@akr71 I ended up deciding I preferred 3 years, but it doesn't really matter. There's no need to add anything because the PCs will all be wizard students, meaning there's nothing for them to compare progression against anyone except themselves. Wizards are studious. The only reason they have a level progression rate in line with a fighter is for gameplay purposes. Really, a fighter's career trajectory should model a pro athlete: quick rise, rapid fall. A wizard's career should model an academic's: in school from age 3 to 33 (average age of PhD grad) with little tangible gain, then a gradual accumulation of power that doesn't stop until you decide to retire (most continue working past 70). In a game with both character types, you have to compromise, but in a wizards only game, you don't.
But, also relevant to the discussion between
@Yaarel and
@Salthorae, the exact number of years was just a theoretical discussion for funsies. In my own notes, all the coursework is in "units" (this changes the math slightly from what I've shown so far because I wanted everything to be whole numbers of units). Note: course units represent the time investment required of an appropriately-leveled wizard; they are not of uniform difficulty (freshmen can't take MS-723) -also note that aside from level 1, this is just the adventuring days required to reach each level, which feels too fast to me, so I just called them units.
| Wizard Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| units to reach (delta) | 12 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| units to reach (total) | 12 | 13 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 29 | 33 | 38 | 43 | 48 | 54 | 60 | 66 | 71 | 78 | 83 | 89 | 96 |
So depending on the magicalness of your game, a unit could be a day, a month, a year. Just pick what works for you.
-At one unit per month, level 1 takes 1 year and level 20 takes a total of 8.
-At one unit per semester, level 1 takes 6 years and level 20 takes 48. In Harry Potter, students start at age 11. So saying they graduate at level 3 (7 years later) and don't max out in power until they're about 60... that works for me.
-There are settings where 1 year per unit would be appropriate, in which legendary wizards are all over 100.
As to the first level taking the longest, the "wizard" threshold is a good way up the learning curve. Two level 1 spell slots is
infinitely more magic than a commoner can do. Going from commoner to Level 1 wizard means learning
two dozen completely new game features (a drastic oversimplification, but all we can work with). Then, improvement from there is comparatively easy. At level 2, you only add
one new game feature and improve on two others that you already knew.
@digitalelf thanks for pointing that out, I'm having a look now. Haha, there's even a "shirking chores" table! I love it XD
@Salthorae thanks for the encouragement, but I feel like playing Level 0 wizards is a pretty niche audience. I do have pages and pages of this stuff though, magical theory and calculations that are completely dry and of no interest to anyone. I even wrote a three-page Collection Development Policy for the Academy Archives, complete with a section that has guidelines for dealing with patrons who who challenge material in the collection. I'm pretty sure this is some sort of condition.
