Traditional battle mages

[Alex Reiden]

Codex Alera. I haven't read it, but it has legions as well as large-scale battle magic. As in, powerful mages - such as the Princeps - can wipe out cities. But usually, magic there seems to be used on tactical, spec-ops level: surgical strikes against enemy leadership and such. I might be wrong, as I said, I have not read it (yet!).

In my world there are no battle mages, because defensive/protection magic is so much more powerful that it has invalidated not just offensive magic but also firearms as well. But I do have in mind event that will change that... though that may change as I develop the world.

I have read this series and like it a lot. One of the principles I especially enjoyed was a character who did not possess magic but used cunning and tactics to overcome those who did. It was a good exercise in the vulnerability of supposedly insurmountable odds and how hubris of the empowered can become a flaw.

 

[skip.knox]

I read the first book in the Codex. It can't have made much of an impression, as I don't remember anything about it. But it's there in my Goodreads. I'll have to take another look, as Butcher is a good at his craft.

 

[Alex Reiden]

I remember the middle books of the series being the strongest.

 

[Pemry Janes]

Yes, I've read Codex Alera and when I did a reread I started at book 3 because that's where the series really gets good.

 

[Peat]

People beat me to the punch. Codex Alera features a crapton of magical battles and while mostly people are using their skills to be supersoldiers, we do see some living artillery usage in the second half of the series - and there is a difference between the rank and file with a little magic, and those without magic to be supersoldiers.

Some other books and possible sources...

Feist avoided it in the Demonwar by a lot of things, but mainly for the reason "One side's wizard casts a spell, the other side's counterspells it, army chops them up while they're busy waving their hands around".

There's an old book called The Horse Lord by Peter Morwood that doesn't feature many wizards, but does feature a conventional feudal army trying to storm a castle held by two sorcerers.

Speaking of Butcher, Changes by Jim Butcher features a pretty much straight up mage battle. Pretty gnarly.

Of course, the best sources come from wargames and RPGs. Obviously wargames demand balance, so they ensure the wizards aren't too gnarly, but you can observe something of the effect by how they do it - and that's mostly by making them really, really expensive. In Warhammer, they also have the possibility of counterspelling; standard tactics are (or were) to go really heavy on magic so you could abuse the enemy army like a rented mule, or take a small handful of low level wizards and items to try and counter the worst of it. Warmahordes simply made magic another gun, except for the Warcasters, who are so important that killing them wins the battle there and then which forces a certain amount of caution on them.

In D&D, counterspelling is hard, but optimisation theory dictates most magic users shouldn't be using direct damage spells as generally its more efficient to make the enemy incredibly bad/divided/unable to attack and let the beatsticks take care of it. It also dictates a ridiculous amount of recce spells.

And in White Wolf Mage games, fireballs are for noobs who haven't worked out that turning the air into poison gas, or making the surface they're on conductive to electricity, are far more effective.

It should be noted that in both D&D and WW Mage games, Mages are generally considered horribly overpowered by people who know.



As for how this would translate into somebody else's books -

I think the four big questions are "How well can Mages defend themselves", "How easy is it to counterspell", "What else can they do", and "How much damage can they do how quickly and at what range".

I think even moderate answers basically turn wizards into early tanks at which point warfare is hugely changed if they're a regular presence. Either you need your own tanks/anti-tank kit to counter or you're left with guerrilla warfare. The army with the wizards is still deploying men to keep the wizard safe, hold ground and all that fun stuff but that's about it.

 

[skip.knox]

Another vote for the Butcher. It's on my TBR list now.

 

[Momonkiir]

I haven't read many western stories with good battle mages, the closest being Skulduggery Pleasant which has less "battle mages" and more "people who can use magic in a fight". however i do know some good eastern comics and novels with good interpretations of stereotypical battle mages. the ones that work best (for me at least) tend to have a cost or limit for magic. An example I like is "Chiyu Mahou no Machigatta Tsukaikata: Senjou wo Kakeru Kaifuku Youin." which limits people to one "Type" or Element of magic. So any one with the ability to cast fireball or similar fire based spells can ONLY do that thing. they cant heal, they can't use magic missile, etc. this means that mages aren't the most powerful on the battle field because they can't just annihilate everything with ~magic~ so soldiers still have their place on the battle field.

 

[Peat]

*pause* Now I think about it, the webcomic Order of the Stick has a really good example of a conventional siege with magic users on each side

Giant In the Playground Games This strip is a good start for the arc but a spoilery summary

Spoiler

Team Goblin is invading Team Human's city for a bunch of reasons.

Team Goblin has a bunch of lower level magic users, and a highly ranking Goblin cleric and a really high level Liche. The latter two are those given screen time.

Team human has a bunch of lower level magic users, mainly clerics, a few higher level wizards and clerics, and a visiting PC wizard - who'll get most of the screen time.

Team Human keeps most of its powerful magic users in reserve and sends the low level clerics out there simply to Heal and Turn Undead.

Team Goblin's main move is to create lookalikes of the Liche and send them out to attack, and fire Elementals out of catapults to breach the walls.

The Elementals are banished by the PC wizard, but they've breached the walls, so she feeds the best soldiers a bunch of potions, gives them a bunch of buff spells, turns them into giants and holds the wall that way. Team Human also work out that all the decoys are decoys, and use Magic to spot that the Liche has turned himself invisible and is riding a Zombie Dragon straight into the city.

When Team Goblin start taking massive casulties, they send their clerics out, but not to heal - but to make Zombies.

The PC wizard does use some magic missile type stuff to fight a high level Undead but finds out it has spell resistance.

After throwing around a few fireballs, the Liche gets to the city's throne room which is full of Paladins, and basically takes them out with a single prepared spell which turns them all insane.

And a bunch of other stuff, but I've got bored with summarising.



What it breaks down to is:

If you give traditional battle mages a reasonably wide range of abilities, doing physical damage themselves tends to come low on the list. Not only does it put them in more danger than they care for, there's a bunch of stuff they can do that nobody else can - but anyone can kill someone.

Enemy mages that do show their faces become immediate targets, which opens the door for all sorts of shenanigans.

Finally - while traditional fireballs do more damage to massed formations and the like, supersoldiers are better in confined spaces (among other things)[/quote]

 

[Devor]

*pause* Now I think about it, the webcomic Order of the Stick has a really good example of a conventional siege with magic users on each side

Giant In the Playground Games This strip is a good start for the arc but a spoilery summary

Ohh yes for Order of the Stick (OOTS). The battle of Azure City was really well done.

I'll add that the PC wizard suffered a mental breakdown over the choices made in that battle, and what it's like to be the super powered survivor who was on the ground making spontaneous choices that lead to saving some lives and losing others.