Usually it's not even a particularly great one, with magic routinely underpowered compared to just clonking things with a sword in order to avoid combat becoming just hanging back and nuking enemies from the other side of the room. Really though, it's little different when we use it in games - awesome power, reduced to simply powering a treadmill in a slightly more flashy way than just hitting things with a sword. It's commoditised power, and as such, pretty boring. Avatar: The Last Airbender's sequel series The Legend of Korra offered several great examples of that as part of its general move from a fantasy world into a more technologically driven one - that while originally, those who could command lightning were seen as elite and able to dominate in just about every battle, a few decades later the best use for it is just standing around all day zapping the stuff into a power-plant in exchange for shit wages. Go too far the other way though and it ceases to become a big deal - mundane instead of magical. It's authorial desire manifesting directly within the story, and limited only by the creator's own restraint. Make it too powerful and everything else becomes irrelevant. Magic is one of the hardest parts of fantasy - any fantasy - to get Right. I just wish it was a more satisfying one. It's an easy fantasy to indulge in almost any RPG out there. Give me control over the elements, the power to reshape the very building blocks of the universe according to my every whim, and if at all possible, a cool hat. Given a choice, I almost always play as a mage.
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