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troperville

Straight: A perfectly ordinary rocket launcher blows up the 10,000 year old demon.
Exaggerated: A single company of muggle troops in the wrong place and time screw up a thousand-year conflict between entire wizard power blocs.
Downplayed: A wizard slaughters a company of muggle infantry only to get blown up by a cruise missile.
Justified:
- The rules of magic so go against conventional physics (Wild Magic, aversion of Magic A Is Magic A etc.) that the scientific method is as alien to the wizards as magic is to muggles. Systematic improvement of magic is thus impossible, limiting the ability of magic to advance.
- Immortal Smug Supers sneered at muggles for centuries, not realising until it's too late just how far the muggles have advanced.
- The Smug Super is very smug, and ignores the fact that, despite his power, he could still easily be killed by conventional means. Whereas before he only had swords to deal with, now he's facing guns.
- Magic is from a land that hasn't advanced its magic, technology, or society in thousands of years, only to find out their traditional magic and honorable ways of fighting are horribly outmatched and outdated when facing modern humans.
- The Magic Has Been Going Away. Modern mages are far weaker than the ones of old, while muggle tech has been steadily improving.
- Magic has all kind of rules that limits effectiveness compared to Muggle technology.
- Magic and magical constructs requires constant source of power to just exist.
- Magic is slow, spells have travel time even after you waste time saying the incantation, can be dodged or blocked, and all defensive spells are reactionary. This puts wizards at a huge disadvantage against muggles with firearms.
- Magic always needs an organic in the loop. This makes mechanised industrial production like muggles have impossible, putting wizards at a logistical disadvantage.
Inverted:
- Muggles are around present day in tech... Mages have a vibrant interstellar empire that makes The Culture look like cavemen.
- Magic can do all kinds of things and at extents that leave Newton, Einstein and all other muggle physicists rolling in their graves.
Subverted:
- Muggle technology looks superior until the mages pull out the really high-end powers.
- Muggles win... only because wizard defectors tell on their own.
- Muggles are superior... but theirs is Sufficiently Advanced Technology that would make the Time Lords stop and stare, making it dubious how "muggle" they really are.
Double Subverted:
- Which the muggles then top.
- The advice the defectors give doesn't amount to much in the end. It is ultimately still up to Muggle tech to carry the day.
Parodied: A butter knife wielded by a fragile old man destroys the greatest wizard to ever exist.
Zig Zagged:
- There is a Lensman Arms Race between muggle technology and magic.
- A third faction puts magic and technology together to form Magitek, which is superior to either individually.
- Magic and muggle technology have their own strengths and weaknesses that the other cannot duplicate.
Averted:
- Magic and muggle technology are about even; neither is substantially better or worse than the other.
- Magic is always superior to anything muggles can do.
Enforced: ???
Lampshaded: "I thought magic would be stronger than this."
Invoked: ???
Exploited: A wizard challenges another wizard to a duel, only to pull out a colt and fill their opponent with lead.
Defied: Wizards keep researching and create spells that offer industrial efficiency so that they can keep up with or exceed muggles.
Discussed: ???
Conversed: ???
Deconstructed: Wizarding society becomes obsolete and is forced into hiding or destroyed.
Reconstructed:
- Wizards decide to fight smart, not hard. If they can't outdo muggles in a straight fight, they'll just use guerilla warfare to avoid fair fights or esoterics such as mind control to set themselves up as The Man Behind the Man to muggle society.
- Wizards manage to steal human technology and upgrade it with their magic.