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Worldbuilding is so much fun, but with great power, comes great responsibility to not screw it up.

And we’ve all been there: you create an awesome magical artifact or high tech device. You’re SO excited to share it with your players or add it to your novel. But there’s just one TINY problem... It totally breaks your story.. or maybe even your whole world.

Creating overpowered items, superpowers or technology is easy to do. And it puts you in a bind - suddenly, your heroes can use the “Travel-Sized Miracle Device” to solve every problem. Bye bye story. 

But, I’m a professional worldbuilding consultant and I have the solution for you: Let me introduce you to the Triangle of Power.

What is the Triangle of Power?

Managing Overpowered magic

The Triangle of Power – as far as I know – is my own invention. But I’m sure there are lots of clever people out there who’ve come up with other versions of the same thing. It’s a tool for helping worldbuilders manage overpowered magic or technology in a fictional setting. Basically it consists of three “levers” you can adjust: Abilities, Cost, and Limitations. 

Abilities: What Can it Do?

The most straightforward lever, in many ways, is ABILITIES. When creating a magic item, super power or technology, just ask “what does it do?” 

Maybe it makes you invisible, or gives you the strength of 10 elephants, or allows you to travel faster than light, like a warp drive?

• It makes you invisible, like a Cloaking Shield, or the One Ring
• It give you the strength of ten elephants
• It catapults a ship faster than light across the universe 
• What is the power you want to give the item? 

Often, especially when an item is story critical, like a MacGuffin, the ability is what we think of first.

If you want some inspiration for amazing magic items, check out Bonus Action over on World Anvil - I’ve linked his world in the description. And while you’re there, why not create a free account and start worldbuilding your own item, technology, spell or power along with this video? Just use one of the specialized worldbuilding templates to get started, and there’s a tonne of prompts to help you develop your world and its powers in more detail… And if you’re a GM, you can add your own stat blocks, or take one from the massive community library! 

The Cost of Magic

The next side of the triangle is cost. How often did Star Trek’s Voyager stall because it needed Deuterium or Trilithium? 

In hard magic and RPG systems, the cost tends to be really obvious - like mana in Magic: the Gathering, or spell-slots in DnD 5e. But it could easily be something as mundane as fuel, or as ephemeral as “life force”. 

Your power’s cost can be complex, or it can be simple. It might not even be immediately obvious. Sometimes this is even more sinister – consider Tolkien’s One Ring that slowly erodes your soul. Creepy.

Some ITEM COST examples:

• Your soul
• Someone else’s soul! (e.g. Skyrim soul gems!)
• Blood, a heart or another body part (yours or someone else’s)
• Some of your life force
• Mana, spell slots, or similar

Limitations: What It Can’t Do

Now let’s get into the most overlooked side of the Triangle of Power…. the Limitations. 

Limitations are…. the other stuff. In DnD these are common: something only works in touch range or within 30 feet. Or it can be blocked by a dead magic zone. In science fiction, limitations are important too: a dust storm or radiation can block your radars or clog your engines. A piece of tech might only work in earth-like gravity.

You’ll notice that limitations are different from cost. Cost is like an input - souls, mana, blood, spell-slots. Limitations are more like conditions that must either be met - like special circumstances, or must be avoided, like “interference”. 

For example, “the planets aligning” is a special circumstance used often in the Dark Crystal (so much so that I added it to the Worldbuilding Meta of Thra when I wrote the RPG!).

Here are a few examples of good limitations. Nerf zones, like dead magic zones, specific environmental conditions, or even special people who can activate the effect, are all common limitations used in fiction. 

Possible LIMITATIONS:

• zones or areas it doesn’t work (e.g. dead magic zones or a vacuum)
• only works for the right species, bloodline, or chosen-one
• only works at a specific time, celestial phase, etc.
• only works in darkness/light
• only works at specific temperatures or altitudes

So ability, cost, limitations are the fundamental building blocks of your magic items, spells, powers and technology. But how do you balance your triangle? 

Easy mode: Balancing Your Triangle of Power

The easiest way to balance your triangle is for all sides to be the same length, or “weight”. If the item with WORLD ENDING POWER only demands a drop of blood as a cost, and has no meaningful limitations, then it’s going to be pretty world breaking. Literally anyone who gets their mitts on is going to derail your story pretty quickly. Apocalypses everywhere.

But if your ABILITY is to Summon Cthulhu (a pretty mighty worldending power), then a good COST should also be hefty - maybe the immortal soul of an angel. It needs to be something difficult to get hold of and weighty. And the LIMITATION might be something just as rare, like “when the planets align”, for example (it’s a classic for a reason, just sayin’).

On the other hand, if your ability is something small, like “manifest a single drop of holy water”, then the costs and limitations can be small. For example one drop of holy water (power)  costs a single drop of blood, and you can do it once an hour - that’s the only limitation. It’s a small power, with small costs and limitations. 

Advanced mode: Balancing Your Triangle of Power

So that's the easiest way, but there are other ways to balance your powers too. In a nutshell, if you don’t have any limitations, the costs must be higher. And if you don’t have any cost, the limitations must be pretty extensive. 

The triangle of power can be used for a bunch of other stuff too, including balancing or even inventing your magic system.

If you want me to do another video going into the advanced usages of the triangle of power, just let me know in the comments.

The Triangle of Power in action?

So, if you’ve been creating along, you should have an ability, a cost and a limitation. But once you’ve balanced your item, how can the Triangle of Power help your storytelling?

Well, Star Trek does this really well. 

Whenever the solution “we just fly away” is going to nerf the story, they use costs (like fuel) and limitations (like an ion storm) to take away warp power. At any point, you can introduce your costs and limitations as obstacles, reasons why your power WON’T work to solve the problem. 

This is important for making your characters try different things, not always solving problems in the same way. Remember, Pixar’s number one rule of storytelling is: You admire a character for trying, more than for their successes. Limitations give your characters make your characters try something new, even when they’ve already got their hands on the ALL POWERFUL ARTIFACT. And that’s good – it’s rich potential for storytelling.

Of course, you have to be careful. Using the same limitation too often can make it feel cliche, like the old “cell phone with no signal”. But, having your characters bump up against limitations or costs can be a powerful start to a try-fail cycle.

And you can also use costs and limitations for motivation! Costs are a great incentive for character action: how many times was Voyager mining or bargaining for trilithium? Or how about villains harvesting souls to power their doomsday device? Costs can drive character and story.

So, balance your triangle and you’re golden, right? Well, there’s one more thing. You need to theme your triangle.

Theming Your Triangle  

As with everything else in worldbuilding, it’s important that your Triangle of Power fits thematically within the world you’ve built. Theming comes down to mood and tone, and it’s critical for giving your world the atmosphere you want, and making it feel real and connected.

If your magic’s cost is the blood of a hundred virgins, but your power is bringing back the marshmallow fairies, then you need to take a long, hard look at your worldbuilding. This item is balanced, but it’s still broken – it betrays the spirit of whatever you’re trying to tell the audience. That is, unless your marshmallow fairies are really freaking scary. In which case, keep them away from me.  

You have to make sure the tone of your ability, cost and limitations match across your triangle of power. That’ll make a power that’s not just balanced, but gives the right flavour to your world, and is memorable too! 

What about other examples of the triangle of power that are super broken? Or really well balanced? Share yours in the comments, throw this video a like, then grab your mighty hammer of +20 inspiration… and go worldbuild!