Well, you really want your magical support guys to be in the same physical shape as the Frontline specialists, otherwise the majority of a unit is holding up for the less physically fit component. You train everyone to the same standards or you get people killed... that is just how it is... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

On the other side of that (so to speak), you'd have military mages who have to pass Astral PFTs (or AFT's, I guess). Something about a cadre of magicians having to run through an astral obstacle course while under the watchful eye of a spirit of man in the form of R. Lee Ermy is humorous to me.

@Nath: Good find. I don't have New Seattle, but does it say how many troops are in the First Infantry Division or how the Metroplex Guard regiment is structured?

I agree for somethings like jogging. But at the same time you only have X hours a day to train. If 50% of that is for magical training something is going to slide. Maybe hand to hand combat, maybe firearms, but even mages can't get more hours out of the day. And with drain, magic is at least as demanding on the body as physical training so you can't just tack it on the end because you wont be suing your body anymore.

Obviously you're forgetting about those spells that let you go without sleep and food. They don't have to waste time going to mess, and they don't have to waste time in bed. Thus they can actually get more hours out of a day.

Not that they are likely to do this long term due to the risk of addiction.

This is the way I see it as well due to playing XCOM and testing my recruits and veterans for their psi stats. Then they would get labelled canon fodder, special ops resistant, or psi oversight and support to be kitted out accordingly. Cannon fodder would basicly get nothing so they would be easier for my side to kill if the aliens felt like controlling them rather than shooting them ... sucks to be them walking point so the special ops guys get all the kills and the psi ops get to do a mind control chain on the aliens from back in the safety of the transport. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Eating doesn't take long and there are plenty of drugs to keep you awake as well so mundanes can keep at it just as long and with similar side effects. But I think my point is more about hours till exhaustion. Your body can only train so far before it starts doing more harm than good. Magic actually causes stun and physical damage, which puts a big limit on how much you can do in a day. I am not sure I want to get my ass kicked on the mat after practicing my levitate spell for the last 2 hours. This is assuming something like special forces where this training is needed. I am sure plenty of mages will be in the same physical training level as a staff sergeant or whatever, since training does not take up much of their time. And they will need similar levels of physical skill in combat.

Ideally, sure. But even in today's Army, you'll find a whole lot leaner, meaner, more physically fit guys in the infantry than you will a lot of support positions; the guys who know their lives will depend on their fitness just naturally take it more seriously than the guys who are working in the chow line or serving as a quartermaster or whatever.

If your mages aren't serving on the front line, alongside the tip-of-the-spear guys, then they won't be slowing them down.

But if you are going to use them in a direct support role (Where the Combat Mages will Shine), they will often need to be "at the tip of the spear" as you so eloquently put... at that point, they damn well better be able to pull their own weight, or they will be dead... I do not know about you, but if my life depends upon those around me, and their life depends upon me, then I (and they, hopefully) will strive to be equal to the task... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

Nothing on that. The books do state the Task Force Seattle numbered 5,000. My guess would be the 1st Infantry Division is not going to be bigger than it is currently (20'000), but may be smaller. With a number of magicians higher than 60 and a number of soldiers lower than 20'000, the rate would be 3% or above. There also should be some adepts which are not included in magicians detachment if they can't patrol the astral or cast spells.
Also, the text says Colloton task force came with a detachment of 40 magicians. If the Task Force included detachments from special force units, their adepts and magicians may not be counted among the 40.

As far as why awakened would join the military, they'd get one heck of a magical group for the purposes of initiation. I think lots would join just for that.

Also, I'd join just cause I'd get to pin pentagrams (or whatever the insignia would be for the magical branch of the military) to my lapels. But what do I know, I'm still in JROTC. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

On a side note, I can see their drill heavily involving military sabers simply because they could use them as weapon foci on the astral. If this is the case, their combat training will probably focus more on teaching them how to use the sword they carry than hand-to-hand combat.

Since someone brought up that the 1% of the population that is awakened includes everybody with even the smallest amount of magical ability, I think that those who are magic 1 or 2 would probably get placed on the front line. Their abilities don't endear them command most likely, so they would probably be combat mages throwing around AoEs for battlefield control/suppressing fire.

As far as the thaumaturgical branch of the military's training goes, I think they would probably have a lot of focus on ritual magic, but thats just conjecture.

And I'm not sure what the military would do with some of the more esoteric traditions out there. Same goes for adepts.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "pulling your own weight" (being basically fit and healthy with decent endurance), and being buff and athletic.

Support tends towards basic levels of fitness, frontline probably trains harder. So maybe 3-4 for support and 4-5 for frontline.




I still have one thing that they told us about being in the JROTC that sticks in my head - that it's possible, if we end up in the military, that we might start a rank or two higher than the baseline, like starting out as a PFC or even Corporal instead of Private. And the first thought that occurred to me was, "Wait, that's supposed to be a BONUS?"


-k

I can live with that... The military is more about endurance than sheer physical capacity afterall...

Indeed, with the increase in Rank comes an increase in responsibility...

Mages probably have a rather weird place in the hierarchy. They're too rare and too valuable to dismiss just because they can be jerks, or because they have a troublesome mentor spirit. In fact, most of the combat mage style mentor spirits have rather nasty drawbacks, in terms of being an obedient soldier. That which makes a mage more competent also makes him harder to work with.

Add to that, that mages are literally using their life energy to do their job. They might get pretty arrogant uptight about that, the whole "my job is more hardcore than yours, because I literally give of my own life to serve my country" shtick.

1 Division (1st infantry in this case) = 4 Brigades.

1 Brigade = 5 Battalions (2 line, one reconnaissance (no, these troops are not any harder/tougher/better than the line, they just are doctrinally placed in a recon/screen role and tend to be lighte ron equipment and numbers due to this) 1 artillery, 1 support battalion)

1 Division = 20 battalions. 8 line, 4 recon, 4 artillery, 4 support.

So, if 65 Mages are 1st ID's complement that is probably distributed as follows:

1 mage per battalion = 20

Addittional mage for line and recon = 12

So, direct assignment is 32 of the 65.

Assume each Brigade HQ maintains 2 mages in specialist/advisory functions (intelligence comes to mind), 2 as Astral Defense, and 2 as a brigade reserve/spirit force. = 24

Division HQ then has 9 mages. 3 in specialist support, 6 as AD and reserve. For grand total of 65.


As such, I wouldn't foresee mages being typically on the frontlines. They are, at the lowest, a battalion asset, and consequently are probably granted the rank of Captain (though everyone knows they aren't REAL captains. No one would assign one to company command for instance. Though presumably as they increase in rank, like doctors, they assume command and advisory roles relating to their specialty.) Said captain would probably be told to either support the battalion as a whole with spirits and other such, be used as the battalion commanders personal magical artillery, or temporarily assigned to support a company during a mission.

Keeping them forward as karl kombat mage risks them too much. We're not used to thinking of it as runners where firefights are really just a handful of quickly exchanged bursts between small groups, but in high intensity military fights, a great deal of your chance of dying is due to random, unfortunate, placement of something lethal by the other side.

If the enemy decides to prep the hills with artillery on a hunch (and most non-western militaries favor the hunch prep during major attacks. Western forces prefer to ID a target, but in high risk situations may do limited "blind" prep), your line mage has just as much chance of dying from a random shell in the foxhole as your rifleman. Ditto for an airstrike, or the ever popular "there's shooting coming from that building. Hose it with machinegun fire. And put a few grenades in it too." You don't risk something that rare to what may just be an unlucky richocet.

Add to this, there is almost certainly going to be a "geek the mage" concept taken to the logical military extremes. Kill the mage equals remove enemy astral abilities. I would certainly keep some of that astral patrol scanning, just waiting for a mage to come out of masking to do his thing. Have a tube with a GPS guided artillery round on call. Your mage spots enemy mage doing his thing via astral. Fire mission.

Guys start going down to powerballs/stunballs on a certain spot? Immediate spirit commitment, via astral. When they ID, they simo materialize and kill the mage.

Really, direct exposure of a mage gains you relatively little benefit compared to a summoning or manipulation mage. He doesn't do anything in combat that a good sniper, machinegunner, etc couldn't do. Used in support, he grants massive bonuses in information, deep strike capability, analysis, and so much more. With the exception of units that live or die on their small unit capabilites (SF mainly), the smart commander would use his mage as a huge combat multiplier, not just a fancy way of killing folks.

Yeah, as far as pure killing power goes, a lot of a runner magician's advantages are situational and unique to the environments they work in. A gator shaman who knows a bunch of combat spells can't really be disarmed short of throwing a bag over his head and beating him unconscious and the heat he's packing can be parceled out according to the threat. That's a great trick in an environment where you're not always going to be assumed dangerous, (and it's part of why I think Magicians as written are typically overqualified to be 'runners) but if you're tromping around in uniform and just want to provide sustainable firepower or make a big bang and make people duck for cover, then, well, you might as well just have platoon of guys out there with a mortar. It's not like you want to send one man out there on his own into a combat zone anyway, after all.

Anyway, I also suspect Magicians with traditions that allow for Spirits with Magical Guard would be highly valued.

And pay.

In terms of the numbers of Magicians, Grimoire (SR1 - Circa 2050) says

One percent of the people in the world can use magic at all. Perhaps 90 percent of those are minor magicians or never get the proper training, or go crazy trying to deal with whatever they are. There are mayber three to four million fully capable, trained, competent magicians in the Sixth World, though some studies suggest that the percentage is rising with each new generation.

Yeah, and 90% of those mages are either runners or corp employed.

I beleive they still use that same 1% number in the current edition. Which means if what was the USA kept its same population there would be about 200-300,000 mages or about 1/3rd the amount of doctors. That area is broken up differently so each country would have different and likely lower mage numbers. I don't think UCAS has an army of the same proportional size as the US has today so the number of UCAS military mages is probably rather small.

No, in the current edition they say 1%, but then they have all sorts of minor magical talent stuff to dilute that 1%. SR1 has 0.1% as full Magic 6 trained magicians, with the rest of the 0.9% being less than that but still mages.

As the percentage of mages was supposed to increase as the mana level increased this seems odd.

Well, keep in mind that is the number of people who can use magic, not the number of mages. A fair chunk of that number is going to be adepts and a few mystic adepts and a handful of spell knack/spirit knack types.

So 1% awakened, 10% of that with real skill, 30% of that is actually mages, and only around 10% of that (or less) is likely to be in the military. So, pretending that the US population is the same and we're talking the entire US, you're looking at roughly 9k mages in the US military. That's not none, but given the size of the country, that is alot.

Add to that the complications caused by Tradition and Mentor spirits. AFAIK, tradition isn't entirely free choice; not every tradition will work for every person.

The military probably favors the Hermetic tradition. It's rational, well-understood and described. Those are people who went to college to learn magic, and they do better in a "straight" environment than say, a Cat Shaman. So the mages attached to more regular armed units will usually be Hermetics.

Of course, mages are too valuable to pass up even if they're in a strange tradition, but certain ones (Black Magic, Native American Shamanism, Shinto, Voodoun) would tend to be considered untrustworthy by the UCAS. The rest is likely assigned to more freewheeling, dress-casual parts of the army.

Mentor spirits are another thing:
Bear +2 to Health, +2 to resist P damage, but berserk rages.
Cat +2 to Illusion and Gymnastics or Infiltration, but issues with incapacitating targets instead of playing with them
Raven +2 to Manipulation and Air spirits, but they can't resist abusing others' misfortune to their own advantage
Shark +2 to Combat and Water spirits, but berserk rages
Trickster +2 to Illusion and Con, but can't resist trickstering, even your allies
Wolf +2 Combat and Beast, but they don't like to retreat
Adversary +2 to Manipulation and +2 to Counterspelling or Banishing, but they don't respond well to orders

I could go on, but the point should be clear; the mentors that provide bonuses relevant to the army often impose a hefty toll on the shaman's behavior as well.

I expect there'll be a lot of officers yearning for the days before the Awakening. Because those insufferable magicians are just too valuable to kick out.

No, they had all the highly skilled be real mages. SR1 population was 3-4 billion, so 3-4 million is 0.1%. Adepts and other such minor talents are the other 0.9%.

Tis True... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)