Wizard population dynamics
 

We know there must have once been a few wizards (presumably human) at IQ 24 because IQ 20 spells exist and somebody must have researched them.

Taking 24 as the maximum feasible human stat, why not use the 4d6 bell curve for wizard IQ? (Round anything under 8 up to IQ 8 and they make up 5.4% of all wizards.)

On the high end one in every 800k living humans is an IQ 24 wizard.
IQ 23 wizards are four times as common at one in every 200k humans.
IQ 22 is more common still at one in every 80k and so on.

I'd make Goblins twice as common at the high end, but with the same 24 cap.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

I think that gives you too many IQ 8 wizards, and too many high IQ (14+) wizards.

I've been working, on and off, mostly off, on plotting wizard IQ distribution, taking into account how much of the population lives how long, and providing a matrix of how many wizards at which age might tend to have what IQ, as well as how many you'd have per population at any given age/IQ, on average.

I used an actual medieval population pyramid for the age breakdown.

The hard and unknown (up to the GM, really) parts though are about what the distribution should be like at each age. i.e. What is the breakdown for 16-20-year old wizards, and then how much do they tend to increase and then lose their IQ as they gain experience and then decay away.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

In my Cidri, there are as many wizards as I need (as GM) for the story and setting that I want :-)
Seems to work. Not a fan of extrapolating too much from the rules, but that's me.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

You're forgetting the Mnoren. They were the only IQ 21+ Wizards.... :-)

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

If there are no IQ 24 wizards then who makes the new Words of Command?

Unless...

Mass research: A group of wizards can combine forces, establish laboratories and communicate on a daily basis (in person or remotely) to research spells together than none of them could have discovered alone. Each wizard rolls independently and research advances on any week when all members succeed.

A group of two wizards can research a spell three IQ levels below their lowest IQ.

A group of four wizards can research a spell two IQ levels below their lowest IQ.

A group of eight wizards can research a spell one IQ level below their lowest IQ.

A group of 16 wizards can research a spell at their lowest IQ level.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

Hopefully hardly anyone, since Words of Command are already one of the most overpowering spells, capable of making fools and corpses of many interesting characters.

I don't see any reason why there would be NO IQ 24 characters, and I think it's good that there would be few of them, and that all of the more difficult and powerful feats of magic remain difficult and therefore rare.

The high-end things are there at the high end for reasons. If you want power creep and to make the current high-end hard things to be more routine, then you probably also want to think about what your new high-end should be like.

But one of the main problems with powerful magic is that it tends to make many interesting mid-range and non-magical characters, somewhat easy to overpower, kill, and render insignificant. A similar effect applies to conventional interesting game world and adventure situations, such as travel, maps, conventional security measures, conventional intrigue methods, etc. It can also be increasingly difficult to strategize about, and to play, because there gets to be so many strong magical tactics to consider, especially for the GM of a hopefully-self-consistent dynamic campaign. At least, I find it much easier if I assume the more powerful magic is rare and so any example of it involves thinking about a rare situation and having specific characters in mind who wanted it, created it, etc. A game with abundant very powerful magic can still be fun to play, for example either as very-powerful wizards, or as more ordinary people trying to succeed in a world with awesomely strong magic, or other play modes.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

I think the mythical man month would apply at least as much to spell research as to systems programming.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

Doesn't it all depend on what percentage of the population are Wizards and how the distribution operates? Why 1 in 800k instead of 1 in 800 million? There is nothing to say that it needs to be a 4d6 distribution. There are many bell curves with steeper asymptotes so that it takes 20 million Wizards to have one IQ 24 or IQ 30 super genius. It can be any distribution we want it to be. There is nothing which requires a population distribution to allow all d6 options to have an equal chance. Perhaps 1 die always rolls a 6 and the other three roll 1, 2, or 3 99.99% of the time?

Personally, I prefer a distribution where an IQ 25 (let's go to the top) Wizard comes along once in 500 or even 5000 years. He may actually come up with an IQ 21 spell - but almost no one will understand it or be able to cast it.

In the same way, perhaps all those apprentices are doomed to stay forever at IQ 8. They have NO opportunity to increase. For every IQ 9 Wizard, perhaps there are 1000 IQ 8, and so forth. That works better in my mind than a bell curve.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

The advantage here is the players bump into a random wizard at the guild and you just roll 4d6 to see how "high level" this random encounter is.

For a random human roll 4d6 and on a 4 or a 24 it's a full blown wizard. On a roll of 5 to 8 it's a hero who knows some spells.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

The most interesting question in TFT is why are starting PC wizards age 20?

Their lack of muggle skills indicates they were shipped off to Hogwarts at age 6 or so and later it takes them about four years to learn their spells at one a quarter.

That gives the lifepath of a wizard to be:

Age 6: Anakin and Tom Riddle are spotted by the Jedi council and shipped off to the academy where they spend the next ten years isolated from the world (and people skills) while they learn the basics of the force.

Age 16: With the literacy talent, basic chakra control, the Aid spell, and the ability to identify spells by their casting (page 142), young miss Poppins is then put under a Sorcerer's supervision for her apprenticeship. She can cast from books, but has very few spells actually memorized.

At age 20 these new journeymen are now ready to duel each other to the death in the arena or do whatever else it is that young independent people do these days.

Also note the following:

Page 60: "If the wizard has an apprentice who can cast the spell you want, he may have the apprentice do it for practice (unless you’re in a hurry)."

Page 141: "In order to cast a spell from a book, a wizard must have the book, right there. It must be in a language he can read. (An illiterate wizard is handicapped!) The wizard must also be in a fully-equipped laboratory, or have his magician’s chest with him."

Page 142: "A lab may be attuned to any number of wizards" ... "A wizard’s chest is attuned to him and him only."

I.e. the apprentice is book casting and attuned to the lab, which is sensible enough.

The big problem is that The Wizard's Guild is not making anywhere near enough money to pay for the $25k in base wizard training each student gets. Wizard academy charges $25 a week ($50 if boarding) for each child between the ages of six and sixteen fifty weeks a year with two weeks off. Each new wizard PC needs an explanation for where this money came from. Perhaps they'll all geased to pay off their student loans?

The Senior Guildmaster of Dranning doubles as the headmaster of the Guild school and has 16 (of the roughly 80, taking in from the surrounding countryside) wizards in the city acting as teachers for a hundred wizard students (in ten year programs) and sixty non-wizard students (that stay an average of a year each).

Each teacher has a rental lab at $200/week plus $150/week in salary times 16 is an expense of $6k to run the place or $27 per student week, with the remaining fraction subsided by guild dues. Truly the guild is cutting their own throats out of the kindness of their wicked hearts to train the next generation of evil wizards.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

(bold emphasis mine.)
Please explain in what way you feel this is the most interesting question in TFT.


Does it? I thought that wizards just weren't inclined to non-wizardly talents, kind of like so many real-world biographical stories of famously talented people whose parents tried to make them get into accountancy or something, only hopefully in Cidri your parents will encourage wizard kids to just do magic, so they do.


It is an interesting question at what age can wizards have learned how many spells.

To me, there is an issue with the new ITL in that it gives PC-minded rules for learning talents and spells, and for characters gaining XP, (and for starting characters), which (unlike original ITL), leaves us without clear guidelines for what NPCs should be like, and what it should take for them to improve themselves.


I don't think it needs to imply book casting. "Hurry" may just refer to the time to call the apprentice over and explain the chore to be done, and possibly for the apprentice to fail their DX roll (modifier for an unfamiliar spell, per the part annoyingly dropped from Advanced Wizard). "Practice" may refer either to the need to familiarize with unfamiliar spells, or just the general notion that the reality of the world may include details which don't have specific mechanics, such that it's helpful for less learned casters to cast spells for practice, even if the game rules don't have a specific mechanic to model that effect in detail.

In any case, since as you pointed out, a lab is attuned to one wizard, presumably a book-casting apprentice would not be using a $10,000 lab, but instead a $2,500 wizard's chest, but even that seems unlikely since PC starting total wealth is $1000... though it could also be that some wizards (and/or guild chapters) invest in chests for their students which they have to repay eventually, either in coin or in kind. Or maybe they don't need to repay them, because when they leave the apprenticeship, if they can't (or don't opt to) buy the chest, the wizard and/or guild can re-purpose it or its components for other apprentices.


What are you talking about?

What "$25k in base wizard training"? Oh, this rate you're making up?

Even if that were the rate, what do you mean "The Wizard[s'] Guild is not making anywhere near enough money to pay for the $25k"? Regardless of what the WG makes, why would it be on the hook to itself for its own tuition fees? It would be paying them to itself, having no effect anyway?

Certainly there is a real cost of room & board during training, but that can be less than adult normal cost of living assuming a guild hall has apprentice dorms and food halls.

Again, the nice section from Advanced Wizard lists the first method of learning spells as apprenticeship, where the apprentice serves the wizard and gradually picks up spells as a matter of course. No tuition is involved. Again, the only expense could be room and board, and the apprentice is useful, especially once he knows the Aid spell. It seems to me that such an arrangement has an a positive impact on the guild, and doesn't really cost anyone anything since the help the apprentice gives is no doubt more valuable than giving him some sort of room and board.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

That's also in the new rules.

Page 13: "Apprentice: Many wizards begin thus, aiding a more experienced practitioner in exchange for bed, board, training, and maybe a little silver."

Page 144: "The GM may instead require wizards to find a teacher for each new spell, or at least the high-IQ ones. The teacher may ask for payment, or a quest or service, or a period of apprenticeship, or for the PC to teach them a spell."

Page 154: "The Guild regulates apprentices, just as it does other wizardly affairs. A wizard must pay his apprentices Guild scale ($25/week), and is obliged to train them – see Learning New Spells."

At one skill point per quarter this is four years of apprenticeship. Backtracking from age 20 gives us a 16 year old kid who is qualified to be an apprentice.

Hence they can already (at age 16)

• Learn the Staff spell
• Cast spells from books
• Read scrolls
• Attune a chest or lab
• identify any spell in the book from the casting ritual
• Research new spells (if IQ 12+)
• Use wizard only magic items
• And learn additional spells with a third the effort a hero takes

And that is what a decade's training at $25/week provides. Hence $25k (including a reasonable standard of living for a middle class child.)

And this means that one out of every 25 adult wizards is a classroom teacher.

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

Looks to me like page 13 differs from page 154 about how often apprentices get more than bed, board and training. Apparently it depends on whether the guild standard is in effect in the specific example, which no doubt actually varies from place to place.

Looking more closely... I think those are two different contexts for the word "apprentice":

Since page 154 is in the context of apprentices used for creating magic items, I would say that the pay requirements listed there are for trained professional (probably adult) people serving in that role, casting Aid and helping work on a magic item enchantment, and probably don't apply to apprentices in the context of how people (especially kids) get trained in magic through apprenticeship. (Especially if they haven't even learned the Aid spell yet, so certainly including everyone not yet at IQ 9.)


Isn't the training time actually the number of spells taught multiplied by the time it takes an apprentice to be taught a spell?

Where are you getting one skill point per quarter?

And are you really assuming typical apprentices are IQ 16?

I am not finding any surviving reference to learning rates in new ITL.

In Advanced Wizard, on the other hand, there are four methods nicely laid out on AW page 10. The expected rate listed for an apprentice is one spell (of up to IQ 12) per four months, with a one-month unfamiliarity period following that, where casting the spell is at -2 DX.

So 3 spells per year.



A decade? How did you go from 4 years to 10 years?

$25 is what they make you pay room and board for the adult professional apprentices helping you enchant magic items.

Even if that is what you spend for apprentices, $25 comes to $1300 per year, or $5200 for 4 years, or $13,000 for ten years. Or, say, for an IQ 9 apprentice being taught 9 spells at the Advanced Wizard rate, three years, or $3900.


How do you figure that?

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

All the specific learning times mentioned in the new rules, i.e. Thieves Guild.

It's ten years to grow from an ordinary child to a wizard with one spell under a guild teacher then four years as an apprentice to learn the starting allotment of spells.

My calculation has $25/wk for housing the child in Guild standard "sub-wizard" conditions plus another $25/wk in teacher salaries. Halve the cost if the parents house and feed the critter.

1. My classroom model has one teacher per ten students.
2. There are two kinds of students in the classrooms.
3. Pre-wizard kids taking ten years of training to become spell-less wizards
4. And one in fifty (page 134) heroes taking a year to learn 1.33 spells
5. Assume teachers average fourty year carrers.
6. The math works out to one in 25 adult wizards being an active teacher.

Every detail short of a campus map here: http://www.hcobb.com/tft/house_rules.html#Maps

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

That's an interesting house rule, to have becoming a wizard be a 10-year process. I agree that something is missing in the details of the original concept where some people just are a wizard (and so as you point out, can do several things that would seem to want some learning), but if you make it so a 10-year training is needed, it would tend to mean every wizard really needs to be trained by someone (for a decade in this version).


So your guild pays its teachers on a per-student basis?

What's wrong with the book-standard of apprenticeship being a trade in-kind between the wizard and the apprentices, with no salary involved?

Re: Wizard population dynamics
 

Shaped by a traumatic event in their childhood: Wizard Academy.

These aren't qualified to be apprentices yet. Once they are full wizards they zip through a standard apprenticeship in just four years.

The teachers are paid as per their IQ. It just averages out to $25 in total school costs per student per week.

If you barge into a random classroom roll 3d6 for the number of students there.

On a roll of 18 you've hit Introduction to basic magical theory first year.

On a roll of 3 you've reached Advanced Demonology.

Remember that these kids will be able to recognize 171 different spells on sight after this decade of training so they spend less than a month on the vast majority of those.