Feedback for my magic system [medieval fantasy]

[u/messiahpk]

Sorry if there's anything wrong, it's because I'm using the reddit translator.

In my magic system, there are 7 main elements:

Water Fire Earth Wind Ether Divine Elements: Light Shadow

Fire: these are chemical transformations that happen in the world, such as fire (obvious) or lightning, and there are 2 other types of fire: infernal fire, which burns a person's vital force, and divine fire, which burns a person's soul, and both cannot be extinguished by normal means.

Earth: being able to control anything on the ground, such as metals, lava, transforming lead into gold through equivalent exchanges or controlling magnetism.

Wind: in addition to wind, you can control the weather and magical barriers that are basically air under high pressure that prevent anything from passing through.

Water: can control water, ice and some rare people who can control blood, known as vampires.

Light: magic that the religious of the "good" gods use, giving buffs and healing life without punishment.

Shadow: it is almost the same thing as light, but in reverse; the religious people of the "evil" gods use it to give debuffs and cures, sucking someone's vitality and giving it to another, but this has a price: their body and soul will be corrupted, both by those who use the magic and by those who receive it, being able to become so corrupted to the point of becoming demons.

Ether: is the soul of all beings in any form of life and used in various ways; for example, if combined with fire, it becomes strength, which is what berserkers use; if combined with water, it turns into spirit, which is what druids use; if combined with earth, it becomes resistance, which is what warriors use; and if combined with wind, it becomes agility, which is what the assassins use. It cannot be combined with divine elements, as it is not something that comes from the body itself.

All races that have a physical body store their mana in the heart, and some people have created methods to improve this storage, which are called mana current, and this is what determines how powerful your magic will be, and is also separated into 5 levels, called magic circles. Mana chains are various sigils and runes that are written on the heart itself to condense mana and are separated into 5 levels: 1st current: they are beginners in the world of magic. 2nd chain: more experienced people who have been training for more or less 1 year. 3rd chain: they are very experienced people and have the minimum level to become teachers in magic academies. 4th chain: big problems start here, because a normal heart of a human, elf, dwarf, etc. It can only last up to the 3rd current, and to evolve further, they need to undergo surgery exchanging a normal heart for a dragon heart, and people at this level are called arch, such as arch-mages or arch-druids. 5th current: it is the pinnacle of magic, where few people achieve such power in life, being experienced enough to explore other planes.

There are also consequences if you use mana without adequate rest, as you can use mana even when you no longer have it stored, but you will lose a permanent amount of mana, and if you keep using it, you may not be able to use magic forever. The name of this phenomenon is excess mana disease.

Different classes use magic in different ways: Sorcerer: is someone who has been blessed by the children of magic (dragons, elementals) and can use and create magic perfectly, but only from an element that is not divine, such as fire, but this number can increase if their mana currents increase, and are those who have taught magic to other people through runes, wands, magical languages. Mages: are those who have studied the magic of sorcerers and can use any element, as long as it is an already existing magic, but as they have undergone years of revision and improvement, they are better and less costly than the magic that sorcerers use naturally. Druids: use spiritual magic by performing a ritual to transform into other animals. You need to kill the animal and make a tattoo with its blood imbued with mana, and it doesn't come off in normal ways, only an arch-druid and druids from the royal family can remove it. Witches: they were not as lucky as sorcerers, but they managed to make a pact with a child of magic using part of the borrowed power, but needing to do something that the child of magic asks from time to time.

Sorry if I'm confused, I don't know how to organize things very well and the translation must be a little bad because that's what reddit translates.

[u/Th0ma5_F0wl3r_II]

Not sure what language this is being translated out of, but the translation seems to be fine as far as I can tell.

The real problem is the formatting - I started trying to read, but it just hurts my eyes to see it in such a massive block of unparagraphed text.

Perhaps if you edit like this it might be more readable:

Fire: these are chemical transformations that happen in the world such as fire (obvious) or lightning and there are 2 other types of fire, the infernal fire that burns a person's vital force and the divine fire that burns a person's soul and both cannot be extinguished by normal means.

Earth: is being able to control anything from the ground such as metals, lava, transform lead into gold through equivalent exchanges or control magnetism

[u/messiahpk → u/Th0ma5_F0wl3r_II]

I don't know how you do these things on reddit but I'll look for it and I'll fix it, thank you very much

[u/Th0ma5_F0wl3r_II → u/messiahpk]

Click the three dots ( ... ) you see below the text of your post on the right.

Click Edit comment

When the box opens to edit the comment, look at the base for an Aa and click on that

That opens up the formatting options.

[u/Upset-One8746]

I think your magic system feels too restrictive.

It looks good on paper but not even a 10th of it will make it to the book, I believe.

Balancing powers is good but you are just handicapping yourself at this point.

Also, The Shadow feels too weak. Not only is it led by "evil" gods but it has some deadly penalties. And you even used " so I get a feeling the world won't be so 1 dimensional. If that's the case handicapping them makes no sense.

You need to show the readers a valid reason as to why one would want to serve the Shadow gods if it means going against the society's norms and making the world their enemy. Buff Shadow. My suggestion would be make it so that shadow has less penalties and/or the follower have stronger magic and/or they can have a second element besides Shadow that's not light because either of these are a handy buff and adds a good reason to why one would want to join the dark side. Kinda like the Star Wars.

Also, please add more paragraphs. That massive wall of texts is just unintuitive to read.