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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 5532001" data-attributes="member: 12460">I've been reading through the 3.5 Eberron book Forge of War recently which describes in great detail the tactics of armies which have immense magical resources at their disposal. But still, characters capable of using spells are vastly outnumbered by characters who are merely mundane. You can take a look at the DMG guidelines for how many wizards there are in a city, but if you then compare that number of wizards to the mundane population you quickly see how much of a minority all spellcasters are.Anyway, it seems the assumption in Eberron is that many of the highest-level casters during the Last War were primarily occupied in magical research or more clandestine operations that wouldn't expose them to the dangers of combat. At the end of the day, most spellcasters are still fairly low on hit points. The most effective magical units in the Last War tended to be those who relied on wands, which were expensive, even the eternal variety. Still, it is not a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that the few powerful spellcasters on both sides were generally glad to avoid situations in which, the round after casting fireball, they would immediately be subject to the wrath of an entire brigade. At the very least, the few high-level casters that do engage in battle probably effectively cancel each other out with their actions if you are thinking on a grand scale. While the attacking army sends a couple wizards with shrink item and fly to drop boulders on the fortress, the defending army's wizards are doing equally devastating things to the attackers. I'd think it would be in the best interest of characters like warmages to be constantly readying actions to counterspell things like fireball that could devastate an entire squad.Anyway, I like Eberron's approach. It seems to make a modicum of sense that there are a lot of low-level casters around, but that they are still far less numerous than the peasant levies, standard warriors, and even the hardened veteran fighters. Actually the most perplexing thing to me is how many regents were assassinated during the Last War and apparently unable to be risen from the dead. Even though Eberron doesn't have a lot of high-level characters around, you'd think you could convince one of the handful of clerics in your kingdom capable of raising the dead that expending resources on a king or queen is worth it.</blockquote>

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