[StevenH]

I was looking through my much-thumbed-through 1st Ed Fantasy book. And I found out something interesting about mages in Yrth. Pg 15 states: "On Yrth, one person in 100 has magical aptitude, and one in 500 is a practicing wizard. One out of 1000 might have Magery 2; one in 10,000 might have Magery 3." It does go on to say that some areas wizards are much more common. Which I interpret as more of the mageborn are trained, rather than a higher incidence of magery.

Those rates would make mages and wizards even more rare.

2nd Ed Fantasy is different (Yrth got an upgrade?)
"For most inhabitants of Yrth, magic is part of their daily lives. Perhaps 1 human in 50 might know a spell or two or have a knack in a high-mana area; 1 in 100 in a normal mana area or 1 in 500 in a low-mana area such as Caithness. In a high-mana area, perhaps half of the magic-users will actually possess Magical Aptitude. Of course, some people with Magical Aptitude, especailly in low-mana areas, will never learn magic or even become aware of their talent."
"The number of trained mages (or mages in training) is much lower--approximately 1 for every 10 'amateurs'."

Then it goes on to mention that in a town of 10,000 could expect to have 100 inhabitants who had some magic, and an additional 10 people who were fully practicing mages.

So that's a bit more confusing. The wording is not very clear. But it seems that the knowledge of spellcasting is more common than the ability to actually cast them. Which seems stupid, considering that the time it takes to learn a spell, only to not be able to cast it, is basically time wasted.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. I hadn't realized that the numbers varied so much between editions. At least I think they vary. 2nd edition doesn't really specifically state how much of the population has Magery.