High-Tech Forces vs. High-Magic Forces

[Dannyalcatraz]

It depends on high high the magic, how high the tech of the relevant forces.

It would be difficult for a fantasy force to deal with the sheer number and array of AP, Incendiary, AoE, and over-the-horizon armaments available to the modern military.

But Harry Turtledove's Darkness series depicts magic on a par with WW2 munitions, for instance...and as pointed out, a well-worded Wish could wreak havoc.

 

[S'mon]

I think it kind of depends. How powerful does a spell have to be to be at the same level of magical sophistication as a nuclear bomb or genome-targetted plague?

I mean, if we are talking big guns, at the same time technology is destroying entire cities all at once with nuclear weapons, magic is pounding entire countries with something on the level of the Rain of Colourless Fire or Invoked Devastation.

If you goal is to completely annihilate your enemies... Magic can do that.

Rain of Colourless Fire would be a one-off like the Tsar Bomba. Nukes per se are much more common. Anyway you can destroy cities with incendiaries, no need for nukes - look at the firebombing of eg Dresden in WW2. AIR a fire-bombing raid on Tokyo killed a lot more people than Hiroshima + Nagasaki combined.

IMO it's the relatively cheap, plentiful modern tech like artillery and armoured fighting vehicles that would give the tech side a huge edge. No need for multi-million-dollar M1 Abrams tanks when a $50,000 T-54 (or even WW2 T-34) will be just as effective & invulnerable vs medieval fantasy forces. Likewise with planes, assault rifles, and heavy machine guns. That's the big advantage tech has over D&D magic - easy reproducibility, ease of use, and at the low end, inexpensiveness.

For that reason, if I was the tech general and I had a fixed budget, I'd buy almost all Russian kit. There would be no advantage to getting super-high-tech, super-expensive American & Western stuff. No need for Chobham armour when rolled steel is just as invulnerable to arrows, spears and fireballs.

 

[Bluenose]

Modern military has the benefits of greater training, that is for certain. If a typical warrior in a D&D style fantasy army is a 1st level Warrior, a modern soldier would be 3rd or 4th level more likely just from increased training and practice.

I don't disagree with most of what you say, but this is not accurate. There's years of training involved to be a competent weapon-handler for an ancient/medieval/renaissance soldier. European knights would usually start about the age of 12. Roman citizens began learning weapon drills and marching/camping at the same age, Spartans even earlier. This isn't unusual. And most people who go to be full-time soldiers will be in the field more often than modern soldiers. So I doubt if there'd be much difference in skill levels, even if they would know different things.

 

[S'mon]

I don't disagree with most of what you say, but this is not accurate. There's years of training involved to be a competent weapon-handler for an ancient/medieval/renaissance soldier. European knights would usually start about the age of 12. Roman citizens began learning weapon drills and marching/camping at the same age, Spartans even earlier. This isn't unusual. And most people who go to be full-time soldiers will be in the field more often than modern soldiers. So I doubt if there'd be much difference in skill levels, even if they would know different things.

Yeah, I agree - the medieval knight had more weapons training than the modern special forces soldier. The modern soldier's big advantage is in higher-level unit tactics. But in terms of level, using a mix of training and combat experience, the pre-modern professional warriors would be much more experienced than most modern regular soldiery. Gygax's "masses of 0th levellers" approach to feudal men-at-arms seems to have been derived from WW2 conscript armies* and bears no resemblance to medieval reality, where a major castle like Caernarvon (in hostile Welsh territory) would be held by as few as 30 men, all of them extremely bad-ass hombres.

*Or/and possibly a desire to emulate John Carter of Mars.

 

[korjik]

It would all depend on how you set the calibrations.

If I have an army in magical full plate, that can only be penetrated by iron rounds, then all the automatic rifles and machine guns just got turned into fragile melee weapons. Grenades and shells would still kill lots tho.

I could come up with hundreds of examples/counter-examples, but without any way to calibrate the effectiveness of the magic vs the tech and vice versa, there isnt a way to say which is better.

 

[Kraydak]

If the magic is weak and/or rare enough that swords and bows in the hands of non-magic using troops are relevant for the high-magic forces, then it will be a high-tech walk-over.

 

[wingsandsword]

I don't disagree with most of what you say, but this is not accurate. There's years of training involved to be a competent weapon-handler for an ancient/medieval/renaissance soldier. European knights would usually start about the age of 12. Roman citizens began learning weapon drills and marching/camping at the same age, Spartans even earlier. This isn't unusual. And most people who go to be full-time soldiers will be in the field more often than modern soldiers. So I doubt if there'd be much difference in skill levels, even if they would know different things.

If you're going to claim that a Knight was a typical medieval infantry instead of being elite cavalry, and that most soldiers were not poorly trained conscripts then I suggest you get your sources together and completely and totally rewrite all the relevant wikipedia articles:

Medieval warfare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Infantry in the Middle Ages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Knights were usually mounted cavalry, occasionally heavy infantry and had a leadership role, more comparable to officers, Rangers and Cav squadrons on the modern battlefield. There is a reason that Knight is a PC class and footman is not: superior training. Armies aren't filled with thousands of people with PC classes.

Also, the Spartans were something of an outlier in terms of military skill. There is a reason that thousands of years later the term is still synonymous with martial prowess. I would hardly call them typical soldiers of the era. The Roman Legions, at their peak, were indeed highly trained and in some ways are still model for modern armies, but that was only at their peak instead of the bulk of the later Empire when their quality declined sharply.

The typical medieval infantryman: a spearman or archer serving only out of feudal obligation (i.e. a conscript) with access to poor medical care and token training, is far inferior to a professionally trained, modern soldier with modern immunizations, comprehensive physical training, and a focus on small-unit tactics over large massed battles. I'll stand by my assertion that at typical medieval peasant conscript footman, would be a Warrior 1, while a typical modern soldier would be a Warrior 3 or 4 in comparison.

 

[mmadsen]

Any story that pits a high-tech force against a high-magic force is going to need to make the two roughly comparable if it intends to depict a war where things could go either way.

The Veil War imagines a magically armed and armored force of "goblins" that isn't so much a D&D-style orc horde, as a dark-elf army. These "goblin" foot-soldiers wear magical armor, which is proof against small-arms fire, and carry magical weapons, including magically accurate and penetrative arrows. More importantly, they seem to have a magical screen deflecting well-aimed bullets just off target.

That seems like a bit of a "brute force" way of designing a fantasy army that could stand up to a modern force. I'm thinking that a little teleportation or invisibility could go a long, long way toward defeating a modern force. Illusions, mind-reading, and mind-control could also work wonders.

What magic do you think would yield the most bang for the buck?

 

[Umbran]

What magic do you think would yield the most bang for the buck?

That depends on the mechanisms of magic. If your magic requires a small amount of cash and prep time (like, say, most D&D magic), that's one thing. If your magic puts your casters as personal risk to use spells (like powerful magic in Shadowrun), the question is different.

Basically, you can't tell what's the most bang for the buck unless you see the price tag.

 

[Alan Shutko]

I suppose a key item might be "How fast can you breed a million rust monsters to drop on the tanks."

Another possibility is the RCD&D 3rd level magic spell Protection from Normal Missiles. If it was ruled that it works against bullets, things get a lot more interesting.

In general, I think the magic team would do best to avoid toe-to-toe battles. With scrying, teleport, invisibility, charm, domination, etc, magic would be great at playing dirty tricks on the tech team. Taking out the tech teams generals over and over again would probably do good eventually. But I can't see them being able to hold ground against mass production: there just aren't enough casters in most campaign settings to do it. Maybe Alphatia might do it.