Wizard: Essential Class or Scared Cow

[Tonguez]

Why do we have Wizards? Despite the use of the term the archtype isn't common in pre-DnD fantasy.

In DnD Wizards use arcane magic to do flashbang tricks whereas the traditional wizards and scorcerers of literature were mainly using subtle magic from a divine source, were necromancers twisting nature or were alchemists exploring the properties of nature

Circe is a nymph (and minor goddess)
Gandalf was also an outsider (Maia) - and his most spectacular trick was to use fireworks
Merlin was (probably) a Bard, maybe a Druid
Thoth-Amon (Conan) was a Cleric-Cultist, worshipper of Father Set
The 'Witch' is in league with diabolical powers
The 'magician' Roger Bacon was an alchemist

How would the game change if all magic was divine magic, alchemy was not magical and the wizard was no more?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Traditionally, wizards are very seldom the protagonist in fiction, more often the villain or, as with Merlin or Gandalf, an NPC-like mentor. Elric is an exception, but he (deliberately) breaks all the rules anyway.

The wizard as hero seems more common now, and has always been a big deal in D&D. I wonder if that's because nerds identify with wizards. I believe they were Gary Gygax's favourite class to play. And the rise of wizard as protagonist may be connected with the rise of nerdism/'geek chic' in popular culture.

D&D could dispense with all the casters, imo, and still work. Magic could be restricted to monsters and magic items, presumably created by a long dead race.

 

[T. Foster]

What about Prospero in John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost, or various magic-using characters in Jack Vance's The Dying Earth? It's no coincidence that those are the two books Gary Gygax singles out by name in the AD&D DMG for readers wanting to know more about the D&D magic system. See also de Camp & Pratt's "Harold Shea" series (starting with The Incomplete Enchanter) -- the "magical laws" are different in those stories than in D&D, but the magic-users are the protagonists (and again, non-coincidentally, this series was always singled out by Gygax as one of the strongest and most direct influences on D&D).

 

[Slife]

I'd say a minotaur wizard might be a little anxious. After all, that race/class combo doesn't work very well.

 

[Felix]

Thoth-Amon (Conan) was a Cleric-Cultist, worshipper of Father Set

The only thing I take issue with here is the idea that simply because a caster is a member of a priesthood and worships a god then he must be a Cleric. It's not as if there's a sign above the 1st Level Wizard door that says, "Check Your Religion Here".

 

[Delta]

The OP's characterizations of several characters don't match the actual source material descriptions; most of them are in fact described as "wizards" or possibly "sorcerers". If anything, the critique is at best that wizard spells in D&D are too flash-bangy (even if you ignore the numerous actual D&D inspirations pointed out by T. Foster).

From Wikipedia:

Thoth-Amon is a fictional character created by Robert E. Howard. He is an evil wizard in The Phoenix on the Sword...

Merlin is best known as the wizard featured in Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae...

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Gandalf is a central character in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where he appears as a fairly archetypal wizard, albeit one as equally at home using a sword as employing magic...

 

[Slife]

The only thing I take issue with here is the idea that simply because a caster is a member of a priesthood and worships a god then he must be a Cleric.

Yeah, he could be an adept or a druid.

 

[Tonguez]

The OP's characterizations of several characters don't match the actual source material descriptions; most of them are in fact described as "wizards" or possibly "sorcerers". If anything, the critique is at best that wizard spells in D&D are too flash-bangy (even if you ignore the numerous actual D&D inspirations pointed out by T. Foster).
From Wikipedia:

Yes the source material does call these various characters wizards but my point is that although they are called such they do not in fact match the DnD concept of Wizard.

The term wizard has a grand history beyond DnD and in many cases it is a divine spellcaster or non-magical alchemist.

Of course the OP also points out how ridiculous discussion of Essentiality vs Sacred Cowness is, since any character could be concieved with reference to any one or more 'class combinations'.

Even the Harold Shea character (and admittedly I have not read many of these books) uses a pseudo-scientific method of accessing alternate realities where the cultural (ie religious) myths of our world are real and thus magic is in fact the natural physics/logic of the 'realm'

Harold Shea is Wizard as natural philosopher in a world with supernatural physics and this is what the DnD wizard models but my point is that it is not the broad archetype of wizard that the term historically models

 

[Felix]

The term wizard has a grand history beyond DnD and in many cases it is a divine spellcaster or non-magical alchemist.

Feel free to call your divine casters and alchemists "Wizards" in your game. Your NPCs won't mind.

 

[Hussar]

Doug McCrae hit it nicely on the head. Prior to about 1980, you don't see many wizard protagonists. Yes, there are the odd exception, but, by and large, wizards are the old guys in the background swooping in and performing Deus Ex Machina when necessary.

The idea of a main character being a wizard comes into popular genre novels at roughly the same time as D&D hits mainstream. I don't know if there is a connection there, but, it seems likely. People play D&D and want novels where the characters seem like the characters in their game.