Ritual magic, wizards in battles and like

[Tarqiup Inua]

Is there any system in D&D 3.X that governs battle magic?

I am somewhat dissatisfied with the way wizards have such an easy time when they are used in war offensively and at the same time they have very hard time protecting - say, a city from magic attacks from outside during a siege.

The idea is as follows - it should be something resembling circle magic - several mages would invest their spell slots into the pool, which would then act as a sort of a buffer - a lot like rod of absorption, but not automatically working - whenever someone from outside of the circle would cast a spell within certain distance (say within a mile or two, though exact distance would depend on number of participants), the wizards in circle would get an option to counter the spell using more lenient rules than those for counterspelling (casters passing some spellcraft check would drain the pool more and creators of circle would get to choose whether to block particularly well-cast spell).

I think such mechanic would have its advantages - wizards would still be very much important on the battlefield, but the spellcasting would be much harder in battle and the main role for casters would be keeping enemy casters at bay and earning time for your soldiers so they could resolve matters in combat.

It would allow for sieges to last, actual battles to take place...

The in-game disadvantage would, of course, be the difficulty of setting up such "shield" over an area in the first place, and the fact it would keep spellcasters occupied unable to do much else.

What do you think?

And is there similar mechanic anywhere to be found? How would you do it?

[One Step Two]

There are spells like Hallow and Unhallow which allow you to tie one of several protective spells into the area, and Guards and Wards which do the same. Also, Mordenkienan's Private Sanctum. I like the idea of using circle magic to amplify these spells to cover an entire city.

Then there are the Mythals in the Forgotten realms. They are epic magics that protected entire areas in powerful wards, which suppressed offensive magic, and allowed certain memebrs attuned to the Mythal to call down spells for themselves to protect the area. It's far more compicated for casting hastily, but you could use the rules and ideas it gives as a basis to create something on a less grand scale. Though I like to think that such a massive undertaking might remove mages from the battle entirely, as they've exhausted their spells to defend the city, and cannot participate in an offensive manner.

[Tvtyrant]

Is there any system in D&D 3.X that governs battle magic?

I am somewhat dissatisfied with the way wizards have such an easy time when they are used in war offensively and at the same time they have very hard time protecting - say, a city from magic attacks from outside during a siege.

The idea is as follows - it should be something resembling circle magic - several mages would invest their spell slots into the pool, which would then act as a sort of a buffer - a lot like rod of absorption, but not automatically working - whenever someone from outside of the circle would cast a spell within certain distance (say within a mile or two, though exact distance would depend on number of participants), the wizards in circle would get an option to counter the spell using more lenient rules than those for counterspelling (casters passing some spellcraft check would drain the pool more and creators of circle would get to choose whether to block particularly well-cast spell).

I think such mechanic would have its advantages - wizards would still be very much important on the battlefield, but the spellcasting would be much harder in battle and the main role for casters would be keeping enemy casters at bay and earning time for your soldiers so they could resolve matters in combat.

It would allow for sieges to last, actual battles to take place...

The in-game disadvantage would, of course, be the difficulty of setting up such "shield" over an area in the first place, and the fact it would keep spellcasters occupied unable to do much else.

What do you think?

And is there similar mechanic anywhere to be found? How would you do it?

I use the Invocation rules from D20 modern+ D20 arcana in my E6 campaign to represent epic level casting, you could try that (it is OGL so you can just grab it off their SRD.)