I'm running a sword and sorcery game for my group in a couple of days...

I don't deny that, but it's perfectly possible to make a magician character who is morally ambiguous or even evil but willing to work with the party; and you can make magic difficult and dangerous.

Have you read Conan? Have you read anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs?
There you go.

lots of snake gods, OP.

I would argue that there's a difference between just reading something. and understanding what its defining features are.

Snake gods are, indeed, vital

Or, if you are going to be a caster, you have to be a really tiny man.

Don't forget to also read Solomon Kane and, of course, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

Because fuck me, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser is the 'D&D campaign the short story collection' series.

At one point they steal a house.
Just because.
If that doesn't scream 'These guys are PCs' to you then I don't know what would really.

Firstly:
youtube.com/watch?v=Bf4Bl6BjkkU

That out of the way, it's typical that your character is either mowing through waves of mooks or is in a pitched duel with someone of equal might or importance. Squashes or one-sided stomps are rare. As others have mentioned, magic is esoteric and not at all commonly available; that said, given the importance of your character(s), they will be rubbing up against magic far more often than most in the world.

Plenty of sword & sorcery takes place in an age of tribal societies. Plenty of characters either belong to a tribe, are exiled from their tribe, or are pure ronins and drifters who somehow don't answer to anyone but their own sword.

Magic should be for villains and NPCs, not the players. It should also be mysterious and very sinister, with a Lovecraftian and demonic mood. Magic users are almost always corrupted by their power.

Players should mostly be common folk, slaves, barbarians, farmers, and so on, not nobles and intellectuals.

The story lines should be focused around revenge and self motivated gain. If they are going to do good, help others, save the word, etc., those things should feel more secondary or incidental. SaS heroes set out on adventure for personal reasons, not heroic ones. Heroism is usually something that happens accidentally along the way, either because they inadvertently help people or find people suffering and decide to help them while also pursuing their goals.

Ultimately, the heroes should always fail to achieve what they set out to, or they should enjoy only Pyrrhic victory. They seek vengeance but never find the true perpetrator. They gain riches but lose them dramatically. They become king but come to resent their responsibilities. That sort of thing.

And of course, the wheel of pain. All good sword and sorcery heroes are emotionally shaped, and often emotionally stunted, but exposure to violence, cruelty, isolation, hatred, and neglect. The harshness of their past and their present should always be what is shaping their personalities and stories. Whether that is struggling to get enough food to eat the next day, witnessing horrible acts of violence and cruelty, or being unable to connect emotionally with other people and achieve quiet, peaceful lives.

Emulate Gilgamesh! There's a town with a problem. Go there and beat everyone up. I'm not kidding. That's literally all he does before Enkidu kicks the bucket.

If there aren't plenty of sultry bandaids, lustful farmer's daughters, flirtatious merchant's daughters, and grateful rescued maidens you're doing it wrong.

>sultry bandaids
bandage me daddy

Requesting r34 on bandaids

Elric's a wizard.

While you're right it's a sword and sorcery trope that wizards are the bad guys, I don't think it's strictly necessary. What *is* necessary is that magic be poorly understood, nasty, and extremely personal.

The concept of magic being treated like a branch of science is anathema to my idea of sword and sorcery. Things like magic colleges are unthinkable, and anything larger than a small, local cabal of secretive (and probably religious) sorcerers seems almost wrong.

Like, one man might have found a magic ring that, when upon his finger, allows him to contact and command creatures from some nameless plane of existence. Another might be a priest of a dark god who favors him with gruesome "miracles". Another might be an alchemist, with voluminous pouches full of powders and oils to enchant and dissolve. Elric was the inheritor of hereditary pact with all sorts of elementals. None of them went to any kind of centralized education for this (okay, Elric kind of did, he was tutored pretty hard on the dream couches). Magic is something that's found in dark corners and old books, not in public.

My point is, wizards are a thing in S&S, and they can even be main characters, but they need to be unique. The idea that you can see a man in a pointy hat and robes and know what he's capable of is something that should never happen in a sword and sorcery game. This is part of the reason I like more "free-formy" games for sword and sorcery--Barbarians of Lemuria's build-your-own-spell system is pretty cool, for instance.