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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8780594" data-attributes="member: 7023887">Cool! Those could all be useful in preventing a mage uprising for as long as possible. I personally think that a bit more would be needed, but this is definitely a good start!  I didn't say that it would let you mind control them, just allow you to influence key decisions that a monarch might make. For example, you could use it to make sure a monarch does/doesn't sign a certain treaty that they might already be on the fence about signing. Or convince them to go along with an investment into a business a friend of yours controls. There are plenty of "reasonable" ways that a mage could subtly influence and control a monarch just with Suggestion. That is actually one of my main points. Magic could be used to earn more money than non-mages could make. Which would allow them to climb the social ladder more easily than non-mages. I'm not saying that they wouldn't develop resistance. I'm saying that if left unchecked, mages absolutely would eventually run the world. This thread is about discussing how worlds would avoid that and which safeguards they would use to keep that from happening. I want you to tell me which ways people could/would use to prevent mages from taking over! That's the whole premise of the thread! However, I do firmly stand by my point that people with power would use that power to maintain their power and that mages would absolutely use that to form an elite magic social class. Social darwinism is false in the real world. In a fantasy world where you can literally inherit magical powers? Not so much. I agree! How deities/religions work in the world would definitely impact whether or not/how effectively Clerics, Druids, Warlocks, and probably Paladins would/could consolidate political and economic power. If there are objectively real divine entities controlling what they can do with their magic, then it would definitely be less likely/almost impossible for them to abuse it. However, in a setting like Eberron where the gods don't objectively exist and probably don't restrict the powers of Clerics and Druids or in a setting where divine power comes solely from belief and not actually from the deity . . . then they'd be much more open to consolidating power. Warlocks (even low level ones) are definitely capable of "phenomenal cosmic power" compared to what we can achieve in the real world. So, even if they're weaker than other full-casters and give away something important for their magic, they could definitely use their magic to more easily take political and economic power. I'm not going to address most of this text because I covered it earlier, but I wanted to respond to a different point you make: there aren't rules for NPCs gaining more power. How a cleric, paladin, bard, or other spellcasting NPC levels up (which we know is possible because there are plenty of examples in 5e) is up to the DM and doesn't have solid rules in the game mechanics. This is a problem, we can't determine how powerful most mages in the thought experiment would be or how they would gain more magical power.</blockquote>

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