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Rogthnor
2012-10-28, 03:46 PM
So I was rereading OOTS, when I came across this strip: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0423.html
and it got me wondering, in what ways would the introduction of magical items, spells and races effect medieval warfare. Both general discussion and specific tactics are encouraged. So to start it off:

The use of delayed blast fireballs items as explosives.

eulmanis12
2012-10-28, 06:19 PM
Some parts of warfare would change greatly, some not much. I see it as spell casters mostly being used to neutralize eachother while the infantry fight it out much as they always have. Explosive runes and the like would be used as landmines and traps but traps have always been used in warfare. Remember, a D&D party is not a good example of the percentage of population or military in each class. In a unit of 1000 men you might have half a dozen wizards mostly of low level and possibly a dozen clerics, The clerics would serve mostly in a medical capacity and their main effect would be to replace the quack doctors of medieval times with people that could actually fix injuries, so casualties would decrease signifigantly. The wizards might zap a few people but would mostly engage their opposite numbers among the enemy. The real changes would come from the fantasy creatures that got involved.

Dragons, Pegasi, and other flying creatures would make air warfare possible, leading to the development of countermeasures, a decrease in formation warfare, and an increase in the use of ranged weapons.

Large melee monsters would also cause a signifigan increase in the use of ranged weapons and a corresponding decrease in the use of melee infantry. Why would you send ten swordsmen to go get ripped apart by an ogre when 3 archers can probably bring it down before it gets close.

Heavy siege equipment would also be used more on the open battlefield. If giants and the like are going to smash through your formations if they get close enough you will want something that packs a big enough punch at a great enough distance to take them out before they can.

Gerrilla attacks using teleports and plane shifts would alter strategy greatly.

High level summoners could open entire new fronts by teleporting behind enemy lines

and thats just the tip of the iceberge

Morty
2012-10-28, 06:26 PM
As is usual when this question is put forward, it's entirely too broad to actually answer. It seems you're talking about D&D despite putting this thread in the general roleplaying section, but there's much more to fantasy than D&D.
If you have a setting like D&D where you trip over easily usable magic in one form or another around every street corner, it's going to shape warfare a great deal. Other approaches to supernatural phenomena can make it affect military matters less or more. What if magic isn't as powerful, easy or commonplace? What if it is, but is religiously persecuted and whoever uses it openly will be declared a heretic? What if using magic on a large scale has side effects that make Chernobyl look tame? What if there are no mortal magic users at all? What if, on the contrary, everyone uses magic, at least in a very minor way? And so on and so forth.

Gavinfoxx
2012-10-28, 06:50 PM
Is this fantasy in general? D&D? Which edition? What setting?

Delwugor
2012-10-28, 07:45 PM
This discussion comes up often and usually boils down to differences between magic or strategy/tactics trumping all on the battlefield.

Modern strategy and tactics are derived from the study of 5,000 years of battles and military campaigns. Strategists understand when and where certain advantages work and even more important when they don't. Then throw in communication, intelligence, espionage and of course logistics.
In fantasy/scifi settings, we do not have real information to study and make concrete arguments one way or another.

Amidus Drexel
2012-10-28, 07:48 PM
If you mean in a 3.5-like system or setting, then it would resemble a much more modern warfare (as large-scale Napoleonic battles are going to just be slaughters). A handful of spellcasters with AoE spells would be cheaper and more effective than fifty or so soldiers, so most of your infantrymen will be archers that take advantage of cover.

If we're talking about fantasy in general, it's going to vary a lot. If there's significant sources of massive damage or area effects, then it'll be very much like the above scenario. If not, then you'll generally be somewhere near traditional medieval warfare, with large fields of infantry and lines of archers.

@^ What he said.

Rogthnor
2012-10-28, 07:55 PM
In the interest of giving common parameters, we will assume 3.5 edition dungeons and dragons

Gavinfoxx
2012-10-28, 07:58 PM
In the interest of giving common parameters, we will assume 3.5 edition dungeons and dragons

Okay, big armies are nonexistent. A single 9th level spellcaster can annihilate a big army. Hideously powerful creatures and spellcasters are the norm, doing essentially spellcasting-specific tactics to counter other spellcasters. Small groups of spellcasters and bound creatures with teleport tactics try to out-think where and what the other casters are doing. Scrying and counterscrying and divination techniques are common, as well as elaborate methods to try and stymie various forms of divination or to give misinformation.

Think elite special operations teams of godlike superheroes trying to annihilate one another, not in a big drawn out battle, but by out-thinking and out-maneuvering to find and exploit the one tiny gap in their enemy's preparations, which will enable a single-shot method of annihilating the most powerful of the enemy force of spellcasters, after which point the victorious spellcasters and their planar bound troops can do whatever they want with an enemy nation.

Delayed blast fireballs as explosives aren't used because that tactic has nothing to do with spellcasters and planar bound creatures vs other spellcaster battles. Further, hit point damage, unless you are going mailman levels (a few hundred at least in 6 seconds, AFTER you take down the enemy's immunity to death by hit points with the right spells), aren't useful at fighting spellcasters, unless you are using hitpoint damage to target their worn items, like via chain lightning (which the person hit by is likely to be immune to).

Kelb_Panthera
2012-10-28, 08:41 PM
Okay, big armies are nonexistent. A single 9th level spellcaster can annihilate a big army. Hideously powerful creatures and spellcasters are the norm, doing essentially spellcasting-specific tactics to counter other spellcasters. Small groups of spellcasters and bound creatures with teleport tactics try to out-think where and what the other casters are doing. Scrying and counterscrying and divination techniques are common, as well as elaborate methods to try and stymie various forms of divination or to give misinformation.

Think elite special operations teams of godlike superheroes trying to annihilate one another, not in a big drawn out battle, but by out-thinking and out-maneuvering to find and exploit the one tiny gap in their enemy's preparations, which will enable a single-shot method of annihilating the most powerful of the enemy force of spellcasters, after which point the victorious spellcasters and their planar bound troops can do whatever they want with an enemy nation.

Delayed blast fireballs as explosives aren't used because that tactic has nothing to do with spellcasters and planar bound creatures vs other spellcaster battles. Further, hit point damage, unless you are going mailman levels (a few hundred at least in 6 seconds, AFTER you take down the enemy's immunity to death by hit points with the right spells), aren't useful at fighting spellcasters, unless you are using hitpoint damage to target their worn items, like via chain lightning (which the person hit by is likely to be immune to).

Read; basically what warfare will look like in reality in about another 20-100 years, but with monsters and magic replacing tech for the most part.

Kitten Champion
2012-10-28, 08:52 PM
I would contend that, in a world with 3.5 edition-level magic, that the vast majority of the people would be casters of some kind eventually. It's the simplest means of survival and security in this universe. Those with the intellect would be the most likely to propagate themselves, while physical labour becomes marginalized as extremely inefficient. Everyone in the world with the least bit of common sense would be clambering to obtain and master magic or see their children do so if they couldn't through apprenticeships or marriage.

It'd something between the Tippyverse and Eberron, inevitably -- if everyone isn't killed first.

Much of the causes of warfare would have disappeared, particularly wars over material needs or wants. In its stead, you'd get explosive conflicts between individuals over issues of pride and honour.

Ravenica
2012-10-28, 09:09 PM
Soulbound army of spectres falls, everyorc dies!

Saidoro
2012-10-29, 10:52 AM
in 3.5: whichever side has the biggest heroes wins. By mid levels a group of PCs can beat more or less arbitrary numbers of 1st-3rd level characters.

Spiryt
2012-10-29, 11:04 AM
Completely by the RAW of 3.5, or at least closely, with just some very general DM Fiat, warfare would be probably largely unrecognizable.

However, the world like that would be generally bizarre,:smallwink:

So there usually will be major adjustment, depending on what exactly players like.

There's obviously also the matter of what exactly "medieval warfare" would be.

It covers quite a lot of different stuff, and its hard to expect that 'medieval' in some very different land would look similar to one period in Europe/some Asia/Africa history.

awa
2012-10-29, 11:17 AM
It also depends on the optimization level of the people and the level spread.

For example characters in the forgotten realms tend to be extremely high level but horribly unoptimised, while in ebberon most characters are fairly low level.
Another important factor is are we talking about a world with drown healing, pun pun and other infinite loops or one with a bit of a guiding hand preventing abuse and then of course where does this guiding hand draw the line
In generally I agree you wouldn’t see traditional midlevel armor regardless of level or optimization because assassination and espionage are so much more effective regardless of whether they are using mind rape or disguise self to do it.

Vitruviansquid
2012-10-30, 02:53 AM
If you've ever played the game Dominions 3 by Illwinter, that's a pretty good depiction of what wars in a DnD-esque setting would look like. The battles would be dominated by the biggest, nastiest spells, summoned creatures, or magical items that each side can bring to bear, and the mundane soldier, no matter how elite, are always secondary to the magical element.

Zahhak
2012-10-30, 11:31 AM
Gavinfoxx has it mostly down I think, but with some changes.

I think, perhaps ironically, that DnD is probably the closest approximation to what a fantasy war would look like. You have people walking around with the power of gods, some of them will be loyal to you, and some will be loyal to your enemy. A head on conlision of these forces will not end well for anyone. Imagine a battalion of thousands of soldiers moving in to strike a certain position and they meet a single mid-level wizard speced out for AOE damage. The wizard is going to cause mass death and destruction among the battalion. The wizard will probably run out of spells per day before the battalion runs out of troops, but they'll all break and run long before then. The response would then be to send in teams of mages to take out the enemy mage.

I think, realistically, the low-level soldiers would be completely removed from any actual battlefield, and would be used for police, fire fighters, and other first responder positions, while warfare is conducted by teams of 4-5 mid to high level adventurers. These adventurers may in fact be little more then mercenaries, but they would be the ones who are able to make it rain fire and prop up a single soldier to fight off armies.

On a related note, I considered this once and came up with a campaign based around a king who pays adventurers to go off and do their thing on the condition that they become his army when he needs them. From there it's a pretty easy matter of figuring out when, where, and how to throw a party of 6-10th level against a castle to capture it.


Heavy siege equipment would also be used more on the open battlefield. If giants and the like are going to smash through your formations if they get close enough you will want something that packs a big enough punch at a great enough distance to take them out before they can.

A formation of hill giants would have countless uses. They are more mobile then catapults, but can throw rocks probably as well. If anything gets near them it'll get its face smashed in. They can be used as a heavy infantry formation to protect the squishier units, or similarly to heavy cavalry, to simply rip big old holes in the enemy's formation. They're ranged DPS and a tank rolled into one. And intimidating.


I would contend that, in a world with 3.5 edition-level magic, that the vast majority of the people would be casters of some kind eventually. It's the simplest means of survival and security in this universe. Those with the intellect would be the most likely to propagate themselves, while physical labour becomes marginalized as extremely inefficient. Everyone in the world with the least bit of common sense would be clambering to obtain and master magic or see their children do so if they couldn't through apprenticeships or marriage.

I think that that is a more broad issue with the way the societies in DnD are depicted. And really, a handful of the DnD races have automatic spells per day or spell like abilities anyways.

awa
2012-10-30, 12:03 PM
i actually the giants arnt just more mobile they have a faster rate of fire and vastly greater accuracy as well as being more durable.

static siege weapons would be nearly useless

VanIsleKnight
2012-10-30, 12:41 PM
If the world is a low-magic or low level (1-5) setting, wouldn't Lord of the Rings kind of cover this? It partially already does, what with the trolls, Ents, and Nazguls. Mordor had fairly strong magic on it's side in by virtue of a diminished Sauron being their leader, and the elves were looked upon with awe and some fear partially because of the magic they had. Also Galadriel, who was also a powerful magic user for the setting.

Actually, you would probably see a lot of military and national leaders great and small being powerful magic users of some sort instead of a king or other regular person. Nations that didn't have magic on their side and instead relied on traditional methods would find themselves having to ally with magical nations just to survive, or put serious funds towards R&D in that area or face what Gondor and the rest of Middle Earth was facing when Sauron decided to roflstomp everything.

I think to some degree, a few high fantasy RPG video games would partially answer questions like these. A few Tactics series comes to mind, The Elder Scrolls -kind- of (especially when I watch some silly mass war mod Youtube videos), and they're somewhat reliable because the protagonists aren't the biggest toughest sentient civilized humanoids around. The villains and enemy nations have to be tough too, and the home nations have to put up -some- sort of show for a fight, so yeah.

awa
2012-10-30, 01:54 PM
I’m not so Shure lord of the rings largely does not utilize the magic it has. Lord of the rings was designed in such a way that magic was so few and far between that it had virtually no impact on warfare at all. Because almost all powerful magic beings just stay out of the way.

Even in a level 5- dnd setting I would expect to see a lot more commando action happening between armies, goblins leading night time raids, and aerial cavalry striking deep behind enemy lines, invisible or magically disguised assassins.