Gunpowder and cannons completely rendered castles and other high-wall fortifications useless...

Gunpowder and cannons completely rendered castles and other high-wall fortifications useless. In a setting which powerful and destructive spells are resonably available (a.k.a every feudal lord is guarantee to have a wizard in his retinue,) how would siege warfare become?

>Gunpowder and cannons completely rendered castles and other high-wall fortifications useless.

This is worse than the "guns killed plate" meme.

>Gunpowder and cannons overcame curtain walls so easily and rapidly that they eventually were no longer worth the investment on fortifications located on flat land that were supposed to restrict the movements of cutting-edge armies

fixed.

For the rest, it depends on what sort of magic we're talking about. A wizard who can move earth will have a field day in Europe as walls generally didn't have foundations worth shit to begin with.

>every feudal lord is guarantee to have a wizard in his retinue
This is the situation I'd like to question further. Why is the wizard(who has access to powerful and destructive spells) not considered the one in charge with the 'feudal lord' simply being the one that oversees the day to day stuff?

What level wizard? What's he capable of?

If he can singlehandedly defeat fortifications and win a siege, why hasn't he vaporized the lord's army and taken over?

Anyway, the real answer is mages neutralize each other. If both armies have a wizard they've already used divination to locate each other and they're both waiting for the other to cast a spell so they can counter if it's lethal or cast lethal if it's something else.

So both of them sit there glaring at each other, unable to do anything, while the siege goes on as normal.

Mages are like nukes. Both sides bring one because not bringing one is suicide, but they can't actually use them.

Doesn't change the question set by OP. What is the effect of fairly commonplace magic on siege warfare?

I think static fortifications become obsolete for being giant targets and armies turn more into highly mobile horseback tactics.

It would involve more magic. You're using your own wizards as a counter and/or building siege weapons specifically designed to deal with an enemy wizard by being resistant to their spells.

Example: The Grindery. Built with special materials and harnessing the power of enslaved dragons, it was a siege machine designed to take out a flying mage city.

worrying about a high level wizard is like worrying about an earthquake, it may or may not completely level your castle without even trying, but that doesnt mean you shouldnt build one to keep out bandits or pissed of warlords who may want to pillage your goods

coz wizards swear an oath to the king to serve him when they enroll at the magic academy in order to learn magic in the first place, and rogue wizards are hunted down and their magic powers are wiped away from them.
furthermore the common folk neither trust nor like wizards, and the head wizards of any given kingdom understand that a kingdom needs a king that can actually lead effectively, plus they are paid handsomely. plus other neighboring wizards will use a wizard uprising in a given kingdom to expand their kingdom's influence and control, thus stealing magical secrets from subjugated kingdoms.
its really complicated actually.

>What is the effect of fairly commonplace magic on siege warfare?

Very little, because the other side has magic as well. In fact, now that you can't even starve them out cuz FOOD AN WATER OUTTA NOWHERE, the dudes behind the walls are even better off.

Really, having lots of magician's towers dotting your land would be ideal.

People have ruled empires by claiming that their ancestors could do less than what the court wizards can pull off reliably and repeatably. Wizards will be in power because they have power. How they choose to rule is up to them but the notion that they wouldn't be ruling and instead bow and scrape and kiss the ass of some muggle is absurd to me.

Ruler don't just stay in place because of ancestor magic though.
It's because they are "competent" in ruling and keeping the kingdom united.

Or else, the french king would still rule and heal people by touching them.

Because the wizard is quite happy to get all the benefits without having to actually manage the nobles estate.

Because there's nothing a warlord can do to stop a wizard from pushing his shit in, short of getting his own wizard to watch his back.

He can deal with mundane guys though. And since mundane guys these settings still don't have the means to effectively level a castle in a timely manner, good old fashioned high walls and towers are still the way to go.

Changing your style of fort won't make you more resistant to fireballs from the sky; just less capable of dealing with a conventional ground assault.

I feel like making a wall out of multiple layers of different materials could be useful. Aside from pure blasting magic, the most common siege warfare spells would be things like Turn Stone To Mud or similar. Having multiple layers of material would prevent any one spell from bringing the wall down. Wouldn't be a perfect defense, but it would slow the enemy down.

Or he just opens a portal in the middle and bypasses you entirely.

Settings with rampant portal magic open up a potential for a very interesting style of pre-modern maneuver warfare. I wonder what kind of infantry formations would be common in such a setting.

Why would you want to rule of you were a wizard? Managing a kingdom distracts from researching magic

If destructive power were all that mattered, the world would be ruled by the people manning the ICBM silos and submarines.

Magic is more than destructive power and I'd like you to remind yourself that the current great players are all, actually, sitting on hoards of ICBMs.

Like I said, the magic guys are free to rule however they feel like, they are in power after all. I just don't see a muggle lording authority over them and having them do as he pleases as a sustainable state of affairs.

I'm fine with it in a setting with low-powered ritualistic wizards and charlatans but once wizards start to seem more like demi-gods more than capable of taking what they want, it's just stupid and lazy.

Duh. Magically enchanted walls.

Fireballs can't take and hold territory.

>ITT: Bunch of faggots again complaining why wizard should be loyal to anyone
This is getting stale.

You don't have to sit in some pretty chair wearing stupid headgear to be the one in charge. The only thing that's needed is that whatever you say goes.The minutia can be left to a representative or something. They'll manage your shit and you get to do as you please and have your whims catered to. Why is servitude to some muggle more appealing?

Summoned creatures/golems can.

>muggle

This guy haha. Magicfags have no idea how things really work do they?

Doesn't matter how much you can wiggle your fingers, if no one respects you no one will follow you. Enjoy your kingdom of ghosts.

What you're describing can and does happen, they are typically called MAD WIZARDS, up in their lofty towers surrounded by only loneliness and misery.

If you don't have a claim you are a bandit and a usurper. Anyone who follows you does so out of fear.

>Enjoy your kingdom of ghosts.

As a matter of fact, i do.

>Enjoy your kingdom of ghosts
The silent majority outnumber the living a hundred to one.

Every kingdom is full of ghosts.

>Magic is more than destructive power

Well yeah, but if you got more than big explosions at your fingertips, you can just fuck off to your own pocket dimension or run your a self-sufficient estate innawoods.

>and I'd like you to remind yourself that the current great players are all, actually, sitting on hoards of ICBMs.

The US had won its top spots without atomic bombs and North Korea, India, Pakistan, France and GB basically are local nuisances, not world powers. But you missed that I was pointing out that direct, personal access to huge explosions in itself really doesn't do shit.

It would change absolutely nothing to be honest. In setting where magic is that commonly available any wall worth a damn would have had powerful warding magic woven into as part of it's construction.

No easy way to teleport in, undermine the foundations or blow up the walls. Could be done in theory, but the amount of power required would make a conventional siege the most practical way to go.

Wizards would be more like support personnel as opposed easy win siege equipment.

>Ruler don't just stay in place because of ancestor magic though.
>It's because they are "competent" in ruling
This is wildly unreliable as a metric for rulership.

You're assuming that magic is common on a level where every pissant lord has a siege wizard capable of taking down fortifications. That's a silly assumption. Kings might have siege wizards of that level of power, maybe even your occasional high-ranking lord. But most of them won't.

Assuming no counter magic. The effect would be to end the siege by allowing an attacker assault.

That doesn't then translate to fortifications being useless or suggest other counters wouldn't exist. It just means that in the one case where there is a high level mate that can nullify defenses there would likely be an attacker assault following the defenses failure.

Wouldn't it just result MAD?

Every feudal lord would have a dedicated program to finding and training Wizards.

Probably have to consider the range of various spells vs the realistic range of much of the weaponry. As well as general tactical implications of spell range.

Bigger issue than what people might think.

Having magic powers essentially paints a bulls eye on the person. Overly ambitious casters would be swiftly eliminated.
>n-no wizards would ise magic to have an omni present knowledge of everyones intentions and have unlimited summons to protect him from assassins.

No. That's a meme answer. The smartest thing a wizard could do would be to live under the service of someone else, or seclude themselves away.

If it's a fantasy setting the ruler stays in place because he is the rightful king as ordained by the gods and if a wrongful king were ever to take the throne the land would be shrouded in darkness, plague and famine.
I mean seriously guys, haven't you ever read a story about a jelous brother killing his sibling to take the throne, only for the kingdom to go into decline and the usurper losing his sanity? It's like a rule in magic kingdoms.

>Gunpowder and cannons completely rendered castles and other high-wall fortifications useless
U fookin' wot m8? France's most famous and enduring fortifications were built in the same era where cannons were declared "the last argument of kings". Forts just changed under the influence of cannons (moving away from the medieval castle design towards such things as star forts) and wouldn't really be phased out until the world wars.

This too. Early modern contract thinkers, egalitarian theories, republicanism etc. simply wouldn't arise in a setting with magical bloodlines because they can actually enforce that "muh blue blood" thing. Kings and nobles would proudly boast their elven, draconic, fey or celestial heritage. Lower class mages would occupy a role similar to that of knights, and the closest thing we'd have to knights in the traditional sense woudl be Gishes.

The Feudal Lord is a higher-level warrior than they are a wizard.

Note that this only applies if you're not playing D&D 3.PF. But that's a good assumption, because if you are still playing 3.PF, then you've obviously taken leave of your senses and wouldn't be thinking about how something would logically work.