You should read Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files." In this novel's universe, magic interferes with technology in a negative way, so the wizard protagonist prefers to carry large caliber revolvers, rather than more modern firearms.

It might just be me, but I think I'm more interested in settings where magic and technology interact in a positive way.

hmm in a series ive seen the mages use keys , maybe keys should be the weapons then

Taser, for anyone who gets too close.

not bad at all
pepper spray as extra vs animals

Maybe I simply don't understand your concept of "modern fantasy", respectively the role of mages in it,...but for me a mage is someone who isn't really allowed to use any weapons beside his wand.

After all: his magic is a mage's main power, and his wand is the embodiment of this power.
That shouldn't be so much different in a modern setting.

So, maybe replace the "classical" wand with a more modern equivalent, like a fancy walking cane?

And for the non-magical fighting...a blackjack.

Or heck...why not combine both and give your mage a modern telescope blackjack with magical abilities?

And yeah - I guess, a modern mage could make use of some kind of martial arts.
Though, for a mage, I would prefer something more on the side of defensive MA (Judo, Aikido, etc). Else you end up with a battle monk. :)

On the one hand, do wonder why some sort of staff isn't an option, since it may well be used in modern fighting.

But if that's the limitation, then I have two quite opposite options.
One is something that keeps the mage as far away from the action as possible and makes good use of their good concentration and focus, and what better to check those boxes than a sniper rifle? Actually, that makes good use of their general mental skills as well, considering all the factors needed to be accounted for when it comes to remarkable sniping feats.
The other is, as I said, quite the opposite, body enhancements that help the mage better transfer their magical powers into physical attacks, where you can go as high tech as you want, or as simple as brass knuckles or similar stuff.

None.

This is one of my major pet peeves with how D&D has influenced fantasy games... the idea that mages need to not only use weapons to fight, but even do most of their killing with them.

No game ever asks which magic skills fighters need to focus on... their weapon is all they need in the game. Same with shooters. They have their gun/bow, and they can fire away forever. But mages continually are punished for their magic. They're presented as needing to be skilled in other stuff, which I think is completely wrong.

Every other class gets to use their main offense type without limit, but mages are crippled with mana, and then have nothing to do when their mana runs out. Games dont' have stamina bars for warriors, telling them they can no longer fight when it's empty, and now have to use only wands and spells, because that is neither "fun" nor "realistic". It's not fun for me when mages have no mana and have to use weapons. I didn't create a mage in order to play a third-rate warrior.

When you pick an archetype in a game, you should be able to deal with 95+% of opponents with your chosen style, whether it's melee, stabbing, shooting, martial arts, psionics, magic, whatever. Games that let every other class kill everything in the chosen style but not mages irritates me to no end. I've recently been watching Let's Plays of Gothic 2 and a roguelike, and I'm reminded of how ridiculous it is for mages to be expected by the devs to use weapons.

An interesting question is why would a society with magic develop advanced technology in the first place. I mean if you can heal all wounds/disease with a cleric spell, why develop medicine? If you can use a mage spell to levitate stone blocks to build stuff, why develop masonry etc? I guess your referring to a setting where magic "came back" like Shadowrun.

SaGa Frontier 2 does a rather nice job of inverting this.
* Physical attacks rely on WP, and most weapons have a finite number of uses before they break. Characters have a bit of WP regen, but this amount is mostly fixed per character, with the only change being that it can decrease by 1 point per round when the character gets older. (Each event takes place in a specific year, so ageing is purely plot driven in this game; taking your time won't result in characters growing older here.)
* Magical attacks rely on SP, and durability is only a factor in duels, not party battles. SP regen can be improved with the right equipment, allowing it to get much higher than WP regen. Furthermore, if you end a battle with low SP, it will be instantly restored to the minimum that your equipment provides. The trade-off is that spell arts are weaker than weapon arts in the long-run, but spell arts have the advantage of a more diverse selection of effects (non-physical damage, healing, stat chances, status ailments you can't get with weapon arts, that sort of thing).
* (Of course, there's hybrid arts, which use a weapon, but consume SP.)
* (Worth noting that equipment is *very* important for casters in SF2; you don't want steel, as that interferes with magic (lowers SP and SP regen, plus a small additional modifier), but you do need to have every anima type you need covered, not to mention good SP and maybe SP regen.)

Also, there are some games (like Dragon Quest 8/9) where staves are not meant to be used as weapons, but are more for the skills (and, in DQ8, spells) that you learn by putting points into the skill (like a free healing skill, for example). Or, you have cases like SaGa 1/2, where there's no such thing as a physical attack with a staff; using one during battle (there's no Attack/Item distinction in these two games) will have a magical effect; original SaGa 2's only practical multi-target healing ability comes from a staff.

I could also mention Ikenfell, where spells are the *only* thing you get (no normal or weapon attacks), and for most the only restriction is finding a spot where there's at least one enemy in the target area for you to use a spell. (One spell can only be used if there's both an adjacent ally and an adjacent enemy; not often that you get to use it, but it's nice to damage an enemy and heal an ally in the same turn.)

(There's also the MP regen approach that some games, like Oblivion, have taken to allow spells to be used as a primary means of attack.)

By the way, when you said "wands and spells", you probably meant something like "wands and staves". Is that correct?

Or it could be a higher tech counterpart of SaGa Frontier 2, where some people are better at using magic than others, but technology doesn't have that issue. (In SaGa Frontier 2, Gustave is disowned by his royal family and exiled from his kingdom because he can't use magic (and this is a common magic setting), so he comes up with the idea of making a sword out of steel, and uses steel in order to build an empire.)

(Also, you mention using a cleric spell to heal wounds and disease, but for philosophical/"religious" reasons, I'm thinking that should be more the province of mages, and if religion is associated with magic, it should be spells of destruction and influence rather than healing; this is another pet peeve of D&D's influence on fantasy games, along with the one BlueMooner mentioned and the low base accuracy of attacks early in many WRPGs.)

Shadowrun is basically this setting and in my experience mages mostly carry light weapons for backup, like a pistol or SMG.

If you want to avoid guns and "old fashioned" melee weapons but have something equipped as a mage item, I'd take inspiration from games that had mages hold tomes or symbols. Maybe something like a voodoo fetish or charm.

Lightsabre, of course (^_^)

hmm thinking about this, chariot with wheel blades would be probably the best , and a dozen cats to pull it

To be honest, lightsabers feel like a way to shoe-horn swords into a science fiction setting, where it feels like they don't really belong.

Also, the idea of the only spellcasters being the only ones able to use what the movies make out to be the most powerful weapon type (excluding planet-destroying weapons) is not a good one for game balance.

(SaGa 1 and 2 do have light sabers, but they work off AGI, not MANA; there are Psycho weapons that work off MANA, but they're only useful in SaGa 1 (well, the Psycho Gun of SaGa 2, which behaves like a powerful spell, could be useful, but it's not practical due to limited availability unless you're playing the remake, finite durability, and that robots can't make good use out of it in the original because they have 0 MANA. Note that MANA is spell power, not MP/SP (as the game doesn't have such a stat, relying solely on durability to limit use of powerful spells like Flare).)

scify? but you wanted fantasy

nah everybody can use lightsabers
but force users can make and maintain them