[Bardos]

Usually the price of magic is fatigue: When you "call upon your magical powers" you get tired. I think this is pretty reasonable, for whatever you do (from fighting and running, to thinking and writing) you get tired; so why not when you're using your M. Powers also?

Of course, there have been other prices of magic in stories. One of them is the burn-out, that might happen to one of the Aes Sedai. Another is the well known can't-control-the-demon-I've-summoned stuff from Howard's or Lovecraft's story.

I've also heard some extreme prices of magic (at least IMO). Orson Scott Card writes in his book, How to Write Fantasy and Scifi, an exmple where the sorceror looses his/her limbs, or injures him/herself, when using magic (!!). Or someone in the world loses a limb, when a spell is cast. I thought this rather funny! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif But, anyway, it's an opinion -- and Card usually writes scifi, not fantasy, I think.

So, have you any more prices of magic to add? Or an opinion about them? Or something, anyway?! http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[jbcohen]

In Margret Weis and Tracey Hickman's Sovereign Stone trilogy there is a cost of magic, but only the evil magic. In this case the spell caster must endure boils that itch and will eventually kill the spell caster.

Dragon Lance's famous magic user Raistlin has to constantly study his spell books because each time he uses a spell it is erased from his memory and must be re-encoded in his memory again. This is why Dragon Lance magic users usually carry daggars to defend themselves if they run out of spells to cast.

Terry Goodkind's spell casters must exert a certain amount of energy, depending on the complexity of the spell. When they run out of energy they can cast no more spells. See Terry Goodkind's latest book Faith of the Fallen, when a female spell caster uses all her energy in one spell.

Harry Potter's spell casters take a lot of mental agility to master spells and include it in there repertoire. Harry has to go to classes to learn the spells and some are harder than others to master.

[Penumbra]

In the Arabian Nights tales, some sorcerors have to sacrifice a part of themselves to achieve certain effects. It seems reasonable that to go against nature, there ought to be a payment of some kind. In my fantasy, Furnace, scheduled for release in the spring, the being responsible for human spontaneous combustion suffers considerably due to the magic he has invoked.

[Sojourn]

Guy Gavriel Kay's book Tigana has an interesting 'price to pay' for magic. Spellcasters must cut off two fingers from one hand in order to cast spells. Whilst this gives them their magical power, it also marks them for prosecution because in Kay's world, magic is forbidden and punishable by death.

[Elessar]

methinks the can't-control-the-demon-I've-summoned was mentioned in Goethe before Lovecraft et. al, and of course in myths and legends, and other stories, even before that ;-) Just a thought :-P
(Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling)


-- Elessar

[Alucard]

Sacrifice, usually human, though sometimes might be a goat or pig (or just animals in general) are a price. But now that I'm thining of it, it might be inetersting if using magic took time from your life. Maybe, per spell, you'd lose a month of your life, or depending on the power of the particular spell, you'd lose more or less. Kind of like smoking, only more "magical". http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif Someone may have already done this, though I've never read it anywhere. Maybe I should write this down. . .

[Keziah]

Like Raistlin in Dragon Lance the magic users in Joel Rosenburgs books loose a spell after the have cast it and have to then study it again to get it back. Except the clerics who have to pray to get them back.

[Bardos]

Actually, the magic system in Dragonlance (the memorization of spells) is taken from the D&D game. And the creators of the game took it from Jack Vance's novels.
Generaly, I don't think it is so "realistic" (if you can say that about magic!). For, how can you study a spell, know it, then cast it, and all of the suddent, forget it?! It just doesn't seem right, IMHO...

[Liselle]

Well, maybe it is like having something and then launching it at somebody - you have to pick it up again for using it newly.

Ähem, I know, this is not really part of the topic, but I wanted to point out the idea of Eddings - in the scene, where Garion first uses magic he throws a stone and gets stuck into the earth because he had not thougt of pushing against the weight of it - I think that's a quite good idea.

[wastra]

In many books, the rituals required to use magic are so elaborate and involve such rare items that they cannot easily be done.

Honestly, magic is my least favorite part of most fantasy worlds. It is simply too arbitrary, and often unbalances the natural order of things. Being a student of history, I know that a very powerful magic user is not likely to live in a hut in the woods when they could have great influence otherwise. Sure, you can write it into the story to make sense, but it often seems too cliche or pre-fabricated.

If there were only one or two powerful magic users in a realm, they could hardly escape notice. If there were many, the relative influence of the caste would be much greater than many authors give them credit for... back to the "realism" idea in fantasy again, I suppose.