Commonality of Enchanters

[Whitewings]

In the setting in question, magic is a relatively new thing, about a hundred years old. The setting uses ritual magics with the core skill being "Deeper Astrology," which has the prerequisites of Astronomy and Occultism. The Enchant spell has a prerequisite count of zero, and the special prerequisite of "Must Have at Least One Point in each of ten other Colleges." Planetary, zodiacal and decanic modifiers apply and sorcery is a legitimate profession (generally speaking), so it's not too hard for even an inept mage to get enough bonuses to have an effective skill of 15+ with the needed spells.

The big change is that Slow and Sure enchantment is vastly faster: An enchanter can put as much energy into an object in an hour as that enchanter can recover in that same hour. At the lower end, that's 6 energy per hour per enchanter; at the upper limit, that's 30 energy per hour per enchanter. However, they can't use powerstones, called in this setting starstones.

One in 375 men has Magery, and four in 375 women (I wanted 1 mage in 150 people average and a skewed sex ratio). The setting is an alternative history that diverged in 1660. It's currently TL 5, early industrial; the Vaucanson lathe was invented thirty years ago.

Given all the above, how common would you expect enchanters to be?

[mlangsdorf]

Learning 10 colleges of magic is arguably equivalent to becoming an MD. There are about 1 million MD in the US population of about 300 million, so 1 MD per 300 people. I wouldn't expect enchanters to be more common than that.

Becoming an MD requires exceptional intelligence and discipline. It's possible that not everyone who can work magic has the drive and discipline to learn multiple colleges of magic to become an enchanter. If only 1 in 300 mages have the drive to become enchanters, I'd expect there to be 1 enchanter per 45,000 people. I wouldn't expect the number to be much worse than that.

The final result is a question of world building. If 1 in 300 people is an enchanter, enchantments are going to be extremely common and every no-name village is going to have an enchanter. If 1 in 45,000 people is an enchanter, only the largest cities are going to have an enchanter, much less multiple enchanters.

I'd probably split the difference, and put it at 1 enchanter per 5,000 or 10,000 people. Every medium sized town has an enchanter, and major cities have several. Large capitals such as Paris have enough enchanters to possibly have a guild to discourage additional entrants into the market.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Learning 10 colleges of magic is arguably equivalent to becoming an MD. There are about 1 million MD in the US population of about 300 million, so 1 MD per 300 people. I wouldn't expect enchanters to be more common than that.

Far LESS common than that. If only one person in 150 was genetically capable of being a medical doctor, you wouldn't get one MD per 300; you'd be damn lucky to get one per three thousand.

And if Enchant retains the requirement of Magery/2, you've sliced the pool that much thinner. Then toss in the various caveats: how many mages of that capability are casting spells-for-hire? They're not enchanting for a living. How many are court wizards? They're not enchanting for a living. How many are pure researchers, or professors at the magical academy, or just retired coots puttering around in their gardens and using lightning to zap voles and rabbits? They're not enchanting for a living. (Come to that, how many are adventurers? They're not enchanting for a living either.)

Too many discussions about the density of mages just assume that everyone capable of doing X is doing X. Far too few recognize that it means that those doing X are not doing Y, Z, Q, or any other letter.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

And if Enchant retains the requirement of Magery 2

It doesn't. Enchanting without the usual prerequisites only makes a spell more difficult, as per the rules in Thaumatology, p. 73.

[The Colonel]

You probably also need to filter for the social system - again, using the MD example, fi you're born in the ghetto you're going to struggle to get that training you need to qualify (it's not impossible - I can think of one globally famous example - just damned difficult).
Likewise, in a traditional feudal setting a potential enchanter born to a family of illiterate serfs ... or, for that matter, as the eldest son of a feudal magnate ... is going to need some special stars to get themselves into wizard school.

...and a medieval population is going to be small. IIRC England got up to about 7 million before the Black Death hit ... and took a long time to get back there. Suddenly the number of practicing enchanters looks very small indeed.

And for a further fly in the ointment ... I would suggest training to be a wizard probably has a higher fatality rate than medical school...

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Far LESS common than that. If only one person in 150 was genetically capable of being a medical doctor, you wouldn't get one MD per 300; you'd be damn lucky to get one per three thousand.

I literally addressed that point in the next paragraph: "If only 1 in 300 mages have the drive to become enchanters, I'd expect there to be 1 enchanter per 45,000 people. I wouldn't expect the number to be much worse than that."

I also disagree with Varyon's point that learning Enchantment is no worse than an AA degree. Having the determination to sit in a classroom and closely follow a lecture, 4 hours/day and 50 weeks/year, is not normal.

But I do think if you combine the two points you get more mages that can potentially be enchanters, but you're still looking at a handful of mages out of a hundred. Which is what I closed my response with: "I'd probably split the difference, and put it at 1 enchanter per 5,000 or 10,000 people."

[Whitewings]

Most mages in this setting only learn a few colleges. Healing is nearly universal due to the immense utility of Recover Energy, and the other most common are Knowledge, Protection & Warning, Communication & Empathy, and Light & Darkness.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I also disagree with Varyon's point that learning Enchantment is no worse than an AA degree. Having the determination to sit in a classroom and closely follow a lecture, 4 hours/day and 50 weeks/year, is not normal.

I may be overestimating how many hours college courses would count as under GURPS. My thoughts were that being a full time student requires comparable time investment to being employed full-time, for 40 hours a week. But it occurs to me that more than half your time is actually spent doing coursework outside of class (an AA degree calls for 60 credits, where 1 credit calls for 1 hour per week for a semester; thus for a 4-semester degree, you'd be in class for around 15 hours per week, with the remaining 25 hours being out-of-class work), and I don't know if that would count as direct learning, self-study, or something in-between. If it all counts fully, then every 5 credits (representing 200 hours - 5 hours per week in class, 8 hours and 20 minutes per week out of class, for 15 weeks) is worth [1] and an AA would be worth [12] - just [1] shy of enough points to be an enchanter. If the out-of-class work counts as self-study, thus being worth half as much, then 15 credits would only count as a bit over 400 hours and thus you're looking at [2] per semester - a 3-year program would get you to the same [12] as above, with [1] left to go. If it's somewhere in-between, where the time spent out of class is 75% as effective as the time spent in class, you're looking at a bit over 500 per semester and 2,000 for a 2-year program, for [10].

But in all cases, the fact remains that you need 2.7x as much study (and have IQ 13 to boot) to be a physician. Or, at least to match the BT template - BT also has the job requirements to be a General Practitioner, and that's Physician and Diagnosis at 12+ each. For a character with IQ 10, that calls for [23] (Physician at IQ+2 is [12], this gives a default of 8 for Diagnosis so you only need to spend [11] to get it up to 12), which isn't quite as stark of a difference (~1.75x as much rather than ~2.7x as much)... but I'm not certain someone with just those two skills would be able to get a job as a doctor, let alone have earned an MD. Of course, there's also the fact that a doctor of above-average intellect wouldn't have to invest as much into becoming a doctor as one with IQ 10, but enchanters don't have that option - an IQ 13 doctor would only need [4] invested in Physician and Diagnosis ([2] each to get them to IQ-1), but an IQ 13 enchanter would still need to invest those [13] into their skills (they'd be much better enchanters than their IQ 10 counterparts, with starting skills of 10 or 11 rather than 7 or 8, however).

I still believe you'll likely see more mages becoming enchanters than you have people becoming doctors. Your estimates of ~1 in 35 to ~1 in 70 mages becoming enchanters (1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000 of the general population) feels like a decent spread.

[Whitewings]

There’s a mention in the basic set that 1 credit in post-secondary is equivalent to 1 character point. The same statement was made in 3e, with a detailed breakdown.

[Varyon]

The absolute lowest point investment to become an Enchanter is [13], for [1] each in Astronomy, Deeper Astrology, Occultism, and each of ten Colleges. In a formal education setting, someone focused entirely on becoming an Enchanter is investing 3600 hours. At 8 hours a day and 25 days a month, that's 200 hours a month, for a total of 13 months of dedicated study. Modern colleges don't go that intense (fewer than 25 days a month and less than 8 hours a day, typically, as well as a few months off), but I think you could achieve that in the amount of time needed for an Associate's Degree (2 years). The Physician template in Bio-Tech has [35] invested in medical skills, nearly 3x as much as the Enchanter requires, and this is on top of having noticeably high intellect (IQ 13). Granted, I think doctors normally take around twice that amount of time (12 years rather than the 6 implied by the above), but a big part of that is that they don't have the option of only learning medical skills in college.

So, with the barrier to becoming an Enchanter (provided you have Magery, of course) being much lower than that of becoming a doctor, you'll have more mages become Enchanters than you have average people becoming doctors. Well, assuming comparable levels of access to such advanced education - at TL 5, fewer people are going to have the option of going to the equivalent of a community college or trade school than here in TL 8. You'd have to weigh the factors involved, but you're almost certainly going to see more than 1 in 300 mages being Enchanters.