Why is it that settings that have various magical monsters and races don't actually uses them in war?

Why is it that settings that have various magical monsters and races don't actually uses them in war?

>Not wanting to roll out a car with a keg and handle bolted on so your giant bro can drink with the rest of your squad after the battle

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Cool idea but I havenothing interesting to reply with so here's a bump

Because most of them don't care to fight for someone else's coin (when they can take all of it by force) or ambition, or are simply too dangerous to keep around.

Because giants hate your shit.

Controlling them is not a thing that is possible unless you can also control a high-level magician and make them control these things for you.

Giants are the dragons of mammals, selfish, greedy and generally too powerful to demand anything from.


Also because most people base their settings on dnd, which bases itself on a pretty narrow view of tolkiens works. Maybe also because at the time of fantasy literature hight your race was considered your culture with no deviation. Which is pretty much everywhere in 70's to early 2000's media, fantasy, sci-fi and "real".

The deviant art page OP pic is from has:
"A company of Landsknechts having a first encounter with the iron golems of the Bavarian golem Mage guild, 1524."

The issue with things like this is there is almost no possible way they could happen in a vacuum. People would probably know if Bavaria could make giant magical death machines. In the off chance a country could somehow hide an entire branch of research and amass what appear to be an entire army's worth of iron, then they get some free wins. There is no real indication that the technology is any less expensive than reaching the same number of victories by conventional means. In the more probably case of others knowing that giant magical death machines are a thing, counter measures could already be in place or in the works. Counters could include: murdering mages, bribing mages, sabotage of mines and metal works, anti-magic weapons, anti-armor weapons, anti-golem tactics, anti-magic magic, making your own magic death machines, etc.

This can be generalized to most every aspect of warfare. I think the better question is what sort of fantastical elements could actually produce long term asymmetric results and how well you can explain why.

I mean, only hack writers who don't put any depth into their settings would have stupid stuff like this.

If you know the next kingdom over they have a breeding program for giant riding dinosaurs why wouldn't you come up with something yourself? What do we have? Giant birds? Get a few of the falconer families together, I want them dropping bombs on the city in the next 10 years.

Because you don't play with me. Giant welding staff sling* equals fast-moving light artillery capable of melee. The damn things are somewhat equivalent to tanks for the renaissance battlefield.

*The precursor was one improvising with a mangonel arm.

Now, gryphons are too useful and rare for combat, but make for terrific scouts, infiltration and messengers. However, one shouldn't overlook the benefits of a gryphon dropping several kilos worth of lead pellets from above the enemy's gun range.

Trolls respect intelligence. Their loyalty becomes such that they allow their master to graft iron plating and let the regeneration pin it down.

Megatheriums make up for the lack of heavy troops among the kavajan light cavarly standard.

A certain lich found out how easy it was to manipulate rotting in such a way as to optimize the production of inflammables and methane. Explosive humanoid zombies were bad enough before he started to use bigger animals.

Ankylossaurs are good battering rams for light fortifications and as shock troops capable of breaking the enemy line.

...

I'd imagine they'd be difficult to replace. Humans are easy to replace since there's always more adult humans so it takes, I don't know, a year of training to be a line soldier plus you can do it en masse. While every giant that gets slain will require either raising another which would take decades or making deals with an unpredictable race that holds no loyalty to you.

Because for the most part any monster and race has its weakness. Some examples:

> oh hey, here come their elite company of werewolves who can regenerate any damage they take and who are monstrously fast and strong
Nothing that a line of peasant conscripts issued some local "lord"'s (actual) silverware melted down into bullets can't solve with a volley or two of arquebus fire.

>oh hey, here comes a big fucking giant iron golem thing with a huge axe
Because it's putting all of its weight on comparatively small feet, it sinks into the ground, especially if the ground is muddy and shitty. Not to mention, why waste all that fucking iron when you could have one hundred soldiers' worth of equipment for the same price? A cannon shot (or in more primitive settings a ballista) will topple it just fine, and then it isn't getting back up.

>oh hey they have a fuckton of elves with masterful archery skills that can snipe our soldiers away!
How the fuck did they get enough money to convince a group of stuck-up twats from a continent over to work for them?

>Oh look it's a single murder-wizard with godlike powe-
He shat himself to death because he caught a disease at camp. They put all your eggs in that one fragile basket again.

Really, humans are the masters of warfare. Not because they're special, but because they aren't. A human isn't particularly fragile, slow, magically inept, and he doesn't have stupid weaknesses like his skin falling off if he so much as puts on a ring without realizing it's silver or some shit.

Because most fantasy settings don't make any real sense. Why are almost all the castles the same type of designs from the real world? We dind't have to worry about giants or flying monsters, but the fantasy setting does.

Battles wouldn't be the same. We didn't have to worry about someone swinging trees as clubs or exploding a huge area with magic. Or being charged by a herd of armor plated dinosaurs (well, I guess that wold be similiar to elephants, so not as different).

Turns out, many people just want medieval Europe with magic thrown on top, with no regard for how such a setting would actually work and how it would of developed differently.

Because mostly they're made by asshole wizards you don't want in your country. The asshole wizards generally DO use those magical monsters and races, that's why they're in dungeons and wizard lairs.

To go the opposite direction, are there any games/settings that have monster hunters portrayed as a fun mix of whalers/SoC? I like the visual of a kaiju/tarrasque being assaulted not by a giant golem or mighty wizard, but by a wiry youth armed with a length of rope, a harpoon, and a grappling hook.

bump

>deploys were wolves as shock troops
>doesn't use them as infiltrators that wipe out entire villages over night
>not infecting entire squads of militia and guards and watching the mayhem unleash on a full moon

>not testing your golems by firing cannons and other field testing and getting veteran soldiers and engineers to give advice on how to improve the design

>investing in a single wizard instead of establishing self sustaining institutions of magical learning and production

It's like you're not even trying to use every resource at your disposal.

Monsters are a pain in the ass, they need more supplies, bigger armor and weapons, more room for everything they do, and their latrine needs -- i dont even wanna think about it...

They're also harder to control; how you gunna discipline a giant, huh?

You're never going to drill military discipline into something like a giant unless you have a full squad of the things, one of which being a sergeant to actually give orders. I know I wouldn't be saluting a man who barely reaches my knee in height.

sauce on pic?

I do like the idea of using different monsters and stuff for combat, but I think it works better if you pull a Shadowrun. Magic JUST came back, so not everyone knows what is available and how to counter it.

At the same time, once the time of troubles are settled, I'm wondering how society would progress.

penuser.deviantart.com/art/Unleash-the-golems-Sketch-424409553

bump

You have to bump with something to discuss, homie. What would you like to imagine the cities are like when you have this type of magic available?

>Why is it that settings that have various magical monsters and races don't actually uses them in war?
Monsters typically have their own societies and don't really care about whatever it is that the humans are fighting over. The giants might live within the borders of a human nation, but they're not really citizens of it and probably won't be affected much regardless of the war's outcome.

>People would probably know if Bavaria could make giant magical death machines
one word: tanks

>They put all your eggs in that one fragile basket again.
so thats their auxiliary unit gone after murdering just 500x his number

only an entire army left to go


there are very few units that can fight combined arms, doesent make them bad

cavalry cant win a battle on its own, people still had cavalry

I think you'd like Attack on Titan.

some of the encounters in monster hunter (shen gaoren, lao shan long, basically all the really big ones)

Wouldn't society still build around them? For example, the Werewolf clans might be independent, but they might offer a few of their warriors as Soldiers to the surrounding Human kingdoms

It probably depends on how large/integrated the Werewolf clans are. I could see a really reclusive clan with small numbers just staying out of the way and getting by largely untouched. After all, how much have real-life societies adapted around gypsies?

The reason the Byzantines got Varangian Guard and mercenary Mongols was because both societies adapted and integrated into the warrior style the Byzantines offered at the time. It was an effort on both sides. If one side hadn't sought it out it probably wouldn't have happened.

What if it was just the Humans who sought them out? A Medieval French Foreign Legion or Mercenaries, a group that tried to benefit from their abilities. It would justify enemy groups not being prepared for them since even their employers might barely be able to field them.

Because a world with magic, magical monsters and races would probably fight war completely differently from the mid-late medieval warfare that generic fantasy is contingent upon, and it's too much for an author focusing on a small group of heroes to be arsed to care about any more than they do about their kingdom's tax policy. Sure, there are people who would be interested but the audience most authors and campaigns think they want to cater to want to watch Thorgrim Grimdale and his band of merry multiracial adventurers save the kingdom of Assrael from the demon lord.

Veeky Forums worked on a setting a while back that was something like that. Basically Mortal Engines but the city is a giant titan.
I guess thats less assaulting them, and more living on them though.

Also for the werewolf thing: Its only during full moon and the cursed are pretty much uncontrollable.

That's true, to an extent. Again, the French Foreign Legion and mercenaries, like the Swiss Halberdiers and Landschnect, are contingent upon the hosts accepting and wanting to use them.

You really don't need a justification for a new military innovation winning against neighboring countries though, especially in the medieval setting most fantasies take place in. The Swiss were largely successful because they broke the normal convention of warfare during their time. Take a look at the battles of Morgarten 1314 and Laupen 1339. These battles happened years apart, but the HRE didn't adopt until Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I created the Landschnect in 1487.

Even in Napoleon's time the enemies of France didn't adopt right away to his strategies of cutting off their supply lines, column marches, and heavy use of artillery. Or even earlier in France's history against the vikings where the vikings were able to sail the French rivers until they began to be guarded.

So long as the mythical species fills a needed military advantage the nation will use them, but when it starts getting outdated it gets outdated. How long has the state used the mythical creatures? What role do they fill? Can technology do it cheaper and/or better? How loyal are the mythical to their employers?

>Also for the werewolf thing: Its only during full moon and the cursed are pretty much uncontrollable.
that is a very setting dependent thing and you know it(heck the concept of the completely berserk Werewolf is barely any older than when Lon Chaney portrayed it in 1941)

>How long has the state used the mythical creatures?
Let’s go with recent. Instead of magic always existing, I think it barely starting to appear would appease numerous groups. People may have SURGE’d a while back, but they are still barely more than villages, no huge population of altered Humans.

>What role do they fill?
Roles that only DaVinci would have been able to dream of. Harpy scouts, Minotaur Heavy Infantry, Golem siege engines. HOWEVER, these are only occasional units that can be employed. There isn’t enough of a population yet where every Noble House can employ them, or even just locate them at all.

>Can technology do it cheaper and/or better?
No, not yet. Plus, for all their costs, most Generals and Commanders are willing to spend to get them. Economically, they’re a sink, but worth it as they can push a battle in their favor.

>How loyal are the mythical to their employers?
Take inspiration from leaders of their eras. A Napoleon might promise them land and official recognition, making those that SURGE’d when they families to take care of very willing to join.