Why DO wizards live in towers anyways?

>>48929686
Some say it's a habit from bygone age/a common sense to live in a defense structure. Some say they want to be physically elevated above rabble. Some say it's a competotion among wizards to have the biggest tower.

>>48929686
pic makes me want to play Starbound

Same reason gods inhabited mountains.

To be above the rabble.

>>48929686
star observatory at the top. really helps with calculations when you can track the movements of the stars and planets easier.

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>>48929686

What else are they going to jump off of when the life of being a pathetic magic user sinks in?

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>>48929686
Wizards tend to come from the lesser nobility, wealthy enough to afford an education, but possessing relatively little lands. What defensive fortifications their family owns are likely small watch towers or the occasional fortified hall.
As one of the younger children of such a family, Wizards are usually those children with an academic inclination given a small plot of land to maintain their dignity and keep them safe, but nothing important.
A tower provides protection and comfort, is good for star-viewing and other scrying-related activities, , and is also a good point from which to light signal fires and warn the rest of the territory.
It has the added bonus of being relatively easy to heat and maintain, most wizard's towers require either no or very few servants, thus providing the wizard with the solitude she craves while also not being an economic drain on the family.
Everyone wins.

So that when you have that 'Eureka!' moment, everyone below you can see exactly who had it.

>>48929686

No no no!

Wizards live in Dungeons! They build their laboratories deep under the earth to ensure if one of their creations flips out and kills them, they cant easily wreck havoc on the nearby citizenry.

>>48929827
>implying the nerds wouldn't just let their creations wreak havoc if they get loose as revenge

The explanation is Freudian. Wizards got penis envy from other more sexually active spellcasters like bards or sorcerers who live in brothels.

>>48929907
Even if they're female wizards?

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Towers are built from the ground up to be magical lightning rods
From the materials to the locations to the runes inscribed on the bricks the tower is meant to channel and amplify magical energy

>>48929942
Then they wish to be on top of said dick

Where do gishes live?

becauses towers are cool?

>>48930165
Split-level homes.

>>48930165
A fort with a tower built into one corner.

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>>48930165
In forgotten dungeons.

>>48929686
Natural instinct - a wizard builds a tower about themself like a snail grows its shell

>>48929827
Not sure if OPM reference

>>48929686
they like climbing stairs. keeps them fit.

>>48929686
>be a beginner wizard
>want a place to do magic
>build ground floor
>experiment goes wrong, ground floor is uninhabitable build first floor
>experiment goes wrong, first floor is uninhabitable build second floor
And that continue until the wizard become competent.

If Discworld is anything to go by, it's in the blood.
And also probably Freudian.

>>48931536
>And that continue until the wizard become competent.
Or the wizard fucks up badly enough to get themselves killed.

Then their tower becomes a dungeon for adventurers to plunder.

~It's the ciiiircle of liiiiiife~

>>48929686
Fun fact: the pentagram has no upper roof so many wizards use to build one in their basement and then build up. This worked for many years until a bound spirit flew so high that the wall of the pentagram started to knock him as the world rotated allowing him to stand on it, he asked for the gods to intervene as the wall was moving in to him and therefore was an attack and the gods called him a cheesy faggot but allowed him a save each round because wizards had been abusing the rules anyway and they were looking for a reason to clamp down on the spell.
Now wizards build towers in the style of old hoping to recapture the glory of those mighty magics they think lost to time.

>>48929686
because they are goats

Discworld wizards build towers because it's expected of wizards to build towers. It's engrained into the cultural unconscious image of wizards that they live in towers and cast spells from them, so Discworld wizards do it instinctively. Even Rincewind, when he was out of it, tries to build a tower because he really is a shitty wizard.

In Littlewitch Romanesque, a simulation game about training two cute apprentice wizards, wizards built towers to tap into the vast amounts of latent magic filling the earth and sky. Then they used these to wage all out magical war on one another.

>>48929686
The tower is a symbol. It is the forfeiture of a man's struggles to raise an isolated point to seclusion and repose. All magic users have a unique method of action. Witches find sympathies in the world's native workings and fill that space with its' potential, then manipulate those relationships toward specific ends. A mage makes magic act "predictable", shunting possibility ranges into ad-hoc laws and behaviors, then enact their work as formulas and influences, making the world conform to those, if temporarily. And there are many other magical kinds besides, all with different methods. A wizard is an aberration: a mottled skin over non-forces and false-worlds where its being used to be. Wizards thrust themselves to expanses with little to no bearing in the world and force a sympathy, taking two observed phenomena from different worlds and mashing them into a fallacious engine, a hybrid weft that pulls on itself and other elements strangely to ends only their worker can guess. Fundamentally, towers serve as surveillance point for resources, hidden cache for anomalies along their long dimensions, and a thoughtspace, grounded enough to all its anchored worlds to provide perspective but separate enough to see the disparate parts with an objective eye towards odd cohesion. Wizards can achieve these ends in other places as well as anyone else, but the structure is mentally stabilizing for many of them.

>>48929686
Astronomy to weave celestial-dependent spells and enchantments, communing with air spirits, tower being a small castle if enemy or misguided peasantry comes, because they can... And sitting on tower roof and gazing on the land below is damn comfy

>>48929686
How else are you going to rain electric death down on anyone who disturbs your 'study' time? You've got to be proactive about these things - you can't wait until they're at your door. You want to be able to spot them casually and annihilate them thirty kilometres out with the wrath of the heavens. You want to be able to take your time, not just go "oh, shit, adventurers" and have to whip out a shaped fireball spell or something.

And then you get the idiots who live in cities. They're either wanting a testing ground for a high-powered doom spell, or they're tools.

>>48930134
Plus you need room for a decent fractional distillation setup (which has to be tall).

>>48929686
Check out the lighthouse threads for suggestions. They've usually got a lot of supernatural explanations for the building of phallic structures.

>>48929686
If you had the opportunity wouldn't you?

Because they are defensible structures.

A Wizard's role in medieval society is like a landed noble's. Which means they are there to protect commoners from threats and be a source of power and intimidation. Bandits want to attack a town? They will think twice if they know there is a guy who commands demons and can shoot fire out of his face living in there.

>>48929686
Because Saruman lived in a tower.

>>48929686
could be like Shadowrun, where the only range for spells is LOS. That would result in wizards wanting to be as high up as possible so they could get the best range on their spells.

Was expecting more wizard tower art.....sorely disappointed.

>>48929686

Advertising. The appearance of defying gravity is a sign for being able to defy other physical laws.

>>48933491
Things were things before Tolkien

>>48932339
>lighthouse
Thinking about it, giving a lighthouse to a wizard may be a way to keep up comfortably seclude AND allow him to be useful to the community. It's a win-win situation!
Until he starts experimenting casting spells with the light.
Much less convenient for astronomy though.

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>>48929781
this is probably where the idea comes from IRL. this is an old astrological tower for instance.

>>48929686

The original wizards used to cause a lot of damage with their experiments, so they were pushed to the outskirts of town whenever possible. The very first working and repeatable spell that came into common use was the light spell and its variations.

Therefore, wizards who could dependably cast light spells and sent to the outskirts of town were lighthouse keepers. They could experiment in their solitary towers while providing a function for the community.

Yes, the original spellcasters were Wizards of the Coast.

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Because they can

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>>48934366
>mfw
It all makes perfect sense now.

Becsuse it gives you the perfect position to kill your enemies with spell fire. But not all wizards live in towers, some prefer hollow trees, libraries, caves and mountains.

But a tower that you can't easily climb does work very well.

Wizards have enemies, a tower allows them a better vantage to reign fire and brimstone down on any would be attackers.