Quote Originally Posted by lord_khaine View Post
I guess its a question of not making said magic user so cool that they overshadow the main character of the show?
I think it's a mixture of this and if you aren't too careful magic can render it impossible for a character to be challenged (the lack of limits on magic in Harry Potter already causes a handful of problems leading up to 'why didn't they kill Voldemort and then look for the Horcruxes while he was coming back to life again'). It's generally much easier to sort this out by limiting the character rather than limiting the magic, because then the writer can still justify whatever Deus ex Machina they need.

One thing I'll definitely agree that, at least in terms of actual wizards, this seems to be almost entirely a trait among 'children/family' media, stuff aimed at adults is a lot more willing to have badass wizards as major characters.

Although it's certainly not universal, I read (four of the) the Magyk/Septimus Heap books years ago and found them to be a great series for children with wizard main characters who got to be cool, skilled, powerful, funny, inexperienced, or whatever depending on the character. I also suspect positive discrimination causes modern examples to have less clumsy/comical female magic users (although again it's not universal, there are certainly inept girl wizards).

Note that if you're going to have a wizard both skilled and powerful in children's/family media then the easiest way to maintain tension is to keep them out of the plot, because most of the time you do not want to explain the details of magic to a younger audience (I suspect that this is why Dumbledore is kept out of the climax of most Harry Potter books). It's easier to keep the Warp Drive broken if Scotty isn't available, and unfortunately powerful wizards solve a lot more problems than Scotty to.

Actually, technology is a good example. If you're written plots that revolve around the struggle to get from A to B you aren't going to give the characters a pilot and a private jet, if the problem could be easily resolved by shooting the villain you won't give the characters guns (or will make them rubbish shots). The problem is that being able to competently solves magic fixes a lot more problems than any single piece of technology about 90% of the time.

TL;DR: it's easier to either make a wizard incompetent or out of focus compared to explaining the rules of magic and coming up with situations that can't be solved by spell X, Y, or Z.