How many Wizards (or lesser magic-workers) in a city?

[TheRealMe]

Are there any canon hints as to how many White Council Wizards are in a typical large city (or as a fraction of the total population)?  Also, on the average, how many lesser mortal magic-workers are there for each Wizard?  Our group is using Boston.

In the books, sometimes it seems that Harry Dresden is the only Wizard in Chicago.  At other times the landscape seem to get a bit crowded, where you couldn't heave a brick without hitting some kind of sorcerer.  

I had the idea of a number of rival Wizard families in the city's history, but this might be too many. On the other hand, a family with a tradition of magic might better be able to find and train its magically inclinded members.
 

[MijRai]

I'd say between 1 to 5 wizards (not including apprentices) in a single city, around 20-75 sorcerer-types, and a few hundred focused practitioners of various stripes. However, if you want multiple wizard families in a single town, go for it. Just make sure there is a reason they all settled there. Maybe a couple big leylines or somesuch.

[Kaldra]

i think we tried to stat out the average number of council level wizards born each year, if applied right it could probably give you an answer. ill see if i cant find it.


Edit: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,22618.0.html

using this data at a more sane time of day could probably lead to an answer.

[luminos]

The number of white council level wizards in your city is equal to the number of white council level PC's in your group + the number of white council level bad guys you decide to throw at them.  For lower powered magic, have a handful of small talents that are neutral or friendly, and as many hostile magic talents as is justified by your themes and threats.

[vultur]

Are there any canon hints as to how many White Council Wizards are in a typical large city (or as a fraction of the total population)? [

Well, Council-level talents are about one in a million. But it would depend on whether they tend to cluster in cities or not.

(The Council has about 5000 members IIRC. If they're evenly distributed, that's about 220 Council members in the US. If Council level talents are one in a million, presumably the extra thousand or two Council-level talents are warlocks, necromancers, people 'under the radar' like Elaine, etc.... so maybe 80 or so of those in the US. So yeah, Council-level talents are rare.)

In the books, sometimes it seems that Harry Dresden is the only Wizard in Chicago.  At other times the landscape seem to get a bit crowded, where you couldn't heave a brick without hitting some kind of sorcerer.  

I kind of get the impression Harry is the only full wizard who actually lives in Chicago, but that *may* just be because most wizards seem to be pretty secretive.

Sells and Kravos weren't full wizard talents. Most of the Kemmlerites seem to have just come in because the NN boundary was already disrupted there -- though we've seen Cowl three times, so he might be more local.

I think numbers go up quickly as power levels decrease though. Sorcerers don't seem all that rare, and Paranet types seem very common -- though the number of *active* lesser talents seems more to be a matter of training; the Alphas don't seem to have been conscious of any magical ability before they met Tera West. (And then you have even-lesser talents like the guys from Day Off, who have practically no ability but claim more...)

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But really, the demographics aren't crucial, as luminos says; if you're playing a higher power game, you will probably want more council level NPCs.

[bibliophile20]

well, IIRC, a practitioner is accepted to the Council if they are within the top 1-5% of magical talent.  Worst case, 1%.  And if your chances of being a practitioner is only 1:1000, that means you'll have 1 council level talent for every 100,000 people--which means that, up until a century ago, that tracks with a Council of about 5000 members (remember that we've only have a billion people+ for less than a century), even given losses against other supernaturals (the longevity of a wizard skews the population demographics, as the population of the council is not going to map to the world population with any degree of precision).  The recent bloom of warlocks has already been attributed in canon to the world population increase--so, alot of those warlocks will have council-level talent, just a severe lack of training.