i know the lightning symbol looks like a sun (which i only realized after your comment), but that was unintentional as i was trying to make it look like an electrical spark or something, and lighning bolt designs are kind of overused lol

i did originally try making a lightning bolt as a placeholder icon, but i couldn't get it too look right in pixel art

Wow I did not expect major air + minor water to be related to light or rainbows, that's really cool. Overall this magic system is quite unique, both in terms of abilities and symbols, thanks for sharing.

I don't know if you thought about this yet, but in whichever world this magic system exists in, what's the factor that gives people certain types of magic? Like, are you born able to use a specific type (perhaps based on genetics/your parents' type), or can you choose which one to learn later on? Also, are the magic types other than the 4 main elements on equal footing as them, like for example you can use storm magic without knowing either water or air, or are they more like subtypes and you need to know water or air or both to be able to use storm magic?

Btw don't worry about too many words, I like hearing about magic and lore. :D

i actually haven't thought about that much but i think it would probably be based on the natural element of your parents (though maybe you could also learn other similar types of magic as well)

for the other elements, this world is supposed to be made up of all 12 of them, so they would be seperate types of magic to the main ones, but you would be able to use very limited magic of the major component of it. like as an example with earth, metal, and plant magic; if you were someone with plant magic abilities, you would not be able to manipulate rock and stone as those are heavily linked to earth magic, but you would probably be able to manipulate sand and dust, and the same goes for metal magic. also, since earth magic is in between metal and plant, earth mages might be able to manipulate small plants such as grass or maybe metal in a dust form but not very much else

so yeah you can use elelment combinations without needing to be able to use the main 4 elements

Ohh ok. That's pretty interesting. Have you any idea what type of magic you'd use in this world?

uh not really... i guess plant or water could be quite cool. which one would you pick?

Probably either water, ice or mist/light

what do you think would make more sense for this magic system: being able to create the element out of nothing, or having to have the actual element near you to manipulate it. i'm leaning towards the second option but idk lol

also i had some more ideas:

you know how in some works it's common for a side effect of using fire magic to be your body overheating, well for this system i had the idea of it actually doing the opposite because you aren't just creating fire, you're taking the heat of one thing (the body heat of the user) and putting it into something else (summoning a flame). so maybe the fire mages of this world are born with a higher normal body temperature, and casting fires uses up that heat, making their body extremely colder. but also, to keep this from being able to freeze your body to death, maybe you can't create fire if you are too cold, which makes using fire magic have some drawbacks and an upper limit to how much you can cast it. but also, since your body temperature would be higher than average, maybe you could cast a small fire to keep yourself from being too hot. (fire magic making you feel colder doesn't sound right but i think it makes enough sense to work lol)

that would probably also be the case for magma and lightning magic too, and the opposite for ice magic (normally colder, using ice magic makes you hotter, being too hot means no ice magic)

what do you think would make more sense for this magic system: being able to create the element out of nothing, or having to have the actual element near you to manipulate it.

Personally, judging by how many types of magic there are and the different rarities of their respective elements, I feel like the first option would be better because otherwise lava and maybe storm magic might be pretty underpowered compared to the other magic types.

Like, unless you live near a volcano, you're not gonna be able to consistently use lava magic on a daily or even yearly basis. Many lava mages would need to travel pretty to get a taste of their magic, and if there's a fight between mages, chances are it won't be near any lava. But then again, that would depend on the world this magic system fits into- it could be very different from earth and have tons of lava/volcanoes around. Or a lava mage might be able to summon the lava from deep underground no matter where they are, depending on your definition of "the actual element near you".

As for storm magic, whether it would be underpowered or not under option 2 also depends on the extent of their powers, like can they control clouds and condensation or can they only use their magic when there's an actual storm overhead.

So imo both options could work but if you ask me option 1 would be more balanced for all magic types. Just my opinion though.

also i had some more ideas

That's an interesting idea, though would it still work that way for someone who uses one of the less "elemental" elements, like earth, steel, shadow, light/mist, or air? Like, do you know how excess of those types of elements would manifest for their bodies?

yeah i was thinking that too, like what would count as storm magic, and how would that work for light/shadow magic, etc. i guess the second option would work for having some type of cost to using magic (e.g. maybe to use fire magic, you need to carry coal or some other flammable material with you to use it, to make it feel more grounded in reality), but this is magic after all, so it doesn't really need to be believable.

as for the other stuff, i think each element should have it's own similar drawbacks to using it too much and have a limit. like obviously theres fire, magma, lightning, and ice already, but maybe for like air, air mages are like better at breathing or something, but using air magic too heavily makes you feel like you're holding your breath/choking, and not having enough air means you can't cast magic so you don't run out of air completely. i don't have many ideas for the other elements' "weaknesses" right now, but if you have any suggestions let me know

oh btw, to make it so that lava magic is actually usable, you don't need actual lava, just earth, and you can turn that into lava, which is why it has the same weakness as fire, just instead of heating any flammable material into fire it's heating earth until it turns into lava. though i guess lava is a lot hotter than fire so maybe lava mages have an ever higher normal body temperature that fire mages.

maybe i should look up the highest temperature your body can be at before your blood vaporizes....

and being extremely hot and then being extremely cold in a very short amount of time probably can't be a good thing

but again i guess this doesn't have to be realistic lol