How do you justify a generic...

Make it low fantasy or lower magics power. Some of my settings have had magic be similarly taxing to physical power and requiring endurance training to have a sustained use or a sort of magic strength training to get bigger one off spells. It wasnt uncommon to see up and coming wizards woking in 3s at a forge blowing fire into the furnace all day alongside apprentice smiths or over at a jewelers imbueing minor enchantments into shitty apprentice made copper braided circlets over and over again. Being a journeyman smith in the forge had as much status and throughput in society as a journeyman caster giving +2 STR to the gauntlets coming out.

>Magic takes time, preparation and materials, and often requires more than one person to perform.
So do military campaigns. Strongman leaders didn't seize power all by their lonesome.

magic takes long time to research and study. If you are on the top of society you are usually a person that is required to solve every problem. Disputes, famine, ambassadors, treasury, harvest, war etc. etc. This takes time. Magic research takes time. You can't do both because you don't have time.

Second. Magic research requires resources. Time spent on harvesting is time taken from research. some things can't be harvested and you need to obtain it. To obtain it you need resources. Time required to obtain the resources it time taken from magic research. It is easier to do some magic favors or spells for a local lord and work as a advisor. He is giving you resources and your magic research is generally uninterrupted.

Third. People don't like things they can't control. People have seen a lot of crazy bastards with power in their hands. Crazy bastard with crazy magic is not a good combination to have for a person in charge.

>someone who can shoot actual fire from his actual hands.

I'm sure you think that's what's really happening when a "wizard" casts a "fireball"..

Fourth. Daily matters are least concern for magic practitioners. They don't care about social interactions, taboos and etiquette. Also they don't care what people think of them or what is generally happening around them. Only thing that really matters is magic research.

Sorcerer and wizard kings should be the staple in a fantasy world honestly. Heck with sorcery running in the bloodline it could easily be a thing of royal and noble families commonly producing sorcerers and purposely doing a sort of magical selective breeding thing where arranged marriages are set up between known mages (preferably) or people from mage rich families.

You could even have it set up with magical bloodlines being treated as the 'divine right to rule' running in their blood.

And of course you'd get the peasants who become hedgemages and witches and stuff due to horny kings and princes sticking it to village girls.

The ability to organize people is the ability that gets you put in charge.

Some people have guns? They fight amongst themselves until someone organizes them. Some people can throw fireballs? Same situation. And the wizard doesn't have time to administer disputes between farmers, he has to spend his days doing magic. Easier to leave a king in charge in exchange for funding and supplies.

If the magic in your setting is spectacularly, drop-the-moon-on-your-enemy powerful, then maybe your leader does wind up being a magician. But he's not going to be the most powerful magician. He's going to be the magician who's the best at organizing people, because him and his fifty mage-bros can kick the shit out of the most powerful magician.

Even without going into sorcery, the rich and powerful would have access to much better education and would churn out more wizards and stuff anyway magic would eventually just become associated with nobility and wealth.

>magic takes long time to research and study.
Again, military conquest doesn't happen overnight either.

>If you are on the top of society you are usually a person that is required to solve every problem.
What? No. People delegate. They always have.

>Second. Magic research requires resources.
So does outfitting your fighting men with the pointiest sticks.

>Third. People don't like things they can't control.
Tough shit. They don't control the asshole with the pointiest stick either. It's the other way around. This is a hierarchy, not a democracy.

>Fourth. Daily matters are least concern for magic practitioners.
They're still living human beings with ordinary needs.

It depends on the setting and is probably rooted in real-world basis. I for one might think that if you've got an order of wizards, they probably banded together in order to cloister away from people who didn't understand their study, probably allying themselves with nobility in subtle fashions and reserving the flashy stuff only when absolutely necessary.

In regards to 'guys with axes vs. man with fireball' that'd probably evolve into people hiring assassins or some kind of ninja in order to get rid of wizards, though as a result that might lead to wizards becoming skilled in anti-assassination measures and further justifying their presence in the nobility and government positions, so it'd be really reasonable for them to be part of a ruling class.

If we're talking D&D magic classes, clerics are allied with their respective churches so they would probably become involved in politics if they were doing something that opposed their beliefs, like mass baby slaughter. Sorcerers would be pretty legit members of the nobility since princess yadda yadda got kidnapped and dicked by a dragon then four generations later prince whatever learns to cast magic. With different kinds of warlocks they'd probably have their own agenda, fiends especially would probably be super aggressive, great for the combat field for glorifying their patron.

The strongest or best Fighter never ruled our societies by that alone OP, you seem to think that.

Besides, in my game, Fighters and Rogues are just as supernatural as Magicians. Fighters can wrestle down elephants at high levels and all their HP is literal meat points, shoving swords in them DOES NOT hurt them like a normal human. Rogues have super human speed and can fire arrows faster and more accurately then humanly possible. Also I say that some societies are ruled by Fighters, some by Magicians, somd by Rogues, some by weak bueracracts, some by religious people, some by rich elites, etc.

Fantasy worlds are a big place and the 'strongest' person by no means rules every society. The commoner with no magic or fighting skill that can command an army will defeat a mid level fighter, wizard, or rogue every time. I'm not really seeing OP's point unless you're playing in a retarded 'everything is realistic minus magic' and 'magic users are over powered' style setting.

It all starts somewhere. OP asked

>Going right back to the first human tribes, what made people organise into hierarchies with a military strong man at the top? Why didn't the earliest magic users seize leadership roles, setting a precedent for all future leaders of tribes, nations and empires?

In that era, it really is a question of which people in the tribe can physically protect the rest of society, or physically bully them into line. If magic-users can't do it, leadership falls by default to people who can.

By time organized armies have emerged then no doubt noble wizards are nothing special, but you still have the cultural expectation that nobles should be able to ride out with their troops and show strength on the battlefield. Then it's just a question of morale and respect.

People in this society were briefly, but brutally ruled by someone with magic.
They then developed a number of Anti-Magical tactics, such as poisoning the uppity little cocksucker or bashing his head in while he sleeps.

Magic is not all powerful, it is not practical, it is risky, and it is not reliable.

Done.

>Why doesn't everyone in the trailer park pursue or hold STEM degrees?
That's basically your question here.

The gods are fueled by nationalism and hate the idea of someone ruling their country who derives power from a source other than them

>They don't care about social interactions, taboos and etiquette
>implying making social connections to the right masters and nobles to secure tutelage and funds isn't important
>implying following strict taboos on magical dos and do not won't make sure you don't get strung up by your toes by angry mobs
>Implying not paying attention to etiquette while casting or even in personal hygiene won't get you blown to high hell when a spell goes horribly awry
I bet you even think mussing up a magic user's hair is okay too

Not really. More like
>Why is the entire trailer park so impressed by Jim-Bob's gang of dudes with knives, when Dwayne's gang has assault rifles?

So why don't clerics rule everything?

The gods are fine with the mundane holding positions of power because they don't pose the same threat as non divine spell casters

Because Jim-Bob snuck into Dwayne's place while he was sleeping and carved him up like Michelangelo.

Why would a cleric allow himself to be ruled by a layman with no divine superpowers?

That didn't answer why clerics don't rule everything.
Gods don't like arcane so Dwayne can't be boss, but Ralph can shoot fireballs AND speak the holy word of God so why isn't he in charge?

They do in many cases, thats what you call a theocracy and several settings have such things, such as the Silver Flame in Eberron where a child pope whose a high level cleric rules or in the dragonlance setting where you used to have the High Priest King whose assholelishness caused the gods to drop a mountain on his kingdom

That's a nice symbolic gesture, but Jim-Bob's entire gang is gunned down the next day. Now there's only gunners left to impress the trailer trash.

Well several settings also have magocracies, but either is irrelevant to OP's request

The religious devotion of the clerics often keeps them from pursuing positions of power

>Magic is assault rifles
Not in DnD. Assault rifles are your +number swords, at best.

I think this thread proves that 3/3.5/Pathfinder did the worst damage to this hobby. Now you have cuck millenials like assuming that magic is necessarily superior to martials.

>Why doesn't the nobility almost exclusively consist of magic users in any generic fantasy setting?

People don't already do this? I started making all of my settings have Sorcerers as the aristocracy a long time ago. The magic is even hereditary so you actually have a reason for noble families. Plus, they naturally lean towards having better Charisma, and the array of spells a household would have at their disposal gives them a nice layer of defense against any usurping spellcasters, or just assassins in general.

Prehistoric Europe is said to have had both types of society. Much of Roman mythology is said to reflect the earliest Romans' military victories over neighbouring tribes with predominantly spiritual leadership.

Oh gee another dnd kid who thinks the most powerful wizard is the one who can shoot the most fireballs from his hands. All that means nothing compared to a leader who can inspire hope and cause people to follow him. Or one who can underhandedly sneak their way into becoming the most influential person of the age. Ex. Gandalf and Rasputin

OP kind of implied it was that way in the setting

Except if everyone is walking around with Stone Axes, how is anyone going to realize you just need a spellbook, some hard to find materials, a specific set of magic words, and a deep understanding of the underwotkings of magic just to throw fire from your hands?

Wizarding takes a lot of knowledge that cavemen don't have.

Military stong man is not only good at stronging less stong men into submission, he's good at organising his band of warriors and making them strong. His roots lie in leaders of hunting parties, and he inherited much from them.
Early magic users are just particularly smart and dangerous prey, mostly lonesome and barely grasping the extent of their abilities. All of those juicy DnD spells had to be made at some point, you know.

Wizards were broken in DnD not because of fireball but because of their non-combat spells that could bypass a lot of problems that martials didn't have an answer for, a wizard with mind control magic could easily rule over a country of mundanes

Only in Birthright. Or do you propose mass suggestions on the whole courts?

>Why didn't the earliest magic users seize leadership roles
Wizards were less knowledgeable of the arcane and generally weaker than their feudal counterparts. They required more focus and time to on learn magic allowing the more charismatic normal folk to rise to leadership roles in the community. Eventually while the wizard could cast fireballs to protect/conquer the tribe, the chief had the support of the tribe and knew how to support each member.

>Feudal society
While learning very basic magic, e.g cast light, is demanded of noble blood, very few pursue the art beyond the basics due to the mental and time strain it requires. The nobles focus on interests such as warfare, mathematics and fashion, after all those who have pursed magic to be walking nukes and haven't gone mad are always around they tend to live much longer than normal folk and like trading favors.

>Divine Magic
The gods, both good and evil. tend to be reserved about intervening in the affairs of mortals. Too much intervention will cause other Gods to notice and interfere. There is also the risk of giving an individual too much power and becoming too weak and/or betrayed

You really can't

>walk up to the current king, mind control him
>everybody just watched you wave your arms and scream hocus pocus at the king
>you die faster than if you had drawn a sword

So sorcerors are in charge everywhere.

>assuming every society was a strict top to bottom hierarchy

Show me a fantasy setting that doesn't have its feudal !NotEurope set up that way.

>assuming that even in such hierarchies only the top matters

I mean it depends on the magic system, but if we're talking 3.5 DnD you could sneak into his bedroom while invisible, gag him and then mind control him

Sorcerers tend to require bloodlines to get started though. I highly doubt there were many dragons going around Fucking cavemen back then, and if there were it would take many generations before you get someone who can cast spells but isn't ostracized for looking like those sky lizards that eat people.

Other than that, yes, it makes more sense for noble houses to consist of sorcerers, but even that's less a matter of them being gods among men and more a factor of a handful of low level sorcerers having more arcane knowledge and greater means to stop a random mid level mage who thinks casting charm person allows him to run the country, at least when compared to a gaggle of low level Nobles.

Sorcerors need training and mastering their gift, too. They also need to know where truly are their limits lie. Which takes effort, time and study.

My setting is in renaissance/enlightenment and steadily advancing in technology and magitek because of wars but;

>magic is hard

Magic is like musical skill. You can teach everyone how to sing and plod along with a guitar but actually skilled magicians are rare and virtuosos like Beethoven are born once in every generation and their skill might never be discovered.

>magic takes effort and money

Functional magic is subject to a lot of factors. Aetherwinds, star constellations, seasons, require complex incantations, ritual circles and hand movements. It also needs shit tons of reagents, rare, expensive reagents, many of them needing months of alchemical preparation involving even more reagents in turn. A mage effectively needs an economy of a small town and dozens of apprentices behind him if he reliably wants to keep casting spells. You could be the best damned firemage in the Kingdoms, if your supply of deep sea scarlet pearls, japanese hornet poison and jaguar-blood infused paradise apple seeds from the new world dries up you wont be casting any fire spells without risking burning yourself to death. Advanced spells quickly hit diminishing returns on effort spent.

>wizards are dumb

Wizards are very competitve and secretive. They dont trust eachother and keep hoarding most of the good stuff(thats how hidden tomes of forbidden knowledge come to be) There is barely any communication between wizard masters which combined with the obscurantism wizards love to practice greatly hinders the accumulation of knowledge. They are also very picky when it comes to apprentices and slow in revealing the big guns to them.

>wizards are not very useful

Sure, magic is indispensable to statecraft. But as power was steadly centralizing in the hands of kings they began to employ their own wizards instead of putting up with the shit of untrustworthy wizarding orders and their politics. Wizards getting sidelined alongside with knightly orders and the Church.

>turn invisible
>bumble about sneaking in because your wizard doesn't know how to climb, move silently, or pick locks
>by some miracle reach the king
>he could probably overpower you since youre a frail wizard
>somehow get him bound and gagged silently
>cast your spell
>it wears off after breakfast next morning

Brilliant plan

>somehow, it all succeds and drags on for some time
>the castellan notices that king's acting weird
>the queen notices that king's acting weird
>advisors notice that king's acting weird
>basically, most of the court knows something's up

Now you have a ton of people to deal with daily.

Contd.

At the end, wizards are simply not cost effective, competitive, flexible and trustworthy enough. Sure, if youre a noble, you could hire a battle wizard, fund all his magical shit, provide him with apprentices and servants and a retinue of guards, put up with his wizard fey moods and hope he wont catch a bullet and lose all your investment.

Or just shell out the money, hire a reigment of Landsknechts who will do anything for you, no questions asked and will stay loyal to the bitter end as long they are paid. They might even bring their own cavalry, cannons and spies to sweeten the deal.

Wizards in 3.5 have spells to answer all of these problems, 3.5 is a shit system but you can't claim wizards aren't broken

* Within 3.5

They are only broken if the DM is willing to let them run around shitting on common sense.

Not really it would be perfectly sensible to take over a country if you were a wizard

There's spells to boost your sneaking, to fly, to pass through walls, to restrain people and mind control them for extended periods of time

>How do you justify a generic, traditional feudal society in a fantasy setting that prominently features magic and spellcasters?

Maybe magic isn't all that good?

It's sad that at 5th level wizards are basically impossible to detect without magic if they use 2 spells

>Wizards have answers to all of those problems
>Doesn't list any of the answers

Yeah, sure. If you're a really high level wizard with enough spell slots youll be able to make a perfect scheme to puppet a king, but it's not the sort of thing some random level 5 schmuck can do.

At that point, they could probably also just make their own pocket dimension of form a castle out of the ground if they really want to rule something. And then they also won't have to risk betrayal or being found out.

At the levels you're talking, a Fighter who invested in Charisma could take over a kingsom about as well through brute force and skill checks.

>Just cast invisibility and charm person
>And all these other spells instead!

I see you've mastered the spell 'Teleport Goalposts'

Play a game with a properly designed magic system.

The point is that a wizard is perfectly capable of sneaking into the bedchamber of the king with magic not to mention that it's perfectly possible for the wizard to have the mundane skills necessary to sneak, climb, and pick locks

They believe that magic is weird, easy and lazy at the best of times, and outright evil and corrupting at worst, because that's what the people in power told them. Because the people in power like being in power, and have no interest in facing competition should their source of power become widespread.

It's like you don't understand how to oppress the masses.

Because royal bedchambers are so easy to sneak in and not guarded at all.

>fantasy
I don't have to justify anything.

If there's a window, a door, or a crack in the wall anywhere, then the wizard can get in. Gaseous Form.

So what you meant to say here was

>a wizard with mind control magic, invisibility magic, flight magic, restraining magic, and a smattering of other infiltration spells, along with a skillset befitting a rogue could easily rule over a country of mundane

So sure, a higher level character could do that, but at that point they could probably manage it regardless of class to a degree

>fly
>pass through walls
Not to mention enchant or put masses of people to sleep or even summon a damn rat to scout for you.
Their toolbox is practically overflowing.

am I the only one bothered by all the horse anuses?

A flying invisible wizard can't be seen and makes no sound because he's not touching the ground, this is achievable at 5th level, alternatively the wizard could capture and replace a servant of the king using disguise self in order to get close to the king

For the same reasons it wouldn't happen if magic were real in our world. Superstitions and fear.

Magic users would have to rule the normals from behind the scenes or everything would just fall apart. And then it'd still probably fall apart because of magically assisted subterfuge and infighting. Even the Aes Sedai eventually tore each other apart.

fuck I meant cow

>So sure, a higher level character could do that, but at that point they could probably manage it regardless of class to a degree
>He thinks a fighter can accomplish anything beyond murdering everyone in sight

How does a flying invisible being open a locked door without making a sound?

That's a good question. The way I do it in my setting: magic users are the nobility. Magic is effectively what lifts them over commoners, the same way wealth and good armor/equipment did to nobles in our world. Noble bloodlines intermarry to maximize their effect (as mages boast heritage from dragons and fey). Shit like the French Revolution doesn't fly because, while certain social factors can create "commoner knights" (gendarmes), there is nothing that creates "commoner mages". Maybe some genetic freak accidents or whatever, but those mages often end up becoming lower nobility one way or another, and even if they don't they're not numerous enough for real social upheaval.

Magic actually makes it easier to maintain a feudal system (or at least a nobility-centric system).

I mean, if the Wizard can invest in Rogue skills for the purposes of goalpost moving, you could certainly have a fighter who is slightly worse at kill shot but has the diplomancy skills of a Bard.

Lockpiking, move silently and climb is only three skills, wizards get more than enough skill points for that, also flying and invisibility make the wizard undetectable, he literally just has to follow the king to his bedchamber

Because those are all level 5 spells

Also, a king wouldnt employ wizards or countermeasures himself, just gormlessly let everything happen to him.

See

He looks through the keyhole and casts dimension door to the other side

>Also, a king wouldnt employ wizards or countermeasures himself, just gormlessly let everything happen to him.
What countermeasures does he have in place to insure his employed wizards aren't the ones trying to mind control him?

>Components: Verbal

Try again

Well I suppose in the past, people with the time to train and fight often become the local warlords and later legitimized lords. I dont see a problem with mage lords ruling over the population.

The only question would be how long does it take to become a respectable mage?

Is magic a direct or indirect thing? Being good at forecasting the weather is a court role claim at best (if thats your only skill) and not one of godking or knight

Can a martial concievably beat a magic user in a one on one fight? How many normies would it take to bring one down?

Does the magic require some sort of moral or social taboo like baby sacrifice or virgin blood?

Would someone who has mastered magic even give a shit about contemporary politics? If you spend all your time in the astral planes fighting deamons, why would you bother with resolving trifle disputes over how many cows peasant Hans owes merchant Frida?

Answering these questions would give you an idea if your setting could conceivably have magic users as the defacto lords of the land.

Feat: Silent Spell

Try again

The same checks and balances on everything else, like his poison taster or advisor and so on.

This whole thread pretty much boils down to two separate threads. On one side you have the people talking about legitimate things like the economy of large scale magical practitioners and the politics of sorcerous bloodlines.
On the other you've got a few people with signs that says
>Magic=win!
screaming at a few people holding signs that say
>Magic=tool
and both refusing to hear the other.

Granted, all of this does come down to the basic standard of "It depends on the system/setting." For every Birthright and Darksun out there, you've got a Greyhawk and Iron Kingdoms.

>Level 10 Wizard can take over a kingdom as long as they have keyhole and not any other sort of lock

Alright, I'll concede to that.

>Lockpiking, move silently and climb is only three skills
It's also three skills you don't have to bother with. There's spells for that. Spells that are really cheap if you get them on scrolls and wands.

Look through the crack under the door nigga, or even just use the gaseous form solution. Does this man sleep in an airtight vault or some shit?

No, but maybe he sleeps with the queen, or guards, or his mistress, or a loyal shadowdancer hanging from the rafters, or in a different room while his body double feigns sleep with a knife under the pillow, or any of a multitude of other simple and sensible precautions for a king.

Because in actual history, the feudal society we had believed in the supernatural. They didn't burn witches just to oppress ugly old women, whatever the feminists tell you today.

1. All Wizards have access to Divination if they want it.
2. They can still probably deal with those situations just fine.
3. The fact that the GM has to go to such lengths to specifically tailor the scenario to thwart the Wizard's shenanigans only proves the point that they're broken.