I don't have a video camera of any sort. And I regularly hold onto live electric fences. Actually, it's difficult to assess the world of Tamriel, since all we have are the games for Canon, and a lot of people seem hell-bent on declaring those non-canon as well.

Remember the electrocution Luke Skywalker endured and survived in Return of the Jedi?

It's very possible people are insanely tough in Tamriel, taking a dozen arrows through the chest and a few through the head and still fighting, getting limbs hacked to the bone yet still remaining operational. Some characters are so strong they can take several Warhammer blows to the face without flinching. Which is why I came up with the idea of comparing mage's abilities to warriors of similar training (both arbitrarily becoming tougher with experience, and the warrior becoming much tougher than the mage)

that's a good point. i just don't think they will ask insanly big amounts for enchanting those arrows because they're lives are at stakes too. and you aren't much with your money when you're dead. but yeah, people tend to get as much gain as possible from any situation. it is a shame actually.

It's because he had the force on his side mang. He was to bring balance to it, plus the script told him not to die. But in the end, it was Vader and not Luke who through the Emperor into the weird cylinder of doom because Luke was twitching from the effects of the shock.

Perhaps you are right when you say people are just tougher in TES then on Earth. Who knows? In game I take a million slashes from goblins and I barely flinch.



Not huge amounts of money, no. But that stuff would still add up in the end I guess.

yeah, it would probably add up. but when you conquer new lands i guess you should be able to pay them with whatever money or expensive items you find. and if you lose, well i don't think there will be a lot of people left to make sure you get paid for enchanting those arrows if you are still alive to get payed.

all soldiers would be under contract im sure that mages will not be paid more perhaps a bonus but most likely its in their job description to enchant/heal/protect/defend. Same with normal soldiers a warrior whom slays ten enemies adverse to the warrior who slays but one will not be paid more. There are strict rules in the military if you refuse to do something that you are ordered to do more so in aiding your fellow soldiers you will probably be severely punish at best and killed at worse. therefor i doubt mages get paid extra for enchantments

You can't just start executing your soldiers though or you could have a full mutiny on your hands. If the mages are under "contract", then when they go to enlist and they decide that because they have to enchant, they may decide they want more for their services. If you don't like it, tough luck. Either they sign up without enchanting or they just don't enlist. Soldiers are not mindless tools and they have a limit you can go around executing them.

Um... considering most soldiers (including mages) are paid to destroy, not create, your anology falls flat. Especially considering it takes expensive resources to enchant items. They'd need an enchantment contract, like weapons+Armor contracts. How many armies pay weaponsmiths, boyars, and armorers static, substandard wages to manufacture weapons and armor needed for their militaries? Why should mages (All of which seem to be possessed by a massive Superior Arrogant [censored] complex) be treated in an inferior manner?

I find it completely hilarious, that myself and Blademaster, along with many others on this forum, have been in 4 or 5 war/political RP's, even hosted them, while everyone arguing here doesn't even bother to do them and take part in them. If you REALLY care so much, then why not actually make/join one?

Sorry, was this directed at me? I'm sure that any "professional" army would contract out such work but the discussion wasn't aimed towards that assumption. It could also be a government controlled process like many nations took it upon themselves to monoploize weapon making for their armies.

sorry, i just wanted to give you my thoughts on some things. and the only reason i haven't been in a war/political RP or any other RP is because that the host of the RP and the other participaters don't like it when someone just drops out and i know i'm someone who never actually complete stuff. i tend to lose interest in the things i do quick. so i just follow any RP that interests me for the moment and enjoy the story. but i don't think you need to have been in a war/political RP to be able to discuss tactics and politics if if it is just a general discussion.

Apologizes for me being an ass. It was more directed at Scow and not you, for the fact that he has been here for three years and has not bothered to even take part in a political RP, but he continues to argue this.

In all actuality, the title of the thread is misplaced. War tactics usually have nothing to do with political RP's, but just the war aspect of political RPin, if war is existent.

While I don't mind a respectful discussion on all of this, and while I don't care right now enough to partake in it, the tone is a bit aggressive and since one of my dear hobbies is writing on this forum in its unique context, the aforementioned aggressive tone is, for lack of a better term, [censored] with my bread and butter. If you would all be so kind as to make sure we remember to respect our peers lest moderation descend upon you and make the rest of the evening unpleasant. Be nice, thank you.

sorry, didn't want to sound disrespectfull or unpleasant at all. but let's get this thread back on topic before it gets closed. but i'll be back tomorrow. good night everyone.

On the issue of Magic:

If magic is so plentiful and not rare, Scow, then why do we even have warriors? Why doesn't everyone use Magic?

The Redguards never used one hint of eastern magic, yet they carved through the Goblins, Orcs, Elves, and Men of Volenfell, and kicked total ass without using magic. If you read every war related book, including the one on pale pass, most soldiers are regular foot soldiers or cavalry and not mages. Thus, it goes to show that mages are rare, and not just anyone can learn magic. More importantly, you have to pay to be instructed in it, like education in the modern world. Everyone has to pay for college, unless you have a scholarship. Unfortunately, there is no high school in TES. Therefore I make the assumption that if Magic was so plentiful, there would be no use for any kind of warriors.

I think once again things got lost in the translation of the internet. Unfortunately, unless you load your posts with emoticons or explain what tone you're typing in, it's hard to understand if people are being hostile or not.

I apologize if I came off like that, but I can assure everyone here that I have in no way meant to disrespect or "be mean" in any of my posts

Because magic isn't all-powerful as you seem to think it is. Redguards are awesome enough without eastern magic. According to lore, the Redguards are so skilled they blew up a continent using a sword technique. We have yet to see a Mage replicate a similarly awesome act with Eastern Magic. Magic isn't necessary if a race is inherently bad-ass enough. Redguards are Stronger, Faster, More Agile, and Tougher than the average Nedic man. Does that answer your question? Also, Bretons have an inclination to not use magic despite their natural inclination toward it because it has a distressing tendency to outright not work against them. On the other hand, Altmer are almost exclusively mages of some sort, because not only does it come easily to them, but it's also rewarding to use against them. Dunmer get a mix of magic users and mundane warriors because while they're capable of spellcasting, they don't have a natural inclination to it as the Bretons or Altmer, and the most spectacular Destructive Magic effect (Fire!) is... underwhelming, to a Dunmer.

Racial inclination toward magic and size of the available magicka pool makes it Not Worth The Effort for a lot of people as well. It's no easier to learn magic if you have a Magicka pool of 50 or 150, so races with the former has much less inclination to study magic when they've got a good enough sword arm. Why would a soldier want to waste years of training on creating fireballs when he lacks the ability to cast enough to kill his foes before they're close enough to stab him in the face?

Why use spell when you can do more with sword? And you just contradicted yoursefl, sort of. Magic is widely available, like college. Most people can't afford it, but again, a 33% of a population being magic users is still an extreme minority. And the discussed numbers are 10-25%, which is still one out of every ten soldiers. So, in a group of 1,000 warriors, 100 are potentially dedicated battlemages, and an additional 150-250 assorted warriors augmented with spellcasting.

If you ask me, magic seems to very powerful...what has been done with Magic?

Well, I'll start off to say that Jagar Tharn used magic to trap an Emperor in another dimension. Dyviath (spelling?) Fir has used magic to live over 3000 years. Each of the Tribunal used magic to become basically immortal, until the Nerevaraine returned. Camoran Ursuper used magic to raise an army which defeated every army in Valenwood, Hammerfell, and part of High Rock. Examples go on and on.

So you're saying that every Raga is stronger than every Nord, faster than every Imperial? Even many Altmeri were skilled with the sword. The Bretons were skilled bowmen and cavalry-

Which, if these Altmeri and Bretons are all "Mages" just as all Raga are "warriors" as you say, then why the hell did they need the other things? Truth is, you stereotype races too much. Just because you are a Redguard doesn't mean you will be a naturally better warrior.

A decent bit of Redguards train their entire lives for combat, as it is part of their society. But is every Raga necessarily more athletic than the Nedic men? No.

Those are exceptional and rare uses of magic cast by three of the most powerful mages in Tamriel's history (Fyr, Tharn, and Camoran). They get a pass because again, someone who studies the sword well enough can blow up an entire continent! And a person who's mastered heavy armor can silently sneak up on someone in joint-siezed Heavy Plating, and commit homicide and incist in a very short amount of time without ever removing a single piece of it. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume Khajiit, in addition to their physics-defying, house-sized, freeway-speeding cat-shaped masses of "I Win/[censored] You", go "Fist of the North Star" on their enemies after a certain level of mastery in the unarmed combat arts. So, at a certain level of training, people can do legendary, humanly-impossible deeds. It's not restricted to Magic. The Tribunal used the Heart of a God (The one responsible for the creation of the world, no less!) to become demigods, not Eastern Magic.

I said Average, not All. The Average Raga's stronger than the average Breton and Imperial, but not Nord. They are faster than the average Breton and Nord, but not neccessarily average Imperial. Also, I believe if it weren't for the other races around them, Bretons would see themselves as magically incompetant. Only when they watch the Altmer they merely intended to prank with a "low-powered shock spell" (to them) handshake get blown to smithereens do they realize how magically potent they are.

The Sword is magic. It's not a [censored] physical sword. It's a mental sword of the soul, western magic. Second level Ansei capable of the Shehai don't even carry physical swords. Their weapon is their mind!

If the Pankratosword can blow up most of a continent, then Archmage Syrabane, with his magic ring, can save an entire continent. Magic in Tamriel seems to be bound entirely by a person's aptitude with it, rather than any limitations on magic itself.

In all honesty, it all just boils down to the individual skill of the magick-user or sword-slinger. It really has less to do with race than one would think. One of the most skilled users of magick in the history of Tamriel was a Nord, Shalidor, and the most skilled mage of all time was a Breton (whose name I can't remember, but he wandered a lot looking for other mages that might be better than him. He never found one.)

And then you find dudes who harmonize magic and fighting. Then you're just [censored].

But again, that degree of proficiency is pretty much restricted to "Once Per Age Per Province". Not something that can be deployed on a battlefield in a War RP. Mages of such power don't get involved in War RPs except as Solo characters, and generally are deployed on the most important offensive actions, or most critical defensive actions. But, most mages can't achieve the warrior-trivializing effects Wooly's bringing up.

First off, there is no rule that states anything about "Once per age per province". Most of the powerful magicians seemed to have been around in the First Era, and were spread out all over the place. This is before restrictions put in by the Mage's Guild. Huh, that's funny, the Guild of Mages seems to have actually stunted magic .

Anyway, if we're talking magic applied purely to the battlefield, however, the pinnacle of that would probably be Galerion.

It's not a rule, but the odds of someone achieving that level of power do pretty much exclude such characters from being "Rank+File Soldiers", making their inclusion in discussion about War RPs moot. Nothing stops someone from creating such a character for those RPs, but the universe does not support the notion that an entire regiment of such soldiers is deployable

I don't think anyone was ever arguing for that.

The whole Mages Guild was put in place to "regulate" magic in the Empire, IIRC, because the Imperials wanted to have all magic in their grasp, with no one really capable of overusing it like in the past (Camoran Ursuper, etc.).

Therefore, what do you do? You stunt all of it that you don't control. The US government does the same thing today. You don't give all the citizens AR-15's and rocket launchers, do you? No. The best weapons are owned by the military. (And no I am not trying to get into politics, so don't even get into that stuff. It's just a relation.)