for a world where magic is drawn from the land of dreams and powered by imagination, belief, and willpower, dragon ageâs use of magic seems... pretty standard, right? mages arenât just wildly doing whatever they can imagine, theyâre throwing around the same set of elemental spells as every other mage. spells often have the same names and similar effects throughout the series, used by different mages. so we can say this is a failure of imagination from the devs themselves, or we can have fun and work it into the worldbuilding. obviously i want to do the latter.
so what iâd like to establish is that a) mages are really in-world using these common spells and knowing them by their names i.e. they literally think âiâm going to cast winterâs graspâ and not just âiâm going to freeze that guyâ and b) they have very good reasons for doing so. and the main three reasons for using established, known spells would be:
efficacy. spellcasting in dragon age is, as i mentioned, about imagination, belief, and willpower. isnât it much easier to imagine an effect, and to force it into existence with your willpower, if youâve seen it done? i think this is probably one reason why getting a teacher for magic is so important. you want to see a spell done a hundred times before you can replicate it with the kind of confident willpower that makes it enforce itself on the world and do decent damage. (incidentally, i think this is also why elemental damage is popular rather than more inventive obviously magical styles; the elements can be observed and replicated, we know what to expect and to imagine. i think baby mages spend a lot of time looking at candles and mages in icy regions are better at ice and so on.)
predictability. âfriendly fireâ exists as a mechanic in these games to demonstrate that once a spell is cast, it is no longer in the mageâs control, and can cause harm they didnât intend. âfree castingâ instead of using a known spell could lead to even more unintended consequences.
resources. mages are reliant on their own reserves of magic (and occasionally lyrium or blood) to allow them access to the fade. they would know exactly how much a known spell will âcostâ, whereas âfree castingâ could cost anything and immediately exhaust them or push them beyond their reserves.
of course, none of this means that mages canât invent their own spells. after all, someone had to invent them in the first place. itâs likely something that mages often do once theyâve reached a certain level of skill, and i think itâs really fun to imagine. (a circle mage apprentice required to make a small, frivolous spell of their own as a project; a tevinter magister fashioning something new and flashy to impress their rivals; a dalish keeper regularly crafting fresh spells to suit their clanâs new needs.) loving the image of a mage excitedly making a new spell only to dig through the books and then grimace and groan as they realise some enchanter from the towers age already published a better version. i think there are lots of mages who try to branch out from the standard elements and so on, and find that it doesnât âcatch onâ because whatâs familiar becomes efficient becomes familiar and so on. i also think a mage who never invents their own spells could do perfectly fine
all this also doesnât mean that one personâs winterâs grasp is necessarily the same as anotherâs. i think it would be sooo fun if something always slightly changes about a spell as a new mage adapts it for their own, and for spells to become unrecognisable over the centuries as they keep passing between hands. that would also be a neat way to explain differences between versions of spells between games.
this is probably a pretty long-winded way to say "what if the things that mages do in front of us in the games are canon?" but i don't think it's said explicitly, and iirc mages don't use spells by their names in the novels. well, i think they should! and it would account for a lot of the combat mechanics here. and all of the spells could have origins and inventors and favoured practitioners and it would be beautiful. we could have newer spells and older spells... spells taught by some traditions and not others... spells with regional variations... my ideal is for a mage to cast walking bomb and for another mage to say âi do NOT know what that was but it WASNâT walking bombâ
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