MAD

Same here.

>the good guys managed to re-engineer the plague so that the bad guys' race was no longer genetically immune to it. So it basically killed both sides in huge numbers.

How did that improve the situation, exactly? "Oh, we turned this devastating genocide into a full-scale omnicide! We killed everyone! We're heroes!"

The lack of nuclear weapons :^)
Wizards, however, have already pushed the world past DEFCON 1 more times than hot meals have been had

Letting them get away with it would be failure in the pursuit of justice, user.

That doesn't sound like anyone is the good guys

There were quite a few. Before the stereotypical-magitech-apocalypse, different wizard cities would build a their own customized WMD deterrent with elegance and style. It was a peaceful form of dick-measuring that made conventional wars obsolete. Some cities had missiles that corrupted the ley lines of a nation, some had sentient plagues confined in echoing crystal hives, some had standing fields that collapsed to make city-sized spacetime prisons...

It was a wacky time, a time of peaceful competition and advancement. And then it all went wrong.

>Wizards, however, have already pushed the world past DEFCON 1 more times than hot meals have been had

General Rule of Thumb: If the local Wizard suddenly has a serious look on his face and is moving faster than that your groups barbarian or monk.... RUN FUCKERS RUN!

Their bugbite weakness where planetbusters are concerned.

Black odourless viscous liquid made out of people, magically twisted to be destructive...
think disintegrate spell x1000 from full metal alchemist's philosopher's stone.
My party allready used it to blow up a lich and his lair leaving what they dubbed a "feel's good man" crater

Powerful Wizards

In the end it's allways wizards. I had traps, deceit, war, death, public unrest, pestilence, nation wide destruction, dragon invasion and a crater... all caused by one mad man and his lust for power.

Ares, God of War along with all the Aesir Gods

Storytime please

An Old man with a wooden stick.

There is none. Nothing equitable to a nuclear deterrent. The whole of the world runs rampant with warfare between fleeting peace, supernatural disasters, or monster incursions. A true nuclear deterrent would mean full-brakes halting of most interesting campaign conflicts, and centuries of petty political intrigue and diplomatic maneuvering in an effort to stave off MAD. Unless a wizard is casting at some kind of solar exalted city-vaping bullshit level, even they are just glorified howitzers, and aren't going to single-handedly prevent their enemies from considering invasion.

Kept in a gravity containment field, in a bunker 2 miles underground, at a secret location only known to the eldest of the elder elves and suspended so it can't touch the sides is a simple wooden box with the lid firmly nailed closed.

There is an ancient not pinned to it and in a script older than humanity the simple message "I Said don't fucking open it you stupid bitch!"

You underestimate the what sort of madness a wizard could cook up if given too much time and not enough distractions.

...

lol bad words!!! so funny

It improved the situation because their hated rivals wouldn't be able to enact their devious plan with impunity.

Imagine that a race of vile insectmen decided to habitate on our planet. They are everything that humans hate. They cannot leave the planet, and do not have outside support. It's just us against them, one to one.

They develop a super-virus that is going to devastate humanity. With their immunity, they're going to kill all the humans and finally be able to do whatever awful shit they have cooked up. As a last ditch effort, humans say "I'd rather have every living thing on this planet erased than allow them to continue living." They decide on a draw with the insects, 0-0.

Well, sort of. I say "bad guys" and "good guys" from the perspective of the main character(s). In reality there was not enough time for the good guys to change the plague to not kill themselves, only to remove the part that made the enemy immune. Had there been time they would have tried, but they barely had a few months after discovering the existence of this weapon before its launch.

The "good guys" were vastly outnumbered. They survived in strongholds that took years to destroy by siege. It was like shooting a fireball into 90 orcs and 10 human soldiers; you might kill 100 people, but 90% of them are who you were trying to kill.

Both sides suffered enormous losses but it put the war on a far more even footing than it would have been otherwise.

Now, the enemy is still in great numbers, but there are not another million ships behind them, and the victories now are real, rather than staving off the inevitable.

We're running a Gundam campaign, so colony drop.

The worrying notion that the superpowered individuals, at least some of them, would survive and essentially become despotic rulers over the human survivors. Or perhaps even, be the only survivors and basically become some super race in the absence of humans.

As expected, at least one villain group wants to cause nuclear war for this main purpose. Though, the two most powerful vilains in the setting want no such thing so it's not likely anytime soon.

...

While no formal agreement was ever made, it is generally agreed among the races of man that atomic warfare is unsportsmanlike and not fun. The last system to try it got their major cities leveled and their fleet wiped out by everyone else.

Must be some small colonies.