There is nothing that turns me away from a fantasy story faster than have the magic system be ‘imagination’. It expresses to me a unique lack of care for the world the story is written in. Not only that but it is the most boring and disinteresting way of adding magic into a world. This is because it disengages the reader and offers no struggle to understand magic.
        
Imagination based magic is any magic that requires a degree of imagination or creativity to achieve the desired outcome.
Example:
 Character felt the mana flow down his arms and out his fingertips. He wanted to cast fireball a simple spell for beginners. But this was no ordinary fireball. Using mana he imagined pure oxygen being pumped into the flame inferno turning to a brilliant blue. Then with a flick of his wrist the fireball when flying off to the distance.

The example may not be the best writing but it should show some of my main complaints for the system.

1. No explanation for how everything related to mana happens. In many of these stories the lore for mana never goes beyond being a gift from gods or something inherit to living things. Be creative and don’t cop out. Make me interested.
2.The Mage problem. If magic is either widely available or very strong then it destroys any reason for other jobs to exist in a high-fantasy world. There would be no reason to have a large army in a world with mages in exception to maintaining general order. Magic needs to be either very rare(1/100,000) or very weak. In regards to magic being weak, it doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be strong but rather that it is poorly understood on a large scale level. Make the world believable to some level. Not all characters in the world are stupid. People learn over time.
3. Write like you feel it. People should feel the heat of their own fireballs. The chill of ice magic should numb the caster. Wind magic should kick up dust and blow people over. Casters shouldn’t have some shield over them from their own magic unless it is in their power set and skill level. Every spell should have an equal and opposite reaction of some kind.

For slice of life readers, you have no excuse for not exploring the magic system. In rare exceptions where the main character can ACTUALLY not use magic I can forgive this transgression. But for the majority of other novels. Why? If you don’t grow your characters through it then why have it? If you really can’t live without magic in your farming fantasy then just conjure up some magic seeds from a magic witch, magically.

Seriously, don’t have magic if you don’t intend to use it to a fuller extent.

Can you define what you mean by 'imagination based casting' ? I can make some guesses, but it's easier to have a discussion if we are all on the same page. 

I'm also curious by what you mean by Imagination based magic system. I have an idea of what youre talking about but i want to make sure its what I'm thinking.

I disagree. If the author wishes to focus on other parts of the story, but still have magic, I think it's perfectly ok. 

Totally depends on:

-what a reader is looking for in a story.
-what a writer is interested in writing about.

Many options on the table for everyone. Read what you like.  Write what you like.

One size will never fit all.  🤷‍♂️

While I wait for you to clarify what you mean, as requested by others before me, I’ll make a public service announcement that disinterested does not mean uninterested.

I generally agree with the sentiment mentioned above that the suitability of a magic system depends in large part on the story it appears in.

Edit:  This feels like a ChatGPT troll post.

Edit 2:  Oh they edited a bunch more into the OP

I read a book on RR that had an incredibly unique and deep magic system. The first one or two chapters were almost exclusively about the magic system and it just had so much potential. I really loved it. And then, for more than a thousand pages the author never touched it again. Small off handed mentions here and there, but never anything serious or anything that even touched that potential.
 
At the end of the day, that book wasn’t about magic. It was a simple slice of life. It could have been a LitRPG with skills, chanting, magical circles, imagination based or any other type of magical system and it wouldn’t have mattered simply because the book never explored it in any way.
 
 
Also, I don’t really think that there is a best or worst magic system. An author can do a bad job of writing it, but that’s not the fault of the magic system. Every system has its strengths and weaknesses and the author’s job is to use the one that would best suit the story they are trying to tell.

I think it depends on if it is a soft or hard magic system and if it is the focus on the story.  If magic exists in the world, but the story isn't about magic then a complex and detailed power system isn't going to be a good use of the author's time.  Their efforts are going to be put into what is important to the story.  But like others said, I don't think there is an inherently bad system, just a matter of execution.  It could be a hard magic system, but if written or used poorly it could be worse than a soft magic system.

I'd argue that imagination-based casting isn't necessarily a problem. It basically turns magic fights into battles of will in a sense.

Joh-yul-vis Wrote: Not only that but it is the most boring and disinteresting way of adding magic into a world. This is because it disengages the reader and offers no struggle to understand magic.

Oh contraire, this type of magic has the largest number of options to explore for how it works. Brains are complicated. Perhaps the trouble is that they are too complicated so do not get executed as well as more physical magic (like magic that uses herbs and plants?). But just imagine slapping an EEG on a witch to figure out exactly which brainwaves produce which changes in the magic. In my world incantations are sometimes used in spells, and they work not because the words matter but because the words prompt a certain thought which is required to communicate with the quantum elves (current theory in some universities but may be completely wrong). This does still require training and doesn't work as well for everyone (because people are inherently variable) but it's built on top of a world where people instinctively use magic in an imagination based way and most people aren't scientists (called sorcerers in my world).

To be honest, I'm not sure how you could have a magic system that isn't built on imagination at some point. If it's spells (incantations or actions), then where did the spells come from? How do new spells get written? Maybe a God, but Gods are fickle so where is the fun in trying to understand something that can be changed at the will of a god? I mean, there is stuff you can do with that that is interesting but it's a different type of story that doesn't lend itself quite so well to exploring the magic itself. And any magic that hasn't yet been fully understood is going to look like imagination magic. It's going to be instinctual. Physics was magic until it got developed enough, some of it still looks like magic. We knew how to run before we understood how muscles work.

Quote:Write like you feel it. People should feel the heat of their own fireballs. The chill of ice magic should numb the caster. Wind magic should kick up dust and blow people over. Casters shouldn’t have some shield over them from their own magic unless it is in their power set and skill level. Every spell should have an equal and opposite reaction of some kind.

I think this is often the case though, the bit I've bolded. It's magic, why can't fire magic come with an innate shield that protects the user? Especially if magic is used by children, otherwise you're going to get a lot of people dying young. Now, I will admit, I actually do have that in my world, where most firestarters don't make it to adulthood because they set themselves on fire and often kill their families in the process. So of course the ones that do make it to adulthood usually have learnt some level of fire resistance and targeted control.

Quote:For slice of life readers, you have no excuse for not exploring the magic system. In rare exceptions where the main character can ACTUALLY not use magic I can forgive this transgression. But for the majority of other novels. Why? If you don’t grow your characters through it then why have it? If you really can’t live without magic in your farming fantasy then just conjure up some magic seeds from a magic witch, magically.

This is just your personal preference. Some of my favorite stories are the ones that don't hyper focus on the magic. Ones where you get to learn about an entirely different world from our own through natural observation of events following a character who is from that world and to whom everything, including the magic, seems most ordinary. It is far too easy to just info dump magic explanations, much harder to weave a story where the magic is blended into the background, providing flavour rather than the meat of the story. Some famous authors who do this well include the likes of Gregory McGuire (Wicked series) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude).

If you aren't going to write a story that I would enjoy, based on my specific and personal preferences, then you shouldn't write anything at all.

Seriously, don’t have magic if you don’t intend to use it to a fuller extent.

There are thousands of stories on RR. Lots of different authors giving us many different types of stories. 

I don't think it's valid for anyone to ever say to authors: "You must do things my preferred way."

Just my opinion, and I'll leave it at that.

Much like other things in writing, the how and why is more important than the what. Magic, technology, leveling systems. They are interchangeable to an extent because they are all essentially dressing for the story, unless it revolves around them. It's up to the writer to determine how important they should be, and how they should be used.
Yes, it isn't always written well and doesn't always make sense, but that isn't the point. It's how it's used and why that matters.

Seriously, don’t have magic if you don’t intend to use it to a fuller extent.

C'mon, don't deal in absolutes. At this point, it just makes you sound like you are trying to enforce personal preferences on others.

This sounds like soft vs hard magic with a whole shovel of personal preference.

In my opinion magic is magic because it is magic. Hence I much prefer soft systems that keep the magic intact as compared to some hard systems that use actual numbers for mana and have spells with set costs and whatnot. They can, of course, make it interesting in their own ways, but since this seems to be about personal preference, that is mine.
I wouldn't even try to explain my system with any numbers or hard facts, because that is not how the system works. Because it does require creativity and imagination to make it go. The mages get a new sense and it is up to them to apply and use that to manipulate the world inside or outside. I can lead you through the process how for example Sylph goes from just randomly making puddles below her to manipulating liquid like strands of yarn inside of her, but I really couldn't tell you that the action takes 3kilomagicplops of energy.

The more hard explanation you offer, the easier it gets to just lose the suspension of disbelief because you realize the author has no idea that their realistic physic based system just doesn't work because physics doesn't want to play that way. Which is also just one example.

Point 3 is just about showing, not telling and good writing.

 

Joh-yul-vis Wrote: Seriously, don’t have magic if you don’t intend to use it to a fuller extent.

Dude that's like saying I shouldn't have a car in my stories unless I'm going to explain Newtons Law. I have other things to do with my wordcount than explain the local laws of physics. 

I actually prefer imagination based magic, for me, it creates more powerful emotional moments that would be ruined by technical details. Our bodies are more imagination based, we think where we want to walk and we walk there. We don't process the muscle movements and create loops and patterns and then chant words to get us moving. Unless you are over 90, then chanting whilst walking definitely helps.

But I think, write what you like and read what you like, there's nothing wrong with having a discussion about it but having definite statements like 'this writing is wrong' is unproductive and will come across as hostile.