Do all mages in a military force have to be combat mages? Or are they the only ones that get the attention?

Why do you say that? The Codex Alera is far from boring; the thing is, the civilization in question has had a thousand years to work on efficient practicality in warfare, and it shows in their use of their different elemental ubermensch.

>hurf durf I'll just walk around with 13 wards and mow down the enemies by myself and noone in the enemy force will be resistant to magic and I'll never be assassinated and there will never be supernatural interference in my life
>grr plebs are all idiots and I should be in charge of everything
Spotted the edgy Tytalus apprentice.

They're combat mages because the actual impact of even moderately powerful fantasy mages on medieval warfare would be profound.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but Mercedes Lackey wrote a series of books in an event called 'the Mage Wars', the mages in that are sub-D&D weaklings comparatively but even then magic turns the war into an utter shitshow.

Ever play Dominions?

Deffensive magic, anti-scrying measures, possible magic supply chains, enchanters and most importantly GEOMANCERS and WATER mages for terrain control.

Pfg is another way bro. And when I say bro I mean never my bro, you little dresswearing pansy.

This. Before any war happens it is a huge battle between mages waged by scrying, counterscrying and divination. A good mage working inside his tower is worth more than a banner of knights.

Codex Alera is Butchershit. Butchershit is all stuff that sounds like a promising subject line, but shitty writing and dragging an idea into the ground makes all of his books a waste of time.

If we are talking real life here, then combat mages would be retarded as shit just like your life OP.

In real life. The most useful mage would be the summoner. A summoner's army can deal with anything.

Non-mage armies would instantly collapse, and if they didn't, they would the following day when they are all tired from the previous fight while the summoners continue their onslaught. Combat mages armies would also collapse in the same way non-mages would.

A mix of both would fare pretty much the same faith.

But then again in real life a single powerful Water/Earth elementalist could destroy anything anyway in a matter of seconds.

So you'd say he butchered the premise?

I liked how every nation in Dominions had their own non-war utility with their mages
Berytos had their mage pilots for navigation, Agartha had necromancers to help run their industry, Tien Chi's geomancers are architects/engineers that can also rain meteors, etc.

>Combat mages? Like a squad?

That's crazy.

Use the 1% rule user.

MISTER OPENING POSTER, I HUMBLY REQUEST CLARIFICATION ABOUT YOUR QUESTION. TO WHICH SETTING DO YOU REFER?
I WISH TO KNOW PRECISELY IN WHICH SETTING IS THE CONTEXT OF THE QUESTION PRESENTED IN THIS THREAD, IF YOU WOULD BE SO KIND AS TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. HAVE I SPELLED THIS OUT SUFFICIENTLY?
THIS REPLY IS AN EXPLICIT REQUEST FOR CLARIFICATION SINCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THAT THE PHRASE "DEPENDS ON THE SETTING" IS AN IMPLICIT REQUEST FOR CLARIFICATION.

In any setting, PC classes (mages, fighters, whatever), make up 1% of the population.

Out of that 1%, 30% are thieves, 30% are fighters and the remaining 60% are all other classes combined.

If you can find a squad of 5th level wizards....your setting is fucked up beyond repair.

Edit: the remaining 40%

In Final Fantasy 12 you see one of the major battles between Dalmasca and Arcadia and the mages are busy keeping a magic shield protecting the soldiers from the airship overhead before they all get ganked and you don't see a whole lot of magic thrown around in the eventual melee that takes place inside the fort.

That said, assuming we're not using the do everything magic of D&D the idea of mages being on the front line is stupid to me. For my very specific and autistic interpretation of what magic should be and how it works I imagine combat magic is best for 1v1/1vsmall number of people rather than warfighting where bodies are pressed together.

>For my very specific and autistic interpretation of what magic should be and how it works I imagine combat magic is best for 1v1/1vsmall number of people rather than
That's retarded as fuck. A single mage can throw a fireball than can harm up to 10 enemy soldiers at once.

10 mages firing 10 fireballs at once could deal with 100 men at once. 100 mages firing 100 fireballs at once can deal with 1000 soldiers, which is already considered an army.

Not using mages for combat is retarded, you are retarded.

A mortar is cheaper then a guy that takes years to jazz hand some fire.

If I need merc a motherfucker I send him in a group with my best soldiers at his side to help assassinate/handle HV targets and objectives.

>implying they wouldnt get shat on my abjuration
>implying your elemental army would get sent back the minute they show up
>implying a bunch of knights now with magical shields and magic resistance wouldnt cut you down like grass

>fighters
>thieves
The fuck are NPC thieves in every majour city? The fuck are guards?

>Dominion

Can you provide a link to read about the setting ?

If we are talking about a setting below low magic then mages should be the ruling class tbqh. Our worlds nobility consisted of people who only had more skills and ressources. Ad superhuman abilities to this and you actually have a ruling class of übermenschen. This only works if the mages don't have some mcguffin style weakness the commoners can exploit.

So in my oppinion the mages either have some kind of non-interference "let the plebs fight it out" rule to prevent out of control magic to destroy everything (with mages stepping in as a nuclear option) OR you have mages as highly specialized officers. I.E communications, supply etc. were a good share of mages actually is used in non-combat duty.

That guy doesn't just fire jazz from his hand. He has a lot of other abilities too

Wheel of Time handles this very well. Spoilers for the last book.

For most of the series, the mages are glorified as walking balls of death and destruction, and they are more than capable of that. However, in the last book, the enemy force has so many troops that the mages get so tired out. Eventually it is discovered the most efficient use of most probably 90% of the mages is not walking balls of death and destruction, but logistics operators, teleporting the real solders from point a to point b.

"Not every member of the city watch, the village militia, or the queen’s army is a fighter. Most of these troops are relatively untrained soldiers with only the most basic combat knowledge. Veteran soldiers, military officers, trained bodyguards, dedicated knights, and similar figures are fighters."

D&D 5e PHB, page 70

Most soldiers, guards, thieves, and such are not competent or skilled enough to be considered Fighters or Rogues. If they are skilled, it's in a very specific field, whereas Fighters and Rogues have very broad skill sets they are proficient in.

>Every guard is a FIGHTER lv 1 at least

lol, fucking idiot

>D&D 5e PHB, page 70

I can't think of a single edition of d&d (except 4, which i never read), that doesn't have that nearly word for word.

This is the right approach--for pretty much all of human history, the logistics of battle have been the determining factor. Very few people died in pitched battle--most casualties come in the rout when one side breaks.
Wizards are basically an excuse to introduce new technology. Functionally, a mortar and a fireball serve the same purpose; The wizard lets you use the idea without having the technology to back it up so you can bottleneck the utility.

Because, yeah, a single guy in your army who can blow stuff up is very useful. But you know what's better? Someone who can double your marching distance or keep you dry in the rain.

I know, I was just specifically calling that one out specifically because 5e is the one I'm able to reach most easily.

Player characters are supposed to be exceptional at level 1, is the general idea. It takes about as much effort to train to be a level 1 Fighter as it does to train to be a level 1 Wizard.

>Player characters are supposed to be exceptional at level 1, is the general idea. It takes about as much effort to train to be a level 1 Fighter as it does to train to be a level 1 Wizard.

100% correct user.

And not every npc who can cast 1 spell, is a wizard, and not every guard with a sword is a fighter.

It wearies me a bit, when I see people talking about ARMIES of wizards, and 20 druids.....etc.

Huh, it's almost like d&d is a shit system that discourages an internally consistent sense of scale

It actually gives the scale.

1%. That's pretty easy.

>Do all soldiers in an military force have to be combat soldiers?
Yes. There is absolutely no one gathering intelligence. No one is using devices to see things that the naked eye can't. No one is using tools and techniques designed to listen in on otherwise private conversations. No one is repairing equipment. No one is building the defenses; no one is improving the defenses. No one is moving troops and equipment around.

Dolt.

As previously pointed out, not all casters of spells are wizards, etc. So when you're facing off against an adept who casts weak spells, you assume it's another wizard and not some shit level npc class

So?

That doesn't change anything about the post you quoted.

>Do all mages in a military force have to be combat mages? Or are they the only ones that get the attention?

They're the only ones that get attention; it's like how kings and generals get all the attention, but foot soldiers, siege-engineers, and the guy in charge of pigeons are the ACTUAL people who have to win the fucking war.

An army can have any number of non-combat mages to do a host of important military jobs:
-Geomancers shifting or moving dirt for trenches, fortifications, perhaps teams to undermine structures so siege engineers can powder keg it the fuck open/down.

-Weather mages who's sole job is to fucking predict if it's going to rain, snow, or what have you. Literally quite possibly the most important wizard.

-Excorcists. If there's magic, there's ghosts; don't let the dead interfere with the living just because they're butthurt about being killed by king richard in some unimportant scuffle.... Also especially useful if a deity thinks your "evil" and they send an Angel down to fuddle up your mortal plans- banish that silly bitch back to heinoheim.

-Conjurer, literally for the sole purpose of siphoning clean water from the air/clouds and perhaps transmuting food from grass/available starch. It won't be pretty, but you'll be thankful when acolyte 1346 sean single-handidly summoned food and water to the point of near exhaustion to keep his platoon fed when goblins ate all their biscuits and jerky.

Exactly why I shouldn't waste those talents on the front line.

Oh, right, how could I forget the most important magical non-combat role:

-Poop/Latrine Mage. You'll be thankful when you're not knee-deep in shit thanks to your poop mages transmuting the literal tons of shit and piss your army produces into useful materials... instead of just DROWING in poop filled latrines.

Probably one of the more if not most embarrassing fields of magical study, but certainly worthy of immense respect.

Am going to have to look it up but I do believe that past dnd has rules for the high level Npc in large cities

So while armies is going too far you can end up with a good number of wizards and clerics in a city

Who never seem to be mentioned ever

If even 10% of PC class characters were mages, you'd have had about 65,000 mages in the Roman empire.

That's enough for 13 entire legions worth of mages alone.

Geomancers would build the best goddamn castles and walls, holy shit. It's not even just brickwork, just solid material.

Having an Alchemist. But he is a full blown Mage
Now your Generals or Captains each have a draught of liquid that gives them supernatural attributes.

Turns out, Magic is Overpowered

Check your math user

>65,000,000 people in the empire
>1% of them are PCs, so 650,000 PCs in the empire
>10% of those PCs are mages, so 65,000 mages in the empire
>A legion is about 4,800 people, so you can get about 13 legions out of those 65,000 mages

Admittedly, the population varied over the ages, but 65,000,000 was a rough estimated average.

>each kingdom has its own intelligence mage guild
>each such guild employs a wide range of scryers, magical sensors, counter-divination methods, cloak-and-dagger field operatives and vision analysts
>and each is a horrible bureaucracy, where each vision, prophetic dream, scryed bits of info must be recorded and catalogued
>every crystal ball, ouija board, taro deck and sheep bone set have a serial and an inventory number
>there are secret warehouses filled with labeled boxes containing posessions and body bits of various individuals, to be used as focuses for scrying

>due to magics of mass destruction, full scale wars just aren't feasible anymore
>instead it's just spies and mages all over the world, spying, scrying, manipulating, assassinating and controlling
>mind controlled bandit kings start a revolution and install a new government, loyal to a foreign power
>spies undergo a dangerous mission to steal a monarch's favourite childhood toy
>recruited assassin gets charmed and then blackmailed into betraying his country and bringing a curse conduit into a strategic arcane forge, then gets fireballed in the middle of the night

Hell, now I want to run a magical medieval spy game.

>Do all mages in a military force have to be combat mages?

Nope.

>Ctrl+F "artillery"
>0 results

It's like you're not even trying, teeg.

>65,000,000
56-57 million was what I've always read?

But either way. I ain't gonna argue about that.

I'd question that 10% of all PC's are mages.

That doesn't leave much room for clerics/bards/barbs/monks/warlocks/psionics.....and fuck, etc etc etc.

But here's a sorta unrelated question.

If as user posted that 1% are PC's,
and 30% of PC's are rogues, and 30% fighters..thus leaving 40% open to the other classes...

Does that mean that if you open up your setting for MORE classes beyond core, that it decreases the NPC's with classes?

dandwiki.com/wiki/3.5e_All_Classes

Because that would be like 1 of each fucking class?

>In any setting, PC classes (mages, fighters, whatever), make up 1% of the population.
>Out of that 1%, 30% are thieves, 30% are fighters and the remaining 60% are all other classes combined.

Anyone have a reference for that?

Try mortar fagbag

I'd have a few questions about 30% each being devoted to just fighters and thieves before I questioned that.

I can't find any of those percentages?

I can't find anything claiming 1% either.

He said support

It's the video game Dominions 4

The different factions at various ages are all superb in flavor. It is definitely Veeky Forums approved vidya.

Butcher has stated outright that the series was written following a forum argument with a fellow author, over whether a good premise or a good execution was better. He essentially combined Pokemon with the Roman Empire, and the ideas of intrinsic spirits from various cultures (Roman house spirits, Japanese yokai, etc), and ran with that purposefully bad concept in an attempt to twist it into something passable.

Basically, the premise is meant to be bad. That was his intention. The entire series from an authorial standpoint is a statement on whether it's best to prioritize concept or writing.

tl;dr he wrote it because a troll told him the idea you start with is more important than the product you end with. And seeing how much money he's made off of the series, I think he won the argument.

Keep them on the back enchanting arrows, swords, bolts, cannonballs, bullets all day long. Don't let them on the frontline until their are high level mages.

Fighter and Rogue are the most generic fighters. They're your generic street thieves and underworld enforcers, your above average soldiers in the army, heads of the militia, and street fighters who've been at it for a while.

The thing people forget is of those tens of thousands of people, the vast majority of them are level one. Then beyond that you have a few thousand at level two. Then a thousand or so at level three. The thin handful who'd be at level five are most likely already in the army or working with or running a high level organization, or else so violently against it pressing them into a legion is impossible without wasting manpower.

So your legion of wizards will be doing cantrips and nothing else. Their ability to fight will always be outstripped by a handful of grunts because they'll throw out a couple of attacks and then be shit out of luck.

Logistics,Comms,Espionage and other force multipliers seem like the best way to use mages, rather than just using them as mobile artillery.

Aren't most NPC high level mages meant to be old (PC being especial snowflakes)? I don't see how they can be of any use on the frontline. Keep them in the back where their frail and old bodies won't be as much of an issue.

They get the attention.

And while some generals dream with a quantity of spells requiring more double digit level mages than the whole world actually has, I make do with some flying eyes and telepathy to fuck up Hannibal's Cannae.

And what really keeps the Empire going is the thousand seers the bureaucraucy employs. Good luck trying to lie to the census or how much you must pay in taxes. We know what you're going to produce next spring better than you.

War is fueled by money, not men or weapons.

>Someone who can double your marching distance
This triggers my saliva glands.

Depends on the GM, the Setting, and whether or not they use that blurb about most NPCs being less than level 1.

Also, lots of Adventure Paths fly in the face of the published guidelines, because they don't work very well for having enemy and Ally NPCs.

Personally I'm inclined to run it like it's Shadowrun: The PCs aren't unusually powerful or skilled, they're just characters who do dangerous freelance work. My "beat cop" is level 6ish; my "soldier who did a tour in *warzone*" is level 10ish, and my spetsnaz are level 15.

If guards aren't even gonna be 1st level characters?

Whelp, I guess it's an e4 campaign.

How in the hell is tapping into lesser referenced folklore a 'bad premise'?

It's the ONLY good premise

DnD has way too much power scaling for my tastes, so it's really hard to try and make everything fit together.

Even just having a dozen level 1 mages who can cast Create Food/Water would be a huge boon to any army. Cut out entire supply chains and let each unit/division be self sufficient and not have to carry food and heavy-ass water.

>There's no such thing as restrictions on magic: The post

Jesus Christ, all you guys are missing something big. Even the guys saying logistics are overlooking something simple that would change the name of the game for any army in a premodern setting:

Get some fucking agrimancers to grow crops on a scale that blows away what a few peasants and the sun can do and you'll be rolling over your neighboring cultures with a fucking quickness.
Oh, you put your mages to work casting fireballs? These catapults we bought with our massive grain stores do the job just fine, as does our army thrice the size of yours with elite mercenary units brought in from two kingdoms over.

I'm okay with ends power scaling, but only if the NPCs are on the same scale as the PCs.

And in a 1-20 campaign, that means a lot more level 10 NPCs. Cop made Detective? Level 10-12. Medical doctor? Level 13ish. Neurosurgeon? 16. Experienced trucker? Maybe 7. Levels 1-4 are reserved for idiots, children, and young interns.

If I'm gonna run the super low level NPCs suggested in the book, I'm still capping the PCs level by beat cop HD x4, at most.

Realizations like this are why people wrote up the tippyverse for 3.5.

Shit, you could even use your newfound source of dosh to pay off neighboring powers to ally against whoever you're warring against. They managed to invade and siege a city? S'alright, Udo the Botaniker will chant and piss in the city plaza and conjure a damn wheat field, we can sit on the walls munching on bread and laugh at the starving soldiers. You'd probably see all those fancy fire mages flocking to your side once they hear you've got so much food it's worthless to you and they can make it bigtime working the forges for artisanal metalworking now that everyone's gotten rich and bored exporting food for luxury goods like jewels, textiles and gold.

This is based on the unrealistic notion that agrimancers wouldn't replace farmers world wide in such a world in short order, and then any food scarcity would be entirely artificial.

>tippyverse for 3.5.
Not familiar. Can I get a quick summary?

The specific premise, in this case, was "Pokemon meets lost Roman legion". As far as premises go, that's pretty shit

>Create food/water traps
>Healing and disease removal traps
>Teleport circles linking everywhere
>Uses of magic in a non retarded way
That sort of thing

Such a thing would neeeeeeever happen, to think that the people in power would screw the less fortunate because they can is crazy talk! It would NEVER happen in real life!

t. Prime Minister Gladstone

Trouble is all the monsters use the same scaling.

>C'tis start off as Egyptian expies who venerate and faithfully memorialize their dead
>by the Late Age they just say fuck it and start raising the hundreds of thousands of bodies buried over the millennia and enslaving them as soldiers
Dominions is a hell of a ride

POG Mages

>In any setting
Stop confusing "default" with "mandatory, no exceptions allowed"

>In any setting
Untrue.

>10 men at once
>20' radius
8*8=64 targets at a maximum, dude.

>I will throw my men into the meat grinder until it runs out of grind!
Genius strategy.

A bunch of people examined the rules of 3.5, and made a world that was consistent with what people could do.

This is fucking amazing. I'd read a book about this shit in a heartbeat.

What wouldn't happen is regular agriculture. I'm not saying food would be abundant. I'm saying food could be abundant, and your neighboring countries wouldn't farm either.

Right. Monsters and PCs use one scale, NPCs another. I'm saying I put NPCs on that same scale. If I keep the NPC scale instead, dragons will be fought by armies, not adventures, and PCs will instead fight gangs of brigands.

Agreed. I saved it for later. Maybe I'll run a campaign based on it.

Shouldn't you be putting PC's on the same scale as NPC's? Otherwise half a dozen accountants are going to be fighting off orc bandits no problem.

Yeah. I might try to do some writefagging for it. I've been kicking around ideas for a magical war story that doesn't focus on blasty combat for a while, and this slots in perfectly with the premise I had, so that's nice.

I'd love to be in a campaign like that. What system would even be best suited for this, anyway? Something with flexible and non-combat magic, but... I've never really looked for a system that can do that.

kind of reminds me of the Bartimeus trilogy
magic is so potentially powerful that most warfare consists of trying to sabotage your enemy's magical capabilities long before the war can start because otherwise you'll end up with spies summoning armies of demons in the middle of your capital or your army getting leveled by magical fire