High TL 9 vs TL2+RPM

[Andreas]

The possibility of getting energy from sacrifices means that very powerful spells would be available to them regardless of skill level. Something would be needed to prevent the mages from just using this to overwhelm the TL 9 force.

Perhaps the mages don't understand the enemy and the structure of their society is such that they can't effectively make use of the information they get from scrying (perhaps they don't trust each other for example).

Another possibility would be that they got a critical failure from one of their powerful spells, which caused massive damage to their own side. Or perhaps they are unwilling to use powerful spells due to the danger of critical failures even if it means defeat in the war.

[Wavefunction]

Originally Posted by Andreas

The possibility of getting energy from sacrifices means that very powerful spells would be available to them regardless of skill level. Something would be needed to prevent the mages from just using this to overwhelm the TL 9 force.

Perhaps the mages don't understand the enemy and the structure of their society is such that they can't effectively make use of the information they get from scrying (perhaps they don't trust each other for example).

Another possibility would be that they got a critical failure from one of their powerful spells, which caused massive damage to their own side. Or perhaps they are unwilling to use powerful spells due to the danger of critical failures even if it means defeat in the war.

Of course there's a pretty major risk involved with getting together a huge number of people for a sacrifice, that becomes a pretty major target for exploding.

[evileeyore]

In order for Greater Destroy to work the mages need either to understand how the machines work (not likely) or get a sample of what they to destroy (more likely for bullets/energy cells).


What I'd do is have it be be a quick blitz for the invaders, shock and awe all around (magic will be a big surprise to the invaders) followed by a terrible occupation. Even with magic I don't think they'd be able to match the edge high tech has... unless every other lowtechie was a Mage with time to prepare and the knowledge of what they were preparing for.

Now following the invasion there would be a strong nigh successful revolt (insurgent Mages now know what they are fighting) as magic could make for some extremely effective guerrilla action. The revolt is only ended when the invaders show they are willing to nuke cities. Probably at least one per planet.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

Of course there's a pretty major risk involved with getting together a huge number of people for a sacrifice, that becomes a pretty major target for exploding.

Sure, assuming that the invaders manage to set up enough presence in each planetary orbit to detect and destroy any large group of people before the mages know about them.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Even with magic I don't think they'd be able to match the edge high tech has... unless every other lowtechie was a Mage with time to prepare and the knowledge of what they were preparing for.

Even a single mage with a large group of sacrifices could cause a lot of damage to the invaders. Some spell effect scale very well with the amount of invested energy.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Even a single mage with a large group of sacrifices could cause a lot of damage to the invaders. Some spell effect scale very well with the amount of invested energy.

Such as external damage over a wide area.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

Of course there's a pretty major risk involved with getting together a huge number of people for a sacrifice, that becomes a pretty major target for exploding.

Design that expected attack into the sacrificial ritual; then the high-tech attackers become your helpers.

Is it possible for the high-tech civilization to detect magic? Or to learn it?

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Design that expected attack into the sacrificial ritual; then the high-tech attackers become your helpers.

Is it possible for the high-tech civilization to detect magic? Or to learn it?

If they can identify the gene that gives access to Magery, sure?

[ericthered]

There are a couple of things you can toggle that really effect the outcome:

How abundant are mages? If you have one per 10 people, that's very different than one per 10,000. And it makes a huge difference in the relative strengths of the two sides.

Where do you fall along the sliding scale of stat normalization? This makes a huge difference, because it decides how good your mages are. if your average mage only has a highest path skill of 12 or 13, you have a lot weaker mages than if your average mage has a skill of 14 or 15, and the curve for RPM power really gets going at about 17 -- so where you put the end of your curve is really important too. Do skill 20 people exist? more than one of them? which paths?

Related to that is how common are grimoires and places of power? are +5 places hard to find, or is there one in every province? can I round up 10 +10 grimoires of 'armageddon fire' for a magically oriented set of nukes?

How united are the low tech folks? It'd be a rare world where a single empire has conquered the entire world. When a small high tech group takes on a small low tech group, its best for the small group to initiate and hijack an internal dispute. At which point its tech and magic vs just magic. Or they can use divide and conquer.

There are lots of things you can use to tip the balance one way or the other.

[Varyon]

A mage with a single late Roman Legion behind him (around 1,000 men) can manage a 3,000 energy spell without a single gathering roll (each soldier contributes 9 FP). Soldiers without Fit will require 90 minutes of rest to recover from this, while those with Fit will only require 45. If you're able to arrange for 1,000 men with Fit, High Pain Tolerance, and an appropriate Sense of Duty (Voluntary Sacrifice is painful), an Adept could make one 3,000 energy Charm every 47 minutes or so (it takes 30 minutes to prepare the charm, 16 minutes 40 seconds to gather the energy from all the soldiers, and 5 seconds to cast the spell). We'll extend this to an hour, in which case he can make 8 such Charms in a workday. He'll want to have the Stabilizing Skill Perk, as otherwise even with skill 16+ he'll suffer a rather spectacular (as in, levels the city) Critical Failure around 0.5% of the time.

A single 2,435 energy charm can accurately locate and destroy nearly all enemy ships within 100 AU - that's enough to reach the Oort cloud in our solar system (Greater Sense Matter (2) + Lesser Control Chance (5) + Greater Destroy Matter (5) + Lesser Control Magic (5) + Affliction, Heart Attack (60) + Bestows a Penalty, Narrow, -8 to resist this spell (128) + Bestows a Penalty, Moderate, -8 on Repair rolls on affected ships (128) + Area of Effect, 100 AU (154)). Assuming hardy HT 14 vessels, each casting will disable 90% of an invading fleet. Such disabled ships may be repairable, but such repairs will suffer a -8 penalty, which means they'll take some time. Break two of these Charms to disable 99% of the invading fleet, then use the information you gathered from the Greater Sense Matter to determine where each ship is at. After that, a few Spontaneous Combustion spells with Area of Effect should be sufficient to eliminate the crews.

This means 3,000 energy is unneeded. A 477-energy ritual (Greater Sense Matter (2) + Area of Effect, 100 AU (154) + Duration, 1 hour (3)) would take 2 minutes, 44 seconds to cast, would "use up" 159 of your 1,000-man reserve, and would accurately locate and track every vessel in the enemy fleet for the next hour. Follow that up with some precise Spontaneous Combustion spells with Area of Effect to incinerate the crews, and you have a bunch of empty ships floating around. Some sort of Greater Sense Chance ritual will tell you which (if any) of the vessels will crash into inhabited planets, and following that up with some castings of Greater Control Matter will divert those away.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

If they can identify the gene that gives access to Magery

If Magery is even genetic in the first place. The OP didn't specify.

The desired post-war setting might influence that choice. Is the original population gone? Still a few magic-wielding refugees? A subjugated remnant? Co-existence with the invaders, with varying possible degrees of hostility? In some of these, you might want magic to remain the exclusive province of the aborigines. In others, the invaders might take over magic along with everything else, or might need it to maintain their foothold.