If we're looking at in-setting reasons, is there even a single good reason for aspiring adventurers with enough intelligence/wisdom/charisma to NOT become casters? Hell, is there a reason for anyone who can afford it to not become casters? Given how powerful even apprentice mages can get in-setting, isn't magocracy the ideal form of governance? Feudalism makes little sense when some random faggot can literally summon the Host of Heaven no strings attached and/or blow an entire platoon away with a single explosion.
Maybe they hate Magic because they think it's a tool of the weak, a crutch to use when your own flesh and blood isn't up to snuff.
>>45864491
It''s fantasy you can do whatever you want.
>>45864623
Unless you're a non-magical character, that is. Then you're limited to waving around a sharp stick.
>>45864491
The king rules through divine right. Its a fantasy setting where goes are confirmed to exist. Do the math.
Any wizards that summons the Host of Heaven to overthrow the king will just get bitch slapped by his own summons in the name of the rightful king.
If you are not running your kings as high level clerics or favored souls, you are doing it wrong.
>>45864491
>taking poor mechanical balance between casters and martials as in-setting truth
3.PF has destroyed everything. It's over, everyone now assumes wizards will always be the most powerful and that that's the standard as it should be. All games beyond will borrow from this philosophy and there will never again be a point to even adding other classes to books save for archaic and outmoded tradition. We live in an age of decline, where nothing new or novel will ever be created, we only live to imitate the husks of the mechanics of old, unable to comprehend their function, their place, or their balance. Innovation is lost to us and we live in an age of superstition and ritual, our ability to learn and re envision or invent lost to us, never to be relearned. We live in the worst possible of conditions were a thousand hopeful newbies are sacrificed daily on the altar of tired tropes and ivory-tower game design, and countless toiling millions play game after endless game of the same flawed editions in perpetuity because there are no other games. To live in such conditions is to be host to the worst horror and realization in the tabletop world, that despite all the successes of our past and the potential for greatness in our present and future, this is the best we can do.
>>45864720
This sucks because I'm pretty sure I watched it happen live action. I had a fighter in my group that would try and suicide himself a dozen times a game and he finally bit it last session and now he's rolling a sorc. Not to mention how every session he would talk about said sorc he already prepared if he happened to die.
>>45864720
Are you surprised? Most of /tg/ plays 40k. What could you hope to expect but for them to pick the worst of all available options to the detriment of themselves and those around them, ignoring all innovation in favor of stagnation? That's what appeals to them. That and heresy memes.
>>45864720
>>45864491
Easy. Most of them are manageable if you take away their spellbook and/or components pouch. And I'm pretty sure most people in a setting, even casters, tend to be below level 5. It's also implied to take a good portion of your life to learn magic which is why elves are already pretty magical but humans not so much.
>>45864821
I jumped into Infinity after 40k got me in at the Kill Team level, and X-Wing is setting my sights on an Armada-scale game. And Dungeon World got me into a pretty fun Only War campaign.
A basic game can be a great way to introduce people to other games, but it's also a really great way to introduce them to bad habits. 40k is not an intro game anymore, since you need a cluster of expensive and broken models to stand a chance, a strategy that'll get you slaughtered in Infinity. Similarly, 3.PF has rules bloat and a huge system to try and comprehend, and people that jump into this as their first system seem to get stuck on it because they think every other game has the same kin of time-investment in their rules, so they stick to what they know instead of branching out, too afraid of other systems.
Fuck, even I had a hard time jumping from 40k to Infinity, but once I made the jump fucking everything opened up for me. I'm pretty fucking confident I can handle any fucking ruleset at this point, I just need to have eyes to read the fucking book and a few playtests to hash out any misunderstandings I might have.
>>45864491
If we assume that your game works on D&D 3E / Pathfinder rules then no, there's no real good reason for someone with high Int/Wis/Cha and adventurer acumen to not become some kind of caster. Spellcasters in those systems are just absurdly powerful, to the point where they are almost without limit.
If you have no problems with this, feel free to implement magocracy and theocracy as forms of government in your games. Of course, that just leads to the question of why adventurers are really needed if there are enough powerful casters to handle all the dangers that civilization faces.
If you have a problem with this, as I do, the solution is threefold. First, make mental attributes useful to non-casters. Second, make physical attributes useful to casters. Third, limit the effectiveness and breadth of magic when compared to non-magical options and approaches. For a good example of how to (roughly) balance attributes across the board, consider something like the Souls series, only adjust things so that certain combat maneuvers drain mana (like in Dark Souls 3), and other small tweaks so that any dump-stat harms a character regardless of role or style of play.
>>45864652
Men have been killing each other with sharp sticks since the beginning, why would I I start using other things when the stick still works? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
>>45864491
Only if your setting is such that magic is the only reasonable option. There are usually trade-offs or weaknesses to magic use.
Also, it doesn't make much narrative sense, unless adventurers in your setting go to adventurer college and pick their major.
>>45864720
take a break and play something else you sperg
>>45865114
No one plays anything else!
>>45864677
>If you are not running your kings as high level clerics or favored souls, you are doing it wrong.
This in no way disagrees with the OP, as both are casters.
>>45865140
World of Warcraft.
I'm only half-joking.
>>45864491
Here are three reasons:
1.Not everyone is born with the Gift
2. Ki, nigga. Mages are versatile and broken in the long run, but most still can't hope to survive getting nuked by an equal-leveled Technician.
3. Because heretic scum is hunted down by the servants of our Lord and Savior Christ.
>>45864720
Just play Fantasycraft.
>>45864491
Magocracy doesn't work because if you gather enough pointy hats in one place, beurocracy takes over, nothing gets done and all the big-wigs either start locking themselves away in research distansing themselves from everyone else or they start sacrificing the peasants for various research.
Suddenly, one of the bigwigs learns something he shouldn't have and the other bigwigs have to either take him down or face the monthly world ending catastrophy.
>Tinkering with unstable timelines?
>Summoning things whose name literally can not be pronounced by mortal tounge?
>Picking a fight with a celestial body of choice?
Such is life in Magocracy.
It's all shits and giggles until everyone dies.
