30 word thesis statment of this whole article
On the whole, despite all the supernatural elements in Scarterra, Scarterran warfare is very similar to historical medieval warfare except that battlefield outcomes hinge more on the actions of heroes.
For clarification purposes, "heroes" essentially means the top 1% of warriors whether they act heroically or villainously.
Earth History Oversimplified
While movies and the like love to focus on epic large scale clashes of armies in medieval historical fiction genre or fantasy genre this was rare in real medieval history.
Not that large scale pitched battles or full scale sieges
never happened in medieval Europe, but large scale battles were less commonly seen in the Middle Ages than in the era of the Roman Empire's heyday and Warring States period of China almost thousand years prior to the Middle Ages.
Often relatively small armies camped near each other with out engaged
en masse and both sides frequently had small skirmishing force break off from the main force to scout, scavenge for supplies, run harassment campaigns or probe the enemy for weaknesses.
A lot of battles were small skirmishing forces clashing with other small skirmishing forces going for small objectives. If you can kill
one enemy soldier with no losses, that's a victory. If you can kill five enemy soldiers and only lose one of your own, that's a victory. This would add up over time.
One of the reasons why castles were so useful is that it let one side's own forces deploy small skirmishing groups to engage in hit and run tactics on the enemy and then retreat to safety over and over again.
Things that Scarterra has that Medieval Earth does not
The most obvious thing is fairly reliable magic, which I will cover in depth below.
The second most obvious things is that Scarterra has supernatural creatures that can fight.
The third most obvious thing is
the Dragons' Path results in a small number of soldiers that are substantially stronger than the average soldiers. Let's cover this one first.
The Dragon's Path impact on medieval warfare
Even in the real world. There are medieval knights who served as mercenaries in foreign wars as much to keep their fighting skills sharp as it was to get paid. With the metaphysical law of the Dragon's Path, risk taking is even more rewarded, so you are going to see more of it Scarterra though it is still going to be a minority of the population. Most people prefer safety and stability over danger and glory, so even with the option of taking the Dragon's Path, most Scarterrans don't take it.
But you do end up with a small core of soldiers that are well above normal rank-and-file soldiers. This doesn't make normal soldiers useless. You still need normal soldiers to maintain order in friendly territory or to occupy enemy territory. And with numbers, determination, and a bit of luck, normal soldiers can and occasionally do take down legendary soldiers.
Finally, most of Scarterra's great heroes ultimately came from the ranks of normal soldiers. Without normal soldiers, you don't have great heroes.
Scarterra's legendary heroes and villains goes hand and hand with magical warfare.
What About Magic during Armies Clashing?
Going into the weeds on Scarterra's magical warfare aspect by aspect is worthy of its own article, but here is the basics of Scarterran magical warfare in very broad strokes.
The majority of warfare applicable magic falls into two broad categories: augments and hexes.
Big "A" Augmentation and
big "H" Hexing are two separate and very specific divine domains for theurgists but small "a" augmentation and small "h" hexing apply to many magics.
Small "a" augmentation is anything that makes your allies more effective combatants and small "h" hexing applies to anything to make your enemies less effective combatants.
Magical augmentation tends to scale better with people who are already strong and skilled. Using augmentation magic can make mediocre soldiers fight like elite soldiers (or heroes), but augmentation magic can make elite soliders into vertiable demigods.
One can also approximate magical augmentation by hexing the other side. Nobody likes being the subject of a hex spell, but hexes tend to practically cripple ordinary soldiers and only moderately inconvenience heroes. Once you have heroes that are either magical augmented or facing enemies that have been hexed, they will normally cut through ordinary soldiers like a hot knife through butter.
When large armies clash, both sides will try to use magical spells and magical items to make their own heroes as powerful as possible. The objective is either to eliminate the other side's heroes as quickly as posssible or to inflict such grievous losses on the other side's ordinary soldiers that they break. Either way will secure a victory most of the time.
How does Magic affect Fortifications?
In a very high magic setting (like most D&D settings), combat magic makes medieval style castles and city walls more or less obsolete.
Realistically, even if the setting is seemingly based on medieval technology, magical warfare would look a lot like modern warfare. Teleportation and other amazing mobility spells are loosely analogous to modern mechanized warfare transporting soldiers and powerful invocations are akin to modern artillery.
In the 20th century and 21st century, very few cities have walls and most politicians do not live in castles. Modern militaries rely on logistics, intelligence and above all mobility more than they rely on antiquated fortifications though trench warfare and underground bunkers are still a factor.
While Scarterra ha a lot of magic in it, it doesn't have teleportation in it. There are spells which enhance mobility, but it is not powerful enough to make normal marching soldiers or cavalry obsolete.
There are some relatively uncommon magic spells in Scarterra that would theoretically make a medieval castle or city walls obsolete. If people can fly over the walls or magically warp the stone for instance, this would negate a castle.
But Scarterra has a metaphysical law known as
The Law of Sanctums. The gist of which is that castles and other fortifications greatly magnify and extend defensive magic spells allowing a single spell-caster to defend against most powerful and more numerous enemy casters much like how non-magical fortifications help non-magical soldiers keep superior non-magical threats at bay.
On the whole, Scarterran magic makes fortifications MORE useful not less. This aspect of medieval warfare is mostly unchanged.
How does Magic Affect Skirmishes?
There is an old saying that an army marches on its stomach. From the ancient world to the modern world, hungry soldiers will not fight very well against well-fed soldiers.
Scarterra has a few magical options for
obtaining modest quantities of drinking water, food is still produced and transported in more or the less the same way that medieval Earth humans did, so magic changes little.
Medieval and Scarterran supply lines also included tents, clothes, medical supplies, ammunition, firewood, and replacement weapons are armor. In Scarterra, supply lines include
potions and other finite magical items and by extension
reagents.
Reagents are to potions and magical items what petrolium is to gasoline and jet fuel. Much like petrolium is a hotly contested resource in the 20th and 21st century, reagents are hotly contest resource in
Scarterra. In this case, magic doesn't negate the need to guard (or attack) supply lines in medieval, it enhances the need to focus on supply lines.
I bring up supply lines most skirmishes occur when one side is attacking the other side's supply lines or both sides are sending out foraging parties and the foraging parties meet each other. Armies either want to throttle the supplies of the other side or they want to nickel and dime the other side's soldiers down bit by bit. And if the latter, the best way to draw out enemy soldiers is to harass supply lines.
These sporadic skirmishes are more or less the same in Scarterran and medieval Europe apart from the fact that magic and the Dragon's Path tilt these skirmishes to the side with more heroes.
Miscelaneous Addendum 1: Ranged attack spells
Scarterra has magic that can directly smite an enemy at range, usually but not always using
the arcane school of "Invocation" or the
the divine sphere of "Wrath". Attack spells of this nature capable of hitting multiple enemies at once usually only do significant damage against poorly armored targets so most magical invokers focus on sniping high value targets one at a time.
The very best invokers can barely pass half the effect range of of a longbow or crossbow and Wrath theurgy is even shorter range. That means it's difficult for an invoker to blast enemies from an unsailable and safe location the way an archer might fire volleys at enemies from cover.
Because any spell-caster is really flashy and obvious, they draw a lot of enemy fire, both figuratively and literally. That's assuming these spell-caster don't swarmed in melee or assassinated. Invokers are so flashy and obvious that the enemy side usually really hates them. In the case of one side surrendering to another side, sometimes the enemy will execute invokers right on the spot, rules of war be damned. Protecting your side's invokers is a difficult task, increasing the importance of heroes.
Invocation and other attack spells can be enchanted into arrow. This greatly increases the range of said attack spell, but it slightly diminishes the damaging payload at the end point, but it makes an invoker safer from retaliation since the invoker doesn't have to fire the magic arrow, any archer can do it.
Enchanted arrows are even more expensive than potions in terms of
reagents, so this is sort of like the Scarterran equivalent of firing a $2 million cruise missle at a $100,000 enemy asset, but war as never been cheap, not in modern times or ancient times. If a Scarterran general has enchanted arrows or crossbow bolts in his arsenal, he is going to hand out the arrows to the very best archer in the army once again magnfying the importance of heroes.
Sneaky Magic
Mind control, subtle hexes, and various illusion spells can sway a battle and unlike an invocation spell, is not always obvious.
Compared to other magics in Scarterra, basic Divination magic is relatively plentiful and cheap. Generals can give normal troops a few potions of staves of Detect Magic or embed neophyte spell-casters into units of rank-and-file troops.
The rank-and-file troops will look for magic aura, and say "I don't know what the magic is doing, but it's
something and it's coming from
that direction." They will report this up the chain of command and then a hero will zero in on "that direction" and apply appropriate counter-measures.
This adds a new element of strategy to battles with each side having their own protocols for detection, identification, and counter measures for enemy magics. But it doesn't change the basic structure of a medieval battle. It just means heroes are that much more important.
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