Magic vs Technology

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Well, actually this thread was mostly inspired from some debates in "Sauron vs US" thread.

Can we answer this question: if we pit magic vs technology, which side's gonna win?

IMHO, both magic and technology are used to achieve certain desired result. If you know the mechanism, it's tech; if you don't, it's magic.

But the fact that we don't know the mechanism doesn't automatically mean that we cannot measure the result.

So I think the most objective way to compare magic and tech is to measure and analyze the result.

I've played CPRGs alot (AD&D Gold Box Series, Ultima, etc). Let's take AD&D's Fireball spell. Sure, it's magic. Big deal. But basically it's merely a way to create ball of fire to harm your enemy. Can't we achieve the same result using flamethrowers? Can't we achieve **better** result using fuel-air explosives?

Or maybe we can take a look on Peter Pan's Tinkerbell. It's technically impossible to fly using those flimsy wings, so it must be magic. So what? IMHO, it only means that Tinkerbell can defy gravity using "magic". Can't we achieve the same result using repulsorlift (assuming we've discovered such tech)?

Or maybe the likes of "shield" spell in some CRPGs. Basically it's a force-field that "magically created" to protect you from harm. So? Doesn't it have time limit? Does it have unlimited power? While it can protect you from swords or arrrows, can it protect you from nuclear explosion? Can't we, using technology, provide a much better "shield" spell using bigger force field generator?

Basically, I never agree with thoughts like "if it's magic, then it must have unlimited power ".

I believe it is the **result** that matters, and with technology, we can achieve better result than magic.

Anyone?

[Graeme Dice]

I've played CPRGs alot (AD&D Gold Box Series, Ultima, etc). Let's take AD&D's Fireball spell. Sure, it's magic. Big deal. But basically it's merely a way to create ball of fire to harm your enemy. Can't we achieve the same result using flamethrowers? Can't we achieve **better** result using fuel-air explosives?

You'd be hard pressed to do better than a fireball that can kill a normal human 15 times in an instant. That's a lot of high explosives.

Or maybe the likes of "shield" spell in some CRPGs. Basically it's a force-field that "magically created" to protect you from harm. So? Doesn't it have time limit?

Minutes to hours depending on the spell.

Does it have unlimited power?

2nd edition AD&D stoneskin will protect the target from any physical attack, no matter how powerful, but will only stop 10 such attacks. Absolute immunity will provide near complete immunity to physical attacks for four minutes, takinf something like a battleship shell to breach it.

Protection from normal missiles would be a completely effective shield against small arms fire.

While it can protect you from swords or arrrows, can it protect you from nuclear explosion?

No, physical protection spells wouldn't do that. For that, you could use protection from fire, plus protection from the elements and other items and spells so that the nuclear blast would actually heal your wounds.

Can't we, using technology, provide a much better "shield" spell using bigger force field generator?

You won't get much better than prismatic sphere. It provides complete immunity to projectile weapons (including man-sized boulders and such), stops poison gases, petrification, breath weapons, divination and mental attacks, all spells, then destroys anything that makes it through the first six barriers.

I believe it is the **result** that matters, and with technology, we can achieve better result than magic.

Not likely. Magic can be completely arbitrary. The power limits exist only in the minds of those describing it. Even with controlled game systems, it is possible to produce effects that have no possible way to duplicate with technology. Take permanency for instance. APply it to an effect and the effect becomes permanent. It becomes a perpetual motion machine.

Science has to make sense, magic doesn't.

[Tanith]

It would have to depend on the level of each, I suppose. Arthur C. Clarke once said that sufficiently advanced technology would be virtually indistinguishable from magic.

At its highest possible peak (I guess something like out of the Culture novels or such, I guess), tech do behave like magic and do 'miraculous' things from the perspectives of those who are more primitive in understanding. Of course, we have no real way to know just what *is* the pinnacle of technology in real life... only sci fi ever attempts to give possibilities there.

As for the upper limits of magic... then you'd have mages like Milamber from Feist's novels, who could rewind time back to the Big Bang and fastforward back again with no ill effects, or open/seal up rifts between dimensions. Or Dr. Strange from Marvel Comics, who can channel the various powers of deities facets of reality in the Marvel Universe. *shrug* That's still pretty impressive there, since only the imagination of the author is the limit of what they're capable of.

[Edi]

Not a straightforward issue, because different fantasy settings have different sorts of magic that abide by different rules. You'd have to examine each instance separately, and in some cases tech will win hands down, in others it will be completely steamrollered. The prismatic sphere and protection from normal missiles are good examples of that.

Sure, you can kill a lot of people with tech weapons, and in this category technology will usually win. It's the protection aspects where magic usually wins, and if we have the premise that both magic and technology work simultaneously, there are some definite advantages for magic in some cases.

A Dragonquest (an obscure rpg system made by SPI in the late 70s and early 80s and later acquired by TSR, and hands down the best fantasy rpg system there is, imho) necromancer would be an absolute terror against a technological foe. He'd need to summon a single wraith, and it would be game over for the tech folk, because a DQ wraith can be harmed only by direct magic. Even magical weapons have no effect on it. The downside is that sunlight destroys it instantly, restricting it to operating at night, but big deal. He'd also be superbly equipped to interrogate enemies, since a necromancer can simply ask up to twenty (depending on his skill in that field) yes/no questions of the spirit of any dead enemy and compel trurhful answers. You can get a lot of intelligence that way.

Of course, it won't matter much if the enemy uses a death star or whatever superweapon happens to be at hand to blow the whole planet to pieces to get rid of such dangerous folks. In magic vs tech, it always goes case by case.

Edi

[Thunderfire]

Magic will win most of the time unless you reach really high
techlevels that might counter magic. Current Day Earth could
easily be conquered by some high level spellcaster e.g. a
Level 30 Defiler. I don't think that all earth forces combined
would surive longer than one week in the bloodwar without
suffering 99% casualties.

[HRogge]

Magic has a built-in advantage, it can ignore the rules of reality.

There are spells to make you immune to energe... as long as the spell works energy weapons do NO damage. It doesn't matter how powerful they are.

They are offensive spells which ignore physical defenses at all. There would be no technical way to defend against them.

There are magical wall impervious to physical AND energy damage. They would block any kind of technological weapon. If large enough they might block the DS blast.

Technology might be more effecient and can be reproduced easily but magic seems to own a few additional tricks...

[Mr Bean]

Yep but even Primsatic Sphere falls Victium to a little problem

If you target the area above or below them and do enough damage even though the Spell might protect you, that moten metal core might be a problem

And as they say spellcasters still have to sleep

[Thunderfire]

Yes they have to sleep. But they can sleep in places
unreachable by nearly technology. Epecially D&D has
some very powerfull monsters. Even a munchkin level
party could defeat any modern army if they used their
spells/powers in the right way.

[Darth_Shinji]

Another advantage that magic has over science is that (usaully) it is easier. Magic is often based on someone's knowledge of that particular magical art. The more one studies and learns the more powerful you get. In some cases, a person can have the power to slaughter a modern day military base, just own only two or three books and rags for clothing.

One of the disadvantages though is that magic is usaully not mass-produced. Though there is sometimes that magicaly civ that ruled the planet thousands of years ago and usaully destroyed by a civil-war or some dark god.

[SirNitram]

Magic mostly just plays by it's own rules, seperate from sciences. There's certainly no technological equivalent to the highest forms of magic, the 10th, 11th, and 12th level spells!

To give you an idea, a 10th level spell is Create Mythallar, a means of providing more or less free magic over a large area, close to indefinately(The only Mythallar saved from the death of Magic in the world is still running, thousands of years later). An 11th level one would be Valdick's Spheresail, which instantly empowers a normal sailing ship with the ability to take to the air and to space, holding in atmosphere and maneuvering at twice the speed of normal Spelljammers. And the only 12th level spell, Karsus' Avatar, is flat out against the rules of technology: It transforms the caster into a deity, slaying the deity they are planning to supplement.

[Thunderfire]

Psipowers can be even worse. You could use
some to bombard earth with dinosaur killer
meteorits and this one requires only a medium
level psionicst and some time. A true master
could use the same power to send earth on a
one way trip into the sun if he put alot of points
into the power.

[consequences]

Magic does tend to have restrictions and loopholes, but you have to be familiar with the system of magic being used to exploit them.

[Manji]

If "technology" includes sci-fi technologies as opposed to only current RL ones, then technology wins by a thousand miles.

The Culture.

No magic/fantasy thingymajig has ever been seen which could face down the Culture.

[Graeme Dice]

If "technology" includes sci-fi technologies as opposed to only current RL ones, then technology wins by a thousand miles.

The Culture.

No magic/fantasy thingymajig has ever been seen which could face down the Culture.

I'd bet a Valheru army could do it without too much trouble.

[Manji]

If "technology" includes sci-fi technologies as opposed to only current RL ones, then technology wins by a thousand miles.

The Culture.

No magic/fantasy thingymajig has ever been seen which could face down the Culture.

I'd bet a Valheru army could do it without too much trouble.

Do you not know that the culture can destroy entire planets from light years away?

By using effectors, they can take over the minds and control the thoughts of any sentient, be they biological or AI.

Culture minds are millions of times more intelligent than humans and have reaction times that make the most quick-off-the-mark human ever to live look like a snail with muscular distrophy. A mind can simulate the birth, lifetime, and death of entire universes at the sub atomic level in a few seconds.

Large space battles involving the Culture are measured in microseconds.

A single culture combat drone coudl take out any fantasy force I've ever seen or read.

[Darth_Shinji]

If "technology" includes sci-fi technologies as opposed to only current RL ones, then technology wins by a thousand miles.

The Culture.

No magic/fantasy thingymajig has ever been seen which could face down the Culture.

I'd bet a Valheru army could do it without too much trouble.

He is prob right about the vallehu.

Also on the list of culture beaters.
The outer gods.
The old ones.
The evil dynasty.
All of rifts gods working together (maybe).
an army of rifts poltegiet entities and othe spirits.
L-sama.

[The Yosemite Bear]

*Ahem*


Culture Vs. Mythos

Azoloth get's to "talk" to the Culture minds FIRST

[The Yosemite Bear]

Alternately I can use Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or Elric to really sic some nasty forces of Chaos or Order on Culture.

Since Multi-Demnsional enities exceed the Span of Light years away......

[Faram]

Ahm

The Culture - Idir War Statistics from Consider Phlebas

Lenght of the war 48y 1m
Casualties Including Mashines 851,4 Billion ~.3%
Losses Ships 91,215,660 ~200
Orbitals 14,334
Planets and major Moons 53
Rings 1
Spheres 3
Stars 6

All this mayhem and the war affected .02% of the galaxy by volume and .01% by stellar population

We are talking about huge civ's

Now mahyem at this scale would utterly trash any magic fantasy stuff.

[Darth_Shinji]

Ahm

The Culture - Idir War Statistics from Consider Phlebas

Lenght of the war 48y 1m
Casualties Including Mashines 851,4 Billion ~.3%
Losses Ships 91,215,660 ~200
Orbitals 14,334
Planets and major Moons 53
Rings 1
Spheres 3
Stars 6

All this mayhem and the war affected .02% of the galaxy by volume and .01% by stellar population

We are talking about huge civ's

Now mahyem at this scale would utterly trash any magic fantasy stuff.

There are a few that exeed that. The vallhu ravaged thier universe whenever they fealt like it. And destroyed an other one when they were impoisined thier.

Or another culture-killer. The god-tribe from Domioions of irith (not exact name. My copy of the book is an hour drive away).

Their entire multiverse is a dream used to teach on of thier woman's unborn baby.

[Graeme Dice]

Do you not know that the culture can destroy entire planets from light years away?

When you haven't lived on a planet, or even in a standard universe for several thousand years, that doesn't matter much.

By using effectors, they can take over the minds and control the thoughts of any sentient, be they biological or AI.

Not any sentient, or else it isn't technology, as it doesn't have limits.

Culture minds are millions of times more intelligent than humans and have reaction times that make the most quick-off-the-mark human ever to live look like a snail with muscular distrophy. A mind can simulate the birth, lifetime, and death of entire universes at the sub atomic level in a few seconds.

And the Valheru can cause the death of the universe, and fight back against gods.

A single culture combat drone coudl take out any fantasy force I've ever seen or read.

There you go. It just shows that you haven't read nearly enough.

[Graeme Dice]

Ahm

The Culture - Idir War Statistics from Consider Phlebas

Lenght of the war 48y 1m
Casualties Including Mashines 851,4 Billion ~.3%
Losses Ships 91,215,660 ~200
Orbitals 14,334
Planets and major Moons 53
Rings 1
Spheres 3
Stars 6

The Valheru wars:
Length of war: Several tens of thousands of years
Losses:
Valheru: 0
Everyone else: Total, including spacefaring races spanning galaxies.

They left nothing behind when they rampaged.

Now mahyem at this scale would utterly trash any magic fantasy stuff.

That totally depends on your definition of what constitutes "magic fantasy stuff".

[HRogge]

If "technology" includes sci-fi technologies as opposed to only current RL ones, then technology wins by a thousand miles.

The Culture.

No magic/fantasy thingymajig has ever been seen which could face down the Culture.

The Nightlords would do it... ( Rifts Nightbane )

they collapsed a whole dimension onto itself, killing everything inside... there is no reason why they should be unable to do it again.

[Darth_Shinji]

The Nightlords would do it... ( Rifts Nightbane )

they collapsed a whole dimension onto itself, killing everything inside... there is no reason why they should be unable to do it again.

I'm a big fan of nightbane nightlords. Which book is this in?

[HRogge]

The Nightlords would do it... ( Rifts Nightbane )

they collapsed a whole dimension onto itself, killing everything inside... there is no reason why they should be unable to do it again.

I'm a big fan of nightbane nightlords. Which book is this in?

Nightlands, Page 128

"... Using this unimaginable energy level, Moloch caused the entire dimension that had spawned those demons to collapse into itself, causing the obliteration of all things within. An entire 'level' of the Netherworld, easily as big an powerful as Dyval or Hades, ceased to exist."