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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 6077613" data-attributes="member: 49017">The first I remember reading where someone with clearly magical abilities was also a/the protagonist was The Incompleat Enchanter, with Harold Shea. He preferred to solve problems without magic, given that it wasn't the most reliable ability he had, but could improvise something in an emergency. What form that would take varied depending on how imaginative he was, what he needed to do, and what was available. So animating brooms to fly himself and Heimdall out of Hel, filling Aeneas' ships sails with wind to escape the fall of Troy, and a variety of other tricks. Since magic wasn't usually repeatable by a single caster, he had to come up with something new each time. Some of de Camp's other books also featured wizards who were part of a group of protagonists.Ged, the wizard of Earthsea. He's less physically capable and uses magic when he thinks it's safe to, which isn't all the time. Using his intelligence often serves him better than displays of magical power.I assume Pug from the Midkemia stories also counts, though since he's supposedly derived from a D&D campaign his abilities (which aren't that similar to a D&D Mages) are fairly predictable.Merlin in TH White's Arthur tales is another I grew up with. He probably comes closest to the "wise adviser" archetype, though he does occasionally take action himself rather than showing Arthur what to do.And if we go outside books, Mickey Mouse in the Sorceror's Apprentice is an interesting example of what happens when you try to use magic you can't control.</blockquote>

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