High Magic - High technology, historical question

[med stud]

Sadly, this was not to be, despite what the report predicted, and even if it had, I still don't fancy the Swordsmen that are against Musketmen in a Pitched Battle.

Just as a curiosity, swordsmen worked well against musketeers in late 17th century; this was how the Swedes beat the Danes, the people from Saxony and the Poles in a couple of months. The Swedes brought 3-4 artillery pieces with the army, and charged the enemy with swords and bayonettes after firing once at 15 meters distance (while other armies fire 3-4 times before entering melee).

 

[Sixchan]

Just as a curiosity, swordsmen worked well against musketeers in late 17th century; this was how the Swedes beat the Danes, the people from Saxony and the Poles in a couple of months. The Swedes brought 3-4 artillery pieces with the army, and charged the enemy with swords and bayonettes after firing once at 15 meters distance (while other armies fire 3-4 times before entering melee).

Hmm...interesting. This would be bacause the poor rate of fire meant that the Musketmen would only get a few shots off before being skewered by Swedish swords, right? Okay.

Well...if we're making Artillery, we're improving Metallurgy, right? So even without guns, we have harder and sharper swords. If we can equip an army with steel swords, we're already at a definite advantage.

How difficult is Mass Production when you use Magic in conjunction with technology? Can we concievably create enough guns and swords to arm a soldier with both?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Hmm...interesting. This would be bacause the poor rate of fire meant that the Musketmen would only get a few shots off before being skewered by Swedish swords, right? Okay.

How difficult is Mass Production when you use Magic in conjunction with technology? Can we concievably create enough guns and swords to arm a soldier with both?

It would be because of a number of factors, pikes were also critically important weapons during early gunpowder warfare, indeed the hand firearm was mostly seen as a complement to the pike. Early firearms did have miserable rates of fire, and were extremely inaccurate and unwieldy. This is why the Bayonet charge rules warfare until the civil war.

The question of arming your soldiers with swords and muskets hinged on the expense of doing so, another reason the Swedish army was so sucessful is that the Swedes operated their army under a uniquely cheap economic model that relied a great deal on looting whereas most other countries during this period routinely went bankrupt trying to field large infantry based armies.

And the major complications that result when you have to train men to use and fight with two such complicated weapons as a musket and sword.

Don't be so quick to judge technological superiority the determining force on the battlefield. It's a big advantage, but there are many others that can disrupt its dominance.

 

[willpax]

More important than magic or tech would be social attitudes. The basic assumption that most of these posts have is that people naturally seek to use their money to invest in improving tools to ensure long term returns (the capitalist mindset).

In history, that attitude (and the accounting principles that make it possible to know such returns are there) is a fairly modern one. If you have widespread education and an investment mindset, you will probably have fairly rapid progress in whatever field lends itself to progress.

Of course, where people choose to invest their intellects depends on social values and basic economics as well. It could be simply a function of prestige, or a reflection of perceived importance (the ancient Greeks understood all the principles necessary for steam production, but the educated people didn't put a high priority on improving the lot of slave laborers; modern pharma companies put much effort into removing toenail fungus and less in eradicating malaria, and so on).

There is nothing inherent in magic as defined in D&D that would retard magic growth, but it could (if you wish to interpet it as such) create a kind of social elitism (because so few people can master it) that discourages the education of the masses--which would have an effect on innovation.

 

[Sixchan]

It would be because of a number of factors, pikes were also critically important weapons during early gunpowder warfare, indeed the hand firearm was mostly seen as a complement to the pike. Early firearms did have miserable rates of fire, and were extremely inaccurate and unwieldy. This is why the Bayonet charge rules warfare until the civil war.

The question of arming your soldiers with swords and muskets hinged on the expense of doing so, another reason the Swedish army was so sucessful is that the Swedes operated their army under a uniquely cheap economic model that relied a great deal on looting whereas most other countries during this period routinely went bankrupt trying to field large infantry based armies.

And the major complications that result when you have to train men to use and fight with two such complicated weapons as a musket and sword.

Don't be so quick to judge technological superiority the determining force on the battlefield. It's a big advantage, but there are many others that can disrupt its dominance.

Good Point about the Training...okay, so that won't work.

Going back to the question of whether Magic slows down technology, is is possible it could speed it up? For instance, if a mage were to discover that if he had magical crossbow bolts/bullets that spun he'd improve his accuracy with the crossbow/gun, is it possible that engineers might try harder to find a way to do it with mundane technology, and invent the rifled barrel earlier? Scientists throughout history have had to do thought experiments because their ideas were in advance of technology, and simply not possible to do. However, with magic it becomes possible (if not simple). This could lead to practical applications much faster. Magic can create very high temperatures and high currents. This helps Metallurgy in the extraction of ores and creation of alloys. Once Scientific interest kicks in, I'd personally expect things like Aluminium to show up earlier.

Now that I think about it, in fantasy worlds there are some things that have been discovered than they were in our world. And the chief one is Electricity. Someone's going to discover the relationship between Electricity and Magnetism at some point. How long before someone makes the first electric motor (by first motor I mean more along the lines of the Faraday Motor rather than a practical one)? They've got the spectrum of light down, too (well, they have spells that start with prismatic, so they know you can split light with prisms), so that helps physics along the road to the Electromagnetic spectrum (and in 1st and 2nd edition, they knew about infra-red and ultra-violet too). So even if low technology isn't as good as magic (which I still disagree with. I'll concede on guns vs swords, but point out that swords benefit from metallurgical technology), if they work together, low tech can make way for middle tech a little faster.

 

[mmu1]

Just as a curiosity, swordsmen worked well against musketeers in late 17th century; this was how the Swedes beat the Danes, the people from Saxony and the Poles in a couple of months. The Swedes brought 3-4 artillery pieces with the army, and charged the enemy with swords and bayonettes after firing once at 15 meters distance (while other armies fire 3-4 times before entering melee).

That seems anecdotal rather than historical , because Polish armies were historically very light on firearms and artillery, and very heavy on cavalry... Not to mention the fact that the Swedish victories had more to do with internal power squabbles among the Polish nobility than military tactics, and once we got our stuff together you got kicked out of Poland promptly.

 

[mmu1]

True, the golem keeps on going. But you'll probably have to wait many years or decades until you see a return on your investment.

And in the meantime, the person who has been hiring people with shovels has been making profit the whole time - money he can invest somewhere else, which brings him yet more money, and so on.

The business cycle of "guys with shovels" is a lot shorter - and this counts for a lot in fast-moving economies...

Very true - considering that the cheapest golem costs 50,000 gold to make, no one in their right mind is going to use one for labor... 50,000 gp worth of laborers will get the job done faster by several orders of magnitude. Not to mention that golems, as per the standard D&D rules, are pretty useless for skilled work, and for unskilled labor, 50,000 gold buys you (assuming 12 hour work days, and DMG labor costs) 6,000,000 man-hours...

 

[Tidus4444]

Going farther into technology, I can see magic being a great boon. Once a mage gets it into his head, I wouldn't doubt that he could make a spell that gives the heat of fusion for a near endless energy source.

 

[jgbrowning]

I think more important is the mindset and situation of the peoples you're discussion. In the RW, only europeans developed and used technology to such an extent that it eventually changed the fabric of their existance. Other cultures develped and used technology, but it often seems that developments occured because of social reasons and ended there as opposed to going futher and having technology change the social.

This is obviously a big simplification, but don't assume that every human (or demi-human to use old terms) is going to think like we think now, or even how europeans thought 300 years ago.

Magic, if viewed like technology, could have the same effect. One small group on your planet could have a different view, a view of using magic to discover things and allowing magic to change society as opposed to making magic subserviant to society.

just some thoughts.......

joe b.

 

[tarchon]

Can you have Advanced Technology or even simple technology advance from a high magic world?

I ask this simple question because I try to think of the inventions of the past that slowly worked towards the technologies of today. Example: In a magical society how could you imagine a printing press existing when one wizard could make a book copier magic item. Or a cotton gin or a mill or anything.

So what do you think?

So what's the difference between magic and technology? A pretty major bit of silliness in the Fantasy Genre is that "magic" and "technology" are really just used to refer to what kind of props you're using. Once magic becomes real, it's technology.