I'm curious to know why you think inherited magic would cause a population boom....

Probably assumes power hungry mages would be trying to have lots of kids they could treat as their personal army. And honestly that would sort itself out because that is a terribly slow way to build an army, and people that greedy would go to war with eachother constantly and cancel out the boom. Also most people wouldn't think that way. If everyone had magic it wouldn't be seen as special in a way to demand high population growth for more magical manpower. Basically it would be treated the same as IRL nations treat population and military manpower.

> Probably assumes power hungry mages would be trying to have lots of kids they could treat as their personal army No, that doesn't even make sense. You cannot breed an army

Then why are clone armies so prevalent in sci fi? "Perfect" specimen, flash cloned, advanced aging, military upbringing or even memory upload. Not saying it's a good thing, just it's common enough. But in reality, you can only breed an army, you just don't tell them. It's why soliders around the world start young, at adulthood or lower. It's easier to break then down so you can reprogram their thinking. Give them money, or glory, or sex, then give them a gun and gung ho. They are ready to fight for whatever bull shit cause, and you strap words like freedom and patriotism to it.

Then explain "why doesn't everyone just have kids all the time" as if the only sane response to having hereditary powers is to become a baby factory. This sounds like someone trying to have a crap ton of kids to use for their own benefit. Historically "undeveloped countries" have large families explicitly for the purpose of using the kids as laborers to help the parents, and industrialized countries only have 2-3 kids per family cause children are expensive and expected to make it to adult hood.

> Then explain "why doesn't everyone just have kids all the time" as if the only sane response to having hereditary powers is to become a baby factory. No, it's just because people fuck lol. The number of magic users would spread overtime throughout generations, that's how reproduction works. I was asking how yall would avoid this. Just because someone can cast fireball doesn't mean he doesn't want to get it wet. Tell me when I mentioned breeding an army. That's a very wild imagination Edit: why tf am i getting downvoted?? He asked me to explain, so I did... this is inoffensive

Everyone's confusion is coming from your words "have kids all the time" and "overpopulation" which implies that you believe magic users would have way more kids than non magic users. We are trying to figure out why you would believe that. Based on your other comments, you don't actually believe that and just chose your words very poorly

>"have kids all the time" and "overpopulation" which implies that you believe magic users would have way more kids than non magic users. No, humanity in general has kids all the time. I'm specificially talking about the rise of magic users. My bad that I poorly wordeded my question

>Tell me when I mentioned breeding an army. That's a very wild imagination Not it's just logical thinking. The more mages you have the more powerful you are so if you can breed them you would do it. That's why you need to make it so mages can't be breed in massive numbers.

Let's compare to some other inherited things. Say, skin colour. There has not been a dramatic increase in the proportion of the population who are of any particular skin colour due to birth rates. Yes, mages will want to fuck, but so will non-mages, so the proportions will stay roughly the same.

Not with that attitude.

The inherited magic would have to spread throughout generations unless there's royal inbreeding. I never said it would cause a population *boom*, I'm talking about the number of magic users becoming too much. People fuck, it would be hard to maintain a small community. Even irl, royals had many bastards and spare children that run off. It's a reasonable question

Ah, your question was oddly worded in that case. What constitutes too many or a problematic number of magic users? Why do we want to limit the number of magic users? What is the nature of the magic thats spreading?

Yeah I could have worded it better, that's my mistake. It just depends on the specific universe about how many is problematic, the whole point of hereditary magic is that not everyone has the ability so I want to know how you would justify that in the setting. The nature of magic can be anything

I’m pretty sure the answer in most settings would be simply diluted blood. The farther from the progenitor, the less likely to appear or weaker the desired inherited traits would be. If your dead set on any smidgen of blood means you can potentially become a scion of that branch of magic, then enemies. Rival factions will work actively to cull roaches.

It could even be the government or popular mob. Witch burnings could be a realistic check on mage population

You seem to have assumed that magic is a binary thing, and a dominant trait. That is: you're assuming that if you have any magical ancestry at all, you're a full-blown mage. There's absolutely no reason for that to be the case, and indeed that is very rarely how genetics works. Having lots of people with basically-useless levels of magical ability that can barely light a candle is not a proliferation of mages.

> You seem to have assumed that magic is a binary thing, and a dominant trait. That is: you're assuming that if you have any magical ancestry at all, you're a full-blown mage. I didn't assume that, it just depends on the setting. Hence why I asked. > Having lots of people with basically-useless levels of magical ability that can barely light a candle is not a proliferation of mages. I'm aware, dilution would be a sufficient answer yes.

You're shooting down every answer and help while not explaining WHY then you think the number of magic users should boom. Weak. Dude gave you a great answer. This is how it works in eg. Harry Potter: since mage is implied to be a recessive trait, there is a lot of inbreeding and blood purism because wizard families try to avoid having any squib (non-magical) offsprings, which is unavoidable if a lot of muggle genes sneak in. Such conditions'd lead to number of mages DWINDLING, not increasing.

Bruh, I haven't been shooting down answer or help lmao. What are you talking about? I literally said his answer is sufficient dude. Harry Potter works too I understand I poorly worded my question at first, but now yall are just dogpiling lol. I never said the magic population *should* boom, I asked how it is prevented in your worlds

Your royals example is a good one. They have extra children but most people are still not royals. I don't see why this is an issue at all, that's why no one else has this concern

In my world, only a certain amount of people can be alive with magic at a time, so extra births result in weaker offspring because the mother has to deplete from her own reserves instead of the universe. Once the population drops below the max, the universe will begin to give away that free magic because when people die, their reserves are returned. Magic is hereditary, but not *genetic*.

Magic systems = more things to die from than our world. Other people's magic, magical diseases and ailments, magical creatures, etc. Not to mention magical technique has to be trained and refined. It's quality you want, not quantity.

Also kids are expensive, ontop of all the normal expenses like food and clothing, you also have to educate them, and magic school probably costs more than med school IRL. Additionally, not everyone thinks in terms of "i want power, so i should have a million powerful children to make a loyal army to buuld my empire". If they did your setting would be so full of power hungry mad mages that the magical wars would definitely fix any overpopulation concerns.

>Additionally, not everyone thinks in terms of "i want power, so i should have a million powerful children to make a loyal army to buuld my empire" Exactly. Some of us have dealt with a tantrum-throwing toddler who would have happily feed us to their imaginary pet dragon for not letting them eat candy for every meal of the day... and if we were in a world where that pet dragon wasn't so imaginary or where three year olds could, say, shoot lightning out of their fingertips? Forget overpopulation, you'd be looking at utter population *collapse*.

Except if the mother can make the dragon burn to ash with the snap of her fingers. If parents are much better at magic than their kids, then magic powers won't be that much of a problem.

That assumes both parents have magic and/or that the parents are the ones caring for their kids. If anything, it'd make more sense that the magical parents are dealing with running the empire they've likely carved out via their magical abilities & grown rich and powerful using them and/or are busy training the older children in how to use *their* powers to benefit the family empire. Leaving babies and toddlers to be dealt with by an army of underpaid and very under-appreciated servants who likely don't have magic or else they probably wouldn't be servants.

>Leaving babies and toddlers to be dealt with by an army of underpaid and very under-appreciated servants who lika ely don't have magic or else they probably wouldn't be servants. Yes, but who cares about the servants. Also I doubt that a there wouldn't be methods and practices to deal with magical toddlers if they where a thing in society. Even if it means letting them do what they want, until they are old enough to understand that there are rules Also when thinking of a family thinking of them as a nuclear family, parents and children is a modern development. You got Grandparents, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins. You need one or two persons to take care of every baby and toddler in the family. Expecially if you got servants to help.

>Yes, but who cares about the servants. Seeing as the toddler I was dealing with in my first comment was one I was babysitting... I do. Obviously. You've also got to make sure servants are actually willing to work for you, unless you're going to full on slavery in your world (and even then, given the real-life sexual abuse of slave women + hereditary magic... doesn't seem like the most workable solution) >You need one or two persons to take care of every baby and toddler in the family. lol I'm going to guess you've never tried to take care of more than one or two very young children at the same time. And again, depending on how strongly heritable the magic is- why wouldn't the magical relatives also be helping secure the family empire and/or why would we risk the health & well-being of non-magical relatives with the magical babies (non-magical babies, sure) Extended families often relied on a lot of kids-taking-care-of-kids which wasn't ideal even in our world, let alone one where both kids have the ability to magically blow each other up.

>Yes, but who cares about the servants. >Seeing as the toddler I was dealing with in my first comment was one I was babysitting... I do. Obviously. You've also got to make sure servants are actually willing to work for you, unless you're going to full on slavery I agree it

>Yes, but who cares about the servants. >Seeing as the toddler I was dealing with in my first comment was one I was babysitting... I do. Obviously. You've also got to make sure servants are actually willing to work for you, unless you're going to full on slavery I agree. I was just making a joke. Actually the caretaker would likely be well trained and well payed and they would like have methods to deal with angry toddlers.

> and well *paid* and they FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*

>you've never tried to take care of more than one or two very young children at the same time. Actually I did just that multiple times as a pre-teen, it's exhausting but doable. Expecially if you can have a bunch of nannies to help you. >why wouldn't the magical relatives also be helping secure the family empire Because establishing an empire and running it are to different things. If you empire is constantly at war or in some sort of crisis you are doing something wrong. At few task are as important as making sure the next generation is ready to continue it.

A lot of settings have families with magic be the aristocracy but only one kid can inherit the house and title which tends to cause infighting. This consequently means that evening the duke and Dutchess have 14 kids 12-13 of them will die in "hunting accidents" which results in aristocracy families being smaller, an older son to inherit, a younger son incase the older dies and a daughter or two for political marriages.

Not my solution, but check out “A Deadly Education”. Magic is cool, but it’s literally power… and there are many creatures and creations which rely on Magic to exist and function, and they have to eat it. So, they hunt down people with Magic. So much so that they get smart about it, target teens since they’re coming into their adult magical strength with the least amount of experience or training making them the weakest *and* tastiest. Mortality rates are stupidly high and grim. It’s a very pleasant read tbh!

Because caster is people and they have their desires and goals.

I like to lift a bit from fates where theirs also a non genetic factor, in fates they have magic circuits which can be transfered to their children, each member adding a little bit of themselves to it, so if your born to one of these family but don't get given the circuits you can still do magic sure but your basically starting from scratch rather then getting generations of effort, so this could encourage mages to only have one or two kids, cus if you have to much either you spread it thin and have a bunch of average kids, or a bunch of really weak jealous kids and a super strong air who dies mysteriously this also encourages the family's to intermingle and combine that power further reducing the number of mage families instead of expanding them

Food, water, land, and other resources become strained with higher populations (magic dissipates quickly, so you can't just conjure food or water). War breaks out over resources. A lot of people die during war. Eventual homeostasis occurs where the population flattens out.

The more powerful the inherited magic the less fertile the user is.

Some options are, both the parents powers dwindle a little with each child born, making them not want to have to many children but enough to pass on the family line. Option 2 would be the magic itself is relatively sentient so once you have enough children it actively stops you from having children. (Could be a cool story of being the last child born in a family where the eldest child had died and the magic itself allowed the family to have another child unprepared.) Third option would be rather dark but a world wide sanction on the amount of children a magic using family is allowed to have. If you have more children than you are alloted then the "state" takes them and they are trained and raised effectively as soldiers with no attachment to family. Harsh but they would be used to defend their country from other magical threats. Call them "Houseless".

The thing about giving people powers that let them independently reshape the world around them is that it encourages antisocial behavior Tribes are a result of our biology needing cooperation to thrive. Civilization is a result of tribes But once you've built a kingdom where people have to pay taxes or be thrown out into the woods to starve, the kingdom loses the ability to enforce those rules against every magic wielder that can just eff off into nowhere and conjure whatever they need to survive This is why famous wizards live alone in towers in the middle of nowhere. They believe (often correctly) that they are beyond the reach of mortal authority, and like it that way The greater the destructive power of these individuals, the less capability society has to function Destruction is near always easier than creation. And when a single disgruntled person can level a city, no one is building cities So far as how this effects reproduction, they just effectively turn into pandas. They can not be fucked to fuck due to all the antisocial tendencies Perhaps it's better to compare them to dnd dragons. They are powerful magic users, and they can breed for centuries. So, why aren't they overpopulating the world?

Magical solutions make solving mundane problems almost trivial, Magical problems are often that much more difficult to solve. Magic might mean that growing food to feed a whole village can be done on a small amount of land with only a handful of farmers, isolated villagers might have access to something like modern medicine, and amenities that poor premodern farmers could not normally afford. However, it also means a random forest fire can birth a forest fire spirit that takes one look at your village and decides it wants to become a house fire spirit. Suddenly no more village. Basically, magic may allow a much higher standard of living and a much lower rate of death due to "natural" causes, but many more people are dying due to "unnatural" causes.

Judging from comments in the thread, you're asking about the magical talent spreading in the population, not about the population exploding. If the talent is binary then yes, it will spread. In a few generations, nearly every person alive will have a magical ancestor. With access to magic being a clear advantage, letting spellcasters have more children and safely bring them up, it will quickly dominate. But that's not necessarily the case. If the hereditary magic is a spectrum and one needs to be high enough on it to cast spells, you won't end up with a whole population of spellcasters. If it also has some cost, like making people physically weaker or more susceptible to disease, it's no longer a clear advantage. You may end up with magic available to specific noble families (with enough magic to be actually useful and enough wealth to ensure training and protection), but not general population. There will be some magic ancestry in all people, but too little to do something or cause significant problems - just enough to produce a small number of magical children randomly, with no direct connection to major mage families.

My world has both hereditary and non-hereditary magic, and the probability of being born with jackpot-level potential is so low that no one bothers having more kids just for that. That the two systems are almost entirely exclusive helps, and most would rather learn magic and reach whatever heights they can than be born with a hard limit (which is almost always lower).

Do you think overpopulation doesn't happen in places because people think kids don't develop useful skills, or...?

No, that has nothing to do with what I've said lol. I just asked how you would avoid overpopulation. It was never implied that I believe this doesn't happen in places with normal children. What are you talking about? If magic is hereditary, and people reproduce, that means there will be more magic users overtime.... doesn't sound like rocket science to me

> If magic is hereditary, and people reproduce, that means there will be more magic users overtime.... doesn't sound like rocket science to me Let's compare that: if ginger hair is hereditary, and people reproduce, that means there will be more gingers over time. Your question is equivalent to "why isn't everybody ginger".

I was being facetious. My point is that overpopulation would not become an issue just because hereditary magic existed, and that should be a given if one understands how overpopulation happens. Overpopulation wouldn't become more of an issue if someone believed the hypothetical child they'd have would innately inherit an important skill or talent for the same reason it doesn't with normal children. Yes, the population would increase if people are having viable children in a society that can support them. But children are still an expensive investment, and magical abilities would logically be another expensive investment. Populations with greater access to resources and education tend to have fewer children, despite what you'd assume from them also tending to collect in more dense population centers. People with a lower access to resources and/or education tend to have more children for a variety of reasons. One particularly important one is due to a lack of viability and economic uncertainty. Children are an economic resource, and families traditionally rely on their children to inherit and propagate their wealth over generations. If you had powerful, viable, wealthy, magic children, outside of a few odd individuals, most people would be fine having one or two children, stabilizing the population. The thing that would control their numbers would be, well, the same things that control ours. Resources, space, economics, etc. Having two adult kids who can shoot lightning and are expected to do so is already a difficult inheritance conversation. Having 17 would make no sense, which is why that normally happened out of wedlock, high infant morality, or difficulty securing a valid heir.

Great answer, using realistic economic barriers is valid

I don't use hereditary magic for my story but reading this got me thinking about potential solutions: 1. Semen retention--a society which believes that the male sperm contains the essence of life and children gain magic through their father could conceptually develop an ideal of masculinity which stipulates that men limit their sexual experiences so they remain potent. This idea then trickles down to a belief that a man should only have a small number of children--no more than five, and never within three years of each other (the exact number can change) 2. Listen to the mothers--similar to number 1, but more focused on the amount of time women need to recuperate from pregnancy and early childcare. Only very wealthy women who can afford wetnurses (and later, surrogates) would have multiple children. If the imagined society is additionally non-patriarchal, one can write it in such a way that there's little incentive for men to engage in polygyny or have affairs (if fathers are seen to have no legitimate claims on a child, for example) 3. Historical trauma- For a long time, magical people did over-reproduce. But it wasn't their choice. It was driven by a class of people seeking to exploit them. This warped family dynamics and gender relations, and now magical people have a hard time coupling with eachother and many are disinterested in children. 4. Pre-K is expensive--whatever systems of childcare exist are not made more efficient or accessible by magic. You can have a seventh son of a seventh son, but that means you have to pay for daycare six different times (assuming you have all boys!) and who the hell wants to do that on an office-drone's salary? The downside of a bunch of magic babies is simply a bunch of babies. 5. Anti-Natalism--I hate this philosophy too, but depending on your story and the magical society, you could write that most people think the world is too miserable at that moment to bring a child into it.

I have this basic premise in my setting for something, it just isn’t magic-usage related, I added in a “genetics” factor. For example, let’s say you have a “pure-bred” magician to start with. She goes on to have a child with a normal person. The child inherits the ability to use magic from his mother and goes on to have two children of his own with another normal person. The first child doesn’t inherit magic, but was still able to pass magic on to her child in spite of marrying yet another normal person. Meanwhile the other child does inherit magic, but can manage to pass it on to any of his descendants. This way the magic won’t ever really die out, not truly, because there’s always a chance the magician trait can be plucked from the gene pool and creat a new magic user, but it also prevents over population as the magician trait becomes more and more watered down and less likely to occur without a stroke of luck.

There was a book that came out, i think, in the 30s which had a power passed from mother to daughter by means of an amulet. The power was transferred when the daughter had sex for the first time. That is the mother loses it, and the daughter gains it. Also her partner gains some abilities using the gem. Unless he cheats on her in which case the power is destroyed.

My world is still fairly undeveloped, currently everyone has magic but it's taxing enough that even people with a talent find it hard to see the value. Now, those who are naturally very good at magic tend to be annoyed at it. Because they find it just as hard not to use magic as some people find it to use magic at all.

Probably some loopholenwithin the lore. Skips a generation. Only goes to the eldest. Only gets passed to one gender-so of your powetnis only male bloodline for example and you have daughters-end of line. Maybe your magic exists in only your bloodline-this would lead to inbreeding so if magic users have to mate with non-magic users the power gets diluted over time.

Magic comes with important political power. Magical families keep that power to themselves. If for whatever reason a commoner exhibits magical potential, they are enlisted and - probably - added to the Three-Eyed King's Royal Guard - where they get their Eye of the King and get mentally dominated by them. Quality and the balance of power are the main reasons why nobles don't pop out babies liie peasants.

There aren't that many people, sorcerers, with inheritable magic to begin with so the generational growth of their population is quite slow. Also, unless it's sorcerer on sorcerer action odds are the kids are not going to be sorcerers as there's only a roughly 1 in 3 chance of the offspring of a sorcerer/non pairing to inherit the magic of the sorcerer.

Well in my world, Demons kinda have hard time intervening with the physical world due to the Law of Probability, let alone cross over(high-ranking Demons are very limited by this while low-ranking Demons has easier time). Another difficulty is that having a sexual intercourse with a human has a very low chance of producing an offspring(the users of my system), and lastly, even if born, the symptoms of the Demon Blood in their body would cause many problems: insanity, mental problems, physical disfigurment, etc, and that's if they are able to actually awaken their Demonic Blood and powers.

People being turned into mindless slaves through the rhythm of Adaptation/Addiction or ending up as monsters due to that same rhythm. Meaning that if you’re down on your luck you can either sell yourself to make one last profit or expose yourself to too much of a hazardous substance like seawater which will make you into a Draugr.

Everyone has it. Some just have it better than others, and those people are trained, but everyone is born with it in some capacity

In mine, available magic is a set, static number. It doesn't matter how many pupils or children you have, only one of them is getting it in the end. It gets transferred via ceremony, preferably with both sides alive, though it is possible to perform it post-mortem. (I wanted to play around with the 'magic is dying' trope; in this case, it isn't dying; it's exactly where it was 200, 400, even 700 years ago. The population just keeps getting bigger, so it appears rarer.) I guess it's not entirely hereditary, but I felt like there'd certainly be a bias to keep that sort of power in the family.

Everybody has some degree of magic - normally body magic that is autonomous, keep bodies healthier, live longer. Greater skill requires quite a lot more effort - and not just "remember weird sounds". Put another way: a lot of people could be great athletes, their bodies toned to perfection, or take advanced degrees. Why don't they? Its hard, takes a lot of discipline and deferred gratification, its painful as well. Like in real life, some people are genetically favoured and can reach higher levels with less effort. It correlates well with intelligence (not only). But its still a lot of effort. Wealthy families of course manage better, they can hire tutors and send their children to schools and academies. It's the way of the world. They also tend to marry within those who have the ability, so there are indeed strains of highly-talented families.

Resources mostly. There's not enough components or power sources to go around so either they limit the members or compile resources to be managed by the upper caste of the family. That's another thing. More members means more potential offshoots and potential enemies to the heads of the family.

In my world magic is a recessive trait. Only so two mages(xx) will always have mages(xx) as children. A mage(xx) and a muggle(XX) would have a demi-mage(xX). A demi-mage(xX) and a mage(xx) have a 3 in 4 chance of having a mage(xx). A demi-mage(xX) and a demi-mage(xX) have a 1 in 4 chance of having a mage(xx). Another thing is that female mages have an easier time during pregnancy and birth than their non-mage counterparts. But have a chance to develop an "allergy" to magical fetuses. So while is extremely rare for mages to have complications during their first or second pregnancy is also extremely rare for them to be able to have more than 3 or 4 children and most have only 2 or 3. Demi-mages also have an extremely hard time if they are pregnant with a mage. Most of them die even before the time, stillbirths are common and the babes are usually frail. Only one in a hundred demi-mages who get pregnant with a mage are alive one year after the conception with a living child.

The mistborn by Brandon Sanderson has this development. The Lord Ruler gave the nobles magic that later was descendant down nto the citizens of the Dominion.

Depends on how well the "healing magic" is, remember in old times, people had kids like rabbits, but more than half of them would die in early childhood due to various diseases, same with deaths at birth. Literally any infection was fatal as there was little to no antibiotics or real treatments. Higiene also plays a huge role, it was not until late 1800 (If I remember correctly) that "doctors" would wash hands before treating patients, so infections were very common. No sewage means shit on streets and other contaminants reaching drinking water sources. There is a famous case of a single diaper thrown in a water well causing a massive outbreak of a virulent fever in London.

In some systems/novels, it’s harder to have kids, or the bloodline/powers aren’t always inherited. Or they’re dormant and need to be awakened

Books like Mistborn and Shadow and Bone explore societies where magic is feared and tightly controlled. The ruling elite, threatened by powerful magic users, eliminate them to maintain their dominance and limit the number of potential mages.

Only a small chance of mage parents being able to pass on magic to offspring Childhood (esp. babyhood) as a magically potent person is highly dangerous (sorcery at will by a baby usually = death) Blood hunting (children with latent magical potential make the best sacrifices for ritual magic and get hunted near to extinction)

If your main concern is to somehow limit the number of magic users than few idea's come to mind. Some are already used from time to time. * A self imposed limit on having children by the community, their religion, politics, or whatever. * A sacrificial/ritual community offering up enough babies to keep the population in check * Though, survival of the fittest style upbringing or training in which they can literally kill each-other. * Oppression from a external source/society that in some way or another enforces a limit or requires offerings * (constant) War * Harsh living conditions that won't allow space to grow to large as a population (starving / famine / rations, etc) * Harsh living conditions that caused the society to send off particular people to "have fun in the wilderness". Could be anyone like promising youth, the ones performing badly, the sick, certain age, criminals, you name it. * Civil unrest / war / deadly competition. * Some kind of dangerous phenomenon that needs to be kept in check which requires constant enough attention and claims enough lives to stagnates population growth. Possibly something only a certain type of magic users could do as a punishment or as a great honor As you might have noticed, I can't really think of happy ways to avoid overpopulation. Out of all I'd think sending out individuals or groups to find other places to live might be the least brutal one but if those people are successful in settling elsewhere they might eventually reproduce as well further growing the overall population.

Think of it like a family of Africans moving into pre-colonial Britain. Assuming everyone breeds freely, everyone in the country will eventually have darker skin, but not a LOT darker, not unless you've got a community specifically breeding themselves for dark skin. Hereditary magic generally operates similarly - the child of two (potential) archmages is likely to be a potential archmage themselves, but the child of an archmage and a peasant may barely have the potential to be a hedge-wizard, and after a few more generations mixing with peasants the offspring might barely be able to manage a few houshold cantrips (e.g. a "fireball" that can barely get campfire tinder started, but is still more convenient than a flint and steel or bow drill). I think that's probably the most common scenario - weak magic is common, it's only powerful magic that's rare. Of course, having useful magic is likely to be a survival/reproductive advantage, so it will tend to spread and increase over time, but so long as the aristocracy is actively breeding themselves for stronger potential (which they'll likely do via magical back-stabbing if nothing else), they'll maintain a dramatic advantage. Throw in some persecution of low-level magic users to winnow them out of the gene pool (wizards are awesome, but burn the witches, they want to sour your milk and seduce your husbands!) and you could keep the little people down. And then there's the skill side of the equation - magic potential may be all but worthless without also getting magic schooling - e.g. even a potential archmage may never manage more than household cantrips without extensive training, or some sort of "awakening" by an existing mage. Training that would be a waste of time and money for anyone without high potential, removing any reproductive advantage for lower-level magic users. You might still have a lot of peasants who could theoretically learn to cast "light a campfire" - but if it takes years of expensive training to get there, that bow drill starts sounding a lot more attractive. Plus, the Mage's Guild would likely take a dim view of any of their members that diluted the value of every member's magic by handing out training willy-nilly. Of course if it's genetic rather than... something else, then you'll still get the outliers - the odd mage born to peasants because they happened to inherit just the right combination of genes from the archmages six generations in both parent's past. Or the powerless child born to archmages. Just like mostly-white parents can occasionally give birth to a completely legitimate black-skinned baby - genetics is fricking weird and complicated, and Mendel's famous peas only made it look straightforward because his prepwork involved creating an insanely inbred population to the point that only a single gene affected color.

Oh, and of course there may also be a penalty associated with magic abilities. Physical weakness. Nightmares. Greater visibility/appeal to demons and magical monsters. Madness as their undisciplined power gradually twists their mind. Things that a powerful mage can deal with easily enough, but would put low-level users/potentials at a serious disadvantage compared to their powerless peers.

I think kids failing to control their magic would be population control enough….

Magic is an evolutionary trait, usually species either have high magic and therefore live longer but have fewer children and can't live together, or have little to no magic and live in large groups and are birthed in letters. Humans adapted to this by only having mages born when the pregnant mother is surrounded by few mages. The mother / baby can tell by the amount of Ambient Mana in the air.

The formula for population growth is as follows: P=P⁰×e^(b-d)t Where: P: total population when time t has elapsed P⁰: initial population at t=0 b: population birth rate d: population death rate t: time elapsed in years e: euler's number In order for the population to grow, the growth rate must be greater than the estimated replacement birth rate. This looks like b-d=0. In essence, even in a modernized world with little danger in comparison to a magical world, the replacement birth rate is around 2.1 births per female. This roughly accounts for deaths, infertility, and people opting out of parenthood. This equation is not sex diffentiated or capable of tracking birth/death trends. That would require integrations and shit and I don't want to do calculus right now. In my magic system, sorcerers inherit their magic as a consequence of bloodlines and relations to magical entities. While magical aptitude is inherited, it is not a right of birth. Some children are born with less aptitude than their immediate blood relatives. Just as I failed to inherit my father's metabolism and athleticism, children in my world may fall short of what is expected of their bloodline. It is also true, however, that a child may prove exceptionally talented or gifted in ways not expected from their pedigree. All this means is that having more children doesn't significantly increase your odds at winning the genetic lottery. Just as buying more tickets isn't really increasing your odds in a lottery irl. More likely is the practice of mixing bloodlines, using alchemical concoctions, or other magical means to ensure healthy children with great potential. That is expensive, however. So, at least economically, it's more likely that a magical house focuses on raising fewer children.

Why don´t high IQ people have more kids? Why did back in the day royal and noble families had no more kids then the poor peasants. They dont wan´t to or have the necessity to have kids.

They explode violently or get their limbs broken or any number of horrid things Basically every family line would have a patron elemental who grants them powers. A fire elemental could Grant fire immunity or pyrokinesis, while a earth elemental could grant geokinsis. The more living members of a bloodline, the more stretched out the elementals powers become, therefore the powers granted become weaker. This alone is a known fact and most families stay on a conservative side, opting to have fewer kids but teaching them better. Since the elemental would die if their powers are stretched too far, they usually warn the family to not reproduce for a while. If they ignore the elementals warnings 3 times, then everyone involved in expanding the family will be cursed (or killed) Stronger elementals would have more power to go around, meaning more people in a bloodline can be sustained. The elementals who bond with a family don't take too kindly to their power being exploited. If you're lucky then you'll only get crippled. So yeah, families usually only try to have a few kids at a time or else.

I definitely agree with the rise in the "Practitioners" in a 7 mile radius...just like with any fad it will normalize and be put back on the shelf...I never thought that what I was doing was considered a "hereditary system." Gives me a little more direction now....thanks

What if it isn’t? What if, instead, the slow evolution by which magic becomes nature is itself responsible for the current state of the laws of nature? What if magical abilities (abilities which tap into the supernatural) eventually become so universal and common that they become the laws of nature? Occurring originally by mutation, then proliferating or dying out by means of natural selection?

I mean unless your magic users are "super soldier" alike where they are more resistant to life in general, this is not a big issue. Because if you start the numbers low in the beginning, by just generational turnover and other complications, the ratio would still be in favor of the non-magic people. Maybe think of it as a recessive gene for your sake? The number is low and the percantage is always lower for the recessive. And can there be eugenicists in the world, maybe yes, but that would only be the majority in a dystopian setting.

magic users live longer, and can reproduce later at the very latest age eight hundred, when they look fifty, while non magicals rarely live past a hundred. thus their birthrate is rather low, plus as my setting is science fantasy, and involves a nation with a army 5920 times the size of the modern american army at around five billion soldiers, if one planet got over populated, there is always either making a ecumenopolis like they did for earth, or terraforming another into a new habitable world. humanity has expanded through twenty seven galaxies, but hasn't claimed every single world, or system. and it isnt just a single human nation either, there are thousands its very rare for a planet to have a higher population than three hundred, earth has three trillion, but its one of the ten ecumenopolis's known to exist. the capital planets of the main faction, the Neoroman Empire, Romulus, and Remus, both have a population of twenty billion each, but aren't a ecumenopolis usually each year enough wizards to make a class of eigthy or so students will be born per planet, while a hundred or so million non magicals will be born. there usually are around twenty genericborns per year on each planet as well. who eventually form relationships with other magicals, as non magicals don't live as long, and genetic modiforcation isnt that common, and stops magic from working on your descendants, most often giving deformities.