Okay, you know what gets me mad? Fantasy armies. Almost never magic has any influence on how armies look...

Okay, you know what gets me mad? Fantasy armies. Almost never magic has any influence on how armies look. There are people who can turn stones into mud, but armies still hide in stone castles. They can chug fireballs, but armies fight in tight formations.
Have you ever done something to correct how armies fight with magic?

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Pitched battle is a fool's endeavour. Guerilla war all the things. Nothing but wizards with small groups of fighters near them for physical protection.

Again, it depends on the fucking setting.

One setting has rocket tag mages, so they use peasants as radar to look for the enemy mage. Others where magic is common as fuck, they interspersed within the army to create barriers and wards against turning stone to mud. And settings where magic is rare as fuck, mages have a gentleman's agreement to not interfere in mortal affairs.

This is the solution. Because of the lack of reliable communications on an accessible scale, we need to devolve decision-making down to highly self-sufficient groups operating largely autonomously across a wide frontier. I think it would be quite the adventure. Perhaps we should call them adventurer groups.

Never had to deal with this because I never liked high magic settings anyway, so spellcasters are rare, sparse, and don't have an active part in warfare.

Okay, you know what gets me mad? Modern day armies. Almost never weaponry has any influence on how armies look. There are weapons that can turn concrete into dust, but armies still hide in concrete buildings. They can fire missiles through drones, but soldiers still fight in tight formations under and open sky.
Have you ever done something to correct how armies fight with modern weaponry ?

As awful as the series was, the Inheritance Cycle handled that pretty well.
The armies were pretty much normal, and wizards functioned as strike teams or lances. They would go in, search for other wizards, and quickly dispatch them, then they would sneak around the battle, picking off particularly threatening targets. Only a few times did a wizard directly charge into the battle, and every time that happened the wizard in question immediately died.

With a wizard in every squad, communication is very reliable.

Chess

OP, if it wasn't already said, you should read Heroes of Battle
I can't link the pdf here, but if you google search it'll come up.

Really unless high level spellcasters are common the armies are going to look the same, just tactics are gonna change. In Anima and DnD games with Low ammounts of high level spellcasters I would imagine armies would just make sure to have a few 1-3 heroes/villains/adventurers that could single handedly kill off another army without a scratch. Then dedicate those few people to combat the other armies adventurers. And the battle would end when one side still has an Adventurer standing and the other doesn't. 'Cause at that point the fantasy army without one will retreat or die. Because what army is going to do good against a Technician or Wizard at high level who can warp reality to do massive damage to everything in assistance and not get hit by your average person.

how did existence get autocorrected to assistance?

Wizards are not a problem unless they are DnD levels of stupidly common. Especially since in most fantasy worlds they die just fine to arrows and have a shorter effective blasting range than 100 men with bows.

Things like trolls being a real threat will have more of an effect.

I've been treating it as a sort of MAD agreement (mutually assured destruction). If each side has mages, the mages are generally reserved for buffs and counterspelling, as a sheer all-out spellcasting battle would decimate each side. It's better to wait until a rout is caused by the soldiers and THEN begin casting spells. No one wants fireballs raining all across the battlefield indiscriminately.

>wizard-based comms network
>magitech elevating fantasy to near-modern levels

youtube.com/watch?v=pJWZlqLxiLg

This game had a pretty silly battle at the start using doofy magic-powered weapons.

The answer is that clerics are more common and have already distorted the field of battle massively already.

In many fantasy clerics have real and verifiable power. This should mean that religions have lots of power in fantasy settings. And they do and because of all the clerics this means all out holy war everyday all day.

One doesn't usually think about deities like the Seldarin being gods of war but Corellon Larethian the wussiest most elf-bitch among them has warfare among his domains. But wait, you say, these deities are Lawful-Good aren't they? Well yes they are but the enemies they fight interbreed with demons and worship evil gods of death and destruction. It is perfectly justifiable to march into battle against the orc hordes of Gruumsh or the drow murder hobos of Lolth.

This also leads to the typical fantasy settings of large wilderness and chaos. The whole world is basically engulfed in a large-scale guerrilla religious war.

High-level mages are rare, and have better things to do than risk their lives in the conflicts of lesser beings.

Okay, you know what gets me mad? Carthaginian armies. Almost never elephants have any influence on how armies look. There are animals that can turn maniples into blood, but armies still form into triplex acies. They can charge through legionary after legionary, but armies fight in tight formations. Have you ever done something to correct how legions fight with elephants?

>Elephants
>not easily dealt with

>mfw

Then why have the armies? I guess they wouldn't count as anything else but occupation forces on already conquered territories and, thus, acting more like guards than a regular army.

>fantasy conflict is just groups of Adventurers and a city guard to occupy conquered areas
That sounds pretty accurate to most settings.

All of this. Realistically one sides heroes are going to murder the other sides heroes and then you might as well just give up and hope the occupying army isn't too mean.

>but armies still hide in stone castles.
Which is why if the DM isn't an idiot, he'd have the walls reinforced with magic somehow to either set off alarms if someones fucking with it, or prevent someone from using a spell that lets them walk into the stone.

>gets me mad
>Almost never magic has
>chug fireballs
Are you drunk?

I always am.