A couple of very general questions.

[Jett]

Sorry if these have been posted before, but I'm brand new both to the forums and to the game.  I'm looking for your opinions on a couple of issues.

First off, how common is magic among humans? My first guess is that wizards of Harry's caliber are about 1 in two to three million. (Chicago could have one or two, New York would have two or three.)  But that would mean that there are more than three thousand worldwide.  Does that sound right?  I further suppose that Focused Practitioners and Minor Talents would be about one thousand times more common (but of course, many of these would never develop their abilities). Even so, that would mean that there are three or four million worldwide, and a big city like Chicago would have one or two thousand.  Does this seem to high?

Secondly, how is the Paranet organized?  When reading the novels, I got the general impression that it was very organized, something along the lines of clandestine cells where each member would know a couple of others at their own organizational level, one or two at a lower level, and one at a higher level.  This level of organization would require considerable management, however.  The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that it's much less organized, maybe something like the informal network of a garden club or a church.  What do you think?   Further, to what degree can minor talents use the internet?  (Cause if there are as many practitioners as I suppose, magical chat rooms are gonna be all over the internet.  And while we're on the subject, to what degree are minor talents aware of the White Council and the wider magical world?

Thanks for your time, Jett.

[Drachasor]

It's more like one in every 6-10 million people can be a true wizard.  There's only about 1000 in the world all told.  Well, that's ignoring the people they don't find and hence don't teach.  Lesser talents could well be 100-1000 times more common.  I definitely think it is a lot more than 10 times as common given what we see in the books.  Lesser talents vary a lot in how powerful they are, of course.

As for Paranet, I don't think they are organized like terrorist cells.  Every member needs to be able to contact a wizard or the like if there's a problem.  It does seem, IIRC, like Harry has some names he calls to warn of danger and I assume they call others.  I imagine any of them could call him if there was trouble, but to ease the calling burden they have certain members responsible for calling others -- ideally they'd have some redundancy so that if one of those members was compromised then the people under them would still get called by someone else, but I don't think they have that.

[sinker]

My question to you would be how will you use this information? How is it pertinent to your story. Seems to me that there are many possible answers. Your estimation on the numbers seems right, and I think that it's fair to assume that at least half of the minor talents are aware of the white council (or at least the image of the white council they have, I.E. wardens). But if you want to have thousands of wizards fighting each other why wouldn't you? If you want to play a minor talent with no knowledge (or complete knowledge) of the white council what's to stop you?

I only make this statement because often these kind of questions are used to limit the story or to limit others within it, and that's generally not in everyone's best interest.

[deathwombat]

Exact wizard level talent numbers have been kept vague on purpose
So whatever works for your game  go for it

Same for the paranet
Use what works for your game and  the forum for ideas of course

[MijRai]

It is around one in one million from what is given. Drachasor, the White Council is bigger then one thousand, and there are wizard level talents who aren't a part of the Council (i.e. Elaine, high powered warlocks, and anybody they don't find). 

As far as the Paranet organization goes, I see it as chapterhouses that can communicate to each other, give each other support if they have the muscle. Harry's goal was to get them to support themselves, not just be a wizard phone service. You may be getting a more prescise answer when the first supplement comes out.

[Drachasor]

It is around one in one million from what is given. Drachasor, the White Council is bigger then one thousand, and there are wizard level talents who aren't a part of the Council (i.e. Elaine, high powered warlocks, and anybody they don't find). 

It is only slightly bigger than 1000.  It is smaller than 1500 from what I remember of the books.  I think it is far less than 1 in a million since that means there are 5-6 times as many people out of the council as there are in it.  That seems like way too many wizard-level talents. 

[Tedronai]

It is only slightly bigger than 1000.  It is smaller than 1500 from what I remember of the books.  I think it is far less than 1 in a million since that means there are 5-6 times as many people out of the council as there are in it.  That seems like way too many wizard-level talents. 

1/1mil might be high as a standing population number, but likely less so as a frequency of appearance
ie. Warlocks tend not to last very long, and so artificially deflate the numbers

[crusher_bob]

The White council has to be considerably larger than 1000 wizards.  There were around 400 wardens before Dead Beat, and assuming that 5% of the council were wardens, that puts them at around 8000 wizards.  Something like 5000 people is probably the smallest possible White Council, otherwise the Wardens take up too much of the population.

Here's my earlier thoughts about the number of wizards in the world.

[bibliophile20]

Also don't forget that wizards live longer than normal people, and thus the number of wizards isn't a straight function of the current population numbers, but is instead an additive function based upon the populations of the last few centuries. 

[Drachasor]

The White council has to be considerably larger than 1000 wizards.  There were around 400 wardens before Dead Beat, and assuming that 5% of the council were wardens, that puts them at around 8000 wizards.  Something like 5000 people is probably the smallest possible White Council, otherwise the Wardens take up too much of the population.

Here's my earlier thoughts about the number of wizards in the world.

Why assume the Wardens are 5% of the council?  I don't believe that's the case at all.  I will look through the books, but I thought somewhere they gave a comment about one group and how it related to the council overall.  Thats' where I was getting my "a bit over 1000" figure -- I thought it was something like 1200.  I don't see how 30% of the White Council being Wardens is "too much."  It isn't like they don't need a lot of warriors.

[toturi]

Do you need to be a White Council wizard before you can be a Warden? Would being an apprentice be enough? Because reading the books, I get the idea that being a wizard takes jumping through quite a few hoops, but they seem to be running kids through Warden boot camp as fast as they can. Are the new kid Wardens like Jedi Commanders, as in they are really only apprentices?

[crusher_bob]

Mostly from percentages of a population that can be kept 'under arms' constantly.  Around 10% is an absolute maximum for any period of time, with most nations/groups putting 2-3% of the population under arms.  The 10% under arms is for places like North Korea and Sparta too, and the council doesn't seem that military.  So somewhere between 1-5% of the population at large as Wardens seems reasonable.  Also, the fact that the wardens can be 'replaced' by newly drafted recruits also shows that the White Council has a considerably larger population.

[bitterpill]

Mostly from percentages of a population that can be kept 'under arms' constantly.  Around 10% is an absolute maximum for any period of time, with most nations/groups putting 2-3% of the population under arms.  The 10% under arms is for places like North Korea and Sparta too, and the council doesn't seem that military.  So somewhere between 1-5% of the population at large as Wardens seems reasonable.  Also, the fact that the wardens can be 'replaced' by newly drafted recruits also shows that the White Council has a considerably larger population.

You are treating the white council like a nation or a polis, when it would be more accurate to look at it as a Diaspora it has a fairly small population spread across a multiplicity of states and relies upon those states welfare and infastructure to a large extent. The only real limit to how many wardens the white council can have is the wizard population and money and the White Council is very wealthy.

[Drachasor]

You are treating the white council like a nation or a polis, when it would be more accurate to look at it as a Diaspora it has a fairly small population spread across a multiplicity of states and relies upon those states welfare and infastructure to a large extent. The only real limit to how many wardens the white council can have is the wizard population and money and the White Council is very wealthy.

Indeed.  It isn't like they need wizard farmers, merchants, etc.  They aren't a nation.

Imagine all mathematicians were in some secret organization.  Further, imagine there are other secret groups and threats that might try to kill any one of them at any moment.  This isn't a nation and you aren't going to see the same sort of job spread that a nation might have.  If anything, they are much more like a military organization.  Wardens are just the front-line troops.  Logistics, healing, and so forth are handled by others.  Remember, when Kemmler was stopped it was the ENTIRE White Council going after him.  Also remember that the main reason Harry gives for the fact there aren't a bunch more Wardens is that not every Wizard is cut out to do combat magic.  They clearly have pretty much everyone capable of combat magic as a Warden -- Harry was an exception because he broke the first law.  That's why when they are trying to get more Wardens together, they are rush-training a bunch of kids rather than having older members sign up or get trained; the older people that aren't Wardens just don't have the talent to do it.

I'd add that as for money, the books indicate they White Council is pretty crazy-rich due to simple things like interest over very long lives.

More debatable is how many people with wizard-level talent get missed.  I think Victor Sells was probably a wizard-level talent (he just didn't seem to have the sight, but I assume that could be trained).  Harry doesn't really run into anyone else with that level of talent in all the books, as best I remember.  Apart from the Elaine (who was thought dead, so the Council found her) and the Black Council members.  The latter isn't going to be a big group as best I can tell, nor are people like Elaine likely to be very large.  Still, it's an open question how many potential wizards are lost and never discovered by the Council.  They really are sloppy and should have had something like Paranet put in place years ago (that's a system that can identify potential wizard-level talents pretty well, ideally).  However, I have to admit that an organization run by people who might find cars and phones to be a new-fangled contraptions would probably have a hard time shifting to a system where they organized and included lesser talents in any way (so I don't think Butcher handled this badly).

[zenten]

I would assume that the majority of "potential wizards" never get training, and thus end up like focused practitioners and minor talents and whatnot.