8 replies to this topic

[RJMooreII]

The Black Colossus shows a use of 'magic' on the battlefield to great effect, and certain summoning spells have been similarly effective at turning the tide of battle on RE Howard's stories. However, while most cities have various sorcerers and priests they don't seem to have much involvement in the military. Perhaps this is because most of their magic and skill is useless on the battlefield, and only a few can actually summon demons or send out shadow assassins.

Moorcock has some pretty impressive magical devices that really make and break battles; such as Elric's giant pyramid barges and earth-ship; or that weird mirror gong thing. These, however, do not seem typical. I mean, obviously people use organized and irregular military forces in the Young Kingdoms that are identifiable as similar to classical and medieval military units, so it can't ordinarily be mostly reliant on magic swords. Yyrkoon and Elric are both minor demigods and elvish royalty, so one might well expect them to have sorceries unknown to those in the young kingdoms (it is said that Elric's house and Melnibone were much favored by the chaos gods, who taught them many things they did not instruct their younger proteges the humans in).

Kane has some absolutely insane sci-fi/magic stuff going on, like weird sea-aliens, demonic spies, enormous kraken and laser-shooting submarines. I've only read the one book so far, so I don't know what else military use of magic he makes.

What ways do you think magic would be used militarily in a S&S world? What are some ways it has been depicted?

It also makes me think about a Universe more like Dungeons & Dragons; adventurers - especially wizards and clerics - basically gain limited use super-powers that are extremely crunchy and gamed for combat. There seem to be fairly large numbers of priests, wizards, sorcerers, paladins and magical beasts. Warfare in D&D would be frighting, and between well organized kingdoms with deep resources the kinds of devils, humanoids, monsters and super-wizards they could unleash would resemble WW3. Most D&D battles I've seen seem to assume human predominance and ancient military tactics, but I don't know why. 100 1st level clerics will kick the living crap out of 100 1st level fighters. It would be a massacre.

[Ironhand]

This reminds me of a D&D story I read many years ago. A high level magic user kept a "stable" of 100 1st level magic users. None of his friends could understand why he was wasting time and money and energy maintaining so many weak little drones. Then, when a big battle was in the offing, he had each of those little 1st level magic users cast Strength + 1 on him. Then, armed with Strength + 100, he strode into battle and crushed his enemies into jelly.

[RJMooreII]

This reminds me of a D&D story I read many years ago. A high level magic user kept a "stable" of 100 1st level magic users. None of his friends could understand why he was wasting time and money and energy maintaining so many weak little drones. Then, when a big battle was in the offing, he had each of those little 1st level magic users cast Strength + 1 on him. Then, armed with Strength + 100, he strode into battle and crushed his enemies into jelly.

lol, that's why only healing and damage are cumulative. Buffs of the same type don't stack, it's the rules in 3E and kind of implied in older D&D.

However, having 100 dudes who can start the battle off with several Magic Missiles or casting Shield on some assault troops you want to get past the archers would make quite a difference. Spells like Bless and Heal would also make a huge difference, a spell like Mass Heal could totally reverse a front.

Your average 1st level dude can cast 2 or 3 spells, so if you can get enough mages together to cast Spider-Climb and Shield you can make storming the walls pretty easy. And most spells in D&D, unlike Hyboria or Melnibone, are not particularly involved to cast.

Edited by RJMooreII, 04 May 2012 - 12:01 PM.

[Cheomesh]

This is something that has always kind of bothered me. I think the explanation given involves the relative rarity of magic users. Acquiring those 100 1st level guys would be kind of a chore, to use an understatement. Then there's the possibility they wouldn't all want to be a part of your plans, especially ones with any "levels" to them.

In the games of D&D I've GM'd and seen played though, magic users and their items are common enough that the quasi-medieval setting stops really making sense - Fireball, glitterdust and AOE spells in general would put some major holes in your pike formations rather fast. Then again, so do cannon...

In the old days part of the reinforcement for them being rare was in stat requirements - back then, in theory, it was harder to have 1-3 magic users in each party. After my first few campaigns I began to shy away from battlemages more and more because of all that.

Some time ago I laid down a setting in which a magocracy had taken root - a premodern world in which the tiered power system supported those who had magical ability instead of supporting those with the wealth to purchase knightly arms.

M.

[RJMooreII]

This is something that has always kind of bothered me. I think the explanation given involves the relative rarity of magic users. Acquiring those 100 1st level guys would be kind of a chore, to use an understatement. Then there's the possibility they wouldn't all want to be a part of your plans, especially ones with any "levels" to them.

In most D&D worlds, though, it's not genetic or anything. It takes brains and study, and anyone can become a magic user at will when they level up.

So, I have to say, the 'rarity' thing doesn't cut the mustard; because these people are GURPS SUPERTECH in a hat; their value to a middle-ages level culture would be incomprehensible. The simple spell 'ray of frost' makes refrigeration possible, which was a major contributing factor to the population explosion. Druids and clerics with their healing, disease curing, cleansing, food creating, fertility spells, etc. D&D, even assuming for some reason they used swords and didnt have modern technology, would be a freakishly wealthy society overrun with wizards of all kinds of power (which, interestingly, is what many fantasy 'ancient ages' look like - Netheril in Forgotten Realms, Sorcerer-Kings in Dark Sun) but the 'downfall' never explains why wizardry is kept down. It's just too good; it makes the discovery of metallurgy pale in comparison.

The basic issue is that Gygax went with a Kitchen Sink and a tactical game background; so the whole setting is chock full of GodButtons that should make it much more like a Technological Singularity than a dungeon crawler.

[Ironhand]

In one series of D&D campaigns I was in, we ended up organizing our party like a modern army platoon: melee fighters were the grunts, archers were the snipers, and magic users were the heavy weapons. We would never bunch up or march in formation, we would disperse and scatter. This made marching through a dungeon really scary, because we had to stay together. And even then, we would use leapfrogging techniques.

But the reason a magic using society wouldn't become an emulation of modern technology is that you don't have a situation where you can train high school dropouts to push buttons on machines they don't even understand. In a D&D type magic using society, even wands and staves can only be used by trained scholars, not to mention self-cast spells.

Edited by Ironhand, 22 May 2012 - 08:29 AM.

[RJMooreII]

In one series of D&D campaigns I was in, we ended up organizing our party like a modern army platoon: melee fighters were the grunts, archers were the snipers, and magic users were the heavy weapons. We would never bunch up or march in formation, we would disperse and scatter. This made marching through a dungeon really scary, because we had to stay together. And even then, we would use leapfrogging techniques.

But the reason a magic using society wouldn't become an emulation of modern technology is that you don't have a situation where you can train high school dropouts to push buttons on machines they don't even understand. In a D&D type magic using society, even wands and staves can only be used by trained scholars, not to mention self-cast spells.

But it's far beyond modern technology. I mean, aside from the irrationality of technology not just working (why can't I trap a mindless elemental in a boiler and have an infinite steamship?) the spells employed in D&D if used rationally - even low level spells - can be memorized in serial, used en masse and used repeatedly, day in, day out. A wizard can literally sculpt a castle out of a mountain on his own if he knows Shape Stone; and the few simple spells anyone educated could learn would be incredibly valuable and it would be well worth it for anyone with an IQ about 100 to get into the job; and well worth the satraps and warlords to train them. And in almost every D&D world there are huge numbers of mages, they are only 'rare' in the same sense bankers are rare; they're ubiquitous but not an especially large section of the population.

D&D worlds are mostly put together with nonsensical crap from an anthropological or economic perspective; the magic is just too powerful and too mechanical; it doesn't matter if you can teach an idiot to do it when you can reliably alter matter or create huge explosions of energy at will several times a day. That would just make magicians into valuable capital goods with all those idiot grunts pushing the nuts and bolts part of the magic-powered machinery they'd use that energy for. That's just how it would work; even low-level spells are far beyond modern human technological capacity.

Magic would break battle in the middle ages and completely rewrite social order, any kind of magic would and push-button Pseudo-Vancian magic would make the idea of a middle-ages society ridiculous. It just could not persist for ten years, much less millenia. Eventually everyone without the genetic disposition to be a mage or a priest would die out.

And if a goblin can learn magic missile, so can any literate person. And you can. Multiclassing like that is a normal part of D&D worlds. You can't really claim the restrictions people try to make up to rationalize it, because it is objectively not true in all the published settings except Dark Sun (and Psionics would worldbreak just as easily, for that matter).

Edited by RJMooreII, 22 May 2012 - 12:47 PM.

[Ironhand]

I think we've been playing slightly different games, but in general I agree with you.

[RJMooreII]

I think we've been playing slightly different games, but in general I agree with you.

It's a sad fact that genre literature and its derivatives are mostly the products of lazy hacks, and by the time anyone tries to put the breaks on it it's so part of the pop-culture that it's almost impossible to get unstuck. I consider all WotC game systems to be unplayable and uninteresting settings, because it's all kitchen-sink craptastical nonsense. At least Gygax had some style and interests outside of Supermarket isle Fantasy novels; now the stuff is being produced by people who have never read a fantasy book that wasn't essentially based on D&D 3rd hand. Why does every elf have to be a bug-eyed fairie? How about a damn ELF for Christ's sake. Do people honestly think 'Alfric' meant 'king of the little pansies with Yoda ears'? Nevermind, people don't think or know anything.

The same thing goes for 'science fiction' - there's no science and the plots are so laughable it's not even fiction. Likewise, the 'heroe's journey' and other overused Jungian tropes. Pretty much all television. I'd rather eat ammonia salts than read/watch that trash. Damn many-all-too-many, polluting the stream of life.

Edited by RJMooreII, 08 June 2012 - 08:17 PM.