dcollins said:
This is a reasonable (and not uncommon) analysis, but I come at it from the other direction. Any common fantasy-world depiction of war uses standard medieval formations, regardless of the presence of wizards. This is how it appears in Lord of the Rings, in the illustrations in any D&D books (like the 3.0 DMG), in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk novels, etc., etc. I'm assuming there should be some reasonable way to replicate these fantasy swords & sorcery battles in D&D, with wizard magic flying overhead while armies in formation battle it out.
IMHO your goal is quite archivable, with some cultural norms on war.
from the wars during the reformation, up and unltill the wars of the industial area, wars in europe were regulated strongly by cultural norms, WW I is the bench mark here. During the time of regulated wars, civilians were mostly left alone, they were not the target of militairy action. If you have curltural (or divine) conventions on how wars are thought, its easy to depict the folowing rules:
1 War has to be declared.
2 within a month the chalenged side choses the site of the battle; this has to be an area within 2 miles of the borders of the chalenger. in the province the chalenger states in his declaration of war.
3 battle will only be engaged between 2 hours after dawn and 2 hours befor dusk.
4 there will be no assasinations and or sabotage actions before or after the hours of battle.
5 the day after the battle there will be negotions, if there is surrender the war is over. if not the Impartial Druids(? or whatever suits you) descide who won the battle, if the warring parties cannot descide.
6 if the defender wan the battle the war is over a new chalenge has to be issued.
7 If the offening party wins the battle, and its demands will not be granted it can issue to press the attack.
8 If the attack is pressed, the chalenging party can attack any target it desires, such as a city.
for sieges count the city and 2 miles around it as a warzone, day and night rules do not aply but the custom is that the city will not be attacked during night unless there has been a break out attemt that day, or night.
for mages (and other casters such as clerics and Psions but we count them as mages for now) this ancient cusom excists:
dressed in white: only defensive, buffing and healing magics
Dressed in red Take to the air and fight the offening army from there only if the sky is red you may take on the oposing army itself
Dressed in black Take to the air and fight the offening army from there only if the sky is black you may take on the oposing army itself
Archers may attemt to take out any visible enemy mages
if you want to use called outsiders:
Outsiders may not be called prior to the battle. they may only be called during the battle, and the summoners ARE a legal target for all, both ariborne and grounded. called outsiders, that can fly count as mages, those that cant still are legal targets for mages.
Dragons always count either as red mages or as black mages.
the red/black can be exchanged for national colors.
Mindaffecting spells are to be dismissed at the and of the day of war.
these rules as far as i can see now, can and should be tailored to your campeign if used, but prevent the fantasy equivalent of a nuclear war, and thus we have a reason why they are followed.
maybe this helps (a bit)
kigmatzomat said:
In short, the flavor of magical combat is, and will always be, setting specific. Arguing it beyond any specific, well defined setting is an exercise in frustration.
True
One of the problems for this discussion is that D&D 3.x has no single defined setting, and the demographics of the DMG can be read any way the DM wants to read them. Another problem is that play styles vary immensly.