Wizards vs fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft.

[K]

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)

It's a common business practice to buy your own books to get onto the NYT bestseller list. It's called a [url=http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/27/books/a-best-seller-plot-is-said-to-be-charged.html]"perfectly legitimate promotional practice."

Since the NYT bestseller list methodology is a trade secret, it's not like anyone can check their numbers.

I'm not trying to argumentative, but what little honors that have been bestowed on Weber have been few and far between, suspect, and not likely to change the opinion I formed after reading him.

[FatR]

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.

No. Just no. Weber's take on naval warfare was wanky and ignorant to beging with, and finally stopped making any sense a few books ago. You know, when he ran out of ideas for battles, and any pretenses that the described technological evolution is anything else but the tool used to solve plot were dropped.

[ishy]

...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.

Actually:

A creature with no Constitution cannot tire and thus can run indefinitely without tiring (unless the creature’s description says it cannot run).

And I got the numbers from the first post, 40 ft a round * 206.25, don't really care if it is accurate or not though. Looking at it quickly it appears it is not, and I should have done 80*206.25. Oh well.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I will now sum up a Weber novel.

Good guys who are Kind and Caring and Like Science battle Evil Power-hungry Villains who Suck at Science. The good guys win every engagement due to the Incompetent Enemy Commanding Officer and their Pimp Science letting them create Cool Rides. The Main Bad Guys rage.

Other Weber tropes: Every battle is between a competent commander with a loyal and devoted army and an incompetent buffoon with an army of rapists.

A few of the enemy officers are token honorable guys who will defect to join the heroes.

Villains are not allowed to have complex motivations. They like dat power and are Puppy Kickers, or are Really Honorable Men who serve their country. Woo.

Did I miss anything?

[FatR]

I will now sum up a Weber novel.

Good guys who are Kind and Caring and Like Science battle Evil Power-hungry Villains who Suck at Science. The good guys win every engagement due to the Incompetent Enemy Commanding Officer and their Pimp Science letting them create Cool Rides. The Main Bad Guys rage.

Other Weber tropes: Every battle is between a competent commander with a loyal and devoted army and an incompetent buffoon with an army of rapists.

A few of the enemy officers are token honorable guys who will defect to join the heroes.

Villains are not allowed to have complex motivations. They like dat power and are Puppy Kickers, or are Really Honorable Men who serve their country. Woo.

Did I miss anything?

A raging Mary Sue protagonist, who managed to be Totally Badass, despite remaining King and Caring.

Villains are not allowed to have complex motivations.

Well, to be honest, this is not a legitimate criticism. The vast majority of premediated crimes are motivated by one or more of the following: money, power, pussy. A good villain does not need a complex motivation, not really. What he needs are virtues that make him actually good at advancing his scummy core motivation and human traits that might interfere with it. This is the difference the poor writers often don't get, thus they try to add depth to their villains by making them kick puppies for the greater good or because the villain's own puppy was kicked when he was a kid.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Villains are not allowed to have complex motivations.

Well, to be honest, this is not a legitimate criticism. The vast majority of premediated crimes are motivated by one or more of the following: money, power, pussy. A good villain does not need a complex motivation, not really. What he needs are virtues that make him actually good at advancing his scummy core motivation and human traits that might interfere with it. This is the difference the poor writers often don't get, thus they try to add depth to their villains by making them kick puppies for the greater good or because the villain's own puppy was kicked when he was a kid.

Ok, fair enough. I'm probably expressing this wrong, but Weber's villains don't do it for me. It's always "Oh noes I am totally evil in a cliched way and rape kittens," which doesn't do it either. I guess they lack those virtues then. You said it better than I did.

[Prak]

...can we stop waving dicks about what authors rock and what authors suck and talk about modern tech vrs. fantasy?

[Winnah]

Makes me think of Christopher Stasheff's Warlock novels; a traditional witch, who's understanding of the universe is based on folklore, classical elements and herbalism, is given a crash course in theoretical physics by her time travelling paramour.

In most cases, technology improves according to the advances of a civilisation. Magical advancement, particularly in response to technology, would probably depend on the individual in D&D land. Any advance technology, can and probably would be negated by some lich researcher in his portable hole.

[MGuy]

...can we stop waving dicks about what authors rock and what authors suck and talk about modern tech vrs. fantasy?

No and how dare you suggest we should do that.

[Foxwarrior]

It's silly of the Wizard to try to confront the Fighter in combat. Although the probabilities come down to unwritten stat values, the Wizard does not know them either, and if intelligent would try to avoid a tactic that had a chance of being injured.

So the obvious option for both of them is the midnight ambush:

The Fighter cannot attack the Wizard because the Wizard isn't really in a place, and wouldn't even have a good method for finding him if he was.

The Wizard however can mangle an airbase and leave in less time than it takes a Fighter pilot to know they're under attack, get ready, and launch.

Teleport is a good spell.

[sabs]

Teleport, Summon MOnster VI, some fireballs on planes that aren't moving.
Wall of Stone or Iron across the runaway. Improved invisibility.
And that's just going all obvious. I'm sure we can do better and more subtly.

[hyzmarca]

...can we stop waving dicks about what authors rock and what authors suck and talk about modern tech vrs. fantasy?

The d20 blast radius for 2000 lb bombs is kind of anemic. In reality, the mark 84 has a lethal radius of 1200 feet.

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.
.

Gate uses a permanent portal opened by the Fantasy Rome. One end is on a hill used as a staging ground by Fantasy Rome's army. The other opens up in the middle of downtown Tokyo. It's big enough to fit tens of thousands of soldiers through, resulting in a rather horrific sack and slaughter of the mostly unarmed Tokyo civilian population until the JSDF is able to organize a counterattack.

The gate provides a direct connection to Earth and all of its infrastructure, though it is a logistics bottleneck. A FOB is constructed around the fantasy side of the gate to prevent further incursions and secure supply lines. The protagonists are a recon team and their local guides. They don't operate very far from the FOB, due to the endurance limits of their vehicles, but since they know absolutely nothing about the land or the people there and even have to learn the language from scratch, its vital work.

[K]

I think people forget that this battle is over before it begins. Wizards can cause a hurricane in ten minutes with Control Weather and ground or destroy entire squadrons of fighters.

Binding teams of teleporting demons to wreck airfields and planes and murder commanders, hiding mountains with illusions so that jets crash into them, or magically controlling enemy troops is just spiking the ball in the endzone.

Fantasy battles are usually depicted in fiction as dramatic confrontations between opposing forces where match-ups between various tactics are played out, but the truth is that the magic guys toss down a fimbulwinter and kill the enemy armies through exposure, open a gate that lasts for days and flood valleys with lava, or cause a planar breach that brings the elemental plane of fire to your current location and sets everything on fire. The number of "no fair auto-win" tactics available to wizards to win army battles is just too dominating an advantage.

[Foxwarrior]

Well, you did just add a couple of levels onto the wizard there, K. Also, a 4 mile wide hurricane that takes 10 minutes to manifest isn't hard to avoid: if it starts too close in front of you to turn, you'll be out of it long before it's finished manifesting.

And none of those other weapons sound more dangerous than nuclear bombs. It's the part where Wizards weather the armageddon on some other, non-destroyed planet that makes them special.

[K]

Well, you did just add a couple of levels onto the wizard there, K.

Not really. A 2nd level wizard can afford a scroll of control weather and the pricing on a one-charge staff is pretty competitive too if you don't want an activation roll or UMD check.

Also, a 4 mile wide hurricane that takes 10 minutes to manifest isn't hard to avoid: if it starts too close in front of you to turn, you'll be out of it long before it's finished manifesting.

Hitting a wall of hurricane-force wind as supersonic speeds will be like hitting a brick wall.

That being said, you cast it on the airfield. Then the planes never take off.

The wizards can do that because they can see the future with divinations. This is why the war never starts.

And none of those other weapons sound more dangerous than nuclear bombs. It's the part where Wizards weather the armageddon on some other, non-destroyed planet that makes them special.

True, but nuclear weapons aren't really warfare, are they? At best they kill large armies and at worst they deny territory, and neither one of those things means anything to a wizard.

A wizard will steal your nuclear weapons well before the war even starts.

[Juton]

I think it's a bit more interesting if the modern forces stage in our world. The Wizard presumably can't get divination information from our reality, and the pilots won't get 'scryed and died'. The modern forces can't take over the fantasy realm, and the fantasy realm can't take over ours, so it's a stalemate.

[K]

I think it's a bit more interesting if the modern forces stage in our world. The Wizard presumably can't get divination information from our reality, and the pilots won't get 'scryed and died'. The modern forces can't take over the fantasy realm, and the fantasy realm can't take over ours, so it's a stalemate.

If we assume that our plane is a magic dead plane, then the fantasy forces can still ask questions about their own world, so "Is a portal for an invading force going to open?" and "where will this force come from?" are still valid questions since it's asking about an event that will take place in the future of the fantasy world.

Planar portals can still enter dead magic planes. This means that the fantasy forces can still drop in hit squads of demons who are badass physical combatants even without their magic powers.

There is also a spell in Lords of Madness that can be cast in a magic dead zones and planes and lets you cast a low-level spell (levels 1-4). This means that the near-epic wizards can still enter our realm and at least charm our guys and d-door into missile silos, though they will be brutally nerfed.

[Juton]

Planar portals can still enter dead magic planes. This means that the fantasy forces can still drop in hit squads of demons who are badass physical combatants even without their magic powers.

They could kill a few dozen infantry men until the army got their act together, unless the army has vehicles near the portal in which case they probably would last a turn. The truly big things like a Tarrasque probably couldn't hold itself for long on our side.

There is also a spell in Lords of Madness that can be cast in a magic dead zones and planes and lets you cast a low-level spell (levels 1-4). This means that the near-epic wizards can still enter our realm and at least charm our guys and d-door into missile silos, though they will be brutally nerfed.

It's Invoke Magic I think. Since Invoke Magic is 9th level and our Wizard can only cast 4th level spells he couldn't get that far beyond the portal without needing to get more spells. Sending a Wizard in could be lulz, but if he gets captured the intel he would give about the fantasy realm, such as how magic works would really even the scales. An interesting second act in such a story is each side learning how the other side operates.

[Prak]

I'd like it clarified how we're defining "dead magic zone." If it's "world wide antimagic field" then there is next to no point in the thought exercise, because anyone with magic is basically bumped down to a moderately beefy commoner. At best Extraordinary ability users screw with perception of reality by evading flame throwers and nuclear blasts (Indiana Jones is a rogue, apparently).

[K]

I'd like it clarified how we're defining "dead magic zone." If it's "world wide antimagic field" then there is next to no point in the thought exercise, because anyone with magic is basically bumped down to a moderately beefy commoner. At best Extraordinary ability users screw with perception of reality by evading flame throwers and nuclear blasts (Indiana Jones is a rogue, apparently).

Like this:

Dead Magic

These planes have no magic at all. A plane with the dead magic trait functions in all respects like an antimagic field spell. Divination spells cannot detect subjects within a dead magic plane, nor can a spellcaster use teleport or another spell to move in or out. The only exception to the “no magic” rule is permanent planar portals, which still function normally.

At best, EX users are unkillable. Pit Fiends can't be killed by normal damage in a dead magic setting since they can Regen and Regen is Ex.

[Prak]

Thank you.

That is fucking dumb ass hell. Basically it means that all DandDland has to fight with is varying sizes of fighter, sometimes with interesting abilities. At best it's "How long would it take the American military to curbstomp Godzilla and Hercules, and some things that are basically living tanks?" or maybe "how many pit fiends does it take to zerg rush the military?"

(I will point out that a Pit Fiend in a dead magic zone is basically an intelligent, venomous anaconda that can't be killed.)

[...You Lost Me]

(I will point out that a Pit Fiend in a dead magic zone is basically an intelligent, venomous anaconda that can't be killed.)

That sounds awesome.

[K]

Planar portals can still enter dead magic planes. This means that the fantasy forces can still drop in hit squads of demons who are badass physical combatants even without their magic powers.

They could kill a few dozen infantry men until the army got their act together, unless the army has vehicles near the portal in which case they probably would last a turn. The truly big things like a Tarrasque probably couldn't hold itself for long on our side.

You'd open the portal on the enemy HQ after kidnapping a soldier to find it. Decimating the entire command structure should take an afternoon.

The Tarrasque's Regen can only be stopped by a Wish and it regens from total destruction, so it's going to be totally immortal on our world.

Considering the number of things with awesome Ex. powers, I'm still voting on the fantasy universe.

Hell, a mess of shadows are almost unkillable. You'd need flame throwers on hand to even have a chance and they'd be useless in any situation where the shadows were in melee.

There is also a spell in Lords of Madness that can be cast in a magic dead zones and planes and lets you cast a low-level spell (levels 1-4). This means that the near-epic wizards can still enter our realm and at least charm our guys and d-door into missile silos, though they will be brutally nerfed.

It's Invoke Magic I think. Since Invoke Magic is 9th level and our Wizard can only cast 4th level spells he couldn't get that far beyond the portal without needing to get more spells. Sending a Wizard in could be lulz, but if he gets captured the intel he would give about the fantasy realm, such as how magic works would really even the scales. An interesting second act in such a story is each side learning how the other side operates.

How would you capture the Wizard? He can escape with Dimension Door or Rope Trick, so capturing him seems nearly impossible. He could Polymorph. He could go Invisible.

That's just assuming that he doesn't charm the first commander he sees or kills them with a fireball or something.

Sure, he won't have many of those tricks since he's limited by 9th level slots for Invoke Magic, but it doesn't seem that he'd need many. He would even metamagic them up since that doesn't change the level of the spell, only the slot used.

[hyzmarca]

At best, EX users are unkillable. Pit Fiends can't be killed by normal damage in a dead magic setting since they can Regen and Regen is Ex.

They're still killable. Regeneration doesn't stop drowning or suffocation. Outsiders, apparently, need to breath just like everyone else and Pit Fiends don't have any powers that would negate that.

So you drop them with non-lethal anti-tank fire and then put what's left in a bucket of water. They're still dangerous, but they're not unkillable.

It's also quite possible to put one in a cage and interrogate it.

And really, most pit fiends would take one look at this setup and tell the summoner to go suck a barrel of cocks. You don't reach the rank of Pit Fiend by jumping through some portal to an anti-magic planet every time some lazy wizard asks you to.

The Tarrasque's Regen can only be stopped by a Wish and it regens from total destruction, so it's going to be totally immortal on our world.

Ironically, the Tarrasque is also vulnerable to drowning. Godzilla it is not. Suffocation may not kill it permanently, but but you could certainly keep it down by tossing it into the ocean.

Hell, a mess of shadows are almost unkillable. You'd need flame throwers on hand to even have a chance and they'd be useless in any situation where the shadows were in melee.

Assuming that Earth is magic dead, then Shadows would just cease to exist, being undead and all.

[K]

At best, EX users are unkillable. Pit Fiends can't be killed by normal damage in a dead magic setting since they can Regen and Regen is Ex.

They're still killable. Regeneration doesn't stop drowning or suffocation. Outsiders, apparently, need to breath just like everyone else and Pit Fiends don't have any powers that would negate that.

How does the modern side know to do that? How many people are going to die before they figure it out?

Remember, the Wizard side just needs to kill commanders. Fighting soldiers is a complete waste of time.

I mean, dropping a few fiends into Congress and the Pentagon is going to win the war before it even has a chance to start. It's not like fiends are going to not kill helpless people.

Hell, a mess of shadows are almost unkillable. You'd need flame throwers on hand to even have a chance and they'd be useless in any situation where the shadows were in melee.

Assuming that Earth is magic dead, then Shadows would just cease to exist, being undead and all.

They wink out because of the AMF and not because of the undead state, but point taken.

------------------------------------

Interestingly enough, Epic Spells should work on Dead Magic planes. That should cinch this discussion completely since epic magic is basically the most broken thing ever.

Binding Pit Fiends with Epic Spells should be easy.