Mages and Muskets

[TooManySecrets]

WARNING: Much like my last post on a similar subject, this is mostly just a written account of what I've been thinking about recently. It meanders, makes a couple of logical jumps, and I can't guarantee that it will have a nice payoff. Oh well.



What does this ...

have to do with this?

In the real world, the crossbow almost ended the age of knights and chivalry. The weapon was simple to use and allowed even an untrained peasant to kill an armored knight - who, remember, was usually at least a minor noble - from a significant distance. Since it allowed a peasant to easily kill a noble, the weapon was deemed inhumane. Pope Innocent II banned the crossbow (for use at Christians, at least) and the Magna Carta attempted to ban the use of mercenary crossbowmen. Despite this, it remained a popular weapon because of the power it provided.

The firearm, on the other hand, did end the age of knights. Like the crossbow, it was simple to use and was even more powerful. It was also introduced in a time when the power of the church and king were waning so it was not subjected to the same restrictions that the crossbow was. In many ways, the firearm (along with changing political philosophies) brought about the end of feudalism. It was, after all, a lot harder to respect noblemen when they could be as easily killed as anybody else.

Which brings us to the mage.

Armor is useless against a mage. Magical energy passes right through it. A prepared mage can cast a wave of fire, which is going to stop a cavalry charge pretty much dead in it's tracks (PROTIP: Horses don't like being on fire). Illusion magic can stop a squad in an instant and leave them extremely disorganized. Even a few mages added as auxiliaries to every squad can turn a bunch of barely trained peasants into a pretty robust force and a mage squad would be pretty dangerous indeed.

"Now wait just a second," you say, "in almost every setting mages tend to be pretty rare. You don't find them on every street corner."

Malarkey, I say!

In pretty much every setting, wizardy is the result of careful study, inherent ability (which is to say - genetics), or some varying amount of both. In any reality where mages exist, they'd pretty much have to be close to the center of attention of a society. Magic is able to sidestep so many problems that it would be foolish not to use it, and in the cases where magic itself causes the problem the solution is usually "more magic". It's in a ruler's best interest to have as many mages as possible to (a) defend themselves from belligerent nations and (b) to gain an advantage when attacking other nations. If magic comes from study, then a ruler would create as many universities and training camps as possible while, if magic comes from genetics, then a ruler would mandate laws requiring mages to only marry other mages (similar laws existed for nobles in the real world - gotta keep that noble blood pure!).

In addition to serving as soldiers, mages would also have to be the premier defense against supernatural threats. Imagine if, in the real world, there existed a creature that was able to fly through the air firing out rays that could mind control a person or disintegrate half of a building in an instant. Even if there only existed a relatively small number of these monsters, it would only take a few cities being mind controlled/disintegrated before people started doing whatever they could defend themselves. When you add into that giant lizards that breathe fire, snake people that can turn you into stone with a look, mage spiders, and bugs that can rust all metal, you have a reality where it's surprising that humans ever survived long enough to get out of the mud-and-sticks period of history. The only way to survive would be to use magic and a few dozen mages isn't gonna cut it for protecting all of humanity.

"Ah-ha!" you say, "that's pretty easy to explain. There's only a relatively few number of mages, but they're all very high level (or whatever system-appropriate equivalent). They swoop in to save the day when they can to prevent the complete destruction of humanity, but most of the time humanity has to fend off supernatural threats with knights in shining armor."

What if I told you there was only two levels of athletes in the world - Olympic-level athletes and people who have never been athletic at all. No amateur athletes. Nobody ever played sports in high school or college. Nobody who is a professional athlete, but still best in the world. Everybody is either at the peak of human performance or they're a couch potato.

You'd probably call me crazy. And you'd be right.

Even if there was some hypothetical sport that was extremely deadly to the inexperienced, you'd still get some distribution of talent from "amateur" to "world's best". And if playing this hypothetical sport was essential for the survival of humanity, you'd think that we would protect trainees until they were good and ready or else we were very, very desperate.

In short, in order for their to be a cadre of high level mages, there has to be a lot of lower-powered mages as well.¹

Which leads us back to the musket ...

or, more specifically, what it did to feudal society. Namely, ending it.

Once mages start getting on the scene, feudal society is going to take a nosedive. Restricting magery only to the nobility is going to cripple one's army and ability to fend off supernatural attacks. Now, even assuming that a ruler would put pomp and circumstance before survival, all it takes is one practical ruler to steamroll the rest of them. The practical ruler would get a mage army and the other rulers would have to adapt or die. Either way, everybody would start getting a populace that has a lot of experience with magic, which brings us to a similar situation of firearms in feudal Europe. The knights in shining armor are going down ... hard.

Except ...

when I said that firearms put an end to the age of knights, I might have been lying by omission. Just a little bit. Firearms did put an end to the age of knights ... eventually. It took about 100 to 200 years (300, if we want to be very generous and start counting from the very first "hand gonne"). Medieval armorers weren't twiddling their thumbs while their clients died on the battlefield. They developed better steel, heavier armor, and reinforced padding to provide greater protection.² Changing cavalry tactics also helped. Eventually, of course, it was all for naught, but the age of knights didn't end overnight.

Likewise, it would be highly unlikely that a ruler would have an entire army of mages. Therefore, they would have to rely, at least partly, on conventional troops and if they want those conventional troops to survive long they would have to give them unconventional armor.

Which brings us to the golem.

Weighing in at over 2 and a half tons and hailing from a wizard's laboratory, the golem is pretty much the perfect fighting machine. It's doesn't have any fleshy weaknesses (except for really extreme temperatures, fire and cold aren't going to do much. Magical acid might work), and can cut huge swaths through conventional troops. It has a great offense and a great defense. It's pretty much perfect.

Except that it's really expensive and time-consuming to build.

And you need to have a wizard following around it controlling it, which makes him an obvious target.

And it doesn't really address the question of how to make conventional troops useful.

The golem is powerful, but it has too many problems to make it common. However, the way imagine it, all it takes is one magical artisan to have a revelation. Why not enchant existing armor with golem-like qualities? Create a hybrid of golem and armor - golem armor, as it were. You'd get the advantages of a golem, while getting around the disadvantages of needing an external control. You'd probably also be able to reduce the cost considerably by making it smaller and no longer requiring the rudimentary golem intelligence.

All of a sudden, the favor of battle starts to swing back to the conventional troops. Not entirely, of course. Mages still have indirect methods of fighting golems, even if their main attack spells are neutered, and golem armor would still be expensive enough to construct that you couldn't outfit an army, even taking into account what I brought up in my last post. However, it would be enough to change the battlefield.³

Now, from a sort of meta-standpoint, all this is fine and dandy, but doesn't mean anything if you can't make it evocative. Players want to play a game to escape reality - if they wanted to play as soldiers fighting in tank-analogs, they'd just play a modern or future RPG. Luckily, I've found something very evocative to use with golem armor.

The above is a pavise. It's pretty much exactly what it looks like - a huge shield placed in front of an archer or crossbowman to form mobile cover. The important thing to note is the intricate painting. Apparently, painting pavises (?) with colorful symbols and depictions of saints and martyrs was an extremely common practice. I think that bringing that same mentality to golem armor - treating them as works of art as well as machines of war - is something that could be very useful in a setting. I would like to shy away from "It's exactly like a knight in armor, just different" because I think it would be cheesy to have, say, golem armor jousting. However, having a village paint the armor used by their fathers and sons before they go out into battle is something really cool.

More pavise paintings:

Spoiler

Show

The way I sort of envision it would be leaders in colorful and intricately made golem armor leading troops into battle as mages whip spells of fire and acid and cold everywhere. I think it would be just the right mix of modern war, but in a profoundly medieval fantasy way.

Anyways, I'm sort of sputtering out here. Can't really think of what else to say.

Thoughts?


Footnotes
¹This is broadly true, but not true in every setting. In David Eddings' Belgariad, the mages have been directly taught by a god, which greatly limits the number of mages running around. There's a few other mages running around they haven't had divine teaching, but they tend to be highly specialized in one or two spells, while the divinely-taught mages can be good at anything.

² If you ever get a chance to look at plate armor made during this time period, look for a little dimple in the armor. It's not a defect. An armorer, to provide proof that their armor could stop bullets, would fire a gun into.

³ In a way, this is sort of similar to what happened in Eberron. However, I'm not really feeling warforged right now. They work great in the Victoria-esque not-quite-steampunk setting, but I don't really see them working in a medieval setting for reasons I can't adequately put to words.

[Martin Greywolf]

Personal firearms didn´t end age of knights. Light, quick to deploy artillery did.

As for proofing of armor, yes, it was done, but on top-of-the-line armor affordable only by the richest of the rich, not by any noble.

Also, by the time of high rennaisance, with fullplate and whatnot, knights were already becoming obsolete in their original form thanks to development of better tactics (combined arms formations like tercio).

Also, knight may or may not be a noble, depending on the definition. There were many fully armored cavalrymen who weren´t of noble birth - such as wealthy mercenaries or merchants. They also weren´t necessarily landholders, look at religious military orders (templars, teutons and hospitallers).

Lastly, firearms and knights coexisted for about 400 years, depending on how you define knights again.

Painting pavaises like that, well, I can´t really say, but it seems to me that pavaises painted that richly were exceptions, they get destroyed pretty quickly by missile weapons, as we found out when we decided to test one of ours (that spear did NOT leave it in a good shape).

That said, most of fantasy (DnD especially) already isn´t medieval in technology, but in early renaissance, and yes, mages take place of artilery. One thing to consider with your golem approach though is that it is more steampunk and less fantasy (kind of like Eberron), or to be more precise, blurs the line between the two. After all, there is a lot to be said about golem exoskeleton, and then you basically have Halo Spartans (or Starship troopers MIs, or Mass Effect soldiers, or...) on the battlefield.

Bottom line is, if you want to put this in your game, make sure players are cool with it. When they expect generic medieval (I knoe, I know, actually early renaissance) DnD, they may dislike it. In that case though, you can still have your golem armored soldiers as a big bads superweapon.

[Beowulf DW]

You make some very good points. However, in most fantasy worlds there's usually a way to combat magic. Dragon Age has its templars. Maho Sensei Negima has certain individuals who can cancel magical energies, as well as the fact that mages need time to cast spells, and those spells can be interrupted unless the mage is protected by a "partner."

If these conditions aren't met in a fantasy setting, magic often becomes an insurmountable force (i.e. the only way to kill a mage is with another mage). This problem is gone over in some depth in the Inheritance Cycle.

I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder game (now in a bit of a hiatus) which our DM has called "The Sands of Adamarin," which takes place on a (mostly) arid continent. It was made that way because an ancient king tried to use the life force of the whole continent to make himself a god. And he succeeded. The three heroes who put a stop to him were killed in the effort, and they couldn't stop him from rendering the continent a desert. The king used a magical ritual to accomplish this, and as a result, what was left of the population collectively said "NO!" to most forms of magic.

As a result, the people relied on technology and alchemy to fill the gap (this is our excuse for having advanced firearms in an otherwise Middle Ages-esque world). Clerics were replaced by Alchemists as the healers of the land. The sound of spellweaving was replaced by the thunder of cannons.

Don't know why I'm telling you about that, but I felt that it might help contribute to the conversation.

[gkathellar]

All of a sudden, the favor of battle starts to swing back to the conventional troops. Not entirely, of course. Mages still have indirect methods of fighting golems,

Emphasis mine.

I'm going to dispute this point in particular, or rather, dispute the implication it casts. Mages have plenty of direct methods of fighting golems, even as early as first level — the Orb spells in particular. Moreover, if golem armor is a magic item and not a creature, it's subject to dispel shutdown.

[TooManySecrets]

Personal firearms didn´t end age of knights. [...] knights were already becoming obsolete in their original form [...] Lastly, firearms and knights coexisted for about 400 years, depending on how you define knights again.

Well, basically, here we come to the problem that no one single thing ended the age of knights and feudalism. Technology, tactics, political theory, and clamoring for rights among the masses all played a part. I simplified things since I didn't want to get bogged down in details that didn't matter. Focusing on firearms specifically was something I felt would be easy enough for the reader to understand without going through Medieval History 101 first.

To be excruciatingly exacting, let's say that the common usage of personal firearms greatly hastened the final end of knights.

Painting pavaises like that, well, I can´t really say, but it seems to me that pavaises painted that richly were exceptions, they get destroyed pretty quickly by missile weapons, as we found out when we decided to test one of ours (that spear did NOT leave it in a good shape).

Apparently it was extremely common. All existing pavises that I've seen are painted, even if it's just with a simple cross and bars. Now, granted, it might be selection bias at work - all of the non-painted ones were crappy and got destroyed while only the painted ones survived. But I don't really think so.

That said, most of fantasy (DnD especially) already isn´t medieval in technology, but in early renaissance, and yes, mages take place of artilery. One thing to consider with your golem approach though is that it is more steampunk and less fantasy (kind of like Eberron), or to be more precise, blurs the line between the two. After all, there is a lot to be said about golem exoskeleton, and then you basically have Halo Spartans (or Starship troopers MIs, or Mass Effect soldiers, or...) on the battlefield.

Bottom line is, if you want to put this in your game, make sure players are cool with it. When they expect generic medieval (I knoe, I know, actually early renaissance) DnD, they may dislike it. In that case though, you can still have your golem armored soldiers as a big bads superweapon.

I appreciate the sentiment, but the fact is that the line is already blurred in generic D&D. Flesh golems come from Frankenstein (Georgian era), mind flayers and beholders would fit into a sci-fi setting without any change, you have numerous monsters from various mythology throughout all time periods, and once you start moving away from the main books (PHB, DMG, MM), you start getting even weirder stuff from atheist technophiles with force guns to mining robots to non-magical portals.

I'm not going to spring this on any of my players unexpectedly. I'm going to repeat what I said in the last thread when somebody thought I was going to spring that stuff on the players unexpectedly:

It is the goal of the DM to ensure that the majority of players have fun playing the game and, in pursuit of this goal, the DM can do anything he or she deems necessary in the context of the game.

In short, if golem armor (or anything else) isn't fun, the DM could and should remove it.

'Nuff said.

You make some very good points. However, in most fantasy worlds there's usually a way to combat magic. Dragon Age has its templars. Maho Sensei Negima has certain individuals who can cancel magical energies, as well as the fact that mages need time to cast spells, and those spells can be interrupted unless the mage is protected by a "partner."

If these conditions aren't met in a fantasy setting, magic often becomes an insurmountable force (i.e. the only way to kill a mage is with another mage). This problem is gone over in some depth in the Inheritance Cycle.

Golem armor sort of takes the place of that. It's more passive than the templars, who can actively dispel rather than just being resistant to magic. In any setting with a lot of mages, I could see some anti-mage gishes running around.

It's an interesting thought. Null mages.

I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder game (now in a bit of a hiatus) which our DM has called "The Sands of Adamarin," which takes place on a (mostly) arid continent. It was made that way because an ancient king tried to use the life force of the whole continent to make himself a god. And he succeeded. The three heroes who put a stop to him were killed in the effort, and they couldn't stop him from rendering the continent a desert. The king used a magical ritual to accomplish this, and as a result, what was left of the population collectively said "NO!" to most forms of magic.

As a result, the people relied on technology and alchemy to fill the gap (this is our excuse for having advanced firearms in an otherwise Middle Ages-esque world). Clerics were replaced by Alchemists as the healers of the land. The sound of spellweaving was replaced by the thunder of cannons.

Don't know why I'm telling you about that, but I felt that it might help contribute to the conversation.

I always like hearing of what people have done in other games, even if it's not directly related. It's a lot better than hearing about pure theory stuff.

Personally, I don't think that magic would completely replace technology. Unless you're in a very unique setting, you're never going to have the case be that everybody is a mage, so there's always going to be a few mundanes who need technology, even if that technology is magic-assisted. It's sort of in the same way how everybody doesn't need to be a computer programmer to have near-ubiquitous computing (or replace car mechanic/car, carpenter and electrician/housing, etc). I don't know what the tipping point for mage-to-non-mage would be so that everybody had access to magitek - probably setting specific.

Though, yeah, a mage causing huge devastation would probably not do well for mage PR.

EDIT:

Emphasis mine.

I'm going to dispute this point in particular, or rather, dispute the implication it casts. Mages have plenty of direct methods of fighting golems, even as early as first level — the Orb spells in particular. Moreover, if golem armor is a magic item and not a creature, it's subject to dispel shutdown.

While I talked mostly in D&D terms, that's just because it's what people are the most familiar with. My points were more dealing with fantasy settings in general, than specifically 3.5 D&D. (Otherwise, I would have posted in that forum)

Anyways:
1. The Orb spells are the most conceptually whacked spells around. "See, this fire bypasses spell resistance since I conjure up fire and then use magic to propel it, while this fire doesn't bypass spell resistance since I evoke the fire and then use magic to propel it. Huge difference!". Or how about "Why, yes, I just conjured up a naturally occurring orb of force, which makes as much sense as a naturally occurring orb of height or orb of width". This isn't even mentioning the crunch of them, which has them be almost strictly better than the other direct damage spells of the same level, unless you're facing an opponent with really high touch AC and bad saves.

Which isn't to say that I don't use the spell. I am a powergamer, after all. It just still rubs me the wrong way.

(I debated whether, when responding to your question, whether to be really facetious and say something along the lines "Well, it's a 3.0 golem" instead. I guess I sort of did.)

2. Not if the item itself has SR or spell immunity. Which it would.

[Gnoman]

Gunpowder weapons had very little to do with ending the feudal era. It was a new weapon in the hands of nobles, and would have greatly altered the political landscape, but only the landed classes had the resources to acquire them, thus very little would have changed. Nor did they end the era of heavy cavalry, as many nations continued to use heavily armoured horseman until fairly recent times, the Conquistadors of Spain being perhaps the best-known example.

What ended the feudal era was the introduction of the standing army, meaning that a leader no longer had to rely on imperfectly-loyal subordinates whenever he needed to conduct operations. This moved most of the powers of the nobles directly into the hands of the sovereign.

[Vitruviansquid]

I would imagine that if you wanted to discuss the existence of mages in a historical or sociological perspective, the first question that comes to mind would be... why weren't the mages/sorcerers the knights?

This whole thing about golem armor seems like a way to make an unmagical heavy cavalryman viable in a battlefield with mages, but it makes more sense to me that the heavy cavalry role wouldn't exist in the first place. Instead, the early aristocracies would've been filled with families that produced a large number of sorcerors (if we're going with the notion that magic is something in your blood) or families with the wealth and power to educate sons in wizardry (if we're going with the notion that magic can/must be learned by study).

[TooManySecrets]

Gunpowder weapons had very little to do with ending the feudal era. It was a new weapon in the hands of nobles, and would have greatly altered the political landscape, but only the landed classes had the resources to acquire them, thus very little would have changed. Nor did they end the era of heavy cavalry, as many nations continued to use heavily armoured horseman until fairly recent times, the Conquistadors of Spain being perhaps the best-known example.

I never said gunpowder weaponry ended cavalry. I said knights. That's a significant difference, in the same way that there's a difference between a castle and a bomb-proof bunker. There's superficial similarities, but conceptual and tactical differences.

What ended the feudal era was the introduction of the standing army, meaning that a leader no longer had to rely on imperfectly-loyal subordinates whenever he needed to conduct operations. This moved most of the powers of the nobles directly into the hands of the sovereign.

See previous post vis a vis simplification and no one single cause.

I would imagine that if you wanted to discuss the existence of mages in a historical or sociological perspective, the first question that comes to mind would be... why weren't the mages/sorcerers the knights?

This whole thing about golem armor seems like a way to make an unmagical heavy cavalryman viable in a battlefield with mages, but it makes more sense to me that the heavy cavalry role wouldn't exist in the first place. Instead, the early aristocracies would've been filled with families that produced a large number of sorcerors (if we're going with the notion that magic is something in your blood) or families with the wealth and power to educate sons in wizardry (if we're going with the notion that magic can/must be learned by study).

Oh yes, I agree. If you had mages from the beginning of human history, you wouldn't have a society that's anywhere close to medieval Europe.

In the alternate history community it's called "butterflies" (as in butterfly effect) and dealing with it is an issue that authors deal with in different ways. Some authors want to throw in Richard Nixon as a used car-salesman, even if it doesn't make completely realistic sense. Likewise, I want to have medieval feudal culture with fighting golems and basically wanted to explain as "Okay, we're starting at normal fantasy. Here's how we're getting over to golem armor."

If we're going with "mages since the beginning", the basic formation would probably be closer to "mage plus bodyguards" - combined arms out of necessity since there's a limited number of mages and they're very lightly armored. I still think there would be a need for some sort of shock unit, even if heavy cavalry was never developed. A few 2 ton golems would probably serve well, though golems might be regulated to a support role (similar to tanks in WWI).

[gkathellar]

While I talked mostly in D&D terms, that's just because it's what people are the most familiar with. My points were more dealing with fantasy settings in general, than specifically 3.5 D&D. (Otherwise, I would have posted in that forum)

Then why bring up golems? Golem magic immunity is a D&D thing, not a general fantasy thing.

1. The Orb spells are the most conceptually whacked spells around.

Yes and no. It's probably best to think of fireball as "simulating" fire with magic, while the orb spells summon it from another realm. The simulation washes off SR, actual fire doesn't because it's actual fire.

2. Not if the item itself has SR or spell immunity. Which it would.

Uh...no, because Dispel Magic is an "SR: No" spell. It's starting to get funny how everybody assumes I don't double-check these things.

[TooManySecrets]

[...]

I was writing a long response. Then I deleted it.

Let's just go with I made a lot of mistakes with my usage of 3.5 D&D. I will now edit my first post to remove all references to D&D.

[Knaight]

"Now wait just a second," you say, "in almost every setting mages tend to be pretty rare. You don't find them on every street corner."

Malarkey, I say!

In pretty much every setting, wizardy is the result of careful study, inherent ability (which is to say - genetics), or some varying amount of both. In any reality where mages exist, they'd pretty much have to be close to the center of attention of a society. Magic is able to sidestep so many problems that it would be foolish not to use it, and in the cases where magic itself causes the problem the solution is usually "more magic". It's in a ruler's best interest to have as many mages as possible to (a) defend themselves from belligerent nations and (b) to gain an advantage when attacking other nations.

And yet, a society still needs laborers, still needs teachers, still needs administrators, and still needs a whole host of other roles that aren't necessarily magical. Magic can alleviate these needs to some extent - and to get into that, I'd make a comparison to science and technology. Science has let the human species learn a huge amount about the world, and it has led to much technological development. Having advanced technology is good for a society. Moreover, advanced technology can reduce the need for certain other tasks - for instance, it used to be most everyone had to be involved in food production. Domestication of plants and animals changed that some. The development of better plows, better crop production methods, etc. changed that further. The recent development of agricultural vehicles and machinery has pushed it to the point where far fewer people are involved in food production than are involved in several other industries.

Oh, incidentally - after several millenniums of technological development, and centuries of scientific development*, scientists are still pretty rare. Certainly, becoming a scientist isn't comparable to learning to use a gun well enough to serve in a large army, which is the comparison you made with mages. So, would you consider becoming a mage more like becoming a scientist, or like learning to use a gun decently?

*These are incredibly conservative estimates. I'd argue that there have been at least 1200 years of actual science, and millenniums of proto-science prior to that. As for technology, even if you ignore everything prior to domestication of plants there are easily 13,000 years, and probably more.

[TooManySecrets]

And yet, a society still needs laborers, still needs teachers, still needs administrators, and still needs a whole host of other roles that aren't necessarily magical. Magic can alleviate these needs to some extent - and to get into that, I'd make a comparison to science and technology. Science has let the human species learn a huge amount about the world, and it has led to much technological development. Having advanced technology is good for a society. Moreover, advanced technology can reduce the need for certain other tasks - for instance, it used to be most everyone had to be involved in food production. Domestication of plants and animals changed that some. The development of better plows, better crop production methods, etc. changed that further. The recent development of agricultural vehicles and machinery has pushed it to the point where far fewer people are involved in food production than are involved in several other industries.

Here's a car factory from the 1920s:


Here's a car factory today:


Notice how there's a lot less people. That's because they're not needed - they've mostly been replaced by robots, because the robots can do it cheaper, quicker, and better.

Now, it depends on the setting, of course, but mages could go anywhere from "helping out society, but we still need others" to "there's no farmers or craftsmen anymore because a mage can conjure it out of thin air". There might be mage craftsmen - a mage who specializes in making, say, conjured armor - but a mage nonetheless. You could also very easily see a situation like with the car factories up there - golem workforces instead of robots, but otherwise the same.

As I said to Beowulf DW, there's definitely some tipping point where you don't need additionally mages while you still have ubiquitous magic items and byproducts.

Oh, incidentally - after several millinea of technological development, and centuries of scientific development, scientists are still pretty rare. Certainly, becoming a scientist isn't comparable to learning to use a gun well enough to serve in a large army, which is the comparison you made with mages. So, would you consider becoming a mage more like becoming a scientist, or like learning to use a gun decently?

That's actually a really good question.

I think that in my setting it would basically be: both. It's pretty easy to be taught a spell that somebody else has created, especially if it's a spell that countless others have refined. Once somebody's done it, you just have to copy what they did. A more skilled user would know their own personal quirks and how to change the spell "formulas" (for lack of a better term) to fit them better. On the other hand, it would also be very hard creating an entirely new spell. "Bravely going" is all well and good, but it sort of stinks if a mistake inverts your face.

To use a car analogy (since it's on my mind from above), you don't need to understand aerodynamics in order to drive a car reasonably well, but you definitely need to understand it in order to design a new car. And, furthering the analogy - there are a lot of people driving cars, but not many car designers.

EDIT: Also, presumably, combat mage training has a lot in common with soldier training. Being able to kill people with your mind doesn't mean much if you freeze up in a combat situation or run like a coward.

[Knaight]

Here's a car factory from the 1920s:

...

Notice how there's a lot less people. That's because they're not needed - they've mostly been replaced by robots, because the robots can do it cheaper, quicker, and better.

Now, it depends on the setting, of course, but mages could go anywhere from "helping out society, but we still need others" to "there's no farmers or craftsmen anymore because a mage can conjure it out of thin air". There might be mage craftsmen - a mage who specializes in making, say, conjured armor - but a mage nonetheless. You could also very easily see a situation like with the car factories up there - golem workforces instead of robots, but otherwise the same.

Note that the car factory still has people working there. The robots have to be maintained by people, and maintenance is far easier than design. It basically mirrors my earlier point about agriculture - a guy with a tractor is the equivalent of a lot of people with pointy sticks seeding by hand. The people are still needed, but the amount drops. Note that in other fields this really isn't true - a lot of administrators are still necessary, for instance.

That's actually a really good question.

I think that in my setting it would basically be: both. It's pretty easy to be taught a spell that somebody else has created, especially if it's a spell that countless others have refined. Once somebody's done it, you just have to copy what they did. A more skilled user would know their own personal quirks and how to change the spell "formulas" (for lack of a better term) to fit them better. On the other hand, it would also be very hard creating an entirely new spell. "Bravely going" is all well and good, but it sort of stinks if a mistake inverts your face.

I think this is the principle determining factor. If learning to use magic, at least at a basic combat level is like firearm training, armor is likely going to go away. If it is like becoming a scientist, less so.

To use a car analogy (since it's on my mind from above), you don't need to understand aerodynamics in order to drive a car reasonably well, but you definitely need to understand it in order to design a new car. And, furthering the analogy - there are a lot of people driving cars, but not many car designers.

Here's the thing - in most settings magic isn't made along the lines of driving cars. It is, at the very least, along the lines of maintenance. Lets depart from cars, and move to chemistry. Basically anyone can use a plastic container. Far fewer people understand polymer chemistry to the level needed to make a plastic container from lab equipment - which, in a pre industrial society is probably a good equivalent for magic, in many cases. Only a scant handful of people understand polymer chemistry well enough to develop new and useful polymers, equivalent to developing a brand new spell. It took Hermann Staudinger and a handful of associates to actually discover how polymers worked - this, perhaps, is equivalent to opening up a whole new school of magic. Now, note that you can push the scales around. In a setting where there really are only a handful of people who can actually use magic half decently, most real mages are equivalent to Hermann Staudinger, with some dabblers who can't really do much being equivalent to pre-Staudinger scientists who thought polymers were colloids. In that setting, magic would have a fairly trivial effect on the way war is conducted unless the magic was ridiculously powerful (to the point where a mage could probably just take an army out). In another setting, using magic might be along the lines of using plastic containers. Everyone can do it, though some people are going to futz around with lids every time they try. This would be about equivalent to Harry Potter, and magic would drastically alter how everything is done.

I suspect you assume a baseline of using plastic containers for casting predeveloped spells, where most people assume the equivalent of making plastic in a lab from known principles. I assume that your developing of new spells is along the lines of making plastic in the lab from known principles, where for others it is more like developing polystyrene or carbon fiber without a lot of help. Given that, I suspect that the different conceptions are a large part of why people fall on different sides of the argument regarding magic largely invalidating mundane armor.

EDIT: Also, presumably, combat mage training has a lot in common with soldier training. Being able to kill people with your mind doesn't mean much if you freeze up in a combat situation or run like a coward.

On this we agree.

[gkathellar]

I think this is the principle determining factor. If learning to use magic, at least at a basic combat level is like firearm training, armor is likely going to go away. If it is like becoming a scientist, less so.

I generally agree with you here, but it's worth noting that scientists usually can't actually kill people with math equations. The military might be more inclined to train large numbers of them if solving 2^3 could actually make people's heads explode.

[Knaight]

I generally agree with you here, but it's worth noting that scientists usually can't actually kill people with math equations. The military might be more inclined to train large numbers of them if solving 2^3 could actually make people's heads explode.

The point is, there is a lot of training involved. Take even an Associates of Science in the U.S. - that's 14 years of science education at a minimum. A full degree is more like 22. Plus, it's not as if the military doesn't benefit from scientists they do have.

[gkathellar]

The point is, there is a lot of training involved. Take even an Associates of Science in the U.S. - that's 14 years of science education at a minimum. A full degree is more like 22. Plus, it's not as if the military doesn't benefit from scientists they do have.

Absolutely. Nonetheless, I think in practice the best comparison might be to special forces guys, rather than to scientists.

[Dr. Yes]

I generally agree with you here, but it's worth noting that scientists usually can't actually kill people with math equations.

I think Robert Oppenheimer would have disagreed with you on that.

[gkathellar]

I think Robert Oppenheimer would have disagreed with you on that.

Robert Oppenheimer was capable of leading a committee of dozens of scientists to build an incredibly powerful bomb with tremendously limited military applications based on a large grouping of equations.

A wizard can make a guy's head explode by solving for eight squared.

Difference.

[fusilier]

If mages are easily trained (like conscript soldiers), then you must have training camps -- most professions in medieval and feudal societies, soldier included, were learned less by training, and more by experience, like an apprentice learning from a master. So the idea of training levies of mages would have to develop first.

Well organized and trained militia infantry can be effective against mounted men-at-arms, for example Swiss pikemen. So, if you can afford to pay and train a permanent army, that will do much more to overturn the power of feudal knights than simply some weaponry (or weaponized magery).

That's expensive -- feudal knights are given some perquisites, but aren't directly funded by the royal treasury (at the very least not in peacetime). The knights are expected to keep themselves and any other vassals under their command prepared for military service. The rural militia, however, would just be levied as necessary, and would not be expected to go through regular training sessions.

But that started to change, and I believe the change took place in Italy, which, for a variety of reasons, had both need of well trained militia and lacked, or distrusted, the landed nobility to provide for defense. In this case it was communal militias that started to receive, at least, semi-regular training. This system expanded to include hiring mercenaries, and while mercenaries became an increasing proportion of the armies in Italy, militia never disappeared from them. Gradually the mercenaries started to become more permanent (it was often easier to reenlist them, rather than demobilize them when pay was in arrears), and even direct state controlled permanent forces were created, often with former mercenaries. If you want to see a good analysis of Italian mercenaries and the development of permanent armies, read "Mercenaries and their Masters" by Michael Mallett.

A changing society (one becoming more concentrated and more wealthy) allowed the military scene to develop beyond feudal armies. Lacking those changes, mages would dove-tail into the feudal scene fairly easily. Employing people always has associated costs, and if the state cannot meet those costs, those people cannot be employed -- this would hold true for mages, as well as non-mages. Before you can answer: how will a mage be trained? you must first answer: who is going to pay a mage to justify his training?

However, even if mages can be taught like common soldiers, medieval and renaissance societies had nothing like modern training camps. That would easily violate the feel of such a setting. On the other hand, lawyers, doctors and theologians, all required university training, but that was done independently, usually required wealth to begin with, and typically had civilian goals in mind.

As for firearms ending knights -- if by "knight" you mean the well-armored horseman, then yes . . . gunpowder weapons are partially responsibly for that. (I would argue that the musket and not light artillery had more to do with that, but that's really a discussion for another thread). But even before gunpowder, or when it was new, some areas weren't using traditional feudal armies (arguably, feudalism may have never really taken hold there). Did gunpowder weapons allow a society to abandon feudalism? Did they merely accelerate a trend? Were they both a cause and a result of the same shift in society? Societies can be very complex, and as humans we naturally try to assign causation, when what we actually have is a correlation. We also like to simplify complicated issues -- statements like "gunpowder firearms spelled doom for the feudal knight" are much more convenient than: "a myriad of socio, economic, and technological, interconnected factors, operating in a way that is not completely understood, led to a decline in feudalism." :-)

[Bagelson]

I think the biggest problem would be the economy of the whole thing. Even if the gift of magic isn't that rare, you'd still have to recruit and train each wizard for a decade or so. After that they'd see another one to three decades of active service until they get too old to trudge around in the mud. Furthermore, you'd need to maintain recruitment of wizards on the off chance that there might be a war in ten years or you'll stand there without the core of your strategies.

Then you send them into battle and sure they're pretty impressive, but once they get killed (which doesn't really take more than a well aimed crossbow bolt) you'd lose the entire investment. The cost is just as prohibitive as it is with knights, if not more so.

Instead, you could spend the entire sum conscripting peasant soldiers in times of need and on equipment that simply passes from one conscript to the next on time of death. You could have a company of crossbowmen for less than the cost of training a single wizard, and easier to come by to boot.

Disclaimer: My take on magic is that it takes some time to learn (especially considering that most of your prospects won't even know how to read and write) and that someone who can control the very fabric of reality won't risk his life for pennies. If in your setting one can't turn around without bumping into another hobby taught wizard, things would be different.

[elpollo]

It's in a ruler's best interest to have as many mages as possible to (a) defend themselves from belligerent nations and (b) to gain an advantage when attacking other nations. If magic comes from study, then a ruler would create as many universities and training camps as possible while, if magic comes from genetics, then a ruler would mandate laws requiring mages to only marry other mages (similar laws existed for nobles in the real world - gotta keep that noble blood pure!).

Except, of course, that teaching a peasant to use a musket and teaching a peasant to teleport and kill dozens of people with a word have very different ramifications. Like reading or thinking for themselves, peasants learning magic would potentially create an incredible and uncontrollable threat towards the throne. Better to tell them that unlicenced magic is caused by a devil and have them weed the future threats out themselves.

Even if there only existed a relatively small number of these monsters, it would only take a few cities being mind controlled/disintegrated before people started doing whatever they could defend themselves.

Just like when something happens that you're not qualified to deal with in the real world, they hire the people that they've heard have dealt with this sort of thing before - i.e. the players.

Once mages start getting on the scene, feudal society is going to take a nosedive. Restricting magery only to the nobility is going to cripple one's army and ability to fend off supernatural attacks.

Restricting magery also prevents you from having 80% of the population capable of frying you from a distance, which is good considering that people tend to crop up in history telling the peasantry that they're being mistreated. You can't make everyone equal and not have a workforce, or else nothing gets done and you lose support. You can't make everyone equal and enlist everyone into the workforce, or else you alienate the higher ups and lose more support. There has to be a divide for the feudal system to work, and you're giving the people below the split the means to change it.

The practical ruler would get a mage army and the other rulers would have to adapt or die.

The practical ruler could instead say "You know how you've been mistreated all of these years? Well, we treat our mages really well - would you just look at this shiny tower?!? Come join us instead and we'll let you have lots of freedom and money!" and wait for the educated, poweful workforce of their enemy to remember that they're considered lesser than the ruling caste, and decide that they want to have a better existance than the one that they have.

The golem is powerful, but it has too many problems to make it common. However, the way imagine it, all it takes is one magical artisan to have a revelation. Why not enchant existing armor with golem-like qualities? Create a hybrid of golem and armor - golem armor, as it were. You'd get the advantages of a golem, while getting around the disadvantages of needing an external control. You'd probably also be able to reduce the cost considerably by making it smaller and no longer requiring the rudimentary golem intelligence.

Now, you don't really explain what golem armour would do, but I'd assume it's got the spell immunity of a golem, and is probably a sort of power armour. So why not just created huge quantities of spell immune iron men? My guess is that because creating one suit of armour with a spell resistance of 19 costs about 9,000 gold. Spell immune armour isn't priced. Power Armour costs almost 19,000 gold. You're better off creating actual golems, not least because golems are completely controllable, and can be commanded to follow the orders of someone mindraped into being completely loyal.[/D&D]

In everything else, as others have said it's just cost. Mages can still screw your men in these extraordinarily expensive bits of armour up, and you've now lost a huge investment of time and gold as well as a few men.

All of a sudden, the favor of battle starts to swing back to the conventional troops. Not entirely, of course. Mages still have indirect methods of fighting golems, even if their main attack spells are neutered, and golem armor would still be expensive enough to construct that you couldn't outfit an army, even taking into account what I brought up in my last post. However, it would be enough to change the battlefield.³

The main ways to mess up unit formations - web, black tentacles, grease, hallicinatory terrain, etc. still work. Sure, you might need some archers to do the actual killing, but you could instead just turn the landscape into a bog, make it look like a road and have the heavily armoured units drown themselves. Or you just could drop a meteor on them. Immunity to magic doesn't equal immunity to a terminal velocity chuck of rock.

[paddyfool]

A magepunk setting which goes beyond, say, Eberron, in making magic-as-used-for-manufacture significantly more commonplace and easier to apply than magic-in-the-field, and where wands, enchanted armour etc. abounded, would be pretty interesting.

In such a setting, it might be cheaper to have ten men in enchanted armour with 2 wand slots apiece (or other enchanted weaponry) than 1 highly trained mage knowing 20 spells and able to apply them, as well as arguably more militarily efficient. Under d20 mechanics as they stand, of course, this doesn't work; but it could probably be made to work, if you were happy to recost things significantly.

[TooManySecrets]

Except, of course, that teaching a peasant to use a musket and teaching a peasant to teleport and kill dozens of people with a word have very different ramifications. Like reading or thinking for themselves, peasants learning magic would potentially create an incredible and uncontrollable threat towards the throne. Better to tell them that unlicenced magic is caused by a devil and have them weed the future threats out themselves.

Okay, let's say that rulers start firing up a wizard BBQ. The mages who survive - do you think that they're just going to sit around, twiddling their thumbs, watching as others die? Maybe some, but there will be enough mages who actually care that they could start making themselves a nuisance, especially since they don't need branches, a match, and an hour to have their own BBQ.

Once the mages start rescuing other mages, they're going to need a place to live. Since they've got illusion magic, they could probably hide themselves pretty well. So now you've got a bunch of mages creating their own city, having more mages (genetics or instruction), all of whom have a reason to hate the rulers who let so many deaths occur.

This isn't to mention, either, that one or two rulers might see an opportunity to gain a huge advantage over their opponents. If magic is genetic, you might even get a ruler who is a mage just (to an outside observer) randomly.

One way or another, you're going to get a bunch of mages and at least one city of them.

Just like when something happens that you're not qualified to deal with in the real world, they hire the people that they've heard have dealt with this sort of thing before - i.e. the players.

Remove the cleric and mage archetype, and let's see how effective an adventuring party is against a monster. Look at Greek mythology - how many heroes were able to fight monsters without help from wizards or the gods? Look at someone like Beowulf - he was strong enough to fight Grendel, but needed magic to fight Grendel's mother and the dragon.

Sooner or later, dudes with non-magical weapons and armor are going to lose to a big enough threat, and then cities burn. How many civilizations will have to be destroyed before the leaders start going "Well, maybe we should allow some mages."

Restricting magery also prevents you from having 80% of the population capable of frying you from a distance, which is good considering that people tend to crop up in history telling the peasantry that they're being mistreated. You can't make everyone equal and not have a workforce, or else nothing gets done and you lose support. You can't make everyone equal and enlist everyone into the workforce, or else you alienate the higher ups and lose more support. There has to be a divide for the feudal system to work, and you're giving the people below the split the means to change it.

My entire point with this entire thread was:
(a) that encouraging magery was something rulers would have little choice to do because it's necessary to defend themselves, at minimum, from supernatural threats and
(b) that this will help hasten the end of the feudal system, for the same reason that personal firearms helped hasten it.

So you're exactly right.

The practical ruler could instead say "You know how you've been mistreated all of these years? Well, we treat our mages really well - would you just look at this shiny tower?!? Come join us instead and we'll let you have lots of freedom and money!" and wait for the educated, poweful workforce of their enemy to remember that they're considered lesser than the ruling caste, and decide that they want to have a better existance than the one that they have.

Um, I don't know what you mean by "instead". That's pretty much exactly what I said.

So, I agree.

Now, you don't really explain what golem armour would do, but I'd assume it's got the spell immunity of a golem, and is probably a sort of power armour. So why not just created huge quantities of spell immune iron men? My guess is that because creating one suit of armour with a spell resistance of 19 costs about 9,000 gold. Spell immune armour isn't priced. Power Armour costs almost 19,000 gold. You're better off creating actual golems, not least because golems are completely controllable, and can be commanded to follow the orders of someone mindraped into being completely loyal.[/D&D]

I've removed all mentions of D&D because people are getting too caught up in be exact to the system.

In everything else, as others have said it's just cost. Mages can still screw your men in these extraordinarily expensive bits of armour up, and you've now lost a huge investment of time and gold as well as a few men.

I sort of skipped over expense (except in a sort of vague way), because I already had a huge discussion about it in the last thread. My point in that thread was that the ENIAC was a multiple ton beast that took up an entire floor, cost millions in today's dollars, required dozens of people to operate, and your home computer is 340,000,000 times faster at 0.016% of the price. If magic isn't entirely random, it can be understood, and if it can be understood, then it's application can be optimized one way or the other.

Now, one might say that in a particular setting magic is too random or it's already at it's most optimized, but those are setting-specific details, and when we're talking about creating a setting, shouldn't really stop us.

The main ways to mess up unit formations - web, black tentacles, grease, hallicinatory terrain, etc. still work. Sure, you might need some archers to do the actual killing, but you could instead just turn the landscape into a bog, make it look like a road and have the heavily armoured units drown themselves. Or you just could drop a meteor on them. Immunity to magic doesn't equal immunity to a terminal velocity chuck of rock.

Minus D&D-specific stuff, of course.

I assume that really powerful magic is still relatively rare, otherwise we would instead be looking more at a Cold War situation with the looming threat of mutual annihilation. Why drop a meteor on a soldier or even golem armor when you can drop it on the king's castle?

(Sidenote: I might want to go in that direction - eventually - but it would just confuse issues even more, so let's ignore it)

In any case, golem armor would still be preferable to nothing, unless the magic completely obliterates the target always. At least in the case of direct attack magic. Illusions would be harder and "I turn the ground into quicksand" might actually put the golem armor at a disadvantage versus normal troops. Which is why I said:

All of a sudden, the favor of battle starts to swing back to the conventional troops. Not entirely, of course. Mages still have indirect methods of fighting golems, even if their main attack spells are neutered, and golem armor would still be expensive enough to construct that you couldn't outfit an army, even taking into account what I brought up in my last post. However, it would be enough to change the battlefield.

About the only thing I would add to that is change it to "However, it would be enough to change the battlefield for a while", to bring it into line with the whole knights analogy.

A magepunk setting which goes beyond, say, Eberron, in making magic-as-used-for-manufacture significantly more commonplace and easier to apply than magic-in-the-field, and where wands, enchanted armour etc. abounded, would be pretty interesting.

In such a setting, it might be cheaper to have ten men in enchanted armour with 2 wand slots apiece (or other enchanted weaponry) than 1 highly trained mage knowing 20 spells and able to apply them, as well as arguably more militarily efficient. Under d20 mechanics as they stand, of course, this doesn't work; but it could probably be made to work, if you were happy to recost things significantly.

Yeah, basically, I think that a bunch of lower-powered mages (or mundanes outfitted with basic magic gear) would be more effective in the army. Of course, you'd still want higher-powered, more experienced mages so that you can (a) innovate, (b) teach other mages, and (c) deal with powerful supernatural threats (monsters or your opponent's own high-powered mages).

I think the biggest problem would be the economy of the whole thing. Even if the gift of magic isn't that rare, you'd still have to recruit and train each wizard for a decade or so. After that they'd see another one to three decades of active service until they get too old to trudge around in the mud. Furthermore, you'd need to maintain recruitment of wizards on the off chance that there might be a war in ten years or you'll stand there without the core of your strategies.

Then you send them into battle and sure they're pretty impressive, but once they get killed (which doesn't really take more than a well aimed crossbow bolt) you'd lose the entire investment. The cost is just as prohibitive as it is with knights, if not more so.

Knights had about a decade and half of training. They were expensive and time-consuming, which is why the king delegated it to his lords, who were ultimately responsible for the raising of an army.

If it takes the same amount of investment in order for a mage to be useful, then the feudal system can probably stay in tact.

However, I think that it wouldn't take that much training to make them partly useful, which I'll address a bit more in bit.

Instead, you could spend the entire sum conscripting peasant soldiers in times of need and on equipment that simply passes from one conscript to the next on time of death. You could have a company of crossbowmen for less than the cost of training a single wizard, and easier to come by to boot.

Likewise, they could have spent the time on peasants instead of knights. Yet they still trained knights. From one account I read, the tactics of the day assumed that a knight was worth about 10 of the lowest soldiers (militia/peasants). I think a comparably trained mage would be worth at least as much.

Disclaimer: My take on magic is that it takes some time to learn (especially considering that most of your prospects won't even know how to read and write) and that someone who can control the very fabric of reality won't risk his life for pennies. If in your setting one can't turn around without bumping into another hobby taught wizard, things would be different.

My assumption is that there's basically three tiers of mages, or so.

1. Mages who learned magic by rote. Make this gesture, say these words, and think this thing, and people die. A mage like that wouldn't take all that much time to teach. They wouldn't be extremely powerful individual, but as a group could do a lot of damage.

2. Mages with a bit more experience. They're not innovators, but they actually understand why magic works (at least, at a basic level). They can compensate for their own weaknesses and they have enough combat training that they can act as a team and won't rout at the sight of a charge. They probably also have training in more esoteric spells, such as illusions, and are experienced to know how to use the spells they have in the right way ("Okay, hit them with the flashing lights then hit them with the ice lances while they're confused.")

3. Mages who not only understand how the forces of magic work, but how to extrapolate new spell formulas from it. These guys are going to take at least a decade or two to train and have to start pretty early. If somebody develops the scientific method or something similar (magic method?), it might take a bit less time. Whatever the case, they'd probably be too valuable to use in most battles, but when they do, they're able to take out entire formations by themselves while using magic to be pretty much impervious.

If mages are easily trained (like conscript soldiers), then you must have training camps -- most professions in medieval and feudal societies, soldier included, were learned less by training, and more by experience, like an apprentice learning from a master. So the idea of training levies of mages would have to develop first.

I probably shouldn't be reading these things in backward post order.

So, yeah, see above.

If you want to see a good analysis of Italian mercenaries and the development of permanent armies, read "Mercenaries and their Masters" by Michael Mallett.

That would actually be an interesting read. Thank you.

A changing society (one becoming more concentrated and more wealthy) allowed the military scene to develop beyond feudal armies. Lacking those changes, mages would dove-tail into the feudal scene fairly easily. Employing people always has associated costs, and if the state cannot meet those costs, those people cannot be employed -- this would hold true for mages, as well as non-mages. Before you can answer: how will a mage be trained? you must first answer: who is going to pay a mage to justify his training?

That's a very interesting question.

It might be a situation similar to what you mentioned with mercenaries. Mage guilds, with a high-powered mage teaching other mages. A ruler would, presumably, not want an entirely independent organization that could turn against them and would try to integrate the guild into the government, if the ruler could afford it. Or maybe it might be more analogous to the bishoprics, where land was given to the church in exchange for certain favors (except, in this case, it would be the mages).

However, even if mages can be taught like common soldiers, medieval and renaissance societies had nothing like modern training camps. That would easily violate the feel of such a setting. On the other hand, lawyers, doctors and theologians, all required university training, but that was done independently, usually required wealth to begin with, and typically had civilian goals in mind.

Oh yes, I agree about the violating the feel of the setting. I want this to feel medieval (as I said earlier, if I wanted it to feel like a modern or future game, I'd run that game). As I understand it, such camps, when they existed, were pretty ad hoc things i.e. we've got a bunch of untrained peasants, let's spend a week teaching them which end to stick into the enemy.

The main difference, I think, is that lawyers, doctors, and theologians didn't have the same, immediate, obvious benefit that a mage would have. Their might be state-run mage universities, but I would try to leave them rare and distinctly medieval (I wouldn't do something like "Oh man, I need 4 more credits to graduate with a Degree in Magery").

The point is, there is a lot of training involved. Take even an Associates of Science in the U.S. - that's 14 years of science education at a minimum. A full degree is more like 22. Plus, it's not as if the military doesn't benefit from scientists they do have.

Absolutely. Nonetheless, I think in practice the best comparison might be to special forces guys, rather than to scientists.

Once again, it all comes down to time. If it takes 15+ years of education, then mages start to supplement knights and replace them in some ways, but you don't see something analogous to personal firearms and mobile artillery. It might start changing if effective mage training required a standing army as mentioned by fusilier above. Overall, it won't change all that much except in tactics.

Except that I do want it to change, so I'm positing mages as I outlined above for this setting.

Note that the car factory still has people working there. The robots have to be maintained by people, and maintenance is far easier than design. It basically mirrors my earlier point about agriculture - a guy with a tractor is the equivalent of a lot of people with pointy sticks seeding by hand. The people are still needed, but the amount drops. Note that in other fields this really isn't true - a lot of administrators are still necessary, for instance.

Yes, the car factory still has people, but those people have a different skill set than the people in the earlier factory. Analogously, mages are people with a different skill set than the larger group of people they're replacing. I mean, mages are still people, after all. Even with golems replacing gross-physical labor where magic can't just magic up something, the people in charge of maintaining the golems are mages.

Using your agriculture example, the medieval peasant farmer had a different skill set then the modern 1st-world farmer. It would be like somebody said "Okay, everybody who knows how to drive is a 'drivomancer'" and then I said that all 1st-world farmers are drivomancers. Well, duh. They're still people, though, just with a different set of skills that we have arbitrarily decided needs a special name.

I think this is the principle determining factor. If learning to use magic, at least at a basic combat level is like firearm training, armor is likely going to go away. If it is like becoming a scientist, less so.

Double plusagreed.

Here's the thing - in most settings magic isn't made along the lines of driving cars.

Except that I'm designing the setting (or rather, talking about a certain reality, determining what it would take to make that reality work, and then maybe making a game setting out of it), so magic would work at least something like driving a car.

Given that, I suspect that the different conceptions are a large part of why people fall on different sides of the argument regarding magic largely invalidating mundane armor.

Yep.



That was a long post.

[paddyfool]

My assumption is that there's basically three tiers of mages, or so.

1. Mages who learned magic by rote. Make this gesture, say these words, and think this thing, and people die. A mage like that wouldn't take all that much time to teach. They wouldn't be extremely powerful individual, but as a group could do a lot of damage.

2. Mages with a bit more experience. They're not innovators, but they actually understand why magic works (at least, at a basic level). They can compensate for their own weaknesses and they have enough combat training that they can act as a team and won't rout at the sight of a charge. They probably also have training in more esoteric spells, such as illusions, and are experienced to know how to use the spells they have in the right way ("Okay, hit them with the flashing lights then hit them with the ice lances while they're confused.")

3. Mages who not only understand how the forces of magic work, but how to extrapolate new spell formulas from it. These guys are going to take at least a decade or two to train and have to start pretty early. If somebody develops the scientific method or something similar (magic method?), it might take a bit less time. Whatever the case, they'd probably be too valuable to use in most battles, but when they do, they're able to take out entire formations by themselves while using magic to be pretty much impervious.

What this suggests mechanically is that mages should be a prestige class... but then, of course, that could be altering things more than you'd like. If it isn't, open the spoiler tags for a rambling sidetrack discussion.

Spoiler

Show

I once made up some homebrew with that intent. Tier 1 classes were all given prereqs, e.g. Knowledge (arcana) 6 ranks, which meant they became level 4+ entry prestige classes. Tier 2s similarly became level 3+, so that either way you get level 9 spells at level 20. Casting at lower levels would then be confined to highly specialised casters, item-based casting where available, or very limited feat-based casting (also homebrewed). But then someone told me there was already a version of this in a rule-book somewhere, so I'm afraid I never fully developed the idea.

[Engine]

I would say that mages are more similar to airplanes than muskets. From a military viewpoint, mages are more than a weapon meant do deal damage to the enemy. You could use mages for transportation, intelligence gathering, communications jamming and, of course, steamrolling the opposition. Much like a modern airforce.

But the massive use of airplanes in modern wars didn't put an end to the use of "common" infantry. Sometimes an army composed mostly of infantry with practically no airforce put a serious threat on armies who relied a lot on airforce (Vietnam, Soviet Afghanistan).

I concur that in a fantasy setting where magic is commonplace battles would be different from the iconic cavalry charge, but IMHO mages wouldn't replace non-mage troops. Using the comparison with an airforce:

- Training a pilot costs a lot. The same could be true for a mage;
- Training a pilot requires time. The same could be true for a mage;
- Maintain an airforce costs a lot. The same could be true for a mage force;
- An airforce is a powerful tool, but you could not have a plane on every corner. You need some cheap way to control the land, that's why you use infantry. The same could be true for mages and non-mage troops;
- An anti-aircraft weapon manned by a soldier could be really cost-effective. And it's simpler to train a soldier to use an anti-aircraft weapon than training a pilot to dogfight. The same could be true in a fantasy setting (non-mage troops using Wands of Dispel Magic, maybe).

[elpollo]

Okay, let's say that rulers start firing up a wizard BBQ. The mages who survive - do you think that they're just going to sit around, twiddling their thumbs, watching as others die? Maybe some, but there will be enough mages who actually care that they could start making themselves a nuisance, especially since they don't need branches, a match, and an hour to have their own BBQ.

My point was more that the peasantry would never reach the point of having high levelled mages in it, precisely for this reason. Magic is discovered, word of it spreads, rulers seize control of what little they can and try and destroy everything else. From that point on, they've got the best magic in the kingdom, and any wiseass mage popping up trying to shove some villagers around is going to get reported (and then nuked).

This isn't to mention, either, that one or two rulers might see an opportunity to gain a huge advantage over their opponents. If magic is genetic, you might even get a ruler who is a mage just (to an outside observer) randomly.

Giving your people the method to overthrow you is not the best idea. There's a difference between having a small controllable group of mages (say, some of the nobility and royalty) and having widespread magic amongst the masses. With the former you don't need to change the feudal system/introduce mass golems/whatever.

Remove the cleric and mage archetype, and let's see how effective an adventuring party is against a monster. Look at Greek mythology - how many heroes were able to fight monsters without help from wizards or the gods? Look at someone like Beowulf - he was strong enough to fight Grendel, but needed magic to fight Grendel's mother and the dragon.

I didn't say remove the archetypes. Rogue wizards are a fantasy trope, and exactly the sort of thing that players might want to play. Failing that, a licenced mage doesn't have to be working in a wizard tower - backing up adventuring parties with a mage and cleric allows the kingdom to be kept safe without creating large groups of mages working together to potentially overthrow you.

My entire point with this entire thread was:
(a) that encouraging magery was something rulers would have little choice to do because it's necessary to defend themselves, at minimum, from supernatural threats and
(b) that this will help hasten the end of the feudal system, for the same reason that personal firearms helped hasten it.

You said that they'd be crazy to not get as many mages as possible. I've said that that's probably not the case - it's much more convenient to limit the mages to limited and controllable numbers, and spread them out amongst non-magic users who can cover their weaknesses (as well as watch to see if they look like they're planning a coup). I don't think it would end the feudal system, because there's such a huge incentive for everyone in power to regulate it, and people in power love staying in power.

Um, I don't know what you mean by "instead". That's pretty much exactly what I said.

I mean "Instead of working for that kingdom that thought teaching the peasantry magic (whilst still expecting you to bow to the king) would be a smart move, come join this rival kingdom who will treat you as equals, thus showing that raising such a mass of educated and powerful mages out of the people who allow your country to continue to function was not the best idea".

I've removed all mentions of D&D because people are getting too caught up in be exact to the system.

That's fair, but the reasons that it could/couldn't happen do depend on the system - in D&D it's cost, whereas in something like Warhammer it's because you'd be declared a witch and burnt, and also might accidentally kill yourself in an explosion. It's not completely irrelevant to the discussion, and if we knew what constraints this was working under there'd probably be less butting of heads.

I sort of skipped over expense (except in a sort of vague way), because I already had a huge discussion about it in the last thread. My point in that thread was that the ENIAC was a multiple ton beast that took up an entire floor, cost millions in today's dollars, required dozens of people to operate, and your home computer is 340,000,000 times faster at 0.016% of the price. If magic isn't entirely random, it can be understood, and if it can be understood, then it's application can be optimized one way or the other.

But no system has adequately explained magic, and we've therefore got no way of knowing whether it is possible to optimise it. You can say "Yes", but then you've got a game like Eberron turned up to 11, where every peasant is flying and nuking cities because it's easy. Pretty soon after you end up with what happens when you give everyone a button to a nuclear weapon - a game where everyone not living in golem armour is dead, and the few who are have to live in the charred remains of the world, which... actually sounds like something I'd quite like to play in.

I assume that really powerful magic is still relatively rare, otherwise we would instead be looking more at a Cold War situation with the looming threat of mutual annihilation. Why drop a meteor on a soldier or even golem armor when you can drop it on the king's castle?

If you answer "If mages are common (and it makes sense for them to be) and magic is easy and optimised (and it makes sense for it to be), how come mages don't dominate everything?" with "Due to Golem armour immune to magic", that raises the question of "Why aren't mages making spells capable of stopping the armour that poses such a threat to them?". You can't escalate magic for the mass creation of golem armour and expect it not to happen for offensive magic as well. Whilst some people are creating walking tanks others are creating tank busters. As to why drop it on the golems - because it's easy and you can do it to the king's castle a few minutes later when the golems are gone.

*snip*

About the only thing I would add to that is change it to "However, it would be enough to change the battlefield for a while", to bring it into line with the whole knights analogy.

Ok, yes, it would change the battlefield and it would be preferable to nothing. I'm just not sure it would change the battlefield for long.

[Bagelson]

If learning magic is that easy, it sounds like the kind of setting where just about everyone knows a little bit of magic. A hunter knows some spells for finding water, a shepherd knows a magic tune to charm the sheep, a housewife knows a rune to keep milk from curdling, a farmer has contracts with the spirits of the land to protect the crops and so on. Things parents teach their children. Scarcely bigger than what superstitious folk believed in a few centuries ago, except that it actually works.

From there the step is short to having the regular troops learn simple shielding cantrips to protect against the attacks of the enemy magicians. Of course nothing against someone with serious training, but if your innate ability is strong enough or you learn fast it might allow you to charge through a hail of lesser fireballs.

I could see veteran soldiers being especially fearsome as they'd have some rather powerful magical defences; partly from having lots of practice and partly because anyone with a weak defence wouldn't last. The talented ones might even pick up some small offence spells or enchantments to improve themselves or their gear.

It also leads to distinct spells for specialized soldiery. Camouflage spells for scouts, for example. Officers might not just be selected for leadership and strategic ability, but for their talent with spells that affect troop morale.

I could certainly see that leading to a meritocracy which would also hasten the demise of the feudal system.

However, if affinity for magic is genetic and hereditary it may lead to those bloodlines with powerful magic to grab the power and essentially become a new ruling class. Which puts us into a sort of feudal meritocracy.

An example of the latter would be the Codex Alera books by Jim Butcher. The society there is more or less based off Roman society.

[Anderlith]

FIRST OFF. Guns didn't kill knights, economics did

Knights were the marines of the medieval age. They were trained since they were six to fight people. They had steel plate armor that would stop almost any blow from a traditional weapon & they could even take shots from people with guns. But knights cost a whole heck of a lot to train & outfit. why spend so much on one guy? Give every man in your army a weapon that doesn't take much skill to use (point & shoot) & you can kill every soldier that isn't wearing proved plate (which is about every soldier on the field) guns didn't cost all that much to make or use, a knight was.


I like the idea of Golem Armor, it reminds me of Shardplate from The Way of Kings

[Spiryt]

FIRST OFF. Guns didn't kill knights, economics did

Knights were the marines of the medieval age. They were trained since they were six to fight people. They had steel plate armor that would stop almost any blow from a traditional weapon & they could even take shots from people with guns. But knights cost a whole heck of a lot to train & outfit. why spend so much on one guy? Give every man in your army a weapon that doesn't take much skill to use (point & shoot) & you can kill every soldier that isn't wearing proved plate (which is about every soldier on the field) guns didn't cost all that much to make or use, a knight was.
[/U]

All this doesn't really make sense, even for very simplified purposes...

According to it, knights of 11th to 14th century weren't knights, because they didn't have any plate....

And more wealthy pikemen, man at arms, cavalry who weren't knight would very often had quite good plate at the end of 15th for example.

Similarly, no one was really 'giving weapons' to knights, gunners, 'outfitting' them, nor was any 'state' really controlling training, raising etc. process of whole damn class.

Finally, nor knights as a class nor heavy cavalry 'died' in any way - just become subject to changes as everything else.

In 16th, 17th century and often 18th century as well, professional, well equipped soldiers, and generally combatants still were very often nobility and land owners of some sort, who were serving king/whoever from majority of reasons.

So in general, 'killing knights" is a bit of flawed idea.

[Terraoblivion]

Only thing I can think of when hearing the title is Mami.

Well, I could think of something relevant, but I'll stop while I'm ahead rather than getting dragged into a discussion about historical minutiae. Besides, I only ever looked in the thread to see if someone had mentioned Mami.