Fantasy Weapons and Magic Vs Science Fiction Weapons and Tech

For the age old Magic Versus Science thing. I decided to make a thread discussing ideas of technological weapons vs enchanted big swords. Here you can describe the reaction your characters have or works that you feel work well for this.

Really just all forms of discussion when it comes to Magic and Science Counterparts.

edited 4th Feb '15 11:25:22 AM by EchoingSilence

Well accuracy probably wouldn't be too different, I mean I'm sure you could enchant an arrow to always hit its target. range and rate-of-fire would definitely be better for the sci-fi guy.

Yeah pretty much.

This also might include works where cybernetics eat souls.

And where an enchanted shield (the medieval kind) is as tough as a force-field.

Or how the society using said science or magic develops depending on their magic or science.

Saint Laughter

In my The Magic Comes Back setting:

Guns are quite powerful enough to break through most magical defenses, which is why the Archmage's Personal Guard added pistols and assault carbines to their arsenal as soon as they got the opportunity. They are, however, largely useless against most spirit entities (like daemons, giants and primal fey), which is why the Guard also kept their magical swords and spears.

A sanctuarian firearm is usually enchanted for both lower weight and greater stability while firing (and frequently constructed from superstrong, lightweight alchemically enhanced materials to begin with), but the projectile remains an ordinary piece of metal unless a spirit is bound into it at great expense in materials, time and energy. Most armed forces on Earth have also recognized that it's better to give one's troops some melee training and weapons than try outfitting them with magic bullets that each cost as much as your average air-to-air missile...or having them come up against a giant and getting utterly destroyed without even being able to fight back.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

Now do Tanks and artillery utterly wreck shit?

A trained mage has the firepower of a MBT and then some, but depending on their approach to casting they may not have the firing rate or the power reserves to keep it up for long (and a mage who uses a certain very dangerous technique to load up on high-power spells is likely to explode spectacularly if they ever lose control).

Said mage is a lot squishier than any tank but would also be far more difficult to detect and hit (especially when you take magical stealth into account). Of course, it's easier to mass-produce tanks than mages.

The real trick is putting mages aboard your tanks and artillery, though. Magically concealed self-propelled guns with their targeting boosted by divination magic? Awesome.

A modern-day (or 20 Minutes into the Future ) army would be roughly tied in effectiveness with one making heavy use of magic instead of technology. Both would be utterly curbstomped by any force that combines both, which is why everybody else, both on Earth (highest tech level in the known universe) and beyond (where magic tends to take the place of tech) considers New Sanctuary (combining offworld arcana with Earth tech) to be really, really scary.

edited 5th Feb '15 11:11:45 AM by MattStriker

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

My setting is all about this. Enchanted swords for bayonets, starships carry arrays of Jumbo magic wands as ship-to-ship weaponry, and people debate magic bullets Vs laser guns Vs biomechanical weapons.

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!

Very interesting. I don't have many settings like that but I find the concept interesting.

Okay what do you think would be the general reaction of a fantasy world entering a mecha world? How would the knights of the kingdom react to seeing giant armored frames and how do you think they would deal with them?

A high-fantasy world encountering mecha would probably have an easier time accepting what they see than the other way around.

"Oh, some giant golem things with magic weapons. Didn't we have that two months ago?"

vs.

"ALL WE THOUGHT TRUE IS A LIE! SCIENCE HAS FAILED US!"

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

Probably.

One fantasy series I have been reading has had the general reaction to modern (at the very least old cold war) era weaponry to be utter shock and realization that their lives are forfeit if they fight. Gate I believe it was called.

Which got me to thinking, how would these kinds of worlds react to stuff like Gundam or Armored Trooper Votoms?

edited 6th Feb '15 6:26:10 AM by EchoingSilence

I was thinking more along the lines of "oh wow, they set us up with a real turkey shoot."

That depends on the level of fantasy. Dark Souls level they'd have trouble. The Iron Golem is a example of that.

More high fantasy level items with spells that can level mountains readily available is another matter entirely.

Eh... could go either way.

The thing is, an incredibly powerful mage could fire off nuke-level spells, but he can only reliably hit what he can see.

A significant number of modern (to say nothing of future) weapons are intended for beyond-visual-range firing. Hence? Your mage drops to a skilled sniper from a klick off.

That said, if the mage just levels the damn city, the sniper's a little bit too dead to shoot him.

So, it entirely depends on the setting, limits of magic, level of technology, et cetera. Personally, I default to Sci-Fi victory on the basis of 'We have more guns. They're bigger. They can hit from farther away.' Because really, what mage can shield himself against an artillery barrage or an airstrike? Or, hell, an orbital strike?

That line of sight accuracy is also only workable if he can follow his target.

Fast enough attacks can cause trouble.

Or the sniper shoots at the illusionary mage walking ahead of the real, invisible one .

That's a tactic that works incredibly well in Shadowrun, a game where everybody knows you need to kill the other side's mage first if you want to have any chance to win.

It also helps that a SR mage can do things like saying "oh hey, Force 6 Water Elemental? Get over to wherever that bullet come from and manifest around that asshole with the big rifle there."

But again, the nastiest thing possible in SR is a mage who knows how to use technology. Enhance Aim or Increase Gear Limit spells combined with a big gun and a spirit sustaining your Improved Invisibility spell? Awesome.

In general, most settings that use magic would have answers for just about anything modern technology could do. This is generally offset by the relative rarity of mages and the difficulty in training them in decent numbers...the archetypical high-fantasy wizard has been training since childhood and is probably at least middle-aged by the time they're ready for the big leagues. Meanwhile, give a mook a few weeks of basic training, an AK and maybe an RPG-7 and you've got something that isn't anywhere near as potent as the mage would be but can be fielded in such numbers and at such a low cost that it comes out roughly the same.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

Ooh, my original universe has quite a bit of stuff on this. Basically a magical race is introduced to a hi-tech planet, and said race quickly begins developing magitek which is harder to mass-produce, but more efficient/powerful. Trying to use both magic and tech however is a problem, as mana tends to be Walking Techbane stuff.

In general, the magic is much stronger, until the tech guys start coming up with Anti-magic fields and stuff... provided by extradimensional Energy Being aliens

...eheh

Why does this thread make me envision a World Of Warcraft Paladin wielding an M-16?

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Considering that WOW characters can already wield rapid-firing futuristic-looking guns...

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

Depends what he can see though, after all, magic mirrors are common enough in fantasy.

Only if he doesn't have a protection spell.

Not to mention other methods of casting at targets without line-of-sight, such as sympathetic magic (voodoo dolls, for example) or True Names.

My Games & Writing

True as well. But we can generally agree that a rifle can put down a wizard slash mage better than a arrow could.

So if the Mage has no idea what his attacker looks like a voodoo doll is nill, since it also apparently needs a DNA sample.

And a sniper is similarly foiled by not knowing what his target looks like. Both call for some sort of information on their target. A sniper might get a photograph and route details from the intelligence arm of his military; a wizard might send an air spirit to steal a piece of hair from the brush of the target, and use that to kill via sympathy.

As I think that others have said, however, a great deal is going to depend on just what the magic system in question can do, and what technology is available (including the question of whether super-science or "sufficiently advanced" technology is included), I daresay; conflating all known magic systems would likely produce something that far overpowers modern technology, while conflating all sci-fi technology might produce a similarly-overpowered result.

My Games & Writing

Well, instead of a sniper, there's always artillery. Available in 105mm, 155mm, and Magictek flavours.