Originally posted by SHARK
In game reasons; well, many armies have magical banners or battle standards that prohibit various spells from functioning within their ranges. These can be thousands of yards, tens or even hundreds of square miles.
Many armies have developed spells that bring into being enchanted clouds that spread a magical vapor throughout the area, again, this effect can be dozens, or hundreds of square miles, that prohibit, mutate, or otherwise defeat numerous magical effects from entering the area, whether it is teleportation, flying, scrying spells, and so on.
Hrm. Well where are the banners that override those banners? The spells that overide those spells. Using your arguement that eventually everything is countered and balanced would not magic eventually counter the countermagic allowing magic free reign over the battlefield, even if only for a short enough time to utterly destroy the majority of the army before this new magic is countered?
Also.. where are the magic banners the prohibit any physical damage from occuring in their range? ie. only magic damage (elemental/force) is not banned in their miles wide radius? Wouldn't those banners be in just as high demand because they almost totally negate the effectiveness of hand-to-hand soldiers
Just seems to me that you're using a base assumption to support what you want to happen as opposed to using a base assumption to disprove what you want to happen. Which is fine, but is not consistant because your base assumption does both.
If, as you postulate, magic will eventually counter magic, would not magic eventually counter counter-magic? Would not those situations arise often enough (given the uber-flexability of magic) so that massive armies of 800k people would die often enough to make making the armies of 800k not cost-effective?
Many armies have developed special war machines that maintain a constant magical "eye" that sees with True Seeing, as well as a battery of other detection/analysis spells that remain constantly functioning with telepathic bondings with several dozen wizards flying on their own or on some magical beast for example, that fly or remain on Reac alert for the Eye of Dominion to see mages enter the threat range of the army on the march, or while encamped, and the Eye of Dominion also immediately launches an array of deception/entrapment spells designed to confuse, slow, or otherwise deceive enemy mages into *believing* that they see x, or have even affected x in the manner they desire, meanwhile the waiting mages that are always on reac guard spring the trap on the attacking mages and the result is that the enemy mages bodies are ripped to pieces or sent back to the enemy in a jar of goo.
So far the only thing i've seen is that you have changed the parameters of the defensive spells to allow you to do what you want to do, which is negate the effectiveness of magic so you can have big armies fighting. Where are the stealth spells that allow wizards to compeletely and utterly ignore this Eye of Dominion? Using your logic, magic would counter magic eventually, no?
How much does it cost to make and use these items you speak of? How much would it cost to make a magical way of overcoming them? Which one is more effective?
The only reason defenses keep getting better is that offenses keep getting better. Defenses will never prevent offense, it can only deter offense to move to another form of attack. Eventually your magic defenses will fail and huge armies are gonna bite it to magic. Magic offense is more flexible, more like water, and it will find ways past every defense faster than the defense can apply itself effectivly. This is why they say you never win a war by fighting defensivly. (Not always true, i know, but mostly so)
There are some forces that have developed mutated animals, and special flocks of interdemensional demonic vampire ravens that guard their foces by flying overhead in mass clouds of flying beasts, always on patrol. Enemy wizards can sometimes make it to the area of the army encampment, and even get off a few spells. Then, however, they are swarmed with the interdemensional demonic vampire ravens who plunge three foot long metallic purplish-black beaks into their bodies that pierce all magical protections,
Why's is this the case? Why do they pierce all magical protections? Wouldn't someone develop protections they they couldn't pierce? Wouldn't there be a "mass charm the interdemensional demonic vampire ravens" to attack the army their supposed to be defending? And once that spell was developed, how quickly do you think it would spread? Thereby rendering any army that uses such defenses more vulnerable?
Wouldn't there be illusion spells that act a foci for wizards. Illusions of the wizards that can cast spells at a distance so that when the ravens are attacking the "wizard" all they're doing is attacking an illusion that cannot be hurt?
I guess the main point im trying to make is this: You have only taken magic to the point where wizards are limited to acting as support units and then you stopped. And you did this because you think magic eventually developes counter-magic. But its a cycle. Magic will eventually counter your counter-magic and when it does entire massive 800k armies will fall quickly before more magic can be developed to counter this new magic. This fact, well i think its a fact
, will counter your assumption of large armies because they will die often enough to not be very cost-effective.
joe b.
