How To Write Hard Magic Systems | Writing & Worldbuilding 

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It has soft elements, but it's definitely a hard magic system. It's not as hard as Fullmetal Alchemist, but it's definitely not a soft magic system.

@@RavensRants it is though. There’s not a lot of rules or boundaries. It’s all based on your innate talent and martial arts ability

@@RavensRants The only real restriction on it though is "Did you get the Bender Gene from your parents - if yes, for what element." That's 1 (maybe 2 depending on how you look at it ) limit and even then the line gets blurry with things like Sand, Mud, and Lava bending taking aspects of other elements into their own. After that its all down to the training and imagination of the Bender. Even most of the "limitations" of bending we learn in the series turn out to be false, and are just due to limits of the imagination of the user: Katara using sweat when there's no "water", Toph and her students bending metal when it was supposed to be impossible according to every earth bending authority beforehand, Hama discovering bloodbending by bending "water" inside living things when no regular water is around, Toph using vibrations in the ground to see and literally tell if someone is lying or not, all the way down to Earthbending somehow giving you the ability to extend your lifespan past that of a regular human (kyoshi living 230, Lao Ge living an even longer undisclosed length of time) . At that point its literally just making shit up that sounds like it vaguely fits the power set.

oh boy, yo two don't understand this at all, do you? Let me give you a little hint about why Avatar's magic system is considered hard. Can the Avatar bend space to create swords and blasts? No? Think about it. That's precisely why it's a hard magic system: it has clear-cut boundaries; fire, water, and earth. The characters must understand and obey those limits since they're not all-powerful. The fact that they can bend sweat and blood just shows that they haven't fully grasped the extent of their own magic system. That's why the reveal of the 'extra' bending disciplines is so exciting; it's a total game-changer in regards to their understanding. like the discovery of the atom, or the fact we spin around the sun, not vice versa. Now, let's talk about Gandalf. Can he bend space to create space blades and blasts? Who knows? He's a wizard, and no one is quite sure about all his powers. The guy is a literal angel in human skin, for crying out loud. Hence, LOTR magic is considered soft because its limits remain a mystery, and the rules it follows aren't entirely clear. all we know is that his power is limited by his body and some wonky angel rules. In summary, Avatar's extra bending disciplines make its magic system even harder, not softer."

@@gew393 Except there are rules. In the series there are four main elements: Fire, Earth, Water, and Air, with Energy bending as a special ability. No one but the Avatar can bend more than one element, and with each element there are branches beyond the base element (so instead of just bending Earth, an Earthbender can learn to bend lava, mud, sand, and etc.). In the show, they do show or explain how these abilities work (like how lavabending is the result of bending the molten rock), and in some cases they assume the viewer has common sense as to why certain abilities exist. Besides, a lot of the branching bending abilities are show to be rare, like lightningbending, the ability is either extremely dangerous or difficult to pull off