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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 8127410" data-attributes="member: 5142">Ad hominems aside, the use of "fantasy elf game" is not meant as any rude dismissal of how people engage the hobby but as a friendly reminder of the subject matter that we are engaging: not actual history with historical veracity and hardwired rules or laws, but a work of mutable fantasy fiction whose fiction has changed with every edition and even within editions. Going back to an earlier post, [USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] raised a point about how magic is depicted in other fiction, wherein sometimes it requires someone to be born with the "spark" of magic. One major issue is that D&D does not present a path to magic. It presents multiple paths to magic without suggesting anything resolute about what is required for magic. The source materials are even inconsistent about its frequency or prevalence. This is largely because D&D tries to walk the line between its own multiverse setting and a fantasy elf game tool kit for general purpose homebrews. And it's often afraid of saying too much that invalidates the latter. Let's see here. In 5e magic requires bloodlines or a freak accident (e.g., Sorcerer). It can be learned in school (e.g., Bardic Colleges, Wizarding Academy, etc.). It can require a pact with a patron (e.g., Warlock). It can be learned as a craft (e.g., Artificer or even magewrights in Eberron). It can be part of a divine or primal calling associated with spiritual practices (e.g., Cleric, Druid). One can even train in arms and armor to achieve a respectable usage in magic: e.g., Paladin, Ranger, Eldritch Knight, etc. There are even bladesinging and war magic traditions that allows training in some weapons and armor while also learning wizardry. So clearly the learning of arms and magic aren't as incompatible as some imagine. No surprise. We are in a edition where the Dev's answer for nearly every class is to give it magical spells. Or even multiclassing. Does wizardry really take that long to learn if a fighter can pick up a level of wizard after a few sessions? Is nobility truly incompatible with wizardry or sorcery when 5e presumes that you can take any background, including Noble, at 1st level? As others have reminded us, PCs may operate by different rules than NPCs, but if that's the case should we really be appealing character creation rules for wizards in AD&D or 3e to make the case about the age or stat requirements for wizards? How many wizards are out in the world? If you are the GM, the answer is as many as you need or want there to be. This is all to say that the gateways preventing magocracies are largely of our own post hoc construction to justify the prevalent aesthetics rather than anything inherent about the fiction of D&D. It's an aesthetic rooted in things like an elderly Merlin who plays a supporting role to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table or Gandalf the Grey/White supporting the "muggle" case of the fellowship. The point that I raised to start this all is merely that I'm surprised that we don't see more world-building in D&D with magocracies and magically-inclined nobles. I honestly probably would not pick the Wizard as the profession of choice for nobles. Instead, I would probably pick either Sorcerers (it's all in the blood) or Bards, which strike a nice balance between arms training, jack-of-all-trades skills, charisma, diplomacy, and enchanting/illusion magic.</blockquote>

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