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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 5679820" data-attributes="member: 78958">How common casters are really depends on the setting I'm GMing in. I've had radically different answers to the OP's question for this reason. Examples:1. My 3E campaigns to date took place in the Forgotten Realms. Magic is the lifeblood of that setting, with lots of high-level spellcaster NPCs out there and whole societies founded on magic (Red Wizards; Halruaa; Evermeet etc.). Nobody would look askance at a Sorcerer or Warlock mixin' it up with nonletzal magic in a barfight - at least, nobody in the more civilized corners of the world. I always thought that there'd be about 1 in 10 individuals gifted enough for magic use in some way. More than 1 in 100 actually took levels in some kind of caster classes - and make that more like 1 in 4 out of the adventurer population.2. Before I GMed D&D, I spent a looong time in a homebrew setting where we used Hârnmaster, but heavily houseruled. In that setting, there was a benevolent church-like organisation of psionicists who taught that everybody had the gift to use psionics. And you know what? They were right! They took in everybody who wanted to learn and was ready to spend three years in study. They even took the poorest of the poor and had them pay for their education in menial services etc. Every single one of their students wound up a psionicist of at least some ability - depending on attributes etc., of course, but there wasn't anybody who couldn't learn at least basic 'magic'.However, there also was a different kind of magic, 'real' magic, the ability to submit one or more of the four elements to one's will. This kind of 'caster' was hated and feared (historical reasons), and no more than maybe one in 50,000 individuals ever became one. Although (predictably) one of the PCs was a Watermage, it took two years of playing before the group ever encountered an NPC elemental mage.3. I'm going to begin DMing a new D&D campaign in another homebrew setting shortly (details in a thread I recently made here). In that setting, magic and technology are virtually indistinguishable. The PCs, hailing from a backward, stone-age culture, don't understand magic well, and hold it very much in awe. Casters are relatively rare among their culture, although every village usually has a wisewoman or witchdoctor, who will usually have mastered a few simple spells. Their magic is genetic, and they can tap into the 'nanosphere', a web of nanotechnological microbes that the atmosphere of their planet had been seeded with centuries ago. Spellcasting PCs have no idea that this is the reason for their magic, though - to them, it's just 'magical'. BTW, the players don't know this technological background. One of the PCs will be a Warlock - the only one in the entire world! Her talents are special, strange, and terrible, because they're actually caused by spirit possession.However, there will be another, high-tech, culture in the setting. Technology, which I'll model like standard D&D arcane magic mechanically, is what those guys grow up with, and their nanite symbionts allow them to interface with and use all technological items (magic items) with ease. Mechanically, every single one of them has a level of Wizard - but the feel of it will be totally different. Note that the PCs will actually see those high-tech people as a people of wizards, not understanding technology at all!</blockquote>

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