Magic on the TL 3 battlefield

[Dalillama]

Or, What's a battle mage for anyway?
Assuming TL3 militaries, who have had access to magic long enough to include it in their tactical doctrine. Assume limited access to enchanted gear, and that a skilled mage has half a dozen primary spells. What are the best ones? Does this change depending on troop type?

Case 1) Rare magic. There is roughly one mage per battalion, 1 in 1000 soldiers is a useful mage. What spells are most useful for this army?

Case 2) common magic: There's about 1 mage per company of 80-100 soldiers; command, intelligence, and logistics have their own mages. What are the best spells for a line mage? How about a 'scout' mage?

Case 3) Ubiquitous magic: Every squad of 4-8 soldiers contains a mage, there are additional company and battalion-level mages, every branch of specialists has mage.
Case 1 is probably going to see mage focused on crying the enemy army, coordinating movements, and ensuring the right weather, and preventing the other side from doing the same.

Case 2 might use a lot of area effect spells, even create fire can control parts of the battlefield.

Case 3 is going to probably focus on buffs, plus one or two fighting spells because they'll be in the thick of it.

Thoughts?

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Or, What's a battle mage for anyway?
...

Thoughts?

Speaking as a semi-pro historian with a military focus...

GURPS base Magic System I can see a number of ways to vastly improve on 'historical' TL 3ish communications.

With improved communications you could have a vast improvement in tactics/operations/strategy. What Napoleon or Alexander might have achieved with a handful of WW2 handie/talkies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkie-talkie

Magic can get you that and I expect that would be a better force multiplier that dice of damage.

And of course magical healing since disease was the biggest killer in war up to the American Civil War at least...

[Anaraxes]

Anything that helps C3I - command, control, communications, and intelligence. GURPS Magic spells tend toward the sort a individual dungeon-crawling hero would want, but for an army, you can leverage the mages better with "big" spells.

I agree with healing, for example, but Remove Contagion on the camp and especially the kitchens and latrines will give the commander more active, healthy soldiers by preventing diseases than will Cure Disease to cure each soldier after they've already gotten sick. If you have few magic items, a self-powered Purify Water hoop would be tremendously valuable (especially if you rig it so that the water supply is channeled through it, purifying everything that comes downstream before it gets distributed to the army). Conversely, you'd like to Foul Water on the enemy water supply, rather than individually sickening soldiers in battle.

Similarly, weather spells can slow the entire enemy army, whereas no mage can throw Rooted Feet on enough enemy soldiers to matter. Gate spells will let mages create portals from one base to the desired destination. ("Get there first with the most men".)

Intelligence means scrying, so Far-Seeing, Far-Hearing, Scry Gate, and the like. Knowledge spells also help the "scout" mage; finding an efficient path to move the army to the desired destination with spells like Know Location and Pathfinder is more valuable than getting one spy to make some personal observations and report back, useful as the latter is. Truthsayer and Mind-Search will have some application in interrogation, but are probably too expensive to apply to every captured enemy soldier.

Regular spells would be most useful if you can target the enemy commanders. But of course the enemy knows that. So, meta-spells to block scrying and remote magical attacks will be a top requirement. Every independent unit needs a security mage.

Some magical research would be directed to developing Area versions of Regular spells for combat. Individual mages throwing Explosive Fireballs at the enemy line don't do a lot of damage on the scale of an entire battle; Rain of Fire (etc) might be applied more usefully. Battlefield control with Area basics like Create Fire might be used to isolate key points of the enemy army so that they can be defeated in detail more effectively than trying to set fire to the entire line.

Other researcher mages will be tasked with inventing a counter to every good idea the offensive mages come up with, so that the same can't be done to their own army. Acquiring enemy magical doctrine and spells to know what to stop is another application of the intelligence spells.

[Fred Brackin]

There are a few simple damaging Spells that have disproportionate effect.

Take Create Fire. cast it on top of a formation of soldiers and the soldiers may only take a few pts of damage before they jump out of the area but you've busted their formation. Add Shape Fire and you can chase them across the battlefield faster than armored infantry can march.

As for cavalry, horses _really_ aren't going to have anything to do with such a combo.

The Opfor can try and match all Create/Shape Fire Mages with extinguis Fire Mages (or maybe Water Jet) but miss one and you've still got big trouble. Fight Fire with Fire and that just means everybody shifts to dispersed troops of the "skirmish" type.

No heavy formations for shock and defense is a pretty big change.

[Anthony]

Some of this depends on what the range is for hostile observers is for ceremonial magic, because 100 extra energy from friendly observers goes a long way. Aside from C3I, GURPS Magic has some very strong positional defense spells, such as mystic mist.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Some of this depends on what the range is for hostile observers is for ceremonial magic, because 100 extra energy from friendly observers goes a long way. Aside from C3I, GURPS Magic has some very strong positional defense spells, such as mystic mist.

Not so much TL3, but you could imagine this sort of thing being behind something like the Zulu war chorus or something ... by chanting and performing a ceremonial dance, you have whole regiments feeding power to your magi. Actually, I could see the Romans doing that - perhaps with the aquilae serving as some kind of accumulator?

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Take Create Fire. cast it on top of a formation of soldiers and the soldiers may only take a few pts of damage before they jump out of the area but you've busted their formation. Add Shape Fire and you can chase them across the battlefield faster than armored infantry can march.

As for cavalry, horses _really_ aren't going to have anything to do with such a combo.

The Opfor can try and match all Create/Shape Fire Mages with extinguis Fire Mages (or maybe Water Jet) but miss one and you've still got big trouble. Fight Fire with Fire and that just means everybody shifts to dispersed troops of the "skirmish" type.

No heavy formations for shock and defense is a pretty big change.

Sure. If you houserule away the -1/three FEET distance mod. That's the elephant on the battlefield, when it comes to the effectiveness of damage spells on the GURPS battlefield. If I'm the OPFOR commander, I am not going to meekly line my army up in one nice, dense, shoulder to shoulder mass, conveniently missile weapon free and standing in ready range to your battlemages. And should something like a wall of fire suddenly spring up as I call the advance? Then I do something intelligent and tell the drummers to call the halt. I bet I can outwait the casters' Fatigue reserves, especially given how hefty the cost is to maintain a large area.

And yeah, the 100-extra-energy bit is bruited about in such discussions pretty often. So here I am, once again, the OPFOR commander, and if I see any group of the enemy clustered together in such a formation, standing still and concentrating? I'm going to be highly motivated to bring any artillery I've got to bear on them. I'm not even so much thinking of the golden bullet of taking the mage out as in having a few onager loads worth of fist sized stones breaking the ritual up. Etc etc etc.

Mages are just way too valuable for things others have mentioned: C3I, healing, weather manipulation, and so on. Hell, I'd rather have an Animal mage more than just about anything else, either to control the bird that's observing the enemy order of battle, or to control the falcon that's going after the enemy Animal mage's bird.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Sure. If you houserule away the -1/three FEET distance mod. d.

That's what the Shape Fire is for. You cast the Create spell next to you and then use the Shape to move it to where you need it faster than any formation of even lightly encumbered infantry. 300 yards per minute in fact.

Then if you start using Ceremonial Magic to get the 100 spectator boost you're talking really big running masses of fire with enough juice for maintaining that you can start them 600 yards or more away from the enemy.

What you need to counter that is probably something like Mongol cavalry that's been trained out of its' fear of fire (men _and_ horses).

It's not unbeatable but it's not going to go away with trivial counters and it probably seriously impairs any ability to fight in formation. That's a big change to the battlefield.

Advanced Mages with the Telecast Spell can effectrively make the -1 per yard go away too.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Intelligence means scrying

Don't forget Beast Speech and Rider Within from the Animal College and Plant Speech from the Plant College for scouting.

Animal spells could also be extremely useful on campaign. Not only can a mage make their own side's beasts of burden more tractable, they can also make the enemy's animals unmanageable (e.g., casting Beast Rouser on an enemy general's horse).

Unfortunately, as you point out, GURPS Magic lacks the sort of "mass animal control/creation/summoning" spells that would allow Animal College mages to really play havoc on the battlefield, like summoning dozens of swarms of wasps or controlling entire herds of horses.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Don't forget Beast Speech and Rider Within from the Animal College and Plant Speech from the Plant College for scouting.

Animal spells could also be extremely useful on campaign. Not only can a mage make their own side's beasts of burden more tractable, they can also make the enemy's animals unmanageable (e.g., casting Beast Rouser on an enemy general's horse).

Unfortunately, as you point out, GURPS Magic lacks the sort of "mass animal control/creation/summoning" spells that would allow Animal College mages to really play havoc on the battlefield, like summoning dozens of swarms of wasps or controlling entire herds of horses.

There is one caveat to your statement above:

BEAST SUMMONING (pg 30) Permits for double the cost - the ability to summon all of one specific beast - usually within 10 miles to the summoner. This spell is per minute, which is generally speaking, not sustainable for very long.

But if that Mage were my character, this is what I'd do if I were alone so to speak:

One college Power Stone enchanted to a decent power point level. Then I'd purchase a few healing potions. Someone who drinks healing potions when they're not wounded, replaces 1d6 fatigue with every drink.

Double the energy cost is 6-1 for skill 15, for a total cost of 5 fatigue. Then it costs 3 fatigue per minute to maintain. For a formation of horses that are in the midst of a charge - casting that spell at the right time would be bad for the cavalry formation.

Now give me an apprentice, casting lend energy, who also has one college powerstones (Healing college) - and he can lend my character energy, and drink healing potions as well.

Bad news is - there are no saving rolls for Beast Summoning. In theory, one could cast GREAT WARD - but only if the blocking spell caster also knows BEAST SUMMONING at skill 12+ (Not generally hard for someone with magery 2).

The only OTHER way to protect a horse from BEAST SUMMONING is if it has an IQ of 7+ at the time the spell is initially cast.

Now, imagine if you will - summoning the cavalry into a pit trap that is covered by an Illusion that hides its pit nature. Or have a prepared pit trap with camouflage done the old school way.

Now, the alternative is to utilize a magic item with Power set to level 4. The user of that item can summon the horses for a mere 2 fatigue, and is self-sustaining. I leave that as an exercise for you to debate...