What's the point of using archers or warriors if mages exist?

>>45107518
Not in GURPS.

Because warriors and archers are necessary for the survival of mages at low levels.

>>45107518
mages are few in number, require a great many years to train, and depending on setting, run out of juice quite quickly.

Think about it like this.

Say a mage can take out 100 pikemen by himself.

Well with the same training cost and material cost, you can produce 1000 pikemen.

They usually have a limited amount of magic available at any given time at which point they're rendered helpless.

Unless they're really powerful, in which case they're a one-man army anyway

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN MAGES HAD NO INFINITY PEW PEW CANTRIP SPELLS

>>45107518
>what's the point of a handsaw if there are electrical saws
different tools for different jobs friend

D E P E N D S
O N
T H E
S E T T I NG

>>45107544
not to mention typically mages don't wear any protective gear so if you use them wrong you could easily find yourself in the situation where you trade 1 mage of yours for 1 archer on your enemy side

>>45107518

What's the point of using cavalry or infantry if artillery exist? They can both fuck up the formations and attack at range with more powerful projectiles than bullets.

>>45107518
>They can both fuck up the formations and attack at range with more powerful projectiles than arrows.
In some settings none or only the most powerful mages can do that.

>>45107518
Fireball has a 25' radius.
A hundred archers cover a much wider area in arrows.
Magically talented individuals aren't nearly as common as hunters or trainable peasants.

>>45107544
>not to mention typically mages don't wear any protective gear

Maybe if the arbitrary balancing of your system says that mages can't wear armor

If I spent 1000 pikemendollars on a mage you fucking bet I'm training him in something more protective than a pair of curtains

>>45107595
That's why you want to hire sorcerers for army warfare. 10 fireballs are better than one.

Wizards should be specialized assassins and black ops operators, not artillery squads.

If we're talking DnD, of course, as faggot OP didn't specify the setting and/or system.

>>45107598
I just brought up the pikemen, not the armor bit.

I've always been a proponent of mages in armor as long as it isn't iron (provided that iron interferes with magic in your setting)

>>45107598
Luckily enough, we have mobile horse archers to counter slow artillery mages

>>45107637
Love horse archers.

Which brings up an idea: Mounted mages. Viable? Mage Knights were my favorite Fire Emblem class.

>>45107535
This.

>>45107539
But why use Warriors and Archers instead of Druids and Clerics?

>>45107699
I always wondered why in some games they are Valkyries and others Mage Knights.

Either way, they kick all the ass.

>>45107712
Because few NPCs get past level 3, so druids and clerics can't do any of their ridiculous shit. Except throwing badgers at their enemies, which is pretty terrifying now that I think about it.

>>45107518
Arrows might be cheaper than virgin albino toenails, or whatever the reagent is for fireballs.

>>45107598
>Maybe if the arbitrary balancing of your system says that mages can't wear armor

If you want to get into that, then it's similarly arbitrary that mages are actually any more powerful then infantry or ranged attackers, and thus I can ignore your similar setting/rules conceits and thus make mundane troops still relevant.

>>45107730
>so druids and clerics can't do any of their ridiculous shit
In what way?
Divine Favor and Bless are both ridicule level 1 spells.
Outside of Tome of Battle, there exists no martial class that can keep up with a Cleric or Druid in melee or ranged, simply because Full and Partial BAB doesn't make a difference.

Because a Ranger will kick the ever loving shit out of a Wizard in a race to murder the other?

Twin Strike, motherfucker.

>>45107518
>what's the point of using infantrymen if we have artillery? They can both fuck up formations and attack at range with more powerful projectiles than arrows
this is literally how retarded you sound. bait/10, made me respond

>>45107637
>The mages hop on tamed dragons.
What now?

>>45107938
We don't have dragons in the setting

>>45108028
Well we don't have horse archers either.
Only javelin-throwing halflings riding big dogs.

>>45107932
We use infantry to hold the ground but mages can do it as well faggot.

>>45107938

Mages would be the absolute worst people to put on your tamed dragons. The mages are already powerful, and all of their many years of training are in matters of the mind. You are proposing we take our most specialized units and adding another few years onto their training just so they can be sent into battle in a way that forces them to choose between casting magic or using the dragon itself as a weapon, when if you just trained separate dragonriders you could do both at the same time as two very effective units instead of having a single unit that is basically irreplaceable and has no idea what the fuck it is supposed to do.

>>45107712
Religious concerns quickly become prohibitive at army scale.
A sizable military employing Clerics as rank-and-file rather than support drastically imbalances the political landscape in favor of their church. If you attempt to counter this by drawing your Clerics from the service of several gods, you instead invite ideological strife between your forces at every level. Additionally, Clerics have additional material requirements and upkeep compared to Warriors and Archers. A conventional military doesn't lose morale if the traveling chapel doesn't have stained glass windows and solid gold incense burners.

Druids,as proponents of naturalism, are fundamentally unsuited to being organized on a large scale because the command structure, supply system, and primary function of an army are unnatural. Any organization capable of raising a military force of Druids at a scale useful for primary units would, by that fact, be unsuitable for training Druids at all. Conversely, any organization suited to training Druids is by nature incapable of producing them en mass.
Additionally, there are concerns with their performance at that scale. An army of Druids would be ill-inclined to the realities of strategic warfare, and would object to such measures as poisoning wells or scorched earth. They would also be hampered by supply issues; while a Druid can forage far more food from the land than an ordinary soldier, and therefore provides a logistical advantage as a support unit, this effect does not scale linearly with the number of Druids. They're better at finding supplies, they aren't creating them from nothing. Past a certain point, there simply isn't any more you can gather from the land, and the provisions required by an entire unit of Druids are far past that point. Conventional supply trains would remain necessary, but now become a morale problem as the Druids chafe at relying on unnatural means of support.
Their animal-calling abilities suffer a similar problem.

>>45107548
Really though fuck cantrips.

>>45108084
This post made me smile. Though one question:
>They're better at finding supplies, they aren't creating them from nothing.
Is Create Water a readily available spell in your setting?

>>45108037
Okay

>>45108080

There are not enough mages to hold all of the ground you need to hold. Sure, a mage can set up some area denial on a battlefield with walls of fire and shit, but you don't want 1 lucky arrow from an enemy archer to mean "the entire eastern flank is dead, because it was exactly one guy".

And who is going to carry all of the supplies that the mages need to do their magic? Not the mages, they dumped strength and constitution. If they ever have to run from a fight, or even give chase after an enemy, they will be gasping and wheezing before they reach the half mile mark, too out of breath to even cast spells as the enemy cuts them to ribbons.

Mages are a supplement to a well trained army, not a replacement for one. This is why every time some magic user gets it into their heads that they don't need anyone else and they can take over the whole world all by their lonesome, they usually end up getting gang stabbed to death by 4-5 dudes in return for quest rewards.

>>45108084
> If you attempt to counter this by drawing your Clerics from the service of several gods, you instead invite ideological strife between your forces at every level.
So the Nations are controlled by Gods. Great

>A conventional military doesn't lose morale if the traveling chapel doesn't have stained glass windows and solid gold incense burners.
But they do. We still have army field priests.

>Druids,as proponents of naturalism, are fundamentally unsuited to being organized on a large scale because the command structure
Thats just a gigantic straw man. The only issue with Druids as a army force, is that they need a catalyst or a pact with nature.
Druids can farm pact with things like Wildfire, Thunder, and Disasters.
Druids are perfect for army force, exactly because they are in tune of the land. They don't even suffer the problem of supply lines, because they are Druids.

>Their animal-calling abilities suffer a similar problem.
You don't want a army of druids with Hell Hounds as companions?

>>45107574
>mages don't wear any protective gear

This is something I never really understood.
If we exclude game balancing, what reason could there be for a wizard to not wear armor? Sure, he probably won't have the strength to comfortably move with the heaviest of armors, but most of the time he only needs to stay on a spot a do his thing, so as long as he can stand and walk that should be enough.

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>>45107518
Nice image you have there, I'll just go get my magnifying glass
faggot

>>45108083
Mobility is king in war. A mage who can strike anywhere on the battlefield at any time is exponentially more effective than one on foot. Dragons are additionally well suited to skirmishing tactics, possessing unmatched mobility, extreme effectiveness against units out of formation, excellent endurance, and natural projectile weapons well suited to anti material roles.
Thus, a mage riding a dragon both enormously improves the effectiveness of his spells and combines two potent shock/disruption units into a single synergistic whole.

>>45107518
An archer and warrior can fuck a mage up pretty good before he can cast a spell.

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>>45108151
Jst put the mage on a Pegasus then.
Balthasar Gelt was baller

>>45108137
>If we exclude game balancing, what reason could there be for a wizard to not wear armor?
"Can't do their silly hand signs and arm waving" is a common one. Plus it's hard to speak the magic words when you're winded from lugging around all that metal after spending years on your ass in a library.

Though really, any battle mage worth their pay should be able to handle a breast plate and pauldron or two. Not the best protection, but decent.

Let the frail old men worry about strategic problems like drought, while the young ones follow the armies. Sure, they're nowhere near as potent, but they're less likely to die from exhaustion...

>>45107518

First, not everyone can cast spells. Second, not everyone can cast spells that are efficient. More, there are a limited amount of spells you can cast each day.

Let's say I have to recite a complicated verse, and wave my hands to fire a bolt of lightning. While I'm doing that, an archer can shoot me six times, which is arguably more deadly.

>>45108137

Its not just game balance, but tone as well.

Everyone who thinks of wizards imagines basically the same thing. Gandalf the Grey, running around in a cloak and a shit and shit. Robes, motherfucker.

Basically no one wants wizards to be fighter looking motherfuckers that also drop fireballs, because that's Not My Fantasy Trope.

Everything else is basically just an excuse for the wizards to run around in robes instead of armor like a sensible person.

>>45107579
Scouting and holding ground respectively when out of battle.
Flanking and engaging to the purpose of repositioning the enemy in a place where the artillery can hit hard when in battle.

You chose a bad comparison mang.

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>>45108295
>Everyone who thinks of wizards imagines basically the same thing. Gandalf the Grey, running around in a cloak and a shit and shit.
m8

>>45107518
>Putting mages in big numbers into an army
Ignoring the part where this is basically begging for an archwizard to create a new faction and start a civil war fo the throne,

Can your freaking imagine what that would be like for the general populace.
>Hey? You know those guys who we generally keep the fuck away from ourselves, out in the ass end of nowhere where they can study god knows what sort of abominations in fruity looking towers?
>You know, the guys who 90% of your cautionary tales and boogeymen are made up of?
>The kind of dudes out of whom (In Greyhawk: became a lich, and then effectively a god, bringing damnation upon countless who sought answers?)/(In Dragonlance: beat up a god, and caused them to start throwing people out of the universe, just so no one gets to be as strong as that one got?)
>You know, those guys who could probably eradicate you off the face of the earth, turn you into a frog, and burn down your entire farmstead, in the time it takes for you to butter a slice of bread?
>They guys who only don't do this, because the army could probably kick their shit in, if they tried, but they are so powerful, even that might not be a viable threat?
>Yeah, those guys? They are now the army. The King thought this was a good idea. Just thought I'd mention.

>>45108322
Does he even wear armor in the books? I don't remember if it was mentioned.

>>45107518
>What's the point of using tanks or infantry if airplanes exist?

>>45108124
Usually the Clerics get that sort of thing. Druids get spells to locate natural wells or shift natural water around. Both can get spells to clean water.
Generally speaking, though, you can't support a military using Create Water alone, because you'd need nearly as many Clerics to cast it as you have soldiers to support (and all those Clerics need water too), and a cleric who's been conjuring water all day isn't going to have as much power available for smiting and healing later.

>>45108131
>So the Nations are controlled by Gods. Great
Assuming you're down with a theocracy, sure. Not everybody is.

>But they do. We still have army field priests.
A Cleric cannot minister to Clerics; he's their a peer, not a teacher. An army of Clerics would require an attendance of Bishops to minister to their spiritual needs, and a Bishop demands more extensive accommodation than field clergy.

>They don't even suffer the problem of supply lines, because they are Druids.
I already explained that this is wrong. Nature isn't inexhaustible; you can't just pull however much you like out of the land and expect nothing to change. A fundamental tenet of Druidism is understanding how much you can take, and how much you need to give back.

>You don't want a army of druids with Hell Hounds as companions?
Of course not, for a number of reasons.
One: most Druids don't want a hellhound companion to start with. They're an invasive species. They'd rather have native species with peacetime utility, like bears, wolves, deer, mice, and birds.
Two: an army of hellhounds would depopulate every prey species larger than a mouse within a day of their passage. The army would be a walking ecological disaster, which no druid would ever willingly support.
Three: they're hellhounds. Hell. Hounds. Hounds from Hell. Employing them in your army is PR suicide. You might as well paint yourself red and wear horns at this point.
Four: just where do you expect to get an army of hellhounds from anyway?

>>45108360
In the books, that is actually Morgoth.
Sauron basically looked like an elf, although he might have been just a very handsome human, I'm not sure.
You can thank Jackson for deciding that a magic wielding schemer wasn't threatening enough, if you didn't put a suit sized fortress on him, with a hammer of +40 Wreckshit

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>>45108360
iirc, after the fall of Numenor he permanently took on a form closely resembling Morgoth's black tyrant form

>>45108360
When he had a body at least, yes.
He also was never mentioned to use spells on the battlefield. It was all mace all the time, just like Morgoth did.

>>45108412
Isn't that cute? Evil overlord imitating his father figure.

>>45108295
>Basically no one wants wizards to be fighter looking motherfuckers that also drop fireballs, because that's Not My Fantasy Trope.
More like because it's not very efficient. If you have fireball throwing wizards, you want them as fire raining artillery rather than wasted in the shieldwall. It's not even a question of "can a mage fight" but rather "why should he".

>>45108461
Besides they usually have protective spells as well so they would just waste money.