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==Rules== No Self-Deception Rule: You can’t trick yourself into thinking that you are able to will magic, because your subconscious will generally know when you’re trying to lie to yourself, and therefore won’t believe your conscious mind. This is not a hard and fast law, only a rule; but one has to use the right methods to do it, often involving help from others. Also called the Self-Derogation rule. Credulity Rule: People who are more credulous and believing, and thus who more readily believe that magic is possible, have a less negative effect on faith and thus make it more possible for magic they are concerned with, to happen. Such people who are more believing that they can will magic, are more likely to succeed in exactly that. Esteem Rules: This is a grouping of similar rules: Self-Esteem Rule: People with high self esteem will be more capable of altering reality, as they are more likely to believe in themselves. Need-Fulfillment Rule: People who are missing some of their psychological needs and wants - for example, if they are starving, or are uncomfortably cold - will generally have less-than-optimal confidence in themselves at the moment. Of course this could change quite quickly depending on the situation. Locus of Control Rule: People who have an internal locus of control - people who believe they and their actions control of themselves and their environment - will be more capable of altering reality. Depressed people for example tend to have external locus of control and make for poor mages. Narcissism Rule: People who are narcissistic and believe that they are superior to others, are more likely to win in a ‘contest of faith’ against someone else, and thus can shape reality to their will despite the counter-faith of others. Likewise for faiths and religions and practices whose practitioners believe theirs to be above those of others. Limiting Rule: Since you know that greater acts of magic are rarer, your subconscious tends to think that grander are more likely to be beyond your reach. Hence, your subconscious is less likely to believe that you will succeed. Confirmation-Contradiction Rule: Contradiction Rule: Magic will fail if the person working it subconsciously realizes that what they are doing in trying to work their magic is incorrect - such as an incorrect incantation, or an error in the doing of a ritual. The opposite - the Confirmation Rule - is also true: if the person working the magic subconsciously believes that all the steps are being taken properly and all the requirements met, then their magic is more likely to succeed. The confirmation rule is the primary reason for all the more-difficult methods of magic-working; their very difficulty empowers their users. As such, it is significantly harder to will magic just by thought than to do so with an incantation; which in turn is significantly harder than to do so with actions; which is significantly harder than to do so with rituals. And this is also why it is easier to work magic when certain conditions are met, such as having certain staves or robes; or using certain ingredients; or cooking potions in certain ways. Extenuation Rule: If you fail at magic, but can provide yourself a good excuse that your subconscious will believe, then it won’t have as much of a negative impact on your faith as per the feedback effect. The downside is that if you are aware of this excuse, the better the excuse, the more likely that excuse will cause your magic to fail in the first place. Also called the “good-excuses rule”. Similarity Rule: If your paradigm involves pigeon-holing the full span of possible magic into categories, and fully believe it, then success and failure will only reinforce the category it belongs to, without affecting the others . ie, “fire magic and water magic are totally different”, if you fail at fire magic you still have a shot at water magic, but if you succeed at fire magic you’re not sure you’re any good at water magic, vs “fire magic is just like water magic”, if you fail fire magic you can’t use water magic either, if you succeed at fire magic you can also use water magic. The more you pigeon-hole, the more focused the benefits and penalties of the feedback effect become. Success and failure of any one means or ends are conveyed to similar means or ends, the less so the less similar they are; so if you use a staff and fail, you’re more likely to fail on using a wand but less so if you throw away the rod altogether. Also called the “pigeon-holing rule”.