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Theocracy vs. Magocracy: who would win?

... After dozens or hundred of years with only some minor conflicts, a terrifying new empire appears- a technocracy race arrived from outer space, their highly cybered and heavy armored troups fighting with weapons of incredible firepower, devastating the major city with a nuclear bomb.
Only short after establishing some new strongholds, a further group entered the "battle field" - a psiocracy ...

:)
 
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Imperialus

Explorer
Eldar-Basilisk: Only problem I have with your theory is how you feel that the clergy would be able to control their very angry pesants after the assasination of their leaders. I mean just about anyone can claim to be a prophet and usually get massive numbers of people to follow them very quickly. I mean look at Peter the Hermet during the second crusade. His troops, if you could call them that were compleately unequiped, unsupplied and nearly every one of them died before they even got to the holy land.
 

Elder-Basilisk

First Post
Well, that's a reasonable point. There are some counter-points to be made though.

First, the medieval Catholic church was not a theocracy and did not directly control or command most of the crusader armies. The crusades were put together in a rather chaotic fashion--multiple armies following national or charismatic leaders rather than a unified body from a single nation-state. As far as I know, although the church offered a plenary indulgence to crusaders, and officially encouraged crusading monarchs, they didn't actively organize the crusaders or provide a unified command structure. Consequently, I would expect a lawful theocracy to organize and command any armies they raised. That seems like quite a different situation to me.

My description was more based on America's response to Pearl Harbor. The story was somewhat different as I described it but shared many aspects--particularly the upsurge in popular support which was followed by a very methodical island hopping campaign that gained in power as the war industry cranked up into full gear.

I suppose that my example presupposes a very lawful group which has enough depth in its organizational structure to sustain itself after the loss of its head (as opposed to a more loosely structured chaotic group--those usually disintegrate if their leader is removed). Greyhawk's Theocracy of the Pale would probably fit this model. Afghanistan's Taliban obviously doesn't.
Imperialus said:
Eldar-Basilisk: Only problem I have with your theory is how you feel that the clergy would be able to control their very angry pesants after the assasination of their leaders. I mean just about anyone can claim to be a prophet and usually get massive numbers of people to follow them very quickly. I mean look at Peter the Hermet during the second crusade. His troops, if you could call them that were compleately unequiped, unsupplied and nearly every one of them died before they even got to the holy land.
 


Imperialus

Explorer
Someguy said:
Theocracy...

Ok...you killed my leader....time for True RES!

There are ways around that... The assasin could just bundle the body into a portable hole and take it back to either be used as a trophy or thrown into another dimention. Plus you have to ask yourself, even in a theocracy how many clerics will be capable of casting a 9th level spell? I'm assumeing only members of the inner circle and they would be the ones assasinated.

As for Elders argument I think you may be underestimateing the powers that prophets hold over a religious society. I mean no one can argue that the Vatican is or ever was anything but highly organized, still however they were unable to control the disorganized mess that was the crusades. It does of course depend on the nature of the religion, if pesant prophets are non exsistant for example then that solve a lot of problems, but I'm baseing my assumtions off of a Judeo Christian religion where the entire foundation of the faith rests on the actions of a pesant prophet. Also with Pearl Harbor it was very difficult for your average American farmboy to get up and walk to Japan with a couple of buddies to wage war with their farming tools. They had to do things the goverenments way just to get there. If these two nations are boardering each other it would be much easier for mobs to cross from one border to the next.

Of course it also depends on the overall ignorance of the society, how much the pesants are kept in the dark as to what is really going on and the organizational structure of the church itself. It would be very easy for the war to go either way and it will ultimately boil down to DM bias, but that's how I'd run such a plot in my campaign.
 

Elder-Basilisk

First Post
Imperialus said:
There are ways around that... The assasin could just bundle the body into a portable hole and take it back to either be used as a trophy or thrown into another dimention. Plus you have to ask yourself, even in a theocracy how many clerics will be capable of casting a 9th level spell? I'm assumeing only members of the inner circle and they would be the ones assasinated.

This is a good point and it goes for a Mageocracy as well. At least one poster has assumed that the Mageocracy is chock full of level 20+ wizards with staffs of power. (Or staffs of the Magi--either way, staffs capable of a retributive strike). My example assumes that level 3 to 7 clerics and wizards make up the bulk of the magical forces on both sides with the inner circle being level 11 to 16 and the leaders (the theocrat and the Dread Sorceror-King) being level 17 to 20. This dramatically influences the result as well.

As for the true res, that's what imprisonment and soul bind are for. . . .


As for Elders argument I think you may be underestimateing the powers that prophets hold over a religious society. I mean no one can argue that the Vatican is or ever was anything but highly organized, still however they were unable to control the disorganized mess that was the crusades. It does of course depend on the nature of the religion, if pesant prophets are non exsistant for example then that solve a lot of problems, but I'm baseing my assumtions off of a Judeo Christian religion where the entire foundation of the faith rests on the actions of a pesant prophet. Also with Pearl Harbor it was very difficult for your average American farmboy to get up and walk to Japan with a couple of buddies to wage war with their farming tools. They had to do things the goverenments way just to get there. If these two nations are boardering each other it would be much easier for mobs to cross from one border to the next.

The difference between the Vatican's lack of the ability to organize the crusades and the theoretical Theocracy's ability to organize their war effort is the difference between absolute secular power and a (partial) separation of church and state. One of the largest sources of disunity in the crusades was the squabbles between the various monarchs who commanded their armies. Had the Vatican actually levied and organized all of the crusader armies, things would have been quite different.

I don't think I'm underestimating the power of a prophet. Jesus and Moses are well known and dramatic prophets (and, in the case of Jesus, I believe significantly more) but there have been many prophets (real and so-called) who came and went without leaving a large mark on the world. Jesus was not the first to claim to be the Messiah, nor was he the last. Most of the would-be messiahs made their claims and died without history making much note of their passing. Jesus and one other (I believe it was Simon Bar-Kobba) made a difference to world history, the rest perished in insignificance. Similarly, the later history of the world is replete with prophets who gained some following but not enough to make a difference. Today, church historians remember Montanus, George Wishart, and William Branham, but most of the world knows only Joseph Smith, John Knox, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

I think that, in that light, the likelihood of an effective "prophet" arising at precisely the wrong point in time for the theocracy is quite slight.

As to the distance factor, it's interesting that Peter the Hermits' crusaders had to face hurdles that were almost as difficult to overcome as it would have been for American farm boys to attack Japan without government assistance in 1939. After all, crossing Europe and the Mediteranean with medieval technology is a pretty daunting task for people without any organized assistance from the society's power structures. I suspect that the difference between the two situations is that Peter the Hermit's crusaders were not offered assistance in going to war by their governments but the Americans in 1939 were. As this would apply to the theocracy, I would expect the theocracy to co-opt such prophets as recruiters for their armies rather than simply allow them to roam the countryside stirring up trouble. The prophets in question would probably agree--after all, the theocracy would be doing what they wanted to do: avenge the death of the theocrat.
 

Imperialus

Explorer
Ok, perhaps Peter the Hermet wasn't the best example, but what about Joan of Ark? She managed to absolutely flabbergast commanders on both sides of the conflict through her compleate lack of tactics. The only differance between her and Peter the Hermet is she won, at least for a while.

As for the church not controling the ruleing powers, it's simply not true. There was a saying, "Who do you fear most, the Pope or your King? The pope. After all the king can put you in jail or kill you but the pope can even send the king to hell." The church was far more directly involved than most people think. No one did anything without the churches say so, at least untill the invention of prodestentisem. Anyhow I'd love to argue more but it's late. I gotta crash.

*edit* As for the distance thing. That's why so many of the crusaders died before reaching the holy land. It was a mostly overland journy and it was a very popular pilgramage to begin with so it would not be impossible to make the journy. You'll notice that in the later crusades even the third most the crusaders arrived by boat. This cut down a great deal on the fanatical mobs that plauged the first two. It also allowed them to avoid the Hungarians and Austrians who were massicared in the first two.
 
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Darklone

Registered User
Uh...

Imperialus said:
Ok, perhaps Peter the Hermet wasn't the best example, but what about Joan of Ark? She managed to absolutely flabbergast commanders on both sides of the conflict through her compleate lack of tactics. The only differance between her and Peter the Hermet is she won, at least for a while.

Uhhh...Flabbergasting idiots who don't use intelligence but military traditions to fight each other "honourably"... That's not very tough. Guess why the huns were so effective? Cause they didn't care about asking the enemy commander politely before attacking the hostile camp at night.

As for the war: I slowly tend towards the theocracy. Considering most wizards or clerics on each side are 3-7th level and no real big artefacts are around (or neutralizing each other) I don't think you can control a country better with magic than with faith. And the control is what gives you good logistics and logistics win a war. Sure, you can say, the mages build undeads and that's how they keep their logistics going... But some single clerics could disturb those undeads a lot.

It all depends if you consider some FR setting or rather low magic or low level.

In FR: It does not matter. Neither side will effectively gain anything. Look at Manshoon or Elminster or all the other 30+ lvl liches sitting at each corner there. No need to attack anyone, you can't defeat him anyways.

In low level settings: wizards and clerics will be useful in battles but not important enough to win the war. How many guys do you get for one wand of fireball between? It's expensive. And you can not always assume that you can buy the ingredients. Buying armour and weapons for the same cash was scarcely a problem.

And good commanders prevent magical attacks from destroying their forces at once.
 

Humanophile

First Post
I've gotta say the theocracy, and that's even giving the magiocracy several sizeable advantages.

First, I'll say that the magiocracy has wizards and sorcerers in addition to fighting grunts, while the magiocracy has just clerics and grunts. If you want to include paladins, they'll be effectively grunts with a bit of clerical training, and mages can raise effectively the same thing (granted, at lower power level, but for the sake of discussion the mages are not going to be evil, and the paladin special abilities won't be as useful.)

Were the magiocratic forces to use a completely underhanded move like sneak in, teleport to kill the higher up clerics and bind their souls, that'd be a victory, but that's not really an open fight. And if they just killed the inner circle of clerics, even if they ditched the bodies in the depths of the abyss, odds are at least one of the high level muckety mucks would have a scroll of True Ressurection on hand in case of unforseen circumstances.

But if the mages don't start with a complete upset, they're going to have a very hard time of things. They can use teleport based strikes occasionally, but the number of mages who can do that is rather small, so the guerilla forces won't be as effective as they could be. And while flying, fireballing bombers would be initially disturbingly effective, the clerical forces will likely be trained against that eventuality soon, and will be willing to put whatever resources are necessary to the task of taking out the bombers. So the theocracy will lose a goodly number of its nameless grunts, but the magiocracy will have lost a more significant investment over time. However, let's say the casualties (loss of bombers vs. loss of troops, morale, and items) balances out on a positive note for the magiocracy, and they have an advantage in both grunts and morale. (The latter both from a very large kill rate and the high Cha sorcerers heading things up.)

Now come the grunt battles, both mundane warriors and non-elite casters. (Actually, including some elite units on both sides, but the remaining mages will be stuck with tactics the clerics can at least approximate/level with.) Here's where the mages start losing massive ground. Battles on this scale in D&D tend to be all about high level folks, either killing hordes of low levels or one or two characters of equivalent level before they're spent. But while the mages have only a handful of relatively expensive ways to recover use from dead soldiers (animate dead, wish, and limited wish), injury to magiocratic soldiers is far more lasting than death to theocratic soldiers, and death takes on a much greater toll. You have to be a really big cheese before you're wished back to life (even if it does only take a limited wish), and you're SOL if they take your body. Meanwhile, raising may very well be a reward for soldier who "make the ultimate sacrifice", and it's a sure thing that the big name theocratic fighters are brought back in any way possible if they fall in battle, often being scried on so they can be true rezzed the moment they fall.

We'll assume that the clerical drive for recruits and the mages are both equally effective, maybe a little more on the mages side since they can charm the hell out of short-term recruits, polymorph them, and throw the power troops after the clerics. (Keep in mind that this will have seriously bad repurcussions on the ones who live long enough to throw off the charms, often with at least a level worth of experience to boot.) The clerics, meanwhile, will preach about the glories of martyrdom (and hint at the hope of glories with raising), use healing to keep their recruits from dying long enough for them to gain levels, and have more of a disposable population base since they can create their own food, thus subsiding on fewer farmers. (And even if we give the magiocratic forces magically enhanced delivery lines, all of them give an objective to attack. Enough low level clerics to round out a create food and water routine are much more flexible, and not too unlikely in a D&D universe.)

So you'd basically have a war of attrition against the mages, culmunating on an assult on the capital. A mage without spells is as effective as a fighter type a small fraction of their level, and a mage who doesn't use spells effectively doesn't have any, so you'll have a group of war-hardened troops send a few sorties into the city to deplete the casters (or kill them, if they take up the fool notion of saving their spells), and then you'll have some of the really big cheese clerics lead the final assult. The heavily depleted mages would obviously fall against a better stocked group of foes, and would have their options limited to surrender, flight, or trying to take down their foes in a self-destructive flash of glory (E.G: retributive strikes). Fallen higher ups will have ressurection contingencies in place, though, and probably at least one grandiose Miracle for protection, so the grand mages are likely to flee, and either become obscene level guerilla fighters, or try to rebuild their magiocratic dreams with some other group of people, far away from the current battlefields.

(Granted, that last option opens the door to a grudge match style win later, when you have a few low level suicide mages teleported into the high clergy's homes and gathering places, followed by a large number of mage lords teleporting in and claiming the place, but we're talking about one war, not the historical consequences.)
 

kolvar

First Post
I would tend to the magocracy, because of the slight advantage in teleportation and invisibility.
The mages would be better in sabotage and could undermine the faith , supplie-lines, moral etc. (and I do not even think of arcane tricksters).
In the end probably those with the better rogue/ spy-system will win in the end.
 

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