We all know that heroes should only use the swordiest sword, or perhaps the bowiest bow, but how do you determine that? Which sword has the most sword-like qualities? What if you, gasp, want to use some other kind of weapon? Well then, this episode is for you, because we’re talking about every fantasy weapon we could think of, and a few we probably couldn’t.
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Anna. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreants podcast. With your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi, Wes Matlock and Chris Winkle.
[Intro Music]Wes: Welcome to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m your host, Wes, and with me today is-
Oren: Oren.
Wes: and-
Chris: Chris.
Wes: And today the Mythcreants podcast is the “What Fantasy Weapon Are You?” podcast. Because if there’s one thing we know about weapons and fantasy stories, it’s that they define the character completely. [laughter] No exceptions, entire personalities are wrapped around specific weapons and the associations readers have with them. So Oren, Chris. What is your signature fantasy weapon, knowing that it says everything there is to know about you?
Oren: That’s all right, I got this, I prepared. Okay. Mine is a gun shield from the armory of Henry VIII. It’s literally a shield with a gun built into it. Like me, it seems cool and neat when you first hear about it, but the more you learn, the more you realize that it’s really impractical and doesn’t actually do much-
Chris: [laughs] Oren!!
Oren: -and this also matches who I am on the inside. [laughter] I love the gun shield, it’s one of my favorites. It’s like even cooler than a gun blade somehow. It’s like, it feels like such a cheesy gamer weapon too. Where the idea is that you’ll have your shield out and just be able to shoot from behind it with no real thought given to how you would reload or aim. It’s like, yeah, this is definitely something that someone made after playing a lot of Elden Ring and wishing they could shoot through the shield. [laughter]
Chris: Let’s see, my weapon that defines me…so I was trying to think of what the definition of a weapon is, because if you make a magical weapon, then that really matters, right? Cause a magical weapon could operate in ways that, you know, normal weapons don’t and I was wondering if you animated a skeleton and punched somebody with it, if that would be a weapon.
And then I decided, well, y’know, technically with these fantasy weapons, you should have to hold them at some point. So if I was holding an animated skeleton arm and then that arm punched people. [laughter]
Wes: You’re like, one step away from just creating an army of Muppets as weapons.
Chris: [laughs] Yeah, that’s me. That’s it.
Oren: So Wes, what is your weapon? You have to answer, you asked us this question.
Wes: I mean, I was going very, I suppose, boring in comparison, but I’m a fan of the classic cutlass. I appreciate a pointy end, a curved blade, and a pommel with, you know, a hand guard on it that I can punch people in the face with when they get too close.
Oren: I mean, that’s really important if you’re going to be fighting on the deck of a ship, cause there’s not a lot of room there. You’re very often not going to be able to have room to swing your weapon.
Wes: Exactly. Although I think in role-playing games, I’m honestly more drawn to halberds and glaives. Because they’re cool. [laughs] Not practical, but they’re cool.
Oren: I’m a big fan of polearms, although for all of its issues, the Seventh Sea role-playing game first edition had a really neat mechanic with encouraging you to use alternate weapon strikes. You could just stab someone with your sword. Or you could roll a pommel strike or you could roll what was called a beat where you were trying to hit their weapon with your weapon. It was just very neat and it was a little complicated, but as far as fencing systems go, it’s one of the better ones out there.
Chris: I think one of the central tensions in, especially in speculative fiction weapons, which also translates to fantasy weapons in particular, is the fact that effective human weapons have a limited number of designs simply because they have to be practical as weapons, but everybody wants to create weapons that are unique or varied or weird and different. And so it’s hard to do that and also have a weapon that could actually be used.
Oren: That’s how you ended up with the bat’leth. This is mostly a sci-fi problem. Fantasy writers have mostly just consigned themselves to the fact that they’re going to use weapons that are more or less like what historical weapons were like, although there are some exceptions, JRPGs exist, but in sci-fi in particular, it’s like, I want to invent a knife and it has to look like an alien knife. And it’s like, what would an alien knife look like? Other than like a knife. Those are pretty efficient for the thing they’re designed to do, right?
Wes: It’s an interesting point kind of about like, the limitations of how we can have weapons. Cause I think if we set sci-fi aside and focus some more on fantasy, high fantasy stuff, there’s a pretty bog standard group of weapons that are acceptable. And to me, it seems like they’re chosen because their, I suppose, power levels are more or less comparable. I think that is why it’s attractive. It’s like, okay, so anybody could grab something, like somebody could grab a blowgun and somebody else could have a warhammer. And the person with the blowgun would kill the warhammer wielder because ranged weapons always win. But…[laughter]
Chris: I mean, you could throw the warhammer.
Wes: You could throw the warhammer, exactly. Like, and that would be just as effective, if you’re going into battle, if you’ve got an axe as opposed to a sword, you can probably do just as fine. One isn’t inherently better than the other, unless you’re the Chosen One, and the sword is always the Chosen One’s weapon.
Oren: Yeah, I mean, fantasy writers do love swords for various reasons. And like I’m willing to let them get away with it as long as they don’t use katanas as super-swords. That’s where I draw the goddamn line. Looking at you, Name of the Wind. [laughter]
Returning to our earlier point about ranged weapons, this is actually a thing that I find very annoying and I think writers could do to look at more is the question of, how well can a person actually use a weapon in close range? And this doesn’t just apply to ranged weapons, it can apply to polearms, or even big swords, too. These weapons are like, physically awkward and hard to use really close up. And you sort of have the opposite problem in stories with guns because in fiction that has guns in it, you always have sequences where the main character is being held at gunpoint, and then the main character like, lunges and attacks the person and takes the gun. And it’s like, y’know, this isn’t D&D, they don’t have to wait their turn, right? They can just shoot you as you’re doing that. But like in fantasy, it’s almost the opposite problem where someone will have a longbow and shoot an enemy that’s like five feet away. And it’s like, you’ll be lucky if you can get the arrow pulled back in that amount of time. Longbows are not melee weapons, hot take. I don’t care what Legolas showed you.
Wes: The only thing that I really appreciate with Legolas was when he pulled an arrow out of his quiver and just stabbed someone with it. I’m like, okay, granted, it’s probably not a great stabbing device, but that makes more sense to me.
Oren: Look, it’ll get the job done if you need to, okay? It’s not ideal. Let me put it this way: If someone was like, right on me and I had the choice between trying to shoot them with my bow or just stab them with an arrow, I would use the arrow. I mean, hypothetically. In real life, I would cower because I have no combat training.
Wes: Cowering is a very appropriate tactic.
Oren: But if I was thinking rationally, that’s how I would do it.
Wes: But I think you’re right too, because Legolas and Gimli, I mean, we talk about the fantasy weapons that the characters wield and how that defines them. Gimli wouldn’t be caught dead using a dagger, even though he definitely could have made good use of that. Just getting like knocked on his ass a lot and just whip a dagger out and stab somebody with it because it’s faster than your two-handed axe. Variety’s the spice of life, so carry all the weapons on you all the time. There’s no carry limits! [laughs]
Oren: Again, I do think, and I wrote about this in an article of mine, I do think that authors could benefit and get some extra novelty out of having their characters use different weapons for different situations, because you have to think about the size of the weapon and the space that it takes up and whether or not you can actually carry one indoors for that matter. Some of these weapons are in excess of 10 feet long and have like a giant metal axehead on one end. And that’s going to be hard to carry through doors, let alone use inside a small room, right?
Chris: So when would you use a flail?
Oren: Um, well, [laughs] there is a, there is discourse about flails. I love it. I have no idea who is right, but there is a lot of argument among online medieval weapon enthusiasts, about to what extent the flail is even real as a weapon. And I have no idea who is correct. I haven’t consulted any primary sources. But even the flail’s diehard adherents acknowledge that it’s probably a pretty rare weapon. Cause it’s hard to use and kind of awkward. It has a good chance of hitting someone who’s next to you.
Wes: It seems like one that would be good for like one swing and then he’d just be like, “Oh man, behave! Like, why won’t it behave? It keeps hitting everything I don’t want it to hit.”
Oren: Yeah, the answer to when you would use a flail seems to be, when you want to show off, if you’re a real showboat, then you would use a flail. It’s a very attention grabbing weapon.
Chris: That’s one of the things that, again, even if people are writing and fantasy and have resigned themselves to historical weapons, there’s always a flail in there. At least in visual media where you have a bunch of dudes, and one of them has a flail because people just want to give them variety.
Oren: I also feel like slings are underused. I think that the sling has a lot of potential. For one thing, you can roll a sling up and hide it in an inner pocket. It’s the closest thing you’re going to get to a concealed weapon in a fantasy setting. And you can absolutely ruin someone’s day with a sling. I mean, it doesn’t have the power of a longbow or a crossbow, but you know, if you’re not fighting heavily armored opponents, it doesn’t have to. And so I think that having characters who use slings other than just like, kids with a toy could be neat. Especially if you have like an assassin type character who needs a ranged weapon that isn’t obvious. I think the sling is a perfect option.
Wes: You can hide it so well. Or you could wear it as an eyepatch. [laughter] It’s very discreet. Speaking of flails being inconvenient, one take I remember watching a YouTube video years ago on was the effectiveness of two-handed swords and full plate armor. And it was basically advocating for this idea that fights between heavily armored knights were more like wielding two-handed staves against each other, where you would hold the sword by the hand, and you’d have the other end of the sword in your other hand, and you would kind of like, two hand fight each other with the goal being to get the sharp edge of your sword between the plating and the armor. So it’s a lot more like wrestling-oriented. And I thought that was quite an interesting take. There’s clearly some historian who’s like, ”No, you guys, it was definitely this way”, but that different approach to combat was very compelling to me. It was like, okay, they don’t just whack each other with these weapons. There’s maybe some precision involved or a different type of martial art aesthetic to it that you can bring to your story.
Oren: Well, there’s also a lot of discourse on exactly how common big two-handed swords actually were and to what extent they were just display pieces. But it is certainly true, and basically everyone agrees with this, is that if you’re wearing what is generally considered plate mail, or maybe even less advanced armor, the chances of a sword cutting or stabbing through it are very low. So you’re going to have to come up with some creative solutions if you have a sword and your opponent is wearing basically an articulated coating of metal. Your sword is not cutting through that.
Chris: That’s when you use the flail! [laughter]
Oren: Yeah, or a mace. Or even a spear, a spear has a better chance of being able to punch through cause you’re focusing more of the energy on a single point. That’s actually what the half swording technique is for, which is this cool thing where you take a two-handed sword and you hold part of it by the actual blade, and then you put your other hand on the handle and you just kind of stab with it. And it looks awkward as heck, and it is, [Wes laughs] but it’s a cool idea. And again, it’s hard to say how often this was actually used because data on the use of big two-handed swords is pretty sparse, but it would be a cool thing to do. If you have your two knights fighting each other and one of them starts half swording, that’s going to be like, most readers won’t have seen that. Now you’ll have to describe it by the same token, cause they won’t be familiar with it, but they would have a lot of novelty value, is all I’m saying.
Wes: Cause you brought up flails a few times and we brought up maces, I want to talk about associations because when you brought up the flail, I was reminded of when the Nazgul King dismounts and drops that flail and starts whipping it around at Eowyn. And more often than not, I think bludgeoning weapons like that are associated with villains. My hot take is because villains are ungraceful brutes. And swords are for refined protagonists, heroes use bladed weapons, at least in certain fantasy stories.
Chris: I do think that bludgeoning weapons definitely have association with like, big hulking figures that are more about brute force than precision. I mean, the question is how many of these are villains and what kind of villains? I would almost suspect that they’re more likely to be minions or, you know, like ogres and trolls. Because oftentimes a big bad still has a level of precision.
Oren: You also see the same thing with the axe. Like axes are a barbarian weapon. Someone decided at some point, and like, I don’t really know why, but that is the association that we have. It’s kind of odd, but it exists for sure.
Wes: Yeah, I just think those associations are kind of fascinating. Like swords are just so, like, bog standard, and so the appearance of something else draws attention to it, but how they choose to bring attention to it seems to matter more if it’s an “unusual” weapon, the presence of like, a hammer shouldn’t be novel, but it ends up being novel. I think, was it in the second, yeah, Eldest, Eragon and then Eldest, it’s his, Roran, right, his cousin, has a war hammer. And I remember being like, “What? Why doesn’t he have a sword? Everybody has swords.” But that somehow like, defined him with the hammer and he gripped the hammer and he would angst about his hammer and I was like, okay. So he’s not a weirdly Elvish, cultured Eragon. He’s more practical, brute, and he has the hammer to back it up.
Chris: I think villains are associated with spikes, serration, and also for some reason, daggers that are wavy. [laughter]
Wes: Wavy daggers!
Oren: Yeah, the snakey daggers!
Chris: The wavy sacrificial daggers! The sacrificial dagger’s gotta be like weirdly wavy for some reason.
Oren: Villains do really like their serrated swords, which are not really a thing, kind of uncommon. If it’s a serrated edge, it’s almost certainly for like a tool rather than for killing. You use that for cutting rope and stuff. It’s not really a very practical fighting weapon, but I get it, you know, it looks mean so bad guys will use it for sure. Bad guys also love spiked armor. I mean, not only bad guys, sometimes good guys have spiked armor too, but it’s more common on bad guys and it’s like, okay, how are you, like, walking around with that on? [laughter] What if you and your friend bump into each other? Oops, going to be a bit of a problem.
Chris: I do think it’s funny that they establish in The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones, that their explanation for Harrison Ford’s scar on his chin is that he actually does that to himself with his whip. [laughter] Like, first time trying a whip. It’s like, that’s great, let’s be realistic about the dangers of using weapons.
Wes: Yeah. The whip as a weapon is hilarious. I mean like, D&D threads like to talk about getting whip proficiency and the reach that it gives you, but all I can think about is just like, you’ve got a whip and someone else is like, I’ve got a spear, you’re dead.
Oren: The whip is definitely not a real weapon. I mean, like, you could definitely use it to hurt somebody, but it’s not really designed as an efficient means to kill another person. Hot take.
Wes: [jokingly] How dare you Oren. I just tie a dagger to the end of the whip. And then it’s a whippy dagger.
Oren: A whip-flail! [laughter]
Wes: Yeah, a whip-flail!
Oren: There you go! I mean, Indiana Jones even, doesn’t actually use the whip to kill people. He uses it to like, grab objects and hit levers, which I’m also a bit skeptical that he could do that, but it’s a, you know, a more believable use of it than like, if he was building a whip sneak attack build.
Chris: Yeah, It’s basically his rope, right? But it can do extra things.
Oren: It’s a danger rope. [laughs]
Chris: [laughs] It’s his danger rope!
Wes: It probably is very much a magical weapon though. The way it just like, attaches and then he can swing and then like, magically unattach it and disarm people.
Oren: How does the whip know it’s time to unattach? [laughter]
Wes: Yeah, I refuse to believe that like a little wrist flick is enough to make the whip say “Oh, okay. I’ll untie myself.”
Oren: And if it is, then that’s not a very safe thing to put your weight on, right? [laughter]
Chris: So we can also talk about weapons that aren’t slashy, stabby or smashy.
Oren: Can we though? Hmmm…
Chris: See, I think a poison ring should count as a weapon.
Oren: Oh man, getting spicy over here!
Chris: Wikipedia tells me that these were actually used, tells me they’re real, people actually had poison rings they used to poison people.
Wes: So like, covertly open your ring over somebody’s drink?
Chris: Yes, in fact, according to Wikipedia, which maybe is true, in Italy today still, if you pour a drink while holding the bottle so that the back of your hand is facing down, so that you could like, open a ring and poison somebody, it’s still offensive! Cause that’s the position your hand would need to be in if you were to poison somebody!
Wes: Ohh, that’s great, oh man.
Oren: Poison is definitely a weapon and it can be very neat. Not very common for someone to poison the king and then be like, “Tell him it was me, I want him to know!” It’s like, usually you don’t want them to know, but yeah, sometimes you gotta brag. I get it, I get it.
Chris: One thing that’s often not included is that they used to poison clothes too, so you could have tactile poisons. We don’t think about that, we always think about darts.
Wes: It’s tough too, cause like, those all sound like very effective weapons, but you’re hard pressed to find your protagonists using them because poison is bad.
Chris: [jokingly] Poison’s the coward’s weapon.
Oren: I mean, unless you’re reading a story that’s heavily RPG influenced and then everyone is like always adding poison to their weapons for an extra d6 of damage. [laughter] It’s like, that’s not really how poisoned weapons work.
Wes: Yeah, that just adds damage and that’s kind of abstract, but like, we brought up this serrated weapons and the pointy weapons of the villains. There’s like a visual pain quotient associated with certain types of weaponry. And if you are an antagonist, you probably are wielding weapons that have a higher pain association. Whereas the sword is supposed to be maybe like, a clean kill. We’ve seen enough shows and read enough stories now where like one stab instantly kills somebody. So it’s almost like a mercy.
Chris: Unless one stab means they just like, walk it off. [laughs] Only two settings, the walk it off setting and the instant kill setting [Wes laughs]. Those are our options.
Wes: I mean, even, just think about how they dressed up the Uruk-hai, his bow and the black arrows to take out Boromir in the movie. Legolas has a bow, but like, that’s clean and nice. And it’s like, okay, we have to really make this look like everything hurts.
Oren: This is an evil bow. This bow is not nice!
Wes: Yeah, this bow is so evil! [laughs]
Chris: But you made a good point about poison because usually it’s just villains that poison their blades.
Wes: Well, you got to add threat because a normal stab and the hero’s just going to walk it off.
Chris: Especially if your hero is supposed to be badass that they like, never lose a duel ever. So then you create threat by being like, “Oh, but the villain poisoned their blade, so now all they have to do is nick you, so you could die even if you win the fight!”
Wes: That’s everybody’s stealing Hamlet. [laughter]
Chris: Yep, basically.
Oren: The end of Dune tried to do that where it was like, they were like, okay, we want Paul to fight, what’s his name? Feyd-Rautha. And we want Paul to fight him. And that’s our climax for Dune. And obviously this is a really one-sided fight because Paul is basically a god at this point and Feyd-Rautha is just some guy who is like, okay at fighting, we established. Not great, but like, okay at it. And so it had like a desperate attempt to add some tension, we had Feyd-Rautha poison his weapon, and it’s like, man, that is not enough, especially since we sort of established earlier that Paul is maybe just immune to poisons now. [laughter] But like, even if we hadn’t established that, it’s like this guy is not even going to touch Paul, he’s such a badass by that point at the end of the story.
Chris: One thing I want to know, is there any reason Buffy shouldn’t be using a longbow? Since she has super strength and longbows take lots of strength, is a crossbow better in some way, or is it just smaller and more convenient?
Oren: Well, if you will allow me to nerd a bit, longbows are real big and physically tall. And obviously Buffy is super strong so she can use whatever longbow she feels like, but they can be kind of hard to maneuver in tight quarters in comparison to this fairly short crossbow and crossbows also have the advantage of they’re much easier to aim. Longbows take, or any bow really, takes a lot longer to learn to aim a target. You go down to the ren faire and you can try out bows and crossbows and, you know, with a crossbow, you can generally hit the target pretty quickly. Cause it’s just a point and click, whereas with a longbow or, you won’t be using a longbow, if you go down to the ren faire to try a bow, [laughter] but with a bow, you will be lucky if you are hitting the target by the end of your first shooting lesson. So there are reasons why Buffy might still prefer a crossbow. Also contrary to popular belief, crossbows are not super easy to load either. Especially the old-timey ones that she’s using. Modern ones are super easy to load, but you still have to be pretty strong to pull the crossbow back. That’s why some crossbows have that weird stirrup on the front, because you’re actually supposed to put your foot in that and hold the crossbow down so you can pull the cord back, which drives me up the wall when crossbows have that stirrup in movies and stuff, but then they don’t use it for that. And it’s like, why do you have the stirrup if you’re not going to use it? [laughter]
Chris: I guess if she was in alleys all the time in close quarters, she would need the crossbow, but she could just be on the rooftop with a longbow and just wait for the vampires to come and shoot them from above.
Oren: Yeah, there are definitely a lot of instances where the longbow would be a superior weapon for someone like Buffy. The main thing is that we’ve already sort of established that Buffy kind of doesn’t like training. And it’s kind of a pain to get her to train already. So I’m imagining Giles is like, yeah, anything I can do to cut down on the amount of training time, that’s what I’m going with. [laughter]
Wes: I mean, really, if I were Giles, I would have just like, soaked a roll of quarters and holy water and put it in her pocket. [laughter] You like punching things, do ya? Okay, here you go.
Oren: I mean, real question is why they aren’t all just carrying around pockets full of small crosses and just like, throw those at the vampires. [laughter]
Chris: That’s a good point about fantasy weapons. That is a conventional fantasy weapon against vampires, the crosses.
Oren: This is the problem: if your fantasy creature can be defeated by something that is easily made, maybe give it a different weakness. It’s not hard to make crosses. Supernatural had the same problem with its devil traps. Supernatural at one point had the gall to put devil traps on a bullet and it was like, okay, great. I’m gonna have to pretend they’d never figured out how to do this next episode. [laughter]
One more note while we’re here, because we’re getting close to the end. I say this a lot, but just to remind everybody: weapons are much lighter than you think. Like even big swords don’t usually weigh more than four or five pounds, that’s very heavy for a sword. Most one-handed swords are in the one to two pound range, and if it’s a fencing weapon, it often weighs less than a pound. So they’re not that heavy. It is strenuous work to use them because you are making repetitive, swinging motions for long periods of time, but the actual weapon weight is not what’s causing the problem here. You get characters all the time who were like, “I could barely lift the sword!” and I’m like, what, is it like a giant’s sword? Is it a replica novelty anime sword that you’re having trouble lifting? They’re not that heavy.
Chris: Look, the sword is too heavy for the female characters, so we’ll give her a longbow instead. [laughter]
Oren: Oh yeah, that’s right!
Wes: That’s practical.
Oren: That’s my absolute favorite, is that at some point, the bow became a girl weapon by this weird logic of like, well, girls are more delicate, so they need to be kept out of melee. So let’s give them a weapon that requires the most upper body strength of any weapon you could think of. And to be clear, women can absolutely use bows, I’m not saying they can’t, I’m just saying if your logic is that they are delicate and weak, the bow is the wrong weapon to give them. I guess, this is an admonition to not be sexist with your weapons, which is fortunately less of a problem nowadays, I can’t think of a time recently where I cracked open a book and it was like, “The woman couldn’t hold the sword, it was too heavy.” So I haven’t seen that problem for a while, so hopefully we’re done with that, but you know, always bears repeating.
Now I think we’re going to go ahead and call this podcast to a close. Before we do, I want to thank a few of our patrons. First, we have Kathy Ferguson who is a professor of political theory in Star Trek. Next we have Ayman Jaber (thefantasywarrior.com). He is an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, we have Danita Rambo. She lives at therambogeeks.com. We’ll talk to you next week.
[Outro Music]P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
Mythbusters had a whole episode devoted to Indiana Jones, including a bunch of the whip tricks. An expert can do the stuff Indy did. With some training, Adam and Jamie were able to do some of it too. Still not terribly practical as a weapon compared to a gun.
…and that is why he carried a gun.
That’s why there’s that scene in the first movie where he just shoots that other guy with a whip…
More spears in fantasy, please! There’s a good reason a lot of legendary weapons, like Gungnir, Gae Bolg, the Holy Lance, and Vel, are spears. Spears are good for offense and defense, and take less training to wield effectively than swords — especially when you are fighting in a formation. The length presents some problems in closer quarters, but it’s a solid all-around weapon. Check out these reenactors testing out swords and spears and you’ll see how effective the spear is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLLv8E2pWdk
Makes me happy in hindsight that I gave my Loki in the novellas a spear as a weapon (I do not work closely with mythology or the MCU in those). It simply seemed a good choice for him.
Also, there’s nothing stopping people from switching to another weapon once the enemy is close enough, like many real soldiers did. Mages are the only people that fantasy regularly seems to allow versatility as far as combat is concerned.
Fritz Leiber’s Gray Mouser fights with a sword and a dagger.
Also, in the Watch series from Terry Pratchett, Vimes is quite the opportunistic fighter, using whatever is handy (including brass knuckles).
Multi-weapon and more realistic fighting is out there, just not terribly common I guess.
“Also, there’s nothing stopping people from switching to another weapon once the enemy is close enough, like many real soldiers did.”
Depends on the style of combat.
In a shield wall there absolutely IS something stopping you from switching weapons. A number of somethings, in fact. Unit cohesion requires you all to have similar kit–this allows you to create “kill zones”, allowing you to focus on very narrow areas of the battlefield. Battles are chaotic, and limiting the responsibility of any individual person is critical to maintaining cohesion (see World War Z’s Battle of Yonkers for a discussion). Secondly, switching weapons takes time. If you’re in the thick of the attack, you don’t have that time. I’ll grant that time does weird things–speeds up and slows down in weird ways–but you don’t have time to grab a second weapon.
Knights and cavalry and the like tended to be able to for the simple reason that they could get away from the giant mess of death, and were armored enough to withstand a bit of being knocked around.
If instead we’re talking a battle that’s dissolved into individual duels, or a battle where the sides are at a distance from one another while engaged (think modern shooting wars), maybe. The question is, if the other weapon is as effective or more effective, why are you carrying the first? (Knights and nobility did it when their primary weapon broke or was otherwise incapacitated.)
Here’s the other thing: Weapons are expensive. You’re not going to casually drop your weapon on a battlefield–it probably cost a month’s wages! The fact that looting was a thing indicates this.
In Medieval combat people often switched weapons for a very social reason. Taking captives was part of the economics of war, and ransom was considered a normal thing. If I can take a duke captive, I can finance my entire campaign! Thus it’s worth the risk to take the time, switch to my rondel, and give his grace the option of yielding or being killed. Even a knight would be worth something, and add enough “somethings” together and you get real value. For that matter, it was often worth my time to figure out who it was I was sitting on top of, battles being rather rough on heraldic tabards (and remembering that a man can give his tabard to someone else).
Well… in a wall of shields the people with shields are the front line, the ones that change weapons are the ones after them. Phalanx worked in the same fashion, the spears that do the work was the ones from the guys 3 or 4 rows back. And every hoplite carried a shield, a spear and a sword. Then we have roman legions, again with a wall of shields formation. What did they carried? A dagger, a “short” and a “long” sword (gladius and spatha), a light and a heavy (pilum) javelin, a light spear (hasta) and a shield (usually a “scutum” tower shield but sometimes a smaller one akin to a roundel, primarily for the auxiliary troops of skirmishers who carried also a sling). Not to mention specific troops that used bows, crosbows or darts.
They didn’t called them “Mario’s mules” after the standarization of their equipment under Gaius Marius for nothing.
The Romans are a bit of a special case. They were also builders, and were expected to be able to adapt to circumstances in ways that most armies couldn’t. Plus, their tactics allowed for periods of rest during the battle. They had three main lines of battle, which rotated in and out of conflict, allowing the soldiers time to rest, drink, and switch weapons.
As for shield walls, there are three main kill zones (excluding archers and the like): Spear-distance (however big the spear is), polearm distance (say 7 feet to 2 feet), and shieldman distance (2 feet to “You’re standing on my face” distance). The ideal is for my side to engage your side at spear or polearm distance. In particular, you engage the shieldmen at that distance. This creates a gap–and as soon as you create the gap, you rush in with your shield wall and punch through the enemy formation. Once you’re in the back field you try to kill as many as you can. Once the shield wall is broken the enemy will usually route (remember, routes happened at about 10% casualty rates–once unit cohesion breaks, people run).
What this means for weapon swap-out is that you can have time while the spearmen are sniping at you and each other to swap weapons. Once that call to charge is issued, you don’t have time for much of anything–you’re in the middle of about 500 people, half of whom are actively engaged in turning your entrails into extrails (to paraphrase “A Knight’s Tale”).
Ultimately I suppose it’s a question of scale….Battles are fractal in nature, both in terms of activity and in terms of tactics. When you’re not doing anything at the moment you have time to swap weapons, but when you are doing something it’s literally fighting for your life and occupies 100% of your situational awareness.
I think you took my statement a bit too literally. Obviously, there might be circumstances in combat that prevent immediate weapon switching – but my point was that there’s nothing that inherently limits a character to just using one particular weapon of choice and no others, contrary to common portrayal.
A trained fighter will usually be able to handle several weapons well. Even if they don’t change weapons during a fight, they would always choose the optimal weapon for a fight. It would be nice to see that done more often in fiction, too.
Training is a huge factor. When adrenaline is pumping, it’s much easier to act on what’s become second nature. Plenty of soldiers have killed enemies in the heat of battle by switching to a loaded sidearm the instant their rifle was empty, for a modern example. That happens when you’re trained to know when to pull your sidearm instead of reloading.
Some older examples of weapon switching:
* Blackbeard was known to have carried from six to ten pistols on his person, and multiple blades. (In general, it was common for those carrying pistols to have multiple, since pistols were both unreliable and took time to reload.)
* Shaka Zulu had his troops adopt a short spear made for close-quarters combat in addition to the long throwing spear. This opened up effective combat techniques which gave his troops a decisive advantage against adversaries.
* Archers in many militaries often carried short swords into battle.
On capturing nobles: having another weapon allowed for a knight to grapple another knight and strike a weak point in their armor. Non-nobility rarely showed compunction against nobles when they could kill them; the Battle of Agincourt is a good example, with huge swaths of French nobility being wiped out by the English when the longbowmen switched weapons to engage the exhausted armored troops in close combat.
I also don’t think World War Z is a good example of military protocol. There are many things in it which are definitely not in line with modern military operation. Although limiting responsibility, in a general sense, is reasonable, troops generally need a certain level of adaptability, or you risk the issue of single point of failure. A more flexible army simply gives you more options.
I suppose it depends on what kind of fighter you’re talking about. And when. But up until rifles became commonplace you really wanted each person to have one weapon system in combat. This avoided confusion, as they were trained in one style. It also allowed for greater battlefield control–you didn’t have to worry about that unit of shieldmen suddenly becoming a phalanx of pikemen. Remember, the general viewed armies as individual blocks of people, not as individuals. They wanted that unit in this location because they needed that unit’s capacity in this location. (Gendered language because the vast majority of fighters were men in most cultures–I’m not advocating it, merely pointing it out.)
Bows are somewhat unique. They required tremendous training to use, but also tremendous strength. An archer has time to pick up a backup weapon, and the strength to make pretty much anything into a backup weapon–maces, branches, rocks, enemies, horses, small buildings….
Knights and nobles could afford to switch it up because they weren’t generic fighters; they were captains. Their purpose was in part to direct the action, in part to inspire the people. Thus they had to be capable of going wherever inspiration was necessary. (Well, honestly most were cavalry, but enough did the “inspire the troops with my presence” thing to be worth talking about.) These people weren’t focused on effectively killing the enemy, but rather steeling the resolve of their units. At 10% casualties most units broke and ran, but if your liege is there you fight harder to protect him, maybe to 15% casualties. That can be enough to turn the tide.
Of course, later combat with firearms, particularly rifles, operates fundamentally differently–guns generally fire operate on similar principles (“It’s a simple point-and-click interface”, to quote Futurama), so it’s much more reasonable to expect someone to pick up the enemy’s gun and shoot them with it. It also allows for more agility on the battlefield, as an individual can switch between firearms and the same training applies.
Early firearms–muskets–required switching between weapons because they were very limited. You could fire a few rounds as you closed with the enemy, but once you were within a certain range you simply couldn’t load fast enough. This was somewhat mitigated in naval battles by having multiple pistols (each fired once per barrel), and in land engagements generally by bayonets. On land firearms were essentially used as small artillery, to disrupt the enemy formation in preparation for the real charge (which was typically either totally effective or a complete failure). Thrown weapons of earlier ages operated the same way.
As for capturing nobles, Agencourt is a bad example. That war was as much about eliminating excess British nobility as anything else, and the campaign had already paid for itself. It wasn’t really representative of combat at that time–the fact that it was a large-scale field battle demonstrates that! The rest of the campaign, you will recall, was mostly a series of sieges, far more in line with Medieval warfare. I’m not saying that nobles were never killed on the field; obviously they were. I’m just saying that they were also captured, and it was often financially incentivized.
As for WWZ, I was only pointing to one specific aspect. Officers need to know what’s going on in the battlefield; soldiers need to know what they need to know to do their job. Giving soldiers too much info causes problems because it serves as a distraction. You don’t want your buck privates deciding that they could be more useful off over there; you want them to be where they were told to be, and to focus on what they’re told to do.
I don’t disagree that the capture of nobles was incentivized, especially important ones; I don’t think armies had to go through particularly great pains to do it, however.
Prior to proliferation of handheld anti-armor weaponry, knights had the best chance at taking down other knights, and this frequently involved protracted fighting and grappling to hit weak points. Articulated joints were a major advancement because they reduced the areas where you could stab through armor.
For a long time, between their training and their equipment, knights on the battlefield were like professional FPS players using hacks in a lobby full of new players. Commoners might as well have been swinging balloons at them, for how effective they were, and most lacked comparable training.
Given the cost of armor, knights were typically nobles of some kind. Nobles generally treated other nobles with respect – they were also imprisoned under better conditions than commoners, for example. When the only person who had a reasonable chance of hurting a knight was another knight, that comes into play.
Armies didn’t have to particularly go out of their way to avoid killing nobility – but under the circumstances, nobles would typically have plenty of chance to surrender before being killed. They were often taken down after a long fight, or were leaders who could direct their units to surrender. Once armor-busting weapons started proliferating among commoners, nobles were more likely to be killed in battle. The arbalest was a controversial weapon because a shot at the right angle would allow someone with minimal training to kill a knight in a single shot. Once armies could give commoners guns strong enough to pierce armor, nobles had much fewer chances to surrender before dying.
As for your last point; that directly contradicts U.S. military doctrine, at least. One of the major improvements to command and control was briefing all involved military personnel on not only what they are doing, but what their goals are. If your officers get killed, you want the other troops to know what the objective is, so they can still try to achieve it. If they only know what they’re supposed to do, but whatever their job is becomes irrelevant because of changing battlefield circumstances, then you want them to be able to adjust accordingly.
This makes the military more adaptable and quicker to react. As opposed to ancient armies, which often routed for lack of direction if the commander died for lack of direction, it’s impossible to render a unit organized in such a way nonfunctional just by killing a few people; it may become less effective, but it’ll still be able to flexibly adapt to the battlefield.
If a private ignores your orders because they feel they would be better somewhere else, that’s not an information problem; that’s a discipline problem, or a morale problem. It means that troops aren’t trained well enough to follow orders, or don’t trust their officers enough to follow their orders, which are problems that themselves need to be addressed.
The idea that troops shouldn’t be expected to think for themselves is, at best, a reflection of the extremes of boot camp, reinforced in order to teach people how to follow orders. At least in the U.S. military, troops are always briefed on what the objective is, and are expected to be able to apply some level of judgment should the situation change and the previous chain of command isn’t available for any reason.
According to my dad, who served in the Bundeswehr (the German army), briefing on the goals is also essential there. It is important that in case of the officer being killed the next in line can take over and the unit can continue its work.
It’s funny how you both are regarding companies of professional soldiers as mooks. You are simplifying it like either they were knights or peasants, but surprise! in all ages there were mercenaries, professional soldiers that knew their job so well they sell it to anyone.
Diminishing combat as people flailing around in hope to hit the enemy while the liege inspire them is BS. Until the invention of the radio, the leaders couldn’t give orders in real time, so the best they could do is prepare an strategy and pray for it to work (there are plenty of battles lost by a misunderstanding, or heroic sacrifices that was just that in disguise, like the charge of the light brigade).
In that scenario, commiting to only one tactic and one type of weapon or unit is suicidal. Hence the troops had enough leeway to adjust to the battle to their best.
Probably the lighter troops(skirmishers, whose task was to harras enemy troops to distract them or create openings) would carry just the most basic weapons and armor to allow them to be mobile (the myth of armor being cumbersome is just that, a myth) but or heavier unit could wear a more diverse assortment of weapons for every situation (of course riding horseback allow the horse to carry the weight, but a dismounted knight wouldn’t be defenseless).
You’d be surprised to know that there were cavalry units NOT composed of knights, and knights that fought on foot. Anti-armor weaponry exist for as long as the armor, and equating “armor” with XVI century italian/german full plate irks me, as XVI century is well into the renaissance, not middle ages.
People have been killing others around for millenia and getting pretty good at it, so i think that using sentences like “At 10% casualties most units broke and ran” like if they were cowards is disrespecting the people that invented the “art of war”, saying that the presence of thier liege automatically raise the “threshold” like if it was a videogame is laughable.
There is a lot we don’t know of historical combat, but for sure ancient don’t mean stupid, people back then were very good at what they did.
I said commoners. This includes mercenaries, who typically weren’t nobles. No mere peasant was affording an arbalest, a weapon I mentioned being capable of piercing armor under the right circumstances (and much more expensive than a gun). Mercenaries were also less common earlier than later, as armies and their costs gradually became more centralized, good equipment became more affordable, and social upheavals brought about by the Black Plague disrupted the social ladder, enabling lower class citizens to more easily earn enough money to equip themselves (and giving them the freedom to explore their options).
Regarding anti-armor weaponry – yes, you could say there was anti-armor weaponry for as long as there was armor, just as I could say there was anti-tank weaponry for as long as there were tanks. The effectiveness of those weapons against armor, however, varied drastically throughout history.
Becoming a mercenary was a valid choice for the younger sons of a nobleman (remember: only the oldest got the money and the title and the castle and the whatnot). In essence, they had the choice between church and army and some chose to serve those who paid best and became mercenaries instead of staying with one employer for good.
A know example would be Götz von Berlichingen (1480-1562) who went on his first campaign as a mercenary at the age of sixteen and his last while he was already in his sixties. He actually lost his right hand at the age of twenty during another campaign, devised a metal hand (he later on had an even better one made on expanded designs), and continued his job – the metal hand allowed for him to hold both a sword and a pen (besides being a fighter, he was also a poet – and clearly not bad at mechanics, either).
Mercenaries have been a thing since ancient times and, as most medieval armies heavily relied on drafted militia, mercenaries were sought after and constantly employed. They were well-paid, well-trained, and well-equipped, as this was their job. They, if not the drafted militia, would definitely have been trained for several different types of weapons and would switch as necessary.
IF anti-armor weaponry (weaponry in fact, because armor and shield are a nuissance that any weapon have to surpass) were inefficient, armor didn’t had evolved, so that argument don’t stand.
Peasants armies (levies) were a last retort effort when leaders didn’t had the means to get mercenaries. Do you think anyone would go to war with subpar troops or equipment?
Bringing up the black plague pile up upon the broad strokes youre making getting all and the sink into the same sack.
Lets pick 1476, in that year Castillian troops were fighting Portuguese forces in Toro; the Swiss fought Burgundians in Grandson, and Vlad Tepes fought the Otomans in Valea Alba. That means three battles, days apart, in Spain, Switzerland and Moldavia (current Rumania) with all six sides using different equipment and tactics. What were the best? none. There is not a be-all and end-all or even superior, nothing makes you invulnerable to anything, not even a heavy armor.
Knights existed since 700-ish to XVI+ century despite equites, meaning “horse owners” existed for most of the roman empire (and republic, and royal period af far as 700 B.C), you can’t gather allup in a single set of rules (arguably Samurai were knights too).
Since the portrait of the battles are usually long after the event, they tend to stick to their current fashion, so there are a lot of plate on Castillian representation, but mostly chainmail in Vlad case.
Of course you can oversimplify all you want, but war is a complex matter and there isn’t anything like a disposable troop (commoners are just non-nobles and depend on the point in story you go, noble invesment on war goes from the Greeks running after Alexanderinto combat, up to some general hidding into a bunker).
I recommend you to read the Osprey military books that analizes armies, battles and such to leave behind such ideas.
Yes – I did mention that mercenaries were *typically* not nobles, but becoming a mercenary was a reasonable option for younger nobles, or otherwise unlanded nobles.
https://www.habsburger.net/en/chapter/making-war-pay
> IF anti-armor weaponry (weaponry in fact, because armor and shield are a nuissance that any weapon have to surpass) were inefficient, armor didn’t had evolved, so that argument don’t stand. My point was exactly as I said – mercenaries became more common as time went on.
That’s like saying “if bows were inefficient, then they wouldn’t have evolved.” It makes no sense to assume that the only reason something advances is because it fails at its purpose. It’s hypocritical to claim oversimplification as you suggest “either it works or it doesn’t.” The whole reason people bought armor despite the cost was because it was very much worth it. The whole reason armor declined in use was because anti-armor weapons became both more effective and more widespread, and armor stopped being worth the cost.
Knights in the sense of what we typically think of, warriors in full plate, come later than handheld firearms, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour
If you’re going to be condescending, I’d appreciate it if you started posting sources before doing so.
The deuteragonist in one of my projects uses a spear and shield as her signature weapons. She’s a goblin who frequently rides a wolf in battle, making a spear’s reach extra valuable to her (yes, she’s heavily inspired by Princess Mononoke, for those wondering). When she’s not mounted, her fighting style incorporates using the spear as a mobility tool/vaulting pole, especially when facing much larger enemies.
Back in my foam-fighting days, polefighters were frequently *hated* by everyone else because of just how much more effortlessly dangerous they were with their added reach. Ditto shield users, who were effortlessly much harder to take down. And god help anyone trying to go one-on-one against a spear-and-shield fighter!
Foam fighting may not be the most historically accurate representation of anything, but I’d still hardily recommend it to anyone writing fantasy combat as a solid crash course in the basics of what it’s actually like to swing a weapon against a live opponent who’s actively trying to gut you first – especially if otherwise your only basis is cinematic combat.
Personally, I think the shield is a criminally underused “weapon” in fantasy. There are so many cool and fun possibilities with them, but you barely ever see them except on background characters (you know, the ones who also do stupid things like “wear helmets”). That’s why I made my own warrior character specialise in the use of the shield.
We have these really long hedges around our yard, which takes forever to cut using traditional tools, so this year, I got an electric hedge cutter. It looks like a much lighter and more delicate chainsaw at the end of a pole. At the opposite end there’s this handle you can press in to make it start plus a big battery.
If you just lift the whole thing up, it feels like it weighs nothing, but as soon as you wave it around to get at various parts at the hedge, the top of tall bushes etc, you realize that it does have some weight to it. After I spent an hour cutting all the hedges and bushes in one go, I had sore wrists afterwards for a day or so, even though I kept switching which hand was back and which was forth, and despite the fact that I go to the gym a lot and is pretty fit overall.
I’m thinking using a long fantasy sword would be similar, at least until you build up sufficient endurance in, like, little muscles in your forearms and stuff that you don’t otherwise use like that.
“I’m thinking using a long fantasy sword would be similar…”
Not appreciably so. I’ve used both, and the issue is balance. A hedge trimmer is tip-heavy, meaning that the center of balance is toward the tip. This makes it relatively hard to control; you need to use a lot more force to do so. Swords, including longswords, tend to have the center of balance closer to the hands, thanks to the pommels. This allows you to move them around a lot better and more accurately (at the expense of a certain amount of power).
Don’t get me wrong, you’ve gotta build up the muscles you intend to use! It’s just that they’re totally different muscles from what a hedge trimmer uses. A weapon more like a hedge trimmer would be a halberd.
That makes sense now when you say it!
Regarding wavy daggers, I seem to recall the real world point of them is that they’re less likely to get stuck in a wound (it’s a design used with punch daggers particularly). Why you’d use them for sacrifices, I’m not sure – I suppose if a dark ritual requires precise timing, you wouldn’t want to risk the interruption.
Flamberge (“flaming”) swords were usually rapiers and zweihänders (“two hand” greatswords) for different reasons. Rapiers, being a dueling weapon, would make the enemy blade to “jump” when sliding, making an opening; Greatswords were intended to cut enemy spears and polearms’ shafts, so they took an approach more similar to a saw, to cut wood faster.
The “axe = barbarian” thing is pretty straightforward, I think. For a good chunk of history swords were primarily the weapons of nobility, and then the weapons of state-backed militaries. Compared to other contemporary weapons, swords were expensive and more difficult to make because they’re entirely metal. These factors contributed to a recurring phenomenon throughout many different cultures that historians sometimes refer to as “the cult of the sword,” where swords above any other weapon type occupied a quasi-mythological place in a given culture based on these associations with nobility and expense, plus the just plain aesthetic coolness of being a long shiny thing whose only purpose is killing.
Axes, on the other hand, were commoners’ weapons because they’re both cheaper and easier to produce, only needing a head of metal (or even stone, if you’re desperate or living in a time before metallurgy) while the rest can be simple wood, and in many cases wouldn’t primarily be a weapon in the first place, but a rather daily tool being repurposed out of necessity. See also spears and clubs.
So on the one hand we have swords occupying a quasi-mythological niche packed with associations with nobility and civilization and literally dozens if not hundreds of schools and books dedicated to their style and technique, and on the other, the makeshift weapon of the unwashed masses. The Hero/Barbarian division writes itself. Add on some artistic exaggeration, and you’ve got hordes of greataxe-wielding barbarians marauding over the countryside.
As for the “bows actually take a long of strength” thing, the Grail Quest series by Bernard Cornwell did an excellent job of hammering into my head exactly how wrong modern depictions of martial archery are. Cornwell writes historical fiction, and the Grail Quest trilogy follows an English longbowman in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. It frequently references how much strength is actually required to draw such a bow, let alone to keep firing one over and over through the course of a battle.
In one particular scene, the marshal of the English army meets with the hero’s longbow unit, and impresses the archers by managing to ALMOST draw a longbow to his ear, which is still more than most knights and infantrymen can do (unless I’m mixing that scene up with Agincourt by the same author, about a different English longbowman in the Hundred Years War :P).
I still like writing cute archer girls, but I make a point now of depicting them as absolutely JACKED. XD
One thing that seems to be forgotten were that a lot of weapons had some very specific uses for battle. This is because individualized combat is more common in novels for drama reasons that big mass battles of professional organized armies, which is more realistic but doesn’t dramatize as well as a dual or fight between two small bands of people or a fight against a monster.
Speaking of which, I’d wonder how a professional army would use wizards if they had access to them. I’d imagine that they would basically be something of a combination of walking talking artillery, imagine synchronized fire ball casting, and defense, again synchronized shield casting. Yep, I can totally see this. Training would be wizards learning how to use their spells in time with each other for mass effect.
Wizards would probably be the equivalent of heavy artillery in an army. It depends on details, of course, such as how magic works or how many other weapons a wizard might use, but it is likely that they as a group would be the equivalent to cannons, trebuchets, or similar weapons – doing a lot of damage, but also needing a lot of protection from infantry units.
I’ve always thought it would be more interesting if mages were more specialized, rather than strictly superior and more elite archers. I’ve typically found mages on fantasy battlefields (when they show up) to be rather boring, because there’s never any tactical depth to them compared to other ranged troops, beyond inflicting an arbitrarily large amount of destruction.
Personally, I’m writing military mages to have shorter range than non-magical ranged weapons (when unaided by specialized equipment), and to be used either against targets that are harder for other weapons to hurt (e.g. knights, cataphracts), or for special effects that are harder or impossible through other means (e.g. tunneling, altering temperature).
The question is how battles would form.
If we’re talking linear warfare or trench warfare, using mages as artillery makes some sense (though I prefer to use archers for that purpose). Remember, in linear warfare (think Revolutionary War) the muskets were basically artillery–you’d fire to disrupt the enemy formation, then rush in with bayonets. Trench warfare worked similarly–the rolling barrages were intended to disrupt the enemy sufficiently to allow the charge to punch through (at which point defense in depth became problematic).
The thing is, both were due more to limits of technology than to the nature of war. Muskets couldn’t be fired rapidly enough or accurately enough for individual shooters to really be effective. You had to have a wall of lead because that was the only way to be sure of hitting your target. Similarly, trench warfare was a very specific case of combat; attempts to apply those tactics in other situations tend to fail horribly. See the first Iraq war (I’m not making any moral statements here, merely pointing out that Iraq used static defenses, the USA and our allies used more modern tactics).
All that said, actually killing people is probably the least useful application of magic. Magic is a force multiplier, and even low-level magic can have tremendous impact if used properly. Some examples:
1) Healing. A huge cost–in terms of treasure and morale–in any war is wounded soldiers. A dead soldier can be buried and turned into a martyr; a wounded one needs medical care and is sent home without a leg. Cheap medical care via healing spells or potions dramatically changes this equation. (As an aside, I’ve been toying around with a fantasy-MASH storyline. Could be fun, but I lack the comedy chops for it.) For that matter, reduction in disease would be a tremendous advantage–in most wars more people died of disease than in combat. What we consider simple sanitation would allow a Medieval army to DESTROY anything it came in contact with, because they wouldn’t be (quite literally) pooping themselves in combat.
2) Communications. This can range from grand strategy–ie, kings talking to each other–to battlefield conditions–NCOs talking to their troops. This is a critical part of any military operation but is always neglected. Medieval settings have very limited communications capacity, which necessarily limits their ability to command and control troops. In these situations individual blocks of troops often act as fire-and-forget missiles. Give the NCOs–or even lieutenants–magic mirrors and suddenly combat becomes a lot more agile. To see how important that is, look again at the first Iraq war. Or Rome in their early combat. Scrying would also be a major advantage–accurate intelligence is absolutely critical to winning any combat, from one-on-one sparring to WWII, and armies devote tremendous resources to it.
3) R&D. Don’t have mages BE weapons, have them MAKE weapons. Or armor. The standard fantasy warrior has a sword, maybe a shield. Give them a five-charge Wand of MakeHolesInPeople and again the combat becomes much more agile. Range, cover fire, and the like become more significant. Give them body armor that’s enchanted to block or heal damage (maybe sacrificing itself in the process) and again it changes the equation. It doesn’t have to be so grand, though. Look at the history of canning–something so simple anyone with a kitchen can do it can revolutionize warfare by eliminating a major cause of incapacitation.
4) Logistics. Teleportation spells are game-breaking. The side with the biggest army doesn’t win the battle; the side with the largest effective force on the battlefield tends to. If I can get my troops into your camp while your troops are sleeping, you’re going to have a very, very, VERY bad day. Even just getting columns of troops to the same place at the same time would be such a huge advantage it would nearly win the war–see the Battle of Pelanore Fields in LOTR. But even something as simple as transporting food would give one side an insurmountable advantage. Again, your troops need to be effective, which means well-fed. Transporting food in pre-industrial societies is HARD. Doing it via magic–even if it’s extremely expensive–all but negates that.
All of this would logically be hideously expensive. Individual countries would need to make a choice between an expensive modern military and a cheap outdated one. Remember, to use a wand (or modern firearm) effectively requires fairly intense training, far more intense than “Walk that way, stick spear in bad guy”. Everything else would be equally expensive. But if you have the resources, an army that could heal it’s wounded, provide effective armor, provide effective weapons, coordinate movements at all scales, and supply the field units with adequate rations would be nearly unstoppable.
This is in line with real-world military considerations. The reason Iraq used static defenses and outdated tactics wasn’t because they were too stupid to do otherwise; it’s because they were too poor to do otherwise. Armies tend to go with what’s good enough to deal with the threats they expect to face, plus ten percent. No one expecting to fight guys armed with swords will invest in a Blackhawk; it’s a total waste of resources.
Talking about a ‘danger rope’ in the context of Indiana Jones reminds me that snakes are jokingly referred to as ‘nope ropes’ or ‘danger noodles’.
“Nope ropes. Why did it have to be nope ropes?”
“Just give it a boop on the snoot, Indy!”