ChaoticDitz
2013-09-27, 12:55 AM
I'm a big fan of both military-themed D&D, and Psionics (admittedly, I would prefer something like Vancian Psionics with "augment points" or something, but that's just because I love the vancian casting system). I was thinking of a hypothetical world that is still midieval but only has Psionics in terms of "magic" and no arcane/divine/invocation/stuff. Yeah, I know, Psionics-only is generally a thing for sci-fi, but... I'm allowed to have my own tastes.
So I was thinking, what kind of military would likely be used in that world? Assuming all troops are level 1-3, and that armies effectively spend resources getting a character to a given level that they can't train/outfit an equal opposite level (for example, an army with only level 3 troops will have exactly 1/3 the number of soldiers of an opposing army with exactly the same starting resources and all level 1 soldiers), what would strategy and army composition be like in the following scenarios:
1. Something you'd generally expect in low-op dnd. There would likely be mostly troops without any Psionic abilities, while the specialists who did have them would be focusing on basic buffs and combat utility. Psionic soldiers could likely enhance the travelling and combat abilities of their allies, mainly, since while it's not full-op, a commander is going to be at least smart enough to realize that the small-scale debuffs of low-level Psions and Erudites will be mostly ineffectual against a large opposing force.
2. Cheesed out to just less than Save Game or Pun-Pun level; they might be low-level, but it's not hard to be explosively OP compared to everything else that even considers existing around your army of broken mechanical combos. Only real limitation I'll give this one is that you either can't go so broke that they'll just leave the military to descend into a free-for-all to try to take over the plane, or at least you must have a method other than keeping them on their honour to control them if you were a commander of no higher than 7th level.
So I was thinking, what kind of military would likely be used in that world? Assuming all troops are level 1-3, and that armies effectively spend resources getting a character to a given level that they can't train/outfit an equal opposite level (for example, an army with only level 3 troops will have exactly 1/3 the number of soldiers of an opposing army with exactly the same starting resources and all level 1 soldiers), what would strategy and army composition be like in the following scenarios:
1. Something you'd generally expect in low-op dnd. There would likely be mostly troops without any Psionic abilities, while the specialists who did have them would be focusing on basic buffs and combat utility. Psionic soldiers could likely enhance the travelling and combat abilities of their allies, mainly, since while it's not full-op, a commander is going to be at least smart enough to realize that the small-scale debuffs of low-level Psions and Erudites will be mostly ineffectual against a large opposing force.
2. Cheesed out to just less than Save Game or Pun-Pun level; they might be low-level, but it's not hard to be explosively OP compared to everything else that even considers existing around your army of broken mechanical combos. Only real limitation I'll give this one is that you either can't go so broke that they'll just leave the military to descend into a free-for-all to try to take over the plane, or at least you must have a method other than keeping them on their honour to control them if you were a commander of no higher than 7th level.