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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2267211" data-attributes="member: 26473">Starting with naming a prestige class, "Combat Medic"...I'm sorry, but Milawd, that's lamer than lame.I was curious about this book, so I've been reading this thread and the previews on WotC's site with interest. Major wars were a big part of our threepointoh game, and I homebrewed both tactical and strategic rules for the campaign. It worked well-enough in that it captured the feel I wanted, but I am interested in other ways of doing things.Something that struck me in one of the previews (I believe it was the author interview) was the assertion that fantasy combat would resemble WWII more than medieval Europe due to the addition of magic - fantasy analogs to armor, artillery, and combat air support were offered. One thing that struck me however is how little the author's really seem to understand the battlefields from which they're drawing analogies, at least based on my reading.One thing that strikes me is that infantry is consistently undervalued by fantasy authors when it comes to exploring the role of magic on the battlefield. The assumption seems to be that animated catapults, squadrons of manticores, and wizards casting fireball and cloudkill make infantry obsolete, but first, if there's a lesson in military history, it's that no wonder weapon short of tactical nukes has made infantry obsolete and second, much (too much, IMHO) of the discussion seems to focus on offense and not defense (not unlike the NBA All-Star Game).If you procede from the stock genre assumptions of the prevalence of magic in D&D, for every wizard casting evocation or mind-control magic, there is likely to be another counterspelling or dispelling magical effects - for every cleric buffing one side there is a cleric buffing the opposition as well. These 'artillery duels' of the fantasy battlefield are likely to cancel each other out to some degree, such that even if one side has higher level wizards than the other, fewer spells will be available to have an impact on the outcome. The same is true for aerial combatants, animated weapons, and so forth - unless one side has an overwhelming advantage and can splinter the enemy ranks with spells and missles, the outcome is still going to devolve on the massed ranks of infantry slugging it out.Without infantry support, artillery and armor is vulnerable - the old adage that armor takes ground but infantry holds ground is, IMHO, just as true on the fantasy battlefield as it is on the real-world battlefield. Reading the supporting materials for HoB, it seems that the authors have forgotten that, or perhaps didn't understand it in the first place.Someone in the thread mentioned that these issues are discussed in more detail in the book, and when I finally get down to my FLGS I'll be interested to check that out. But based on what the authors themselves had to say, I'm a little put-off straight out of the gate by this latest example of anachronistic thinking.Another perspective: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2267175&postcount=48" target="_blank">CLICK ME</a></blockquote>

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