"'Credible' non-human Fantasy minis?" Topic

They are totally credible. I have had teddy bears all my life. Nothing is better at defending the good from the forces of evil!

Seriously though, it does seem that the expedience of technology would indeed tend to force out magic for all but the most reality bending needs.

Why cast fireballs when you can fire cannons that you can build by the hundreds? Magic missiles are really a bother when you can have massed troops drawn from the common man.

Now, if you wanted to turn the tide of battle by summoning an elemental, perhaps call up the hordes of the undead, create favorable weather or such things to boost your odds, these are what magic would be good for.

-Eli

Why cast fireballs when you can fire cannons that you can build by the hundreds?

Indeed -unless everyone in your race is a gifted magic-user; yet, if an individual fireball is no more efficient than a musket ball, and the spell takes as much time to be 'reloaded', the balance is kept.
But (ab)use of powerful magic can too easily change the nature of warfare: in Glen Cook's series of 'The Dread Empire' "portals" are used like helos in Viet-Nam.

Magic actually plays a very minor role in battles, in Tolkien's Middle-Earth during the lives of Bilbo and Frodo as well as in Howard's world of Conan. At most a few useful tricks at the scale of the adventures of a small group -sending crows to scout, triggering an avalanche or a flood… During large battles magic is basically used to balance hostile magic, so in the end the nature of warfare is unchanged. Of course High Magic can represent a dreadful menace *in the background* (Sauron if he recovers the Ring, Xaltotun's Great Thaumaturgy in 'Hour of the Dragon'), but the authors don't allow it to be used. Tolkien as a Christian, Howard as writing the feats of a warrior, took care to tone battle magic down -very, very down.
Only in Moorcock, during the invasion of the Young Kingdoms by Chaos, does the 'supernatural' play a major part in battle. As a traditionalist wargamer, I greatly prefer Howard's and Tolkien's "cautious" approach.

Then in Keyes' Age of Unreason series link once Isaac Newton had discovered the Laws of Alchemy, 'magic' works as a science and is applied to technology, soon turning the early 18th C. into some form of WWI (or even II, for a part) with people in tricornes.
Without going that far, if we want to keep the linear warfare of the Lace Wars unadulterated, one could have a 'country' using magic to power a few experimental 'tanks' and dirigibles, to field a few unreliable prototypes of 'thunderbolt spitting' pieces equivalent to Puckle's machine gun; while its enemy would use science-based technology to power its steamtanks and dirigibles, using airguns to throw Leyden jars and the like. 'Lacepulp' vs 'Lacepunk'.
What is essential imho is to keep such contraptions, regardless of their 'supernatural' or 'scientific' basis, few and basically inefficient -a costly encumbrance for their army more often than not. Flying vehicles (or mounts) specially could totally change the nature of warfare if not carefully 'suppressed' by the game organizers.

Btw, to get back on-topic, Disney imagery notwithstanding 'credible' Good Faeries should look like:

(from YouTube link – well, for us )

In one of my fantasy RPG campaigns there is a nation that has grown to fear unchecked magic and has instead developed magically powered engines and items in a sort of arcane industry.

The theory there is that magic, confined to the specific function of a device, is calculable and less likely to run amok. Instead of having magic swords imbued with personalities and ancient magics, they have weapons that designed for a specific function, with controls, safeties, etc all powered by a finite magical power source that must be replenished in a manner similar to refueling or changing batteries. This magic is destroyed when used, keeping it from lingering in pockets or collecting into areas of wild, uncontrolled force.

-Eli

For well proportioned dwarf miniatures, look at Mithril miniatures. They have legs, theu are not fat (Accept for Bombur)
Their orcs also fit my idea of what orcs should look like.

Dear Emu

None of us have "seen" an electromagnetic field, but we know they exist. We can see them by the old classroom iron filing on a piece of cardboard under which a magnet is moved. "Magic" is usually determined as "that which breaks the laws of physics as we know them." The key is in that term "as we know them." There are many phenomena that happen that are inexplicable (like cancer suddenly going into remission) etc. Magic or if you like, belief in magic resides side-by-side with us in the most highly advanced technological and de-mystefied society in all of world history. It did in the 18th century. The question is WHAT is the nature of magic!

Magic swords, magic attachments, thunderbolts and fireballs are and impedimentia of what we think as magic. Tarot cards are thought to be from ancient Egypt (they're not, they're the invention of the late Renaissance). But many believe them efficacious. It depends on what the age is prepared to swallow as "magic."

Even today people believe in "mallochio" the evil eye, and one of the things that has always amused me about our conceptions of magic is as John Wellington Wells notes in Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Sorcerer" that the majority of his trade is in curses and love philters, and no one seems to want to buy blessings at all. In my novel I am writing on which is our 18th century with magic where it is assumed magic can be REAL, there is a character, Ben Trovato who is a scientist, attempting to advance the goals of skeptical reasonable science, but he can't make a living at it (in spite of inventing such things as a brilliant code machine, a viable pressurized oil lamp, and pantyhose, he can't make enough money to keep his family from starvation and turns to attempting to produce a better more scientific deck of tarot cards, which EVERYONE is interested in. This includes extravagant process of treatment of the cards with certain analogous and "sympathetic and syncretitious elements" and all the mumbo-jumbo of the occult but seriously pursued. His cards are a great success, but he finally makes his money and reaches security through a carrying case for them that his wife embroidered out of love to try and help. The governess of a powerful prince sees it, likes it very much, and buys it, then orders more needlework from the guys wife, and she has to open up a business hiring seamstress and needleworkers to staff it.

It all depends on what the century would allow in magic. As it was, in real life, "Magic" of the love philters, potions, charms, curses and blessings, spiritualism, mesmerism, and other bits of scientific quakery existed side by side with what we called legitimate science back then, when THEY called the quakery legitimate science too.

Otto

The man who invented the pantyhose should have be burned on the stake
Not only it's hideous, but a full pair of stockings has had it as soon as only one got a run it: forced consumerism.

A curse can work if the victim is aware of it and *believes* in it: placebo effect can be 'negative'. Maybe more easily than the 'positive' effect of a blessing? Though that Belle Epoque doctor who observed the strikingly positive effects on his declining virility of self-injection of extracts of chimps testicles actually benefited from a positive placebo effect: faith can do marvels

Now we have homeopathy, auriculotherapy, osteopathy and a rich palette of parallel and perpendicular medicines; extra-terrestials instead of elves and fairies, 'abducted' people instead of bewitched ones, awful Sci-Fi writings sold as Holy Scriptures; while astrologers, cartomancians and chiromancians prosper. We could not laugh of our ancestors' gullibility.

Back to initial topic: a 'credible' 18th C. Dwarf: TMP link

A 'credible' steampunk troll:

link

YouTube link