D&D Battles
Edmund E Freeman
large-scale battles would be like in the D&D world. I want to expand on
that.
The essential insight is: if you have a mage with a wand of fireballs,
a ring of levitation, and a scroll of PF : Missiles on one side, and say
a Roman legion on the other, the result isn't a battle but a barbecue.
The first rule is: spread out! This gives a non-trivial optimization
problem: to optimize for magic survival, an army wants to be spread out
as much as possible; but to optimize for practically everything else, an
army wants tight formations. The amount of magic available is going to
vary a lot from campaign to campaign, but let's take an example of two
50,000 man armies going at it, each with 500 people who have some levels
in magic use.
The armies are going to want to have maximal spread, so say 1 person
alone in a 22' sphere, so a fireball can get only a couple of people.
At this spread, magic missile will be as effective as a fireball,
really. This gives an army spread out over about 2.7 sq miles. You can
stick an army like that in a square 1.7 miles a side, which isn't that
bad. Note that is you try to form them up into a line, say 20 men deep,
the army has to be 33 miles wide. This raises problems. I suspect a
square, or a rectangle 1 mi * 3 mi, will be the best. The spread will
be more if the armies have discrete units with space between the units.
The real trouble is keeping this kind of formation during marching.
Roads will be deathtraps for armies (Have a magic item that's a one-shot
fireball that goes off when the item hits something -- a hand grenade,
essentially. Get a fast invisible flying thing to drop a stick of these
on an army. Stuff like this is why you avoid roads). The army will
(slowly!) arrive at the battlesite a disorganized mob. There's also
going to be a huge amount of attrition during a march, in terms of
people just getting lost or finding ways to chicken out. Crossing a
bridge is going to be a major event. The army will be very vulnerable to
raiding parties.
It's also going to be painfull to get everybody fed with an army that
spread out and that disorganized.
The battle will be nerve-wracking. The two armies come into contact
with each other, and a thin line forms at the contact points. You want
a continuous line there so the front line doesn't get overwhelmed but if
the line is too deep it makes for tempting target. Even worse than in
our world, the commanders will have no idea what's going on. The goal
of the initial contact will be to get the enemy to commit as much
magical resources as possible early in an inefficient way, so that later
in the battle you can commit yours efficiently and decisively. This
will give a lot of battles a back-and-forth flow: one side will appear
to be winning but then the other side will crash through.
For the guys on the front line, life is really hard. If they win
though, their reward will be getting flattened with a major spell. A
lot of them will find lots of reasons for getting lost on the way to the
battle.
The decisive factor in the battle will be magical resources, both in
terms of numbers of mage-enabled characters and the spell resources of
an army. There should be a lot of pressure on up-and-coming fighters to
take at least one level in mage, so they can use mage-only items. Also,
there should be a lot of pressure to produce and stockpile magic items.
I can see a mage's tax of basic magic items it return for being allowed
to practice magic. A gentler version of this is the King sponsoring
magical studies for as many people as can be managed, with the payback
in magic items and service in times of war.
Before war is declared, the nations should try very hard to reduce the
magical resources of the other. There should be thief-raids on the
other's magical armories, and an assassination war against the other's
mages. Kings must covertly be on very good terms with their Assassin's
Guild, even to the point of protecting the existence of the Guild.
All of this gives lots of opportunities for adventures.
-- Sudden assassination attempts against the party's mages as the first
indication of a war starting.
-- The party commissioned to go munch a few opposing mages.
-- The party being given a few low-level mages to keep alive.
-- The party having to complete a mission without its' mages, because
the mages have to be kept safe for the war or have been ordered to start
making items for an upcoming war.
-- Raids against opposing magical armories, either to steal or to
destroy (what is the sound of 100 wands going off at once?)
-- Outside of warfare, those armories are going to be tempting targets.
-- Players uncover evidence of a LG king sheltering an assassins' guild.
-- Raiding parties against an opposing army, or being told to hunt down
some raiding party.
There is also the strategic issue of not wanting to expend all of your
magic resources in one war. If A defeats B, but both are completely
drained, C has an easy lunch. Of cource, if A and B then put up more of
a fight than C thought then D might want to get involved, perhaps
pulling in E. This might give A and B time to rev up again. This could
get extreme if it happens after a long period of peace, so everybody's
stockpiles are big.
I really haven't touched on the air war and how to keep air
superiority. That's a whole 'nother mess.
--Ed Freeman
Gary J. Robinson
classical D&D world. The fireball wand is the equivalent of the machine
gun, or modern artillery. The idea of ancient mass armies makes no sense
if you have machine guns and modern artillery. Instead you would get
smaller groups of people all armed with fireball wands. Masses of
soldiers are not cost effective in such a scenario. They are not good at
killing anything except other masses of soldiers. They are ineffective
against the fireball-using mages. They are as obsolete as a Roman legion
would be in a trench in 1916. So, for that matter, are castles, city
walls, and other artifacts of mundane history.
That is why, in my latest incarnation of my world, magic does not work
anywhere near human civilized areas. Monsters cannot go there and spells
do not work there. There is thus a reason for castles, armies, and other
ancient/medieval features. Peasants can also survive (hard to imagine
how in the classical D&D world filled with ankhegs, etc.) and thrive
without a 24 hour a day guard against marauding monsters. And characters
cannot waltz into a city and use their spells and magic items to rob,
steal, dominate or terrorize the population. In the city, numbers count
and magic is useless. It does a good job at keeping public order and
reducing abuse....it is hard to imagine how public order could survive
in a world filled with invisibility spells, silence spells, spider
climbs, charm persons etc. Nothing and no one would be safe, even in a
city, which means there is no particular reason why cities should even
exist.
But if civilized areas are completely mundane, you get your cake and eat
it too: you can have stable, orderly civilizations, with armies and
castles, political organizations and law and order, and yet have lots of
funky magic stuff going on...it just has to go on out in the wilderness,
where the wild things are....
Gary
Ian R Malcomson
>The bottom line is that the idea of armies doesn't make any sense in the
>classical D&D world. The fireball wand is the equivalent of the machine
>gun, or modern artillery. The idea of ancient mass armies makes no sense
>if you have machine guns and modern artillery. Instead you would get
>smaller groups of people all armed with fireball wands. Masses of
>soldiers are not cost effective in such a scenario. They are not good at
>killing anything except other masses of soldiers. They are ineffective
>against the fireball-using mages. They are as obsolete as a Roman legion
>would be in a trench in 1916. So, for that matter, are castles, city
>walls, and other artifacts of mundane history.
This argument works, *unless* the proportion of wizards in the world is
small. If only 1/1000 individuals are wizards, and only 1/1000 of those
wizards take to battle, that's a very small number of "machine guns" and
"artillery units" to take to war. In this case, most battles would be
fought using more mundane methods - making massed armies, castles, etc.
prevalent.
Whether or not massed battles make sense within a given world depends on
the level of magic that world possesses.
--
Ian R Malcomson
Erstwhile Domicus bloke
Domicus website: http://www.domicus.demon.co.uk
ProFantasy Freelancer: http://www.profantasy.com
R. Scott Rogers
> small. If only 1/1000 individuals are wizards, and only 1/1000 of those
> wizards take to battle, that's a very small number of "machine guns" and
> "artillery units" to take to war. In this case, most battles would be
> fought using more mundane methods - making massed armies, castles, etc.
> prevalent.
>
> Whether or not massed battles make sense within a given world depends on
> the level of magic that world possesses.
It also depends on the strength of defensive spellcasting in the world. If,
for every magic user casting fireballs you have another magic user casting
anti-magic shields, you can be back to square one.
This discussion has so far assumed that people will want to engage in
hoplite-style shield-wall combat, with dense formations meeting on an open
field. I suspect that combat that emphasizes missile attacks, guerilla
tactics and mobile forces will likely evolve in settings with lots of
uncountered offensive magic. The Mongols and Scythians, not to mention the
Viet Cong, might provide better examples for warfighting in high-magic
environments than the decisive-combat model of the West. For mass armies,
you'd need to think in terms of combined arms, which requires sophisticated
communications. Bards casting Message and Whispering Wind spells, along with
lots of Scrying, would make up your command-and-control infrastructure, and
would be a winning army's secret weapon.
I think perhaps the Seven Years War in North America (the French and Indian
War) would be a good model for study as well.
Cheers,
Scott
--
"All things end badly, or else they wouldn't end."
R. Scott Rogers
sro...@mindspring.com
Gary J. Robinson
<i...@domicus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >The bottom line is that the idea of armies doesn't make any sense in the
> >classical D&D world.
>
> This argument works, *unless* the proportion of wizards in the world is
> small. If only 1/1000 individuals are wizards, and only 1/1000 of those
> wizards take to battle, that's a very small number of "machine guns" and
> "artillery units" to take to war. In this case, most battles would be
> fought using more mundane methods - making massed armies, castles, etc.
> prevalent.
>
> Whether or not massed battles make sense within a given world depends on
> the level of magic that world possesses.
I understand your point, but notice I said "in the classical D&D world"
and the original poster was assuming stockpiling of magic items, etc.
There is an entire body of assumptions that go behind the idea of
armies, castles, and walls. All of these assumptions are negated by the
existence of magic. What army would undertake a long slow march to an
enemy area, for example, if they knew a mage could simply fly or
teleport behind them and destroy their homes while they were away?
Defense becomes impossible. What soldiers would march into battle
knowing there was a chance they would simply be massacred by area of
effect spells? It would be impossible to hold an army together under
these conditions. Morale would be devastated. And why waste money hiring
an enormous army, and trying to feed it, when a couple of wizards would
do instead? Why spend years building an expensive city wall when a mage
can make a hole in it in seconds, or even fly right over it?
In any case your numbers are a bit extreme. One out of a million people
being battle wizards means the equivalent of the Roman Republic, which
could field an army of 80,000 men from Rome's population of one million
souls, having exactly one wizard. In medieval terms the average medieval
kingdom, with a much lower population of potential soldiers than Rome in
its glory, would have no wizards. At this point you are basically
talking about a non-magical world in terms of military science. Which is
fine, but I don't think it is the scenario envisioned by the original
poster. And it doesn't take into account monsters either. An army would
be a sitting duck for a large dragon or any number of other flying or
horde monsters. An even bigger target would be the homes the army left
behind.
Armies were used because they were the only force available. I doubt
they would be used under the circumstances of the typical D&D world. Of
course if you make magic really rare, it changes things a bit, but then
it is not the typical D&D world, especially under 3d edition where magic
items can be manufactured pretty easily.
Gary
Anivair
>small. If only 1/1000 individuals are wizards, and only 1/1000 of those
>wizards take to battle, that's a very small number of "machine guns" and
>"artillery units" to take to war.
>Whether or not massed battles make sense within a given world depends on
>the level of magic that world possesses.
Agreed. The other factor is whether you want to allow magic to overpower
technology. I mean, a fortress like a castle isn't exactly the same as a
Dominion home. It's built to withstand siege weapons (which is funny because
siege weapons are often built to tear a castle down). WHo's to say a fireball
will do enough damage to bring the place down, even at the door. Human beings
caught in a fireball stand a decent chance of survival, as evidenced by many
charachters survining fireballs. So why would a huge castle fare worse?
I agree that magic makes things hard on an advancing army. Of course, a smart
general will think his way around that. That's the point of having someome
plan the army's movment, isn't it?
--
later,
~Anivair
Ani...@aol.com
Gary J. Robinson
<sro...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> It also depends on the strength of defensive spellcasting in the world.
> If,
> for every magic user casting fireballs you have another magic user
> casting
> anti-magic shields, you can be back to square one.
Not really. The offense decides where and when to hit. Defensive magic
is not of much use when you don't know when, where, and with what you
are going to be hit. In this sense, D&D magic is similar to mid-20th
century technology: tactically, the offense dominates the defense. There
is no real protection against most 20th century weapons, you just have
to hope they miss you.
> I suspect that combat that emphasizes missile attacks, guerilla
> tactics and mobile forces will likely evolve in settings with lots of
> uncountered offensive magic.
My suspicion is that once magic is recognized as the key element of
victory, all military resources would go toward getting more and better
magic. Why waste time and money on equipment, training and techniques
that are ineffective? The response to the machine gun was not to engage
in hit and run raids, it was to equip your own guys with machine guns.
Wizardry, like atomic weapons, would not remain the province of a few
eggheads once its value was recognized militarily. It would become the
chief interest of rulers everywhere.
Gary
Drew Id
"Edmund E Freeman" <efre...@blarg.net> wrote in message
news:3A90A43F...@blarg.net...
> I few weeks back, a poster made some interesting comments on what
> large-scale battles would be like in the D&D world. I want to expand on
> that.
>
> The essential insight is: if you have a mage with a wand of fireballs,
> a ring of levitation, and a scroll of PF : Missiles on one side, and say
> a Roman legion on the other, the result isn't a battle but a barbecue.
>
> The first rule is: spread out!
I have to come again to the point I made on this topic earlier. Assuming a
fairly high combat wizard to combat soldier ratio, of say 1/50, the best
tactic would be to never group the army into one mass in the first place.
The smartest invading army would be divided into autonomous roving guerilla
bands of 10-50 soldiers and wizards, each band with seperate goals and
routes into enemy territory. Each group would go through the area raiding
any village that it could beat, and running away from larger forces, while
working towards a particular goal. After the general infrastructure of the
region becomes unstable and splintered, the larger cities would fall prey to
these same bands that could use deception to enter the cities and perform
"terrorist" or hit-and-run attacks on key targets. Finally, decimated bands
could regroup with other bands to reform into larger units when needed for
final assaults. In this small-unit combat, the effects of magic would be
limited to the standard role that it plays in most DnD parties, where it
does not completely replace the usefulness of conventional weapons, as it
would do in a large-scale battle.
Under this type of invasion, a defending army could not stay in one
large group and defend everywhere, so it, too, would have to split up into
similarly-sized bands for defense. Again, at this point the usefulness of
magic would drop down to a manageable level and the usefulness of
conventional weapons and soldiers would again rise to normal levels. The
most important aspect of magic for both sides would then become
communication and through communication, the interception and evasion of
opposing forces. Also, the importance of assassination would become more
prevalent, as eliminating a high-level wizard could make more difference to
the final outcome than eliminating a ruler or effective general, but still
not so much that the war becomes simply a matter of dueling wizards.
Edmund E Freeman
This makes a lot of sense.
It's going to be impossible to logistically support an army like this,
so both sides will be forced to live of the land; i.e., steal from
peasants. If the war goes on for a while, this can get really hard on
the peasants. In the 30 Years War, Germany lost 1/3 of its' population,
not to battle casualties but to starvation from the armies stealing all
the food.
Strategically, it is going to be critical to have the war on the other
guy's territory. Or, you could have the 30YW situation, which was
essentially a war between France and the Hapsburgs (Austria / Spain)
fought on German land.
This would be a great set-up for a campaign: a long war between two
great powers. Good players would have a real moral problem: they want
to defeat evil but the real source of evil is the war itself. The lack
of food could lead to some interesting treasures: " ...Gold ... Platinum
... Gems ... CHEESE!! GUYS, THEY HAVE CHEESE!!!".
Note that this viewpoint has some interesting societal implications.
Kingdoms need to actively encourage adventurers, to make up its' small
groups. The D&D universe actually starts making sense.
--Ed Freeman
Drew Id
Yes, the groups would have to adopt a brigand/adventurer lifestyle, or keep
clerics around for the Create Food option, but mostly it would come down to
raiding farms, villages, and caravans. An army does live on it's stomach,
but the small groups would have a tactical advatage here, as they would go
into it with the assumption that they would have to support themselves.
> Strategically, it is going to be critical to have the war on the other
> guy's territory. Or, you could have the 30YW situation, which was
> essentially a war between France and the Hapsburgs (Austria / Spain)
> fought on German land.
Absolutely. Also, the populace would likely drop into refugee mode and
either leave until the fighting was over, or else hole up into large cities
and castles. A stranger entering a town would be under extreme suspicion,
and travelers meeting on the road would have to assume *everyone* is a
potential enemy.
> This would be a great set-up for a campaign: a long war between two
> great powers. Good players would have a real moral problem: they want
> to defeat evil but the real source of evil is the war itself. The lack
> of food could lead to some interesting treasures: " ...Gold ... Platinum
> ... Gems ... CHEESE!! GUYS, THEY HAVE CHEESE!!!".
LOL. This is actualy really true. The roving bands would probably collect
money up to a point, but they would really be after more supplies a lot of
the time. Also, smart leaders would quickly establish hidden caches of gold
and other valuables for later reclamation. A nice hook is then established
later, when PC's might find a map from a war long ago detailing where caches
of gold and weapons were hidden and never reclaimed. Of course, the
defenders would e doing the same thing.
> Note that this viewpoint has some interesting societal implications.
> Kingdoms need to actively encourage adventurers, to make up its' small
> groups. The D&D universe actually starts making sense.
Actually, this was how I constructed this strategy; I was trying to find a
way for the D&D universe to make sense, and this is what came of it. Glad ya
liked it. ;-)
R. Scott Rogers
> It's going to be impossible to logistically support an army like this,
> so both sides will be forced to live of the land; i.e., steal from
> peasants. If the war goes on for a while, this can get really hard on
> the peasants. In the 30 Years War, Germany lost 1/3 of its' population,
> not to battle casualties but to starvation from the armies stealing all
> the food.
Difficult, not impossible. The front-line forces in the European Theater of
WWII were similarly spread out. With some dimensional doors, bags of holding
and so forth, supplying such a thinly spread front-line source is eminently
possible, but not easy. It will eat up proportionally more people than the
typical pre-Renaissance army, but given the thinly spread front-line force
you'll have extra soldiers to put into quartermastering.
> Strategically, it is going to be critical to have the war on the other
> guy's territory. Or, you could have the 30YW situation, which was
> essentially a war between France and the Hapsburgs (Austria / Spain)
> fought on German land.
It is always preferable to fight a war on someone else's land, as long as
you have good information about the terrain. This is a sweeping
generalization, but given the context of the example and the discussion it's
a useful one.
Michael Harvey
Edmund E Freeman wrote:
>
> I few weeks back, a poster made some interesting comments on what
> large-scale battles would be like in the D&D world. I want to expand on
> that.
FWIW, the world of Mystara has a huge magical empire (Alphatia) which
fields battle-mages. The battle mages are 1st-level magic-users armed
with a wand of magic missiles (plus a dagger for emergencies). Fireballs
are waaay too expensive to mass produce and easily outsmarted by
spreading out; magic missiles are fairly cheap and unerring. The battle
mages wear sharp uniforms but no armor, armor being useless against
magic anyway. In Alphatia, all spellcasters are nobility, so the batte
mages are junior officers, at least. They are supported by standard
nonmagical troops in plate and sword. Additionally, Alphatian armies
have air superiority with their fleet of flying ships armed with
fireball cannons.
The Thyatians, arch-enemy of Alphatia, are geared toward fighters. They
lack the large numbers of spellcasters and the flying ships, although
they do have powerful mages which accompany their legions into battle.
But mainly they rely on vast legions of crack troopers, heavy cavalry,
etc. Instead of a sky navy, they have an "imperial air corps" of
dragon-riding knights. Thyatis also has a LOT of clerics to support the
army, something Alphatia lacks, including fanatical religious Storm
Troopers.
Both of these empires are balanced by the Heldannic Knights, a nation of
religions knights and clerics who also have a sky navy of flying ships
(including invisibility devices and top secret energy launchers), who
worship a god of conquest. There is also the nation of Glantri, a land
literally swarming with high-level wizards, with enough magical might to
stand on their own without any army or navy at all. And there is The
Master, who simply swarms his enemies with uncountable hordes of nomadic
barbarians and humanoids.
The real problem for Thyatis and Alphatia isn't really warfare
technology, though: it is apathy, political corruption, and the
logistics of trying to control such vast empires. The empires regularly
beat each other into a bloody pulp until their treasuries are exhausted,
back off, and do it again a decade later. The wizards of Alphatia and
Glantri care far more about research and "face" than they do about
conquest -- war is just another court intrigue, and when they've
humiliated their rival the war is abruptly called off. This is also true
with Thyatis to a large extent. Cites are walled, not to protect against
neighboring empires, but to protect against pirates and the occasional
orcish horde.
> There is also the strategic issue of not wanting to expend all of your
> magic resources in one war. If A defeats B, but both are completely
> drained, C has an easy lunch. Of cource, if A and B then put up more of
> a fight than C thought then D might want to get involved, perhaps
> pulling in E. This might give A and B time to rev up again. This could
> get extreme if it happens after a long period of peace, so everybody's
> stockpiles are big.
This is important on Mystara. Both Thyatis and Alphatia could walk over
the known world if they were unopposed, but their ongoing cold war won't
allow them to expend too much effort on such things.
Magic changes everything. I tend to think that, if handled
realistically, it would be a lot more like Mystara than Greyhawk or the
Realms.
Mike
Ian R Malcomson
>This is important on Mystara. Both Thyatis and Alphatia could walk over
>the known world if they were unopposed, but their ongoing cold war won't
>allow them to expend too much effort on such things.
It's also considerably harder for Alphatia to enact continued warfare
against Thyatis, considering the current location of the continent...
Duane VP
news:wiggler-BCD981...@news.concentric.net...
> The bottom line is that the idea of armies doesn't make any sense in the
> classical D&D world.
Oh they still make sense. They just can't operate according to ancient
rules of warfare in the presence of magical opposition.
> The fireball wand is the equivalent of the machine
> gun, or modern artillery. The idea of ancient mass armies makes no sense
> if you have machine guns and modern artillery.
It definitely encourages division of troops into smaller units than
companies (squad or platoon) for greater mobility and lighter density of
troops. Massed "Braveheart"-style combat, sieges, and the like still work
as they always did - just not in the presence of an enemy using any
significant amount of magic, especially area-effect damage spells.
> Instead you would get
> smaller groups of people all armed with fireball wands.
Well, maybe not with wands, but certainly with spells. All depends on
the commonness of magic items and spellcasters in a given campaign.
> Masses of
> soldiers are not cost effective in such a scenario. They are not good at
> killing anything except other masses of soldiers.
There you get into issues of spell range and tactics. Light Cavalry
would cover the 400'+ of a fireballs range in 2 rounds at running speed. If
they're spread out fairly well as they cover the intervening distance they
can't ALL get hit by fireballs. Then there's missile fire and
counter-battery fire (fireball hurlers on the other side).
> They are ineffective
> against the fireball-using mages. They are as obsolete as a Roman legion
> would be in a trench in 1916. So, for that matter, are castles, city
> walls, and other artifacts of mundane history.
Only in the presence of magic. Castles and curtain walls are still the
best place to start for defenses. And a Roman legion would probably not be
so stupid as to commit themselves to trench warfare in the first place.
Remember that even in WWII riflemen still carried bayonets to stick on the
end of their _firearms_ - and occasionally used them!
> That is why, in my latest incarnation of my world, magic does not work
> anywhere near human civilized areas. Monsters cannot go there and spells
> do not work there. There is thus a reason for castles, armies, and other
> ancient/medieval features.
Interesting idea. Very interesting...
> reducing abuse....it is hard to imagine how public order could survive
> in a world filled with invisibility spells, silence spells, spider
> climbs, charm persons etc. Nothing and no one would be safe, even in a
> city, which means there is no particular reason why cities should even
> exist.
It certainly helps if you postulate that not every tenth person is a
spellcaster. Keep magic rare and the PC's as _extraordinary_ individuals
and the problems associated with magic and large-scale warfare drop
dramatically.
--
Duane VanderPol
http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp
Duane VP
> My suspicion is that once magic is recognized as the key element of
> victory, all military resources would go toward getting more and better
> magic. Why waste time and money on equipment, training and techniques
> that are ineffective?
But if magic is really that deadly in war - you need MORE mundane troops
to soak up the damage. Territory STILL has to be taken and held by grunts
or what's a war for? :-)
Xeno
wrote:
That's also a good reason why great wizards have to go out and build their
keep in the middle of nowhere, and don't want company or else it will spoil
the environment. :)
Good work!
Gary J. Robinson
mlsh...@SPAM.memphis.edu (Xeno) wrote:
Thanks! In terms of mechanics, each great city has at its heart a huge
ziggurat, or temple. This structure serves the purpose of sucking all
the local mana for miles around and concentrating it in the ziggurat
itself. The mana level in the inside of the ziggurat is sky-high which
naturally makes it the ideal home for a god, who is the patron of the
city. This arrangement naturally leads to the idea of the gods as
protectors of human civilization, so long as you build temples for them
to live in. The high mana level in the temple complex also means priests
can cast their priestly spells there, so the temple has a monopoly on
priestly magics like healing, raise dead, cures etc. These ceremonies
are always performed in holy places because they don't work in the
mundane areas in the city or the surrounding environment. Got a problem?
Go to the temple.
If for whatever reason (earthquake, etc.) the ziggurat is destroyed or
damaged, all hell breaks loose because the ziggurat continues to work to
some degree as a magnifier. The god flees, the city becomes a wild magic
zone, the most dangerous of ruins, with very high and fluctuating mana
levels and filled with all kinds of powerful monsters that can't exist
anywhere else. Such an event is an apocalypse for the city and the
humans quickly are killed or abandon it, leaving it as the coolest of
adventuring places, filled with all the treasures of a lost civilization
and guarded by the most terrible of monsters who thrive in its high mana
environment.
All wizards in my world have elven blood in them and as part of their
abilities they can see the mana levels the way we can sense temperature
or heat shimmering off a highway. Each ten points of mana level allows
the casting of an additional spell level, i.e. level 10 means first
level spells can be cast, level 20 means second level and so on.
CIvilized areas typically have zero mana except maybe in graveyards and
tombs where it might be a bit higher as a local anomaly, making these
places somewhat feared (and home to undead). You can use the mana levels
to also determine what monsters can go there. Dragons would only be
found at level 100 or higher for instance. Wild magic zones could go off
the scale and contain extraplanar creatures and so forth. You can also
have levels rise at night, with a full moon, at certain astronomical
holidays, and so on to generate plots. "This enchantment can only be
cast at this isolated spot during the solstice" and so on.
Gary
Bryan J. Maloney
>the scale and contain extraplanar creatures and so forth. You can also
>have levels rise at night, with a full moon, at certain astronomical
>holidays, and so on to generate plots. "This enchantment can only be
>cast at this isolated spot during the solstice" and so on.
This and the deletia sound a LOT like Ars Magica.
Gary J. Robinson
(Bryan J. Maloney) wrote:
And from what I can gather, Ars Magica sounds a lot like the old 1982
SPI wargame "Albion: Land of Faerie" and the Dragonquest roleplaying
game. It is a good framework if you want to have something approaching
an ancient or medieval world, despite the existence of magic and
monsters which would, if they could go anywhere they chose, change
everything so much that we wouldn't recognize it.
There are a lot of mythological references to magic and monsters but
none that I know of where they come right into the city in any strength.
The wilderness was the dangerous place, and that is also where the
enchanters hung out.
Gary
Edmund E Freeman
for -- policing the area and collecting taxes.
--Ed Freeman
john v verkuilen
>> This and the deletia sound a LOT like Ars Magica
>And from what I can gather, Ars Magica sounds a lot like the old 1982
>SPI wargame "Albion: Land of Faerie" and the Dragonquest roleplaying
>game.
I never thought of it that way, but I think you're right. DQ is a way cool
game. I have the second edition in hardcover and the third (bowdlerized
TSR) edition as well.
It is a good framework if you want to have something approaching
>an ancient or medieval world, despite the existence of magic and
>monsters which would, if they could go anywhere they chose, change
>everything so much that we wouldn't recognize it.
Yes. I *love* the demons in the College of Greater Conjurations.
Jay
--
J. Verkuilen ja...@uiuc.edu
"It will kill you faster than a bullet." --Claude LaMont
Brian
> for -- policing the area and collecting taxes.
I would tend to disagree..
A smart wizard won't get into the fray himself unless circumstances are
dire. Charged magic items and scrolls should be the rule of the day.
"Here, take this twig..NO! Don't drop it!..point it at the man you want to
shoot..say 'Zap!' and he'll get hit with a magical missile.."
"Zap!"
"Wonderful! Well done, lad..now if you notice that you have his attention
and he's charging at us."
"Uh-hunh.."
"Looks like he might be tougher than I thought at first..point the stick at
him again and say 'Zappity-zap!', and this time he'll be hit with *two*
magical missiles."
"Zappity-Zap!"
"Well, what do you know? He's still coming!..hmm. Lucky for me I still have
this big stick. '*Pow!*'.."
"Wow!..ahem..M'lord, might I have one of those sticks instead?....M'lord?"
Eric Tolle
>
> Agreed. The other factor is whether you want to allow magic to overpower
> technology. I mean, a fortress like a castle isn't exactly the same as a
> Dominion home. It's built to withstand siege weapons (which is funny because
> siege weapons are often built to tear a castle down). WHo's to say a fireball
> will do enough damage to bring the place down, even at the door. Human beings
I'd say it's likely that castles would be built in response to magic
the same way they were in response to canon in the real world- the
design changes involved going from compact, vertical designs, to
spread out ones with thick walls. Given that fortifications
survived in the real world up through W.W. II- heck, even up to the
modern day, I'd say that fortifications of some sort would be
present in an AD&D world. After all, single mages cannot dominate a
territory.
Infiltration, on the part of small parties and creatures using the
appropriate abilities, will be an entirely different sort of
problem- but probably only somewhat more so then in the real world.
--
Eric Tolle sch...@silcom.com
People tend to underestimate the impact of scientific progress.
Why just fifty years ago, only a few people had even heard of DNA,
and now everybody who is somebody uses it!
Eric Tolle
>
> Agreed. The other factor is whether you want to allow magic to overpower
> technology. I mean, a fortress like a castle isn't exactly the same as a
> Dominion home. It's built to withstand siege weapons (which is funny because
> siege weapons are often built to tear a castle down). WHo's to say a fireball
> will do enough damage to bring the place down, even at the door. Human beings
I'd say it's likely that castles would be built in response to magic
Gary J. Robinson
<sch...@silcom.com> wrote:
> Anivair wrote:
> >
> > I mean, a fortress like a castle isn't exactly the same as
> > a
> > Dominion home. It's built to withstand siege weapons (which is funny
> > because
> > siege weapons are often built to tear a castle down).
Castles, and fortresses in general, evolved over time as part of an arms
race. What we think of as medieval stone castles did not really appear
until after the Crusades, when the Europeans went to the Middle East and
saw very sophisticated fortresses (and siege engines) in the Byzantine
area. Castles were not "built to withstand siege engines" so much as
they were built as a place of shelter from a raiding or invading force,
which could not be overcome *without* siege engines - equipment
unavailable to the typical marauding force.
> >WHo's to say a
> > fireball
> > will do enough damage to bring the place down, even at the door.
I don't know why people are fixated on fireballs. Rock to mud could do
an excellent job of collapsing a castle wall. Disintegration and other
spells, earthquakes, etc. would work too. But such structural attacks
are not even necessary. One invisible person who can fly can easily land
inside the castle and either open doors/gates, or else cast a charm
spell on someone in the castle who in turn can open the doors/gates.
Alternatively the intruder could simply capture an important person/the
leader while he is asleep and fly or teleport them out of the castle.
Castles are built to protect things; if anyone can get in and get at the
thing to be protected, they have no purpose.
> I'd say it's likely that castles would be built in response to magic
> the same way they were in response to canon in the real world- the
> design changes involved going from compact, vertical designs, to
> spread out ones with thick walls.
I'd say that, like battleships, they would not be built at all once some
spectacular failures at defending a castle occured. They are too
expensive.
> Given that fortifications
> survived in the real world up through W.W. II- heck, even up to the
> modern day, I'd say that fortifications of some sort would be
> present in an AD&D world.
Fortifications in modern war serve a totally different purpose than
castles. Castles were meant to serve as a shelter against raiding
enemies. Everyone and everything valuable would go inside the castle,
and the enemy would be on the outside, unable to get to the valuable
people/stuff and unable to get any food. Eventually they would have to
leave. Modern fortifications are not places where you put the most
valuable stuff inside. They are frontier constructions which are meant
to slow down the enemy and deny him an easy route of supply into the
country being invaded, or deny him access to strategic port assets like
Manila Bay or Sevastopol which can be supplied by sea. I can think
offhand of no modern fortress which ever survived an assault.
I think you guys are being very creative, but you are essentially trying
to reason backwards to justify the existence of mundane castles in a
magical world, because you think castles are cool. I don't think castles
would really exist in a world filled with fly, invisibility, rock to
mud, charm person, etc. spells. They would not be worth the money
because they would not protect what they are supposed to protect.
Gary
Drew Id
> an excellent job of collapsing a castle wall.
Not in 3E. "Castles and large stone buildings are generally immune to the
effects of the spell, since transmute rock to mud can't affect worked stone
and doesn't reach deep enough to undermine such buildings' foundations" -
from the SRD.
> Disintegration and other
> spells,
Disintegrate would work on a section : "Up to a 10-foot cube of
nonliving matter is affected, so the spell disintegrates only part of any
very large object or structure targeted. The ray affects even magical matter
or energy of a magical nature, such as Bigby's forceful hand or a wall of
force, but not a globe of invulnerability or an antimagic field" but I
assume an item could be constructed with the specific intention of
counterspelling disintegrate. I know items can't normally be used for
counterspelling, but I would probably allow for items that were specifically
designed for counterspelling to be created and used. Or, as a variation,
items that could produce an antimagic field that only worked against one
spell or one school that in turn got a longer duration, wider range, or
cheaper cost.
Second, disintegrate is a 6th level spell, so not *that* many wizards
are going to around to cast that spell. In many rural areas, there may not
be *any* wizards capable of casting it, or at least that know how to cast
it.
> earthquakes, etc. would work too.
Also viable, but again a very high level spell. (Even a cleric with the
Earth domain could not cast it until the were level 13). Also, see antimagic
stuff above.
One rationalization to still building castles in spite of these high-level
spells is the idea that we still build army bases even though a nuclear
missile could wipe them out, because we know that nuclear attacks are
(thankfully) rare. If a castle can withstand 99% of the assaults against it,
it is probably still viable to build one, even if there are rare high-level
spellcasters who could take it down.
A further balancing factor is that magic could also make castles easier,
faster, and cheaper to build, so that although they are vulnerable to
magical attacks, they are still cost-effective.
One reasonable change I would put in, if this ever comes up in my campaign,
would be a spell or item which can add spell resistance and/or antimagic
abilities to an enclosed stone structure, probably at a high expense. The
duke's castle in a peaceful farm valley may not have it, but the frontier
castle which borders the Valley of the Mad Mages might have a built-in SR as
high as they can afford, or a permanent antimagic field that only works
against these specific spells. I would assume non-detection/anti-scrying
spells would also be available in the options package.
> But such structural attacks
> are not even necessary. One invisible person who can fly can easily land
> inside the castle and either open doors/gates,
And be shot down by the archers inside, or set off the detect invisibility
alarm.
> or else cast a charm
> spell on someone in the castle who in turn can open the doors/gates.
And be shot by the archers inside, or set off the detect charm alarm. Also,
if I built a castle, I'd have the front gate mage-locked or held in some way
to prevent this. Otherwise, I'd give the only key to the guy with the best
Will Save.
> Alternatively the intruder could simply capture an important person/the
> leader while he is asleep and fly or teleport them out of the castle.
Well, I have a big anti-teleport thing in my campaign, but even without
that, I'd guard the important people with every available resource.
> Castles are built to protect things; if anyone can get in and get at the
> thing to be protected, they have no purpose.
I'm not a historian, so don't take my word on this, but *I thought* the real
importance of castles was that you couldn't run a supply train past them. An
invading army *has* to take out every single castle they encounter on the
way to their goal, or otherwise the soldiers inside will wait for the army
to march on by and then come out and start conducting raids on the army's
long and relatively unprotected supply train behind it, cutting the army off
with no supplies in the middle of hostile territory. The only wayto protect
your supply train was to take over or lay seige to every castle in between
you and your final goal. Overall, this just further convinces me that the
"hundred small teams" approach would become the dominant means of waging war
in a fantasy landscape.
John Rudd
>
> > I don't know why people are fixated on fireballs. Rock to mud could do
> > an excellent job of collapsing a castle wall.
>
>
> Disintegrate would work on a section : "Up to a 10-foot cube of
> nonliving matter is affected
(assuming that means "10' x 10' x 10', as opposed to "10 cubic feet"
(which is about 2' x 2' x 2') )
Right ... that's all it takes to take down a curtain wall. All sappers
did was build a tunnel under a wall, that was propped upto keep the
tunnel from collapsing them ... and then burn those props so that the
tunnel would collapse under the curtain wall.
If you remove a 10 foot cube of wall from the bottom of a curtain wall,
about midway between the towers, and such that one face of the cube is
flush with the outer surface of the wall, you'll probably cause enough
structural integrity damage to cause the face of the wall to collaps
above the cube ... that will cause the inner packing of the wall to fall
out, reducing the structural integrity of the wall and the immediately
adjacent surface area... and then it's like dominos or a land-slide
effect, it just all keeps losing structural integrity and falling down,
until one of two thigns happens:
it gets to the nearest towers,
or it just creates a wide V shaped gap in the curtain wall, with the
bottom of the V being that 10 foot cube.
> Second, disintegrate is a 6th level spell, so not *that* many wizards
> are going to around to cast that spell.
Right ... but that one mage replaces and entire team of sappers who take
several days to do a job that the mage takes minutes to do. You only
really need one of these mages per siege army ... though 2 mages or 1
mage who can cast it twice is good (seperate your 10 foot cubes by 20
feet, and you'll probably cause your V shaped gaps to overlap enough to
cause the section inbetween to completely collapse, giving you a very
nice wide gap to pour soldiers through).
In a world where mages are few and far between, I think you'd probably
have castles like our historical ones, and every so often you'd have a
mage involved in a siege and all hell would break loose. But it
wouldn't affect the formation of siege armies nor the architecture of
castles.
If mages are plentiful enough that every siege army has one, then
probably also every castle has one ... and the first part of any siege
will be the mages dueling from a distance. If the siege mage wins, then
likely the conventional siege will be very short and devolve into a
simple battle. If the castle mage wins, then the siege will be long and
mostly conventional (or perhaps shortened by the castle mage doing
things to disrupt the siege camp).
If mages are as plentiful as plumbers, then castles will be constructed
in a way that helps them defend themselves against magical attack.
Either enchanted walls, or living matter integrated into the walls that
resists spells (a mold that has to be fed, and is resistant to spells?
or a moss that has to be watered? the moss idea might lead to sieges
always happening on the side of the castle where moss doesn't grow :-)
), or something similar. And then the initial mage duel will be more
like a corps of mages vs a corps of mages that resembles a magical
version of the siege engines and repulsions... that is supplemented by
conventional siege work.
Only in the third case would I expect the architecture of a castle to be
significantly altered. The 2nd case might see every castle having a
mage's tower that allows them to see the all of the likely siege camps
(to help with line of sight to the siege mage), but the tower would have
to be sturdy enough to withstand directed siege engine attack against it
(to interdict the mage). Might have multiple such towers. But that's
the only change I'd expect for the second case. I wouldn't expect _any_
change in castle architecture for the first case.
Also, for 3e rules, this would probably lead to two prestiege classes:
Siege Mage (specializes in siege warfare spells, like disintigrate,
etc... possibly getting them early)
Fort Mage (specializes in counter-siege warfare spells)
--
John "kzin" Rudd http://www.domain.org/users/kzin
Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm. Charm
ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last. (Physics of Quarks)
-----===== Kein Mitleid Fu:r MicroSoft (www.kmfms.com) ======-----
Gary J. Robinson
<sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I would probably allow for items that were specifically
> designed for counterspelling to be created and used.
> I would assume non-detection/anti-scrying
> spells would also be available in the options package.
>
> the detect invisibility alarm.
> the detect charm alarm.
> the front gate mage-locked
I can tell you have a completely different concept of what you want
magic to be like than I do. What you are describing is an industrial
magic arms race. The castle is intrinsically worthless, so you lump all
kinds of magic onto it to try to protect it. In reality, no one would
waste money building a structure which is intrinsically worthless, and
then spend more money trying to protect it from the enormous number of
potential ways to negate its defenses. It also leads to a world where
magic is an industrial phenomenon, mass produced on demand for strategic
military purposes, which is not to my personal taste, but whatever.
> I'm not a historian, so don't take my word on this, but *I thought* the
> real
> importance of castles was that you couldn't run a supply train past them.
You are thinking of fortresses in the age of the nation-state - that
came later. The world "castle" usually denotes a privately owned
residence of a member of the nobility, and its purpose is to protect
that noble and his family, and the surrounding peasants, in case of raid
or invasion. In medieval times there were not a lot of supply trains -
armies lived off the land, which is why castles were so effective -
invaders often arrived to find the land stripped of food, which was all
in the castle, so they couldn't besiege it for very long.
If your world has organized nation-states like the Roman Empire, it is a
different situation, because the fortresses are property of the State
and manned by the State's troops at all times to guard the frontiers.
Still, the typical barbarian army did not have a supply train either.
Supply lines were a feature of modern armies which needed ammunition
manufactured in factories at home. Even the Romans tended to live off
the land most of the time when on the march.
> An
> invading army *has* to take out every single castle they encounter on the
> way to their goal, or otherwise the soldiers inside will wait for the
> army
> to march on by and then come out and start conducting raids on the army's
> long and relatively unprotected supply train behind it, cutting the army
> off
> with no supplies in the middle of hostile territory.
This was not a feature of warfare before the invention of gunpowder.
Ancient and medieval armies did not have supply lines stretching all the
way back to their home city. (See Caesar's references in The Gallic War
to his army constantly "gathering corn" from the local countryside.)
They did not have motorized transport. The only supply lines a
pre-gunpowder army was likely to utilize would be by sea. This is how
the Crusaders were supplied for example. The main function of fortresses
was to control the local area. Unless you took the local fort, you could
not control the local area. Whereas modern war is primarily about taking
the enemy industrial center, ancient and medieval war was about taking
land and controlling it. Control is exercised by means of castles.
> Overall, this just further convinces me that the
> "hundred small teams" approach would become the dominant means of waging
> war
> in a fantasy landscape.
As Sun Tzu said, a small army is just booty for a large one. Small teams
would just be meat on the table for a larger defensive force, which
would destroy them one by one as they appeared. In a magic-rich world,
wizards would be the only effective warriors.
Gary
Drew Id
> in a way that helps them defend themselves against magical attack.
> Either enchanted walls, or living matter integrated into the walls that
> resists spells (a mold that has to be fed, and is resistant to spells?
> or a moss that has to be watered? the moss idea might lead to sieges
> always happening on the side of the castle where moss doesn't grow :-)
> ), or something similar.
Ooh I like this idea. I will give you my highest honor by blatantly stealing
this idea and using it in my campaign.
You could throw in something about the moss has to grow from magical seeds
and that it can not just be taken from one castle and made to grow in
another castle. So any castlebuilders would need someone to track down a new
source for seeds.
> Also, for 3e rules, this would probably lead to two prestiege classes:
>
> Siege Mage (specializes in siege warfare spells, like disintigrate,
> etc... possibly getting them early)
>
> Fort Mage (specializes in counter-siege warfare spells)
Well, I'd just make those the same class, and make sure that an NPC Adept
can get to requirements. Very well done.
Drew Id
> magic to be like than I do. What you are describing is an industrial
> magic arms race.
Well, I can't say how you may see it, but I admit there are a wide variety
of views on the subject. I understand the viewpoint that magic is supposed
to maintain an air of mystery, etc. but I suppose IMC, I see it as divided
into the "everyday" magic of fireballs and anti-invisibility charms, where
these spells are researched and implemented by crack teams of very practical
mages, and the "fantastic" magic that lets dragons fly and raises the dead.
IMC, I would say there is a sort of an unspoken ceiling that civilized
uses of magic reaches and has trouble going beyond, and that the magic used
by civilizations has lost a lot of the wonder and awe, although it is still
not an everyday phenomenon except in the halls of power. The higher power
levels are therefore still rare and amazing to behold, and can only be
attained by going out beyond the civilized world.
An analogy might be helpful here. If you think of magic like hacking.
Most people could never become hackers, and there is some level of
intelligence and study involved to get started. You could learn a certain
amount from schools, and take related classes at your local junior college
or through books. But, to go beyond that, and become a *top* hacker, you
would either have to be very gifted, or else go out and find other hackers,
and delve into a lot of obscure information that is not readily available or
understood by the general public. Becoming a high-level mage would be about
the same as that.
> > I'm not a historian, so don't take my word on this, but *I thought* the
> > real
> > importance of castles was that you couldn't run a supply train past
them.
>
> You are thinking of fortresses in the age of the nation-state - that
> came later. (snip)
> If your world has organized nation-states like the Roman Empire, it is a
> different situation,
Aah, perhaps I should have said as much. This is exactly what I am thinking
of, and this is the basis for my campaign.
> Unless you took the local fort, you could
> not control the local area. Whereas modern war is primarily about taking
> the enemy industrial center, ancient and medieval war was about taking
> land and controlling it. Control is exercised by means of castles.
>
> > Overall, this just further convinces me that the
> > "hundred small teams" approach would become the dominant means of waging
> > war
> > in a fantasy landscape.
>
> As Sun Tzu said, a small army is just booty for a large one. Small teams
> would just be meat on the table for a larger defensive force, which
> would destroy them one by one as they appeared. In a magic-rich world,
> wizards would be the only effective warriors.
Sun Tzu never had to deal with magic.
Okay, to offer more than a witty comeback. I'll respond that where you said
"Unless you took the local fort, you could not control the local area" is
just not true, especially in a fantasy world. Using Robin Hood as an
example, who controlled Sherwood Forest? The bandit in the countryside did,
not the guys in the castle. The guerilla warfare tactics of a hundred small
teams in a fantasy campaign would tear a country to shreds without anything
a large army could do to stop them, unless the large army also broke down
into smaller pieces first. The large army simply could not find them all,
and engage them all in any kind of effective pace. While the army chases one
group in the south, 20 other groups are in the north raiding one vilalge
after another.
I do want to say that you have some valid points, but I think we are
comparing two differerent campaigns where the rarity of magic and the
general national structures are pretty different. I'll tell you how things
come out balanced in mine, and I think we'll find that we are coming at this
from two very different standpoints:
The nations IMC are best described as advanced nation states, with
clearly defined boundaries and zones of control, albeit with vast areas of
wilderness esiting both internally to some states and beyond some national
borders. Low level magic is fairly common but still expensive, such that a
successful middle class merchant would probably have a magical alarm on his
shop and a captain of a city guard *might* carry a low-level magical weapon.
Higher level magic is usually rare in civilized areas and even then is
achieved most commonly via groups of mid-level mages working in unison.
Large scale effects such as teleporting armies onto a battlefield or
captains riding dragons into battle is simply the stuff of legends. As is
the case in many campaign worlds, there was a time in the ancient past when
magic and high-level spellcasters was more common, but that knowledge was
lost, and many doubt that those stories are even true anymore.
Overall, spellcasters (including wizards *and* clerics) might make up 1%
of the population at the maximum, and during a war, you might expect to see
one spellcaster of roughly fifth level for every 100 soldiers. There is also
a sense of realism, such that no PC would ever call themself an adventurer.
They may be a mercenary, a brigand, a traveler, a soldier, etc. But there
are no "taverns where adventurers hang out" or posters citing "adventurers
wanted".
Collecting a large army of thousands of soldiers and a hundred
spellcasters into one central location could be done, but it would be
foolhardy to attempt. A wand of fireball or earthquake spell could kill of
huge numbers of soldiers arranged in this fashion. Two armies of this size
colliding would result in everyone but a handful of people dead in only a
few minutes.
The more effective means of waging war that has developed is to split an
army into many small autonomous teams, much like a large group of
adventurers, which then infiltrates a nation, hides out somewhere within the
borders, and conducts guerilla attacks on the villages and caravans of the
nation while working to disrupt trade, communication, and the general
well-being of the nation. The nation under attack is then bled dry from
hundreds of small daily attacks, and no single defending army can intercept
and prevent every attack, unless it too splits up into pieces and sends
these pieces out to the various regions under attack. The various groups
then may split up further or reform into larger groups depending on their
particular goals and the current tactical situation. Magic provides the
potential for communication and support, and in these small groups it can be
*effective and even decisive without being overpowering*, much like two
large adventuring parties in a battle against one another.
Castles represent a tactical advantage, and magical defenses for key
castles are common, and an essential requirement, really, or they would be
useless. However, castles are only built either to protect a key object or
family, or to protect a key crossroads, harbor, mountain pass, river, etc.
They are *not* used to "project power into the surrounding area", and they
truly can not fulfill that role, since a good guerilla party can effectively
hide out in the countryside and conduct raids without ever having to face
the castle itself.
The key difference between real-world history and this tactical
situation is that magic would allow fast and reliable communication between
these small teams, allow them in many cases to mask their presence, to
support themselves more easily with food and healing, and to conduct more
effective raids against small targets such as caravans and villages.
What makes this scenario appealing for me and my players is that the
role of the adventuring group becomes an important and *socially logical*
role. The adventuring groups outside of a war follow something like the
typical adventuring campaign, but within a war zone, they provide the
backbone and the standard for the invading or defending army, and their
contributions can truly be felt and accurately appraised within their local
area without the immediate aid of thousands of other soldiers alongside
them. Also, given the conditions I have described, this seems to me, and to
the players, as a very logical conclusion as to how wars would be fought in
this world.
Given this rundown of my campaign, I expect that you will agree it is
logical within this framework, but I am also very interested to hear how
this differs from your own implementation of magic into a war situation.
R. Scott Rogers
> an excellent job of collapsing a castle wall. Disintegration and other
> spells, earthquakes, etc. would work too. But such structural attacks
> are not even necessary. One invisible person who can fly can easily land
> inside the castle and either open doors/gates, or else cast a charm
> spell on someone in the castle who in turn can open the doors/gates.
> Alternatively the intruder could simply capture an important person/the
> leader while he is asleep and fly or teleport them out of the castle.
> Castles are built to protect things; if anyone can get in and get at the
> thing to be protected, they have no purpose.
At Edinburgh castle they make a point of telling visitors that the castle
was never taken by direct assault. And given the fact that it stands on a
200-foot basalt rock with a single walking approach, one that can handle
only a very narrow line of attackers, the impregnability of the place makes
sense.
However, the castle has been surrendered to sieges and, in at least one
event, was taken by a commando raid of a few dozen attackers who climbed the
rock at night, slit the throats of the guards and opened the gates. So your
example has much merit.
It's not so much that castles or other fortresses are built to protect
things like important people (although they are that), it's that they are
built to control territory. Without the Castle, an invader cannot hope to
profitably occupy the rest of the Edinburgh district. That fact does not
depend on the presence of anything of value inside the Castle.
And if you simply walk your army past the Castle and ignore whatever force
is sheltering inside its walls, that force will then be free to harass your
communication and cut your lines of supply. If it's large enough, it might
even come up behind you and force you to fight in your rear or, worse, make
a stab in the direction of your territory relying in interior lines while
you're at the end of a long tether in foreign territory.
> Fortifications in modern war serve a totally different purpose than
> castles. Castles were meant to serve as a shelter against raiding
> enemies. Everyone and everything valuable would go inside the castle,
> and the enemy would be on the outside, unable to get to the valuable
> people/stuff and unable to get any food. Eventually they would have to
> leave. Modern fortifications are not places where you put the most
> valuable stuff inside. They are frontier constructions which are meant
> to slow down the enemy and deny him an easy route of supply into the
> country being invaded, or deny him access to strategic port assets like
> Manila Bay or Sevastopol which can be supplied by sea. I can think
> offhand of no modern fortress which ever survived an assault.
The fieldworks around St. Petersburg (Leningrad) might qualify, depending on
whether you allow them into your definition of "modern fortress." And there
are any number of modern fortresses like Corrigedor (sp?) that were
surrendered after a siege made further occupation of the citadel impossible
but that never fell to any of the assaults mounted against it. But the
exceptions are few. The chief value of a fortress is to force the enemy to
meet you.
> I think you guys are being very creative, but you are essentially trying
> to reason backwards to justify the existence of mundane castles in a
> magical world, because you think castles are cool. I don't think castles
> would really exist in a world filled with fly, invisibility, rock to
> mud, charm person, etc. spells. They would not be worth the money
> because they would not protect what they are supposed to protect.
I tend to agree, although I suspect that you'll still have large buildings
(that's what large populations do to show their wealth), and it only makes
sense that some large buildings will come to have significant defensive
works. Maybe not enough to fend off a large army with a powerful corps of
battle-mages, but enough to hold off your typical raiding party or small
attack. As long as the raiding parties are a more common threat than the
battle-mages (and let's face it, they will be), it will make sense to build
fortified buildings. Sort of like how American shop-keepers put bars in
their windows. It's a solid defense against burglars, but if the 101st
Airborne decides they want your stuff there's really nothing you can do to
stop them. Comparing the incidence of burglary (nightly) to the incidence of
military looting (never), the barred windows are quite sensible.
For facing the battle-mages, you're probably still going to have some
incentive to have prepared defensive works, but they might be more in the
form of an embanked hilltop with multiple sources of water, storage
facilities and space enough to contain several thousand men. Such sites
will, of course, also be enchanted in helpful ways, and will serve as a
rallying point for your troops and as a way to force your enemy to face you
at a disadvantage. If the enemy simply leaves you on your hilltop, passing
by your earthen battlements, you're free to strike at his rear and disrupt
his lines.
Gary J. Robinson
<sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sun Tzu never had to deal with magic.
Well, "magic" in your world is basically military technology, and he
certainly had to deal with that. To put it in your terms, a defense
force containing ten wizards will easily be able to catch and destroy 20
hit and run groups each containing one wizard. It is the principle of
concentration of force, an essential military principle. I think a lot
of posters here have an inflated sense of what guerilla tactics can
accomplish. Guerilla tactics are the poor man's tactics, the loser's
tactics, which are used by the weaker side because it has no choice and
cannot deny control of its territory to the enemy. You don't see
invaders using guerilla tactics, they are a defender's weapon and a poor
one at that.
> Okay, to offer more than a witty comeback. I'll respond that where you
> said
> "Unless you took the local fort, you could not control the local area" is
> just not true, especially in a fantasy world.
I don't know what kind of control you are talking about. In the real
world, especially the ancient and medieval world, land was valuable
because of food production. If an enemy fort was nearby, the people in
it could sortie forth and disrupt food production or steal the food. As
a result, you could not meaningfully control the area without getting
rid of the enemy fort.
> Using Robin Hood as an
> example, who controlled Sherwood Forest?
Sherwood Forest was a wasteland. It was not a food production area which
is why there was no castle to control it.
> The bandit in the countryside did, not the guys in the castle.
The guys in the castle were never hungry, because they controlled the
valuble farmland, and Robin did not. The woods was the last place you
wanted to be. In the pecking order, "bandit" is lowest and "noble in a
castle" is highest. Robin was good a being a pain in the ass, but it did
not give him control of land, or restore him to the status of nobility
with a castle of his own. Robin also had the sympathy of the local
peasants, he was not an invader. He could never had survived as an
invader.
>The guerilla warfare tactics of a hundred
> small
> teams in a fantasy campaign would tear a country to shreds without
> anything
> a large army could do to stop them, unless the large army also broke down
> into smaller pieces first.
War is about control. Small teams don't control anything. I am a
wargamer so I have a lot of experience with these kinds of weird
strategies. If someone tried to do that to me, I would simply march on
his capital and burn it to the ground, since his forces would be weak
and dispersed and incapable of stopping me from going where I wished.
You can bet that every feasible idea has been tried before. The
Parthians fought the way you describe, with small mobile hit and run
teams of horse archers. The Romans preferred a gigantic infantry army.
When it came down to it, Trajan marched on the Parthian capital and took
it and there was nothing these little teams could do to stop him. In the
Hundred Years War the English marched around burning and looting all
over France. In the end it accomplished nothing except pissing off the
French people and they lost all their holdings in France.
>The large army simply could not find them all,
> and engage them all in any kind of effective pace. While the army chases
> one
> group in the south, 20 other groups are in the north raiding one vilalge
> after another.
You assume that raiding is always the goal in war. It is not; the goal
is control. You don't get that with little raiding teams. Anyway, given
that wizards would be the only effective combat arm, the "large force"
would simply be 10 or 15 wizards, not some bulky collection of soldiers.
> I do want to say that you have some valid points, but I think we are
> comparing two differerent campaigns where the rarity of magic and the
> general national structures are pretty different.
Military principles never change. My ten wizards will kill your one
wizard every time. They can do it at small risk to themselves, and they
can do it repeatedly. If you split up into little groups, you are
feeding yourself to me in easy to digest pieces.
> Overall, spellcasters (including wizards *and* clerics) might make up
> 1%
> of the population at the maximum
That's pretty huge. By comparison only about 1 in 260 people in the U.S.
is a soldier, if that.
, and during a war, you might expect to
> see
> one spellcaster of roughly fifth level for every 100 soldiers.
What? Of the population, say 40% is children or old people. Half of the
remainder is female. So maybe 30% are males of fighting age. Putting
them all into the army would destroy the economy and cause mass
starvation. If you could field half of them you would be pushing it, but
say it's an emergency. So 15% of your population ends up as soldiers. 1%
of people are spellcasters. That is one spellcaster per 15 soldiers.
> Collecting a large army of thousands of soldiers and a hundred
> spellcasters into one central location could be done, but it would be
> foolhardy to attempt.
Primarily because armies make no sense in a world where combat magic is
common.
> The more effective means of waging war that has developed is to split
> an
> army into many small autonomous teams, much like a large group of
> adventurers, which then infiltrates a nation,
Of course the local people would give them away pronto. This isn't Viet
Nam.
>hides out somewhere within the
> borders
It would be pretty hard to hide a group of foreigners in an ancient or
medieval area. Everybody knows everybody else.
> and conducts guerilla attacks
Which totally alienates the local people and stokes up their morale, and
does not give you control of any land. It also leads to banditry and
loss of control of your "troops" who are basically just being set loose
as pirates and looters on civilians - not a very civilized way of waging
war, and one that would reflect badly on a nation that tried to use it.
> on the villages and caravans of the
> nation while working to disrupt trade, communication, and the general
> well-being of the nation.
You are presupposing these attacks will be totally effective, and the
invaders will never run into traps, ambushes, or treachery problems, or
suffer from desertion, or cause rebellion among the good men who are
sickened by their orders to loot and pillage innocent peasants.
> The nation under attack is then bled dry from
> hundreds of small daily attacks, and no single defending army can
> intercept
> and prevent every attack,
Which brings us back to castles. Their purpose is precisely to defeat
these sorts of raids. Remember the Vikings? The whole idea of a castle
is a place to bring all the food and people when raiders show up. The
raiders end up deep in enemy territory with nothing to eat, until they
are caught and destroyed by the army. The Vikings' solution was to run
away by boat, and to strike by boat so there would be as little warning
as possible. Your land guerillas will have no such advantages.
> Magic provides the
> potential for communication and support
It also provides the potential for the defenders to spot and track all
the invading groups so they can be trapped and destroyed at leisure with
overwhelming force.
> Castles represent a tactical advantage
> They are *not* used to "project power into the surrounding area", and
> they
> truly can not fulfill that role, since a good guerilla party can
> effectively
> hide out in the countryside and conduct raids without ever having to face
> the castle itself.
Incorrect. The guerillas can never *control* the land as long as an
enemy castle threatens it. At best the guerillas could ensure no one
controls the land, but they themselves cannot control it. Denial of
enemy control is not the same thing as control. And the guerillas,
sooner or later, would have to leave, abandoning the land to the castle
owners.
> The key difference between real-world history and this tactical
> situation is that magic would allow fast and reliable communication
> between
> these small teams, allow them in many cases to mask their presence, to
> support themselves more easily with food and healing, and to conduct more
> effective raids against small targets such as caravans and villages.
I'm sure someone as creative as yourself could come up with equally
effective ways to use magic to totally negate these advantages and
destroy all the teams one by one, especially given the advantage of
being on one's home turf.
> What makes this scenario appealing for me and my players is that the
> role of the adventuring group becomes an important and *socially logical*
> role.
Only if it is socially accepted to be a professional looter and
terrorist. This kind of behavior is very unchivalrous for one thing. For
another I doubt the average mage studied arcane arts all his life so he
could run around in the mud at night burning peasants' crops. I mean
really! I find it hard to swallow. And certainly no character of good
alignment would participate in such an army. It is "barbarian" behavior
and is associated with undisciplined troops who are out to grab what
they can. Successful conquerors like the Romans brought the gifts of
civilization with them. They were successful because often, the
conquered people realized they would be better off under Roman rule.
Looting and pillaging does not inspire confidence.
> Given this rundown of my campaign, I expect that you will agree it is
> logical within this framework, but I am also very interested to hear how
> this differs from your own implementation of magic into a war situation.
My implementation is simple: magic does not work in civilized areas. The
arts of war therefore depend entirely on might and cunning, and I can
use all the lessons of history directly, as well as wargame mechanics to
resolve large battles. Magic plays no part in the wars of men, and
wizards are strange beings like Merlin who are usually found in the
wilderness.
In the end you have to do whatever you think is fun, and trying to
project how D&D magic would work in warfare can be an amusing mental
exercise. I just think if you worked it out with another person instead
of just by yourself, with them in an adversary role, you would find they
could probably counter a lot of what you could come up with. As an
example, using the home turf advantage, I would set up a network of
posts across the frontier and scattered behind the frontier. I would
then establish "crack teams" of wizards and clerics. Using Teleport or
Word of Recall, these teams could instantly go to these familiar posts
whenever necessary. Then I would establish a network of spies and
lookouts who could alert headquarters as soon as an invading team
appeared. A crack team (or all of them, concentration) would be
dispatched magically to the nearest post and would destroy the invader,
and be back in time for breakfast. The defense would be able to respond
much more quickly than the offense because of the home turf advantage of
familiarity with the posts (for teleport and word of recall) and you
would get a situation like WWI, where the defender could use trains to
move up reserves while the attacker had to walk forward when attacking,
and the result was no progress, anywhere up and down the line.
Personally I think this kind of magic-heavy warfare is not very
appealing, because it feels more like technology than magic, but that is
another subject.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
<sro...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> It's not so much that castles or other fortresses are built to protect
> things like important people (although they are that), it's that they are
> built to control territory.
It's both. The original walled cities arose because of pesky raids by
barbarians. The same phenomenon appeared when the Vikings started
raiding the coasts of Europe. Strong places frustrate raiders. In a more
stable situation they also exert control.
> The fieldworks around St. Petersburg (Leningrad) might qualify, depending
> on
> whether you allow them into your definition of "modern fortress."
The Germans did not assault Leningrad, Hitler decided against it. The
siege artillery used at Sevastopol was actually being moved up there in
late 1942 as I recall in preparation for an attempt when the Soviets
seized the initiative.
>And
> there
> are any number of modern fortresses like Corrigedor (sp?) that were
> surrendered after a siege made further occupation of the citadel
> impossible
> but that never fell to any of the assaults mounted against it. But the
> exceptions are few.
If it surrendered, as far as I am concerned, it fell. Attackers will
usually choose the most efficient way to take a fortress. I don't know
of any fortresses in WWII that were attacked and did not fall. Leningrad
was neither surrounded nor attacked, although it was "under siege" in
the sense that the Germans were next to it and were harassing its supply
lines.
> I tend to agree, although I suspect that you'll still have large
> buildings
> (that's what large populations do to show their wealth), and it only
> makes
> sense that some large buildings will come to have significant defensive
> works. Maybe not enough to fend off a large army with a powerful corps of
> battle-mages, but enough to hold off your typical raiding party or small
> attack.
I see what you are saying, but if small raiding parties often include a
wizard, I have to wonder if people would keep spending the money on
castles. Similarly, if the towns contained wizards, I have to wonder if
there would still be such a thing as small raiding parties - it would be
too dangerous.
> Sort of like how American shop-keepers put bars in
> their windows.
But as an investment goes, that is very minor. A castle is enormously
expensive.
> For facing the battle-mages, you're probably still going to have some
> incentive to have prepared defensive works, but they might be more in the
> form of an embanked hilltop with multiple sources of water, storage
> facilities and space enough to contain several thousand men.
I still don't see why several thousand men are ever going to be useful
in a world filled with battle mages.
Gary
Fitz
wrote:
>> Second, disintegrate is a 6th level spell, so not *that* many wizards
>> are going to around to cast that spell.
>
>Right ... but that one mage replaces and entire team of sappers who take
>several days to do a job that the mage takes minutes to do. You only
>really need one of these mages per siege army ... though 2 mages or 1
>mage who can cast it twice is good (seperate your 10 foot cubes by 20
>feet, and you'll probably cause your V shaped gaps to overlap enough to
>cause the section inbetween to completely collapse, giving you a very
>nice wide gap to pour soldiers through).
I can just see the conversation....
"Wizard, you go and stand over there and disintegrate the bottom of
that wall.... what? Archers? Don't worry about them, we'll cover
you...... What? Kiss your WHAT? You can't talk to me like that, I'm a
duke! Ah.... OK, tell you what, you put the wand away and I'll put
this sword away, and we'll sit down and come up with another plan."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fitz
http://fitz.jsr.com
http://usa.spis.co.nz/fitz
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
John Rudd
>
> On Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:42:48 -0800, John Rudd <jr...@cats.ucsc.edu>
> wrote:
>
> >> Second, disintegrate is a 6th level spell, so not *that* many wizards
> >> are going to around to cast that spell.
> >
> >Right ... but that one mage replaces and entire team of sappers who take
> >several days to do a job that the mage takes minutes to do.
>
> that wall.... what? Archers? Don't worry about them, we'll cover
> you...... What? Kiss your WHAT? You can't talk to me like that, I'm a
> duke! Ah.... OK, tell you what, you put the wand away and I'll put
> this sword away, and we'll sit down and come up with another plan."
>
I said he replaces the sappers, not the entire siege army.
Eric Tolle
>
> If you remove a 10 foot cube of wall from the bottom of a curtain wall,
> about midway between the towers, and such that one face of the cube is
> flush with the outer surface of the wall, you'll probably cause enough
> structural integrity damage to cause the face of the wall to collaps
>
castles would exist. That's generally why I say 'fortifications"
instead.
>
> In a world where mages are few and far between, I think you'd probably
> have castles like our historical ones, and every so often you'd have a
> mage involved in a siege and all hell would break loose. But it
> wouldn't affect the formation of siege armies nor the architecture of
> castles.
Which oddly enough, seems to be the attitude of most fantasy novels,
movies,. and anime I've seen. The first Lodoss War series is a
perfect example of that.
> If mages are as plentiful as plumbers, then castles will be constructed
> in a way that helps them defend themselves against magical attack.
I'd think they would be made that way even if mages were relatively
few.
I like your ideas- one other method would be to make fortifications
similar to the ones that appeared after canons appeared- huge,
multilayer sprawling things designed to keep the wallbreakers away
from where they can do damage. And thick walls too- thick enough
that a single shot from a canon (or mage) wouldn't cause a breech,
Of course those fortifications would be huge and massively
expensive- just like in real life. There are historical cases where
countries bankrupted themselves in creating those defenses. Of
course magic might make them much cheaper to produce as well.
Eric Tolle
>
> or invasion. In medieval times there were not a lot of supply trains -
> armies lived off the land, which is why castles were so effective -
> invaders often arrived to find the land stripped of food, which was all
> in the castle, so they couldn't besiege it for very long.
In post medieval times, as late as the Napoleonic era, armies still
lived off the land. In fact, one of the major tasks facing an army
would be to find supplies in the area.
> This was not a feature of warfare before the invention of gunpowder.
> Ancient and medieval armies did not have supply lines stretching all the
> way back to their home city. (See Caesar's references in The Gallic War
> to his army constantly "gathering corn" from the local countryside.)
> They did not have motorized transport. The only supply lines a
> pre-gunpowder army was likely to utilize would be by sea. This is how
That was the case for post-gunpowder amies, until fairly recently.
In fact, the larger the amies became as time went on, the more
critical the need to supply food from the local area. In fact,
large armies could be similar to army ant columns, stripping all the
food from the area they were in. This could be far more devastating
to the local populace then the actual war itself.
Eric Tolle
> I can tell you have a completely different concept of what you want
> magic to be like than I do. What you are describing is an industrial
> magic arms race. The castle is intrinsically worthless, so you lump all
> kinds of magic onto it to try to protect it. In reality, no one would
> waste money building a structure which is intrinsically worthless, and
> then spend more money trying to protect it from the enormous number of
> potential ways to negate its defenses. It also leads to a world where
> magic is an industrial phenomenon, mass produced on demand for strategic
> military purposes, which is not to my personal taste, but whatever.
Actually, he's running with the parameters you suggest. If mages
are common enough to be common combatants in an army, they are going
to be common enough that they can be used to increase the defense of
fortifications.
Really, the idea of magic as an industrial phenomenon comes
naturally from your concept of mages making a major, integral
portion of an army. You can't avoid an "industrial magic arms
race", unless you assume that mages cannot make defenses against
other mages- that they are simply offensive weapons like ICBMs.
> You are thinking of fortresses in the age of the nation-state - that
> came later. The world "castle" usually denotes a privately owned
Which is why I wouldn't use the term castle. I agree that the old
style castle would be as obsolete as they were in the day of
Cromwell. That's why I prefer the term "fortifications" to
"castle".
Eric Tolle
> One rationalization to still building castles in spite of these high-level
> spells is the idea that we still build army bases even though a nuclear
> missile could wipe them out, because we know that nuclear attacks are
> (thankfully) rare. If a castle can withstand 99% of the assaults against it,
> it is probably still viable to build one, even if there are rare high-level
> spellcasters who could take it down.
A very good point- in my campaign, the main opponents are creatures
similar to orcs who have extremely few high-level magic users. The
main threat from them is not a 13th level cleric, nor a 9th level
wizard, but raiding bands. If I went on the assumption that
fortifications were useless, then the area would simply be
uninhabitable for humans, as there would be no defensive areas for
cities to be built around, and no relatively safe areas to build
out from. Fortresses are a strategic necessity in my game world.
> > or else cast a charm
> > spell on someone in the castle who in turn can open the doors/gates.
>
> And be shot by the archers inside, or set off the detect charm alarm. Also,
You don't even need a detect charm spell. A description of Charm
Person, combined with military procedures can prevent that. "I'm
sorry my friend, I can't do that. I'm also supposed to take any
person who isn't part of the garrison to the holding cell- but I'll
put in a good word for you."
Edmund E Freeman
>
> In article <t9b3qur...@corp.supernews.com>, "Drew Id"
> <sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Sun Tzu never had to deal with magic.
>
> Well, "magic" in your world is basically military technology, and he
> certainly had to deal with that. To put it in your terms, a defense
> force containing ten wizards will easily be able to catch and destroy 20
> hit and run groups each containing one wizard.
Not so simple. While the group containing 10 mages will have an
advantage over any one group, it is going to be fairly easy for one of
the small groups to get lucky and toast the large group.
I remember one character I had, a cleric with a very high dex. Fastest
silence in the west. That party used to regularly toast multi-mage
groups.
Another example: 10 mages jump a spread-out party and obliterate the
guy in robes first thing. Too bad the guy in robes was charmed person
dressed funny; the real mage and the fighter with one level of mage so
he can use wands pull out their wands and blast 6 of the 10 wizards.
D & D parties tend to be unique enough so that preping for them cna be
very difficult.
> It is the principle of
> concentration of force, an essential military principle. I think a lot
> of posters here have an inflated sense of what guerilla tactics can
> accomplish. Guerilla tactics are the poor man's tactics, the loser's
> tactics, which are used by the weaker side because it has no choice and
> cannot deny control of its territory to the enemy. You don't see
> invaders using guerilla tactics, they are a defender's weapon and a poor
> one at that.
>
While 'concentration of force' is a fundemental military principle,
dividing one's force is also a standard tactic, *as long as* one can
force the opponent to also divide.
> > Okay, to offer more than a witty comeback. I'll respond that where you
> > said
> > "Unless you took the local fort, you could not control the local area" is
> > just not true, especially in a fantasy world.
>
> I don't know what kind of control you are talking about. In the real
> world, especially the ancient and medieval world, land was valuable
> because of food production. If an enemy fort was nearby, the people in
> it could sortie forth and disrupt food production or steal the food. As
> a result, you could not meaningfully control the area without getting
> rid of the enemy fort.
>
> > Using Robin Hood as an
> > example, who controlled Sherwood Forest?
>
> Sherwood Forest was a wasteland. It was not a food production area which
> is why there was no castle to control it.
>
At least according to the legends, Sherwood Forest was a major deer
preserve.
> > The bandit in the countryside did, not the guys in the castle.
>
> The guys in the castle were never hungry, because they controlled the
> valuble farmland, and Robin did not. The woods was the last place you
> wanted to be. In the pecking order, "bandit" is lowest and "noble in a
> castle" is highest. Robin was good at being a pain in the ass, but it did
> not give him control of land, or restore him to the status of nobility
> with a castle of his own. Robin also had the sympathy of the local
> peasants, he was not an invader. He could never had survived as an
> invader.
>
This bit about 'sympathy of the local peasants' is an excellent point.
Small groups are going to have a great deal of difficulty operating and
eating if the peasants hate them. They would have to take everything by
force. So much for the paladins.
> >The guerilla warfare tactics of a hundred
> > small
> > teams in a fantasy campaign would tear a country to shreds without
> > anything
> > a large army could do to stop them, unless the large army also broke down
> > into smaller pieces first.
>
> War is about control. Small teams don't control anything. I am a
> wargamer so I have a lot of experience with these kinds of weird
> strategies. If someone tried to do that to me, I would simply march on
> his capital and burn it to the ground, since his forces would be weak
> and dispersed and incapable of stopping me from going where I wished.
>
Except that many of the small, dispersed groups would be perfectly
capable of burning your capital to the ground by themselves.
This gives us a kind of MAD situation: if both sides go flat-out for
the jugular, both sides wind up being destroyed.
> You can bet that every feasible idea has been tried before. The
> Parthians fought the way you describe, with small mobile hit and run
> teams of horse archers.
Parthians didn't have wands of fireballs.
>The Romans preferred a gigantic infantry army.
> When it came down to it, Trajan marched on the Parthian capital and took
> it and there was nothing these little teams could do to stop him. In the
> Hundred Years War the English marched around burning and looting all
> over France. In the end it accomplished nothing except pissing off the
> French people and they lost all their holdings in France.
>
> >The large army simply could not find them all,
> > and engage them all in any kind of effective pace. While the army chases
> > one
> > group in the south, 20 other groups are in the north raiding one vilalge
> > after another.
>
> You assume that raiding is always the goal in war. It is not; the goal
> is control.
The ultimate goal is to destroy the enemy's will and ability to resist
(Clausewitz). This can be done by destroying an army, or destroying the
economic base.
> You don't get that with little raiding teams. Anyway, given
> that wizards would be the only effective combat arm, the "large force"
> would simply be 10 or 15 wizards, not some bulky collection of soldiers.
>
> > I do want to say that you have some valid points, but I think we are
> > comparing two differerent campaigns where the rarity of magic and the
> > general national structures are pretty different.
>
> Military principles never change. My ten wizards will kill your one
> wizard every time. They can do it at small risk to themselves, and they
> can do it repeatedly. If you split up into little groups, you are
> feeding yourself to me in easy to digest pieces.
>
> > Overall, spellcasters (including wizards *and* clerics) might make up
> > 1%
> > of the population at the maximum
>
> That's pretty huge. By comparison only about 1 in 260 people in the U.S.
> is a soldier, if that.
>
No, I think 1% is reasonable. For an ancient society, it is reasonable
to assume that 5% of the population is non-productive; artists,
religuous people, army types, rulers. Since it is so important to have
a lot of mages around, I think 1 in 5 of the top 5% is a reasonable if
maximum magical population (note; this includes clerics etc in the 1%).
> , and during a war, you might expect to
> > see
> > one spellcaster of roughly fifth level for every 100 soldiers.
>
> What? Of the population, say 40% is children or old people. Half of the
> remainder is female. So maybe 30% are males of fighting age. Putting
> them all into the army would destroy the economy and cause mass
> starvation. If you could field half of them you would be pushing it, but
> say it's an emergency. So 15% of your population ends up as soldiers. 1%
> of people are spellcasters. That is one spellcaster per 15 soldiers.
>
> > Collecting a large army of thousands of soldiers and a hundred
> > spellcasters into one central location could be done, but it would be
> > foolhardy to attempt.
>
> Primarily because armies make no sense in a world where combat magic is
> common.
>
> > The more effective means of waging war that has developed is to split
> > an
> > army into many small autonomous teams, much like a large group of
> > adventurers, which then infiltrates a nation,
>
> Of course the local people would give them away pronto. This isn't Viet
> Nam.
>
Even more so, local people would refuse to give them supplies, and
might even be formed into small goups for sucide runs on the food
caches.
> >hides out somewhere within the
> > borders
>
> It would be pretty hard to hide a group of foreigners in an ancient or
> medieval area. Everybody knows everybody else.
>
> > and conducts guerilla attacks
>
> Which totally alienates the local people and stokes up their morale, and
> does not give you control of any land. It also leads to banditry and
> loss of control of your "troops" who are basically just being set loose
> as pirates and looters on civilians - not a very civilized way of waging
> war, and one that would reflect badly on a nation that tried to use it.
>
IIRC, this happened a lot in Medieval warfare, especially if the war
went on for any length of time.
> > on the villages and caravans of the
> > nation while working to disrupt trade, communication, and the general
> > well-being of the nation.
>
> You are presupposing these attacks will be totally effective, and the
> invaders will never run into traps, ambushes, or treachery problems, or
> suffer from desertion, or cause rebellion among the good men who are
> sickened by their orders to loot and pillage innocent peasants.
>
Good points. In this small group warfare, moral and discipline are
going to be huge issues. Absent anything else, it is going to be a huge
temptation for a small group to go get itself lost somewhere away from
the main fighting, and maybe strike a deal with a local village.
The guerillas would never control the land, just as a legion in battle
formation would never control land. The guerilla bands would eventually
wipe out the other side's bands to the point where the authorities would
surrender; ultimately, the guerilla bands would wipte out the opposing
guerilla bands and then convert themsleves to an occupying army.
> At best the guerillas could ensure no one
> controls the land, but they themselves cannot control it. Denial of
> enemy control is not the same thing as control. And the guerillas,
> sooner or later, would have to leave, abandoning the land to the castle
> owners.
>
In our situation, many of these small bands will have the resources to
potentially level the castles.
> > The key difference between real-world history and this tactical
> > situation is that magic would allow fast and reliable communication
> > between
> > these small teams, allow them in many cases to mask their presence, to
> > support themselves more easily with food and healing, and to conduct more
> > effective raids against small targets such as caravans and villages.
>
> I'm sure someone as creative as yourself could come up with equally
> effective ways to use magic to totally negate these advantages and
> destroy all the teams one by one, especially given the advantage of
> being on one's home turf.
>
> > What makes this scenario appealing for me and my players is that the
> > role of the adventuring group becomes an important and *socially logical*
> > role.
>
> Only if it is socially accepted to be a professional looter and
> terrorist.
Read, say, Greek literature and mythology.
Or for that matter, follow a typical D&D group on a dungeon crawl.
> In the end you have to do whatever you think is fun, and trying to
> project how D&D magic would work in warfare can be an amusing mental
> exercise. I just think if you worked it out with another person instead
> of just by yourself, with them in an adversary role, you would find they
> could probably counter a lot of what you could come up with. As an
> example, using the home turf advantage, I would set up a network of
> posts across the frontier and scattered behind the frontier. I would
> then establish "crack teams" of wizards and clerics. Using Teleport or
> Word of Recall, these teams could instantly go to these familiar posts
> whenever necessary. Then I would establish a network of spies and
> lookouts who could alert headquarters as soon as an invading team
> appeared. A crack team (or all of them, concentration) would be
> dispatched magically to the nearest post and would destroy the invader,
> and be back in time for breakfast. The defense would be able to respond
> much more quickly than the offense because of the home turf advantage of
> familiarity with the posts (for teleport and word of recall) and you
> would get a situation like WWI, where the defender could use trains to
> move up reserves while the attacker had to walk forward when attacking,
> and the result was no progress, anywhere up and down the line.
This network system could be very vulnerable, actually. Suppose an
enemy assasinates some of the key mages, the ones that are responsible
for the teleports. Or booby-traps the posts.
--Ed Freeman
David Serhienko
>
> "Gary J. Robinson" wrote:
> >
> > In article <t9b3qur...@corp.supernews.com>, "Drew Id"
> > <sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
> > It is the principle of
> > concentration of force, an essential military principle. I think a lot
> > of posters here have an inflated sense of what guerilla tactics can
> > accomplish. Guerilla tactics are the poor man's tactics, the loser's
> > tactics, which are used by the weaker side because it has no choice and
> > cannot deny control of its territory to the enemy. You don't see
> > invaders using guerilla tactics, they are a defender's weapon and a poor
> > one at that.
> >
> While 'concentration of force' is a fundemental military principle,
> dividing one's force is also a standard tactic, *as long as* one can
> force the opponent to also divide.
I'd just like to point at that 'concentration of force', as
a military tactic, does NOT mean bunching your troops
together. 'Concentration of Force' is meant to allow that
force to be massed on the Target.
The historical reality is that until recently, the way you
amassed firepower on a target was to bunch up the troops,
bringing lots of clubs and sharp pointy things into one area
so they could all be applied to the Target at once.
This is by no means a necessity of the tactic.
Anyone who thinks it is will lose a combined arms conflict.
Badly.
<snip>
--
David Serhienko
"All your base. Are belong to us."
Gary J. Robinson
<efre...@blarg.net> wrote:
> Not so simple. While the group containing 10 mages will have an
> advantage over any one group, it is going to be fairly easy for one of
> the small groups to get lucky and toast the large group.
Not if the large group is played intelligently. Two or three members
would be devoted to high level defensive spells, they would probably be
spread out, certainly invisible, and they would attack when the
defenders were not expecting it.
> Another example: 10 mages jump a spread-out party and obliterate the
> guy in robes first thing. Too bad the guy in robes was charmed person
> dressed funny; the real mage and the fighter with one level of mage so
> he can use wands pull out their wands and blast 6 of the 10 wizards.
But this kind of foolishness works both ways. Every village filled with
innocent-looking peasants could contain one with "one level of mage" and
a wand under his burlap clothes who could toast the guerillas. Guerilla
work would be insanely dangerous if you presuppose this kind of thing.
> While 'concentration of force' is a fundemental military principle,
> dividing one's force is also a standard tactic, *as long as* one can
> force the opponent to also divide.
Forcing the opponent to divide is pretty hard to do in a D&D world
because, frankly, there is no means of production as far as adventurers
are concerned. This is why the whole high-magic worldview makes no sense
in the end. You can't threaten the "homeland" of the characters because
they don't give a darn. They can make their own food and water; they can
re-learn their own spells. They need no food or ammunition. Unlike any
real military that has ever existed, they have no home base and need no
supplies. They have nothing to lose. It is hard to imagine why they
would even agree to be soldiers; they have nothing to protect. There is
no way to negate them short of killing them. There is no way to
outmaneuver them. You can't force them to split up. They are basically a
giant carrier task force than can replenish itself at will.
When you start to think about it, if clerics could produce food and
water for groups of people several times a day every day, why would
anyone bother with all the work, trouble and risk of trying to grow
crops? Instead, more people would be clerics and no one would be a
peasant. Then there is nothing for the guerillas to pillage or disrupt.
When you continue to think about it, since disease can be magically
cured, you would have 20th century rates of population growth since
disease and hunger were the major limiting factors on medieval society.
Now we have food created on demand and no disease. Population shoots
through the roof. But you can't exhaust the land because you don't use
it; more people = more clerics = more magically created food and water.
Population grows till it is standing room only. The result is ludicrous.
But that is what happens if magic becomes industrialized. You would end
up with a magic-based food economy long before your legions of guerillas
with fireball wands, hunting for nonexistent crops.
> > Sherwood Forest was a wasteland. It was not a food production area
> > which
> > is why there was no castle to control it.
> >
> At least according to the legends, Sherwood Forest was a major deer
> preserve.
So what? You can't feed an agriculturally-sized population very long
using hunter-gatherer resources. The "preserve" part meant peasants
weren't allowed to hunt there, to make sure the deer were not wiped out,
which they would be if the peasants could hunt there at will.
> Read, say, Greek literature and mythology.
I have. Take the Iliad. The Greeks did not run around deep in foreign
countries as little bands of guerillas. They had a mass army which
arrived by sea and besieged an enemy fortress.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
<sch...@silcom.com> wrote:
> Actually, he's running with the parameters you suggest. If mages
> are common enough to be common combatants in an army, they are going
> to be common enough that they can be used to increase the defense of
> fortifications.
Except that fortifications make no sense to build if you need mages for
them to work. Fortifications were built in real life because they had
inherent value.
> Really, the idea of magic as an industrial phenomenon comes
> naturally from your concept of mages making a major, integral
> portion of an army.
I know that, which is why in my campaign, mages are as rare as hen's
teeth, they are not mercenaries, and magic doesn't work in civilized
areas. The last thing I want is industrialized magic. My armies are
mageless.
Gary
R. Scott Rogers
>> incentive to have prepared defensive works, but they might be more in the
>> form of an embanked hilltop with multiple sources of water, storage
>> facilities and space enough to contain several thousand men.
>
> I still don't see why several thousand men are ever going to be useful
> in a world filled with battle mages.
I take your previous points, but I do see some need for infantry even under
a military paradigm of heavy magic. To the extent that all one wants to do
is affect one's enemy, like force it to give up small bits of territory or
to stop oppressing the Acmean minority or whatever, then battle-mages will
do just fine. They're rather a lot like modern "precision" air forces in
that regard. (In the sense of being completely overwhelming when used
against ground forces and fortifications.) The battle-mages would be quite
good at disrupting command-and-control, infrastructure, and non-magical
forces.
However, if you intend to do things like conquer a significant portion of
the enemy's territory or destroy his magic and non-magic armed forces, I
think you will need lots of guys with bows and spears. For one thing, the
presence of a similar number of battle-mages on the other side makes the
whole magic issue sauce for the goose. Things like command of terrain and
maneuver will once again become important when the magical forces are more
or less equalized.
But even when you have magical superiority or even supremacy, you'll still
need to occupy and garrison the territory you conquer. This is particularly
true while your operations are still underway, and you are stretching your
lines through enemy territory. You'll need lots of men with bows and spears
to garrison your supply lines while your front-line battle-mages let slip
the dogs of war.
And even if your enemy is attacking you with superior magical forces, you
might not want to simply run away. If you choose to fight the high-magic
enemies, you'll want to do so on the most favorable ground. How to force the
enemy to face you on the terrain of your choosing? Fortify it, and garrison
a large number of your infantry there. Even with battle-mages, the enemy
will still have to either face you there or leave you free to disrupt his
lines after he passes.
Drew Id
> > > spell on someone in the castle who in turn can open the doors/gates.
> >
> > And be shot by the archers inside, or set off the detect charm alarm.
Also,
>
> You don't even need a detect charm spell. A description of Charm
> Person, combined with military procedures can prevent that. "I'm
> sorry my friend, I can't do that. I'm also supposed to take any
> person who isn't part of the garrison to the holding cell- but I'll
> put in a good word for you."
Good point. You might imagine that your best friend is a Secret Service
agent protecting the President, or a soldier working in a nuclear missile
silo. If we were at war, you couldn't ask your best friend to let you in to
see the President, or to let you into the nuclear control room. I think the
best that a Charm Person could do in that scenario would be to make them
feel really guilty before locking you up.
Gary J. Robinson
<sro...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> However, if you intend to do things like conquer a significant portion of
> the enemy's territory or destroy his magic and non-magic armed forces, I
> think you will need lots of guys with bows and spears. For one thing, the
> presence of a similar number of battle-mages on the other side makes the
> whole magic issue sauce for the goose. Things like command of terrain and
> maneuver will once again become important when the magical forces are
> more
> or less equalized.
In that case I must progress to the next level of analysis and point out
that in a magic rich world, terrain is useless. There really is no
reason for these wars in the first place. If the technology (Create Food
& Water) existed to make food and water on demand, no one would be a
peasant. You would have more clerics instead. There would be no
agriculture, and control of land would be irrelevant. Wizards do not
need ammunition like modern artillery does; they are self-replenishing.
There is no equivalent to threatening the enemy industrial base. Which
means there is no maneuver either. An army that can make its own food
and ammunition will never have a supply line, nor will it have territory
it needs to defend.
Let's face it, this whole war thing assumes all kinds of mundane
economic and political structures that simply wouldn't exist in a world
where people can make their own food with a spell, and cure disease at
will. The world would not resemble anything that we can see from
history. There would be little reason to fight, since land would be
worthless. Trying to have territorial wars in such a world makes no
sense. I find it far simpler to simply eliminate magic from the wars of
men, than to try to rationalize away all the incredible implications of
low-level spells like Cure Disease and Create Food & Water being
available on a mass scale.
The more you want your fantasy world to look like the real one, the more
rare magic has to be.
Gary
Drew Id
non-binary Usenet post? :-)
"Gary J. Robinson" <wig...@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:wiggler-8B0BDD...@news.concentric.net...
> In article <t9b3qur...@corp.supernews.com>, "Drew Id"
> <sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Sun Tzu never had to deal with magic.
>
> Well, "magic" in your world is basically military technology, and he
> certainly had to deal with that.
No, he didn't. He had to deal with standard weaponry. The very concept of a
weapon that could obliterate a hundred troops in an instant didn't even
exist. Again, just as you are trying to show that castles shouldn't exist,
you should remember that virtually *all* military strategy would have to be
re-thought to handle magic.
One other point I should add before anything else is the *extreme* rarity of
teleportation IMC. This makes some of what you said in your post
unapplicable. I should have stated that earlier.
> To put it in your terms, a defense
> force containing ten wizards will easily be able to catch and destroy 20
> hit and run groups each containing one wizard.
God, I would *love* to meet the group that could do that!
As I said before, high-level magic is rare and the result usually of
teams of mages working together. These ten wizards you describe would be a
national treasure and could not be convinced to waste their days waiting for
an invasion. IMC, if an opposing nation had ten wizards like that, things
probably would be different, but at best each nation has a handful of
powerful mages, and they are usually not the order-following type.
Obviously with teleport out, the defending teams would have to catch all
of these groups first, and anti-scrying spells would be likely, leaving some
standard forms of tracking neccessary. A small group could hide pretty well.
Second, you seem to be assuming the defending wizards would suffer no
losses, and could always catch the teams off-guard. Not likely. Also, as
each team would have a different make-up, the defenders could not accurately
predict what to expect when fighting each team. There could be several teams
devoted to just killing off wizards. A team of rogue/wizard assassins could
look just like normal soldiers until the last second and then kill off the
defending wizards in one or two rounds.
You also assume that each team would come through singly, and be
detected. Highly unlikely. 100 teams coming through in a single night, all
over the border, would leave any single rapid-response overwhelmed. Or more
likely, the 100 teams would enter the country peacefully, one by one, and
infiltrate the country over a month or more. Unless the border guards are
doing mind-searches on everyone that enters, they can't say who is an enemy
infiltrator and who is just a merchant. This tactic would also mean that
many cities and castles might have assassins inside before they even know
about an invasion.
>It is the principle of concentration of force, an essential military
principle. I think a
> lot of posters here have an inflated sense of what guerilla tactics can
> accomplish. Guerilla tactics are the poor man's tactics
Again, concentrated forces would get slaughtered, and guerilla tactics would
be much more effective with magical aid. Could the average party of 10 5th
level PC's destroy an entire village with a population around 100? Very
easily. Especially if the party had a day or two to prepare. Could the
average party of 10 5th level PC's destroy a standing army of 10,000? No,
but they could take out a disproportionate number of soldiers in a short
time, and no scouts, support caravans, or messengers would be safe without a
massive escorting force.
> > "Unless you took the local fort, you could not control the local area"
is
> > just not true, especially in a fantasy world.
>
> I don't know what kind of control you are talking about. In the real
> world, especially the ancient and medieval world, land was valuable
> because of food production. If an enemy fort was nearby, the people in
> it could sortie forth and disrupt food production or steal the food. As
> a result, you could not meaningfully control the area without getting
> rid of the enemy fort.
If raiders can prevent 90% of all traffic from entering or leaving the fort,
and terrorize the surrounding countryside to a point that the locals demand
that those within the fort come to their rescue, and those inside the fort
are scared to come out for fear of being killed out in the open, and I can
keep this up for an indefinitely long period of time, then at worst *no one*
is in control, and many would say that the raiders are in control.
> Robin [Hood] also had the sympathy of the local
> peasants, he was not an invader. He could never had survived as an
> invader.
> It would be pretty hard to hide a group of foreigners in an ancient or
> medieval area. Everybody knows everybody else.
Charm Person, Hypnotize, Change Self. "Yes, I'm a local merchant that you've
seen before, even if your memory is somewhat hazy now, please help me."
Resistance from the average villagers would never be a real issue to the
invaders.
> War is about control. Small teams don't control anything.
No, war is about destroying the enemy, period. There are many reasons to go
to war, and not all of them care about taking over viable land when you are
done. Also, prevention of control *can* be the same as having control
yourself, if you can keep it up longer than the other guy.
> I am a
> wargamer so I have a lot of experience with these kinds of weird
> strategies. If someone tried to do that to me, I would simply march on
> his capital and burn it to the ground, since his forces would be weak
> and dispersed and incapable of stopping me from going where I wished.
Leaving no one to defend against my small teams? Cool, My capital is gone,
but my entire countryside and economic base it secure. Your capital still
stands, and the people inside are starving to death, every village has been
burned to the ground, and everybody that could leave to seek refuge
somewhere else has done so. Every night, my teams continue to eat up your
country one small piece at a time, while my defensive teams rain down
fireballs and earthquakes on your large marching force, until they stopped
squirming. End result, terrible losses on each side, but you no longer have
any forces left or any real country to return to.
> You can bet that every feasible idea has been tried before.
Yeah, the Romans were big on lightning bolts.
Seriously, ancient military strategy never had to deal with the odd mixture
of available resources in a fantasy world, so why do you think that *all* of
the same rules still apply?
> In the
> Hundred Years War the English marched around burning and looting all
> over France. In the end it accomplished nothing except pissing off the
> French people and they lost all their holdings in France.
For a hundred reasons that had nothing to do with their military strategy.
> You assume that raiding is always the goal in war. It is not; the goal
> is control.
Again, the goal is "not having an enemy left to fight".
> Military principles never change.
Yes, I agree, principles do not change, *but tactics do*.
> My ten wizards will kill your one
> wizard every time. They can do it at small risk to themselves, and they
> can do it repeatedly. If you split up into little groups, you are
> feeding yourself to me in easy to digest pieces.
No, they won't for reasons discussed above, they would do it at serious risk
to themselves, and could not do it repeatedly. You also seem to completely
ignore the fact that your tiny group of powerful wizards would be completely
ignoring *my* tiny group of powerful wizards. Even assuming such groups
existed (which I don't), the first wave of any invasion would be a duel
between these two groups, and the likely result would be in favor of the
invaders, who would be able to decide when and where the battle would take
place and prepare for it. Your group of wizards could not not be a feasible
defense unless you split them up to use as parts of other groups.
> So 15% of your population ends up as soldiers. 1%
> of people are spellcasters. That is one spellcaster per 15 soldiers.
Not all spellcasters would be part of the war effort, and an adept who can
cast a single cantrip counts as a spellcaster. Viable war mages (5th level
or higher) would make up a smaller percentage of the total spellcasting
group, so that effective spellcasters in the army make up approximately 1%
of the army. If high-level spellcasters were common, I would be agreeing
with you about almost everything you've said in this thread, but just "being
a spellcaster" does not equal "being a high-level spellcaster" with access
to reliable teleport and other spells.
> > Collecting a large army of thousands of soldiers and a hundred
> > spellcasters into one central location could be done, but it would be
> > foolhardy to attempt.
>
> Primarily because armies make no sense in a world where combat magic is
> common.
And yet earlier in this post you mentioned marching to destroy the enemy
capital with your army? You are correct *here*; armies do not make sense.
High-level magic is too rare to be decisive, what strategy remains? Small
teams guerilla warfare. Essentially every PC party that has ever adventured
in hostile enemy terrain has proved this point.
> Which totally alienates the local people and stokes up their morale, and
> does not give you control of any land. It also leads to banditry and
> loss of control of your "troops" who are basically just being set loose
> as pirates and looters on civilians - not a very civilized way of waging
> war, and one that would reflect badly on a nation that tried to use it.
Scroched-earth strategy: Most of the villagers will not survive. The ones
that do will be forced to accept the new reign, or more likely be replaced
with my peasants, who are more than happy to work this new land. Invading
another country is a big enough deal that *how* you do it hardly matters.
Especially if this particular tactic is the only viable way to do it.
> You are presupposing these attacks will be totally effective, and the
> invaders will never run into traps, ambushes, or treachery problems, or
> suffer from desertion,
Oh, they will, but the effect on the defending country will still be the
same. Enough will be successful to lay the country to waste. And the
defending troops will be impossible to distinguish from the invaders.
> or cause rebellion among the good men who are
> sickened by their orders to loot and pillage innocent peasants.
I think you *seriously* overestimate the human sense of morality, honor, and
fair play. Soldiers of any country throughout history, will rape, pillage,
kill, and burn anything in their path, and moral dissention will not make a
difference. As an American, I might like to believe that American soldiers
have never done such atrocities, but I would be kidding myself. Every Axis
soldier was not a villain, and every Allied soldier was not a hero. They
were soldiers killing people because they were ordered to.
> > The nation under attack is then bled dry from
> > hundreds of small daily attacks,
>
> Which brings us back to castles. Their purpose is precisely to defeat
> these sorts of raids. (snip) The Vikings' solution was to run
> away by boat, and to strike by boat so there would be as little warning
> as possible. Your land guerillas will have no such advantages.
Except invisiblity, charms, fireballs. These same raiders could conceivably
perform an attack while disguised, then ride down the road, clean up, and
hang out in the local tavern looking like locals when the king's men arrive.
Throw in an illusion of tracks leading off to the woods or beach, and no
defender could suspect them.
> > Magic provides the
> > potential for communication and support
>
> It also provides the potential for the defenders to spot and track all
> the invading groups so they can be trapped and destroyed at leisure with
> overwhelming force.
As stated before, the "magical arms race" would include anti-detection; and
teleportation is not an option. The best the mages could do from their
remote tower would be to collect and disperse "reports from the field".
> And the guerillas,
> sooner or later, would have to leave, abandoning the land to the castle
> owners.
Why? If anything, the longer they stay, the more likely that other invading
teams will meet up with them, or that they will destroy the area completely.
> > The key difference between real-world history and this tactical
> > situation is that magic would allow fast and reliable communication
> > between
> > these small teams, allow them in many cases to mask their presence, to
> > support themselves more easily with food and healing, and to conduct
more
> > effective raids against small targets such as caravans and villages.
>
> I'm sure someone as creative as yourself could come up with equally
> effective ways to use magic to totally negate these advantages and
> destroy all the teams one by one, especially given the advantage of
> being on one's home turf.
I appreciate the compliment, and I have, and the most effective tactic is a
netwrok of small semi-roaming defensive teams.
> Only if it is socially accepted to be a professional looter and
> terrorist. This kind of behavior is very unchivalrous for one thing.
As above, it's sad but true, that most soldiers would *not* have a problem
with this at all. Leave chivalry to the knights that protect the queen, and
leave the real war to the grunts who have never head of the concept of
'human rights" or "honor". These enemies that they are killing are
foreigners, therefore, they don't deserve any better.
> For
> another I doubt the average mage studied arcane arts all his life so he
> could run around in the mud at night burning peasants' crops. I mean
> really! I find it hard to swallow.
Yet PC's do it all the time :-). It would be nice to believe that every
student of the arcane arts studies to fulfill some bookish yearning in his
soul, but it is more likely that they study as one of the few ways for a
peasant to get ahead in life. Just as joining the priesthood in the medieval
age was very often an economic decision, so to would be the study of magic.
The attitudes of the magic user would be much the same as anyone else.
> And certainly no character of good alignment would participate in such an
army.
"I was just following orders." are possibly the 5 scariest words in the
English language, and every invading soldier would know them well.
> It is "barbarian" behavior
> and is associated with undisciplined troops who are out to grab what
> they can.
Not if everyone does it. Then it is just the standard, and would be accepted
as normal.
> My implementation is simple: magic does not work in civilized areas. .
And I really like that concept, and everything you have said makes sense in
that light, but not in a world where magic *does* function everywhere
equally.
> I just think if you worked it out with another person instead
> of just by yourself, with them in an adversary role, you would find they
> could probably counter a lot of what you could come up with.
Like posting it here? :-)
> As an
> example, using the home turf advantage, I would set up a network of
> posts across the frontier and scattered behind the frontier. I would
> then establish "crack teams" of wizards and clerics. Using Teleport or
> Word of Recall, these teams could instantly go to these familiar posts
> whenever necessary.
It would work, except teleportation magic is *severely* limited. For all
intents and purposes, it might as well not exist at all. (Incidentally,
there is a good story behind that, and teleportation does not work so well
because it was used in a war 2000 years ago and some *really* powerful
people did not like the way it turned out. People powerful enough to make
sure teleport never quite worked right again even 2000 years later.)
> Then I would establish a network of spies and
> lookouts who could alert headquarters as soon as an invading team
> appeared.
Good for a naturally hostile border, hard when the troops sneak in disguised
as civilians. Still the communications part works.
> A crack team (or all of them, concentration) would be
> dispatched magically to the nearest post and would destroy the invader,
> and be back in time for breakfast.
See teleport statement above. Also, alerts would only come in when attacks
were made, making the "run" the important part in "hit and run" attacks.
Also, especially in the case of the first teams to attack, they would not be
"easy meat".
> The defense would be able to respond
> much more quickly than the offense because of the home turf advantage of
> familiarity with the posts (for teleport and word of recall) and you
> would get a situation like WWI, where the defender could use trains to
> move up reserves while the attacker had to walk forward when attacking,
> and the result was no progress, anywhere up and down the line.
Valid, although the line would be everywhere at once. Perhaps even a more
valid analogy would be Vietnam, where the line was pretty vague, and
violence behind the line was common. You don't so much win as you just make
the other guy lose.
> Personally I think this kind of magic-heavy warfare is not very
> appealing, because it feels more like technology than magic, but that is
> another subject.
And probably should be, since this post is practically a book, but I would
say that low level common magic *should* feel a little bit like technology,
and let the high level stuff so all of the awe-inspiring.
Justin Bacon
writes:
>John Rudd wrote:
>>
>> If you remove a 10 foot cube of wall from the bottom of a curtain wall,
>> about midway between the towers, and such that one face of the cube is
>> flush with the outer surface of the wall, you'll probably cause enough
>> structural integrity damage to cause the face of the wall to collaps
>>
>Right. Which is why I _do_ doubt that castles, as in pre-gunpowder
>castles would exist. That's generally why I say 'fortifications"
>instead.
Why wouldn't you simply build castle walls which have permanent anti-magic
fields attached to them -- thereby preventing mages from taking direct magical
action against them?
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
ba...@digital-marketplace.net
<snip>
>
> Why wouldn't you simply build castle walls which have permanent anti-magic
> fields attached to them -- thereby preventing mages from taking direct magical
> action against them?
This sounds like spell research.
After all if you cast anti-magic first how can you cast permanency on it
successfully.
If you cast permanency first, then cast anti-magic this spell will
cancel the permanency spell. Besides what would you cast the former
spell on, there is supposed to be an effect already in place.
>
> Justin Bacon
> tria...@aol.com
Michael Scott Brown
news:3A96BBAF.A2138830@digital-
> If you cast permanency first, then cast anti-magic this spell will
> cancel the permanency spell. Besides what would you cast the former
> spell on, there is supposed to be an effect already in place.
<laughter>
A fascinating catch-22.
One would have to ensorcell protective dweomers, rather than
magic-negating ones. Interesting nuance.
-Michael
Drew Id
> that in a magic rich world, terrain is useless. There really is no
> reason for these wars in the first place. If the technology (Create Food
> & Water) existed to make food and water on demand, no one would be a
> peasant.
If you had at least 1 5th level cleric for roughly every 10 people, this
would be reasonable. Otherwise, some agriculture will be neccessary. Also, I
can't speak for everyone, but IMC and several others that I have heard of,
the fod created by the spell is very bland and real food is preferable. (I
know it does not say so in the spell)
> The more you want your fantasy world to look like the real one, the more
> rare magic has to be.
I agree, although low level magic can be common, anything above a 2nd level
spell should be rare and even more rare the higher in level you go.
Gary J. Robinson
<sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well, what I see here is a lot of wishful thinking from someone who has
not studied the history of war to any great degree. You just seem to
assume the existence of a large, elite corps of fearless men who all
possess individual initiative, perfect coordination and timing, complete
amorality regarding civilians, and the ability to operate in hostile
territory with limited information, with yet with total competence.
These conditions have never existed at any time in any place in Earth's
history and I do not think they would exist in a fantasy world simply by
adding a bunch of low level spellcasters to the mix. Even modern armies,
with maps, radios, aerial reconnaissance, and other advantages, are
incapable of acting with such incredible coordination and effectiveness
in enemy territory, and that is true even when they are mass armies and
are not trying to avoid detection first and foremost.
Real men feel fear, they panic, they hunker down and wait for
developments, they get sick or injured, they make mistakes, they desert
or switch sides, they do the wrong thing. I don't know what kind of
magical communication devices you are assuming that will be available in
such mass numbers, but it is hard to imagine how these small teams, who
know they are meat on the table for any decent sized force which
discovers them, are going to proceed into the darkness of unknown
territory and communicate effectively with all the other teams and not
give themselves away. Have you considered what would happen if one of
these communication devices was captured by the enemy, as would
inevitably happen? Of course if you just say "They can't use it" I can
say "Then they invent another device which can listen in" and back and
forth we go.
> No, he didn't. He had to deal with standard weaponry. The very concept of
> a
> weapon that could obliterate a hundred troops in an instant didn't even
> exist.
You are getting lost in the details. Death is death. A man doesn't care
whether he is killed by fireball or arrow. As far as strategy and morale
is concerned, what matters is the soldier's chance of surviving the day.
Frankly your high magic world doesn't make sense at any level. Why have
peasants and fields when you can have clerics creating food and water?
Why fight over land when food can be created on demand? Land would be
worthless and there would be no peasants - and no territorial wars.
> No, war is about destroying the enemy, period.
How many enemies have been destroyed in the history of warfare? You tell
me.
> There are many reasons to
> go
> to war, and not all of them care about taking over viable land when you
> are
> done.
Hmmm, you must have read about different wars than I have.
> Leaving no one to defend against my small teams? Cool, My capital is
> gone,
> but my entire countryside and economic base it secure.
No, your political power would collapse, your "small teams" would panic
when communications were cut off and they realized their families were
all hostages or slaves, and they would desert and try to make their way
home. You assume fantastic organization of your forces, but without the
weaknesses of organization: centralization and vulnerability to
disruption. You can't have it both ways. History shows that when highly
organized states lose their capital, they collapse like a house of
cards. If you can't defend your capital, it shows you can't defend
anything, and you lose morale, prestige, and national coherence. People
don't like to fight and die when the war is already over.
> End result, terrible losses on each side, but you no longer
> have
> any forces left or any real country to return to.
You seem determined just to imagine you win under any scenario, but your
strategy is bad, it has never worked at any time in history, and you
assume not just magic, but an entirely different human psychology, one
which has never existed. The art of command is making use of ordinary
men to do a tough job, not to imagine you have thousands of crack amoral
fearless assassins who are blissfully apathetic about the fate of their
home city and live to terrorize innocent foreign farmers.
> Yeah, the Romans were big on lightning bolts.
The Romans knew you didn't need lightning bolts to kill people or
capture cities.
> Seriously, ancient military strategy never had to deal with the odd
> mixture
> of available resources in a fantasy world, so why do you think that *all*
> of
> the same rules still apply?
Because they never had to deal with helicopters, submarines, rifles,
infrared sighting systems, guided missiles, aircraft carriers, or tanks
either, yet those things did not change the principles of warfare.
> > My ten wizards will kill your one
> > wizard every time. They can do it at small risk to themselves, and they
> > can do it repeatedly. If you split up into little groups, you are
> > feeding yourself to me in easy to digest pieces.
>
> No, they won't for reasons discussed above, they would do it at serious
> risk
> to themselves, and could not do it repeatedly. You also seem to
> completely
> ignore the fact that your tiny group of powerful wizards would be
> completely
> ignoring *my* tiny group of powerful wizards.
This is you trying to have it both ways again. You said you split your
forces; now you are saying you have a concentration equal to mine. You
can't have both. Whatever you choose to split up, I keep together. By
definition I *have* to have a much bigger, more powerful strike team of
mages than you. Whatever resources your teams have, my team has more.
You will lose any given confrontation because in every confrontation you
will have the weaker force. After each confrontation I will heal my
wounded and raise my dead, and you will do nothing because you lose the
battle and I burn your corpses. You get weaker and I get stronger. The
result is inevitable and when your men realize it their morale will
crack and they will desert, and you will find they are no longer
answering their communication crystals or whatever they are. Some will
switch sides and betray the communication system you are using and I
will start to listen in and track down the other teams.
> And yet earlier in this post you mentioned marching to destroy the enemy
> capital with your army?
Or whatever passes for an army in your world. A concentration of force.
They would not be any more concentrated on the march than modern
soldiers; fireballs are no more deadly than artillery (and fireballs
actually have a smaller radius of blast effect).
> Scroched-earth strategy:
Considered to be a war crime incidentally. Field Marshall Erich von
Manstein was put on trial at Nuremberg after WWII for using this
strategy in Russia.
> Most of the villagers will not survive. The ones
> that do will be forced to accept the new reign, or more likely be
> replaced
> with my peasants, who are more than happy to work this new land.
Why would they be happy to work for a mass murderer? I would think they
would be terrified of revenge in the night by enemy guerilla "small
teams."
> Invading
> another country is a big enough deal that *how* you do it hardly matters.
Not true. Almost all wars in history have been fairly inconclusive and
settled by treaty. When you indulge in total war, like the Nazis or
Assyrians did, everyone tends to gang up and crush you as a common
scourge.
> I think you *seriously* overestimate the human sense of morality, honor,
> and
> fair play. Soldiers of any country throughout history, will rape,
> pillage,
> kill, and burn anything in their path, and moral dissention will not make
> a
> difference. As an American, I might like to believe that American
> soldiers
> have never done such atrocities, but I would be kidding myself. Every
> Axis
> soldier was not a villain, and every Allied soldier was not a hero. They
> were soldiers killing people because they were ordered to.
No American was ordered to kill German farmers and burn their crops. And
most American soldiers were heroes. If you don't believe that you can
ask any German. If Americans looted and pillaged their way across
Germany like the Russians did, Germans alive in 1945 would detest
Americans. But they don't. I think you are doing a serious disservice to
both Americans and the world in general when you say all armies are
equally amoral. They aren't and it is no accident. The U.S. Army should
be commended for its behavior.
At this point I have to wonder why you want to run a campaign whose goal
is for characters to run around murdering farmers and then using magic
to hide or escape. I have run evil-aligned campaigns but never anything
that twisted. I hope you enjoy it but this conversation is making me
somewhat ill.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
protective radius, they would simply be manufactured and used in armies
so the entire army was immune to fireballs, etc. Which brings us back
to the idea of simply skipping magic for anything involving wars.
Gary
Drew Id
This is an easy issue to Rule 0 : such items must be immobile and require a
great deal of time to construct. Again, they work for castles, and even give
further reason to build castles, but they are useless for a mobile army.
Drew Id
> In article <t9daarp...@corp.supernews.com>, "Drew Id"
> <sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Well, what I see here is a lot of wishful thinking from someone who has
> not studied the history of war to any great degree. You just seem to
> assume the existence of a large, elite corps of fearless men who all
> possess individual initiative, perfect coordination and timing, complete
> amorality regarding civilians, and the ability to operate in hostile
> territory with limited information, with yet with total competence.
Um...like an adventuring party? You seem to assume an "all men are grunts"
philosophy, which, even if it seems reasonable to you, would make the
fantasy wars so boring that no one would want to play out the scenarios. I
enjoy the challenge to my way of thinking, which enables me to fill in holes
and make a stronger model, but I *do* work under the assumption that if the
end result means that there are no heroes, then it is not something I want
IMC.
> These conditions have never existed at any time in any place in Earth's
> history and I do not think they would exist in a fantasy world simply by
> adding a bunch of low level spellcasters to the mix. Even modern armies,
> with maps, radios, aerial reconnaissance, and other advantages, are
> incapable of acting with such incredible coordination and effectiveness
> in enemy territory, and that is true even when they are mass armies and
> are not trying to avoid detection first and foremost.
Again, we aren't playing a game of "Average Joes & Backyards", it is
supposed to be a game of heroes. Such feats are well within the standards of
fantasy literature and do not require a great stretch of the imagination or
turning a blind eye to logic.
> Have you considered what would happen if one of
> these communication devices was captured by the enemy, as would
> inevitably happen? Of course if you just say "They can't use it" I can
> say "Then they invent another device which can listen in" and back and
> forth we go.
And back and forth they *do* go. IMC, magical research of this type is
on-going, but then I never denied a "magical arms race".
> You are getting lost in the details. Death is death. A man doesn't care
> whether he is killed by fireball or arrow. As far as strategy and morale
> is concerned, what matters is the soldier's chance of surviving the day.
You seem more concerned with protecting a viewpoint now than discussing the
world-building issue here. Any war risks a soldier's life, this point
doesn't dismiss my earlier points at all.
> Frankly your high magic world doesn't make sense at any level. Why have
> peasants and fields when you can have clerics creating food and water?
> Why fight over land when food can be created on demand? Land would be
> worthless and there would be no peasants - and no territorial wars.
See the post before. The magical creation of food beyond temporary
subsistence is not a possibility.
> > There are many reasons to
> > go
> > to war, and not all of them care about taking over viable land when you
> > are
> > done.
>
> Hmmm, you must have read about different wars than I have.
Fantasy literature: Was the war in the LOTR trilogy about acquiring land?
> You assume fantastic organization of your forces,
In a fantasy setting, a "fantastic" organization seems appropriate
> History shows that when highly
> organized states lose their capital, they collapse like a house of
> cards. If you can't defend your capital, it shows you can't defend
> anything, and you lose morale, prestige, and national coherence. People
> don't like to fight and die when the war is already over.
You put too much stock in national reputation. Who cares what the other
states think? If they were considering attacking you before, you shouldn't
have started a war.
> You seem determined just to imagine you win under any scenario, but your
> strategy is bad, it has never worked at any time in history, and you
> assume not just magic, but an entirely different human psychology, one
> which has never existed. The art of command is making use of ordinary
> men to do a tough job, not to imagine you have thousands of crack amoral
> fearless assassins who are blissfully apathetic about the fate of their
> home city and live to terrorize innocent foreign farmers.
You seem determined that my tactics can never work under any scenario, yet
you've yet to give any real reasons against it, except that this is not how
it works in your head. Yes, I imagine a nation of heoes, yes, I gravitate
towards sceanrios where the fantasy heroes can make the difference, but
nothing I have said so far is illogical or unlikely, and most of these
things have historical precedent. Would it make a difference if I said my
nation was one of orcs and goblins, and they didn't have these human
frailties of fear and pity? The tactics are sound.
> By
> definition I *have* to have a much bigger, more powerful strike team of
> mages than you.
Huh? Now you've seriously just lost me. The remainder of this paragraph
amounts to my big army is unstoppable and will always win, suffering no
attrition at all. Not logical.
>
> > Scroched-earth strategy:
>
> Considered to be a war crime incidentally. Field Marshall Erich von
> Manstein was put on trial at Nuremberg after WWII for using this
> strategy in Russia.
Winner decides what was right or wrong.
> > Most of the villagers will not survive. The ones
> > that do will be forced to accept the new reign, or more likely be
> > replaced
> > with my peasants, who are more than happy to work this new land.
>
> Why would they be happy to work for a mass murderer? I would think they
> would be terrified of revenge in the night by enemy guerilla "small
> teams."
And yet 100 bloody dictatorships worldwide continue to exist.
> > Invading
> > another country is a big enough deal that *how* you do it hardly
matters.
>
> Not true. Almost all wars in history have been fairly inconclusive and
> settled by treaty. When you indulge in total war, like the Nazis or
> Assyrians did, everyone tends to gang up and crush you as a common
> scourge.
And the best position to be in when negotiating a treaty is to have your
opponent in ruins.
> No American was ordered to kill German farmers and burn their crops. And
> most American soldiers were heroes. If you don't believe that you can
> ask any German. If Americans looted and pillaged their way across
> Germany like the Russians did, Germans alive in 1945 would detest
> Americans. But they don't. I think you are doing a serious disservice to
> both Americans and the world in general when you say all armies are
> equally amoral. They aren't and it is no accident. The U.S. Army should
> be commended for its behavior.
I'll answer this with your quote from the start of this post. "Well, what I
see here is a lot of wishful thinking from someone who has not studied the
history of war to any great degree"
> At this point I have to wonder why you want to run a campaign whose goal
> is for characters to run around murdering farmers and then using magic
> to hide or escape. I have run evil-aligned campaigns but never anything
> that twisted. I hope you enjoy it but this conversation is making me
> somewhat ill.
Fortunately, the PC's have always been the defenders. They also find such
attacks distasteful.
The Fifth Llama
In D&D terms, some of the tactical effects of introducing magic users to the
mix would be similar to what modern day armies have done since the
introduction of automatic weapons.
- disperse the troops (fireballs and such have relatively limited area
effect, and mages have limited "ammunition")
- combined arms (flying troops with missile weapons, your own mages casting
too, plus foot soldiers, cavalry, knights, archers)
- snipers (mages, assassins, or high level archers who conceal themselves
and wait for an enemy mage to start casting and give himself away, then
target him)
- guerilla warfare (small bands of highly trained, well equiped infiltrators
who fight a war of attrition ... gee sounds like an adventuring party)
If anything, modern warfare has brought automatic weapons and artillery
(ground, sea and air-based) but armies have adapted using some or all of
these methods.
Also, with respect to mages able to cast powerful spells like disintegrate:
these guys are very rare and it would be even far more rare to have one dumb
enough to stick his neck out in a grand battle, unless it was for an
extremly important cause. He might plan the battle from some distant
stronghold but by and large mages don't want to put themselves into the
action. That's not to say PC mages wouldn't, but NPC mages are generally
averse to the notion. If it's a matter of some town or other under siege,
what does that matter in the grand scheme of things? If it was *his* town,
he might step up and defend it but would still rather let the peons do the
work.
Gary J. Robinson
> - guerilla warfare (small bands of highly trained, well equiped
> infiltrators
> who fight a war of attrition ... gee sounds like an adventuring party)
Why are people so obsessed with guerilla warfare? No modern army ever
adopts guerilla warfare by choice, it is not an offensive weapon, it is
a defensive one by an essentially conquered people who want to resist
their conquerors. It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare. It is a tactic
adopted by those who are weak and afraid to face their enemy in open
battle. Offensive "guerilla warfare" doesn't make any sense.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
<sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
So it is perfectly clear that you are not as interested in seeing what
the implications are of D&D magic on warfare, as much as you are
interested in changing every rule necessary to get the exact situation
you want. I thought as much. That's fine, as long as you realize you
are doing it. If you have to change a rule to win an argument, you lost
the argument.
Gary
Mike Benveniste
> Why wouldn't you simply build castle walls which have permanent anti-magic
> fields attached to them -- thereby preventing mages from taking direct magical
> action against them?
DnD Magic is sufficiently powerful and adaptable that this would be a
half measure at best. I don't think a Rod of Cancellation can zap an
Anti Magic Field, but indirect attacks against the wall, or circumventing
the wall via teleportation, air or ground assaults would still work fine.
A historical castle had many purposes. In a magic rich world, its role
as a bastion of defense in war is significantly weakened, for the
reasons noted so well in this thread. But the general theory behind a
castle was defense in depth, and that theory would still hold in D&D.
Every minute the legions of doom spend destroying your wall is another
minute you have to kill them or make good your escape. Even after a
castle wall is breached, it can still serve a very useful purpose in
funnelling the invaders into a kill zone. A savvy defender would add
traps and spells triggered by the act of breach as well.
I feel that castles, albeit in varying forms, would continue to
exist in a D&D for at least five non-combat related reasons.
1. Terrain is still important. One area of D&D magic which is fairly
weak is the ability to move large amounts of goods over distance.
Teleportation circle, for example, only works on creatures. There will
still be strategic mountain passes and rivers. A fortified stronghold
will still protect these against a large number of threats.
2. A seat of government and a visible expression of force. While
placing a stronghold in a pocket dimension has distinct advantages,
it's not very imposing to the masses. It's easier to impart a sense
of grandeur and majesty with a permanent seeming edifice to intimidate
the yokels.
3. An expression of worship. Same reasons as above, only with regards
to religious power rather than secular.
4. Ego. It's a relatively harmless way for weak rulers to achieve
immortality.
5. Economics. A castle is a classic public works/redistribution of
wealth project.
--
Michael Benveniste -- m...@clearether.com
Any comments or statements made are not necessarily those of any
employer or client, their subsidiaries, or affiliates.
Edmund E Freeman
> Also, with respect to mages able to cast powerful spells like disintegrate:
> these guys are very rare and it would be even far more rare to have one dumb
> enough to stick his neck out in a grand battle, unless it was for an
> extremly important cause.
You don't need a mage that can cast disintegrate; you need a mage that
can crank out a few disintegrate scrolls some other sucker can get
within rage to cast.
--Ed Freeman
Edmund E Freeman
<snip>
> No, they won't for reasons discussed above, they would do it at serious risk
> to themselves, and could not do it repeatedly. You also seem to completely
> ignore the fact that your tiny group of powerful wizards would be completely
> ignoring *my* tiny group of powerful wizards. Even assuming such groups
> existed (which I don't), the first wave of any invasion would be a duel
> between these two groups,
The first stages of conflict are going to be a protracted 'shadow war'
directed against the mages of the other side, not jsut the very high
level ones but also the ones that can reasonably produce magic wands (or
even ones that could use a wand). This shadow war wouldn't be just
assasinations, but bribery, blackmail, honey traps, etc.
The shadow war stage could easily become a permanent condition between
several nations.
--Ed Freeman
Edmund E Freeman
>
> In article <t9daarp...@corp.supernews.com>, "Drew Id"
> <sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Well, what I see here is a lot of wishful thinking from someone who has
> not studied the history of war to any great degree.
In modern warfare, air power is supreme. Functionally, the country
with the best air power wins. But grunts are still involved in
warfare. What do the do? They move around the countryside in small
units, just large enough to be effective and still small enough to limit
the damage from one attack. And sometimes countries fighting like this
beat the country with better air power. Afghanistan, for instance.
Substitute 'mages' for 'air power' and you basically have Drew's
system. How is this so terribly contrary to military logic?
> Frankly your high magic world doesn't make sense at any level. Why have
> peasants and fields when you can have clerics creating food and water?
You have a few high-power clerics, most don't have that oomph. Clerics
can feed a few people, not the whole population.
> Why fight over land when food can be created on demand? Land would be
> worthless and there would be no peasants - and no territorial wars.
>
> > No, war is about destroying the enemy, period.
>
> How many enemies have been destroyed in the history of warfare? You tell
> me.
>
Clausewitz -- The objective of war is to destroy the enemy's will and
ability to resist (paraphrase).
>
> > Leaving no one to defend against my small teams? Cool, My capital is
> > gone,
> > but my entire countryside and economic base it secure.
>
> No, your political power would collapse, your "small teams" would panic
> when communications were cut off and they realized their families were
> all hostages or slaves, and they would desert and try to make their way
> home.
The same problem will happen with a large army. They just toasted the
capital, but their own homes are burning. It's possible to carry on a
war like this -- see Hannibals' campaigns in the Punic wars -- but it
isn't easy.
>
> No American was ordered to kill German farmers and burn their crops.
Americans were ordered to bomb the houses of civilians. In the Indian
Wars, American soldiers killed children and used smallpox to wipe out
villages. And in the Civil War, Union soldiers under Sheridan and
Sherman did burn every crop they could find with the express purpose of
starving the Confederacy into submission.
--Ed Freeman
The Fifth Llama
"Edmund E Freeman" <efre...@blarg.net> wrote in message
news:3A973A0D...@blarg.net...
I bet a wish or limited wish spell cast on the castle at the ground-breaking
ceremony might fix that ... any thoughts, anyone? It wouldn't have to be
immunity to disintegrate, it might just be a curse on the caster ...
muahahah.
>
> --Ed Freeman
Gary J. Robinson
<efre...@blarg.net> wrote:
> In modern warfare, air power is supreme. Functionally, the country
> with the best air power wins. But grunts are still involved in
> warfare. What do the do? They move around the countryside in small
> units, just large enough to be effective and still small enough to limit
> the damage from one attack.
This is not true. In an invasion of one country by another, the invader
uses massed formations of heavy troops with armor and artillery. Desert
Storm for example had the largest armored battle in history.
> And sometimes countries fighting like this
> beat the country with better air power. Afghanistan, for instance.
Wrong. Afghanistan did not "beat" the USSR. It did not invade the USSR
with "small groups." This was a classic guerilla action, fought on the
defender's soil because they were too weak too keep out the attacker and
had to fight guerilla style, a style of weakness. They did not conquer
the USSR, or even threaten it; the USSR simply got tired of being in
Afghanistan and left eventually. If the USSR soldiers had been the
farmer-slaughtering soldiers of Drew Id's imagination there would have
been no Afghanistanis left alive in the country because the Soviets
controlled it for years. Guerilla warfare only works when the occupier
is too humane to slaughter all your civilians in retaliation for the
guerilla attacks.
> Substitute 'mages' for 'air power' and you basically have Drew's
> system. How is this so terribly contrary to military logic?
In Drew's logic the Mujahadeen are overrunning the entire USSR and
burning it to the ground. Complete fantasy in more ways than one.
> You have a few high-power clerics, most don't have that oomph. Clerics
> can feed a few people, not the whole population.
The point is the whole population would take up clericism, not farming,
if clericism could product food more reliably than farming, which it can.
> > How many enemies have been destroyed in the history of warfare? You tell
> > me.
> >
> Clausewitz -- The objective of war is to destroy the enemy's will and
> ability to resist (paraphrase).
Clausewitz - war is the continuation of politics by other means.
Clausewitz would be appalled at the idea of sending hit squads to murder
farmers. 19th century German generals had a strong sense of legalism and
thought every war should be tied up by a treaty. They had no interest in
trying to "take over" non-German-speaking areas.
> The same problem will happen with a large army. They just toasted the
> capital, but their own homes are burning.
No, their own homes are safe inside the castles that the small teams are
too weak to take.
> It's possible to carry on a
> war like this -- see Hannibals' campaigns in the Punic wars -- but it
> isn't easy.
Hannibal's campaigns were conducted with a mass army, not small teams.
> Americans were ordered to bomb the houses of civilians.
It must be remembered that Germany was terror-bombing Britain and had
started it first. That is what happens when you are a rogue state of the
type Drew is advocating - people pull out the stops against you. But
soldiers were never ordered to go around murdering German farmers.
> In the Indian
> Wars, American soldiers killed children and used smallpox to wipe out
> villages.
Are you saying there is no difference between the Indian Wars and the
20th century? You see no progress there?
>And in the Civil War, Union soldiers under Sheridan and
> Sherman did burn every crop they could find with the express purpose of
> starving the Confederacy into submission.
Yes they did - with a mass army, not small teams. The point was the
Confederacy had already lost because it could not oppose Sherman's army.
When they refused to surrender anyway, the implications of an unopposed
army had to be show to them the hard way. It's like refusing to
surrender when the cops are pointing a gun at you. At some point they
have to shoot. Whose fault is that? The Confederacy had itself to blame
for prolonging the war past the point where it could be won. There is a
time to surrender and if you refuse, you will feel the pain. What else
are you supposed to do if the enemy refuses to fight you? Just sit down
and whistle? But they still did not go around murdering Southern
farmers. Their mission was economic, not extermination.
Gary
R. Scott Rogers
> adopts guerilla warfare by choice, it is not an offensive weapon, it is
> a defensive one by an essentially conquered people who want to resist
> their conquerors. It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
> fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare. It is a tactic
> adopted by those who are weak and afraid to face their enemy in open
> battle. Offensive "guerilla warfare" doesn't make any sense.
That's a load of culturally biased hooey. Well, most of the above. If your
enemy has overwhelming conventional power, then you have a choice of either
facing your enemy in a gloriously suicidal decisive combat or finding a way
to change the terms of the engagement. If suicide is not your cup of tea,
guerrilla warfare and other tactics not directly descended from the Greek
hoplite system are a perfectly rational choice.
Furthermore, you can conquer territory with guerrilla methods. You need to
have some proportion of the population willing to help you, but it's
perfectly plausible. Ask the North Vietnamese government of 1963-75 about
that one, or ask the leaders of the American War of Independence of 1775-83.
Washington's first actual victory was a hit-and-run raid against a Hessian
camp on Christmas morning. Thereafter, he built the main body of the
Continental Army into a force that could face the Brits on the field, but it
was guerrilla tactics that wrested New England and most of the South, as
well as the Ohio valley, from the Redcoats. The War of Independence was not
mainly a defensive war. The British started out controlling most of the
territory, and had to be beaten back from the colonies.
It's just a question of knowing your enemy's strengths and your own, and
fighting only on terms favorable to your strengths. There's nothing cowardly
or immoral about fighting a war to win.
Cheers,
Samy Merchi
> It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
> fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare.
Robin Hood?
--
Samy Merchi | <sam...@mash.yok.utu.fi> | http://mash.yok.utu.fi/
"One false move, wizard, and your familiar gets it!"
-- DMG1
Gary J. Robinson
<sam...@mash.yok.utu.fi> wrote:
> Gary J. Robinson <wig...@concentric.net> wrote:
>
> > It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
> > fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare.
>
> Robin Hood?
Robin Hood was benign to the peasants, even enriched them, and also
supported the ruling authority, King Richard. He represented the Saxon
nobles who previously held power as aristocrats but who were
dispossessed after the Norman conquest by Norman nobles. He was not
carrying on the kind of countryside wasting, peasant-murdering,
scorched-earth tactics that Drew Id has labeled "guerilla warfare" in
this thread, rather, he was more of a vigilante trying to enforce
justice against the usurping King John and his criminal toady the
Sherriff who was oppressing the people. He was an elite fighting another
elite, he did not represent the kind of "trained elite turned loose on
the peasantry" that these posters are calling guerilla warfare.
Still, it is true that his tactics were not chivalrous. This is a
tension in late medieval society. The English tend to glorify the
armor-piercing longbow because it allowed them to defeat the numerically
stronger French chivalry in combat several times in the Hundred Years
War. As far as the French were concerned this was not chivalrous
behavior and the efficiency of these weapons, along with gunpowder,
effectively ended the age of chivalry and the dominance of the armored
aristocrat in combat. Robin Hood represents a case of the wrong methods
being used in favor of the right cause, kind of like the Allied bombing
in WWII. Such contradictions tend to cause confusion and mixed feelings.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
<sro...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Why are people so obsessed with guerilla warfare? No modern army ever
> > adopts guerilla warfare by choice, it is not an offensive weapon, it is
> > a defensive one by an essentially conquered people who want to resist
> > their conquerors. It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
> > fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare. It is a tactic
> > adopted by those who are weak and afraid to face their enemy in open
> > battle. Offensive "guerilla warfare" doesn't make any sense.
>
> That's a load of culturally biased hooey.
Your ignorance is starting to glare.
> If your enemy has overwhelming conventional power, then
Then invading him is out of the question.
> Furthermore, you can conquer territory with guerrilla methods.
Never.
>You need to
> have some proportion of the population willing to help you, but it's
> perfectly plausible. Ask the North Vietnamese government of 1963-75 about
> that one,
The war in Viet Nam ended when the mass conventional forces of the North
Vietnamese Army invaded the south, with tanks and massed troops, and
conquered it. This could only occur once the massed conventional forces
of the U.S. had already left. This occured for political reasons.
Militarily the unconventional warfare of the Viet Cong was a disaster
ending with the Tet Offensive where they were virtually wiped out.
Guerilla war does not conquer countries. The guerilla warfare was as
successful (not very) as it was in Viet Nam because it was a friendly
country, not a foreign country. Viet Cong were local men, not
foreigners. When Viet Nam got into a shooting war with Cambodia, they
did not try to win by sending in small groups of Viet Cong. They invaded
with mass troops and tanks. They knew what they were doing.
> or ask the leaders of the American War of Independence of
> 1775-83.
Again you are talking about war on the territory of the people doing the
fighting. It was local men from local territory. No militiamen were
invading England.
> The War of Independence was not mainly a defensive war.
That is ridiculous. The British were an occupying army sent to put down
a rebellion. If you think that rebellion constituted an invasion of a
foreign country by the Americans, you are very confused.
> It's just a question of knowing your enemy's strengths and your own, and
> fighting only on terms favorable to your strengths. There's nothing
> cowardly
> or immoral about fighting a war to win.
Guerilla warfare has never, ever, been an offensive tactic with which to
invade enemy countries. It doesn't work.
And it cowardly and immoral to go around murdering peasants. The ends do
not justify the means. Even war has rules, and that is especially true
in medieval times, with knightly codes of honor, hostages, ransom,
parleys, yielding, and all the rest. I know I have no interest in a
fantasy world which is based on Apocalypse Now.
Gary
The Fifth Llama
You seem to forget that guerilla war was not the total strategy, but it was
an integral part of the strategy.
Example: Washington's Continentals versus the Brits. Washington employed
guerilla tactics along with his continental regular troops. His goal with
hit and run was to harass and weaken the enemy, demoralize them, before the
big battle.
Example: War in Russia (Nazi Germany versus Russia). Russia employe
guerilla tactics behind German lines throughout the war, holding up
supplies, demoralizing the enemy, forcing them to commit reserves to guard
rear areas, meanwhile the regular Russian army still fought like a regular
army.
Example: Vietnam. North Vietnam and to a lesser degree the US utilized
guerilla tactics in an effort to attrition and demoralize the enemy. The
North Vietnamese are not stupid, they probably realized early on that a
fight of any kind against a committed US was hopeless; however, they set the
tone of the war to be one of attition and in the end they forced a US
withdrawl because of political reasons -- but this came after a long time
and a lot of casualties on both sides. The air war against N. Vietnam was,
regardless of what they say, a guerilla war -- it was limited, it was far
less effective on the North's military production than it could have been.
Example: Present day Columbia, "rebel" militias running around causing
trouble for the goverment. They can't take on their goverment in an all out
fight; however, they will continue to wear down armies/police in whatever
way they can. It's probably not all that hard for them to recruit new
members from among poor people who have nothing, and have no prospect of
ever having anything under the current system, if you offer them
something -- in this the promise of a better future is probably sufficient
for many. Cuba started out that way and ultimately the rebels became
popular enough, organized enough, and powerful enough to take over the
country.
Justin Bacon
ba...@digital-marketplace.net writes:
>After all if you cast anti-magic first how can you cast permanency on it
>successfully.
Well, there's got to be some way to create permanent anti-magic items,
otherwise there are a host of magic items which are going to have to go the way
of the dodo.
How would you get rid of a permanent anti-magic field, though? Since dispel
magic doesn't work on an antimagic field, it looks like it would be stuck there
for eternity. (Although, if you allow the permanency to work on the anti-magic
field spell, I suppose you could rule that the dispel magic could be used on
the permanency.)
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Eric Tolle
>
> "Gary J. Robinson" <wig...@concentric.net> wrote in message
> news:wiggler-638FBD...@news.concentric.net...
> > Guerilla warfare has never, ever, been an offensive tactic with which to
> > invade enemy countries. It doesn't work.
> >
> You seem to forget that guerilla war was not the total strategy, but it was
> an integral part of the strategy.
However, not that of an invading army.
>
> Example: Washington's Continentals versus the Brits. Washington employed
> Example: War in Russia (Nazi Germany versus Russia). Russia employe
> Example: Vietnam. North Vietnam and to a lesser degree the US utilized
> Example: Present day Columbia, "rebel" militias running around causing
Which are, oddly enough, all examples that _support_ Gary Robinson's
argument.
--
Eric Tolle sch...@silcom.com
People tend to underestimate the impact of scientific progress.
Why just fifty years ago, only a few people had even heard of DNA,
and now everybody who is somebody uses it!
ba...@digital-marketplace.net
>
> In article <3A96BBAF...@digital-marketplace.net>,
> ba...@digital-marketplace.net writes:
>
> >After all if you cast anti-magic first how can you cast permanency on it
> >successfully.
>
> Well, there's got to be some way to create permanent anti-magic items,
> otherwise there are a host of magic items which are going to have to go the way
> of the dodo.
Indeed high level magic (out of the range of PCs) have been created. An
immortal has this power for example. I did state (in deleted potion)
that spell research was a solution. There is also the construction of
fortifications in magic null areas, but that offers other problems in
siege warfare.
>
> How would you get rid of a permanent anti-magic field, though? Since dispel
> magic doesn't work on an antimagic field, it looks like it would be stuck there
> for eternity. (Although, if you allow the permanency to work on the anti-magic
> field spell, I suppose you could rule that the dispel magic could be used on
> the permanency.)
anti-magic nullifies permanency where any magic is in effect. A +5
sword +10 vs. beholders grants the +10 to hit and damage when the great
eye looks another direction. If the eye is looking at the sword, the
sword becomes normal, the sword still has it's magic it just is not
working at that time or any other time in anti-magic field. Dispel in
most (if not all D&D) cancels permanency if successfully cast. If one
could cast "permanent anti-magic field", the only ways I can envision
removing such would require divine intervention, wish or other high
magic.
>
> Justin Bacon
> tria...@aol.com
Eric Tolle
>
> In article <3A960E1C...@silcom.com>, Eric Tolle
> <sch...@silcom.com> wrote:
>
> > Actually, he's running with the parameters you suggest. If mages
> > are common enough to be common combatants in an army, they are going
> > to be common enough that they can be used to increase the defense of
> > fortifications.
>
> Except that fortifications make no sense to build if you need mages for
> them to work. Fortifications were built in real life because they had
> inherent value.
The value of fortifications is zero, without the people manning
them. If mages are as common as you posited, they would be common
enough to man fortifications.
Eric Tolle
> > You have a few high-power clerics, most don't have that oomph. Clerics
> > can feed a few people, not the whole population.
>
> The point is the whole population would take up clericism, not farming,
> if clericism could product food more reliably than farming, which it can.
In which case, the vast majority of the population would be 1st.
level clerics. I strongly, strongly doubt that the entire
population would be comprised of fifth level clerics- any more then
in the canon material it is comprised of fifth level commoners.
Gary J. Robinson
> Example: Washington's Continentals versus the Brits.
>
> Example: War in Russia (Nazi Germany versus Russia). Russia employe
> guerilla tactics behind German lines throughout the war
>
> Example: Vietnam.
>
> Example: Present day Columbia, "rebel" militias running around causing
> trouble for the goverment.
Thanks for providing four examples of guerillas operating only on their
own territory and not being used in an offensive role in an enemy
country! Saves me a lot of typing.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
<sch...@silcom.com> wrote:
> Gary J. Robinson wrote:
>
> > > You have a few high-power clerics, most don't have that oomph.
> > > Clerics
> > > can feed a few people, not the whole population.
> >
> > The point is the whole population would take up clericism, not farming,
> > if clericism could product food more reliably than farming, which it
> > can.
>
> In which case, the vast majority of the population would be 1st.
> level clerics.
> I strongly, strongly doubt that the entire
> population would be comprised of fifth level clerics- any more then
> in the canon material it is comprised of fifth level commoners.
I guess it depends on how you view levels and custom classes. If food
production really revolved around one spell, and you used it every day,
and you grew up doing it as a profession, and the entire society was
oriented around it, I have to think that almost everyone would be able
to use it, like driving a car or using a keyboard in modern America. Is
a farmer a "first level farmer" if he has been farming for 20 years? How
does he gain a level in farming? In terms of farming skills I would
think most adult farmers would be the equivalent of fifth level or more,
even if they weren't in terms of hit dice. I can see some kind of class
specialization based around the Create Food and Water spell so people
could cast that and nothing else. In a magic rich world, such a spell is
a technology, and societies would reorganize themselves around it and
use it, like they did around agriculture when it was discovered.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
<sch...@silcom.com> wrote:
> Gary J. Robinson wrote:
> > Except that fortifications make no sense to build if you need mages for
> > them to work. Fortifications were built in real life because they had
> > inherent value.
>
> The value of fortifications is zero, without the people manning
> them.
But the people can be very cheap, unspecialized, unskilled people. The
fort is a great force multiplier. Real armies always kept their best
troops for their maneuver units, not for fortress garrisons.
>If mages are as common as you posited, they would be common
> enough to man fortifications.
Perhaps, but that still leaves the question of why build the fortress in
the first place if it has no inherent value? A fortress would not act as
a force multiplier for a group of mages. People who can fly and be
immune to missiles don't need castle walls for protection.
Gary
Ian R Malcomson
>> It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
>> fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare.
>
>Robin Hood?
The vaguely historical bandit, or the rose-tinted legend?
--
Ian R Malcomson
Erstwhile Domicus bloke
Domicus website: http://www.domicus.demon.co.uk
ProFantasy Freelancer: http://www.profantasy.com
Justin Bacon
ba...@digital-marketplace.net writes:
>(Although, if you allow the permanency to work on the anti-magic
>> field spell, I suppose you could rule that the dispel magic could be used
>on
>> the permanency.)
>
>anti-magic nullifies permanency where any magic is in effect. A +5
>sword +10 vs. beholders grants the +10 to hit and damage when the great
>eye looks another direction.
Which has no relevance whatsoever to permanency having an effect on the
antimagic field spell, or to dispel magic having an effect on a permanency
spell cast on an antimagic field.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Samy Merchi
>>> It is hard to imagine anything less medieval, less
>>> fantasy-like, less chivalrous than guerilla warfare.
>>
>>Robin Hood?
> The vaguely historical bandit, or the rose-tinted legend?
The latter. I know zilch about the former.
Brett Evill
> Perhaps, but that still leaves the question of why build the fortress in
> the first place if it has no inherent value? A fortress would not act as
> a force multiplier for a group of mages. People who can fly and be
> immune to missiles don't need castle walls for protection.
They don't need them for protection in battle, especially against their
fellows. But there are other dangers.
Norman mottes and towers seem originally to have been developed to
protect the knights' wives and children against kidnap by other knights.
Who looks after your wizards while they're asleep? Who protects their
wives and children from rogues?
It is doubtless very attractive to develop a high-level protective spell
that will keep an area secure against entry by teleportation or
etherealness. But that's no good itself without stout walls to keep out
the idiot swordsmen.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Brett Evill
> I guess it depends on how you view levels and custom classes. If food
> production really revolved around one spell, and you used it every day,
> and you grew up doing it as a profession, and the entire society was
> oriented around it, I have to think that almost everyone would be able
> to use it
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
If the population depended on the spell, everyone would learn to use it.
But the population can't become dependent on the spell *until* everyone
learns to use it...
And by the way, farming and many other aspects of life in the USA today
are dependent on the abilities to run oil refineries and power stations.
You wouldn't last three weeks without them. But is everyone in the USA
an engineer? No. You know how to drive cars instead.
Final note: to cast a third-level clerical spell you need a Wisdom of 13
or better. Only 12% of the populaiton qualifies.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Gary J. Robinson
b.e...@tyndale.apana.org.au wrote:
> They don't need them for protection in battle, especially against their
> fellows. But there are other dangers.
>
> Norman mottes and towers seem originally to have been developed to
> protect the knights' wives and children against kidnap by other knights.
>
> Who looks after your wizards while they're asleep? Who protects their
> wives and children from rogues?
>
> It is doubtless very attractive to develop a high-level protective spell
> that will keep an area secure against entry by teleportation or
> etherealness. But that's no good itself without stout walls to keep out
> the idiot swordsmen.
You don't need big expensive stone castles for that. Any simple wooden
structure will do for simple security. For added protection you could
put anti-fire spells on it. Stone castles are for resisting armies,
which are unneccessary in this situation.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
b.e...@tyndale.apana.org.au wrote:
> And by the way, farming and many other aspects of life in the USA today
> are dependent on the abilities to run oil refineries and power stations.
> You wouldn't last three weeks without them. But is everyone in the USA
> an engineer? No. You know how to drive cars instead.
So what? A Create Food and Water does not create food for 500 people who
live 1000 miles away. It is a local effect for a small number of people.
You are making a bad analogy. The spell is local enough that every
family would want to be able to use it for their own daily food supply.
> Final note: to cast a third-level clerical spell you need a Wisdom of 13
> or better. Only 12% of the populaiton qualifies.
It might be a third level cleric spell, but I imagine it would become a
first level "magical farmer" spell. Traditionally different classes can
get the same spell at different levels.
Anyway you are trying to make very technical arguments based on 3E
rules. The underlying principle is that if magical food production was
possible and it did not require inordinate amounts of magical power, it
would be incredibly widespread and farming would disappear.
Gary
Brett Evill
> You are making a bad analogy. The spell is local enough that every
> family would want to be able to use it for their own daily food supply.
Every family would want to be able to use 'Wish' for their own daily
supply of every conceivable luxury. That won't make 'Wish' a first-level
spell, even for the 'wooly-headed Usenet poster' class.
You think that every parish priest wouldn't want to be able to use
'raise dead' on their parishioners? They want to. They ache to. They
just can't.
> > Final note: to cast a third-level clerical spell you need a Wisdom of 13
> > or better. Only 12% of the populaiton qualifies.
>
> It might be a third level cleric spell, but I imagine it would become a
> first level "magical farmer" spell. Traditionally different classes can
> get the same spell at different levels.
So why won't these farmers get 'Wish' at first level? 'Plant Growth' at
zero level. Why don't parish priests get 'raise dead'?
> Anyway you are trying to make very technical arguments based on 3E
> rules.
Of course I am. What other basis is there for discussing the impact of
'Create Food and Water'?
> The underlying principle is that if magical food production was
> possible and it did not require inordinate amounts of magical power, it
> would be incredibly widespread and farming would disappear.
And if pigs could fly aircraft would be bacon slicers.
But pigs can't fly, and there is no spell in D&D that makes farming
redundant. Nor ought there to be.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Gary J. Robinson
b.e...@tyndale.apana.org.au wrote:
> Gary J. Robinson wrote:
>
> > You are making a bad analogy. The spell is local enough that every
> > family would want to be able to use it for their own daily food supply.
>
> Every family would want to be able to use 'Wish' for their own daily
> supply of every conceivable luxury. That won't make 'Wish' a first-level
> spell, even for the 'wooly-headed Usenet poster' class.
Unfortunately it is you who are being wooly-headed. The reason
adventurers are presumably rare among the masses is because in a
medieval society, the masses are assumed to be busy doing something
else, namely, producing food. That is the business of the masses. It is
their primary concern and they use the best available technology and
techniques, which in the mundane world meant farming, available to them
to do it. To assume they would stick with farming if spellcasting was
available as a much reliable, efficient, and low-labor alternative is
like saying they would stick with hunting-gathering after agriculture
had been discovered, or handcopying after printing presses were
invented, or arrows after gunpowder. It simply ignores human psychology
and the resulting world is not just fantasy, it is nonsensical. But of
course you are free to play in nonsensical worlds. I just prefer worlds
where human psychology stays the same even if the environmental
parameters are changed a bit. As a result I am careful to craft an
environment where it makes sense for the people to be doing what they do.
Gary
Brett Evill
>
> The reason
> adventurers are presumably rare among the masses is because in a
> medieval society, the masses are assumed to be busy doing something
> else, namely, producing food.
Your presumptions are not a sound basis for argument.
The majority of the masses can't even make it to second level as a
commoner, let alone making it to fifth level as a cleric.
> That is the business of the masses. It is
> their primary concern and they use the best available technology and
> techniques, which in the mundane world meant farming, available to them
> to do it. To assume they would stick with farming if spellcasting was
> available as a much reliable, efficient, and low-labor alternative is
> like saying they would stick with hunting-gathering after agriculture
> had been discovered, or handcopying after printing presses were
> invented, or arrows after gunpowder. It simply ignores human psychology
> and the resulting world is not just fantasy, it is nonsensical.
Perhaps so. But that isn't what I assume. I assume, or rather I conclude
because of explicit statements to the effect, that these spells are
*not* available. Given that 'create food and drink' is not available in
to a sufficient extent, the masses return to growing food because they
have no alternative.
*If* every householder could cast third-level cleric spells the masses
wouldn't need agriculture. But they can't. They don't have the wisdom,
they don't have the levels, and they aren't members of the right class.
> But of
> course you are free to play in nonsensical worlds.
Or even ones where the gods just can't hand out enough spells to feed
everyone, for example.
> I just prefer worlds
> where human psychology stays the same even if the environmental
> parameters are changed a bit. As a result I am careful to craft an
> environment where it makes sense for the people to be doing what they do.
Okay, carefully craft this:
People have the distribution of attributes the D&D rules say they do.
People are members of the classes the D&D rules say they are. Perhaps
the gods can't ordain any more clerics because of mana shortages,
perhaps you need to be born with the Talent to become a sorceror or
wizard.
Magic spells work the way the D&D rules say they do.
Therefore there is no way of casting enough 'create food and drink'
spells to feed everyone. Not nearly enough.
What do the masses do?
Regards,
Brett Evill
Justin Bacon
writes:
>>>Robin Hood?
>
>> The vaguely historical bandit, or the rose-tinted legend?
>
>The latter. I know zilch about the former.
<hype> Then you need to pick up a copy of SUPPRESSED TRANSMISSIONS 2, by
Kenneth Hite. </hype>
Justin Bacon
Brett Evill
>In article <3A99BE...@tyndale.apana.org.au>,
>b.e...@tyndale.apana.org.au wrote:
>
>> Every family would want to be able to use 'Wish' for their own daily
>> supply of every conceivable luxury. That won't make 'Wish' a first-level
>> spell, even for the 'wooly-headed Usenet poster' class.
>
>I see you have decided to get rude. Okay.
>
> You really consider third level spells that exalted eh? How long does
> it take the average adventurer to get to fifth level?
That is irrelevant, since becoming an adventurer and particularly a
cleric is not an opportunity available to most farmers.
>A few months of adventuring at most?
Your campaigns must clog up with 20th-level NPCs pretty quickly if you
extrapolate from those careers to the general behaviour and achievements
of the masses. I marvel that the monsters can breed fast enough to
provide sufficient challenges.
> Don't you think getting to fifth level cleric
> ability would become a rite of passage for young people in a world where
> that would guarantee being able to support themselves and their family
> for life?
Most certainly not. These days, for example, becoming a doctor is pretty
much a guarantee of your being able to support yourself and your family
for life. But becoming a doctor or equivalent professional is not a rite
of passage for young people. And although it is true that medicine and
engineering could not support everyone as practioners all at once, it
isn't a glut of professionals that is keeping people out of the
professions at the margin. There are thousands of people who could still
make comfortable livings as extra doctors *if they could become
doctors*. But they wait tables instead, or farm the marginas of the
Serengeti. Why? Because they are not *capable* of becoming doctors, or
have no *opportunity* to become doctors.
Similarly, in the D&D world a fifth-level cleric lives a lot better than
a farmer. he is even able to support himself and his family by casting
'create food'. Does that mean that all farmers will become fifth-level
clerics? If you think it does you must have trouble explaining why
anyone in the real world farms in Zimbawe rather than becoming a doctor
or engineer.
> But you didn't think of that because you don't think through
> the implications of changing major environmental parameters.
I think the boot is on the other foot. I think that it is you who fails
to think things through. You think about the possibility of everyone
becoming a fifth-level cleric and you ignore everything else, even when
you have the example of the real world to guide you.
>> You think that every parish priest wouldn't want to be able to use
>> 'raise dead' on their parishioners? They want to. They ache to. They
>> just can't.
>
>I seriously doubt it, since in a world where disease can be cured with a
>spell, and food and water can be created on demand, the only deaths in
>civilized areas would tend to be natural ones of old age, and there is
>no point in raising them. But you didn't think of that because you don't
>think through the implications of changing major environmental
parameters.
I thought of it. Then I thought about the *limitations* on those
capabilities. that allowed me to reason *quantitatively*.
How many diseases can be cured per parish per day? (Answer: Zero. No
village priest is high-enough level to cast 'Remove Disease'.) How many
new infections are there likely to be per parish per day at the
beginning of an epidemic? (Answer: easily as many as twenty.) Is the
priest going to be able to stop the epidemic? (Answer: no.)
How many meals can be created per parish per day? (Answer: 0, 3 or 6,
expected value 1.5.) How many mouths are there to feed per parish per
day? (Answer: about 900.) Can the village priest feed all the hungry in
the event of a crop shortage? (Answer: no.)
What about accidental deaths? What about sudden infant deaths?
Conclusion: there will be many premature deaths in the average village
in a D&D world that the highest-level cleric available will be unable to
prevent.
You make the mistake of thinking that because something can be done at
all it can be done in every case where it would be desirable. That isn't
true of real-world capabilities and there is no reason to suppose that
it must be true of fantasy capabilities.
In this case the limitations are even explicit in the game rules. There
aren't enough clerics of high enough level to do away with agriculture.
>> > It might be a third level cleric spell, but I imagine it would become a
>> > first level "magical farmer" spell. Traditionally different classes can
>> > get the same spell at different levels.
>>
>> So why won't these farmers get 'Wish' at first level? 'Plant Growth' at
>> zero level. Why don't parish priests get 'raise dead'?
>
> Wish is a classic example of a dangerous technology.
True enough, but the point stands. There are lots of spells that people
would like to cast a lot of the time. Just because they want to do so
doesn't mean that they will be able to. There are limitations on the use
of these spells that are explicit in the game system and that neither
PCs nor NPCs can overcome no matter how powerful their motivation.
> A third level spell that creates
> food and water is hardly in the same category. But you didn't think of
> that because you don't think through the implications of changing major
> environmental parameters.
That's not the way I see it. The point remains that mere usefulness of a
capability does not magically sweep away all restrictions on its use.
And I maintain that it is you who failed to think through the
consequences in a change of the environment (specifically this spell)
because you considered only the capabilities of the spell and overlooked
its limits. This despite the fact that they are explicit in the game.
>> > Anyway you are trying to make very technical arguments based on 3E
>> > rules.
>>
>> Of course I am. What other basis is there for discussing the impact of
>> 'Create Food and Water'?
>
> The concept itself?
The concept alone doesn't provide enough information for anyone to work
through the consequences. You need also to know 'who', 'how often', 'how
much', and 'at what cost', among other things. The results depend very
much on the answers to those questions. In other words, you need
quantitative data and quantitative reasoning to obtain even qualitative
results.
After all, the concept of 'polymorph' admits of a spell that would
change all orcs, anywhere in the world, into goldfish or topheavy
crystal wineglasses. To conclude that there will be no orcs left because
some elf will obviously cast this spell would be quite invalid, and an
absolutely asinine way to draw conclusions about the D&D world. Once you
take into account range and duration it becomes plain that some orcs
might survive.
If every householder could cast 'Create Food and Water' once or more per
day, then goodbye to agriculture. But in D&D a village of 900 people has
a highest-level cleric with a level of D6 + 1. There is only one chance
in three that such a priest can cast the spell at all. If the parish
priest can cast the spell he or she can only do so once or twice per
day, feeding 3 or 6 people. And each casting of that he performs is
'Cure Moderate Wounds' forgone, or an augury of 'Make Whole' that could
be of great benefit in the congregation.
> Create Food and Water did not appear for the first
> time in 3E.
No. But every time it did appear it was subject to such restrictions
that it could not replace agriculture as a means of supporting the
masses.
> Can you imagine for a moment the real consequences of such
> a spell on people who labor dawn to dusk for six months to get their
> food for the year, and face starvation if something goes wrong?
I can imagine all sorts of different consequences that result from
different specifics about the spell. If it is cheap, readily available
in practically-unlimited quantities, and can be cast by practically
anybody, then it might do what you say. If it were like the spell
described in D&D it would have no great impact on agriculture.
> Can you
> imagine them just straggling back to the fields for a lifetime of labor
> if a few weeks or months of adventuring could give them a life of ease
> and guaranteed food?
No, or at least not unless there were a lot of difficulty or expense
involved in going adventuring (such as accumulating weapons and armour),
or unless adventuring were dangerous or expensive, or unless
opportunities to go adventuring were restricted in some way.
But what you describe is not the case in D&D. Most people have no real
opportunity to become a fifth-level cleric or to cast third-level spells
even if they did. Some of the obstacles are explicit (Wisdom
requirement). Others can be deduced, or at least their existence can be
deduced, for the statements in the rulebooks about the number of members
of various classes. Furthermore, adventuring is dangerous. Many people
who started it with average abilities would die, either violently or of
starvation, before they made it to fifth level. Farming is strenuous.
But for most people it's a better bet than adventuring.
> But you didn't think of that because you don't
> think through the implications of changing major environmental
> parameters.
Either that, or I think through them better than you do. It seems to be
you, rather than me, who is overlooking things and their consequences.
Specifically, you are overlooking that 'Create Food and Water' is a
third-level cleric spell, and that therefore to cast it a character
needs to be a fifth-level cleric or higher with a Wisdom of at least 13.
Further, you are overlooking the fact that adventuring is dangerous.
Further still, you depend on an unwarranted assumption that there is no
obstacle to anyone who wishes to do so becoming a cleric, despite the
clear implications of the 3E rules, explicit statements in earlier
editions, and a real-world analogy.
>> > The underlying principle is that if magical food production was
>> > possible and it did not require inordinate amounts of magical power, it
>> > would be incredibly widespread and farming would disappear.
>
>[stupidity deleted]
I'm going to put the stupidity back. "The D&D rules say that inordinate
amounts of magical power *are* necessary, so the premise is nugatory and
the argument invalid."
>> But pigs can't fly, and there is no spell in D&D that makes farming
>> redundant. Nor ought there to be.
>
> I bet your world, if you have one, is one gigantic mess full of internal
> inconsistencies, where people never do the things that real people would
> do in such a situation. They see someone use an electric lightswitch
> then straggle back to spending days of labor making candles to last them
> a little while.
I, of course, don't see it that way. I think my worlds are unusually
consistent because they take into account the limitations as well as the
capabilities of such things as magic and high tech; because I work out
consequences *quantitatively*; and because I include, second, third, and
sometimes even fourth and fifth order effects. But perhaps I'm no judge.
You would have to seek an opinion from someone who had played in one of
my worlds.
And even if my worlds are inconsistent, that doesn't make you right on
this point. Your conclusion about the effects of the 'Create Food &
Water" spell in a D&D world are wrong because you have failed to take
into account that few few people can cast it. In other words, you did
not employ any qunatitative techniques in your supposed 'working out'
> In a magic rich world farming would never happen.
That depends on exactly *how* magic-rich the world is. At the upper
limit, yes, magic would completely displace farming. At the lower limit,
no: spells that create food are too scarce and costly to replace farming
to a significant degree. In the middle magic will displace various
amounts of farming, depending on the cost and availability of spells,
the yield of agriculture, the availability of arable land, and the
amount of food needed.
> And 3E presupposes magic rich worlds.
3E presupposes worlds with a certain amount of magical wealth. The exact
magic-richness of 3E worlds is defined by how many people there are of
given classes and levels, who can cast what spells, etc. If you were to
suppose that it presupposes a world in which anyone could cast 3rd-level
clerical spells with a little application and negligible risk you would
be wrong.
The other day I worked through the 3E system to work out how many
members of each class and level there are in a metropolis. I came up
with only 28 clerics above 2nd level (plus 24 adepts: not sure how much
they's help). That isn't enough to feed 25,000 people (the minimum in a
metropolis).
Now, it happens that I think that result is too low, and in my world (my
D&D world is still under construction: I only started on it three weeks
ago) I will be increasing the magical richness somewhat. I would expect
to see something more like 400 clerics above 2nd level in that city (a
metropolis with 97,000 inhabitants). That still isn't enough to feed the
population of the city, let alone its hinterland.
I will not turn the magic-richness of my setting up high enough to make
'Create Food and Water' a 1st-level Commoner spell, nor to make every
householder a 5th-level cleric. And you're going to have to find better
arguments than you have to date to convince me or anyone else that I
ought to do so.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Bryant Berggren
<b.e...@tyndale.apana.org.au> wrote:
>It is doubtless very attractive to develop a high-level protective spell
>that will keep an area secure against entry by teleportation or
>etherealness. But that's no good itself without stout walls to keep out
>the idiot swordsmen.
But we already *have* a mid-level protective spell to do THAT
(Leomund's Secure Shelter). :)
BRB
mark....@reading.ac.uk
Robinson <wig...@concentric.net> writes:
>> And by the way, farming and many other aspects of life in the USA today
>> are dependent on the abilities to run oil refineries and power stations.
>> You wouldn't last three weeks without them. But is everyone in the USA
>> an engineer? No. You know how to drive cars instead.
>So what? A Create Food and Water does not create food for 500 people who
>live 1000 miles away. It is a local effect for a small number of people.
>You are making a bad analogy. The spell is local enough that every
>family would want to be able to use it for their own daily food supply.
>
>rules. The underlying principle is that if magical food production was
>possible and it did not require inordinate amounts of magical power, it
>would be incredibly widespread and farming would disappear.
But it's not *magical* food production. This is the kind of reason why I
hate the term "cleric spell" (I favor "miracle"). If you're a wizard, then
your spells are directly affected the world by magic and yes, they'll usually
work. But if you're a cleric, they don't. Essentially you're just
demonstrating your devotion to some gawd (misspelt to indicate fictionality)
or other who then throws you a helping hand. You don't control this, and
they are not obliged to do so.
Create food and water is meant to represent a prayer asking the gawds to
*bail out* a group of people who're stuck. If the gawds had meant it to be
used ALL THE TIME to create food and water, then the world wouldn't have been
created to include farming, plants and animals.
Now, on the other hand, I *can* understand things like streets lit with
Continual Light and similar. (But then, magic has its own integration
problems in D&D, not the least of which is that it's impossible to understand
how wizard's colleges operate.)
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Gary J. Robinson
b.e...@tyndale.apana.org.au wrote:
> Okay, carefully craft this:
>
> People have the distribution of attributes the D&D rules say they do.
>
> People are members of the classes the D&D rules say they are. Perhaps
> the gods can't ordain any more clerics because of mana shortages,
> perhaps you need to be born with the Talent to become a sorceror or
> wizard.
>
> Magic spells work the way the D&D rules say they do.
>
> Therefore there is no way of casting enough 'create food and drink'
> spells to feed everyone. Not nearly enough.
>
> What do the masses do?
They get their heroes to make magic items capable of casting "Create
Food & Water" instead of +2 swords and fireball wands, the way modern
people get their exceptional people to design power grids, powered
tractors and refrigeration.
I am afraid that as long as you put your head into the sand regarding
what real people would do, you will never have believable behavior in
your worlds. But that's your loss, not mine, and I have grown tired of
trying to make you realize that.
Gary
Gary J. Robinson
e-mail, and was not posted here. Since he is choosing to violate
netiquette by posting a private communication, I will not respond other
than to point out his breach of netiquette as a warning to others. I
know I will not be e-mailing him any more in the future.
Samy Merchi
> In article <3a98c...@news.utu.fi>, Samy Merchi <sam...@mash.yok.utu.fi>
>>>>Robin Hood?
>>> The vaguely historical bandit, or the rose-tinted legend?
>>The latter. I know zilch about the former.
> <hype> Then you need to pick up a copy of SUPPRESSED TRANSMISSIONS 2, by
> Kenneth Hite. </hype>
Why? ;)
Drew Id
"Gary J. Robinson" <wig...@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:wiggler-EF7668...@news.concentric.net...
> In article <t9dr5cn...@corp.supernews.com>, "Drew Id"
> <sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > "Gary J. Robinson" <wig...@concentric.net> wrote in message
> > news:wiggler-01D6F9...@news.concentric.net...
> > > More to the point, if it was that easy to make anti-magic items with a
> > > protective radius, they would simply be manufactured and used in
armies
> > > so the entire army was immune to fireballs, etc. Which brings us back
> > > to the idea of simply skipping magic for anything involving wars.
> >
> > This is an easy issue to Rule 0 : such items must be immobile and
require
> > a
> > great deal of time to construct. Again, they work for castles, and even
> > give
> > further reason to build castles, but they are useless for a mobile army.
>
> So it is perfectly clear that you are not as interested in seeing what
> the implications are of D&D magic on warfare, as much as you are
> interested in changing every rule necessary to get the exact situation
> you want. I thought as much.
Having taken a moment to weed out your childish attitude from your actual
contribution to this discussion, let me say again:
The whole point of the discussion, as stated before, was to find and plug
the holes in how I wanted the end result to turn out IMC. It was never, and
I repeat, never, about seeing the *real* implications (which is impossible
and based purely on what the DM wishes it to be), so much as about making my
particular campaign more sensible.
> That's fine, as long as you realize you
> are doing it. If you have to change a rule to win an argument, you lost
> the argument.
Were we arguing? I missed that. I believe that I was attempting to have a
rational discussion, and you were arguing and trying to bait me.
Drew Id
"Gary J. Robinson" <wig...@concentric.net> wrote in message
news:wiggler-FCD313...@news.concentric.net...
Cool, Gary. Do us all a favor and don't post either.
Gary J. Robinson
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
In article <t9ksvem...@corp.supernews.com>, Drew Id
<sean_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Were we arguing? I missed that. I believe that I was attempting to have a
> rational discussion, and you were arguing and trying to bait me.
I apologize for that. I tend to get irritated when I see people
disseminating what I believe to be untruths with regard to how real
warfare works, and the guerilla war thing set me off. It is your world
and you can do what you want.
I used to run magic-rich worlds and I eventually concluded, after
studying history and warfare for years, that those worlds don't make
any sense in terms of human psychology. So what you see is really me
getting mad at my younger self and my own flawed creations.
Gary
Ed Chauvin IV
That's funny, because it appears to be a response to an ongoing Usenet thread.
Apparently, *you* attempted to take it to email and Brett refused to take the
bait. I'll presume that you didn't want to carry on the debate in a public
forum for fear of looking like the fool you are.
Ed Chauvin IV
--
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the Beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
"I always feel left out when someone *else* gets killfiled."
--Terry Austin
Gary J. Robinson
Ed Chauvin IV <edc...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> Gary J. Robinson wrote:
> >Note the message Brett was replying to was sent to him as a private
> >e-mail, and was not posted here. Since he is choosing to violate
> >netiquette by posting a private communication, I will not respond other
> >than to point out his breach of netiquette as a warning to others. I
> >know I will not be e-mailing him any more in the future.
>
> That's funny, because it appears to be a response to an ongoing Usenet thread.
> Apparently, *you* attempted to take it to email and Brett refused to take the
> bait.
The accepted way of declining an invitation to a private conversation is
to simply not respond. Posting the private communication in a public
forum is a violation of netiquette. The fact that that doesn't bother
you tells me you have as little responsibility as Brett. You are the
type to sacrifice public convention and order for reasons of personal
satisfaction. Some people may be sniggering but the overall effect is a
chilling one, as others in the future will simply refrain from
participating in private conversations for fear of this kind of
behavior. This leads to more public flaming and discourages those who
try to take it offline and out of the public forum.
>I'll presume that you didn't want to carry on the debate in a public
> forum for fear of looking like the fool you are.
Indeed I have been a fool, because I have spent my time arguing with
fools about foolish things. But you have done me a service by making me
aware of that fact. Thank you. Time to get back to more productive
things.
Gary
David Serhienko
>
> In article <7d6l9t8hp8atg1r30...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> Ed Chauvin IV <edc...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
> > Gary J. Robinson wrote:
> > >Note the message Brett was replying to was sent to him as a private
> > >e-mail, and was not posted here. Since he is choosing to violate
> > >netiquette by posting a private communication, I will not respond other
> > >than to point out his breach of netiquette as a warning to others. I
> > >know I will not be e-mailing him any more in the future.
> >
> > That's funny, because it appears to be a response to an ongoing Usenet thread.
> > Apparently, *you* attempted to take it to email and Brett refused to take the
> > bait.
>
> The accepted way of declining an invitation to a private conversation is
> to simply not respond. Posting the private communication in a public
> forum is a violation of netiquette. The fact that that doesn't bother
> you tells me you have as little responsibility as Brett. You are the
> type to sacrifice public convention and order for reasons of personal
> satisfaction. Some people may be sniggering but the overall effect is a
> chilling one, as others in the future will simply refrain from
> participating in private conversations for fear of this kind of
> behavior. This leads to more public flaming and discourages those who
> try to take it offline and out of the public forum.
Death of Usenet predicted! Film at 11!
--
David Serhienko
"All your base. Are belong to us."