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Originally Posted by talonthehand
I had never really considered the implications of magic in an army before. Well, beyond tossing fireballs at the enemy. I can't help but think that things like illusory ground would be nicely countered by mages on the other side though. Or as Raymond E. Feist once put it, "First mage casts a spell, second mage casts counterspell, third mage helps the first, fourth mage helps the second, and so on and so on until the army comes and chops up all the mages."
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Which is why I've always advocated using mages as the intelligence gatherers, communications experts, fortication specialists and logistics aids.
If ceremonial casting is allowed, it doesn't take all that many mages to feed an army on the move, which makes it incredibly mobile. If a mage or two is capable of scrying, the information available to the general will be dramatically better than that available to nonmagical enemies. And if one mage with each part of the army can use communication spells, the speed by which the general can coordinate his forces is multiplied.
And all of these functions allow the mages to be kept behind the front lines, much safer than the so called 'battle mages' that some naive dreamers would have in their armies.
As long as competent mages are rare (at least as rare as doctors, lawyers and research scientists today), they'll be much too valuable to waste in fighting directly.