4E Flavor: modern wizardry (academy structure and ranking)

[b][u]WIZARDRY IN THE MODERN WORLD[/b][/u]

[b]On the Nature of Wizardry[/b]
Nowadays, almost every settlement of significant size plays host to a wizard's academy. The court wizard has become as common as the court jester in the halls of power and "magic shops" selling enchanted knick-knacks keep regular hours in crowded bazaars. In theory, this is because the research carried out at a wizard's academy can ultimately serve the public good: the knowledge, rituals, and enchanted items developed there might defend the polity from threats or increase the overall standard of living.

In practice, any library might well catalog the means of dealing with occult threats, while the library of a wizard's academy is replete with diagrams of hand gestures, guides to enunciating incantations, and general records of eldritch miscellanea completely useless to anyone who is not, themselves, actually intending to cast a magic spell. Rituals with nontrivial effect are generally expensive, time-consuming, and only castable at all by the mages that developed them. Magic items are not only hugely expensive to produce but almost universally personal in scope; gold equivalent to lifetimes of labor for the average peasant might be spent in the course of producing an object that can feed only a few people per day, but more likely on a powerful weapon or piece of armor for a noble or adventurer rich enough to afford it.

Strictly speaking, wizardry is public service run in reverse. The private effort of whoever invented, say, the waterwheel, went on to markedly improve the operation of civilization as a whole. On the other hand, the expense of funding an academy and the  collective effort spent on research and experimentation might ultimately produce a single spell that only a handful of wizards can successfully cast. The actual primary export of a wizard's academy is wizards themselves; the end-goal of wizardry is to become a powerful wizard, and wizardry benefits the public good only insofar as individual wizards are willing to work towards the public good. The artificer tradition is committed to [i]actually[/i] bringing the benefits of applied arcane magic to the masses, but is thus far young and lacking in traction. For the most part, a built-in tendency towards elitism and self-aggrandizement has shaped wizardry's place in the wider world.

[b]The Academy[/b]
Since wizardry's early days, access to powerful artifacts and stores of truly esoteric knowledge has been strictly controlled, both because of the inherent danger such things might pose in the hands of a dabbler and because wizards are rarely inclined to share their toys. Prior to the establishment of formal academies, this meant a general state of open war between wizard cabals; it was common and expected that mages would steal from or outright attack each other in attempts to secure control of valuable implements, spellbooks, or places of power.

This has led, within the formal academy, to the development of a variety of complex ranking systems which sort wizards based on their relative magical power and grant increasing administrative power and executive privilege to those higher on the ladder. Rather than fighting each other outright, wizards demonstrate their puissance through a variety of formal tests and demonstrations, and thereby win priority access to valuable grimoires, residuum stockpiles, and offices with nice views out the window. Since each and every academic discovery potentially serves to make [i]somebody[/i] more powerful and therefore cause an upheaval in the established arcane pecking order, such a system is not entirely stable, but it's largely agreed to be better for the profession than the no-holds-barred free for all that came before it. Sabotage and outright assassination aren't unheard of in particularly cutthroat academies as means of quickly ascending in rank, but they at least have to be done in secret.

[b]Inter-Academy Relations[/b]
[i]Separate[/i] academies are not, technically, bound by the oaths that prevent members of the same academy from incinerating each other on sight. This isn't an oversight. An academy is a standing alliance among a group of wizards against a common foe, and the greatest enemy of a wizard is usually another wizard. In times past, separate wizard's academies have engaged in protracted magical wars, sending monsters lumbering across the land or spells screaming through the sky and generally doing much more damage to the surrounding landscape and the bystanders living on it than to each other.

As wizardry has integrated itself more and more closely into civilized society, wizard's wars have become much less common (or at least much less visible) and relations between academies have become much more congenial. It's not uncommon for separate academies within the same barony to count themselves as close allies or even separate branches of the same wider institution, and for academies affiliated with different duchies or city-states to view extant rivalries in nationalistic, not occult terms. Still, thus far the dream of a truly catholic academy has not been realized, and so one academy skirmishing with or raiding another is technically in keeping with the lore.

[b]Academies and the State[/b]
A wizard's academy is beyond political concerns, devoted solely to the pursuit of higher knowledge and the mastery of the mortal races over the capricious forces of nature. This means that, properly speaking, no self-styled duke or baron truly has the authority to tell an academy what to do, because their so-called nobility is a petty, ephemeral fiction compared to the mind-shattering cosmic truths which even the least among wizards deals with from day to day. On the other hand, someone's got to cook the food and do the laundry.

The actual number of academies that contain nothing [i]but[/i] wizards is vanishingly small. Even those academies founded on remote mountaintops or within deep forests often wind up as the nuclei of small settlements of farmers, traders, craftsmen and guards crucial to those academies' operation. And, of course, it is increasingly common for an academy to situate itself right in or alongside an established town or city. In these cases, complex negotiations have to take place between the academy master and the local baron, duke, or magistrate as to the precise nature of the academy's relationship to the overall public.

Such relationships tend to take on a vaguely mercenary character. An academy is allowed to operate within some noble's domain in return for that academy's service to the noble. It might be required to contribute wizards to that noble's military efforts, defend the city against attack, open some portion of its libraries to public perusal, manufacture magical items to certain specifications, or otherwise pitch in in some appropriate manner. Limits are also often placed on the academy's use of magic, barring the performance of particularly dangerous experiments or the disposal of magically-charged waste materials on public ground. Most academies refuse to engage in something so base as paying taxes, since such petty, mortal concerns are of no consequences to masters of arcane forces, but at the same time quietly agree to provide gifts of gold or other currency to the ruling magistrate at regular times as an entirely voluntary means of showing their appreciation.

Sometimes, these arrangements break down. The specialized problems local wizards are called upon to solve are often problems those same wizards are responsible for, either by using irresponsibly dangerous magic or carrying on a shadow war with another academy. It has been necessary in the past for pitchfork-waving mobs or platoons of armed soldiers to raze local academies to the ground, because an academy's entire inner circle has fallen to demonic possession or been revealed to have been attempting to control the local baron's mind. Modern-day academies are careful to ensure that many hazards endemic to wizardry stay firmly within academy walls, lest the economic and social forces they depend on to function suddenly turn against them.

[b]Academies and Other Magic-Users[/b]
Though most academies begin purely as alliances between wizards, they tend to become more holistic over time. Arcane ritual libraries are usually opened for the perusal of priests and spiritualists in return for access to the collected magical knowledge of the churches and tribes, in those places in which relations between these institutions have not broken down for other reasons. Other practitioners of arcane magic are often invited to study at the academy in order to be studied in turn, so long as those practitioners are not dangerous heretics.

Witchcraft has gone badly out of style in the eyes of most academic wizards. Witches are technically meant to be afforded the same respect and opportunity for advancement that spellbook-using wizards have, but in practice they are often viewed with suspicion and excluded from many academic proceedings. It's true that the stores of extraplanar knowledge that witches have access to via their familiars can prove invaluable to academic research, but it is often viewed as an embarrassing admission of failure to actually consult a witch on a magical problem because it implies that some hindrance has been found that [i]can't[/i] be overcome through mortal ingenuity alone. And, of course, there is always the chance that the ultimate patron that provided a witch's familiar in the first place was fiendish or otherwise heretical in nature.

Most wizards are happy to allow sorcerers into an academy, and most large academies retain experienced sorcerers on staff who can guide younger sorcerers in the development of their powers. Sorcerers are usually great assets to a wizard's academy; because, as a rule, they command much more raw magical power than wizards do, they're usually much more able to defend an academy from outright threats or serve an academy by loaning themselves out as battle-mages. However, sorcerers are generally treated as second-class citizens by the arcane establishment. Classes in sorcery are usually viewed as a sort of trade school hidden away at the bottom of a serious academic establishment, an act of charity that gives magic-users a place to be even if they couldn't hack it in [i]real[/i] arenas of arcane study. Sometimes sorcerers themselves are treated more like magical anomalies or supernatural creatures than academy members, fit to be probed and studied but not to be afforded authority or respect. For this reason, a great many sorcerers eschew the academy system entirely, instead finding places directly in mercenary companies and army units or simply going their own way.

Warlocks are a particular problem for wizard's academies, because they are often very hard to tell from wizards. The more public the profession of wizardry is, the more people there are that want to join it, and the warlock pact has always provided a path to arcane power for those who lack the talent, temperament, or patience to learn to cast spells in the normal fashion. In theory, it is possible to detect by magic whether a given magic-user is a curse-slinging, soul-reaving heretic rather than a proper wizard, but in practice the pact is cunning, insidious, and secretive [i]and[/i] an enormous body of wizarding tradition specifically prohibits wizards from subjecting each other to batteries of invasive magical tests. After all, not only is it demeaning, but it might be the pretext for an assassination attempt, either during the scan or afterwards once the scanner has detected some sort of crucial weak spot in the scan-ee's magical wards. So it is that a secret heretic is occasionally found hiding among the apprentices (or the journeymen, or sometimes even the senior faculty) of a wizard's academy, and summarily imprisoned and executed. No doubt many more escape discovery entirely, and operate to this day.

Bards often practice at the peripheries of wizard's academies as loremasters, archivists, guest lecturers, or practical advisers. Depending on the power and personal style of the arcanist in question, a bard might be barely afforded more respect than a sorcerer or enjoy frequent collaboration with the academy master. Precisely because some of what is technically classified as bardic magic is almost indistinguishable from wizardry, the wizards of an academy are usually very careful to keep track of which magic-users count as proper, spellbook-using wizards and which magic users are "merely" bards or other dabblers, in order to keep wizards at the top of the pecking order.

[b][u]Ranking and Hierarchy Among Wizards[/b]
Wizard academies establish hierarchies among their members according to a number of overlapping schemes. Many of these systems apply equally to other types of arcane magic user, and are therefore carefully tuned to favor wizards.

[b]Title:[/b] The official title of a practicing wizard is derived from their place within the formal academy system. It theoretically corresponds to their amassed arcane power, but only in a general sense.
[list]
[*][b]Apprentice:[/b] An apprentice has began to study magic under a master, usually at an academy. An apprentice is not allowed to use magic without their master's express approval, although it's rare for anyone to make a fuss over a cantrip being fired off here and there. Any problems caused by an apprentice's reckless use of magic are formally the master's fault.
[*][b]Journeyman:[/b] A journeyman wizard has not yet been released by their master, but may use magic without first seeking their master's direct approval and is considered personally responsible for any damage their spells cause (although any mishaps will certainly lead to their master's embarrassment). It's common for journeyman wizards to take academic sabbaticals, honing their powers through employment as explorers, mercenaries, or (lowercase a) artificers, though they're generally paid a fraction of what a full wizard can expect. Thus far, attempts to change this title to something gender neutral have met with little success.
[*][b]Wizard:[/b] A wizard has completed their education to their master's satisfaction and been released from their apprenticeship, generally graduating from an established academy in the process. Graduation usually means passing a number of written and practical tests as well as performing some personal service for wizardry as a whole, such as by retrieving a valuable spellbook or artifact for the academy or developing and donating a new spell.
[*][b]Master:[/b] A master is a wizard fit to train lesser wizards in the arts. Any wizard technically becomes a master upon taking an apprentice, but cannot expect to be called "master" by anyone [i]but[/i] their apprentice unless they manage to garner a lot of professional respect and/or take a wider role in advancing education as a whole. A wizard actually in charge of an entire academy can expect to be known as a master, although not to be referred to as "master" alone by wizards they do not personally teach.
[/list]

[b]Degree:[/b] Wizards use "degree" (sometimes "order" or "level") to describe the general arcane power attained by an individual, which practically speaking means the power and frequency with which that individual can cast arcane spells. There are, of course, countless arcane spells of varying power and complexity, ranging from common, easily-repeatable cantrips like Mage Hand to legendary or completely hypothetical workings like the Excellent Prismatic Spray.

Wizards can and have devised ranking systems taking all of this into account, such that it is possible to denote a mage who can produce Force Orb and Color Spray in sequence without even needing to catch their breath, but can't [i]also[/i] cast Lightning Bolt within the same span... but the variety of spells, spellbook organization systems, and paths to arcane power means that a lexicon that's too precise might be able to describe every wizard from one academy to a tee but fall apart when applied to a different one.

So it is that the widely accepted "degree" system refers only to the most powerful spells available to wizardry, the workings of such power and complexity that hours of rest and study are required to ready them for casting. Of these, wizards are principally concerned with those spells that are weapons-grade; certainly, Feather Fall or Wizard's Escape are handy in a pinch and too powerful to use repeatedly, but it's Flaming Sphere or Mordenkainen's Sword that make the difference when one wizard clashes with another.

A wizard of the first degree can reliably weave and cast a single greater spell in the space of a day, and usually qualifies as a journeyman barring unusual disgrace or incompetence in their master's eyes. A second-degree mage can produce two, and a third-degree mage three. As wizards proceed through the degrees, the spells they produce become notably more powerful - Fireball packs more punch than does Flaming Sphere, and Wall of Fire's more dangerous still, although each has its own uses.

Whether arcane advancement beyond the third degree is possible is a matter of some debate. The progression from first degree to second degree to third degree is one that has been observed over many wizards' careers, but there it seems to stop. Many wizards of note have measurably increased in power and skill since attaining the third degree, developing powerful spells suited to their individual magical styles and discarding entirely the lesser spells they made use of early in their careers, without ever managing to cast a fourth greater spell in a given day. Many wizards are convinced that this is impossible owing to limitations in the architecture of the mortal mind or the material spellbook. On the other hand, myths and epics of magic users of the past have suggested the existence of a fourth degree to some scholars, although many question whether obsessively tabulating the actions of arguably-fictional characters in order to discern their precise level of arcane power really counts as reputable scholarship.

Beyond the fourth degree lies epic, superhuman power, or so the legends say. Rumors persist in the arcane community of the "archmage", a wizard of such fantastic power that they have reached the [i]fifth[/i] (or sixth, or seventh) degree, even casting the same greater spell multiple times. The "magister" is another apocryphal figure, a savant (not necessarily a wizard) whose absorption into arcane magic is so complete that not only are they a fourth-degree mage, but their every spell sheathes them in a protective aura of flowing magic. In either case, the spells of such beings are supposedly of such potency that they can affect the gods themselves. Possibly the high arcane conclave of the Sevenfold Realm can confirm or put to rest such rumors, but it has not elected to thus far.

[b]The Code Duello:[/b] Within the bounds of title, which applies to wizards, and degree, which can describe a great variety of spellcasters, lies a great deal of wiggle room. Wizards with higher titles are usually more powerful than those with lower titles, and degree is a pretty good predictor of arcane primacy, but it's not a perfect predictor. A third degree mage might have been sitting on his laurels for the past thirty years, while the second degree mage challenging them might be mere days from a breakthrough while also personally possessing a much greater stockpile of lore. Therefore, wizards have developed a number of means of establishing supremacy between pairs of mages.
[list]
[*][b]Just Plain Fighting:[/b] Also known as the "duel vulgar", this method involves each party casting spells at the other until one falls over. Prior to the establishment of the academy system, even wizards within the same cabal often resolved disputes by this means, and wizards of warring academies still use it. This means of conflict resolution has fast fallen out of favor among wizards, though, both because no one [i]actually[/i] likes putting their lives on the line just to get to sleep on the top bunk and because, frankly, compared to  other kinds of arcanist, wizards aren't very good fighters. Wizard spells are quite impressive, as spells go, but they're often not enough to save a wizard from a sorcerer's raw power or an artificer's resilience and adaptability, and it would be simply absurd if something as trivial as the ability to win a fight were to determine a wizard's academic ranking.
[*][b]The Duel Arcane:[/b] Also known as certamen, the Duel is a formal, abstracted, and intellectualized version of a magical battle that takes place in a specially-prepared ritual space. Each participant selects spells in their repertoire to serve as their "Sword" and "Shield" and can additionally use their knowledge of arcane lore to hone or reconfigure these regalia in response to those selected by their opponent. In game terms, the Duel Arcane tests the attack bonus (not the damage) of the duelist's implement-based arcane powers, and offers numerous advantages to casters with a wide variety of arcane powers to bring to bear and a high Arcana score with which to fine-tune them.
[*][b]Ritual Contest:[/b] A ritual contest is a straightforward test of a wizard's knowledge of arcane lore. This isn't the same thing as a wizard's arcane [i]power[/i] - some hugely potent wizards have only a workmanlike understanding of occult lore beyond that which applies to their favored spells, while some relatively weak and unpracticed wizards are nevertheless expert researchers. Of course, if such things were established merely by some sort of test or riddle a completely nonmagical bystander who's read a lot of books would be able to place, so the usual means of contest are for one wizard to cast an arcane ritual which another wizard attempts to counter, undo, or override (Arcane Lock vs. Knock is very common). Ritual is only a small part of wizardry, of course, so ritual contests are never used to establish formal academy rank, but winning one is often the means of resolving a bet, qualifying to perform a particular important and prestigious task, or simply embarrassing a rival. In game terms, winning a ritual contest usually boils down to who can roll higher on the skill check associated with a cast ritual, almost always Arcana - which means that it does help to be higher in level than one's opponent, and that if the terms of the contest require the casting of a particularly advanced or complex ritual a challenged party might be forced to concede that they lack the power to participate at all.
[*][b]Spellcraft:[/b] Spellcraft is a magical real-time-strategy game derived from a combination of wizarding principles and popular fiction. It's played out on an enchanted game board representing a magical landscape as seen from high overhead, overlaid with planar gates, ley lines, and other supernatural phenomena. Each participant (official tournaments almost always consist of series of one-on-one matches, but the Spellcraft framework allows for team games or free-for-alls) begins with a "tower" on a place of power and then uses magic to claim resources, summon minions, construct more towers, and otherwise attempt to take hold of the map with the ultimate goal of destroying their opponent's holdings. It plays like a combination of chess, poker, and Pipe Dream. Playing Spellcraft requires an understanding of arcane magic and the ability to cast arcane spells, but it also calls upon one's memory, reflexes, concentration, strategy, and knowledge of Spellcraft's rules, control scheme, maps, and miscellaneous quirks. Being a third-degree wizard might help one win a Spellcraft match, but not as much as having played Spellcraft daily for the past three years. The Sevenfold Realm has a large and vibrant professional Spellcraft community - it's a common diversion for young, bright Eladrin - but owing to a lack of comparative wealth and infrastructure the Newer Lands are miles behind and have yet to scrape so much as a national league together. In game terms, a Spellcraft game tests the participants' Arcana most commonly (anyone not experienced with Spellcraft can expect to eat a hefty penalty), but skills like Insight, Bluff, Intimidate, History, Acrobatics, Endurance, and Initiative might all be called upon in the course of a fast-paced, high-intensity game.