Thought experiment: how many arcane spellcasters in a fantasy combined arms army

[redking]

This is a simple extrapolation based on drawing a comparison between modern armies and fantasy armies.

Jet fighters and bombers = wizards and arcane casters.
US marines and army = fantasy combatants (fighters, rogue specialists, etc).

US military is 1,417,370 active servicemen.
Jet fighters and bombers consists of 5217 aircraft in service.

You divide the number of serviceman by the Jets fighters and bombers and get 271 servicemen for every fighter/bomber.

The US is a first world army however, so in the fantasy sense we are talking about a major empire rather than a small kingdom, who may have lower ratio of wizards (or more, if there is a fantasy reason for them having lots of wizards).

Roughly 300 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in an army of a powerful country. A higher ratio, maybe 500 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in your "average" kingdom.

Obviously circumstances vary but does this sound about right?

[RandomPeasant]

"About right" by what metric? Certainly, those are ratios of mages to non-mages you can have, but whether they are "right" depends on questions ranging from "what do you want warfare to look like" to "which set of rules with implications about level distributions do you think are dispositive" to "how much do you think market forces effect the rate at which mages serve in armies".

[Mechalich]

"About right" by what metric? Certainly, those are ratios of mages to non-mages you can have, but whether they are "right" depends on questions ranging from "what do you want warfare to look like" to "which set of rules with implications about level distributions do you think are dispositive" to "how much do you think market forces effect the rate at which mages serve in armies".

Indeed. And since this is the 3e forum, you have to ask 'are there even armies at all?'

[pabelfly]

This is too dependent on game setting to be a question that could be answered.

[redking]

This is too dependent on game setting to be a question that could be answered.

Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms?

[Elenian]

A medieval European kingdom of the sort often used to inspire dnd games (though not a great fit for the actual rules!!) would generally not have had a standing army at all (partial exception for the pre-Norman anglo-saxon fyrd, and the Carolingian select levy, though even these were a far cry from the professional armies of antiquity). Instead your 'army' would be a retinue of retinues: the king would have some immediate vassals drawn from a martial aristocracy, who in turn had some vassals of their own, and so on down the line to minor nobility with just a couple of household retainers.

This force might be supplemented by low quality conscripted infantry (or decent quality semi-professional infantry in Flanders and England) raised for a single campaign.

Force compositions (and chain of command!) were therefore determined by the wealth and preferences of the martial aristocracy, and the personal relationships developed by the king.

So how many wizards would there be? In a pseudoeuropean medieval society, the answer depends *profoundly* on the underlying social structure.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Greyhawk? Forgotten Realms?

It depends on who fields the army, but at least for FR that sounds roughly like the figures for some of the more advanced factions.
Iirc Silverymoon is supposed to have 30-40 spellcasters to roughly 800 mundane troops or something in that ballpark.

Most of the bigger cities in FR have that information given in the books.

Orcs, Uthgard and other savage factions would probably have less spellcasters, more magically inclined factions like the Red Wizards would probably have at least an apprentice for every officer position. Some of them might be all spellcasters with only raised undead or enchanted thralls as melee fodder.

A medieval European kingdom of the sort often used to inspire dnd games (though not a great fit for the actual rules!!) would generally not have had a standing army at all (partial exception for the pre-Norman anglo-saxon fyrd, and the Carolingian select levy, though even these were a far cry from the professional armies of antiquity). Instead your 'army' would be a retinue of retinues: the king would have some immediate vassals drawn from a martial aristocracy, who in turn had some vassals of their own, and so on down the line to minor nobility with just a couple of household retainers.

A medieval European kingdom also wasn't under constant attack by undead, orcs, the servants of evil gods and who knows what other horrors even in "peace time".
A FR or Greyhawk kingdom needs a standing army just to keep the roads reasonably clear of monsters.

[King of Nowhere]

The ratio of tanks to infantey is strongly influenced by practical and economical reasons. If you could, you'd give a tank to every single soldier on the battlefield, but of course it's impossible; the more you can get, the better.
Same for wizards. They are useful, so you want as many as you can get.
As for regular soldiers.... In a world with golems immune to anything a mook can do, and adventuring parties that can teleport around and the army cannot stop in any way, do regukar soldiers even make sense?

[sleepyphoenixx]

The ratio of tanks to infantey is strongly influenced by practical and economical reasons. If you could, you'd give a tank to every single soldier on the battlefield, but of course it's impossible; the more you can get, the better.
Same for wizards. They are useful, so you want as many as you can get.
As for regular soldiers.... In a world with golems immune to anything a mook can do, and adventuring parties that can teleport around and the army cannot stop in any way, do regukar soldiers even make sense?

High level adventurers are elite troops.
Every adventurer stuck dealing with the small fry is not available to deal with the big stuff that needs an adventurer to deal with. And the bad guys have adventurers too.
They're special forces you use for infiltration, sabotage and maybe as artillery in a proper war, but they'd be wasted patrolling the countryside for bandits or goblins even if they were willing to.

Golems are expensive and mindless. They're good at brute force, but you want your army to be able to do act without supervision and react to changing circumstances in the field.
And they're pretty vulnerable to being defeated with alchemical items even by mooks.
That 40k Clay golem dies pretty easily against a militia armed with nets and a few hundred gp worth of acid flasks and the same holds true for most other constructs.

Undead have a similar problem - they're (usually) much cheaper than golems, but the ones that are easy to control just aren't that useful for anything except cannon fodder and still several orders of magnitude more expensive than a soldier.
The good ones rely on rebuke/command or spells to keep under control which is a massive security risk.
Also PR issues with most good factions and religions (and if your army relies on healing from good clerics you don't want to trade that for a few zombies).

A lot of things (bandits, goblins and similar monsters, etc) can be taken care of just fine by low-level mooks, who are cheap, easy to use and much easier to replace or field in the numbers you need to qualify as an army. You can field hundreds of low level mooks for the price of a single mediocre golem.
And having low level mooks fight low level threats is the only way you get those high level adventurers after all.

[Maat Mons]

If a nation wants more spellcasters in its army, it would be well-served to increase the ratio of spellcasters in its populace in general. Easier to do recruiting if you have a bigger pool to recruit from. This means either encouraging private spellcaster training programs, or starting state-run spellcaster training programs.

[Gnaeus]

.
A medieval European kingdom also wasn't under constant attack by undead, orcs, the servants of evil gods and who knows what other horrors even in "peace time".
A FR or Greyhawk kingdom needs a standing army just to keep the roads reasonably clear of monsters.

1. You are wrong. Many medieval kingdoms were under constant internal and external threats.

2. You don't understand why feudal armies existed as opposed to standing armies. No one ever at any time in history said, "we don't need a standing army. It would be better to have an unprofessional, potentially disloyal collection of 30 mobs that I can call on when they decide to show up." The reason you have feudal armies is because you have weak states. If the kingdom lacks a bureaucracy to efficiently collect and administer taxes and the economy and infrastructure to support tax collection, you don't get a standing army because you can't afford it. Not because you don't think it would be a good idea.

So instead you take a murderous nutjob or PC and you say essentially "I'll let you be mini-king over there but you kill bandits and keep the roads open and help when the big bad shows up. And whatever taxes and support I can get from you are better than the nothing I would get if you weren't securing that territory." That is feudalism in a nutshell. So all those threats you mentioned aren't reasons to have a standing army. No autocrat ever needed a reason to have a standing army. They are the reasons you DONT have a standing army. Because last year orcs plundered the Westfield and your tax collector in the east farthing got eaten by a grue. Threats of monster attacks on the roads are exactly why you have decentralized authority and mini armies. The more prevalent the threats are, the less likely you can support a standing army.

If you are lucky enough to get a period of peacetime you attempt to centralize power, because you no longer need baron nutjob to hold his post on the border. But at that point most of the kingdom's armed power is held by the lords and it's difficult to just take back without war.

This changes a bit in a tippyverse or (to a lesser extent) Eberron where you have magic replacing high tech. If you have widespread instant communication and high speed travel, like by magic trains or ring gates, so you can collect income and your centralized army can easily redeploy to wherever it needs to be, there isn't a need for a feudal structure. You have a state, for as long as the infrastructure holds up (and then you get one of those magic apocalypses that seem so common and refeudalize). But Greyhawk or FR? Mostly classic feudal states, and the exceptions don't involve standing armies as much as individuals with godlike power (epic or near epic casters) who fill the role of standing army with personal power.

[zlefin]

This is a simple extrapolation based on drawing a comparison between modern armies and fantasy armies.

Jet fighters and bombers = wizards and arcane casters.
US marines and army = fantasy combatants (fighters, rogue specialists, etc).

US military is 1,417,370 active servicemen.
Jet fighters and bombers consists of 5217 aircraft in service.

You divide the number of serviceman by the Jets fighters and bombers and get 271 servicemen for every fighter/bomber.

The US is a first world army however, so in the fantasy sense we are talking about a major empire rather than a small kingdom, who may have lower ratio of wizards (or more, if there is a fantasy reason for them having lots of wizards).

Roughly 300 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in an army of a powerful country. A higher ratio, maybe 500 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in your "average" kingdom.

Obviously circumstances vary but does this sound about right?

No, I don't think that makes any sense. Planes are expensive compared to individual humans. Wizards are not inherently so expensive compared to humans. A low level wizards, especially level 1, isn't that expensive at all really. Also note that modern planes have tended toward higher tech and greater cost; the plane to serviceman ratio may have been different in earlier eras.

A better point of comparison for arcane casters would be the heavier equipped modern infantry; ie the ones that have mortars, bazookas, anti-X missiles. Also the field artillery.

[QuadraticGish]

The ratio of tanks to infantey is strongly influenced by practical and economical reasons. If you could, you'd give a tank to every single soldier on the battlefield, but of course it's impossible; the more you can get, the better.
Same for wizards. They are useful, so you want as many as you can get.
As for regular soldiers.... In a world with golems immune to anything a mook can do, and adventuring parties that can teleport around and the army cannot stop in any way, do regukar soldiers even make sense?

Even if it was possible monetarily, in real world the dominate doctrine is combined arms. You can't hold cities with vehicles, you need feet on the ground to do that. Tanks are also highly vulnerable to aircraft and maneuverable anti-tank squads either with things like man carried direct fire anti-tank weapons or artillery teams using indirect fire weapons. Now using a squad back up with a golem would be highly effective since with their size they can be used as the walking shield for the squad or be commanded to run into an entrenched enemy position. Plus, if we're talking money we now also have to talk about monetary opportunity, and time costs of doing things like, finding people that can create golems, convincing them to work for you, paying them to making golems, paying for the logistics required to make golems, paying for the added logistics of deploying golems. For hiring a party, you gotta worry about paying to find a party, paying the people negotiating to get them to work for you, and the actual costs of their demands.

Anyway, like zlefin said I think casters would be more comparable to the role of artillery teams. You do a specialized job while covered by other squads.

[King of Nowhere]

High level adventurers are elite troops.
Every adventurer stuck dealing with the small fry is not available to deal with the big stuff that needs an adventurer to deal with.


Golems are expensive and mindless.

those are the stock justifications, but they don't work.
A mid level wizard can pop in, kill a few hundred people, pop out with minimal risk. It takes a few mminutes of his time. Do it every day, and before the end of the week the enemy army collapses. Armies do not fight to the death. Once an army takes 10% casualties, the soldiers will run away, and won't be in fighting shape for months. That percentage can go up or down depending on morale, but it's rarely much higher. And I'm sure a demigod popping out of nowhere and wantomly killing hundreds of soldiers without them being able to do anything would be definitely bad for morale. Good luck keeping your mook army together against that.
And all it takes is a single wizard with a few 5th level spell slots, using up his spells for a few days. This is not "adventurers are too busy to deal with this". This is "adventurers can deal with this during coffee break".

As for golems, they are expensive up-front. But you don't have to pay them, you don't have to feed them, you don't have to equip them, you don't have to provide them housings. In the long run, golems are cheaper than soldiers. And you can put all those commoners at work doing something productive, then they will pay taxes that will fund more golems.

this is especially true if we keep up the pretence of "almost medieval". In the middle age, war was common, but much less bloody than it became later. Nations didn't have the resources to wage total war. "War" at the time consisted in the aristocrat and his retinue with their horses and armors crossing the river and pillaging a bit, stealing some cows, torching some hovels. Actual pitched battles were rare. None of that compares with the carnage that high level forces can wreak daily. So the idea that those adventurers don't matter in the army clash because the casualties they inflict are a drop in the sea... nope. doesn't work like that. the army of mooks does not swarm the champions and slowly chip away at them until they win. the army of mooks sees whoever gets close to the champions getting instantly turned to red paste, and they run.
Heck, the whole point of the feudal system is that it was more effective for 50 farmers to work and pay taxes and sustain a single trained and equipped knight on the battlefield, than it was for those 50 farmers to pick up spears and go in battle themselves. High level forces would push that disparity even further.

And the bad guys have adventurers too.

All the more reasons for you to not waste money and lives outfitting an army that's totally unable to deal with them.


My campaign world has industrial level technology, the common soldiers have high caliber rifles and grenades, and each platoon has a couple of low level casters with some scrolls for extra power. And with those premises, the mooks can be a threat to advanturers and golems, and it makes sense to field them. Barely. Even then, you need your adventurers ready to intervene and counteract any attack against the army, else enemy adventurers can harrass it to death fast.

Even if it was possible monetarily, in real world the dominate doctrine is combined arms. You can't hold cities with vehicles, you need feet on the ground to do that. Tanks are also highly vulnerable to aircraft and maneuverable anti-tank squads either with things like man carried direct fire anti-tank weapons or artillery teams using indirect fire weapons. Now using a squad back up with a golem would be highly effective since with their size they can be used as the walking shield for the squad or be commanded to run into an entrenched enemy position. Plus, if we're talking money we now also have to talk about monetary opportunity, and time costs of doing things like, finding people that can create golems, convincing them to work for you, paying them to making golems, paying for the logistics required to make golems, paying for the added logistics of deploying golems. For hiring a party, you gotta worry about paying to find a party, paying the people negotiating to get them to work for you, and the actual costs of their demands.

Anyway, like zlefin said I think casters would be more comparable to the role of artillery teams. You do a specialized job while covered by other squads.

An army battle in my world would have a line of golems advancing with huge shields. Behind those golems, artillery (often with adamantium-tipped shells) and riflemen would fire on the enemy. low level casters would provide support and battlefield control; each golem would have a low level wizard with several scrolls of repair spells behind them. You don't want to fight battles, though, because all those resources are very expensive. The principle of the thing is that it is expensive to craft a golem, but it is very cheap to keep a golem in storage. Same for scrolls, or adamantium bullets. So you ammass huge armies by spending a moderate sum every year into those magical, highly durable goods, and when you use them... well, even if you win, you'll need many years to recover from your losses.
Which is why warring nations prefer to just use adventurers as strike teams. total war is way too unpractical
Adventuring teams are a bit of a wildcard, depending on their specializations they can fill many roles.

[ngilop]

I feel that wizards would be more akin to nuclear capable stealth submarines. So, you would have 1 wizard for every 101,241.


Lore wise is most standard D&D wizards are supposed to be much more rare than the average joe. Then you factor in that most wizards are your hermit hedgemage guy and I feel that the above is a bit more accurate.


I think that 1 our of every 300 (or so) of your population being a war-capable wizard is a bit much.

[sleepyphoenixx]

those are the stock justifications, but they don't work.
A mid level wizard can pop in, kill a few hundred people, pop out with minimal risk. It takes a few mminutes of his time. Do it every day, and before the end of the week the enemy army collapses. Armies do not fight to the death. Once an army takes 10% casualties, the soldiers will run away, and won't be in fighting shape for months. That percentage can go up or down depending on morale, but it's rarely much higher. And I'm sure a demigod popping out of nowhere and wantomly killing hundreds of soldiers without them being able to do anything would be definitely bad for morale. Good luck keeping your mook army together against that.
And all it takes is a single wizard with a few 5th level spell slots, using up his spells for a few days. This is not "adventurers are too busy to deal with this". This is "adventurers can deal with this during coffee break".

I think you're vastly overestimating the effectiveness of mid-level wizards on a strategic scale. Or in general.
Most of them aren't going to be high-op armchair archwizards with tons of metaknowledge after all.
They'll be the basic fireball and maybe some summons/bfc kind if you're lucky, not Abrupt Jaunt focused conjurer/incantatrixes and killer gnome shadowcraft mages.

A mid-level wizard can kill dozens of people, not hundreds. If they're clustered up. In open space. And he has exactly the right spells prepared. And the right defenses to survive it.
Most spells don't have more than a 20-30ft radius area and he's not exactly swimming in high-level slots.

A mid-level wizard can also be killed easily enough by a horde of level 1 commoners if they're spread out or attack from ambush.
Even the worst shot hits on a natural 20 after all, and that's before you factor in things like teamwork benefits and buffs.

[Seward]

My original "Ahlissan Legion" where they drafted everybody that could "level" (using D&D 1.0 rules for what % of the population could gain levels for henchman purposes) had about 60% magic users, 35% clerics, and folk who couldn't qualify for either (int/wis both below 9) tended to be trained as rogues or fighters.

The 3.0/3.5 version was about 1/3 sorcerers, 1/3 wizards and 1/3 clerics, with folks below 11 in all of int/wis/cha tended to be trained as rangers or thieves (LE society) to get skill monkey support.

Basically anybody not a full caster was considered dead weight, skill monkeys were assigned at the platoon level. In this model, spellcasters weren't tanks or air support, they were people assigned with assault rifles, grenades and a modern medical kit, with the better/high primary caster stat ones being the heavy weapons guy, and those who fought offense mostly with wands due to low stats prepped support spells, although boostrapping with primary-stat-+4 type spells let them use better scrolls too.

[Jay R]

The number of jet bombers and fighters depends on how much money the military can get to build them. Modern taxation and politics don't inherently work like a fantasy medieval culture.

It would primarily depend on how many actual casters the King can find and recruit. A small village might only have 20 warriors. But if there's a single (willing) wizard in town, their ration is 20:1. Meanwhile, the larger village nearby might have 100 warriors and no caster.

Also, you're treating all casters alike. A first level wizard isn't a jet; he's at most a specialist -- possibly a PFC or non-commissioned officer. A low-level wizard with a fireball wand? She's a bazooka replacement, the equivalent of two modern soldiers.

An analogy is useful only if it is, well, analogous.

[QuadraticGish]

My original "Ahlissan Legion" where they drafted everybody that could "level" (using D&D 1.0 rules for what % of the population could gain levels for henchman purposes) had about 60% magic users, 35% clerics, and folk who couldn't qualify for either (int/wis both below 9) tended to be trained as rogues or fighters.

The 3.0/3.5 version was about 1/3 sorcerers, 1/3 wizards and 1/3 clerics, with folks below 11 in all of int/wis/cha tended to be trained as rangers or thieves (LE society) to get skill monkey support.

Basically anybody not a full caster was considered dead weight, skill monkeys were assigned at the platoon level. In this model, spellcasters weren't tanks or air support, they were people assigned with assault rifles, grenades and a modern medical kit, with the better/high primary caster stat ones being the heavy weapons guy, and those who fought offense mostly with wands due to low stats prepped support spells, although boostrapping with primary-stat-+4 type spells let them use better scrolls too.

How did you determine ability scores?

[noob]

This is a simple extrapolation based on drawing a comparison between modern armies and fantasy armies.

Jet fighters and bombers = wizards and arcane casters.
US marines and army = fantasy combatants (fighters, rogue specialists, etc).

US military is 1,417,370 active servicemen.
Jet fighters and bombers consists of 5217 aircraft in service.

You divide the number of serviceman by the Jets fighters and bombers and get 271 servicemen for every fighter/bomber.

The US is a first world army however, so in the fantasy sense we are talking about a major empire rather than a small kingdom, who may have lower ratio of wizards (or more, if there is a fantasy reason for them having lots of wizards).

Roughly 300 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in an army of a powerful country. A higher ratio, maybe 500 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in your "average" kingdom.

Obviously circumstances vary but does this sound about right?

Depending on the setting the ratio of arcane spellcasters to ordinary soldiers can vary from anywhere to "0 arcane spellcasters" to "only arcane spellcasters", you can even have a balanced setting with only arcane spellcasters: there is a feat that makes its user able to use 0th level arcane spells so you could have everybody be fighters but with that feat.

No, I don't think that makes any sense. Planes are expensive compared to individual humans. Wizards are not inherently so expensive compared to humans. A low level wizards, especially level 1, isn't that expensive at all really. Also note that modern planes have tended toward higher tech and greater cost; the plane to serviceman ratio may have been different in earlier eras.

A better point of comparison for arcane casters would be the heavier equipped modern infantry; ie the ones that have mortars, bazookas, anti-X missiles. Also the field artillery.

A starting spellbook for a wizard can possibly cost over a thousand gold if you have 20 cantrips in the game.
More if there is more cantrips and spells.
so basically a first level wizard's spellbook costs as much as a small house so it is surprisingly reasonable.
However we do not know the cost of studying as a wizard even if we know it can be done in a single year if you are a member of a short lived race.

[AvatarVecna]

DMG community rules is that there's 1 full time guard/soldier per 100 adults, and that for every 20 adults, there's 1 that can be pulled into militia service within a few hours. So constantly 1%, and temporarily 6%, as far as "percentage of adult population" goes. Additionally, Warriors will make up something approaching ~5% of the population regardless of settlement size. Finally, we have an example settlement, including militia status:

Using these guidelines and the tables in the previous section, the breakdown by class and level for the population of a typical hamlet of two hundred people looks like this:
• One 1st-level aristocrat (mayor)
• One 3rd-level warrior (constable)
• Nine 1st-level warriors (two guards, seven militia members)
• One 3rd-level expert smith (militia member)
• Seven 1st-level expert crafters and professionals of various sorts
• One 1st-level adept
• One 3rd-level commoner barkeep (militia member)
• One hundred sixty-six 1st-level commoners (one is a militia
member)
• One 3rd-level fighter
• Two 1st-level fighters
• One 1st-level wizard
• One 3rd-level cleric
• Two 1st-level clerics
• One 1st-level druid
• One 3rd-level rogue
• Two 1st-level rogues
• One 1st-level bard
• One 1st-level monk

There's three fighters, none of whom are guards or militia (although it's definitely possible for fighters to be guard captain). Despite high numbers (especially for the latter), experts and commoners each only have a single militia member, which is their only non-1st lvl member. No casters are guards or militia...but then, this is a small settlement with only two permanent guards and only 10 militia members. Let's do some estimates based on a few big communities.

Spoiler: Average Small City

Show

Adult Population: 8500
Permanent Guard: 85
Guard+Militia: 510

Sorcerers/Wizards by Level: 48/12/4/2/2/0/1/0/0/1 (total 92)

Expectation: The guard maybe has 0-1 permanent arcane casters, the militia has another 4-5, for a total of 4-6 (depending on how you wanna round things). I would expect the 4-6 to be the lvl 4/5/7/10 mages, since low-level mages aren't much use to the guard/militia.

Ratio: 1 arcane caster per 85-127 guard+militia members.

Spoiler: Average Large City

Show

Adult Population: 18500
Permanent Guard: 185
Guard+Militia: 1110

Sorcerers/Wizards by Level: 96/48/16/8/4/4/4/0/0/2/0/2/2 (total 186

Expectation: The guard maybe has 1-2 permanent arcane casters, the militia has another 9-10, for a total of 10-12 (depending on how you wanna round things). I would expect the 10-12 to be the lvl 5/6/7/10 mages, since low-level mages aren't much use to the guard/militia, and high-level mages are probably more interested in playing general than soldier.

Ratio: 1 arcane caster per 92-111 guard+militia members.

Hrm...metropolis has no maximum, so can't average population. But we can ratio? 18500/8500 is the ratio between the previous two, so multiply that by the previous one, and we get the next step? That would be 40264, but let's say 40000 to keep the numbers simple?

Spoiler: "Average" Metropolis

Show

Adult Population: 40000
Permanent Guard: 400
Guard+Militia: 2400

Sorcerers/Wizards by Level: 128/64/0/32/0/0/8/8/0/0/0/0/2/2/2/2 (total 248)

Expectation: The guard maybe has 2-3 permanent arcane casters, the militia has another 12-13, for a total of 14-16 (depending on how you wanna round things). I would expect the 14-16 to be the level 7/8 mages, since low-level mages aren't much use to the guard/militia, and high-level mages are probably more interested in playing general than soldier.

Ratio: 1 arcane caster per 150-171 guard+militia members.

The ratios here range from 1:85 to 1:171, which average at 1:128. That's right around 4 times as many as you predicted, but it feels pretty realistic to me? Mages aren't a perfect analogy for air support - it'd be as accurate to say they're analogous to grenadiers (1:12 ratio in rifle squads), or tanks (1:160 in the US military overall). Which is to say, not accurate. All three are decent fits, but none are a great comparison for what a mage can bring to an army. That's not a "magic supremacy", it's more that what a mage brings to the army could be extremely variable and harder to quantify. You could make a wizard who flies around chucking fireballs and laying down cloudkills, but you could just as easily be looking at a diviner who's useless in direct combat but stellar at providing critical intelligence, for example.

EDIT: Of course, as others have mentioned, not every class is going to strictly have 1% of them in the guard and another 5% of them in the militia. Even in our example community, commoners make up a huge portion of the population, and yet none of the Commoner 1s are in the militia - presumably because they're unsuited for it. One could probably assume the "sorcerers/wizards in the military" ratio is lower than I've described here, to account for the likelihood of a given mid-level wizard having a spellbook suited for military participation. Some of them will just be personally unsuited for combat, too - I'm sure there's an NPC somewhere who rolled Int 18 and Con 3 who has no business doing anything as strenuous as thinking about hand-to-hand combat, for example.

[Seward]

How did you determine ability scores?

3d6 no reroll, old school. Statistical over the population size to determine numbers. Humans only, nonhumans were considered vermin (and plundering gnome hills or elf forests is how they leveled up when there were no more invading armies to fight, until there were no more of those)

When somebody qualified for more than one class, priority went to the higher primary attribute, but some of the lower ones would shift to get the numbers in balance if needed (eg, if you have an 11 int and 12 wisdom, you might be a wizard if there are enough clerics in the pool, but first they'd split up the folks with an 11 in both stats and a 12 in both stats). Mostly you ended up in a class that matched your best mental attribute, although the 1.0 legions to get to the desired "2 wizards per cleric" ratio would assign a few people with lower int than wisdom to balance things out.

In the 1.0 version they had people of all ages, it was a one-time draft for an emergency so we had age-modifiers to mental stats, which helped increase the recruit pool. Replacements later done by skimming all the folks who could level out of the youth population.

In the 3.x version I figure they had to recruit teenagers (before you got your first level of "peasant" or whatever) so it was basically they took every 16 year old out of the entire population and drafted them. Again this isn't something you can do as a society more than once for an emergency, and working out how to recruit later waves probably involved aptitude tests and skimming off the folks with highest mental scores from each class and leaving the rest to be peasants, craftsmen and whatever.

Which meant the first legions were weird - in 1.0 you had some attrition from old age, and your newer legions had average lower stats but were around a lot longer before they died off. In 3.5 your later generation legions were fewer in number just like in 1.0 but for different reasons, and had higher primary stats (not Elite Array, all that mattered was where you were in percentile - a 16 wisdom guy with 6 in every other attribute would be a great pick the way the Legion worked).

Another thing - the entire army used 1 spellbook, although with 1st edition rules it contained spells many could not learn. Squads would be organized so that if you, for example, failed to learn sleep, enough people in your squad would be assigned so that the squad as a whole would have the effective number of sleep spells. Obviously not a factor in the 3.5 legions, but sorcerer spells known were from an approved list, with higher stat people getting more save dependent spells known and fewer support spells or no-save-battlefield control. Both sets of legions though relied pretty heavily on crafted stuff (scrolls in lower levels, wands in higher levels) in the 3.5 legion to fill in gaps and give staying power. They preferred to nova and just destroy enemies in seconds, but if you got an extended battle they wanted to not be reduced to half-bab crossbowmen or whatever.

Using one spellbook meant costs were reduced (you'd memorize spells in shifts, there were backup spellbooks at HQ) and problematic spells (for the state) could be removed, or authorized only for specific missions (eg, interrogation units might be allowed access to charm person and detect thoughts, your average soldier in the field would not).

Clerics were all priests of Hextor, that was the state religion, although alignments varied and each unit had at least one LN cleric who could spont healing in 3.5 and turn undead. Undead BTW did a lot of menial/support stuff in both versions like digging ditches, but were not used in combat if it could be avoided. Your body after death was a resource for the State, but there isn't an unlimited supply, especially with 3.x Black Onyx costs. I imagine in 3.5 domain picks were also organized so squads would get a good mix of domain powers/spells in a reliable way.

In the beginning, they also drafted existing clerics and wizards to provide magic item crafting support and to write out all those spellbooks (funding it out of loot taken by victorious legions after the initial outlay). Eventually the squads became self-supporting.

In both worlds you eventually had real problems with Legions with a few thousand soldiers in their mid teens levelwise (Ahlissa had MANY problems and re-unifying the empire while eliminating all nonhumans settlements in the border monster or demihuman + pesky dungeons like Tomb of Horrors within your borders generated a lot of xp), bored and nothing to do. At minimum they needed to get some xp somewhere to continue public works crafting projects. So the society either gets a coup by the legions, possibly with a warlord period (think late Rome where each general thought he could be emperor) or, if it holds the loyalty of these incredibly powerful units somehow, goes on a conquering spree that probably gets the equivalent (on Greyhawk) of Circle of 8, Great Druid, Iuz and his Bonehearts and any random Epic or Native Demigod folks still wandering around to forget their usual differences and working together to destabilize the whole thing and pick off these squads as they're no longer amused by Ahlissa just getting its own house in order).

Although a conquering spree would then level up even more legions and push some of the older ones to near-epic, which leaves you an even bigger problem if they pacify the continent and then have nothing to do...it's not a model that automatically puts you in a tippy-verse because they don't get QUITE powerful enough for the real powers to be unable to kill them in job lots if you scare them, but if they get the upper hand, yeah you're in a very different world.

These are the very definition of high-k troops, so subduing them and dropping them into spheres of Annihilation or similar un-recoverable deaths is not really possible to recover from. It takes about 4 years of constant conflict to level a new recruit into a L15ish Legion Soldier, and it is as much trouble to find 4 years of level appropriate challenges as it is to support that recruit for 4 year as you'd imagine. The model assumes very few unrecoverable deaths, and eventually you don't have to use your original clerics to bring them back if they merely die. We figured most likely outcome is they kill each other off in a civil war a decade or so after the first crisis that created them, leaving some very scary remnants lying around or trying to organize duchies or small kingdoms around similar totalitarian models, leveling by warring with their neighbors but aside from relics of the old Empire, nobody much above L5-6.

I actually did a CRPG with a fire team from one of these legions - the old Temple of Elemental Evil game that came out right about when 3.0 came out. 2 Sorerers, 2 Wizards, 2 Clerics, although with unusually high stats for a Legion unit. (I figured a unit out of support from the army would get the very best of the latest recruits and didn't sweat it)

It was a buggy as hell game, but it did (unusually) allow magic item crafting and it was a fairly normal "all caster be careful and plan to escape and rest after each incursion" game until L5 when wand crafting got online. When we went into the dungeon with wands for everybody we cleared vast sections in one go. Wands of ice storm were the go-to after level 7, few things were entirely immune, no saving throws and slower movement worked well with other effects that defended your party. You'd use your spell slots for buffing and taking out harder targets. The clerics could tank and even melee a little if that was needed, but generally you did most of the damage with spells. Clerics and wizards made wands and scrolls, sorcerers had craft wondrous to make a few important things (resistance cloaks and statboost items primarily - every sorcerer had two L2 spells devoted to either Bear Endurance or one of the 3 mental stats, and all of them had resistance as a cantrip by L2, so a fire team was self-sufficient in crafting by L6 on the key magic items in 3.5).

Every fire team also had 4 familiars, which is a lot of why you don't need scouting resources (basically somebody with trapfinding and somebody with tracking+survival as class skill) below the platoon level. They just had swarms of familiars on the perimeter wherever they operated.

[Maat Mons]

Doesn't the lore for Sorcerer involve the class being the result of unpredictable atavisms from rare bloodlines? Training Sorcerers isn't, as far as I know, possible.

This is why my Pathfinder-based efforts have used the archetypes for Witch and Druid that change your casting stat to Charisma. Druids are, lore-wise, just folks who got training from a … grove of Druids? That's what it's called? And Witches are just folks who made a pact with an outsider, fey, or terrifying unknowable entity.

[AvatarVecna]

Doesn't the lore for Sorcerer involve the class being the result of unpredictable atavisms from rare bloodlines? Training Sorcerers isn't, as far as I know, possible.

This is why my Pathfinder-based efforts have used the archetypes for Witch and Druid that change your casting stat to Charisma. Druids are, lore-wise, just folks who got training from a … grove of Druids? That's what it's called? And Witches are just folks who made a pact with an outsider, fey, or terrifying unknowable entity.

That's pretty explicitly the lore in PF, but in 3.5 it's more nebulous. There's feat lines that tie sorcerers to particular bloodlines (dragon/fiend/celestial/others im forgetting?), but like...okay, straight from the PHB:

Sorcerers create magic the way a poet creates poems, with inborn talent honed by practice. They have no books, no mentors, no theories—just raw power that they direct at will. Some sorcerers claim that the blood of dragons courses through their veins. That claim may even be true in some cases—it is common knowledge that certain powerful dragons can take humanoid form and even have humanoid lovers, and it’s difficult to prove that a given sorcerer does not have a dragon ancestor. It’s true that sorcerers often have striking good looks, usually with a touch of the exotic that hints at an unusual heritage. Others hold that the claim is either an unsubstantiated boast on the part of certain sorcerers or envious gossip on the part of those who lack the sorcerer’s gift.

That could be "inborn talent for particular spells" or it could be "inborn talent for doing magic". The bloodline stuff is called out as a unproven rumor.

[RandomPeasant]

Most of them aren't going to be high-op armchair archwizards with tons of metaknowledge after all.

Sure. But the thing about Wizards is that they learn new spells really easily. It's probably true that a lot of Wizards know fireball or even some random utility spell they use to run a business as a 3rd level spell. But if you have one Wizard with teleport, cloudkill, and planar binding, you can teach all those spells to all your Wizards just by throwing some gold at the problem. It's true that you can't just buy your way into an army of Shadowcraft Incantatrixes, but Wizards are strategically important precisely because it is easy for a kingdom to turn money into better Wizards.

Doesn't the lore for Sorcerer involve the class being the result of unpredictable atavisms from rare bloodlines? Training Sorcerers isn't, as far as I know, possible.

In addition to what AvatarVecna points out, there are other things you might be able to do, depending on your view of what can be intentionally trained. PrCs are the most obvious, as they provide a direct way to advance Sorcerer spellcasting without gaining additional Sorcerer levels. But there are also various feats that grant additional spells known, so maybe you can train all your Sorcerers to take Extra Spell (Something Good) and get very limited specialization that way.

[Seward]

The 1.0 Legion was based on DMG rules for "what % of the population can level based on experience"

The 3.x Legion was based on "you can take any class you want when it is time to level" that is the norm for PCs, with demographics based on age (children don't have class levels yet, at some point that changes) As others noted, Sorcerers in 3.5 don't have the Pathfinder bloodline class features, so that restriction isn't really a problem.

In both cases it was a LE society so "nonlawful" classes like bard or barbarian were explicitly not part of the Legion, even if some in the Legion were NE and could have become one.

Basically a Legion member was treated exactly as a PC - he or she can choose anything except that if you don't level the way the Legion leadership says you should, you are now an outlaw, basically. Peer pressure, patriotism, societal pressure, maybe aptitude tests and specific training methods are what ensures the uniformity. Similar considerations apply daily for clerics and wizards - what spells you prep are what you are ordered to prep, with standing orders on that front if you have nothing specific from your leadership.

At a more meta-level, the patron deity of the person who set all of this up was Hextor (a LE War/Strategy type god) and all those new priests of Hextor+followers anywhere the Legions held sway was very good for that religion. It's possible there was a bit of divine meddling to cause the legions to be self-reinforcing, to make most members WANT to level up the way the Legion leadership said. Sorcerers seem to have a touch of wish fulfillment as well built in, so if it is seen as an awesome cool thing to join the Legion, their gift might be easier to mold in the Legion direction than you might think.

[liquidformat]

I feel that wizards would be more akin to nuclear capable stealth submarines. So, you would have 1 wizard for every 101,241.


Lore wise is most standard D&D wizards are supposed to be much more rare than the average joe. Then you factor in that most wizards are your hermit hedgemage guy and I feel that the above is a bit more accurate.


I think that 1 our of every 300 (or so) of your population being a war-capable wizard is a bit much.

What are you calling a 'war-capable wizard'? You really seem to be ignoring level in your thoughts. If we are talking about all arcane casters level 1-20 then 1 out of every 300 troops doesn't seem unreasonable. If we are talking about 'nuclear bomb' comparable casters then we are talking level 15+ in which case 1 in 101,241 also doesn't seem unreasonable. Most casters (and most troops in general) in an army will be level 5 or less and that is important to keep in mind. A caster level 5 or less is in general pretty weak and their killing power is often going to be less than a full bab character at these levels especially when you add in how squishy they are.

I don't believe we can really pull anything from comparing a modern army to a fantasy army for quite a few reasons. Probably the biggest is we can't accurately represent soldier level in modern armies.

[Max Caysey]

This is a simple extrapolation based on drawing a comparison between modern armies and fantasy armies.

Jet fighters and bombers = wizards and arcane casters.
US marines and army = fantasy combatants (fighters, rogue specialists, etc).

US military is 1,417,370 active servicemen.
Jet fighters and bombers consists of 5217 aircraft in service.

You divide the number of serviceman by the Jets fighters and bombers and get 271 servicemen for every fighter/bomber.

The US is a first world army however, so in the fantasy sense we are talking about a major empire rather than a small kingdom, who may have lower ratio of wizards (or more, if there is a fantasy reason for them having lots of wizards).

Roughly 300 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in an army of a powerful country. A higher ratio, maybe 500 soldiers for every arcane spellcaster in your "average" kingdom.

Obviously circumstances vary but does this sound about right?

1 war/battle mage per platoon! Mage being 3 levels higher than enlisted personnel!

[noob]

1 war/battle mage per platoon! Mage being 3 levels higher than enlisted personnel!

Somehow this makes me feel your non mages have a high death rate and so have less opportunities to reach higher levels.
That or your non mages are all artificers spending all their xp on crafting lots of eternal wands of celerity and other magical items of similar power.

[Metastachydium]

As for golems, they are expensive up-front. But you don't have to pay them, you don't have to feed them, you don't have to equip them, you don't have to provide them housings. In the long run, golems are cheaper than soldiers. And you can put all those commoners at work doing something productive, then they will pay taxes that will fund more golems.

(Â…)

All the more reasons for you to not waste money and lives outfitting an army that's totally unable to deal with them.

This has been rattling in my head for a while, so I ran the numbers. My basic assumptions were as follows: some nation or whatever starts relying heavily on golems in war; this becomes common knowledge after a few engagements where such constructs are deployed; everyone else is not a total moron; therefore they shall devise strategies to deal with golems, specifically, rather than throwing peasants at them and then throwing some more when that does nothing.

And that's, I shall argue, is neither difficult nor costly. I will now present a level 2 build that's barely a caster, uses the non-elite array and no source other than what the SRD has to offer. Let's see:

Spoiler: Low-rank dedicated golemslayer

Show

Wood Elf Ranger 1/Battle Sorcerer 1
STR 15 DEX 12 CON 9 INT 7 WIS 8 CHA 12
Feats: Point-Blank Shot feat tax for later or whatever
Skills: Craft (bowmaking/weaponsmithing) +3, Hide +7, Listen +5/+7, Move Silently +5, Ride +6, Spot +5/+7, Survival +3/+5 and whatever
Attack: +3(/+23) for 1d8+4 (min. 5; avg. 8,5; max 12)

Relevant class features:
Favored Enemy (constructs)
Spells per day: 4/3
Spells known: 0th: Message and whatever; 1st: True Strike

Equipment (with price):
Masterwork composite longbow (STR +2) 600 gp
20 adamantine arrows 1201 gp
20 normal arrows 1 gp
Masterwork studded leather armour 175 gp
Short sword, dagger 12 gp
Light warhorse with military saddle, bit, bridle and saddlebags 176 gp
Backpack, bedroll, tent 12,1 gp
Waterskin, 5×rations, feed for 5 days 3,75 gp
Hooded lamp, 2×flask of oil, flint&steel 8,2 gp
Masterwork tool for Hide 50 gp
Whetstone 0,02 gp
Traveler's outfit 1 gp

Total: 2240 gp 7 cp

An iron golem costs 150000 gp upfront; creating one takes a DC 20 Craft check and a 16th level caster with access to three specific spells.

150000 gp leaves us with 66 golemslayers, fully equipped, with a mount and 5 days worth of food for themselves and their horse alike. So, what can 66 chaps like this achieve? I'd say a lot. An iron golem has a speed of 20'. It is large and noisy, which makes it easy to spot. It has 129 hp on average and can only be "healed" by a specialist. It can't do much to anything farther from itself than 10'.

Our golemslayers, in contrast can move twice as fast when mounted, can engage the golem from 110' away, and (being a sorcerer) is entitled to a hard to spot flying scout if need be. Any one of these elves has a 76% chance of hitting the golem from the aforesaid distance if True Strike (usable three times per day) is on, and is guaranteed to deal a minimum of 5 or an average of 8,5 points of damage with adamantine arrows. If the elves manage to pump out average damage on every hit, it takes 10 golemslayers to destroy an iron golem, worth 150000 gp, in two rounds, expending 1201 gp in adamantine arrows.

Now, if we work with somewhat higher-ranking members of an organization like this, the numbers begin looking better yet. Let us consider a unit of 4th level slayers, with two more levels of ranger! The ASI bumps their STR scores up to 16, so we may spend a further 100 gp to give their bows a STR rating one point higher. This minor change allows for fielding 64 advanced slayers for the cost of acquiring a single iron golem; these advanced elves, furthermore, have an attack bonus of +25 with True Strike on, which is an 83% chance to hit. They also deal 9,5 points of damage per hit on average; consequently, it only takes 8,1 of them to take down a golem in 2 rounds, which is an expenditure of 960,8 gp in adamantine arrows.

Elite, 6th level operatives with no change to their equipment might actually be cheaper to field with native access to a horse. If we deduct the 150 gp the 2nd level build spent on such a mount, we can get as much of 68 operatives for the price of a single golem. These operatives will have a +4 favoured enemy bonus against constructs, and subsequently, as their to hit (with True Strike) climbs up to +27, a 90% chance of scoring a hit, the damage dealt increases to 11.5 per hit, reducing the number of operatives needed to neutralize a single golem in two rounds to only slightly more than 6,2, using up 720,6 gp worth of arrows.

If these troops are supported by a single 1st level (!) bard per (a mixed) unit, the numbers begin to favour the side using real soldiers even more.

On the long run, the golem-using army would, of course, likewise adapt to the new tactics of its enemies. However, the learning experience would likely cost them dearly.