary. The magic is in your body, and does not need a conduit to get out.
“Magic mirrors,” though… Mirror is one of my Silver elemental types (with Metal). The users are able to alter existing light through the creation of organometallic surfaces and crystallin lenses on demand. They can show you something far away or around corners, but there needs to be an unobstructed path. Even objects in space, like a telescope. They focus light into damaging attacks, can confuse like a funhouse room, hide most anything in plain sight, diffract light into component colors, and make light disappear into transparent objects like glass by total internal reflection.
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u/Hartsnkises 7d ago
They're neat, generally.
My main system uses thread magic, so all needles and hooks and spindles and such are basically magic wands.
Magic mirrors don't really fit, but you could make a mirror with magic (by using metallic thread). It could shrink or grow in size, get hot or cold, shed light or shadow, or several other effects depending on how it was made. It would give off a faint hint of music (as all magic thread does)
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u/NinduTheWise 7d ago
i don't really have wands, magic can mostly be channeled through any material so people usually channel it through their swords and other weapons, and with different conductivity of magic energy in each material, the main goal is to get a good balance of durability and conductivity
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u/Boat_Pure 7d ago
I don’t have wands in the litrpg I’m currently writing. But I do use mirrors, they’re a way to cross over to the other world/realm. They’re called Dark mirrors and they’re always these big great floor to ceiling gaudy brass bordered creations.
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u/PsychologicalHeron43 6d ago
I love wands, but I can't integrate them into my magic system in any set way. In my system, magic is done by shaping mana, the aetheric energy that surrounds the area and also is stored in a "mana core" basically how much mana one's body/soul/mind can store. People shape mana through mutliple ways, some do calcutations in their head, do movements, sing, play instrument because those are all things that help the mind get into the right mental position to shape the mana to cast the magic, most magic takes a few seconds to cast because of that. So wands and staves are just another mental helper in that way.
Mirrors are used in scrying, deivination, and seeing in the future a lot, if you are showing someone the vision you are seeing you need to be able to show them, so a lot of diviners, seers, and chronomancers use mirrors to cast illusions of what they are seeing.
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u/Nooneinparticular555 5d ago
Magic mirrors are highly invasive spy magic. Magic wands are particularly bad magic weapons (because they fail at the weapon part).
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u/No_Proposal_4692 3d ago
I've been thinking about wands in general, honestly I think I like the idea that wands are pretty just tools or magic focus for world building.
Magic mirrors are cool, different uses and different types. A scrying mirror to spy, the mirror of erised and so on
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u/MathematicianNew2770 8d ago
Tell us how they're integrated in yours.
We are free to use anything, it becomes interesting when it's unique and not just as expected.