Historians! Gamers! Armchair Gamer Historians! Gather for the arcane revolution!

[Rabelais]

Can't wait until we get to the 15th and 16th Century. f33r my l33t h1$t0ry skillz.... *cough* I mean... I may have some things to contribute with regards to discussion of the Papacy of that Era.

'Bout half of em would have been lich material. The other half would have been assassinated by confederations of cardinals. One or two would have "nuked" Central and Southern portions of the Italian Peninsula.

Oh, and Torquemada was leading the song and dance routine known as the Spanish Inquisition. Although, you may have expected me to say that. Among their many tools were a ruthless disregard for humanity, and an unquenchable thirst for blood.

Burn the Witches, but leave the Combat Mages under our personal direction!!!

 

[mythusmage]

Okay, magic is a new discovery. The ability to change the world through manipulation of arcane forces has come to light, and been made reliable.

How would the Church deal with this?

Not entirely as you would expect. Back then the world was divided into the sacred and the profane. Either something was of God, or it was not of God. If not of God it had to be from the Devil, and so a perversion of God's work. the secular was not part of the equation. You could not have something that was not of God or of the Devil.

Now people start manifesting powers and abilities they hadn't before. What to do?

That depends. Is it of God or Satan? If it comes from Satan it must be a perversion of God's work, for Satan cannot create himself. All he can do is take and twist that which God has made. So if these new powers are a perversion of God's work, then there must be those who can use what God has wrought for God's glory.

How do you tell the difference? Well, good seed does not bear bad fruit. Bad seed does not bear good fruit. If the works of a wizard bear bad fruit, then his skills must be of Satan. But if the works of a wizard bear good fruit, then his skills must be of God.

You can expect the Roman Catholic Church to adapt to the new conditions in short order, and start using magic to their own ends. Establishing orders dedicated to the Godly use of arcane and divine magic. And to combating Satan's perversion of God's will. Other branches of Christianity and other faiths as well.

Rabbinical Judaism would probably adopt magic even before western Christianity. It is, after all, from Rabbinical Judaism that Kabballah comes. With Islam it depends. The pagans would take to it like a duck to water.

The eastern Christian rites would vary in their adoption of magic. The more mystical sects may take to it rapidly, or reject it for even longer depending on their traditions.

But all in all I'd have to say the Western Church would be strongly influenced by their long time hold on secular power. When you have to handle real world affairs it does tend to make you a more practical person. Which means a fairly quick adjustment to the new conditions and a rapid adoption of the new abilities.

 

[MonsterMash]

Of course if higher level magic starts to emerge then it'd have major effects. Dense bodies of troops would be natural targets for fireballs and the other area affecting spells.

Things like purify food/drink and cure spells could have pretty massive impacts given how many people died from disease and what to us would be minor injuries then, and many of the diseases were carried in food and drink so that would be reduced.

Certainly the church would look to suppress or control magic to reinforce its power.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I think people are undervaluing the "shock and awe" aspects of magic. We're proceeding from the assumption that magic is brand new, correct? OK, here's a scenario:

One guy with Burning Hands is going to be a soldier's nightmare. I'm used to the Christian priest who "cleanses my soul" once a week and the local witch woman who plays with entrails and claims to know the future. I might even believe one or (more likely) both of them. That's an entirely different matter than a guy who starts shooting fire. FROM HIS HANDS!

If a guy steps in front of an entire army and sets off a Dancing Lights spell, most of them are going to freeze in awe. Maybe a few sergeants keep their cool, and a few archers are told to take the wizard out. A few arrows bounce off because of a Shield or Protection from Arrows spell, and the average soldier is going to be a bit panicky already. At that point, a Burning hands, a Color Spray, Pyrotechnics, or a Summon Swarm are going to send people packing. Heck, a Gust of Wind might. A single summoned animal might if it appears in a sufficiently impressive way. If a flash of red light and a thundering boom accompanied some brimstone and a Fiendish Monstrous Centipede into the world, the uninitiated would not want to find out what else accompanies the centipede.

Or what about an Obscuring Mist? The wizard disappears into the mist, and then a couple Acid Arrows, Magic Missiles, or even Rays of Frost come out of the mist. Or a Spectral Hand carrying a Shocking Grasp or Ghoul Touch. What happens if one of those sergeants or officers who kept their head is suddenly inflicted with Hideous Laughter?

The front line would almost certainly break, only to run into their archers, who have been Webbed into place. All Heck breaks loose. Even if the priesthood and the secular educated on both sides know that a single mage can only pull a very few of those tricks in a day, the average soldier doesn't know and probably doesn't care. There's a HUGE psychological difference between being killed by another man and being killed by the spawn of Hell or blasts of magic.

And this is assuming a somewhat organized army. The Crusades weren't populated entirely with professionals. The first several uses of magic on the battlefield are going to send the opposing army running for the hills. And whoever figured out the offensive possibilities first (and someone has to be first) will win the first Crusade. Probably with very few casualties.

Let's assume it's the Muslims who put it together first. That's more likely, IMO, because in that time and place, that culture was much more invested in education and scientific advancement than anyone in Europe. They would be poised to take better immediate advantage of the new availability of magic.

So, the Europeans flee. They pack off home, and the Church and the Byzantine Empire would spend a LOT of time and effort on advancing their knowledge of magic. Even if they made tremendous progress, it would probably take a couple generations for the horror stories to die down enough to launch another attack.

Now, we can assume the Muslims haven't been sitting on their hands, but they weren't handed a sound defeat, so they've had less incentive to really improve their magical training program, as it were. Let's say they haven't really progressed past 2nd level spells, but just have more of them. They've branched out beyond immediate military applications and figured out things like Speak with Animals and Zone of Truth, Detect thoughts, and what not.

So it would be an entirely different type of war, IMO. Whoever has more mages wants a pitched battle where they can bring their "artillery" to bear. The side with fewer mages would prefer guerilla tactics and subtle spells. Counterspelling and anti-magic aren't really an option yet, I would think that low level spells and relatively simple applications of spells would be it, initially. After all, the weapon usually comes before it's counter. The first side to figure out counterspelling is going to win decisive victories again. Battles would have become very reliant on mages to the exclusion of superior numbers. An army with the ability to counterspell would be prepared for the battle to suddenly become about manpower and more traditional tactics again. While the enemy mages are still trying to figure out why their spells aren't working, they'd be overrun by mundane soldiers.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

A question:

If you are going to have DnD level magic in battle are you also going to have DnD style balance?

Because Burning Hands is a lot less scary when you know that any first level human fighter is probably going to survive an application. Same with magic missile.

Hmm, the odd thing about magic on a battle field is that it's really going to disturb medieval notions of military hierarchy.

It's going to be a lot harder to look to your local lord as the sole source of authority when you have a learned guy who can heal you and make you fight far more effectively.

As a result, I would expect the following potential adaptations:

1.) The development of formal officer levels at a far earlier stage than historically occured. This would allow for a level of complexity that would still give the lords control but would also give the clerics some level of authority.

2.) Lots and lots of 'multi-classing' among the nobility and military elite. With the actual social strangeness that results. Out of this I would expect that the church and nobility would arrange some form of bastardized holy orders. The trade-off would be that nobility would gain access to miracles and the church would gain access to a stronger moral authority over the nobility.

3.) Sub-cultures develop that educate people in magic. When you get longbows you don't get training camps that train people in the longbow you get villages that develop it as part of their local culture and economy. A lot of magic is essentially a long bow advantage so you would develop sub-cultures that trained in it. Two variants on this:
-Gypsy style sorcerors. They really on their wits, charisma, and valuable skills to live in between the lines of medieval society. They are frequently hired as mercenaries by various military bands. Probably on a band by band basis as scouts would have been.
-Actual sub-cultures. You would probably have to make most arcane magic-users take a feat to describe where they got their training from: hermit types who live in the wilderness with small enclaves of apprentices, student types who pick it up in various odd schools, eastern types who study with noted and pedigreed scholars. This sort of phenomena would be very Ars Magica-esqu. But I could equally picture their being provinces in each empire who specialized in creating wizards out of their surplus population. Older mercenaries would retire to the village and train whole classes in the basic skills of war-magery.

As a side note, you would certainly develop 'rugged' variants on the magic using classes which would represent the first few levels where you get more practical training in moving about in the world with the trade off that you only learn very vanilla version of a very few well known and easily taught spells.

4.) Given the lack of specialization in any medieval society. I would expect that there would be a common pool of magical knowledge that anyone could potentially draw off of. Basically, you would have to have a feat that gave away some flexible spell like prestidigitation as basic peasant knowledge of magic. Peasants are clever, smart, and capable they just don't have time to go into a lot of specialized knowledge. So comprehensive knowledge of writing isn't that applicable a skill to generally living and surving, but their are plenty of low level spells that are going to be of much greater interest.

5.) Potions, scrolls, and other low level and generally useable spells are going to develop their own manufacturing industry. Tremendous mega-monastaries will make their fortunes off of this and represent tremendous strategic assets and their will be arcane, scholarly, and magical versions of the smithing villages that used to provide things like mail and arrow heads to marching armies.

As the period progress you might see a very scholarly like Cordoba or Bologne picking up the economicly robust nature of Milan as they become the equivalent of industrial knowledge makers.

Also note that all of the above is only related to Western Europe.

 

[mythusmage]

To expand on the above, the new magic will not develop as D&D magic did. For one thing, D&D magic is predicated on the proposition that it has been around for a long time, and that magic has been developed over the centuries. While the 12th century West did have a long magical tradition, it was not as formalized as later Hermetic or Kabbalistic practice. For all practical terms not only is magic new, so is magical practice. How to most effectively use the new ability needs to be worked out.

Which means spells are going to be harder to cast, and less efficient than they would be given a few generations of practice and experimentation. Even a simple 0 level spell in standard D&D could be as hard as a 4th level standard spell in its first iteration.

Furthermore, D&D magic is aimed at the adventurer, and so is not truly suitable for cultural or societal use. In a fully realized setting you can expect most magics to be aimed toward common use. Protection, medicine, crafts and professions for example. The typical wizard in this world is far more likely to know Mending than Magic Missile, and he'll likely know it as a 2nd level spell. Now, true, an inventive person could think of ways to use Fireball in daily life, but a variant that released the energy in a long term, controlled fashion would be far more useful.

So spells will tend to be underpowered for their level, highly individualistic, and mostly mundane in applicability. The very philosophical/theoretical basis for magic will need to be worked out, along with basic practice. And neither need come to the same ends as real world magickal practice.

Besides which, this magic need not be game-balanced as D&D magic is required to be. Energy release (Fireball) may well prove to be easier to do (a 1st level spell) than persuasion/co-option (Charm Person, fourth level).

All in all this would result in a much different experience for the player. A good system for spell creation/invention and spell optimization is necessary at the very least.

I have an appointment coming up soon, and I have to leave early to catch the bus. More thoughts later, and I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the above.

Catch you later.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Catch you later.

Man, leaving in Texas has finally left it's mark, I spent a minute trying to figure out who the specific object of the above you was till I realized that other parts of the country don't have specific second person plurals.

I completely agree that a huge part of how magic would affect the crusades is going to be the specific history of its development and discovery. And that the initial period of experimentation is going to be pretty weird.

I would say, however, that DnD magic is probably not so bad a starting point for magic. The magic system as a whole is probably far more refined then people are initially going to believe or experience it to be, but the spells are the sort of attention grabbers that people are going to develop first.

Particularly the divine list.

To continue what Mythus was saying, though, let's assume that levels actually exist inside the magic. That they are reflective of some fundamental nature of spell casting. How long is it going to take you to figure out what exactly qualifies as first versus second level?

Particularly when it's probably pretty easy to come up with new spells, but very difficult to come up with anything like a standardized list?

Unless, of course, Divine Magic users come pre-equipped with a good knowledge of what they can and can't do....

....interesting... ...what if arcane magic only looks the way it does because people had a much better initial understanding of divine magic and assumed they would work in similar fashion?

One affect of an initial period of discovery is that there are going to be a lot of fairly odd cultish and schoolish effects as everyone tries to capitalize on the little bit of the truth they have, is very distrustful of sharing with the other guy, legitimizing the other guy, and, at the same time, desperately wants the other guys secrets.

The Catholic, and too a lesser extent Orthodox, church is probably going to do a lot to see that all magic that has to do remotely with them doesn't go cultish too fast. But in the Muslim world you are likely to see a huge proliferation of idiosyncratic practices and politicking for influence.

The Orthodox/Byzantines at immediately seeing the practical and potential benefits of magic given their much greater knowledge of, well, just about everything scientific, strategic, legal, and economic.

A big question I have out of this is: Will there be outsiders?

Historically and in the game a lot of magic is geared towards the reality of outsiders, and if they, or knowledge of them, are proliferating alongside spell based magic you are going to see a big to do.

On another note, I think Al-Quadim actually isn't too bad a take on how magic would affect Islamic civilization. Mind you, it is missing a lot of the Greek, Hindu, and Latin influences that were incredibly important to the Dar-Al Islam, but magic works pretty well in it.

Aside from the battlefield, you could argue that some of the armies really haven't embraced it as they should. And of course it has the DnD assumption that the magic has been around for a very long while.