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Question about mages. Can anyone become a mage, if they have the smarts for it, or do you have to have magical abilities to become a mage? Example. In D&D 3rd edition, anyone could become a wizard (although you had to train, and had to have a higher than average intelligence to become a wizard, sorcerers it's inborn). In Dragon Age, you had to have the ability to cast magic to become a mage (and if you did have magical abilities, you're forced to live in a prison- the quality ranges from "just slightly better than a Nazi concentration camp" - like Kirkwall's Gallows, and you might be safer being a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp than in the Gallows - to a prison just slithly worse than Pablo Escobar's hotel prison - like Fereldan's Circle.)

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Plotwise, there are no references I can think of in the Avernum series to magic being something innate that you either have or don't, and quite a few references to it being something people learn through intensive training and study. Some people might have more of a talent for it than others, but in principle there doesn't seem to be anything stopping a random person off the street from learning magic.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some people are "Natural Mages" according to the trait. Others are just ordinary mages.

 

—Alorael, who also doesn't recall anything definitive one way or another. There's also no definitive declaration that one need not be born a priest, or a blacksmith, or a farmer, though. The absence of evidence for some necessary inborn talent probably does mean there's no such essential inherent quality.

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  • 4 weeks later...

...but in principle there doesn't seem to be anything stopping a random person off the street from learning magic.

 

In Avernum 3, there is actually a book that is labeled "Magic for Dummies". I do remember that the book described simple spells that included doing something benevolent (?) to one's grandparents, and spaying a pet.

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