![]() ![]() It might be a world that is terrible to live in for mundanes, but is still stable. Just how fearful mundanes are sets the tone of the world. ![]() Not giving wizards reasons to kill off folk around them will go a long way towards making it a rare occurrence. Mundane folk will do just about anything to avoid offending wizards who can easily kill them. How mundanes view and interact with wizards will naturally contribute greatly to stability. If wizards are common, or even a majority, it can be bad news for mundanes, for even if you aren't the target, you might become collateral damage (fireballs having an area of effect). ![]() For those rare times that mundanes encounter a wizard, their behavior will likely be such that they won't give the wizard cause. If most mundanes go their entire lives without encountering a wizard, magical murder won't be a social problem. The ratio of mundanes to wizards greatly impacts instability caused by magical murder. This can be a destabilizing factor as not only wizards will suffer.Įven if it doesn't come to a physical fight, wizards will likely have to deal with society. From the people's perspective, if someone is killed by magical means and you don't have a way of determining who did it, you might not care exactly who pays the price as long as someone does. Wizards might thus have to take care in concealing their powers to the point of not using magic. The above factor may stabilize into a condition where wizards are attacked on sight. This factor involves periodic instability, though it might not happen during the time of the story. Even if they can teleport away, they may have to leave behind their valuable equipment. It could be that there's a tipping point in the army size, beyond which a wizard isn't likely to prevail. If the wizards are so powerful that the armies are unlikely to win, it might still take long enough for a wizard to destroy an army that they'd rather spend their time on their Other Concerns (see below). If the mundanes outnumber the wizards and wizards become a large problem for society, the mundanes will band together to attack the wizards. Wizards might view themselves as superior to others to the point that they consider others to be a lower order, which would be a destabilizing factor (see Wizard Attitudes below). This only works if the other is seen as a person. It can take extreme circumstances to overcome this. Doing so severely impacts their psyche, so they avoid it. Many people, fortunately, simply have a hard time killing others. Natural Consequences Psychological Consequences The attitudes of mundanes and wizards will affect each other, which can provide additional reinforcing stabilizing (and occasionally destabilizing) affects. These aren't stated as rules of the world so much as their occurrence is natural and prevalent, such as in the attitudes (and thus behaviors) of folk. While much of the below isn't explicitly cast in terms of costs, benefits and incentives, they can be identified in the list. ![]() Where the world falls on this spectrum depends on stabilizing factors (with no single deciding factor). How rare depends on what sort of characters and world do you want to explore, anything from a world where magical murder doesn't show up as a concern in the story to one where it's a primary theme and its affects on individuals and society is a driving force of the story (though you can get the latter even when magical murder is quite rare). Let's also look at a slight rephrasing of the question: how can a society be stable when overpowered wizards can kill on a whim? This perspective shift is useful, since a stable society wouldn't have no magical murder, but it would be rare enough that most people could go about their daily lives, just as in our own world. I'd like to keep the wizards supremely powerful in terms of their ABILITY to kill people, so please no "killing takes effort" answers.People are poor, and often can't afford protections.It's very hard to tell who killed whom when you use magic.Law enforcement might work, but remember that these are wizards who can kill people on the spot, so you might need a more powerful variety.Teleporting a object into their brain or heart (People will know the victim has been killed by magic, but they won't know who did it)Īll right, so Bob is a wizard (like level 20 in 5e terms), and Joe is a average joe a serf to a feudal lord, so he can't afford fancy protections like Antimagic fields, or wizard bodyguards.In my fantasy world, wizards are quite powerful, and they can kill anyone they know the location of with just a thought. How do I stop annoyed wizards from killing people all the time? ![]()
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