Excellent summary! A couple of comments/thoughts:
> Unless it is a small raid, the Yelmalions don't try to fight a set
>battle with a file of militia against mounted nomads. They defend the
>buildings, letting the nomads do as they please in the fields, and signal
>other villages.
I would think that the Sun Domers would have to show some sort of willingness to drive the nomads from the field. Otherwise, the nomads would come all the time, as there would be no real danger for them. They could take what they want at any time then leave. If your fields are getting destroyed and looted all the time by nomads, then you won't have anything to eat yourself. Of course, you could hold up in the fortified positions with you possessions, but this doesn't help protect the farmlands.
> Magic is seldom used as artillery, unless the Lunar College of Magic
>is there. Some spirits, some invocations. It is more important the ability
>to fight at night that the paltry sunspears they can manage.
>
Ever been hit with a Sunspear? Artillery and firearms are just an analogy. I think you get the same effect with offensive magic if you think in terms of these two real-world examples. Artillery provides destructive firepower in an area at a distance and firearms provides firepower for the individual troops at a distance and provide a more mobile platform (i.e. the human) than the artillery. RQ doesn't seem to have many spells that would qualify in the artillery category, but firearm analogies are certainly valid.
Analogies to spells in RQ are simple:
Disruption (though weak), Firearrow (though bow needed), Multimissile, Lightning, Sunspear, Thunderbolt, Palsy, Venom, etc.
And more subtle spells:
Befuddle, Demoralize, Fear, etc.
Sergion:
>1. Large scale, far reaching, and integrated communications and
>intelligence.
Speak with animals (i.e. birds,fish,forest animals), Wind Words, Flight, Farsee, mobility (for message carriers), mindlink (for increased battle field communciations), teleport, guided teleport
>2. Spells (both offensive and defensive) that can target a group instead of
>an individual, or an area instead of a point in space.
Spirits, sylphs, gnomes
>3. Spells that remain active for a long period.
Extension, Sorcery Duration - though not many of the common troops would have access to these.
>4. Spells that result from the combined eforts of several people.
Try having 1000 disruptions cast into your ranks, everyone has bladsharp cast on their weapons, a beserking Storm Bull unit, 1000 demoralize spells cast on your enemies
Yes, all cast by the individual, but when combined within an entire army - deadly
>Certainly, this high level magic will not eliminate the usefullness in the
>battle field of the individual scale magic we know so well. After all,
>today our RW infantry soldiers still carry a bayonet.
I assume what you are trying to get at is where an individual can affect mass amounts of troops with one spell. It doesn't seem Runequest, in general, provides for those area effect or multiple target type spells (except for maybe a good sorceror) - nor should it IMO.
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