Wizards vs fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:07 pm

...I got a different number... (assuming vehicles can use the run action, and I don't know whether they can or not, 3630/rnd)

But yes. Sufficiently large speeds wreck D&D's shit. This may be why ship speeds are completely fucked. When I statted up the iron man armour in another thread, I basically gave it a fast, but sane, tactical speed, and at will dimension door to represent its ability to go mach 3. Which doesn't really prevent Tony from just DD'ing around the battlefield and fucking his D&D opponents with impunity, but it's basically the only way to represent such large speeds and maintain tactical utility.

Fighter Jets, however, really aren't tactical against anything other than more fighter jets. They're a plot device that lets you wreck up large armies and forts, but they are too damned fast for engaging man sized, roughly man speed, targets.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:17 pm

Why are you using level 2 spell slots (quickened, level 6) to disable someone for 15 seconds? Just cast sleep, it'll even last longer (no one in the real world has more than 4 HD, that would make them superheroes). Quickened sleep comes online at the same level as teleport, not later.

But mostly: you don't actually have line of sight to the fire in a combustion engine. I seriously doubt you can target it.

Mr. GC · Post by **Mr. GC** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:56 pm

DSMatticus wrote:Why are you using level 2 spell slots (quickened, level 6) to disable someone for 15 seconds? Just cast sleep, it'll even last longer (no one in the real world has more than 4 HD, that would make them superheroes). Quickened sleep comes online at the same level as teleport, not later.

But mostly: you don't actually have line of sight to the fire in a combustion engine. I seriously doubt you can target it.

What the hell are you talking about?

Read the post again. Read it very, very carefully. It's not hard.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:29 pm

Prak_Anima wrote: Fighter Jets, however, really aren't tactical against anything other than more fighter jets. They're a plot device that lets you wreck up large armies and forts, but they are too damned fast for engaging man sized, roughly man speed, targets.

Fighters can hit lone man-szed targets on the ground, and are quite brutal about it. It just tends to be a waste of ordinance compared to attacks against vehicles and convoys.

But the A-10 is probably better in the CAS role. It's got a substantially lower speed, but still cruises at about 3000 feet/round and has a stall speed of 1200 feet/round, which is still too fast for most D&D targets to effectively engage, though very much subsonic.

It also has a 30mm rotary cannon the size of a car. Dragon, meet Avenger.

Or the AC-130, which is only slightly slower and has better endurance. It should be quite effective for providing air support against most D&D style troops and monsters.

Mr. GC wrote: Do tell then, how does a blinded jet pilot fly when his engine ceases functioning?

Aerodynamics.

The engines don't hold the plane up, air under the wing holds the plane up. Losing the engines means that the plane loses speed, but it can still glide. And you can restart the engines. It's dangerous if the pilot is maneuvering and close to his stall speed, but when cruising it's easy to deal with.

Anyway, those dark visors on flight helmets aren't there just to look cool. They're for flash protection. Fireworks won't blind a fighter pilot any more than the sun will.

Mr. GC · Post by **Mr. GC** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:37 pm

In that case you could replace it with any decent fire spell and count on the jet fuel to do the rest, I was just going for style points.

K · Post by K » Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:11 pm

Korwin wrote:
K wrote:Magic vs tech is pretty much an iconic trope for 3rd-rate speculative fiction and the sci-fi/fantasy bargain bins of your local used bookstore.

It basically started in the 70s when the history-based wargamers started playing DnD and it never stopped.
Yeah well the only thing is, I would not call David Weber 3rd-rate
That said, above books where co-writen and are (IMHO) not his best. (Still not 3rd-rate )
But I only read the eArc of the second one, maybe it got better in the editing?

The other series that springs to my mind is Joel Rosenbergs Guardians of the Flame.

Weber is third-rate. Only his newest books aren't being given out for free by Baen.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:12 pm

Thinking more about this topic, I don't think you can get a satisfactory answer. For instance how long do D&D actions take in the real world? If even teleport takes a second to resolve, like beaming on Star Trek, then the pilot will be able to fly out of the way. If it is instantaneous then not.

You also need to know whether a missile does fire damage, fire/sonic damage or something else. The Wizard won't have clear line of effect to the pilot and may not have clear line of sight to the plane's more sensitive inner workings.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:47 pm

K wrote:Weber is third-rate. Only his newest books aren't being given out for free by Baen.

That's a sales gimmick, with proven results (you know, you give the first few works of a series out for free, and then charge for the new releases, so people who are reading a series pay to read it when it comes out, while new readers have access to the body of work), and is not necessarily correlated with writing quality. Do you have any mechanical or stylistic criticisms of Weber, or do you just assume that his sales gimmick means he's automatically worthless?

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:01 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Fighter Jets, however, really aren't tactical against anything other than more fighter jets. They're a plot device that lets you wreck up large armies and forts, but they are too damned fast for engaging man sized, roughly man speed, targets.

High level Wizards are in the same exact boat, though. Like Aircraft, they can work at a Tactical level but they are far more useful performing strategic level tasks or performing defensive operations against themselves.
Which means that the F15 vs. Wizard argument is dumb because it would never happen. Both sides are too busy blowing up targets that actually matter to ever come into direct contact with the other.

And it's even mooter (?) at a higher level. Scrying and Teleportation allow D&D world to operate on a completely different battlefield than any modern, mundane army can. Instant and Accurate intelligence with Instant and Accurate Mobility? The War would end within 24 hours.

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:48 pm

Wrathzog wrote:And it's even mooter (?) at a higher level.

I believe it is "more moot", or "most moot" if exhaustively superlative.

echo

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:50 pm

Juton wrote: Thinking more about this topic, I don't think you can get a satisfactory answer. For instance how long do D&D actions take in the real world? If even teleport takes a second to resolve, like beaming on Star Trek, then the pilot will be able to fly out of the way. If it is instantaneous then not.

Like I said, for D&D spells to be consistent, they have to be able to choose targets when the spell triggers, not when they begin casting. Or else, readied spells would be impossible/nonsensical. But also: the SRD apparently says as much.

SRD wrote:You do not have to select your target until you finish casting the spell.

Wizard spells have built in tracking. The only concern would be projectile flight time, which D&D doesn't describe. That's not a problem for teleport, though. It's not a projectile.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:53 pm

Scry and Die is tactically similar to high accuracy satellite surveillance and high efficiency deployment.
However, that assumes that the modern forces get their satellites.

On an adventuring level, modern forces would likely be very effective. A marine sniper with a Barrett light. 50 effectively has a wand of Finger of Death, soldier with a flame thrower, a wand of heightened, expanded, widened burning hands. And they have these in ungodly amounts for otherwise third level characters.
However, the force as a whole is crippled if their modern infrastructure gets brought over as well.

There's actually a book that deals with this idea in an interesting way, Mary Gentle's Grunts. In it, a traditional fantasy dark lord sends a squad of orcs to recover modern weaponry from a time traveling dragon. They obtain vast amounts of the weapons, and even tanks and helicopters. But they have none of the infrastructure. A curse on the weapons colours the initial four orcs' attitudes with those of British marines, but they have to build their whole infrastructure from the ground up, and when they an actual marine engineer later, he's largely useless because he doesn't know how to build the tools he needs to build the tools to build the tools he needs.

The weapons themselves, however, are amazingly effective, at first, because there was no magical defense against them. On the other hand, magic easily disabled them because they had not been built to resist a simple "weapon fail" spell.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:55 pm

Couldn't you just put a gelatinous cube in the airfield locker room?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:58 pm

Or water elementals. Or mimics. Or succubbi and nymph "honey pot" agents.

K · Post by K » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:02 pm

Endovior wrote:
K wrote:Weber is third-rate. Only his newest books aren't being given out for free by Baen.
That's a sales gimmick, with proven results (you know, you give the first few works of a series out for free, and then charge for the new releases, so people who are reading a series pay to read it when it comes out, while new readers have access to the body of work), and is not necessarily correlated with writing quality. Do you have any mechanical or stylistic criticisms of Weber, or do you just assume that his sales gimmick means he's automatically worthless?

If Weber were a better writer, he wouldn't need to give away 14 of his books for free.

I also have criticisms of his plots, characters, and writing style, but I think the fact that his books haunt the discount bins of used bookstores is pretty objectively damning criticism of his talents.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:45 pm

I shrug. Such is the fate of many a paperback. Similarly, sales figures aren't everything, as is richly evidenced by the drivel that usually tops the best-sellers list. Free books are a marketing strategy, typically employed because the publisher thinks it'll bring net profit. That said, I'd present Cory Doctorow as a good example of a writer who uses the strategy, yet is demonstrably not a hack (although he gives his books away for philosophical reasons, rather then marketing ones).

Not that I'm a firm devotee of Weber (I get mixed results from him, to be honest); mostly, I just find your criticisms invalid, and would prefer actual, intelligent criticism to "it's free, therefore it must suck".

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:12 am

What demonstration exists, exactly, to prove that Cory Doctorow is not a hack?

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:23 am

Nice try OP but everyone knows that fighters are inferior to wizards.

Anyway this thread is fairly moot unless we have stats for military attack aircraft in d20... Anyone here know if any military aircraft were writen up for d20 modern.

K · Post by K » Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:38 am

John Magnum wrote:What demonstration exists, exactly, to prove that Cory Doctorow is not a hack?

Exactly.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:47 am

Getting more then a little sidetracked here, but Cory Doctorow has received several awards for his writing... including the John W. Campbell Award (twice, actually; and it's in the top tier of SF-specific awards).

David Weber, by contrast, only has two bottom-tier awards (the kind of things they hand out at conventions to entice authors to show up), and as such lists awards that he was merely asked to give out on his awards page.

I'm not a literary critic myself, but I do think that the opinion of the kind of critics that sit on award panels is probably sufficient to count as reasonably objective evidence for the merit of a work, if such a thing can be measured objectively at all.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 2:47 am

Prak_Anima wrote:...I got a different number... (assuming vehicles can use the run action, and I don't know whether they can or not, 3630/rnd)

They can't, no Con score. I could argue that a modern fighter jet is a creature not a vehicle (because its targeting systems meet the requirements for having a Wisdom and Charisma score), but it would still be a construct.

Really fighter jets just don't fucking work right in D&D. D&D can only really handle slow-moving vehicles with flat walkable surfaces (boats, flying carpets) and even those go all screwy if you try to anchor zone effects to them.

K · Post by K » Tue Sep 18, 2012 3:20 am

Endovior wrote:Getting more then a little sidetracked here, but Cory Doctorow has received several awards for his writing... including the John W. Campbell Award (twice, actually; and it's in the top tier of SF-specific awards).

Wikipedia says about the Campbell Awards... wrote:Criticism has been raised about the Campbell that due to the eligibility requirements it honors writers that become well-known quickly, rather than necessarily the best or most influential authors from a historical perspective.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 3:34 am

Lord Mistborn wrote: Anyway this thread is fairly moot unless we have stats for military attack aircraft in d20... Anyone here know if any military aircraft were writen up for d20 modern.

Guardians of Order published a book of military vehicles, but they used White Wolf's d20 mecha rules to create them, so they might not be entirely compatible

Unfortunately, they don't have stats for the F-15E. They've got the F-15C, but it's optimized for air-to-air.

Anyway, here are the stats for the F-15C

Size/Type: Gargantuan Vehicle (Jet Fighter)
HP: 50
Occupants: 1
Cargo: None
DR: 4/-
AC: 19 (Base 6, +8 for speed, and +5 for countermeasures)
Air Speed: 880 mph base speed (7744 feet/round), 1528mph with afterburners (13446 feet/round)
Ceiling:65,000 feet
Initiative: -4
Maneuver: +9

Special abilities
Radar (Blindsight, 100 miles)
INS (+3 to navigate)
Secure Long-Range Radio
Targeting Bonus (+2 for bombs and guns)
Stabilization Gear (No penalty for firing while moving)
In Flight Refueling
Radar Warning Receiver (sounds alarm if painted by radar)
Radar Jammer (+5 DC to paint target with radar when active)
Defensive Jammer(+5 AC)
Life Support (Internal Oxygen bottle)

Defects
10 Minutes Start up Time
Very Noisy (+20 bonus listen checks to notice it)
Volatile (may explode if destroyed, deals 10d6 to anyone who fails to eject and 5d6 to anyone within 50 feet)
145MPH Stall Speed
Hanger Queen (Requires 1 hour of maintenance per hour of use)

Amraam Air-to-air missiles have the following stats.

Range:46 miles
Speed:2640mph (23,232 ft/turn)

Damage 9d10
Type:Blast
Critical: 20
Range Increment: 24,000 feet
Blast Radius: 20 feet (Causes full damages everything in the radius, DC 15 Reflex Save for half)

and 2000lb bombs

Damage 9d20
Type:Blast
Critical: 20
Radius: 80 Feet
Range Increment: 3600 feet

Anti-personnel Cluster Bombs
10d8
Blast
Crit: 20
Increment: 1600'
Radius 320 feet

DSMatticus wrote: Like I said, for D&D spells to be consistent, they have to be able to choose targets when the spell triggers, not when they begin casting. Or else, readied spells would be impossible/nonsensical. But also: the SRD apparently says as much.
SRD wrote:You do not have to select your target until you finish casting the spell.
Wizard spells have built in tracking. The only concern would be projectile flight time, which D&D doesn't describe. That's not a problem for teleport, though. It's not a projectile.

The target of a teleportation spell is the person being teleported, not the destination.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:32 am

K wrote:
Korwin wrote:
K wrote:Magic vs tech is pretty much an iconic trope for 3rd-rate speculative fiction and the sci-fi/fantasy bargain bins of your local used bookstore.

It basically started in the 70s when the history-based wargamers started playing DnD and it never stopped.
Yeah well the only thing is, I would not call David Weber 3rd-rate
That said, above books where co-writen and are (IMHO) not his best. (Still not 3rd-rate )
But I only read the eArc of the second one, maybe it got better in the editing?

The other series that springs to my mind is Joel Rosenbergs Guardians of the Flame.
Weber is third-rate. Only his newest books aren't being given out for free by Baen.

Others allready said, thats an marketing ploy. (One who worked at least on me.)
You could argue he doesnt need this ploy anymore...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weber

The most popular character he has created is Honor Harrington.[2] Her story, together with the "Honorverse" she inhabits, has been developed through a series of 13 novels, four shared-universe anthologies, and two sub-series. The series has over 3 million copies in print, and more than thirteen of Weber's titles have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Not shure how accurate (or up to date) Wikipedia is, but since you like to quote it, I thought why not...
I do wonder how high have those titles apeared ont the NYT Best Seller list. (To lazy to look into it... http://www.hawes.com/pastlist.htm)

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:54 am

For me, the question is not whether a modern military could beat a wizard or vice-versa, but how much improvement would be required for the weaker side to match the stronger. For example, all of the "teleport inside the cockpit and kill the pilot" shenanigans would be countered by pilotless robotic craft like the Global Hawk or by putting all the pilots into pods that don't give a wizard enough open space to teleport things into. And so on.

As for the David Weber argument: I like his books, but I speedread most of it. I read it because it's an interesting take on the naval portion of the napoleonic war and because I like the way the setting's technology evolves. Weber has enough knowledge and smart enough forums that his setting makes a hell of a lot more sense than most. Trying to follow and predict their thought processes is quite fun.