Can I plug a loophole in my magic rules without rewriting the whole novel?

Question

I've gotten feedback for a complete draft of my WIP fantasy novel. Overall it's looking good, but a couple of friends noticed a significant loophole in the system of magic I use in the book. The book introduces the basic rules of how magic works in my fantasy setting. Without making this too specific about my particular magic ruleset, reviewers liked the magic system, but these two figured out the same basic loophole, which basically makes it possible to gain a ridiculous amount of magical power (way beyond anything anybody has in my book, and certainly way beyond what my protagonists have).

I might be able to find a small tweak to the rules that could close the loophole. But if I don't find something simple, easy to explain, that makes sense with the rest - is there anything I can do to solve a major flaw in my magic system, without needing to rewrite the whole system and novel from the start?

Answer 1

Consequences.

That something is possible within a system doesn't mean it's a good idea. You can drive your car 180MPH on public roads (if the speedometer labeling is accurate), but if you do you'll soon be getting used to a bicycle. You can subsist on nothing but Big Macs and Coke for a year, but you may face medical problems. You can make a deal with the devil for great reward in this world, but you'll probably find yourself on the receiving end of an exploit and you'll be handing your soul over much sooner than you planned.

In the case of your magic system, then, the following could be used to prevent use of the loophole (or make for interesting stories when people do it anyway):

• an authority that will do something bad to you if you try it
• a great personal cost (health, sanity, related magical powers, a curse, whatever)
• a correction factor in the magic system itself; magical forces will compensate for the loophole exploit in a way that will make the exploiter unhappy

Answer 2

Novice: Master, if I understand correctly, it looks to me like if we do [insert loop hole] that we could eventually gain unlimited power.
Master: Yes, that would be the case and in the early times of magical exploration many magic users tried this. All of them disintegrated. You see, because of the [insert closure of loophole] that means that beings in this realm cannot harness more than [insert maximum level of magical power].

I can't remember where I first read the phrase, possibly Science of the Discworld, but essentially this is "lies to children". You first tell them that gravity is 10 ms^-2 and then when they are better at physics you explain that gravity is 9.8 ms^-2 and then when they learn some more you explain that gravity is actually variable dependent on how close you are to a body.

So cover up your loophole by saying that what has been previously explained is an over simplification.

Answer 3

The same solution as every decent DM has to Pun Pun.

You Are Not The First Who Thought Of It. And the one who did think of it first really doesn't like competition.

They are a background god, one who avoids spotlight and acts following own motives, rarely heard of. You rarely hear of them in particular, because the moment you think of a viable way of gaining means to beat them, you draw their focus to yourself, and die a very gory death. So, my advice is, don't think about it.

Answer 4

Why plug it? Have the loophole pointed out or discovered in the epilogue. It can be discovered by the bad guy, or by an innocent who is easily captured/corrupted by the bad guy. Presto: instant sequel!

Answer 5

Religion, time and blackmailing

Have your world feature a religion that forbids the use of certain kinds of magical practices that would use your loopholes. The in-universe explanation would be that the church or whatever institution you want feared that people were too powerful and therefore uncontrollable, so they invented reasons to not do this thing.

They also changed the education so that new mages wouldn't find out about this or are trained to avoid situations that would lend themselves naturally to exploitation of this loophole. If every authority you knew said "Don't do this, you will die!" then you won't do it - even if it wouldn't change a thing.

If someone still tries to do this and succeeds he will probably talk about his great discovery. Which will lead to someone important hearing about a wizrad that will soon be uncontrollably powerful. Powerful people don't like people that are far more powerful than them and not under their control by other means. Either they will swiftly be executed or you could blackmail the wizard into following the standard rules and keeping quiet about his discovery if he doesn't want his family to suffer.

I first heard about this method in The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan.

The wizards have a certain school that teaches everyone little magic tricks that use their life force. Wizards are problematic because their life force violently explodes when they die. But for some reason there are very, very old graves nearby and nobody knows what that's about, because there is nothing left after a wizard died.

Later you find out that somewhere else people still know how to absorb the life force of other people. Basically the master teaches the student and therefore gets a regular supply of their life force, absorbing parts of their magic through open wounds/their blood. This way they become incredibly powerful, especially if they have a lot of students.

Normal mages are nothing against these people and once they find out that the first group has forgotten how to use this magic because they thought that "absorbing other peoples life force is dangerous and cruel" they quickly attack - and nearly wipe out the first group. Except for the main character of course.

By using a method like this you can explain the loop hole and even use it for social interactions about why someone uses this loop hole or not and what the problems are with it. It gives you more variations and always an easy way out like "Don't do it - you will get more problems than you can solve". Which the main character does not necessarily have to follow, leading to the next story arcs where he has to figure out how to clean up the mess he created by using this loophole.

No need to close the loophole - just place something in front that says "Loophole ahead - be careful!" and let your main character/villain/... be everything but careful.

Answer 6

In a series of urban fantasies that I read in the last couple of years (and I really wish I could remember the name), people who got too much magical power became unworldly insane. This was called "wizzing out." Most of the time they were harmless people who acted like stoners. When it got bad, they were very dangerous to be around.

They did have their power, they just could only access a fraction of it normally. In other world, huge power, but not enough sanity to control it.

The main character knew two of them, and visited them occasionally because they could use some of their power and had knowledge.

If anybody else has read these and remembers the name, please add it to the comments.

In the "Laundry Files" series by Charles Stross, doing magic in your head was bad because it attracted the "little eaters", microscopic extra-dimensional beings that would appear inside your brain and eat a brain cell or two before leaving. This was called "K-Syndrome" which resembled a prion disease. Before the advent of computers this very much limited the power of sorcerers, which is why we think they don't exist.

There were a few ways to get around this. Becoming a vampire (and his version of a vampire horrified even me) was one way to prevent K-Syndrome. These PHANGs (since the Laundry is part of the British Civil Service, they have committees and committees create acronyms) can increase in power without worrying about K-Syndrome, and they have most of the other advantages/disadvantages of vampires (don't age, are very strong, require blood, and burn up in sunlight).

Answer 7

Seems to me this could be a "Feature not a Bug" situation if played right. If two individual beta readers have pointed out this "loophole", if it's not too broken a system, you now have an area of exploration for your sequel story to this. A new antagonist who loophole abuses magic and requires your hero to step up their game.

Take the "magic system" of Avatar the Last Airbender. We establish early on that there is a subset of individuals in each nation that can bend one of the four classical elements, only the Avatar can bend two or more, ect. From there, the rules are expanded naturally. By the time it is demonstrated (mid season 1) fans are already wondering if Katara needs to have line of sight on water in order to manipulate and is proven true. The fans can then slowly turn the idea of "Can a waterbender bend water in a closed system, like a pipe" by the time we get introduced to Plantbending in early Season 2. By the time we have gotten over that, we are ready to accept that if you can bend plants could you bend animals... and we get our answer to that in season 3.

Use the progression of loop hole abuse to raise the stakes.

Answer 8

The intriguing thing about magic is that you can imagine being able to do things that you cannot do in real life.

But characters that can do anything are exceedingly boring. What drives a plot for me is the limitation that the character has to work under. The story of an all-powerful god would be boring and short:

"He did anything he wanted."

So you do need a limitation to make magic interesting. And that limitation must not be a random "plug to a loophole", it must be constructed as a foundation of the world and a defining element of the plot.

(The story of the all-powerful god might have an interesing sequel: "After centuries of this he got bored and killed himself / gave up his power to life as a human / turned mad / ..." The limitation here is boredom. This gives the story something that makes us interested.)