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Comments
Fundamentally, though, a mundane weapon is a completely known and reliable factor that doesn't need to fulfill any magical conditions, and leaves one with options when confronted by any force that acts contrary to magic. It's simply sensible to have one as a fallback. After all, in a dangerous situation, you want to take as many safety measures as are practical. Having some basic skill in a basic, common weapon just seems like common sense. Insofar as we're talking quasi-medieval fantasy (urban fantasy is a bit different in context, after all), it makes sense for mages to know the basic application of basic weapons because, well, most independent people would. If Heinrich the shoe-maker knows how defend himself decently with a staff, y'know...
And I think a fundamental element of this whole shebang is mechanical. A lot of fantasy fiction is influenced by D&D, which had wizards be crappy at direct combat as a factor of balance. This isn't a factor that strictly needs to exist in a purely literary or cinematic context, but is well ingrained into the "fantasy consciousness".
The other weird thing about TES is that fighting a dragon and fighting a bandit isn't much different insofar as direct combat goes. One takes more hits and deals more damage than the other, but one's tactical approach needn't change as the conflict will be more likely decided by stats than anything else.
An armor rating of 19 doesn't exactly help, though.
Well, they do sometimes feel like kind of a copout for people who don't want to make a decision: "Wahh, I want to be a super powerful magician, but I also want to be a great swordsman!" Unless both sides are toned down considerably, that is.
^ Actually in most cases both aspects are worse than "pure" practitioners of both sides.
For game balance, mostly.
There's actually quite a few reasons one might not want a weapon.
(Well, a point to keep in mind here is that by 'weapon', I mean a mace, or a staff, or a sword; I don't mean a knife, which many wizards keep on their persons anyway as a last resort measure anyway.)
One is a reason that's popularly referred to in fantasy, and even non-fantasy; having a weapon implies that you are capable and willing to use it, which, in turn, makes you a threat in some people's eyes. You'll often see a scene in many fantasy stories wherein an adventurer walks in with a sword hanging on his back, and the local belligerent louts challenge him. This is dealt with in the story by beating them up or intimidating them. A mage without any significant skills with the weapon may be able to intimidate them, but it's not likely that he will be able to fight them without resorting to magic, which is often undesirable in many circumstances.
Another reason is that mages often just prefer to fall back on their magic than on a physical weapon. Magic is often a weapon unto itself; as I stated earlier, it is probably preferable to a mage to just telekinetically throw someone away from you than it is to pull out a sword and stab them, and that way they get to avoid having to carry around a hunk of metal.
Yet another reason, which ties into the above, is that carrying a weapon is tiresome. Many mages don't get regularly involved in physical activity, after all, and walking long distances tires them enough without having to add several extra pounds to their weight. It's not particularly tiresome, but when you already have the ability to crush people's heads from a distance, there's no real reason to put up with the extra hassle.
That all said; I would really like to see a mage who primarily relies upon using a bow. Fuck melee weapons; shoot people from a distance, and just blast them away if they get close.
That reminds me of Huntress Wizard for some reason.
See, the whole it's tiresome defense doesn't really square with using a bow. Bows will wear you out man. Think about it, a typical bow has a draw strength of 50-70 lbs(22- 31 kgs). So you need to pull back that much force every time you draw an arrow and hold it for however long it takes you to aim it. That shit will wear you out after ten or so shots if you don't have the muscle conditioning for it. Granted it won't be as tiresome as running around in armor swinging a weapon around for a prolonged period of time, but archery isn't just a thing wimps can pick up, you need some decent upper body strength to be good at it.
Well, yeah. That's why I said "That all said", rather than "So what I'm saying is".
I'd like to see mages running around shooting people in the face with magic arrows, the same way Alex would like to see people running around stabbing each other with swords made of fire.
The problems there are all the same, although a mage could probably dress themselves up as a hunter and pass the bow off as a tool for hunting rather than a weapon of war, to avoid the first problem.
It'd still be tiresome, and they'd probably still fall back on their magic first, and unless they took precautions first, even the first problem would still stand. But it would be cool, so I want to see it.
I imagine it'd end up something like Evangelyne.
There is an awful lot of post here I don't feel like reading.
So I'm just going to say that spellblades and the like have the same issue that most caster characters do, which is that they tend to all be pretty similar. Innovation is the key to making something like that interesting. Or at least presenting old tropes in a new and unfamiliar way.
But y'all don't care about my opinions.
Anyway I got a new avatar. It's Bee from Bee & Puppycat, a show that doesn't exist yet.
I was thinking Archer from Fate/stay Night (okay, his arrows are actually swords). Huntress Wizard doesn't use a bow, if I recall correctly, so it's pretty much using magic to throw things, in her case. (Unless you don't mean the one from Adventure Time)
Also, what about cases where a sword is used to channel magic? (granted, I have no clue if this is a common thing)
That's usually a much more subtle thing; either the magic will give the sword some sort of energy (think fire, or holy energy), or it will shoot like, waves of energy, giving the sword a ranged attack.
Outside of that, it's extremely rare.
@Nova:
To be completely accurate, he doesn't use it as a weapon very often.Black Mages could do that in FF3.
@Eelektross:
Chocolate has approximately the same amount of caffeine in it as decaf coffee.
Why do you feel the urge to do this every so often? What's the point of telling folks that you aren't interested in what they had to say and informing them you didn't read it?
I never got Huntress Wizard's popularity as a character. I mean she only appears in two episodes in bit roles. Lemongrab at least had an entire episode centered around him before he became a recurring character.
Because you see, you touch yourself at night.
Like I said, though, anyone living a medieval lifestyle is going to be stronger and fitter than the average modern person by a pretty significant degree. What's tiring to you or I might be same old for a medieval person of any class.
That's a fantasy invention moreso than anything. In actual medieval society, it was entirely normal and within the ordinary to carry some kind of weapon on your person and you're quite unlikely to get harassed for it. There are exceptions, suchs as the feuds between fechtschuls and the cocky aggression of Italian Renaissance youths, but for the most part you treat someone with a weapon as you would treat anyone else.
If individual fantasy settings do it differently, cool beans, but I think think it's possible to use it as a broader argument against spellcasters having some skill with a proper weapon.
Anyone with significant skill in magic would probably not want to use a weapon. Indeed some settings might portray such a thing as crass.
It's the Google Effect. Why do it yourself when you can have something else do it for you? You don't *need* a sword if you can just throw fireballs at people.
Nah. In most fantasy settings swordspeople get a lot of respect too.
Really I can only see club-wielders as being looked upon as crass.
I specified some and might.
I know of at least one where it's considered improper for a mage to use a weapon, but I don't recall where that's from off the top of my head. It might've been a D&D setting, not sure.
Also blunt weaponry does not get the respect it deserves. Maces > > > > > > >
Iunno dude, I'm of the opinion that blunt weapons are emblematic of crass culture in general. I mean one of the biggest orc stereotypes is the "big, dumb alcohol-loaded club swinger".
...That last sentence could be construed as an orc chilling at a club, couldn't it
Orcs don't get the respect they deserve either.
From the vom Tag guard, or any comparable high striking guard, it takes less than 0.2 of a second for an experienced swordsman to launch an attack. With a large, two-handed sword. An attack from such a guard can be instantaneously disabling or lethal, and has an effective distance of the length of the blade plus the extension of the swordsman's dominant hand plus the extension of the swordsman's foot.
A fireball spell is inconsistent, but there's usually some catalyst required -- words to be spoken or hand signs to draw in the air. I doubt these things can be accomplished in 0.2 of a second or less, which gives the swordsman (or axeman, or spearmen, or whatever) a significant advantage when within range with their weapon. Furthermore, people have survived immolation, being struck by lightning and frosty environments, but no-one to my knowledge has survived having their throat slit by a blade.
Plus, the semi-automatic crossbow is medieval European (and Chinese, for that matter) technology. If distance attacks at speed are a concern, then there's that. And this.
Yeah see here's the thing.
For one thing I was not talking about just fireballs specifically. Second of all, how spells in general work is not consistent across fiction, and obviously they don't exist in real life, making any kind of comparison to the real world art of swordsmanship moot, rather silly, and coming across as rather fanboyish.
Yeah mate. We need to see more Orc wizards around.
(Shamans don't count: curse you Warcraft!)
Orcs being systematically portrayed as generic brutish badgaiz is another symptom of the lack of originality I'm always complaining about in fantasy.
Sometimes you'll get Warcraft Orcs who are basically Native Americans, but that's about it.
That may be true for, say, farmers, or shopkeepers. I doubt it's true in most universities, or colleges, or Guilds, or whatever the hell the particular book in question calls its institute of magic, where there are servants to do the heavy lifting, and mages spend most of their lives studying.
I imagine it's different in settings where mages are like, hermits and shit. Hermits have hardcore muscles, lugging bucket after bucket of water to their caves and hauling firewood and stuff. In that case, they're likely physically fit- but carrying an extra pound or two around is still going to be tiresome, although less so than if you're a weedy, asthmatic little mage.
Yes. I even qualified my post with that. Multiple times.
Given that we're talking about mages learning or not learning weapon skills in fantasy settings, I think it's entirely valid to bring up fantasy inventions and conventions, as they are what are used in fantasy settings.
I feel I've already brought up the relevant points on my side, and nothing you have said has convinced me that all settings would be improved if mages employed weapons on their persons. I've already agreed that in some settings, it would definitely be an improvement if they did, and I'm restraining myself from making a longpost about all the settings that actually do have their magic users learn how to use weapons and how it affects their narrative.
I can't recall ever seeing a scholarly Orc wizard.
Well that's because don't you know that ORCS ARE ALWAYS DUMB AND STUPID AND BLRRRRG.
Okay, I'm going to step in here now.
An Orc describes a concept, nowadays. They are brutish, physically imposing creatures with a predilection towards combat.
It is entirely possible for an author to make orcs little blue guys who stand four feet tall and like to steal men's underwear. However, that isn't done not because it's original, but because at that point, you've stopped describing what people know as orcs, and have created a different creature entirely and just slapped the name orc onto it. Which is valid, I will acknowledge that.
There are authors who play with conventions like that. There are authors who make their orcs intelligent, or who give them a culture that explains why they are predilected towards violence. Slight changes like that are okay, because at that point, they're still recognizable as the things most people think when they say "orcs". Even then, though, you're stumbling away from what the core of orcs is to most people, so authors tread carefully around that.
The complaints about unoriginality in fantasy these days doesn't stem from people using the same concepts the same way; the complaints come from people using the same concepts, full stop. Which you're aware of, yes, but shut up, I'm talking/typing.
The complaints stem from people overusing the same few creatures; elves, orcs, dwarves, goblins, some sort of flying creature that may be either a dragon or a creature somehow related to an eagle.
If everyone will not roll their eyes too much about me fangirling over Brandon Sanderson again, this is one of the reasons why his works are often praised so much.
Within Sanderson's Mistborn books, he creates several fantasy races; most predominantly, the kandra and the Koloss. What makes the way he plays with them so interesting is- well, partially the creatures themselves; but also how organic he makes them to his setting.
The Koloss do not feel shoehorned into the world like orcs do in most fantasy. We know how they came about; we know what they're there for; we know what they are, what they want, why they develop the way they do. They are large, brutish creatures that turn and salughter any living thing at the slightest provocation, and reasons are given for that, so we understand why.
That's a major part of my complaints, I guess. Elves, orcs, dwarves; they so often feel shoehorned into stories, rather than being an organic part of the setting that serves to enhance the setting.
Also I lost track of what I was saying somewhere in there.