Leveling Up Your Character's Magic Skills Part 2

In Part 1, we covered the different ways your character's power can grow. Let's dive deeper into that. What does leveling up look like. It's the same as trying to figure out what your child character will be like when they're an adult later in the book or series.

So many factors contribute to the growth. It's different for every character, every book.

We'll use one of my characters from Chains of the Sciell. Most have explosive powers. Blea Carlton's abilities are quieter. The power in my Merging World series is energy from Darkness. The characters pull the energy inside themselves and use their bodies to change it into something else. The power sharpens all five senses.

Blae favors creating tennis ball sized energy bombs. His real gift is his power of observation and his strategic mind, which he inherited from his father. He's an excellent judge of character. Nothing escapes his senses. Blae has a devious side which people tend to forget about because he's so mild-tempered. He enjoys emotionally strangling people with their own weakness.

Let's put him in a scenario mentioned in Part 1. The Boss Battle. Blae's fighting a powerful opponent. He's throwing bombs. They're having no effect.

What now? He loses, he dies.

He could make the bombs larger. However, he's fighting in an underground cave. Also, larger
bombs mean using more energy. He'd run out of power faster. Blae never goes for the nuclear option. It's not his personality.

By now, he's been battling long enough to know the enemy's fighting style and the battlefield's layout. The enemy is powerful, yet slow. Blae's amazing at dodging attacks and taunting his opponents to make them angry and stupid.

Instead of attacking head on, Blae places a bomb trap around the cavern and pushes the enemy into it. He varies the depth of each bomb to throw off the enemy's footing. His trap could either drop his opponent down some deep hole or crush them under a pile of rocks. His power plus his sharp mind lets him know of any hidden chambers.

Leveling up Blae depended on:

• The scenario (Boss Battle)
• The battlefield (underground cavern)
• His current abilities (his power)
• His personality
• His strengths 
• The opponent 
• The power system

This battle would've turned out differently if Blae was fighting a rock monster. Another character in the same situation would've gone for using more power. It might've worked for them. 

It's similar to voice. How each character reacts to the same thing will be different. 

Becoming more powerful isn't just about this:

Though that can be awesome! One of my characters does quite of bit of that :) Leveling up is about a character getting closer to understanding their limits and their power. It can mean endurance, faster casting, being able to hold more power...

Now, say you want to evolve your magic system, which would lead to your characters leveling up.

In my series, the power evolved between Books 1 and 2 to protect the users from an increasingly dangerous world. The characters can now see a person's aura. If they study auras, they'll know when someone or something means them harm.

The world becomes so much worse between Books 3 and 4. Logically, the power would change again.

The Problem: Darkness has taken over the world. It feeds on negative emotion and traumatic past experiences. It makes people relive the worst days of their lives.
The Current Situation: People with powers have a "natural" defense against outside manipulation, but Books 2 and 3 show the defense can be broken far too easily.
Option 1: The power transforms the physical body to make it more suited to live in this new world (It's done that before).
Option 2: Most people with power have a core, an untouchable light within. This core could grow stronger to fight the Darkness. What about those without a core?
Option 3: The power is alive inside the body. It can taste this dangerous Darkness and strengthen the person's defenses against it. And we have a winner!!

Amazing how complicated and fascinating magic systems are!

If you have problem in your world building you can't solve, consider turning it into a blog post. It forces me to face the problem and look at it objectively. You'll be helping someone else.

Share a character or magic system you leveled up!

Leveling Up Your Character's Magic Skills Part 1

Pokemon, the game, came to mind for some reason. I know, total nerd moment. Thank Nintendo for bringing Pokemon to the near-front of my mind. Well, in gaming, you unlock new abilities when you level up. The post is gonna be extra nerdy. You have been warned ;)

Your magic user will do some leveling up. If your power source is alive, that'll probably do some changing as well.

Unless the character is like 1,000 years old, they aren't going to know everything about their powers in Book 1. Even then, some things about the system will remain a mystery. Think Harry Potter. There's a school to teach magic yet some things even the teachers don't know. Take Avatar: The Last Airbender, the cartoon not the movie. Toph, an earthbender, invented metalbending- something totally new. Earthbending has been around for centuries.

What are the ways you can level up a character?

Training
The character attend a magic school. They're someone's apprentice. They observe someone use they're power and copy that person secret.

Danger
Your character is put in a life-threatening situation or someone they care about is in danger. This doesn't just mean mortal danger. This could mean being kidnapped to be sent into slavery or to marry some evil warlord.

They discover a new ability to save a life. Take Toph for example. She was trapped in a metal box being taken somewhere she really, really didn't want to go. She needed to do something. Be careful. You might be tempted to make your characters go all Super Saiyan.

Try to avoid going the omnipotent route. Even if you've stated earlier in the story that your character has a lot of untapped power, don't make them so powerful they can easily solve any problem.

Boss Battle
If you're character survives a fight with a strong enemy, they will become more powerful. They could purposefully but themselves against a notorious baddy out of necessity or they simply want to defeat someone other people couldn't.

Sparring
This combines both danger and training. It's similar to a Boss Battle only the opponent isn't an enemy. I use this one often. My characters spar with someone, usually a stronger opponent. They need to dig deep to find a way to beat the other person because their usual attacks don't work. The stronger opponent usually fights like they're trying to kill the weaker one. They're not. It just seems that way to get the weaker opponent to take the battle seriously.

This can go real wrong if you have two inexperienced character practicing. An experienced person will know how to battle without seriously injuring their opponent. Two newbs fighting might end with some broken bones or someone being knocked unconscious. This might also happen in a strong vs. weak battle. The stronger one could make a mistake.

What if
This is similar to danger but the character's life doesn't need to be threatened. They need to solve a puzzle or they're bored. They try something new with their power and it works. In The Sciell, Vayle wanted to power an old generator. He knew Lifeblood (his power) was pure energy and it worked like electricity in his village. He never used Lifeblood to power technology. He tried using it to turn on the generator. He eventually got it to work. It didn't work for long, though.

Text
If your magic system is old enough, someone will have written a book on it. Or, an ancient civilization wrote instructions on the walls of a temple, cave, stone tablet, parchment...any material that lasts over 100 years.

A Guide
Continuing with the nerdy theme. In The Legend of Zelda, Link has a fairy that pops up to offer.. lets call it advice.

For non-gamers, you remember old Microsoft Word, when you started tying a letter, the paperclip appeared.

You could give your character a travel companion who knows the magic system but only gives the protag info they need at that moment. This might create some nice tension. The character wants some info but the guide doesn't talk.

Potion or Item
In the game, you can force your Pokemon to evolve by using certain items. You can also use items to boost a certain ability. A character would wear special gloves that raises their power 2 or 3 levels. Try to stay away from things that makes the character super powerful instantly. If you have an object that significantly raises their level, it shouldn't be easy to find or full-proof-- only the worthy can make the stone work. It could be temporary or have some side effects.


What are the ways you level up your characters?

Next time, we'll cover tips on determining what the power evolves in to. I'm a bit stuck on that. My power system needs to evolve between Books 3 and 4 of The Merging Worlds series and I don't know how it's gonna change.

Read Part 2!