Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-24516349-20140208174350/@comment-11437688-20140210132816

A battle between magicians is like the game of chess. Rather than focusing on sheer firepower, it focuses more on knowing what your opponent will do next while knowing the weakness of the opponent's spell then countering it with a magic symbol that will oppose it. So in short, magicians are more of counter-attackers. I think this is one of the reasons why they have so much difficulty in fighting Touma since Touma's fighting style is more of a counter-puncher to the level that they have no choice but to take the position of the attacker rather than the counter-attacker position which they are most comfortable with.

Also as a magician, you should also expect the same from your opponents so it requires not just knowledge and background about history, religion, etc but also a sound mind and a sound body. Even refining one's own life force to mana requires certain disciplines (controlled breathing, heartbeat, etc). So all in all, magic (as far as I can see it, as of now) is more sophisticated than PCP.