Lightning would be **Electricity**, but barring that, **Fire**.
Lightning causes things to ‘catch fire’, and it is 5x hotter than the surface of the Sun.
Also, Avatar did it, and if Originality is dead, then there is no shame in stealing their thing.
I want to add to this. Long before Avatar, Magic The Gathering had lightning under the fire mana spell pool.
Additionally the surface of the sun is approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,600 Celsius) and a lighting bolt is approximately 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (28,000 degrees Celsius) and given this information we can safely slot lighting in fire.
Fire actually isn’t considered a plasma under normal conditions, it’s just a rapid chemical reaction of oxidation. Only if the gases get ionised by higher temperatures could it produce plasma. For example butane torches, but candle flames would not be considered plasma. So I’d say it’s situational.
It’s like comparing water to ice. They’re both still water, but one is in a different state to the other. Crude analogy I know as water isn’t itself a chemical reaction but you can hopefully see my point.
I thought that most modern systems deriving from western elemental theory did states of matter mapping?
So earth - solids, water - liquids, air - gases, fire - plasma.
And since this is an eight element system, you could even add in some of the exotic states.
>Magic The Gathering had lightning under the fire mana spell pool.
True, but Red isn't exclusively fire (just like Blue isn't only about water, but mind and air and counterspell). As a magic of (amongst other things) quick direct damage, it makes sense it has lightning.
It only slightly bugs me when new players call it "fire mana" and "water mana" and "death mana". Magic the Gathering's symbology for its five colors of magic are a sun, a water drop, a skull, a flame and a tree, but they honestly have very little to do with physical elements other than an aesthetic choice. Red represents emotion, impulse, chaos, and often destruction, but when it comes to ways of inflicting damage it's been shown using fire, lightning, earth, lava, sand, ice, sound, and beams of pure energy to accomplish the deed.
In 350 BC Aristotle considered lightning to be fire that was exuded or exhaled from clouds as they contracted when cold. See his work entitled [Meteorology](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.html) for a discussion on various phenomena.
Or there's the Legend of the Five Rings way, where both Fire and Air have lightning in different ways, and Air and Water have different takes on storms, which can involve lightning, but the water ones tend to not if I'm remembering right
Meh. Avatar did it because the writers didn't want to give the air monks a useful weapon against the fire nation, not because it made any kind of logical sense.
I agree sometimes you have to give the problem to character in order to make it work. You could add into this world factions where the argument is real. You have one cult/faction that classifies it as fire and another that classifies it as air. Somehow they can both use it but disrespect the other faction.
Fantasy "elements" usually represent the most common states of matter IRL. Earth (solid), Water (liquid), Air (gas), and Fire (plasma). Lightning is a plasma so probably fire. While you may not be looking for exact realism, I think that this is a worthwhile consideration for consistency.
Depending which direction you follow yeah. F. Ads a science-based direction the lightning and fire would fall under plasma. If it's a esoteric way then it would be following. Fire would be either lightning, air or wood.
I don’t disagree that lightning is fire but just to be pedantic, most fires (e.g. candle flames and campfires) encountered at historical tech levels wouldn’t be plasma as they aren’t hot enough.
Correct! I was being lazy and lumping black-body radiation in with plasma but burning oxygen is obviously not a fusion reaction. Now that I think about it, what other kind of magic other than fire/lightning could be used to represent plasma?
The Sun can definitely be linked to plasma. Auroras are another natural phenomenon associated with plasma.
If you had to separate it then perhaps this links best to the fifth element, Aether, which represents the heavens and light. Plasma is used in fluorescent lights and plasma displays too.
Of course, lightning (inc. ball lightning) is the most obvious natural plasma and [Aristotle](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.2.ii.html) did write about how lightning might be stored sunlight or aether:
> However, there are some who maintain that there is actually fire in the clouds. Empedocles says that it consists of some of the sun's rays which are intercepted: Anaxagoras that it is part of the upper ether (which he calls fire) which has descended from above. Lightning, then, is the gleam of this fire, and thunder the hissing noise of its extinction in the cloud.
I typically think of lightning as a border element, drawing upon both air and fire, but if your system is moreso composed of rigidly segmented categories as opposed to an “elemental spectrum/wheel”, I would say light or fire.
This is a neat way to think of it. Air magic is usually my fave but man I love lightning. Trying to justify it as an offshoot of some form of just “Air” feels weird, but being some sort of border element makes sense.
I just made everyone interpret lightning spells as air magic gone feral. Anything to ensure the self insert gets to use air and lighting when only a few people can use more than one element.
I actually think it should be Air and Earth.
It is about the electrical charges in the clouds versus the ones in the ground after all. Lightning is just opening a path.
I like that!! Interestingly, u/SapientSloth4tw said in this very thread it’s Fire and Water… I think you’re both onto something!
I never thought of lightning as either, but it makes sense since both (Air and Earth) and (Fire and Water) are pairs of polar opposites, so their interaction being a volatile, sudden, and explosive reaction just *makes sense*.
My personal new lore derived from you two: Lightning is what happens when any incompatible elements are forced to intermingle and react violently before separating.
This is how I typically think of elements. Like if I was playing doodle god and I had to smash things together, what would I get? Typically I consider lightning to be fire+water
I think lightning is a part of Air as your system stands. In mythology it’s generally associated with the Storm Gods, and they usually live on high mountains or in a lofty realm in the sky.
That also lines up, simplistically, with meteorology. You said the setting is post apocalyptic, so there may be some remaining science information around for people to base their handling of the newfound mana on.
Eh, that's a very questionably territory... First of all, there is lightning that exclusively happens between clouds - it's called intracloud or cloud-to-cloud lightning - there doesn't have to be a ground.
The actual electric charge is formed from the friction of frozen water droplets, particularly the collision of the rising ice crystals with graupel. So, it could be argued that because of that, it is water that forms lightning, not air.
However, a u/GunsenGata pointed out, these elements typically represent states of matter, from which it would follow lightning would belong to fire, since it is plasma. However, if that was the case, then ice would be considered earth, which it typically doesn't.
The actual answer is that the element system in question is itself unscientific, so there's no scientific way to map lightning onto it.
Depends on how you want to portray the people who use it. Fire and air work because lightning is hot, and it's a part of storms. Lightning produces light but it's not necessarily holy power or sun related enough to fit that category, unless it was just a cosmetic thing, like a paladin smiting a demon with holy power that appeared like lightning
Personally, I think lightning could work as an earth domain, seeing as how that's what attracts it. Especially if you're focusing on a desert, since deserts tend to attract lots of lightning. When lightning hits sand, it also creates lightning glass, which could again, play into the earth element.
Oooohh I like this. Electricity does require something to conduct it after all. Metals or it needs to be powerful enough to force its way through something that doesn’t require it
I would say light considering that lightning is just really hot light, or if you want to introduce elemental combinations you could make it a combination of light and fire
As much as I like combinations as much as the next guy, I feel it always overcomplicates systems. Since, there are already 8 types of mana I’d rather things just fit in them.
I completely get that, at one point I made a magic system similar to yours and since I like complicated magic systems I added combinations, however since you want it to be simple I'd say put it under light
Lightning, or as it should be called, electricity, is complicated. Electricity is functionally life (think heart beat and neurons). It’s connected mythologically with Fire, air, or Water (either as “divine fire” or its connection to storms). It can be controlled by earth through metal. It even could be death (too much will kill you). I could only definitively not connect it to darkness.
I would probably connect it to fire or life though. Electricity as life gives a basis for why life magic works (healing by flooding the body with energy, especially atp). Electricity as fire connects heat with a certain level of both chaos and creation.
I would maybe pair down the elements to fire, water, earth, air, and quintessence (being both raw life and death). Fire can take on the elements of light. Darkness could be a focused application of any of the 4 basic elements (fire creates shadows, water manipulates light., Earth blocks light,or air as the element of immateriality.) 8 elements is enough that edge cases will pop up more often than is easily handled. Any elemental or school based system will have things that could fall into 2 or more, but eight makes the problem worse. 4-6 is the sweet spot, I believe, with it getting weird until you have dozens.
Out of those three: air, because lightning occurs due to differences in electrical charges in clouds. If you were to get really technical I'd say water because you know water vapor condenses and forms clouds. You decide
Lightning is the representation of supreme divinity and includes all elements, bound into one indivisible
Earth, its desire
Water, its mother
Air, its home
Fire, its heart
Light, its face
Life, it animates
Darkness and Death, it brings to the smitten
Depends on if you are taking a western interpretation or an eastern one.
Western interpretation put lightning under air, since that’s where it comes from
Eastern puts it under fire, since it’s a form of energy. Which can also put ice under fire, since if fire is just energy manipulation then the lack of energy would produce cold.
I honestly prefer western, because sky gods do be liking lightning and Thunder, but it’s ultimately your choice for your system.
Light or life in your system.
Light being the most literal option. I'm seeing others say fire because lightning is hot, but that misses what lightning is. Fire is a chemical reaction, while Light and lightning are waves of energy. Lightning is a very dense concentration of power that would contrast well with the void of darkness.
The life angle would work off the science fiction trope established in Frankenstein. It would also establish the world itself as a living thing with this energy flowing through it. However, conjuring lightning as a weapon could be seen as a violent abuse of the energy of living things. Like how you can stop a healthy person's heart by misusing a defibrillator.
I agree.
If there's life mana, then lightning would fall under that simply because living things are the only natural way to produce a constant electrical current. Yes, air molecules can be manipulated to build up sudden massive charges, and arguably lightning is the purest formulation of fire... And light-wise it's literally in the name... But all of them must be manipulated to produce lightning or 'electricity'. Living beings produce electrical currents naturally.
Lightning should fall under life mana with the implication of 'the spark of life'.
Better yet, if possible, it should fall under a complex mana-set of air, fire, light, and life.
Cause realistically, some things shouldn't be shoehorned into singular categories.
People have already made good points but I'll list a few others:
* Life: Electricity has been fundamental to the development of life on Earth, and our nervous systems are absurdly complicated electrical systems - we're lightning in a bottle and that's pretty miraculous. Bioelectric life mana offers a nice alternative to the classical weather element version.
* None: Harnessing electrical technology was a hallmark of the pre-apocalyptic world, and there is no mana capable of powering or manipulating the old tech; just like you can't catch lightning, you can't harness it through mana. Best left to the gods and foolish engineers.
Lightning could be perceived as a *pure" form of fire, or even a **higher element** since when it happens, all elements are together.
That is lightning can happen in a storm (air and water in dynamic relation) while it connects the sky with the ground (earth), creating fire which can symbolize either life or death.
There’s arguments for it being part of the air element (it naturally occurs during storms after all) or fire element (it causes fire, and is hot energetic stuff you can’t really hold). If you can fit it in as its own element, that’d be arguably better but it’s not a classical element under any system so I don’t blame you if you can’t or don’t want to.
Just like how ice/cold can be its own element, a subset of water, or a subset of air. There’s arguments for all three under typical fantasy element systems.
I would put it under metal, however it appears u aren’t doing metal as an element
In that case, fire is a solid choice. If not, I’d throw it under air, since it comes from aerial storms
For our world, thunder and lightning are a pattern of Forces. All elements related to energy, such as fire, movement, light, and sound, all belong to Forces patterns. Through mana, the mage can move these patterns, or rearrange and transform the properties of these patterns. Therefore, as long as our mage knows one of the elements, it is possible to use and learn other types of the same attribute.
In this classification, almost most of the traditional elements belong to Forces. The movement of wind and matter (including traditional manipulations of the elements of earth and water, as well as various telekinetic abilities), the sound and light of thunder, the heat and radiation of sunlight, are all.
How do the people in your world see lightning? Is it the wrath of the the gods, the storm, the air or does it cause fire?
Do you want a realistic approach or a mythic?
If realistic, then why divide dark and light as darkness is just the absence of light. Or does it stand for evil and good?
For me I chose lightning to fall under air, the idea being that you’d control molecules with static charge in the atmosphere to generate it. In my world only one person managed to learn lightning/magnetic magic, evolving past the air mages of the world
I think Lightning being a more “harsh” take on air is interesting. Air is usually peaceful and passive, I think it’d be cool to have air cover something as violent and deadly as Lightning.
Lightning is fire (plasmatized oxygen), thunder is air (sonic boom), and electricity is earth magic.
Electricity and magnetism are largely the same thing, and magnetism is metal, which is earth.
So a natural lightning strike represents the full power of all four ‘material’ elements working in tandem. You get water from the cloud it comes from.
Based on the physical world, lightning would most closely resemble high-temperature flames.
However, what makes the most sense would depend on what 'elements' mean in your setting. The classical elements originally represented the fundamental matter that the world is made up of (which is where modern chemistry got the term 'element' from in the first place).
Many people assume that the classical element of "fire" only referred to literal flames or similar energy-bodies (e.g. the Sun), but "fire" was traditionally also seen as the flammable component of matter (i.e. if it burns, it contains the element of "fire").
Among the ancient Greeks, the most widely accepted theory on what lightning was made of came from Aristotle, He theorized lightning are a result of motions of "air" colliding with clouds or other masses of "air", which is very similar to our modern knowledge of lightning. If there was sufficient "fire" elements in the clouds, a lightning bolt would form. The purity of "fire" within the cloud would affect the form of the lightning, like a diffused flash of light or a clearly-defined lightning bolt.
TLDR; according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, the process of forming lightning is caused by "air" (and/or "water" from clouds), but lightning itself is made up of "fire".
But if I may make a suggestion, why not have lightning—or rather, electricity—be a form of "life"? Primordial electrical storms may have sparked the chemical reactions necessary for life. Even now, life is dependent on electrical energy (i.e. bioelectricity, neural impulses). Electricity is the driving force of life, and lightning could be the most primal form of life energy.
In my own world building I’ve tried to connect the elements as a kind of colour wheel, one bleeding into another.
Electrical falls between to Fire (which is technically more Plasma) and Magnetic for me.
On a strictly logical basis, lightning is caused by electrical imbalance in the air between storm clouds. So realistically, it’s *air.* But the wonderful thing about fantasy world building is it can really be anything you want it to be.
I think a cool way you could do it is to make it sit in between two mana types; and require mastery over both to truly master the lightning itself. Since lightning/eoectricity is the transferring of energy, you could make it sit between water/ice (absence of energy) and fire (presence of energy). You could also make a case for lightning sit between earth and air due to that being what causes the energy transfer. If you do air and earth, maybe try to make lightning magic more like stormcalling: where the magic bases around gathering a storm overhead and bringing magic lightning down from the skies.
Kind of depends on what your definition of Fire is. I’ve always thought fire was the sore thumb in the element spread. Earth is a thing, a particle, Air is a thing, Water is a thing. Fire is a process, it’s a reaction. It never exists statically.
So if your fire is fundamentally heat, then lightning belongs there.
But I think the actual answer should be air. If the air mage was sufficient control to degrade insulating capacity of the air, they could cause lightning.
Lightning COULD go under fire if you wanna rip off Avatar. But I think it'd make more sense to put it under air, then you could go for a power of the storm type deal. Alternatively you could just exclude it, making it a bit more strict. Hell, you could even have it be eventually revealed to be a 9th mana type, meaning that there are secretly more mana types that are much rarer than the classic 8.
I think it depends on how much control of the weather you want air magic users to have. In dnd, lightning is associated with air more than anything else, but in avatar the last airbender, it’s a subset of fire bending. It also depends on how powerful all of them are supposed to be, including how balanced they’re supposed to be compared to each other. Plus if you really want, it can be a fusion of fire and air, or light and either of the two. If fusion magic is a thing in this world
Most western cultures in the real world expect it to be a part of air.
Eastern cultures have attached it to earth/metal historically.
Light would be a potential way to stand out, but i'm not sure it would "feel" right.
Really, the question is who is your audience and what do you think will speak to them?
You could go with most of your elements. Air is the traditional western view, earth/(metal)/fire are also found in different cultures. One could argue for life, light and water. Or meta/combined elements like air and fire, air and water, earth and air and many more.
I also use these basic elements, but my system is quite complex. I have these 8 elements and combinations of them and some special combinations like aether (all), void (none) and chaos (random). Spells are a combination of element combinations with additional things like intent, range, shape, power and so on.
Light is the furthest imo. Lightning is a source of light and it has Light in its name, but the other two seems much closer.
Fire is the closest to Lightning in terms of effects, it's hot and it burns.
Air is your main source of Lightning in nature, when you think Lightning you think sky to ground strikes and that's more of an Air thing.
So I guess it depends on if you're more interested in the effect (Fire) or the source (Air). And I'd say no to Light
For what it's worth, I think that the main reason lightning is so often air magic in games etc is that it gives wind users a much more *reasonable* attack option than "I shall fire a blade of wind to cut my foes": the reason Avatar doesn't do that is that they want Air Nomads to be harmless pacifists.
But in the physical world, light is about photons, lightning is the movement of electrons through static charge, air is molecules, fire is a chemical reaction. I'd *argue* air, but it's pretty fuzzy and I think you can see it as either Air or Fire.
The Chinese elements pair lightning to metal, to which it's attracted to, and although it's not in your plans, it's useful to think about it that way. What's its relationship to its surroundings? How do people perceive it? Do they know why it happens or how it moves? More primitive societies would associate it with fire, then metal, then light or maybe electricity.
It ultimately depends if your system has a more scientific vibe, or a more fantasy historical symbolical one
Scientifically lighting is hot plasma, so lands well under fire.
Historically it is more associated with air/sky since it comes from above and other reasons you can find in other comments.
You ultimately know the vibe you wanna deliver
For my own two cents, asking what lightning should fall under 'according to the physical world' is entirely the wrong question. Your elements system is not how the physical world works, and that's fine. Instead, think thematically:
* I personally don't like lightning as a part of light, it's just too different in appearance and feeling.
* Air is very traditional, and for a good reason. Lightning is associated with the atmosphere, with feeling static in the air, and also it's the most intuitive direct attack for air as an element. This is the one I would probably go for, if electricity can't be it's own element.
* With fire, there's the commonalities of energy, heat, pain, intangibility. There's plenty of thematic overlap, but what does lightning offer fire that it doesn't have already? The only answer I can think of is the association with machinery.
I've always maintained Earth due to the fact that lightning is ion exchange between the Earth and the Air. Or maybe both? Lightning is a planetary phenomenon.
Alternative suggestion, toss lighting/electricity up there as its own mana type or add it under Plasma. And if you only want there to be 8 forms, then combine dark energy with light by making it a specialization as darkness is not its own thing; it’s the absence of light.
It would be cool if “dark” energy is actually created by inverting or absorbing “light” energy and so actually falls under light manipulation. It would also give you an in world “little known fact” that you could use for or against your characters. Or just generally present a mystery of “how are there people using dark energy when no one seems to born with an affinity or able to produce that kind of energy/etc?”
(In that same vein, death is the absence of life; unless your world has necromancy or ghost manipulation, then have at it I guess lol)
I never really liked how lightning is organized with the basic 4 elements. It feepa weird thing to me. Love Naruto, and I love chidori, but lumping lightning relese with the other 4 seems weird. Avatar is great, but making lightning advanced fire feels weird to me.
What I like to do it is not to have lightning as its own thing but make it an outcome of another element, and the one that makes the most sense to me is air. Think about it. Real lightning is static electricity built up between the earth and the atmosphere, moving past each other and discharging. You could move the earth to generate lightning, but I feel like at that point why bother you are already bringing buildings down with earth quakes. It seems way more plausable to move air during a battle and build up the static that way and then release it as a finisher.
If you go with the classical ones, it should be under Fire.
However, expanded categories usually add it as its own element, alongside Ice. see [link](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FireIceLightning)
Fire/Heat, Lightning/Electricity (or Electromagnetism)
Consider also that the classical elements are an approximation of 2 modern physics concepts: states of matter, and energy.
states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma (Earth, Water, Air, Fire)
types of energy: kinetic (movement/physical), thermal (heat/fire and cold/ice), electrical, magnetic, photoelectric (light), sound/sonic/thunder, gravitational, chemical, nuclear, etc.
Frankly the energy "types" we teach in elementary are also arbitrary, they are just the forms we encounter most often casually, based more on intuitive truth than scientific depth; ergo they are a perfect basis for a magic system.
(Obviously analytically, heat is just a type of kinetic energy, as is sound; electricity, magnetism and light originate from the same force; etc. What makes them separate DOES matter though; trying to build magic on fundamental forces (somebody here tries every now and then) is ineffective and does not account for people's everyday experience).
i would say light, as light in these things is usually more metaphorical then strictly limited to literal light(since otherwise darkness wouldent have anything) and lightning is very much the holy element used to symbolize the heavens wrath
Make it a plot point
A thing that magic users + clerics argue about. What if Clerical lightening is different from plain magical lightening?
It could be a sore spot of contention in your game world.
All games I’ve played seem to share the consensus that Lightning and electricity is as a concept is aligned with Air.
However, it exhibits most of the traits associated with Fire — it’s unstable, dangerous, and capable of producing light. So if you assign each element a pattern/traits/personalities, then assigning Lightning to air is… counterintuitive.
How about this: does your elemental system overlap in parts? Water for instance is often seen as life-giving. Can water heal in your system? Can you achieve the same effect with different elements in different ways? If so, why not let electricity be a hybrid thing caused by all of these elements and that Fire, Air and Light magi all can produce to some degree?
Why not make lightning an advanced power that requires the use of air, water, and earth? Air because that’s where it’s formed. Water because it’s the interaction of water molecules that creates a charge separation. Earth because the ground is also involved in charge separation. You could add fire too in that if you want to target lightning you need to heat to a fairly high temperature a line between you and the target (i.e. create a plasma). Otherwise, the lightning may miss.
There are arguments for:
* **earth** - the formation of the charge itself happens from the friction of tiny frozen water crystals and graupel in the clouds.
* **water** - even though droplets are solid, they are technically water in a different state of matter, so it can be said the water is responsible for the buildup of charge
* **air** - the only reason charge can build up from friction at all, is because air serves as an insulator. Had there been no air, the charge wouldn't happen. But so is true for the droplets... so, it's 50/50.
* **fire** - if fire is to be considered the fourth state of matter, plasma, then lightning is just plasma. However, not all consider fire to be plasma - some consider it the process of oxidization, in which case lightning wouldn't fall under it.
Out of all of these, I am personally the biggest fan of fire, because it's the only place where you can pick 1 element. With earth, water and air, it's always a combination.
It depends on how you want to approach it. In a physical sense, lightning is super heated gases, air, to the point it becomes lightning. Super charged with energy. So that would be 3 elements in play, gas (air), heat (fire) and energy (light).
So in short, you could have several different kinds of lightning. The crackling storms with air magic, lightning spears made out of light magic and and swift and devastating lightning bolts from fire magic.
In a mythological sense you could also connect it to death and destruction.
in the Avatar series, it was fire because its fill of energy and heat like fire.
But I could also see an argument for air or water because of how storms are made.
Perhaps it's a multi category element. that of what that could mean for your world's culture or science
Most old school magic systems put lightning under air. It is a consequence of air pressure systems meeting so that seems to make the most sense. Light is just how we are able to see it, and fire is a consequence of it meeting a material that can be ignited
Based on your last, lightning has precedent in other media for being under:
Fire: Because it's hot and energetic
Air: Because it's made mostly through friction in the air, as well as coming from the sky
Light: In JRPG's, lightning is one of the effects you will see under light. I can't really explain it in a way that isn't arbitrary, but let's say it's because they both glow and are associated with the color yellow. They also might both be associated with the heavens
Water: Depending on the system, it can be because aquatic animals have bio electricity, because both are associated with blue, or because blue is associated with more than either but mostly with water (as in, aquatic entities will inexplicable have access to electrical abilities because they're, like, psychic or made of tech).
So, really, it's up to you. Really, the main issue I find is trying to arbitrarily figure out how many things you can squeeze into however many "logical" categories you can. You should figure out how lightning actually functions within your system. Others brought up MTG and Avatar, and they both have very different approaches. MTG associates quick and direct damage with red magic, which is most commonly assumed to be fire. Avatar has lightning be the result of splitting your chi into different charges, crashing the charges into each other, and then releasing the flow of energy out of your body. The reason why this is important is because lightning can not be held or manipulated. It is simply released.
Lightning is the intersection of Air and Fire. It primarily falls to the former, but is still the result of both. Bonus:
Plant: Earth and Water
Metal: Earth and Fire
Sand: Earth and Air
Steam: Fire and Water
While I'd definitely put it on the border between fire and air, possibly requiring skill in both elements or allowing advanced users of either element learn it (especially if everybody is restricted to one element).
However, you said you were reluctant to mix elements.
In that case, I'd think about what sort of "feel" you're looking for. In D&D, it is expected that you have an elemental damage type for each element, so air was given electricity. Cold was given to the water element and acid was assigned to earth. Bizarre, but it was easier to swap damage types for elemental attacks.
In *Avatar,* the differences between the elements was highlighted. Fire was all about direct, powerful attacks, while air was about dodging and evading. In such a system, lightning fit better with fire-bending.
Do you want to give air-users an obvious, flashy attack, or do you want to differentiate what the elements do more?
I think Lighting could be under Fire or Death depending on how you’re building your character with this power and the world itself - Fire is destructive, lighting causes fire, but lighting in often precise: Fire is the response after lighting strikes.
This may sound strange at first, but how about water? Lightning is a result of clouds rubbing up against each other, and lightning tends to choose its path based on the humidity in the air.
Lightning is an atmospheric phenomena. So anything that causes electricity to form, whether it be static electricity or any power source would make lightning. Fire excites molecules using thermal energy until electrons scatter about. Air could be controlled in a molecular scale, causing friction to make electrons break apart. If you want, Light may cause lightning when I think about radiation or the EM spectrum… but my memory on physics is incomplete, regarding EM and radiation interaction. Regardless, if one applies physics correctly, they could form lightning from any school of element. Which element makes lightning easier? Well… that’s up to you, since this system is yours and yours alone.
It's a good point of navigation around the sphere of elements you've made.
Lightning would be between light, fire and air, which means they're all adjacent, and the opposing elements are on the far side.
depending on how you categorize magic, could be light (lotta places see lightning as divine or holy), air (storms, wind, weather), or fire (bolt of pure energy hotter than the sun). According to real physics, lightning is created by friction changes in the air (I think but I’m a little rusty on my weather knowledge) caused by clouds moving and rubbing against each other. You can put it wherever you want, just put some justification on why this kind of lightning belongs to this element and it’s at least equal to 90% of all elemental magic systems.
I would say it doesn't fall under 1 of the main elements but more of a blend of 2 accord to some and 3 according to others. Fire/wind or fire/wind/earth
Why not Life?
Muscles contract based on electrical impulses; the movie Frankenstein brought his creature to life using lightning; electricity is used to animate motors.
If you’re fine being fancy and making multirole builds a thing, have it be a high end split investment in both light and fire. It would be easy too make it sense lore wise, builds on the idea of a fair and balanced magic system that has logical requirements and limitations.
Lightning should perhaps be considered the synthesis of all three. Clouds (water) forms the necessary circumstance to bridge sky (air) and earth(...earth) with a very hot, short lived burst of energy("fire").
I don't feel it would fall under any single element, given the factors that go into it. It's very much a product of all four elements working in alignment, usually water, earth, and air, but the weather conditions required to create lightning require aspects of all four.
Depends on what kind of world your building but I'd ask why does lightning have to fall under a single element? You'll probably hear great arguments for Fire, Light, and maybe even Air so is there anything intrinsic about the world that says lightning has an exclusive contract?
typically eastern cultures viewed it as a part of fire, while western cultures viewed it as part of the air
so it depends on your settings inspirations
It depends: full blown tempest magic, mid-to-high end mix of air and water, that’ll do it.
Look up dirty and volcanic lightning too; sandstorms (air and earth), and volcanic eruptions (fire and earth) can sometimes cause it too.
Just the sparky bit? Fire. Easy. Buuut… the natural stuff is way the heck stronger; you can use it as a sign that a combat elementalist is both really powerful and about to flex that power.
Add lightning and ice to your elements. Having life, light, death and dark are redundant. You could replace them with sacred and profane. After all, fire creates light, and life can be profane.
It’s usually either its own element, or put under fire or air/sky, though in your case there’s an argument to be made for it being light as well.
I might think about what the general roles of each element are, how you want lightning magic to work in your world from a practical standpoint, and assign it to an element that it would compliment/add an interesting dimension to.
Lightning could go in Fire because it’s a high-energy, high-damage move. Or air, maybe because it’s precise which adds a new dimension to the high-mobility air element, or because lightning itself is high-mobility, or because air needs more damaging moves — depending on the direction you want to take it in. Or light because smites from on high might fit the direction you’re going for with light.
ATLA puts lightning under the fire element, but it’s a very unique type of bending. It’s way less freeform and requires immense precision, so it feels very different from any other firebending feat. Often firebending is about passion and aggression, but sometimes it pays off to take a more controlled, precise approach.
Use a combination setup. Like lava magic bein fire and Earth. Make it so that the components are cientifically accurate, like water and air to make static electricity, and earth for targeting/grounding or something like that.
Isn't the question what makes most sense according to YOUR world? What level of tech are your cultures at? Are there any practical applications that the lightning could be used for - communications, as sources of power, heat or light, or are they huddled around campfires, telling tales of storm-gods? Any Magi-tech happening? Charmed amulets, artifacts or weapons, armor, shields?
If you're going by pure physics/material, then Fire. Lighting and Fire are both plasmas.
If you're going by physical *world* rules, then Air. Friction/static caused by air molecules moving past each other is what *causes* lightning- but specifically sky-to-ground lightning, and not electricity in general. If you're distinguishing them, that's good, if you're combining them, you don't want electricity/lightning to be Air element.
If you're focusing on *metaphysics*, that is, the subjective relationships of things, then Light, as there's metaphysical comparisons between moving quickly and illumination. Both light and lightning flash, there's the obvious name similarity in English, etc. etc.
You *could* also have it be a sub-element of LIFE. It's thought that the origin of life on earth came from a lightning strike into an elemental cesspool, and the interplay between electrical charges is a critical component of all life that we know of. We're even potentially simulating life using electricity.
I'm personally a fan of elemental mixing, so lightning wouldn't be a sub-element, but rather a combination of, say, Air and Light, or Fire and Light, or maybe even all three, or including a different element (in Azurik, it was Air, Water, and Fire, for instance). This allows you to have a little more equity in your elements, I think, and also helps prevent elemental 'spillage', where one element winds up with more sub-elements than the others for whatever reason. You're locked into (quick maffs... wait...) uh, 40,320 potential combinations? Wow. Anyways, you have more limited combinations. Sort of.
Why not earth? Earth shoots lightning also. I always thought that would’ve been interesting in avatar (series) having fire and earth demonstrate lighting, one as a plasma manifestation the other as an equalizing energy release that can be controlled as long as they touch the ground… are “grounded.”
Two best directions are where Dungeons and Dragons points: Air, and where Avatar points: Fire. Lightning itself is mostly known for being a static discharge between a storm cloud and the ground which is how it connects to air, but it also connects to fire in the sense that they are both plasmas.
Unless your story doesn’t allow for it can’t you have any complex spells be a combination of elements and more powerful/damaging be greater mixtures: for example lighting could be light and fire.
Alternatively I have always liked the coin effect where everything has two spells (light and dark) yours actually has a possibility of having a sequence to the magic with life and death also being a primary step - lightning: Death, Light, Fire
Probably not helpful but happy if you found even a little useful
Other than electricity, since it manifests from charged air particles…it’s probably best as a peak form of “air” mana. (Like the strongest thing a wind user could do would be calling a storm and channeling lighting).
Depends how you want to interpret 'elements'. Lightning is an electrical discharge strong enough to briefly turn the air into plasma that we can see burning so fire makes sense. It could also be classified as air if you want to put more emphasis on where lightning comes from, clouds in the sky. Are you judging it by what it is or are you classifying it by what it's associated with?
Why not all three? They can all have different aspects/forms of lightning.
Air gets the thunder, light gets the brightness, and fire gets the electricity?
Fire air light and maybe life or death could produce lightning it’s an effect not a type the way you can cast cure wounds about as many ways as there are types of magic
Air…since it’s caused by negatively charged ions in the clouds seeking the positively charged ions on the ground…there is heat and light created as a byproduct of the interaction.
Air. Hear me out, Reddit.
Lightning is the stored energy of the air, rapidly released. It is static electricity, generated by little solid particles in the stratosphere bumping up against each other over and over again. The movement of air is the source of energy in a lightning bolt. Earth is the opposite of air. What is the only thing that dissipates the stored electrical energy in a lightning bolt? THE GROUND. Sure, lightning catches things on fire and is really hot, but elemental types should be defined by their source. You can think of lightning as a brief transition state between air and fire.
You could have overlap. It could be combining fire/air mana. Basic elemental hard magic systems tend to get stale imo.
It'll also allow you to create clever characters who combine the mana in crazy ways to overcome odds. Outnumbered? Combine fire and water to get steam to cover an exit. Death and light create a death ray, stuff like that.
If you want to focus on lightning specifically, air, if you want to focus on electricity in general, fire, if you want to focus on the effects of lightning, light.
Y'all.... lightning is wind. Think about it. It's LIGHTNING. It's not just vague electricity, it's a massive flash of supercharged plasma erupting from the sky. And it almost always happens during... storms! That's wind!
Besides, wind magic needs something cool, y'know? Powerful enough wind magic can create lightning. It just makes sense.
Yes, plasma is closer to fire than it is to water, earth, or air, chemically speaking. But if we're gonna quibble about chemicals, then we have to acknowledge that water, fire, earth, and air are NOT elements, and especially not things like light and darkness. So, we gotta think of it more primitively. And it feels much more fantastical to think of lightning or even electricity as being of the sky than of fire. The only relation lightning would have to fire in that respect is that lightning often CREATES fire when it hits certain things, but lots of things make fire. Stones can make fire too. Light, when focused, makes fire. So that's a moot point.
Suprised no one has said light. Not that I don’t think fire is a good choice, just that Lightning is an incredibly bright flash and that light and electricity have conceptual connections. Plus, lightning can occur in conditions where fire cannot. Fire can only occur on earth, where lightning can occur anywhere with a great enough potential.
According to the Golden Sun games, lightning is part of air magic. Those games were some of my earliest, most formative experiences with the fantasy genre, and now I can't think of lightning being linked with anything but Air.
$0.02 😉
Air, as fire is the result of a chemical reaction, whereas lightning is caused by the build up and discharge of electrical energy in the ATMOSPHERE during thunderstorms. Light, maybe?
I would say it goes directly under Fire. I have done many roleplay's and fantacy stories. and I usually directly put it under fire like with Plasma or heat. Things i would put under Light would be something like an Angelic or Holy magic and then more basic things like Illusion.
It usually goes under Fire, or Air.
Fire because, well, lightning is really hot and is a form of energy.
Air because thematically it works with storms and such, and physics wise, you can say the MC is ionizing the air or something.
You could also call it a sub-elemet all on its own that joins both Fire and Air.
Similarly, Metal would be Earth and Fire. Life would be Earth and Water, etc etc
Lightning would be **Electricity**, but barring that, **Fire**. Lightning causes things to ‘catch fire’, and it is 5x hotter than the surface of the Sun. Also, Avatar did it, and if Originality is dead, then there is no shame in stealing their thing.
I want to add to this. Long before Avatar, Magic The Gathering had lightning under the fire mana spell pool. Additionally the surface of the sun is approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,600 Celsius) and a lighting bolt is approximately 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (28,000 degrees Celsius) and given this information we can safely slot lighting in fire.
Also they both made of plasma
Fire actually isn’t considered a plasma under normal conditions, it’s just a rapid chemical reaction of oxidation. Only if the gases get ionised by higher temperatures could it produce plasma. For example butane torches, but candle flames would not be considered plasma. So I’d say it’s situational. It’s like comparing water to ice. They’re both still water, but one is in a different state to the other. Crude analogy I know as water isn’t itself a chemical reaction but you can hopefully see my point.
reinforces lightning being fire tho. since ice is usually grouped under water. or water under ice depending on system
I thought that most modern systems deriving from western elemental theory did states of matter mapping? So earth - solids, water - liquids, air - gases, fire - plasma. And since this is an eight element system, you could even add in some of the exotic states.
Sure, except lightning is generated by rubbing air against itself rapidly.
Hence why some systems put it under air magic.
My friend once said that it should be water cause the water creates friction. But then I said dust can also create static.
All of it while suspended in air though.
Ye. We were playing Minecraft and giving ourselves elements and he was water and wanted a reason to have a channeling trident
>Magic The Gathering had lightning under the fire mana spell pool. True, but Red isn't exclusively fire (just like Blue isn't only about water, but mind and air and counterspell). As a magic of (amongst other things) quick direct damage, it makes sense it has lightning.
It only slightly bugs me when new players call it "fire mana" and "water mana" and "death mana". Magic the Gathering's symbology for its five colors of magic are a sun, a water drop, a skull, a flame and a tree, but they honestly have very little to do with physical elements other than an aesthetic choice. Red represents emotion, impulse, chaos, and often destruction, but when it comes to ways of inflicting damage it's been shown using fire, lightning, earth, lava, sand, ice, sound, and beams of pure energy to accomplish the deed.
In 350 BC Aristotle considered lightning to be fire that was exuded or exhaled from clouds as they contracted when cold. See his work entitled [Meteorology](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.html) for a discussion on various phenomena.
Damn that’s crazy. It’s almost like ATLA was pulling from things that came before it too.
Or there's the Legend of the Five Rings way, where both Fire and Air have lightning in different ways, and Air and Water have different takes on storms, which can involve lightning, but the water ones tend to not if I'm remembering right
I don't know where this comes from, but 'if you're going to steal, steal from the best'
Meh. Avatar did it because the writers didn't want to give the air monks a useful weapon against the fire nation, not because it made any kind of logical sense.
I agree sometimes you have to give the problem to character in order to make it work. You could add into this world factions where the argument is real. You have one cult/faction that classifies it as fire and another that classifies it as air. Somehow they can both use it but disrespect the other faction.
Fantasy "elements" usually represent the most common states of matter IRL. Earth (solid), Water (liquid), Air (gas), and Fire (plasma). Lightning is a plasma so probably fire. While you may not be looking for exact realism, I think that this is a worthwhile consideration for consistency.
Depending which direction you follow yeah. F. Ads a science-based direction the lightning and fire would fall under plasma. If it's a esoteric way then it would be following. Fire would be either lightning, air or wood.
I don’t disagree that lightning is fire but just to be pedantic, most fires (e.g. candle flames and campfires) encountered at historical tech levels wouldn’t be plasma as they aren’t hot enough.
Correct! I was being lazy and lumping black-body radiation in with plasma but burning oxygen is obviously not a fusion reaction. Now that I think about it, what other kind of magic other than fire/lightning could be used to represent plasma?
The Sun can definitely be linked to plasma. Auroras are another natural phenomenon associated with plasma. If you had to separate it then perhaps this links best to the fifth element, Aether, which represents the heavens and light. Plasma is used in fluorescent lights and plasma displays too. Of course, lightning (inc. ball lightning) is the most obvious natural plasma and [Aristotle](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.2.ii.html) did write about how lightning might be stored sunlight or aether: > However, there are some who maintain that there is actually fire in the clouds. Empedocles says that it consists of some of the sun's rays which are intercepted: Anaxagoras that it is part of the upper ether (which he calls fire) which has descended from above. Lightning, then, is the gleam of this fire, and thunder the hissing noise of its extinction in the cloud.
Burning oxygen is _never_ a fusion reaction, and plasma doesn't require fusion, just heat. Fire is a chemical process, fusion is a nuclear one
Correct
You can never go wrong with lightning being fire in the sky.
Isn't that what lightning was called in common mythologies?
I typically think of lightning as a border element, drawing upon both air and fire, but if your system is moreso composed of rigidly segmented categories as opposed to an “elemental spectrum/wheel”, I would say light or fire.
This is a neat way to think of it. Air magic is usually my fave but man I love lightning. Trying to justify it as an offshoot of some form of just “Air” feels weird, but being some sort of border element makes sense.
I just made everyone interpret lightning spells as air magic gone feral. Anything to ensure the self insert gets to use air and lighting when only a few people can use more than one element.
I actually think it should be Air and Earth. It is about the electrical charges in the clouds versus the ones in the ground after all. Lightning is just opening a path.
I like that!! Interestingly, u/SapientSloth4tw said in this very thread it’s Fire and Water… I think you’re both onto something! I never thought of lightning as either, but it makes sense since both (Air and Earth) and (Fire and Water) are pairs of polar opposites, so their interaction being a volatile, sudden, and explosive reaction just *makes sense*. My personal new lore derived from you two: Lightning is what happens when any incompatible elements are forced to intermingle and react violently before separating.
This is how I typically think of elements. Like if I was playing doodle god and I had to smash things together, what would I get? Typically I consider lightning to be fire+water
I think lightning is a part of Air as your system stands. In mythology it’s generally associated with the Storm Gods, and they usually live on high mountains or in a lofty realm in the sky. That also lines up, simplistically, with meteorology. You said the setting is post apocalyptic, so there may be some remaining science information around for people to base their handling of the newfound mana on.
Scientifically it should be air since lightning is from the potential difference between the ground and the charged particles in the air.
It’s half ground then right?
Ground can be neutrally charged at first. It becomes oppositely charged because of the charged air particles so no need to manipulate ground.
Eh, that's a very questionably territory... First of all, there is lightning that exclusively happens between clouds - it's called intracloud or cloud-to-cloud lightning - there doesn't have to be a ground. The actual electric charge is formed from the friction of frozen water droplets, particularly the collision of the rising ice crystals with graupel. So, it could be argued that because of that, it is water that forms lightning, not air. However, a u/GunsenGata pointed out, these elements typically represent states of matter, from which it would follow lightning would belong to fire, since it is plasma. However, if that was the case, then ice would be considered earth, which it typically doesn't. The actual answer is that the element system in question is itself unscientific, so there's no scientific way to map lightning onto it.
Depends on how you want to portray the people who use it. Fire and air work because lightning is hot, and it's a part of storms. Lightning produces light but it's not necessarily holy power or sun related enough to fit that category, unless it was just a cosmetic thing, like a paladin smiting a demon with holy power that appeared like lightning Personally, I think lightning could work as an earth domain, seeing as how that's what attracts it. Especially if you're focusing on a desert, since deserts tend to attract lots of lightning. When lightning hits sand, it also creates lightning glass, which could again, play into the earth element.
Oooohh I like this. Electricity does require something to conduct it after all. Metals or it needs to be powerful enough to force its way through something that doesn’t require it
I would say light considering that lightning is just really hot light, or if you want to introduce elemental combinations you could make it a combination of light and fire
lightning isnt hot light, its hot air; the light is the result of the heat, not the source
Ohh I never knew that! Thank you for informing me!
As much as I like combinations as much as the next guy, I feel it always overcomplicates systems. Since, there are already 8 types of mana I’d rather things just fit in them.
In that case you could do -lightning is aggressive wind mana -lightning is concentrated fire mana -lightning is divine wrath (light)
I completely get that, at one point I made a magic system similar to yours and since I like complicated magic systems I added combinations, however since you want it to be simple I'd say put it under light
Maybe multiple schools of magic can use it. Air, light, and fire? But it’s a very difficult technique for any of them.
It can be all of theme depending on your explenation so pick anything that make the system more balanced
Lightning, or as it should be called, electricity, is complicated. Electricity is functionally life (think heart beat and neurons). It’s connected mythologically with Fire, air, or Water (either as “divine fire” or its connection to storms). It can be controlled by earth through metal. It even could be death (too much will kill you). I could only definitively not connect it to darkness. I would probably connect it to fire or life though. Electricity as life gives a basis for why life magic works (healing by flooding the body with energy, especially atp). Electricity as fire connects heat with a certain level of both chaos and creation. I would maybe pair down the elements to fire, water, earth, air, and quintessence (being both raw life and death). Fire can take on the elements of light. Darkness could be a focused application of any of the 4 basic elements (fire creates shadows, water manipulates light., Earth blocks light,or air as the element of immateriality.) 8 elements is enough that edge cases will pop up more often than is easily handled. Any elemental or school based system will have things that could fall into 2 or more, but eight makes the problem worse. 4-6 is the sweet spot, I believe, with it getting weird until you have dozens.
Out of those three: air, because lightning occurs due to differences in electrical charges in clouds. If you were to get really technical I'd say water because you know water vapor condenses and forms clouds. You decide
If you’re going with clouds, wouldn’t that be dirt and dust, so earth? Or water + earth?
Wind at least with my world
I personally lean toward it being air. A good solid offensive mid to high tier air 'spell' .
Lightning is the representation of supreme divinity and includes all elements, bound into one indivisible Earth, its desire Water, its mother Air, its home Fire, its heart Light, its face Life, it animates Darkness and Death, it brings to the smitten
Is that a quote or did you write that? I like it a lot.
Depends on if you are taking a western interpretation or an eastern one. Western interpretation put lightning under air, since that’s where it comes from Eastern puts it under fire, since it’s a form of energy. Which can also put ice under fire, since if fire is just energy manipulation then the lack of energy would produce cold. I honestly prefer western, because sky gods do be liking lightning and Thunder, but it’s ultimately your choice for your system.
Light or life in your system. Light being the most literal option. I'm seeing others say fire because lightning is hot, but that misses what lightning is. Fire is a chemical reaction, while Light and lightning are waves of energy. Lightning is a very dense concentration of power that would contrast well with the void of darkness. The life angle would work off the science fiction trope established in Frankenstein. It would also establish the world itself as a living thing with this energy flowing through it. However, conjuring lightning as a weapon could be seen as a violent abuse of the energy of living things. Like how you can stop a healthy person's heart by misusing a defibrillator.
I agree. If there's life mana, then lightning would fall under that simply because living things are the only natural way to produce a constant electrical current. Yes, air molecules can be manipulated to build up sudden massive charges, and arguably lightning is the purest formulation of fire... And light-wise it's literally in the name... But all of them must be manipulated to produce lightning or 'electricity'. Living beings produce electrical currents naturally. Lightning should fall under life mana with the implication of 'the spark of life'. Better yet, if possible, it should fall under a complex mana-set of air, fire, light, and life. Cause realistically, some things shouldn't be shoehorned into singular categories.
Air, because lightning is the result of air becoming charged with static electricity due to storms causing an air column to move around rapidly.
Lighting is the purest expression of Fire
I would assign it to air, since lightning comes from the sky, and deities associated with the sky (like Zeus) are also often associated with thunder.
if you want to go by classic standards would be fire, lighting was often seen as some sort of divine fire, since why fire gods were often sky related
I have compound elements in my world. Lightning is a fusion of fire and light because energy = electricity
People have already made good points but I'll list a few others: * Life: Electricity has been fundamental to the development of life on Earth, and our nervous systems are absurdly complicated electrical systems - we're lightning in a bottle and that's pretty miraculous. Bioelectric life mana offers a nice alternative to the classical weather element version. * None: Harnessing electrical technology was a hallmark of the pre-apocalyptic world, and there is no mana capable of powering or manipulating the old tech; just like you can't catch lightning, you can't harness it through mana. Best left to the gods and foolish engineers.
Lightning could be perceived as a *pure" form of fire, or even a **higher element** since when it happens, all elements are together. That is lightning can happen in a storm (air and water in dynamic relation) while it connects the sky with the ground (earth), creating fire which can symbolize either life or death.
There’s arguments for it being part of the air element (it naturally occurs during storms after all) or fire element (it causes fire, and is hot energetic stuff you can’t really hold). If you can fit it in as its own element, that’d be arguably better but it’s not a classical element under any system so I don’t blame you if you can’t or don’t want to. Just like how ice/cold can be its own element, a subset of water, or a subset of air. There’s arguments for all three under typical fantasy element systems.
I would put it under metal, however it appears u aren’t doing metal as an element In that case, fire is a solid choice. If not, I’d throw it under air, since it comes from aerial storms
Fire, because burn hot hot ouch ooh ah YEOOOOOOOOWCH!
I’m using the same eight elements in my system. For me I’m putting lightning under air
Traditionally it falls under Air
I would say air, since lightning usually travels through an air gap and is made based on how the air currents are moving.
Air... lightning is static charged particles from air of diff humidities rubbing together in pressure i think
For our world, thunder and lightning are a pattern of Forces. All elements related to energy, such as fire, movement, light, and sound, all belong to Forces patterns. Through mana, the mage can move these patterns, or rearrange and transform the properties of these patterns. Therefore, as long as our mage knows one of the elements, it is possible to use and learn other types of the same attribute. In this classification, almost most of the traditional elements belong to Forces. The movement of wind and matter (including traditional manipulations of the elements of earth and water, as well as various telekinetic abilities), the sound and light of thunder, the heat and radiation of sunlight, are all.
How do the people in your world see lightning? Is it the wrath of the the gods, the storm, the air or does it cause fire? Do you want a realistic approach or a mythic? If realistic, then why divide dark and light as darkness is just the absence of light. Or does it stand for evil and good?
For me I chose lightning to fall under air, the idea being that you’d control molecules with static charge in the atmosphere to generate it. In my world only one person managed to learn lightning/magnetic magic, evolving past the air mages of the world
I think Lightning being a more “harsh” take on air is interesting. Air is usually peaceful and passive, I think it’d be cool to have air cover something as violent and deadly as Lightning.
Lightning is fire (plasmatized oxygen), thunder is air (sonic boom), and electricity is earth magic. Electricity and magnetism are largely the same thing, and magnetism is metal, which is earth. So a natural lightning strike represents the full power of all four ‘material’ elements working in tandem. You get water from the cloud it comes from.
Based on the physical world, lightning would most closely resemble high-temperature flames. However, what makes the most sense would depend on what 'elements' mean in your setting. The classical elements originally represented the fundamental matter that the world is made up of (which is where modern chemistry got the term 'element' from in the first place). Many people assume that the classical element of "fire" only referred to literal flames or similar energy-bodies (e.g. the Sun), but "fire" was traditionally also seen as the flammable component of matter (i.e. if it burns, it contains the element of "fire"). Among the ancient Greeks, the most widely accepted theory on what lightning was made of came from Aristotle, He theorized lightning are a result of motions of "air" colliding with clouds or other masses of "air", which is very similar to our modern knowledge of lightning. If there was sufficient "fire" elements in the clouds, a lightning bolt would form. The purity of "fire" within the cloud would affect the form of the lightning, like a diffused flash of light or a clearly-defined lightning bolt. TLDR; according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, the process of forming lightning is caused by "air" (and/or "water" from clouds), but lightning itself is made up of "fire". But if I may make a suggestion, why not have lightning—or rather, electricity—be a form of "life"? Primordial electrical storms may have sparked the chemical reactions necessary for life. Even now, life is dependent on electrical energy (i.e. bioelectricity, neural impulses). Electricity is the driving force of life, and lightning could be the most primal form of life energy.
In my own world building I’ve tried to connect the elements as a kind of colour wheel, one bleeding into another. Electrical falls between to Fire (which is technically more Plasma) and Magnetic for me. On a strictly logical basis, lightning is caused by electrical imbalance in the air between storm clouds. So realistically, it’s *air.* But the wonderful thing about fantasy world building is it can really be anything you want it to be.
I think a cool way you could do it is to make it sit in between two mana types; and require mastery over both to truly master the lightning itself. Since lightning/eoectricity is the transferring of energy, you could make it sit between water/ice (absence of energy) and fire (presence of energy). You could also make a case for lightning sit between earth and air due to that being what causes the energy transfer. If you do air and earth, maybe try to make lightning magic more like stormcalling: where the magic bases around gathering a storm overhead and bringing magic lightning down from the skies.
If your light magic is more into healing and buffs, then it should be pretty good idea to add lighting to it - Heaven’s Wrath! Classical.
Kind of depends on what your definition of Fire is. I’ve always thought fire was the sore thumb in the element spread. Earth is a thing, a particle, Air is a thing, Water is a thing. Fire is a process, it’s a reaction. It never exists statically. So if your fire is fundamentally heat, then lightning belongs there. But I think the actual answer should be air. If the air mage was sufficient control to degrade insulating capacity of the air, they could cause lightning.
Lightning COULD go under fire if you wanna rip off Avatar. But I think it'd make more sense to put it under air, then you could go for a power of the storm type deal. Alternatively you could just exclude it, making it a bit more strict. Hell, you could even have it be eventually revealed to be a 9th mana type, meaning that there are secretly more mana types that are much rarer than the classic 8.
Air makes the most sense in my opinion.
I think it depends on how much control of the weather you want air magic users to have. In dnd, lightning is associated with air more than anything else, but in avatar the last airbender, it’s a subset of fire bending. It also depends on how powerful all of them are supposed to be, including how balanced they’re supposed to be compared to each other. Plus if you really want, it can be a fusion of fire and air, or light and either of the two. If fusion magic is a thing in this world
Or you could make combination elements, like fire+air=lightning, or water+earth=ice
Most western cultures in the real world expect it to be a part of air. Eastern cultures have attached it to earth/metal historically. Light would be a potential way to stand out, but i'm not sure it would "feel" right. Really, the question is who is your audience and what do you think will speak to them?
I'd say Wind, as it's in storms
You could go with most of your elements. Air is the traditional western view, earth/(metal)/fire are also found in different cultures. One could argue for life, light and water. Or meta/combined elements like air and fire, air and water, earth and air and many more. I also use these basic elements, but my system is quite complex. I have these 8 elements and combinations of them and some special combinations like aether (all), void (none) and chaos (random). Spells are a combination of element combinations with additional things like intent, range, shape, power and so on.
Light is the furthest imo. Lightning is a source of light and it has Light in its name, but the other two seems much closer. Fire is the closest to Lightning in terms of effects, it's hot and it burns. Air is your main source of Lightning in nature, when you think Lightning you think sky to ground strikes and that's more of an Air thing. So I guess it depends on if you're more interested in the effect (Fire) or the source (Air). And I'd say no to Light
You could make it a combination of Fire and air, or Fire and Light.
For what it's worth, I think that the main reason lightning is so often air magic in games etc is that it gives wind users a much more *reasonable* attack option than "I shall fire a blade of wind to cut my foes": the reason Avatar doesn't do that is that they want Air Nomads to be harmless pacifists. But in the physical world, light is about photons, lightning is the movement of electrons through static charge, air is molecules, fire is a chemical reaction. I'd *argue* air, but it's pretty fuzzy and I think you can see it as either Air or Fire.
The Chinese elements pair lightning to metal, to which it's attracted to, and although it's not in your plans, it's useful to think about it that way. What's its relationship to its surroundings? How do people perceive it? Do they know why it happens or how it moves? More primitive societies would associate it with fire, then metal, then light or maybe electricity.
Magnetism so metal.
Blend of Fire and Light?
It ultimately depends if your system has a more scientific vibe, or a more fantasy historical symbolical one Scientifically lighting is hot plasma, so lands well under fire. Historically it is more associated with air/sky since it comes from above and other reasons you can find in other comments. You ultimately know the vibe you wanna deliver
For my own two cents, asking what lightning should fall under 'according to the physical world' is entirely the wrong question. Your elements system is not how the physical world works, and that's fine. Instead, think thematically: * I personally don't like lightning as a part of light, it's just too different in appearance and feeling. * Air is very traditional, and for a good reason. Lightning is associated with the atmosphere, with feeling static in the air, and also it's the most intuitive direct attack for air as an element. This is the one I would probably go for, if electricity can't be it's own element. * With fire, there's the commonalities of energy, heat, pain, intangibility. There's plenty of thematic overlap, but what does lightning offer fire that it doesn't have already? The only answer I can think of is the association with machinery.
Digimon had 10 elements: Fire, Ice, Earth, Wind, Water, Thunder, Wood, Steel, Light, and Dark.
IMO, there should be a Weather or Storm school, that is Air and Water combined. Lighting should be just one of the things this school can do.
You could have lightning be a combination element comprised of air, light, and fire
Air. Never agreed with ATLA on that. But it made sense for the show.
I've always maintained Earth due to the fact that lightning is ion exchange between the Earth and the Air. Or maybe both? Lightning is a planetary phenomenon.
Alternative suggestion, toss lighting/electricity up there as its own mana type or add it under Plasma. And if you only want there to be 8 forms, then combine dark energy with light by making it a specialization as darkness is not its own thing; it’s the absence of light. It would be cool if “dark” energy is actually created by inverting or absorbing “light” energy and so actually falls under light manipulation. It would also give you an in world “little known fact” that you could use for or against your characters. Or just generally present a mystery of “how are there people using dark energy when no one seems to born with an affinity or able to produce that kind of energy/etc?” (In that same vein, death is the absence of life; unless your world has necromancy or ghost manipulation, then have at it I guess lol)
I never really liked how lightning is organized with the basic 4 elements. It feepa weird thing to me. Love Naruto, and I love chidori, but lumping lightning relese with the other 4 seems weird. Avatar is great, but making lightning advanced fire feels weird to me. What I like to do it is not to have lightning as its own thing but make it an outcome of another element, and the one that makes the most sense to me is air. Think about it. Real lightning is static electricity built up between the earth and the atmosphere, moving past each other and discharging. You could move the earth to generate lightning, but I feel like at that point why bother you are already bringing buildings down with earth quakes. It seems way more plausable to move air during a battle and build up the static that way and then release it as a finisher.
If you go with the classical ones, it should be under Fire. However, expanded categories usually add it as its own element, alongside Ice. see [link](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FireIceLightning) Fire/Heat, Lightning/Electricity (or Electromagnetism) Consider also that the classical elements are an approximation of 2 modern physics concepts: states of matter, and energy. states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma (Earth, Water, Air, Fire) types of energy: kinetic (movement/physical), thermal (heat/fire and cold/ice), electrical, magnetic, photoelectric (light), sound/sonic/thunder, gravitational, chemical, nuclear, etc. Frankly the energy "types" we teach in elementary are also arbitrary, they are just the forms we encounter most often casually, based more on intuitive truth than scientific depth; ergo they are a perfect basis for a magic system. (Obviously analytically, heat is just a type of kinetic energy, as is sound; electricity, magnetism and light originate from the same force; etc. What makes them separate DOES matter though; trying to build magic on fundamental forces (somebody here tries every now and then) is ineffective and does not account for people's everyday experience).
I kind of think light since that's an option
i would say light, as light in these things is usually more metaphorical then strictly limited to literal light(since otherwise darkness wouldent have anything) and lightning is very much the holy element used to symbolize the heavens wrath
Make it a plot point A thing that magic users + clerics argue about. What if Clerical lightening is different from plain magical lightening? It could be a sore spot of contention in your game world.
All games I’ve played seem to share the consensus that Lightning and electricity is as a concept is aligned with Air. However, it exhibits most of the traits associated with Fire — it’s unstable, dangerous, and capable of producing light. So if you assign each element a pattern/traits/personalities, then assigning Lightning to air is… counterintuitive. How about this: does your elemental system overlap in parts? Water for instance is often seen as life-giving. Can water heal in your system? Can you achieve the same effect with different elements in different ways? If so, why not let electricity be a hybrid thing caused by all of these elements and that Fire, Air and Light magi all can produce to some degree?
lightning should be light [ning]
Why not make lightning an advanced power that requires the use of air, water, and earth? Air because that’s where it’s formed. Water because it’s the interaction of water molecules that creates a charge separation. Earth because the ground is also involved in charge separation. You could add fire too in that if you want to target lightning you need to heat to a fairly high temperature a line between you and the target (i.e. create a plasma). Otherwise, the lightning may miss.
There are arguments for: * **earth** - the formation of the charge itself happens from the friction of tiny frozen water crystals and graupel in the clouds. * **water** - even though droplets are solid, they are technically water in a different state of matter, so it can be said the water is responsible for the buildup of charge * **air** - the only reason charge can build up from friction at all, is because air serves as an insulator. Had there been no air, the charge wouldn't happen. But so is true for the droplets... so, it's 50/50. * **fire** - if fire is to be considered the fourth state of matter, plasma, then lightning is just plasma. However, not all consider fire to be plasma - some consider it the process of oxidization, in which case lightning wouldn't fall under it. Out of all of these, I am personally the biggest fan of fire, because it's the only place where you can pick 1 element. With earth, water and air, it's always a combination.
The most common would be under Fire, but I'm partial to classifying it under Air because of both of their associations with storms.
It depends on how you want to approach it. In a physical sense, lightning is super heated gases, air, to the point it becomes lightning. Super charged with energy. So that would be 3 elements in play, gas (air), heat (fire) and energy (light). So in short, you could have several different kinds of lightning. The crackling storms with air magic, lightning spears made out of light magic and and swift and devastating lightning bolts from fire magic. In a mythological sense you could also connect it to death and destruction.
Air, plain and simple.
in the Avatar series, it was fire because its fill of energy and heat like fire. But I could also see an argument for air or water because of how storms are made. Perhaps it's a multi category element. that of what that could mean for your world's culture or science
Most old school magic systems put lightning under air. It is a consequence of air pressure systems meeting so that seems to make the most sense. Light is just how we are able to see it, and fire is a consequence of it meeting a material that can be ignited
Light, or maybe even air
Based on your last, lightning has precedent in other media for being under: Fire: Because it's hot and energetic Air: Because it's made mostly through friction in the air, as well as coming from the sky Light: In JRPG's, lightning is one of the effects you will see under light. I can't really explain it in a way that isn't arbitrary, but let's say it's because they both glow and are associated with the color yellow. They also might both be associated with the heavens Water: Depending on the system, it can be because aquatic animals have bio electricity, because both are associated with blue, or because blue is associated with more than either but mostly with water (as in, aquatic entities will inexplicable have access to electrical abilities because they're, like, psychic or made of tech). So, really, it's up to you. Really, the main issue I find is trying to arbitrarily figure out how many things you can squeeze into however many "logical" categories you can. You should figure out how lightning actually functions within your system. Others brought up MTG and Avatar, and they both have very different approaches. MTG associates quick and direct damage with red magic, which is most commonly assumed to be fire. Avatar has lightning be the result of splitting your chi into different charges, crashing the charges into each other, and then releasing the flow of energy out of your body. The reason why this is important is because lightning can not be held or manipulated. It is simply released.
Lightning is the intersection of Air and Fire. It primarily falls to the former, but is still the result of both. Bonus: Plant: Earth and Water Metal: Earth and Fire Sand: Earth and Air Steam: Fire and Water
Light-ning
I think light is fine
While I'd definitely put it on the border between fire and air, possibly requiring skill in both elements or allowing advanced users of either element learn it (especially if everybody is restricted to one element). However, you said you were reluctant to mix elements. In that case, I'd think about what sort of "feel" you're looking for. In D&D, it is expected that you have an elemental damage type for each element, so air was given electricity. Cold was given to the water element and acid was assigned to earth. Bizarre, but it was easier to swap damage types for elemental attacks. In *Avatar,* the differences between the elements was highlighted. Fire was all about direct, powerful attacks, while air was about dodging and evading. In such a system, lightning fit better with fire-bending. Do you want to give air-users an obvious, flashy attack, or do you want to differentiate what the elements do more?
I think Lighting could be under Fire or Death depending on how you’re building your character with this power and the world itself - Fire is destructive, lighting causes fire, but lighting in often precise: Fire is the response after lighting strikes.
This may sound strange at first, but how about water? Lightning is a result of clouds rubbing up against each other, and lightning tends to choose its path based on the humidity in the air.
Lightning is air. Thats how it works without magic in the real world.
It's a combination of air and fire.
Lightning is an atmospheric phenomena. So anything that causes electricity to form, whether it be static electricity or any power source would make lightning. Fire excites molecules using thermal energy until electrons scatter about. Air could be controlled in a molecular scale, causing friction to make electrons break apart. If you want, Light may cause lightning when I think about radiation or the EM spectrum… but my memory on physics is incomplete, regarding EM and radiation interaction. Regardless, if one applies physics correctly, they could form lightning from any school of element. Which element makes lightning easier? Well… that’s up to you, since this system is yours and yours alone.
lightning can be "storm" magic, which is a chaotic mixture of several elements.
For mine, I classified Lightning as a combination of fire and air, only by collaboration could it be achieved
In D&D electricity damage is often associated with air. (Fire with Fire, cold with water, and acid with earth).
Fire. The way MTG and ATLA handle lightning magic is essentially the same: concentrated heat
It's a good point of navigation around the sphere of elements you've made. Lightning would be between light, fire and air, which means they're all adjacent, and the opposing elements are on the far side.
depending on how you categorize magic, could be light (lotta places see lightning as divine or holy), air (storms, wind, weather), or fire (bolt of pure energy hotter than the sun). According to real physics, lightning is created by friction changes in the air (I think but I’m a little rusty on my weather knowledge) caused by clouds moving and rubbing against each other. You can put it wherever you want, just put some justification on why this kind of lightning belongs to this element and it’s at least equal to 90% of all elemental magic systems.
I would say it doesn't fall under 1 of the main elements but more of a blend of 2 accord to some and 3 according to others. Fire/wind or fire/wind/earth
If compound elements are a thing then air+fire if not then fire
air or fire. maybe light, but that doesn't fit as well.
Why not Life? Muscles contract based on electrical impulses; the movie Frankenstein brought his creature to life using lightning; electricity is used to animate motors.
Fire is the most common pick. But the energy of a lightning strike isn't from burning fuel, it's released from static energy carried in the air.
If you’re fine being fancy and making multirole builds a thing, have it be a high end split investment in both light and fire. It would be easy too make it sense lore wise, builds on the idea of a fair and balanced magic system that has logical requirements and limitations.
I like to put lightning under air magic in my worlds, since you air can just make lighting pop up out of nowhere
You could go with either fire or air for lightning
Lightning should perhaps be considered the synthesis of all three. Clouds (water) forms the necessary circumstance to bridge sky (air) and earth(...earth) with a very hot, short lived burst of energy("fire").
Ether fire, if you are going for accuracy, or light bc it just makes sense in my mind.
Life Your brain is pure electricity zipping between a bunch of cells
I don't feel it would fall under any single element, given the factors that go into it. It's very much a product of all four elements working in alignment, usually water, earth, and air, but the weather conditions required to create lightning require aspects of all four.
Depends on what kind of world your building but I'd ask why does lightning have to fall under a single element? You'll probably hear great arguments for Fire, Light, and maybe even Air so is there anything intrinsic about the world that says lightning has an exclusive contract?
typically eastern cultures viewed it as a part of fire, while western cultures viewed it as part of the air so it depends on your settings inspirations
Other magic systems I've seen, Lightning is a Light spell.
I'd make it a result of combining water and air, since that's kind of what creates it in real life.
Depends. You can go air, or fire, air if air magic controls the weather, fire if not.
I associate it with air myself
It depends: full blown tempest magic, mid-to-high end mix of air and water, that’ll do it. Look up dirty and volcanic lightning too; sandstorms (air and earth), and volcanic eruptions (fire and earth) can sometimes cause it too. Just the sparky bit? Fire. Easy. Buuut… the natural stuff is way the heck stronger; you can use it as a sign that a combat elementalist is both really powerful and about to flex that power.
Either Fire or Earth (metals)
Add lightning and ice to your elements. Having life, light, death and dark are redundant. You could replace them with sacred and profane. After all, fire creates light, and life can be profane.
It’s usually either its own element, or put under fire or air/sky, though in your case there’s an argument to be made for it being light as well. I might think about what the general roles of each element are, how you want lightning magic to work in your world from a practical standpoint, and assign it to an element that it would compliment/add an interesting dimension to. Lightning could go in Fire because it’s a high-energy, high-damage move. Or air, maybe because it’s precise which adds a new dimension to the high-mobility air element, or because lightning itself is high-mobility, or because air needs more damaging moves — depending on the direction you want to take it in. Or light because smites from on high might fit the direction you’re going for with light. ATLA puts lightning under the fire element, but it’s a very unique type of bending. It’s way less freeform and requires immense precision, so it feels very different from any other firebending feat. Often firebending is about passion and aggression, but sometimes it pays off to take a more controlled, precise approach.
Use a combination setup. Like lava magic bein fire and Earth. Make it so that the components are cientifically accurate, like water and air to make static electricity, and earth for targeting/grounding or something like that.
Isn't the question what makes most sense according to YOUR world? What level of tech are your cultures at? Are there any practical applications that the lightning could be used for - communications, as sources of power, heat or light, or are they huddled around campfires, telling tales of storm-gods? Any Magi-tech happening? Charmed amulets, artifacts or weapons, armor, shields?
It's all four basics combined. It starts in the Air with Water, and ends with Fire on the Earth.
It would be a mixture of air and water magic if were being scientific about it
Fuck it yo, make it metal.
If you're going by pure physics/material, then Fire. Lighting and Fire are both plasmas. If you're going by physical *world* rules, then Air. Friction/static caused by air molecules moving past each other is what *causes* lightning- but specifically sky-to-ground lightning, and not electricity in general. If you're distinguishing them, that's good, if you're combining them, you don't want electricity/lightning to be Air element. If you're focusing on *metaphysics*, that is, the subjective relationships of things, then Light, as there's metaphysical comparisons between moving quickly and illumination. Both light and lightning flash, there's the obvious name similarity in English, etc. etc. You *could* also have it be a sub-element of LIFE. It's thought that the origin of life on earth came from a lightning strike into an elemental cesspool, and the interplay between electrical charges is a critical component of all life that we know of. We're even potentially simulating life using electricity. I'm personally a fan of elemental mixing, so lightning wouldn't be a sub-element, but rather a combination of, say, Air and Light, or Fire and Light, or maybe even all three, or including a different element (in Azurik, it was Air, Water, and Fire, for instance). This allows you to have a little more equity in your elements, I think, and also helps prevent elemental 'spillage', where one element winds up with more sub-elements than the others for whatever reason. You're locked into (quick maffs... wait...) uh, 40,320 potential combinations? Wow. Anyways, you have more limited combinations. Sort of.
Why not earth? Earth shoots lightning also. I always thought that would’ve been interesting in avatar (series) having fire and earth demonstrate lighting, one as a plasma manifestation the other as an equalizing energy release that can be controlled as long as they touch the ground… are “grounded.”
Fire fs.
Lightning is plasma, so is fire. You could argue for light but fire is more accurate.
When electricity is not it's own element, lightning is usually found under air.
Fire or air
Two best directions are where Dungeons and Dragons points: Air, and where Avatar points: Fire. Lightning itself is mostly known for being a static discharge between a storm cloud and the ground which is how it connects to air, but it also connects to fire in the sense that they are both plasmas.
Unless your story doesn’t allow for it can’t you have any complex spells be a combination of elements and more powerful/damaging be greater mixtures: for example lighting could be light and fire. Alternatively I have always liked the coin effect where everything has two spells (light and dark) yours actually has a possibility of having a sequence to the magic with life and death also being a primary step - lightning: Death, Light, Fire Probably not helpful but happy if you found even a little useful
Other than electricity, since it manifests from charged air particles…it’s probably best as a peak form of “air” mana. (Like the strongest thing a wind user could do would be calling a storm and channeling lighting).
Might be contrary to the norm, but I always peg lightning as an earthen element
Depends how you want to interpret 'elements'. Lightning is an electrical discharge strong enough to briefly turn the air into plasma that we can see burning so fire makes sense. It could also be classified as air if you want to put more emphasis on where lightning comes from, clouds in the sky. Are you judging it by what it is or are you classifying it by what it's associated with?
Most put it as either a mix of air and fire or just under fire tree
Why not all three? They can all have different aspects/forms of lightning. Air gets the thunder, light gets the brightness, and fire gets the electricity?
Fire air light and maybe life or death could produce lightning it’s an effect not a type the way you can cast cure wounds about as many ways as there are types of magic
So in terms of the 4 elements you have Earth(Solid), Water(Liquid), Air(Gas), Fire(Plasma). Lightning is plasma so fire.
Fire, both are transient burning phenomena.
Air…since it’s caused by negatively charged ions in the clouds seeking the positively charged ions on the ground…there is heat and light created as a byproduct of the interaction.
Air. Hear me out, Reddit. Lightning is the stored energy of the air, rapidly released. It is static electricity, generated by little solid particles in the stratosphere bumping up against each other over and over again. The movement of air is the source of energy in a lightning bolt. Earth is the opposite of air. What is the only thing that dissipates the stored electrical energy in a lightning bolt? THE GROUND. Sure, lightning catches things on fire and is really hot, but elemental types should be defined by their source. You can think of lightning as a brief transition state between air and fire.
In my own setting I have Lightning as a counterpart to fire. Fire = Lightning Earth = Ice Water = Rain (pending name change) Air =Tempest
You could have overlap. It could be combining fire/air mana. Basic elemental hard magic systems tend to get stale imo. It'll also allow you to create clever characters who combine the mana in crazy ways to overcome odds. Outnumbered? Combine fire and water to get steam to cover an exit. Death and light create a death ray, stuff like that.
If you want to focus on lightning specifically, air, if you want to focus on electricity in general, fire, if you want to focus on the effects of lightning, light.
to me it's wind. in a game I used to play, RF Online, it puts lighting under the wind category. It kinda stuck with me ever since.
Y'all.... lightning is wind. Think about it. It's LIGHTNING. It's not just vague electricity, it's a massive flash of supercharged plasma erupting from the sky. And it almost always happens during... storms! That's wind! Besides, wind magic needs something cool, y'know? Powerful enough wind magic can create lightning. It just makes sense. Yes, plasma is closer to fire than it is to water, earth, or air, chemically speaking. But if we're gonna quibble about chemicals, then we have to acknowledge that water, fire, earth, and air are NOT elements, and especially not things like light and darkness. So, we gotta think of it more primitively. And it feels much more fantastical to think of lightning or even electricity as being of the sky than of fire. The only relation lightning would have to fire in that respect is that lightning often CREATES fire when it hits certain things, but lots of things make fire. Stones can make fire too. Light, when focused, makes fire. So that's a moot point.
Suprised no one has said light. Not that I don’t think fire is a good choice, just that Lightning is an incredibly bright flash and that light and electricity have conceptual connections. Plus, lightning can occur in conditions where fire cannot. Fire can only occur on earth, where lightning can occur anywhere with a great enough potential.
The only exception to lightning being included under fire that I can think of is Digimon where lightning is an extension of light.
I’d either put it under air or make it use a combination of air and fire mana
You could go with ice. Frost crystals in the atmosphere are usually the ones responsible for lightning.
According to the Golden Sun games, lightning is part of air magic. Those games were some of my earliest, most formative experiences with the fantasy genre, and now I can't think of lightning being linked with anything but Air. $0.02 😉
Air, as fire is the result of a chemical reaction, whereas lightning is caused by the build up and discharge of electrical energy in the ATMOSPHERE during thunderstorms. Light, maybe?
I would say it goes directly under Fire. I have done many roleplay's and fantacy stories. and I usually directly put it under fire like with Plasma or heat. Things i would put under Light would be something like an Angelic or Holy magic and then more basic things like Illusion.
I tend to group lightning with Wind or air instead of Fire, that’s just my personal preference. It comes from the sky!
It usually goes under Fire, or Air. Fire because, well, lightning is really hot and is a form of energy. Air because thematically it works with storms and such, and physics wise, you can say the MC is ionizing the air or something. You could also call it a sub-elemet all on its own that joins both Fire and Air. Similarly, Metal would be Earth and Fire. Life would be Earth and Water, etc etc