The Gaming Den

Right. So I'm still obsessed with doing a modern military invades D&D game.

Okay, a 10th level wizard can cast Overland Flight, giving him a fly speed of 40ft, or 4 miles an hour. He can fly 8 miles an hour if he hustles. A F-15E Strike Eagle has a maximum speed of mach 2.5 or 1650 miles per hour, 206.25 times the wizard's maximum flight speed.

The difference is so absurdly huge that I'm not sure that the Strike Eagle can actually engage the wizard. It isn't exactly designed to fight human-sized targets that are effectively standing still. It's 20mm canon should be effective, but the huge relative velocity means that the pilot won't have much time to line up a shot. An AIM-120 might be more effective, but I'm honestly not certain if one could get a lock on such a low-velocity human-sized target. It might be possible, I don't know.

On course, there's also the issue of the wizard's ability to damage the Fighter. He can't. He isn't fast enough to engage it in combat. The wizard could use Summon Monster V, but that runs into the same problem. None of the creatures he can summon are fast enough to engage a super-sonic aircraft, nor do they have enough range to hit it.


Since the fighter and the wizard can't hurt each other, let's compare their ability to harm level-appropriate encounters.
A level 10 blaster wizard is, of course, going to have those nasty 10d6 fireballs and cloudkill and cone of cold. He can do a lot of damage. He's also got some pretty decent save-or-sucks. If he's smart he can probably buy a wand of disintegration, too.

The F-15, on the other hand, is limited to non-magical weapons. It can, however, carry 23,000 pounds worth. It's ground attack weapon systems include the CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition (quite effective against those low-HD hoards), the CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon (for large and gargantuan enemies that have sufficiently high body temperature), the Paveway III (excellent for bypassing dungeons and crypts) and the Mark 84 (2,000 pounds of high explosives). It can also carry the B61 nuclear bomb, with an adjustable yield between 300 tons and 340 kilotons, but most DMs would disallow that, and for good reason. Just because its rules-legal doesn't mean that every fighter will be issued one. There are political issues to consider. And for attacks against surface ships, it can carry harpoon missiles.


So, in terms of raw firepower, the fighter beats the wizard by a wide margin. It doesn't have the save-or-sucks, but you'll need ta bucket full of damage dice once it starts attacking.


But there's one last little thing. The wizard has teleport, the fighter doesn't. While a 10th level wizard with teleport only has a 200 mile combat range, maximum, and the Strike Eagle has a comfortable 790 mile combat radius, the wizard can get to his targets faster and he can get places that the fighter simply cannot go. Depending on the setting, it's kind of hard to fly a jet plane in the Underdark.

The Wizard's advantage is divination spells + teleportation. For the Wizard to win he just has to 'scry and die' the pilot when he is sleeping. If the F-15 could sortie from a dimension where magic doesn't work, like ours, the F-15 can operate with near impunity. If he stages in Faerun then the Wizard's buddy is going to get to learn a new trade.

EDIT: The F-15 can probably engage the Wizard. The F-15 started out as a tactical fighter meaning that it can shoot down enemy planes but its real job is air-to-ground missions. Excepting the F-15E Strike Eagle and its derivatives, the regular F-15 has a weapons office that can manually coordinate weapons fire. The US has most likely developed ways for its air support to (semi-accurately) engage small numbers of belligerents. The F-15 would have something in its arsenal to shoot at the Wizard. Whether it can do any damage depends on how you integrate D&D spells into real world physics.

I think this entire topic was contrived just so you could say "the fighter beats the wizard by a wide margin."

erik wrote:I think this entire topic was contrived just so you could say "the fighter beats the wizard by a wide margin."

Only partially.

It was inspired by this little scene from a manga called Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There, scanlations of which can be found easily with a google search.

Admittedly, it's a Cobra attack helicopter (newer model with the 20mm cannon instead of miniguns) and not a fighter, but the principle is similar.

I'm not sure that the Strike Eagle ca actually engage the wizard. It isn't exactly designed to fight human-sized targets that are effectively standing still. It's 20mm canon should be effective, but the huge relative velocity means that the pilot won't have much time to line up a shot. An AIM-120 might be more effective, but I'm honestly not certain if one could get a lock on such a low-velocity human-sized target. It might be possible, I don't know.

http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=758970

http://www.ausairpower.net/Profile-F-15A-D.html wrote:
McDonnell Douglas F-15E Dual Role Fighter MSIP III

The F-15E was developed to fulfil a growing USAFE need to effective hit second echelon Warpac ground forces. The F-111E/F wings based in the UK were overcommitted with both all weather Close Air Support (CAS) and deep strike missions, the problem growing further as the Russians increase the density of their defences and deploy look-down/shoot-down fighters. It was apparent that the dwindling F-111s could no longer meet both missions, so the USAF initiated a flyoff for the Dual Role Fighter (DRF), an air superiority aircraft configured for precision all weather medium/deep strike.

McDonnell Douglas offered the F-15E, a growth version of the F-15D, and General Dynamics offered the cranked delta F-16E (XL). Though the F-16E was an excellent long range fighter, it simply could not match the payload range performance and sensory fit of the larger F-15E, which easily won the DRF contest.

wikipedia wrote: Strike Eagles were deployed to Aviano as well as RAF Lakenheath in the UK. In-theater, F-15Es conducted Close Air Support missions, a new idea in the late 1990s which has since become a popular concept within the USAF.[52]

Edit: You missed a bunch on the other side too:

Okay, a 10th level wizard can cast Overland Flight, giving him a fly speed of 40ft, or 4 miles an hour. He can fly 8 miles an hour if he hustles.

myself, on another thread wrote: Other flying stuff in D&D

In the 3.5 PHB and DMG, PCs may gain access to a number of flight spells and items. Here's a short list of the more common ones (with the speeds in parenthesis): Carpet of Flying (40'), Alter Self (120'), Fly (60') Overland Flight (40'), Broom of Flying (40), Winged Boots (60'), Wings of Flying (60'), Phantom Steed cast by 14th level caster (240'), wildshaping into birds, using Figurines of Wonderous Power. If PCs can expect to use the Monster Manual entries, then Spider Eaters (60'), Giant Owls (70'), Giant Eagles (80'), Griffons (80'), Hippogriffs (100') and Pegasi (120') are all listed as potential aerial mounts with egg costs and animal handling DCs right in the book. Furthermore, creative PCs will likely find additional rules-supported methods to fly: a gnome illusionist may use reduce person to become light enough for his hawk familiar to carry him aloft; a bard may charm monster a manticore into serving as a beast of burden and close air support, someone might play a nonstandard race with flight, a cleric of the death gods may animate the corpses of fallen flying foes to soar again as zombies, or maybe you want knights riding around on dragons Weis and Hickman style.

The more astute of you will notice that in Core 3.5 there is absolutely no fucking correlation whatsoever between the actual utility of a flight effect (speed, maneuverability, carrying capacity etc) and the level of the spell or cost of the item. If you have a wide bestiary to choose from, or are playing a Tiefling or something, you can get 60'+ (perfect) out of a 2nd level spell slot with a duration of 10min/level - which makes spending a 3rd level spell slot to fly at 60' (good) for one minute per level utter foolishness. A 14th level wizard can cast Overland Flight to fly at (40', average) for 14 hours as a 3rd level spell slot - or he can jolly well use that exact same spell slot to summon a Phantom Steed that flies at (280', average) for the same 14 hours. Seriously, fewer than half of the flight effects in core are things that PCs would ever choose to use if they didn't show up as unsaleable random treasure results. Winged Boots cost 16,000 GP and let their wearer fly (60', good) for 15 whole minutes a day contrast that with the 17,000 GP Broom of Flying - which is a sluggish (40', average), but provides 9 hours of flight and can run errands independently - contrast both of those with the Figurine of Wonderous Power: Ebony Fly, which flies at (100, average) for an oddly weekly duration that averages out to 4 hours and 40 minutes a day for only 10,000 GP. Wings of Flying cost 54,000 GP and let the wearer fly as much as they want at (60', good) with no weight restriction - while a 10x10 Carpet of Flying costs 60,000 GP to flies at (40' average) with a strict weight limit. Contrast all of that to the listed cost of 4060 for a trained young pegasus with exotic military saddlle and its (120', average) flight speed.

Teleport has a range of anywhere you can see or accurately imagine and you arrive there instantaneously. How is that not fast enough to engage the fighter? Keep in mind, the fighter plane is travelling fast enough that a collision with any significant object will destroy the plane instantaneously.

Level 13: teleport object. You put 650lb of rock directly in front of the plane. It dies.

Level 13: ethereal jaunt + teleport. You put your maximum load in non-ethereal rock directly in front of the fighter plane. You're there too, except ethereal. The resulting collision and explosion is totally nonmagical, you're fine.

Level 13: teleport + quickened solid fog. Mentioned for hilarity. Slowing a plane down to 5ft/round from supersonic in that timeframe will destroy it. Hitting solid fog is worse than hitting water. May want to be ethereal for the explosion, so ethereal jaunt, too?

Level 9: teleport + quickened summon monster I or II. There has to be something on that list big/hard enough to damage a plane via collision. You're going to be very close to the explosion. You will probably die. Oops.

Level 9: teleport + quickened sleep or color spray. He'll just lose control and crash, probably go down instead of up. You should be fine. Might be hard to aim properly, get your bearings. Not really in the rules, but neither are fighter jets so we have to consider it. Can you aim sleep in time after teleporting directly infront/above the plane?

Summoned monsters can't use their teleport abilities, and called monsters usually aren't suicidal. But if you can bind and mind control a creature with teleport, you can destroy a fighter jet. Alternatively, if you can summon or mind control anything, be ethereal, and teleport, you can also destroy a fighter jet.

I like the Solid Fog one.

DSMatticus wrote:Teleport has a range of anywhere you can see or accurately imagine and you arrive there instantaneously.

Teleport has a range of 100 miles, and I forgot that it was 100 miles per caster level. Even so, adding a couple of fuel tanks extends the F-15E's combat radius to about 1150 miles, which is farther than a level 11 wizard can teleport in one casting.

Level 13: teleport object. You put 650lb of rock directly in front of the plane. It dies.

Level 13: ethereal jaunt + teleport. You put your maximum load in non-ethereal rock directly in front of the fighter plane. You're there too, except ethereal. The resulting collision and explosion is totally nonmagical, you're fine.

Level 13: teleport + quickened solid fog. Mentioned for hilarity. Slowing a plane down to 5ft/round from supersonic in that timeframe will destroy it. Hitting solid fog is worse than hitting water. May want to be ethereal for the explosion, so ethereal jaunt, too?

Level 9: teleport + quickened summon monster I or II. There has to be something on that list big/hard enough to damage a plane via collision. You're going to be very close to the explosion. You will probably die. Oops.

Level 9: teleport + quickened sleep or color spray. He'll just lose control and crash, probably go down instead of up. You should be fine. Might be hard to aim properly, get your bearings. Not really in the rules, but neither are fighter jets so we have to consider it. Can you aim sleep in time after teleporting directly infront/above the plane?

Summoned monsters can't use their teleport abilities, and called monsters usually aren't suicidal. But if you can bind and mind control a creature with teleport, you can destroy a fighter jet. Alternatively, if you can summon or mind control anything, be ethereal, and teleport, you can also destroy a fighter jet.

None of that works because the wizard can't cast fast enough. 850m/s. Between when he starts casting teleportation and when he finishes the fighter has already moved five kilometers.

As the manga suggests, Apache Vs wizard makes more sense.

Summon Monster IV. You Greater Teleport a Lantern Archon inside the plane. Then there's a fight inside a supersonic plane which the pilot almost certainly loses but which in either case results in the plane crashing. The wizard doesn't even have to see the plane, just imagine that it might exist.

The question of whether D&D Wizards beat you in a war setting is always a rather silly one: they do. They just fucking do. The only question is how outside the box they have to go to make that happen.

In the rather silly scenario of a D&D Wizard deciding that they really wanted to crash airplanes, the answer is that they can spend half a minute to crash five flying jets from anywhere on the planet. One brightly glowing laser wisp per cockpit and it's just fucking over. The Wizard doesn't even have to leave his house or even his bed (provided that he can reach a candle on the nightstand).

-Username17

hyzmarca wrote:None of that works because the wizard can't cast fast enough. 850m/s. Between when he starts casting teleportation and when he finishes the fighter has already moved five kilometers.

That's a bunch of bull. You're forcing the wizard to follow abstractly chunked D&D time-keeping while letting the fighter continue its actions through other people's turns.

Here is exactly what you're suggesting on a scale where you can trivially understand how stupid it is: anyone from the real world can beat up a D&D fighter, because in the 3 seconds a fighter spends swinging his sword the person from the real world can sidestep to the left a few times and be in a different square. The attack will miss.

I'm sorry, but if you're going to tell me wizards can't track moving targets because of how the D&D combat round is divided I'm just going to tell you planes don't move on other people's turns.

Now, there is an almost valid concern here: when does a wizard choose his spell targets? The rules don't really concern themself with this because, well, it never comes up. But let's contrive an example where it's an issue:
1) Bob knows Steve is going to teleport next to him. Bob readies a magic missile to blast Steve when he comes into range.
2) Steve teleports adjacent to Bob and immediately begins running away. Steve is a really fast guy, and has a move speed of 300ft.
3) Magic missile takes 1 standard action or three seconds to cast; Steve will have moved 150ft-300ft by this time, depending on how you view the abstract division of the round. This will put him outside the range of Bob's magic missile.

Does Bob's magic missile hit? The answer, from D&D, is yes. Readied actions trigger immediately when their condition is filled. The magic missile will hit Steve. As a matter of fact, it will hit him before he moves at all. If magic missile takes an absolute three seconds to cast, the only explanation for that is that Bob cast the spell and then waited for Steve to come into range before choosing the target.

Wizard spells update their targeting at the end of casting. Being really, really fast will not prevent a wizard from targeting you if you are in range. Since teleport is instantaneous movement both technically and conceptually (a fireball at the very least presumably has some flight time, even if D&D discounts it), that is sufficient to hit a moving target of any velocity.

hyzmarca wrote:Even so, adding a couple of fuel tanks extends the F-15E's combat radius to about 1150 miles, which is farther than a level 11 wizard can teleport in one casting.

None of that is relevant at all. That is the range the fighter can travel on a combat mission. A wizard's combat radius is however many teleports he has minus teleports needed for combat more, then divided by two. It's how far you can go, fight, and comeback. What we're interested in is the range at which you can engage and kill the wizard, because the wizard can engage and kill the fighter from >900 miles away (or as far as he can see, which will be less). This is seriously better range than plane-mounted long-range cruise missiles. The only real danger is tracking missiles from further than the wizard can see.

FrankTrollman wrote:Summon Monster IV. You Greater Teleport a Lantern Archon inside the plane.

3.5 takes away summoned monster's ability to use their teleport abilities. Or an errata did. The online SRD thinks it does, anyway, I haven't looked at the PHB itself. Planar binding still works, but sadly those creatures aren't suicidal, and it's unclear if you can teleport inside the cockpit of a fighter jet (those things are not roomy, and teleporting into an object doesn't hurt the object, it just hurts and ejects you). You need to combine your own teleport with etherealness or mind control a called teleporting outsider into killing itself. Preferably by level 9, because by level 13 you just shortcut all that bullshit and cast teleport object, and being able to do something when regular teleport comes online would be nice.

Jet planes are actually really terrible for attacking ground targets. Most can't do it at all, and that's why we have attack helicopters.

Anything slow enough to make strafing runs on ground targets with any accuracy at all is vulnerable to ground fire, so there are a lot of options. This means that Fireball is probably the anti-aircraft solution for low-level wizards after they've made themselves immune to all the aircraft's attacks by going ethereal or something.

DSMatticus wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Summon Monster IV. You Greater Teleport a Lantern Archon inside the plane.

3.5 takes away summoned monster's ability to use their teleport abilities. Or an errata did. The online SRD thinks it does, anyway, I haven't looked at the PHB itself. Planar binding still works, but sadly those creatures aren't suicidal, and it's unclear if you can teleport inside the cockpit of a fighter jet (those things are not roomy, and teleporting into an object doesn't hurt the object, it just hurts and ejects you). You need to combine your own teleport with etherealness or mind control a called teleporting outsider into killing itself. Preferably by level 9, because by level 13 you just shortcut all that bullshit and cast teleport object, and being able to do something when regular teleport comes online would be nice.

It's an Archon, it has (Su) Greater Teleport. It just needs a "reliable description of the place to which [it is] teleporting".
So if your wizard can scry the insides of one fighter jet, he can bamboozle all of them with Lantern Archons.

Also, if you throw away some feats, I'm sure you could manage Persistent Permeable Form at level 10. In case you wanted to be immune to everything the fighter jet can bring.

Presense of modern weapons does not, in general, neutralize magic and unless they are metaphysically incompatible, magic-users will be ones disproportionally benefitting from addition of high tech to the setting. With sufficiently powerful magic, like, DnD-style, this might just mean that the wizard now has mind-bitches with high-tech weapons. But even with less powerful magic, you're facing the problem that mojo-users can also freely use tech, but people with tech cannot augment themselves with mojo, because it usually requires some very special talent or shit. So magic people will eventually gain the place on top of whatever society results from the contact of the worlds, unless the magic is really weak in the first place.

This topic reminds me of this book:
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-201-hells-gate.aspx

They Thought They Knew How The Universes Worked—
THEY WERE WRONG

In the almost two centuries since the discovery of the first inter-universal portal, Arcana has explored scores of other worlds . . . all of them duplicates of their own. Multiple Earths, virgin planets with a twist, because the "explorers" already know where to find all of their vast, untapped natural resources. Worlds beyond worlds, effectively infinite living space and mineral wealth.

And in all that time, they have never encountered another intelligent species. No cities, no vast empires, no civilizations and no equivalent of their own dragons, gryphons, spells, and wizards.

But all of that is about to change. It seems there is intelligent life elsewhere in the multiverse. Other human intelligent life, with terrifying new weapons and powers of the mind . . . and wizards who go by the strange title of "scientist."

Its not our tech level (but with psi's) against wizards, I always wondered if there is a third faction (our world) in an future book.
Not shure if an third book is still in the pipeline.

Second book would be this:
http://www.baenebooks.com/p-198-hell-hath-no-fury.aspx

GATEWAY TO HELL'S FURY

The Union of Arcana has expanded through the portals linking parallel universes for over a century and a half. In that time, its soldiers and sorcerers have laid claim to one uninhabited planet after another—all of them Earth, and in the process, the Union has become the most powerful, most wealthy civilization in all of human history. But now the Union's scouts have discovered a new portal, and on its far side lies another human society, Sharona, which has also been exploring the Multiverse, and the first contact between them did not go well. Arcana is horrified by the alien weapons of its sudden opponents, weapons its sorcerers cannot explain, weapons based upon something called . . . science. But Sharona is equally horrified by Arcana's "magical" weapons. Neither side expected the confrontation and each thinks the other fired first. But as the initial disastrous contact snowballs into all-out warfare, both sides can agree on one thing. The portal which brought them together is Hell's Gate itself!

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.

Tumbling Down wrote: It's an Archon, it has (Su) Greater Teleport. It just needs a "reliable description of the place to which [it is] teleporting".
So if your wizard can scry the insides of one fighter jet, he can bamboozle all of them with Lantern Archons.

The rules do say that, but it's very likely the DM won't let a creature make a precision teleport into a specific partial space occupied by another creature. It's just too conceptually similar to a whole slew of "I target the inside of his lungs" shenanigans.

I would say it's more likely the DM will let you send a lantern archon just above the cockpit. Lantern archon spends its Standard to teleport, jet speeds off before it can get off a light ray. If you're lucky the DM will let the lantern archon treat the surface of the jet as a "terrain space" and stay in the jet's inertial frame (like if the fuselage were the deck of a ship), then next round you get to have an argument about how those light rays interact with the windshield's hardness.

So I'm not saying you can't use lantern archons to crash F-15's, but there's too much MTP bullshit involved to say for sure that you can. (Also I realize how ridiculous it is to be arguing about this in the first place, etc.)

ModelCitizen wrote:

Tumbling Down wrote:

DSMatticus wrote: 3.5 takes away summoned monster's ability to use their teleport abilities.

It's an Archon, it has (Su) Greater Teleport. It just needs a "reliable description of the place to which [it is] teleporting".
So if your wizard can scry the insides of one fighter jet, he can bamboozle all of them with Lantern Archons.

The rules do say that, but it's very likely the DM won't let a creature make a precision teleport into a specific partial space occupied by another creature. It's just too conceptually similar to a whole slew of "I target the inside of his lungs" shenanigans.

No the rules say you can't do that. At least, summoned monsters can't.

phb wrote: A summoned monster cannot (...), nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them.

ishy wrote: A summoned monster cannot (...), nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them.

Good point, forgot about that. You could get the lantern archons with Lesser Planar Binding, although that adds even more MTP to the works.

how many hit points does a jet have, and what's its AC

What happens if you cast Pyrotechnics on the engine?

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.

Mr. GC wrote:What happens if you cast Pyrotechnics on the engine?

Very little and you really can't anyway. Any spell with a standard range (even long) simply can't reach out and touch a fighter jet at the range it can blow you up. You really need teleport to get to the fighter jet, and once you're there you need to be able to immediately deliver death to it, or it will be out of range again in the blink of an eye. Teleporting things in its path, teleporting things into its cockpit, or teleporting and quickened spells.

Speaking of magic vs tech, Arcanum. Man, I love that friggin' game. Magic screws up complicated/atypical physics that occurs nearby it (that doesn't really make a lot of sense; the human body is complicated physics, and magic doesn't cause liver failure. There's a lot of arbitrary and handwavium there. But magic is one of those things you can actually make arbitrary and handwaved. That's what makes it magic), and technology suppresses magical energies. The world's in a middle of an industrial revolution, and the first town you go to has a pissed, grumpy alchemist who's complaining about how the new steam engine is fucking with his mojo.

But mostly it's just good story-telling and a really big, fleshed out world. Tons of branching dialogue.

As long as it is cast in the same round why couldn't you? And given how engines are fucked up by small birds flying into them are you seriously telling me that something that will cause a jet engine to do this:

Fireworks

The fireworks are a flashing, fiery, momentary burst of glowing, colored aerial lights. This effect causes creatures within 120 feet of the fire source to become blinded for 1d4+1 rounds (Will negates). These creatures must have line of sight to the fire to be affected. Spell resistance can prevent blindness.

And then this:

Material Component

The spell uses one fire source, which is immediately extinguished. A fire so large that it exceeds a 20-foot cube is only partly extinguished. Magical fires are not extinguished, although a fire-based creature used as a source takes 1 point of damage per caster level.

Would have no effect?

Do tell then, how does a blinded jet pilot fly when his engine ceases functioning?

Personally, I think that if you have a speed of 8250 feet a round, you're better off with a different system than the default D&D combat system.