Why would you build castles, siege weapons and use close formations

Because the mage can't sit in a single spot for all eternity?

why would you spend all that time learning magic spells when you can just dump blighted corpses into a towns water supply and watch the people slowly die of the plague

>>53428882
Simple you build castles with defensive wards and enchantments then man them with your own mages

Mages are reclusive spergs who don't participate in politics or organized warfare.

Keep one on a leash and feed him books and he's plenty happy, maybe he'll read the stars for your good fortune in return.

Otherwise just send murderhobos to raze his library and he's powerless.

>>53428937
I actually read a fantasy novel where similar defense existed for close formations too - they'd raise up standards with warding runes and the men would chant as they advanced. None of them matched a mage's power but as a unified body they brought out enough magic to form a defense against the kind of spells that would wreck a phalanx

>>53428923
I'm glad you could bake it, Uther.

mages are rare
mages are evil
magic can be countered (like >>53428996)
immunity to fire damage (ABYSIA A-GO-GO)

>>53428882
The people respect castles.

>>53428882

What, don't you have a mage to protect you from mages?

Ever heard of the Wand and Sigil Race?
The Magehattan Project?
Please Wizard, magic missle this wall!

>>53429069
My favorite Abysia tactic is to turn the battlefield into a fiery hellscape and laugh as my enemies burn.

>>53429051
You're not my king yet, boy

>>53428918
If a skinny monk can do it, so can a wizard.

>>53428882
That assumes wizards are both common and powerful enough to defeat armies/castles by themselves.

And such settings are usually shit by default, army/castle defeating magic should be a legendary if not mythical feat. Or an OH SHIT moment to let you know the antagonist is some serious business. A regular old fireball will be nearly useless against a castle anyway. Whereas 20 guys with crossbows are very effective against unarmoured old men.

>>53428882
Counterspell.

>>53428882
Why would you build castles, siege weapons and use close formations when artillery exists?

>>53428996
Do you remember what the novel was called? Sounds interesting

>>53428882
>Why would you build castles, siege weapons and use close formations when mages exists?
Castles were being built, and Swiss Pikemen were marching in tightly knit phalanxes after the introduction of canons to the battlefield. As to why siege weapons would be employed, if nothing else, they can be repeatedly used, while wizards run out of spells. Plus there is probably a pretty limited number of powerful wizards you can muster.

>>53432768
Old cannons were nothing like modern artillery, they were also much less effective than a fireball.

>>53428882

Hown to you burn a stone castle?

>>53432819
>Old cannons were nothing like modern artillery, they were also much less effective than a fireball.
I'm not so sure that grapeshot would fuck you up less than a fireball.

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>>53428918
>Because the mage can't sit in a single spot for all eternity
Not with that attitude.

>>53428996
>>53432319

I would also like to know this.

>>53428882
Because a mage can't cast fireball on your formation when he was assassinated three weeks before the opening of hostilities.

>>53428882
Because if you don't you'll get demolished by cavalry.

>>53434490
You killed an expensive simulacrum.

Now you have an extra pissed mage on your tail.

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The exact shape of the castle is useful for buffing the magical abilities of the mages inside through the use of runes. Siege weapons can disrupt the flow of energy within the castle by destroying the circuit of walls and towers that direct the magical energy.

If a cannon is being a funny, I can get rid of it without having my genitals cursed.

>>53432819
An 'old cannon' can fire a giant metal dart, bit more effective against a castle than a fireball.

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Tight formations are there so your own counter-mages can concentrate their magic in a small area.

Your castle is built on a ley line, and is physically laid out in the form of a magic circle which wards off magical attacks while powering up your own mages' defensive spells.

>>53429108
Wait, there are other Abysia tactics?

>>53428882
You're thinking about this all wrong. Military strategy requires efficiency at all levels. Yes, a mage can wreck a castle. The whole point is that an enemy HAS to find a mage because you have a big ass castle. Regular troops can't just March onto your land with castles there. Then you stock your castle with a mage and now neither a mob or a mage can easily defeat you.

You can't arm all your infantry with only anti-armor just because tanks are the worst threat out of a few.

>>53432819
Nigger you know nothing of the cannonade.

Why would you use siege wizards when a wizard can just build a magical castle with magical rocks?

>>53435773
>The exact shape of the castle is useful for buffing the magical abilities of the mages inside through the use of runes.

The exact shape of the castle IS a rune.

>>53428882
Mayes powerful enough to beat all those things are too rare to be a consern

Because they still wreck the bottom 90% of threats, and there's nothing you can do about the top 1%.

>>53428882
Because mages aren't omnipotent?

>>53432819
A ball of fire spell is usually depicted as roundish orange flame. What burns as orange flame? Why, hydrogen of course. Or maybe butane or methane. Can cause serious burns on unprotected flesh but jackshit on hard brick and mortar of which castles are made of. But but muh plasma matter fireball. No! If so, the mage and everyone around him will get burned too when the spell is initially casted.

>>53428882
Depends on the magical abilities of my neighbors and enemies.

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>>53428882
You can ward a castle with all sorts of magical defenses. As time goes on, more magical defenses are stacked on it making it harder and harder for spellcasters to tear it down.

>>53434770
>It was a hologram the whole time!
You were the kid nobody liked.

>>53442270
Wouldn't that just lead to a magical arms race or even a mage cold war?

>>53442487
Magical cold war is the canon 2e D&D, Forgotten Realms explanation about high level casters. They inconvenience each other with proxy warfare like intrigue and adventurers because no level 20 wizard wants to get in a spell duel and learn the enemy had a trump card they didn't know about.

>magic exists but is useless for fighting because everybody is protected by supermega runes who make you impervious to terrain-destroying firebombs so you need to use some rusty spear to kill them haha solved OP
Thanks, geniuses.

>>53442278
Yeah because
>pshhhh... killed off-screen, kid
is so much better
You compliment each-other, if anything

>>53438122
Spam Fire Elementals so you aren't as hard countered by Rain. Still insta-lose to Army of Gold, of course.

>>53428882
>Wake up
>Remember war of the cross exists

Depends on the setting buddy, on anima normal fucking humans along with 1 demigod destroyed not only basically nazi wizards, but also all supernatural empires into the fucking ground so hard there is nothing left of them.

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>>53432951

>>53428882
In 5e D&D, a lot of spells only affect creatures.
As far as I know, a castle is not a creature.

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I'd love to see what magical warfare would look like with the use of sensible tactics; dispersed mobile formations, magically enhanced Command & Control, summons used for scouting and spoting targets for long ranged indirect spells etc.

>>53428962
>Otherwise just send murderhobos to raze his library and he's powerless.
>powerless

Yeah no. Watch those murderhobos get turned inside out.

The sword will never match the sorcerer.

>>53447209
probably like how modern tactics and technology are used today to be completely honest. Satellites, drones, etc. have equivalents in settings with advanced enough magic. You also have medieval styled grenades being upgraded with magical spells/wards to make them more effective, cannons and other siege weapons fire wizard created munitions that do thing such as armor penetration, air burst effects and delivery systems for chemical weapons. Just mix the technology of the era with magic and you'll eventually have a setting similar to today but set in the past.

Look at the Malazan books.

Mages counter mages and nullify each other often. But more likely before the battle even happens a mage assassin slots the throat of the resident arch mage and sends the city into chaos, and then the attacking army wrecks them with mages and alchemical grenades.

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>>53428882
Keeps the riff raff away

>>53445243
thats literally how it works in real life though
>haha we have nukes now we're undefeatable
>wait wtf do you mean the enemy has nukes and now we cant fight at all?

>>53449483
Wow real life, so cool.
Even in real life though you don't have nuke that don't work. If you're that anti-fun you could just say that magicians' guilds around the world have a deal not to join wars because they know if they started shit they would end up tearing reality apart which even if boring is a massive improvement over loldoesntwork.
It would also make for a nice setting where every war might be the last instead of that cop-out one-way shit.

>>53449931
>haha i have magic that means literally everything else is pointless now and magic is all that matters
wow, so fun, so cool

>>53450093
Where did I say that?

>>53450093
>>53450166
Also aren't you basically cucking magic users in the other example, being reduced to buffers while the big boy physical damage dealers are the ones doing everything?

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>>53450203
Not really, it just means that magic becomes another tool of war that has be used in conjunction with other tools.

Saying that there are countermeasures, then assuming magic is completely useless, is like assuming that aircraft, artillery, or armor are useless because there are counters to them.

This isn't saying magic is useless. This is saying that OP's assumption that magic would be some silver bullet is just not true.

>>53428882
Because mages are rare and cost a lot.

A trebutchet is common and only costs a little bit.

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>>53428882
A setting either has enough magic users to matter or not.

>magic is super rare
the ten wizards on the continent have better things to do than play politics and would run out of fireballs before the castle runs out of men

>magic is common
nation level combat is conducted by dogfighting invisible wizards mounted on flying monsters

>>53428882
Because even in magefest that is dnd wizards that can actually cause any damage or spells thats worth a damn are exceedingly rare, the players are just meant to be that much of a special snowflake.

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>>53450725
That's boring. Reducing magic to cast before battle because fireballs hurt your feelings is boring no matter what dumb real life analogy you want to use. I hope you get raped by the town diviner.

>>53442151
could be a ball of wrapped fire magic that explodes when it hits a target instead of just a flaming magic balloon that washes over some dudes.

>castles
romance, depending on the setting defence from wizards; even if wizards are a given in actual regular warfare, in most settings it's unlikely that a plebeian uprising will include wizards and as such a castle would also be resistant to siege in those circumstances

>siege weapons
an alternative to dealing with wizards, who are usually patently insane autonomous engines of destruction whose only real allegiance is to themselves; alternately, the siege engines are run using wizards to apply their abilities more effectively

>close formations
so they can stand under their own wizards' magic shields freeing up more wizards to wreck shit, otherwise there's no excuse

>>53429108
...what else can you do as abysia, other than assassinations? Fire elementals are still fire resistant shits that you mass to march on your enemies under conditions that heavily favour you. That's the whole point, it's like saying "my favourite thing to do as MA ermor is amass several thousand skeletons and cast burden of time asap so there aren't priests to stop me"

>>53428882
Why would you build castles and use tight formations when artillery and gunpowder exist.

>>53428882

There's no in-universe reason whatsoever. It's all because it panders to the expectations of simpletons.

>dey got sords!
>dey got chainmails!
>dat mean dey must have cassles too! XD

It really only happens in shitty, poorly-thought out settings like most major DnD settings. They reason, quite cynically, that the superficial appeal of the medieval theme is more important than whether it really makes any sense at all. Plebs will defend this.

Because they're so rare the vast majority of what I have to worry about as a local lord are still marauding armies and bandits?

>>53451621
>That's boring.
No, magic being super OP with zero counters (not even other mages, apparently!) is boring.

>>53431797
Didn't artillery obsolete all three of those things?

>>53432768
Only until cannons advanced in technology enough to be effective.

Because in this setting obviously a castle would be built with magical defenses in mind, however magical defenses work in the setting.

>>53452176
Or it's just that in a well balanced setting magic will have countermeasures too and castles would still be incredibly useful for their main purposes?

>>53428882
>Why would you build castles, siege weapons and use close formations when mages exists?

You wouldn't. In a setting with magic, there's no reason to have any mundane martial accouterments whatsoever.

>>53428882
Simple. Don't have faggot mages that make everyone obsolete.

>>53452500
Machine guns played a large part as well.

>>53453003
Machine guns obsoleted massed infantry attacks like in the first world war, but infantry standing in a line shoulder to shoulder was obsoleted by battlefield artillery. By the American Civil War it was already pretty much obsolete as a tactic and by that time unreliable Gattling guns had just been introduced, but artillery was a leading cause of combat deaths.

>>53453065
Well the only real reason to have tight infantry formations was for anti cavalry anyway.

>>53453088
But that's wrong. Infantry formations go back to the bronze age and were significantly important in fighting against other infantry. In a phalanx formation each person could protect the guy next to him, making a more effective fighting force than so many individuals alone.

>>53453120
I'm not speaking on pre firearm infantry.

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>>53452498
Who said that? Are you referring to the example I gave you earlier of reality-ripping, deal-making mages?
That's actually how it would work in reeeeeel laaaaaaif since you like to bring it up so much and it still would be a far more interesting thing for a setting as a whole than that magic rune and wait it out shit you think makes for such a hit. Boring fluff, boring to play, boring people will like it.
In my example it's up to individuals to breach the rules instead of your stale shit for videogame retards looking for le balanced themepark of happy rides.
That is btw the first thing I made up on the spot, you can also have mages cast defensive spells that protect everyone from the elements and such and cut down their damage to single digits if it's such an issue to you and still have them take an active part in the conflict you brain dead monkey.
You want 100% balance? Fucking die.

>>53452722
That is only true if you deliberately make magic ridiculously overpowered. In the majority of settings magic is only used by a tiny number of people relative to the population as well. If magic makes it obsolete its because you are an asshole and chose to make a setting like that.

>>53453385
>Who said that?
You. You said that.
Right here:
>>53451621
>That's boring. (in response to someone posting magic should have countermeasures)
also you must be really stupid attacking this strawman
>and it still would be a far more interesting thing for a setting as a whole than that magic rune and wait it out shit you think makes for such a hit.
and then immediately suggesting the same thing everybody else in the thread did
>you can also have mages cast defensive spells that protect everyone from the elements and such and cut down their damage to single digits

>>53453463

All settings where magic is worthwhile are like that. If magic wasn't inherently superior to the mundane, nobody would undergo the bother of magic and they'd just use mundane stuff instead. Thus, every setting where magic exists must be definition obviate the mundane and martial.

tl;dr, cry moar martialfag. Magic is better, and it's supposed to be

>>53453497
That does not even make sense and you know it doesn't. Magic is useful =/= magic makes all normal forms of combat obsolete.

How is 0.001% of the population being able to cast fireballs change anything? Won't hurt a castle, won't hurt 500 archers in a skirmishing formation. If you can divine the location of the enemy headquarters or baggage train you still need guys with spears to go kill them if wizards are not one man armies. Which would be boring.

>>53453497
That's like saying having an air force obsoletes ground forces, and just ain't true.

>Mages are rare

Problem solved right off the bat. Any "common" magic is really minor. limited stuff. A D&D-tier caster, even a first-level one, would be one of maybe, at MOST, a few thousand. The overwhelming majority of these would be busy with their own agendas.

In short, the vast majority of the time, you're going to be facing a mundane army. Are you going to abandon fortifications and tactics that are good against the threat you face by far the most often because there is another, super-rare threat that somewhat negates it that you will probably never face? No, instead you'll just take that other threat into account as a possibility and take precautions against it while you focus on dealing with the actual army invading your land.

>>53450801
>A trebutchet is common and only costs a little bit.
But that is wrong. Cannons ended up being an improvement to prior siege engines because hauling GIANT METAL TUBES AND EXPLOSIVES was still cheaper and faster than transporting a trebutchet or having to assemble one on site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1EAA7pkEJ4

>>53454034
This is about Mage vs everything pre-firearm, that includes cannons, dipshit.

>>53453596

But it does mean you need air forces if you want to really compete with someone who has them.

>>53453632

The trouble is the methodology of how you make magic rare in your setting. If you say it's by bloodlines, fine, but then every magic PC needs a bloodline. And if there's traditional wizard-style magic anywhere, as in a learned series of hand gestures, words and materials, then there's no reason that knowledge wouldn't propagate as quickly as the knowledge of how to, say, make a longer sword or make a bigger boat. Or at least no reason that isn't going to be eyeroll inducing. That's without even getting into divine magic which is theoretically open to whoever's devout enough to have it, and would probably result in most armies not marching without a cleric somewhere in the ranks.

The trouble is that you need a really, really solid reason for magic to be rare because magic is too good for people and kings to not pursue as far as possible, even if it means finding bloodlines that do magic and controlling their breeding. It does too much too well.

>>53454204
Nah just Surface to Air missiles or other Anti-aircraft weaponry.

>>53428962
boring

Because you can train 30 men to use a siege engine in a week.
It takes years to train one Mage to be as effective as a siege engine, he can't wear armor, and he can only do those big blast spells so many times a day. For all that money I can buy more ammo for my trebuchet and siege a fortress for days on end.

>>53428882
Mages are rare and probably don't care about your petty territorial dispute.

>>53428882
Wizards need towers, right?

A castle is four wizard towers linked by a big stone wall.

>>53449931
Mage guild is running a world wide protection racket on the kingdoms of the land.

>>53455047
Wizards extrude towers.
It's not like they need them, it's a side effect of using too much mana.

>>53455102
Then why not build a castle? It uses only wizard byproducts for raw materials. Very environmentally friendly.

>>53455185
wizard himself is quuite environment-unfriendly

>>53428882
Because mages aren't the only possible combatants.

If you take warfare into account then wards and ward breaking siege weapons also become a factor while mages generally become single powerful combatants needed to fend of the opposing mage with their main roles being artillery and terrain control.

>>53428882
Interesting question. The mage is busy counterplaying your own mage support and thus while still a credible threat when he gets a chance to toss a fireball out as he inevitably will, he won't have time to rain as much death as he would like.

Alternatively, both sides got together before the battle and agreed to butcher all their mages so as to avoid ridiculous and completely pointless mortality rates.

>>53429108
That's the only Abysia tactic

>Wizard Splafetti casts Rain
>Sad_Abysian.png

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>>53453464
No, the thread was about mages being cucked to death with no active role in a war outside of lolruneofdefence and that is boring.
It was NOT about mages having wards that still let them take part to the war (but still very cucked, hence the single digits comment for insecure bitchboys like you who need cuddly cartoon worlds where everybody is equal), that's all.
End of the question, stick to WoW. I'm glad I don't play with whiny queers like you, I bet you're not even a DM either way so it's not like your setting's opinions matter.
Now go fucking die so you can find your balance.

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>>53458538
butthurt nerd that was bullied by the big mean jock detected

>>53428882
Because mages are rare, high-value targets that you save as a final strike. Because tossing them around willy-nilly while there's archers and catapults about is a bad idea.

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>>53459810
>waifufag
Project harder