What's a good reason for the performance of magic to be relatively rare that doesn't involve magical potential being an...

Maybe it involves striking deals with dangerous creatures

Would saying "only autistic people can use magic" fall under "magical bloodlines" or is it a creative twist on the trope?

Autists don't breed that often, so it's more of a creative twist. I'd change it a little so that magic comes from mental illness in general, with more madness meaning more magc - an autist might be able to light a candle, but a gibbering lunatic could burn a city down.

Magic relies on secrets that not just anyone can learn, and not just anyone can teach even if they know them. It requires an intricate understanding of the world, almost to foreign for the human mind to even grasp, that can't be taught by books.

Its uses are odd and useless to the common man.
Like, one of the basic spells is to summon a single apple, which will appear randomly within a hundred feet, in return for blinding you for 24 hours.

The same reason not everyone becomes a doctor; shit's hard.

Wizards are literally arbitrarily selected mutants with different thaumitology (like biology but magic) to other people.

Unsounded is a good example of a thing with this, wrights (spellwrights, the magically able) have special 'ports' on their hands that while not physically present are required to be able to manipulate the Khert, the magical overlay over all of reality

Magic is a literally physical mutation, wizards who appear human rarely remain as such since to increase your magical potential means to quite literally shed your humanity

People are just randomly born with magical ability. There's no known surefire way to produce a magical child, although there are lots of rumors and probably secretive and very unethical testing going on to do so.

All magic is powered by a very rare and a quite expensive mineral.

You have to be chosen/you have to achieve enlightenment/ (look up the Pythagoreans).

Limit magic socially:

Magic is confined to bloodlines not innately, but because the knowledge required to use it is closely guarded and handed down the generations withing each wizard family.

Magic requires a non-human patron, various patrons are extremely choosy about who they grant their power to.

Limit magic geographically:

Magic flows along channels in the earth and pools in certain places, and humans can only use that power in the places where it pools. Anyone can learn how, but actually doing it means being forced to remain near the seat of your power, and having to deal with the others who would try to share or steal your mystic site.

Limit magic chronologically:

Magic waxes and wanes in accordance with the heavens, like the seasons or the tides. Periods when it is strong enough for ordinary humans to use are short and infrequent.

It takes a long, long time to git gud.

Magic is as varied and versatile as it is frustrating. Magic isn't just 'I draw the mana and somehow spells happen' like so many things out there, magic is the secret, symbolic underlying laws of the world, of the universe, a distinctly supernatural, extramundane layer of the very world we live in, not apart from it. Magic really is all around us, every day, and affects things we can and cannot see. The different plants that make potions, the positions of stars, the phases of the moon, the purity of a heart, the ores of the earth, the claws and teeth and eyes of birds and beasts, the spirits of the air and earth, corpses of unhallowed ground and the dirt of churchyards, all of this is perfectly normal, but also magical and fits into a grander web of the absolute nature of the world.

Magicians are above all scholars and seekers of knowledge. Their powers are a bi-product of their delvings into the unknown. It takes profound dedication and desire and seek out the truth of the world, wizards are almost like monks in their want for enlightenment and knowledge.

It takes decades to uncover these secrets, to experiment with ingredients, to learn to call spirits and commune and bargain, to amass knowledge, and most of all, to hone your desire and dedication, this isn't a side hobby you can dabble in, this is a life time's work, and the life time's work of all the wizards who came before you. It is quasi-sacred and noble, the path of the one who would uncover the secrets of the world in full, it is powerful beyond compare, wondrous beyond imagination and dangerous beyond comprehension. It's a lonely life of long travel gathering ingredients in wild places and long nights holed up in your study perfecting incantations and gestures and divining words of power.

It takes profound willpower and a singular mindset to do magic. It's a life meant for very, very few people.

I think this is a pretty good answer. The sheer amount of work and reading and study that goes into even mundane schooling (not to mention the fees) is mostly prohibitive. People don't have the time/money/dedication. I would imagine it's a mixture of difficulty, money, and secrecy. Wizards would naturally be very protective of their knowledge, so that not every schmuck could go around casting the exact same spell as them.

Magic costs resources, e.g. mana. If you like the aesthetic of mana, you can make people consume crystallized mana to regain it. This lends itself to governments strictly controlling mages, since powerful people accumulate valuable materials.

If you don't like a world with mostly military mages, magic can impose great cost to the user. Every second spent spell-casting is a second removed from their natural lifespan. Most people will not do the cost-benefit analysis and dismiss magic as too dangerous. Those with desperation or ambition will consider it.

The bottom-line is that magic comes with a cost, and most people aren't willing to pay it.

I think a way to show this in world would be the failures. Assuming there is a commonly available introduction to the concepts that are necessary for full blown wizardry. you would invariably have people who cant hack it. These people might have minor tricks. For example the bartender who has a thaumaturgic ritual set up upstairs to repair the plates and glasses after a fight or the town cop who just makes rocks light up behind him as he makes night round. They will never teleport or even fight with magic but they understood enough to open the door even if they couldent get down the stairs.

Learning magic takes a lot of time and dedication (exp) before it starts paying off. Most normal people loose faith in their potential long before they can cast their first spell.
With all the energy it take to become a mediocre wizard, a guy can become a decent warrior and see more returns along the way.
Because of this investment most organisations don't bother to teach magic to their common charges.

Of course this only makes sense if you are using a system where developing magic takes more resources than other skills.

The other, more universal reason that a few other anons mentioned is that the materials needed to begin learning magic are hard to find. You ether need a teacher, spell book, charged magic item or mystical treatise to learn from, all of which are rare, usually finding any of them can be an adventure in itself.

If you don't mind adding house rules, make magical advancement risky.
Every time you gain a level in magical class or ability you have to make a roll to avoid the disaster in your magical experimentations. This could be blasting off your nose while researching elementalism, accidentally cursing yourself, summoning a powerful monster you can't control, sacrificing important memories or just going crazy. A serious effect should last one to three adventures and minor one could be permanent. The risk is even greater the first time you gain a level in a magic class or ability. It has a chance of causing severe, permanent harm or death, which is why few people bother learning magic in the first place.

Instead of class level you could use this every time a character learns a spell. The effect would relate to the specific spell and the serious risk is taken when the first spell of a new spell-level (assuming D&D) is learned.
This could make it so wizardry as trade is not uncommon but most wizards are just simple scholars with a knack for arcane lore and items. Very few of them take the greater gambles of spellcraft.

Magic isn't that powerful and most people don't bother.

>"Ever since I was a kid I always wanted to become a Wizard, I did."
>"Until I tried enrolling to an actual academy that is. The entrance exam was harder than an adamantium barstool."
>"Learned how to conjure up a candle flame though, which beats fussing with a tinderbox at least"

"Books are expensive and commoners are illiterate" is the reason the learned nerd wizard is a thing, fampai. The ability to read and scribe words, most likely in an unknown tongue, was fucking magical to your average shitfarmer.

You could go with arcane knowledge being holed up in artifacts only the gentry/church have.

In ACKS, a wizard who starts up a mage-sanctum gets would-be apprentices, but each of them have to pass a proficiency throw to actually become a mage (about 35% to pass for most, and even the smartest have a 50%). If they fail they become discouraged after 1d6 months and quit, while those that succeed become level 1 magic-user apprentices. Who can cast one spell per day. No cantrips, just one spell and you're done till next morning.

Basically, it's hard and even aspirants who can get themselves into a wizard tower are frequently overwhelmed by the hellish workload involved in learning the basics of magic. I see it as comparable to an notoriously tough and selective PhD-level program. Yes, there are a lot of people who theoretically could do it, and it gives some great benefits to people who make it through, but even people who are blessed with the opportunity often don't finish, or they realize it isn't what they thought it would be. Or they might run into abusive mentors and inadequate support systems when they have trouble. Not everyone can be a scientist, and not everyone can be a wizard.

What's a good reason for slaughtering hundreds of soldiers on the battlefield to be relatively rare that doesn't involve combat potential being an inborn trait? "horses and armor are expensive and commoners have little combat training" seems like a cop out, but I don't want to resort to "noble bloodlines" either.

It's the kind of thing that takes a lot of practice to work. If you have a medieval society, most people can't spend hours every day for a year trying to conjure a fireball. They have to worry about plowing the fields. Of course, this makes magic more of a plaything for the aristocratic class.

There's a lot of superstition about magic, but most of it isn't true. Consider how most of human history we'd have rituals and things that didn't really do anything. If people don't understand science and the scientific method, it's easy to ascribe magical properties to random events. If you had real magic interspersed there, it could happen occasionally, but the signal to noise ratio is very low such that it's hard to tell what really works.

It requires a specific set of circumstances that are hard to control for. If magic is tuned to lunar cycles or the constellations overhead, you can make certain times easier to perform magic than others. This makes it rare at certain points in time and more common in others.

Really, you just need to be creative for your reasons for having magic, and it's pretty easy to come up with a justification.

In my opinion, you can't have a believable complex, civilized social setting if you have widespread and common magic. If you think about it for a second, you realize a society in which various people have various powers of that scale would never hold together. Just translate it to real life. Sure, we have guns, we have the means to kill other people rapidly, but guns are a limited concept. Everyone understands the general idea of a gun, it's a device that shoots a projectile fast enough to damage your organs, and so when they see a gun they know what to expect. In a fantasy setting though, if more than 50% of people can do magic, then nothing is held together, you never know what the person in front of you can or cannot do, especially if there are many types of magic existing, or if the magical power of each individual varies a lot.

Everytime I see a setting with a lot of magic users, I always wonder how it can remain anything else than some kind of wilderness roamed by bands of elite wizards, in some sort of hunting/gathering train of life.

Yeah, but there are a lot of low-level warriors around. OP want reasons why the world isn't full of shitty hedge wizards.

That's twist isn't so creative, it's basically Unknown Armies (or lovecraft/fae shit) with less development and more edge.

>some kind of wilderness roamed by bands of elite wizards, in some sort of hunting/gathering train of life.

I kinda want this setting now.

>I don't like power to be economic, I don't want it to be inherent, and I don't want it to be ubiquitous
All that's left is conspiracies.

Well, it's a bit dumb if magic is an inherent part of your world. You should have minor magical things, like striking a special stone against steel to start a camp fire (and then big mages can throw fireballs) as part of the magic if your magic system is related to the rules of the world. If you're calling on outside powers like the lightbringer or the black goat of the woods or whoever, then the reasons that most people get involved in it should pertain to that. Same if it's an outside force that isn't an entity.

Literally sounds like a medieval townsman's view on modern firearms.

In my opinion, you can't have a believable complex, civilized social setting if you have widespread and common firearms. If you think about it for a second, you realize a society in which various people have various weapons of that scale would never hold together. Just translate it to real life. Sure, we have swords, we have the means to kill other people rapidly, but swords are a limited concept. Everyone understands the general idea of a blade, it's a device that cuts well enough to damage your organs, and so when they see a sword-weilder they know what to expect. In a fantasy setting though, if more than 50% of people can have guns, then nothing is held together, you never know what the person in front of you can or cannot do, especially if there are many types of guns existing, or if the rapid-fire power of each individual varies a lot.

It would hold together for the same reason society holds together despite the possibility everyone around you is packing heat: Humans are inherently social animals that are not randomly bloodthirsty.

It's not the same thing. Guns are physical things, with persistence in the physical world. If someone has a gun in his hand, he has a gun in his hand. If someone knows how make an acid explosion 20ft around him, he looks exactly like the guy who doesn't.

People feared magic in our world, and it didn't even exist.

A big difference here is that guns rely on advanced civilization to get made, maintained and supplied with powder and balls. Not to mention other restrictions of materials and skilled workmanship.
Some magic systems bypass all these factors.

Historically it has always been that no matter how badass you are, there is an equally badass dude on the other side who you have to watch out for.

Sort of limits your options.

People believe that magic drives people insane, and that's partially true. But the bigger truth is that you need to be insane to even start learning magic.

This also explains why wizards have such big hats. They used to be hatters, you see.

Being able to handle magic is a skill that not everyone has the knack for. It's entirely random whether or not a person has said knack, and most people who do have it tend to be missed or ignored by master mages, either because they never demonstrate any magical talent in front of said masters, or they're too old to become an apprentice when their talent is discovered.

This is an accurate description of cities where black people live.

If someone has a gun in his waistband, he looks exactly like a guy who doesn't.

A man with a bomb strapped to his chest and a fully automatic submachinegun in his coat looks exactly like the somewhat cold guy next to him.

It's the exact same thing. You seem to underestimate the sheer amount of easily concealable death available in the modern world compared to in the past.

We're all wizards, now. Comparatively.

> that doesn't involve magical potential being an inborn trait

>If someone has a gun in his hand, he has a gun in his hand. If someone knows how make an acid explosion 20ft around him, he looks exactly like the guy who doesn't.

Guns can be small and concealable. People can be packing heat without you sensing it, until it's too late.

Let's take the extreme approach and say that magic use is instantaneous and requires very little energy use (so it's repeatable). The same rules apply for the person potentially using the magic nefariously as they do for everyone else. Sure, you might be a badass wizard, but everyone you meet could be just as powerful. What are you going to do, just assume you're the baddest motherfucker around and arbitrarily kill everyone you meet? That works just up until you meet someone who was paranoid enough to cast a protection spell on themselves this morning and is at least as powerful as you are. And if you're doing this in any sort of calculated manner, like trying to rob banks or something, you can be damned sure that the banks are going to go out of their way to employ the most powerful magicians they can find to protect their investments.

At the absolute worst, you get something akin to the wild west. Sure, there's the outlaws that exist, but chances are at some point they'll come up on someone at least as good as them, and then they're dead.

Most people aren't risk takers like that. They'll channel their magic into ways that are still profitable (by enchanting artifacts and selling them, or brewing potions, or being a healer, or whatever) without being branded a societal outlaw.

Doing magick require visiting astral plane once in a while.
To visit astral plane you have to defeat a guardian.
To become more powerfull mage you have to beat another guardian to enter more deep astral level.
Actualy lot of IRL spiritual\esoteric teachings use this videogamish trop - beat a boss, go to next level.

Also you can add another esoteric flavor to it by setting a limit of power you can cross but you dont have too. Like after some level you still can go deeper, but its all just a trick of reality to lure mages on greater power so they lost themselves in that power. So mages have to be humble and wise and remember that path they walking on is gathering knowledge, not infinite powerleveling.

Coming up with new spells is incredibly difficult, and wizards refuse to teach magic to people who can't teach them anything new in return

To use magic requires an understanding deeper than knowledge alone. Anyone with access to education could learn the scientific principles behind spells, but that doesn't mean they grasp how spellcasting itself works; to do that, one must reach enlightenment. At its most basic level, casting a spell not merely a matter of saying the right words at the right time, it's about shaping the substance of your mind and soul and understanding how they are connected to the world around you, like moving a muscle you never knew you had.

The fundamental principles of wizardry are not something that can be easily taught in a textbook; while anyone could theoretically gain this understanding, there's no sure way to actually share it. In some remote places, there are monastic orders dedicated to this understanding, in hopes that acolytes can find this part of themselves through years of carefun study and meditation. Others come by it in times of extreme stress, being so desperate to achieve something that they're willing to try anything to do it, even things they thought impossible. Some people discover it through encounters with strange forces beyond mortal reckoning. Some simply reach enlightenment by thinking about the world and coming to this startling revelation. Whatever the case, these people are finally cognizant of some part of themselves that they never felt before, and that part is what lets a mortal become a mage.

Basically, the Mage: the Ascension concept. It can work even without that game's specific fluff.

The gift of magic can only be granted by the gods, and the gods work in strange ways

MtAw, MtAs use actual magic concepts, they are not invented by game developers, just reinterpretation. Srsly, OP should read some irl magic books, not just fantasy ones. With that you can add greate philosophical meaning to spellcasting, blend science and magick beyond banality of TechVsArcana wars, allow your setting to have more complex casting characters. Or at least have some inner fun for yourself since exactly 0% of your players will understand that clever alchemical reference you made.

Magic is not innate to humans. The ability to cast it comes from an infusion ritual done at intersections of Ley Lines, and only during the rare occasions that the energy is thick enough to see.

As such, wizards keep very close tabs on who attains magical potential, and control all known Ley Lines with vicious jealousy. Furthermore, the knowledge required to cast magic with practical speed and variety is kept guarded within their academies, just as much prisons as places of learning. Rather than a diploma, you must sufficiently contribute to the academy before they let you leave sans hunting party.

This is why they hate "accidental" magic users so much, and why they have such strained relations with Fae who appear anywhere and randomly infuse and teach people magic without the use of Ley Lines.

maybe something like you have to die first to become a magician? now a days you have cpr and stuff but a medieval setting would lack all that thus making it extremely rare

A) Magic requires really expensive components so only the exceptionally wealthy or well backed can afford to practice it.

B) Spells are sentient to some degree (think Djinn from Golden Sun) and "bond" with their spellcaster. You have to find and bond with spell-spirits in order to cast the spells that is inherent within them. Theres a finite amount of them though so only those who really dedicate themselves can ever find them. A common man may spend their entire life to find a single one, not a reasonable prospect if you have a family to raise.

C) Magic is really hard to learn, like the amount of intelligence it would require to get a phd in a very specific department. Theoretically only 1% of the population really has the intelligence to become a wizard or witch. This is compounded even further by the fact that the magical schools tend to be expensive, and only those who can afford entry or are discovered can really study magic. Many with the potential are simply never given the chance because of low birth & never being discovered.

Honestly - any mind altering state will do. Near-death hallucination. Shrooms. Meditation. Math. Buttsex. Sensory deprivation. To look on the World from another perspective and realise things you didnt realise before. Like if there is realy any difference what behind a closed door if noone watching it from another side? If there is no difference so lets just it be what i want.

Also willpower and thought control. If you mind bend reality what will happen if random thought make it so your blood literaly frezes? So if you gonna path the Treshholg and become wizard better make sure you dont kill yourself and half of the universe with uncarefull idea.

In muh setting the excuse is that magic mutates the user and tends to backfire violently.
Most who try to learn magic without expert tutorship end up dying of various cancers before they become skilled for them to use magic in any practical sense.
Those fortunate enough to be born with any significant innate magical ability tend to liquify their organs the first time they accidentally invoke a spell.
The reason proper wizards tend to wear hooded robes or wide brimmed hats is so as to hide their forms, which become more hideous and unnatural as they gain in experience.

Also magic can be socially unacceptable. Like if you dont want grimdark stuff with posessing demons and generic fantasy with peasants you can do magic as a sort "Everybody knows its exist, but thats not really a job for a gentleman". Also then you must not make it overpower or it look silly, powerfull thing cannot be socially unacceptable.

God, I hope I never get into one of your games. You sound like a right retard.

This sounds an awful lot like Avatar.

This setting can be cool, just dont see potential. You with your team can dive into colorfull world of wonder and tackle greate mysteries, but when you come back all you get is misunderstanding. Why cant you do real job and earn money for the family instead your everyday chattering with fey? Like an allusion on your IRL life, user.

The Children of the Light shall not suffer a Dark Friend Aes Sedai to live after they caused the breaking of the world.

Do what Robert Howard did

Magic is feared, no one teaches it, it largely involves trafficking with beings you don't quite control that want to eat you.

Mage colleges and guilds understand supply and demand, and therefore are insanely selective about who gets in to learn the arcane arts. If there were too many wizards, we couldn't charge so much for the services.

Very few schools teach magic, and the journey there alone is too dangerous, expensive and time consuming for all but the most skilled, dedicated and wealthy

How to rule kingdom where every peasent knows how to throw fireballs? Who will tend the soils if everyone is fucking enlighten?
Sooo... Political end economic reason. Higher class tells lower class that magic is dangerous. Mages dont have choice - sitting in their tower quiet or else is pitchfork, pitchfork, fire, sodomy.

>How to rule kingdom where every peasent knows how to throw fireballs?
With knights that know how to throw iceballs.

>Who will tend the soils if everyone is fucking enlighten?
Peasants with earth and plant magic. They'll be able to do more work in less time and get better crop yields than any other nation.

I feel like "only insane people use magics" is a pretty good one

Human beings have an innate resistance to magic that insulates them from particularly manipulative and internally destructive magic(but not proper evocations like fireballs), but also makes it very difficult to use magic.

It is possible to deactivate this resistance when certain conditions are met(called an "awakening"), but it is very dangerous to do. Emotionally unstable people will often hurt themselves severely with their own abilities, or drive themselves insane, or at the minimum manifest "poltergeist" phenomenon.

Wild magic DOES exist, in the form of people who meet the awakening circumstances by chance, but they often go insane or destroy themselves. Wizards and other orders of magicians have learned to induce the awakening with relative safety using a mixture of drugs, meditation, and diet to suppress their emotions while they learn to safely weave magical manifestation into spells.

I really don't think you understand how rare literacy is and was throughout history.
Whole religious revolutions were based around the people not being able to read their own text, spreading literacy helped build the mercantile class and redefine history. It's easy to take for granted posting from mostly private computers on our board discussing games imagining adventure and struggles of past ages but still today many people are not literate.

Speaking of the growing mercantile and tradesmen classes, hidden techniques passed down through the guilds were a huge historical thing. You protected your secrets instead of teaching the details to anyone off the street and that's just for mundane things like creating tools or sewing. Famous craftsmen and inventors were even known to write blueprints and recipes in code so that you couldn't properly reproduce the work if you followed the instructions directly and didn't know the secret.

Aside from magical texts and secrets being carefully kept and controlled to maintain power from monopoly and likely being written in code or obscure dead languages even if you can read the damn thing without proper instruction and context it would be like trying to understand advanced quantum physics and mathematical formulae on crazy pills.

It's really fucking expensive. A BLANK spellbook is 15 gp. For the same price, you could buy a herd of sheep, enough chickens for the village, the materials needed to fix the roof, or the services of a healer for a sick child. And then the cost of materials to transcribe a new spell are even more punishing. 50 gp x spell level just to learn the new spell. After that it's 100 gp per page, so even the three starting spells a wizard gets are going to cost 300 gp total.

So unless you're a noble, good luck fielding the cash you need to get started.

Magic is willong passed from one person to another. A wizard will spend years training his apprentice in the theories and process of using magic, all whike the apprentice is completely incapable of using magic. On his deathbed the wizard gives his power to his apprentice, who, having studied for years, immediately takes to magic quite well. Sometimes however, a wizard is too lazy to train an apprentice, or deems the apprentice unworthy, or is killed and cannot pass the magic on. In such a case the magic has a will of its own and seeks out people it deems worthy.

In the sense of magic being for aristocrats, it could be like the clergy. In a medieval European setting where primogeniture exists, no one in their right mind would send their firstborn off to spend twenty years reading books. They would send the child who has no prospects in courtly or ruling life.

There is every reason one can have knowledge of magic, but not be able to cast spells. These hedge wizards might know a thing or two about plants, or strange patterns in weather. They might be able to explain some of the stranger things that happen around the village, but they could never muster the skill needed to actually make this knowledge coalesce into a spell. They could never twist and warp the cogniscent fabric of their minds to entice magic to reside there.

Magic is an outcome of runic programming. You write the code in runic, activate the spell via some kind of trigger, like a word, and then the magic happens. Spellbooks are a thing, and magical items with runes engraved in them.
No-one can cast magic with their bare hands, unless they have some spells tattooed in ancient runes, and even then the magic channels through your body - too powerful magic can leave you a charred corpse.

Magic is not too widespread. In ancient times, someone invented a printing press and started mass-producing spellbooks, and magic become too mainstream that armies employed solely magical troops. Then they went to war and basically nuked an entire continent, with few people managing to escape to a whole new continent their kingdom found just a bit earlier. Nowadays it's a death-sentence to be caught knowing how to write runes, as it's a formed religion so that the nuking wouldn't happen twice.

Why isn't everyone a nuclear physicist? That shit pays well, so surely everyone should just be a nuclear physicist or a doctor or a lawyer or any other profession that requires a lifetime of discipline, diligence, and study to become proficient at.

My apologies, but I'm going to steal this and I don't even have the good mind to be ashamed of it.

Finding a teacher is hard and materials needed to experiment to learn it your self cost a decent chunk of money.

The price extracted through acts of magic is typically worth more than the actual work being done when there are non-magical alternatives available.

Like, you can conjure a bigass demon to just pulverize grain with his fists to make flour, offering him a virgin soul for every bag he produces.

Or you can use a mill.

Or you can use the bigass demon to subjugate people to mill grain for you. Seems like an arms race.

OP said they didn't want magical potential to be tied to bloodlines. I gave them the simplest solution imaginable.

Besides, I see way more of the "magic genetics" shit than "random potential" these days, and I can't stand it. It always leads to some gross ubermensch eugenics bullshit, and fuck that noise.

Also, random magical potential makes it harder to justify anti-magic inquisitions and other grimdark bullshit like that. When anyone could be harbouring magical power, from the local baker's daughter to the crown prince, it's harder to believe that people would dehumanize magic-users so heavily that they'd allow them to be taken away by inquisitors, especially when the person being taken is a member of the monarchy.

I was thinking the same thing.

Magic is a spiritual art you fag.

Not only is this a great excuse as to why magic isn't super common, but it also justifies the population shitting on Wizards and their crazy pagan traditions and also because this was almost always the case with real life wizards too.

Also try some Unknown Armies shit too, works great. Wizards have to 'go insane' to become Wizards, it's not as bad as it sounds but you have to become super obsessed and basically change your world view.

Doing magic requires great acts of sacrifice- as in great acts of travel and rituals. Burying yourself alive, touching the moon stone five countries over, setting foot on every major Continent in the world. Each of these acts bestows a small amount of magic power.

Even better if you take the above concept and take it into magic tradition itself- each nation has magical traditions and practices. For example, in yours people spread ash at their door at night, just a sprinkle, to trick fire spirits from burning their house down. This is a tradition here- five countries over everyone is getting rekt by fire spirits and the guy who knows this one weird trick is a Wizard. Holy shit!

Magic is mostly supernatural luck and fate manipulation stuff. You carve voodoo dolls and perform dances in the woods to call upon the blessings of nature and such. Many people don't believe it works at all, hence low turnout.

Also fuck everyone ITT who doesn't like 'common' Wizards. Don't make Wizards something everyone is or can be, but make a Wizard in every town. The local witch doctor making love potions is too good, and fits perfectly in every fantasy setting. (Except Dark Sun)

Magic is inherently dangerous and powerful, and people want to keep a lid on that shit. In order to get training you prettymuch have to be an apprentice to some old codger who will box your ears if you tell people your secrets, or you're a thief who stole your books and delved into dark sorcery and will probably be fireballed on sight by any conventional wizard.

Peasants are inherently suspicious and fearful of wizards wandering around, because conventional wizards are stodgy grumps and illegal wizards are dangerous criminals.

It's not a copout. You know how long the written word had to exist before the shape of the planet we stand on became common knowledge? People are fucking stupid and farmers don't have time to study the thousand invoking sigils and potion recipes for basic witchcraft. Wizards being rare makes exactly as much sense as neurologists being rare.

Shits hard yo.
You ever hear a proffessor give lecture on quantum physics or some other such crap? Shit goes in one ear and right out the other so we get black science guy type mages who can dumb it down with examples of things and stuff to make it SEEM easy and understandable but in reality its still as hard as the shit that professor spews.
Now imagine if you could not only understand that shit but make it happen, in your HEAD.
again, sounds easy right? Say i'm 20 feet away and i underhand throw a rock i picked up. Imagine doing all the equations necessary to know EXACTLY where to place your hand to catch that rock. Now imagine doing all that perfectly before the rock even leaves my hand so your hand can be where it needs to be in a timely manner.
That's Magic.
Now, i know what you're thinking "but I don't need to do that and still catch the rock! I can just see it and make my hand do it." And you're right. Your mind does all that crazy mumbo jumbo instinctually on a day to day basis but it does it in a way you can't and don't understand beyond a cause and effect relationship and thus you miss out on the magic as the magic is in the details.

Magic is not infinite.
There is a finite amount of magic in the air and the earth, that slowly regenerates overtime.
To many spell-casters would drain the land of magic, causing horrible stillbirths and suffering to the weak bodied.

The government, church and magic-users have a shared interest to keep the level of magic users low.
But magic is very useful in wars and protection. For magic knowledge to become forgotten could spell doom, when an evil lich descends on your lands.
In order to maintain the status quo, magic-users are expressly forbidden to teach magic to anyone and magical knowledge is kept a tight secret.

Insert generic organisation to enforce the magical status quo "The keepers of seal", they are a secret organisation that seals away the magical powers of unlicensed magical users.

To keep magic an interesting force in the story you're trying to write or the game you're trying to run.

Unless it is specifically about exploring that aspect of magic (especially from an outsider's point of view) the question of why magic is rare may be completely meaningless and thus not worth mentioning.

Even if you want to answer that question you probably won't need to find a place for it.

buttsex is a mind altering state?

Clearly you haven't felt the pleasure of being cummed in.

Make it like IQ.
Everyone might be able to move a tiny little pebble.
But only 1 in a 100 can ignite a candle or draw out dirt and make water clean.

Then 1 in 100 000 maybe can hold a large flame in their hand, lift a large rock, channel a bolt of lightning, create field that protects from previous mentioned shenanigans...

Then one in a maybe ten million have the power to start storms, "part the seas". Concentrate "force" to shatter a small mountain. Regenerate large wounds. Or create forcefields that the previous mountain shatter can't even pierce.

Then one in a 100 million can bring back people from the dead (not necromancy, but force their souls back then create an entire new body), part a portion of the atmosphere to make the sun burn through everything in the area, move tectonic plates, shatter atoms tand be able to focus that energy into whatever they want.

Scientific magic is best magic.

Have you never had buttsex? It's pretty mindblowing assuming you're with someone of caliber.

You should read an entire post before responding, not just the first sentence.

Nah, that contradicts existence of spider wizards.

Human magic-users don't "cast spells", they gain random powers that must be used creatively like a stand or a devil fruit.
Sure, PCs are assumed by the anthropic principle (look it up) to have powers worth telling stories about, but most people aren't willing to pay the price for a total unknown.

>it's pretty much rocket science

>it requires visiting a dangerous place to kick off your powers

>the way access to magic is well controlled or highly secret

>magic highly persecuted for real or imagined danger or immorality

>requires you to do something peculiar like create something new to the universe

>requires some exemplary attribute like great faith so gods lend you power