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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Conaill" data-source="post: 763757" data-attributes="member: 1264">The Mages GuildSorceror, Wizard:1x9, 1x8, 2x5, 2x4, 8x2, 16x1Bard, Adept:1x11, 1x8, 2x6, 2x4, 4x3, 4x2, 16x1Bards are arcane casters; Adepts are divine casters, but they a number of Sor/Wiz spells in their spell list. Should Adepts be required to join the Guild if they want to use those spells?The Guild primarily regulates commercial uses of magic. Personal use is allowed, so visiting mages do not necessarily need to join the Guild. Do they need to register when visiting Mor's End?Resident mages are strongly encouraged (required? how to enforce?) to join.Quote from A Magical Medieval Society:Wizards' GuildsNo magical medieval city is complete without a wizards' guild. Like other members of society, wizards need a community and group insurance. To determine a viable wizards' guild, one needs to remember why people form them: what benefits they offer, what financial and social payments its members pay for the privilege of membership, and the guild's role as regulator in the city. These ideas are integral to maintaining medieval thought among magical times. The unique magical ability of wizards also adds complication in creating a guild structure. The guild is for camaraderie, insurance, and social distinction according to one's profession or craft. A wizards' guild offers many benefits for its members, both social and arcane-oriented. If a wizard dies an untimely death, then the guild insures proper burial and a stipend for the widow and children left behind. For members wealthy enough to afford coming back, the guild can ensure the member's return. In larger cities with wealthy guilds, the guild can grant access to research facilities, laboratories, special materials, and spell components. Where else can a wizard safely find the snake off a medusa's head, even if he has to pay the outrageous guild price? Other possibilities are shared magical learning, spell trading, and lend/lease magic items. Holiday feasts and theater productions must be a riot at the guildhall, and the types of songs wizards sing after pitchers of ale are legendary. Wizards also enjoy the settled ease of knowing someone understands them when they say over cards, "Yes, I tried to reverse the metamagic field by polarizing the phlogiston; unfortunately, upon opening the box, I found the cat dead." The guild acts as a police force for its craft, both on guild members and on outsiders within the guild's territory. If there is a wizards' guild in a city, being a member of the guild is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite. As with other professional and craft guilds, membership is compulsory to practice wizardry in the city, which includes casting spells for others, selling wizardly services, and making magic items for sale. Unauthorized practitioners risk retribution by the guild if word leaks out. This does not mean that it does not happen; it just means that guilds have a socially and legally supported right to pursue such transgressors. The guild also creates its regulations and bylaws. Any number of restrictions may be a part of a wizards' guild. Though the particular laws of any given wizards' guilds are campaign specific, here are a few ideas. Wizards' guilds limit who can make what magical items. They restrict what level of spells a wizard can cast for hire, depending on level or status in the guild. They regulate the prices at which wizards sell magic items, potions, scrolls, or spells they cast from memory. They determine who can create new spells and what new spells are created. They determine who becomes a wizard, through controlling membership and taking on apprentices. They even create codes of conduct for foreign wizards who enter the city. They create specializations within the guild, like battle wizards, caravan wizards, research wizards, and production wizards. However, with guild membership comes guild obligation. Service, magic items, scrolls, potions, research, spells, unique components, or plain coin cover membership fees and other payments. The combination of payments depends on the particular guild. The guild itself has feudal obligations it must fulfill. The amount of comparative power the guild holds, the lord or city council that gives the guild a charter, and the arrangements made with other groups determine the feudal obligations a wizards' guild owes to other groups and power centers in the city. It is important to remember that despite the camaraderie and rules for self-policing, wizards' guilds have just as much internecine fighting, backstabbing, individual power grabs, systematic rule-breaking, and dirty play as any other magical medieval guild. Although lords may grant a city the right to form a wizard's guild, they will never relinquish control over their rights of magical taxation and service, unless physically forced otherwise. Wizards' guilds are potentially one of the most powerful groups in a city. Such organizations have the magical power, and most likely the wealth, to compete against other guilds and power centers for attention and influence. Wizards provide magic that improves crime solving, intelligence gathering, and diplomacy. Wizards' guilds are full of learned men and their comprehensive libraries, facilities held in high esteem as places of learning and prominent architecture. A city's wizards' guild is immensely useful in places where military concerns are strong, or in times of war.In smaller communities, it is possible to have an arcane guild, opening the guild concept to sorcerers and bards, but such an organization is unlikely where enough learned wizards gather and look down upon their unlearned and undisciplined arcane counterparts.</blockquote>

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