I've read this saga on the napoleonic wars, but with dragons called "Temeraire" by Naomi Novik. It depicts an amaicing array of ways in wich diferent cultures interact with dragons. India, Turkey, England and specially China have diferent ways to interact with the lizards and the book also goes into detaio regarding the tactics andadvantages that dragons bring to the table.

But vampires would be the kings of the night if dragons are the kings of the day. The relative implications of mass vampirism are much less concerning than winning the war after all. Also, you can make vampire-spawn by the docen and turn the promising ones into full fledged vampires, as vapire-spawn are under the absolute control of their master, they cant revolt or refuse to charge. This also opens the door to vamping any prisioners you get to extract information from them.

I'm thinking, wouldnt an undead be, by definition of not having a brain or even being alive, be the perfect suicide assasin/canon fodder. But, you would need a method to keep the enemy side from recycling the boys a second time. If you dont, its like playing pingpong with a massive undead horde. A sport I'm sure many necromancers would enjoy playing. Also, hig lv clerics and paladins wold be able to, literally bless the rain, killing undead left and right.

On a side note, would the ghost of a soldier still want to fight? If so, the necromancer just got the posivility of more complex tactics and strategies, thanks to these ethereal aides.

"Divine intervention" can have so many varied meanings.

Thats a good point, but gunpowder horns are wateproof and being underwater still beats death. On a side note, control water is a lv4 spell, so ti would be a good example of "and then we knew that they had a powerfull caster, because, you know, ten feet underwater things like that become obbious".

Thanks for the tip.

Also, necromancy would become a must for both sides, after all, a the death of a legion may generate revenants or wraiths. The idea of mass destruction magical weapons or crazy magical creations has been explored somewhat in earlier editions. I'm talking about things like the frostforged wyrm, or the crazy nethereese spells of levels above 9. There is literally a "conjure volcano" spell that a wizard just made for flexing and no one actually casted, until now of course, until now.

I have downloaded the pdf of FotVH, man this is gold. I have read like three monsters and these things are a wild ride. Thank you kindly for the recomendation.

Man this is serious stuff, these are some really good references
Thank you, you are going to be the indirect cause of the nightmares the characters of my players

I like the idea of familiars as spys, perhaps demons make pacts not with individuals, but with batalions to get eldritch blast and some imps in an effort to gain the upper hand. Also, the idea of a magical superweapon arms race seems like another good excuse to "why do we have so few wizards on the batallion", magical Openheimer is doing its thing.

You can use the ol'reliable magical masterclass trick. Go to some nobles and tell them some random stadistic about how much can learning a cantrip help their sons to defend themselves in these hard times.