Why are old wizards always the most powerful? Shouldn't it be the opposite? Does magic not strain the body and mind...

That has the opposite effect on me. It's a very annoying stereotype and implies all wizards are vein.

vain*

>Magical potency
This is the sticking point, really. There’s too much that has to be specified to determine this. It may just be the case that in whatever setting you play, this nebulous “magical potency” decresases because it depends on the structural integrity of the body and magic has no way to stave of the effects of aging.

Or, the setting could be that all magic is based on contracts with spirits, and the older you get the more you understand them and the more goodwill you have with them, thus you have more magical power.

Or, it could be something based totally on studying. Thus, those who spent most of their glory years studying before their brain ossified will be, and will always be, the most powerful wizards until mental degredation starts to set in.

And so on and so on. There are hundreds and thousands of possible settings and ways that magic work, each necessarily acting differently, where age might be positive, or negative, or neither.

>all wizards
Nobody said all wizards do it, just the vain ones.

>I think OP is looking for young SORCERERS
He should specify so.

Wizards are old learned types cause their magic is knowledge based knowledge comes with age. Nat cause old=wise but there is only 24 hours per day and old tomes won't read themselves.

On the other hands powerful SORCERERS should be at peak human performance and stay so.

In the end most powerful magic user should be old(but young looking) sorcerer that bothered to learn wizard ways so his natural magic is used at 100% efficiency that only scholarly wizardry is able to provide.

Typically, especially in older works, wizards are illustrated as being similar in many aspects to real world scholars, therefore the oldest have typically been in the game the largest, and therefore aquired the greatest amount of knowledge. That being said, there's no reason you must abide this rule, it all depends on how magic works within a given setting.

You’re showing your anime influence again. Magic in the Western tradition comes from divine understanding and wisdom; go read the story of the Golem again and de-rice yourself.

Anime makes more sense than anything western

until it jumps the shark in the middle of season 2

Nothing about magic “makes sense,” you fucking mong. Take a step back and think about what you just said.

Did I specify magic you dumb fuck

No I did not

Implicit context. I’m speaking about magic in the western tradition, and you reply with
>anime makes more sense than anything western.
The assumption is that you refer to the same thing as I do when making a reply, lacking any other clarification. Thus, you mean that
>Anime [magic] makes more sense than anything [in the Western view of magic.]
When you respond as you did. If you mean to say that
>Anime [as a genre] makes more sense than anything wester [as a genre]
Then you have to clarify that you mean that.

The Skullduggery Pleasant series has it as a setting element that using magic rejuvenates the body and slows ageing, so mages age normally for most of their childhood but then their ageing slows more and more as they get stronger

It's the reason the most powerful people in the setting aren't magically powerful AND young AND good-looking AND athletes AND highly accomplished in close combat AND capable of charming or commanding everyone they meet.

Wizards pay a price for their magic because it takes so long to study, and there is always a limit to it otherwise they would simply transform themselves into the above.

There's a gag in one of the Pratchett books that there's a perfectly servicable spell to summon hot women who will obey your every whim; it's just that by the time you learn the spell, your wishes have more to do with comfy clothing and soft food than sex.

>Why are old wizards always the most powerful?

More time to learn, most recognized scientists are old men too.

>Shouldn't it be the opposite? Does magic not strain the body and mind?

Not necessarily, you are thinking about other types of casters.

>Does the body and mind not indicate magical potency?

No, magic normally resides in the subtle body, the material vessel is not necessarily part of the equation.

In lord of the rings lore, wizards are essentially angels.

Wizarding and casting powerful spells takes years of study and practice, wizards are not sorcerers, they become stronger with more knowledge and practice that can take years to master. or you murder so many monsters that you absorb knowledge via murder and blood

That's like saying someone with an associates degree in medicine would be better at brain surgery than someone with a doctorate in brain surgery.

Only the most powerful wizards survive to become old. They also know things that can't be learned anymore because the records or teachers were destroyed.

Powerful young wizards are out carving their own slice of the universe whereas old ones will have settled in.

Not all Wizards are old. However many Wizards gain the magical ability to become immortal, or something similar to it, with limited youth or vigor. If you're going to see an 800 year old Wizard it's almost always going to be in the past 700+ years he's looked like an old fuck.

Not so sure about that.

Every ancient wizard(male) in D&D sticks to the venerable old sagely appearance.
But they also turn themselves young and handsome in their spare time.

It's all about respect and reverence.

The ones that live long enough to be old are the ones who know what the fuck they're doing

No village girl wants to bang someone who saw her grandpa grow up, even if he looks young. That's why wizards publicly look old but all have young, handsome apprentices with magical power far greater than their age would suggest. Nobody ever sees these apprentices except on weekends, when they sneak out of the wizard's tower to pick up barmaids.

Nigger, you don't have to be vain to want to stay young. Your body goes to shit to some degree, no matter how much you take care of yourself. Reversing the adverse effects of ageing without changing your looks is probably more complicate than just straight up turning yourself young.

No? 'anime' doesn't have to carry any implication in that context. If he were talking about magic specifically, THEN I'd prefer if he specify. His omission of the word was clarification enough.

>Reversing the adverse effects of ageing without changing your looks is probably more complicate than just straight up turning yourself young.

nah, it's pretty much what every fictional wizard does. everyone wants to look like odin and cast fist instead of fireball.

Let's be honest, here, the only people who think using magic to restore youth is vanity alone are people younger than thirty. That hundred-year-old wizard who looks 20 isn't doing it to pick up girls; he's doing it because at that age he can stay up all night when he wants to, he can read by candlelight for hours without eyestrain, he can hear the bubbling of the cauldron before it boils over without resorting to an ear trumpet, he can lift great wooden-backed tomes without his arms shaking, and he can walk deftly about his laboratory without fear of knocking into things or tripping over his alembic. Being old SUCKS.

Well, maybe magic improves with age instead of decaying?

good point. make it that way in your setting when you write it. it'd be pretty interesting i think

>Let's be honest, here, the only people who think using magic to restore youth is vanity alone are people younger than thirty.

This is some glorious irony. :^)

>implying a wizard needs to turn himself young to stay fit
user do you even magic

no wizard worth their salt is going to be the laughing stock of the community by turning himself into a fuccboi

what a silly little weeb you are

Brilliant.

The guys jumping through the extra hoops to get that Odin look sound a lot more vain than those going "fuck it" and just casting rejuvination

How is enhancing ones body more vain than turning yourself young?

A bit of an oxymoron on your part.

>Anime makes more sense than anything western

And you can see more outrageous physics going on in your average episode of Popeye, what's your point?

A little defensive there, aren't you?

No, just pointing out hypocrisy.

Uh-huh.

Deny it all you want but there's nothing that anime does wrong that western animation isn't equally guilty of in some way.

Anime has way more retarded dialogue.

And I'm sure your average western cartoon would have equally retarded dialogue if it had to be translated to another language.

That, and if you truly believe that western cartoons don't have retarded dialogue, look up the Bubsy pilot, the Battletoads pilot, or any cartoon that tried appealing to black culture with outdated slang and 2kool4skool lingo.

they are like those old programmers who still maintain legacy code from the dawn of time. the ones who wear Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts no matter what the dress code is. no one understands what they are doing. all the (good) managers know is that without them things fall apart.

It's not just a translation issue. Delivery, tone, pacing. I'll never understand the stupid habit of people explaining their every action in a fight. And sure, western cartoons have retarded dialogue as well, but nowhere near as bad or as much.

>It's not just a translation issue. Delivery, tone, pacing.
Problems that aren't limited to anime by any stretch of the imagination. If you don't believe me, look up shit like nuPPG or Breadwinners.
>I'll never understand the stupid habit of people explaining their every action in a fight.
It's mostly because the Japanese are autistic by nature so if you don't explain how something works, they'll just keep bashing their faces against a wall until someone else explains what to do. In either case, either you like it, you don't mind it, or you hate it as a staple.
>And sure, western cartoons have retarded dialogue as well, but nowhere near as bad or as much.
That's pretty much your own confirmation bias setting in. You can find trash regardless of the country of origin and looking at the bulk of any medium, you'll still find the 80-20 rule in play.

I'm not swayed. I watch a lot of cartoons and a lot of anime, and anime is more retarded and nonsensical by far. Disagree if you want.

It likely means that the wizard is immature.

Again, I'm pretty sure that it's your own confirmation bias that's stopping you from seeing the truth.

Also, what anime have you seen vs. what cartoons have you seen?

How does the story of the golem come into play?

Mental stats go up as you age dumb dumb

Not the dude but this argument is retarded.
Your grounds for anime making more sense is down right ridiculous and we all know it.

Is everyone from /a/ this autistic? I'm not going to deconstruct my history as a viewer so you can pick it apart because you can't handle someone thinking less of anime.

Thread derailed by disgusting weeblets

I'm not the guy arguing that anime makes more sense, I'm saying that you'll find crap in both anime and western animation and claiming one is better than the other (aside from personal opinion) is foolish since it's just two sides of the same coin.

If your taste wasn't shit then you wouldn't be so hesitant to list the shows that you've watched. You just realize that you're backed into a corner.

What do you expect, nu/tg/ is raided daily and yet everyone still thinks that this place is untrollable.

You don't see much east v. west arguments on /a/ because it's a dead horse that's been beaten until it was fine sand. Most arguments on /a/ are on the morality of lolis and why [popular anime] was so shit.

I think you missed my point: It wasn’t the context implicit in the term “anime,” but the context implicit in responding to my coment, which was specifically about systems of magic.

He's right, you know. When your joints ache and your eyesight starts to go, you'll miss your days of youthful vigor.

We are simply beyond trolling at this point - what can the trolls possibly say or do that we have not already lowered ourselves to?

But you won't have any of that because magic.

Practically anything because you fags will respond no matter what LMAO.

If you've lived long enough to be old as a wizard, it means one of two things:

>1. You rarely if ever actually use magic.
or
>2. You are very, very good at it.

If you've done this and also don't hide behind a disguise or pleasurable glamour to hide that you are, in fact, a venerable and haggard creature with few years left should they not be preserved by arts arcane, then it means either you were never really enough of a wizard to be called one, or that you really couldn't give a fuck anymore because you've already conquered whatever urges get that phase kicking and lived to kill the demilich who wanted you to be an 11 year old girl anyway.

Brains don't ossify

pretty much this
trolling Veeky Forums is like shooting fish in a barrel