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I have an Urban Fantasy setting where people can choose to walk on only one path of magic. After choosing, these mages gain spells related to said path. Furthermore, these spells mutate and transform based on the mage's personality, making every mage hold unique and personalized spells. As they progress their own interpretation of their magic, they develop more spells. However, every spell still retains the 'core essences' of their branch even after the individualization.

Luck magic has the essences of:

  • Fortune: Luck magic focuses on increasing the chances of a mage encountering favorable situations and achieving success from probability-based endeavors.
  • Dynamicism: Luck magic bases itself on the mage's current short-term needs and wants. It doesn't operate in the long-term and doesn't take into account the future. Therefore, it constantly gives the mage's Fortune based on the present, immediate situation.
  • Positivity: Luck magic operates through excess. Fortune is always given in immense quantity, manifesting as positive Fortune. It doesn't use negative Fortune through deprivation, reduction and absence. Luck magic amplifies what the mage wants but it doesn't reduce what the mage doesn't want.
  • Perception: Fortune is defined by what the mage, as an individual, considers lucky.
  • Self: Luck magic focuses its Fortune on its mage only. It deprives the Fortune of others to add it to its own mage's Fortune.
  • Uncontrollability: While luck magic bases itself on the mage's desires, how it delivers Fortune and what the Fortune would even be is uncontrollable. The mage cannot specify the result or adjust the process of luck. Fortune is an unpredictable process that gives an unpredictable outcome.
  • Uncertainty: Luck magic has a limit to how much it can affect probability. It cannot give certainties and absolutes.
  • Life: Only the living have Fortune.
  • Opportunity: At the end of the day, luck magic merely offers opportunities, nothing else. It is the mage's responsibility to grasp onto it.

Back when chaos reigned and the world was constantly bombarded by external threats, luck magic was one of the most popular paths. As time went on, humanity slowly solidified its position, drove out the myriad dangers, and eventually developed modern technology and civilization. Today, asides from the occasional Killing Path mage or the Sun trying to scorch Earth, life is decent from the perspective of existential safety. Of course, humans are humans and without external threats comes internal conflict.

Ironically for luck magic, its relevance in the magic stage has unfortunately fallen. At its absolute height during the path's founding by the Gilded One, 1/1,000 mages used luck magic. However, this was only at that chaotic past. Now, very few mages would even consider walking it. It has been consigned to the dustbins of magic history... for now.

My question is: Despite luck magic's many boons, why would it be impractical in the modern era of mages?

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    $\begingroup$ You're basically asking us to write a story for you, rather than defining it. You are the author, you decide any downsides or upsides or politics or such issues to magic use. $\endgroup$
    – Nepene Nep
    Commented Aug 13 at 11:09
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, but you're supposed to have a best possible answer. You've only given upsides to the magic, and so any answer is just gonna have to invent downsides. With no limitations, there's no way to have a best answer, and so it's story based. $\endgroup$
    – Nepene Nep
    Commented Aug 13 at 11:15
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    $\begingroup$ The answer is obvious. They have to choose just one path. Nobody chooses Luck, because they choose other paths. They choose other paths, because the other paths are better. Why the other paths are better is probably up to you to explain (but it's likely to do with uncontrollability and uncertainty). $\endgroup$
    – user111403
    Commented Aug 13 at 11:53
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    $\begingroup$ Voting to reopen. Just in reading the question, it isn't asking for a character's choice and is thus not story based. So far all of the responses focus on some aspect of luck magic or history of magic or some other aspect of the world. $\endgroup$
    – elemtilas
    Commented Aug 13 at 19:47
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    $\begingroup$ Luck magic in specific might be really bad for any kind of modern technology. Changing the local laws of probability might not be a big deal if you're working with gears and belts, but complicated electrical switching or semiconductors could be badly affected. A lot of microelectronics depend on things like quantum tunneling (a random but predictable effect) to function properly. $\endgroup$
    – Darth Pseudonym
    Commented Aug 14 at 14:07

15 Answers 15

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Luck Favors the Bold:

It takes a wild and reckless person to take advantage of luck magic. In the Age of chaos, people had nothing but luck to rely on. Hard work wasn't rewarded. Having your magic do what it was intended to didn't help much - something disastrous would ruin your outcome. Only good luck put you in the right place at the right time to survive.

The people who benefited most from luck were those with a wild and reckless view. Pushed into an inescapable position? Throw yourself off a cliff and see what happens. But in a predictable world where death is not constantly imminent, putting your life constantly on the line gets you killed - eventually, your luck runs out.

Luck Feeds on Chaos:

Luck works best in unpredictable situations. A chaos world provides fuel for luck. Wild events present endless opportunities for luck to act in crazy and surprising ways. In such a world, luck doesn't particularly stand out - everyone who lives got lucky.

In a predictable world, there isn't another monster around every corner to intervene. No longer do random lightning bolts strike enemies dead.

Chaos Feeds on Luck:

Luck generates chaos. The world stops behaving in predictable ways as luck increases. The more luck that is around, the more the world starts to behave like the age of chaos. Luck is widely seen as being the cause of the age of chaos. As luck decreased, chaos decreased.

Luck is Greedy:

Controllable magic can be used to do what your conscious mind wants. Want to protect your village? Blast enemies, even if it risks your own life. Heal friends. Build things up.

But luck magic operates on entropy. You benefit personally, even if you'd rather save your friends and family. You don't have enough food today? Your baby catches a cold and dies. The mage's actions optimize this, so greedy luck mages who act in a self-centered way have the most luck. That works in a world where personal survival is paramount. But a greedy mage soon finds that getting what you want is not always what you need.

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    $\begingroup$ Luck favors your section headers. I've hardly seen bolder lettering in recent time. $\endgroup$
    – Mindwin Remember Monica
    Commented Aug 14 at 13:56
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Don't discount social pressure

Imagine a lottery, one with 100 people; All having equal 1% chance to win the thing. Now imagine a luck mage, increasing the odds of himself winning. Anybody else taking part in that same lottery is going to really dislike that.

The reason why you won't find that many luck mages then? People hate them.

To go some more in depth, the common believe about luck mages is that they increase their own odds, at the detriment of others. Even if their powers miraculously don't make the odds of others worse, and doesn't make them get opportunities that might have gone to others, it hardly matters. As people aren't completely rational, and as long they believe that they are losing out somehow; People will use luck mages as scapegoats. And thus people that are suspected of being luck mages are ostracized.

They should have shared it!

There are people that aren't luck mages, whom despise them in their jealousy. Either for the power the mages have (and they want), or for what the people believe should have been rightfully theirs (and is obtained by a luck mage).

I would have won the raffle, if it wasn't for that mage!

People that become luck mages either hide it, faking a different path. Or they attempt to force their magic onto a different path.

I am a lightning mage, I swear! lightning strikes the same tree twice

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    $\begingroup$ OP explicitly states "It deprives the Fortune of others to add it to its own mage's Fortune." So luck magic is widely known to make others more unlucky as part of its working. $\endgroup$
    – GiantSpaceHamster
    Commented Aug 13 at 13:58
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    $\begingroup$ @GiantSpaceHamster The point I tried to make is that it wouldn’t even matter it didn’t lower others’ their luck; People believing it does is enough. That it does just makes it easier to point out. $\endgroup$
    – vinzzz001
    Commented Aug 14 at 0:10
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Luck is great for threats you don't expect. If you're in a wild, vicious wilderness then you want to be lucky. You trip over food, predators stand on twigs to alert you - all things you couldn't plan against.

But in civilization... as long as you remember to look both ways at a road it makes little sense. The very many ways the need for luck has been eased out of life. Food poisoning isn't a thing with health and safety gone mad, etc.

Why have something so unpredictable and useless when you could have specialised magic that you can reliably use and target? After all, specialisation is the core of the modern workforce. You don't want a lucky doctor, you want a reliable one. You don't want a lucky teacher, you want one who can read your mind and tell you where you're screwing up your understanding of calculus.

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    $\begingroup$ This was my first thought as well. Barring the special exceptions of gambling and thrill-seeking, there is little need for true ‘luck’ in modern life because we have made so many things so much more consistent than they used to be, and the ‘bad’ outcomes are sufficiently rare or sufficiently low impact for them to just not matter. And outside of those special exceptions, almost every use for true ‘luck’ in modern life requires you to properly capitalize on the opportunity, which luck magic apparently can’t do for you. $\endgroup$
    – Austin Hemmelgarn
    Commented Aug 14 at 17:22
  • $\begingroup$ I was going to say the same, but on the other hand: Isn't the difference between the unhappiest, unhealthiest, powerless person and their exact opposite simply a matter of luck? Lucky to be born to the right parents at the right time in the right location with the right genes and then not suffering any illness or misfortune $\endgroup$
    – Michael
    Commented Aug 15 at 6:28
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    $\begingroup$ Expecting a mage to be using luck magic to ensure they're born to the right parents seems... excessive? $\endgroup$
    – user2702772
    Commented Aug 15 at 8:27
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Thieves in a zero-sum game

Self: Luck magic focuses its Fortune on its mage only. It deprives the Fortune of others to add it to its own mage's Fortune.

The description you have provided makes it clear that Luck mages deprive others of Fortune in order to take it themselves. Somewhere along the way, the other mages decided that they were fed up with the Luck mages making everyone else unlucky and banded together to do something about it. (As you have not provided any details about the other magic paths, the methods for how the Luck mages are/were detected and dealt with are up to you to determine.)

On an associated note, unless mages are self-taught, the "conservation of Fortune" principle means that apprentices to a master of Luck magic are likely to suffer a prolonged apprenticeship of bad luck before finally getting to leave and inflict comparative ill-fortune on others. Once this became known, it is unsurprising that people were disinclined to apprentice to Luck mages, leading to the path dying out.

There is also the reality that in modern times, with improved knowledge of the causes of ill-health, improved weather forecasting etc there is less need for luck, especially since luck "merely offers opportunities" - other magic paths also offer opportunities that are more predictable.

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I write what would discourage ME from taking the Luck magic as my only field.

Fortune: Luck magic focuses on increasing the chances of a mage encountering favorable situations and achieving success from probability-based endeavors.

Since this only increases the chance of success and does not guarantee it nor does it make me more likely to spot the opportunities that it brought. I would rather have the type of magic with more predictable outcomes.

Dynamicism: Luck magic bases itself on the mage's current short-term needs and wants. It doesn't operate in the long-term and doesn't take into account the future. Therefore, it constantly gives the mage's Fortune based on the present, immediate situation.

Since this magic takes only immediate future into account I can't trust it to grant me outcomes beneficial in a long run. I may consider myself lucky to come across a free cigarette now but my lungs will disagree tomorrow.

Positivity: Luck magic operates through excess. Fortune is always given in immense quantity, manifesting as positive Fortune. It doesn't use negative Fortune through deprivation, reduction and absence. Luck magic amplifies what the mage wants but it doesn't reduce what the mage doesn't want.

... meaning it won't reduce amount of my lung cancer cells I got from smoking all those 'lucky' cigarettes.

Perception: Fortune is defined by what the mage, as an individual, considers lucky.

Which again has the great potential to turn me into my own worst enemy

Self: Luck magic focuses its Fortune on its mage only. It deprives the Fortune of others to add it to its own mage's Fortune.

I may be be idealist, but I would consider this immoral.

Uncontrollability: While luck magic bases itself on the mage's desires, how it delivers Fortune and what the Fortune would even be is uncontrollable. The mage cannot specify the result or adjust the process of luck. Fortune is an unpredictable process that gives an unpredictable outcome.

Imagine scientist trying to use his magic to help his career. The magic would mess his experiments to always be a success independently of whether they are based on correct premise.

Uncertainty: Luck magic has a limit to how much it can affect probability. It cannot give certainties and absolutes.

If this is the limit I can rely on my only type of magic, then I would do better not relying on it at all.

Life: ...

Can't argue with that.

Opportunity:

Same as the first point

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    $\begingroup$ While the Life feature may not be a problem, it still puts Luck at a disadvantage to any path that doesn't have that limitation. Magic that gives you a Dead Man's Switch or your family life insurance is worth something, while anything that offers resurrection could easily be the most popular path out there. $\endgroup$
    – user111403
    Commented Aug 14 at 10:53
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You can't steal fortune from a machine

... It deprives the Fortune of others to add it to its own mage's Fortune... Only the living have Fortune...

Luck magic only affects living things meaning that any random event that was not created by a living thing is immune to your power. Because so much of the fortune inherent in the modern world is created by machines, luck magic is simply impotent and less reliable in the modern world. 1000 years ago, luck magic could save you from a deadly dragon, or a malevolent warlord, but what it can't do is make a slot machine payout better or keep your break line from spontaneously failing because "things" have no fortune to steal from.

Because of this casinos, lotteries, etc. will have no problem preventing a Luck mage from cheating by simply using some sort of unpredictable but deterministic machine in place of dealers to handle any game of chance.

This means that even the most powerful of luck mages could be exactly as lucky as anyone else in a wide range of common circumstances, and the more technology advances, the more humans rely on technology to create its own circumstances, and the less common situations will arise where you are dealing with a problem that gives you a direct line between you and someone else allowing their good fortune to be stolen.

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Based on your setting, I can think of a few reasons why they might abandon it:

No major threats: Without an impending danger, which nobody can see a clear way to defeat, there's less perceived need to depend on chance for a solution.

No practical incentive: Luck magic doesn't solve any concrete problems, so a pragmatic high-technology culture would favor anything else instead of it. Imagine depending on luck magic instead of regular maintenance to keep your factory running.

No risk takers: In a society where most people are generally content and well-off, they will be less willing to take risks. And, as we all know, fortune favors the bold. If you have a lot to lose, and tend to play it safe, then choosing luck magic means you won't likely reach your full potential.

High culture: Societies which are well-off and safe tend to think they've discovered the solution to morality and civilization. A culture with those kinds of self-righteous undertones might frown on gambling, and might feign asceticism by preferentially choosing certain losses over uncertain gains.

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Actuarial Magics

Just as there is Luck Magic that thrives on Chaos, there is Actuarial Magic that thrives on Order.

And the modern day is full of Actuarial Magic.

Luck Magic is a form of theft. It steals Fortune from others and provides it to the Luck Mage. Actuarial Magic detects this theft and society treats it as a crime, unless the person whom the Fortune was being stolen from was actively causing the Luck Mage harm.

An uncontrolled Luck Mage is nothing but a kleptomaniac, "surprised" by the cash and goods they pick pocketed. But here, they are sucking Fortune out of random passers by.

Imagine a world where Fire Mages would freeze everyone within 100' whenever they cast a fire spell, as they didn't generate heat, they just sucked it out of other people. The use of Fire Magic outside of extremely controlled situations would be illegal, and people who used Fire Magic in an uncontrolled manner would be caught and punished and prevented from harming others.

Luck Magic is this; and with the invention of Actuarial Magic, everyone can detect when their Fortune is being sucked away by some Luck Mage thief.

Abjuration Charms

Pretty much everyone carries a Luck charm, produced by an Actuarial Mage, that detects such Luck theft. It even indicates from which direction the Luck theft is occuring.

Luck Magic isn't the only harmful magic that is treated this way. A Mind Charm that detects mind reading and manipulation, and Charms against other kinds of harmful magic (disease, fire, cold, whatever), are just part of what people walk around with. They both prevent some low level harm from other people's use of Magic, and they provide detection of whom it is that is using the Magic.

And when you can't safely steal Fortune from other people, what use is Luck Magic?

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The fact that luck magic drags down others' Fortune might make the luck path less attractive for a couple of reasons:

First: If someone on the Luck path impairs the Fortune of everyone nearby, it's like they're constantly casting the evil eye on all their neighbors. As others have noted, Luck mages would become outcasts. The more intertwined people become in a civilization, the less viable this would be. Who would want to do business with a Luck mage? Worse, I imagine that most societies would pass laws against any kind of Luck magic if it harms others.

Second: Industrial-scale magic would certainly develop in an advanced society. Imagine that some Luck mage invents a method of packaging the Fortune effect and selling it. (He or she stumbled on the method by sheer luck, ha ha.) Now everyone can buy as much luck as they can afford. Oh, wait, somebody got lucky enough to stumble on a different, more efficient way of packaging and selling Fortune. There's competition in the market and the price goes down. Others get lucky too and come up with cheaper ways to package Fortune. Now everybody starts accumulating Fortune.

There are a few different ways this could end that would make the Luck path unpopular. Why specialize in a path when you can buy its effects cheaply? Or perhaps the arms race gets so out of control that the government has to step in to regulate (or ban) magic that affects Fortune.

Note that, because of the negative effect that Luck magic has on others' Fortune, you can have a society saturated in Luck magic and still write a story without tons of serendipity - everyone is being weighed down by others' Fortune as much as their own Fortune is lifting them up, so what they experience isn't particularly lucky or unlucky. And it's still possible to have a few Luck mages out there who benefit from their specialty, if your plot requires it. Suppose there's a secret society with the knowledge of how to wield Fortune that's not affected by others' Fortune. They keep this to themselves to maintain an advantage over the rest of society, or to escape legal penalties, or something like that.

This second reason can obviously veer into comedy, if you want that. But the idea of mass-produced industrial magic has a lot of possibilities that might be worth exploring.

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Negativity fields.

These were originally cast by a powerful sorcerer, now "passed from this world" (take that as you will). These fields wander, even tending to accumulate around magic centres (i.e. anywhere wizards may gather or hang around for too long).

These are common, perhaps one in three castings of luck-spells will attract something not so good. One in ten (or so) are fatal to someone; a well-paying client perhaps or the caster themselves.

Everyone knows the stories passed down of how the Grand-Chief Mage cast on the day of planting his orchid-cuttings, hoping for good growth - getting hit by multiple bolts of lightning - indoors. This has the effect of making any mild-mannered mage, cautious by nature and perhaps a little averse to negatives, rather shy away from the possibility.

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Fortune Magic is for Losers

I don't know how mages use their talents in your setting, but obviously there is a lot of very good (or very bad) things you could accomplish using different kinds of magic. You could be either be a wizard accomplishing impressive miracle-like feats, doing the impossible to help others and be greatly respected for it. Or you could destroy things and kill people unleashing devastating destruction spells and being feared and hated for it. You can do things that are great, or terrible, but either way, impressive.

Fortune mages, on the other hand, can be neither of those things. As I see it, Fortune magic offers two types of life path to those who became experts at it. One is being a freebooter, living off various kinds of gambling winnings (always having to move on to another casino or whatever once they've figured out you're basically cheating). Maybe you'll also be accidentally finding chests full of ancient coins or suitcases full of drug money from time to time.

The other is climbing the career ladder or finding celebrity and fame based purely on your ability to be in the right place at the right time. So you'll be someone who's been promoted way beyond their competence just because you've helped the big boss that one time or that annoying celebrity who no one particularly likes but who just ends up in everything. So fortune mages are not hated, but they're just sort of despised a bit. Add to that the common knowledge that the fortune mages steal their luck from others around them, basically, and it ends up a school of magic that's just really not respected.

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It requires passivity.

Every time you take steps to improve your own life, it jars the Fortune. Perhaps this helps, but overwhelmingly it harms. Either it reverses what the magic was doing, or it knocks it sideways so that the fortunate situation is not a benefit, happens to someone else, or still more odd occurrences.

To use Luck magic, you must accept that only Luck magic will improve your life. You work on it, it takes care of you as best it can, and you sit there and accept it. (This can make it hard to grasp the opportunities when they present. Or perhaps grasping an opportunity jars Fortune again.)

OR -- you use some other kind of magic AND you can do other things to improve your life.

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Evolution!

Luck magic works better for those with some intrinsic ability. Since it makes the individuals with this ability more likely to successfully procreate, the intrinsic ability strengthened and became more widespread. The need to actually understand and study complex rituals for decreasing reward faded out (because the art became less and less useful compared to the innate).

We still have luck magic. We just don't recognise it as such. We just notice that our society is full of people succeeding in their lives to a far greater extent than can be rationally explained. Elon Musk? Taylor Swift? Donald Trump?

They were born with greater amounts of intrinsic luck-magic-ability than most of us are. But magic doesn't exist. We just think they are lucky, and don't understand that their luck is in their genes (to a greater extent than explained by mere good looks and good health and inherited wealth).

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It doesn't play well with Modern Sciences.

All the other magic paths are predictable and so have been studied and improved via the scientific method meaning people are able to use them in very advanced and inventive ways.

The others paths might have high level university courses and be integrated into various technologies or precision arts where Luck's generic and random effects are not compatible.

The advancement of luck magic has been left behind so it is too primitive to compete in jobs, hobbies and general life.

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Individual's luck creates inequality and destroys countries. Only global countermeasures enabled the development of a modern society.

Luck magic would be extremely beneficial in modern society.

Even not mentioning lotteries; one's career, personal life and business can be really, really improved by a pretty small amount of luck. I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to be a luck mage.

Up to the point where you can rule the world with a pretty small amount of luck. No one would just give it away.

So, what happened?

After the Lucky Bastard Wars between a few especially powerful and ambitious luck mages who declared themself kings wiped the not-so-lucky 9/10 of the population, a united group of other mages with a great effort had put the weakened Lucky Bastards down.

They put a powerful Equal Opportunities Interdict spell onto the entire land.

"Equal Opportunities" became a popular idea, and enabled societal development, through both fair competition and improved education.

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