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Old 09-01-2019, 03:26 PM   #1
David L Pulver
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Default How Many High-IQ Wizards?

In Cidri in large cities (such as Dran) I am wondering how many powerful wizards should exist! Specifically, in a city of 15,000 people, such as Dran, the largest on a map the size of Southern Elyntia...

Outside of player character adventurer parties...

... How IQ 15-16 wizards (capable of using potent spells like Create Gate, Long Distance Telepathy and Teleport) are reasonable?

... How many IQ 17-18 wizards (capable of potent spells like Summon Demon, Lesser Magic Item creation) are reasonable?

... How many IQ 19-20 wizards (capable of spells such as Revival, Greater Magic Item Creation or Zombie) are reasonable?

... What do you think the wizard to non-wizard population ratio is?

I'm working on some TFT material for publication, and am curious what people think best fits their conception of the settled areas of Cidri.
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Old 09-01-2019, 07:19 PM   #2
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

I should think very few high IQ wizards.

IQ 15+ maybe 2-3% of the total wizard population
IQ 17+ 0.25-0.5%
IQ 19+ 0.01% or less

I also favor what I suspect others might think is a low wizard:mundane ratio, something like 1:100, and probably 80% of those those will have an IQ of 10 or less.
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Old 09-01-2019, 07:56 PM   #3
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

I've tried to run the numbers for the wizards of Dran and they all get sucked into jobs just running the place. There simply aren't any wizards available for random encounters.

https://www.hcobb.com/tft/wizards_dran.html
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Old 09-01-2019, 08:37 PM   #4
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
I should think very few high IQ wizards.

IQ 15+ maybe 2-3% of the total wizard population
IQ 17+ 0.25-0.5%
IQ 19+ 0.01% or less

I also favor what I suspect others might think is a low wizard:mundane ratio, something like 1:100, and probably 80% of those those will have an IQ of 10 or less.
A ratio of 1-100 is also fairly equivalent to the ratio of professional soldiers (huscarls, knights errant, mercenaries, palace guards, etc.) who spend most of their time on duty or training in many historical societies. (Expect that to expand by 5-7 times with a seasonal call up or mobilization of militia, levies, citizen soldiers or whatever).
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Old 09-01-2019, 09:02 PM   #5
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
I've tried to run the numbers for the wizards of Dran and they all get sucked into jobs just running the place. There simply aren't any wizards available for random encounters.

https://www.hcobb.com/tft/wizards_dran.html
Very interesting numbers. (By Dran you're counting just the dutchy, and not all of southern Ellyntia, right?

The reason I ask is that it seems very possible that Dran, as the wealthiest regional area and probably he best school, acts to suck both the most promising students ("send you away to Dranning") and best extra high-end talent away from surrounding areas (much like, say, Hollywood does actors). Local rulers probably take action to mitigate this, but it's likely an effect...

I also wonder how the choice of a formalized "wizards' school setup" affects this? If well run it may increase the number of children who learn to be wizards and allow efficient use of apprentices (cheap labor, as you say). On the other hand, it's also possible that wizardry requires less complex training. Perhaps at least some of the 6-15 year period can either be self-taught or be taught without requiring a wizard -- (or is passed from wizard parent to wizard child as a family background). That is, the basics could be purely academic preparation (e.g., reading the right books, understanding certain songs, etc.) plus a huge helping of innate ability. In other words, perhaps, anyone with, say, Literacy or Bard might be able to do the teaching of a young wizard; in noble or well off families with books, this might even be self-taught, and this gives them the ability to reach, say, IQ 8-10 spells, perhaps higher if they do well and come to a real wizard's attention. At some point between age 13-16 those with real ability are directly apprenticed to a wizard, with most wizards having 2-5 apprentices depending on how much they are into the large circle enchanting...

Of course, we DO know wizard schools of the formal sort exist (cf. T'Reo School in Wizard) and it is quite possible Dranning indeed has one, and if so, it's likely more efficient in raising better mages. it may be possible to assume that the majority of places on Cidri lack such schools, at least in any real professional fashion. (Especially advanced ones: for much of the middle ages, Europe and the Islamic world managed about one university for every 25 million people...)
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Old 09-01-2019, 09:29 PM   #6
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

TFT limits spellcasting to the available pool of humanoid ST and restricts apprentice jobs to wizards. If you have mass Drain ST drives, or teach a lot of non-wizards the Aid spell it changes things.

One concept I've rejected for Revoreesh is to make him a ghost haunting his fifty foot tall staff tower. Assume that he is the IQ 24 wizard researching those IQ 20 spells.

Also what model do you use for XP/year for NPCs? I get around 38 attributes at most before humans age out.
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Old 09-02-2019, 08:18 AM   #7
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

The number, power and motives of magical people and beings has such a powerful impact on the progress of a fantasy roleplaying game that I can't imagine conforming to someone else's idea of how your setting is supposed to go. Ergo, there are as many powerful wizards in the Duchy of Dran as I need to have be in the Duchy of Dran.
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Old 09-02-2019, 10:48 AM   #8
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
Ergo, there are as many powerful wizards in the Duchy of Dran as I need to have be in the Duchy of Dran.
EXACTLY! Each of us has his/her own ideas of what our worlds and the Duchy of Dran are like.

I've seen statistical estimates of how many wizards there should be, but it's only someone else's interpretation. Everyone should do their own thing.
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Old 09-02-2019, 11:54 AM   #9
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

I assume 300 to 1 is the baseline (and that it is based on inherent gifts more than it's based on training) but modify to fit the situation in the setting, including as suggested that some wizards will tend to travel to places of opportunity.

In my version of Dran, I realized after several years of play with lots of mayhem and death, that the actual population must be much larger than generally thought, just to account for the number of people being (and frequently dying young as) brigands and thugs and adventurers and so on. Part of that is that most of the "empty" hexes have rural population (many of the wizardry-inclined people may move to a city).

And I do agree with the "as many as the GM wants there to be", but I also prefer as a GM to have an idea what's going on in my gameworlds, and as a player I prefer the GM to have an idea what's going on in the gameworld. TFT and ITL (and GURPS) themselves developed my appreciation for things making sense and being logically self-consistent.

I've made quite a few efforts over the decades as GM to do demographics, and it is an interesting and useful but complicated thing, and nearly impossible to really get right in detail. It can get a GM to think though about what it really takes most people to get to what levels of different abilities, how many people actually survive and do that, how many don't, how old they are, where they are, whom they serve, what they do with their time, etc.

We tended to assume that there definitely would be non-wizards trained in Aid as a pretty common thing - it's so useful (even with the original Advanced Wizard -4 DX for not being a wizard) that it seems very inefficient not to do that (unless you're someplace where wizardry is outlawed).

I take the "average attribute is 10, total 30" guideline seriously. And I don't think of most NPCs as having the same opportunities as PCs to increase attributes nor the freedom of choice of which attributes to increase.

I do assume wizards tend to be more likely to have higher IQ than non-wizards. And that they tend to have more opportunities, so that more of them than the rest of the population tend to develop themselves throughout their lives. However I also assume that a fairly large number of them still do not really advance much during their lives, and not all of those who advance do so by increasing IQ.

When looking at a population pyramid showing age versus attribute totals for wizards, a major consideration was working backwards from the NPCs I've tended to make, and the NPCs I've long assumed would exist in my version of Cidri. There are more low-powered wizards that high-powered ones, and the higher-powered ones tend to be rather older, with a statistical attribute peak in the 41-50 age range.

The result is that there are about as many 33-point and lower wizards than in the other ranges combined, and quite a few 34-36 point wizards, and the 37+ point wizards (who tend to be the ones with the more powerful spells etc) are the rarest but also tend to be the ones with the most status, influence and wealth.



I also have it that many wizards will travel or relocate, and that notable Wizards' Guild chapters will attract powerful power/status-interested wizards if/when there is a leadershship vacuum in one. So any guild chapter house of much size will tend to attract a few of the more powerful wizards.

I also assume that the Wizards' Guild tends to focus on projects, meaning that powerful wizards tend to get drawn to relocate to do one or more projects in different locations (e.g. enchantments, research, castings, situations, meetings with wizards and other powerful people). This means that which powerful wizards are at which guild chapters tends to change quite a bit.

I also tend to assume that high-powered wizards tend to use their status, wealth, power and influence to grant themselves more freedom than lower status wizards. So many of them tend to be going where they want and doing what they want, or be working together on group projects of interest to that group, and so while they exist, many of them are generally not sitting around waiting to be called upon to do services.

It's also how I assume most Gates get set up, as a logical thing to do and a convenient way to get to and return from places. But usually the powerful wizards in my campaigns tend not to consider Gate network development and maintenance an interesting or high-priority project except when there's some particular reason to do so.
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Old 09-02-2019, 01:43 PM   #10
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Default Re: How Many High-IQ Wizards?

The most important aspects of the Dranning School of Wizardry in my setting is that it has been active and undemolished for the past two centuries. This gives them a vast stockpile of stored magics to rely on.

Typical instructor
ST 8 DX 11(14) IQ 18, 0 points of mana
Staff w 10 point powerstone, +3 DX ring, Stone Flesh ring, Wizard's chest ($26k of gear, books and lab provided by the school)

That's 37 attribute points and only 71 CP. Which is bandit leader levels of effort.
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