Beldar
2018-04-26, 05:56 PM
In most D&D worlds, the setting is medieval, which, among other things, comes with lots of minor nobility - counts, barons, dukes, earls, and so on.
Some of these will have the money to hire a court wizard. These may be of greater or lesser ability, depending on pricing & availability & to what extent the noble is hiring them for appearances rather than actual utility. In other words, you would have some fairly low-level wizards here & there serving as court wizards - it's a cushy safe job for the most part, & some would want a break from the stress of adventuring etc.
One more foundational factor is that nobility are absolutely notorious for nepotism - they hire their cousins, nephews & so on, regardless of ability, and they do so fairly often.
Frequently, these hired relations are more or less useless. That can cause stress & the desire that they'd be more useful.
That sets the stage.
Imagine a Cousin Herman. This is not any specific person, but the concept of a certain type of person. Somewhere, at some time, this kind of person (by whatever name) will have existed in a D&D setting.
One is enough.
Cousin Herman is your typical unimpressive relative of a noble, hired solely because he is a relative. He has no particular skills, talents, or achievements. But he has pride - he WANTS to be impressive.
And he imagines he can be impressive if only he was called a Court Wizard and actually had some magic to go with the job.
So he bugs his cousin the baron (or duke or whatever) for training.
He points out that the existing Court Wizard actually has some free time available - he mostly spends his time standing around looking impressive (some such would be hired merely to intimidate others by their presence alone not to try things, such as lying, in the Baron's presence).
But whatever the reason, and however busy the Court Wizard actually was, some such situations would result in the baron telling the Court Wizard to spend some time training Cousin Herman in whatever magic he can learn.
Poor Cousin Herman only has a 10 or 11 intelligence, but that's enough to learn cantrips or 1st level spells, which, over time, he does.
Now Cousin Herman is ecstatic - he can cast real spells, and loves to prove that by casting prestidigitation, mage hand and similar. The baron gains status for having TWO Court Wizards (and though one is pretty weak, most people don't know that).
These Prestidigitations actually prove useful from time to time, and Cousin Herman casts them freely - he doesn't hoard his regular spells like most wizards do (in case they get into combat, about which Herman is not worried since he's of noble blood and so he has the mindset that it is other people's job to protect him).
So the baron's food is often flavored with Prestidigitation, and his clothes are often cleaned by Prestidigitation. And the keys (or anything else you want to retrieve) that a small child tossed down the sewage pipe can be retrieved with Mage Hand (if they don't have that specific example, you still get the idea - something which rolled into a small hole works too) & a ring stolen by a raven and taken to its nest can be retrieved as well.
Cousin Herman has not become quite useful.
Aunt Zelda notices that. She is getting older & feeling less useful & wants to counteract that - to some degree at least. She does the same as Cousin Herman did - bug the count for training - and succeeds.
Now her life is better - she can have Unseen Servant do things for her (assuming she is int 11 or better), use mending on things she wants fixed right now (rather than waiting for a servant), get stuff off high shelves with mage hand, open stuck drawers with open/close, stick notes in convenient places with Stick (or hold cloth together without pins, while she completes her sewing), make pretty displays with Dancing Lights and maybe even Silent Image, etc.
Sure, she can do some of that other ways, or by having servants do it, but it feel empowering to get it immediately & to do more things herself again after age has stolen some of her ability to do so.
Other relatives notice, get jealous and want to improve their lives similarly.
So the Baron gets bugged some more.
So several of his relatives get trained. He may even have to hire another Court Wizard just to do the training. But he can afford that, and it makes his relatives stop hassling him, which is worth it to him.
At some point something will happen. It may be an assassination attempt or a coup. It may be an ogre charging his carriage from out of the woods as he travels to another town. It may be an attack by skeletons or zombies as he [asses by a village graveyard.
Whatever form it takes, There will be a dangerous situation. This is an opportunity for Cousin Herman. Say he blasts the zombie with Disrupt Undead, or scares off the ogre with Dancing Lights that look like Will 'o The Wisps, or foils the assassination attempt by using Daze, then Acid Splash to distract/delay the assassin until the guards come & finish him.
Whatever form it takes, the realization will hit the baron that these trained relatives - or others like them - can be useful to him in certain military or guard functions.
So he sets out to get more trained.
And, as always happens with nobles, there are those who want to imitate him - prominent merchants & similar will want some of their guards trained too.
And thus is born...
The ShortBus School of Magic
Assume that most magic schools are like modern universities - many people want to get in, for the benefits they perceive it will be to their lives, but the schools limit enrollment via entrance requirements (my nephew is applying to a medical school that, last year, had 10,000 applicants and accepted 184 of them, for example), and by high tuition.
The people they 'weed out' are the people the ShortBus school of magic, targets.
Assume that most magic colleges, in taking 'only those who can succeed' are taking those with 18's in their primary casting stat - for the best schools at least.
Some lesser schools take 17's and maybe even 16's.
They're missing an untapped resource.
People with 11's in the primary casting stat can still cast 1st level spells.
Many of those spells are quite useful.
Even 10 in a primary casting stat can still cast cantrips (a few in D&D & unlimited per day in Pathfinder, with a wider selection to boot.)
The ShortBus school would still administer entrance exams to make sure you have at least a 10 primary casting stat, but given that requirement is met, they'd accept all applicants, even the homeless & destitute, for the same reasons many militaries have accepted whomever wanted to join.
And stats of 12's and up are even better.
So the ShortBus school of magic, run by any enlightened kingdom near you, accepts them all.
Signing up is like signing up for a term in the modern military - you contractually commit to a certain term of service (usually a few years) during which time you will follow their rules and commands and accept their punishments for infractions. In exchange, you get room & board & pay, in the form of training. Maybe a little actual pay on top of that too (varying by kingdom).
The Magic Service, for which you sign up does many functions - fighting, guarding the walls, and, given the right spells, something like the Army Corps of Engineers.
Rank and file graduates are all 1st level wizards & so can all use light crossbows, slings, daggers and quarterstaves & so are equipped with these.
So, even without any magic, they can serve in exactly the same way and role as did the Roman Velites or Macedonian Peltasts - light armed troops not weighed down by armor (so moving fast) & acting in the missile-skirmishing role - go out ahead of the main body of troops, fire ranged weapons while the armies close, then retreat behind the front lines to leave the main fighting up to them (though they come out and shoot at the flanks once everyone is too busy to come kill them)
They have crossbows for the damage, and slings as backup, since you never run out of sling ammo (though what rocks you find may not all fly straight and true, even the worst ones will fly and go somewhere in the direction of the enemy).
That is a very useful role, even without any magic, add in magic and familiars and the scribe scroll feat and they become far more useful.
With familiars, scouting becomes easy (training for certain signals so the animals can communicate clearly about a couple things - such as training a bird familiar to peck the right square, on a shield covered by such squares, to indicate whether he saw open fields, a monster, troops, a source of water, etc - the 1st such animal trained may be difficult unless you have a druid available to Speak with Animals, even just once). And with Improved familiars (like fire or ice mephits), fighting takes on a whole new flavor - magic missiles, scorching rays etc, in those numbers, make a big difference.
With scrolls, you can save up what 'magical oopmh' you have. So instead of just casting Magic Missile once & then defaulting to your crossbow, you can cast two or more times. This gives flexibility too, since you can carry scrolls of spells that are only useful in certain situations.
Cantrips like disrupt undead, mage hand, prestidigitation, light, dancing lights, ghost sound, mending, message, open/close, stick, and others can be used in combat (dancing lights as a signal flare for instance) to some degree, and for general utility (Army Corps of Engineers types of stuff).
Most of the 1st level spells would be useful in battle - some more than others, such as Hail of Stone, Magic Missile, or Light of Lunia - but some would also be very useful as Army Corps of Engineers-types of things or in other ways.
A preliminary list of useful 1st level spells (leaving off most of the obvious combat spells):
Summon Monster 1 would be great for training - tell the summoned monster to stick to non-lethal damage and have combats among the unit for xp.
Mount would be great for surprise mobility - a whole unit of 'Velites' suddenly mounts up and moves much faster than expected.
Animate Rope, done rationally (more than 3 or so commands) would be insanely useful - basically a big long animated snake that can take things in its coils and bring them here or take them there.
Charged Object (from the Sorcery and Steam book) lets you store up blast-em power for later use.
Charm Person and Comprehend Languages would both be very useful in the diplomatic sphere, as is Friendly Face (Races of Destiny).
Create Bricks (from the Mythic Vistas-Testament book) is too useful for words. Not only can it crank out vast amounts of bricks for use in buildings, bridges, roads, sewers etc, but it makes them match your 'seed' brick. So make a few that look a bit like legos & now the bricks fasten together easily (though not snapping, since they're not flexible like plastic) - they could have dovetail or mortise-and-tenon joints on each end, and dowel-joints in top/bottom (holes in the bottom matching rods coming out of the top). It can also make pottery, tableware etc - anything made of clay that you declare a 'brick', including sling ammo.
Discern Bloodline (Races of Destiny) can be very useful in guarding the city gates & similar 'vetting' situations, as would Know Protection - vampires and werewolves & similar could be caught by such approaches.
Endure Elements is even useful - many times in history one army has surprised another and defeated it because it could move at times or through places that the enemy thought it could not move through. Think Washington crossing the Delaware river in a cold winter - it was unexpected because nobody attacked in winter. If you can attack in a blizzard or over a glacier or desert which was thought to be impassable, you have big advantages. If they don't know you can do it, you have surprise, and if they do, that knowledge forces them to guard against more possibilities and thus weaken their forces by spreading them out.
Similarly Feather Fall could enable, for instance, your Velites to pass by an impassable cliff for a surprise attack.
Eyes of the Avoral would tremendously help your scouts (see details for 10 miles, per the fluff text).
Float makes river transport very easy and enables recovery of sunken ships or anything else.
Grease and Glue can both be used for civil engineering (aka Army Corps of Engineers) types of applications, as well as impairing the enemy's movement.
Ghostly Tail (Races of the Dragon) is a very potent surprise your frontline troops could use - flanking these has been a primary military goal through the ages, but with this they can 'accidentally' leave themselves open in ways that will provoke attacks of opportunity, which this spell gives them as a touch attack for 2d6 & lasts for 1 hour (at 1st level caster). Having that up on all your frontline troops could multiply their effectiveness in most fights.
Guided Shot would make for devastating longest-ranged attacks, since it ignores distance penalties. Most armies did not shoot at max range for ammo-conservation reasons & so would be caught off-guard by a hail of accurate fire at max range, especially if you had a longer-than-usual max range (such as from Great Bows or Flight arrows).
Launch Item can be tremendous - imagine a unit of 100 Velites launching a flask of oil each (with 1 in 10 flasks being Alchemists fire instead, so they self-ignite and catch the rest on fire too) at an enemy 440' away.
Locate City would be occasionally useful, if the army is lost in a blizzard, or in unknown enemy territory, or for caravan guards to help guide the caravan.
Low-Light Vision could give you the ability to do effective night-attacks, whether from scouts/snipers, or on a whole unit of troops charging in.
Message could help coordinate night attacks & pass orders in a noisy battle & similar.
Obscuring Mist would be very useful in the same situations & for the same reasons that the army uses smoke - hide your advance or retreat.
Scholar's Touch is great for your Velites to educate themselves generally, allowing you to recruit uneducated hobos etc.
Silent Image is amazingly useful in combat for tricking the enemy about what units you have, where they are going, how they are armed etc. Sun Tzu said all war is deception. In Civil Engineering it is also useful for mass communication - think huge neon sign showing everybody some kind of announcement.
Tenser's floating disk can be used to aid in army Logistics as well as in civil engineering (like taking roof-repair supplies to the roof & such).
Unseen Servant is useful in as many ways as you can think of. Sure it can't fight, but it can dig foxholes & trenches, clean or repair equipment, cook food, carry things etc. And in Civil engineering roles it is unsurpassed. While it takes one farm worker multiple trips up and down a ladder to pick all the apples off a tree, for example, an Unseen Servant can do it without any such hindrance or delays. Used intelligently (ie, don't tell it to haul heavy loads), it can multiply the work you get done.
And 2nd level spells, if you get some Velites that high, can be far more useful.
Just one example:
Spider Climb is great for civil engineering operations - you don't need ladders, ropes etc to go do work on a roof, or recover someone stuck on a cliff face or down a well. It is also great for sieges - city walls are no obstacle when your troops can just walk right up them.
A unit of, say, 100 such Velites - graduates of the ShortBus school - even if they only have 11 Intelligence and have no other stats with bonuses to speak of, could easily, with the right leader and forethought, take out a unit of 100 fighters or similar (which is the kind of troops most other kingdoms will be training).
The simplest example would be the fighter unit being shot at, as it advances, by crossbows, then when it closes to 110 feet, being hit by 100 magic missiles. Even with maxed hit points and good constitution bonuses, 4 magic missiles will bring down a fighter, meaning a quarter of the enemy force simply drops dead. That's enough of a morale hit to stop most of the armies that have ever marched.
But if they keep coming, you do it again next round with scrolls and drop another quarter of them, totaling half.
And if you have Improved Familiars, then the mephits fire a third volley of magic missiles and leave only a quarter of the enemy's original force (if they do not have con bonuses, then you drop a third of them per volley and are now done in any case).
For the last 25% (assuming they have unbreakable morale somehow & so keep coming), you 'kite them' by firing with your crossbows and retreating on your ponies (which you bought for all casters instead of, and a lot cheaper than, armor). Or you have the mephits close in for breath-weapon attacks. Or simply disengage to fight another day, as you prefer.
And that's 1-on-1. These Velites are a lot more effective as support troops.
With some Velites and some normal heavy infantry, you can play a lot of tricks, like having the spots just in front of your front lines be sticky with the Glue spell (-2 to their attack among other things, which is significant at these levels and scales) and then, once the enemy is stuck, have your front line back up 5' and fight with reach weapons while the enemy stands there more or less unable to strike back.
That takes only about half your spells, so we can still fit in Silent Images, Hails of Stone to break up groups, Ghostly Tails for the troops guarding the flanks, and the like.
Then, here's the kicker.
We only need one Cousin Herman, somewhere, sometime, to start all this off. Once one baron gets to the point of having such Velites (graduates of the ShortBus school of magical studies), you get the same effect that the HMS Dreadnought had: the mere existence of such a unit makes the forces of anyone who doesn't do the same obsolete. They have to do similarly or fall behind.
And so the idea will spread like fire - everyone adjacent to the source will catch on, then everyone adjacent to them & so on.
And so most of the world will eventually end up with such magical training available (for Clerics and druids too, for similar reasons). It is, effectively, suicide not to, militarily.
And many folks would be willing & even eager to sign up for it - a few years military service in trade for life skills of such value is a bargain. Even the least imaginative, least ambitious graduate could, after his term in the army, easily support himself as, say, a janitor, by using Prestidigitation to clean, in minutes, what would have taken hours otherwise. At that rate, he could even hold down several janitor jobs - one per Prestidigitation spell he has and one more done manually. Evan at a janitors pay, holding 3-5 jobs at once gives a pretty good income.
And of course, they could do far far better than aiming for such low-end jobs.
Some of these will have the money to hire a court wizard. These may be of greater or lesser ability, depending on pricing & availability & to what extent the noble is hiring them for appearances rather than actual utility. In other words, you would have some fairly low-level wizards here & there serving as court wizards - it's a cushy safe job for the most part, & some would want a break from the stress of adventuring etc.
One more foundational factor is that nobility are absolutely notorious for nepotism - they hire their cousins, nephews & so on, regardless of ability, and they do so fairly often.
Frequently, these hired relations are more or less useless. That can cause stress & the desire that they'd be more useful.
That sets the stage.
Imagine a Cousin Herman. This is not any specific person, but the concept of a certain type of person. Somewhere, at some time, this kind of person (by whatever name) will have existed in a D&D setting.
One is enough.
Cousin Herman is your typical unimpressive relative of a noble, hired solely because he is a relative. He has no particular skills, talents, or achievements. But he has pride - he WANTS to be impressive.
And he imagines he can be impressive if only he was called a Court Wizard and actually had some magic to go with the job.
So he bugs his cousin the baron (or duke or whatever) for training.
He points out that the existing Court Wizard actually has some free time available - he mostly spends his time standing around looking impressive (some such would be hired merely to intimidate others by their presence alone not to try things, such as lying, in the Baron's presence).
But whatever the reason, and however busy the Court Wizard actually was, some such situations would result in the baron telling the Court Wizard to spend some time training Cousin Herman in whatever magic he can learn.
Poor Cousin Herman only has a 10 or 11 intelligence, but that's enough to learn cantrips or 1st level spells, which, over time, he does.
Now Cousin Herman is ecstatic - he can cast real spells, and loves to prove that by casting prestidigitation, mage hand and similar. The baron gains status for having TWO Court Wizards (and though one is pretty weak, most people don't know that).
These Prestidigitations actually prove useful from time to time, and Cousin Herman casts them freely - he doesn't hoard his regular spells like most wizards do (in case they get into combat, about which Herman is not worried since he's of noble blood and so he has the mindset that it is other people's job to protect him).
So the baron's food is often flavored with Prestidigitation, and his clothes are often cleaned by Prestidigitation. And the keys (or anything else you want to retrieve) that a small child tossed down the sewage pipe can be retrieved with Mage Hand (if they don't have that specific example, you still get the idea - something which rolled into a small hole works too) & a ring stolen by a raven and taken to its nest can be retrieved as well.
Cousin Herman has not become quite useful.
Aunt Zelda notices that. She is getting older & feeling less useful & wants to counteract that - to some degree at least. She does the same as Cousin Herman did - bug the count for training - and succeeds.
Now her life is better - she can have Unseen Servant do things for her (assuming she is int 11 or better), use mending on things she wants fixed right now (rather than waiting for a servant), get stuff off high shelves with mage hand, open stuck drawers with open/close, stick notes in convenient places with Stick (or hold cloth together without pins, while she completes her sewing), make pretty displays with Dancing Lights and maybe even Silent Image, etc.
Sure, she can do some of that other ways, or by having servants do it, but it feel empowering to get it immediately & to do more things herself again after age has stolen some of her ability to do so.
Other relatives notice, get jealous and want to improve their lives similarly.
So the Baron gets bugged some more.
So several of his relatives get trained. He may even have to hire another Court Wizard just to do the training. But he can afford that, and it makes his relatives stop hassling him, which is worth it to him.
At some point something will happen. It may be an assassination attempt or a coup. It may be an ogre charging his carriage from out of the woods as he travels to another town. It may be an attack by skeletons or zombies as he [asses by a village graveyard.
Whatever form it takes, There will be a dangerous situation. This is an opportunity for Cousin Herman. Say he blasts the zombie with Disrupt Undead, or scares off the ogre with Dancing Lights that look like Will 'o The Wisps, or foils the assassination attempt by using Daze, then Acid Splash to distract/delay the assassin until the guards come & finish him.
Whatever form it takes, the realization will hit the baron that these trained relatives - or others like them - can be useful to him in certain military or guard functions.
So he sets out to get more trained.
And, as always happens with nobles, there are those who want to imitate him - prominent merchants & similar will want some of their guards trained too.
And thus is born...
The ShortBus School of Magic
Assume that most magic schools are like modern universities - many people want to get in, for the benefits they perceive it will be to their lives, but the schools limit enrollment via entrance requirements (my nephew is applying to a medical school that, last year, had 10,000 applicants and accepted 184 of them, for example), and by high tuition.
The people they 'weed out' are the people the ShortBus school of magic, targets.
Assume that most magic colleges, in taking 'only those who can succeed' are taking those with 18's in their primary casting stat - for the best schools at least.
Some lesser schools take 17's and maybe even 16's.
They're missing an untapped resource.
People with 11's in the primary casting stat can still cast 1st level spells.
Many of those spells are quite useful.
Even 10 in a primary casting stat can still cast cantrips (a few in D&D & unlimited per day in Pathfinder, with a wider selection to boot.)
The ShortBus school would still administer entrance exams to make sure you have at least a 10 primary casting stat, but given that requirement is met, they'd accept all applicants, even the homeless & destitute, for the same reasons many militaries have accepted whomever wanted to join.
And stats of 12's and up are even better.
So the ShortBus school of magic, run by any enlightened kingdom near you, accepts them all.
Signing up is like signing up for a term in the modern military - you contractually commit to a certain term of service (usually a few years) during which time you will follow their rules and commands and accept their punishments for infractions. In exchange, you get room & board & pay, in the form of training. Maybe a little actual pay on top of that too (varying by kingdom).
The Magic Service, for which you sign up does many functions - fighting, guarding the walls, and, given the right spells, something like the Army Corps of Engineers.
Rank and file graduates are all 1st level wizards & so can all use light crossbows, slings, daggers and quarterstaves & so are equipped with these.
So, even without any magic, they can serve in exactly the same way and role as did the Roman Velites or Macedonian Peltasts - light armed troops not weighed down by armor (so moving fast) & acting in the missile-skirmishing role - go out ahead of the main body of troops, fire ranged weapons while the armies close, then retreat behind the front lines to leave the main fighting up to them (though they come out and shoot at the flanks once everyone is too busy to come kill them)
They have crossbows for the damage, and slings as backup, since you never run out of sling ammo (though what rocks you find may not all fly straight and true, even the worst ones will fly and go somewhere in the direction of the enemy).
That is a very useful role, even without any magic, add in magic and familiars and the scribe scroll feat and they become far more useful.
With familiars, scouting becomes easy (training for certain signals so the animals can communicate clearly about a couple things - such as training a bird familiar to peck the right square, on a shield covered by such squares, to indicate whether he saw open fields, a monster, troops, a source of water, etc - the 1st such animal trained may be difficult unless you have a druid available to Speak with Animals, even just once). And with Improved familiars (like fire or ice mephits), fighting takes on a whole new flavor - magic missiles, scorching rays etc, in those numbers, make a big difference.
With scrolls, you can save up what 'magical oopmh' you have. So instead of just casting Magic Missile once & then defaulting to your crossbow, you can cast two or more times. This gives flexibility too, since you can carry scrolls of spells that are only useful in certain situations.
Cantrips like disrupt undead, mage hand, prestidigitation, light, dancing lights, ghost sound, mending, message, open/close, stick, and others can be used in combat (dancing lights as a signal flare for instance) to some degree, and for general utility (Army Corps of Engineers types of stuff).
Most of the 1st level spells would be useful in battle - some more than others, such as Hail of Stone, Magic Missile, or Light of Lunia - but some would also be very useful as Army Corps of Engineers-types of things or in other ways.
A preliminary list of useful 1st level spells (leaving off most of the obvious combat spells):
Summon Monster 1 would be great for training - tell the summoned monster to stick to non-lethal damage and have combats among the unit for xp.
Mount would be great for surprise mobility - a whole unit of 'Velites' suddenly mounts up and moves much faster than expected.
Animate Rope, done rationally (more than 3 or so commands) would be insanely useful - basically a big long animated snake that can take things in its coils and bring them here or take them there.
Charged Object (from the Sorcery and Steam book) lets you store up blast-em power for later use.
Charm Person and Comprehend Languages would both be very useful in the diplomatic sphere, as is Friendly Face (Races of Destiny).
Create Bricks (from the Mythic Vistas-Testament book) is too useful for words. Not only can it crank out vast amounts of bricks for use in buildings, bridges, roads, sewers etc, but it makes them match your 'seed' brick. So make a few that look a bit like legos & now the bricks fasten together easily (though not snapping, since they're not flexible like plastic) - they could have dovetail or mortise-and-tenon joints on each end, and dowel-joints in top/bottom (holes in the bottom matching rods coming out of the top). It can also make pottery, tableware etc - anything made of clay that you declare a 'brick', including sling ammo.
Discern Bloodline (Races of Destiny) can be very useful in guarding the city gates & similar 'vetting' situations, as would Know Protection - vampires and werewolves & similar could be caught by such approaches.
Endure Elements is even useful - many times in history one army has surprised another and defeated it because it could move at times or through places that the enemy thought it could not move through. Think Washington crossing the Delaware river in a cold winter - it was unexpected because nobody attacked in winter. If you can attack in a blizzard or over a glacier or desert which was thought to be impassable, you have big advantages. If they don't know you can do it, you have surprise, and if they do, that knowledge forces them to guard against more possibilities and thus weaken their forces by spreading them out.
Similarly Feather Fall could enable, for instance, your Velites to pass by an impassable cliff for a surprise attack.
Eyes of the Avoral would tremendously help your scouts (see details for 10 miles, per the fluff text).
Float makes river transport very easy and enables recovery of sunken ships or anything else.
Grease and Glue can both be used for civil engineering (aka Army Corps of Engineers) types of applications, as well as impairing the enemy's movement.
Ghostly Tail (Races of the Dragon) is a very potent surprise your frontline troops could use - flanking these has been a primary military goal through the ages, but with this they can 'accidentally' leave themselves open in ways that will provoke attacks of opportunity, which this spell gives them as a touch attack for 2d6 & lasts for 1 hour (at 1st level caster). Having that up on all your frontline troops could multiply their effectiveness in most fights.
Guided Shot would make for devastating longest-ranged attacks, since it ignores distance penalties. Most armies did not shoot at max range for ammo-conservation reasons & so would be caught off-guard by a hail of accurate fire at max range, especially if you had a longer-than-usual max range (such as from Great Bows or Flight arrows).
Launch Item can be tremendous - imagine a unit of 100 Velites launching a flask of oil each (with 1 in 10 flasks being Alchemists fire instead, so they self-ignite and catch the rest on fire too) at an enemy 440' away.
Locate City would be occasionally useful, if the army is lost in a blizzard, or in unknown enemy territory, or for caravan guards to help guide the caravan.
Low-Light Vision could give you the ability to do effective night-attacks, whether from scouts/snipers, or on a whole unit of troops charging in.
Message could help coordinate night attacks & pass orders in a noisy battle & similar.
Obscuring Mist would be very useful in the same situations & for the same reasons that the army uses smoke - hide your advance or retreat.
Scholar's Touch is great for your Velites to educate themselves generally, allowing you to recruit uneducated hobos etc.
Silent Image is amazingly useful in combat for tricking the enemy about what units you have, where they are going, how they are armed etc. Sun Tzu said all war is deception. In Civil Engineering it is also useful for mass communication - think huge neon sign showing everybody some kind of announcement.
Tenser's floating disk can be used to aid in army Logistics as well as in civil engineering (like taking roof-repair supplies to the roof & such).
Unseen Servant is useful in as many ways as you can think of. Sure it can't fight, but it can dig foxholes & trenches, clean or repair equipment, cook food, carry things etc. And in Civil engineering roles it is unsurpassed. While it takes one farm worker multiple trips up and down a ladder to pick all the apples off a tree, for example, an Unseen Servant can do it without any such hindrance or delays. Used intelligently (ie, don't tell it to haul heavy loads), it can multiply the work you get done.
And 2nd level spells, if you get some Velites that high, can be far more useful.
Just one example:
Spider Climb is great for civil engineering operations - you don't need ladders, ropes etc to go do work on a roof, or recover someone stuck on a cliff face or down a well. It is also great for sieges - city walls are no obstacle when your troops can just walk right up them.
A unit of, say, 100 such Velites - graduates of the ShortBus school - even if they only have 11 Intelligence and have no other stats with bonuses to speak of, could easily, with the right leader and forethought, take out a unit of 100 fighters or similar (which is the kind of troops most other kingdoms will be training).
The simplest example would be the fighter unit being shot at, as it advances, by crossbows, then when it closes to 110 feet, being hit by 100 magic missiles. Even with maxed hit points and good constitution bonuses, 4 magic missiles will bring down a fighter, meaning a quarter of the enemy force simply drops dead. That's enough of a morale hit to stop most of the armies that have ever marched.
But if they keep coming, you do it again next round with scrolls and drop another quarter of them, totaling half.
And if you have Improved Familiars, then the mephits fire a third volley of magic missiles and leave only a quarter of the enemy's original force (if they do not have con bonuses, then you drop a third of them per volley and are now done in any case).
For the last 25% (assuming they have unbreakable morale somehow & so keep coming), you 'kite them' by firing with your crossbows and retreating on your ponies (which you bought for all casters instead of, and a lot cheaper than, armor). Or you have the mephits close in for breath-weapon attacks. Or simply disengage to fight another day, as you prefer.
And that's 1-on-1. These Velites are a lot more effective as support troops.
With some Velites and some normal heavy infantry, you can play a lot of tricks, like having the spots just in front of your front lines be sticky with the Glue spell (-2 to their attack among other things, which is significant at these levels and scales) and then, once the enemy is stuck, have your front line back up 5' and fight with reach weapons while the enemy stands there more or less unable to strike back.
That takes only about half your spells, so we can still fit in Silent Images, Hails of Stone to break up groups, Ghostly Tails for the troops guarding the flanks, and the like.
Then, here's the kicker.
We only need one Cousin Herman, somewhere, sometime, to start all this off. Once one baron gets to the point of having such Velites (graduates of the ShortBus school of magical studies), you get the same effect that the HMS Dreadnought had: the mere existence of such a unit makes the forces of anyone who doesn't do the same obsolete. They have to do similarly or fall behind.
And so the idea will spread like fire - everyone adjacent to the source will catch on, then everyone adjacent to them & so on.
And so most of the world will eventually end up with such magical training available (for Clerics and druids too, for similar reasons). It is, effectively, suicide not to, militarily.
And many folks would be willing & even eager to sign up for it - a few years military service in trade for life skills of such value is a bargain. Even the least imaginative, least ambitious graduate could, after his term in the army, easily support himself as, say, a janitor, by using Prestidigitation to clean, in minutes, what would have taken hours otherwise. At that rate, he could even hold down several janitor jobs - one per Prestidigitation spell he has and one more done manually. Evan at a janitors pay, holding 3-5 jobs at once gives a pretty good income.
And of course, they could do far far better than aiming for such low-end jobs.