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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rbingham2000" data-source="post: 1561498" data-attributes="member: 12947">Turning this back toward ways to make magic interesting again, I'd like to add this little tidbit:Every powerful sorcerer or other magic-user has to have a weakness, a way to break his or her power without relying on more powerful magic. Because let's face it, if you can't overcome a sorcerer by any means except magic items or more powerful magic, you're stuck with the unenviable task of explaining why the sorcerers of your world didn't take over long ago.It's much like superheroes in comic books. Until Superman's writers came up with Kryptonite and other limits to his powers, nobody wanted to read about his exploits because the odds were automatically stacked against just about anyone who came up against him -- and when you know that there's no way that the hero or villain can possibly be beaten believably, it makes for a very dull story.For an example of what I'm talking about, a powerful sorceress rules her frozen realm with an iron fist. Her power comes from a magic ring that she found several hundred years ago. The ring makes her immortal and unaging, and grants her the use of several terrible powers: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Her scream can shatter ice and cause avalanches from up to several miles away.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Her breath can freeze someone solid from ten paces or less, and when used in full force, can create powerful gusts of wind that can travel through the land and have the power to blow someone off a mountain or other precarious perch.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She can call up powerful ice storms against her enemies.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She can create monsters from the ice and snow to do her bidding.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She can control any animal that lives in the wilds of her frozen realm.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Her voice can be carried on the winds for miles.</li> </ul>In other words, this is one lady you do not want to mess with. But as powerful as she is with the ring, it also bestows upon her several very nasty weaknesses: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She thrives in the arctic cold of the realm that she rules, but she cannot travel to other parts of the world except during their winter months. If she tries to travel to other parts of the world any other time, she will slowly start to melt and die from the heat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She cannot be near any source of heat, like fire, or she will slowly start to melt as above.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the ring is ever taken away from her, she will revert to the age that she would have been had she never found and put on the ring. Because she has lived for several centuries with the ring, this will result in instant death as her body crumbles into snow.</li> </ul>Kinda sucks, huh? Well, as Barsoomcore so kindly put it, "them's the breaks." The price that this sorceress pays for her tremendous power is being cut off from any kind of warmth in the world and being more or less bound to her frozen realm.</blockquote>

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