Why are so many people assuming that invention of firearms would make magic obsolete? It's completely retarded

Magic fire arms.

Technology and magic would likely just mix, never understood the te tendency to keep them seperate.

If anything, magic would be enhanced by firearms. Hell, maybe a wizard/alchemist will invent them. They may use special bullets with magical incantation. Bodyguards armed with muskets to counter murderhobos etc. Golems with cannons etc.

>Spent a day placing spells in your bullets.
>Now you have a couple of free spell slot that would have been used for offensive spells.

a wizard would be an effective counter to a pike and shot formation

their tightly packed bodies would increase the effectiveness of a fireball, the smoke produced by their volleys would prevent them from seeing the battlemage casting, and even if they did the inaccuracies of arquebuses and the general chaos of the battlefield would make retreating in an orderly manner impossible

a tercio would only have 3 options, stand and fight on the off chance you kill the wizard before he casts and risk losing a 30ft circle of men, retreat and risk being routed, or charge and risk being wiped out by a counterattack of cavalry

>Stick a wand in the gun
>Now you can cast spells with the gun.

Lone wizards would be cannon fodder to cavalry. That's how you counter skirmishers.

>rifles with underslung wands

>*snorts a fuckload of crushed mana crystals*
>say hello to my little friend!
>*disintegrate*
>*disintegrate*
>*disintegrate*

>He doesn't want blessed bullets with holy water.

Magic vs technology has never been a logical or substantive conflict. It's at its heart a conflict between two different aesthetics, a mystical, medieval-feeling one and a post-industrial, post-enlightenment one. Every other facet is slaved to that central premise.

In fact, industrialization should make magic more accessible to the public as well.

>Mass production of wands
>Mass production of objects designed to take enchantments, with wizards enchanting in batches at the end
>DIY spellcasting kits
>Wizards using spells to compensate where technology can't do the job quite yet, leading to faster development of industry

Arcanum is an exceptionally well thought-out example: Magic is actually Reality Warping, and the more complex a given device is, the more likely having the laws of physics bent in its presence will break it. Result: most mages can only ride trains if they stay in the caboose for the safety of both mage and machine, and powerful mages have to learn to teleport or get used to walking. Likewise, attempting to use magic around a complex machine is a bit like sticking your hand in said machine; you'll break it if you're lucky, if not it'll shred you without missing a beat. Result; complex technology generates its own anti-magic field. Thus, spells are less effective against someone with a lot of high-tech gear, and becoming a technologist weakens your ability to use magic.

Wow this thread is is on fucking hyper repeat as of late. All I'm going to say is powder fantasy is great, fuck anyone who disagrees, gm post in the gamefinder thread if you have a thirst for it.

Because the peasant, the peasants brother, the peasants brothers sisters dead cat, the family that feed the cat occasionally, and the entire fucking village, would own rifles and pistols, the town guard would own a cannon, maybe a venture capitalism wizard realized there was entertainment afoot and started selling enchanted suits of armor, and suddenly the wizard can't do dick but jack himself off because there's 10,000 peasants out there with the same level of power or near same level of power, that have the ability to poke holes in things from distances he can't normally see out to.

In most settings, magic is used as a tool of the elite, something one in a million possess and fewer yet master, but in such gain greater powers than ten million. But those powers mean piddly shit the second some asshole can treepan you and open your mind to god, from a mile away with their snowflake WIZARDS brand Sniper Rifle© "we have no sense of eight and wrong".

What the fuck? If guns are that commonplace, that just will mean every goddamn wizard will have a machine gun that comes with fucking bullet time.

Peasantry implies feudal society, doubt you'd have such a widespread weapons profilation in that case.

These

It wasn't that gun > bow it was that 1,000 guys with guns became quicker and cheaper to train than 1,000 guys with bows.

The guns themselves were initially expensive of course, but costs dropped over time and it was when gun-equipped troops became cheaper and quicker to raise than longbowmen that the gun slowly replaced the bow - a process that took hundreds of years.

So the argument isn't 1 gun vs 1 wizard it's more like 'how many guns+men does 10,000 gold pieces buy me for this years war and how soon can they be ready? (weeks/months) vs how much spell-power do I get for the same price and how long does it take for them to be ready?'

The time factor is an issue along with the cost.

Years to train a longbowman (because they have to be damn strong)

Weeks/months to train a chap to fire a gun

Years/decades to train a battle wizard

In generic fantasy setting, without specific limits on magic/technology I see warfare as adopting the gun but keeping the wizard - using them as different tools for different situations

>how to spot an american

To be fair the Britbongs were the first Amerishoots; nearly everybody in England had a self-defence crossbow until the Pope went full autistic and banned their use so the King told everybody to use Long bows instead.

>bongs
>having guns

>He hasn't read his history
Bongs started introducing controls because at one point there were more guns than people in Britain and a metric fuckton of people were carrying around several guns on their person at all times.

>Why are so many people assuming that invention of firearms would make magic obsolete?
Because that's the way it actually happened in history, duh.

>actual history
>generic fantasy magic
Pick one.

But about the OP:
It's basically the different aesthetics clashing + normies having a distorted view on technology and science in general, thinking scientists wouldn't just research magic like they do physics.

It's even worse because in many settinhs wizards ARE scientists.

>Magic vs technology has never been a logical or substantive conflict. It's at its heart a conflict between two different aesthetics
So many this.

Is it too late to /thread?

>Why are so many people assuming that invention of firearms would make magic obsolete?
Firearms weren't in many classical fantasy stories so dum-dums assume it would be impossible to make them fit. Also dum-dums who doesn't understand history associate guns with the end of melee combat, and think that a matchlock arquebus would be equivalent to a modern sniper rifle somehow.

I remember when Bloodborne was being teased, one of my friends said "Woah, how are they going to balance guns in a Souls game?" To which I replied "Why would it intrinsically be unbalanced?" to which he didn't have a reply.

I would say it's a little more than that.
Science vs Mysticism is a real thing, where generally people will ascribe mystical attributes to something until a scientific explanation is found.

>Lightning is a bolt thrown by zeus!
But actually it's electrical discharge.
>That Preacher talks to god and god tells him about me!
Actually he just had you doxxed when you bought your ticket and has someone talking to him on a radio.
>The gypsie placed a curse on me!
And all the bad luck you're experiencing is just confirmation bias.

This of course is pretty nonsensical in a setting in which magic is real.

Great post mate.

Remember, fear the old butt.

It takes months, years, decades even to make someone effective with any learned system, like magic or even melee weapons like swords, etc.

It takes a few days to a week to make someone effective with a gun.

That's why all novice mages carry grenades, firebombs and a handgonne to protect themselves should they run out of pew-pew juice.

Guns, along with other forms of technology are simply another form of magic. It wouldn't remove the need for older magic.

Guns aren't even that widespread today with all the benefits of industrialization

Guys... guys...

What about a one-shot-cannon that shoots a sphere of annihilation at your enemies?

That why you dot let engineers play D&D.

>It takes a few days to a week to make someone effective with a gun.
Blatantly false. A hundred soldiers with a day's worth of training will be effective with a gun. One guy with a day's worth of training will be just as useful with a bow, sword, or literally any other weapon.

This entire argument is retarded because you're using historical basis founded in armed warfare when every fantasy system ever if based on small groups of wandering mercenaries.

Crime was also far lower at the time; though that could be blamed on fewer Asians.

Grapeshot cannons that shoot lead balls with some form of delayed chain lightning cast on them.

I highly doubt that. Crime rates go down as time passes. As technology improves it's more difficult to get away with crime.

I like to go with this example.
Take 2 people, one is a wizard and one is a guy with normal tools. Take the tools away and put both of them in a cell, who is more likely to get out?
The wizard obviously, though this premise fails if we go with vancian magic and not something mana based.

Bullets that contain a Create Water spell.

Imagine getting shot. And then having two gallons of water magically appear in your wound.

>Not using chains to prevent the wizard from casting magic.
>Not cutting off their tongues to be sure.

>not using a prison cell so old and famous it is tainted by the suffering of its prisoners, crushing the hope of magical effects under the brutal metaphysical weight of history

>Blatantly false. A hundred soldiers with a day's worth of training will be effective with a gun.
That's why hit rates in warfare are so abysmal right? Its almost like training someone to be able to kill takes some effort. But I guess you're technically correct in the sense that before they route if they stay as a group one day's training is enough for the entire group to be functional. I mean they're going to reload, slow as shit, probably over/under charge the gun due to hectic battlefield conditions and lack of the instinctual muscle memory that comes with training, but hey if that's your definition of effective, sure.

>One guy with a day's worth of training will be just as useful with a bow, sword, or literally any other weapon.
I would love to see you pick up a bow made for war and even be able to fully draw it in a day. If you truely mean literally any weapon, I'd really love to see that compared with how quickly you pick up a meteor hammer.

>This entire argument is retarded because you're using historical basis founded in armed warfare when every fantasy system ever if based on small groups of wandering mercenaries.
First of all some games actually make you wait to improve skills, some games have certain skills cost reflect the difficulty of that training. I also don't see how a small group of wandering mercenaries in and of itself alters any bit of what's being discussed for that matter.

of course but that would also disable the normal person so the point is moot then.
also awesome idea

>I would love to see you pick up a bow made for war and even be able to fully draw it in a day. If you truely mean literally any weapon, I'd really love to see that compared with how quickly you pick up a meteor hammer.
Congrats on missing the forest for the trees. You're correct, anybody with a day's training in any weapon would be laughably ineffective. Guns aren't magical murder machines, claiming someone with a day's training in firearms is as effective as a wizard is retarded

There's actually a metric ton of debate on the real historic crime rates, they reckon a lot of "homicides" were a result of non-to-death duels and judicial punishments that wouldn't have been fatal in the 21st century, people died from extremely minor wounds like getting small cut from a thrown vase.

Wait, what if it wasn't create water, but salt?

Instead of salt, Prions.

In the last 200 years, rape has declined by around 400%.

They used to be more widespread, but eventually urban populations stopped using them so much and the government decided that taking away the population's ability to fight was a good idea (to be fair, it is from their point of view).

>Not enchanting the gun itself

kek

"Asians". Indians and Chinese people ain't doing the crime. It's one type of Asian and that's pakis.

>I've never seen a real gun in my life, let alone held one, and never came close to shooting one.
>The post

Hate to break this to you dumbass, but 2/3rds of basic training is fitness, 1/4 is education, and what's left is firearms.

The vast majority of the PE is teaching discipline. Granted there are many skills needed to work a firearm and shoot properly, but that is all easily drilled in within a week.

It doesn't take a degree to rock box in slot, pull leaver, aim dot up with bad guy, pull trigger until he's a quivering mass of gelatine, repeat as necessary. The degree of skill comes shooting past 100 meters, which is why iron sights are adjustable.

You literally have to be dumber than an uneducated, malnourished alcoholic Russia to be unable to operate a gun.

But someone with one day's firearm training is far more effective than an apprentice wizard with the same amount of time spent in total on his/her/its studies...

>comparing medieval/early modern guns with modern guns
Have YOU ever seen a real gun? Holy fucking shit, you retarded fucking cuck. Fucking kill yourself.

Yep, owned several, I've hunted with a muzzle loader as well.

And if you've got magic, industrialization would no doubt accelerate things from shitty flintlock to precussion cap revolver tier in a fraction of the 200 years it took us.

Read a book dipshit, and maybe stop talking out your ass about things you have no experience with instead of making assumptions.

average training time for an arquebus is 2 weeks, faster than most weapons, though still not "hand weapon to peasant" fast

of course while a wizard would lose to his cost in gunmen in a straight shooting match, a battlemage could be deployed strategically as part of combined arms

a tight formation of arqebusiers would be royally wrecked by a single fireball, while magic missile would be incredibly useful in singling out specific people
even if it doesnt totally kill everyone, it could turn the tide of battle if deployed surgically

so while a wizard wouldnt form the rank and file or dominate the whole fight, keeping a battlemage or two in your pocket can turn defeat into victory, and can most certainly exist alongside most gunpowder wielding armies

>Medieval guns
>"real guns"

lol they didn't even exist so how could they be real, the musket was the first gun and that was a renaissance thing
stop reading your shitty fantasy novels and start living in the real world

Crime is so high in Bongland today because just sneezing on someone counts as a crime

>casts fly

Sorry horsies

Don't forget that in a era of gunpowder, a mage with a fireball can inflict even more damage.

I mean, every fucking soldier carries his own supply of "please blow me up with a fireball wizard!" gunpowder.

Malazan setting deals with this- the battles in The Return of the Crimson Guard are pretty good.

IDEALLY your army is highly trained Light Heavy Infantry- armored infantry that habitually fight in open order but can and will close ranks to operate in large formations when tactically appropriate- organized into mixed spear/bolt/sword squads, equipped with magical munitions on a team level and a low-level mages on a squad level, with the high-end stuff being added at platoon, regiment, army levels of organization. World-beaters. Literally world-beaters.

AFTER YEARS OF REALITY there is a massive formation of conscripts, nominally organized into squads, with a cloud of arbalest-armed skirmishers that mostly shoot the enemy and not other voltiguers in the back. They try to keep the squad-mage going and it's amazing what you can sweep up with conscription whether you are aware of it or not. They can defend hardpoints (even ad hoc field fortifications) decently well but movement in the open in formation is for dead suckers.

Reminds of a decent post I can't quite remember properly, It was a extremely detailed explanation of how Wizards vs Gunpower would have catapulted military tactics into something nearly identical to how the Russians Spetsnaz operated Afghanistan; lightning fast insertion warfare utilizing only the most highly trained soldiers.

Still 10 in 3 womyn are raped everyday.

>everyone ITT assuming wizards are throwing fireballs at the gun users
>not casting a Rusting spell on their guns that causes them to jam and misfire
>not summoning rain
>not casting illusion spells that fuck up their aim or prevent them from receiving orders
>not decaying all the wood in their gunstocks to render the weapon ineffective
>not teleporting into their supply train and blowing up their gun powder
>not transmuting their gun powder back into its base elements
>not generating earthquakes or destabilizing the ground under their gunlines
>not summoning a massive swarm of stinging insects to cheat their aim and fuck them up
>not doing any of the countless things more effective than a simple magic missile

In most settings, magic missiles are probably the least effective spells around, there's nothing you can achieve with them that can't be done with weapons and they're only good for combat. Utility spells and manipulating the battlefield environment would fuck up gun users way more than thrown fireballs or lightning

peasants wouldn't own guns asshole

Guns were expensive to make so only Nobility could afford to have them in any number and they would chose who to arm them with

Matchlocks could easily be made by the village smith, they are kind simple.

Because guns imply a certain degree of industrialization unless we are talking arquebuses and I fucking hate magi-tech with a passion. Can't stand final fantasy aesthetics.

And they would blow up the first time they used them, cause the village smith has no clue how to make flintlocks.

>the musket was the first gun and that was a renaissance thing
Not sure if bait or actual retardation.

Casters with the capability to control humanoid minions would rule everything, massive armies of zombies, skeletons, lesser demons, golens etc.

No really, it's very easy to make these early firearms.

no the Idea of guns is simple

making one thats doesn't blow up in your hands when you have no idea what your doing is almost impossible

>Guns were expensive to make
They were actually cheaper and easier to make than the high-end heavy crossbows of the late Medieval period. Read an actual history book, maybe.

Massively oversimplified ideas of how industrialization, modernism and technological change operate over time, a preference to pretend everything as-is sprang from the ground in a mythical instant revolution and as someone already pointed out, an obsession with nature(magic) vs man(technology) binary.

Like, its in a game for pretending to be a wizard or a knight or some shit most of the time so nbd, I don't expect a lot of rigorous interdisciplinary research and thoughtful examination of the human condition in fantasy fiction. But it does seem to get in some people's buttholes pretty deep.

And the opposing side's mages hadn't spent the time while the troops were being trained in embedding protective spells in the weapons? Or adding anti-magic shields to the logistics train?

Small arms and bows weren't in direct competition, you could have formations of bowmen supporting guns because they fulfil different roles, what really sealed the death of bow formations is the cannon, they can reach much further and with far more power than arrows, making them obsolete.

youtube.com/watch?v=n7I1L0Oa-NE

because they don't think of this when you say first gun

I am engineer and I regularly Gm for group containing engineers... This is 100% true.
We will make grapeshot rifles with delayed lightning.
We will enchant cavalry armor with antimagic sphere.
We will create smoke grenades with anti magic chaff disrupting spells coming from above letting our wizard annihilate them from front.

Cast purify water on shrapnel - so that it will purify blood into water.

Engineer a golem made of smaller golem.

It wouldn't make it obsolete, it'd just level the playing field a bit.

And then someone popularizes the idea of the scientific method and applies it to magic, and suddenly Weapons of Magical Destruction are used in the 1800's equivalent age to all but end the world in aethereal fire.

Warhammer has guns

I feel like magic would do more than just speed up developments. There were a LOT of stupid ideas and one-off wierdo guns all the way through to the modern day. Freakish things like harmonica guns would just be the ground floor.

Or a spell that creates or transmutes forth a bead of antimatter.

Depends on setting, like always.

It becomes a measure of energy and resources for guns vs wizards

Both can get things done, each are preferable depending on the task

Yes you can get 10000 peasants with guns, but looking at the cost of peasants/guns/ammo/training vs the cost of buying up a few wizards to lay down the same effective firepower.

For shit like this in games I just roll with thermodynamics and say that the cost is associated with the output. If you use wizards or guns your paying based on the bang anyway.

It's interesting that many (perhaps even the majority of) fantasy settings actually treat magic very scientifically. You have magical colleges where magical researchers study magic by performing magical experiments to test magical theories, and then they arbitrarily declare that "not science". There are plenty of reasons for that, mostly that the scientific method has been ingrained deep in our collective psyche, but I think it illustrates how superficial the concept is. "Magic" is simply there to enforce the appearance of a pre-industrial world, without actually trying to capture what that kind of world would think like.

I think it's kind of ironic that comic book sci-fi, with its bullshit approach to technology and mad scientists, actually captures the fundamentals of magic than fantasy does.

Most modern fantasy is very superficial and materialistic.
Like, the writters try to copy aesthetics of ancient stuff without trying to understand what made it tick.
It's weird how the average fantasy "magic system" is impersonal, when on myths and fairy tales the persons morality was such an important part of the magic.
There was an "scientific" componente (alchemists, astrologers, etc believed to be analysing nature and whatnot but it wasn't sterile like it show on books and rpgs).
Also, magic was often part of society and people tried to exploit it (predict the future, get good harvests, have children born healthy, cure the sick, etc)

One of the things I noticed is that the approach to magic is frequently... artificial. There is always an effort to explain and systematize magic as a distinct force/energy/place as opposed to an organic aspect of the universe.

That's handy if you're writing a DnD rulebook and need a set of mechanics for your mage, but it's exactly the wrong approach to take when crafting a setting.

In general I think the fact that so many writers have internalized game mechanics as an integral part of a fantasy story is one of the major problems of modern fantasy.

I'm pretty sure I've never heard of anyone who assumes that. I don't dislike firearms because they make magic obsolete, I dislike firearms because they fundamentally alter the setting.