"Fantasy gaming, what's more important? Creatures or magic?" Topic

My friends like to fantasy game sometimes but they absolutely hate to have magic on the battle field. But they insist on tons of monsters. In your groups what do you like?
1)Magic is artillery on our battlefields.
2)Magic is only slightly present in our battles.
3)Magic is too fiddly to be depended on in battle, send in the orcs!
4)Who needs magic when you have dragons! Burn baby burn!
5)Sheesh, its bad enough we have to fight monsters, magic too?
6)Too much magic ruins the sauce.
7)Fantastical creatures is enough.
8)We reflect magic through unit abilities rather than an actual magic attack.
9)Magic is powerful but can back fire on the caster if you screw it up.

I like magic users.
9

depends on the magic.

Back when we played WFB we used only level 1 magic.
I recall a spell called ravine that would decimate entire units in one go.
Made having super knights or big creatures pointless.
Ravine was iirc level 4.

I like option 8.

PRIDE OF LIONS magic is like artillery, or, as someone here remarked, like Electronic Warfare. Assuming competent play on both sides -- and assuming both sides spend their points more or less evenly on magic users -- it tends to even out in overall effect. The most powerful spells only go off half the time, and then may be ineffective; i.e. if a shaman wants a D20 fire elemental attack on an enemy unit, he will miss his roll to cast it half the time, and THEN if it does work the unit gets to roll a defensive die, so the odds of the fire attack doing serious damage to the target is more like 1 in 4.

More effective are spells like DARK that can immobilize a unit for one turn. (Hence the EW and ECM analogy.)

If one side's shamans devote themselves to countering enemy magic and attacking enemy magic users directly, as opposed to going after enemy units, the magic tends to largely cancel out.

However, some armies (necromancers and vampire lords) are intrinsically magic-based, and the overall effect of the magic subgame is much greater.

But if opposing armies are mortal, magic is fairly marginal to the outcome.

Magic is artillery, a unit enhancer, and is reliable.

Big monsters may or may not be reliable.

But battlefields in the First Age look more like modern to near-future scifi battlefields than 'fantasy' battles.

6.

To me what makes a game tactical is predictability. Dice incorporate some randomness, but on the average you expect a troll to squash a goblin more often than not.

Having a wizard that can case a spell that detroys a whole unit in one go is a bit difficult for a general to cope with. :)

I'm not sure if it fits 2 or 8 but I like magic to affect others abilities particularly moral rather than kill. This can still be powerful but more subtle than sap and a unit dies.

x42

Pedrobear, I agree, but I also think fantasy games ought to be a level less predictable than historical. Isn't that part of the reason we enjoy fantasy?

I love me a well done and interesting magic system. Have no idea what ruleset that would be.

I prefer low level magic such as potions, enchanted weapons, blessings etc. I think that the commitment and study need to become a magic user would make you very wary of risking it all on a battlefield.

Gogators, may I recommend my Pride of Lions rules? Five distinct types of magic, complex enough to be a fun sub game, but simple mechanisms.

I think its a problem of figure:men ratios.

In a traditional RPG for example a novice wizard can cast a sleep spell and disable say a dozen orcs at best.

In a fantasy battle game, an orc figure might represent 10 or 20 or 50 orcs. Does the wizard figure represent 20 novice wizards, one more powerful wizard or a single novice wizard with a few hangers-on and bodyguards? In the last case he should struggle to disable a single enemy figure, let alone a regiment.

Likewise with monsters – is it a single dragon or 20 dragons being represented by your dragon model?

Maybe some intermediate number like 4 or 6, similar to the usual conventions for eg. Napoleonic artillery?

In table top battle games I use it in different ways. Sometimes we use it as an enhancer sometimes as artillery. It depends on the world we are playing in. If playing in a Melnibonean type world then summoned beasties and unit enhancing is all good. If playing in a D&D like world (like warhammer or warmaster) then it can be artillery.

It just depends on the type of game I'm looking for.

I like magic that has operational or strategic effects rather than tactical ones.

Blowing up five cavalry units with a fireball is boring (magic is just artillery). Setting an area in front of opposing artillery on fire to spook the horses, then extinguishing it as your forces charge in from behind it is fun. Especially when part of it doesn't work.

I lost five cavalry is a routine issue to deal with. How do I regroup cavalry? Can I do something else with them? How close to the wall of flame do my units get before I try to extinguish? What if it doesn't go out and my men charge in? Whaddaya mean they put the fire out with ice magic and all my charging horde is sliding on their butts? Those are fun issues to deal with.

"… I also think fantasy games ought to be a level less predictable than historical. Isn't that part of the reason we enjoy fantasy?"

To me it's not the less predictability, but the wider range of abilities that fantasy affords. A troll is much stronger than any human was historically, but the rules give you an idea of what it is capable of and how to defend against it. Magic is just much harder to draw a historical parallel to.

I think we are saying the same thing in two different ways. A wider range of abilities and possibilities is precisely why a fantasy game should be less predictable.

A troll unit in PRIDE is rolling a D20 in melee, and the halfling spearmen a D8. The troll's victory is predictable but not assured, as even the D20 has a 1 on it!

Yes, that's what I am saying. :)

It seems to me, also, that fantastical creatures often ARE magic, for some meanings of "magic." A unicorn is a whole lot more than a horse with one horn; at least mine share the traditional abilities such as healing and resistance to evil and very great movement (perhaps teleportation or invisibility).

Is a pack of werewolves who are immune to normal weapons an example of fantastical creatures or of magic? Yes.

Tough to paint magic easier to paint monsters

Yes. I like to use "spell markers" when possible -- the D&D Minis line is a great source, with its translucent whirlwinds and smokey translucent shadows and such. But yes, magic is often invisible and hence difficult to depict on the table.

That's another reason a lot of rules use cards for spells; at least you can put the card down or out to show something is happening.

Gotta have balance between the factors.

Personally, I like creatures and magic, but only if they don't render conventional forces completely useless, otherwise why have conventional forces on the table at all?

Fortunately, I have a crop of local gamers I play with who are mostly on the same page about this stuff, so it's not a big point of contention…

but only if they don't render conventional forces completely useless, otherwise why have conventional forces on the table at all?

Yes indeed. That is exactly why I make line infantry very attractive with a low point cost, and there are lots of advantages to both width and depth of a battle line. The special stuff is relatively expensive, as it should be.

3 send in the goblins! Lots n lots o' gobbos. There's millions of 'em sir! and 6 just not overly fond of tactical nuclear strikes in fantasy.

I like all 9 -you have just set up 9 different games -- make magic a rarety -- if hitler had the arc – would ww2 be different-- if a magic user cast spell – he she must pay a ccst in years. orc were made from elves using twisted magic -in some of the large diplomacy games i have run before – for every large scale spell – nature had to compensate with natural disaters – eathquakes – gates opening – things vanishing into dust – you get the idea a balance that nature will reflex upon man or orc alike – after a while the kings -stopped sinking each others navies in port – and began using armies and diplomacy to do their bidding.

in some of the large diplomacy games i have run before – for every large scale spell – nature had to compensate with natural disaters – eathquakes – gates opening – things vanishing into dust – you get the idea a balance that nature will reflex upon man or orc alike – after a while the kings -stopped sinking each others navies in port – and began using armies and diplomacy to do their bidding.

Yes, I have thought somewhat along those lines, though not in so much detail. I'm thinking in my campaign rules -- still very much in development process -- that each culture would have some (variable) amount of strategic magic, most of which would "normally" be devoted to Thrive (increase births and crop yields, etc.) with a little bit of Ward against enemy spells. Any sort of major offensive magic would entail drawing power away from Thrive -- so the Guns versus Butter tradeoff.

But I have provision for Wizards Weather -- which could indeed sink a fleet at harbor -- and you are right, it OUGHT to have potential for blowback, beyond the cost in foregoing Thrive and the possibility that it simply doesn't work.

Don't use magic at all in my fantasy games.

As per HOTT, magic is what you make it.

so 9) of the options given.

Somewhere between 3, 6 and 8.

2 and 8 is where I land.

And for those of us historical gamers (ignoring Ancients/Medieval who'll play Sumarians against French Ordinance), you need:

Nice blue footed dragon of boobiness. Fear da feet!

I like magic to impose chaos on your enemies. Nothing like healing a unit to full strength the turn after your enemy decimates it, casting aerial protection right in front of the enemy archers, or casting a massive fear spell on the enemy's biggest monster.
Also, I have a sliding scale for figures. The more powerful the figure, the fewer people or things the figure represents. Thus the wimpiest unit is 19 critters per figure, while the most powerful is 1 per figure.

Numbah 6.

That's what I like about the Exalted setting. Magic has a huge impact on the battlefield. Or at least it *can*.

You might not have anything 'awesome' like a Warstrider or Lightning Ballista. Then you can bunch up and fight like a phalanx.

But if you are bunched up in a phalanx and your opponent unlimbers a talon of 25 soldiers with fire pikes, well, you're going to have a bad day.

I'm fine with varying levels of magic and fantastical creatures, as long as they don't relegate conventional troops to irrelevance.

I've developed a preference, however, for the "magic as artillery" philosophy. If cannonballs kill men (and goblins) at a distance, and fireballs do the same, there's really no need for different mechanics for them. If armour gives a saving throw, so should the Spell of Protectyness.

Magic needs to have some effect on the game but it needs to be tone downed.

WFB 8th Edition brought back the unit killing spells and unlike before there is very little to keep them in check.

This is to far overboard.

I have no problem with unit buffing spells and the 1d6 Fireball or 2d6 Fireball type spells that need to roll against toughness.

But try playing a High Elf Army without a level 4 wizard or any wizard and see how you do.

I'm okay with any power or combination, as long as it suits the feel of the game. Anything from Game of Thrones early battles, where a big wolf is the most fantastic thing, to a full on war of gods, is fun in the right context!

Reaper's Warlord has magic that's balanced just right. You can build an army with no casters and still go after the multiple caster army.

Right now, it's all we're playing.

I think creatures, represented by actual physical miniatures, have a greater impact for creating a feel of a fantasy environment than magic, which usually is represented only by rules or variations thereof, so I prefer creatures.

Really depends on the setting, for me.