Since mages and other prep heavy classes tend to have much less in the way of preventing escape then melee builds do.

Also keep in mind that as a mage when you use up those sweet precious preps and they just teleport/word you just wasted your prep gathering time too.

And do you know what? As a non villager using the east/west/north/south/up/down commands work for avoiding fights too.

Having word and teleport out there is fine, but the fact is that they are extremely low risk (oh no I died to a mob in 1 of 90 teleports I wonder if I should try now with a close to 1% chance of bad happening or try to hoof it! such a tough tactical decision!)