Correct in a roleplaying game where there was very few classes it made little sense and it alienated me AND it just got mocked oh my gosh and golly better not let them notice that mace is dripping with blood and brains them hypocritical bible banging celibate moses miracle working crusader look alikes .
You can call it what you want but if you are parting the red sea in your miracle list... and using a mace only it is what it is.
Not much different from a real-world death by random bullet on the WWI front line.
Again, true of any real-world battle: to have a chance of winning you have to be able to deal with whatever the enemy's liable to throw at you. Take something as simple as mounted cavalry in days of old: if the opposition had it you had to counter it, usually by having some yourself*.
Not interested in your hopeless fantasy vietnam story lines dude ... the point of a "set piece battle" is undermined by that anti-climactic goo.
Primacy of magic you people make the argument for Tony.
Two things:
I'm neither arguing for nor against the whole 'primacy of magic' thing; I'm simply saying that if magic exists in the setting (and it does, in all editions) then it's inevitably going to become a factor in any battleplan: how to deploy it, how to defend against it, or (most likely) both.
Whatever... not really it was obviously bible banger territory.
Assuming how much existed at a level of affecting large scale battles is sort of Game World dependent you could keep the game world incidence of magic much lower with the heros being the individual exceptions (for those who like somewhat more historic looking battles instead of modern one where people spread out to avoid problems of area effect attacks) and yes if you have nothing to deal with ranged enemies you might be screwed regardless of the nature of the missile fire battlefield impact of magic could be overwhelming or could be more part of the flow... with adapting to area effect attacks accomplished by tactics in play instead of changing the encounter dramatically. (smart minion class enemies spreading out in response to casters for instance )
Keep banging that drum there was far more to it... boring assed bags of hit points has less appeal to my wife than having her rogue throw out some cool assed maneuvers.
