How would magic interact with late TL5 naval warfare? & Campaign idea

[martinl]

One thing I tend to do as standard in "magic and explosives" settings is have a few spells, items, and abilities that are some variant of "summon a swarm of small hyper fire elementals that love to hug explosives."

This does not outright prevent the use of explosives, and of course there are mundane and magical counters, but:

1. It is fun. Chaos, tiny critters, explosions! (I recommend making the tiny elementals look like fire kittens or golden lion tamarins.)
2. It reduces the dominance of guns over other strategies seen in RL.
3. It reduces the players' tendency to apply high explosives to every problem, which in my experience gets tedious after a while.
4. It encourages creativity on the players' part.