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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 648244" data-attributes="member: 5724">Re: Re: wellGlitterdust doesn't counter the wizards. Glitterdust is a medium range spell. Fireball is long (an extended fireball is truly scary). Glitterdust has a 10-ft spread. The wizards are 300+ feet up, invisible (and you'd have to have true sight on your Glitterdust casting wizard to begin with unless you're just going to randomly fire glitterdusts everywhere. good luck hitting the right place at the right time. Also please note that true seeing only goes 120ft, so really your pretty much outta luck).  That's not a counter.Im not assuming flat plain, perfect line of sight, or failed reflex saves (a succesful save would still be on average, 12hp of damage). I am assuming fairly bunched together, as armies on the march are usually such. Armies camped are also such. In fact armies under almost any situation are close together. Even were you to limit the number effected by each round of 10 fireballs to only 200, thats 2000 soldiers hit within a single minute. And were that not enough to kill the soldiers, well then you have a whole bunch of wounded soldiers.Pound for pound, you'll spend less magic on the attack and more magic on the defense.Glen Cook is not DnD. His series is, IMHO, very well written (one of my favs) but the basic assumption is a almost no-magic world. There are perhaps 30 big sorcerors and (at least mentioned in the book) only a handful of lesser wizards. Although for continuities sake there'd have to be more cause where else are the big ones coming from <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Everyone else has zero magic. In DnD (at least according to the DMG) around 1 in every 50 of your populace is some kind of spell caster.  That may not be how it is in your campaign, but thats the way it is in the assumed average. Anyway, the Black Company isn't a good barometer of what a DnD war would be like.As to a leveling effectof wizards on both sides?  Well if you mean that both armies would have the same 10 wizards doing the same tactics, you're right. And both armies' common soldiers would probably be leveled (destroyed) as well. Magic is more effective on the attack than the defense. The conflagration that an honest ta god magical war would be is truly amazing.This is why i don't think there would be massive armies of fairly low-level soldiery. (1-5th).  They're not cost-effective, they're vulnerable and most importantly, they pin down your mages who could be used more effectively on the attack than the defense.Spellcasters do personal or small-group defense very well. If a bad guy needs to get (possess) something (item, person, whatever) a group can defend against an attack.  If the bad guy just needs to destroy something however, the party's going to be very hard pressed to prevent it.Now if the bad guy just wants to destroy something that is very very big (like a group of 1st-5th level fighters ie. army), you simply cannot effectivly use magic to defend against magic. You have to preemptivly strike to try and prevent him from striking you.Actually, you can't paint them.  You also can't see them without true seeing (and even that is questionable, a tight reading of dust of disappearance would seem to indicate that no magical means can detect you. I allow true seeing to because i like true seeing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />). You can't dispell them. Dispel is again a medium range spell with a 30 ft burst. Good luck, getting lucky if your just aming at the sky.If you can't see them, you can't target them. Also all of those spell, except meteor swarms are close range spells. You can only use long range spells in this scenerio.  Even if you could see the wizards, you'll never be able to catch them. Especially were the wizards to polymorph into a dragon shape so they would have uber-fast flying. If an attacking wizard sees you coming at them, they simply retreat. Now you have 9 others to deal with. Course if you move on to the next one the 1st one comes back.Here's another common scenerio: Your army of 10-20k is marching. If you're travelling like the romans did (who by far had the most organized non-technological mostly-infantry military), you're marching collumn is something like 10 miles long.  How do you defend your collumn against something like i discribed?  The wizards would rush in, hit for 30 seconds, rush out move up/down the collumn, rush in, hit for 30 seconds, and rinse and repeat.Those 10 mages don't have to HOLD the land. They don't need to. They just have to destroy the enemy, destroy crop production, destroy infrastructure. They just have to chevauchee into enemy territory, rapidly destroy and leave. If they want the land for themselves, they'll eventually get it, because they are only part of a military force.  Divination/enchantment spells practically make any form of "freedom fighters" worthless unless they can maintain their secretcy via magic. You can't have friendly villiages not tell the occupying force who and where the "freedom fighters" are given charm spells.Honestly, i don't think most of what is traditionally part of a DnD war would even happen.Magic is almost equal to or better than the war technology we have now, depending on what aspect you want to look at. Magic provides almost 100% accurate intelligence, which everyone knows is often the most important part of any conflict. Magic provides almost 100% stealth. etc.. etc..Arguably they may have a mindset that precludes them from using their abilities in the most effective manner, but assuming magic has evolved the entire time with the culture, certain uses are not that unreasonable.Well, im tired of typing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.  I think the only reason why people have combats in DnD that resemble historical combats is because thats what they want. It has a more traditional heroic feel and leads to a hell of a lot of fun.  I just dont think thats the way it would be, though.again, these are just my opinions.joe b.</blockquote>

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