How do you explain that high level wizards don't simply rule the world in your typical d&d setting?

Even among wizards, magic isn't something you can just INHERIT.

It requires years of training. CLOISTERED training. Nobility are far better spent chasing glory on the battlefield where they can learn about what it's like to lead, and build relationships with other nobles and make a name for themselves.

Wizards make much more sense as a privileged class of skilled freemen like yeomen than it does the nobility, who must necessarily be willing to spend their lives and youths defending their lands.

It's like in the Witcher universe, they don't rule but they make puppets of the kings by acting as their "advisors" and making it so every king *must* have a wizard advisor. Besides, the common folk would rather follow a king than some magic slinging freak.

neither are wizards.

At least not in my setting.

Why, did you expect them to be?

Because they're all too busy ruling the multiverse to worry about so boring a place as our world.

Political power is worthless compared to the power high level wizards already have. Actually conquering and ruling things has responsibilities attached, and that takes time and effort that could be better spent studying on a private demiplane surrounded by a succubus harem.

If it was me it would be because paladins or divine assassins would keep the wizards from gaining too much power. It's the same reason wizards don't get healing spells. The gods keeping a mortal down, ya dig?

Because anyone who tries will have to deal with other high-level characters of various classes. And gods. And dragons. And so on.

There's always a bigger fish.

Welllll in my settings.

>Mythic Fantasy
You're either empowered by the gods (and their servant), or seeking divinity (and thus their enemy).

>Dungeonpunk
Because the world is fucking huge and even with a huge outlay of time and magic on teleportation spells, you still can't be everywhere you're needed. You need to delegate power, meaning potential threats and mundane governments.

>Age of Sail fantasy
Because arcanists are cursed.

In typical D&D, it's because magic is HARD. You're not going to figure it out and also master economics and diplomacy unless you're truly exceptional. So 'ruling' is just not praxtical.

Because having access to powers doesn't mean one can use them all the time. Being able to magically do something once a day doesn't make you omnipotent.

Do what Ars Magica did. Once upon a time, wizards all hated each other. Until some hardcore motherfucker went around kicking heads and taking names until he managed to convince wizards to calm down and pursue the good things in life, like studying.

If one wizard steps out of line and tries to pursue worldly power, he's got a good fifty or so other mages nearby with a vested interest in fucking him up before he can say the word "spell".

Sure, it probably still happens from time to time, because of politics and idiots and any combination of the two. But giving any nearby wizard carte-blanche to do anything they want to you is a surprisingly good deterrent, I'd imagine, what with the vivisection and all.

To become a high level wizard a character needs to be obsessed with their magical research, they don't give a shit about power or pleasures of the flesh unless it somehow helps their research.

Nice try, Sorcerer Supreme.

>To become a high level wizard a character needs to be obsessed with their magical research

Uh...no? To become a high level, which I'm arbitrarily gonna pin at Level 15, you just need to go out and kill...lemme check...

3,300 ordinary wolves, or do tasks equivalent to killing 3,300 ordinary wolves (50 XP/wolf).

You don't even need to do any research. Hell, you don't even need to kill all 3,300 wolves at once. You can space it out.

Okay, go out into the woods and start your crusade against awookind and see how long your skinny twig ass lasts.

The wizards who are autistic enough to reach high level either don't care about ruling over people, or are so bad at it that they eventually give up after so many failed attempts at leading a country, and retreat to isolation.

D&D is not a real-life simulator. You don't get XP in real life, dude.

Because studying ancient tomes for 30 years doesn't actually make you a good leader, and even the most powerful wizards can only dominate a dozen people at most.

Because nobody trusts or wants to follow a fucking wizard, that's why.

>Because studying ancient tomes for 30 years doesn't actually make you a good leader

It doesn't even make you a good wizard. You don't get experience for studying a tome.

In D&D, the really powerful wizards are the ones who got out there and delved dungeons, fought dragons, saved damsels, etc.

Why don't sorceress run the world? They have high Charisma. They don't require any skill or hard work to achieve their power.

Same with the Warlocks, who just make pacts with foreign entities.

And even those wizards generally don't get that far. Consider that in the average party, experience is split four ways, and foes are generally things that threaten the combined power of all four.

Take your wizard's ass out into the fantasy forest and have him fight wolves. See if he lasts more than a day before ten wolves maul his ass to death.

Would half-dragons be the nobility/feudal lors? After all, feudalism is based on a contract between a mighty warlord and the peasant who give him food.

Because my setting doesn't fall under the simplistic political cliches that only a nine year old thinks would be clever and instead has actual politics instead.

I hear nine year olds sometimes make threads like this one too, come to think of it.

Why bother ruling the real world as a king when you can rule a personal demiplane as its God?

>wolves
>implying the forest spirits / fucking elves / dire wolves won't be the ones to do it

I use milestone leveling my dude

He probably wouldn't. My point, however, was that wizards don't gain substantial experience from studying tomes, if they get any at all. The only wizards who get to cast 9th level spells are the ones who AREN'T locked away in their towers, but instead are going out on epic quests with fighters, rogues, and clerics.

The wizards who spend their time locked away in towards are great at theorycrafting and understanding magic, but they're physically and mentally incapable of actually performing the great feats (high-level spells) that they've studied.

Exactly. The only wizards who get to high levels are the wizards who are capable of working with a team possessed of a diverse skill set.

Basically, the wizards who get powerful are the ones who get out there and make friends! Big adventure, tons of fun, beautiful hearts faithful and strong! Sharing kindness is an easy feat, and magic makes it all complete!

You're a dull and interesting person. Got it.

>and interesting

*uninteresting. Shit.

Man, I am not good at hiding my power level. If Anons had scouters, they'd explode every time I posted in a thread.

...

Because the goddess of magic is a bitch and any wizard that gets too big for his britches gets bit by the backlash.

Just 'cause you don't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.

My point about wizards needing to adventure to get powerful, that is. I don't care about your opinion on MLP. But I do feel I make a good one about how sitting in a tower reading books all day isn't going to make you particularly powerful.

There are options for non-combat exp gain, and the wizards that go out are assumed to be studying in addition to adventuring. Heck, there are rules that say for a city of a given size there's going to be a wizard of a certain level, and they don't have to do anything but exist. These are game mechanics that don't reflect the fluff, they make for a poor argument.

Also I would recommend against repeating that last paragraph.

Why should they? There's bigger fish out there, and even the mightiest wizards can only push themselves so far.

I don't get it, why'd you post a completely normal human for that picture?

>Actually making players roleplay and work for their levels instead of just killing wolves
>Dull AND interesting

I don't understand

Milestone leveling > Only rewarding XP for killing

My preference.

all gods are high level wizards in my d&d setting.

milestone leveling is by far more fun for the players, and it's more natural. the only time this might not be true is if you have a weird PC group of min/maxers that enjoy grinding, which is plausible.

I've nevet liked the way that lvl are handled. Lvl 9-12 or so is probably the pinacle of human achievement. Beyond that, you enter into the Wuxia/Demigod stories. Also no lvl cap.

Disinterest.

This is also why Boccob is a better Magic deity than Mystra ever will be.

Boccob's like a wizard. He doesn't really care about all that shit, he'd rather have his books and his magic and do his stuff, and wizards are like that.

Ruling a kingdom or the world is tedious and demands you deal with other people who, considering you are a high level wizard, are all VASTLY LESS INTELLIGENT than you and get on your nerves constantly.

Meanwhile you're perfectly capable of creating a pocket dimension in which you are god and a swathe of servants that do exactly what you want.

This entire thread is about how the existence of magic is OBVIOUSLY greater than anything else in the setting...
and the *math comparison* is the thing that makes you go 'power fantasy'?

>Ruling a kingdom or the world is tedious and demands you deal with other people who, considering you are a high level wizard, are all VASTLY LESS INTELLIGENT than you and get on your nerves constantly.
>everyone's so stupid

This.

They try. As it turns out, however, quite a lot of people want to end up ruling the world, and most end up murdering each other long before that.

Pretty much this especially in most versions of D&D. Generally speaking you quickly pass over the point where Magical power absolutely trumps anything most generic fantasy kingdoms could handle but also where ruling them would have any sort of notable benefit.Sure some PCs might run an individual kingdom but have you ever had a campaign delve into world conquesr? If you did how bogged down did it get by the logistics of running a world? Of course this assumes a DM that treats it as a living breathing world not just a bunch of flags the army captures which sadly is how most DMs treat the BBEGs marching army of doom

You seem butthurt by mere words.
Did most people ignore you in your daily life?

Why cant kings and the lords multiclass into wizards? Im sure they can afford the beast teachers of magic.

youtube.com/watch?v=mPavMhfNHjI

I think the best example of this is the little blurb of text you find in the character info for a lot of the original Gygaxian Wizard PCs in the books, like Mordenkainen.

Something along the lines of "being an immensely powerful wizard, can find, acquire or obtain almost anything, given time". A bunch of them have it.

The meta-answer is that, contra , the rest of the fantasy world most D&D games operate in doesn't "actually" work according to the same rules as PCs.

For me it's that there aren't enough high level ones.

You hit a hard upper limit at around level 12 without becoming a godling and gaining mythic ranks. As soon as you become a godling you're more busy trying to not die than rule the world. This isn't to say there aren't a few godlings that do rules, but everyone with mythic ranks have a massive target on them as all godlings try and kill/consume one another.

Issue is you need to go up against a "reasonable threat". After a point wolves are no longer a reasonable threat.

Found one.

Because Wizards are no more or less powerful then an equally leveled fighter, Thief, or cleric.

>>Not Bard
>>Not the class with the Cha and tons of spell casting plus all the skills
>>Doesnt know that Bards secretly run the world and orchestrate everything behind the scenes

Because the PCs stop them.

Well,using D&D universe for example; the same question can be asked about Clerics, and Paladins.Seeing how all three are drawing their powers from deities.

The real question is...how did humans survive as a species? Even if you say they have magic, and deities watching over them...so do the other races, hell even the monsters that kill them have magic, and deities. The majority of the other races live longer as well.

If a Cleric or Paladin would try to take over the world, assuming his deity even wants this (and to be fair, a lot of the evil ones do), then Clerics and Paladins of an opposing deity move to intervene.

I mean that's literally a pretty stock plot. Evil Deity Follower wants to take over world, followers of good deity are sent by their god to stop him.

In AD&D you would have a point. Thats the only one where Humans are completely inferior to everything around them outside of the shitstain that is st ed halflings as a fat hobbits that dont wanna leave their kitchen

From 3rd onward they get so much better that you wonder how the fuck Elves function in that universe

In 5E they suck shit again if you dont use variant Humans but nothing has an ungodly advantage even over the suckshit humans

there are infinite planes to rule and the Material Plane sucks ass, only mortals want to rule there
gg ez, next question OP

>At least not in my setting.

So you're not playing D&D?

>Why, did you expect them to be?

Because this is a thread about D&D

Because the other high level wizards won't let him. Que wizard cold war

Because when they're that powerful they often bugger off to other more interesting worlds to conquer and rule.

wizards might be better as advisers rather then rulers, especially when they neglect wisdom or charisma

And why wouldn't this apply to any mage that is trying to offset the balance the gods provide?
To wit, 2 official settings where the gods CAN NOT interfere, Dark Sun and Ravenloft, are the logical answers to OP's rather silly question.

Tut tut, user, D&D does not consist of solely 3.PF, the only time OP's ridiculous statement could be remotely possible.
This is also ignoring that wizards are not the only powerful group in the setting. What about every powerful undead or worse in the world that would have qualms with an upstart human wizard taking what is rightfully theirs?

I mean it could, but the generic setting pretty much just has the gods interfering because it basically violates the "neutrality" of the material plane in that it is no one deities domain and because its an action done by their direct rivals. A mortal trying to rule it does not immediately interfere with the deities interest or stake in it unless he bans all worship of them. But my answer's already been given: Wizards aren't interested in ruling the material plane, it's a hassle and it's got nothing special to offer.

>What about every powerful undead
But liches ARE wizards :^)

Hasn't it been made clear in fantasy that becoming a ruler is more about ruthless ambition than your power level?

Also, arent there plenty of D&D kingdoms that are ruled by magic-users of some form? For god's sake, Kingdom ruled by Mages is a fantasy trope.

>this thread is just the age old caster vs martial clusterfuck bait.

Top tier wizards are locked in a struggle for dominance with reptilians

More spells = More better

A Wizard can learn all the spells he needs to make his tower assassin-proof and then only cast them the one time a month he needs to and have wasted no resources except the gold he needed to research and inscribe those spells

A sorcerer needs all his spells to be useful at all times because his slots are so limited.

That lack of flexibility is crippling, especially if what you're trying to do is secure yourself to hold power long term and not just go into dungeons to blast kobolds

There's Waterdeep of course. And Red Wizard fuckery in general.

Also Mordy's Circle of Eight basically wanted to make sure no single faction got too much power in the Flanaess, so I guess you could say they ruled over them, though its more like they being all wizardy were more powerful but decided they didn't wanna rule so much as make sure no one else can fuck it all up completely.

In 1st ed not much kept Wizards in check at high levels except the sheer invulnerability of Fighters. Fuckers made saving throws on a 2 or better because of gear had too many HP to stop and did 3X the damage of anything you could summon.. This made party play much more important since the Fighter still could fly travel the planes or turn himself back to flesh when he needed to 1/20 times

2nd ed the multitiude of metaplot based NPC bullshit that had infinite Super-God powers given them by Lorraine Williams to ensure you stayed on the rails and bought the next book kept them in line and then the company went bankrupt

In 3.PF only the sheer cluelessness of the designers kept their worlds together before the PCs showed up and buttraped a fireball and magic missile spamming Elminster

In 4th edition world conquest was a $29.95 expansion pack and the options were greyed out until that point unless you used a hacking tool which crashed the game

In 5E Bounded accuracy and the general nerfing of spells keeps it in check. Even a killer crazy Batman Wizard would be hard pressed to beat a bunch of guys with bows and arrows

Even being a sorcerer takes an incredible amount of work, and you're so squishy most probably die early on and never even reach a high level.

>Even being a sorcerer takes an incredible amount of work
Such as?

Getting the proper amount of rest to have spells at the ready, balancing the fact you basically can't wear armor and thus can trip and pretty much die and dealing with the fact you're extremely hated by nearly everyone.

I always assumed leveling up even as a sorcerer required a fair amount of studying to choose what spells to use.

>Getting the proper amount of rest to have spells at the ready
Wow, you must sleep like the rest of your race does (or doesn't, depending), how harsh.

>balancing the fact you basically can't wear armor
But you can. You absolutely can. It MAY restrict you with some spells, but not with others, and you can find ways to make it not restrict you at all. If you ever have to enter an unsafe environment there's nothing stopping you from putting on something for safety, either.

>dealing with the fact you're extremely hated by nearly everyone.
Incredibly charismatic, people naturally drawn to your exotic looks, and magic that can control peoples reaction or even minds.

>required a fair amount of studying to choose what spells to use.
In-world sorcerers do not choose what spells they manifest, they just gain it from their draconic ancestry.

It always bothered me that its not represented with bloodlines or heritage feats and that they can pick ridiculous spells no creature would naturally manifest, like Mordenkainen's Magnificient Mansion, but if you wanna change that is up to your houserules. As it stands though, none of your points accurately reflect Sorcerers.

>you basically can't wear armor
wearing light armor gives you like a 5 percent spell failure chance. gg ez

>failing 1 in 20 spells
GG retard, lern 2 math.

>succeeding 19 in 20 spells
gg ez, learn to count fag

I like the idea of noble bloodlines being bloodlines in which magic is more prevalent. In our world, nobles were the descendants of great warriors who carved themselves pieces of land after the collapse of Rome. I imagine in a fantasy setting, nobles would be the descendants of great wizards or perhaps even the union between ancient humans and dragons, demons or other such powerful creatures. So mages would already rule the world, and perhaps not every noble is a full blown wizard but the grand majority of them at least has some latent magical potential.

Perhaps this potential also exists among the commoners to a much lessser degree (bastards to happen), but unless they're very wealthy these commoners would simply be unable to afford the training to master their magic (even a sorcerer needs to hone is magic and learn to master his energies if he ever wants to learn anything more powerful than party tricks).

Light armor isn't good though, you're still getting killed.

>Wow, you must sleep like the rest of your race does (or doesn't, depending), how harsh.
Or in the middle of dungeons, constantly, because you've run out of spells for each (or important) levels.

>But you can. You absolutely can. It MAY restrict you with some spells, but not with others, and you can find ways to make it not restrict you at all. If you ever have to enter an unsafe environment there's nothing stopping you from putting on something for safety, either.
Have fun with no magical bonuses and failed spellcasting, though. I was wrong here, but instead of you I would have countered with mage armor and other spells. It's still wasting up valuable spells to make you only somewhat competent in protection.

>Incredibly charismatic, people naturally drawn to your exotic looks, and magic that can control peoples reaction or even minds.
This is high level magic. I'm assuming you're referring to spells like Dominate Mind.

Sorcerers are also known for being very, VERY arrogant, so that's death in dungeons right there.

They have better things to do.

>charisma
It's a worthless dump stat for everything that's not a charisma-based caster. You can't actually convince anyone to do anything they wouldn't normally do, according to the rules. Sorcerers would just use their spells to get any real convincing done. Wizards could achieve the same thing.

AD&D 1E fighter, best fighter. Also, Assassins in 1E are beasts.

Looks like a picture from Witcher 2. She's actually a dragon or something iirc

>You can't actually convince anyone to do anything they wouldn't normally do, according to the rules

This is why RAW diplomacy was so much better in 3.5

In that edition diplomacy wasn't about convincing people to do things, it was about making people more favorable towards you in general.

So if you improved their attitude of you to that of a friend they still wouldn't just do whatever the fuck you wanted, but they would do stuff for you that they would ordinarily do for a friend.

Makes a lot more sense than it just being non-functional mind-control.