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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 675092" data-attributes="member: 63">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:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Only one person proposed a peaceful solution.  The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves for your violent tendencies!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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?</blockquote>

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