Warfare in Fantasy Setting [NO D&D allowed]

[Man on Fire]

The discussion about how warfare would be affected in fantasy settings.

I would like to ask you not to discuss this in Dungeons & Dragons terms, thread about it is already here and another here and I want to take the discussion out from the game - I'm more interested in actual story than mechanics and sadly, with D&D it's all mechanics, optimization and gaming mentality I don't care about. I want to discuss this in terms of narrative structure, common sense, morality, long-time strategy, tactics, technological advancement politics, society, your average joe and things like that.

[Mx.Silver]

Honestly, wouldn't this rather depend on which fantasy setting we're talking about? Because the big thing in determining how warfare works is tech level and especially how magic works and what it can do. Are wizards rare or common, and does how magic works make them battlefield support and/or mobile artillery (e.g. Warhammer) or are they more suited to campaign logistics (e.g. [i]Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell[i/]). Essentially, the less decisive an effect magic has, the more in common the setting's wars will have with real world wars of similar tech level. Both of these factors can vary pretty hugely in between different tech settings.

[Tavar]

As said before, if you don't specify the rules regarding the fantasy, then there isn't a cogent answer I can give you. There are so many different rules regarding magic, and each results in a different scenario.

[Lord Raziere]

Yea, what Tavar said. "What is Warfare in a Fantasy Setting Like" is like asking "What are People like on this Continent?" the question is too wide and the answers are too many.

[Man on Fire]

I think we could just discuss this from different angles, comparing many settings, but okay, if you guys belive it wo't work and want to have defined setting, I prepared a list of questions we should have answered. I don't want to enforce anything on you, so this should let you create setting you guys want to discuss - treat it as set of guidelines.

1) Is magic common or rare?
2) Is magic respected or feared?
3) Is magic something you can learn or you need to be born with it?
4) Does becoming semi decent wizard is easy and fast or takes many years of hard studies
5) Are the rules of magic understood or does wizard focus a lot of their time and resources to understand it's nature and it's a subject of heathen debate?
6) Is using magic only a matter of skill/knowledge or does it comes with a price?
7) Is magic a powerful force you can use openly, in quick dominating and effective way or more subtle power that works quiletly and slow, almost unnoticed for common people?
8) If kings keep wizards do they are infulential and respected or don;t have more to say than a farm-boy?
9) Is magic tolerated by religion or is it seen as sin/evil force that must be destroyed?
10) Are wizards united in one organization or divided and of various, often mutually exclusive, goals and alliegances?
11) Are humans only one race or there exist others?
12) Are magical creatures common or rare?
13) Are magical creatures easy to tame or hard to control?
14) if there are gods, do they meddle in afairs of mortals or preffer to left them to their own devices?
15) Are magical items rare or common
16) Are magical items incredibly powerful or can do only a little things?
17) Is there only one kind of magic or are there multiple schools that differs in the way of use?

[Maxios]

Dungeons and Dragons enters the room. "Hey every-[sees sign]oh." Dungeons and Dragons sadly walks away.

[t209]

I think we could just discuss this from different angles, comparing many settings, but okay, if you guys belive it wo't work and want to have defined setting, I prepared a list of questions we should have answered. I don't want to enforce anything on you, so this should let you create setting you guys want to discuss - treat it as set of guidelines.

1) Is magic common or rare?
2) Is magic respected or feared?
3) Is magic something you can learn or you need to be born with it?
4) Does becoming semi decent wizard is easy and fast or takes many years of hard studies
5) Are the rules of magic understood or does wizard focus a lot of their time and resources to understand it's nature and it's a subject of heathen debate?
6) Is using magic only a matter of skill/knowledge or does it comes with a price?
7) Is magic a powerful force you can use openly, in quick dominating and effective way or more subtle power that works quiletly and slow, almost unnoticed for common people?
8) If kings keep wizards do they are infulential and respected or don;t have more to say than a farm-boy?
9) Is magic tolerated by religion or is it seen as sin/evil force that must be destroyed?
10) Are wizards united in one organization or divided and of various, often mutually exclusive, goals and alliegances?
11) Are humans only one race or there exist others?
12) Are magical creatures common or rare?
13) Are magical creatures easy to tame or hard to control?
14) if there are gods, do they meddle in afairs of mortals or preffer to left them to their own devices?
15) Are magical items rare or common
16) Are magical items incredibly powerful or can do only a little things?
17) Is there only one kind of magic or are there multiple schools that differs in the way of use?

How about the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons (Magic exist in Warhammer and Warmachines but they have guns)?
P.S- I wonder if there are Fantasy games with gunpowder (It'll be cool to see Paladin looking like Wh40k space marine with flintlock pistol and sword).

[GenericGuy]

How about the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons (Magic exist in Warhammer and Warmachines but they have guns)?
P.S- I wonder if there are Fantasy games with gunpowder (It'll be cool to see Paladin looking like Wh40k space marine with flintlock pistol and sword).

One of my favorite CRPGs was Arcanum, and it had a typical fantasy world going through the industrial revolution. That backstory had a bunch of highly skilled classically trained knights get cut down by unskilled conscripts, who had guns. However, In terms of gameplay the guns were really not as good as melee, magic, or bows.

[Brother Oni]

How about the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons (Magic exist in Warhammer and Warmachines but they have guns)?
P.S- I wonder if there are Fantasy games with gunpowder (It'll be cool to see Paladin looking like Wh40k space marine with flintlock pistol and sword).

I believe in the older versions of Warhammer, Khornate chaos champions could get magic bolters as a champion reward.
I forget how effective they were though.

I think in the Dragonlance setting, they had tinker gnomes that had effectively invented gunpowder weapons and I know Spelljammer had magical equivalents.

[KnightDisciple]

Pathfinder by this point not only has guns, but actually has a paladin archetype specifically dedicated to using guns.
Heck, if you can convince your DM, you can even run around with revolvers and a lever-action rifle!

[Selrahc]

P.S- I wonder if there are Fantasy games with gunpowder (It'll be cool to see Paladin looking like Wh40k space marine with flintlock pistol and sword).

Have you really never encountered a fantasy setting with widespread use of gunpowder?

[Ravens_cry]

Pathfinder by this point not only has guns, but actually has a paladin archetype specifically dedicated to using guns.
Heck, if you can convince your DM, you can even run around with revolvers and a lever-action rifle!

More subtly, but just as important, it also has clockwork, including pocket watches, and printing presses.

[Morty]

There's one issue you seem to be forgetting. There may be no "wizards" at all. Mortals might simply not have access to magic at all, or they may only have stuff like alchemy, rituals or somesuch that has limited or simply no effect on warfare.
Futhermore, plenty of issues regarding usage of magic in combat have nothing to do with actual magic. It may be affected by culture, history, religion... many things.

[Jayngfet]

Really it depends on how anochristic the tech level is and what kind of magic is so widespread.

You could easily have a pseudo-modern soldier with his rapid repeating multi-bow crossbow with a curved groove and an attached sword bayonett, throw in some kind of simple grenades, and wind up with a vaguely modern soldier. It wouldn't be realistic considering how all the individual compnonents developed in different ages in real life, but it'd work for fantasy provided you justified it.

Or if you have a reasonable population of wizards with heavy offensive magic, that changes the game all over again. One fireball would be enough to take down a cluster of cheap conscripts and would probably make metal armor incredibly uncomfortable to say the least.

Hell, one good sized dragon would be a game changer on it's own: It'd be fast enough in the air to get around catapaults and hard to aim for with cannons and ballistas, it'd be thick-skinned enough to avoid worry about arrows and bolts, and a blast of fire would be enough to completley ruin anything in range.

Just a few ogres or trolls would wreck ANYTHING conventional. They'd smash catapults, tear through knights in plate, and if you gave them a ranged weapon even pre-gunpowder the size and power of something to that scale could put a hole in whatever poor fool it hits and probably tear out the other side if there's no armor. Hell, just giving them a sling of that size would tear off any bits of a man they impacted. Lord have mercy if they wear armor, they'd be the fantasy equivalent to an entire tank by themselves.


Terrain is another big factor. I mean those ogres and dragons are all well and good on a hypothetical flat plane where everything is nice and neat but if you have to fight in a densely wooded area with so much rain that catching a good fire is next to impossible a couple of smaller, faster goblin teams suddenly manage to pick your soldiers off with gurella tactics. If you're at sea and your big main ship sinks while your dragon is in the air he's kind of out of luck unless you have something big enough to land on and you've lost it even if you win the battle as a whole unless it can reach the coast.

Just like actual war it comes down to who's got the best stuff in the best conditions very often. Who's got flying units? What's the strongest type of soldier you've got? What's the range on your spellcasters, if they even HAVE that much offensive magic?

[Man on Fire]

There's one issue you seem to be forgetting. There may be no "wizards" at all. Mortals might simply not have access to magic at all, or they may only have stuff like alchemy, rituals or somesuch that has limited or simply no effect on warfare.
Futhermore, plenty of issues regarding usage of magic in combat have nothing to do with actual magic. It may be affected by culture, history, religion... many things.

Yeah, we should take this all also in consideration - in fact, maybe I should change the thread to be about the way magic and magical creatures would have affect the society in general?

[KnightDisciple]

Yeah, we should take this all also in consideration - in fact, maybe I should change the thread to be about the way magic and magical creatures would have affect the society in general?

Hm. I dunno. I think the focus isn't too bad. I mean, it's good for people to ask the questions they are, but at the same time, I think it's fair for you or others to try and construct a hypothetical scenario/setting.

I mean, even that question you propose has thousands of answers, because it depends on the nature of the magic and the magical creatures.

[Morty]

Yeah, we should take this all also in consideration - in fact, maybe I should change the thread to be about the way magic and magical creatures would have affect the society in general?

That's even broader than the original topic, so discussing meaningfully would be even harder.
And besides, why are we focusing on a Tolkienesque fantasy world, anyhow? What about urban fantasy? Or things that are harder to classify, like the Exalted setting?

[Soras Teva Gee]

Way I see it magical warfare depend on a plot along three axises

X: Combat Effectiveness of Magic
Y: Commonality of Magic
Z: Overall Advancement of the Setting.

At the high end on all three you have say Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, where magic is common enough for a full on magitech society. Tech level is above our own and the dimensions are open for travel, leading to something around magic based Star Trek level. And on the fighting end.... its where elementary aged school-girls can level cities while flying like fighter jets. And TSAB ships can just skip the nuke scale and go for somewhere between a Krakatoa and Yellowstone Eruption Event. (And historically it was even worse)

Then there's say the DC/Marvel one where classic Doctor Strange killed seven Elder Gods before breakfast and Galactus roams (he's de facto magical despite claims to the contrary) but where magic is broadly speaking sufficiently rare enough it doesn't effect things overall that much.

Dropping the setting advancement to preindustrial while being rare enough to not dominate society as a whole and and your high mark is probably the Wheel Of Time. Where a couple hundred Channelers can annihilate a 40k army like that isn't even a thing. And the two most powerful artifact working together could crack the planet like an egg, literally.

Dropping the power of magic but going back up on the advancement level you have like the Dresden Files where magic looses badly. As Harry is one of the brawniest wizards on the planet but a single .50 cal round smashed his defense and was only stopped by where his duster double layered. On Harry is like top ten for power in his setting, while .50 cal weapons are common as dirt.

Finally on the low end for magic you probably have A Song of Fire and Ice where its not only ridiculously and extremely rare but is of little use for direct combat.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

Some of it depends upon on what you mean by fantasy.

"Any sufficiently advances technology is indistinguishable from magic."

In the Safehold novels by David Weber, the main character Merlin Athrawes is actually a cybernetic avatar of a woman named Nimue Alban. He/she introduces small but vital technological changes to a pre-steam technology. So is Merlin a wizard, or just an android? Merlin also uses his technology to help in the war efforts, using nearly microscopic "bugs" to eavesdrop on the enemy commanders, his android's greater strength and speed, aircraft, and his own weapons are designed to look like medieval weapons, but are made of modern materials.

So, clairvoyance/clairaudience spells, haste, bull's strength, flying carpet/broom of flying, and magically enhanced weapons? Merlin introduces a revolver, a small but significant advance from a muzzle-loading pistol of one or two barrels. The line between technology and magic blurs...

Look at what spells might be available to a Battle Wizard, and look across sources. You've eliminated D&D, but look at World of Warcraft, GURPS, regular fantasy, whatever.

The books themselves are focused on this type of warfare. Most of the battles are cannon equipped sailing ships and single shot rifle or sword equipped Marines vs. mostly equally equipped humans. The minor technological advantages are just enough to swing the battle the way of the protagonists.

[Aux-Ash]

Like I mentioned in another thread: One thing that must be considered is scale. It is very easy to overestimate magic's importance because it seemingly can do "anything".

It is quite frankly not enough that magic can do a lot. It needs to be able to do so consistently and in enough quantity if warfare and/or society are to be changed by it. The same thing applies to all things fantastical.

Warfare isn't changed by a single flying pegasi. But the warfare (and society) is irrecognicable if every nation breeds them in the hundreds.
Just because a giant has the brute strength and size to smash a formation doesn't mean you can field them, because the pivotal question is if 80+ pikes/polearms is enough to prevent him from doing it easily.

An exploding fireball sounds impressive. But if it can only be used a handful of times a day at at worst only takes down a few dozen then hundreds of fireball-throwers are needed before conventional strategy needs to account for them.

Teleportation doesn't nullify overland travel before it becomes cheaper, simpler and can take greater quantities of cargo.

Magic (and other fantastical elements) does, almost by definition, sound impressive. And on a individual level it can very easily seem so significant that it's impossible to at a glance consider how it couldn't change the world.

But it's so very easy to underestimate just how large the world is. Especially in this age when we casually talk to people on the other side of the world and can fly to them within a couple of days if we need to.

But the world is actually mindboggingly big. It's difficult to fathom the scales and numbers that shape society and when we do work with them it's only on an abstract level. If what the fantastical elements can only affect what is essentially a drop in the water next to the scale that society and or warfare actually uses... then it's impact is at best limited.

And if magic is on such a level that it equals or surpasses what the common world achieves... then nothing we know or take for granted is necessarily true anymore.

[Selrahc]

It wouldn't be realistic considering how all the individual compnonents developed in different ages in real life, but it'd work for fantasy provided you justified it.

You mean it wouldn't be historical. Since most fantasy worlds aren't based on the actual real world, that doesn't really mean it isn't realistic.

[t209]

Have you really never encountered a fantasy setting with widespread use of gunpowder?

BTW, Beserk is only Cannons (Gunpowder as in pistols and rifles). I know these fantasies but I wanted to know about flintlock firearms in D&D style games (not a crappy one or the one in Pathfinder).
Okay! Do you think a person with muskets is like WH40k Imperial Guard equivalent (In Warhammer, musketeer always get beaten by Armored Chosen).

[Corvus]

My view is that the more powerful and ubiquitous the magic, the more irregular the warfare becomes. If you can start tossing out clouds of death or balls of fire, mass units of troops are going to serve little purpose.

Instead you have strike teams of special units running around nuking stuff.

[SoC175]

How about the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons (Magic exist in Warhammer and Warmachines but they have guns)?
P.S- I wonder if there are Fantasy games with gunpowder (It'll be cool to see Paladin looking like Wh40k space marine with flintlock pistol and sword).

Well, in D&D (*duck*) on the campaign world of Oerth (Greyhawk Setting) there's a hero-deity of technology and he just happens to have an order of paladins that are among the rare users of gunpowder weapons.

[Wardog]

I suppose a good way to do this would be to consider all the technological and social changes that significantly altered warfare in the real world, and then see what fantasy elements would duplicate / accelerate / negate those changes.

A few examples:
Firearms: eventually made medieval-style full armour obsolete (and ironically made swords useful again, because armour had become effectively sword-proof).

Now, in many fantasy settings (including but by no means limited to D&D), magic generally ignores armour. So if wizards shooting balls of fire or magical missiles becomes a common sight in warfare, then (in contrast to most games), heavy armour may become obsolete. (Other changes brought about by firearms probably won't be duplicated, unless entire regiments of wizards become commonplace).


Cannon/artillery: made major changes in castle/fortress design necessary, because old-style high-walled castles could easily be demolished, and were replaced with this sort of thing.

So if wizards can easily demolish castle walls with earthquakes, blasting spells, then similar design changes may be necessary. On the other hand, if a fireball is more like a gas explosion, or unconfined gunpowder than an artillery shell (lots of heat, and enough force to injure or kill a human, but not much good for demolition), then they might make traditional castles even better defences, because a wizard on the walls will make it much harder to use any attacking strategy or siege equipment that requires having a lot of men in a tight formation (ladders, battering rams, etc).


Moving away from tactical considerations, any magic that can make food production and healthcare more like that of the present day than of the middle ages will mean you can field much larger armies (because you can feed more people, and don't need to keep so many of them back at the farm). This will also cause other major changes to society, creating a larger urban population, perhapse leading to increased industrialization (maybe an early industrial revolution), or a larger educated class (maybe resulting in magic users becoming far more common, and exagerating and accelerating all the changes just described).

[Lothston]

I'm more interested in actual story than mechanics and sadly, with D&D it's all mechanics, optimization and gaming mentality I don't care about. I want to discuss this in terms of narrative structure, common sense, morality, long-time strategy, tactics, technological advancement politics, society, your average joe and things like that.

That's funny on a number of levels.

First, probably the most extensive example of how magic affects "narrative structure, common sense, morality, long-time strategy, tactics, technological advancement politics, society, your average joe and things like that" is (surprise surprise) D&D. If you count the novels, it becomes utterly ridiculous, but the sourcebooks are an excellent source of all that by themselves. E.g. the descriptions of how magic would affect combat on a large scale, posted by some fellow forumites above, have long been available in significantly greater detail in books such as "Heroes of Battle" and "Power of Faerun".

Second, "mechanics, optimization and gaming mentality" is, sadly, exactly how people would react to magic should it ever become real. After all, that's how our civilization was built.

So, I believe your premise is deeply flawed from the get-go: you're trying to build an interesting story while at the same time denying the basis and underlying structure of any such story: the world mechanics and the "gaming mentality" of pro-active people.

However, to reply to your question on a substantial level:

I believe the greatest "game-changer" of magic would be the ability of people to become demigods: effective immortality, instant travel, time distortion, shapeshifting, extreme destructive power all in the hands of a single human being.

All rationally minded people would undoubtedly seek this power. Civilization as we know it will cease to exist, and an entirely new culture - unfathomable by our mentality - will appear in its place.

[The Glyphstone]

As has been said many times previously, it depends on what sort of fantasy and how much, and how close to the real world it hews in the first place. What comes to mind immediately for me is the Temeraire series - quite literally, 'Napoleonic Wars...WITH DRAGONS'. Dragons are real, come in a wide variety of sizes and breeds, and - at least in Europe - are more-or-less domesticated for the purposes of warfare. What this does is turn the Napoleonic Wars into a weird fusion between what they actually were and World War I - the best and commonly accepted use for dragons are (A) fighting off enemy dragons, and (B) strapping crews to their backs to use as bombing platforms, like fighter planes and bombers were used for. Breeds with special attacks like fire or acid breath are prized for their bombardment value, small, speedy 'lightweights' act as message couriers and scouts, while ground troops have invented things like barbed cannonballs to tear wings and grapeshot infused with hot pepper as deterrents against strafing runs.

[Man on Fire]

That's funny on a number of levels.

First, probably the most extensive example of how magic affects "narrative structure, common sense, morality, long-time strategy, tactics, technological advancement politics, society, your average joe and things like that" is (surprise surprise) D&D. If you count the novels, it becomes utterly ridiculous, but the sourcebooks are an excellent source of all that by themselves. E.g. the descriptions of how magic would affect combat on a large scale, posted by some fellow forumites above, have long been available in significantly greater detail in books such as "Heroes of Battle" and "Power of Faerun".

Second, "mechanics, optimization and gaming mentality" is, sadly, exactly how people would react to magic should it ever become real. After all, that's how our civilization was built.

So, I believe your premise is deeply flawed from the get-go: you're trying to build an interesting story while at the same time denying the basis and underlying structure of any such story: the world mechanics and the "gaming mentality" of pro-active people.

However, to reply to your question on a substantial level:

I believe the greatest "game-changer" of magic would be the ability of people to become demigods: effective immortality, instant travel, time distortion, shapeshifting, extreme destructive power all in the hands of a single human being.

All rationally minded people would undoubtedly seek this power. Civilization as we know it will cease to exist, and an entirely new culture - unfathomable by our mentality - will appear in its place.

1) I think that novels actually should be allowed, D&D-related threads about this topic are all about the rules.
2) It is my belief that omnipotent, undefeatable wizards, who can solve all their problems in three seconds doesn't make a good story. Good game characters? Yes. somebody I would like to have in my part? Sure. Somebody I would like to read about? No.
3) It is also my belief that a strategy always tryumphs over the power, no matter how large it wouldn't be (and before somebody will bring Start of Darkness - despite what he's saying there, Xykon is using a strategy, his entire build is made to let him beat casters and even in that battle he is using a reasonable tactic). As I once said, Sun Tzu's Great Book Of War isn't going to be made obsolete just because of one guy in pijamas who can summon tornado made out of bees.
4) I think we should have put other things in consideration, not only magic, and sadly, D&D thread devolved into "Wizards Are Awesome", completely ignoring pretty much everything else - political and sociological impact, existence of fantastic creatures, human nature (and there is much more to it than "we want more power" - what about fear, prejudice, distrust, convervativism, greed, jealously) change of the society or industrial impact in favor of wizard utopia. D&D also ignores settings which are anything but standard D&D setting - this game does horrible job at reflecting any kind of fantasy aside High Fantasy and some High-Power Heroic Fantasy, where magic is omnipotent and common. What about setting where it's powerful but rare ( like Black Company or Berserk), common but very limited or even rare and limited? What about settings that doesn't work on vacian casting or where you cannot mix different schools of magic? D&D utterly and completely fails at reflecting any of them without massive homebrewing, at which point you aren't playing D&D anymore but your own game. Look at Temeraire Glyphstone mentioned - Dragons there are rare and look what impact they made, series would look completely different if they were as common as chickens.

[Lothston]

1) I think that novels actually should be allowed, D&D-related threads about this topic are all about the rules.

The novels are deeply rooted in the rules. So is non-RPG fantasy, though it might seem strange to you. Every writer who invents a fantastic world also invents its rules, otherwise it's not professional writing, just bad fanfiction.

2) It is my belief that omnipotent, undefeatable wizards, who can solve all their problems in three seconds doesn't make a good story. Good game characters? Yes. somebody I would like to have in my part? Sure. Somebody I would like to read about? No.

Then why do you want magic in the first place?

Also, who says powerful wizards are omnipotent and undefeatable? Just because you can't imagine ways to defeat them doesn't mean a good writer can't. E.g. Sauron in Lord of the Rings was very powerful, practically a demigod himself, yet was defeated - though it took three books of excellent writing to do so.

3) It is also my belief that a strategy always tryumphs over the power, no matter how large it wouldn't be (and before somebody will bring Start of Darkness - despite what he's saying there, Xykon is using a strategy, his entire build is made to let him beat casters and even in that battle he is using a reasonable tactic). As I once said, Sun Tzu's Great Book Of War isn't going to be made obsolete just because of one guy in pijamas who can summon tornado made out of bees.

Your eloquence on the topics of strategy and power is substantially undermined by your inability to spell. And you probably mean The Art of War, not "Great Book of War". As for tornadoes and summoning thereof, let me offer a simple metaphore: imagine, instead of a scrawny wizard, a modern tank with thermal vision, two machine guns and a large-caliber main gun putting cumulative rounds through a man-sized targer at a distance of over 2,000 yards. What strategy could a medieval force employ to "tryumph" over this machine over the course of a single battle? And over the course of a campaign, add to the tank some modern infantry, field recon, artillery and air support. Any ideas?

That's the kind of force multiplyer magic is. Actually, scratch that: satellite reconnaissance, long-range strategic bombers and nuclear warheads, that's more like it. Against a medieval army. Yeah, right.

And it's funny you invoke Xykon, since he's a notorious believer in power.

Bottom line: "strategy always tryumphs over the power" is an oversimplification with no connection to reality.

4) I think we should have put other things in consideration, not only magic, and sadly, D&D thread devolved into "Wizards Are Awesome", completely ignoring pretty much everything else - political and sociological impact, existence of fantastic creatures, human nature (and there is much more to it than "we want more power" - what about fear, prejudice, distrust, convervativism, greed, jealously) change of the society or industrial impact in favor of wizard utopia.

Fear, prejudice, distrust, conservativism, greed and jealousy all either cause people to desire power, or appear because of not having enough power, or both.

Needless to say, wizards (or rather, magic-users as such) are an excellent solution to this conundrum: they offer power the likes of which has never been seen in this world. Who cares about fantastic creatures or the emotions of others when you can have that?

D&D also ignores settings which are anything but standard D&D setting - this game does horrible job at reflecting any kind of fantasy aside High Fantasy and some High-Power Heroic Fantasy, where magic is omnipotent and common. What about setting where it's powerful but rare ( like Black Company or Berserk), common but very limited or even rare and limited?

A horrible job, you say? How about just, you know, making magic rare in your campaign? Populate the world with non-spellcasting classes and only a few casters of the limited sort? Disallow classes like Wizard and Cleric, or stop them half-way? What's stopping you, if that's the game you want to play you can do it easily with D&D mechanics.

In fact, if you wanted a low-magic world, you should have specified it in your starting post, no?

What about settings that doesn't work on vacian casting or where you cannot mix different schools of magic? D&D utterly and completely fails at reflecting any of them without massive homebrewing, at which point you aren't playing D&D anymore but your own game

.

Non-vancian magic? Warlocks, psionics, binders, Incarnum, "blade magic" to name a few.

Really, it seems you're just crusading against D&D without a good reason.

[Lord Raziere]

Lothston, if he doesn't want DnD in the thread, don't bring DnD into the thread. Thats thread logic 101. Chill ok? let a dead thread die, or at least let a sleeping thread lie….