Check every spell and power against the laws of your magic

You decided that magic always costs something and the dead cannot be raised, then forty spells later one of them does both. Here is how to write the laws of a world as rules a list of powers can be checked against, with the exact offenders named.

Why this works

Magic feels believable because of its limits, and limits get broken by accident when powers are added one by one. Written as rules that every power is run through, a broken limit is named at once, and the writer can change the power or the rule on purpose.

When not to use it

Skip it for soft magic that is meant to stay mysterious, where the wonder comes from nobody knowing the limits. Rules written down there only invite readers to hunt for loopholes. Keep a few themes in mind instead.

In the full entry

• What to build, step by step
• Starting values and the reason for each
• 3 common mistakes and the fix
• A diagram of every state
• 30 lines of example code with 4 checks that pass
• How your AI shows you that it works

Say this to your AI

Use the Spielerando entry "Check every spell and power against the laws of your magic" (read_entry magic-rules-that-the-spell-list-must-obey) in my game. Build it step by step, and show me how you checked that it works.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP