Invading hell - at level 15

[Heliomance]

Okay, so we're heading into the denoument of our campaign, and we're about to go invade hell. We'll all be level 15 when we actually do it, we're 14 at the moment. We do have a large army with us, but not nearly large enough. The party consists of:

Myself, an Elf Ranger/Planar Master (Homebrew class, more details here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110659))
A Dwarf Fighter capable of putting out obscene amounts of damage due to homebrew critical rules and dice that love him. His record so far is 4464 in one hit - at level 6.
A Human Paladin, with a Pegasus Cleric as special mount and cohort
A Halfling Wizard, generalist but mostly uses evocation and transmutation. Thanks to a looted spellbook, she has pretty much every evocation spell in the PHB.
A Gnome Sorceror, using homebrew rules to specialise. He can only cast necromancy, evocation and illusion spells, but his DCs for necromancy and illusion are obscene, and he can pick spells from any class list for those two schools.
Elf Rogue/Red Dragon Disciple, he has a magic item that lets him use his breath weapon every 1d4 rounds.
Half-Elf Druid, focused RP-wise towards air- and electricity- themed spells, and bird forms for Wild Shape. Can use Call Lightning inside, doing d8s of damage thanks to a custom magic item. He's put all his blasty spells in a staff, so he generally prepares utility spells. The DM was very annoyed to discover that he actually had quench prepared when he tried to throw a forest fire at us! He also plans to use Changestaff on this staff, and the DM has ruled that the resultant treant will be able to use all the spells stored in the staff.

We've gathered all the allies we've had previous contact with already - suggestions for anyone else we could get are welcome. If they exists, they'lll probably be willing to help as we're doing this to stop the devils invading the Prime. Note about cosmology, the Outer Planes don't exist, only the Inner. Mechanus is a city on the Plane of Earth, we're going to invade the City of Brass.
Current list of allies:
The entire orc population of the north, united under one king
One great wyrm red dragon
A tribe of fire giants
A tribe of salamanders
A bunch of sorcerors
Probably one epic necromancer
Going to approach the Dwarfholds
Going to approach the Elf homelands
Going to approach the Druids
One squad of demons under a warlock
A batallion of warlocks that fire positive energy Eldritch Blasts, which can take people over their max HP and hence explode them

I'd also had an idea of taking a bunch of clerics to the plane of water and getting them to do a ritual to bless large amounts of it into holy water, then opening a gate there and flooding the battlefield in holy water.

Any other suggestions, whether for tactics or allies, would be highly welcome!

[Fenix_of_Doom]

It sounds awesome, but I'm wondering what your trying to achieve.
do you want a foot hold in hell, take over at least one plane or take over hell all together?

you are also playing in a homebrewed world, can we assume standard opposition in hell?

[Heliomance]

We're trying to take out their supply chain to delay their invasion by as long as we can. They have slug-like devils that act as power conduits and make an invasion of the Prime possible - we're trying to destroy as many as possible of those conduits. As for opposition - Asmodeu and the Council of Nine will be personally involved. The Orc King will be taking on Asmodeus, but knows full well that he will die and that all he can do is delay him.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

1. Get a Scroll of Gate or a Candle of Invocation.
2. Gate in a Fiendish (if it needs to be extraplanar) Paragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/paragonCreature.htm) Hellfire Wyrm (MM2). It has racial spell-like abilities, usable at will, with a base caster level of 20. Paragon adds +15 caster level, and another +13 Insight bonus which should also be applied to the caster level.
3. Order it to use Dictum at caster level 48 on the demons to the best of its ability as often as possible for the duration of its service (2 rounds per caster level of the Gate). Since the demons will be on their home plane and will almost certainly have fewer than 38 hit dice, every one of them will be killed with no saving throw permitted.
4. ???
5. Profit.

[Heliomance]

We're fighting Devils, not Demons. We'd need Word of Chaos. Also, the DM would insist on Knowledge checks to know of such creatures.

[SilverClawShift]

When my group did this, we were slightly higher level, and all of us were full casters leading a massive army comprised of paladins and clerics from several churches united for the cause. And it was still a constant scrapping struggle to stay in double-digit hitpoints. Death was basically perched on our shoulders and giggling about how close we were to shuffling off with every step we took.

For us, we suceeded by making it a blitzkrieg. We attacked so fast, so thoroughly, and moved onto the next target with such a rush, that anyone in a position to set up defenses against us wouldn't beleive we were about to spring a suicidal frontal asssault until we allready had them surrounded and were re-adjusting our sites on the next lowest layer.
I highly suggest similar tactics.
Devils do really good at fighting each other in a war, because of the formal red-coat style mentality that comes with being lawful (marching in lock-step and executing bttle maneuvers precisely).
Devils do really good at fighting DEMONS because demons are too poorly organized to do anything other than swarm like locusts in an attempt to overrun.
But you swarm like locusts in an attempt to overrun, WHILE doing so in lockstep formations full of trained warriors?

Might work.

Maybe.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

We're fighting Devils, not Demons. We'd need Word of Chaos. Also, the DM would insist on Knowledge checks to know of such creatures.

Er, replace Paragon Hellfire Wyrm with Paragon Titan, it can Word of Chaos at will at the same caster level.

Edit: The DC is 30 (HD+10), it could be a Knowledge check or a Search check made in a library to research a creature which would be capable of that.

[J.Gellert]

Adding to what SilverClawShift said, guerilla warfare would seem pretty alien to the inhabitants of the hells.

Of course, most archdevils have high Intelligence scores and, perhaps more importantly, ages of experience, so good luck with anything...

I love the holy water gate idea :smallbiggrin: In fact you can do all kinds of tricks with gates... if you are losing, open one to a demonic plane (preferably near someone important) and escape as the chaos of the Blood War spills out.

[Malacode]

Go read the The Art of War. Suprisingly, much of it applies to D&D pretty well.
Employ real-world guerilla tactics. Think befre you attack. Etc. Either that, or use Leadership to get a Wizard cohort. He'd do it without a problem, even at level 13.

[AslanCross]

This depends pretty much on whether your DM is using the Nine Hells as depicted in Fiendish Codex 2 or not. Some tidbits:

-It's impossible to gate past the first layer, Avernus. Not even the Demon Princes can do it.
-The first layer is dominated by a gigantic fortress governed by Bel. Its presence there is one of the reasons they can fight off the disorganized demons.
-The first layer suffers random showers of fire. I suggest mass fire protection for your grunts, or else way too many of them will die. Devils laugh off fire. Another reason the demons don't make it past the first layer.

I'm not sure how well guerilla tactics will work. Unless you have intelligence that is better than that of the devils (it's their home plane, they should know how it works), I doubt you can easily outwit them with large, easily-detectable armies.

I'm not sure how much the dragon can help. For one thing, his breath weapon is completely useless against the devils. He can probably fight off a dozen or so at a time and overpower a Pit Fiend. Of course, he still is a 19th-level sorcerer with insane HP, saves and AC, and is also immune to whatever fire-based (Sp)s the devils throw.

The Gate of Holy Water is an awesome idea. Opening it over the Bronze Citadel would be hilarious.

EDIT: I missed your part about invading the City of Brass, not Avernus.
Anyway, you have a lot of fire-based creatures, so they won't have problems with that. Protecting your massive armies is going to be another deal altogether. Furthermore, I don't know how guerrilla tactics would work on a plane made entirely of fire.

[Yora]

Though you can only gate to the first layer, you can hop from one plane to the next. If you're fast and try to avoid most defense lines, you can get down a couple of layers before your advance is halted.
But as said, they mostly want to kill as many of the slug devils as possible. If they are on the third layer, just rush through the first and second and run past any devils encountered there.
But unfortunately, the devils probably have put the slugs in well protected places, so full hit and run with small groups is probably not working.

[Jack_Simth]

Step 1:
Get information. You want to figure out where the slug-demons are (the planes are big - and even if you've got it narrowed down to a single city, unless you're planning on smashing the entire city, you'll still have to search them out), and what's guarding them (if anything). Pity you don't have an actual high-level Cleric - Commune is almost perfect for this (if you're familiar with binary searches on large areas). Divination spells are handy.

Step 2:
Disguise. Granted, most outsiders have Spot as a class skill, so this won't be particularly effective up-close, but if you can make your army appear to be another military unit of devils moving to a particular location, using the local lord's banner, you *might* be able to skip most encounters on the way there, and actually be inside the city prior to starting your first fight. You'll need a lot of Knowledge(The Planes) and someone with the Forgery skill.

Step 3:
See if you can take over (and man) the city's defenses. Planar blocking the place should take high priority (Forbiddance, Dimensional Lock), so that you don't get teleport squads behind your "secured" lines ... but because both demons and devils tend to have Greater Teleport at will, it's likely this is already done. Check with your DM - mention it, then make the appropriate knowledge check. The Great Wyrm is your heavy-hitter (19th Sorcerer casting, full-scale heavy-duty-melee capabilities), and is fast-enough to be rapid-response when your opponents bring in their heavy hitters.

Step 4:
Once things get bad, retreat.

[Kornaki]

A lot of this stuff assumes things about how devils live. Depending on the setup, you're not going to march into the city and be surrounded by innocents, you're going to march into the city and be surrounded by one million highly dangerous combatants. This changes the dynamics completely; you'd probably be better off staying the hell away from any large population centers.

Your objective


We're trying to take out their supply chain to delay their invasion by as long as we can. They have slug-like devils that act as power conduits and make an invasion of the Prime possible - we're trying to destroy as many as possible of those conduits. As for opposition - Asmodeu and the Council of Nine will be personally involved. The Orc King will be taking on Asmodeus, but knows full well that he will die and that all he can do is delay him.

This is how you lose a war. I only see one objective here; what if it's too heavily defended? Are all these devils in the same place, or are they spread out? If you're going for broke, you could end up having to face the entire devil army at the same time. Formulate alternative objectives that they will feel compelled to defend (if the conduit guys are spread out, then each of them counts as a separate objective).

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/9264/movement.jpg

Always maneuver your troops in such a way that the enemy can't tell which objective you're aiming for. For example, if the Council of Nine is going to be defending the slug-demons, hit their assets elsewhere on the plane instead. Have some way of having good intel, so you make sure to hit the easiest target. Take the path of least resistance, and by definition your casualties will be lower

Utilize interior lines; if you're closer to every objective than any objective is to any other, then each soldier can only defend one at a time. If there are n objectives, you're now fighting a force 1/n as large as you would have originally. This doesn't take into account magical teleportation, but for large forces it's unlikely they can move the whole force many times, so don't worry if you start moving on an objective, watch it get reinforced, then have to turn around and take the now undefended secondary objective. The easiest way to set up a situation like this is to maneuver yourself into this type of situation

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/1595/interiorlines.jpg

All of this requires a DM who understands that this kind of stuff works, so you probably want to hash it out with him beforehand or you'll probably end up accidentally tripling the enemy army as the DM wings it and decides each objective should be fully guarded :smallannoyed:

[PrismaticPIA]

Metabreath feats for the dragon.

Come equipped with low-level casters capable of casting Locate City bombs.

Anti-Osmium trick to wreck the plane altogether.

Gate Cheese for an army of Solars (If your Invading Hell, I don't think it take much convincing)

Hire out some Initiates of the Seven-Fold Veil

Make friends with either Celestia or the Aybss and watch the fun.

Hire Chuck (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=993832) to search and destroy.

You can try bribing one of the Council of Nine.

[Heliomance]

A few notes:

Heaven (in the Positive Energy plane, I believe) is under constant siege by demons and devils alike. The celestials would love to come and help, but it's doubtful how many forces they'll be able to spare.

There is no Blood War in this world

As mentioned, it's the City of Brass we're actually invading, not the Nine Hells. As there are no Outer Planes in this cosmology, it's effectively equivalent, but the planar effects of the Nine Hells are irrelevant.

We're going to get the army there by a huge, constantly open gate from Faerieland to the Plane of Fire. Any reinforcements we recruit at this point will have to be able to make their own way there.

Energy immunity for pretty much anything other than dragons is /dragonsbreath in this world - a red dragon's breath weapon can even hurt a fire elemental. We're using the dragon to get through the gates of the City of Brass.

Major cheese won't fly - the DM is not afraid to just say no.

As for objectives, what do you suggest? We haven't got anything like enough forces to take on the entire army, taking out the supply line seems like the best way to delay the invasion.

Fire resistance whise, we've been advised to recruit a particular tribe of kobolds who know a ritual that can give moderate amounts of energy resistance to vast numbers of creatures.

[GoC]

One great wyrm red dragon
Probably one epic necromancer

You have two epic spellcasters and lots of minor spellcasters. Try creating your own Force Dragon or simply make yourself have AC 100, immunity to non-epic spells, +50 to all saves, SR 100, a +100 against spellcraft checks and an energy or summoning attack.

You know what works wonders here? A tank made of magically enhanced Obdurium (or whatever that hardness 30 material is called) armed with a variety of weapon turrets. Maw of chaos, that disintegrating sphere, gate, summoning and shapechange.
Just one of these tanks can shred a huge army.
Note: you will need the Stronghold Builder's Guide and Spell Compedium (for certain spells).

[woodenbandman]

Hey, you have 4644 damage per hit guy, what are you so worried about?

Seriously how the hell did he pull that off? I love your DM's houserules, they sound crazy. More importantly, the party members sound like they're pretty even with each other.

Umm... any evocation, necromancy, or illusion spell? I believe that Shades is your friend, as are greats like Forcecage, Howling Chain, Radiant Assault, Red Tide (Druid 8), Tidal Surge or Tsunami, Shivering Touch, Waves of Exhaustion...

The druid should cast Stormrage, as well as do stuff like chain Avalanche to Blood Snow and bury people under snow while dealing constitution damage.

You could, of course, sneak into the place.

[Heliomance]

Hey, you have 4644 damage per hit guy, what are you so worried about?

Seriously how the hell did he pull that off?

By rolling a ridiculous number of consecutive natural 20s.

The sorceror can get necromancy or illusion from any class list - including domains - but evocation he's still limited to the sorc list. The wizard has access to pretty much every evocation in the PHB. Non-PHB spells are only allowed on a case-by-case basis, we don't have automatic access to other sources.

Epic spellcasting per se doesn't exist in this world - anything higher than level 9 has to be done by ritual, and rituals take a long time to research and a fairly long time to cast. We just don't have the time to be researching rituals now. Also, the dragon is unlikely to be hugely co-operative - we managed to get it to come with us by promising it half the loot from the whole campaign, which included a march halfway across the continent. We're hoping that its pride will stop it from turningback having come this far, but don't count on getting it to do anything special for us.

[Heliomance]

Er, replace Paragon Hellfire Wyrm with Paragon Titan, it can Word of Chaos at will at the same caster level.

Edit: The DC is 30 (HD+10), it could be a Knowledge check or a Search check made in a library to research a creature which would be capable of that.

Crap, Titans don't exist.

[AslanCross]

The great wyrm red isn't an epic caster, even. They're only 19th-level sorcerers.

[J.Gellert]

To be honest, and after re-reading my Fiendish Codex, there isn't much you can do... But don't despair, you are invading hell. Even if you lose, the power of plot dictates that something awesome will happen.

Now you have an army already, but if you care to go stealthy, you can just off someone high-ranking and take over while the rest of the devils fight amongst themselves. Historically, this is how a large percentage of normally great nations were defeated by weaker foes, and the devils are notorious for games of power.

[ironballs]

A Dwarf Fighter capable of putting out obscene amounts of damage due to homebrew critical rules and dice that love him. His record so far is 4464 in one hit - at level 6.

how is it even remotely possible !?!?

[Coidzor]

how is it even remotely possible !?!?

modifiers stacking from multiple sources, probably. 2d6+6 with only extra crit modifiers tacked on rather than looking at say, extra damage dice being multiplied as well.... 18 * 4 * 5 * 3 * 2 * 2 = 4320

[Jack_Simth]

Oooh - I got it - do you know how many hit dice these slug-beasts have?

(Greater) Planar Bind them, then kill them without bothering to make a deal. Repeatedly.

You sit relatively safe at home.

The slug-demons can't be planar blocked if they're to do their jobs of planar transport.

You know exactly when one will be arriving, because you're Calling it, so you can pre-buff, no problem. You can kill one every ten minutes for as long as you can keep up the Callings, without actually having to step foot in the lower realms.

[J.Gellert]

Oooh - I got it - do you know how many hit dice these slug-beasts have?

(Greater) Planar Bind them, then kill them without bothering to make a deal. Repeatedly.

You sit relatively safe at home.

The slug-demons can't be planar blocked if they're to do their jobs of planar transport.

You know exactly when one will be arriving, because you're Calling it, so you can pre-buff, no problem. You can kill one every ten minutes for as long as you can keep up the Callings, without actually having to step foot in the lower realms.

Won't they take notice and consequently come at you right after you stop calling because you need to rest?

[Fixer]

Won't they take notice and consequently come at you right after you stop calling because you need to rest?That is why traps are set...

Control the battlefield. Force them to come to you.

[Tar Palantir]

Your heaviest hitters are the PCs, the dragon, and the necro. Combine the dragon's fantastic fly speed with whatever long range spells and teleportation magic you have, and hit targets of opportunity. Spot an archdevil? Fly in, Dimensional lock to keep out reinforcements, and hit him with everything you've got. As the command structure breaks down and the tide turns in your favor, move on to your real objective. Keep your heavy hitters mobile and unpredictable. Alternatively, find an undead with high, exotic DR, like a vampire, a heucuva, or a lich. Use Disguise Undead on them, and go to town without fear of taking any significant damage. Heck, the lich has two energy immunities to boot, stack on energy immunity (fire) to compensate for the obvious environmental hazards, and just wade in with whatever spells you can muster.

[The_Werebear]

For Alternate objectives:

There are many things you could hit that look important. Barracks, Supply Depots, Command Headquarters, Civilian targets, siege weapons, the actual walls of the city. Devils are lawful. They will probably expect a coherent plan. Don't give them one. Remain unpredictable, if focused.

Oh, and watch out for being Scryed on.

[Anteros]

One other thing to consider. Depending on your setting, Hell may have an existing population who may be very unhappy with the current administration. Sure, they're individually weak...but there's probably billions of them. Mobilizing them may or may not be an option.

I'd also like to see this Orc Chief who's planning on delaying Asmodeus. That may just make my list of "most one-sided fights ever." Honestly, if your DM plays Asmodeus the way he's supposed to be played, any plan you make is pretty much doomed. The guy is smart.

[Heliomance]

The Orc King was ridiculously nails, just wouldn't die. Asmodeus eventually killed him by holding him down and getting three Pit Fiends to Wish him dead. He then came after us, the fighter and the paladin both pulled out high triple-figures damage and Asmodeus ran away with 30 HP left, letting us face four Pit Fiends. We stopped in the middle of the battle as it was 2 in the morning and everyone was getting tired, we're finishing off tonight. We currently have our entire army down in the Fire Pits jobbing up the slugs - some 70000 orcs, and sundry others - whilst we hold the only entrance. There are thousands of slugs.

As for the high damage, the Weapon Focus/Spec chain have been changed to make damage dice explode - roll max damage and you get to roll again - and if you roll consecutive natural 20s, the crit multiplier goes up FAST. Two twenties in a row, subtract one from your crit multiplier, roll the damage die of your weapon, and add that to the multiplier. I'm not sure what it does after that, but I think the time he did 4464 damage he rolled four or five 20s in a row.

[Killer Angel]

Hire Chuck (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=993832) to search and destroy.


Fixed the Chuck (http://www.chucknorris.com/)link for you. This is far better. :smallcool:

[Jcoyne]

What I’m wondering is this: if you don't think you have a chance of stopping the inevitable invasion, and the best you hope to get out of this is delaying said invasion, don't you think it would have made more sense to fortify your defensive position on your home plane rather then potentially risking your entire defensive forces?

I mean seriously, you're attacking a heavily defended position, and even if this your attack succeeds, you'll lose huge amounts of forces in this attack that you probably won't be able to replenish before the devils manage to regain the stage for their invasion.

Again, I don't know too much about your setting or the context, but if given the option, conserving your forces and going on the defence tends to make more sense.

On the other hand, no one should ever turn down an opportunity to invade hell.:smallbiggrin:

[Tohron]

Maybe you can try convincing some deities to lend a hand? I'm sure many of them aren't very keen on devils invading the Prime Material, and it would really help against the various planar defenses.

[Heliomance]

What I’m wondering is this: if you don't think you have a chance of stopping the inevitable invasion, and the best you hope to get out of this is delaying said invasion, don't you think it would have made more sense to fortify your defensive position on your home plane rather then potentially risking your entire defensive forces?

I mean seriously, you're attacking a heavily defended position, and even if this your attack succeeds, you'll lose huge amounts of forces in this attack that you probably won't be able to replenish before the devils manage to regain the stage for their invasion.

Again, I don't know too much about your setting or the context, but if given the option, conserving your forces and going on the defence tends to make more sense.

On the other hand, no one should ever turn down an opportunity to invade hell.:smallbiggrin:

When I say delaying the invasion, I meant by thousands of years. In the end, we managed to take out around three quarters of the slug demons - turned out there were 7000 or so in total. They're not easy to make. We also (the PCs, personally) managed to take out six of the fifteen extant pit fiends and we actually knocked the Master of the Nine (not actually Asmodeus as it's a homebrew world, but his equivalent) down to 30 HP before he ran away. Our total losses: most of the army, admittedly - we took in 100,000 orcs and brought back 5000 or so, but I think the Orc King was the only named NPC to die, and all we lost was the Druid and the Sorceror's cohort, both of whom got rezzed afterwards. The Cohort went down to an Implosion by Asmodeus, and the Druid failed his save against a Pit Fiend's Wish (DM rules that "I Wish you dead" does a total of 1000 damage, split up among targets as the caster desires, Ref half. The fiend hit six of us with it, and I think the druid was the only one to fail the save.)

As for whether it would have been better to just fortify, the devils play a long game. They've been planning this for a very long time and it wasn't going to go down for another few hundred years, but when it did it would have been a complete invasion of the entire Prime. It's one of the DM's apocalypse scenarios. The reason we went there? The ORc King saw a vision of the devils planning. They were planning to allocate a section of the army to each area of the Prime. They didn't allocate anything to the Orcs.