>>96350213
Eh, the Warham way of doing it works pretty well instead.

The correct way of using magic takes longer than humans even live to learn. Which isn't a problem for Elves. Except humans are too often of the opinion they don't mind burning themselves from the inside out because they don't plan on living past 30 anyway. So who cares about correct? Burn bright, blow up the elven mage of 500 years of practice, and drop dead on the spot as a husk that looks like it was doing crack daily for 50 years. It's fine.

The thing that concerns me most about magic is simply it's interface. Here is the basis for my thinking. Even if we say imagination can become reality just from wanting it enough, inevitably a real phenomenon requires too much information to implement. How do we translate intent to reality, then? A woodworker has carving tools to make their intent a reality. Starting from a wood block. What does a mage have? Mana? Mana is just an abstraction of the same [work] energy required to accomplish anything. Be it pushing something up a hill or electricity turning on a lightbulb. We need something for that work to apply to.

Something like The Elder Scrolls involves messing with reality's own understanding of itself. Much like our world, phenomena rolls downhill. That is, to most effort to least effort. If you make something else require less effort than what it's already doing, that happens instead. This also gives magic it's edge of chaotic danger. While technically the same action gives the same result, your intent is being applied indirectly. If you flip the wrong switch, you'll get whatever that switch handles. Not what you wanted. The most common, and closest to reality, is use of spirits. That is, you either convince or coerce some nonhuman entity in to doing what you want. A fire spirit can make heat or flame because that's what it does. No different to your dog's ability to dig up your garden because it was bored. It's just one of it's normative functions. Something like Dungeon Meshi uses this system. Gnome magic convinces. Elf magic coerces. Gnome magic is less precise but needs far less mana. Elf magic is precise but needs far more mana. A simple system to understand. Since it's no different to paying a guy who's 6'9" to go beat people up for you. Your part in this is being rich enough to afford his services.

There's also stuff like the weave for DND, but who cares about that?