Schools of Magic?

My upcoming roleplay is going to feature valkain, which is my version of magic. I have it pretty much worked out by now, but I'm stuck on what different types of valkain I should include. I'm going for a somewhat large variety here.

There are genera, and then there are schools. Genera are broad categories that the different schools of valkain fall into; I'm thinking about also including sub-schools, which are even more specific.

For example:

Genera: Nature
School: Elements
Sub-school: Fire

Any ideas? So far, what's above is all I really have.

Well there's all sorts of things.

Spirit
Time
Reality Manipulation (Illusionary)
Shadow
Light
Holy
Necromancy


And for Elements it gets a bit tricky. You can have four main: Fire, Wind, Earth, Water. But you can also combined two of the elements to create a new one; Ice for example, or lava, even storms. It'll go as deep as you can be creative about it.

The trick to combining magicks opens up endless possibilities; lightning is a discharge from air to earth, so could require mastery of two elements to manipulate. Allowing you base classes like the elementals, and advanced classes about combining them. Or maybe that's what they teach the kids in college instead of high school? If your school focuses on teaching magic to fight, you could also have PE, for building up stamina and such. But you could also teach kids basic fighting classes in case there's limitations to magic, or maybe they need to handle people without giving away they're mages.

You might also not focus on magic to fight, maybe teach magic to heal, maybe magic for household chores, construction work or administration, etc.

As for a bland category of sorts; your best bet is to find the wiki of some fantasy books or animé or superhero comics, and pick what you like from there. Combine it if you feel it is too limited or too magicks are too similar. For example, on Eos' list it is perfectly plausible to combine Light and Holy, or Light and Illusionary, or even Light and Shadow into one branch of magic.

There a lot of magical powers some I don't even know the names to them so I'll give just describe them to you and let you pick a name for them.

The abilty to absorb the composition of any material into your body, iron, nickle, jade, diamond, ect

Sound magicks also forbidden types of magicks. You could put revival magic that brings people back to life but only if they are masters of large vareity of magic.

Sounds like fun. I'll throw together some ideas for some genera and schools.


I. Nature
Elements, Flora, Fauna, Disease, Space and Time

II. Spirit
Astral manipulation, Divination, Summoning

III. Mind
Psionics, Mental Shields, Charms

IV. Form
Shape-shifting, Illusions

V. Transubstantiation
Alchemy, Enchantments, Wards and Protections

This reminds me of a FUDGE based system of magic that someone made. Called "The Graymarye." Maybe it will help, since it operates in a similar fashion to what your trying to acheive. Heres the link.

The Gramarye

A magic system. Where to begin? First of all, you have to ask yourself this question: do you want (and need) a strictly defined system of magic?

The thing is, it's extremely hard to create clear borders when it comes to the effects of various spells. Some examples:
1) Healing/resurrection spells. You can easily attribute healing to any of the following "elements": water, light/holy, life, nature, body. But isn't fire/heat also an important part of a person's life? What about the earth that sustains all life? As for resurrection, is it a manipulation of the body, of the soul, of the mind? All three? Then again, it seems like a divine magic, so it should be light/holy. But then we have phoenixes, who are reborn through fire.
2) Summoning/enchantment. A separate school of magic, a supplementary skill to be used in conjunction with others, or simply a term given to spells of various elements with a common effect?

Unless you have a very specific set of ideas of what magic should and should not be able to do, you will never be able to put it within the borders of a defined system.
That's not much of an advice, is it. XD Well, here's a system I designed (after reading Gramarye, I see they have a lot of similarities, but mine is simpler and was designed for a free-form rp).

The system separates the nature of a spell (Elements) and its purpose (Style). Spells are made by combining various elements and styles depending on their level of skill. Even with the same combination of elements and styles, spells can have a vast difference in their execution/behavior/use.
The three styles are Destruction, Conjuration and Alteration. The first one is self-explanatory. Conjuration deals with creating or restoring something - summoning, illusion and healing spells would fall under here. Alteration deals with altering existing objects - enchantments belong here, but some healing spells are also part of this style rather than conjuration, and some belong to both styles at the same time.
Elemental School consists of fire, water, earth and wind and is pretty self-explanatory. "Advanced elements" like steam, ice and lightning are products of the basic ones.
Clerical School consists of body, mind and spirit. Body is sort of a non-elemental physical manipulation magic, but it also has elements of "life" and "death" magics (such as healing or a curse that affects one's body). Mind magic deals with the minds of living creatures. Spirit magic deals with the spiritual, supernatural, ethereal and the emotional part of a sentient being.
Then there's the Arcane School, the countless elements of which are less elements in their own right and more specific combinations of other elements from the previous schools, created to achieve effects you couldn't otherwise. For example, nature magic is meant to manipulate plants and animals (or other non-intelligent creatures), which means its spells may contain any of the seven basic elements (though mostly water, earth and body).
Finally, there's the Sorcery School, which only has the "element" of Sorcery. This deals with pure manifestations of magic and opens pretty much unlimited possibilities of effects. Though this is a heavily restricted element that only a few can harness at all, not to mention use proficiently.

That is the basic set up of the system, at least.