Am I the only one who has trouble keeping their characters' color identities at a low number of colors? Even when I get past the "it's definitely NOT green--it's more Grixis than Jeskai/Esper/Mardu---it's more Rakdos than Izzet/Dimir---- it's more Red than Black" I still have problems avoiding development that leads certain characters to splash, or dabble, (like Ajani) or even snowball into other colors throughout a short time period. Does anyone else have this issue, and if so, how do you resist this mental process?

I guess it's a matter of keeping in mind what your character's basic motivations are. Sometimes branching into multiple colors is going to be a necessity, but for the most part, I think most characters can be described in pretty simple one- or two- color patterns. Remember also that people in general almost invariably have aspects of all five colors, and characters can, too, without actually being all five colors.

I'm often reminded of a quote by Antoine de Saint Exupery, one which I know Mark Rosewater has also thrown around in terms of design. It can be translated as "perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." I find simplicity is often more of a challenge than complexity, and success in simplicity often pays off better than success in complexity.

I guess my ultimate advice is to remember that if you have a three- or even four- color character, the majority of what that character does should reflect all of those colors, which gets pretty difficult to maintain after a while.

Also remember that a lot of color identity comes down to what magic you use. Jace in his first appearance is a rather unambitious, unimaginative person, but he's a mind mage and is therefore blue. It's a little reductive but it's a good rule of thumb. You can have exceptions of course like white necromancy but broadly speaking probably relying on magic is not a bad idea.

Oh, and don't be reductive about colors either. Like... don't... don't be MaRo. >_< If a character has strong family bonds and ties to their community, MUST they splash white, or is their core color of red enough to express these ideas? I'd argue that if you play it right, yeah, it is, or at least it can be. Raleris is a caring person who went out of his way to help a young planeswalker even though he knew it might be a trap set by Raiker Venn! Is he white? MMmnope. He did so in part to serve his own ends! Is he black? Doubtful. Dude's pretty blue, at his core--just like Jace is kind of a selfish brat (but isn't black) and has an awful hero complex that usually involves him bumbling around doing more harm than good and saving the day Pink Panther style (but isn't white).

Basically, don't reduce colors to rigid stereotypes, and keep in mind what Raven says about people having aspects of all five colors.

Oh okay, thanks, those are definitely some words of wisdom. It's just especially when I conceive a mono-colored character (most of mine are 2, I have one who pivots from Black to either Blue or Green, and another who splashes Green philosophically) for example I have one Jade Mage and one Crimson Mage (I intend them to dabble deeper into the one color than most individuals, for example Chandra sticks with fire and fiery things, the crimson mage would be just as suited to fire, lightning, dragons, goblins, etc.) anyway, I have trouble for example, if the jade mage went to Theros if he/I would be tempted to splash in White from Karametra, Blue from Kruphix, or Black from Pharika's belief system.

EDIT: I'm well aware that with time, personal attributes can change, thus so does color identity, but too often am I tempted for them to immediately start picking up on an aspect of another color as a satellite to their own ("I'm red and I'm gravitating towards Mardu or Izzet or Naya, better adapt my magic and attitude to Black/White/Blue/Green.")

Yeah, I would definitely say that in a situation like that, splashing would be almost completely unnecessary. For one thing, there's no reason mono-colored characters can't worship multi-colored gods. For another, as long as they're not adopting new philosophies that are directly contradictory to their primary color identity, there should be no need to splash them into a new color. If, however, it's important for them to change that philosophy, or to start using spells outside of their color, then you might want to start merging them, but in my experience, there will rarely be a need, and if there is, your characters will sort of let you know.

The other thing, especially with regards to Ajani and other canon characters, often (it seems to me, anyway) Wizards shifts their color focus not for story reasons, but to market new cards. Sorin, for instance, has no business being . Creative then has to come up with reasons to justify the color shifts, and it rarely goes well. So if you feel you need to start adding colors to characters, just look at why you're doing it, what point it serves, and how forced it's going to seem.

It might be helpful to remember that hybrid mana is a thing, and sometimes what seems multicolored may just be hybrid.

Oh ok, that makes a whole lot of sense. I have to expect that, for example a mono-Green character could very well affiliate themselves with the Gruul Clans, Selesnya Conclave, Golgari Swarm, Simic Combine; shards of Bant, Jund, and Naya; as well as the Abzan Houses, Sultai Brood, and Temur Frontier; and plenty of others canon or otherwise. However, it's harder to wrap my head around a Blue character affiliating him/herself with the Cult of Rakdos, for example. But I completely understand where you're coming from, I will keep that in mind. Fortunately none of the guilds, gods, or clans demand use of magic of all their associated colors (though there must be SOME lore reason that you don't see White Dimir cards, it wouldn't make a lot of sense) and only a character from pre-Conflux would be forced to use 1-3 colors of their respective shard.

I've considered that... but how do you identify the gaps between | | | philosophically? (Sorry, I don't mean Blue, Red, Blue/Red hybrid, and Blue/Red multicolored specifically, just using them as an example.)

Getting a simple color identity comes from understanding that a color identity need not contain absolutely every facet of the character They will have elements of their personality that don't quite jive with the dominant themes, but the dominant themes (as well as the nature of any magic they use) are what determines color identity. So ask yourself, when the chips are down and your character has a hard choice between following a path of one color and one of another, which one do they take?

If I wanted to cut Illarion Vale down to a one-color identity, for instance, I would be comfortable assigning him Red. Why is that? I mean, he uses illusions and is certainly more of a thinker than a doer, and he's a hero who wins through cleverness and guile. That's blue, isn't it? But when he's given a choice between logic and passion -- doing the rational thing or doing the "right" thing, he chooses passion. I prefer him as a blue/red character, especially given that his magic skews blue (this is bigger for me than personality since a dimensional personality naturally goes out of bounds but a powerset doesn't) but I would have been somewhat comfortable submitting him as just plain red.

Frankly, it is my opinion that there are few characters who couldn't be reduced to a 1-2 color identity, but that a color identity should contain as many colors as it takes to adequately describe the character. Using my own 'walkers as examples, Lourima Viiran could have been all the way to Black/Red/Green -- she's got a hot temper and acts on emotions, and her ruthless "the strong survive at the expense of the weak" can be lensed as black/green or even simply a villainous green character. In the end, however, what defined her was seeing that the way the world worked was unjust and going with it anyway, which is pure black "looking out for number one", not emotional red or the darker social darwin side of green. Black is adequate for her. Ellia, on the other hand, I left with a tricolor identity -- a wedge identity no less -- because no component seemed adequate. There would be something fundamentally missing from her character without blue, from her magic without green, and a little from both without black -- to an extent she's a blue character with a black/green powerset, which is devilishly hard to identity.

I mean, I certainly agree with this that there are certainly some characters that cannot be reduced to one or even two colors. I think Kahr-ret-Taris fits this bill, as well. Both his power set and his basic philosophy fits pretty clearly into a color scheme. And your point about Illarion Vale and Ellia are both well-taken. It's just been in my experience that MOST characters tend to be able to be pared down to one or two colors.

I think one thing we're seeing though, is that maybe color identity really isn't as important as we've sort of been treating it. I mean, especially if we're not putting these characters into cards. Like Tevish said, the characters are what they need to be. But I do think there's a tendency for writers, especially newer writers, to want to fit as much of the "cool" stuff into a character as they can, and that's sort of what I'm getting at.

If I ever get around to expanding on the beastshaping druid ogre character I posted about a few months ago zie'll be red-green, despite the fact that zie shapeshifts, and the fact that zie is interested in shapeshifting as a form of self-expression and an exploration of the fearful and monstrous. I could maybe splash in blue for shapeshifting but we know that beastforming stuff can be done in monogreen, and while the spookiness and the self-centered nature of zir motivations could push things to black, I think those qualities can appear perfectly adequately in red, to use Szat's terms.

If we're talking choices (and I really like that heuristic) if it's between shapeshifting into a person for some advantage and shapeshifting into a baloth, zie'll pick the baloth. If it's between taking the path that gets zin the most stuff or the most power, and the path that gets zin the most pleasure and emotional edification, zie'll pick pleasure every time. Zie could be a four color character, and maybe it'd be fun to explore zin that way, but I think there's a real value in particular to exploring less appreciated aspects of certain colors, red and green being highest on the list, so it makes more sense to me to use a two color pair rather than four colors.

Honestly the character already probably has too much going on to really work more colors is the last thing zie needs. Zie's really in danger of falling into that trap of Too Much Cool Stuff, Not Enough Actual Character, which is why I haven't tried writing anything about zin yet honestly. Neat concept, uuuultra narrow application.

Color identity can be different things:
1. The beliefs and personality and philosophy of the character
2. The mechancial color identity of a planeswalker card
3. The magic the character uses

And in regards to each:


1. Every actual human being has some personality aspects from all 5 colors. That's how the colors are concepted. That means that any especially well-rounded human character, and probably quite a lot of non-human ones, will sometimes dip into every color. But most characters (and probably most real people) strongly favor 1-3 core colors over the others. So keep in mind what your characters' core values and personality traits are, but don't worry if they don't hit every single trait in a bulleted list of their core color's philosophy, and don't worry if they share a few values with other colors.

2. A planeswalker card represents only one facet of a planeswalker, one fraction of their spells, not their whole suite of magic abilities let alone their personality. If you build a character by thinking about how you would depict them, in their entirety, with one card, you unnecessarily limit yourself. Also keep in mind something Brady told us: there is no flavor difference between hybrid and gold.

3. Mages and planeswalkers normally have an affinity for 1-2 colors of magic, or limited schools of magic that they learn earliest and most easily, prefer to use, and keep perfecting over their lives (i.e. telepathy for Jace, pyromancy for Chandra). Since every color has associated values and personality traits, it's not surprising that characters are best at drawing and using the mana that best matches their personality and philosophy.

But planeswalkers can and have picked up other colors of spells as they grow more experienced and visit more planes. Back when they were all immortal, planeswalkers usually ended up quite skilled in all 5 colors, even if most still preferred 1-2 over the others. That isn't likely for most characters now, but there's no reason a neowalker can't dabble in a color outside their usual set of powers if they're exposed to an opportunity and motivation to learn. Nissa dabbled in magic, for example. She's still a character at the core and mostly uses magic. She knows a few spells, but she's still best at using . This is the equivalent of putting a splash in a deck. If she started heavily using magic more than , I could see it affecting her personality over the long long term, but that's a different scenario.



4. Lastly, when it comes to splashes of off-color magic and bits of off-color philosophy, I see absolutely no reason they have to line up with each other for a character to make intuitive sense. A green character might have white as their secondary color philosophically, but splash black rather than white magic when and if they do learn non-green spells. I don't see any problem there. As a semi-real example, my personality is first, second, third. But if I were a planeswalker my magic of choice would be plus with at most a dabble in .

Oh, so in a nutshell you're saying that it works just fine to chart a character's color identity on two different axes; magical and philosophical/personality. Though if Nissa's black magic dabbling is 'splashing' a color, then what of Ajani, Sarkhan, Tezzeret, and Garruk's color shifting?

It's different for every character, but all those actually had more than just a splash. Note that Nissa never had a card.

Also usually WotC makes personality and spell colors match, almost exactly. I'm saying that isn't necessary, at least not outside the core color. It may be hard to justify somebody whose core color philosophically is different from their core color magically.

I cannot recall who it was that said it, though I seem to remember it was on a DailyMTG article years ago, that the difference between hybrid mana and multicolored can be defined thusly: where multicolored is the space where two colors exist at the same time, often the opposing sides of the colors involved, hybrid is the space where the two colors share magic and/or philosophy. So, for your example, is where, say, a character is the "crazy genius" archetype, basically a lot of what Izzet is defined by -- magic wise, maybe using both fire and water; but is more of where a character is just really passionate and obssessive about learning and information, probably the kind that loves teaching for the sake of instilling others with the same passion of learning -- magic wise, probably leaning toward ice and lightning (or just weather if not lightning). To differentiate them from just , is much more scattered and unorthodox, not ordred like likes to be; and is much more open and people-oriented, where is rather resereved and hermit-like. To differentiate it from just , is too concerned with the process and the results, does what it does for progress, or for betterment, where does what it does because it's fun, or because it wants to (which can be "for the sake of ones it cares for"); on the other hand, is too peaceful and too concerned with information -- isn't active enough for 's liking.

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Other than that, I don't think I can add much that others haven't already said. If I had to say one thing, it's recognize what your character is and not what you want it to be.

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That is probably the most graceful way I can possibly imagine to explain it. Only issue besides is what would be the purpose of identifying your character as instead of any of the others? If you identified a character as (instead of or something) wouldn't that just be translated as "this character isn't white, black, or green in any way, but he/she is vaguely red or blue, but not perfectly both and not completely either"?

Ultimately, colour identity comes down to how X perceives the world. Just to give an example of mine, Panahihou is a Black character, but expresses the side of the colour more oriented towards belief in free will, and has a personal history with slavery, so he loathes it.

This pretty much encapsulates my own thoughts.

I like to divorce color identity from the library stacks.

A character may have an identity strongly rooted in black, say the usual willingness to use reckless means to accomplish his or her goals but have a library whose stacks are full of white and blue spells. Black's willingness to pay any cost to achieve a goal is best exemplified by the classic Faustian bargain with a demon. This is a very reckless decision for the Black mage, as is paying some kind of sacrifice in blood to launch attacks on an enemy's mind with something like Thoughtseize. My hypothetical mage wouldn't deal with demons or pay in life. He or she might throw themselves into a political situation and use the more control oriented aspects of White and Blue to manipulate the other politicians or the common folk. This is reckless because the mage may well run into another mage that's better versed in those colors, or that dabbles in Black and so would be able to level the playing field with my hypothetical mage. The ripple effects from this subtle spell duel are far-reaching, impacting the other politicians as well as the common folk. Ruthlessness and recklessness tend to be associated with Black, but here I present a White/Blue mage whose personality aligns with Black.

Tezzeret, in the webcomics, seems to be driven by both a desire for the truth about the Seekers and anger toward the Seekers (and much of Esper at large if we consider that book) and Bolas. Anger is associated with Red, yet we have never seen Tezzeret use Red mana, nor has he had a card with Red in its mana cost.

I don't see the willingness of a black mage to pay in life or take risks as reckless. Recklessness is red to me -- goblins charging into battle and getting slaughtered, or Tuktuk stupidly getting himself killed/transformed by a hedron trap in a ruin that everybody else had the sense to avoid. The risks black philosophy/characters take seem more like carefully calculated payments of exactly the amount to get stuff done. It's just willing to give up things that other people might not want to part with, such as its soul, its humanity, the lives of 342 other people, etc.

Kind of like the financial industry's risky practices today in the U.S. They're taking risks that look insane, but all the danger is to other people in the economy. The wealthy bankers and hedge fund managers know how to shield themselves from and even profit from giant recessions, so they aren't endangering themselves while they knowingly sabotage the U.S. economy. They're risking other peoples' money and livelihoods, not their own.

Or the black mage is willing to undergo some pain or bloodletting or suffering if they get something they really really want out of it, but not to the extent that their lives are destroyed.

Not that a black character can't be reckless -- look at what Liliana did when she was "young and stupid."