How do you incorporate magic into war tactics in your setting?

...

Like trump cards. A mass rez spell after the war is won, or when things are looking bad.

A necromancer using his spell to bring back all the dead and add them to their ranks.

A giant fireball that kills all that are in it.

Training a magic user takes almost eleven years (depends if adept already knew how to read and write). It costs between 1000 and 1100 crowns per year, depending on which year it is. For comparison, a set of plate armour fitted for the user (and not the "mass" produced crap) costs about 700 crowns and a small village is going to turn profit of about 400-420 crowns a year.
In other words, it costs about the same as an average barony is making in about 3 years to train a single magic user, plus of course the time. And mages DO need all that training, while it's expensive for practical reasons, rather than "because".

Equipping a single footsoldier with a polearm, hauberk, helmet and good boots costs 100-105 crowns. 130 if you reinforce the hauberk with plate elements. Training will take about (assuming we are not talking about a simple levy) 2 months and will cost about 140 crowns per person (food & garrison included) for entire period.
Meaning a single footsoldier can be trained for less than 250 crowns in 2 months. If it's levy, then you can cheese that up to only 100 crowns and a day or three of most basic training.
So for a price of a single mage (about 11.6k crowns in total) you can train 46 footsoldier, in 1/66 of that time OR levy and arm 120 people.

tl;dr mages do take part in warfare, but mostly when you really need to get that fortress taken out and taken out quick; trying to apply them on battlefield is extremely inefficient when it comes to price, risk and resources, for the simple fact that a magic user might cast a pretty nifty spell... that is going to protect a group of no more than 50-60 people or kill and maim about half of that, both after incantation that takes about 20 seconds to perform.
In short - mages are applied like artillery & special forces, being extremely useful, but not exactly something you can mass-produce or use as "instant win" card

Mages in my setting are to rare to substitute archers/crossbowman with them for example.
Wizards mostly serve as diviners and tactitians and role of those who join troops in battle is mainly to stop enemy spells when they're starting to take effect.

What worried me was the fact, that they could easily take the role of artillery and turn conflitcs into trench warfare similar to this we know from WW1.

I had to take two steps to counter such logical outcome:
>employing large scale spells that could hurt advancing armies takes time and preparation/rituals. It makes them vulnerable to hunter-killer operations.
>those spells can be countered by mages that join troops or by magical devices that officers and certain trained soldiers soldiers would be carring.

In such setup magic would still be dangerous, but a group of dozen wizards won't be able to decimate whole regiment by themselves.

Rock Paper Scissors

Mages shit on massed troops, mainly due to panic when people start melting.

Specialized anti-mage units can neutralize and kill enemy battle mages.

Regular troops can pin down and take out assassin units with numbers.

I also like the way parma affects magical combat in Ars Magica. Mages are virtually immune to direct magic effects and when mages fight they tend to destroy everything but each other. Indirect spell effects (like turning the ground around him to mud, or mortar-firing rocks so it's gravity, not magic) and mundane steel are the only ways to kill a mage.

Why people should panic about magic in a world where magic is commonplace enough to apply it widely in war?
I mean it's like you were expecting people panic, because guns are used, while both sides are armed with them and familiar with them. It has zero effect, other than people dropping like flies.

Mostly use mixed units. Fighter mages in command positions, so they can control the battlefield from the front. Assassin mages for taking out specific targets, etc. Mages alone are too weak to work well in mass combat. I mean. It only takes a few arrows to kill even a big mage. Sure you can compensate for that with protection from missiles and stuff but in a real fight the mages are gonna be the first ones targeted. You really gotta start playing and figure out what works for you. There's lots of variables involved in mass combat. Mages wreck the shit out of massed troops. In my experience its incredibly impractical to mass a rank and file medieval army. It's also way expensive according to 1e rules. (Don't hate on me for playing 1e.) Mixed units are the way to go. Alternatively you could give all your mages brooms of flying and wands of fireball and shit, and you basically have an air corps

The eragon series did it pretty well I think. Each platoon would have a magic user with them in charge of placing wards on them. There other major duty was to duel other units magic users to protect the troops under there command. They also used telepathy to communicate with each other and call for aid from other magic users when needed

The same way that artillery strikes, machinegun fire and flamethrowers make them panic.

I dunno, why would fire falling from the sky and people getting blown apart by demons cause someone to panic?

>I mean it's like you were expecting people panic, because guns are used, while both sides are armed with them and familiar with them. It has zero effect, other than people dropping like flies.
Oh I see, you're a retard.

But they don't? They rip you to shreds, instead.
The only person panicking under any of those three is a completely untrained conscript that didn't even finish basic traning, aka the very way how to get deployed in the first place.

Unless you are taking your knowledge from le ebin war movies, that is.

depends on the mechanisms and power of magic in your settings and the technological level in your setting and on the culture and relationship amog the various races in your setting.

Are you at least semi-aware what kind of crap needs to start rolling for people to get PTSD severe enough to get them inactive AND FOR HOW LONG?
That goes without stating the obvious - trying to apply real situation to not just invented, but outright fantastic scenario.

He asked about YOUR setting, user, not how to handle it in his.

I don't actually play games

Mostly for logistics and planning, but also to counter the magical fuckery the enemy may bring to bear.

Offensive tactics: Kill The Mage First At All Costs
Defensive tactics: Protect The Mage At All Costs

The state of modern Veeky Forums

right, we're not talking about machineguns. we're talking about fifteen foot tall demons appearing and pulling people apart, waves of acid melting people's skin off, people's bones climbing out of their bodies and laughing, etc.

also spells that can literally force people to panic, as the spell effect

Special operations and logistics.

The most front line thing they will do will be to empower any sort of shielding mechanicism for bases being scrambled when the sirens go off to prepare the group spells nescessary to build up the shield energy from the pylons. From then on they are cycled in and out so as not to break the spell and prevent them from over-extending.

Mages skilled in healing tend to wounded affected by mystical afflictions such as special poisons crafted with alchemy or from war beasts while regular wounded are tended to via mundane methods.

Diviniation and counter divination are also key as experts work with engineers (are often egineers themselves) building areas where command can communicate safely as well as handling protocols to ensure no one is "bugged" in some kind of mystical manner.

Finally, we have our black ops where various disciplines are put to work creating and manning various weapons programs. Our latest project, project fang is slated for a test run in a secret mission where the results will determine if we can declassify it or not.

>right, we're not talking about machineguns. we're talking about fifteen foot tall demons appearing and pulling people apart, waves of acid melting people's skin off, people's bones climbing out of their bodies and laughing, etc.

to be honest none of that is *that* much worse than what modern weapons can do anyway. a fifteen foot tall demon is pretty pedestrian compared to some stuff.

Siege and artillery more or less with limited number of rounds per day (It's a D&D E6 setting). Most wizards and other spellcasters are only mildly useful during war and for the most part work as support, recon and so on. But the few capable of throwing out enlarged fireballs and similar spells could turn the tide of battles. The side that has such a wizard could basically dictate if it wants to have a big battle or not by deploying him at a certain place. You just can't fight in formations if a wizard could wipe 300-500 tightly packed people in a couple of spells.

When the war happens countries spend a lot of on assassins, traitors and surgical raids trying to kill artillery wizards. Because if they could manage it while still having their own guy with the fireball they'll get a huge lead in a war.

eh, I started coming to Veeky Forums because I was interested in tabletop games and wanted to start.
But apperently you have spe spend weeks studying the rules, then week studying the setting, then spend days preparing your character, study spreadsheets with stats and attacks and stufff, spend days disussing all of that before you can even start a game, then you can't even play lightheartedly, but must act like you are your character at all times or people will bitch.
it's too much work to have some fun a couple hours a week. I'd rather just talk about games than play them.

>weeks
>week
>days
>days
must suck being a retard

if you're interested in trying D&D a shit-hive of autists who are here because they got kicked out of all their games is not where you should be going

none of that shit is even remotely true outside of horrible games

>you have spe spend weeks studying the rules, then week studying the setting, then spend days preparing your character, study spreadsheets with stats and attacks and stufff, spend days disussing all of that before you can even start a game
But that's the best part

If magi taught me anything, is that Mages can not replace conventional troops.
That said, there is a difference between supplementing them, only using troops as supplement to mages, and magic wargear.
There is also a really big difference between total war(not possible in a pre modern society), desperate mobilization, skirmishes, and warfare.

And if Uber has taught me anything, is that if the Ubermenschen is strong and numerous enough, its a waste to field them as a supplement, as opposed to hardcore turbo blitz by men outrunning their motorbikes and running causally trough Paris while destroying all Landmarks

The way The Elder Scrolls franchise does it. Everyone has access to magic, so essentially, the mages counter one another.

Why would you do that? Instead of just mass producing fireball wands, getting people 1 rank in Magic Devices.
And then using the remaining mid level mages to use massive siege spells like Enlargened Cloudkill? Or even better: Use rituals instead of normal Vancian casting.

D&D warfare shouldn't even resemble warfare. It should resemble something more akin to global nuclear warfare.

Well, there are different kinds of magic, but for the most part, a mage is only as powerful as he is powerful. If you have a mage powerful enough to take out entire regiments, and the enemy has a fighter capable of going Sauron on yours, they're gonna be pretty evenly matched.

Laylines, large plots of land that produces Mana into the air. This Mana is then gathered by magically able soldiers to cast spells during battles.

Laylines are capable of going dry if too many people drain from them and they need to recover. Prolonged sieges/trench warfare will make magic useless during battles, but for battles that are quick and require men to move across large parts of land, it can be useful .

It's "leylines" btw.

But Dungeon Conquerors could literally wipe out entire armies and the regular troops got shit on when 'Rome' tried to invade wherever the wizard jew nation was.

Espionage, sabotage and guerrilla warfare.
Magicians take too long to train and have too many special conditions to be useful on the battlefield. There skilled warrior-wizards but their talents relate to man-to-man combat and one incredible soldier does not an army make. Instead they are deployed as specialised agents behind enemy lines or as advisers to generals.

The strength of magic is it's obscurity. A wizard is walking arsenal and with his mind and a few pouches of regents he can move unnoticed in enemy territory before activating and wrecking havoc where havoc is needed. An illusionist can smuggle soldier into or out of enemy forts at the drop of a hat. Enchantments can raise fear and mistrust in populence overnight, making them a nightmare to manage. Necromancers and conjurers raise temporary units of men in unexpected places. Destructive elementalists often lay in wait, disguised or camouflaged before launching fast, horrifying attacks and then retreating.
Magics in war, while useful, tends to evoke a sense of distaste and paranoia. War-wizards are knaves, scoundrels, necessary evils that are tolerated but never fully trusted.

Aside from that support wizards often attend to generals. They offer divinations and conjured scouts, they create favourable weather and they often attend to the health of the general. They also analyse enemy magic and root it our and counter it.
Some mystic apprentices act as inquisitors in times of war. While they have yet to learn powerful spells they know enough of magic to protect against it. They maintain wards and comb street and barracks for hints of enemy sorcery.

Because there is no mid level people? E6 means that the highest level guys are level 6. The foot soldiers are warrior or expert 1 for the most part, with good troops being expert 1/ warrior 1 and veterans expert 2 / warrior 1. Some may have PC class levels.

The guys with levels 4+ are 1 in a thousand. And an average kingdom won't have more than 20-30 people of level 6. Large countries may get to a hundred. And not all them will be wizards or other spellcasters.

If you're ok with playing D&D 5e, you can be like my friends and just show up for the RP, delegating combat mechanics to the person with the most knowledge of the system. Most of them don't have their abilities memorized, let alone their character sheet.

At this point it's basically me and the DM playing a wargame where I'm the tactician and directing people not that I mind tho, they RP really well

D&D has been around for decades and the spell list there is kinda standardized already. The effect of D&D magic on war is too damn interesting and important to just handwave. Surely someone must have written an article or book about it already, right?

Pike and shot, sort of.
You've got pikemen, who do your typical pikey things. You've got bird cavalry, flighted, who rain glass orbs of elemental magic onto the pikemen. You've got mages assigned to each pike unit who keep a Duneish (blocks things at a certain momentum) shield over the unit. You've got flightless bird cav equipped with long lances whose job is to a) stab the fuck out of that shield mage in particular and b) stab the flanked pikemen in general. And you've got units of mages dedicated to large scale communal artillery spells. Each faction has their own specialties, of course.

This is for the fantasy novel I swear I'll write so donut steel it pls

This. Basically mages are a supplement to artillery, which leads to...

>trench warfare similar to this we know from WW1.

Massive stalemates and loads of casualties, which is suitably grim.

You either make mages rare as fuck, or you incorporate magic into absolutely everything.

>how do you incorporate magic into war tactics in your setting?

You don't. Mages are more useful crafting magic weapons and armor all day long.

walking talking WMD's at higher levels

specialists at lower levels

that could be okay.
Now I just nee to find friends.

It's not too hard user, just have a modicum of self-awareness to reel-in your autism, practice good hygiene, and don't try too hard to not be beta/alpha, just kinda hit a middle-point it worked for me, and I got a girlfriend out of it

I actually know how act well aroud people and be well-liked.that is not the problem

>But they don't? They rip you to shreds, instead.
t. knowledge of war comes from videogames

The purpose of machine guns is suppression.

There are other kinds of games, user.

In pic related, wizards are used in warfare all the time. There's two minor level wizards with the company who usually use illusion and confusion spells to help disrupt the enemy frontline and counter sorcery that the enemy is throwing back. The heavy weight wizards in the setting are basically living artillery, shooting off fireball spells or used as lethal trump cards.

Just because you know what a gun is doesn't mean you can't be afraid of it or dying. Wizards flying around like harbingers of death and raining spells down on you is bound to make you lose your nerve too.

Then what's the problem user? You should be able to find friends pretty easily.

>Wants to play tabletop games
>Doesn't want to roleplay

Why don't you just go play premade solo dungon crawls like descent or folklore instead of shitting up the rp threads with your so uninformed as to be literally worthless opinion.

I, too, have learned everything I need to know about war and weaponry from youtube channels and /k/.
But sure, lie about your military service anyway.