Attn everyone: Fantasy world arms race experiment!

[F5]

Been away from my e-mail too long...I missed out on most of round one.

I see the plains people splitting into two distinct groups. The followers of the Wolf-Spirit are drunk with power. They've just successfully decimated their enemies the Hill People with their beast totem, and have gained control of their tribe. Unfortunately, the Wolflord's boon is a curse as well as a blessing, and along with the strength and honor of the wolf, they have also assimilated some of the wolf's savage nature. The Wolf Sect warrior/shamans will develop more and more "combat buffs", as they continue to please thier animalistic spirit guides. Some of the most favored shamans are granted the ability to summon spirit wolves to fight for them (Summon Nature's Ally).

Meanwhile, the Plainsters's Head Witch tried to call on the Hill People's fire magic, and was spurned, and then was spurned again when the Animal Spirits granted their boon to her rival. The old Witch's few remaining loyal followers, mostly in exile from the tribe since her death, will be searching for a new source of spiritual guidance. Maybe they come to the conclusion that they're on their own, and forsake the divine in favor of the more practical. As followers of the Old Witch, they are well versed in the lore and the songs of their tribe, and find that these ancient songs have a power of their own. As the lore is passed from Elder to apprentice, the beginnings of Arcane Magic is formed.

The broken remnants of the once-proud hill-people live in small conclaves, high in the mountains or deep in caves, only venturing out when they must. Raiding parties of the Wolf Tribe continue to make life difficult for them. They continue to revere fire as a protector, and the find strength in meterial talismans (like the bone shard used to fend off the werewolf). Alone in the dark, afraid and desperate, a young shaman-in-trianing reaches out to the flame for help, his various talismans of bone and feather and bronze lying around him. And something answers...

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, we've had a lot of ideas. This thread wasn't really to see who specifically would win, but rather to get people thinking of interesting tactics in these different situations. This early scenario was really just testing the waters; in the future, I want to do more of an arms-race style idea: wizard develops fireball, military group tactics have to change to not be so close together, and then when each side has fireballs, what kind of tactics do the grunts use to be effective on the battlefield? Stuff like that.

I think the main things from this thread that I was interested in are:

• Unsurprisingly, for primitive people, magic is a great power. We took the track that these people would have only limited magic powers, and that they'd develop new powers to help them defeat different challenges. I think we should keep on that track: name a challenge facing the group, and have the spellcasters come up with magical ways to defeat it. Then we figure out how this new magic can be used as a new tactic, and how to counter the new tactic, and so on, ad infinitum. I think that will give the threads more structure, though random other ideas are always welcome.
• I was intrigued by people's thoughts on how magical power might affect politics. I think I might actually do a thread about that, and how politicians will handle things like charm spells. Suffice it to say, though, the first time you see your local shaman bust out a spell that kills three people at once (burning hands), or that causes the main defender of the enemy flee in terror (cause fear), you'll respect them and not want to piss them off. Anyway, you probably see a lot less back-stabbing in primitive tribes than you would in a culture like, say, Rome, where being in charge has great allure.
• Only one person proposed a peaceful solution. The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves for your violent tendencies!
• Magi were only really useful on the defensive (where they have lots of other people around them to keep away the sharp pointy sticks), or when they were able to enhance their allies and let other people do the fighting. No one proposed anything like sending out the shamans to directly attack the other tribe. I guess we don't really like hands-on types of magic-users.
• Surprisingly, though, I don't recall anyone specifically saying they'd go hunt down the other tribe's magic-users. I guess they didn't play too prominent a role this time, except at the end. Though yes, lycanthropy was too powerful for this early a stage. We could've allowed, oh, maybe Mage Armor (which would be impressive in its own right), but damage reduction is a bit much. However, this brings me to the next point.
• Someone asked where all the monsters are. Well, how about for the sake of these threads, we start with relatively few monsters? There are humans and dragons, and maybe giants and giant serpents, and if you have good enough magic you can summon demons and holy things. But right now let's not have trolls, or griffons, or owlbears, or whatever. Magi might create some magical creatures, and we might introduce monsters for a specific scenario, but we'll assume that there are very few actual monsters.

So this first one was a little free-form, but it gave me ideas on how to give more structure to future ones. I'll start another thread this evening, but first, how about I see what would interest you the most?

1. Imagine that we have a bronze-age style culture, with pretty good weapons, but not much metal armor; think Scorpion King or Conan movies. Magi on one side of a long-standing national conflict have learned to summon extraplanar creatures and make them do combat, though only for up to a minute at a time (for example, an Extended Summon Monster I cast at 4th level, or a normal Summon Monster II. So far there are no magical weapons. How do summonable creatures affect tactics? On the defensive, on the offensive storming a fortress, or in an open battlefield?

2. People have been using sound tricks and camoflague to distract enemies for centuries, but how do full-fledged illusion spells (anything 1st level, and all 2nd level ones except invisibility) affect combat? What kind of tricks can you do with them in war?

3. Levitation. How is it useful to large groups of mundane warriors?

4. How do we view mages? Are they powerful allies who we bring with us into battle to empower us (but we make sure they stay safe), or do we keep them at home and just hope their magic lasts long enough for battle to start? If it's the second case, how might the spell lists of D&D be changed if most magic-users were expected to stay far far away from the battlefield?

 

[Sixchan]

In order of interest:
2.
4.
1.
3.

Illusions would have a MASSIVE effect on battles, even up to the modern age, on soldiers, battlefields and larger weapons (like ships).

 

[Utrecht]

1. Imagine that we have a bronze-age style culture, with pretty good weapons, but not much metal armor; think Scorpion King or Conan movies. Magi on one side of a long-standing national conflict have learned to summon extraplanar creatures and make them do combat, though only for up to a minute at a time (for example, an Extended Summon Monster I cast at 4th level, or a normal Summon Monster II. So far there are no magical weapons. How do summonable creatures affect tactics? On the defensive, on the offensive storming a fortress, or in an open battlefield?

2. People have been using sound tricks and camoflague to distract enemies for centuries, but how do full-fledged illusion spells (anything 1st level, and all 2nd level ones except invisibility) affect combat? What kind of tricks can you do with them in war?

3. Levitation. How is it useful to large groups of mundane warriors?

4. How do we view mages? Are they powerful allies who we bring with us into battle to empower us (but we make sure they stay safe), or do we keep them at home and just hope their magic lasts long enough for battle to start? If it's the second case, how might the spell lists of D&D be changed if most magic-users were expected to stay far far away from the battlefield?

1) For the short durations that we are talking I see two primary uses for summoned monsters. The first is formation disruption. One fo the keys to anchient warfare was the ability to keep formation - most casualties occured after a formation borke - so if you could drop a couple of dire badgers into a formation a couple seconds before it makes contact - it could be devastating.

The second is as you suggested - assulting fortresses - the ability to place enemies behind a wall is a big plus

2) Two areas that I can come up with. The first is giving false "orders" to troops. Another of the large problems faced by ancient armies was command and control. Typicaly c&c was managed by a combination of semaphores and trumpets. If by using illusions you were able to send false orders, the results could be dealy. Extending this, the ability to cast darkness or silence would have equal results.

The other area that I think they have appropriatness would be in small unit skirmishes where you use illusions to draw/lure the opponent away from you or into an ambush (as the case may be)

3) The only legitimate use I see for this is seiges. Cast levitate on a squad of archers and send them up so that they can shoot down onto the wall.

4) fundamentally this is a function of how well organized the military we are talking about is. In the timeframe that we are working with, the idea of a formal military was simply not possible, the cost in food of supporting non-producing people would be to great. Typically, there would be a very small cadre of people (mages might be one of them) that would protect the ruler (another example of food overhead). These would then form the basis of any army might be called up from teh populance to fight. But remember, every body that is pulled up to fight is one that is not capable of harvesting grain.....

 

[F5]

Any or all of the above would be interesting ideas to play with. I'm less interested in levitation than in the other three, for what it's worth.

Are we going to use the results of this thread as a basis for the next, or are we going to start fresh with a new set of assumptions? It might be fun to take the results of our stone-age magic users and progress them through history. But if we did that we wouldn't have as much variety in the types of magic optons we can use, so I'd be happy either way.

 

[Tonguez]

Are we going to use the results of this thread as a basis for the next, or are we going to start fresh with a new set of assumptions? It might be fun to take the results of our stone-age magic users and progress them through history. But if we did that we wouldn't have as much variety in the types of magic optons we can use, so I'd be happy either way.

Actually I like this idea and think we could cary it through. We can introduce new elements by 'extending the map' as it were. ie the Plains-Hills conflict was a very localised event between two small 'mobs' (sort of the small village in an isolated corner of Gaul type thing)

If we were to look at the Bronze Age scenario then it could well be that the Plains-Hills people are now a single tribe who are expanding their terriotry northward (due to Wolf Tribe pressure from the south) beyond the hills and meet another group

BTW I vote for the Bronze scenario as first preference

so

1
4
2
3

 

[s/LaSH]

I vote
1
2
4
3

and second the idea of extending the initial scenario out along history. It could have some surprising results, and create a setting with a great deal more internal consistency than others. (It could also devolve into an apocalyptic shambles, but the Dark Ages were simply the last in a long line of civilisation crashes, so the occasional apocalypse can be forgiven. It might even give rise to new monster races, created as soldiers but run amok.)

Anyway, this thread is likely to provoke the creation of new spells and such. For the sake of the argument, I suggest that existing (and especially core) spells, weapons and creatures be given precedence, and anything else be either reduced in power or require a higher caster level/technology level than you'd otherwise think, simply because the Core spells, weapons etc. are 'easier' than anything else.

Ready to roll.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm good with anything just make certain that the second thread is easy to find.

I think two people suggested peaceful solutions by the way.

 

[F5]

I think two people suggested peaceful solutions by the way.

BAH! This is an arms race! Peace is for wussies!!!

Quasi-seriously, we should remember to think of magical defenses, as well as just magical attacks.

...but peace is still for wussies!!! Grrr!!!

 

[Kahuna Burger]

BAH! This is an arms race! Peace is for wussies!!!

Quasi-seriously, we should remember to think of magical defenses, as well as just magical attacks.

...but peace is still for wussies!!! Grrr!!!

The thing is that while not a panacea, magic as represented in D&D could prevent a fair number of conflicts. A moderate level cleric in the proposed scenario could have healed the wounds of captured plainsmen and magically understood them. A bit of purely defensive magic to avoid being killed until the other side was convinced he's there to talk, and viola, negotiation.

Plant growth, animal control spells and the emergency create/purify food and water could help a tribe ride out the temporary famines which might otherwise force them into conflict with their neighbors.

And of course, ritual combat between the holy men/women of the tribes could easily come to replace more bloody conflicts in cases of regularly encountered rivals.

Not peace in our time certainly, but changes...

Kahuna Burger