Let's settle this once and for all. In a "generic fantasy setting", how many people out of a million are mages?
What quantity of matter can the average mage conjure or transmute into consumer goods with a single spell? How many spells can they cast per day? How many *different* spells can they learn before it becomes extraordinary even by mage standards?
Come on, give us the hard numbers. If you deviate by as little as double or half what another user thinks magic in a "generic fantasy setting" is capable of, that could make or break whole industries.
Do you have people who make candles out of whale oil for a living, and other people who collect whale oil to sell to those candle-makers? Or does the village mage simply create a year's supply of candles from thin air with a wave of his hand? What are the rules of magic in a "generic fantasy setting" that we are all supposed to know?
Let's settle this once and for all. In a "generic fantasy setting", how many people out of a million are mages?
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Depends on the setting
There is no generic fantasy setting.
Roughly 1 in 10,000 people, so about 100 per million.
>Let's settle this once and for all. In a "generic fantasy setting", how many people out of a million are mages?
However many the DM says. All of your other questions are derivative of this and do not merit response by anybody other than your DM.
>someone clearly asking for setting ideas or 'how do you do it?'
>Veeky Forums responds with complete autism
Bear in mind that "generic fantasy setting" is an amalgam of the tropes the general consumer would most likely expect out of a fantasy setting
>how many people out of a million are mages?
Not many, its almost always depicted as rare, id say about 100 per million
>What quantity of matter can the average mage conjure or transmute into consumer goods with a single spell?
Small objects, not all of them are permanent
>How many spells can they cast per day?
Depends on the medium but usually there is a vague limit to how many spells they can cast in a short time frame, even in movies
>How many *different* spells can they learn before it becomes extraordinary even by mage standards?
Id say above 25
>What are the rules of magic in a "generic fantasy setting" that we are all supposed to know?
Usually something bad happens if people abuse magic
1 in 1000 are born with the potential to do magic, however depending on their circumstances many of them might never be affected by this at all. Some will die from persecution or their own powers, others will never learn a single spell or act on their potential.
Magic where wizards can do everything, without being restricted by a field of study, functional constraints or thematic identity is shit magic.
One for each dark tower in the woods, three to ten for every which's coven, and ten to thirty for every mage's guild, college or official sect in important cities. Plus a few wandering mages per sub-continent, one or two mages per court (who can be on lease from the guild) and the odd hermit (a dark tower mage, sans darkness and tower).
All in all I'd say a hundred in a middle-sized kingdom, or one in every 10,000 people (assuming a million people per middle-sized kingdom) Half of them will be apprentices of some sort, and thus not the most powerful. Actual battlefield-destroying mages would be one to five per country (guild headmaster, local wanderer, particularly powerful hermit/tower overlord, witch king/queen), everyone else would be somewhere in the middle.
Of course, all of that depends on the setting.
>someone asks a question with no right answer because magic isn't real
>"depends on how magic works in your setting"
>"it's a generic fantasy setting"
>1 to 5 battlefield destroyers per country
I like that. It allows for conventional armies to still exist and a sort of "we won't use wizards if you won't" diplomatic position.
As many as there are roaming superhuman warriors and bomb-making scientists and would-be Batmen. Out of a million maybe 100,000 aren't just normal peasantry, and maybe half of them are magic-users of some description.
>In a "generic fantasy setting", how many people out of a million are mages?
How many does the writer need?
I like mages to be about as rare as college graduates. Wizards of 5th level or higher tend to be rare, I'd say maybe 10 per million.
>generic fantasy setting
Brainlets shouldn't play RPGs.
It’s a function of time.
At one point a handful of people period were academics in a tradition that would be equivocal to magic. Now they are household names globally and the majority of people can do better than what they did because the way education works.
In a far future “fantasy” even without tech every man woman and child would know magic.
>missing the point of this thread so hard
Tell that to faggots like archive.4plebs.org
Based on myths like Merlin, I'd say one mage per kingdom per generation. There might be a few hedge mages around but they would only have limited knowledge and be more magician than wizard. Maybe in some civilizations with high populations and infrastructure a wizard could discover and recruit a sizable number of students and teach them, but it would be a pretty limited thing and not a real school. Alchemists and fortune tellers would be much more common but also less powerful. Any wizard who can conjure matter or transmute things is so powerful that they won't care much for peasant economics. If a wizard did interfere in such issues they would likely crash the kingdom's economy by making goods cheaper than naturally possible. Keep in mind that to reach wizard levels of power and knowledge a person would have to abandon normal human behavior for centuries and is unlikely to understand or sympathize with the needs of average humans. A guy like Merlin would be exceptionable for taking an interest in politics and most wizards would avoid attracting that kind of attention.
I like to think about magic as being like math and philosophy. The average medieval peasant wouldn't know magic, but anyone who had any amount of formal education is going to know a little magic theory. They might not be able to cast any spells, or if they can, they might only be able to cast a cantrip or two, but they understand the fundamental concepts behind how magic works.
Not a bad idea, but what about "spontaneous" casters like sorcerers and bards? Hell, what about druids and clerics (I wouldn't think the usual image of the cleric is that of the nerdiest scholar in the abbey, so to speak)?
As a DM, I typically have magic in my setting be an extremely commonplace thing. Typically the towns I make have 1/10 people be a low level spellcaster of some sort, typically using their power to help in day to day tasks.
Ironically this has made the magically inclined races lazy and violent, while those without magic are forced to develop actual technology.
>In a "generic fantasy setting", how many people out of a million are mages?
999,999
>What quantity of matter can the average mage conjure or transmute into consumer goods with a single spell?
1 g
>How many spells can they cast per day?
845,981
>How many *different* spells can they learn before it becomes extraordinary even by mage standards?
2268