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I think I agree that magic has an integral part of any fantasy novel simply because magic in and of itself is a fantasy most people imagine having. It's almost like having a sci-fi novel without any mention of stupendous technologies. You can do it, but the task of beating out paragraphs of fantastical writing with no word or mention of dazzling light or mysticism is a big stretch. I almost think there should be a pseudo-fantasy category for writers and their stories that are set in a fictional time yet contain no magic. Just a thought, I'm a bit fried from my workout, so if none of this made sense, domo away.

the Lion

Top ten, eh? Well, those are only the tip of the iceberg.

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1. Anti-Newton: Any universe in which any kind of magic exists will have deviant physics that allow the magic to be possible, and also to permit bizarre special effects that defy conventional physics.

2. The "Evil powerful overlord is weak against a rag-tag group of heroes" Rule: Main villains, no matter how many countless thousands of soldiers are under their command, will always fall against a small band of ten or fewer rookie adventurers.

3. Why won't you die!!!: The main villain can only be defeated permanently by killing him, usually with a sword but sometimes with some ironic trap, or with some kind of spectacular explosion.

4. I'm only good at being a victim: The main heroine, no matter how competent or incompetent she is in other things, will wind up being captured by the enemy or otherwise cast into an inescapable situation that will result in death unless the main hero saves her.

5. Girls, in the event of an emergency, PANIC!!!: Very few heroines are good at keeping their heads in the middle of a crisis. They will typically have some kind of emotional overreaction and be unable to think properly for most of the book OR they will run out and do something incredibly stupid/impractical as a result of an emotional overreaction. This is why I usually don't like reading about girl heroes. Yes, I do admit that there are some women who don't do that, but you'll notice that these tend to be tomboyish characters outside of crises anyway.

6. No Questions of Ethics here!: The enemies are always clearly evil so no one has to feel remorseful about killing them. When they're not, it's purely so the hero/heroine can get all introspective about life and death.

7. Someone Call Tech Support!: Any extremely rare artifacts found during the course of an adventure will not be usable at first. Or, if they are usable, the main hero/ine will not know how to use it properly/effectively.

8. Stupid Golem...: There is nearly always a recurring petty villain who tends not to be very significant to the plot, most of the time. Usually he'll only attain a role of real significance when the main heroes are nowhere around, or at really important spots near the end/middle of the book/series. The rest of the time he'll just be really annoying.

9. Stereotypes: A story will generally have some uber swordsman, some ultimate old wise sage, a super evil half deity half demon fellow, a quiet, introspective priestess type, and many, many more! If it somehow fails to have even ONE of these characters... then the book you are reading is probably not a fantasy, because there are no fantastic people in it.

10. Don Quixote Blames the Enchanters: There are almost always some kinds of magical spirits, demons, wizards, etc. working in the background and quietly manipulating the heroes in small ways. Occasionally they will appear in person as villains, guides for the heroes, or lecturers who harangue the heroes about screwing up for the 98th time in a row.

11. Monty Python says "I'm not dead!": Generally, whenever a main hero/ine dies in a spectacular manner that allows for a tiny chance that they are alive, they're perfectly fine and will be good to go adventuring again in about a week or less.

12. The "Friend's" Secret: One of the characters who claims to be an ally will always have a secret that no-one else knows, usually a traitorous one. If it’s one of the protagonist's most trusted friends/advisers/someone he trusts, then s/he is, in secret, the main villain or an ally of the main villain. If not, then they’ve got some kind of connection to the dark side. Occasionally this is just something about a mysterious past that no one actually cares about once it gets out in the open. "I used to be a spy for Breland." "Yeah, so what? You work for us now."

13. "My God! He's dead!”: The best friend or some of the friends of the Hero always have to die. Why? Presumably so the karma of killing off great evils that plague the world is balanced, I guess. Occasionally the hero himself will die, but his martyrdom always results in victory for Goodness and comes at the end of the book.

14: Murphy's Law strikes again!: If someone or something (on the good side) is impenetrable, can't be destroyed, is immortal, or anything similar, but there is one weakness to him/her/it......It'll get exploited.

15. The "It Always Works Out" Rule: No matter how horrible things may seem or how much things seem to have changed, everything always works out for the best regardless of how scorched, salted, and/or depressed the land has become. Life always flourishes and they always end up happy!

16. The "I'm late, I'm late, for a Very Important Date!" rule:
No matter how improbable or unlikely, the hero will show up just the nick of time to stop a horrible event or be on time for a very good/bad event. This may be either on purpose or by accident, but they will always be there and are NEVER late. If it ever seems they really have arrived “Too late,” then whatever they were too late to stop probably wasn't something they could help anyway.

17. It's a sword! It doesn't have to make sense!: The laws of physics will cease to apply to anyone who is wielding two swords at a time or is otherwise a master swordsman/woman. They will be able to accomplish incredible flipping and twirling attacks and cut right through heavy armor, regardless of how heavy their own armor is. These stunts will be utterly impossible both in theory and in practice but are cool to imagine, so there!

18. Where the hell is a Mystic Sword!? Oh...Right there... : Every time the main hero has to find a sword or any other kind of weapon, one shall appear.

19. The Rule of the Cranky Old Arch Wizard: There is often a mage-type person (who is in the top ten most powerful people in the world) near the main character until they are killed off in the must unfitting way possible (I can melt a mountain, but some guy shot me, and I didn't do anything about the arrow). However, before they die, they will probably have enough time to pass on a few vital teachings or magic items to the hero who must go on without them. Furthermore, they are always old, and the hero always surpasses them after minimal training.

20. Don't pick that up! Oh wait... never mind: If something is cursed, and the hero has it, the curse will rarely hinder him, and will sometimes help him. If it DOES hinder him, then it will only ever be for plot-important reasons, and the odds of it actually killing or seriously hurting him are slim indeed.

21. The Chaos Shrine Theory: The heroes always, often for no good reason, wind up having to go back to the same freaking place they started at. (Not necessarily the hometown).

22. THE REVIVAL RULE: When an extremely powerful enemy or ally dies, they may end up coming back to life later on, only they'll be more powerful, and sometimes in another form/body, in some cases even coming back as the opposite gender. Note that this doesn’t apply to weaker characters, especially if they deserve it more.

23: The "Luke, I am your father (or brother, or half-sister)" rule: In a book where the main protagonist has an arch villain that they do not know at all except for a name, it will almost always end up being part of their immediate, extended, or married-in family.

24: The "Hey! That was my kill!" rule: In a party, if one of the characters that is NOT the main character is the basic stereotype of someone who would never be the real hero (a dwarf, a kid, a goat, a stupid fat hobbit, etc.), it will be they, not the real hero, who ends up defeating the antagonist. Note that this only applies if they are present when the final battle takes place and are not hostages.

25. The death complaint rule: When Villain/sub-villain (or even rival) gets killed off by someone that is not the Hero they will be shocked and say how that "insert hero's name" is the one that was supposed to kill them. Why exactly they care about this as they bleed their last is never explained.

26. The "'I think I saw a rock... if we milk it, we can use it to...' and other insane items that always work" rule: Somewhere along the way in a book, the hero will spot a random object that is only mentioned once, but at the end, ends up being the key to success. Such as a sentence half-way through saying 'Hmm, a rock. Cool.' And at the end, saying, 'Let's use rocks to...'

27."You couldn't sleep either?" Rule: Whenever there is a romantic story between the hero and some girl, there is always a romantic talk about their feelings under the moonlight. The only times this does not happen are when one of the two dies, when the Hero's quest takes him far, far away from the girl, or if they instead choose to confess it after some kind of near-death experience.

28. It's just like the Jerry Springer show...: Any romantic relationships the protagonists have will always go one of three ways:
1. The hero falls in love with the heroine and rescues her time after time.
2. The hero/ine falls in love with with the hero/ine, but has all sorts of stupid mixed feelings about it for some reason, refuses to see logic/obey his or her passions, and as a result stays away from the hero/ine until the end of the book/series. This is most often true if the hero/ine is a teenager.
3. The hero falls in love with the heroine, but then falls for another girl. That's okay though, because the heroine will fall for another guy at roughly the same time.

29. "Oh my, that was unexpected. NOT!!!": Fantasy heroes never read fantasy stories themselves, apparently. Whenever they're walking into some kind of clichéd overused ruse or trap, they will NEVER see it coming. This is especially true if the aforesaid trap is blatantly obvious to the reader. For the same reason, heroes somehow manage never to recognize monsters that are common legends in every world by the one in which they really exist. "Holy crap! That giant red-scaled lizard can fly and breath fire! What kind of beast IS that?"

30. "See, this is what happens when you discuss the plan right under the security cameras." (AKA Scooby-Doo Principle): Any brilliant, well-thought-out plans that the heroes make that are discussed in detail under the reader's eye will invariably fail in some spectacular manner when put into action. It is only plans that are not made totally visible to the reader's eyes that work. Interestingly enough, the absolute opposite is true for villains.

31. "The Bigger they are, the smaller you need to be to kill them" Rule: The physically larger the opponent is, the person must be inversely sized to them in order to kill him. That’s why massive giants fall most easily to dwarves, and hobbits can take down evil spirits so powerful that they corrupt the landscape for countless miles around.

32. "The Gods are really mean." Polytheism Rule: In any fantasy story which involves multiple gods, they will all, or mostly, be really mean to people, excepting only one who is the hero’s patron. If this is not the case, then the gods are not a big presence in people’s lives anyway, so it doesn’t matter, OR you have a collection of good and evil deities in constant conflict with each other. Also there is a small chance that a character, perhaps a rather important one, may actually try to become a God in their place. Those odds double if the character is evil and/or insane.

33. "Who cares if I'm a level 5 fighter and he's a level 49 Turbonium Dragon? I can take him!" (AKA Dungeons and Dragons Revenge!): In any book based off of an RPG game or related to an RPG game, any and all characters will almost never act according to the laws of RP-gaming physics, i.e. levels and stats. A peasant with a spoon will be able to kill an adult red dragon, the ranger will never be able to take a hit despite having 128000 hit points, and two heroes who can be up to fifteen levels apart will have as much difficulty fighting each other as two heroes one level apart.

34. "Nonviolence never solved anything.": 95% of all problems in any given fantasy story can only be solved by killing or destroying something. The rest involve healing the wounded, completing strange challenge games, and running away. Sometimes a hero will refuse or not think to use violence to solve a problem, and that problem will continually grow in size until violence is applied.

35. "Dragonheart" all over again. And again. And again.: At some point in any long-running series, the hero/ine(s) will be forced to confront a dragon or dragon-like creature and either tame it, negotiate with it, or kill it in a battle of epic proportions. This may happen several times, sometimes even with the same dragon.

36. Seeing the light: When ever a character (usually the main character) is working for an evil group or such, they won’t admit or know that what they're doing is wrong until a small town gets destroyed, someone dies or they stumble across something else that will make them want to fight against their former allies. Then they'll be as zealous about killing their masters as they were about serving them.

37. Vengeance Rule: In any book where a main person who is not actually in the traveling adventuring party dies, then they will be one of the main hero’s greatest friends, or a mysterious new guy will come and avenge him. If not, then he’ll come back to life. If not that either, then the book is going to end soon anyway. Then again, the corpse of the main guy might actually be the motivator that sends the hero on his quest.

38. The cow goes BOOM!: No matter what time period the story takes place in, and no matter how primitive technology is, there will always be some means of making things explode, 'cause explosions are cool.

39. Da Vinci's Law: There'll sometimes be someone ahead of their time (usually a mage or an inventor) who will somehow be able to create something that, conveniently enough, the adventurers need.

40. The Betrayal Rule: The second in command or summoned demonesque servant always betrays the enemy leader near the end of the book, or in the beginning when he/she first shows up. The heroes then have to fight him and he turns out to be 50 times harder than the evil leader.

41. “Use superglue next time”: There is always some kind of evil chap who has been sealed away in some vault or prison and yet always manages to break free again, only to be resealed again at the end, or killed.

42. The Nightmare (Richard III Syndrome): Either the villain or the hero may have some kind of dream about what’s going to happen to them. In the villains case they will try to change this, but their efforts will be what actually leads them to their death. In the heroes’ case, they will either take it as divine inspiration and do exactly as the dream says, or try to evade it and wind up making it happen anyhow.

43. "Hey, aren't you that figment of my imagination from page 259?": Any time ANYONE catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, only to see it disappear seconds later, it is ALWAYS real and never a hallucination or the like. Unless, of course, the observer goes to investigate it. Then it turns out it's really not there. But even in that case, there's at least a 50% chance that the strange vision will reappear later and have some plot significance.

44. “Lets go to the moon!”: When the heroes need to get off the planet fast, to either go after a villain or look for something they need to get, etc, there always seems to be some sort of spaceship/craft that will let them get there. This is true even if there is no other type of high technology on the face of the planet, in which case an ancient race of people or monsters built it and just happened to die out long ago, after placing a few clues to let people know where the spaceship is.

45. The Adrenaline Rule: If there is a team of three and one separates from the other two, then the two will go after t3h ub3r 3bilz0rs m0nst0rZ!!! and get their butt handed to them. Then the one shows and goes nuts on t3h ub3r 3bilz0rs m0nst3rZ!!! and totally annihilate them.

46. The Temporary Paralysis Rule: When someone taken hostage is about to be killed by the main bad guy, the good guys bust down a wall and the villain holds the knife at hostages throat but does nothing except talk for 3 hours with the good guy, and then watch all his guys get beaten down and still not move the knife or threaten the hostage until the hero goes after him personally. The hostage will not struggle very hard. The hero is also known to freeze and not move a muscle if someone puts a knife at his throat, even if said hero could easily escape such a situation easily.

47.The Cool People Rule: Often seen is that one guy who strays away from the rest of the party members, and has a dark past, and used to be evil, and at one point leaves everyone out of annoyance. Than later on when the chips are down he breaks down a wall and kills most of the enemies, saves the main hero, and helps him beat down the big baddie.

48. The Mind Control Rule: When the hero’s best friend is controlled by the villain, he will almost always break free and the villain will ask 'How is that possible?' and the hero will go on some corny rant about how 'Their friendship was superior' and what not. Then the villain freaks out and no matter how badly injured he is, the main character will hit the villain once really hard and kill him. If this does NOT happen in anime fashion, then the hero will either find a way to manually release the friend from mental enslavement, or kill him and feel really sad afterwards.

49. "Who are you calling archetypal?": Heroes usually come in one of three basic groups:
1. Seemingly strong adventurers who are not, in fact, very strong. In fact, they tend to accomplish very little without their friends to help them. (See cliché 50)
2. Very strong adventurers who vastly outstrip all their friends, companions, and almost all enemies (except the main villain) in terms of power. (See cliché 51)
3. Very weak adventurers who aren't good for much except getting in the way. (See cliché 52).

50. "My Faith in my Friends protects me!" (Anime Principle): Adventurers in category 1 above are always made out to be tough, but usually can't survive a single encounter with stronger enemies without their allies at their side or an incredible amount of dumb luck. For this reason, they will never even get close to defeating the main villain until the end of the series when they are at maximum power, and then they'll still need help, most likely.

51. "I am the finest swordsman in Icewind Dale. No, really!" (Drizz't Principle): Adventurers in category 2 above tend to be ridiculously strong, and can easily defeat anyone except the main villain, and that only because their magical sword or the like isn't magical enough. The entire book is dedicated to glorifying them.

52. "Goddammit Bilbo!" (Newbie Principle): Adventurers in category 3 above tend to be more of a nuisance than anything else. More often than not, their lack of good sense/bad luck will get them into trouble that their allies must rescue them from. But if that character happens to be the main character, it doesn't really matter because s/he'll never have to fight anyway and s/he'll some how manage to save the world in spite of his/her total lack of ability.

53. "I'm a lumberjack, but that's not what the ax is for." (Home Boot-camping rule): All adventurers in categories 1 and 2 above, regardless of their original walk in life, will be enhanced in some way to ready them for adventuring. Starting out as a blacksmith as an excuse to be stronger than an adult stone giant is a common one. Being skilled with a trident because you forked hay all your life is also a good example. And let's not forget all the master archers/marksmen who just happened to be okay at hunting. Of course, occasionally they were trained in some kind of military academy, but that doesn’t happen as much.

54. Pick up a sword and FIGHT!: Isn’t it funny how the average young hero can just pick up a weapon with little or no training/experience and defeat enemy soldiers/minions easily? Enemies who are: A: Stronger B: More experienced C: Better trained? A kid (insert age between 13 and 19 here) years old dispatching hardy soldiers of the enemy? Hmm... Either the mega evil dudes up top pay below minimum wage or bad guys just feel sorry for the poor lil' heroes...

55. "I shall now wield... the Magic Sword!": There will, most probably, be a magical item to end all evil. More often than not, that item was made in the shape of the sword, which the main hero just happens to fight with. If it is not a sword, then it's usually A: A magic amulet/pendant, B: A suit of magic armor, or C: A shield.

56. "I don't wanna go home!": A strange plot twist, subplot, or turn of events will usually cause the adventurers to go back to a member's hometown. Sometimes the hometown will be in ruins, and if the adventurer did not leave in the first place then he might have spared the lives of hundreds.

57: I am the Destined One!!!!: The hero generally has some sort of prophecy attached to him, whether there is an artifact involved or not, wherein s/he must be the savior of the entire world from an ancient evil.

58. Being "The One" ain't all it's cracked up to be, for reasons which do not concern you.": Any hero/ines with prophecies and great destinies attached to them will usually never be satisfied with their lots in life. For at least the first half of the book, any hero who got dragged off his dirt farm for some adventure will actively resist any attempt to make him carry on with it. He'll always be saying how he'll just go home after such-and-such is over, and that he doesn't want to get involved in anything, and generally just whine his head off instead of saving the world. They'll always be longing to go back home to their dirt farms and slave away all their days mucking out stables instead running all over the place hitting things with swords and spending time with their friends and loves in the adventuring party. People who are actually EAGER to adventure generally fall into cliché 59.

59. Somewhere, over the Rainbow...: Occasionally you get adventurers who just NEVER get tired of the life of excitement. They can't settle down for five seconds before they start getting an urge to go out and kill things. They usually end their stories by starting new adventures. Presumably after a certain point they die and leave their corpses lying around for other adventurers to find, thus passing on whatever magic gear they had on them.

60. "Gather round kids, it's storytime-, nope, never mind.": Any tales that the hero tells about his adventures, even if those adventures took YEARS to complete, will be told in full with no details excluded in a matter of fifteen minutes or less. The same applies to written stories which are composed and read in no time at all using a minimal amount of paper.

61. Everyone has a perfect memory!: Anyone who does not suffer from amnesia or similar issues can recall everything that has ever happened to them, ever, with perfect clarity, down to the minutest details.

62. Speeches warp the space-time continuum: Whenever two or more characters are having a conversation just after lunch, they will always finish sometime in the late evening, in time for dinner or for a plot event. This is true even if the conversation only takes half an hour or less to recite aloud. Sometimes characters will talk all night after starting to talk at 8 PM.

63. Clearly, the solution is to kill all prophets: If there is a prophet in the story, he or she will most likely be some kind of hermit hiding off in some remote, nigh-unreachable location which the heroes will be compelled to reach anyway. Any and all prophecies that the hero/ine hears that pertain to his quest in any way at all WILL come true. However, they will always be vaguely worded, or deliberately misleading, so that no one understands them until it's too late. Kind of makes you wonder why the prophets bother.... Oh yeah, and trying to make prophecies come true always makes them come true the wrong way. Trying to stop them just fails outright.

64. We're not speaking to each other: In any adventuring party, there will never be any time on the road while traveling to talk about adventures or past experiences that the reader witnessed, but any given character did not. That way, everyone in the party stays in the dark about everyone else in the party until it becomes too much to ignore. Unless of course, you consider the below rule:

65. Just nod your head and smile: If anyone in the party notices anything strange about anyone else in the party, they will rarely consider straight-out asking about it. More often, they'll just spy on the character for a while, or just do nothing. If they do ask, circumstances will intervene so they don't get an answer.

66. Life is one big soap opera.: Everywhere the hero goes, and everything the hero does, will have the most unlikely coincidences attached to it. For instance, the woman the hero save in chapter three will just happen to be the duchess who commands them to be released from prison in chapter eight.

67. City of Heroes rule: In most cases, it's pretty rare for the main hero and his companions to be the only heroes or would-be heroes in the world. There's always uncommonly good soldiers, noble knights, random wandering mages, rangers in the woods, and similar people who are just as cool, if not cooler, than the hero but who don't take it upon themselves to save the world in lieu of the hero, probably because they don't want to bother with all that annoying destiny stuff. Who can blame them?

68. You get to the end, and give up: Whenever the enemy army is on the verge of overwhelming the forces of good, something will stop them, usually the death of their leader. They will all either inexplicably die, or just stop fighting, or run away. They're never smart enough to just finish the job, never mind that their boss is dead.

69. Stupid Indians...: There is always some kind of tribe of barbaric people who have not advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, never mind that an advanced civilization has grown up only a few miles north. If they are evil, they will also turn out to be either death-worshipers or cannibals.
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(I hereby acknowledge that I have borrowed this list from another and was not created on my own. However, I won't declare who, but if you're really that curious, then PM about it.)

That is so true. Every bit of it.

Christ... bitter much? I think you forgot the magical jewel on the forbidden sink of plot advancement...

the Lion