In most fantasy universes in which people cast spells, magic is a talent that few are born with. No matter how much they study, some people will never be anything but muggles, while other people are born with the Talent or the Gift or a high midichlorian count or whatever.
There are a number of reasons why this choice makes a fictional setting more coherent and focused.
However, these reasons don’t really apply to D&D, which has never had any pretensions at being a coherent and focused fictional setting.
D&D is a world where magic is common. Most of the D&D classes are spell-users to some degree. Most of the monsters have spells or magical abilities. You might assert that offscreen, within the borders of civilization, magic is rare, but the players’ game experience don’t really speak to that assertion one way or the other. The fact is that in D&D as it’s played, the world is chock-full of magic knapsacks, resurrection magic, and fireballs.
Your wizard isn’t special. If you come up with some demographics that specify that, say, only one in every thousand people has an arcane gift that can be nurtured, you fall afoul of the fact that nearly every D&D party has a wizard, or a variation like sorcerer, warlock, or bard – not to mention the clerics, paladins, rangers, monks, and druids also in the party. I’ve been playing D&D for decades, and I’ve seen a lot of wizard characters, and if they’re all rare and special, they’re the most common rarity there is. When a wizard character dies, we know we can go back to town and pick up another one if we want. We might claim they’re rare in the campaign setting, but they’re not rare in the game. Furthermore, most players don’t want their wizard characters to be feared, or hunted as witches, or even venerated as demigods every time they come to a new town. Every game session of D&D doesn’t have to be the X Men mutants vs. the world. Just leave me alone and let me do my shopping! Therefore, a blase attitude to spellcasters is pretty common among NPCs: the sort of attitude that comes from familiarity.
Your wizard isn’t super powerful – at least not at first. In any edition, a first- or second-level wizard isn’t any more powerful than a fighter, and might be significantly weaker. Sure, a first-level wizard can drop a fighter, and a crowd of commoners besides, with Sleep or Burning Hands, but a fighter can drop a wizard with one hit. It all comes down to who wins initiative. And besides criminal assault with Sleep and Burning Hands, what can a novice wizard do that’s any use? They might be able to get a middle-class job as a repairman (Mending), a mortician (Gentle Repose), a locksmith (Knock and Arcane Lock) or a charlatan (Charm and Disguise Self). They might rightly be regarded with suspicion, but not necessarily with awe. Being a low-level wizard might be kind of like being a grad student. It takes years of study, and might lead you to a respectable career some day, but no one’s really jealous of you right now.
There’s one more reason to avoid the “some people have the Gift” trope, at least for the 5e wizard class specifically. It steps on the sorcerer’s toes. The sorcerer’s story is all “I have a special inborn gift that lets me set things on fire.” Sorcerers are not much of a foil for wizards if the wizard’s story is “I too have a special inborn gift. Mine lets me set things on fire after five years of school.” I much prefer the more democratic message that anyone can go to school, make something of themselves, and learn how to set things on fire.
1st-level wizard spells for the masses
Given all this, I say: Open the arcane floodgates wide! Let anyone into the Arcane University, PC or NPC, from muggle or wizard family, so long as they can pay the tuition. The real limitations on wizard power are more insidious: not everyone has the wealth and leisure to attend wizard college, and, as is true for any other character class, most people stay low level. Few survive, or care to brave, the dangerous adventures required to become even, say, third level and unlock second-level spells.
Therefore, first-level wizards (and clerics, and bards, and other learned spellcasters) might be as common as educated people in our own medieval or renaissance times. Imagine a Shakespearean England where every Oxford scholar can cast Shield but not Suggestion, every vicar can cast Cure Light Wounds but not Lesser Restoration, and every minstrel can cast Charm Person but not Detect Thoughts. Would it really be that different from the standard D&D world?
low-level spells and society
Would this turn your world into Eberron, where magic is commercialized and ubiquitious? Not really. In fact, it’s surprising how much first-level spells resist the assembly line. A world where first-level spells are common actually resembles the medieval world that medieval people thought they lived in. You go to your local cleric for healing, blessings, and the detection and turning of minor demons. You go to the local witch for curses and curse removal. Really, Create Water and Purify Food and Drink are the only first-level spells we’d think of as being economically exploitable, and they’re small-scale.
Second-level spells offer a bit more room for altering society. I believe that lighting cities with Continual Flame is a classic Eberron move. Detect Thoughts and Zone of Truth could change the justice system. Lesser restoration – LESSER restoration – cures all nonmagic diseases, making a 3rd-level cleric better than the best 21st century hospital.
If third level spellcasters are dirt-common in your campaign world, you might stray a bit from the standard D&D pseudomedieval assumptions. But I don’t think you’ll do your campaign world any harm by allowing a Magic Missile-toting scribe in every village and a Cure Wounds-casting cleric at every roadside shrine. If anything, you’ll bring it more in line with the actual high-magic D&D gameplay that I’ve experienced, where no one blinks at the arrival of a traveling wizard, and someone in town can lift the curse on your fighter – for a price.
If your D&D world is built on a Vancian magic system, then only a keen mind can memorize the complex information needed to cast a spell and the “formulas” are closely guarded secrets. Even the Medieval guilds closely guarded their trade secrets and did everything they could to hinder competition.
Anyone can study astrophysics at a university. Only a few can fully understand it. Fewer go on to make great discoveries of their own.
Back in the day, as recently as 3.5, the rule was you needed an intelligence if 10+spell level to cast a wizard spell. Even this restriction has been lifted for 5e. This doesn’t make it seem particularly difficult for people to pick up first level spells.
This is awesome. It crystallized some things I’ve been thinking about. I agree that magic in our worlds is very common. I’ve been thinking of sub-cantrips that everyone has. Spark to light a fire, an every day need. Sweep to move things like dirt around. Dry to remove moisture from a thing. The sorts of things people who had magic would need in their every day lives.
This could lead to a deeper exploration of magic, like what do you have to do in order to get an apprenticeship?
What the game really needs is a longer list of non-combat, non-adventuring spells. Because if magic is that common I guarantee all those hedge witches and educated squires aren’t sticking to magic missile and burning hands, someone will have researched other spells. In the absence of that, GMs and players understandably default to magic-users being adventurer-only.
Hi! I was thinking about setting up my own Mearls dnd play by poll. But it seems like the links for Mearls aren’t working.
I respect all the wizards for entertaining us.
Of course, Magic is a talent that few are born with. But need to do practise more and more to make it perfect.
I agree with you that They might manage get a middle-class job as a repairman, a mortician, a locksmith, or a charlatan.