# High-Tech Forces vs. High-Magic Forces



## mmadsen (Nov 4, 2011)

Some of us were discussing guns in a fantasy setting, and then I came across The Veil War, which imagines a magically armed and armored force of "goblins" invading our world and facing confused US forces.

I don't know if the author has D&D-style hit points in mind, but he has the US troops concentrate their fire on specific goblins.  Their reason: "It @#$%s with their mojo, sir."

How would you imagine a fight between a D&D-style horde and modern military forces?


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## Sepulchrave II (Nov 4, 2011)

Tactical nuclear weapons
Biological weapons targeting goblinoid DNA
Dungeon-busting bombs with depleted uranium casing

Are goblinoids covered by the Geneva convention?


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## wingsandsword (Nov 4, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> Some of us were discussing guns in a fantasy setting, and then I came across The Veil War, which imagines a magically armed and armored force of "goblins" invading our world and facing confused US forces.
> 
> I don't know if the author has D&D-style hit points in mind, but he has the US troops concentrate their fire on specific goblins.  Their reason: "It @#$%s with their mojo, sir."
> 
> How would you imagine a fight between a D&D-style horde and modern military forces?




Hmm.  The M-16 can reliably kill a person at 300 yards vs. swords and bows (longest effective range of a longbow is circa ~250 yards.

Modern military has the benefits of greater training, that is for certain.  If a typical warrior in a D&D style fantasy army is a 1st level Warrior, a modern soldier would be 3rd or 4th level more likely just from increased training and practice.

Simply put, modern forces against a typical goblin horde would be a wipeout.  The goblins would have to use wave attacks throwing more forces than the defenders have ammunition.  Standard combat load for a US soldier is 210 rounds (7 magazines of 30 rounds each), and despite what you see in movies, US troops do NOT use automatic or burst fire as standard doctrine.  Against little green men with shortswords and shortspears, one soldier could reliably fight several dozen of them.  

Add armored vehicles into that fray and the multiplier becomes huge, because a goblin would need siege engines or mid-to-high level magic to stop it, while the tank can devastate goblin forces.

Also realize that most D&D magic might be dangerous at short range, but it would take a pretty high level goblin shaman to pose a real threat to an A-10 performing Close Air support.

Since they aren't "human" the issue under international law about things like Geneva Convention protections and rights, as well as prohibitions against the use of CBRN weapons becomes a little more fluid as well.


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## Kaodi (Nov 4, 2011)

Sepulchrave II said:


> Tactical nuclear weapons
> Biological weapons targeting goblinoid DNA
> Dungeon-busting bombs with depleted uranium casing
> 
> Are goblinoids covered by the Geneva convention?




" I _wish_ their weapons had backfired, "  .


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## Umbran (Nov 4, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> How would you imagine a fight between a D&D-style horde and modern military forces?




Like _Grunts_, by Mary Gentle.


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## S'mon (Nov 4, 2011)

It depends what edition of D&D the magic force is using!  But in general the tech force has most of the advantages.  Invisibility in 1e-3e is a useful low level spell that the tech force can't counter, but in terms of firepower the moderns would have a huge advantage.


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## AeroDm (Nov 4, 2011)

I'm just going to add that I would absolutely be willing to read _The Things they Carried_ from the perspective of a goblin.


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## Kaodi (Nov 4, 2011)

I think it kind of depends. How powerful does a spell have to be to be at the same level of magical sophistication as a nuclear bomb or genome-targetted plague?

I mean, if we are talking big guns, at the same time technology is destroying entire cities all at once with nuclear weapons, magic is pounding entire countries with something on the level of the Rain of Colourless Fire or Invoked Devastation. 

If you goal is to completely annihilate your enemies... Magic can do that.


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## TheAuldGrump (Nov 4, 2011)

The people playing the orcs, goblins, & trolls in Sturmegshcutz & Sorcery may lose, but they will have more fun doing so than the folks playing the Germans.... 

Ranges have increased, modern tactics have been developed to handle the increased range and accuracy. If the archers remain in a solid formation then the artillery/grenades will hurt them bad. If the try to skirmish then modern weaponry will out range them, affecting weight of fire at any one point.

Magic is the only wild card, and much of magic in D&D emulates modern weaponry, which technology is more available becomes the deciding factor, and I again give modern weaponry the edge.

The Auld Grump, compare a wizard's fireball range with that of an explosive shell fired from an Abrams....


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## Dioltach (Nov 4, 2011)

I believe that the second _Darksword_ novel by Weiss & Hickman included a massive invasion by high-tech forces into a world of magic. No idea how it ended though: I haven't read the books for about 20 years.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 4, 2011)

It depends on high high the magic, how high the tech of the relevant forces.

It would be difficult for a fantasy force to deal with the sheer number and array of AP, Incendiary, AoE, and over-the-horizon armaments available to the modern military.

But Harry Turtledove's _Darkness_ series depicts magic on a par with WW2 munitions, for instance...and as pointed out, a well-worded Wish could wreak havoc.


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## S'mon (Nov 4, 2011)

Kaodi said:


> I think it kind of depends. How powerful does a spell have to be to be at the same level of magical sophistication as a nuclear bomb or genome-targetted plague?
> 
> I mean, if we are talking big guns, at the same time technology is destroying entire cities all at once with nuclear weapons, magic is pounding entire countries with something on the level of the Rain of Colourless Fire or Invoked Devastation.
> 
> If you goal is to completely annihilate your enemies... Magic can do that.




Rain of Colourless Fire would be a one-off like the Tsar Bomba.  Nukes per se are much more common.   Anyway you can destroy cities with incendiaries, no need for nukes - look at the firebombing of eg Dresden in WW2.  AIR a fire-bombing raid on Tokyo killed a lot more people than Hiroshima + Nagasaki combined.

IMO it's the relatively cheap, plentiful modern tech like artillery and armoured fighting vehicles that would give the tech side a huge edge.  No need for multi-million-dollar M1 Abrams tanks when a $50,000 T-54 (or even WW2 T-34) will be just as effective & invulnerable vs medieval fantasy forces.  Likewise with planes, assault rifles, and heavy machine guns.  That's the big advantage tech has over D&D magic - easy reproducibility, ease of use, and at the low end, inexpensiveness.

For that reason, if I was the tech general and I had a fixed budget, I'd buy almost all Russian kit.  There would be no advantage to getting super-high-tech, super-expensive American & Western stuff.   No need for Chobham armour when rolled steel is just as invulnerable to arrows, spears and fireballs.


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## Bluenose (Nov 4, 2011)

wingsandsword said:


> Modern military has the benefits of greater training, that is for certain.  If a typical warrior in a D&D style fantasy army is a 1st level Warrior, a modern soldier would be 3rd or 4th level more likely just from increased training and practice.




I don't disagree with most of what you say, but this is not accurate. There's years of training involved to be a competent weapon-handler for an ancient/medieval/renaissance soldier. European knights would usually start about the age of 12. Roman citizens began learning weapon drills and marching/camping at the same age, Spartans even earlier. This isn't unusual. And most people who go to be full-time soldiers will be in the field more often than modern soldiers. So I doubt if there'd be much difference in skill levels, even if they would know different things.


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## S'mon (Nov 4, 2011)

Bluenose said:


> I don't disagree with most of what you say, but this is not accurate. There's years of training involved to be a competent weapon-handler for an ancient/medieval/renaissance soldier. European knights would usually start about the age of 12. Roman citizens began learning weapon drills and marching/camping at the same age, Spartans even earlier. This isn't unusual. And most people who go to be full-time soldiers will be in the field more often than modern soldiers. So I doubt if there'd be much difference in skill levels, even if they would know different things.




Yeah, I agree - the medieval knight had more weapons training than the modern special forces soldier.  The modern soldier's big advantage is in higher-level unit tactics.  But in terms of level, using a mix of training and combat experience, the pre-modern professional warriors would be much more experienced than most modern regular soldiery. Gygax's "masses of 0th levellers" approach to feudal men-at-arms seems to have been derived from WW2 conscript armies* and bears no resemblance to medieval reality, where a major castle like Caernarvon (in hostile Welsh territory) would be held by as few as 30 men, all of them extremely bad-ass hombres.

*Or/and possibly a desire to emulate John Carter of Mars.


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## korjik (Nov 4, 2011)

It would all depend on how you set the calibrations.

If I have an army in magical full plate, that can only be penetrated by iron rounds, then all the automatic rifles and machine guns just got turned into fragile melee weapons. Grenades and shells would still kill lots tho.

I could come up with hundreds of examples/counter-examples, but without any way to calibrate the effectiveness of the magic vs the tech and vice versa, there isnt a way to say which is better.


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## Kraydak (Nov 4, 2011)

If the magic is weak and/or rare enough that swords and bows in the hands of non-magic using troops are relevant for the high-magic forces, then it will be a high-tech walk-over.


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## wingsandsword (Nov 4, 2011)

Bluenose said:


> I don't disagree with most of what you say, but this is not accurate. There's years of training involved to be a competent weapon-handler for an ancient/medieval/renaissance soldier. European knights would usually start about the age of 12. Roman citizens began learning weapon drills and marching/camping at the same age, Spartans even earlier. This isn't unusual. And most people who go to be full-time soldiers will be in the field more often than modern soldiers. So I doubt if there'd be much difference in skill levels, even if they would know different things.




If you're going to claim that a Knight was a typical medieval infantry instead of being elite cavalry, and that most soldiers were not poorly trained conscripts then I suggest you get your sources together and completely and totally rewrite all the relevant wikipedia articles:

Medieval warfare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Infantry in the Middle Ages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Knights were usually mounted cavalry, occasionally heavy infantry and had a leadership role, more comparable to officers, Rangers and Cav squadrons on the modern battlefield.  There is a reason that Knight is a PC class and footman is not: superior training.  Armies aren't filled with thousands of people with PC classes.

Also, the Spartans were something of an outlier in terms of military skill.  There is a reason that thousands of years later the term is still synonymous with martial prowess.  I would hardly call them typical soldiers of the era.  The Roman Legions, at their peak, were indeed highly trained and in some ways are still model for modern armies, but that was only at their peak instead of the bulk of the later Empire when their quality declined sharply.

The typical medieval infantryman: a spearman or archer serving only out of feudal obligation (i.e. a conscript) with access to poor medical care and token training, is far inferior to a professionally trained, modern soldier with modern immunizations, comprehensive physical training, and a focus on small-unit tactics over large massed battles.  I'll stand by my assertion that at typical medieval peasant conscript footman, would be a Warrior 1, while a typical modern soldier would be a Warrior 3 or 4 in comparison.


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## mmadsen (Nov 4, 2011)

Any story that pits a high-tech force against a high-magic force is going to need to make the two roughly comparable if it intends to depict a war where things could go either way.

The Veil War imagines a magically armed and armored force of "goblins" that isn't so much a D&D-style orc horde, as a dark-elf army.  These "goblin" foot-soldiers wear magical armor, which is proof against small-arms fire, and carry magical weapons, including magically accurate and penetrative arrows.  More importantly, they seem to have a magical screen deflecting well-aimed bullets just off target.

That seems like a bit of a "brute force" way of designing a fantasy army that could stand up to a modern force.  I'm thinking that a little teleportation or invisibility could go a long, long way toward defeating a modern force.  Illusions, mind-reading, and mind-control could also work wonders.

What magic do you think would yield the most bang for the buck?


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## Umbran (Nov 4, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> What magic do you think would yield the most bang for the buck?




That depends on the mechanisms of magic.  If your magic requires a small amount of cash and prep time (like, say, most D&D magic), that's one thing.  If your magic puts your casters as personal risk to use spells (like powerful magic in Shadowrun), the question is different.

Basically, you can't tell what's the most bang for the buck unless you see the price tag.


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 4, 2011)

I suppose a key item might be "How fast can you breed a million rust monsters to drop on the tanks."

Another possibility is the RCD&D 3rd level magic spell Protection from Normal Missiles.  If it was ruled that it works against bullets, things get a lot more interesting.

In general, I think the magic team would do best to avoid toe-to-toe battles.  With scrying, teleport, invisibility, charm, domination, etc, magic would be great at playing dirty tricks on the tech team. Taking out the tech teams generals over and over again would probably do good eventually. But I can't see them being able to hold ground against mass production: there just aren't enough casters in most campaign settings to do it.  Maybe Alphatia might do it.


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## Krensky (Nov 4, 2011)

Take a look at Weber and Evans' Multiverse books, Hell's Gate and Hell Hath No Fury.

A magical multidimensional empire and a technologic multidimensional empire meet and wind engaged up in a war without any real reason (not that there isn't a story reason, there's no legitimate reason for the powers to go to war other then fear and pride).


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## mmadsen (Nov 4, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Basically, you can't tell what's the most bang for the buck unless you see the price tag.



The price tag is denominated in _(un)believability_.  You're designing a magical army that is believable (to fantasy fans who've bought in) and interesting and just powerful enough to challenge a modern force.



Alan Shutko said:


> I suppose a key item might be "How fast can you breed a million rust monsters to drop on the tanks."



That's exactly the kind of thing that I would _not_ base a story on -- unless I was writing a comedy piece for D&D players.



Alan Shutko said:


> Another possibility is the RCD&D 3rd level magic spell Protection from Normal Missiles.  If it was ruled that it works against bullets, things get a lot more interesting.



That seems like what's at work in the story, and it seems plausible, with a fairly big effect from a fairly small dose of magic.  If we deflect a bullet one degree, it hits nothing of consequence.



Alan Shutko said:


> In general, I think the magic team would do best to avoid toe-to-toe battles.  With scrying, teleport, invisibility, charm, domination, etc, magic would be great at playing dirty tricks on the tech team. Taking out the tech teams generals over and over again would probably do good eventually. But I can't see them being able to hold ground against mass production: there just aren't enough casters in most campaign settings to do it.



Yeah, imagine a team of evil adventurers simply appearing in the modern HQ, killing everyone there, and then disappearing.  I'm not sure they'd need a horde...


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## El Mahdi (Nov 4, 2011)

wingsandsword said:


> Hmm. The M-16 can reliably kill a person at 300 yards vs. swords and bows (longest effective range of a longbow is circa ~250 yards)...




You're comparing two different things here, though the missunderstanding is less with you than it is with the existence of inconsistent definitions.

The 300 yards you quoted for an M-16 is more accurately the "maximum effective range on a point target".  A bullet fired from an M-16 still has the energy to kill well beyond 300 yards (lethal range), it just can't be accurately aimed at a target beyond that point (less than 50% chance to hit).

The "maximum effective range on a point target" for a longbow would still be the same as for any bow and dependent on the skill of the archer...in the real world, most archers wouldn't attempt an aimed shot to kill of more than 40-50 yards, though a reeeeaaaallly good archer might be able to aim out to 60 or 70.  For medieval combat, I'd say that "aimed" shots would be maxed out at 100 yards.  Any shots beyond that range are area shots, not aimed at a specific target.  Longbows were only lethal at 250 yards as concentrated group fire, i.e. medieval artillery, not as aimed shots on a point target.

One soldier with an M-16 and proper cover (fox hole or pit with plywood/pallet and sandbag cover), could eliminate an entire line of archers at 300 yards single handedly (as long as sufficient ammunition was available).

Soldiers without cover would be in for a world of hurt.  A single soldier could probably get a few archers before being turned into a pin cushion.


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## Kaodi (Nov 4, 2011)

A hail of arrows versus a tank obviously looks like a bad proposition until you figure that they would be _phase_ arrows. No need to destroy the tank if you can shoot through the tank.

As well, can you imagine what havoc a single soldier with invisibility, silence and mage hand could cause to troops armed with pull pin grenades.

Even the tech armys air could be neutralized by well placed readied walls of force.

To begin to get a handle on how much magic the magical force could bring to bear, I think you have to first consider what it would look like if their magical education system matched our technological one. Public education for all, tens of thousands of wizards (their scientists and engineers).


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## D'karr (Nov 4, 2011)

You might want to look at the Campaign Setting/Sourcebook Amethyst Foundations for a setting that mixes Fantasy with Technology.  Imagine the feywild all of a sudden burst into our real life world and then have each "side" be antagonistic towards the other...  Great fun ensues

A lot of these assumptions are being taken in sort of a vacuum.  Opposing "generals" would look for ways of neutralizing, or diminishing the advantages of the other side's weapons.  The modern "general" would want to fight in open spaces where their accurate targeting and longer ranges would be a huge advantage.  The fantasy "general" would want to avoid fights in open spaces for the same reasons.  Guerrilla warfare would probably be the type of combat scenario where the range of the modern weapons is not a huge advantage.

Look at urban warfare in WWII, against tanks, as well as now to see how a much smaller "poorly" equipped force can still wreak havoc in the modern battlefield.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 4, 2011)

> A hail of arrows versus a tank obviously looks like a bad proposition until you figure that they would be phase arrows. No need to destroy the tank if you can shoot through the tank.




Or Brilliant Energy weapons.

Or, on the flip side, Sonic/Subsonic weapons.



> As well, can you imagine what havoc a single soldier with invisibility, silence and mage hand could cause to troops armed with pull pin grenades.




Which raises the question of how easy it is for each force to adapt and use the tactics and weapons of their foes.  (Where is the magic using dude getting the hand grenades?  And what if the US Army discovers how to make & use CLW wands?  Or the *Spear of Destiny*?)



> The modern "general" would want to fight in open spaces where their accurate targeting and longer ranges would be a huge advantage. The fantasy "general" would want to avoid fights in open spaces for the same reasons. Guerrilla warfare would probably be the type of combat scenario where the range of the modern weapons is not a huge advantage.




Yep.

_Where_ the fight happens also matters hugely.  If the dimensional breach allowing the invasion happens in Utah, the initial response of "Nuke 'em"- especially if they come through on a weapons testing range- might be pushed to the front of the queue, but if it happened in Chicago, things get dicey very quickly.



> Look at urban warfare in WWII, against tanks, as well as now to see how a much smaller "poorly" equipped force can still wreak havoc in the modern battlefield.




Adaptability would be key.

Those poorly equipped forces of our world still understand implicitly what a "tank", "helicopter" or "bomber" is.  They know how to react.  Magically armed foes from beyond the veil of reality may not understand what to do until the tide of battle is irrevocably turned.

Similarly, fantasy types would know what an "elemental", "dragon" or "efreet" is, and that the guy in robes with a pointy hat and big stick is a real threat.  A flight of F-14s could be taken down before they realized what the nature of the problem really was...


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## Bedrockgames (Nov 4, 2011)

With magic it isn't the combat stuff like fireball that would tip the balance but the more unusual spells like wish, raise/animate dead, command, geas, teleport, etc.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 4, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> With magic it isn't the combat stuff like fireball that would tip the balance but the more unusual spells like wish, raise/animate dead, command, geas, teleport, etc.




Oh yeah, baby!  *Oh yeah!*


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## Kaodi (Nov 4, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Which raises the question of how easy it is for each force to adapt and use the tactics and weapons of their foes.  (Where is the magic using dude getting the hand grenades? ... )




I think you may have misunderstood me. " Magic using dude " is not going to " get " the grenades. He is going to pull the pins while they are still on the enemy soldiers,  .


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## Bluenose (Nov 4, 2011)

wingsandsword said:


> If you're going to claim that a Knight was a typical medieval infantry instead of being elite cavalry, and that most soldiers were not poorly trained conscripts then I suggest you get your sources together and completely and totally rewrite all the relevant wikipedia articles:
> 
> Medieval warfare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> Infantry in the Middle Ages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




I do hope that Wikipedia isn't your main source for historical information. 

And I'm certainly going to claim that most medieval soldiers weren't poorly trained conscripts. Most were professionals, paid and maintained at the expense of a great noble. This was preferred to a feudal levy that would serve for it's designated period (forty days, in Normandy, for example) and then start drifting off home. The English recruited by Commission of Array, the French by Ban d'Ordonnance, and in Italy mostly by Condotta. Exceptions to that general rule can be found, usually in the form of civic militias which have their own training regimes that, if not leaving them equal to professional soldiers, would make them something more than barely trained conscripts.



> Knights were usually mounted cavalry, occasionally heavy infantry and had a leadership role, more comparable to officers, Rangers and Cav squadrons on the modern battlefield.  There is a reason that Knight is a PC class and footman is not: superior training.  Armies aren't filled with thousands of people with PC classes.



Medieval armies often have thousands of 'knights' in them. Arguably of course some of those would have been senior squires and other professional men-at-arms, rather than proper knights, but the training would hardly be different. 



> Also, the Spartans were something of an outlier in terms of military skill.  There is a reason that thousands of years later the term is still synonymous with martial prowess.  I would hardly call them typical soldiers of the era.  The Roman Legions, at their peak, were indeed highly trained and in some ways are still model for modern armies, but that was only at their peak instead of the bulk of the later Empire when their quality declined sharply.



I could come up with other examples. The Ten Thousand, the Sacred Band of Thebes, Alexander's Companions, the Varangian Guard, the Bucellarii, the White Company, the Catalan Grand Company, the stradioti, the Bande Nere... 



> The typical medieval infantryman: a spearman or archer serving only out of feudal obligation (i.e. a conscript) with access to poor medical care and token training, is far inferior to a professionally trained, modern soldier with modern immunizations, comprehensive physical training, and a focus on small-unit tactics over large massed battles.  I'll stand by my assertion that at typical medieval peasant conscript footman, would be a Warrior 1, while a typical modern soldier would be a Warrior 3 or 4 in comparison.



I think you're being very generous to the Iraqi army there. Try comparing full-time professionals from the middle ages with full-time professionals from the present day, and medieval 'conscripts' with modern conscripts.


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## kinem (Nov 4, 2011)

It depends a lot on what kind of magic and monsters the fanatsy forces have available. I'll assume a 3.X/PF scenario.

Things that would be very effective against modern forces includes:

- Incorporeal undead (wraiths, spectres, shadows) require magic to harm, they can enter through any barrier such as tank walls, and they reproduce when they kill. This is best kept in reserve as a 'nuclear option' though since the resulting area would be pretty much uninhabitable except for undead.

- Commune: Who controls the modern forces? Discern location. Scry. Greater invisiblity. Greater teleport. Dominate Person. We now control the modern forces. (Or just take out some leaders & threaten to take out more. Undisclosed locations & deep bunkers pose no problems.)

- Once you understand how nukes work: Wish for one to arm and detonate in its silo, or just to teleport it & get your own.

- Pit fiends. Seriously. Can be gated in. Fireball at will, greater teleport at will. Even if nuked, will eventually regenerate - requires magic to kill. (It's reasonable to rule that a direct hit by a nuke would nevertheless kill it, but even then the kill radius for such a nuke would be far less than typical and nukes are not designed as anti-personnel weapons so the modern forces would probably just nuke the general vicinity which would not work. It can teleport away if it sees a threat coming.)

- Clerics. "Our gods are the true gods. Here's proof:" (raise dead, heal, etc.). "Now do as we say."


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## mmadsen (Nov 4, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Which raises the question of how easy it is for each force to adapt and use the tactics and weapons of their foes.



The first few clashes should be interesting, as neither side _really_ "gets" the other -- but I would give the magic-using force the advantage here, because they've presumably been scrying on the tech-using force, even if they don't understand everything they've seen or heard.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> Where is the magic using dude getting the hand grenades?



Kaodi's idea of pulling the enemy's grenade pins is a great idea -- that wouldn't occur to the magic-using force until they'd seen, up close, how a grenade is activated -- and survived to tell the tale.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> If the dimensional breach allowing the invasion happens in Utah, the initial response of "Nuke 'em"- especially if they come through on a weapons testing range- might be pushed to the front of the queue, but if it happened in Chicago, things get dicey very quickly.



I think the first reaction has to be, _What the heck is going on?  What are those things?_

Anyway, I"m not sure you'd need to nuke 'em from orbit.  Heavy artillery _should_ destroy just about any "normal" D&D creature, right?  As long as the crew isn't killed in their sleep or mind-controlled into wiping out their own forces.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 4, 2011)

Kaodi said:


> I think you may have misunderstood me. " Magic using dude " is not going to " get " the grenades. He is going to pull the pins while they are still on the enemy soldiers,  .




No, I got that immediately.

I was just saying that just as the invaders can figure out mundane tech, it may be possible for the mundanes to figure out the stuff the invaders are using.  The first thing might be CLW wands found on the battlefield, used by our own guys and maybe a few handed in for analysis by the propellerheads.

Then the US Army rolls out the H1 Healstick.


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## wingsandsword (Nov 4, 2011)

Bluenose said:


> I do hope that Wikipedia isn't your main source for historical information.



 Well, as a site I can quickly cite for an informal internet debate, it does the job.  I have a B.A. in History, my senior thesis was on the role of the Papacy in the Crusades.  I am a stranger to neither formal historical research nor medieval studies.  However, as a popular, widely used reference site that allows crowdsourced input I would strongly recommend you go in there and completely rewrite all articles regarding medieval warfare once you pull out the sources you are using to say that they are completely wrong and medieval armies were full of well trained professional soldiers instead of conscripts since you claim to be sitting on something fairly revolutionary in terms of evidence.



> I think you're being very generous to the Iraqi army there. Try comparing full-time professionals from the middle ages with full-time professionals from the present day, and medieval 'conscripts' with modern conscripts.



I am a soldier in the United States Army, which is the standard I was using in referencing modern armies.  I know quite well the standards of professionalism and training of modern militaries.  If you want to use an Iraqi conscript or a member of the Afghan National Army as a "typical" modern soldier instead of a US Soldier or Marine, you're going to get completely different results given the radically different training standards.

Given that the structure of the armies is completely different, I think you are being misleading in trying to compare modern professional soldiers to the relative handful of trained knights of the middle ages, instead of comparing the backbones of those armies: the modern professional soldier to the historic conscript and comparing the elite of those armies: modern special forces to historic knights.

If you want to get game-mechanical about it, I once sat down and worked out using the stats for an M-16 in d20 Modern and the details of the standard US Army qualification firing course for that weapon to figure out what the average attack bonus of a soldier would be just to reliably graduate basic training and maintain routine qualification with an M-16 or M-4. . .I came up with a +4 bonus to reliably qualify with the weapon.

I'm no infantryman, I am not even combat arms, but I shoot pretty dang well with my weapon and I see cooks and mechanics, analysts and clerks regularly shoot 300 meter targets and score well. . .and I see infantry and other combat-arms soldiers shoot even better.


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## mmadsen (Nov 4, 2011)

wingsandsword said:


> If you want to use an Iraqi conscript or a member of the Afghan National Army as a "typical" modern soldier instead of a US Soldier or Marine, you're going to get completely different results given the radically different training standards.



_Radically different_ is putting it diplomatically.



wingsandsword said:


> If you want to get game-mechanical about it, I once sat down and worked out using the stats for an M-16 in d20 Modern and the details of the standard US Army qualification firing course for that weapon to figure out what the average attack bonus of a soldier would be just to reliably graduate basic training and maintain routine qualification with an M-16 or M-4. . .I came up with a +4 bonus to reliably qualify with the weapon.



So, if a _marksman_ has a +4 bonus, how much better is a _sharpshooter_ or an _expert_?


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## korjik (Nov 4, 2011)

kinem said:


> It depends a lot on what kind of magic and monsters the fanatsy forces have available. I'll assume a 3.X/PF scenario.
> 
> Things that would be very effective against modern forces includes:
> 
> - Incorporeal undead (wraiths, spectres, shadows) require magic to harm, they can enter through any barrier such as tank walls, and they reproduce when they kill. This is best kept in reserve as a 'nuclear option' though since the resulting area would be pretty much uninhabitable except for undead.



3.5 incorporeal isnt proof against physical attacks. At 8 rounds a second, a machine gun would disrupt incorporeal pretty quick. You could also use massive spotlights to make them powerless also.


> - Commune: Who controls the modern forces? Discern location. Scry. Greater invisiblity. Greater teleport. Dominate Person. We now control the modern forces. (Or just take out some leaders & threaten to take out more. Undisclosed locations & deep bunkers pose no problems.)



Blam blam blam blam blam. Modern force now under its own controll. One high level mage disposed of.


> - Once you understand how nukes work: Wish for one to arm and detonate in its silo, or just to teleport it & get your own.



Seeing as this takes about a decade, I would not worry about it. By that time the tech force simply wishes that its nukes arent affected by wishes.


> - Pit fiends. Seriously. Can be gated in. Fireball at will, greater teleport at will. Even if nuked, will eventually regenerate - requires magic to kill. (It's reasonable to rule that a direct hit by a nuke would nevertheless kill it, but even then the kill radius for such a nuke would be far less than typical and nukes are not designed as anti-personnel weapons so the modern forces would probably just nuke the general vicinity which would not work. It can teleport away if it sees a threat coming.)



Blessed cold iron jacketed .50 cal rounds.  Again tho, any hard enough hit will injure the Pit Fiend. A 155mm arty barrage would mess it up, to say nothing about heat seeking bombs.


> - Clerics. "Our gods are the true gods. Here's proof:" (raise dead, heal, etc.). "Now do as we say."




Blam blam blam blam blam. Click, ping, thunk, WHOOSH.

Raise that. Thermite grenades would not even leave ash.

This whole thing depends on how the tech scales against the magic. Without any way of saying how it would scale, no example really makes any difference. I could say:

Spy sat on IR, company of MRLS. The magic guys dont even know they are under attack until everything explodes. By everything, I mean from horizon to horizon is nothing but boom.

.50 cal Sniper Rifle. Good Scope, good sniper. Mage casting a spell has his head explode, and cant detect any magic that caused it.

The mages keep casting lightning bolt and fireball on the flying metal dragons that keep breathing fire on the troops, but no damage is ever seen. 

You can keep bringing up examples, and so can I. We dont really have any way to see if any of our examples are worthwhile.


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## Bedrockgames (Nov 4, 2011)

Wingsandsword, what are your thoughts on how magic might be used to conduct psy-ops and the like (through enchantment and divination) against a modern military. For example using 3e or 2e how easy would it be for a magic user to disrupt the chain of command or take control of tge other side's forces.

Also greetings from a fellow history grad.


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## wingsandsword (Nov 4, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> Wingsandsword, what are your thoughts on how magic might be used to conduct psy-ops and the like (through enchantment and divination) against a modern military. For example using 3e or 2e how easy would it be for a magic user to disrupt the chain of command or take control of tge other side's forces.
> 
> Also greetings from a fellow history grad.




I think that one key problem is a language barrier.  English (or whatever language local soldiers are speaking) is almost certainly NOT Common, Undercommon, Orc, Giant ect.  This makes language-dependent spells less useful unless they also have Tongues up.  The more prep-magic spells they have to spend every day, the less combat ability they will have.

The use of illusions, divination and enchantment will be a big advantage for the magic army, but just how much of it will they have?  If you have a 9th level Cleric who can cast Commune and Raise Dead, you probably won't have an awful lot of them.

Also, if you assume that the magical invaders have high-level spellcasters, it is fair to assume that leaders and the elite of the non-magical army are equally high-level in non-magical PC classes, so they'll have good saves and probably their own abilities (the abilities of classes like Smart Hero, Field Officer and SpecOp from d20 Modern come to mind)

I think that the use of magic for intelligence gathering and psyops are the main advantage of a magical army, the biggest thing that the modern army will not easily counter.

On the battlefield, in a straight-up shooting war the modern army has an advantage.  A modern US Soldier packs more destructive firepower than his non-magical historic equivalent and is better trained.  The force multipliers of the spellcasters depend on how common they are.  In most settings, spellcasters are fairly uncommon and magic items are also fairly limited.  Unless it's Thay or some other magiocracy invading, I would expect casters to be a significant minority of the invaders.

I am kind of wondering about the idea of what if the magical army brings magic "with them", making magic possible in a mundane world through the process by which they invade.  Chaplains find they get miracles happening (i.e. spells), some soldiers find they can make things happen by their will alone (Sorcerers and Wilders), ect.  In that case the magical army will find that they have an initial advantage in training, but the modern army will have a long-term advantage in organization, professionalism, and tactics.

Honestly, the entire concept kind of reminds me of the old "Star Destroyer vs. Enterprise" threads on usenet from the '90's.  Fun debates, but you'll never solve them because they come from completely different models of reality and changing even one assumption can completely change the results.  Let's understand up-front that no definiative solution is possible because the results depend on so many different variables that can change the outcome.


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## kinem (Nov 4, 2011)

korjik said:


> 3.5 incorporeal isnt proof against physical attacks. At 8 rounds a second, a machine gun would disrupt incorporeal pretty quick. You could also use massive spotlights to make them powerless also.




Read the 3.5 SRD or pick up a MM:

Incorporeal Subtype


> An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms.




The assumption obviously is that the modern force has no magic (at least to start; and what they can get is by taking from the enemy). Otherwise it's just a mixed tech/magic force which is trivially superior to either a modern or a magic force.



> Blam blam blam blam blam. Modern force now under its own controll. One high level mage disposed of.




Korjik, just a style point here but your repetition of "blam" is annoying and does not stand you in good stead.

As for your statements they are clearly false. The mage could easily protect himself from bullets but in any case he wouldn't need to; the greater invisibility means that the moderns would have no idea he's even there.



> Seeing as this takes about a decade, I would not worry about it. By that time the tech force simply wishes that its nukes arent affected by wishes.




You are vastly underestimating what high intelligence coupled with divination magic is capable of.



> Blessed cold iron jacketed .50 cal rounds.  Again tho, any hard enough hit will injure the Pit Fiend. A 155mm arty barrage would mess it up, to say nothing about heat seeking bombs.




Again, the moderrn force would have no access to blessed ammo, nor would they have any clue that it's what's needed. Apparently neither do you, since devils require silver, not cold iron.

Using d20 modern stats, bombs do a lot less damage than you think.



> You can keep bringing up examples, and so can I. We dont really have any way to see if any of our examples are worthwhile.




Obviously a lot depends on the scenario, but you don't seem to even know the rules.

As for snipers vs. high level mages, that's what the contingency spell is for. And assuming he's a member of a a high level party, even blowing his head to bits would only take him out until the others bring him back. Or if he's a lich then he auto-ressurects as many times as he needs to.

As for shooting the clerics, that is obviously BS. The sides are obviously talking to each other at that point. Their magic is real and the moderns would see it. They might think it's of the devil, or they might be convinced and convert - that depends on a lot of factors, but I think a single high level cleric is all you'd need - send him ahead. He speaks the modern language just fine thanks to tongues spells. He gets the lay of the land, asks questions, gets on TV (no problem given that he sure can put on a show), gets tons of followers, soon enough he is running the whole place.


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## wingsandsword (Nov 4, 2011)

kinem said:


> You are vastly underestimating what high intelligence coupled with divination magic is capable of.



I think it is more assuming that magic will be used like it is normally used in D&D metaplot and fiction.  

While you can sit and come up with absolutely perfect Commune questions and theoretically perfect magically augmented tactics that could tip the balance of a war, why is it that in the history of various D&D settings (novels, backstory, metaplot, adventures) we don't see these things ever used by NPC's in warfare?  We don't see NPC's performing surgical strikes using high-level divination, teleportation and sabotage to decapitate regimes.  D&D warfare has almost always depicted as being medieval warfare with a small amount of spellcasters which act like big cannons or high-powered medics.



> Using d20 modern stats, bombs do a lot less damage than you think.




For reference, here are some stats for modern weapons systems from d20 Modern (since I do have those works around me to reference):

RPG-7 Rocket Propelled Grenade: 100 ft. Range Increment, 6d6 Damage with a 10 ft. blast radius ignoring the first 10 points of object hardness to the object actually struck (not objects in the blast radius).

M9 Pistol: 2d6 damage, 40 ft. range increment.

M-16A2: 2d8 damage, 80 ft. range increment

M2 Heavy Machine Gun: 2d12 damage, 110 ft. range increment, Autofire (may target a 10ft by 10ft area with a single attack, reflex DC 15)

Hellfire Missile: 15d6, 500 ft. range increment

Sidewinder Missile: 20d6, 1 mile range increment

Minigun: 4d10, 150 ft. range increment

Fragmentation Grenade: 4d6, reflex DC 15 for half

Thermite Grenade: 6d6 fire damage


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## Alzrius (Nov 4, 2011)

For those interested, I wrote a short sidebar that deals with the questions of how this question (high-tech weapons and armor vs. magical weapons and armor) could be easily resolved in a d20 system game.



> Looking over the new armors listed here, you may realize that, in terms of statistics, armors from one Progress Level are relatively the same as another. A Vanadium Covering, for example, doesn’t seem that much different than a Neutronite Aegis. However, given that the latter armor was developed in the future from the former, shouldn’t it clearly offer better protection?
> 
> In regards to weaponry from previous eras, it does. When weapons from a lower PL than a suit of armor are used against it, the wearer gains DR X/--, where X is the different in their Progress Levels. For example, while wearing a Nanofluidic Suit (PL 8), you would have DR 2/-- against damage from a Laser Pistol (a PL 6 weapon). When a weapon from a certain PL is used against armor from a lower PL, the weapon gains a circumstance bonus to the attack roll equal to the difference between their Progress Levels. For example, someone using a Laser Pistol against a target wearing a Duraplastic Breastplate (PL 5), would have a +1 circumstance bonus to their attack roll.
> 
> If you’re using FX in your game, then consider altering the above rules slightly. Magic (or psionics) transcend the limits of the physical universe, and make it possible for even a primitive weapon to penetrate a powerful armor (or for a weak armor to resist a futuristic weapon). When using FX, armors of a higher PL than an attacking weapon gain DR X/magic. Likewise, weapons of a higher PL than the armor they’re attacking do not gain the circumstance bonus to the attack roll if the armor has an enhancement bonus. Fantasy d20 weapons and armor are all Progress Level 2. Natural weapons and unarmed strikes are PL 0.


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## korjik (Nov 5, 2011)

kinem said:


> Read the 3.5 SRD or pick up a MM:
> 
> Incorporeal Subtype
> 
> ...




And you have completely missed the point. I never said I was using d20 Modern. What calibrations I use to determine the interaction of has not been determined. Should it be that a contingency spell takes 10 milliseconds to activate, and has a detection range of 5 meters, sniper shots will still kill him. What happens after isnt really relevant to the discussion.

My point is that the interactions between magic and tech are unknowns. For every bit of magico-babble you come up with, I can come up with some techno-babble to counter it. You can keep pushing your ideas, but all that says it that you have decided that magic is better, not that you are right about magic being better.

A few notes: 
You are right about the incorporeal, but that just brings up more questions about the nature of magic and technology

Cheap insults are unnecessary. It should have been obvious that I was misremembering a game that has been out of print for a few years.

You are wrong about the blessing tho. Last I checked, there are alot of clerics around, and most people would probably think if a blessing if confronted with a devil.


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## Cerebral Paladin (Nov 5, 2011)

Way back at the beginning of the thread, Sepulchrave asked whether goblinoids are covered by the Geneva Conventions.  Just thought I'd take a stab at an answer.  There are a couple of key questions:  are goblinoids "persons" as that term is used in the Geneva Conventions is the big one, but questions like whether the fantasy army is a "Power" and whether it would "accept[] and appl[y] the provisions" of the Geneva Conventions without being a formal "High Contracting Power" also apply.  

But as I said, the big one is the meaning of the word "persons," which is, to the best of my knowledge and after very brief research, not defined within the Conventions.  I think that's a clearly open question, but there is at least a decent argument that it would apply to other sapients. The Conventions include substantial language designed to avoid the limiting of the concept of "persons" or of the protections to be provided.  For example, Art. III (which sets minimum standards for non-international conflicts), specifies: "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria."  The language about "without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth, or wealth, or any other similar criteria" recurs elsewhere.  In context, I think that's clearly designed to say that a power can't say that, for example, Jewish people, or people of African descent, or other historically discriminated groups are not "worthy" of full protection under the Conventions.  The next extension, to say that limiting the Convention to protecting humans rather than all persons violates the "any other similar criteria" language, seems pretty sound to me.  Of course, that's a qualifier to the word "persons":  dogs, horses, and (I presume, although I don't know if it's ever been tested) dolphins and apes aren't persons, and therefore do not receive the protections of the Conventions.  And I'm sure that some people would say that goblins are also not "persons," and therefore that distinguishing goblins from humans is not an application of "any other similar criteria" but rather an application of the meaning of the word "persons."  But I'm not persuaded:  the Conventions are intended to sweep broadly, and are based both on a concept of what sort of behavior is acceptable for modern nations and on a desire to prevent atrocities by the other side.  In that context, and in light of the breadth of the language and the desire to prevent exclusions based on individual characteristics, I think the best interpretation would be that "persons" includes non-human persons.

I'm going to leave it at that, because it's a bit of a tangent, and probably boring to most non-lawyers anyway.


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## mmadsen (Nov 5, 2011)

Cerebral Paladin said:


> Way back at the beginning of the thread, Sepulchrave asked whether goblinoids are covered by the Geneva Conventions.  Just thought I'd take a stab at an answer.  There are a couple of key questions:  are goblinoids "persons" as that term is used in the Geneva Conventions is the big one, but questions like whether the fantasy army is a "Power" and whether it would "accept[] and appl[y] the provisions" of the Geneva Conventions without being a formal "High Contracting Power" also apply.



Since the "goblins" haven't _signed_ the Geneva Conventions, it's really an issue of whether the various human forces would unilaterally decide to abide by them -- which would presumably depend on how the goblins treated human prisoners, whether they truly gave up when they were given mercy, etc.

If word got out that the goblins were _eating_ prisoners, well, I wouldn't expect the human troops to take too many prisoners themselves.


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## Stalker0 (Nov 5, 2011)

Without any calibrations, I would go with the following general assertions:

1) Tech: The superior army
2) Magic: The superior special forces

I am making this assertion on the fact that magic provides for abilities technology currently does not, and allows for superior infiltration, subversion,assassination, and misinformation.

If we continue the standard dnd model that magic use is fairly rare, then the magic army would not have widespread use of magic, and so a technology based army would have a great deal more advanced firepower at their disposal.


So the basics here is a big powerful army vs a small specialized one...who wins?

I would go with the tech army on this one. While special forces can be very effective, they don't singlehandedly win wars without backup. Attrition and logistics start to set in at some point.

Magic users start to get assassinated, tactics are developed to counter them, and you still have a large well supplied army that is devastating your own. Unless magic use could be very quickly replicated (in the timespan of a year or two), then the large army will eventually win out imo.


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## (Psi)SeveredHead (Nov 5, 2011)

I think both sides would have a huge education barrier, but especially the goblins. Sure, eventually the goblins will use to pull pins out of grenades using magic, but some will die before that happens. Worse for the goblins, we know what a sword or spear is, whereas the goblins would have to learn about guns the hard way. (Of course, afterward they would never use a "green wave" tactic again, but might lose a lot of troops in their first battle.) The modern soldiers might not use the "best" tactics (maybe machine guns are a pretty bad choice against golems), but application of superior firepower will _eventually_ give the moderns an edge.

With modern intel-gaining abilities, the modern soldiers would know more about the goblins than the goblins would know about them. The goblin's main advantage is the lack of belief in magic. If the goblins hide and don't attack immediately, they could learn about their surroundings. They could teleport into commanders' rooms and magically interrogate and/or assassinate them, steal supplies, charm civilians into giving them a ton of info, etc.

There's scaling issues too. Are the modern soldiers using artillery or aircraft? Do the goblins have the prep time necessary to learn about the neighboring world, or perform rituals? Do automated sensors detect invisible goblins? Just how much magic do the goblins have?

I suppose the issues boil down to:

1) How much magic do the goblins have? Lots of weak shamans? A few powerful ones? A mixture?
2) Do they initiate hostilities, or recon first?
3) How quickly does the modern world become aware of them?
4) How many resources can be devoted to fighting the goblin incursion. (It would make a big difference, I think, if the goblins first appeared in Brazil compared to, say, Utah.)

I think the odds are on the modern side, and the goblins would have to do a _lot_ of recon before they can learn enough about modern weaknesses. *If* the goblins reach this point, and *if* they have a lot of magic, they can turn the tides and actually win.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 6, 2011)

There is also this unasked, unanswered question: does magic not work here because we don't know what we're doing, or does it not work here because it doesn't/no longer works here?

If it's the former, we get the usual scenario we've been discussing, and it's entirely possible that we correct our mistakes and start using magic ourselves...possibly even including divine magic.

If it's the latter...well, some mystic goblin knights are going to be in for a surprise once they get through the portal...


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## (Psi)SeveredHead (Nov 6, 2011)

I assume the moderns simply never discovered magic. They could start to learn it, but a bunch of barely-trained 1st-level wizards and clerics who don't really know magic tactics aren't going to scare an army of rampaging magic-users.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 6, 2011)

But that's not really satisfying.  We have legends of magic, books of spells- Hell- we have people who claim to practice it today- so there has to be more to it than that.


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## Cerebral Paladin (Nov 6, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> Since the "goblins" haven't _signed_ the Geneva Conventions, it's really an issue of whether the various human forces would unilaterally decide to abide by them -- which would presumably depend on how the goblins treated human prisoners, whether they truly gave up when they were given mercy, etc.
> 
> If word got out that the goblins were _eating_ prisoners, well, I wouldn't expect the human troops to take too many prisoners themselves.




As a practical matter, I think you're likely right.  But as a legal matter, that's not right.  The Geneva Conventions define several different legal regimes:  rules that apply to the treatment of prisoners from a foreign army, rules that apply to the treatment of civilians in a war zone, rules that apply during civil wars, and so forth.  One of the categories is rules that apply when dealing with nonsignatories to the Conventions.  At a first cut, the rules apply in full force with regard to a nonsignatory "Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof."  In other words, you're right that it matters whether the goblins obey the Geneva Conventions; if they do, then (assuming they're "persons") then even though they're nonsignatories, the signatories are fully bound.  But, even if they don't, some rules protect persons despite the fact that they are not troops/civilians of a Power that is behaving as if it's bound by the Conventions.  In particular, Common Article III sets up a baseline of rules that apply regardless of whether the opposing Power abides by the Conventions:  in short, humane treatment for all prisoners, specifically excluding murder, torture, etc., requiring that the wounded, sick, etc. be cared for, and requiring some enforcement provisions like giving the Int'l Red Cross access.

Thus, as a technical matter, even if the goblins violate the Geneva Conventions, the legally permissible response is not to retaliate in kind, but rather to prosecute them (through proper trials) for war crimes, after which they can be punished for their violations.  As a practical matter, however, I think you might well be right--if the goblins routinely violated human norms of war, it makes it much more likely that either (a) countries would conclude that they are not "persons" in the language of the Conventions or (b) would simply violate the Conventions in response... although maybe not, because most militaries have a strong attachment to some of the basic parts of the Conventions, violations notwithstanding.


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## Umbran (Nov 6, 2011)

Stalker0 said:


> So the basics here is a big powerful army vs a small specialized one...who wins?
> 
> I would go with the tech army on this one. While special forces can be very effective, they don't singlehandedly win wars without backup. Attrition and logistics start to set in at some point.




Well, hold on there a second.  

You think the old "scry, buff, teleport" on a few national leaders and generals wouldn't end the conflict quickly?

Our special forces don't use those tactics because they *can't* teleport, and because our civilization has some traditions against that sort of thing.  The fantasy folks, if they're coming from a D&D-style world, don't have that.  Quite the opposite - they come from a tradition where eventually you have to confront the enemy leader personally.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 6, 2011)

> You think the old "scry, buff, teleport" on a few national leaders and generals wouldn't end the conflict quickly?




Nope- I think that would just get the more belligerent & hawkish elements in world governments the license to win "by any means necessary."

IOW, retaliatory assassination would be the least of the invaders' worries as world gov't's unleash weapons they don't admit to having, and weapons developers get free rein to do live testing on the battlefield.

If, for example, some nation actually has orbit-to-surface lasers, the magical invaders may be in for a rude surprise...

Lord Necrozian: "The mundane warriors of this world couldn't hit a Tarrasque at this dis..."_*ZZZAAAP*_


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## Stalker0 (Nov 6, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Well, hold on there a second.
> 
> You think the old "scry, buff, teleport" on a few national leaders and generals wouldn't end the conflict quickly?
> .




It would have a powerful and immediate impact. The magic users would win the initial battles imo.

But with satellites and surveillance technology we aren't exactly in the dark ourselves.

"Sir, we have the goblin general on satelite".

"Very good, send some cruise missiles and take care of it".


Also, since many world leaders have those underground bunkers, would scry even be able to find them?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 6, 2011)

> It would have a powerful and immediate impact.




Actually, given the modifiers to the scrying rolls, it would have a powerful but_ delayed_ impact.  They'd have to get some actual intelligence on their targets first if they wanted any real chance of succeeding at scrying...and its not like a goblin could just walk into a bar and casually chat someone up, "So, tell me about this...Oh Bar Mar...who leads this country. He sounds a fascinating hum...man"

And that's still assuming that magic works perfectly in our world...  What if Alter Self just made you look like Lemmy Kilmister?  Or Teleport worked more like Blink?


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## tomBitonti (Nov 6, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> I'm thinking that a little teleportation or invisibility could go a long, long way toward defeating a modern force.  Illusions, mind-reading, and mind-control could also work wonders.




Ah, I was waiting for folks to bring up issues _other_ than simple firepower.

Modern forces seem to have huge advantages in terms of communications and control, which cannot be emulated except by a few spell casters.  Also, modern weaponry seems vastly more powerful than most simple damage dealing spells and weapons.

On the other hand, magic forces seem to have other advantages in terms of gathering information, hiding, and generally engaging in subterfuge.  How much damage could a group of mind-reading form shifting mages do?  How would modern forces keep a shadow dancer out of a munitions depot?

Also, until they got a grip on it, ghoul fever (from raised undead) might cause a lot of problems.  Certain other summoned monsters (e.g., a fire elemental, or some demons) might be a hard problem.  A summoned devil which is tasked with entering an enemy base and killing as many as possible, might do a very large amount of damage.

TomB


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## Jack7 (Nov 6, 2011)

Personally I would in no way want to be on the side of magic when it's magic versus modern technology.

Nor would I in any way want to be on the side of magic when it's groups of creatures led by individuals trained in magic versus groups of people trained in technological systems, advanced weapon systems (either personal or integrated), command and control systems, etc. and individuals trained in modern war tactics.

If the point of such a war is to kill the enemy and someone offered me the chance to fight in either Army then the thought of being in the magic army would make me laugh.

If my life personally depended on such a choice then magic is a fantasy war tactic and method. 

I'd never risk my life on such a thing. Or a war on such a supposed set of weapons and methods.

It's a fun theoretical discussion but if it ever could happen, and it were my fight, I'd bet on man and his war-methods any day. And I suspect it wouldn't be much of a war either.


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## MortalPlague (Nov 6, 2011)

Technology has tanks.  Magic has iron golems.

I think the debate is more fun if the magic side has a proliferation of potent spellcasters.


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## Umbran (Nov 6, 2011)

Stalker0 said:


> "Sir, we have the goblin general on satelite".
> 
> "Very good, send some cruise missiles and take care of it".




With all due respect to our military forces, I think recent history has shown that our modern imaging techniques are not particularly good at finding particular individuals who don't want to get shot or blown up - those still seem to require more mundane intelligence gathering techniques.

Let's assume, however, that the horde leader isn't trying to hide from satellite imagery.  It is still very difficult to identify individuals, and there's a delay between when you snap the picture, and the arrival of the munitions - and individuals tend to move around.  

But, more importantly, you're the head of a fantasy horde - that means your pretty badass (have lots of hit points, and maybe Improved Evasion) and you fail to be stupid.  You've got powerful spellcasters, and are used to looking out for the enemy sending dragons and whatnot.  You're telling me you don't have folks keeping air elementals and the like in the skies whacking anything bigger than a goose out of the sky?  




> Also, since many world leaders have those underground bunkers, would scry even be able to find them?




Nothing in the d20 SRD spell description says it'd be stopped by any particular material.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> Actually, given the modifiers to the scrying rolls, it would have a powerful but_ delayed_ impact.  They'd have to get some actual intelligence on their targets first if they wanted any real chance of succeeding at scrying...and its not like a goblin could just walk into a bar and casually chat someone up, "So, tell me about this...Oh Bar Mar...who leads this country. He sounds a fascinating hum...man"




Knowing nothing about him makes it a +10.  But even having secondhand knowledge (like a newspaper) makes it only a +5.  Getting an image of him (see again, that newspaper) puts that down to a +3.  The newspaper won't have a lot on generals, true.  But actual national leaders should be pretty easy to find.

And that's before you get to using any other divinations to get information about the targets.



> And that's still assuming that magic works perfectly in our world...  What if Alter Self just made you look like Lemmy Kilmister?  Or Teleport worked more like Blink?




Well, then of course magic loses.  The discussion is trivial and uninteresting if either side is significantly nerfed.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 6, 2011)

> But even having secondhand knowledge (like a newspaper) makes it only a +5.




They still have to acquire the newspaper- tough if they bust through dimensions in Yellowstone, easy if they pop up on the LA strip- and recognize that the articles & pictures are of the kinds of targets they want.

If the first periodical they grab is _People_ or _Variety_, the entertainment world may take a heavy hit...



> Well, then of course magic loses.




I don't think it's quite that bad.  Not everyone will recognize Lemmy.  Blink, while not as good a Teleport, is still going to wreak havoc with mundane targeting.

The key is _how much_ magic gets screwed up and how...like using spells in a wild magic zone.

And my question also begs the other- how does mundane tech interact with magic?

If none of what we have could be considered a "magic weapon" certain Protection spells and special units would be über potent.  A summoned creature immune to normal weapon damage may keep coming even after you hit it with a Hellfire missile.

The _*ahem*_ devil is in the details.


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## kinem (Nov 6, 2011)

korjik said:


> My point is that the interactions between magic and tech are unknowns.




You have missed the point of specifying a rule system - in this case 3.5 ed D&D - to use for the exercise. Obviously, if there are no rules, there is no way to compare anything. There is no such thing as real magic so it's not like we can use that as a base.



> You are wrong about the blessing tho. Last I checked, there are alot of clerics around, and most people would probably think if a blessing if confronted with a devil.




For one thing, in order to turns weapons 'good', you need the actual paladin spell _bless weapon_, not just some prayer by a cleric. It's not even a cleric spell.

For another, there are no actual spellcasting clerics in the modern world, just a bunch of scholars who have in the scenario such great misconceptions about knowledge(religion) that they don't even know about the gods who grant spells.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 6, 2011)

> For another, there are no actual spellcasting _<edit>_ in the modern world




Which is why I asked why this was the case.  Because the "Why" 'matters.

If magic doesn't work because our physics are anti-magic, a lack of mana*, or that we don't have the right material components, the invaders may have a "supply line" issue.

If it's because we don't have the right ritual formulations- aka spells- than there is a knowledge gap that can be closed.

If the divine is silent in this world because it is nonexistent, we can't do much about it.  If it is silent because it so chooses to be, things could change very rapidly.


* and if our world is magic dead brcause a lack of mana is the issue, a portal to a fantasy world may act like rain in the desert.  Think of all the people out there right now casting spells that won't work; singing satanic hymns or talking about Hastur & Cthulhu on message boards or in game stores...and all of a sudden, magic reenters the world...


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## pippenainteasy (Nov 6, 2011)

On the open battlefield, unless they have some deities to back them up, the goblins are toast. However in urban warfare they would dominate.


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## Viktyr Gehrig (Nov 8, 2011)

It isn't strictly compatible with the question in the OP, but read _Fables_. I want to avoid spoilers, but I can safely say that it is the most thorough treatise on the application of D&D-style magic to principles of modern warfare.


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## Mishihari Lord (Nov 9, 2011)

There's an amazing setting riff thread on rpg.net on this topic, called "Voices From Below and the Long Stairs"


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## Morrus (Nov 9, 2011)

For the question to make sense, you'd have to give both sides equal resources; otherwise it's a no-brainer.  So if the modern side gets to invoke tactical nukes (as some have suggested), the magic side should have some very potent artifacts.

It's probably easier to say that neither side has either for some reason.  I'd say it's also fair to say the magic side has no Elminsters or equivalent.

I think small arms fire is in the magic's favour -_ protection from normal missiles _is a gamechanger there.  I don't know how that scales up to larger missiles, but a modern military is very heavily dependent upon "normal missiles". 

The area where the modern side wins unquestionably is air superiority.  Even with griffin riders or dragons, the magic side has nothing that can engage a modern fighter jet - either in terms of speed or in terms of engagement range (the fighter jet can attack from miles away).  The modern side definitely dominates the air, and that's gonna make a big difference.

I don't know how druids and weather control might help mitigate that.

As others have mentioned, magic can do some stuff that technology simply can't, and won't ever be able to do, being magic and all.  The modern side will never be able to match magical invisibity, teleportation, binary protection spells, magical divinations, and the like, although they can try to mitigate the effect of them once they realise what's going on.

_Heat metal_ sounds like it'd be fun against vehicles.

I think the battle would be more even than some folks here do, as long as you assume equal resources.  If you stack the resources heavily in favour of one side or the other, then that pretty much decides the outcome.


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## Neonchameleon (Nov 9, 2011)

(Psi)SeveredHead said:


> I assume the moderns simply never discovered magic. They could start to learn it, but a bunch of barely-trained 1st-level wizards and clerics who don't really know magic tactics aren't going to scare an army of rampaging magic-users.



That's not true.  Think what a Lesser Magic Weapon spell on a sniper rifle could do to magical defences such as Protection from Normal Missiles or Insubstantiality in the 3.5 version.

The basic issue is that everyone on the magic user side who isn't (a) a mage or (b) wielding seriously powerful defensive magical items (a +5 holy avenger just won't cut it) is, to put it simply, an irrelevance.  And that includes dragons.  So it comes down to small teams of mages and asymmetric warfare.


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 9, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I think small arms fire is in the magic's favour - protection from normal missiles is a gamechanger there. I don't know how that scales up to larger missiles, but a modern military is very heavily dependent upon "normal missiles".




Not terribly well IIRC. In 3.5 it gives protection 10/magic, until it has stopped 10 damage per caster level (max 100). That wouldn't last long against bullets. Even in older editions where protection from normal missiles was absolute, it didn't protect against balista and seige weapons properly. In 3.5 it isn't much of a game changer by the rules.


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## Umbran (Nov 9, 2011)

Neonchameleon said:


> The basic issue is that everyone on the magic user side who isn't (a) a mage or (b) wielding seriously powerful defensive magical items (a +5 holy avenger just won't cut it) is, to put it simply, an irrelevance.




I don't think that's necessarily true.  

In the real world, nobody has magical protections, but somehow soldiers don't just drop dead when someone waves a gun in their general direction.  Actually hitting someone who knows enough to duck is actually kind of difficult.  While goblinoids and orcs and such aren't the brightest bulbs in the marquee, but they aren't so stone stupid that they don't know to make themselves hard to hit with missiles.

And that horde may well be critters with a whole lot of hit points, for whom a bullet or two (generally the most a real-person takes before being out of the fight) may not be a big deal.  Perhaps closing to melee range is not such a problem.  And then, modern forces have issues.  You cannot spray automatic weapon's fire when the enemy is among your ranks, unless you don't care about killing your own men.


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## Twichyboy (Nov 9, 2011)

Well, considering nukes, we have to remember that 1 in 20 of our nukes that we launch will probably explode in their silos


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## Morrus (Nov 9, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> Not terribly well IIRC. In 3.5 it gives protection 10/magic, until it has stopped 10 damage per caster level (max 100). That wouldn't last long against bullets.




I'm not sure I agree there, unless one is of the school of thought that guns do more damage than swords.  A sword in the head is just as bad as a bullet.

That's assuming we're using a D&D rules system.  If we're using a more lethal (realistic) system where you die if you get hit by a bullet or a sword, then it changes of course.   But we have no idea what changing to that system does to the lethality of D&D spells.  

However, you can't choose a system which suddenly makes guns much more lethal but not magic (well, you can, but you're just deciding which outcome you favour at that point and shaping the situation to ensure that).

We're either using D&D, in which a gun is not much more lethal than a sword, or we're using something more realistic in which case we have to adjust magic to fit it.  At that point, we're just making stuff up since we have no idea how to adjust D&D spells to reflect a more realistic environment; we're basically just choosing which we want to win.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 9, 2011)

Just got this XP award comment:


> jasper:
> um how do know that they are not already in the entertainment world?




Which just gave me a hilarious thought: what if the dimensional breach happened in Hollywood or some other place in which the next great epic fantasy film were being shot with a cast of thousands.

The initial slaughter would be horrendous.  "TOM CRUISE SLAIN ON SET OF 'LEGEND 2!!!"

But the invaders would be damn near clueless as to why the soldiers they were fighting were sooooooo poorly armed and trained.

Then would come the response...SWAT, Nat. Guard...who knows.


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## Crazy Jerome (Nov 9, 2011)

There are multiple Geneva Conventions (note the plural), and the latter ones are not signed as much as the earlier ones.  (The USA has not signed the most recent conventions.)  But in this scenario, it doesn't matter.

If goblins are coming through some kind of rift, humanity falls back on what it considers fair play or not ("just war" or whichever system you want to use)--against non-humans.  Humanity doesn't know what the goblins' views of these ideals are--nor their goals, fidelity to their ideals, etc.  So in the "First Goblin War," it is pretty much anything goes that a human can justify to another human.  After the war, assuming some kind of stalemate, truce, exchange of ideas, etc, then there may be a first "Goblin Convention" signed.  It probably won't be exactly like any of the Geneva Conventions, unless the goblins are much like humans.

In the early going, "misunderstanding" will dominate everything.  This will lead to all kinds of things that the active parties will come to regret (for various reasons). Lack of conventions on treatment of prisoners in war and targetting of civilians are one of many.


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 10, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I'm not sure I agree there, unless one is of the school of thought that guns do more damage than swords.  A sword in the head is just as bad as a bullet.




I was thinking more about the fact that the spell doesn't just have a duration, it gets ablated by damage too. Depending upon caster level it only stops 30-100 total damage before it is used up (which isn't many machine gun bullets). It also means that even if heavier munitions are considered 'normal' weapons, a lot of their damage is going to get through. 

Makes sense now?


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 10, 2011)

Umbran said:


> And that horde may well be critters with a whole lot of hit points, for whom a bullet or two (generally the most a real-person takes before being out of the fight) may not be a big deal.  Perhaps closing to melee range is not such a problem.  And then, modern forces have issues.  You cannot spray automatic weapon's fire when the enemy is among your ranks, unless you don't care about killing your own men.




I think WW1 and the advent of the machine gun showed that mass attacks against machine guns just doesn't work!


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## Morrus (Nov 10, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I was thinking more about the fact that the spell doesn't just have a duration, it gets ablated by damage too. Depending upon caster level it only stops 30-100 total damage before it is used up (which isn't many machine gun bullets




You're tracking each machine gun bullet separately?  That's one fiendishly complicated RPG system! 

In d20 Modern (the only place we'll find roughly compatible machine gun stats), a burst from a machine gun is gonna do on average 10 damage or so.  That makes _protection from normal missiles_ reasonable protection against it.  If you're unlucky enough to be hit by 6-10 machine gun bursts, then yeah, you're screwed.


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## Kraydak (Nov 10, 2011)

Morrus said:


> You're tracking each machine gun bullet separately?  That's one fiendishly complicated RPG system!
> 
> In d20 Modern (the only place we'll find roughly compatible machine gun stats), a burst from a machine gun is gonna do on average 10 damage or so.  That makes _protection from normal missiles_ reasonable protection against it.  If you're unlucky enough to be hit by 6-10 machine gun bursts, then yeah, you're screwed.




But if you run d20 Modern, then walking onto a battlefield with a non-magical sword or just plain fists is a completely valid option.  Those stats turn the question from high-tech forces vs high-magic forces into: no magic but reskinned medieval weapons forces vs medieval weapons forces with magic.

Even the case where people talk up melee weapon in the modern world, ie close quarter combat, we use guns.  Yes, we *do* have (para)-military forces that are completely focused on that problem.  We call them SWAT.  They do not use swords.  There is enough random violence with melee weapons (by people not planning on getting into a fight) that if melee weapons had a place, we'd know about it.

If bows AND swords both have a place in the high-magic force, then high-tech has a total weapon dominance.  If only bows have a place, then those bows are special enough to warrant closer investigation.  If only swords, then the armor is special.  If the sword/bow armed troops are only there to die and let the bards sing about the slaughter, well...


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## Morrus (Nov 10, 2011)

Kraydak said:


> But if you run d20 Modern, then walking onto a battlefield with a non-magical sword or just plain fists is a completely valid option.  Those stats turn the question from high-tech forces vs high-magic forces into: no magic but reskinned medieval weapons forces vs medieval weapons forces with magic.
> 
> Even the case where people talk up melee weapon in the modern world, ie close quarter combat, we use guns.  Yes, we *do* have (para)-military forces that are completely focused on that problem.  We call them SWAT.  They do not use swords.  There is enough random violence with melee weapons (by people not planning on getting into a fight) that if melee weapons had a place, we'd know about it.
> 
> If bows AND swords both have a place in the high-magic force, then high-tech has a total weapon dominance.  If only bows have a place, then those bows are special enough to warrant closer investigation.  If only swords, then the armor is special.  If the sword/bow armed troops are only there to die and let the bards sing about the slaughter, well...




I didn't mention swords....

I was talking about magic spells.  Although magic bows could be relevant, too.

I agree a medieval peasant isn't going to stand much chance against a machine gun wielding modern soldier.  But a wizard might.


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## Umbran (Nov 10, 2011)

Plane Sailing said:


> I think WW1 and the advent of the machine gun showed that mass attacks against machine guns just doesn't work!




A mass attack of *real-world humans* against machine guns doesn't work.  But, that's because human beings are frail, and it typically takes a single bullet to take one of us of commission.  The spray of bullets is actually pretty diffuse, and you only land one or two bullets in any particular target in the crowd.  Much of the effect of machine guns on a charge has more to do with morale than with dishing out physical damage.

But, what if that horde isn't just like real-world humans?  Just like we have to ask how magic works in the modern world, we have to ask how the critters themselves work.  If that charge is of uruk-hai and ogres who can take several bullets before stopping, and are downright suicidal by real-world morale standards, the scene might be quite different.


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## prosfilaes (Nov 10, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> The first few clashes should be interesting, as neither side _really_ "gets" the other -- but I would give the magic-using force the advantage here, because they've presumably been scrying on the tech-using force, even if they don't understand everything they've seen or heard.




But we're having the discussion here. Any solider can tell you what a dragon is, but the goblins don't know what an airplane is. If they're so convenient as to come from a D&D world, we have Jane's Guide to Fantasy Forces (aka the Monster Manual.)



Umbran said:


> But, what if that horde isn't just like real-world humans?  Just like we  have to ask how magic works in the modern world, we have to ask how the  critters themselves work.  If that charge is of uruk-hai and ogres who  can take several bullets before stopping, and are downright suicidal by  real-world morale standards, the scene might be quite different.




Again, it's all about how you stack things. Ogres are chaotic evil; I don't think you're going to get swarms of ogres to rush artillery and machine gun nests. According to the Monstrous Manual, their morale is nothing special; it's just Steady (11-12); Solider Humans are Steady (10-12), and Mercenary Humans are Steady (11-12).) Uruk-hai might work better; I don't have D&D stats on them. On one or the other, I think you're underestimating the morale of humans; I don't think there's any evidence that humans failed to take machine-gun nests because they were too cowardly to do so.

I do question numbers. Humans could probably field an army of 100 million if it came out to all-out war. That's more than the entire population of D&D style fantasy worlds. And the population of D&D style fantasy worlds is made up mostly of 1 HD creatures. You could field an army of orcs or goblins or humans, but ogres and uruk-hai are going to be flavorings, Special Forces.

Also, that whole Geneva Convention thing? Adhering to the Geneva Convention saves the lives of your troops, because the other side is more likely to surrender to you. The fact that the Geneva Convention is vastly generous compared to anything the enemy might have known is could be extremely helpful. It gets back to the goblins that surrendering goblins get three-square meals a day, and you may get mass defections. Even the wizards might start defecting; would you rather be the chief wizard adviser to the US Air Force at some hidden base in the US or under a couple layers of command eating military rations in the field?


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 10, 2011)

Morrus said:


> You're tracking each machine gun bullet separately?  That's one fiendishly complicated RPG system!




For some reason you don't get the very simple observation I was making, and have made a series of fairly obtuse replies. Sorry, don't understand. I'll duck out of this conversation now.


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## mmadsen (Nov 15, 2011)

Morrus said:


> For the question to make sense, you'd have to give both sides equal resources; otherwise it's a no-brainer.



Yes, my first instinct is to _parameterize_ the scenario and explore what it would take to make the fight fair -- or at least interesting.  Obviously either side could win a decisive victory, depending on how we set the ground rules, but simply saying "it depends" isn't very insightful either.



Morrus said:


> I think small arms fire is in the magic's favour -_ protection from normal missiles _is a gamechanger there.  I don't know how that scales up to larger missiles, but a modern military is very heavily dependent upon "normal missiles".



In the first installment of _The Veil War_, the "goblins" clearly have something akin to _protection from normal missiles_ working for them.  Their "mojo" deflects even sniper rifle rounds -- but it doesn't seem up to the task of deflecting whole volleys of fire directed at one target.



Morrus said:


> The area where the modern side wins unquestionably is air superiority.  Even with griffin riders or dragons, the magic side has nothing that can engage a modern fighter jet - either in terms of speed or in terms of engagement range (the fighter jet can attack from miles away).  The modern side definitely dominates the air, and that's gonna make a big difference.



The second episode emphasizes that air superiority -- but only in the absence of dragons.

I'm trying to imagine how flying beasts might be superior to aircraft.  They should have nowhere near the speed and power, but they should be quite agile, and I suppose they'd have little radar or infrared signature.  Breathing fire might change that last part.  I suppose helicopters might find themselves vulnerable to being grappled by dragons, but I can't imagine a jet facing much threat, and autocannons should rip apart anything without magic armor.  Maybe a dragon would find it trivial to stay out of a fighter's line of fire?


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## mmadsen (Nov 15, 2011)

Umbran said:


> A mass attack of real-world humans against machine guns doesn't work.  But, that's because human beings are frail, and it typically takes a single bullet to take one of us of commission.  The spray of bullets is actually pretty diffuse, and you only land one or two bullets in any particular target in the crowd.  Much of the effect of machine guns on a charge has more to do with morale than with dishing out physical damage.
> 
> But, what if that horde isn't just like real-world humans?  Just like we have to ask how magic works in the modern world, we have to ask how the critters themselves work.  If that charge is of uruk-hai and ogres who can take several bullets before stopping, and are downright suicidal by real-world morale standards, the scene might be quite different.



While I largely agree with your first few points, I don't think Uruk-Hai or even Cave Trolls would have much chance of charging machine-guns, given how easily real-world cavalry horses are cut down by post-Napoleonic firearms.

There's a reason we didn't bring back the war elephant during the Great War.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 15, 2011)

> I'm trying to imagine how flying beasts might be superior to aircraft. They should have nowhere near the speed and power, but they should be quite agile, and I suppose they'd have little radar or infrared signature.




That, plus maneuverability and no gears to get jammed.

Because of their nature, many modern armaments simply wouldn't lock on to living targets...which leaves guns/cannon, which is de-emphasized in most modern air force training except helicopter gunnery, air-to-ground units, and the entire Israeli AF.


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## mmadsen (Nov 15, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Because of their nature, many modern armaments simply wouldn't lock on to living targets...which leaves guns/cannon, which is de-emphasized in most modern air force training except helicopter gunnery, air-to-ground units, and the entire Israeli AF.



Yeah, the highest of the high-tech weapons likely wouldn't work, but any kind of gunship should tear through magical beasts that came out into the open.  I'm not sure how you'd ambush a helicopter or close-air-support plane.

The author of _The Veil War_, by the way, has a Twitter feed going.  Any ideas you'd like to see in "print"?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 15, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> Yeah, the highest of the high-tech weapons likely wouldn't work, but any kind of gunship should tear through magical beasts that came out into the open.  I'm not sure how you'd ambush a helicopter or close-air-support plane.




What a gunship could or could not do to a magical creature would depend heavily on the nature of the beast in question.  What are 30mm spent uranium rounds from an A-10's  GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-type cannon going to do to an enraged Air Elemental?

As for the strike back, we lost 4 A-10s in 1991's Gulf War, all to surface to air missiles.  If you look at most magic systems, you'll find a rough equivalent.


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## coyote6 (Nov 15, 2011)

Give the magical forces common access to long-lasting versions of the GURPS spell Reverse Missiles, and things start to become painful for the tech forces (the spell does just what the name says, unerringly). 

Give the magical forces access to something like GURPS Unlimited Mana, and you may rapidly approach MAD (as spellcasters overcast so massively that they begin to alter the world).

So, as everyone's said -- it depends on ground rules. 

Standard D&D goblins don't stand a chance. It's a fairly boring experiment, though fun to game out if you're the guys with guns. Maybe try an army of elves -- fighter/magic-users with decades of training and experience, not Warrior 1s -- in goblin-like numbers.

Worse, make it the Abyss vs the real world, and things get much harder for the tech side. All of the fantasy forces' units are inherently magical -- there are no wands to swipe, or scrolls or books to learn from. Just enemies in the millions, most of which can unerringly teleport, many of which are metaphysically troublesome and frighteningly uncaring of traditional religious means of opposing them (after all, I'm pretty sure the Catholic church doesn't dump five pounds of silver dust in a jar to make one flask of holy water in the real world).

Side question: Say fantasy invaders get their butts kicked, and the real world wants to retaliate by sending forces through the gates to the other side. Once there, they learn that their tech (guns, explosives, electronics, etc.) don't work there. How quickly could a modern military gear up a medievally armed force? Imagine a fantasy armor equipped with the best swords and mail a modern industrial society could create.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 15, 2011)

Well, a lot of military forces teach HTH, basic knife fighting and the like, so they wouldn't be completely unskilled.

As for modern materials...some could prove handy.  Kevlar, DragonScale, lexan and other polycarbonates.  Heat resistant ceramics.  I don't know how much sense it would make for us to make titanium alloy blades, though.


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## mmadsen (Nov 16, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> What a gunship could or could not do to a magical creature would depend heavily on the nature of the beast in question.  What are 30mm spent uranium rounds from an A-10's  GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-type cannon going to do to an enraged Air Elemental?



Well, yes, of course what a modern weapon does to its target depends on the nature of the target -- but I used the phrase "magical beast" to imply _beast_-like creatures, rather than elementals, ghosts, slimes, etc.

Anything that would casually tear up an elephant should do the same to a dinosaur, a "realistic" dragon, a hill giant, etc.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> As for the strike back, we lost 4 A-10s in 1991's Gulf War, all to surface to air missiles.  If you look at most magic systems, you'll find a rough equivalent.



It should come as no surprise that low- and slow-flying airplanes were taken out by surface-to-air missiles; that's what those missiles are for.

Is there anything a wyvern, griffon, or giant eagle could do to a modern military aircraft though?



coyote6 said:


> Give the magical forces common access to long-lasting versions of the GURPS spell Reverse Missiles, and things start to become painful for the tech forces (the spell does just what the name says, unerringly).



I suppose the good news when faced with _reverse missiles_ is that most rounds miss in the first place...

High-explosive artillery should work, right?  Just pray that no round actually lands _right_ on target.



coyote6 said:


> Standard D&D goblins don't stand a chance. It's a fairly boring experiment, though fun to game out if you're the guys with guns. Maybe try an army of elves -- fighter/magic-users with decades of training and experience, not Warrior 1s -- in goblin-like numbers.



The _Veil War_ "goblins" seem much more like an army of (ugly) elves, _all_ armed and armored with magical gear.



coyote6 said:


> Worse, make it the Abyss vs the real world, and things get much harder for the tech side.



That would be my go-to scenario.  An army of ravenous demons, largely immune to mundane weapons, comes through the gate and nothing seems to stop them.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> Well, a lot of military forces teach HTH, basic knife fighting and the like, so they wouldn't be completely unskilled.



Modern military forces train in hand-to-hand combat a few _dozen_ hours.  After a few _hundred_ hours, they would become competent, like hobbyist martial artists who've been at it a year or two.  After a few _thousand_ hours, they would reach the level of a young warrior who grew up in a culture that treated fighting the way we treat academics.


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## El Mahdi (Nov 16, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I don't know how much sense it would make for us to make titanium alloy blades, though.




Yeah, I agree...it wouldn't make much sense at all.  Titanium anything is one of those silly tropes that seems to have life due to the idea that anything new or technological must be better.

Titanium is only used in applications where something requires strength greater than aluminum, but requiring the end product to be as light as possible, which rules out steel.

Titanium is not stronger than steel, it just has a better tensile strength to density _ratio_.  The tensile strength of steels is still 3 to 5 times higher than titanium alloys.

It's like the power to weight ratio of a vehicle.  A motorcycle may have a much better power to weight ratio than a truck, but you're still not going to be able to tow anything with the motorcycle.  Hands down, the truck is going to have more power.

That's why I always laugh when I watch the _Blade_ movies.  Blades titanium sword is about as useful as a stainless steel replica sword against a real, weapons grade steel sword.  A decent parry or strike from the steel sword is going to snap Blades sword into an useless piece of junk.

I know, a bit off topic but I couldn't help myself.


But yeah, some of our modern materials could come in quite handily.  Kevlar and other polymers, ceramics, and modern industrial techniques could be significant factors in a tech-forces chances of invading the magic-forces realms.  Our industrial capabilities would definitely allow us to make armor and weapons much faster than the other side, though we wouldn't necessarily make them of any better quality.  Even with our modern understanding of what makes steel useful in armor and weapons, I doubt we could actually improve upon the best made swords and armors made with medieval techniques. But cranking out a couple hundred to thousands of Mail shirts a day could be very advantageous.

Though for fighting against medieval weapons, I don't think Kevlar or ceramics would help in making better armor.  Against bullets they're very good.  Against slashing and piercing weapons, kevlar is just about useless.  And chopping/bludgeoning weapons (maces, axes, etc.) would likely shatter ceramics and hard polymers.

But a very interesting technological material might be very useful against medieval weapons: sheer-thickening fluid used in "liquid" body-armors.  That could make very light and flexible armors that are as protective as full plate!


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## El Mahdi (Nov 16, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> Is there anything a wyvern, griffon, or giant eagle could do to a modern military aircraft though?




They could make for one hell of a _bird_strike_!


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 16, 2011)

I was thinking of the ceramics for making heat-resistant tile armor plates...you know why!


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## coyote6 (Nov 16, 2011)

What non-armament technologies and gizmos would be useful for fighting fantasyland?

Nomex suits, for soldiers tasked with eliminating pyromaniac wizards. 

Big fans, for blowing their stinking/poisonous/solid/acid fogs back at 'em (or at least apart).

Herbicides and crop-dusters, for those pesky druids.

Ooh, what could modern armies do against the classic Natural Spell-enabled wild shaped druid? Kill every animal you see? That would be a bit much -- win the war and exterminate a few species. How could you distinguish a shapeshifter from a real animal? (Assuming that the shapeshifting actually works, and doesn't have some odd thermographic signature or the like.)

How much would modern marketing and similar psy-ops techniques help? The average American grows up in a blizzard of marketing and ads and propaganda; Joe Medieval's got a couple of lords and priests. Memetic warfare for the win!


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## El Mahdi (Nov 16, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I was thinking of the ceramics for making heat-resistant tile armor plates...you know why!




Oh Yeah! I understand.  They'd be great against fire breathing dragons, fireballs, lightning bolts, scorching ray, etc.

Taking that the other way also, IR missiles with a few programming/sensor tweaks could probably target fire breathing dragons.

I was just taking it into the personal armor realm due to concepts of future armors that are being worked on.  Specifically one's using ceramic plates for protection, along with electric "muscles" and exo-skeletons for strength enhancement.

Something else that might be cool is if the high tech forces start understanding the high-magic forces abilities and magic a bit (as some have posited earlier in the thread), they may be able to develop anti-magic missiles (technology-magic hybrid devices).  A missile with a detect magic spell on it would be the fantasy version of a HARM missile (anti-radar missile).  A Wizard starts casting and all of the sudden - BAM!


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## mmadsen (Nov 17, 2011)

The _Veil War_'s author has commented on our little thread:
One of the most interesting things in laying out the background for this story is coming up with a plausible rationale for high-powered fantasy infantry. If the invading goblin hordes were equipped like the Swiss Landesknecten, or Roman Legions, or an early Medieval spear levy they would stand exactly no chance against the modern-style military in a stand up battle. Hell, look what happened to Saddam’s army in ’91 and he was equipped with technology only a few decades, not centuries, behind the current state of American military art. The battle of 73 Easting was a turkey shoot.

If you have an army, even a very large army, of essentially non-magical creatures with a few chocolate-y nuggets of magic embedded within, the non-magical part gets rapidly attrited until all that is left is a few powerful magical creatures or wizards in the middle of an abattoir being targeted with lots and lots of artillery, missiles and – if all else fails – small tactical nukes.

I looked at it this way. If you live in a world where magic works, magic will be part of the way you live your life. You – or the skilled craftsmen and enchanters who make your stuff – will begin to include magic in everything. First in the high value artifacts, eventually in damn near anything. Look at what’s happened with computer chips here in our world. First, they were used for extremely critical national defense needs like decryption and calculating atomic bombs. Later, big business started using mainframes. Later still, personal computers. And finally, there’s chips in your toaster and throwaway toys from Happy Meals.

This doesn’t mean that every fantasy world dweller is a wizard that can cast a fireball any more than every American citizen is a Chinese or Indian integrated circuit designer. But the residents of the fantasy worlds will increasingly, over time, benefit from the diffusion of magic into smaller and smaller crevices of their lives, barring only some cultural prohibition on the use of magic or some sort of serious side effects from prolonged magic exposure akin to the brain tumors we all get from using cell phones. (You don’t have a brain tumor? Wow, lucky you.)

So a fantasy army that has ubiquitous magic is not one where everyone is a wizard, but rather one where everyone has access to reasonably powerful magical artifacts – enchanted armor, enchanted weapons, etc. And that eliminates one major advantage of a modern military force – the fact that each American soldier or Marine possesses an automatic weapon that can shoot very far and very fast.

Other issues, like logistics, air power, long range artillery – well, we’ll have to deal with that, too. But we haven’t even added dragons and wizards to the mix yet.​


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## Umbran (Nov 17, 2011)

prosfilaes said:


> I do question numbers. Humans could probably field an army of 100 million if it came out to all-out war.




Stepping a bit back but... no-way, no-how.

I think you vastly underestimate the logistics behind extending force.  Those people have to be moved, supplied with gear, and, most importantly, fed.  

This Thanksgiving, it is estimated that 42 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home.  And that travel is distributed over the entire nation, not all at one spot - it is spread through all the planes, trains, and highways, and it'll still be massively crowded.

Now, try to move more than double the number of people, and put them all in one spot, so most of them are traveling a lot more than 50 miles.  There is no place on the planet set up to handle that kind of influx in anything like short order.  In addition, continuously move a hundred million gallons of water and a three hundred million pounds of food *EACH DAY* to those people.  And, get all these people their guns, and medical care for when they've been rent asunder by an ogre...

Oh, and move and feed all the people to support the fighters, as well.  

No.  That's just not happening.


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## mmadsen (Nov 17, 2011)

Umbran said:


> I think you vastly underestimate the logistics behind extending force.  Those people have to be moved, supplied with gear, and, most importantly, fed.



I thought that would be one of the most terrifying advantages of a monstrous army.  How do you feed an army of monsters?  Not by bringing along rations...


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## Umbran (Nov 17, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> I thought that would be one of the most terrifying advantages of a monstrous army.  How do you feed an army of monsters?  Not by bringing along rations...




That hadn't occurred to me, but you're right.  Gives them a good motivation to advance, rather than retreat.  If you retreat, you're leaving dinner behind on the battlefield.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 17, 2011)

Fantasy monsters- at least certain ones- would benefit greatly from "The Dodo Effect"- the creatures of this world may simply not recognize them for the threat they are, making them easy prey, at least initially.

Imagine, for instance, a necromancer releasing a single Shadow (or another caster summoning a demon that could spawn) inside a major metropolitan area.  By the time the threat is recognized, the battle for that city may have passed the tipping point.

Assuming, arguenndo, that this world's forces can even combat such beings.

(See Terry Brooks' _Knight of the Word_ books to see how THAT plays out.)


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## Umbran (Nov 17, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Imagine, for instance, a necromancer releasing a single Shadow (or another caster summoning a demon that could spawn) inside a major metropolitan area.  By the time the threat is recognized, the battle for that city may have passed the tipping point.




Yah.  Everyone talks about how the modern military could drop a tacnuke.  The other side of that is a shadow or wight teleported into NYC's Central Park.


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## prosfilaes (Nov 17, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Stepping a bit back but... no-way, no-how.




I went to look up the numbers ... and 100 million is a low estimate. We've been there, done that. That's how many people the world had under arms in WWII. No, not on one battlefield, and that includes support... but the population of Faerûn is less than 50 million (FRCS, 3ed). We can win a battle of attrition.



Dannyalcatraz said:


> Imagine, for instance, a necromancer releasing a single Shadow (or  another caster summoning a demon that could spawn) inside a major  metropolitan area.  By the time the threat is recognized, the battle for  that city may have passed the tipping point.




What are their goals? That's the equivalent of dropping a nuke on a city, except that turns the enemy civilians into creatures that can destroy your troops on a touch and is spreading from city to city. Unless you've got serious magical backup, that could burn the invaders.

Not only that, if we haven't started using nukes, we will. Oh, and do they have DNA, because biological warfare is back on the table, and goblin-specific plagues are now looking amazingly safe. If they thought they could keep any country uninvolved or neutral, I don't think any nation is going to be comfortable while the invaders are dropping spawning undead in cities.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 18, 2011)

> Not only that, if we haven't started using nukes, we will.




I actually raised the _*ahem*_ specter of using WMDs early on.

In addition, we have other weapons that would be a surprise for fantasy forces.  We have vertigo-inducing lasers if you want tomb non-violent, and lasers that can lunch through steel if you don't.

We are also making great strides in sonic warfare, and have deployable weapons that use focused sound, high pitched piercing noises, and lethal dBs of volume.  Some even use subsonics...also capable of non-lethal or lethal effects.

Bottom line: both sides have weapons and tactics at their disposal that the other side is poorly prepared to deal with, at least initially.  The deciding factors will be who uses which of those weapons first, and how broadly such tactics get used.

If, for instance, someone reading this thread happened to have their finger on "The Button" when the invasion occurred, he might go nuclear even before a magical breach-head could be established.


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## KiloGex (Nov 18, 2011)

I'm pretty sure that if you put a group of 5th level wizards against a military company that magic would win over tech.  Just look at the spell lists:  Dimensional Door, Ball Lightning, Mass Fly, Fiendform, Death Throes, Metal Melt, Forcewave, Orb of Force, Dragon Polymorph, Wall of Force.  A small group of wizards would be able to destroy a military base in no time, before they even knew what was going on.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 18, 2011)

KiloGex said:


> I'm pretty sure that if you put a group of 5th level wizards against a military company that magic would win over tech.  Just look at the spell lists:  Dimensional Door, Ball Lightning, Mass Fly, Fiendform, Death Throes, Metal Melt, Forcewave, Orb of Force, Dragon Polymorph, Wall of Force.  A small group of wizards would be able to destroy a military base in no time, before they even knew what was going on.



OTOH, a military company can engage an identified target from over the horizon.

I can just see the wizards sitting there making their war plans, when one says, "Hey, anybody else hear a high-pitched whistling noise?"


_**BOOOOOOOOOOOM**_


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## prosfilaes (Nov 18, 2011)

KiloGex said:


> I'm pretty sure that if you put a group of 5th level wizards against a military company that magic would win over tech.  Just look at the spell lists:  Dimensional Door, Ball Lightning, Mass Fly, Fiendform, Death Throes, Metal Melt, Forcewave, Orb of Force, Dragon Polymorph, Wall of Force.  A small group of wizards would be able to destroy a military base in no time, before they even knew what was going on.




As 5th level mage, you don't have Dimensional Door; that's a fourth level spell. Mass Fly is 5th level, IIRC; in any case, certainly higher than the 3rd level Fly. Orb of Force is also 4th level.

I think your plan of attack would fail dramatically. A 5th level wizard with an 18 Int has 4 first, 3 second and 2 third level spells. Even assuming 3d4 + 3 or 5d6 is enough to drop a trained Marine (i.e. Marines are all first level with no Con bonus), each Marine has more bullets then each wizards has spells. And there's a lot more Marines than wizards. Sooner or later, each wizard is going to run out of spells and is going to run into a small group of soldiers that have been alerted through phone or walkie-talkie, and is going to get shot repeatedly. 

(And realistically, if you're using D&D-ish rules, some of the guys on our side of the portal should be high level, too. If fantasy world gets an unlimited supply of 5th level wizards, the real world should get a bunch of 5th level fighters. Yes, if all the real world people can be taken down by a high-level magic missile, and you're invading with a bunch of forces that can shake off the 2d12 the .50 cal sniper rifle can do, then things are a little stacked.)


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## Verdande (Nov 18, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Stepping a bit back but... no-way, no-how.
> 
> I think you vastly underestimate the logistics behind extending force.  Those people have to be moved, supplied with gear, and, most importantly, fed.
> 
> ...




You are vastly underestimating the world's capability for organization, movement, and discipline. You're probably imagining a massive crush of people, milling about and throwing ammunition at each other, but it's really more of clockwork.

You'd have people organize into their units, standing in lines to receive their gear, their food, their weapons, their water, sitting through breifings, getting into airplanes, and going where they need to go. Very orderly, very boring, very organized. 

"But it's a lot of units all at once!" No, it sure isn't. It's one unit at a time, through redundant military airports, processing stations, armories, and centers. First the recon units, then the base constructing guys, then the security elements, then the main army force, then you rotate each of those units out. 

Now, I don't know how difficult it would be to move 100 million people, per se, especially considering that the US' military strength is 1 or 2 million people. The real point is that it's entirely possible for everybody in the world, from every country, to field 100 million people. I can't think of a single reason we'd need 100 million people around, especially when we're dealing with high-explosive rounds, ICBMs, tanks, artillery, ship-board bombardments, aircraft and aircraft carriers, and the like; or when you consider the fact that the US alone probably has enough conventional explosives stockpiled to turn a medium-sized country into glass.

But I'm pretty sure it could be done. 

The reason that Thanksgiving is such a mess is that it's totally disorganized, with people taking less optimal routes, not considering the travel plans of others, and travelling down a totally decentralized system and going who the hell knows where. When you organize properly, you get a lot more done, and that's kind of the one thing the military is good at.

I could go into it more, but I'm already afraid I've gone rather into more depth than I'd intended.


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## apoptosis (Nov 18, 2011)

prosfilaes said:


> I went to look up the numbers ... and 100 million is a low estimate. We've been there, done that. That's how many people the world had under arms in WWII. No, not on one battlefield, and that includes support... but the population of Faerûn is less than 50 million (FRCS, 3ed). We can win a battle of attrition.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Goblin-specific plagues is not really on the table unless we are talking basically science fiction. 

Having done lots of genetic engineering and molecular biology in my time with many different types of vectors, this while possible is venturing into the science fiction arena.

If goblins are too similar then you are just making a disease that can kill anyone. If they are too different any virus (or bacteria) from our world might not be viable to replicate in them. We could potentially try and isolate plagues (i use that term very loosely to include virus, bacteria, fungus etc.) that are endemic to their world and modify them but that is most likely a very long road that would most likely be unproductive.

While theoretically possible this strategy would  not be easy, doubtfully very efficient, likely not very effective, and most likely would not work very well if at all.


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## tomBitonti (Nov 19, 2011)

What worries me are scenarios like:

Make a Pact with an Imp

Send him to a nearby base with instructions to find the enemy's biggest weapons, and make them blow up (inside the base) to the best effect for killing the enemy and destroying the base.

Do that for the next seven days, or until there is no-one left to kill at the base.

Try very hard to not be discovered, and kill anyone that discovers you.

Imps are easy to distract, of slightly less than average intelligence, and maybe not the best at this, even though they can turn into rats at will.  But, at CR2 / 3 HD are about the cheapest that can be used in this way.

Better, but a lot more expensive, would be an Erinyes (CR 8, 9 HD), with all of: 

Damage reduction 5/good, darkvision 60 ft., immunity to fire and poison, resistance to acid 10 and cold 10, see in darkness, spell resistance 20, telepathy 100 ft., true seeing, 

Plus:

Str 21, Dex 21, Con 21, Int 14, Wis 18, Cha 20

And:

At will—greater teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), charm monster (DC 19), minor image (DC 17), unholy blight (DC 19).

Should probably be able to do a huge amount of damage.

A problem there of making sure the Erinyes carried through the mission appropriately.

Also, with:

Unlike other devils, erinyes appear attractive to humans, resembling very comely women or men. An erinyes stands about 6 feet tall and weighs about 150 pounds.

An Erinyes could possible go in for extended information gathering, so to get an understanding of the modern humans capabilities, so to find the most devestating attack.

Still a problem of controlling the Erinyes ... since model humans have so much modern stuff, and, have a huge number of souls for the taking.

The combination of Greater Teleport, Telepathy, Charm Monster, plus the high Int, Wis, and Cha, seem to make for the danger.

TomB

Edit: This may seem unfair, using modern own stuff against the modern folks, but that, along with the relative fragility of some systems, seems to be their  biggest weakness.  Their biggest defense is probably simply the opponent's lack of understanding of modern capabilities.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 19, 2011)

> Send him to a nearby base with instructions to find the enemy's biggest weapons, and make them blow up (inside the base) to the best effect for killing the enemy and destroying the base.




You're thinking like a RW human- how would the caster or Imp know that a particular weapon "blows up?"  Could they even recognize the weapon for what it is?


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## prosfilaes (Nov 19, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> You're thinking like a RW human- how would the caster or Imp know that a particular weapon "blows up?"  Could they even recognize the weapon for what it is?




And modern bombs are no longer big piles of gunpowder; many of them can only be detonated by an electric charge, not heat, fire or impact. And there's not going to be ways to detonate them just laying around; they're designed to be dropped or launched, not blown up on base.

One question that keeps coming to mind is where's the other side? If a cleric of Nerull is importing shadows to New York City, where's the cleric of Pelor trying to stop him? Even one cleric with points in knowledge skills could be a huge boon to the real world, and it probably wouldn't be hard for him to gain some converts in this situation.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 19, 2011)

> ...where's the cleric of Pelor trying to stop him?




He'll show up naked in another city, and be mistaken for a crazy person. 

Which makes me ask this question: what happens if, by extreme coincidence, the arcane invasion occurs just as SkyNet goes actively malignant?  If its bad enough, it radically changes the narrative- suddenly, the arcane invaders must team up with the remnants of humanity to stop the Terminators...


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## tomBitonti (Nov 19, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> You're thinking like a RW human- how would the caster or Imp know that a particular weapon "blows up?"  Could they even recognize the weapon for what it is?






prosfilaes said:


> And modern bombs are no longer big piles of gunpowder; many of them can only be detonated by an electric charge, not heat, fire or impact. And there's not going to be ways to detonate them just laying around; they're designed to be dropped or launched, not blown up on base.




I'd say that Telepathy and Charm Monster would let the Erinyes know how to make stuff blow up.

I think this answers a lot of the rest:



tomBitonti said:


> Their biggest defense is probably simply the opponent's lack of understanding of modern capabilities.




That is, the big problem here (for both sides) is knowledge.  There will be hugely different results depending on whether both sides are unknowing, knowing, or if one side knows but the other doesn't know their opponents capabilities.

If the Erinyes came across years before the invasion, that would be a big deal.  Or, if both sides started the fight expecting the same sort of opponents as themselves.

A big problem would be either side's actual ability to even comprehend the others capabilities.  

Here's a different scenario: Lawful Evil cleric, 11'th level, goes undercover and offers to provide healing (in particular, *Heal*) to recruit turncoats.  At 13'th level, you can add in *Regenerate* and start giving folks back lost limbs or organs.

Thx!


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## Gentlegamer (Nov 19, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Gygax's "masses of 0th levellers" approach to feudal men-at-arms seems to have been derived from WW2 conscript armies*



Probably more inspired by Napoleonic armies.

The knight certainly trained longer than conscripts, but his real counterpart in modern warfare are special ops units, like Delta Force or Navy Seals, if we're talking about years of training and experience.

Even in his day, the knight was eventually bested by the development of pikemen and gunmen formations employed by 'less well trained' troops. It's not as much about the years of training but the 'state of war-tech.'


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## S'mon (Nov 19, 2011)

Gentlegamer said:


> Probably more inspired by Napoleonic armies.
> 
> The knight certainly trained longer than conscripts, but his real counterpart in modern warfare are special ops units, like Delta Force or Navy Seals, if we're talking about years of training and experience.




Special Ops to an extent; but also elite line units like US Airborne Rangers & Marine Force Recon, UK Parachute Regiment & Royal Marines; not just ultra-elites like SAS, SBS, Delta Force & SEALs.  Knights did after all form the main force component of many armies.


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## Gentlegamer (Nov 19, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Special Ops to an extent; but also elite line units like US Airborne Rangers & Marine Force Recon, UK Parachute Regiment & Royal Marines; not just ultra-elites like SAS, SBS, Delta Force & SEALs.  Knights did after all form the main force component of many armies.



Yeah, the comparison isn't perfect due to the nature of war and roles in it. During the knight's time, his armor and steed made him nearly invincible to anything except another knight (until tech and tactics caught up and dethroned him as supreme on the battlefield). I guess my point is that there are very highly trained components of modern military that are what knights should be compared to instead of the rank-and-file enlisted/drafted.


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## Morrus (Nov 19, 2011)

prosfilaes said:


> One question that keeps coming to mind is where's the other side? If a cleric of Nerull is importing shadows to New York City, where's the cleric of Pelor trying to stop him? Even one cleric with points in knowledge skills could be a huge boon to the real world, and it probably wouldn't be hard for him to gain some converts in this situation.




Why would there be a cleric of Pelor trying to stop him?  If we hand the modern forces free magic, then we have to hand the fantasy forces free technology.  And that kinda makes the whole discussion moot - both forces are the same at that point.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 19, 2011)

> I'd say that Telepathy and Charm Monster would let the Erinyes know how to make stuff blow up.




Yes, it lets the Eryines know what the Wiz does...but how do the invaders find out in the first place?

Simply put, sabotaging modern munitions requires a steep learning curve, and in many cases, may not be possible in the way you envision.

A nuke requires 2 people with passwords, launch codes, and physical keys...not to mention access passes.  A modern artillery shell has to have its fuses set properly.

Heck, even our explosives aren't so simple anymore: I recently saw a demo of a high explosive you can actually set on fire- and it will burn quite nicely- but will not explode without the proper type of fuse.


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## tomBitonti (Nov 19, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Yes, it lets the Eryines know what the Wiz does...but how do the invaders find out in the first place?
> 
> Simply put, sabotaging modern munitions requires a steep learning curve, and in many cases, may not be possible in the way you envision.
> 
> ...




Agreed on the first part, or, at least, that there is a knowledge/understanding problem.  That goes to my point: How quickly does either side get an understanding of how the other side works?

I wasn't yet considering nukes.  Just, say, how to take out a base with normal equipment.  So no nukes, or chemical weapons.

If a devil with greater teleport (teleport without error) got several hundred pounds of high explosive in small parcels, with detonators and enough instruction to use them, I'd think they would have a very good chance of demolishing an airbase, or at least, of taking away any combat capability.  A fuel depo would seem to be another easy target.  Command and control is probably too distributed to completely take out.  But, I think that a lot of the more advanced capabilities would be removed from the modern forces in short order.  In particular, any equipment with high supply costs.

TomB


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 19, 2011)

> If a devil with greater teleport (teleport without error) got several hundred pounds of high explosive in small parcels, with detonators and enough instruction to use them, I'd think they would have a very good chance of demolishing an airbase, or at least, of taking away any combat capability. A fuel depo would seem to be another easy target. Command and control is probably too distributed to completely take out. But, I think that a lot of the more advanced capabilities would be removed from the modern forces in short order. In particular, any equipment with high supply costs.




Again, the problem is getting the knowledge.

Shapechanging & charm effects makes it easier to gain, to be sure, but not _easy._. There is a time factor, for one.  Second, there is a discipline factor- demons might relish the potential of learning methods of modern warfare, given its destructive capability, but may lack the discipline & patience- and may relish personal combat too much- to actually follow through.


Devils, OTOH...maybe.

But if you look at THEIR powers and abilities, they would have some difficulty infiltrating a base to get the necessary knowledge in the first place.


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## Stalker0 (Nov 19, 2011)

I think people are seriously underestimating either sides ability to gain knowledge and adapt.

It is amazing how fast you learn about someone when they are actively trying to kill you.

That brings up a facet of this conversation I had not considered before: Magical bonus to intelligence and charisma.

Think about this: Imagine a headband of intellect + 6 being placed on the magic sides smartest guy. That would create an equivalent intelligence that the tech side has never seen (an int so high to make Einstein blush).

Or a charisma one, making a leader so charismatic and inspirational that people would follow him to the death (and we already have leaders like that, imagine them supercharged).


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## Roland55 (Nov 19, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I'm not sure I agree there, unless one is of the school of thought that guns do more damage than swords.  A sword in the head is just as bad as a bullet.




Does it ever!

Still got a dent on my pate that proves that.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 19, 2011)

> I think people are seriously underestimating either sides ability to gain knowledge and adapt.
> 
> It is amazing how fast you learn about someone when they are actively trying to kill you.




Not me- but I also recognize their limitations.

1) Looking at the arcane invaders: assuming a mixed race force means fewer individuals who look human enough to infiltrate.  Magic alleviates this somewhat, but not completely.  Other means like screwing have limitations of range and their own peculiarities.

On the tech side, we have ridiculous satellite imagery, but it doesn't get you audio.  By definition, there would be no transmissions epwe could monitor.  Special forces can do some infiltration, but will have limitations of their own.

2) There is the language barrier: Common probably isn't English...or Chinese or any other language of our world, so your cryptographers would have to go to work.  This isn't easy for them, either- remember how much trouble the Germans had breaking transmissions in Navajo and other Native American tongues?  So an infiltrating agent- assuming he could pass off his inability to communicate as a personal deficiency- would probably have only the most basic understanding of operations.  He could relate all of what he saw, but none of what he heard.  Bugs have the same limitation.

And, of course, the same problem exists for the invaders, only amplified by the fact that so little of what we do resembles what they would.  A medieval/fantasy war camp operates very differently than a modern base...or even a mobile camp.  An infiltrating invader would not see field forges or men actually _building_ weapons.  He could find the machinists, but would have difficulty distinguishing between parts destined for attack choppers and those meant for jeeps...or which machines are the most crucial for making those parts.

3) Then there is the nature of the knowledge you need to acquire.

Both tech and magic have analogous limitations: any truly dangerous knowledge takes a lot of time to acquire and understand.  To fight magic with magic requires study of the language, rituals and rules of magic; to fight tech with tech requires actually understanding the tech.


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## tomBitonti (Nov 19, 2011)

Stalker0 said:


> Think about this: Imagine a headband of intellect + 6 being placed on the magic sides smartest guy. That would create an equivalent intelligence that the tech side has never seen (an int so high to make Einstein blush).




I was wondering what happens if you mix this: Give a +6 Int Headband to, say,  Feynman.  Mix modern information processing (e.g., computers, heavy duty collaboration through universities, high speed communications) with magical augmentation.  Or, if you put in instantaneous communications matrices in computers as their main bus.

TomB


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## Leatherhead (Nov 20, 2011)

mmadsen said:


> How would you imagine a fight between a D&D-style horde and modern military forces?




The horde would take over an area the size of a small country or state.
Then a group of adventurers (A mix of special forces, mercenaries, desperate resistance members, and some layabouts along for the ride) would take out the entire horde.

That's how stories and campaigns always work. You would need like 14 people tops.


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## prosfilaes (Nov 20, 2011)

tomBitonti said:


> A big problem would be either side's actual ability to even comprehend the others capabilities.




Let's see; we're having this discussion. I think we win.



Morrus said:


> Why would there be a cleric of Pelor trying to  stop him?




Because that's what clerics of Pelor do. If there's a real world behind the invading fantasy forces, they've got to deal with the constraints of that real world, and one of the constraints of a D&D world is that evil gods have good gods opposing them.



> If we hand the modern forces free magic, then we have to hand  the fantasy forces free technology.  And that kinda makes the whole  discussion moot - both forces are the same at that point.




That's like saying the Napoleonic forces and English forces were the same at Waterloo, so the discussion is moot.

One 8th-level cleric of Pelor converting, even if he can change people into first level clerics by opening his mouth, it won't make the sides equal. And one of the advantages the real world will has is that it can attract people from the fantasy side better than vice versa.


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## Hussar (Nov 21, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> He'll show up naked in another city, and be mistaken for a crazy person.
> 
> Which makes me ask this question: what happens if, by extreme coincidence, the arcane invasion occurs just as SkyNet goes actively malignant?  If its bad enough, it radically changes the narrative- suddenly, the arcane invaders must team up with the remnants of humanity to stop the Terminators...




Heh, isn't that the basis for Shadowrun?


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## Hussar (Nov 21, 2011)

prosfilaes said:


> /snip
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Honestly, I think this is a fair point.  We do have to be a bit more specific about what the Fantasy force is.  Unlike our world, FantasyLand has alignments that have actual, real impacts.  Dropping undead bombs is something that Good aligned forces won't do.

Granted, the nuclear option is pretty problematic too, but, honestly, mostly unnecessary anyway.  Fuel Air Explosives are every bit as effective against virtually anything that FantasyLand armies can field.  Never mind what you could do with helicopters.

As far as anything flying goes, you don't need to shoot them.  Fly by at about Mach 2 and they go KERSPLAT in the sonic boom.  The shock wave rips the wings off of any large flier quite nicely and, while an Air Elemental is quick, it's nowhere near that fast.  Not sure how supersonic forces would affect it, but, I'm thinking it would get ripped to shreds.

But, at the end of the day, my vote is on the Technologicals simply for logistics.  The Technologicals can replaces anything on the field at a rate that the Fantasylands can't even remotely match.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 21, 2011)

> But, at the end of the day, my vote is on the Technologicals simply for logistics. The Technologicals can replaces anything on the field at a rate that the Fantasylands can't even remotely match.




...except spawning undead and gate-opening extraplanars.

ESPECIALLY Extraplanars wily and patient enough to reach out to our own occultists and teaching _them_ to open gates.*









* if that is possible.  If the practice of magic requires "the gift" or long-term exposure to a reality steeped in magic or some such, that factor may be lacking in most if not all of our population.


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## prosfilaes (Nov 21, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> ...except spawning undead and gate-opening extraplanars.




That takes defining what type of force we're fighting. Goblins probably aren't going start summoning undead and demons; even if they can, unless they have them under control, the demons/undead will conquer or kill the goblins. If we're fighting things that have unlimited access to extraplanar forces, that's an entirely different matter. 



> ESPECIALLY Extraplanars wily and patient enough to reach out to our own occultists and teaching _them_ to open gates.*




If we're fighting extraplanars, we might be in trouble. However, it wouldn't be long before individual occultists, or even a whole group of them, realized they were on the wrong side and told everything they knew to our side. Depending on how it worked, we could easily open gates to the Upper Planes, which would presumably swarm through to fight the demons.

Seriously, I think opening free gates to the lower planes is outside the realm of the discussion. I thought this was a fight with forces from a Toril/Oerth-style fantasy world, not forces from Hades.


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## Hussar (Nov 21, 2011)

Yeah, I gotta go with prosfilaes on this one.  Heck, depending on system/setting, Fantasyland casters could possibly call down a god (or possibly more than one).  At that point, ok, yup, Fantasyland wins.

There would need to be some pretty seriously set parameters.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 21, 2011)

> Goblins probably aren't going start summoning undead and demons; even if they can, unless they have them under control, the demons/undead will conquer or kill the goblins.



Of course.

But if they are especially devoted to Maglubiyet, the entire point of the goblin invasion may be for the purpose of summoning him and his extraplanars minions into our world, to reshape it as a paradise for goblinkind.

In that case, that kind of magic would be part of their plan, and prep work for his great summoning ritual could begin as soon as the beachead was established.


> However, it wouldn't be long before individual occultists, or even a whole group of them, realized they were on the wrong side and told everything they knew to our side.




That is assuming that they are, in D&D parlance, "good."  And/or sane.

Besides, open a gate for the wrong being or the wrong place, and one gate might be all it takes to seal our doom...


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## tomBitonti (Nov 21, 2011)

Originally Posted by tomBitonti 

A big problem would be either side's actual ability to even comprehend the others capabilities.



prosfilaes said:


> Let's see; we're having this discussion. I think we win.




I dunno, we don't have exactly a lot of agreement.  And, we have years of detailed knowledge about the fantasy forces.  And, there seem to be pretty experienced armed forces members on the boards, to contribute the modern outlook.

Who's to say there aren't mages who have spent a lifetime (or two or three) pondering separate realities, such that our own is only a minor variation.  An ancient archmage, in 3.5E, would easily have a 28 Int, (or 33 with wishes, if that bonus stacks, not sure about that), and might consider our modern systems a trifle compared to the awesome complexity of high magic.

I do need to go back on one of my earlier points, in that, an infiltrator could easily sabotage a base with their own explosives.  The level of partitioning and redundancy in controls would make that an extensive endeavor.  Not impossible, but requiring a lot of investigation and piecing together of bits of information.  And then, if it took too long, the detailed answer (say, codewords) might change in the time it took to figure out.

On the other hand, a basic force of goblinoids, without a lot of magical support, should be quite easily demolished.  I'd think, any visible force concentrations would be destroyed in a matter of hours, what with satellite imaging and cruise missiles, air superiority, and the like.  Perhaps the limit there is the extant arsenal.

A problem, though, is that D&D hardly considers major issues for mass warfare: Command and control; logistics; morale.  We have no meaningful definition of how a true combined force (mundane + magic + extraordinary creatures) would be put together, managed, or supplied.  The rules pretty much avoid those sorts of issues, as most folks don't want to play a management game.

Also, a lot of creature abilities are tuned for their being one encounter foes.  A devil with teleport at will and at will abilities ought to never get pinned down in a fight, if it can be helped.  That is, using one encounter statted creatures in extended fights is a misuse of those creatures: They are rather overpowered as extended foes.  (Meaning my devil example from before isn't really a fair example.)

TomB


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## prosfilaes (Nov 21, 2011)

tomBitonti said:


> I dunno, we don't have exactly a lot of agreement.  And, we have years of detailed knowledge about the fantasy forces.  And, there seem to be pretty experienced armed forces members on the boards, to contribute the modern outlook.




Try "We're going to teleport some number of pre-21st century forces from somewhere and somewhen to somewhere now. How do you fight them?" You're not going to get a lot of agreement on that, either.



> Who's to say there aren't mages who have spent a lifetime (or two or three) pondering separate realities, such that our own is only a minor variation.  An ancient archmage, in 3.5E, would easily have a 28 Int,




? I get 26=18+5 level bonuses + 3 for venerable. Which, funny enough, is the same I get for an ancient engineer in the RW. The +6 headband is what's going to make the difference, and possibly +2 for the right subspecies of elf.



> might consider our modern systems a trifle compared to the awesome complexity of high magic.




And never think of engineering a steam engine so people will stop bothering him for flying carpets? Personally, I'm rather sceptical of high intelligence being so useful; in real life, really intelligent people seem to lose touch with reality unless they've got a community to bounce stuff off of and to disagree with them.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 21, 2011)

> A devil with teleport at will and at will abilities ought to never get pinned down in a fight, if it can be helped. That is, using one encounter statted creatures in extended fights is a misuse of those creatures: They are rather overpowered as extended foes. (Meaning my devil example from before isn't really a fair example.)




What creatures & tactics get used depend highly on the goals of the invaders.

Devotees of Maglubliet hoping to transform our world into Goblinhalla will use differing tactics and "special forces"- spell, magical creatures, etc.- from a nihilistic death cult hoping only for destruction and the triumph of entropy.  The latter would have no qualms about releasing the most destructive beings and spells they know of upon this world.


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## tomBitonti (Nov 21, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> What creatures & tactics get used depend highly on the goals of the invaders.




Yes, but, when those tactics are based on the creature's abilities, and when those abilities are artificially placed (e.g., as a part of a narrative package for a single combat, *not* as an opponent free to use their ability over a long period of time), that makes for an artificial result.

That is, a lot of creatures (and spells, and abilities) just don't work if taken out of the context of small skirmishes.  Put another, world building on top of abilities that don't scale beyond a skirmish is bound to break, and, I would imagine, rather quickly.  (One classic case is Wall of Iron, or Fabricate.  The extreme virulence of undead such as ghouls and shadows, or of were-creatures, is another.)

Heck, that is one of the complaints about the 4E POL setting (or even generally about D&D): Commoners have just about zero chance in a world with escalating CR opponents out there.  High CR critters will mow down the lowbies in no time at all.

Then, to ask what will happen when a horde of goblins crosses a portal into our world, there is a lot of stuff that needs to be added to get the details to work out so that the forces are close to comparable.

TomB


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## Hussar (Nov 22, 2011)

tomBitoni's point gets made quite easily with the Undead spawning powers.  Even in a D&D setting, they don't make a lick of sense once you take them out of the context of small scale skirmishes.  We'd have a zombipocalypse every single time if undead really worked that way.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Nov 22, 2011)

Hussar said:


> tomBitoni's point gets made quite easily with the Undead spawning powers.  Even in a D&D setting, they don't make a lick of sense once you take them out of the context of small scale skirmishes.  We'd have a zombipocalypse every single time if undead really worked that way.



Yes & no.

As written, their spawning powers ARE a bit über, perhaps.

But in their "natural" environment, there are all kinds of foes who know the signs of their presence and who work tirelessly to eradicate them.  Even most commoners would be aware of the basics of undead lore, and would not hesitate to raise the alarm.


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## Hussar (Nov 22, 2011)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Yes & no.
> 
> As written, their spawning powers ARE a bit über, perhaps.
> 
> But in their "natural" environment, there are all kinds of foes who know the signs of their presence and who work tirelessly to eradicate them.  Even most commoners would be aware of the basics of undead lore, and would not hesitate to raise the alarm.




Perhaps?  A single hit from any level draining undead will kill 90% of the population.  Any 1 HD creature hit with a single negative level automatically dies.  It then spawns in about 30 seconds as a full fledged monster of whatever killed it (or perhaps a wight if the spawning isn't specifiied).  No saving throw, no recourse.

By the time any alarm was raised, you'd have an army of undead on your hands.  Double the number of undead every minute or so - that gives the undead lots of time to find and kill another victim.

Never mind what humans might do to protect themselves, any humanoid works.  A single spectre in a town would decimate the town in a single evening.

I think that's what TomBitoni is pointing at.


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## pippenainteasy (May 21, 2012)

It would be very ugly in a direct conflict. 

Take a standard 120mm tank shell, it can penetrate close to 30 inches of solid steel. That's equivalent of 230 inches of organic flesh (7.85 vs 1.01 density). Divide that by width of an average human and multiply that by 8 hit points per, and 1 tank shell is doing over 200 points of damage.

A tank can fire about once a round (6 second reload time). 2-3 tanks can take down an Ancient Dragon within 3 turns. And unless your name is Tiamat, you probably can't dish out enough damage to take out a single tank by the time you are out. And there are about 20,000 modern main battle tanks used worldwide. I don't know how many ancient dragons there are, but I doubt Faerun has more than a few dozen.


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## Loonook (May 21, 2012)

Rise from the (thread) grave!

The whole problem with most rules for Modern weapons are that, well, they suck.  Atomic bombs do quite a bit of damage... But most ballistics are actually turned away by a Protection from Arrows spell (per the D20 Modern ruleset).  

Of course there is also the fact that a man trained with a bow and arrow will probably, when basic training, be quite effective with a rifle... Imagine not having to pull a string, maintain hand strength/balance/fluid draw, and be able to fire dozens of 'arrows' a second?  

As we all know, Or(c/k)s love dakka .

Slainte,

-Loonook.


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## Derren (May 21, 2012)

pippenainteasy said:


> It would be very ugly in a direct conflict.
> 
> Take a standard 120mm tank shell, it can penetrate close to 30 inches of solid steel. That's equivalent of 230 inches of organic flesh (7.85 vs 1.01 density). Divide that by width of an average human and multiply that by 8 hit points per, and 1 tank shell is doing over 200 points of damage.
> 
> A tank can fire about once a round (6 second reload time). 2-3 tanks can take down an Ancient Dragon within 3 turns. And unless your name is Tiamat, you probably can't dish out enough damage to take out a single tank by the time you are out. And there are about 20,000 modern main battle tanks used worldwide. I don't know how many ancient dragons there are, but I doubt Faerun has more than a few dozen.




When using the provided stats the tanks would have quite some trouble hitting the ancient dragon for damage because of its natural armor even before protective spells.

Still, in an open battle the modern army has the advantage because of size, speed and range which are all vastly superior to a magical army. And non magical troops will be mowed down by the thousands.

But in a guerilla war the magical troops would be unstoppable. Imagine the Taliban who can turn invisible, teleport, fly and control the minds of others.
And here comes the biggest weakness of the modern army, the supply chain. Without fuel, ammunition and spare parts they are useless. And magical troops can blow up fuel depots at will with invisible wizards.

The magical side also has better information gathering ability ranging from speak with dead over domination (to get prisoners to talk) to actual divinations. And when the modern army pulls out the nukes, the magical army can simply wish that the nukes detonate before they are fired (imo a rather low powered wish). Also, not even a nuke can penetrate a wall of force.
And if all else fails, the 3E shadows and wraiths can't be harmed by a modern, unmagical army. A single 3E Shadowdancer could use his shadow companion to clear out an army base.

Or one could get a wraith to spawn some others, then keep the original wraith under control with spells and through it command a unstoppable army of them. When the war is won, order them to kill each other (see OotS). But if control of the wraith is lost both factions will likely die to undead hordes.

Another disadvantage for the modern army is that their weapons can be captured and used by the enemy. And while the modern army can capture magical items, they would be more rare and mostly useless for a modern soldier.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 21, 2012)

> The magical side also has better information gathering ability ranging from speak with dead over domination (to get prisoners to talk) to actual divinations. And when the modern army pulls out the nukes, the magical army can simply wish that the nukes detonate before they are fired (imo a rather low powered wish). Also, not even a nuke can penetrate a wall of force.




The magical side has _different_ intelligence capabilities over modern forces, not necessarily better...depending upon whose world is involved.  Magic can't quite match satellite imagery for range & precision.

And while a nuke (arguably) can't penetrate a wall of force*, once that wall goes down, the caster will be subject to radiation poisoning.  Also, a WoF lets light pass through freely, and it's likely that the intense visible light would simply fry the person it protects.  He would definitely be blinded.







* I say arguably, since a WoF can be disintegrated, and a Sphere of Annihilation will also destroy it- effects mirrored in the heart of an atomic explosion.


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## Derren (May 21, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> The magical side has _different_ intelligence capabilities over modern forces, not necessarily better...depending upon whose world is involved.  Magic can't quite match satellite imagery for range & precision.
> 
> And while a nuke (arguably) can't penetrate a wall of force*, once that wall goes down, the caster will be subject to radiation poisoning.  Also, a WoF lets light pass through freely, and it's likely that the intense visible light would simply fry the person it protects.  He would definitely be blinded.
> 
> ...




A nuclear explosion is heat (see sun), not disintegration.

Also I would say that Clairvoyance and Scrying tops satellites as it is real time (despite what Hollywood says, satellites can't do real time very good or for long) and unaffected by all cover except lead while satellites can be blocked by clouds or most underground complexes.

Magic is also much more useful for interrogation as it can, first and foremost, allow you to understand the prisoner, discern lies with 100% effectivity or force a prisoner to talk while the tech army has to resort to normal torture and maybe some drugs if they can actually understand what the prisoner says.
At least in 3E curing diseases and blindness was rather easy, too.


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## wingsandsword (May 21, 2012)

Derren said:


> A nuclear explosion is heat (see sun), not disintegration.




What is "disintegration" then?  The net effect of that much thermal energy is that molecules are shattered and everything within 10 or 20 feet is reduced to superheated vapor.  Sure sounds like a disintegration effect with a scientific rationale.

So, would you try to argue that being immune to fire damage makes you immune to a nuclear weapon?  What about the overpressure, would that just be sonic damage?


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 21, 2012)

Derren said:


> A nuclear explosion is heat (see sun), not disintegration.



Not all of it- there is concussive force and energy released in all electromagnetic wavelengths, including intense and damaging visible light.

Effects of nuclear explosions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you're near the explosion, you may have to deal with nuclear fission/fusion.  You will also have to deal with kinetic energy.  Yes, while the concussive force of the attack cannot Penetrate the force field, the field will find itself in an empty space formerly occupied by vaporized land.  Without an anchor point, either the protective sphere will fall into the depths of the crater, or it will be moved along the by the blast's winds.  Either way, those inside will be tossed like dice in a cup.



> Also I would say that Clairvoyance and Scrying tops satellites as it is real time (despite what Hollywood says, satellites can't do real time very good or for long) and unaffected by all cover except lead while satellites can be blocked by clouds or most underground complexes.



Clairvoyance has a range measured in feet.

Scrying, while essentially infinite in range, depends upon the skills of a uniquely talented and powerful individual, who cannot fully multitask.

In contrast, satellite imagery has a range of thousands of miles, and is not dependent on the skills of a single person.  Instead, such imagery is done by teams of specialists, and destroying one person or one team still leaves the capacity unhhampered.  In addition, destroying the satellite and/or its operators will not reduce the offensive strike capability of the military, just it's accuracy...whereas, killing a scrying wizard significantly hurts all aspects of the force he is a member of.


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## wingsandsword (May 21, 2012)

Years ago there was a thread here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...s-change-you-int-member-different-race-5.html

Where the whole point was that if you, real-world you, could choose to be turned into a specific creature race/type from any D&D book, what would it be?

A common answer, and a very munchkin one, was LeShay, from the 3e Epic Level Handbook.  It's essentially the most uber-Elf you've ever seen, physically is essentially an elf with white hair and pale eyes, and a CR 28 to go along with it.

I ran across that thread last night, and realized just how ridiculously powerful that epic-level race could be on modern real-world Earth, or even the Urban Arcana setting for d20 Modern which posited an Earth that coexists alongside other D&D worlds as just an alternate material plane (albeit one where magic is weaker).

On my long commute to work this morning, I started thinking about how a single LeShay could conquer the world.  Seeing this thread again rise made me think about the subject even more.  

One LeShay could conquer the Earth.  One.  Wouldn't even have to make a single attack roll.  By the time it came to attack rolls, Earth would be more on the side of the LeShay than the people trying to stop him.

First, you've got a CHA of 47, with a Bluff skill of +71 and a Diplomacy skill of +77, and a continuous Charm Monster gaze (DC 53).  Looking at the Diplomacy skill rules, that means with just a full-round action they can turn somebody from Hostile to Friendly. . .guaranteed.  With a second full-round action they can make their attitude Fanatic for 18 days: so loyal they will fight to the death and even get a +2 bonus to STR and CON.  If you spend 12 seconds with somebody they can go from being willing to kill you, to willing to die for you, and that's with no saving throw, leaving out that Charm Monster gaze.  

Even if targets are completely immune to Mind Affecting effects, that only negates the Charm Monster gaze and the Fanatic attitude (but not Friendly).

A Bluff skill of +71 means that even a ridiculously outrageous lie is totally believable unless the subject has at absolute least a Sense Motive bonus of +33 (to see through it on a natural 20).  

Think what that can do with public speaking.  People have changed the course of world history with a lot less.

Combine that with Detect Thoughts at-will (DC 30) and a +24 Gather Information and +59 to Listen, Search and Spot.  You're going to be incredible at finding out information as well.

Add in an INT of 33 for ability to plan and scheme.

Then realize you have Alter Self as an at-will spell-like ability, Greater Teleport at-will, +71 on your Disguise skill, and the Polyglot feat (which lets you naturally speak all languages).   You can flawlessly teleport anywhere in the world on only a few seconds notice, look like anybody, speak any language.  With the Knowledge: Local +59 of a LeShay, you'll also know the traditions, cultures, legends and ways of pretty much every community and society on the planet, definitely enough to blend in as a local and relate to eveyone as if you're one of them. 

Hide and Move Silently of +70, plus Greater Invisibility at will, and when combined with your Greater Teleport, you basically go anywhere and nobody notices you.

Then look at your defenses.  You've got 825 HP, an AC of 52, DR 15/Epic AND Cold Iron, immune to all poisons and diseases, Fast Healing 10, and a +66 Concentration to try to cast Greater Teleport or Heal in the middle of a fight.  Fortitude save of +29, Reflex save of +44, and Will save of +35. . . and an Armor Class of 52 (touch AC 47), and a +21 bonus to initiative.  

A lone LeShay can take the form of any person on Earth, speaking any language, and go anywhere, speaking to individuals or groups for only seconds and turning them into utterly loyal followers, even former enemies.  Not constrained by any Earthly barriers or borders, able to be in Hollywood at 12:00, Tokyo at 12:05, Paris at 12:10, and Washington at 12:15, having made allies and learned valuable information at each place.   They might not even know you're the same person thanks to disguises.  You could singlehandedly look like an world-spanning organization that somehow has perfect communication amongst its members.

You could quickly network your way into legitimate appointments with world leaders. . .who within moments are more loyal to you than their own countries.  Inside of a week you could have everybody from billionaires to Kings and Presidents as absolutely loyal subjects.  Gifts of money could have you as a multi-billionaire in your own right, getting diplomatic immunity wouldn't be too hard when you have heads of state who take their marching orders from you.  Before long you could probably end up as absolute monarch of a small country.

Turn invisible and walk around hospitals randomly casting Heal on the terminally ill.  Build up goodwill with a de facto cure for anything.   With a Charisma of 47 and the ability to appear anywhere in the world and cure virtually any disease or mental illness and even grievous trauma?  You could start a religion like that real quick.

Finding an Epic Weapon on Earth is not likely, and even most military small arms are unlikely to break 15 points of damage in a single hit without a lot of bonuses from the operator, even then being able to inflict well over 800 points of damage before Greater Teleport can be cast is very unlikely with anything short of a nuclear weapon or an entire infantry battalion opening fire simultaneously.  The stats for a Hellfire Missile are in d20 Modern Menace Manual. . .and he could easily survive several direct hits, so a strike from a Predator UCAV (Drone) would just rough him up a litle.

With as many friends as he would have, just trying to stop him with force would start World War III (or make whoever tried it the most wanted criminals in the world), even if it failed.  

If this was the antagonist to an adventure (or the pointman for an invading force), by the time the PC's might even realize something is when every major world leader and the CEO's of every major world corporation all appear to be on the same page about something, even when it's a complete turnaround in policy and might not be in their best interest normally. . .right as a rash of dozens of miraculous cures appear at a hospital somewhere and rumors are surfacing about some mysterious messiah who can cure any disease with just a touch, if you'll just sit down and talk with him for a few moments, and if they manage to track him down they find he's legally protected as the Ambassador from another country (or perhaps even the King/Emperor of that nation) and any direct attack on him is severely punished under law.

. . .all in a world where the highest level characters only go up to Level 20, and spells only go up to 5th level (or with complex "incantation" rules, up to 7th level as complicated and expensive rituals).


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 21, 2012)

Bizzare double post due to traveling mobile device...


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 21, 2012)

> One LeShay could conquer the Earth. One. Wouldn't even have to make a single attack roll. By the time it came to attack rolls, Earth would be more on the side of the LeShay than the people trying to stop him.




...assuming someone didn't notice the mind-bending effects it had on those in its vicinity, and didn't simply try to kill it at range.  Handgun...sniper rifle...ICBM.

...assuming it didn't overplay its hand and try to get someone merely friendly to it to do something radically against their self interest (it is not a magical effect, after all)

...assuming those it convinced to aid it were very persuasive themselves.

I'm not saying it couldn't do what you say, just that it isn't a cakewalk.  It may end up bring every bit as surprised as Loki was recently...


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## wingsandsword (May 22, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> ...assuming someone didn't notice the mind-bending effects it had on those in its vicinity, and didn't simply try to kill it at range.  Handgun...sniper rifle...ICBM.



What Earth handgun could take down a being with an AC of 52, flat footed AC of 35, with DR 15/Epic & Cold Iron and 825 HP (and Displacement for a 50% miss chance if it has a round to put that spell-like ability up as well)?  Even a Desert Eagle .50AE is doing 2d8, so it has a 1:64 chance of doing a single point of damage. . .which heals up the next round thanks to Fast Healing 10.  

Even a critical hit at maximum damage would only do 2 points of damage, well less than 1% of its HP and it would heal that in moments.

He would have to be getting hit with 640 attacks a round just to damage him enough that his fast healing wouldn't catch up, and with his AC that high he's basically only hit on a Natural 20 by anything short of a min-maxed 20th level character, so 1200+ people simultaneously opening fire with 2d8 weapons (like M16's or AK-47's.) just to start to whittle down at his HP, double that if it has even a single round of prep-time for Displacement and doesn't flee instantly.. . .and after 1 round (and a make-it-on-a-one) Concentration check he can Greater Teleport out, Heal up, Disguise/Alter Self, Teleport again, and go and Diplomacy some people in places of leadership of another nation into going to war with whatever country just tried that stunt (and maybe more subterfuge to infiltrate that army and undermine them.  Being immune to all poisons and diseases could mean you would have no fear of using CBRN warfare yourself).

For that matter, what sniper could do 800+ points of damage in one hit, or even one round?  The main cannon of an M1 Abrams tank is doing 10d12, which after DR would take 17 hits (assuming average damage) to drop it.  It would take an entire army to drop it in a straight-up fight.

No AdC or PrC in d20 Modern that I can think of gives an assassin-like instant death ability for a sniper, the closest is the 5th level ability of the Sniper PrC, which lets him spend an Action Point to automatically turn a hit into a critical hit.  The Barret .50cal is the highest damage sniper rifle, at 2d12.  With an average damage of 13 it won't even break the DR on a typical hit without some extra abilities that make ranged weapon hits do more, and I can't find any of those yet.  

Yeah, an ICBM would _probably _do it.  Then again, you'd have to get the drop on it to do that, and when you can be anywhere on the planet in 6 seconds and ICBM's have travel times around 30 minutes or so. . .and if your target tends to stay in major cities would you nuke a major world city to stop it. . .especially since there is a very good chance it won't be there by the time the weapon goes off?  Basically you'd have to be willing to nuke any specific place on the globe without reservation since he could hide there, then you'd have to know for sure he was there, and then be able to either keep him from fleeing or keep him completely unaware for around 30 minutes. . .and then hope that a nuclear weapon does more than 825 points of damage. 



> ...assuming it didn't overplay its hand and try to get someone merely friendly to it to do something radically against their self interest (it is not a magical effect, after all)



 Yeah, that's possible, but with a CHA of 47 and WIS of 23 I'd say it would be a while before he screwed up that bad.  



> ...assuming those it convinced to aid it were very persuasive themselves.



 Hence the idea of manipulating world leaders and the super-wealthy first.  Getting the leaders of a few world powers, a few absolute dictators of countries, a few CEO's of the biggest companies on Earth, a few multi-billionaires on your side being Friendly can go a long way.

Put it this way: if the President of the United States, President of the Russian Federation, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Premier of China, President of France, the Pope, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were all Fanatically loyal to you personally to the point they'd be willing to die for you. . .you'd basically rule the world, if only from the shadows.



> I'm not saying it couldn't do what you say, just that it isn't a cakewalk.  It may end up bring every bit as surprised as Loki was recently...



 I'm not saying he's invincible, but I think a lone CR 28 LeShay would be more able to conquer the world than a lot higher CR monsters because many of it's skill set and spell-like abilities could be extremely powerful in a modern-day setting. . .and it's epic-level AC, DR, and HP mean it would be very hard to stop before it could retreat and heal up to full in only 6 rounds of Heal spells.  

Defeating it would be on the same scale of taking on Loki, yes, and would be a radically different challenge than fighting the vast fielded armies otherwise discussed in this thread, and would probably be a huge high-level campaign-climax type adventure.  I am not pretending it's utterly invincible and it's a foolproof plan, but it's a threat greater than its CR would otherwise imply if played smartly and taking over the world is very plausible.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 22, 2012)

I personally know jack all about LeShay, however:



> He would have to be getting hit with 640 attacks a round just to damage him enough that his fast healing wouldn't catch up



A round is 6 seconds.

We already field weapons like the Vulcan that can do 100rd/sec with spent uranium rounds.

The metal storm prototype can do 17,000rd/sec.


> The main cannon of an M1 Abrams tank is doing 10d12, which after DR would take 17 hits (assuming average damage) to drop it. It would take an entire army to drop it in a straight-up fight.




That may be how it's statted out, but I'd say that was a tad...low.


> Yeah, an ICBM would probably do it. Then again, you'd have to get the drop on it to do that, and when you can be anywhere on the planet in 6 seconds and ICBM's have travel times around 30 minutes or so. . .





The question isn't whether he can avoid the ICBM, but rather can he recognize & identify it as a threat, _and then act appropriately._

Unless he gets a heads up from the launch control OR from the country's defenses- either of which would assume he is in a location like the Kremlin or AF-1 OR has operative in that particular location AND he's not dismissing the notification because he's talking to someone else- he's not going to have a lot of time to ID and react.  He won't see it unless he's looking right at it, and he won't hear it until it's too late.

Loki's hubris doomed him to failure as much as anything else, and he completely failed to recognize the true threat represented by The Hulk.

ICBM still too slow?  How much you want to bet they'd rush one of the airplane-mounted lasers into the front line?

And of course, nukes.  (See _Failsafe_.)

Any of which assumes the modern forces manage to do what I said the LeShay must do: recognize & identify it as a threat, _and then act appropriately._

(FWIW, somewhere upthread is a nearly identical discussion of how a single spawning undead could take over the world...)


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## Hussar (May 22, 2012)

In large numbers, far too many of the D&D monsters would simply overwhelm conventional armies.  Commando squads of medusa, harpies, or anything else with that sort of area of affect always on ability would be devastating.  Heck, magmin, in fairly small numbers, instantly kill anything within 20 feet of them.

Never mind what you could do with elementals.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 22, 2012)

I think I said upthread when this thread came around the first time that the devil is in the details.

If/when the commanders of the modern forces realize their conventional forces are being wiped out, they would quickly escalate to the nastier stuff.

Assuming that rout happens, of course.  Depending on where (and the nature of) the mystic forces establish their beachhead, they will have an easy/nearly impossible task ahead of them.

If the breach into our world happens on a military test range, they may face the threat of unexplored ordinance, or even the deadly residue of WMD tests.  Some facilities even have shoot (to kill) on sight orders for detected intruders.

OTOH, if they pop up in the Amazon, they could have their entire army through the gate before they encounter even token resistance.


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## pippenainteasy (May 24, 2012)

wingsandsword said:


> and then hope that a nuclear weapon does more than 825 points of damage.




1 pound of C4 does 4d6 damage, and is about 25% more efficient than TNT, so let's say one pound of TNT does 3d6 damage.

Typically an ICBM can field about 35-40 megatons of TNT.

That is equal to 12,000,000d6 damage.

Definitely enough for 825 I believe.




> I'm not saying he's invincible, but I think a lone CR 28 LeShay would be more able to conquer the world than a lot higher CR monsters because many of it's skill set and spell-like abilities could be extremely powerful in a modern-day setting. . .and it's epic-level AC, DR, and HP mean it would be very hard to stop before it could retreat and heal up to full in only 6 rounds of Heal spells.



Alone? You mean take to the open battlefield against a modern military? A tank platoon would smash that LeShay. You quote the desert Eagle doing diddly squat, okay that's a 0.39 kg projectile going at 1380ft/s. An Abrams tank shell is a 12.7kg projectile going 5,800ft/s. Nearly 140 times more kinetic energy.

LeShay's DR?...Let's talk about the tanks...How is the LeShay going to bust through 30 inches of solid steel?



Dannyalcatraz said:


> If/when the commanders of the modern forces realize their conventional  forces are being wiped out, they would quickly escalate to the nastier  stuff.




There is no way a modern military would lose conventionally...it's the D&D forces that would have to resort to nasty measures.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 24, 2012)

He definitely won't be talking them out unless he has access to a radio on the right freq...


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## wingsandsword (May 24, 2012)

pippenainteasy said:


> 1 pound of C4 does 4d6 damage, and is about 25% more efficient than TNT, so let's say one pound of TNT does 3d6 damage.
> 
> Typically an ICBM can field about 35-40 megatons of TNT.
> 
> ...



Where do people get this idea that weapons damage in d20 is linear?

In d20 Future, a 1MT nuclear mine (meant for taking out capital starships) does 5d100, average damage 275 HP.  It will do more damage in an atmosphere because of atmospheric effects, but it would have to do more than 3x damage in atmosphere for a 1 MT weapon to have a serious chance to kill it in one hit.

That's actual official stats from a WotC book for nuclear weapon damage (and the biggest one, they had tactical nuclear missiles doing 16d8), not arbitrary back-of-envelope calculations.  The only weapon in d20 Future which could have a good chance by the rules-as-written take one down in a single hit is a Zero Point Mine (basically blowing up a pocket universe to create a big-bang like explosion mean to take down heavily shielded starships), an anti-ship weapon at Progress Level 8 (think Space Opera stuff for centuries or thousands of years in the future), that does 15d100, for 825 HP on average, which is exactly it's HP, so if it does more than 10 over it could kill it because otherwise its Fast Healing will kick in.  

Also, in response to that idea about automatic weapons doing so much damage because they are firing so many rounds. . .no.  Check the autofire rules.  Automatic weapons fire does the same amount of damage as a weapon on semi, the automatic weapon fire only turns the attack into an area-of-effect attack instead of just attacking a specific target, it does not multiply the damage.  



> Alone? You mean take to the open battlefield against a modern military? A tank platoon would smash that LeShay. You quote the desert Eagle doing diddly squat, okay that's a 0.39 kg projectile going at 1380ft/s. An Abrams tank shell is a 12.7kg projectile going 5,800ft/s. Nearly 140 times more kinetic energy.
> 
> LeShay's DR?...Let's talk about the tanks...How is the LeShay going to bust through 30 inches of solid steel?




Yes, alone.

Not in open warfare.  

If you actually read, I was talking about the vast manipulation/control abilities of a LeShay.  When you can teleport anywhere in the world flawlessly within 6 seconds, use Knock at will to open any lock, appear to look like any human, fluently speak any language, and know the local culture and traditions of any place on Earth, and can convert any person you speak to for 6 seconds from being hostile into being friendly to you, even in a fight and without a saving throw, and make them fanatically to-the-death loyal to you in another 6 seconds and tell lies so convincing only an Epic level character could possibly disbelieve anything you say no matter how absurd. . .you don't win in a straight-up fight like that, that would be a huge waste of power.

Yeah, it's strong enough that it would take significant direct military force to take it down, but that would also assume it doesn't flee instantly (or again, if a nuke would work you could find it and hit it, and would actually use a nuclear weapon, which realistically is doubtful).

Imagine using Alter Self and that +71 Disguise and Bluff skills to claim to be the return of a major religious figure, and use that Heal spell-like ability to heal the sick and ill of even 
"incurable" diseases and mortal wounds.  Use of Greater Teleport, Speak with Plants, Water Breathing and Detect Thoughts spell-like abilities to create other seemingly miraculous events.  You could easily rally millions of true believers to its side in no time at all.  Try teleporting into a church during services, healing the sick and saying it's the second coming (with a +71 to your Bluff and Disguise checks and a DC 53 constant Charm Monster gaze effect).  Then imagine the public response when a government tries to mobilize the army to take this individual down.

This is the d20 system, exact calculations of projectile mass to muzzle velocity mean NOTHING to damage dice.  When have D&D/d20 stats for anything been so scientifically designed?   That "140 times more kinetic energy" is 10d12 per page 126 of the d20 Modern Core Rulebook (per the official d20 stats for a M1A1 Abrams tank), not 280d8, which would be 140 times that 2d8 for a Desert Eagle.

As for breaching 30 inches of armor, just as a side note, yet another power of LeShay are their innate weapons.  They can summon from nowhere 2 +10 Brilliant Energy weapons of any melee weapon in the game, either a two-handed weapon, or one in either hand with perfect two weapon fighting.  It can create a +10 Brilliant Energy Longspear at will in its hand.  Remember, Brilliant Energy weapons ignore all nonliving matter like it isn't even there, so it would effortlessly pass through feet of armor to strike who is on the other side.  They would have concealment, but unless you've got about 10 feet of armor, you aren't out of reach. . . and if you're in a bunker or such it can just teleport to the other side.


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## Nifft (May 24, 2012)

I've seen movies where zombies take over the earth.

*ZOMBIES*, people. Cheap little cannon-fodder CR 1 zombies.

Those level 1 speed-bumps took over the earth. So yeah, I think the magic guys might have a chance here.

Cheers, -- N


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 24, 2012)

Re: the LeShay in D20

One of the things that some of us are trying to illustrate is that, as a system, D20 tends to undervalue the dangerousness of anything beyond small arms, which stacks the deck to a certain extent.

Re: Zombie apocalypses

Again, the writing on those often assumes a few things about the preparedness of the military that may simply not be the case.  If nothing else, they REALLY underestimate what the dictatorships of the world would do: any gov't willing to commit the atrocities against the living we've seen on the world news would not hesitate to use similar or more drastic measures against hordes of undead.

(And forget the nukes- remember what Allied carpet bombing did in WW2...a capacity we still retain. )

IMHO, the only way you get a ZA is via something like a global pandemic, and those historically have better vectors besides bites & scratches.


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## pippenainteasy (May 24, 2012)

wingsandsword said:


> Where do people get this idea that weapons damage in d20 is linear?
> 
> In d20 Future, a 1MT nuclear mine (meant for taking out capital starships) does 5d100, average damage 275 HP.  It will do more damage in an atmosphere because of atmospheric effects, but it would have to do more than 3x damage in atmosphere for a 1 MT weapon to have a serious chance to kill it in one hit.




Characters take x10 ship damage, so he would take a 50d100, an average of 2750 damage. That would absolutely vaporize him instantly, much less a 30-40 MT ICBM.


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## wingsandsword (May 24, 2012)

pippenainteasy said:


> Characters take x10 ship damage, so he would take a 50d100, an average of 2750 damage. That would absolutely vaporize him instantly, much less a 30-40 MT ICBM.




I've heard that claimed in some posts, but I didn't put it in my post because I couldn't find an exact rules cite for it (I'm away from my libraries because of my current military duty assignment and having to work with the SRD and PDFs).

If that's true, then a LeShay could still probably survive a tactical nuclear weapon 16d8x10  is 720 HP average damage, leaving the LeShay with 105 HP and able to use Heal every round for 5 rounds to recover completely.  The ~20 kt weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be tactical weapons by modern standards (albeit a somewhat strong one). 

By the way, no, ICBM's don't have 30-40 Mt warheads.  Not even close, by a couple of orders of magnitude.  No deployed nuclear weapon really went past 10 Mt, and those were replaced by smaller MIRV devices by the '70's.  The 30-40 Mt range was more for tests, especially a few super-large tests conducted by the USSR.

Typical MIRV warheads on modern ICBMs and SLBM's are in the 300 to 400 kt range.  Much beyond 500 kt is overkill in destroying a city.

Also, I find the idea that Earth governments would immediately jump to the use of ICBMs to be downright farcical, especially when the target would likely be moving at random around the world and appearing in major cities.

A mysterious stranger appears who has become best friends with a number of world leaders (including quite possibly pretty much everybody with launch authority for those strategic nuclear weapons, get the right handful of people on your side and you've negated that possibility entirely), titans of industry, religious leaders (and who could plausibly be appearing to be a religious event by his existence), and the first response is a strategic nuclear weapon?

Okay.  Let's say somebody decided to shoot him.  Sniper rifle probably doesn't even break the skin, neither would a heavy machine gun.  It would be like shooting at Superman.  Seeing bullets bounce off will just embolden his followers.   Trying the typical tactic of an attack on him with a UCAV would just scratch him.  Find where he is and drop a hellfire missile on it?  Hellfires do 16d8, it would cause some HP damage and blow up the building he was in.  The LeShay could teleport out, Heal up the next round, disguise himself and lay low while assessing the situation.  The government that blew him up would claim victory. . .and he would reappear, making him look even more invincible, and rallying his followers even more.  

Even if they went to nuclear weapons, why would they start at an ICBM or SLBM?  Even with the x10 damage rule, he has a very good chance of surviving a tactical nuclear weapon.  If they dare use a tactical nuclear weapon, and he survives it, why do you think they'd even try a strategic nuclear weapon?

At what point would they say "we aren't going to win this through raw firepower?"  Earth militaries are not used to fighting things that can take a tactical nuclear weapon, survive it, and be fully healed up in less than 1 minute and then be on the other side of the globe manipulating the head of another nuclear state into retaliating in a couple more minutes.

It's not like whoever is taking him on will have access to his character sheet and know his DR and HP and immunities.  They'll have to escalate, not start at ICBMs.  

This nuclear strike idea also requires knowing where he is, and being willing to use that level of force on a target that could vanish in moments.  The US took 10 years to find Osama Bin Laden, and that was with a massive intelligence effort, and he had the protection of one country and hundreds or thousands of loyal followers.  Qaddafi was famous for not sleeping in the same place two nights in a row specifically to thwart attempts to kill him via airstrike, and he was limited to just one country, not the entire planet in terms of where he could stay.  Imagine trying to repeat Operation Neptune Spear with somebody who can Greater Teleport at will and is pretty much as tough as Superman.

The LeShay could go anywhere in the world and seamlessly blend in.  At the pulpit of a megachurch converting thousands to being loyal followers one hour and claiming that every patient in a hospital somewhere will be healed later that day as a show of grace, to being in a Mumbai slum healing the sick, to rubbing shoulders with the giants of Wall Street for lunch, to finding a wealthy billionaire with a terminal disease and curing it in exchange for "favors" (imagine what Steve Jobs would have done for somebody who could have cured his cancer with a touch), to walking around a small hospital in Seattle with Greater Invisibility up and using Move Silently while using Heal on every patient to fulfill that prophecy from earlier in the day, to showing up at a high society party in Paris that night and making friends in all the right circles. . .all in one day.  

Basically the only way to kill a LeShay without very powerful magic it to use a strategic nuclear weapon, get lucky shot with a tactical nuclear weapon, or the ridiculously implausible scenario of him just standing there while a couple of army battalions opened fire on him simultaneously with everything they had.  Yes, a strategic nuclear weapon could kill a LeShay, and a tactical nuclear weapon has a chance on a high damage roll.  However, getting to the point where one could be used is extremely difficult and would likely result in World War III, not just from the use of a nuclear weapon, but the political fallout from killing a figure with such a following worldwide.


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## wingsandsword (May 24, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Re: the LeShay in D20
> 
> One of the things that some of us are trying to illustrate is that, as a system, D20 tends to undervalue the dangerousness of anything beyond small arms, which stacks the deck to a certain extent.




The original reason I even used LeShay was to show that it's possible to conquer the Earth through means other than a straight-up fight of armies slugging it out, as human-like being (type Fae, but appears as an elf) with astronomical social skills and some very useful spell-like abilities.  With just its skills and spell-like abilities it could probably either conquer the world or at least a big chunk of it through social means, the extreme defensive abilities are very secondary.

The hypothetical scenarios discussed here of a huge massed Earth army taking on a huge massed fantasy army also stacks the deck in the other direction to some extent, as well as the idea that the release of nuclear weapons is plausible in any but the most extremely dire circumstances.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 24, 2012)

> Sniper rifle probably doesn't even break the skin, neither would a heavy machine gun.




Depends on the machine gun.  The stuff carried by infantry or mounted on most land vehicles?  You may be right.

The ones mounted on planes designed for dogfighting?  It's a tossup.

The ones the AF & Army mount on tankbusting A-10s and certain helicopters?  They'd penetrate, no doubt.



> With just its skills...




Skills are not magic, though.  Even though the LeShay is more convincing a rhetorician than Hitler*Jim Jones, he cannot convince everyone hostile to him to be in his BFF army.  And even those he convinces utterly are NOT mind controlled.  Some will see through his charade and act.  Some may even act against the LeShay even though they are "friendly", just because he's "corrupting everything" he thought the creature stood for.

Humans are very good at killing those they love...and retaining that love even after the killing has been done.


> The hypothetical scenarios discussed here of a huge massed Earth army taking on a huge massed fantasy army also stacks the deck in the other direction to some extent, as well as the idea that the release of nuclear weapons is plausible in any but the most extremely dire circumstances



Like I said upthread,  what scenario is deemed "dire" enough depends upon the awareness of the military commanders assessing the scenario.


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## wingsandsword (May 24, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Depends on the machine gun.  The stuff carried by infantry or mounted on most land vehicles?  You may be right.
> 
> The ones mounted on planes designed for dogfighting?  It's a tossup.
> 
> The ones the AF & Army mount on tankbusting A-10s and certain helicopters?  They'd penetrate, no doubt.



 Hence why I said sniper rifle.  They aren't going to know instantly that it's nigh invulnerable.  Attempting to kill the LeShay would start with small arms like a sniper attack, or a small-unit raid by an elite group like a SEAL team, and escalate up when they find that small arms can at most scuff his skin.  



> Skills are not magic, though.  Even though the LeShay is more convincing a rhetorician than Hitler*Jim Jones, he cannot convince everyone hostile to him to be in his BFF army.  And even those he convinces utterly are NOT mind controlled.  Some will see through his charade and act.  Some may even act against the LeShay even though they are "friendly", just because he's "corrupting everything" he thought the creature stood for.
> 
> Humans are very good at killing those they love...and retaining that love even after the killing has been done.



Yes, it's not magic, but they can do a LOT.  +71 to Diplomacy and Bluff would make somebody the best speaker in human history.  I'd tried to avoid the Hitler example, but it works quite well, and he probably only had half that bonus to the skill.  It wouldn't work on everybody, but it would work on most people, and would make attempting to take him down by the people who oppose him be more like a resistance movement than a war.

A DC 53 Charm Monster gaze effect (Caster Level 50) continuously active to anybody within 30 feet that meets its gaze however, is magic.



> Like I said upthread,  what scenario is deemed "dire" enough depends upon the awareness of the military commanders assessing the scenario.




At least in the United States, military commanders have no authority to launch nuclear weapons.  Thanks to permissive action links, they cannot arm and launch a nuclear weapon without those codes.  The authority to launch nuclear weapons is initiated by the President, and confirmed by the Secretary of Defense, then the codes are transmitted to the actual units.  Without those codes, the weapons are not going off, not even tactical weapons are going to be armed without those codes.  It's not like in Dr. Strangelove where a rogue General can order an attack, it hasn't been like that for several decades (although the USAF strongly resisted putting lock codes on weapons, saying it was insulting to their professionalism to imply that they might launch without orders).  General Douglas MacArthur's illustrious career was ended in the Korean War when he demanded to drop nuclear weapons on China against the orders of President Truman.

Thus, if the POTUS, or even just the SECDEF is on the side of the LeShay, the US nuclear arsenal is completely out of the fight, no matter how many Generals want to attack.  They could use chemical or biological weapons. . .except it's completely immune to poisons and diseases.  I don't know the launch authorization processes for other countries, but again, releasing a nuclear weapon in this scenario will likely start WW III.


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## TanisFrey (May 24, 2012)

Gentlegamer said:


> Probably more inspired by Napoleonic armies.
> 
> The knight certainly trained longer than conscripts, but his real counterpart in modern warfare are special ops units, like Delta Force or Navy Seals, if we're talking about years of training and experience.
> 
> Even in his day, the knight was eventually bested by the development of pikemen and gunmen formations employed by 'less well trained' troops. It's not as much about the years of training but the 'state of war-tech.'



Peasant Levies were used at times.  Medieval commanders did prefer to use real soldiers when they could be had.  A friend likes to quote a report of a battle between two barons in Medieval England, they reported to the king a loss of 4 knight on one side and something like 6 on the other.  The church objects to the fact that nigher side reports the 2-3 hundred peasant who died.

Medieval commanders did summon peasant levies to back up an army or as a way to tax the nobles.  The English crown goes to war to defend its Norman holdings from France.  The crown call for peasant levies.  Those levies in Normandy would help fight, those levies in England would report to their noble lord and receive a small amount of coin and send some of that coin to the crown which would use the tax to hire a real army to do the fighting. 

If I had to give 3.x levels to troops:
Magic using:
Peasant levies: commoner  1 - 3 (a small number will have multi classed with a 1-2 levels of warrior if there is a lot conflicts between lesser nobles in the area)
Soldiers/Guard Warrior: 1 - 5
Squire: Fighter 1-4
Knight: Fighter 5+

Modern: (for out of basic and their first Advanced school for US/Western troops)
Non-western Troop: warrior 1-7
US/Western support troops:  Warrior 2 plus Expert 2
US Infantry: Fighter 4 with weapon focus M-16
Western Infantry: Fighter 2-4
Special Forces: Fighter 5-10+


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 24, 2012)

> A DC 53 Charm Monster gaze effect (Caster Level 50) continuously active to anybody within 30 feet that meets its gaze however, is magic.




And you've pointed out it's main limitations: short range and meeting its gaze.  In our wired world, those conditions may be hard to meet.

Odds are good that access to sensitive persons- POTUS and other world leaders- would be barred by the personnel in the monitoring stations who can lock & unlock doors.  (Yes, I know he can teleport, but he might not have the neccessary info to scry properly...)

I mean, SOMEBODY out there will be at least as smart as Odysseus (or smarter, and not risk their own life and eschew his own advice) and prevent significant forces from being subject to its Charm.



> At least in the United States, military commanders have no authority to launch nuclear weapons.  <snip>




1) That assumes the LeaShay manages to control POTUS before the codes are either transmitted or passed down to the VP or whomever is next available in the chain of succession amidst the conflict (I know the progression, but I'm making no assumptions about who has been compromised).

2) if nukes were the final viable option and POTUS had been compromised before transmitting or passing the codes, you can bet that someone would contact the other nuclear powers.  The odds of the LeShay having simultaneously disabled the nuclear option for ALL of the world's nuclear powers- known and unknown- is pretty slim.

I have no doubt someone out there would decide it's better to make the USA glow in the dark than let the LeShay take over the world.


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## pippenainteasy (May 24, 2012)

I wonder how Abeir-Toril would handle a Reaper invasion...


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## Derren (May 24, 2012)

pippenainteasy said:


> I wonder how Abeir-Toril would handle a Reaper invasion...




Rust monsters. Lots and lots of rust monsters.


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## Hussar (May 25, 2012)

I had to admit, this:



> US Infantry: Fighter 4 with weapon focus M-16
> Western Infantry: Fighter 2-4




made me giggle just a bit.


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## pippenainteasy (May 25, 2012)

Derren said:


> Rust monsters. Lots and lots of rust monsters.




Gotta take down those shields first


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## TanisFrey (May 25, 2012)

Hussar said:


> I had to admit, this:
> 
> 
> 
> made me giggle just a bit.



A lot of countries are tiring to martian a technology parity with the US but are cutting weapon stockpiles to save $$.  If you do not have extra bullets/missiles/bomb your soldiers do not train as much at the US military.

Look at what happened in Libya last year.  NATO forces were running out of bomb forcing the US to step back up to the major combat role at the end of the air campaign.


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## Nellisir (May 25, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> And you've pointed out it's main limitations: short range and meeting its gaze.  In our wired world, those conditions may be hard to meet.
> 
> Odds are good that access to sensitive persons- POTUS and other world leaders- would be barred by the personnel in the monitoring stations who can lock & unlock doors.  (Yes, I know he can teleport, but he might not have the neccessary info to scry properly...)




I missed the entire first 95% of this conversation, but if the LeShay (whose stats I do not know) can teleport essentially at will, charm 99% of the people within a 30' radius, and can use knock at will...what's a locked door going to do?  Won't he just open it?  Heck, he can break into the Kremlin and the White House simultaneously.  And whatever China has.  I don't think they keep anti-tank weapons in bunkers, and presumably he can take some small-arms fire long enough to get in the door and work his mojo.  And if he can look like anyone, why on earth would people shoot the president's wife?  Or the PM of Britain?  Or Secret Service Agent B?


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## Hussar (May 25, 2012)

I'd also point out that with Epic level skill use, you can perform acts which are mostly magical - well extraordinary, so they work in an anti-magic field.  Charm Monster makes a target friendly.  His +70 Diplomacy score makes them fanatical and willing to sacrifice themselves for him, forever, with no duration.

All he really needs to do is start walking through crowded cities to cause enough disruption and then teleport away. Even the best prepared military response in the world cannot respond that fast.


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## pippenainteasy (May 25, 2012)

Lol this went from "high tech forces vs magic forces" to "magic spies vs Obama"


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 26, 2012)

> ..what's a locked door going to do?




A security door that is controlled by someone not actually standing where he is, but is instead controlled by someone at a control center?  It will stop him until he can scrye behind it.


> Heck, he can break into the Kremlin and the White House simultaneously.




Are they really capable of bilocation or are you exaggerating?



> And if he can look like anyone, why on earth would people shoot the president's wife? Or the PM of Britain? Or Secret Service Agent B?




They might if he doesn't have proper ID- passwords, magnetic cards, RFID, biometrics* or whatever is required at the place he's trying to access.  He may LOOK like the person, but appearance alone won't get you in.








* this one depends on the actual power of the magic involved- as in, is the mimicry so good as to reproduce fingerprints, voice scans, retinal scans, etc.?  Any or all of which may be used depending on the security of he facility in question.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> A security door that is controlled by someone not actually standing where he is, but is instead controlled by someone at a control center?  It will stop him until he can scrye behind it.



So why can't he knock the door open?

I just checked some stats: apparently he has "greater" teleport, so there's no chance of error and he only needs a "reliable" description.



> Are they really capable of bilocation or are you exaggerating?



Slight exageration.  I mean, if he can teleport back and forth 10 times a minute, it's not bilocation, but it's close.




> They might if he doesn't have proper ID- passwords, magnetic cards, RFID, biometrics* or whatever is required at the place he's trying to access.  He may LOOK like the person, but appearance alone won't get you in.



No, but two minutes with the person will get you everything but the biometrics (and I'm not sure about that either), given their charm capabilities.  Supply closet.  Bathroom.  Never mind a leshay that plans ahead and shows up at your house for a sleepover.

POTUS isn't in a bunker 24/7 for four years, and the leshay doesn't -look- like a threat.  That's the whole point.  It's a total stealth operator.  He walks in as a tourist.  A quick chat with the guide, and he's shaking hands with a Secret Service agent, who introduces him to his superior as a favor.  A little smile, nod of the head, and one of the top secret service agents is arranging for him to meet the president for a moment, while POTUS is walking from one photo-op to another.  That's without even shapechanging (beyond the tourist shape), knock, teleportation, greater invisibility, or anything else this thing has.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2012)

What you don't understand is, the LeShay are already here.

And there's one behind you now.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 26, 2012)

> So why can't he knock the door open?




It depends on the door.



> SRD
> ...Knock does not raise barred gates or similar impediments (such as a portcullis)...




Many doorways into secured areas probably would be considered to be modern portcullises.

Some would also work much like airlocks- you open the outer door, pass through, then wait until the first one closes and locks before the inner door is even unlockable.



> I just checked some stats: apparently he has "greater" teleport, so there's no chance of error and he only needs a "reliable" description.




From past experience, I know that some secure locations, only persons over a certain clearance ever see the area beyond a certain point.  In many cases, the outermost guards don't have that clearance.  So, unless he's lucky and arrives at jussssst the right time, he won't be able to get that "reliable" description without doing a little investigation.



> POTUS isn't in a bunker 24/7 for four years, and the leshay doesn't -look- like a threat. That's the whole point. It's a total stealth operator. He walks in as a tourist. A quick chat with the guide, and he's shaking hands with a Secret Service agent, who introduces him to his superior as a favor. A little smile, nod of the head, and one of the top secret service agents is arranging for him to meet the president for a moment, while POTUS is walking from one photo-op to another.




That's true, he's not.

But even so, a breach of the sort you describe is unlikely unless the LeShay is actually receiving visitors.  Someone getting the invader back at the wrong time may just get himself shot at.  Secret Service does NOT mess around- I've met a few who were just this side of psychos- they don't shoot to wound and they have some interesting ordinance at their disposal.

Far, far better that he meet the POTUS at an event as the "plus 1" of a big campaign contributor.

Look, my point isn't that the scenario is impossible, just that there are enough ways things can go wrong that the outcome is not a given.  As a "Lone Gunman", the LeShay cannot really afford to make too many mistakes, even though its powers are formidable*, because the nature of what we have at OUR disposal is both powerful AND alien to it.

Simply not understanding or accepting that a single weapon located in another country or somewhere under the sea could be fatal.  If he thinks Tomahawk when the speaker is talking about a Tomahawk he may, in the words of Dave Mustaine, "wake up dead."

Even assuming he does take over the world, he can't rest on his laurels.  There are IEDs in the world as powerful as some military ordinance, and "The Resistance" would probably not shy away from using them.  A classic: a shaped charge was used to deform and launch a thick plate of copper at a heavily armored car in an assassination about a decade ago- the blast made the plate into a heavy, near molten airfoil that traveled at hypersonic speed into the car's side, sending the car flying sideways through the air in multiple burning pieces.  (There was also a banker killed in similar fashion.)

Why did it work?  Becsuse the leader in question was so confident in his safety that he never varied from his routine paths on official business.  They knew where he would be at that time right down to the minute.











* assuming, of course, magic works.


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## Hussar (May 26, 2012)

Why would the Le Shay even bother with the president?

He has a gaze charm effect out to 30 feet.  And a diplomacy of +77.  That means that anyone he has charmed is, the next round (even the -10 on the check for doing it in one round is still an autosucceed), forever a fanatical follower of his to the point where they are willing to sacrifice their own lives for him.  This is a non-magical effect.  Heck, anyone that can hear him might be affected, but, 95% of people within 30 feet of him are automatically affected.

So, if he's smart, he walks down major streets in large urban centers for ten minutes, teleports to the next city and repeats.  Thousands of fanantical followers are created virtually instantly in every urban center on the planet.  Nuclear attack?  Nuke who?  He's miles gone every ten minutes.  You'd have to be willing to destroy your own cities to pull that off.

Talk about the zombie appocolypse.  And, the worst part is, once he's visited the major urban centers, all he has to do is repeat.  Start going through major urban centers again and create thousands more followers.  No modern government could survive revolt of tens of thousands of its own people starting within a week.  

When he's done, he picks up the pieces and crowns himself king.

Heck, DC 50 Bluff check (he's got +77) allows him to instill a Suggestion on anyone that can hear him.  Imagine the damage he could do with a radio transmitter.  Or, teleport onto a live broadcast stage.  Now his Diplomacy reaches millions of people.  Imagine the effect of teleporting into a live showing of the Super Bowl and talking for 6 seconds.  A 77, (average check with the -10 for hurrying) means everyone listening is now helpful.  Even those that started out hostile are now helpful.

In six seconds.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Look, my point isn't that the scenario is impossible, just that there are enough ways things can go wrong that the outcome is not a given.




And my point isn't that it's unstoppable, just that the chance of actually stopping it is...well, pretty tiny, actually.  Shooting it won't stop it.  It's fast enough to overrun a shooter in a few seconds, and every time it rounds a corner it's a different face.
So you need a certain clearance to clean the bunker bathrooms?  So what?  That janitor has a life.  She has an apartment, a family, goes to the movies, buys groceries.  And in six seconds she'll tell the leshay everything it wants to know.



> Even assuming he does take over the world, he can't rest on his laurels.  There are IEDs in the world as powerful as some military ordinance, and "The Resistance" would probably not shy away from using them.  A classic: a shaped charge was used to deform and launch a thick plate of copper at a heavily armored car in an assassination about a decade ago- the blast made the plate into a heavy, near molten airfoil that traveled at hypersonic speed into the car's side, sending the car flying sideways through the air in multiple burning pieces.  (There was also a banker killed in similar fashion.)
> 
> Why did it work?  Becsuse the leader in question was so confident in his safety that he never varied from his routine paths on official business.  They knew where he would be at that time right down to the minute.



I think we can assume that almost everyone who has been assassinated didn't mean to be, and that a mistake was made in protection,  surveillance, or procedure.  

It sounds just like a Hollywood movie:a few valiant defenders with inappropriately large ordinance, triggerhappy reflexes, and a good ol' nuclear deus ex machina succeed in holding off the end of the world.  I'd go see it.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Why would the Le Shay even bother with the president?



I wouldn't.


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## Nifft (May 26, 2012)

pippenainteasy said:


> Lol this went from "high tech forces vs magic forces" to "magic spies vs Obama"



 Magic has an overwhelming upper hand in asymmetric warfare. So, that's where the smart magic forces would seize victory.

Dumb magic forces would probably die horribly on the battlefield.

Cheers, -- N


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 26, 2012)

> Shooting it won't stop it.




Again, depends on what you shoot it with.



> So what? That janitor has a life. She has an apartment, a family, goes to the movies, buys groceries. And in six seconds she'll tell the leshay everything it wants to know.




And a security clearance of her own, meaning her ID as a janitor in a top-secret installation is not a matter of common knowledge or even easily accessible through government records. For example, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas has the "Janet" terminal...so far, nobody (that I can think of) has been revealed as an employee who worked there.

Yes, he could figure it out given time.  But there are better and easier ways around it, at least in the short run, such as the "plus one" scenario I pointed out above.

The question is which options he considers and ultimately decide to go with?  How good is he at assessing the nature and Pros & Cons of his options in this alien world?




> You'd have to be willing to destroy your own cities to pull that off.




1)  If you think there aren't people who are willing to do this, you're kidding yourself.

2)  There are those out there who would be willing to do the job for you in order to preserve their own countries, and their odds of might success actually INCREASE due to the instability the LeShay might cause.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Again, depends on what you shoot it with.



:blink:
Ok, you win.  I can't argue with that.  It does indeed depend on what you shoot it with.


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## Derren (May 26, 2012)

Nellisir said:


> :blink:
> Ok, you win.  I can't argue with that.  It does indeed depend on what you shoot it with.




But for people to get the idea to use anything larger than a bomb it would take several failed assassinations where the assassin also got away with the knowledge that his weapon was not effective.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 26, 2012)

The thing is, in a world where magic is required to do things like cause fireballs, there are fewer threats to worry about.  In that sense, it's a lot easier to prepare against powerful foes because you'll have fewer of them.

In OUR world, anyone you meet can potentially deliver an attack of house-leveling potency.  And, as the shaped charge assassinations (and other mine/IED/drone/missile/etc. attacks) show, the attacker doesn't even need to be close.

The modern day leaders solve this by maintaining a certain amount of distance*...which is exactly contra to what a LeShay would want to do in order to maximize the efficacy of his personal abilities...abilities he'll have no reason to distrust.

Recruit one suicide bomber to have a HE device surgically implanted...

Edit:  thought I'd post a link to the thing if we're going to keep discussing it (in case anyone else was as unfamilar with them as I was):

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Leshay

Interesting...AC 15 if flat footed.

Also, while Charm is magical, those outrageous Diplomacy bonuses are not going to mean as much if the target doesn't understand your language- I wouldn't consider any D&D's world languages to correspond with ours, honestly.  (Speedbump, not barrier, to his plans.)






* not isolation, just having a lifestyle that includes limitations on where, when and how long they will be exposed with _only_ some armed men for protection.


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## Nellisir (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> In OUR world, anyone you meet can potentially deliver an attack of house-leveling potency.  And, as the shaped charge assassinations (and other mine/IED/drone/missile/etc. attacks) show, the attacker doesn't even need to be close.



I don't carry shaped charges on a regular basis, and I don't know anyone that does.  And in order to use them, you have to have a target.  The leshay doesn't give you a target.  It teleports, it's invisible, it changes appearance, and it converts anyone and everyone it talks to (see below) into a zealot.  



> The modern day leaders solve this by maintaining a certain amount of distance*...which is exactly contra to what a LeShay would want to do in order to maximize the efficacy of his personal abilities...abilities he'll have no reason to distrust.



And the leshay can close that distance.



> Interesting...AC 15 if flat footed.



Also 825 hit points, DR 15 epic and cold iron, fast healing 10, and _heal_ as an at-will spell-like ability.



> Also, while Charm is magical, those outrageous Diplomacy bonuses are not going to mean as much if the target doesn't understand your language- I wouldn't consider any D&D's world languages to correspond with ours, honestly.  (Speedbump, not barrier, to his plans.)



True.  But given it has the polyglot feat (speaks all languages) and a 33 intelligence, it's not much of a speedbump.  24 hours?

I just don't see a win here.  If you don't kill it, instantly, it's gone in 6 seconds, fully healed in 12, invisible in 18, and back in 24 seconds, hasted, armed, and pissed off.  If there's no one around, surviving, which seems likely, it goes elsewhere and goes to ground, maybe takes an hour or so, and then starts asking questions.  Subtle questions, but the answers are always honest and as helpful as possible.  It works its way up the chain, and launches a surprise attack at a place and time of its chosing.  If, by a miracle that doesn't succeed, it falls back, adjusts tactics, and does it again.  It's not dumb.  It's the extreme opposite of dumb.


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## wingsandsword (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Interesting...AC 15 if flat footed.
> 
> Also, while Charm is magical, those outrageous Diplomacy bonuses are not going to mean as much if the target doesn't understand your language- I wouldn't consider any D&D's world languages to correspond with ours, honestly.  (Speedbump, not barrier, to his plans.)




That gives you one round to punch through 825 HP, DR 15/Epic & Cold Iron, Fast Healing 10, CON 37 and a Fortitude Save of +29 (and immunity to all Poisons and Diseases).  As we've already discussed, the only way you're doing 825 HP in one round is with a high damage roll with a tactical nuclear weapon, a direct hit by a strategic nuclear weapon, or by concerted fire of a battalion-sized army unit (or other very large scale conventional assault).  

It's kind of like Mungo from Blazing Saddles "If you shoot him, you'll just make him mad."

Also, the Polyglot feat that the LeShay has specifically has as it's description "The character can speak all languages. If the character is literate, he or she can also read and write all languages (not including magical script). ".  By the RAW, he would understand languages he's never heard before, he's smart enough and a good enough linguist to decipher languages on the fly, understand and extrapolate, and make Epic leaps of intuition to communicate in languages he's never dealt with before that encounter.

Even if you accepted that he wouldn't know Earth languages, yeah, it's a mild speedbump.  The idea behind the feat is that you're an Epic-level linguist (prereqs being able to speak 5 languages, an INT of 25+ and being at least 21 Levels or HD, so smarter and more experienced than any human on Earth) and can piece together languages kind of like a Universal Translator off of Star Trek.  Give him a few hours or a couple of days at most and he'd be fluent in any language he was exposed to (especially if you remember he has Detect Thoughts as a spell-like ability, so he can hear people's thoughts in other languages, even rationalize that feat partially in his case as him copying linguistic information he telepathically extracts),  In any case, turn him loose in a very cosmopolitan city like New York and he'd be fluent in most Earth languages inside of a week.

When I proposed the leShay idea, it wasn't for something that would blast through and use brute force or act quickly.  The whole point is subtlety, thinking fairly long-term, and showing that to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi "You cannot win, but there are alternatives to fighting".  In a straight up, conventional war, Earth would win against just about any fantasy force through superior firepower, professional tactics, and advanced technology.  For a fantasy nation/army to win, they'd have to be far more subtle and take advantage of their magical advantages like magical disguises, magical healing, magical teleportation and superhuman/magical translations.

Given time to prepare, and given that LeShay are essentually Epic-Uber-Elves they can think in long term planning, they could come up with strategies as good as anything we could think of here, or better.  Learn languages, learn the culture (with Knowledge: Local +59 I think he'd learn local cultures real fast), make allies, make plans, and by the time anybody knows what you're doing, you've got most of the world in your back pocket and they don't even realize it yet.  

The use of Epic Bluff for a Suggestion is a good one, I hadn't noticed that, but that's another good one, essentially at-will Suggestion.  Notice that he can project a false Alignment with a DC 70 check and he has a +71 to the skill, so no matter what his alignment is he could always appear to be Lawful Good to everybody. . .anybody who tries to intuit this stranger's motives or intentions would find that he is benevolent and wants peace and order.

That brings up the point, what agenda would a LeShay Emperor of Earth have?  They are essentially Epic Elves that are the last survivors of a cataclysm/war that wiped their entire time/space spanning civilization from the reality so that they never existed (Elves from Gallifrey?)  They are Fey, with some obvious fey affinities for nature (Knowledge: Nature +59 and Speak with Plants).  As just brainstorming, I could see a LeShay that arrived on Earth deciding to conquer it for it's own good, that it finds the inhabitants too immature for their own good and too likely to hurt themselves or worse, the planet they are on.  End wars, end abuse of the environment, end discrimination and bigotry. . .but at the cost of making mankind essentially indoctrinated and brainwashed into its agenda.  A "benevolent dictator" with nigh-godlike powers.

Oh, and for the record, the Fanatic attitude produced by the Epic-level Diplomacy skill use is not permanent, if you'll notice, it reverts to "Friendly" after a number of days equal to the CHA bonus, in this case 17 days.  That's still making people unquestioningly to-the-death loyal for 17 days (and still being friendly afterwards) by just talking to them for 12 seconds.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

> And the leshay can close that distance.




You missed my point- my statement was in the context of the LeShay victorious.

Because of the nature of its powers- and probably, the size of its ego- it would be less likely to resort to the kind of distance-keeping that helps POTUS and others safe from a variety of threats.

Instead, the LeShay would feel right at home in a crowd, influencing people with its Charm & Diplomacy...leaving it open to things like suicide bombers and so forth.



> As we've already discussed, the only way you're doing 825 HP in one round is with a high damage roll with a tactical nuclear weapon, a direct hit by a strategic nuclear weapon, or by concerted fire of a battalion-sized army unit (or other very large scale conventional assault).




Or a Vulcan Cannon with its armor piecing spent uranium rounds, or a 17k rounds/seconf Metalstorm, or a shaped-charge molten copper IED on an infrared beam trigger or...well, let's just say there are a lot of options that people keep discounting.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

> That's still making people unquestioningly to-the-death loyal for 17 days (and still being friendly afterwards) by just talking to them for 12 seconds.




With a population of 7B and growing, he can't keep them all in thrall.

Even assuming he gets & keeps the humans in positions of power, that is still going to leave "The Resistance" a significant number of potential recruits.


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## wingsandsword (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Or a Vulcan Cannon with its armor piecing spent uranium rounds, or a 17k rounds/seconf Metalstorm, or a shaped-charge molten copper IED on an infrared beam trigger or...well, let's just say there are a lot of options that people keep discounting.




No, no, no and no.  Prove it.  Automatic weapons in D20 do NOT do damage per projectile, there isn't one bit of evidence to that fact.  Setting a firearm auto-fire does is turn a weapon into an area of effect, it doesn't do extra damage per additional round fired.

Armor Piercing rounds give a +2 circumstance bonus to hit when attacking opponents with an Armor bonus to their AC (Urban Arcana p.69).  A +2 to hit won't mean much when you're attacking a LeShay and you will probably hit if it's flat footed, and can't hit on less than a 20 if it's not.

The closest weapon to a vulcan cannon in official rules is a 7.62mm minigun (Menace Manual p223.), noted as a typical door-mounted  It does 4d10 in a 20 ft square, and takes 100 rounds of ammo to do that.  On average damage it will barely break the LeShay's DR, and it's fast healing is fast enough that it will fully recover each round from continuous fire from that minigun.   It's not doing hundreds of dice of damage because it's throwing hundreds of rounds of ammunition.  There is no grounds to assume that increasing the caliber of the weapon will suddenly make the damage dice jump 

How in the world is an explosively formed penetrator IED going to do as much damage as a tactical nuclear weapon?  They are excellent anti-armor weapons, but it's essentially an improvised version of a shaped charge.  A Hellfire Missile does 15d6 (Menace Manual p.223), that's 52 points of damage on average.  These improvised devices are supposed to be doing more than 16 times that much damage?  

An improvised device is supposed to be vastly superior to an actual military munition?   A maximum strength Disintegrate spell in D&D does 40d6, for an average damage of 140 HP (240 at maximum damage).  Is an IED cobbled together in a shack supposed to be doing more than a 6 times the damage of 6th level spell at 20th caster level, or more than 3 times the damage of a 9th level spell by a 20th level caster (Maximized Disintegrate)?  

Actual shaped-charge devices are in the d20 Modern rules set already (d20 Modern rulebook p102), and having a shaped charge effect means that a weapon ignores 10 points of hardness when it strikes an object, vehicle or building.  

Seriously, show me some kind of official WotC stat for any modern-day weapon system that can do 825 HP in one round that is less than a nuclear weapon (and I had to go to starship weapons systems tables from d20 Future to get that).

To get a concept of what a weapon which can do 825 HP of damage can do, look over at d20 Call of Cthuhlu (as another official WotC set of d20 rules).  A 825 HP blast could defeat Hastur, could put Great Cthuhlu itself into the double-digits in HP.   Taking down a LeShay by direct military action would be about the same as engaging a Great Old One in a stand-up fight (except without the automatic Sanity loss, instead you get the various mind-controlling powers).


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## Nellisir (May 27, 2012)

I think I've reached the end here.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

> The closest weapon to a vulcan cannon in official rules is a 7.62mm minigun (Menace Manual p223.),




IOW, you're saying a Vulcan cannon or Metalstorm can't harm the LeShay based on the stats of a completely different weapon.  That makes no sense.

There is- quite literally- a huge difference in the size & mass of the projectile launched by a minigun and a Vulcan.  That is why it is used to destroy tanks.

http://www.rense.com/general93/mime-attachment 96.jpeg

In the 6 second round the Metalstorm was trained on a LeShay, that would mean 100,000 rounds of ammunition potentially hitting it- approximately 1000x the number of rounds delivered by the minigun.  There simply is no weapon statted out in D20 that approximates this.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKlnMwuCZso&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/ame]

And the fact that something from the RW isn't statted out shouldn't remove it from consideration in what is, essentially, a thought experiment.



> How in the world is an explosively formed penetrator IED going to do as much damage as a tactical nuclear weapon? They are excellent anti-armor weapons, but it's essentially an improvised version of a shaped charge. A Hellfire Missile does 15d6 (Menace Manual p.223), that's 52 points of damage on average. These improvised devices are supposed to be doing more than 16 times that much damage?
> 
> An improvised device is supposed to be vastly superior to an actual military munition?




I didn't say it would.

I pointed out that this is enough to take out armored vehicles and all within, then extrapolated from that that it would probably do more than enough damage to kill a LeShay.  That a Hellfire missile has been statted out by someone as 15d6 just goes hand in hand with my contention that modern weapons in D20 have their damage seriously nerfed...probably to 1) keep the rules consolidated and 2) to facilitate viability of mixed-genre games.

IEDs can be very powerful.

You may note that some IEDs are made from scavenged military munitions, and that devices like the the OKC truck bomb that took out the Murrah building are considered IEDs.

And, FWIW, that particular IED has proven it can toss & shred a multi-ton armored vehicle quite a distance- equivalent to or superior to certain kinds of military munitions.


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## Hussar (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> With a population of 7B and growing, he can't keep them all in thrall.
> 
> Even assuming he gets & keeps the humans in positions of power, that is still going to leave "The Resistance" a significant number of potential recruits.




Doesn't have to.  He gets on a public broadcast and everyone who listens to him for 6 seconds is his thrall for a bit longer than two weeks and still FRIENDLY after that.  There is no resistance.  Do you try to kill your friends?  You might disagree with them, but, I'm thinking that very few people send suicide bombers to their friend's houses.

Never mind that as soon as the suicide bomber gets within bombing distance, he's subject to Charm Monster - 95% of the time he's charmed, and six seconds later, he's a fanatical convert of the Le Shay.  

Oh, and as soon as he's within 60 feet, the Le Shay automatically knows what he's thinking - at will detect thoughts.

This thing is close enough to being a god that he can see godhood on a clear day.  

On a side note, what would a recording of someone this convincing do?  Could you diplomatize someone with a DVD?


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Doesn't have to.  He gets on a public broadcast and everyone who listens to him for 6 seconds is his thrall for a bit longer than two weeks and still FRIENDLY after that.  There is no resistance.  Do you try to kill your friends?  You might disagree with them, but, I'm thinking that very few people send suicide bombers to their friend's houses.




1) not everyone has a TV

2) just because you're someone's friend doesn't mean you'll give them a pass if you think they're threatening something you value even more deeply.  The American Civil War- and others besides- pitted brothers against brothers, fathers against sons.  I'd bet there are enough patriots in the world who would see the LeShay a threat to their respective country/way of life that some would try to kill their "friend."

3) some people are psychopathic/sociopathic, and have no qualms about killing people they "like"- not all of them are serial killers, either.



> Never mind that as soon as the suicide bomber gets within bombing distance, he's subject to Charm Monster - 95% of the time he's charmed, and six seconds later, he's a fanatical convert of the Le Shay.




It's a Gaze attack, meaning the person would have to meet it's eyes to be affected.
Besides, that's why the bomb:

1) would not be controlled by the bomber (timer, radio controlled by someone else, etc., such as in the Collar Bomb Heist), or

2) would not need to get within 60' to be lethal (see OKC), or

3) would be delivered via a method too fast for the bomber to change plans once within the LeShay's sphere of influence (9/11), or

4) the bomber is blind, or

5) other



> Oh, and as soon as he's within 60 feet, the Le Shay automatically knows what he's thinking - at will detect thoughts.




See above, plus "at will" /= "always on for everyone in range"- specifically in this case, the detect thoughts power is a conical effect, not a radius effect.



> On a side note, what would a recording of someone this convincing do?  Could you diplomatize someone with a DVD?




I'd say it's no more or less effective than the broadcast you suggested- I'd probably give a penalty, but the LeShay's bonuses are big enough that it wouldn't matter.


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## Derren (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Besides, that's why the bomb:




Now you are grasping straws. Why would anyone use such a complicated setup for delivering a bomb, which we already have established wouldn't kill the LeShay anyway?


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## wingsandsword (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> IOW, you're saying a Vulcan cannon or Metalstorm can't harm the LeShay based on the stats of a completely different weapon.  That makes no sense.
> 
> There is- quite literally- a huge difference in the size & mass of the projectile launched by a minigun and a Vulcan.  That is why it is used to destroy tanks.
> 
> ...




It is a thought experiment, one I am finding quite entertaining, but the only common frame of reference we have here is the official stats.  

You seem to think that automatic weapons can do 800+ points of damage in one round.  I reject that concept on the grounds there is nothing anywhere in the rules to suggest that any automatic weapon can do even close to a high three-digit damage total.

Yes, Metalstorm throws an incredible number of rounds in a ridiculously small amount of time.  I'm quite familiar with the weapon system, I am also aware that a number of practical considerations have kept it in the prototype phase for years now and it's not an operational weapon with any army because the serious issues in making it operational.  I'm also familiar with the well established precedent in d20 Modern/Future rules that automatic weapons don't scale linearly as the number of rounds fired increased. 

As I noted, Hastur from Call of Cthuhlu has less staying power in a fight than a LeShay.  The same attack that could kill a LeShay in one hit or one round could also take down Boccob, Lolth, Vecna, Wee Jas, Aphrodite, Hercules, Hestia, Anubis, Imhotep and Sobek.  (looking in Deities and Demigods).  Realize that's the scale of damage you are talking about here. 



> I pointed out that this is enough to take out armored vehicles and all within, then extrapolated from that that it would probably do more than enough damage to kill a LeShay.  That a Hellfire missile has been statted out by someone as 15d6 just goes hand in hand with my contention that modern weapons in D20 have their damage seriously nerfed...probably to 1) keep the rules consolidated and 2) to facilitate viability of mixed-genre games.




Those damage totals are quite in line with the stats for vehicles provided.

330 Foot Luxury Yacht: 94 HP and Hardness 5
M1 Abrams Tank: 64 HP and Hardness 20 
UH-60 Blackhawk: 46 HP and Hardness 6
V-22 Osprey: 52 HP and Hardness 5
Humvee: 38 HP and Hardness 5
Ford Crown Victoria (typical police car): 24 HP and Hardness 5

With stats like those for vehicles, the damage given for heavy weapons are quite reasonable for destroying them (remembering that destroying them does not mean completely reducing them to scrap, the same way that reducing a person to 0 HP means reducing them to a bloody pulp, that's the amount of damage to totally incapacitate the vehicle).   

We are used to playing PC's with HP totals like that, but they are the outliers, remember that a typical person has typically between 2 to 7 HP depending on the details (1st level D&D commoner with 1d4 HP would have 2 or 3 on average, 3 or 4 if he was an Expert instead of a Commoner.  2nd level d20 Modern ordinary with 2d6 HP would have about 7 on average).  Don't let the sky-high HP totals of those rare PC's skew your understanding of how tough (or not) most people and things are.

The extrapolation that a weapon can kill a LeShay because it can take out a tank is like saying a weapon can kill Lolth (a being with similar HP and DR) because it can kill a Mummy in one hit (a being with DR and similar HP total).  



> IEDs can be very powerful.
> 
> You may note that some IEDs are made from scavenged military munitions, and that devices like the the OKC truck bomb that took out the Murrah building are considered IEDs.
> 
> And, FWIW, that particular IED has proven it can toss & shred a multi-ton armored vehicle quite a distance- equivalent to or superior to certain kinds of military munitions.





> I know quite well the capabilities of IED's.  I've lost friends to them.
> 
> However, that being said, I know that the particularly dangerous ones like EFP's are very time consuming to build, take expensive and detailed components, and highly skilled bombmakers to achieve effects similar to what we can mass produce.
> 
> The VBIED used in OKC was a huge outlier in IED construction.  Even then, saying it could do 800+ HP of damage seems very out of line with the damage of other heavy weapons and HP totals of vehicles.


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## Stalker0 (May 27, 2012)

Nifft said:


> I've seen movies where zombies take over the earth.
> 
> *ZOMBIES*, people. Cheap little cannon-fodder CR 1 zombies.
> 
> ...




Yeah, in movies, we are talking real life here!


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## Stalker0 (May 27, 2012)

Unless stopped right at the beginning, I think LeShay would have it in the bag.

1) Gather Info: Quickly get up to speed on key country leaders and the most powerful weapons the world had to offer.
2) 5 minutes later: Fanaticize Leaders of all nuclear armed countries to take out the big guns.
3) Systematically acquire all other key leaders/captains of industry.
4) Have them bring you any other personnel you need to acquire.
5) Once the military is dealt with, go on TV. Roll big check, fanaticize the world.

CheckMate. While I think there are likely weapons that could stop him they wouldn't get to be fired. Literally by the time he started doing anything offensive he could acquire so many world assets that no one would have the will to bring those weapons to bear.


But....that's not the key argument here. We aren't talking about one single superbeing, we are talking about magical armies vs real world armies.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

Derren said:


> Now you are grasping straws. Why would anyone use such a complicated setup for delivering a bomb, which we already have established wouldn't kill the LeShay anyway?




1) I don't accept the premise that the LeShay would not be killed by what I'm positing would be used, for reasons stated above.

2) the Iraqis didn't kick the Russians out of their country by beating them outright, they just made the prospect of continued occupation seem so unpalatable that the Russians withdrew.  The same principle applies here.  Even if you can't kill the LeShay, you can make it uncomfortable enough to deem rulership of Earth to simply not be worth the trouble.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

> The VBIED used in OKC was a huge outlier in IED construction. Even then, saying it could do 800+ HP of damage seems very out of line with the damage of other heavy weapons and HP totals of vehicles.




So what if it is an outlier?  The LeShay is an outlier itself.

The point is, these are known RW techniques, and if the LeShay survived assassination attempts, _eventually_, someone would suggest and attempt just such an attack.  OKC and 9/11 might be seen as the only viable options at some point.

And that's assuming the Resistance is made of people like you and me.  If there were free minds among the military or other similarly capable & connected organizations, "misdirected" military grade weaponry, dirty nukes (or plutonium seasoning for his chef salad), and probably stuff we don't even have clue about would also be on the table.

The same goes for prototype systems like Metalstorm.  Even though it is not considered field-ready at this time, in a battle for THE WORLD, someone would give it a try if that option were available.

Why?  Because they would be desperate.  We see that kind of attitude all over fiction- what we have doesn't stop Godzilla, so what do the eggheads have in their labs we can try?  The invading Martians are invulnerable to nukes, so what else do we have?

The same mentality exists in real life.

Look at what the Axis powers were researching/contemplating right before they lost, you'll find stuff we know works- jets, nukes, etc.- and exotica like vortex cannons and death rays.

So what none of this is already statted out for WotC's take on D20.  Do you mean to say if a play asked to make a Metalstorm type device- and having the requisite skills and facilities- you'd say "No" to the request?

Go back and read this thread, you'll find I'm NOT "Tech side wins Dude"- I point out strengths and weaknesses of BOTH sides.

As for LeShay vs Deity HP & defenses: it has always been my position that deity stats only represent the avatars they manifest to beings on planes other than their own.  Destroying such an avatar is like a scraped knee- painful, but not life threatening, and it will get better.

So while a nuke might wipe out the LeShay and Cthulhu, Cthulhu might still return some day.


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## Derren (May 27, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> And that's assuming the Resistance is made of people like you and me.




What resistance?
Why would anyone resist the LeShey in the same way one would resist an occupational force?

The LeShey is charismatic enough to get elected legitimately and then can easily influence other world leaders after meeting them at a G20 or UN summit. Why would there even be a resistance?


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 27, 2012)

> Why would anyone resist the LeShey in the same way one would resist an occupational force?
> 
> _<snip>_
> 
> Why would there even be a resistance?




Depends upon how the LeShay wants to rule the world.  If the LeShay instituted worldwide pantheism as the mandatory faith, that would cheese off a few billion people of various faiths.

What if he cracked down on things like cocaine, tobacco, etc., with military force?  What if he did the same for junk food?

What if he didn't like anyone darker than Asians since they reminded him of Drow, and instituted a genocide?

(They can have any alignment, after all.)

Some things are deeper than friendship, and the more he tries to reshape our world, the more negative modifiers he could accumulate.

Instead of Tim Leary's "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.", you'd hear "Tune out, Drop out, Arm up."

How many would there be?

Well, assuming every human were targetable, he'd still fail to persuade 1 in every 20.  That's about 350M worldwide.  Of course, not everyone has access to a TV.  So that might get another 50m to the total of unconvinced humanity...at least, temporarily.

Diplomacy normally requires a minute of using the skill, but with its bonuses, the LeShay could usually risk thë -10 mod for doing a rushed, full round check.

But sometimes, even that isn't enough time.  Just as an FYI, if the LeShay took on Obama's form, he'd never convince my Mom of anything over the airwaves- she sees his face or hears his voice, she immediately changes the channel.*  And her hearing is in decline, so she usually doesn't _hear_ the TV so much as read it- that delay takes enough time that the Obama LeShay's words wouldn't even register.






* FWIW, she's black and a registered Dem.


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## Hussar (May 28, 2012)

DannyA said:
			
		

> Well, assuming every human were targetable, he'd still fail to persuade 1 in every 20. That's about 350M worldwide. Of course, not everyone has access to a TV. So that might get another 50m to the total of unconvinced humanity...at least, temporarily.




That's actually a mistake.  There is no autofails on skill checks in D20.  He persuades every single person who hears him.  If he has two minutes to talk, then he doesn't take the -10 to his check and pretty much autoconverts anyone who hears him for 17 days and then they still think favourably (friendly) after that.

If I got a "friendly" result on a diplomacy check and they still send IED's and suicide bombers after me, I'm thinking that that's the last time I play with that DM.  

As far as anyone who cannot hear him - people with no radio, television or internet, those people also don't generally have nukes or high tech weaponry either.  

It would be pretty simple for the first message going out to be, "Now, bring my message to everyone else!"  and blanket the planet.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> That's actually a mistake.  There is no autofails on skill checks in D20.




Oops!  You're 100% right!



> He persuades every single person who hears him.  If he has two minutes to talk, then he doesn't take the -10 to his check and pretty much autoconverts anyone who hears him for 17 days and then they still think favourably (friendly) after that.




He doesn't need the 2 minutes- the full-round (6 sec) version with the -10 mid will still probably result in an 80+% success rate (I haven't actually done the numbers).  That's probably good enough.

However, "friendly" isn't an eternal state since this is non-magical.  If your people were targeted for genocide by his forces and you knew it and he didn't speak to you for 17 days, "friendly" Would evaporate into "hostile" pretty much instantaneously.



> If I got a "friendly" result on a diplomacy check and they still send IED's and suicide bombers after me, I'm thinking that that's the last time I play with that DM.




Hey, sometimes "friendly" simply isn't good enough.  History is full of people who killed their friends and family- honor killings*, "just business", "for the greater good", etc.



> As far as anyone who cannot hear him - people with no radio, television or internet, those people also don't generally have nukes or high tech weaponry either.




I can think of a few people who do without those conveniences, and not all of them are Unabomber/OBL types.  Now, none of those I know personally are violent, but one is a retired Army demolitions expert. (He likes his solitude.)

The thing is, someone not in thrall to the LeShay with the proper skillset could still get access to the necessary equipment if he or she is wise enough.  The guys guarding the munitions in "Landru's" world don't have magic powers to determine whether someone is still loyal.  A little wax a la Odysseus and he won't hear enough to become enthralled.  Ditto a set of fake earpieces (see multiple episodes of Dr Who).

Then there are the survivalists who have pirate and/or shortwave radio.

As for the Internet...when has ANYONE been convinced of ANYTHING contra to their personal viewpoints on the Internet? 



> It would be pretty simple for the first message going out to be, "Now, bring my message to everyone else!"  and blanket the planet.




But using intermediaries won't work.  They won't be as convincing.  People slam the door on Jehova's Witnesses, Mormons and Hare Krishnas every day.  They change channels from CNN or Fox to watch The Cartoon Network.

Even if he takes over all the radio and tv stations simultaneously, some people will turn them off.

If he uses the EBS system, people will tune out once they realize there's no tornado, hurricane or Amber alert, thinking its some joker playing a prank.







* by "honor killing", I mean in the broadest possible sense any killing in any culture related to the preservation of personal, familial, institutional, religious, political, business or other honor.


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## Nellisir (May 28, 2012)

Argh.  Catastrophic failed Will save to not read this thread and not post.

EDIT: NO, NO!  I WON'T DO IT, AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!

<sigh>
Maybe 5e will give me a better Will save?
Cheers


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 28, 2012)

> OK, first off, your "resistance" is a bunch of disconnected people who don't like to communicate and have no way of identifying each other




All resistance movements share those communication & identification issues.  This is a hurdle, not an insurmountable barrier.



> Secondly, if you really think your retired demolitions buddy can walk onto a military base alone, obtain explosives sufficient to obliterate a building




No, while he still has access to military bases, he probably could not access a munitions storage area without help as things are today.  The question is open, though, whether such a level of security would remain intact und the LeShay's rule.

In "This Side of Paradise" the crew of the Enterprise, enthralled by alien plants, abandon their positions to live planetside.  This leaves the ship and all its resources unguarded.

While I doubt the LeShay would have troops stand down completely, the guards in question may not be as vigilant as they would be.  Their minds would expect anyone approaching to be as loyal as they are, as opposed to the suspicious minds of the unentrhalled.

Just as people have questioned whether someone would use an IED on someone they thought a "friend", the question is just as valid here- would an enthralled guard be disciplined enough to shoot someone who is supposedly just as besotted by the LeShay as he is?

As for my buddy, I know he could make an OKC device, though.

You and I know that it is possible to make such a device with materials common to farming.  We also know that certain materials even contain unique plastic identifying beads so they can be tracked to individuals.

But this is an alien concern, probably outside the LeShay's experience.  He would have to ask the right questions to recognize the threat.



> Fourth, if we're just going to make up random bad stuff for the LeShay to do



The LeShay can be ANY alignment.

One who is LN may deem drugs a hedonistic scourge and attempt their eradication.  One who is CE Might engage in genocide.  Etc.



> we might as well throw gas rationing and travel papers into the mix




If I were a LeShay, I probably would.  But that just makes things difficult, not impossible.



> Milgram experiment.




Familiar with it- VERY familiar.  What's your point?

Just because someone is willing to do great evil in someone's name if they think it is for a good cause/they're trying to follow instructions, YOU won't quietly accede to extinction unless you yourself are in the "fanatic" mind state.

Not only that, while the Milgrim experiment's results are pretty horrifying, we also have RW counter examples from the very regimes that inspired the experiment, illustrating that it is possible for people to disobey authority in the face of death.

On top of this, there seems to be an underlying assumption that someone can be a fanatic about only one thing at a time.  Admittedly, this is at least in part because of the way the skills are we printed in D20- there is no consideration as to what happens when someone is trying to convert a fanatic to a fanatic of opposite intent.  I don't know about you, but I already have things in my life I would be willing to die for.


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## Hussar (May 28, 2012)

DannyA said:
			
		

> As for the Internet...when has ANYONE been convinced of ANYTHING contra to their personal viewpoints on the Internet?




I wonder what the skill check penalty would be for this?   

Funnily enough, if you step away from D&D for a second and look at other games, you can actually get decent games out of this setup.  Sufficiently Advanced, for example, allowed for this style of thing, mostly because your PC had powers equivalent to that Le Shay (or could if you wanted) and you could be dealing with fairly low tech (ie. present day) societies.

It was entirely possible for the extremely advanced individuals to pretty much take over the world.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 28, 2012)

I thought in terms of a lot of systems in this thread...just not obviously.

D20 nerfs modern weapons over the small-arms size,but many systems do not.  My early questions about the way magic does or does not function in our world- and why- don't make as much sense in D20 as in other systems.

The thing is, whoever designed the LeShay could just as easily made it even tougher- its Charm power could have been an aura with a radius instead of a conical gaze attack, for instance- making its plans for world domination even more likely.


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## pippenainteasy (May 28, 2012)

wingsandsword said:


> As I noted, Hastur from Call of Cthuhlu has less staying power in a fight than a LeShay.  The same attack that could kill a LeShay in one hit or one round could also take down Boccob, Lolth, Vecna, Wee Jas, Aphrodite, Hercules, Hestia, Anubis, Imhotep and Sobek.  (looking in Deities and Demigods).  Realize that's the scale of damage you are talking about here.




Yeah but that's not much of a scale...D&D gods are incredibly weak, they can't even beat a mid-tier Marvel or DC character. Not even considering their lame stats, even within the lore greater deities get taken down by lesser powers all the time.


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## Hussar (May 28, 2012)

Heh, this is a fun thought exercise.

Here's my "Ultimate Bastard Le Shay Conquest Scenario"

Day 1 - Le Shay teleports and uses its charm/diplomacy powers to gain access to major television network broadcasts.  Starts with English and moves on to every major language group in the world.  Tells the victims to continuously broadcast.  The message sent out is, "I am the new messiah.  Spread the word.  Make sure EVERYONE hears and sees this."

Day 2-4 - Le Shay, with the backing of every world political and religious leader (since it's likely they would all see the broadcast), institutes actions to continue spreading the word - airplanes and helicopters with honking big speakers, public announcement systems, TV, Radio, Shortwave broadcast, Internet, etc.  Again, the message is "Spread the word.  Make sure everyone hears this."

Day 5 - New message goes out.  "Spread the word.  Anyone who refuses to listen is a demon and must be killed."  Sucks for the deaf, but, them's the breaks.

Day 6 to 13 - continue to spread the word, blanketing everywhere possible.

Day 14 - Announce a major announcement in 2 days.  Everyone must watch.  Spread the word.  Anyone not watching is a demon and must be killed on sight.

Day 16 - With about 95-98% of the world watching the announcement, the Le Shay Jim Jones' the entire planet.  Mass suicide cult style.  He's going to take them all to Heaven.

Day 17 - The remaining pockets of humanity are basically tribes with no outside contact with the world in areas like the Amazon basin or Papua New Guinea.  The Le Shay makes contact with these people and sets himself up as the new God Emperor of everything.

Three or four generations later, he begins a massive program of social engineering, with himself firmly ensconced as the God Emperor.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 28, 2012)

He'd need a bit more time than that- command centers for things like ships at sea and cetain businesses wouldn't be monitoring commercial broadcasts, and some facilities bar or have limitations on which areas devices that would pick up things like radio or tv.  (My brief stint at TI was one such place.)

For things like those military command centers, many off-duty personnel might be affected, but it wouldn't be so fast and thorough that others couldn't react.  To convert an aircraft carrier or sub without incident, for instance, he might have to get control of the base that is broadcasting on command channels to convert the bridge first.

And he _wants_ those to go without incident- he really wouldn't want the crew of an aircraft carrier to have the time to lock up the ones who were listening on their personal radios or the TVs in the lounge areas, because that would give them a chance to recognize the origin & nature of the threat.

Better for the LeShay that he convert the bridge crew and have them channel his message through the ship's PA system, achieving near total control fairly quickly.


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## UngainlyTitan (May 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> .....snip
> 
> 
> Day 17 - The remaining pockets of humanity are basically tribes with no outside contact with the world in areas like the Amazon basin or Papua New Guinea.  The Le Shay makes contact with these people and sets himself up as the new God Emperor of everything.
> ...



And so we get the Warhammer 40K universe


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## pippenainteasy (May 29, 2012)

ardoughter said:


> And so we get the Warhammer 40K universe




Exterminatus: the end, Mr. Leshay


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## Stalker0 (May 29, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Depends upon how the LeShay wants to rule the world.  If the LeShay instituted worldwide pantheism as the mandatory faith, that would cheese off a few billion people of various faiths.




Which billion, the ones that saw him on TV and now believe he is god?


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 29, 2012)

> Which billion, the ones that saw him on TV and now believe he is god?




The ones who didn't and heard about it- which gets to timing.

There has yet to be a broadcast that reaches everyone in the world with a TV- as I recall, Princess Di's funeral is #1 with 2.5B (and I wasn't one of them).  Unless and until he has control over most of the media outlets, one broadcast won't do it.

I'm guessing, at the minimum, he'd need control over the big American stations & cable news channels, the BBC, Russia's main channel, and the various state-run channels in places like China and other closed societies before that announcement gets him enough converts to avoid at least the rumblings of a holy war.


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## Hussar (May 29, 2012)

But, that's the thing.  He doesn't NEED TV.  He can get the same effect with radio as well.  And, putting his first message out as, "Make sure you share this with everyone.  Make sure everyone hears this" pretty much makes sure that everyone does.


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## Dannyalcatraz (May 29, 2012)

Hussar said:


> But, that's the thing.  He doesn't NEED TV.  He can get the same effect with radio as well.  And, putting his first message out as, "Make sure you share this with everyone.  Make sure everyone hears this" pretty much makes sure that everyone does.




1) Radio is even less efficient than TV- FM's range is shorter, AM's market is smaller, and while it is potentially worldwide, satellite radio also has only a small audience compared to TV...and the market as a whole is much more fragmented and compartmentalized.  It's almost not worth his time.

(Let's be honest here: how many people in this thread regularly listen to radio?  I only do so if my Mom is in the car- the rest of the time, I'm listening to CDs.)

2) "Sharing the message with others" is, arguably, not going to have the same massive bonuses.  The secondary conversion rate will not be as high, and as a DM, I probably wouldn't let any secondary method that doesn't include an actual recording of the LeShay have the option of converting someone to a Fanatic.

3) Better than radio would be a YouTube recording that followers send links to...


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## mmadsen (Sep 17, 2012)

mmadsen said:


> Some of us were discussing guns in a fantasy setting, and then I came across The Veil War, which imagines a magically armed and armored force of "goblins" invading our world and facing confused US forces.



By the way, The Veil War is still going strong.  It's up to chapter 25 now.


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