How long would you expect it to take for people to master magic?

[GreyBlack]

I'm working on a new homebrew setting based roughly on some of the backstory of the Witcher novels. For those who don't know, an event in their past around 1500 years ago called the Conjunction of the Spheres basically dumped humans and monsters onto the world of the elves. Long story.

Anyway, I sort of want to work out a homebrew like this; a certain amount of time ago, monsters were dumped into the world, only this time it's that everyone was dumped into the human world's (thinking about even making it our world, but that would involve A LOT of backtracking and bookkeeping that I haven't had a chance to yet). Until that event, magic did not exist*, and people are only now beginning to grasp what magic is capable of. To that end: no NPC is capable of magic above level 3 spells for example.

Now, to my question. How long after this introduction of magic would it take for people to basically grasp the basics of spellcasting, but not be able to reach the higher levels of spellcasting? Assume circa year 900 C.E. technological and sociocultural levels; I'm making this a world for D&D.

Honestly, I'm looking in the area of 30-110 years, but I want to know how far off I am. Remember; this is a completely new and foreign concept to the people living in the world, and even the transplants generally didn't have high levels of knowledge about this stuff.

[JoeJ]

There's really not enough information here to answer that question. How does magic work (not game mechanics, but in-world explanation)? How hard is it to learn? Is it something that any ordinary slob can stumble into by accident? Does it require years of dedicated study? What kind of infrastructure is needed to experiment with magic?

[PhoenixPhyre]

As was said, this is strongly contingent on the types of magic. If there's no genetic dependency and miscasting magic has few harmful effects (ie you don't burn your brain out/summon demons by mispronouncing a word), a few generations. This also assumes that information can spread easily and research isn't condemned--if it really were 900 AD and magic came back, those trying to research it would likely get burned at the stake as heretics/witches/etc. before they could make strides. If these aren't true, much more time than that.

But even a basic engineering knowledge (being able to cast spells without understanding the underpinnings) is a long way from a full understanding (if such is even possible with magic). We had a working engineering knowledge of a lot of principles by the late Roman Era (if not before). We're only now getting toward understanding the underlying principles, after lots (hundreds of thousands? Millions?) of man-years of effort.

[Lleban]

Hard to say but your time frame seems believable for basic casting.

If magic is like you describe then its basically just another natural force, it's mastery will be limited by humans fundamental understanding of how magic works and how they are capable of experimenting with it. If its like any other science then mastery would probably be a few centuries of steady progress, before some type of exponential growth.

[Xuc Xac]

"Mastering magic" could be an impossible task, like "mastering physics". You can study it for decades and get a PhD in it, but that only means you know enough to know how much you still don't know.

Or mastering magic could be done in a couple hours in a cool training montage that unlocks the real magic that was inside you all along.

How hard do you want it to be?

[Tvtyrant]

The problem of course is the setting defines all of that. In typical D&D land wizards might take millenia to become important because Sorcerers, Druids, Clerics and Warlocks all bypass the need for accumulated knowledge.

In my E6 3.5 campaigns Wizards don't know anything about how magic works, new spells all originate with Sorcerers who are phenomenally rare and Wizards just crib off their spells. The birth of a Sorcerer is a gigantic deal because it has the chance of introducing new spells to the world.

[Man_Over_Game]

Follow the system of our world, and how we developed.

500 years in the Egyptian time period is nothing compared to our last 500 years. At first, development is chaotic and often useless, because it's usually done for survival. They don't learn Fire because it's "the foundation", or because it's pretty, they learn Fire because they need to burn something and stabbing them isn't an option. When they can start to solve problems by spending time to learn, as opposed to survive, then they'll start to develop the cool stuff.

Knowledge is really only valuable if it can get passed down from generation to generation reliably. Consider what we would be like if we didn't pass down any knowledge for a single generation, and how simple they would be. That is what's going to happen if everyone learning magic is some really odd hermit with no family or friends to teach. Likely, then, magic is going to be passed down as sacred knowledge that have been funded by kings and lords, to force it to be learned and known, likely as a way to wage war.

Assuming magic is really easy to learn (after maybe a year or two of practice), I'd say that institutionalized magic should be starting up after 300 years or so.

Long before they bother learning magic, humans are going to be doing the same things they've always been doing, like making cities, keeping out bad guys, building farms, and causing mischief. After a few generations of humans where doing mundane stuff isn't enough, I'd finally start to expect them to branch out into studying magic as more than accidentally setting something on fire.

[Tube Wizard]

I'd assume that depends on the type of magic, but ultimately, it's your decision to make.

[noob]

We could imagine it takes 5 minutes to master magic because maybe the first spell you can cast is a spell that allows to understand magic better and makes you know a better spell for this purpose.
Or maybe magic would take thousands of years to master after the first scholar observe the first sparks of magic.
Or maybe magic just makes head explode randomly and does not have any extra effect.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Mastering anything means becoming about as good as a human will get. In our world that takes about ten years of fulltime learning effort under the best possible circumstances. In a world of longer lived elves it probably takes longer.

If the humans are lucky the elves learn slower than them.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm working on a new homebrew setting based roughly on some of the backstory of the Witcher novels. For those who don't know, an event in their past around 1500 years ago called the Conjunction of the Spheres basically dumped humans and monsters onto the world of the elves. Long story.

Anyway, I sort of want to work out a homebrew like this; a certain amount of time ago, monsters were dumped into the world, only this time it's that everyone was dumped into the human world's (thinking about even making it our world, but that would involve A LOT of backtracking and bookkeeping that I haven't had a chance to yet). Until that event, magic did not exist*, and people are only now beginning to grasp what magic is capable of. To that end: no NPC is capable of magic above level 3 spells for example.

Now, to my question. How long after this introduction of magic would it take for people to basically grasp the basics of spellcasting, but not be able to reach the higher levels of spellcasting? Assume circa year 900 C.E. technological and sociocultural levels; I'm making this a world for D&D.

Honestly, I'm looking in the area of 30-110 years, but I want to know how far off I am. Remember; this is a completely new and foreign concept to the people living in the world, and even the transplants generally didn't have high levels of knowledge about this stuff.

A lot of this depends on things we don't know about your settings.

Can anyone figure out magic and learn it, or is there another step that's rare and/or costly before they can actually cast spells?

Does it follow any of the assumptions about "magic" that people held before the event?

How common are those studying it?

How willing to collaborate, leave notes, train others, etc, are those studying it?

How dangerous are mistakes?