What's the in-universe rationale for witch and wizard hats? I know that IRL they're derived from popular depictions of Odin, the archetypal wizard, but most fantasy settings have people sporting these hats in his complete absence. There must be a reason why casters dress like this.
Depends on the setting. Otherwise, consider the practical uses of broad-brimmed hats.
>Engineers still wear a metal ring on their pinky after swearing an oath in the Order of The Engineer
>Doctors are pretty insistent on their professional title
>Graduates wear that unique cap for their graduation ceremony
A lot of professionals have some sort of pseudo-uniform or keepsake that denotes their status. In a homebrewed setting, what distinguishes wizards are their big, wide-brimmed hats, and it's easy enough to come up with a justification for them:
>The hat is large and ungainly, peasant folklore is that Wizards and Witches have to fill their skull with arcane knowledge to even wear it.
>Among Wizards and Witches themselves, wildly gesticulating whilst casting spells or turning into some kind of laughing mad villain (always a risk) would strike their cap off, which serves as a reminder of a few things:
>1. That for all of his godlike power, the wizard is still a human (or elf, dwarf, etc) and capable of the same foibles, mistakes, and accidents as any other person
>2. That a true wizard should be stoic, patient, calm, and collected
>3. That a true wizard should be humble. To waste even a trifling bit of magic on teleporting the hat back upon your head is dangerously prideful.
The hats are pretty nifty, anon
Almost every major profession had its own hat that informed random people what they were in the 19th century. It's where we get things we still use today like the chef hat, police hat, conductor hat, fireman hat. But israeliteelers had their own hat too. So did accountants, brewers, and teachers.
Wizard hats follow the same mindset, that this is to inform everyone that this is a wizard even to illiterate people.
> conductor hat
Those aren't used anymore. At most conductors might wear a baseball cap.
I cant speak for the rest of em, but firemens "hats" (there helmets) were and still are purely practical. It has a tall top to allow for a leather shield to show which department you are a member of and the back of the brin extends back to prevent falling debris from striking the neck. In fact most of Europe has switched to a new style of fire helmet that is supposedly better and some cities in the US use a fire helmet that is more bowl like in shape than the traditional style.
As for Police hats, the traditional police cap is just a peaked cap that was popular military fashion at the time, or earlier was a pith helmet which once again was popular with militaries at the time. In the US some police officers wear a campaign hat, which, once again, comes from traditional military style.
Most professions headwear serves some practical purpose or is just trying to emulate a traditional style
Sun hat.
There was this Franciscan friar philosopher in the 1200s named John Scotus who believed that wearing cone shaped hats would improve your thinking ability. This is where both the "witch hat" and, ironically the "dunce cap" come from.
The world iq has lowered since the general abandonment of the dunce hat. I must conclude that scotus was in fact correct.
Not to mention the cone head species is quite more advanced then our own.
Aren't those actually originally brewer hats?
I have no idea what a brewer hat is meant to look like, but I guarantee to you that the popular image of wizards, and Gandalf in particular, is derived from Odin's traditional depiction.
Gandalf, sure. But the wizard hat tradition didn't start with him and was most definitely not originally modelled after Odin's.
Then show me a pre-Gandalf depiction of a classic fantasy wizard.
Why? That has no relation to what I said.
Don't try to wiggle out of it. Either you admit that modern wizards are based on Odin by way of Gandalf, or you show me that it's not so.
I wasn't talking about wizards. I was talking about their hats.
Doesn't matter, show me a wizard before Gandalf wearing the classic wizard hat.
The more correct idea is that wizards don't wear hats. Why would they? It's just stereotyping, a strange one at that.
IDK whats with this
weird guy here who is seeming allusive about it when your question is perfectly reasonable in context.
Here, big floppy hats being associated with witches and wizards far predates tolkein. Dont quote me on this, but I think there was a general cultural thing of pointy hats being mystical in a "mystic orient" sort of way. Even the cone hate Yen Sid style. I think israelites sometimes wore them too
in the right, traviling israelite with israelite hat israeliteing about israelily. Could see it catching esoteric connotations over time. Kind of like how mages are often shown as having vaguely arabian trapings like a israeliteeled turban. mystic east again. Though it could also be connected to the conical hats of the nobility of the medieval age.
forgot pic of the israeli individual
tell me 1 welsh women who is not a witch.
could that be a neologism/convergent evolution thing? cause are there depictions of odin with the wide brimmed pointy hat from before the 1700s-1800s? hes definitely said to sometimes be wearing a wide hat, but the type of hat he is often depicted wearing seems more 1600's european rather than pre 1000's norse.
The tall pointed hats we associate with witches were first worn by women hawking beer.
These woman are simply Welsh. This is called a Welsh hat.
I fricking knew it.
As with all devilry, it begins in Wales.
The idea of 'witches' is a modern orthographic error, which was exploited by the halloween-industrial-complex and then appropriated by feminist historians. In truth, it has always just been an issue with Welsh demonism.
2nd from left would help garden and take home basket full of cookies. She looks like a sweet gran.
That's all of them. Lighting is the only thing making the others look more evil than her.
Isn't it weird to think that when these old ladies were 18, they were getting their muff stuffed?
>archetypal
Wizard concept is likely extremely older than that.
in combat it's often impractical, probably even detrimental since it potentially marks you as a high value target. one use i could think of is for identification purposes in a well organized army
but out of combat why do bankers and lawyers still wear suits? why do people even wear hats in the first place? fashion is also an indicator of status or position, which might matter much more in a fantastical setting. i think extreme class mobility is a much more modern concept than we take for granted, but i don't really know
>high value target
Cuts both ways. Increases incoming fire, maybe, but also marks you as a good candidate for ransom.
Why do lawyers wear robes? Because at some point in time it became iconic for said profession and thus was adopted as a symbol of status and easy identification.
*Judges
Lawyers wear suits.
Yeah, my mistake. ESL struck.
>Lawyers wear suits
Americans think everything is about them. (Lol. He may have misspoke)
Seriously though. In Canada lawyers still wear gowns in court.
It has nothin to do with Odin. They come from the phrygian caps the three magi were depicted wearing.
Which comes from the actual magi, the Zoroastrian priests who lent their name to "magic" itself. Much of the European conception of magic and magicians comes from West Asia, especially (pseudo-)Zoroastrianism and Chaldean astronomy.
Have you ever seen what a phrygian hat looks like?
It's a little stylised, sure.
>Distinctive hat = distinctive role in society.
>Tall hat = easy to find in a crowd (may be important for status, or for convenience, or because other people may want to avoid or be wary of witches and wizards)
also
>Wide brim = sun no ouchie
i always liked tying magic to sacred geometries. long, triangular-tipped stuff conducts the flow of mana really well, which is why witches and wizards love pointy hats, burning candles, wands & staves, and tall tall towers. pentacles are great for conducting magic because they're just a bunch of triangles with a nice safe circle in the middle
The explanation I most like using is that they are related to the religious wear of some order or fraternity, kind of like Spanish Capirotes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capirote), a visual reminder of the stricly religious beginnings of magecraft and wizardry.
A lot of rival spellcasters and demonic creatures have spells that require eye contact to work. The big brim allows the wearer to quickly break eye contact, thus acting as an efficient way of countering spells. A lot of witches and wizards who find themselves frequently going up against these spells will take to wearing eye patches as an added bit of protection.
In FF14 black mages fight things that you shouldn't stare at so the big hats are meant to obscure vision on demand without having to completely close your eyes
They're the fedora of the fantasy world. They're worn by the kind of person who says "acktchually, necromancy is about communing with spirits to gain information and has nothing to do with animating skeletons". They call themselves wizards instead of mages and grow beards because "you can't call yourself a wizard if you don't have a beard". They're usually overweight and you can hear them coming from a mile away because they won't go anywhere without an oversized staff that keeps getting caught in doorways.
but what about witches
To flex on the normies.
I like the idea that some anon posed ages ago that reality kind of "stretches" around wizards. Their wands turn into longer and longer staves, forts become towers, and brimmed hats become wizard hats.
so I have a few reasons that I like to use, depending on what I'm working on
> badge of office
that's the basic one. they wear pointy hats because otherwise they're improperly dressed. or off-duty. discworld, equal rites in particular, et al.
> the magic does that to it
one of my favourites for slightly weirder worlds. it's also why they live in apparently precariously constructed towers or weird, seemingly malformed, cottages. the bigger and pointier the hat and weirder the construction of their home, the stronger the mage.
> it's a spell focus
this one I don't use too often but I find it fun. why should a wand be a spell focus? you use your brain to focus and your brain is in your head. 40k's psychic hood but with a bit of fricking style.
forgot this
> keeps the sun out of their eyes or stops them from blind themselves with their own beams or other practical reason
sometimes it is practical to wear a hat. if your wizards are theatrical to the point of being anime-esque it's more interesting if they have an entirely mundane reason to wear a hat. (like because they spend ten minutes charging a beam over their head before actually casting it) it provides a contrast.
A wide brimmed hat with a pointy top is iconic, even at a distance and in silhouette. People respect magic and magic users and they know a mage when they come in with the hat. The hat will open doors, it will get cooperation when you need it and it keeps down the level of nonsense.
Also it's good at keeping the rain and sun off.
fear of travellers and travellers wore big hats and cloaks
Probably goes back to the Odinnic wanderer myth
It's to let people know you're a wizard.
There is no rationale. It's just a thing amongst mages because big hats are cool.
The hat is the wizard/witch the body is just a puppet. If you look very closely you can make out which buttons or creases are its "eyes". The magic hats are very magic so people who want to be seen as a powerful mage emulate those who are
Do you need one? This is the definition of overthinking shit. You must be a horrible GM, if that's the shit on your mind
hat = clout
Originally, it was just a comfy hat. Soft, with a wide brim to keep the sun out of your eyes. Conical to divert rain and snow. However, it's become something of a badge of office for Mages.
It has been a fact through all of time and space that he who weres the grandest hats is bequeathed the grandest powers.
>what's the difference between witch and wizard
>are witches or wizards stronger
>what are the justifications for witch or wizard hats
Do you have absolutely nothing better to do?
Wizard hats aren't even that common nor do witches and wizards coexist in the vast majority of cases.
You're arguing hypotheticals with no point because you have no games beyond talking to yourself.
My personal approach is that it's simply tradition, in the same way an academic would wear a square cap back in the day or a businessman would dress in a suit. Just an aspect of dress culture.
As for why that tradition would exist, perhaps some well-respected wizard once wore a distinctive pointy hat just because, in the same way a king would try a new style and it would catch on because he's the king.
>What's the in-universe rationale for witch and wizard hats?
It's practical and fashionable at the same time.
Pale nerds and hats go together????
In the last game I ran, it was a combination of fashion statement and badge of office. The typical attire of a witch or wizard is comfortable, loose robes and a pointed hat with a wide brim. Cut and color is up to the wearer, but as a general rule the brighter the colors and broader the hat, the more well off and capable the mage. By the end of the campaign, the party's wizard was wearing magical fireproof robes worth more than the average small business.
Maybe they're like radio antennae for mana