How do spellcasters affect naval warfare in you setting?

Mages that help with easing bad weather, smoother sailing, navigation, ward of most of the creatures of the sea. They usually don't have that much of a combat role due to the fact that mage are rather rare and are better out to use other places. Ship to ship fighting is usually done with catapults, ballista, ramming or boarding. (no cannons) but mages are able to strengthen materials and by using special type of wood you can build enormous ships of wood that won't fall apart.

Mages dissolve in water, like old fashioned witches, and tend to avoid boats. Sailors also entertain many negative superstitions about having a mage on their ship. While some have tried to field mages in a naval capacity, it has unfortunately always ended in failure because the superstitions are actually correct.

I think as time has gone by I've slowly begun to dislike the typical DnD sort of magic where you shoot fire from your hands and lightning from your asshole

If i had to describe it. Hermeticim mixed with the sort of magic that exists in Berserk is more my speed now

>beams of steel enchanted to have negative weight
>All shipping is airships
>Height is adjusted via application or removal of runed clamps that dampen the enchantment
>the effect is not linear so adjusting elevation is a very tricky, specialized job that takes a good deal of time, elevation maneuvers in combat are practically suicidal
>Ships have a primary and secondary beam, with a primary and secondary emergency clamp.
>Secondary is always emergency clamped, primary is not. primary adjusted with smaller clamps
>Emergency (ship is damaged, ballast-master and all his apprentices are dead) procedure is to clamp main beam and unclamp the secondary. Which generates just enough lift to descend at a non-lethal rate.
>Incredibly expensive ships like a nation's singular flagship might have dozens of individual beams with prescribed activation groups for particular elevations
>Combat is mostly ram and board, no black powder weapons
>Wizards can't throw fireballs or lightning bolts, but they can spend a day casting to summon a favorable wind or repair a broken spar
>More spectacular wizardry exists in legend, but canonically the PCs are the first to have access to direct evocation because plot reasons

Very helpful if you have one but there are not enough wizards for every ship to have one

no good idea.. the sea is full with big things that get attracted by magic... things with tentacles, lotsoflotsoflotsof tentacles.

They're used to tell time. That plus basic celestial navigation gives at least a thousand years of navigation development and speeds progress rather significantly.

First, check this anons, if you want:
>A bit of 16th century help for sea adventures
pastebin.com/rDyP8Mrx

I use the maxim "for damage I have cannons; for anything else I have mages". There aren't enough mages to substitute cannons, culverins or even swivel guns. Cost-benefit wise, spells are vastly outperformed in terms of damage and range. But..

A) The best thing about spellcasters is communication. Once war rolls in, no need for dozens of small messenger ships.

B) The magitech nation mostly has fluyts going through the portal network, but it allows for a small number of galleons to achieve 21th century levels of global power projection.

C) Blessed nails allow for stronger ships, although this is costly.

D) Considering if the pyromancer nation casts hulls out of pumice, siphoned from magma.

In a setting with ready access to magic warfare as a whole is entirely different than it is in the real world.

They release the kraken.

heavily enchanted cannonballs that activate based on the users affinity to various elements.

Summon fresh fruit and vegetables to stop scurvy. Turn saltwater into fresh water. Attract fish to the ships for easier food. Basic level of weather forecasting.

Start out with massive illusions to force enemy flat to ram itself, split, be unable to find the streams to enter the Golden City, run ashore.
Use Magic to build Bigger Ships, so you can leverage Archers, Javelins, and Canons for boarding.
Use Alchemy to create Peak Performance Battle Drugs, and use it entry level conscripts, so they can rout the enemy, kill them all, with fewer numbers
Magic weapons and armor everywhere.

BTFO everyone until some faggot elf exile king decides he wants to fuck his cousin and kill her brother.

This makes me wonder. Scurvy was a problem for Europeans for a long time; it was well within their power to avoid.

But they didn't, because it took them fucking forever to figure it out. How much stuff would be missed when you just have wizards around to fix shit? I think there would be more low level knowledge like that, that people wouldn't know, because they would just rely on wizards to fix everything all the time

Mages in naval warfare are basically suicide bombers, warp manifestations are as likely to destroy the ship their standing on as much as the enemy ship if casting goes poorly. As such, a priority is made to ensure the enemy ship and the ship the mage is standing on, is in fact, the same ship. If someone's got a good enough throwing arms to sling a harpoon around the sail-arms of the mast so the mage can dangle out of melee and just sling magic everywhere. The better.

>his setting has naval warfare
lucky you ;_;

I struggle to find a system with a decent naval component.