Gaining Magery

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The simplest option is "magery requires 15 points worth of study"; having power come from scholarship is within the medieval paradigm, and having to spend 4,000 hours under a teacher or 8,000 hours of self study to get magery 1 and 5 spells at IQ-1 is gonna keep magic rare enough.

Well, half that gives you Magery 0 and 5 spells at IQ-2. For most folks, that's not that effective, since that means five spells in the 7-9 range. That's not reliable, and for the same amount of time, you could have Farming at IQ+2 and Area Knowledge at IQ+1 and earn a living with those.

[Michael Cule]

If you make a fourth assumption (which I think you implicitly are) to wit:

4) Anyone can become a Mage.

Then the limitiing factor would be the cost of the training to make use of Magery and the expense of the transformation itself.

So assume a four year course.

In the first year they are testing for intellectual potential and personal character. If they like what they see at the end of that year the Faculty of the College of Magic opens the path to the Other Side and the students must pass a quest/test to achieve Magery 0.

In each subsequent year, they train you in spells and Thaumatology as well as related useful skills. (Alchemy elective with compulsory Glass-Blowing course.)

Once you fail one of the end of year quests you progress no further but learn as much as you can at the level of Magery you have achieved. The tests become harder each year. Perhaps they are always the same, perhaps they are different. You could model them on the Cabalistic other realms if you cared that much for pseudo-realism.

Most become Mage 0. Many become Mage 1. A substantial minority become Mage 2. An elite few become Mage 3.

That's how I'd do it. You could probably become a Mage at any age... But scholarships are only available to adolescent children. The State would insist on proper controls on who gets training and proper professional discipline.

And you need some large number of Mages and a fair bit of material expenditure to perform the opening rituals.

[Varyon]

An interesting option that would keep mages rare, even if it doesn't require a large time period to acquire Magery, would be if everyone is born with a low degree of magic potential, and it's actually possible to transfer this potential from one person to someone else - thus, to become a mage, you need to have a large number of other people transfer their potential to you, and to increase your Magery, you need to take the potential from many more people. You may want to set it so this can only be done willingly (although even then, it can lend itself to exploitation). Brandon Sanderson did something rather similar for the magic system in Warbreaker.

[Plane]

Powers 102 and 119 suggest that if you use Affliction (Advantage; Permanent +300%) on someone that so long as it remains up they earn the right (the obligation?) to spend character points on that permanent advantage.

Maybe that is how Magery 0 could get bestowed to people?

I don't know if I like the "benefits vanish after the usual duration" though. If that applies to extended duration +300% then what about +280% and so on?

I don't see a problem with leaving it up for full duration, just keep in mind there are ways to negate the affects of Affliction like Healing (Affliction)

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

I think by “limit” he means “limit the number of mages per capita.”

If so, that's desperately simple: pick out a number that suits his amour propre.

If you've got one practicing mage per 600 people, for instance, you've made them about as common as blacksmiths.

[Whitewings]

He (and I) are speaking of in-universe reasons. As are most of the postings.

[Pursuivant]

Considering that a minority of the medieval population was fully literate, and that only about 10% of medieval society was fully free and even fewer people were in a position to spend multiple years in advanced academic study, mages are going to be about as rare as medieval doctors or university professors, who were rare birds indeed.

If you assume that intense study is required to acquire Magery, that feeds into all the rituals associated with medieval universities. In fact, universities might incorporate or be schools of magic.

Assuming that The Church is OK with mages, then the investiture ritual might be similar to taking minor religious orders - similar to becoming a novice monk or nun but without the poverty and chastity bits. Perhaps there might be actual divine retribution if you break your vow or do the wrong sort of magic. Alternately, look at the sort of rituals associated with Freemasonry or early 20th century "real magic" like The Order of the Golden Dawn.

In some universities, doctoral candidates defended themselves publicly, standing in a town square and answering questions from all comers as evidence of the depth and breadth of their knowledge. If applied to mages, it wouldn't be so much a ritual to become a mage as a ritual to prove that you are worthy of the title.

[Anaraxes]

Mages per capita is an interesting worldbuilding consideration, but pretty much irrelevant to PCs. Legendary swordsmen, super-stealthy thieves and assassins, and people who are in well enough with the gods to perform miracles on demand are also likely pretty rare in the general population. But they're all stock features of adventure games. Heroes are exceptional pretty much by definition. Per capita frequency has nothing to do with PC or party frequency of occurrence.

(Fortunately, GURPS is a point-buy game, so worldbuilders aren't likely to fall into the trap of making Magery dependent on chance. But I've known DMs that expect mages -- sometimes just mages, for some reason -- to have to make a qualifying roll just to be that archetype.)

More random possibilities:
- Defeat another mage in ritual conflict. (This implies the examiner getting the benefit of their Magery, while the postulant doesn't have that yet. So, the postulants have to be good.) "Conflict" might be abstract conflict of power, like Ars Magica's Certamen, as simple as a Contest, or you could play it out with actual spellcasting.

- Quest to find the one crystal (or whatever) that resonates with you and amplifies your magic. You don't want to lose it. (Consider making it a Gadget that grants Magery. The GM might want this to a Unique item, even.)

- Absorb the Gift of an existing mage. Not meeting the "not gruesome" requirement, this might be by killing them. (There can be only one!) Less gruesomely, it could require a voluntary transfer - passing on the torch to a favored apprentice, on the elder mage's deathbed, to the one soldier nearby helping the mage right before they died...) On the bright side for per-capita calculation, this does keep the number of mages constant. (Perhaps there's even a fixed number in the world, which doesn't scale with population, explaining why magic dies out as technology advances -- indirectly, because that's also tied to population increase.)

The nature of the desired setting is probably the best guide. What does that world suggest, and what method fits into it? Do you want mundane PCs adventuring to become mages in play, or is it something that just fits into the backstory of the characters? Magic systems generally flavor their settings and stories fairly strongly, so look at it from the narrative angle more than the game-mechanical one of how many points / hours it takes to buy which traits.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Mages per capita is an interesting worldbuilding consideration, but pretty much irrelevant to PCs. Legendary swordsmen, super-stealthy thieves and assassins, and people who are in well enough with the gods to perform miracles on demand are also likely pretty rare in the general population. But they're all stock features of adventure games. Heroes are exceptional pretty much by definition. Per capita frequency has nothing to do with PC or party frequency of occurrence.

That is all true, and I will not dispute it. But the reasons for the rarity or commonality of mages can and should affect character generation. The vigil suggests that Disciplines of Faith or Vow should be fairly common, for example. Magic from scholarship would suggest various mental Advantages and Disadvantages.

[Opellulo]

The in-world justification could be, as other said, just to "Study the Hermetic Arts" which in a Renaissance setting comes with its own prerequisites: being literate, having a master, finding books, spend time to practice and so on. This without counting eventual social stigmas, Church/Political/Family opposition and the like.

Think Magery as becoming a Renaissance Polymath/Artist (You know, Leonardo, Raphael, Lorenzo de Medici, Frederick the II) and you have a good script to follow.

Maybe in theory "everyone could get Magery" but in practice only few people have the necessary resource, money and access to actually get it.