The Influence of High Magic on Warfare

[Anchises]

Okay so fantasy settings love the powerful caster that can throw fire, call down thunder and delete people from reality. They can heal, communicate over vast distances, scry perhaps even teleport troops. However that power is supposed to be rare. Not everyone has the spark the vast majority if people is muggles.

Fantasy also loves doing fake medieval (or antiquity if its spicy, napoleonic if its daring) settings. So you just have 40 strong mages in your army but on the battlefield its still the popular conception of how battles worked back then. Most settings wiggle around the fact that that would be horribly dysfunctional given the fact that fireball or lighting storm would wreak havoc if introduced on a battlefield not adapted to them.

Now you can work around that by making sure mages stay out of war for cultural reasons or by making defensive magic way stronger so you can just counter-spell the enemy magic artillery away. You can also do magetech stuff where you recreate the modern battlefield but with wands instead of assault rifles.

But that is all boring. Lets plunge into the deep end and consider how societies limited to broadly late medieval tech (plate armor etc.) would deal with that degree of magic.

That degree of magic meaning that magical shields only really work well for a single person and don't scale well at all. Mages have their usual destruction and utility stuff (think DnD without the truly reality breaking stuff like similacrum loops). Magical artificats are hard to produce and generally limited to leaders or champions.

My thoughts are:

- The degree of concentrated firepower mages could bring to the table in a pitched battle mean those would be mass casualty events. Societies would be ill equipped to handle those and conventional military would probably be to heavily focus on raids and asymmetric warfare.

- A large pitched battle where every side fully commits would probably be a very rare event thag changes the trajectory of whole regions.

- Close formation warfare is probably dead. Necessitating highly trained soldiers that might coordinate their lose formations with flags and acustic signals.

- The trench (and other field fortifications) would probably make an early and very forceful entry.

 

[DanBaque]

Have you read Eragon and seen how they deal with magic and large-scale battles?

 

[Anchises]

Have you read Eragon and seen how they deal with magic and large-scale battles?

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I might have ages ago but I don't think so and I certainly can't remember if I did.

 

[DanBaque]

I might have ages ago but I don't think so and I certainly can't remember if I did.

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SPOILER ALERT:




In eragon trained mages can kill nonmagical people essentially effortlessly just by giving death commands, ie 'cause aneurysm' 'break spine' etcetera because the cost of magic is directly related to the physical energy required to carry it out. Large scale battles still happen because organised states have enough access to mages to have them cast wards, that is, to put a bit of their magic towards protecting hundreds of soldiers from the least costly magical killing methods.

As such in battles the soldiers focus on killing each other while mages in the midst try to figure out loopholes in the magic protections or find the enemy mage and engage in a duel with them.

There's more to it but this is simplified.

 

[Anchises]

SPOILER ALERT:




In eragon trained mages can kill nonmagical people essentially effortlessly just by giving death commands, ie 'cause aneurysm' 'break spine' etcetera because the cost of magic is directly related to the physical energy required to carry it out. Large scale battles still happen because organised states have enough access to mages to have them cast wards, that is, to put a bit of their magic towards protecting hundreds of soldiers from the least costly magical killing methods.

As such in battles the soldiers focus on killing each other while mages in the midst try to figure out loopholes in the magic protections or find the enemy mage and engage in a duel with them.

There's more to it but this is simplified.

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Real testicular torsion magic vibes. Sounds interesting though I am not sure I could stomach reading Eragon its very YA right?

But I don't like the magical protection thing. Rock, paper, scissors with mages where they essentially negate the other side's mages can be interesting but for the purposes of this brainstorms its cooler to think about how to deal with the fireballer if you can't just counter-spell him.

 

[DanBaque]

Real testicular torsion magic vibes. Sounds interesting though I am not sure I could stomach reading Eragon its very YA right?

But I don't like the magical protection thing. Rock, paper, scissors with mages where they essentially negate the other side's mages can be interesting but for the purposes of this brainstorms its cooler to think about how to deal with the fireballer if you can't just counter-spell him.

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Eragon is YA written by YA so it's got a kind of cute aura and it does some imaginative stuff within a tropey framework. In the setting the question of how do you deal with fireballs etc without magic is... You don't and just die.

Other settings... There's small tantalising hints of it in TES but it isn't really described aside from a few cases such as the altmeri rebellion over a dark elf lady.

There's also Warhammer of course, and the Elenium and Tamuli partially dealt with similar things.

 

[Kadmus]

You're going to end up with a much more decentralised army than was typical for the time period, with a lot more power and initiative vested in lower officers; you're also going to have a much more dispersed army. You're essentially dealing with massed artillery here, so defences against massed artillery are going to be the name of the game. Trenches, dispersed troops, the lot.

Depending on how quickly mages can cast, you'll also likely determine the entire battle - if not the war - with a cavalry charge or some kind of ambush trying to get in close enough to massacre the enemy's mages.

You might instead end up with a situation where the mages spend all their time fighting one another, because the first mage force to die/flee is the side that loses. Sure, John could fling fireballs around and burn a shitload of troops, but if Frank over on the other side is chain lightning-ing John and his fellow mages, that's a cost Frank's side will be happy to pay.

And of course, if the magical artifacts are good enough you might just have small 'mage-killer' squads that are loaded to the gills with magical kit, whose only job is to get to and destroy the enemy mages. Something like a party, of adventurers perhaps; they might even go into dungeons and fight dragons in their off-time. (D&D parties are already fantasy SEAL Team 6/SAS)

 

[Acolyte]

You just get armies of summons and or crafted super humans, a fireball isn't doing shit to a iron golem.

Look at the age of wonders for ideas.

 

[Silent Optics]

On a more macro scale, if a good battle wizardry tradition requires a system of intensive education and a sufficient population base to draw talent from, then centralised, urbanised states would benefit much more than, say, steppe nomads. If horse archers lose to battle wizards every time then nomadic expansions like the Mongols aren't going to get off the ground.

 

[TreeFrogSoup]

My thoughts are:

- The degree of concentrated firepower mages could bring to the table in a pitched battle mean those would be mass casualty events. Societies would be ill equipped to handle those and conventional military would probably be to heavily focus on raids and asymmetric warfare.

- A large pitched battle where every side fully commits would probably be a very rare event thag changes the trajectory of whole regions.

- Close formation warfare is probably dead. Necessitating highly trained soldiers that might coordinate their lose formations with flags and acustic signals.

- The trench (and other field fortifications) would probably make an early and very forceful entry.

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A Practical Guide to Evil is a work that deals with this often, for the most part due to how so much of it is basally "Sharpe but powered by fantasy-adventure logic", and as such, a lot of the large scale combat in the story is not just extensive use of mages in all sorts of armies, but different specialisations, too.

 

[Eliar]

Dunno about actual battlefield stuff but the shadow wars would be absolutely insane.

Ops targeted at mage loved ones, intense propaganda and culural efforts to produce antimagic fanatics , you name it.

In a setting where mages are poised to kill a whole lot of people they would either be rulers because I got magic so fuck you or pariahs because magic is obviously the work of the devil since its utilized for killing en mass etc etc.

The introduction of high magic would have drastic consenquences on and off the battlefield.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Sieges.

Medieval warfare tended to see-saw between raids and sieges, with pitched battles being rare. So how do mages do against castles? Can they simply demolish castles on their lonesome, which completely upends the standard dynamics, or can protections be put on castles to make them as much of a pain in the ass to a battlemage as they are to regular armies?

 

[Entropy Judge]

that degree of magic.

That degree of magic meaning that magical shields only really work well for a single person and don't scale well at all. Mages have their usual destruction and utility stuff (think DnD without the truly reality breaking stuff like similacrum loops). Magical artificats are hard to produce and generally limited to leaders or champions.

My thoughts are:

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Who casts magic, how do they cast magic, and what do they need to cast magic?

Do some people just luck into being able to cast village-ending fireballs until they get tired? Do they need training and knowledge to do Vancian/D&D-style casting? Do they use/distort natural phenomena to create related effects (IE, "it's daylight out, that means there's a ball of fire in the sky, that means I can use Big Fire against that army; if it were night and I only had a torch, I'd have to use Little Fire against individual soldiers.")?

Or, like, the lady who has to sing what she wants the world to do right then might not be able to do preparatory magic - and has a significant weakness to anything that hinders her ability to speak - but has amazing versatility as long as she can figure out how to sing what she wants to happen well enough. The guy who has to write down runes or a story that only take effect after a period of time to do magic doesn't have anywhere near the immediate versatility, but probably has much greater fine control over generated effects.

How magic is created and activated plays a huge part in how it's used and countered, along with the usual suspects of average magic-user strength and number of magic-users in general.

(When I have more time, I'll check the Death Gate Cycle appendices to see if they talk about Sartan/Patryn warfare; I think they go a little bit into it in one of the appendices, but it might just be about dueling.)

 

[UponALotusBlosom]

If you want a book recommendation on the subject I have vague memories of Mercedes Lackey's first book in The Dragon Prophecy duopoly that tackles this explicit problem but— like very vague memories I had to spend 15 minutes searching for it based on a description of what I remembered. What it boils down to in this universe however is the weaponization of magic eventually leave the princelings with the choice of having mages duke it out with their special forest power batteries directly or engage in more traditional forms of mounted knightly combat and then heal the grievously wounded after. And of course it's not a clean choice because devote nothing to your defenses against magic and you're going to have a very bad day.

Oh also one woman's journey from prophesied orphan who will end the world to high-king and some other unimportant plot stuff like preparing the world for the apocalyptic fight against the darkness.

 

[Anchises]

You're going to end up with a much more decentralised army than was typical for the time period, with a lot more power and initiative vested in lower officers; you're also going to have a much more dispersed army. You're essentially dealing with massed artillery here, so defences against massed artillery are going to be the name of the game. Trenches, dispersed troops, the lot.

Depending on how quickly mages can cast, you'll also likely determine the entire battle - if not the war - with a cavalry charge or some kind of ambush trying to get in close enough to massacre the enemy's mages.

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Oh for sure but the catch here is that a medieval-ish society doesn't have the communication methods of later armies. Ofc magic might mitigate that and indeed it might be one of the crucial battlefield functions of magic besides firepower.

And training and maintaining an army that allows for initiative by lower officers and small units operating relatively independent will be a serious challenge. That would require a standing army that drills regularly. And independent officers would have political ramifications too.

On a more macro scale, if a good battle wizardry tradition requires a system of intensive education and a sufficient population base to draw talent from, then centralised, urbanised states would benefit much more than, say, steppe nomads. If horse archers lose to battle wizards every time then nomadic expansions like the Mongols aren't going to get off the ground.

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That's an interesting point. It would surely shift the calculus of military power. Though I would expect that polities would try to compensate as much as they could. Perhaps different traditions for social elites valuing education etc.

Ofc population density and other factors would put a hard cap on how much you compensate. Mass education for example would be a pill few would be willing to swallow.

Dunno about actual battlefield stuff but the shadow wars would be absolutely insane.

Ops targeted at mage loved ones, intense propaganda and culural efforts to produce antimagic fanatics , you name it.

In a setting where mages are poised to kill a whole lot of people they would either be rulers because I got magic so fuck you or pariahs because magic is obviously the work of the devil since its utilized for killing en mass etc etc.

The introduction of high magic would have drastic consenquences on and off the battlefield.

Click to shrink...

The political implications are crazy. I assume magocratic systems wouldn't be rare and even in systems that aren't outright magocratic the danger of concentrating magical power and making it aware of its military utility would threaten political stability.

Perhaps military evolution would be stunted by muggle elites having to carefully weigh the domestic risk of magical takeover with battlefield effectiveness.

Sieges.

Medieval warfare tended to see-saw between raids and sieges, with pitched battles being rare. So how do mages do against castles? Can they simply demolish castles on their lonesome, which completely upends the standard dynamics, or can protections be put on castles to make them as much of a pain in the ass to a battlemage as they are to regular armies?

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Good question I think it would certainly be more novel if castles are actually relatively helpless against massed battlefield magic.

So without the ability to construct a backbone of reliable fortifications things would really change and we would see an even biger emphasis of more devastating raids that are harder to defend against.

Also the art of constructing fortifications would drastically change. Away from imposing fortresses to the field fortifications we are more used to today.

 

[Exmorri]

There's a great many factors that go into picking formation density, so I must simplify some:

1) A loose formation outmaneuvers a tight formation.
2) A tight formation beats a loose formation in a fight.
3) The tighter the formation you want, the more training and drill your soldiers need.
4) Artillery has effectiveness proportional to enemy formation density.

To a first approximation, fireballing mages are artillery and so they add importance to rule 4. "Mass casualty events" sounds a bit overstated unless you were thinking of something much bigger than fireball. A fireball from D&D 3e hits about 160 people in the maximally tight formation that D&D supports (one guy every battlemap square), 40 people if they're loose formation with an empty square between them. The weirdly shaped fireball from D&D 5e is down to 120/30.
This doesn't kill off close formations entirely, it just shifts the balance in much the same way artillery did. Point #2 is still important: the tighter formation has more DPS (Damage Per Square) and better morale. A general who loses an entire tightly-packed cohort to a fireball while his 4 other tightly-packed cohorts beat 4 loosely-packed enemy cohorts is still winning.

Armies tended to move looser than they fought (see points #1 and #2) so the tight formations mostly happened in conditions where a fireball would risk hitting allies, they're not consistently getting 160 enemies unless the enemies are showing off their more-than-one-guy-per-square formation. It's physically possible to stand tighter than D&D's battlemaps, but it makes it increasingly hard to move, turn, or do anything without jostling the guys carrying around big spears and big shields on every side.

Once mages have lowered the equilibrium of formation density, that means the value of training is also lowered somewhat. You'd probably see more peasants, mercenaries, cheap recruits and swarm tactics of various sorts. Some of these would be for everyone to simply outnumber an enemy or for baiting fireballs at low-value units. States that have magical supremacy would probably use even more swarm tactics: If the enemy can't use tight formations, gang up on them.

Depending on a lot of specific numbers for magical artifacts on the champions you mention, there might also be a bifurcation of armies, moving away from mid-range professionals and towards a combination of easy-to-replace masses with hard-to-fireball champions.

Next up, how much range are you imagining on these mages? Because the D&D fireball has a range measured in hundreds of feet, while good bows have a range measured in hundreds of yards. A mage who casts a fireball within 200 feet of a battle is a mage who is about to be a priority target for 200 arrows. Fireball is not subtle. (Spell ranges in 3e are often 100ft base + 10ft per level, 5e standardized a bunch to 150ft.) The archers may be inaccurate at that range, but they can make up for it with volume of fire.

Fireball is a relatively good case since it can be thrown that far, a lot of the other D&D spells advertised as army-killers are even shorter range than that. The mage ranges are going to be important here.

A lot of historical warfare revolved around specific countermeasures, and magical warfare is likely to be no different. There's concentrating archers on the mage, and there's magical countermeasures.

The scry-and-die tactic popularized by D&D, for example, is a surprisingly bad idea in D&D (at least 3e, the most mechanically detailed and optimized edition) because D&D also has the Greater Anticipate Scrying spell. It lasts 24 hours, so a cautious wizard will cast it every day and have it up continuously, and it gives the wizard 3 rounds warning of anyone attempting to teleport to his vicinity, where they're going to arrive, and how many they are.

Warned Wizard: *Cloudkill, Firewall, Forcecage*

The scry-teleport team now arrives burning to death in an unbreakable box full of poison gas that wasn't there when they scried. This is a very bad situation.

So, specifics. Depends a lot on specifics.

 

[Anchises]

There's a great many factors that go into picking formation density, so I must simplify some:

1) A loose formation outmaneuvers a tight formation.
2) A tight formation beats a loose formation in a fight.
3) The tighter the formation you want, the more training and drill your soldiers need.
4) Artillery has effectiveness proportional to enemy formation density.

To a first approximation, fireballing mages are artillery and so they add importance to rule 4. "Mass casualty events" sounds a bit overstated unless you were thinking of something much bigger than fireball. A fireball from D&D 3e hits about 160 people in the maximally tight formation that D&D supports (one guy every battlemap square), 40 people if they're loose formation with an empty square between them. The weirdly shaped fireball from D&D 5e is down to 120/30.
This doesn't kill off close formations entirely, it just shifts the balance in much the same way artillery did. Point #2 is still important: the tighter formation has more DPS (Damage Per Square) and better morale. A general who loses an entire tightly-packed cohort to a fireball while his 4 other tightly-packed cohorts beat 4 loosely-packed enemy cohorts is still winning.

Armies tended to move looser than they fought (see points #1 and #2) so the tight formations mostly happened in conditions where a fireball would risk hitting allies, they're not consistently getting 160 enemies unless the enemies are showing off their more-than-one-guy-per-square formation. It's physically possible to stand tighter than D&D's battlemaps, but it makes it increasingly hard to move, turn, or do anything without jostling the guys carrying around big spears and big shields on every side.

Once mages have lowered the equilibrium of formation density, that means the value of training is also lowered somewhat. You'd probably see more peasants, mercenaries, cheap recruits and swarm tactics of various sorts. Some of these would be for everyone to simply outnumber an enemy or for baiting fireballs at low-value units. States that have magical supremacy would probably use even more swarm tactics: If the enemy can't use tight formations, gang up on them.

Depending on a lot of specific numbers for magical artifacts on the champions you mention, there might also be a bifurcation of armies, moving away from mid-range professionals and towards a combination of easy-to-replace masses with hard-to-fireball champions.

Next up, how much range are you imagining on these mages? Because the D&D fireball has a range measured in hundreds of feet, while good bows have a range measured in hundreds of yards. A mage who casts a fireball within 200 feet of a battle is a mage who is about to be a priority target for 200 arrows. Fireball is not subtle. (Spell ranges in 3e are often 100ft base + 10ft per level, 5e standardized a bunch to 150ft.) The archers may be inaccurate at that range, but they can make up for it with volume of fire.

Fireball is a relatively good case since it can be thrown that far, a lot of the other D&D spells advertised as army-killers are even shorter range than that. The mage ranges are going to be important here.

A lot of historical warfare revolved around specific countermeasures, and magical warfare is likely to be no different. There's concentrating archers on the mage, and there's magical countermeasures.

The scry-and-die tactic popularized by D&D, for example, is a surprisingly bad idea in D&D (at least 3e, the most mechanically detailed and optimized edition) because D&D also has the Greater Anticipate Scrying spell. It lasts 24 hours, so a cautious wizard will cast it every day and have it up continuously, and it gives the wizard 3 rounds warning of anyone attempting to teleport to his vicinity, where they're going to arrive, and how many they are.

Warned Wizard: *Cloudkill, Firewall, Forcecage*

The scry-teleport team now arrives burning to death in an unbreakable box full of poison gas that wasn't there when they scried. This is a very bad situation.

So, specifics. Depends a lot on specifics.

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I mean tbc I'm talking more the general shape of magic is DnD and not the world specifically runs on DnD assumptions. I assume the DnD rules are RPG rules meant to make small adventurer fights enjoyable and trying to simulate a whole world on them tends to produce goofy results imo.

To introduce some specifics:

- To make it easy range of magic is generally limited by sight. A mage can hit what they see but naturally the aim gets worse for greater distances and attacking further away is more energy intensive (higher spell slot or however you would express it metaphysically in world).

- There are "battlefield" versions of spells that are optimized for area of effect.

 

[Exmorri]

I mean tbc I'm talking more the general shape of magic is DnD and not the world specifically runs on DnD assumptions. I assume the DnD rules are RPG rules meant to make small adventurer fights enjoyable and trying to simulate a whole world on them tends to produce goofy results imo.

To introduce some specifics:

- To make it easy range of magic is generally limited by sight. A mage can hit what they see but naturally the aim gets worse for greater distances and attacking further away is more energy intensive (higher spell slot or however you would express it metaphysically in world).

- There are "battlefield" versions of spells that are optimized for area of effect.

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I wasn't trying to simulate a whole world on DnD either, I was using fireball as a benchmark for specifics because you brought up fireball and the specifics are relevant. Saying "optimized for area of effect" could mean a lot of different things from double-size fireball to tactical nuke, so I repeat: it depends a lot on specifics.

Another specific thing that the setting will depend a lot on: what does the training regimen and support structure look like for a mage?

If it's expensive and technical enough to empower a tactical-nuke mage, the setting might end up with something like nuclear power deterrence. States with sufficiently strong mages are the world powers and give occasional demonstrations to remind everyone else to stay in line, denying magical nuke proliferation to everyone outside of the Magical UN Security Council.

Do mages have an upkeep? Do they get rusty with time? Do they need to eat ambrosia and snort mana crystals to keep their powers? What are their limitations and tools, what do they need from non-mages? Can "the spark" of magic be found or induced in any way other than luck?

If mages are sufficiently powerful and need little in the way of support, an all-magocracy world starts to be a plausible outcome. Some places might have nominal kings or elections, but the elections will de facto be advisory to the mage.

Past that again, mages might cease to care entirely if they require very little or no support. Mages interact with other mages as peers, everyone else tries not to get stomped by magical kaiju.

Tangent about what sort of other colorful specifics might happen:
D&D popularized "Vancian magic", but it's a far cry from Jack Vance's books that inspired it. I've read Vance's fantasy books and in half of those books the mages are not wielding D&D-like innate power, they're contracting with and commanding nonhumans (call them spirits, demons, gods, aliens, whatever) do to the thing for them. Magic sometimes means having a funny goblin sidekick who backtalks the mage and complains about being overworked when he's asked to sit in the ocean for millennia. (The reason for this is that a mage lost something in the ocean and told his goblin: "Sit here and mark the spot", then time-traveled millennia ahead to when sea levels are lower and he could get the thing from the dried seabed. Vance's wizards are very much INFINITE COSMIC POWER, ITTY-BITTY COMMON SENSE.)

 

[Dark as Silver]

I think you could create a huge variety of answers based on the specifics of the high magic setting in question.

How common are mages who are capable of artillery type spells? If they're rare enough then you could end up with pretty traditional warfare among small states who all dread getting into a fight with a neighbouring sorcerer king.
Can enchanted equipment provide an equalising force? Either via being mass producible or by brining
How does counter magic and defensive magic function? The scry and die meta was effectively created because there was a pretty significant divide between the offensive options available to the adventuring parties and the defensive options that were available to the GM.
Are people in this setting baseline humans or can they be superhumans? Related, are there weaponizable war beasts/monsters? Elder Scrolls - Everyone is Superhuman Lets face it as much as great magicians are a trope of High Fantasy, ordinary people who kill dragons are pretty common as well.

Have you read Eragon and seen how they deal with magic and large-scale battles?

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Related and I don't think anyones mentioned this yet from the Age of Five series: A single one person nuke mage might be able to crush any army that opposes them but they probably can't actually police that territory that they conquered, they just can't be physically present in enough different places. So they do need to bring an army with them to do that, and the defender also wants to bring an army so that incase they lose so that they can kill as many of the occupying force as possible.
There might be other ways this could go if the mage was a necromancer for example, but its a worthwhile thought that often conquering land is the easy part, keeping it requires a different set of abilities.

 

[htgriffin]

In a setting where mages are poised to kill a whole lot of people they would either be rulers because I got magic so fuck you or pariahs because magic is obviously the work of the devil since its utilized for killing en mass etc etc.

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The former? Perhaps (depending on the degree of study needed to stay on the cutting edge, there is likely considerable motivation for magicians to let someone else to the irritating minutiae so long as they are let alone). The latter? With serious measurable large-scale magic well past "Made my cow sick" levels? Any polity/organization that does will suffer as the wizards run to less dogmatic competitors.

 

[Skyspear]

Regardless of the specifics of battlefield magic, the existence of wizards means generals want assassins. If your army has wizards on the battlefield and theirs doesn't, you have much better chances of winning, etc. The need for assassins and the evolving defenses against them means generals now want a wide array of scoundrels with strange and lethal talents, which is a very good way to justify your cool protagonist.

 

[Entropy Judge]

(When I have more time, I'll check the Death Gate Cycle appendices to see if they talk about Sartan/Patryn warfare; I think they go a little bit into it in one of the appendices, but it might just be about dueling.)

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Yeah, pretty much just on duels - although the off-hand mention of public duels being restrained because 'you didn't want to accidentally electrocute half the audience' in a large amphitheater gives a sense of scale. There are other places where magic gets used in warfare: controlling animals, animating constructs, subtle-to-blatant mind control. But the only other sort-of-example of the really powerful magic-users getting their warfare on is semi-speculation on a magic weapon that was apparently to be turned out in job lots to arm non-mages so they could mob-rush opposing wizards. Said weapons had (relatively) limited magical abilities to protect the wielder, prevent the enemy from protecting themself, and harm the enemy.

 

[ScorpioSting]

Nation-state that focuses on scrying and divination magic so they literally only pick fights they know they'll win because of precognition.

 

[Anchises]

How common are mages who are capable of artillery type spells? If they're rare enough then you could end up with pretty traditional warfare among small states who all dread getting into a fight with a neighbouring sorcerer king.

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Well everyone is theoretically capable of using magic but for the vast majority of people the talent isn't there. They can learn a few cantrips maybe but don't have the juice to master very complex higher spellcasting.

Between 1-2% have the right mix of magical aptitude, willpower and intellect to throw around heavy duty artillery level spells. However social hierarchies and inefficiecies means not all of those 1-2% actually become mages.

Elves are a different case cause they are literally built for magic and for them its more 15%.

Can enchanted equipment provide an equalising force? Either via being mass producible or by brining
How does counter magic and defensive magic function? The scry and die meta was effectively created because there was a pretty significant divide between the offensive options available to the adventuring parties and the defensive options that were available to the GM.

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Mass enchanting isn't viable at best you can equip small strike teams.

Magic heavily leans offensive beyond the personal level. A mage can cover their ass with a strong shield but that shield doesn't scale.

Are people in this setting baseline humans or can they be superhumans? Related, are there weaponizable war beasts/monsters? Elder Scrolls - Everyone is Superhuman Lets face it as much as great magicians are a trope of High Fantasy, ordinary people who kill dragons are pretty common as well.

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The classical EDO fantasy races exist but are the result of magical transhumanism. They are "better" in some disciplines (orcs are stronger than baseline humans and have more endurance) but those advantages usually come with disadvantages.

Otherwise its uh "normal" humans and fantasy species. Unlike DnD you can't take a fireball to the face and be fine.

Nation-state that focuses on scrying and divination magic so they literally only pick fights they know they'll win because of precognition.

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Tbf if both sides can scry and divine the future you probably land in a feedback loop where your magic spits out endless result.

 

[Dark as Silver]

Well everyone is theoretically capable of using magic but for the vast majority of people the talent isn't there. They can learn a few cantrips maybe but don't have the juice to master very complex higher spellcasting.

Between 1-2% have the right mix of magical aptitude, willpower and intellect to throw around heavy duty artillery level spells. However social hierarchies and inefficiecies means not all of those 1-2% actually become mages.

Elves are a different case cause they are literally built for magic and for them its more 15%.



Mass enchanting isn't viable at best you can equip small strike teams.

Magic heavily leans offensive beyond the personal level. A mage can cover their ass with a strong shield but that shield doesn't scale.


The classical EDO fantasy races exist but are the result of magical transhumanism. They are "better" in some disciplines (orcs are stronger than baseline humans and have more endurance) but those advantages usually come with disadvantages.

Otherwise its uh "normal" humans and fantasy species. Unlike DnD you can't take a fireball to the face and be fine.


Tbf if both sides can scry and divine the future you probably land in a feedback loop where your magic spits out endless result.

Click to shrink...

If cantrips are widely taught we might be focusing too much on the 1%.
1 Archmage probably can't counterspell 100 peasants with firebolt.
The limiting factor of archery has typically always been the difficulty of maintaining the widescale training to field them, depending on the difficulty of this we could be seeing something like pike and shot formations when they're most common, and acting as an additional auxilery when they're least.
This could put a lot emphasis on the more capable mages using silence, or darkness effects to try and stop the cantrip gang from mass casting while their own minions shoot the enemy rather than casting fireball and such themselves. This also leaves more room for archers who can't be silenced to try and shoot the mages casting area control spells.


Depending on how much offense scales above defense you might actually stop the development of higher magic and large scale warfare.
If your best answer to "How do I stop some guy from Ebenezar McCoy from Tunguska-ing me?" is obsfucation by hiding your wizard tower, it becomes very dangerous to teach a lot of people from your wizard tower, who could spill the beans. It becomes dangerous to have large capital cities or centralised power.
And if you can't teach a lot of people, or all gather in big groups, how do you research when collaboration is an inherent danger? How do you develop magic?