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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SHARK" data-source="post: 650261" data-attributes="member: 1131">Greetings!Well, Fenes, indeed, sir, there are countermeasures to the items and spells that I mentioned as well.<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=":)" /> And so it goes, as I mentioned in my earlier thread. The end result? Wizards and such can *potentially* dramatically effect a given battle, however, generally speaking, they support and protect the forces most of the time, waiting for the commander's assessment of when a particular situation has arrived in the cut and thrust of battle where a particular deployment of the wizards can be briefly made to potentially catch a weakened, under-prepared enemy off guard in such a way as to make the victory possible, whether that is directly from their own actions, or contributory to the infantry and cavalry forces exploiting and siezing the victory from that point onwards. Battles flow, and are often as much determined by personality, skilled tactics, and good judgment as they are by supplies, firepower, or magic. It is a flow that each commander regulates, struggles, and fights with, waiting for the right moment or series of moments in time to sieze the initiative and gain the decisive leverage from which the battle is then won by. The actual ingredients that go into that vary by degree from battle to battle, and situation to situation.Indeed, epic level spells can be used to harness all manner of strange powers. Epic level spells allow one to truly create spells that can accomplish all manner of strange designs and desired effects. Naturally, for every special epic level attack spell, there can also be effective counter-spells, too. Of course, though magic can have powerful effects, there may not necessarily be that many epic-level wizards, or they may not all necessarily be involved in whatever battle at whatever precise place in time, merely because they do in fact exist. PLus, I would think that even if for example, lets say that an army of 800,000 troops is invading an enemy city of 2,000,000 people. Now, there might be hundreds of wizards, even thousands in that huge army. Many though would be lower than 12th to 15th level for sure. There would be some more in the upper reaches, and maybe a few epic level wizards. Even if there were a dozen or two dozen epic level wizards present, they, as individuals, are certain to have different specialties and different ideas on how to contribute to winning the battle. I can assure you that teleporting into the midst of the enemy army and blasting away may occur to some of them, but not all of them would necessarily agree that that is what they want to do, or the necessarily best way to use their power against the enemy. Indeed, they may be quite effective, even devastating against the enemy forces, but the wizards are sure to figure out the mathematical odds if anyone would what their chances of getting nailed down and killed would be. Again, this isn't the case of sending in some infantry that you have spent weeks, months, or even a few years training--for an epic level wizard or cleric, of whatever specialty--is the product of great attention, training, and wealth, perhaps somewhere to the tune of ten, fifteen, or more years, for each such character. Even in a large empire, no emperor would cheerfully greet the news that a dozen or two dozen of his elite wizards just died in battle. "Yes, sire, they won the battle, but two dozen of them are dead, six are horrifically mutated, and three have gotten some strange kind of madness that there is no known cure for, and will have to be committed to an isolated monastery for the rest of their shattered lives. That leaves, sire, four other elite wizards that are alive and well." Even if each of the epic level wizards killed directly 10,000 enemy people--for a total of 24x10,000=240,000 people, and the victory achieved, the empire can't afford such possible costs in another battle.In my campaign, for example, wizards don't necessarily *always* suffer such lethal casualties, or even operate under such dangerous conditions, but the operative is that the wizards and the commanders themselves have no way of knowing for certain, number one, and even if the dangerous environment isn't a total wizard kill, the environment is sure to be challenging. The point of the different war efforts is not that wizards are necessarily shut down completely, but that commanders must use them very carefully, very judiciously, for the cost may be high indeed, even for victory. In addition, such an environment doesn't prohibit wizards, but it tends to build into the environment a certain and a potential cost--a bloody price that wizards will be required to pay. This combines to serve as a balancing factor, a built-in restraining factor that creates an environment where wizards have an effect, even a potentially significant effect, but wizards do not have a dominating effect like that which Reapersaurus seems to want to insist that they should have in my campaign world.<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=":)" />Does that make any sense?<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=":)" />Semper Fidelis,SHARK</blockquote>

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