God, whenever discourse about "magic in RPGs" and "magic systems in fantasy" and "tabletop powerscaling" come up my mind casts wistfully to my beloved The Lady, who forever reshaped the idea of what magic COULD BE, if only writers weren't cowards, for me
I'm not going to retell the whole story of The Lady - read the Books of the North, the arc starting with The Black Company and going through Shadows Linger and The White Rose, if you want the story. It's too big for me to compress into tweets. Too sweeping.