It has no sense to compare the weapons in the game with the real life ones, as the weapons have to hit against an armor class while in the real life every weapon performs better in certain situations, thing that is only partially considered in the game as some armors perform in a different way depending on the type of damage.
A staff is surely really powerful against a person without armor, but is of little use against a full plate armor as the full plate spread the pressure on a much larger part of the body.
Some weapons are made to do damage to a full plate protected fighter, the war hammer is a good example, but the same weapon against a person with a pike or halberd is way less effective as is heavy, slow and lack of reach.
To have a realistic simulation of a real life fight a completely different combat system would have been used, the logic the game uses cares more about balance then realism.
The staff can easily trip the fighter in plate, and keep him down by sweeping his arms from under him as he tries to push himself up. Not to mention the constant butt-end thrusts to the head, lower back etc. Just getting off the ground in full plate would be exhausting without this. Against polearms just block the initial thrust, push it aside and rush in. They(polearms) are ineffective at closer quarters. It's not the weapon that matters, it's the warrior.
surely the warrior's skill matters a lot, and this is more then considered in the game as for the first 20 levels the thac0 improve.
but i am talking of weapons and armors and how different weapons are effective against the different types of armors, assuming that the fighters have similar levels of skill.
The staff can easily trip the fighter in plate, and keep him down by sweeping his arms from under him as he tries to push himself up. Not to mention the constant butt-end thrusts to the head, lower back etc. Just getting off the ground in full plate would be exhausting without this. Against polearms just block the initial thrust, push it aside and rush in. They(polearms) are ineffective at closer quarters. It's not the weapon that matters, it's the warrior.
is not so easy to take a full armored trained warrior to the ground with a staff or a spear, he is really well protected and to reach a weak spot or the back is really difficult in a real fight.
there was a reason why the fighters, the rich ones, mainly nobles, that could afford it, wore that really heavy, uncomfortable and extremely high priced armors and dominated for at least a couple of centuries the battlefields. the full plate is the highest achievement in the warfare and only the advent of firearms made it obsolete. weapons like the crossbow and the war hammer was used because many other weapons just lacked the power to penetrate or crush a full plate.
also to block a spear or staff and close in is a thing more easy to tell then to do, assuming that both the fighters have comparable skill.
i post 2 videos about it, in the first the people fighting are not well trained, but are trained mostly with sword. some of them use the spear for the very first time. still to block and close is not so easy.
imo is quite evident that the polearm with its long reach and speed gives a dynamic protection, is not easy to close the distance.
on the second one, that being the fighters better trained is more relevant, i notice also how the man with the sword has to be really careful to avoid the attacks of the men with the spear, but a warrior in full plate should have been less worried having to protect mainly the face, that with some helms is anyway protected, and part of the legs and arms. a spear or staff lack of the power to do real damage on the torso, the top of the head and part of the arms and legs.
the same sparring would have been really different in that situation as the fighter with the short reach weapon. but in full plate, would have been slower, so less fast in closing the distance, but the one with the spear would have a real problem in damaging him, probably the best option for him is to run away...
Certain types of armor definitely would have changed the calculus, but the spear looks really, really wicked. Mike could move the tip of the spear 3 feet forward in a fraction of a second, and only Nick's buckler was sometimes fast enough to deflect it. Once the swordsman closes the distance, the spear is very clumsy at defense, but it seems so incredibly difficult to close that distance when the spear has such superior range and can strike so much faster than the sword.
The spear also has great speed in terms of its aim--because it's so lightweight for a two-handed weapon, you can change the direction of the thrust very quickly, whereas the arc of a sword is very easily telegraphed and difficult to change up mid-swing. You would have very little time to figure out where the spear was going to strike you; it could be anywhere. On top of that, the spear is narrow and can seek out holes in your defenses. It doesn't help that the spear's strength is focused on such a small point that you don't need to put quite as much force into a blow in order to pierce lighter armor.
A halberd might be necessary to deal with an opponent in heavier armor (until you get to full plate mail, in which case blunt weapons and crossbows would be the only realistic option), but the principle looks the same. Polearms are fast and their reach is long. It's the melee equivalent of a bow or sling: you can't hurt your opponent if they get to you first.
Yes, gorgonzola, but you are giving no armor to the spearman and the best, most expensive armor to the swordman. Two guys in plate armor, one with an sword and the other with an waraxe or an swiss halberd and an mace as secondary weapon. Who would win?
Swords was an backup weapon on most armies around the story by a reason. Making an analogy with firearms, an 9mm SMG can be an good weapon to some police operations, but you will not gonna pierce an AR500 with it. Same for hunting. Polearms dominated the battlefield and hunting since the pre historical times by a reason. A lot of people consider swords cool, but IMO an Swiss halberd is much cooler.
Two handed weapons like Spears and Halberds already have a ranged advantage over weapons like warhammers.
That just by necessity becomes less of a game changer in a system where many battles aren't resolved in a single blow. It's less realistic but in this case fun gameplay mechanics take precedence over realism.
The Warhammer was designed to ruin your day when you're wearing armor, but that doesn't exactly mean it was useless against people with no armor. Far from it.
About "end in one strike", depends a lot where you got hit. D&D has rules like "critical" to simulate for eg an strike on the head, the maximum damage on D&D from an medium halberd is d10, assuming that you roll 10 and hit an critical, you can do 20 pts of damage in one strike. Even an class with low HP like an sorcerer, in mid level, can survive it. Sure, with STR bonus to damage and other variables, it can become more deadly and an mid level fighter will probably have feats and enhanced weapon, but i don't think that D&D and his games has an problem that some rpgs have, very long fightes on dos2, tyranny, oblivion, etc.
One of the most interesting campaings that i've played was with 4x critical damage, not just for PC's, the enemies has this advantage too. The battles becomes much more "tense". I think that an mode "realistic" damage model and armor can make the game much more tense. I mean, when is extremely unlikely that you character will gonna survive an spear trowed into his head, PCs tends to avoid much more conflict and think much more. Spell slots that can heal become much more valuable and of course, after some sessions, we needed to stablish another homebrew rule. Creatures immune to crictical are just resistent taking 2x instead of our homebrew 4x.
Trained? They both constantly and repeatedly drop there guard. A major no-no. Spears are not, technically, polearms. Against a true polearm the time tested and true method was/is to block...pushing the pike aside and "sliding" your sword or whatever along the pike as you close the distance. A spear is obviously not as long as a pike, it does not have as large and heavy a head as a halberd. These weapons are effective only in group formations. Spears are very good weapons, a staff with a piercing point. My point had been proven in history, a well trained fighter with a dagger in no armor can defeat a well armed man in full plate on foot. Full plate actually had more than a few weak points. The face, arm pits, ankles, back of the knees, groin, wrists, inside the elbow. The more protective of the face a helm is, the more it restricts vision. You can't hit, or block, what you can't see.
Put the plated warrior on horse back, though, and he becomes truly formidable. Not only becausehe can maneuver easier, but it puts him also on higher ground with its commensurate advantages.
EDIT: I should probably make it clear that the I'm talking only about defeating an opponent, which doesn't necessarily mean causing serious injury or death. But with patience and skill you can take the warrior in armor out of the fight by exhausting him both physically and psychologically.
@shabadoo Plate wasn't all that uncomfortable and really easy to move in. If properly fitted, you can literally do acrobatics in it, so the armor itself wouldn't hinder getting up at all.
It was specifically done to not hinder movement, at least not the kind of movement that is useful in combat, and it was tailored on the person using it. But it was quite heavy, a lot of steel and also the padding under it has weight.
Maybe is possible that a strong person wearing a full plate can do some acrobatics, but to wear that weight for a long time before the battle and then fight, thing that is already exhausting, is something completely different, a fighter wearing it would be lucky if he could still stand after a battle, surely could not run or do acrobatics...
The pros of it, a fantastic protection, greatly overcome the cons, it makes you slower, it fatigue you a lot and it restrict your sight field, but the cons are very true.
About the chainmail armor it has to be told that it performs way better then how is showed in the videos posted by @SorcererV1ct0r. The ones in the video are cheap modern replicas and the chain mail has open loops, the true chainmail has riveted loops that are much more resistant, they can even block a very pointy weapon like an arrow (depending on the bow used and the distance between shooter and target).
Every mail with open loops is easily pierced by an arrow, a spear or a dagger.
Would a proper chainmail have survived to the war hammer od halberd? Surely not, but from the video the impression on how it lacks of effectiveness is misleading, a proper one with riveted loops give a very good protection, different from the one of a plate armor, but really effective.
The chances of you encountering someone with plate armor and no trainning is almost non existent. Plate armor is too expensive, maybe you can encounter an mercenary with an ""half plate"" and average training, but if the guy has plate armor, he is probably from an rich family and trained since his childhood.
yes, also some basketball players can dunk even if they wear some heavy weighted belt, but they certainly don't wear it in the actual matches...
i would like to see if those people in the video can do the same things after maybe wearing the armor for some hour, maybe march trough a some miles distance and after 10 minutes of intense combat, and some battles was lasting way more then that, sometimes a full day.
i would also like the same people doing the same things without armor, probably they would be faster and more effective. the one that is able to do few push ups with the armor probably can do more then 100 of them without.
Of course plate armor was superior protection, and standing toe-to- toe against it without being comparably equipped would have been very risky, well-trained or not. But it had many weaknesses that could be exploited with a little patience.
and he is also short, but can carry a backpack that contain many full plate armors, if he uses a str belt.
it make me think at some ants that carry seeds or bread crumbs way bigger then they are.
baldur's gate logic: you can heal a badly wounded person, badly wounded in all the body and really close to death (like 1 hp left) with a spell, you can resurrect a dead person, even after some time if you wish so his brain is probably rotten, brain cells begin to take damage after few minutes without oxygen, with an other spell. on some difficulty settings you can ever resurrect a chunkifyed person whose body has been shattered in little pieces.
but there is no way to heal minsc from his brain damage and restore the stats that he is supposed to had at the moment he became a ranger.
EDIT: in the underdark is possible to heal a person that became crazy with an healing spell, the same in wk, so it should work also for our ranger as it heal both body and mind.
baldur's gate logic: you can heal a badly wounded person, badly wounded in all the body and really close to death (like 1 hp left) with a spell, you can resurrect a dead person, even after some time if you wish so his brain is probably rotten, brain cells begin to take damage after few minutes without oxygen, with an other spell. on some difficulty settings you can ever resurrect a chunkifyed person whose body has been shattered in little pieces.
but there is no way to heal minsc from his brain damage and restore the stats that he is supposed to had at the moment he became a ranger.
EDIT: in the underdark is possible to heal a person that became crazy with an healing spell, the same in wk, so it should work also for our ranger as it heal both body and mind.
Why don't I think that Minsc would suddenly revert to the genius that he once was after a Heal spell? I'll bet his intelligence would stay the same...
baldur's gate logic: you can heal a badly wounded person, badly wounded in all the body and really close to death (like 1 hp left) with a spell, you can resurrect a dead person, even after some time if you wish so his brain is probably rotten, brain cells begin to take damage after few minutes without oxygen, with an other spell. on some difficulty settings you can ever resurrect a chunkifyed person whose body has been shattered in little pieces.
but there is no way to heal minsc from his brain damage and restore the stats that he is supposed to had at the moment he became a ranger.
EDIT: in the underdark is possible to heal a person that became crazy with an healing spell, the same in wk, so it should work also for our ranger as it heal both body and mind.
Why don't I think that Minsc would suddenly revert to the genius that he once was after a Heal spell? I'll bet his intelligence would stay the same...
Dynaheir says straight out that Minsc wasn't always as we know him today. He became as he is after suffering a severe head injury.
She doesn't explicitly tie it to his Intelligence Score but it's hard to imagine a head injury that has such a profound impact on somebody while still leaving their Intelligence completely intact.
I'm pretty sure that's also why he has no control of his berserker rage. His rage isn't the practiced skill of a berserker or barbarian, but rather an unfortunate side effect of a scrambled brain.
being one of them, or better an hater of the (ab)use we do of technology i surely agree.
with a different use of technology the humanity could live without people starving, having much more free time and living in balance with the environment, instead of destroying it.
=Purchase an magic license
=Walk in the middle os street with 5 animated skeletons and nobody cares.
Lol! Yeah, and in magic-hating Athkatla!
I never got why there are so many "magic haters" in this fantasy settings... You don't see much technology haters IRL
It's a well-established trope in fiction. The Jedi deplore technology that tries to blot out the Force. "He's more machine than man now. Twisted, and evil."
The out-of-control AI wants to "Kill all humans". See Bender in Futurama, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that." (Open the airlock so you can breathe; I'm going to kill you now.)
The Cylons so hate their human creators that they try to wipe out all of humanity - Battlestar Galactica, both versions.
In Dragon Age: Origins, in the world of Ferelden, we see a society so paranoid about the possible abuses of magic that every child who shows the least bit of the Talent is immediately taken from his or her parents and permanently isolated in a mage training tower where he or she is taught to repress and restrain that Talent, and that any and all unrestrained, unregulated use of it is horrible and evil.
In Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time", we see a society where any female with the Power of Source-channeling is shipped off to a prison-like Tower as soon as she is discovered, and any female who refuses or "escapes" that imprisonment is seen as a "Wilder", to be treated as a dangerous criminal.
Any male who can Source-channel, Heaven help the poor guy, is assumed to be mad. Although the assumption of male Source-sensitive madness is not without truth and precedent. In that world, the ability to channel the male side of the Source really does lead to horrible, violent madness, or at least it does if your name isn't Rand al'Thor.
And yes, we see the heavy and paranoid regulation of magic in Amn. Valygar and his entire personality are a symptom of that paranoia.
But, a trope becomes a trope because it has some truth to it. Those with an "unfair" power advantage often can and do enslave and dominate those without power. It's happened over and over again in real life, and often leads to rebellion in real life just as in games, or to repressive regulation in real life, just as in games.
=Purchase an magic license
=Walk in the middle os street with 5 animated skeletons and nobody cares.
Lol! Yeah, and in magic-hating Athkatla!
I never got why there are so many "magic haters" in this fantasy settings... You don't see much technology haters IRL
It's a well-established trope in fiction. The Jedi deplore technology that tries to blot out the Force. "He's more machine than man now. Twisted, and evil."
The out-of-control AI wants to "Kill all humans". See Bender in Futurama, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that." (Open the airlock so you can breathe; I'm going to kill you now.)
The Cylons so hate their human creators that they try to wipe out all of humanity - Battlestar Galactica, both versions.
In Dragon Age: Origins, in the world of Ferelden, we see a society so paranoid about the possible abuses of magic that every child who shows the least bit of the Talent is immediately taken from his or her parents and permanently isolated in a mage training tower where he or she is taught to repress and restrain that Talent, and that any and all unrestrained, unregulated use of it is horrible and evil.
In Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time", we see a society where any female with the Power of Source-channeling is shipped off to a prison-like Tower as soon as she is discovered, and any female who refuses or "escapes" that imprisonment is seen as a "Wilder", to be treated as a dangerous criminal.
Any male who can Source-channel, Heaven help the poor guy, is assumed to be mad. Although the assumption of male Source-sensitive madness is not without truth and precedent. In that world, the ability to channel the male side of the Source really does lead to horrible, violent madness, or at least it does if your name isn't Rand al'Thor.
And yes, we see the heavy and paranoid regulation of magic in Amn. Valygar and his entire personality are a symptom of that paranoia.
But, a trope becomes a trope because it has some truth to it. Those with an "unfair" power advantage often can and do enslave and dominate those without power. It's happened over and over again in real life, and often leads to rebellion in real life just as in games, or to repressive regulation in real life, just as in games.
yes, is a trope. But why people who have this power will accept subjugation? On Magi anime, magicians created an mage empire after much persecution by nobility. And they stablished an "meritocratic aristocracy"
These are the levels of citizenship of Magnostadt.
1st Level of Citizenship: All the high level magicians under the Magnostadt Academy’s chancellor. There are currently 500 people in this level. 2nd Level of Citizenship: It is extended to all the Magnostadt Academy’s second year students and above and to all the magicians who have the Magnostadt nationality. There are currently 3,000 people in this level. 3rd Level of Citizenship: It is extended to all the Gois who have both their parents as magicians, to all the Gois who have some particular technical skills, to those belonging to the army or working for the government. There are currently 20,000 people in this level. 4th Level of Citizenship: All the Goi citizens of Magnostadt. There are currently 80,000 people in this level. 5th Level of Citizenship: The Goi citizens of Magnostadt who are not able to pay the tax liability. There are currently 200,000 people in this level. https://magi.fandom.com/wiki/Magnostadt
Making an analogy with IRL, slaves that managed to flee and rebel slaves created their own communities. And if i can create an undead army, can trow fireballs, stop the time, dominate people, etc; good lucky invading my magocracy. You will need it
That's what Amn did too... One group of wizards basically rules and decrees that all magic must be done on their terms. It's still very much a magocracy or whatever, it's just that you, as an unlicenced foreigner, are not a citizen of it.
Comments
A staff is surely really powerful against a person without armor, but is of little use against a full plate armor as the full plate spread the pressure on a much larger part of the body.
Some weapons are made to do damage to a full plate protected fighter, the war hammer is a good example, but the same weapon against a person with a pike or halberd is way less effective as is heavy, slow and lack of reach.
To have a realistic simulation of a real life fight a completely different combat system would have been used, the logic the game uses cares more about balance then realism.
but i am talking of weapons and armors and how different weapons are effective against the different types of armors, assuming that the fighters have similar levels of skill.
is not so easy to take a full armored trained warrior to the ground with a staff or a spear, he is really well protected and to reach a weak spot or the back is really difficult in a real fight.
there was a reason why the fighters, the rich ones, mainly nobles, that could afford it, wore that really heavy, uncomfortable and extremely high priced armors and dominated for at least a couple of centuries the battlefields. the full plate is the highest achievement in the warfare and only the advent of firearms made it obsolete. weapons like the crossbow and the war hammer was used because many other weapons just lacked the power to penetrate or crush a full plate.
also to block a spear or staff and close in is a thing more easy to tell then to do, assuming that both the fighters have comparable skill.
i post 2 videos about it, in the first the people fighting are not well trained, but are trained mostly with sword. some of them use the spear for the very first time. still to block and close is not so easy.
in the second one two more trained people are sparring
imo is quite evident that the polearm with its long reach and speed gives a dynamic protection, is not easy to close the distance.
on the second one, that being the fighters better trained is more relevant, i notice also how the man with the sword has to be really careful to avoid the attacks of the men with the spear, but a warrior in full plate should have been less worried having to protect mainly the face, that with some helms is anyway protected, and part of the legs and arms. a spear or staff lack of the power to do real damage on the torso, the top of the head and part of the arms and legs.
the same sparring would have been really different in that situation as the fighter with the short reach weapon. but in full plate, would have been slower, so less fast in closing the distance, but the one with the spear would have a real problem in damaging him, probably the best option for him is to run away...
The spear also has great speed in terms of its aim--because it's so lightweight for a two-handed weapon, you can change the direction of the thrust very quickly, whereas the arc of a sword is very easily telegraphed and difficult to change up mid-swing. You would have very little time to figure out where the spear was going to strike you; it could be anywhere. On top of that, the spear is narrow and can seek out holes in your defenses. It doesn't help that the spear's strength is focused on such a small point that you don't need to put quite as much force into a blow in order to pierce lighter armor.
A halberd might be necessary to deal with an opponent in heavier armor (until you get to full plate mail, in which case blunt weapons and crossbows would be the only realistic option), but the principle looks the same. Polearms are fast and their reach is long. It's the melee equivalent of a bow or sling: you can't hurt your opponent if they get to you first.
Swords was an backup weapon on most armies around the story by a reason. Making an analogy with firearms, an 9mm SMG can be an good weapon to some police operations, but you will not gonna pierce an AR500 with it. Same for hunting. Polearms dominated the battlefield and hunting since the pre historical times by a reason. A lot of people consider swords cool, but IMO an Swiss halberd is much cooler.
Look to what an warhammer can do to an armor
That just by necessity becomes less of a game changer in a system where many battles aren't resolved in a single blow. It's less realistic but in this case fun gameplay mechanics take precedence over realism.
The Warhammer was designed to ruin your day when you're wearing armor, but that doesn't exactly mean it was useless against people with no armor. Far from it.
One of the most interesting campaings that i've played was with 4x critical damage, not just for PC's, the enemies has this advantage too. The battles becomes much more "tense". I think that an mode "realistic" damage model and armor can make the game much more tense. I mean, when is extremely unlikely that you character will gonna survive an spear trowed into his head, PCs tends to avoid much more conflict and think much more. Spell slots that can heal become much more valuable and of course, after some sessions, we needed to stablish another homebrew rule. Creatures immune to crictical are just resistent taking 2x instead of our homebrew 4x.
Put the plated warrior on horse back, though, and he becomes truly formidable. Not only becausehe can maneuver easier, but it puts him also on higher ground with its commensurate advantages.
EDIT: I should probably make it clear that the I'm talking only about defeating an opponent, which doesn't necessarily mean causing serious injury or death. But with patience and skill you can take the warrior in armor out of the fight by exhausting him both physically and psychologically.
Maybe is possible that a strong person wearing a full plate can do some acrobatics, but to wear that weight for a long time before the battle and then fight, thing that is already exhausting, is something completely different, a fighter wearing it would be lucky if he could still stand after a battle, surely could not run or do acrobatics...
The pros of it, a fantastic protection, greatly overcome the cons, it makes you slower, it fatigue you a lot and it restrict your sight field, but the cons are very true.
About the chainmail armor it has to be told that it performs way better then how is showed in the videos posted by @SorcererV1ct0r. The ones in the video are cheap modern replicas and the chain mail has open loops, the true chainmail has riveted loops that are much more resistant, they can even block a very pointy weapon like an arrow (depending on the bow used and the distance between shooter and target).
Every mail with open loops is easily pierced by an arrow, a spear or a dagger.
Would a proper chainmail have survived to the war hammer od halberd? Surely not, but from the video the impression on how it lacks of effectiveness is misleading, a proper one with riveted loops give a very good protection, different from the one of a plate armor, but really effective.
As for mobility,
i would like to see if those people in the video can do the same things after maybe wearing the armor for some hour, maybe march trough a some miles distance and after 10 minutes of intense combat, and some battles was lasting way more then that, sometimes a full day.
i would also like the same people doing the same things without armor, probably they would be faster and more effective. the one that is able to do few push ups with the armor probably can do more then 100 of them without.
A halfling is about 80 pounds. Its Strength score is only 1 point lower than a 160-pound human's.
it make me think at some ants that carry seeds or bread crumbs way bigger then they are.
but there is no way to heal minsc from his brain damage and restore the stats that he is supposed to had at the moment he became a ranger.
EDIT: in the underdark is possible to heal a person that became crazy with an healing spell, the same in wk, so it should work also for our ranger as it heal both body and mind.
Why don't I think that Minsc would suddenly revert to the genius that he once was after a Heal spell? I'll bet his intelligence would stay the same...
=Walk in the middle os street with 5 animated skeletons and nobody cares.
Lol! Yeah, and in magic-hating Athkatla!
Dynaheir says straight out that Minsc wasn't always as we know him today. He became as he is after suffering a severe head injury.
She doesn't explicitly tie it to his Intelligence Score but it's hard to imagine a head injury that has such a profound impact on somebody while still leaving their Intelligence completely intact.
I'm pretty sure that's also why he has no control of his berserker rage. His rage isn't the practiced skill of a berserker or barbarian, but rather an unfortunate side effect of a scrambled brain.
I never got why there are so many "magic haters" in this fantasy settings... You don't see much technology haters IRL
I'm a chemist working for a chemical company, trust me there are a fair amount of technology haters IRL...
with a different use of technology the humanity could live without people starving, having much more free time and living in balance with the environment, instead of destroying it.
It's a well-established trope in fiction. The Jedi deplore technology that tries to blot out the Force. "He's more machine than man now. Twisted, and evil."
The out-of-control AI wants to "Kill all humans". See Bender in Futurama, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that." (Open the airlock so you can breathe; I'm going to kill you now.)
The Cylons so hate their human creators that they try to wipe out all of humanity - Battlestar Galactica, both versions.
In Dragon Age: Origins, in the world of Ferelden, we see a society so paranoid about the possible abuses of magic that every child who shows the least bit of the Talent is immediately taken from his or her parents and permanently isolated in a mage training tower where he or she is taught to repress and restrain that Talent, and that any and all unrestrained, unregulated use of it is horrible and evil.
In Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time", we see a society where any female with the Power of Source-channeling is shipped off to a prison-like Tower as soon as she is discovered, and any female who refuses or "escapes" that imprisonment is seen as a "Wilder", to be treated as a dangerous criminal.
Any male who can Source-channel, Heaven help the poor guy, is assumed to be mad. Although the assumption of male Source-sensitive madness is not without truth and precedent. In that world, the ability to channel the male side of the Source really does lead to horrible, violent madness, or at least it does if your name isn't Rand al'Thor.
And yes, we see the heavy and paranoid regulation of magic in Amn. Valygar and his entire personality are a symptom of that paranoia.
But, a trope becomes a trope because it has some truth to it. Those with an "unfair" power advantage often can and do enslave and dominate those without power. It's happened over and over again in real life, and often leads to rebellion in real life just as in games, or to repressive regulation in real life, just as in games.
yes, is a trope. But why people who have this power will accept subjugation? On Magi anime, magicians created an mage empire after much persecution by nobility. And they stablished an "meritocratic aristocracy"
These are the levels of citizenship of Magnostadt.
1st Level of Citizenship: All the high level magicians under the Magnostadt Academy’s chancellor. There are currently 500 people in this level.
2nd Level of Citizenship: It is extended to all the Magnostadt Academy’s second year students and above and to all the magicians who have the Magnostadt nationality. There are currently 3,000 people in this level.
3rd Level of Citizenship: It is extended to all the Gois who have both their parents as magicians, to all the Gois who have some particular technical skills, to those belonging to the army or working for the government. There are currently 20,000 people in this level.
4th Level of Citizenship: All the Goi citizens of Magnostadt. There are currently 80,000 people in this level.
5th Level of Citizenship: The Goi citizens of Magnostadt who are not able to pay the tax liability. There are currently 200,000 people in this level.
https://magi.fandom.com/wiki/Magnostadt
Making an analogy with IRL, slaves that managed to flee and rebel slaves created their own communities. And if i can create an undead army, can trow fireballs, stop the time, dominate people, etc; good lucky invading my magocracy. You will need it