r/magicbuilding•
pugselot

What is your favorite tropes for magic?

General Discussion

I guess title kinda self-explanatory enough, but I will write a little of what I love. Maybe somebody could even give examples where I can see my favorite tropes.

By far the most pleasant one for me - biological aspect. Especially if it is something artificially added to amplify or even give magic in the first place. There is one incredible good worldbuilding project on YouTube called Monstergarden - and I think it is perfect depiction of what I mean with this trope.

Another really common yet exciting thing is pacts or their equivalent. It is always interesting to see something new from such view. Also pacts are really good as theme catalyst, something like cost of power or can source be inheritly evil or not.

Also I love magic as scientific practice. I even made a post about it and it's very common trope I guess. What I specifically like about it is that magic can be studied by anybody. This fact alone creates whole bunch of questions like: how world exists where everyone is mage? Or if it is still rare thing, than why? How long one must study magic?

And last one is mainly from D&d - material components. I think there is a lot of different stories with similar concept. Basically alchemy is almost always have materials as necessity. But I specifically like idea of mages being limited not only to personal skill or knowledge, yet wealth and capacity itself. It works as great limitation especially when there is enough attention spent on making it important.

What is your favorite tropes for magic and why do you like them?

Posted Apr 6, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

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