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Old 03-20-2012, 12:33 PM   #51
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ View Post
The Youth spell is in incredibly high demand. Always and forever, everyone wants the Youth spell.

More than can ever be met, let's say. In a population of two million people, the demand for it is two million successful castings a year. You can't meet that demand. So, the incentive for the wizards with Magery 3 is to learn the Youth spell.
Sure you can. A wizard with skill 15+ and 100 assistants can cast 48 times per day (not sure why Youth doesn't have a casting time); over a 250 day year, that's 12,000 times. Ceremonial magic critically fails on 17+, so he'll have an average of 222 critical failures over the year. One critical failure will be a demon, which can typically be dealt with as long as your assistants are also competent at basic thuggery, but can be figured to cost a week of work in disruption. Three critical failures will be 'temporarily forget the spell', costing an average of three weeks of work, though he can do something else during the off time. All other critical failures are insignificant. Thus, he actually manages 11,000 castings per year. If magery 3 is 1/1,000, youth enough for the entire population takes 9% of all mages with magery 3. And you don't really need the entire population.
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Old 03-20-2012, 12:44 PM   #52
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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If magery 3 is 1/1,000
That's way more common than I would make it.

Looking at ancient demographics, we can say that Ancient Greece was ten million people and Rome was sixty million. Your proposal would give them ten thousand and sixty thousand people with Magery 3.

With those kinds of numbers, it's just about impossible to picture anything resembling an army in use. Unless it's an army of wizards.
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Old 03-20-2012, 12:49 PM   #53
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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That's way more common than I would make it.
Shrug. Doesn't matter that much, since it's not like there's any real need for casting youth on 100% of the population.
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Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ View Post
With those kinds of numbers, it's just about impossible to picture anything resembling an army in use. Unless it's an army of wizards.
Why would most wizards be in the military? I'd expect the same portion of wizards in the military as the portion of GDP spent on the military, so probably fewer than 10%.
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Old 03-20-2012, 01:24 PM   #54
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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Shrug. Doesn't matter that much, since it's not like there's any real need for casting youth on 100% of the population.
I was thinking it would be a small enough number that they wouldn't be able to everyone who wanted to pay for it, and so it had a very high price. But since the casting time is so low on it...

How did you get that they could only cast it 48 times a day? Isn't it ten seconds to cast? If they only got one off a minute for eight hours a day, that would be 480 a day. And they could in theory cast many more than those with the right infrastructure in place. It really doesn't make any sense to have Youth cast in such a short amount of time. I would house rule to ten minutes or an hour or something.

Not that it matters. The point still stands. Just replace Youth with Resurrection. I could easily see having all the Magery 3 people churning out nothing but Youths and Resurrections and three-point Blesses (which all the members of the aristocracy will have to have). I don't know what the numbers would be for accidental deaths in this world, and then add in Bless.... And I think that Bless is going to be such an economic boon that you want to keep it cast on everyone. Depending on the circumstances, you might see lots of resurrections as well. Imagine elite soldiers you can keep alive for centuries with Youth, and at their prime, no! better than their prime, because they've spent centuries training and fighting. You send them off to battle and then Resurrect the fallen.

I think those sorts of things might be in very high demand.

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Why would most wizards be in the military? I'd expect the same portion of wizards in the military as the portion of GDP spent on the military, so probably fewer than 10%.
Because you have to pay to train them. Unless we're allowing the Spellgraft spell. If we're allowing that, then you're right. Anyone and everyone is a trained wizard. Otherwise, who can afford to train them? The church? Good luck getting some of the limited supply of people born with Magery. I'm sure the ruler will allow that to happen.

These people are going to be viewed as too dangerous to the political rulers to be allowed to do as they please. People who can potentially have mind control magic are not going to be allowed to live free lives and study magic as they please. I would expect the rulers to keep access to learning magic to themselves, the same as they do with their top secret technologies today. I don't know the capabilities of their secret spy planes, and the only people who would get access to learning magic are people the rulers are sure aren't going to use it to threaten them.
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Old 03-20-2012, 02:27 PM   #55
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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How did you get that they could only cast it 48 times a day?
That 100 extra fatigue comes from the onlookers, and it takes them 10m to recover it.
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Because you have to pay to train them.
And? There are people other than the military with money.
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Old 03-20-2012, 03:04 PM   #56
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That 100 extra fatigue comes from the onlookers, and it takes them 10m to recover it.
Oh. I just figured you'd have each person bring their own onlookers. Or you could ten wizards with Lend Energy and Recover Energy standing there helping. Maybe power it with powerstones.

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And? There are people other than the military with money.
Sure there are. A wealthy slaver could start raising his slaves into wizards, if that was legal. But if it's not politicians doing it, and it's not religious institutions doing it, and it's not other wizards doing it (which I doubt it would be, since I don't see them ending up as freemen), then there aren't going to be many people with the money to do it in a medieval (or earlier) economy. I could easily see some law that you have to be a senator to train your own wizards, if only to ensure that the person doing it has the wealth to keep them in line. Maybe there will be certain spells that aren't regulated and that anyone is allowed to teach or learn, but I doubt it. It makes it more difficult to monitor them than if the state takes them all at birth after detecting them with a simple Aura spell. If you're a king or an emperor or a senator or a whatever and you want to maintain your power, then that means controlling the wizards. I would be inclined to treat them like modern states treat nuclear weapons.
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Old 03-20-2012, 03:34 PM   #57
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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If magery 3 is 1/1,000, youth enough for the entire population takes 9% of all mages with magery 3. And you don't really need the entire population.
Different strokes...my demographics assumption for any magery is about that...with a pyramid for the distribution of Magery 0/1/2/3+, with about 50% of potential mages being found and trained (although the upper reaches of the pyramid tend to be found more often than the lower levels...)

But I want my magic to be rare...mages to be special (as PCs or enemies)...and mages to be an important factor in world affairs...not the end all be all...

But then again I divide the Magic book up so no one order of mages can 'cast all spells' so there are choices to be made...and all mages have a flavor of their own...sitting down a PC with the entire text of Magic and saying 'have fun' is about the last thing I would ever want to do...

YMMV tho...
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Old 03-20-2012, 04:43 PM   #58
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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... People who can potentially have mind control magic are not going to be allowed to live free lives and study magic as they please. I would expect the rulers to keep access to learning magic to themselves, ...
That only seems viable if the rulers themselves are an aristocracy of mages.
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Old 03-20-2012, 05:00 PM   #59
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That only seems viable if the rulers themselves are an aristocracy of mages.
I don't see why it would mean that. It could end up that way. Maybe each king has hundreds of children until he has one that has Magery 3, and then that one becomes the heir. Definitely possible. But certainly not necessary. Or possibly even preferable.

A kingdom is like a corporation. There's no reason for the CEO of a music corporation to know anything about playing rock music or dropping fat beats. He knows how to run a business. In the same way, a king knows how to run a kingdom. He can understand magic without being a magician. If we're doing random Magery, and it's a hereditary monarch, then he's probably not a wizard. He'll know how magic operates and all that--he'll have to--but there won't be any need for him to cast spells. As king, he probably wouldn't want to waste his own time casting spells. Just like how the CEO wouldn't do all of his own secretarial work, even if he was better at it than his secretary. Division of labor. I'm sure the king has an IQ score as high as any of his wizards. He can afford a +5 Wisdom crown, after all (which wouldn't help him with magic, anyway).

He keeps wizards as his servants. The same as how he has soldiers as servants, and tailors, and butchers, and bakers, and candlestickmakers.

He probably personally controls access to the books containing the more powerful spells. These people don't have the internet. They probably don't even have the printing press. And it's a lot easier to control wizards learning spells that would serve the same function than it is to control what peasants are printing up in their basements. It would be incredibly easy for a king to control access to magic. He could have all the books with that information in it, and he can simply ban any unlicensed teaching of magic. It takes so long to learn a spell. And they would test everyone at birth for Magery. So they could just check on all those people constantly, if they weren't taken separately at birth. And they could scan everyone entering the cities with Aura. It seems trivial to control access to magic when you already have such access yourself.
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Old 03-20-2012, 06:22 PM   #60
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Default Re: Ceremonial Magic used to support an army.

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Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ View Post
I don't see why it would mean that.
Why would mages tolerate a social system that confines them to a life of being controlled by non-mages? How could such conditions be imposed on them except by other mages?


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A kingdom is like a corporation.
In fundamental ways it is not. A corporate exists within a context of laws and property relationships. A kingdom IS the context of laws and property relationships.

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... If we're doing random Magery, and it's a hereditary monarch, then he's probably not a wizard. He'll know how magic operates and all that--he'll have to--but there won't be any need for him to cast spells.
There's no need for him to be king either. Who can defend a throne against people who can read minds and walk through walls?

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He keeps wizards as his servants. The same as how he has soldiers as servants, ...
Throughout history, kings and emperors have been the leaders of soldiers, and whosoever the soldiers chose would be the leader. I suggest that this would be intensified and stratified when the power resides no just with trained roughnecks but rather is vastly more flexible, stealthy, and inherent.


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It would be incredibly easy for a king to control access to magic.
I don't see how. If he needs other people to actualy do the magic, they'll have to know about it. But there's an earlier-stage question ... How does he get to position where he can control of it in the first place?


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... he can simply ban any unlicensed teaching of magic.
But why would mages obey him?
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