An easy answer, and one that would not let Thomas fix the oncoming energy crisis in an afternoon, is just to have the magic be a way of forcing cells to use more energy and perform more, like a sort of magical adrenaline. It might cause tissue damage or other complications, but no matter what it will use more than the equivalent amount of un-boosted energy [due to increased inefficiency], and produce an equivalent amount of waste products [lactic acid, etc.]. It is still a massively MASSIVELY useful power, but at least then it is something explainable naturally and within the realm of possibility [and therefore game balance] It is only marginally more useful then being able to move around small to medium amounts of kinetic or thermal energy, in fairness.

YUS.

Well, the power comes in bursts right? I think the major drawback would probably by the time limit then. It's a power that only works for a very short period of time. She can make her legs faster just long enough to get out of the way,or she can make her arms stronger just long enough to pull herself over a hurdle. Have it so that she can only augment select parts of her part with one select attribute at a time (I think this was already established) for a short duration, and has to recast the ability every time it wears off. Then it doesn't become a matter of conservation, but of precision and timing. It leaves room for her powers to grow, since she's still young, and it fits with her character's role as an acrobat and performer. While she manages to make it look easy, in actuality it takes an intense amount of concentration and effort. Naturally, anyone would become exhausted due to the strain if they were to keep it up for too long. That said, I can also totally see Hector and Juliette becoming BFFs. He cooks, she talks. 'Nough said. Edit: Looking at Rex's post, there's no reason the two can't work in conjunction.

I could see the exhaustion happening continuously as she keeps doing it- being like needing to go to bed at the end of a performance from using so much energy at the beginning of her career, building strength and endurance as she got older. If she's been doing it her whole life, like her profile suggests, she honestly might start to feel some of the effects that Rex was saying... if you start working out too soon it hurts you in the long run, even without magic, that's a real life effect. I don't want to kill the fun cause she's an interesting character but I want to keep that in mind.

I'm not saying that it is long-term effects - lactic acid production is a short term thing that, until it is metabolized causes pain in the muscles due to respiration. My statement is that a body has a certain amount of energy available to it, and if she can use more than her body has then she breaks conservation of energy or there is some external magical force. What I am saying is that she uses her powers to force her mitochondria to anaerobically respire, causing a big surge in work done, but burning ATP fast and inefficiently.

Good lord, you guys explained it better than I could have! Thanks~ <3 But yes. I didn't imagine for Juliette to have some unlimited surplus she can draw from at will. Boosts or no, she gets tired like every other person and her energy depletes at a normal rate. I think "magical adrenaline" hits it on the nose; she does it in bursts because it gets taxing and prolonged use can have damaging effects on her body. That's where precision and timing becomes important, like Zurnt mentioned. She uses her magic sparingly and in conjunction with her skills as an acrobat to make the most of it. Haa, sorry I couldn't be as scientifically eloquent as Rex. X3 Edit: @rextremendum, I have a feeling that when Thomas talks science-y to Juli, everything will just go over her head and she'll come out of it with a headache. I wonder if he would get frustrated at her complete ignorance over the nature of her magic.

I feel like there should be a long term effect but more like in like a few years from now. I get she is literally creating and forcing a burst of energy but to push the body to that extent for a such long time will have an adverse effect on the body. And no worries, he lost me in that last sentence.

*whistles* Ill get a post up and backstory up after it so you guys can cut loose sorry for the delay.

Or in Star Trek terms, it's like getting a runner's cramp in return every time she uses her powers. It would also imply that she would need to eat like pro football player In order to maintain use of her powers. I wonder if she can subconsciously boost her digestion rate with the magic too. You wouldn't see the glow if she was enchanting her internal organs.

Wait, Sana, the way you're saying it you're implying that it is external kinetic force acting on the body in tandem with its natural movement, which is what I thought we were not doing. A great deal of anaerobic respiration will start to cause tissue damage if done too much, and it may kill cells naturally, but there will not be TOO much long term natural damage. Also, speeding up digestion would not fit with the "magical adrenaline" idea, but it would be a good thing to pick up. She may be able to do it subconsciously as a variation on the same spell, and not realize the difference despite there being one.

I'm guessing healing magic works in much the same way then. It uses the patient's own stores of energy to heal the tissue at a faster rate. As a side effect, they get the brunt of the pain and intense (possibly lethal) exhaustion. You could possibly also use your own body (or any bystander's) as a source of energy as well, given that you have that level of control over it. Dark healing magic... Heal somebody so hard they develope cancerous tumors... You could even theoretically grow tissue to attatch itself to solid objects. Like armor... Extraneous mutations not withstanding.

the issue is, rapid cell division is a very dangerous thing, and just telling cells to divide means certain cancer. "Good" healing magic would have to either prompt the body's pre-built directional systems to speed up to match the cell division, or understand exactly what is needed and be able to stop mutations before they spread too far in the duplication. We do not have enough knowledge in the game universe for the latter, and I have no idea how we would do the former without much much more knowledge. However, that is not exactly true, because we have established with Skittles that someone does not need to understand how a magic works, though presumably the person who "created" the spell understood how it works and somehow makes it work automatically on casting. Therefore, I would give the hypothesis that healing is currently only possible through ancient spells crafted by lost knowledge, or at least by scholars who have spent their entire lives trying to understand the way the body works and then turning that knowledge somehow into a spell.

It could be the diffefence between enlightenment and intent. The spell "intends" to do something, and takes the path of least resistance in order to bring about a result. Understanding the actual machinations of the spell could be an area of idle study for most, since they work anyways without delving too deep. That said, I imagine knowledge of the path a spell takes allows one to change the intent to be that much more specific, theoretically (and situationally) increasing the potency of the spell. It's the difference between casting Fireball and casting Delayed Quickened Empowered Fireball. Just speculation.

That hypothesis privileges spells with either intelligence, or at least analytical capabilities, as if some sentience drives them. We create a spell meant to "heal", but heal is a vague term. There are no specifics there, and therefore either it acts mechanistically or there is some overarching analytical power that either comprehends for us, or predicts possibilities and comprehends them enough to choose the best manifestation of power. The question then is, if spells are driven entirely by intention, then we can use them to fucking ruin the world. For example: I cast a spell with the intent to write out every single law of the universe in easy-to-understand mathematics. If spells are run by our own comprehension, this is impossible, but if it is run by intent as arbitrated by a higher power, it will produce exactly what I want, and that will rape this setting hard. Please don't give me that power.

See, this is why I do the rps on my book ideas. It gets me feedback and ideas I wasn't seeing because I get so flustered with the story XD But no, the road to hell is paved with good intentions so it isn't based on that. I think it would have to be limited by comprehension and honing your abilities. So just because you know how a spell should work doesn't mean necessarily that you can do it until you've practiced it. But yea, I get the no long term physical effects, I'm just trying to cover all the basis to make magic make sense. You guys are definitely huge helpers in that.

If you want me to help pick holes in your book, it is one of my very few talents, and we can do it better in places that are not this forum. However, I need to answer a few questions. Provided that at least some spells are cast via saying an incantation and sundry other requirements: What happens if someone misspeaks the incantation? What happens if someone does not know what a spell does, but casts it correctly otherwise? What if some of the accouterments fail but the incantation and intention are correct? How are new spells created? Is there a clear translation from intended action to incantation/actions? Is the language of magical incantations syntactical, and is it well understood? Can people speak in the language, and does it have any sort of power in and of itself? Is there a way to do everything needed to cast a spell physically and still not cast it? Does it require some control over magic, or is it able to be performed by any old luddite? Where does the energy that powers spells come from? Is it biological energy made from ATP and pushed into some hitherto-unknown magic-organ? Or is it something like direct matter-energy conversion, and a person loses weight when casting, or is it drawn from ambient matter/energy, or pulled from other theoretical universes parallel to our own? [my understanding of quantum theory is not excellent, I apologize] Can someone do more work than the energy present in their body is theoretically capable of doing, according to modern understanding of biology/quantum physics? we'll start with that, I suppose This is also assuming that spells can be manipulated by magical aptitude, or magic can also be done without incantation

I'm giving Twisted the authority to explain this.... he'll explain it later, he's making a character profile. He was helping me to word it but I'm brain dead and I can't follow his helping me explain it logically while trying to write it down. But a basic answer to what I saw was no incantions.

Right, I'll wait for the explanation before i ask more questions

I love the idea of a bunch old wizards sitting up in their ivory towers, pigging out on a huge buffet because they'll die of starvation otherwise. Hmm, maybe that's why every other meal in the Harry Potter universe was a feast?

I mean, who knows - I still don't know if there is conservation of energy, so they could cast a spell to give themselves more power for less than the power given, and subsist forever like that