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SirKazum
2009-07-28, 11:30 AM
Today, I saw a reference in another thread about dragons doing "strafe runs" and it got me to thinking about how stuff like dragons and wizards might work in a war, and it reminded me of something that irks me a lot about fantasy literature and RPGs. Namely, the lack of real thought behind the effects of magic and fantastic creatures on warfare, and the tactics and strategies that would arise from them.

In most cases, when battles are depicted in a fantasy medium, they function almost exactly like "normal" medieval (or whatever appropriate time period/culture) battles from history, except for some fantastic stuff going on that (usually) has no effect in the overall battle at all. Those wizards and dragons and giants and heroes and whatnot usually just fight each other, not really interfering much with the mass-combat. (In fact, the old-school Chainmail system actually had very separate rules for "normal" and "fantastic" combat, and it seems to encourage keeping the two mostly separate.)

But think about it - why would any sane warlord actually do things that way? Why not get your wizard to Fireball the Hades out of the enemy pikemen, and give your horsemen free reign? Why not get your high-level cleric to spam Mass CLW on your troops during melee? And why waste a huge amount of time, resources and human (or elf, dwarf etc.) lives on a grueling siege, when you could just 'port a high-level strike team into the castle and get the job done in like 15 minutes?

What I'm saying is - the military resources available to the different forces often shape the tactics used, to the point that warfare becomes practically unrecognizable from what it was before the resources were introduced. Case in point - the rise of castles as highly efficient defensive structures led to the creation of siege warfare. Gunpowder made castles obsolete, and led to trench warfare. Today, aerial support and guerilla tactics both changed warfare in different directions, both of which highly different from what we had 60-70 years ago. Each of those kinds of warfare is a completely different endeavor, that works in different ways and uses different tactics.

So, I ask you - what would war really look like in a fantasy world? I mean, magic and fantastic creatures would surely make warfare into something utterly different - so, how? Right off the top of my head, I imagine that "scry-and-die" tactics would play a huge role. Armies and nations would have to start "thinking four-dimensionally" (to quote Dr. Emmett Brown), in this case, taking teleportation and planar travel into account, not to mention the whole scrying and other divinations part. Healing magic and ressurrection would probably change a lot too - in fact, the latter might even make assassination a mostly worthless tactic. (I.E. if you're important enough to be assassinated, you probably have allies that would gladly spring the cash for a Rez or even True Rez.) And so on.

I prefer to avoid comparisons to modern technology and modern warfare, both because I think that's just lazy, and because technology is NOT the same as magic - for example, technology can't do teleportation (yet), and it's tough to get easy, reliable and accessible long-distance communication with magic, at least in D&D.

Morty
2009-07-28, 11:36 AM
The reason battles in fantasy tend to be portrayed traidtionally rather than "magic pwnzorz all" is that well, at least some people tend to prefer the traditional warfare in stories set in quasi-medieval settings, and thus many authors keep the impact of magic on warfare lower that it should logically be. Also, tricks like "fireball the hell out of enemy troops" or "teleport high-level strike team into the castle" work in D&D, but not in a system with lower magic level.
That said, you seem to be underestimating the extent people take magic into account in fantasy warfare. In D&D books, there are chapters that look precisely like your post - describing how magic can turn war inside-out.

BRC
2009-07-28, 11:40 AM
For such an engagement, I think we first have to categorize things.

What Fantastic elements do effectively the same thing as mundane things ,only better.

For example, a band of ogres are, for tactical purposes, the same as normal infantry. They may be much better at it, but they still serve the same purpose.

Other things, like flyers and wizards, add entierly new tactical dimensions. There is no analogue in medieval combat for flying troops. or for summoners.

Spiryt
2009-07-28, 11:43 AM
So, I ask you - what would war really look like in a fantasy world?

That's not easy to answer.

First someone should know how fighting really looked like in actual history.

And no one can be really sure about everything, especially as many years have passed.

Then one should acknowledge that even with considerable knowledge, there are always thousands of different possibilites in reality.

And then there comes a fact that it's fantasy world, which complicates things even further.

The Flyin' Lion
2009-07-28, 11:46 AM
You are also underestimating what D&D itself has printed. In one of the books (Complete Warrior? The one based around Martial classes), they point out that a 2nd level Wizard or Sorcerer can be given a Scroll of Fireball and a Wand of Magic Missle, acting as a machine gun and a rocket launcher. They point out how certain monsters will invalidate fortresses, how Giant Eagles can render impossibly accurate troop dispositions, how a single Ice Giant can hammer through companies of soldiers.
In my campaign, the DM is throwing a Demonic army at our city next session, and I am trying to figure out the best tactics to ignore 'conventional' warfare, and there are thousands of ways to do it (Folding Boat+Fly comes to mind...)

Lapak
2009-07-28, 11:54 AM
I think the point that we have a limited ability to predict what would happen is a good one. No matter how good an assessment we think we have, we can easily be wrong - the generals of Europe had a good idea of what the equipment available to them in WWII could do, in part based on their experiences of WWI, but the actual way that events played out did not always - or often - meet with their best guesses. That was in a situation where the laws of physics and the raw performance capability of the equipment was pretty well known. Adding in elements that flat-out deny our ability to apply the rules of the world as we know them makes it pretty much impossible to be certain how it would play out.

And it's not unreasonable in many cases (D&D is not one of these cases, but fantasy in general) that things would cancel each other out. If my sorcerers can block anything yours can throw, and vice versa, then it all becomes a wash. This is presumed to be the case in the Vlad Taltos novels, for example - sorcery became so widespread that every tactic on a war-sized scale had a counter, and almost every soldier was capable of at least a little bit of counter-spelling, so war had moved through a magic-blasty phase and right on back to swords and arrows.

Now, in D&D in particular (and most especially 3.x) magical offense DOES generally outweigh defense on a warfare scale, but taking magic to its logical conclusion alters ten thousand other things in the campaign besides war. If you approach things on that tack, the setting becomes unrecognizable in a hurry.

Swordguy
2009-07-28, 12:00 PM
Assuming we're discussing D&D, whomever has more/better arcane spellcasters wins. That's where this discussion ends up, and it's boring. Which is why we see warfare portrayed the way it is - it's at least interesting to read about.

It's not so much as "it's not been thought through" (it has - google the "Tippyverse") as "it's been thought through - at least somewhat - and found to make dull stories".

Morty
2009-07-28, 12:02 PM
Assuming we're discussing D&D, whomever has more/better arcane spellcasters wins. That's where this discussion ends up, and it's boring. Which is why we see warfare portrayed the way it is - it's at least interesting to read about.

It's not so much as "it's not been thought through" (it has - google the "Tippyverse") as "it's been thought through - at least somewhat - and found to make dull stories".

This, pretty much. Once more, someone else manages to convey my point better.

SirKazum
2009-07-28, 12:10 PM
For example, a band of ogres are, for tactical purposes, the same as normal infantry. They may be much better at it, but they still serve the same purpose.

See, right there, I'd see a new tactical possibility. While ogres essentially work the same way as footmen, just the raw concentration of power and durability might be enough to change tactics at least somewhat. To me, comparing ogres to footmen is the same as comparing battletanks to rifles. The ogres would be great for breaking up enemy lines (thus giving them a role closer to cavalry), while lasting much more against archer fire, and would even double as siege engines in a pinch. But yeah, I see what you mean - some things are just improved versions of already available troops/resources, while others simply have no parallel.

Anyway, I'm not really talking about specific ways to use fantasy stuff in battles per se; I'm talking about what would magic/fantastic warfare look like, in a basic concept. I certainly don't see sieges and the whole pikemen line / knight charge / archer hail of arrows thing working in fantasy; so, what essential tactics would take their place? Divination recon + teleporting sabotage + "nuking" (by dragons, heavy-duty area spells, and other such resources, attacking from the air or long magical range) + heavy footmen (this means ogres, giants, buffed-up-the-wazoo melee characters, etc.) + magically defending the conquered area (Wall of Iron etc.) while healing the shock troops + insertion of a mass of "cannon-fodder" defensive troops (including reanimated enemies) with plenty of ranged and anti-magic defensive capabilities + rinse and repeat? Also, if this has already been explored, how did it play out, and which resources do you feel could still be used more extensively? After all, war is generally all about pulling all the stops and using everything you can to gain an edge.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 12:12 PM
You have to set the level, ruleset, and supplements, essentially. Otherwise you end up with Tippyverse, and as has been noted, that's boring as hell.

JonestheSpy
2009-07-28, 12:13 PM
Assuming we're discussing D&D, whomever has more/better arcane spellcasters wins.

Yeah, first off we have to seperate "fantasy" from DnD - most fantasy novels and such don't have the uber-plentiful magic available that DnD does, nor is it that flashy - endless wands of firebals and such. Look at the master of fantasy battles, Mr. JRRT - magic was about will, morale, weather - large scale impacts like that, not treating wizards as artillery - though it's also worth noting that in the Silmarillion the presence of a single Dragon won the batlle for Morgoth many times.

Now even in a DnD world, the idea that "whoever has the better spellcasters wins" is just simpleminded. Didn't we just see that theory blown out of the water in the Varsuvius vs Xykon battle? Or for a real world analogy, look at Vietnam - the American had far far more firepower and advanced technology, but the Viet Cong were better strategists and knew the battlefield better than the U.S. army possibly could.

lvl 1 sharnian
2009-07-28, 12:15 PM
Today, I saw a reference in another thread about dragons doing "strafe runs" and it got me to thinking about how stuff like dragons and wizards might work in a war, and it reminded me of something that irks me a lot about fantasy literature and RPGs. Namely, the lack of real thought behind the effects of magic and fantastic creatures on warfare, and the tactics and strategies that would arise from them.

In most cases, when battles are depicted in a fantasy medium, they function almost exactly like "normal" medieval (or whatever appropriate time period/culture) battles from history, except for some fantastic stuff going on that (usually) has no effect in the overall battle at all. Those wizards and dragons and giants and heroes and whatnot usually just fight each other, not really interfering much with the mass-combat. (In fact, the old-school Chainmail system actually had very separate rules for "normal" and "fantastic" combat, and it seems to encourage keeping the two mostly separate.)

But think about it - why would any sane warlord actually do things that way? Why not get your wizard to Fireball the Hades out of the enemy pikemen, and give your horsemen free reign? Why not get your high-level cleric to spam Mass CLW on your troops during melee? And why waste a huge amount of time, resources and human (or elf, dwarf etc.) lives on a grueling siege, when you could just 'port a high-level strike team into the castle and get the job done in like 15 minutes?

What I'm saying is - the military resources available to the different forces often shape the tactics used, to the point that warfare becomes practically unrecognizable from what it was before the resources were introduced. Case in point - the rise of castles as highly efficient defensive structures led to the creation of siege warfare. Gunpowder made castles obsolete, and led to trench warfare. Today, aerial support and guerilla tactics both changed warfare in different directions, both of which highly different from what we had 60-70 years ago. Each of those kinds of warfare is a completely different endeavor, that works in different ways and uses different tactics.

So, I ask you - what would war really look like in a fantasy world? I mean, magic and fantastic creatures would surely make warfare into something utterly different - so, how? Right off the top of my head, I imagine that "scry-and-die" tactics would play a huge role. Armies and nations would have to start "thinking four-dimensionally" (to quote Dr. Emmett Brown), in this case, taking teleportation and planar travel into account, not to mention the whole scrying and other divinations part. Healing magic and ressurrection would probably change a lot too - in fact, the latter might even make assassination a mostly worthless tactic. (I.E. if you're important enough to be assassinated, you probably have allies that would gladly spring the cash for a Rez or even True Rez.) And so on.

I prefer to avoid comparisons to modern technology and modern warfare, both because I think that's just lazy, and because technology is NOT the same as magic - for example, technology can't do teleportation (yet), and it's tough to get easy, reliable and accessible long-distance communication with magic, at least in D&D.

I believe that if Kings are at the point where armies are fieldable, a few magicians wouldn't difficult to hire for either side. Arguably, the reason that casters and PCs go after eachother is that it's more tactical to go around crippling the support than damaging the cannon fodder because as long as you are engaging their casters, they can use spells on your troops.

Besides, spells don't interact like they should in the real world. For example, Fireball creates a pressureless 20ft spread of fire, so a shield wall should be able to shrug it off. On the other hand, if magic is so predominant as to have ressurection then assassins will probably carry trap the soul, while the targets, assuming they are important enough, should be able to toss enough money to ward against scry-and-die.

Saph
2009-07-28, 12:15 PM
Kazum, you should take a look at the 3.5 book Heroes of Battle. It has a sub-chapter on basically exactly what you're talking about.

In particular it makes a distinction between:

Medieval Warfare: Massed troops. Large blocks of infantry. Armies tend to stay together because that's the only way to communicate. Officers are highly visible because they want to be recognised. Armies are extremely obvious and can be spotted miles away.

Modern Warfare: Cover and concealment are king. Armies have good communications and so can spread out over a wide area into many small groups. A modern battlefield, to an untrained observer, looks completely deserted, because everyone's staying out of sight.

It explains how you can get both kinds in D&D.

- Saph

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 12:20 PM
Now even in a DnD world, the idea that "whoever has the better spellcasters wins" is just simpleminded. Didn't we just see that theory blown out of the water in the Varsuvius vs Xykon battle?

While the Vaarsuvius versus Xykon battle is excellent storytelling, it is terrible modeling of D&D, in particular because Vaarsuvius fails almost every basic rule of how a Wizard should be built to be optimal. Allow me to express that I in no way consider this to be a fault of OotS.

Joran
2009-07-28, 12:23 PM
Anyway, I'm not really talking about specific ways to use fantasy stuff in battles per se; I'm talking about what would magic/fantastic warfare look like, in a basic concept. I certainly don't see sieges and the whole pikemen line / knight charge / archer hail of arrows thing working in fantasy; so, what essential tactics would take their place? Divination recon + teleporting sabotage + "nuking" (by dragons, heavy-duty area spells, and other such resources, attacking from the air or long magical range) + heavy footmen (this means ogres, giants, buffed-up-the-wazoo melee characters, etc.) + magically defending the conquered area (Wall of Iron etc.) while healing the shock troops + insertion of a mass of "cannon-fodder" defensive troops (including reanimated enemies) with plenty of ranged and anti-magic defensive capabilities + rinse and repeat? Also, if this has already been explored, how did it play out, and which resources do you feel could still be used more extensively? After all, war is generally all about pulling all the stops and using everything you can to gain an edge.

It's really too large of a question to ask with not enough information. First you must define the society which this army is drawing from. The shape of an army is defined by the society. My military history teacher always stated that the two questions that you must ask are: "Who fights and why?" "Who pays, how much, and why?"

You must answer essential questions such as how the soldiers are trained, are they professional, standing troops, mercenaries, or farmhands plucked from the fields? How large of an army can the nation support; can magic be used to increase crop yields, improve logistics, cure the sick? How rare is magic, how powerful, and how difficult to cast? It really depends on a lot of variables.

SirKazum
2009-07-28, 12:28 PM
First off, yeah I understand that casters would basically dominate war (even if it's not ALL about them), and battles might actually not be as engaging as ones fought with swords and arrows. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. Heck, I mean this more as a thought exercise than as something to use in an actual game or in fiction. And, as to being boring - I'm not even sure about that, as long as you're viewing the story from the involved casters' vantage point.

In any event, people talk a lot about "Tippyverse" (which I understand as being a 3.5 D&D world where arcane casters have free reign to twink-out as much as possible, though I don't know exactly where the term comes from). So, just so we have a basis to work on - how would warfare work on the Tippyverse? I mean, what exactly do Tippy wizards do in this situation? Let's assume we have two large nations with ample resources and a large pool of NPCs of all classes and levels, distributed as per DMG guidelines, fighting against each other. Don't tell me "whichever nation acts first wins" - I don't care who wins, I wanna know what tactics they're going to use, both offensive and defensive.


And it's not unreasonable in many cases (D&D is not one of these cases, but fantasy in general) that things would cancel each other out. If my sorcerers can block anything yours can throw, and vice versa, then it all becomes a wash. This is presumed to be the case in the Vlad Taltos novels, for example - sorcery became so widespread that every tactic on a war-sized scale had a counter, and almost every soldier was capable of at least a little bit of counter-spelling, so war had moved through a magic-blasty phase and right on back to swords and arrows.

See, that's the approach I was talking about in my OP, and with all due respect to that author, that sounds like a lazy cop-out to me. I just don't see it happening that way. Even if magical offense and defense are balanced to each other, doesn't mean people are going to just toss both of them off and go "ah what the hell, let's go back to swords and arrows". There's no way the exchange wouldn't change the face of the battlefield. In fact, if any base soldier is capable of a bit of counter-spelling, that's all the more reason to not waste able hands with silly things such as swords and invest your manpower in using enough raw spellcasting power to overcome the enemy's defenses.

tyckspoon
2009-07-28, 12:30 PM
Now even in a DnD world, the idea that "whoever has the better spellcasters wins" is just simpleminded. Didn't we just see that theory blown out of the water in the Varsuvius vs Xykon battle?

Braving a risk of reopening some rather overdone discussions- no, we didn't. The better spellcaster still won. What we saw was that 'better spellcaster' is not determined solely by how many spells you can throw.

On topic: as mentioned upthread, how fantasy warfare looks different is going to depend a lot on just what your particular fantasy world is. Are fantastic creatures tamable and/or willing to help your side? If so, what advantages do they bring (having a D&D dragon on your side is a very different thing than having a corps of people riding big eagles- the tactics for dealing with the eagles are fairly mundane, the tactics for the dragon require pretty big changes.) What does magic do? Are your wizards going to be doing mostly intelligence gathering and psych-ops, or are they best sent to the battlefield as fire support? It's quite possible to have a world where the actual battles are all carried out in 'traditional' style, but the people with the best magical backup have the ability to pick the time and place, demoralize the enemy and maybe disrupt their communications; they get a massive advantage and change the face of warfare without anything fantastic actually happening where the swords hit the meat.

SirKazum
2009-07-28, 12:43 PM
Well, I wanted to keep this generic to allow for wide and abstract discussion, but it seems some constraints are in order. So, let's say we're talking about 3.5 Core D&D (which has quite enough to talk about, and has a very deep knowledge base), with monsters working in the most "default" manner possible, character class/level distribution following the NPC guidelines in the DMG, and the same goes for magic items. In other words, 3.5 D&D, kept as basic as possible. Yes, it's a lot more magic-heavy than most fantasy, which works great for my purposes - I don't care for subtle changes, I wanna see a world completely upturned by magic :smallamused: If this means changes in how society and everyday life work, that's just gravy, though that might be too much for a single thread. And oh yeah, assume a more-or-less-medieval-European-though-not-really society, the kind that's pretty much default in D&D.

Eldariel
2009-07-28, 12:47 PM
Modern warfare really works quite well with D&D, as the books point out, and is actually quite close to a basic level of application of Magic and fantastic creatures into the system. Dragons acting as ground combat planes/bombers (or flying Wizards, sure), Wizard-type effects acting as variety of artillery/missile launchers with ability to use a varying kinds of battlefield altering- or enemy killing payloads while providing mobility and warriors acting as the actual force to control an area with.

All manners of casters also act as counters to the opposing casters, much like WWII era artillery targeted opposing artillery to shut down their support at some points (though it was found more efficient to target the grouping areas, of course, especially on the east front).


The problem with this is that melee soldiers are mostly useless in modern warfare and it would translate into D&D warfare too. Getting in range as a melee character means giving up your cover and concealment making you an easy target for all the area effect spells and attacks flying around. Now, tanks are perfectly usable, but they need to be actual tanks.

The frontliners who step in there and go wreak havoc on the opposition need to have sufficient defenses to not fall to the non-concentrated attacks around the battlefield and to be able to take the focused fire from hiding defenders. That means you need energy resistance and decent saves/spell resistance along with a large number of HP and damage reduction+prolly fast healing/regeneration meaning only high level melee types and some bigger creatures (such as Giants or The Tarrasque) and buffed spellcasters have any business acting as melee units in combat (and buffed spellcasters better have high enough CL to survive whatever dispelling the opposition can throw at them).

Most of the standard soldiers are best off with Crossbows prone behind some tree in holes in the ground, hoping your caster support keeps the Walls from blocking your shots and just firing away at any visible targets, because else they'll just fry in crops as a variety of breath weapons, evocations, confusions, cloudkills and such wreck hundreds of troops in seconds. Same applies to low level spellcasters without the spellcasting prowess to defend themselves; it's also worth noting that they'll run out of gas without some Wands very soon and be reduced to mooks.


But yeah, it's doable, it just flies in the face of the fantasy archetype of "swordsman" or in general, any frontliners be they mounted cavalry, pikemen or in general, anyone without a reach weapon. Those can exist, but Level 1/2 Soldiers have no business in those roles as they'll be dead before they get to swing once.

Also, magic obviously removes the communication difficulties faced by medieval army - indeed, Sendings, Telepathic Bonds and similar spells make for a command chain much more efficient and sophisticated than what we are using today as messages can't be intercepted and are relayed instantaneously from a mind to another with no disruption.

Fishy
2009-07-28, 01:27 PM
I'm wondering about scry-and-die.

Deception has always been a staple of warfare, right back to Sun Tzu, and guerrilla tactics is the traditional answer to a military that just plain outguns you (read, Wizards).

How does that work against a Wizard 5/Mindbender 1 with Mindsight, who just plain knows where you are? Or Scrying, Clairvoyance, Detect Thoughts, Sense Hostile Intent, or any of a thousand 'ha, there you are' effects?

How do you set up choke points and ambushes against an enemy that can teleport?

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-07-28, 01:32 PM
In DnD, your basic troops are best off as Warlocks and entangling exhaustion Dragonfire Adepts. This allows people with poor stats to still be threatening, as the Warlock and DFA classes are about as SAD as you get.

A third level warlock can shoot you for 2d6 damage, hits your touch AC, and can do so at 250 feet without penalty. He also gets an invocation that can be spent on Entropic Warding so that you suffer a 20% miss chance on your ranged attacks against him. Stick him in a chain shirt, have him take cover on the ground, and you're archers have to contend with a range penalty, +18 AC + dex mod, and a 20% miss chance.

Anyone who gets too close is entangling exhausted by Dragonfire Adepts and shot to death while trying to advance. Not fun.

Higher tier troops should be casters and operate as special forces units.

Artificers would have scrolls of things like Fireball and use them as fire support.



How does that work against a Wizard 5/Mindbender 1 with Mindsight, who just plain knows where you are? Or Scrying, Clairvoyance, Detect Thoughts, Sense Hostile Intent, or any of a thousand 'ha, there you are' effects?
Undead takes care of Mindsight. Mindblank takes care of the diviniation effects.

I don't think you can be undead and be Mindblanked, but I'm sure there's some spell for it. Like Nondetection, maybe? I forget what that does, but it sounds like the right kind of spell.



How do you set up choke points and ambushes against an enemy that can teleport?
It's very hard to stop the DnD equivalent of paratroops, but you can ward areas against teleportation. Other than that, diviniation to know where they will be and send units to intercept.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 01:33 PM
How do you set up choke points and ambushes against an enemy that can teleport?

If you want to make it possible within a setting - areas with valuable resources that run interference with dimensional effects. Also, almost certainly, key headquarters are warded specifically to avoid them. This is one of the things that is easier (if not easy) to overcome.

Eldariel
2009-07-28, 01:38 PM
I'm wondering about scry-and-die.

Deception has always been a staple of warfare, right back to Sun Tzu, and guerrilla tactics is the traditional answer to a military that just plain outguns you (read, Wizards).

How does that work against a Wizard 5/Mindbender 1 with Mindsight, who just plain knows where you are? Or Scrying, Clairvoyance, Detect Thoughts, Sense Hostile Intent, or any of a thousand 'ha, there you are' effects?

How do you set up choke points and ambushes against an enemy that can teleport?

The whole opposing force hardly has the capability to teleport; just small, strong strike squad, much like paratroopers. Key areas can be warded by Anticipate Teleport (which doesn't stop Teleportation, but allows you to know it's coming and prepare a death trap for the new arrivals in a span of ~30 seconds) and the higher-ups you don't want targeted of course want the best non-detection/mind blank type effects at your disposal. Generally said effects are strong enough to negate scrying to a degree.

Scrying also doesn't let you know more than what you see; you don't know the location of the place you're scrying and thus cannot use it to e.g. make sure the general is still in the place he was in the morning. Also, thanks to Teleportation and Illusions, misleading takes a whole new aspect and a brand bunch of toys; indeed, I think that aspect of warfare is most altered by magic compared to modern day warfare. Information is available without any risk, but that information is incomplete and can be mislead with spells and just setting the environment for the spell. And on the other hand, the ability to completely shift landscapes, create phantom armies and such definitely makes believing what you see less given (though on the other hand, they're counteracted by other types of magic but if the said magic doesn't happen to be available where these spells are deployed...).


Also note that many spells have rather short ranges; 100' or 120' is nothing in a war which renders things like Mindsight, Blindsight, True Seeing and such far less of issues and less relevant as you need to be very close to something to use such abilities to detect possible ruse and such.

endoperez
2009-07-28, 02:40 PM
In the Temeraire series of books, dragons are handled almost like naval vessels. Most dragons don't breath fire, but are instead used to carry bombs, relay messages, defend against enemy dragons, support ground/naval troops, etc. Dragons wear harnesses with metal rings and leather straps, crew wear special belts that let them secure themselves on the harness, besides bombers and lookouts each dragon has a gunner crew, etc. Really nice take, much better than the usual "single knight on a dragon".

Lapak
2009-07-28, 03:47 PM
See, that's the approach I was talking about in my OP, and with all due respect to that author, that sounds like a lazy cop-out to me. I just don't see it happening that way. Even if magical offense and defense are balanced to each other, doesn't mean people are going to just toss both of them off and go "ah what the hell, let's go back to swords and arrows". There's no way the exchange wouldn't change the face of the battlefield. In fact, if any base soldier is capable of a bit of counter-spelling, that's all the more reason to not waste able hands with silly things such as swords and invest your manpower in using enough raw spellcasting power to overcome the enemy's defenses.In the setting in question, the power curve went something like this (as laid out in Dragon, one of the books in the series):

- When sorcery first started being used, its users were inexperienced. The focus was mostly on scrying and illusions, and this was effective until counter-scrying charms were developed and soldiers were taught how to penetrate illusions easily.

- Sorcery got more powerful, and was invested in items. You could give every soldier an enchanted item that fired off one-shot sorcerous blasts. This pushed the setting into a Renaissance-style combat model, with such items taking the place of primitive artillery and firearms. The large-scale sorcery was still mostly scrying, illusion, and counters.

- Someone figured out how to unravel enchantments and enchanted items, causing them to detonate in the process. Armies stopped using them (obviously) and threw their resources into training combat sorcerers to throw around BIG effects. This is the period you'd be interested in; a sorcerer corps could roast an infantry division, teleport behind enemy lines to assassinate a general, destroy all of an army's supplies and so on. The problem with making this interesting is that it is utterly arbitrary. As other people have said, it's impossible to talk about unless you've set precise rules on what can and cannot be done - if we assume no upper limits or prohibitive costs on magic, then it just becomes a matter of who can throw more power at a problem and wipe the opposing nation off the map in one spell. (Which is how this era in the Taltos setting ended; accidental annihilation.)

- Sorcery became so commonplace that everyone puts up wards against everything. Teleport blocks, scrying protections, shields against blasts in combat, counterspells to prevent terrain alteration. In general, in that setting, it's easier to counter magic than to use it. It's not an unreasonable assumption, incidentally, if you see magic as breaking the rules of the universe - it SHOULD be easier to reinforce the universe against something teleporting than it is to teleport. Since the enemy can counter more cheaply than you can enchant, you can get more for your money by countering and sink the rest into mundane troops. Dumping more money into magical offense is a losing game, because it's just plain easier to counter than to create magical effects.

But that's in a particular setting with particular rules. If you want to take a look at this in fiction, there are a couple of places you can go. Several have been mentioned already; another option is Turtledove's Into the Darkness series, which is pretty much explicitly WWII in a world where magic is used as technology. A lot of settings do treat magic as a replacement for tech at one level or another, because that's the best approximation we can imagine for it.

deuxhero
2009-07-28, 04:02 PM
Some of my random thoughts brought this up.

In my hypothetical world magic HAS made regular soldiers useless now that you can teach a man to sling level 2 spells in under 3 years. A single grease spell could take out an entire group of mundane troops, while Fireball would destory the sails of most ships.

I also had the idea for a empire with an epic, immortal wizard for a ruler. The primary offensive "tactic" of the empire was to scry/die rulers and generals, then crush the leaderless country. The emperor would also use crazy magical tricks to warfare unneeded. One idea I had was that she would (further, given how common it is in D&D) flood the world with gold and silver (via epic magic) to break the economy of the rest of the world (except for the empire, which uses Steel Mithril and Adamantine slugs for currency.) to walk over half the world while they were in economic ruins.

Lapak
2009-07-28, 04:20 PM
I also had the idea for a empire with an epic, immortal wizard for a ruler. The primary offensive "tactic" of the empire was to scry/die rulers and generals, then crush the leaderless country. The emperor would also use crazy magical tricks to warfare unneeded. One idea I had was that she would (further, given how common it is in D&D) flood the world with gold and silver (via epic magic) to break the economy of the rest of the world (except for the empire, which uses Steel Mithril and Adamantine slugs for currency.) to walk over half the world while they were in economic ruins.The problem I have with this kind of thing is that it only makes sense on first glance. On second glance, you'd realize that any world in which magic was common enough to make this possible would not have produced a currency based on a substance that magic can replicate. The primary reason gold was valuable was because it was relatively rare; a world in which metals can be created out of nothing would have stuck with a barter system or found a base currency that can't be produced magically. Or possibly overshot hard currency altogether and gone straight to a modern credit-based banking system, though I'm not sure how easy that leap would be.

Eldariel
2009-07-28, 04:22 PM
Or possibly overshot hard currency altogether and gone straight to a modern credit-based banking system, though I'm not sure how easy that leap would be.

With magic, it should be relatively simple.

Zen Master
2009-07-28, 04:26 PM
Generally, I feel the more common magic is, the less interesting it becomes.

I truly see no reason wizards should be common enough to become any significant part of armies - nor do I see how or why they should be particularly powerful. A fireball doesn't do anything that a hail of arrows doesn't do better.

These discussion of how combat would be ever so enormously different in a fantasy universe always assume unlimited ressourses. For what it's worth, I actually see cleric pulling more weight on the battlefield than wizards.

jmbrown
2009-07-28, 04:35 PM
The important thing to remember is that very few fantasy settings have high level characters running around which is what we're used to because we all play high level characters.

Protagonist level characters are rare. They make up maybe 1% of the world's population. The wizard that can teleport troops, reverse gravity, and stop time is likely the warlord's closest confidant. Everyone else is a peon.

In DnD terms, the average soldier is a level 1-4 warrior. Higher ranking guys go up to level 10 but that's the upper limit. When building an army, few countries can afford +5 enchantments for everyone. Few people can afford the component cost for higher level spells. Few people can afford to convince powerful creatures like dragons to fight for them.

Within the limits of the generic high fantasy trope, war is pretty conventional. If one side has access to nigh infinite resources then just like in real life that side is likely to win.

edit:


These discussion of how combat would be ever so enormously different in a fantasy universe always assume unlimited ressourses. For what it's worth, I actually see cleric pulling more weight on the battlefield than wizards.

Thank you. Most DM's ignore minor material components and assume the wizard happens to have them on hand. In a real battle I don't think the wizard would hold up fumbling around for bat guano and which spider he should eat.

Lapak
2009-07-28, 04:36 PM
With magic, it should be relatively simple.I wasn't thinking about the practical execution so much as the formation of the idea to begin with; if people weren't used to abstracting value in the form of hard currency, jumping all the way to abstracting it completely is a huge leap. I think it's likely that the barter system would reign supreme for a looooooong time unless there was some rare substance that couldn't be reproduced magically.

And yeah, this whole topic is working under the assumption that magic is common; if it's not, then there wouldn't be any significant changes to tactics on any kind of wide scale. I agree that magic and magicians are generally more interesting in settings that they are rare, partly because it makes it a lot easier to make assumptions about the rest of the setting.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 04:36 PM
My biggest problem with D&D as a simulationist game is healing. Healing is so goddamned powerful when put in a scale of anything beyond "four men whacking a bunch of things that come their way systematically." It is very difficult to put in several cinematic type life and death situations when by 3rd level spells, a single divine caster/bard can negate the whole thing.

"Healing triggers a second wind" type mechanics such as used in 4E and in a few places in Saga Edition are about the only way I've seen so far to have healing keep pace in a class-based system that makes HP go up insanely high without just wondering why the healer doesn't find a nice city to park himself in and become a worshipped god.


And yeah, this whole topic is working under the assumption that magic is common; if it's not, then there wouldn't be any significant changes to tactics on any kind of wide scale. I agree that magic and magicians are generally more interesting in settings that they are rare, partly because it makes it a lot easier to make assumptions about the rest of the setting.

I like Eberron's take on magic - magic is common, but only in 'weak' ways. It allows you to make sweeping changes to the setting from a typical fantasy look without making battles boil down to initiative checks between abstract beings that just stare at each other and then one dies.

Lamech
2009-07-28, 04:38 PM
Depends on the setting, and the rules for fantasy. For example Rolemaster would probably be something like this.:
If a single werewolf, invincible except to a rare weapons, will tear through ranks like paper, and giving a random soilder your rare weapon will just get him killed by the werewolf. You need an elite soilder to stop the werewolf. Of course, your elite soilder is still vunerable to being shot at by a bunch or arrows. Even most casters will go down to a crap ton of arrows. So you have a few rare units that can fight things like dragons, and other monsters. But those rare units are vunerable to archer swarms, or infantry swarms.

Casters will probably have use for things like blowing up siege tank, shattering walls, recon and the like. They will probalby make up an elite strike team of units for special tasks. Not the least hunting down monsters with limited vunerablity and people who can fight those monsters.

Healers will be invaluable when they ressurect your army, and cure their wounds. But only if the body is quickly reached. So people equipped with herbs will be left around to preserve corspes so they can be returned to life. Although healing takes to long to do in combat.

Monsters will be unleashed were they can't be stopped. So people will have to keep heroes on hand to stop them. And then when those "heroes" show up the other side will probably try to protect the invinca unit. I also suspect one might want to send in an assassins and other elite units to counter the enemies elite units. If you strip one side of its elites they will go down to a few demons or werewolves or the like.

Forteress will be less valuable if a caster can just destroy them. Tightly composed formations are asking to be nuked. On the other hand a bunch of AoE buffs can easily give a massive boost to archers turning them into riflemen as opposed to bow men.

Other than that mideval warfare holds fairly well there. Kind of.

Now there are a few units that will simply wipe the floor with every one. Specifically maxed casters. Two maxed arcanists could walk around dropping nukes. I mean massive city destroying nukes. A high enough summoner will just summon a massive army of demons and then just win. A high level warlock will ask for divine intervention (and recieve) every two seconds, and a cleric will call in spells from their god every round. These are the nukes of Rolemaster. They just win.


Of course, Rolemaster is vastly differant than DnD. I suspect DnD to be more like a modern battle field. And in DnD a single dragon can scatter a huge number of units. A powerful wizard can wipe out huge swaths of land with the largest of the AoE spells, and high level characters can basically only be fought with high levels. If we gave Harry Potter magic to people who new what to do with it, I suspect magic would be used for transport and its many utility ablities, but muggle weapons would do the actual fighting.

In 4th ed humans would get sent home because they are mostly minions.:smallamused: Although it would be far less like a modern battle field then 4th tightly packed groups of low levels would go down to high level "tanks"

P.S. Actually in Rolemaster, DnD and a lot of other systems its shadows/ghosts/spirits/other undead kills everyone.

Eldariel
2009-07-28, 04:44 PM
Generally, I feel the more common magic is, the less interesting it becomes.

I truly see no reason wizards should be common enough to become any significant part of armies - nor do I see how or why they should be particularly powerful. A fireball doesn't do anything that a hail of arrows doesn't do better.

These discussion of how combat would be ever so enormously different in a fantasy universe always assume unlimited ressourses. For what it's worth, I actually see cleric pulling more weight on the battlefield than wizards.

Uhm, having things like Telepathic Bonds makes communication and commanding vastly easier making the whole army a hundred times more efficient and able to use Teleportation-effects for transportation and surgical removal of opponent's command structure is just crippling.

Warfare isn't just about the men on the field, it's about command, strategy, supplies and so on. Magic improves all those aspects hundredfold. Almost all battles are over before the actual fighting has commenced, and rarely if ever is an army actually destroyed; the fight is over when their morale is broken and the troops disperse and cannot continue fighting.


Then again, having a Wizard with the offensive power of few hundred normal men is also pretty huge (imagine a Cloudkill hitting a formation or even cowering lowlevel troops while his Planar Bound demons are throwing around their SLAs, or a Confusion just making an army self-destruct or so on). It should be pretty obvious why even one strong Wizard with an army would make all the difference.

Clerics and all other full casters are huge too, but Cleric lacks in the areas most useful in war (communications, transportations, etc.) so while a mid-level Cleric can buff large groups and has the offensive potential of few hundred mooks, he can't do quite as much as a Wizard. Meh, in army scale, Dread Necromancer actually starts to shine since you can generate another army pretty soon. And one without morale issues or such.


And frankly, the existence of even two-three high-level casters in the backlines throwing offensive spells should be enough to force the mundane troops to adapt their tactics as to not get nuked by a single spell.

deuxhero
2009-07-28, 04:50 PM
The problem I have with this kind of thing is that it only makes sense on first glance. On second glance, you'd realize that any world in which magic was common enough to make this possible would not have produced a currency based on a substance that magic can replicate. The primary reason gold was valuable was because it was relatively rare; a world in which metals can be created out of nothing would have stuck with a barter system or found a base currency that can't be produced magically. Or possibly overshot hard currency altogether and gone straight to a modern credit-based banking system, though I'm not sure how easy that leap would be.

Wizards are common. Crazy epic wizards willing to crush the economy (and possibly use the souls of criminals as a material component) so they can rule the world are... much less common. In my hypothetical world generally only immortal characters reach epic levels (except the odd level 21 character with timeless body)

AslanCross
2009-07-28, 04:52 PM
If we take a look at the battles in fantasy literature, it really depends on what is on the field at the time. The Silmarillion's battles are mostly conventional for a medieval setting until the dragons, balrogs and whatnot come out. That's when the excrement hits the ventilation and the heroes have to come out and slay the monsters. Ecthelion kills Gothmog, Earendil slays Ancalagon, etc.

I've been discussing the Hindu epic Ramayana in class, and for the most part the battles there seem to look like what core D&D battles would be like---there are conventional clashes between the troops on both sides (though monkeys vs demons seems hardly conventional), until one side brings out its secret weapons (Indrajita brings out his invisibility magic and arrow showers). It's then down to duels between the heroes and villains (Lakshamana vs Indrajita and finally Rama vs Ravana).

I think the impact of magic is largely dependent on how powerful the casters available are. A Sorcerer 6th with nothing but blasting magic, Eschew Materials, Empower Spell and Arcane Thesis (Fireball) and is definitely not going to open a portal to the Tippyverse (let's not go there), but he will definitely make the battle look less and less like a conventional military battle and more like a modern one, as Complete Warrior has mentioned.

A single warforged titan is going to be mostly impermeable to mundane arrows and swords that your regular infantry brigade can bring to bear. They're going to need to call in fire support from the wizard to disable or destroy the giant war machine.

A single fire giant in full plate in an entrenched position throwing rocks at an army will probably feel like an insurmountable obstacle to large masses of troops. A special force of Dread Commandos under a wizard's Invisibility Sphere might have to sneak in to take him out directly.

Dragons are really close to WMDs. If they're Young Adult or above, the fear effect alone will scatter a group of 500 1st level Warriors like flies. Even if one assumes a 5% of them get natural 20s on their saves, that's only 25 soldiers. The group is routed completely.

Eberron's take on magic, as AstralFire has mentioned, is that only low-level magic is common. You have an entire race of living constructs who make excellent soldiers---they don't eat or sleep, and can run marathons across the continent and have the intelligence to command themselves---however, their cost is so prohibitive that while they had a great impact on several crucial battles, the nation that used them the most was still the weakest was eventually blown off the face of the planet.

Aundair had its wizards, Thrane had its clerics, Karrnath had its cheap, intelligent undead troops, Cyre had its warforged, and Breland had its resources.

The result of a hundred year war fought with those resources was practically still a deadlock, many with losses on all sides throughout the entire conflict, although only Aundair and Cyre really lost anything. Aundair lost territory to Thrane, and Cyre got glassed.

Johel
2009-07-28, 04:55 PM
What fantasy war would really look like :

If it's a low-fantasy setting, exactly like normal medieval battle, with maybe a better logistic (the wounded are healed in mere seconds, it's easy to repair stuff, food and water aren't a real problem, communication is much better).

If it's a high-fantasy setting, then it's basically the side who has the more high-level spellcasters that win.

Look at what a single "Symbol of Insanity" did in Oots. Sure, it costs 5.000 gp to cast. But throw it right in the middle of a moving regiment and that's about 400 people who go insane (...and more if your symbol can move). Sure, they can be healed but in a war, how will you find the time to cast 400 high-level spells ?

But it's not enough to kill an enemy. You must make sure none of his followers can raise him back to life.

Less costly :

-Mass Hold Monster
-Incendiary Cloud
-Wail of the Banshee
99% kill ratio, wide area of effect, take about 20 seconds to do.
You can ask a high-level spellcaster write the scrolls and have a few low-level casters use them when needed.

-Alter self or Disguise Self
-True Strike
-Enervation (or any touch spells)
To assassinate a person properly and without a chance to miss.

P.S. : Low-level spells : 3rd and below. High-level spells : 4th and above.

imp_fireball
2009-07-28, 04:59 PM
The ogres would be great for breaking up enemy lines (thus giving them a role closer to cavalry), while lasting much more against archer fire, and would even double as siege engines in a pinch.

I hope you're kidding. True siege engines can hurl rocks thousands of feat, and a ram hauled in by hundreds of men can break any wall. I don't think a group of ogres could do the same. 28 STR max isn't enough to break down walls. Also, ogres last about 10 more seconds against archer fire than regular footmen - and the ogres require class levels to equip tower shields (they can't just be hired with 'giant' as their only levels).

Also, ogres are stupid. They find it harder to compromise (and their -2 WIS makes them less creative). Really, I'd take advantage of their constitution. Send them on the grueling journeys that other men can't take (without suffering losses). Get them to haul heavy equipment. They'd make decent shock troopers too, probably, although trolls fill the roll much better (as does any creature with high STR).

Also, imagine fighting Genghis Khan with ogres on your side. It would still be a tough battle, especially considering Genghis took on something like 200,000 with 40,000 mounted archers, where the 200,000 had both very cold weather and outposts/camps to their advantage (that's basically cover and no weather penalties for a lot of those 200,000; which is huge in battlefield scale).

In essence, everything matters on a battlefield. A lot of small things can make a huge difference. It's no different from magic. I'm sure there's people out there (decent writers, as they'd have to be) who can weave a setting appropriately (yes, in '10,000' different ways) to remain logical.
-----


A single warforged titan is going to be mostly impermeable to mundane arrows and swords that your regular infantry brigade can bring to bear. They're going to need to call in fire support from the wizard to disable or destroy the giant war machine.

There's also mundane methods. No, don't waste your arrows, you've only got so many.

Instead, withdraw with mounts (to get away quickly). Make sure you have scouts knowing where the titan is at all times.

Get hundreds of slaves to dig a massive pit and do whatever you can to cover it up afterwards (all the energy of your portable forges will be thrown in). Get a proper smith to tell if metal can be melted at the temperatures brought to bear at the pit and if the temperatures can be maintained for hours on end. Essentially, you'd be creating one massive forge. The operation would take a few hours with all your slaves working at it.

Assuming it all works out, draw the titan into the trap with cavalry that essentially annoy it with arrows or slings or whatever (making sure to avoid the pit themselves).

The pit should be steep enough that there's no way out and with hard enough layers that the warforged can't simply dig its way out in any amount of time. The warforged should melt in an hour or a few minutes.

This is all unlikely and quite circumstantial (in fact, everything is), but it also assumes that the titan is alone - which can actually be quite likely. If the titan is a slave, it would be very difficult to control without hundreds of men. Conventional whips also don't work on the thing.

In warfare, they'd probably just set it lose and hope that it reaches the enemy.

AslanCross
2009-07-28, 05:04 PM
Regular ogres probably couldn't, but Skullcrushers definitely could. They're smarter, stronger (+14 Strength racial mod), and have innate rock-throwing skill. (Only about 600 feet max, though, so they'd be more like field mortars than siege engines.)

jmbrown
2009-07-28, 05:10 PM
Uhm, having things like Telepathic Bonds makes communication and commanding vastly easier making the whole army a hundred times more efficient and able to use Teleportation-effects for transportation and surgical removal of opponent's command structure is just crippling.

Warfare isn't just about the men on the field, it's about command, strategy, supplies and so on. Magic improves all those aspects hundredfold. Almost all battles are over before the actual fighting has commenced, and rarely if ever is an army actually destroyed; the fight is over when their morale is broken and the troops disperse and cannot continue fighting.


Then again, having a Wizard with the offensive power of few hundred normal men is also pretty huge (imagine a Cloudkill hitting a formation or even cowering lowlevel troops while his Planar Bound demons are throwing around their SLAs, or a Confusion just making an army self-destruct or so on). It should be pretty obvious why even one strong Wizard with an army would make all the difference.

Clerics and all other full casters are huge too, but Cleric lacks in the areas most useful in war (communications, transportations, etc.) so while a mid-level Cleric can buff large groups and has the offensive potential of few hundred mooks, he can't do quite as much as a Wizard. Meh, in army scale, Dread Necromancer actually starts to shine since you can generate another army pretty soon. And one without morale issues or such.


And frankly, the existence of even two-three high-level casters in the backlines throwing offensive spells should be enough to force the mundane troops to adapt their tactics as to not get nuked by a single spell.

This is why battles in fantasy novels usually last a day. It's pretty hard to siege someone when a single character can teleport to the enemy encampment, torch their supplies, then teleport back into the safety of the castle walls.

Thane of Fife
2009-07-28, 05:23 PM
If anyone has $138,000 handy, he/she could get the rights to use TNDM (http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tndm.htm) for a year, which should enable one to see roughly how effective, say, a tank would be against a formation of medieval knights.

Tiki Snakes
2009-07-28, 05:28 PM
Mostly I resent the assumption that anyone can be trained in any class, given a small investiture of time. I personally imagine that in the grand magical colleges, there are people who graduate after years of study, unable to cast a single cantrip.
If you are lucky, you will be able to whip up some magical light now and then, after a college + Degree + Masters style period of time studying magic.
Now and then, the top Wiz's may get to the point of using actual spells. Once or twice a generation you'd get a crop of low level Wizards, even.

And every now and then, you'd get someone of PC calibur who might reach 10+ one day.

And given what is entailed in classes like Warlock, really I don't think making an entire army of them is a long-term wise idea...

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-07-28, 05:32 PM
Make sure they're all CG warlocks fighting to overthrow the ill reputation of their brethren...

And as for making them, succubi gotta be doing *something* in their spare time...

Hell, planar bind a CG succubus. They're one in a million, but since there's an infinite number of demons, there's also technically an infinite number of CG succubi...

Randel
2009-07-28, 05:36 PM
A few ideas:

1. While wizards and other spellcasters are capable of many things, there will still be mundane soldiers like fighters and archers. First because not everyone would have the intelligence, wisdom, or charisma stats to make good spellcasters and second because the Powers that Be would likely want to limit or control the amount of magic users there are... if one jerk wizard can cast burning hands and torch a building (or library full of books, scrolls, explosive alchemical substances, forest of trees or whatever) with his mind then you might want to keep some control over what sorts of people get that power.

2. Monstrous races might very well get equal rights as humans in progressive societies. If one king wants to fight a war against another king, he could send his loyal human soldiers out to fight the opponents loyal human soldiers... or he could get a bunch tasty cows and pigs and bribe a tribe of ogres or goblins to go attack the other kings farms or armies or whatever.

Eventually, smart military people will figure that all the monsterous races could make decent soldiers (with ogres and other brutes being able to terrorise villages single handedly, packs of gnolls being able to track enemies better than human trackers, and small sized goblins good for sneaking around or just having lots of them swarm the enemy). At the very least, a general might use monsterous soldiers as cheap pawns and send them in places he wouldn't send his more 'valuable' human soldiers.

Then, when the monsterous races have actual military value and its seen as better to just get them to work for than against you, then one king will just flat out announce that they will accept all races as citizens. Then, all the gnolls and goblins go to work for them and their supply of soldiers increases to the point where they can beat any kingdom foolish enough to ban monsterous races from use.

Sure, there will be problems at first and the people who have monsterous citizens might have tensions between the races and there would be favoritism and racism... but at the least the idea should shift away from "kill all goblins on sight" to "use goblins as cheap migrant workers and only kill them if they cause problems"

3. Military would include other dimensions to the battlefield. Kobolds and other digging races might be able to make a network of tunnels that reach beyond enemy lines. Flying animals could provide with air power as well. Once you get a flying castle (or maybe even a house or something) that is impossible for ground-bound bandits to reach then walls aren't really that necessary for keeping people out.

4. Supply lines could get interesting. Normally, the medival kingdom requires lots of farms to provide the food needed to feed its inhabitants. With all the weird spells and monsters available, someone could either use plant growth to make farms all extra fertile or make a create food and water trap that makes food out of nothing.

If they make a food and water trap then that money doesn't go tward making magical weapons, if they keep their farms then they have the possibility of gnolls and ogres attacking their farmers and causing famines. Not to mention all the curses and plagues of locusts that druids could potentially unleash.

5. Walls will be less useful than in a standard medival battle. Castles stopped relying on walls for protection once people invented cannons that could blow big chunks out of those walls. With magic and monsters, attackers can use elementals or spells or dig tunnels or fly over the walls to cause trouble. And there are other things like vampires or oozes that can probably mist or ooze their way through the walls anyway.

6. Wights will be considered a biological weapon of mass destruction and their use will tick alot of people off. Having monsters in your army is smart (unless they are the kind that backstab you), having zombies and skeletons is probably okay as well (nobody cares how the mindless undead feel, though the cost in spell components could be pretty steep). But creating undead monsters who replicate by killing people and have the potential of breaking free of your control and ending all life in the world is stupidly scary. Atomic Weapons might destroy an entire city and leave horrible radiation... an a whole lot of them going off at once might royally mess up the planet... but Wights can potentially just keep spreading and causing trouble long after the initial war was ended.

Though it does remind me of the cold war scare where people were making fallout shelters and preparing for nuclear war. People in a fantasy world if they knew about the possibility of zombie apocolypses might start making fallout shelters and other stuff to protect themselves and their families from the possibility.

Maybe there could be some kind of un-undead... like a zombie that attacks other undead and turns them into mindless un-undead things. That way if it comes to a war between the "Living People" and the "Lich and Vampire Menace" then the living folk have their own counter to the undead forces. Mutually assured destruction via infectious magical abominations of nature.

HamHam
2009-07-28, 05:44 PM
Basically, it comes down to "Can you stop teleportation?". If yes, then things can be brought back down to a reasonable level, with cities or even entire kingdoms protected against unauthorized teleportation and thus requiring a lot of classical invasions with armies.

If not, then MAD sets in because there is basically no way to stop a wizard from teleporting to your cities, summoning a wraith or other spawn making undead, lycanthropes, or whatever.

SirKazum
2009-07-28, 06:22 PM
As for the "unlimited resources" thing, I don't see how that would be a necessary requirement for magic to change warfare. It's not a matter of "how many", but of "whether" - if a single mid-to-high level wizard can teleport behind enemy lines and zap the army's commanders, it suddenly becomes a significant tactical concern. You don't need the resources to do that many times. So, it would need to be planned for, and would add a new tactical dimension to the battle. And, while wizards needn't be necessarily that common (I'm not assuming they are, maybe D&D worlds don't have more wizards because wizarding is tough stuff), in a nation big enough to pull a good amount of military weight, there are bound to be enough arcane casters loyal to the king that will make a difference. Not to mention other kinds of special troops, like other types of casters and tamable / potentially allied monsters.

The biggest problem I see regarding resources is magic items. Sure, PCs pile on magic items like they were Jenga blocks, but that's because you're talking about a four-man-band. (Let's not get into how the amount of wealth they're moving should wreak havoc on local economies, not to mention you have to wonder where it comes from... but that's another rant for another day.) But, when you're dealing with large-scale contingents, magic items become simply prohibitive, because anything good enough to matter on a battlefield (i.e. permanent magic items) isn't affordable in large enough quantities to matter, even if you have crafters working non-profit for you. And sure, you could buy/make potions and scrolls in bulk, but you're still going to spend so much money on it that you're better off investing in nonmagical weapons and armor. On the battlefield, the only significant use I can see for magic items is getting wands for your lower-level casters (which aren't going to be so numerous anyway), because without wands they're going to run out of usefulness pretty quickly.

But something that I'd see as a good way to spend your magic item budget (assuming you have any) would be with counter-scrying, counter-teleportation and counter-other-things (save-or-die, domination, etc.) items to distribute among your higher-ranking officials. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm coming around to the idea that most of the high-profile magicking happens outside the battlefield, and in a strategic rather than tactical level. Sure, single higher-level wizards can still do a good amount of damage on the battlefield, which would in fact require tactics to counter them (i.e. no massing troops together, to avoid AoE spells, just to cite the obvious), but the "background" is where they would really shine. Much of warfare would actually be a magical arms race of scry-and-die vs. anti-scry-and-die magics, with actual battlefield combat being used mostly to secure terrain you already won on another "front".

And as for monsters such as dragons, trolls etc... many of them are rather unreliable, which means they're better off used as WMDs. As in, you somehow drop them deep into enemy territory (by teleportation, aerial units, or whatever other means - with the dragons, you'd just have to point them in the right direction) and watch them wreak havoc. Then, when the enemy has been softened enough for you (or when the monsters have been killed), you walk in. Blasty casters go in the front, with defensive buffs and items out of the wazoo, since they're big-time archer bait. Low-level clerics should probably be mixed among your troops (especially melee troops) more or less evenly, to heal and buff (but mostly heal) - they're going to make a difference, but not a very big one. And the more I think about it, the more I think low-level arcane casters (like 1st-4th) have no business being in the battlefield - they're too much of an investment to lose, and can't quite pull that much weight in a mass battle to be worth the risk of losing them.

Friv
2009-07-28, 06:33 PM
Protagonist level characters are rare. They make up maybe 1% of the world's population. The wizard that can teleport troops, reverse gravity, and stop time is likely the warlord's closest confidant. Everyone else is a peon.

While I would like to agree with you, and certainly would modify the rules in that direction, it's not where the game goes.

If you have two typical nations of 100,000 people each - not tiny, but certainly well within medieval levels - you are, according to RAW, looking at sixteen spellcasters in the area of levels 13-18, another thirty-two for level 7-9, sixty-four for levels 3-5, and hundreds for levels 1-2. If only one in ten of them are in the army, that's still an average wizard and cleric throwing around Level 7 spells in each army that a given nation can field, with dozens holding onto weaker spells to change the battlefield. The effect will be pretty huge.

Renrik
2009-07-28, 06:50 PM
I wouldn't characterize fantasy warfare as too different from historical medieval warfare. Granted, there are monsters, wizards, and magic items, but let's not forget some things.

1. Those magic items are expensive, especially to feudal land owners who don't spend their lives running about killing trolls and stealing their shinies for cash.

2. Those sorcerers, wilders, and warlocks are not easy to come by. You have to born as one. The same goes for several other classes.

3. Wizarding school is probably not available to people who are not of wealthy merchant or land-owning families.

4. To gain access to clerics, one may have to go through various churches and temples. There is no guarantee these temples will agree to the goals of your war, especially if they are good-aligned and you are fighting something that does not have green skin and fangs. Evil and neutral clerics are more likely, and don't always have healing.

5. High level characters are rare, and usually have to be hired or convinced of the righteousness of your cause. This puts a damper on the use of very high level spells.

6. Monsters are hard to recruit, whether they be monstrous humanoids with which an alliance must be built, or magical beasts that must somehow be bribed or tamed into service. Dragons seem like an unlikely fixture to most armies.

Let us also consider that if one side has magic, high-level adventurers, and monsters, the other side may as well. Hence, the elite forces of each side may be tangled up fighting each other.

That's not to say there's no difference. There's quite a bit. But maybe not as much as we are thinking.

Woodsman
2009-07-28, 07:06 PM
I'd generally like to think if a battle lasts a day or more, the armies are pretty well matched. If there's a big difference in power, one army is going to squash the other pretty damn quick.

Teleport is a fifth-level spell, which requires a 9th-level wizard with ant Int of at least 15. At this point, thought, it'd be likely the wizard has an Int of 22, giving it an extra 5th-level, which means it can cast Teleport twice: one in, one out.

Remember, not many wizards get past 10th-level, and the ones that do are likely going to ignore armies squabbling over things such as land or power. There needs to be a good reason for the wizard to even consider joining (This is my thinking), otherwise if it doesn't directly affect the wizard, why should he bother? He can continue his studies in peace.

As for dragons, it's not exactly "uncommon" for a bronze dragon to join an army with good pay and a just cause. I'd expect they'd be the ones popping up the most.

Toastkart
2009-07-28, 08:38 PM
I know you guys are mostly talking about D&D, but I was thinking of how fantasy warfare was handled in Chris Bunch's Dragonmaster series.

In it, dragons are 50-70 ft. long flying lizards with no breath weapon and no more intelligence than your average horse. During the beginning of the war, dragons were mostly used as mounts for scouts and couriers while the battle between the main armies was fought on the ground in typical medieval fashion with the exception of spell casters who spent most of their time counter-spelling each other. Occasionally one side's spell casters would break through and what they cast mostly were local terrain altering affects, fear and confusion, or summoning demonic monsters for the ordinary soldiers to fight.

As the war dragged on, the main character and his unit devised a new kind of crossbow that had a clip of ammunition that it could fire before reloading another clip. This allowed them to attack the dragons of the other side with deadly effect until the other side devised a similar weapon (and they found a breed of bigger dragons). Now the war was happening both in the air and on the ground. What finally clinched it was when the main character and his team again devised a way for magic to be used. Giant boulders were shrunk to pebble size, carried high in the air, dropped, and returned to normal size.

woodenbandman
2009-07-28, 08:41 PM
Guerilla warfare fought with small groups proxied by high level wizards, clerics, and druids. I imagine it would be extremely similar to Warcraft, with the player in question micromanaging the combat options available to units being analogous to the wizard.

The armies would be split into several cells which would work mainly on their own. Each group would contain your standard party (beatstick, buffbot, debuffbot, sneak). Most or all of these are wizards, druids, or clerics (unless we're to assume that not everyone is a spellcaster), and these cells split up and try to maneuver the other cells on the opposing side into disadvantageous positions where they can

A: Control the actions of the enemy cell, reducing the damage that they output. Getting the drop on them helps a lot.
B: Ensure that the actions that they take result in the most damage possible to the other cell, while sustaining as little damage as possible to themselves. Hopefully they can
C: Force a retreat.

The cells communicate directly with each other and with the master strategist who sees the battle from afar (on his demiplane), and he directs the troops, ideally with a dominated member of the group as a free action with but a thought.

The ideal tactic is to make hit and run attacks to put the enemy on the defensive, then allow them to think that they hold an advantage, and when they press, you sneak attack their single unit with two or more of your own, wiping them out.

It's a lot easier to do in a turn based system than it is to do in Warcraft 3 or some **** like that. If you've ever seen an actual pro match, you'll notice that the most essential thing to do is to know how your opponent will think, what he is actually doing, and how you will be able to plan accordingly.

In truly full-on warfare, these groups may get as large as twenty each, composed of 5 or so Archers, 5 frontliners, and 3 or 4 summoners, debuffers, and healers. The archers would be trained as Swift Hunters, and they would focus fire the strongest target they could find until it dies horribly. Frontliners protect the other members as best they can. The other jobs are obvious.

Then of course you have your siege weapons brought to bear against an enemy city, along with units that fly, are invisible, or teleport. Invaluable spells on the battlefield would be invisibility, dimension door, overland flight, dimensional anchor, true seeing, any number of scrying spells, and the standard save or suck spells. Barring a few obviously stupid spells, this system works well to represent warfare.

By "siege weapons" I of course meant the stronger creatures that the wizard can control: Balors, Dragons, Solars, Beholders... These creatures represent a great investment of resources, and are very difficult to destroy. They are ideally supported by a small retinue of soldiers so that they're harder to just surround and focus-fire down. A cell can't hold against one of these for long, so they'll ideally retreat. These can be defeated with force, to be sure, but doing so means that you'll waste a lot of resources, so the best way to go about it would be to try to outsmart the enemy commander, and goad him into slipping up. Doesn't work so well for things that can teleport around, like a Hound Archon squad, so you'll just have to plan for those.

I plan to have a war in a game I'm running that will act a lot like this.

Nightmarenny
2009-07-28, 11:05 PM
I don't really see high-level PC's engaging in battle's by kingdoms. by 20th level PC's are barely mortal. So I feel I can assume a max level of 15 those being rare.

That said, lets talk about price. Complete Warrior mentions that its cheaper to outfit a Wizard. Consider that a fighter needn't purchase a new sword or armor at the end of each battle. The Wizard will have used up its Fireball scroll and put a dent in the Wand of magic Missle at the dame point. A lot of people say we should assume inifinite funds but that doesn't really make sense.

One more thing. I disagree with the idea of wizards being untouchable and the tide-turning units. Indeed with all their power I think they are in a great bit more danger than normal. For these reasons.

Hit Points can come back, Spell-slots don't The Wizards main limit on its combat compacity is running out of spells. Yes their are items but they are limited and can and will run out. But there always contingency spells right? Well...

War won't wait a day for you In an adventure setting Wizard is king because even when you get to them they can just hop away and come back later, prepared. that works fine when the objective for winning is "kill your opponent" war rarly has that objective. When you need to hold a breach then running out of spells and running away is losing.

They're everywhere! If forcing a contingency means you win, the question becomes how hard is it to force a wizard into it? We'll a High-level fighter hiding in a load of low level fighter, a greater invisibility Rogue with maxed hiding(and liberal use just in case) and a planned teleport right by you means you have to stop all of them in one turn or be forced out of the fight.

AslanCross
2009-07-28, 11:35 PM
There's also mundane methods. No, don't waste your arrows, you've only got so many.

Instead, withdraw with mounts (to get away quickly). Make sure you have scouts knowing where the titan is at all times.

Get hundreds of slaves to dig a massive pit and do whatever you can to cover it up afterwards (all the energy of your portable forges will be thrown in). Get a proper smith to tell if metal can be melted at the temperatures brought to bear at the pit and if the temperatures can be maintained for hours on end. Essentially, you'd be creating one massive forge. The operation would take a few hours with all your slaves working at it.

Assuming it all works out, draw the titan into the trap with cavalry that essentially annoy it with arrows or slings or whatever (making sure to avoid the pit themselves).

The pit should be steep enough that there's no way out and with hard enough layers that the warforged can't simply dig its way out in any amount of time. The warforged should melt in an hour or a few minutes.

This is all unlikely and quite circumstantial (in fact, everything is), but it also assumes that the titan is alone - which can actually be quite likely. If the titan is a slave, it would be very difficult to control without hundreds of men. Conventional whips also don't work on the thing.

In warfare, they'd probably just set it lose and hope that it reaches the enemy.

Err, Warforged Titans aren't just mindless hulks of metal. They're intelligent enough to obey orders, and all you need to do to one is yell at it. Furthermore, they're resistant to all energy types. It will take more than an hour to slag a magically-protected titan made of adamantine. Various scenes from the Forge of War book depict entire columns of them marching together.

Strangely enough, the same book says that the titans were nowhere as effective as they were originally hoped to be.


Despite their size, the titans were vulnerable to massed troups, particularly Thrane pike-and-axe counteroperations. Of the four hundred titans built from 959 to 964, only 79 were still operating in 95. This depletion was partly a function of their experimental forum, but House Cannith also nted that the titans were nearly always placed at the hottest and deadliest points of any engagement. Both Breland and Cyre requested that the titans be scaled down and made more reliable.

This led to the creation of the modern warforged.

Lamech
2009-07-28, 11:44 PM
Hit Points can come back, Spell-slots don't The Wizards main limit on its combat compacity is running out of spells. Yes their are items but they are limited and can and will run out. But there always contingency spells right? Well...Not with out magic, you need a caster to restore HP's Or Tome of Battle.


War won't wait a day for you In an adventure setting Wizard is king because even when you get to them they can just hop away and come back later, prepared. that works fine when the objective for winning is "kill your opponent" war rarly has that objective. When you need to hold a breach then running out of spells and running away is losing.
A wizards can planar bind + geas large numbers of units very quickly. And those things have DR so the only effective counter is magic. And yes geas is permanent; you have to make your geas something like "Obey me until you die. Feel free to kill yourself at any time as long as you don't directly harm anyone else in your suicide.", except with more detail to close possible loop holes. Those things will hold the breach nicely.


They're everywhere! If forcing a contingency means you win, the question becomes how hard is it to force a wizard into it? We'll a High-level fighter hiding in a load of low level fighter, a greater invisibility Rogue with maxed hiding(and liberal use just in case) and a planned teleport right by you means you have to stop all of them in one turn or be forced out of the fight. A very valuable spell is arcane sight. It detects people who use magic no matter there hide score. Then you just have to surrond yourself with high spot/listen people. Or get some form of scent or blindsense. So basically the rogue dies when he gets caught. The fighter is glowing or not capable of fighting the wizard and the planned teleport works if its a better wizard. (Which means you show that a better wizard beats a weaker wizard.)

Nightmarenny
2009-07-28, 11:48 PM
I probably should mention that its assumed that everyone has magic. So its assumed that anything that can only be defeated by magic is still fairly vulnerable. I'm not saying that Wizard's wouldn't be important to the battle just that they would not be the only factor and do have limits.

Off course hp comes back with magic, but everyone has magic. Nothing gets slot back

EDIT-Planar Bind takes ten Minutes, how is he going to do that fast? Even then if we assume the Wizard has used all other useful spells(as per the description) then how long will that HD12 creature survive when hit by the remaining Fighters, Rogue's or CoDzlla? I didn't see any immortality in the spell desc.

Edit-Also the best buffs will most likely get dispelled if they cause enough damage.

tyckspoon
2009-07-29, 12:03 AM
Hit Points can come back, Spell-slots don't The Wizards main limit on its combat compacity is running out of spells. Yes their are items but they are limited and can and will run out. But there always contingency spells right? Well...

War won't wait a day for you In an adventure setting Wizard is king because even when you get to them they can just hop away and come back later, prepared. that works fine when the objective for winning is "kill your opponent" war rarly has that objective. When you need to hold a breach then running out of spells and running away is losing.


The source of Hit Points is spells, too. Slot-sourced healing is easier to replace with magic items, but in the end it's still an expendable limited resource, and the caster who blows all his slots and all his expendables is still almost certain to have done more to determine the fight than the HP-limited character who is almost dead.

If you're looking at fighting a large battle, prepare spells that are useful for large battles. In particular, this means you're going to be looking at spells with extended durations- if you have to fill a breach, you don't do it by throwing fireballs at whoever gets near and hoping you kill them all before you run out. You do that to clear the immediate area of the breach, if you have to, and then you drop a Wall in it (Stone, Ice, Fire, Iron, all good options depending on the level of magic you have available) and call it good (Wall of Fire has the upside that it kills things and you can leave it up for as long as you can manage to stay near it and concentrate. It has the downside that you have to stay near it and concentrate.) Or Summon a Swarm.

Tangent: Magic Missile is a horrible analogue for a machine gun. It can fire at most once every 6 seconds and hit at most 5 people for 2-5 damage, if you spring for a 9th level wand. If you're trying to do suppression/mass damage, as is the actual purpose of a machine gun, you'd be better off just buying the equivalent value in Fireball scrolls or supplying your wizard with an actual wand of Fireball. Or using that much money to hire and outfit several companies of archers; a hundred men with bows or crossbows will do a much better job of cutting down the kinds of enemies that care about Magic Missiles. No, the proper tactical application of Magic Missile is sniping. If your enemy still has to rely on non-magical communications, for example, you can reliably put down their musician, or their semaphore flag-bearers, or that courier you spotted trying to run between strongpoints. Or that previously-unassuming soldier who just beat an ogre against all odds; what do you think it'll do to local morale when the newly-minted hero gets killed shortly after with a volley of inescapable magic?

AstralFire
2009-07-29, 12:06 AM
tyck, you are cruel.

Nightmarenny
2009-07-29, 12:08 AM
it really feels like I said this before but I'm not argueing that in a magic vs no magic fight that nomag would win. I'm saying that Wizards would probably be their most vulnerable in a war and that while they would be able to do more on the short term they would very likely run out of spells long before the the battle ends.

tyckspoon
2009-07-29, 12:42 AM
it really feels like I said this before but I'm not argueing that in a magic vs no magic fight that nomag would win. I'm saying that Wizards would probably be their most vulnerable in a war and that while they would be able to do more on the short term they would very likely run out of spells long before the the battle ends.

The opposite position is, roughly, that the short term is all that is really needed. This is because most battles really shouldn't last that long- a couple of hours, at longest, after which most of each side's strength should be used (or killed) and it will be pretty clear who has won. Siege situations are the exception, and even there the actual combats shouldn't take too long. The other factor is that your spellcasters really shouldn't be dropping a spell in every round of the combat (that's what Warmages are for, and even they do run out pretty quickly if they try.) They put down a Fog Cloud when you need something's line of sight blocked, or they Enervate something big and let the normal troops clean it up afterward.. generally, they should try to solve a particular battlefield situation with as few castings as possible (which is another point where the Wizard-as-artillery idea fails; the mechanics of direct damage and the generally limited area-of-effect of such spells means it takes far too many of them to get the job done.) Spellcasters on the battlefield really aren't for taking down the enemy's rank and file directly. They're for taking down your opponent's own nasty tricks, or for setting the situation such that your own standard troops can take down their counterparts without troubles. It doesn't take a lot of spells to pull that off.

Nightmarenny
2009-07-29, 12:50 AM
Which should bring the effect from, say, a fighter and wizard closer together, right? The Wizard takes out a large number of low level units tha rush a position(or puts up a wall to slow advancement ect.) and waits for a good time to expend another spell. While that happens a Fighter of the same level runs rampant and kills several mid-range units(just as the wizard holds his resources dear so should a Fighter, attacking only what they can without sacrificing to much hp)

tyckspoon
2009-07-29, 01:25 AM
Which should bring the effect from, say, a fighter and wizard closer together, right? The Wizard takes out a large number of low level units tha rush a position(or puts up a wall to slow advancement ect.) and waits for a good time to expend another spell. While that happens a Fighter of the same level runs rampant and kills several mid-range units(just as the wizard holds his resources dear so should a Fighter, attacking only what they can without sacrificing to much hp)

Potentially. It is indeed possible that the Wizard's best course of action in a battle will be to help the Fighter get where he can do the most good (an Enlarged melee character with a reach weapon can pretty easily sweep out 20-foot swathes of death to standard soldiers, just the same as a Fireball). The Fighter's problem is that, without other spell backup, his personal influence is pretty limited. He can do devastating things within his own reach, or somewhat less devastating things with a ranged weapon, but those don't really compare to the kind of influence a spellcaster can exert at a distance (up to about a quarter mile, for spells with Long range.) But that one act is likely to draw special attention to him.. and unfortunately, he's often kind of stuck when an enemy spellcaster decides that he is one of those special problems that deserves getting a spell or two. There are oh-so-many ways to completely bone a standard Fighter or Barbarian sort (Sort of exception: a Horizon Walker build, like Saph's Tripper. Give it a Spiked Chain and an Enlarge and let it loose on the enemy. For the net cost of a single 1st level spell slot, he pops up somewhere different every 24 seconds and slaughters everything within 20 feet of him. It's a portable, durable, self-targeting Fireball. But then, that's at least 11th level to get the Dimension Door ability, by which point a PC should have exactly that kind of impact on a fight.)

Zen Master
2009-07-29, 04:57 AM
Uhm, having things like Telepathic Bonds makes communication and commanding vastly easier making the whole army a hundred times more efficient and able to use Teleportation-effects for transportation and surgical removal of opponent's command structure is just crippling.

Warfare isn't just about the men on the field, it's about command, strategy, supplies and so on. Magic improves all those aspects hundredfold. Almost all battles are over before the actual fighting has commenced, and rarely if ever is an army actually destroyed; the fight is over when their morale is broken and the troops disperse and cannot continue fighting.


Then again, having a Wizard with the offensive power of few hundred normal men is also pretty huge (imagine a Cloudkill hitting a formation or even cowering lowlevel troops while his Planar Bound demons are throwing around their SLAs, or a Confusion just making an army self-destruct or so on). It should be pretty obvious why even one strong Wizard with an army would make all the difference.

Clerics and all other full casters are huge too, but Cleric lacks in the areas most useful in war (communications, transportations, etc.) so while a mid-level Cleric can buff large groups and has the offensive potential of few hundred mooks, he can't do quite as much as a Wizard. Meh, in army scale, Dread Necromancer actually starts to shine since you can generate another army pretty soon. And one without morale issues or such.


And frankly, the existence of even two-three high-level casters in the backlines throwing offensive spells should be enough to force the mundane troops to adapt their tactics as to not get nuked by a single spell.

No.

Telepathic Bonds doesn't do any thing shouting or signalling doesn't also do.

You're thinking modern warfare, where warzones may span continents, and hundreds of thousands of troops may need sattelite communication and computers just to coordinate the battlefront. That's not what this is - or, as I said, the more you use magic to turn it into this, the less interesting it becomes.

Also - 'a hundred times more efficient' - that's just a figure you're totally conjuring out of thin air. I'll grant you tho, dependent on circumstances, it may make the troops more efficient.

I also don't see any reason to claim a wizard has the firepower of a few hundred men. The ability to do massive amounts of hitpoint damage to soldiers with 6 hp is largely irrelevant. Archers will be every bit as efficient - and it doesn't take anywhere near 'a few hundred men' to cover the same area as a fireball. Also, they can keep firing long after the wizard has used up his spells.

And then again, you completely disregard my main point: Making wizards dominate (which, yes if you want to, you can), is just boring bordering on the pain threshold.

tiercel
2009-07-29, 04:58 AM
Well, there are magical countermeasures for battlefield magical offense. The simplest is fog (and illusions, say, of fog). If you take away lines of sight, suddenly all those nasty targeted spells, and even knowing where to aim your AoEs, just got a lot harder. (At its most basic, just issue some wands of obscuring mist and cheat in some wands of silent image. Same cost as a CLW wand and may save you more casualties per wand when you get right down to it.)

Besides, if I'm gonna have spellcasters on the battlefield in the D&D system I want druids. How many first level spells are going to have the battlefield impact that entangle can? (Goodbye, massed charges by enemy formations, particularly cavalry.) If you have the luxury of higher level spellcasters, so much the better, since wildshaped druids don't have to worry about being targeted so much -- enemy armies have better things to target than every last random bird or squirrel or whatever.

And battlefield spells? Gosh. There is the aforementioned entangle, all sorts of fog, gust of wind (for counterfogging), summon swarm (Duration: Concentration looks pretty sweet for a battlefield), soften earth and stone, plant growth (check that AoE), sleet storm, spike growth, control water, spike stones, control winds, commune with nature, wall of fire, wall of thorns, and this is only Core and before we've even gotten to 6th level spells yet. The trend continues at higher levels too -- druids get the big-area spells.

Of course if you can get any dragon shamans spread through your army, get that fast heal aura rolling and you've turned a huge fraction of your fatalities into wounded.

Bards should go without saying -- get them some masterwork instruments, and if you can get 2nd level bards who learn inspirational boost, so much the better. Hitting everyone in earshot with +hit/+damage/+save vs fear (to keep from breaking morale) is pretty awesome.

I don't think the question should be so much "what happens if your entire army can be PC spellcasters?" as "what can a few high level spellcasters, plus a handful of low-level spellcasters spread throughout the army, do to give your army an edge?". Attaching a low level spellcaster or two per company of fighting men, plus having a "special ops" force of higher level casters for recon, battlefield control, and artillery, makes a heckuva difference while not necessarily eliminating the need for grunts.

Eldariel
2009-07-29, 06:08 AM
No.

Telepathic Bonds doesn't do any thing shouting or signalling doesn't also do.

It does. Do you know why medieval warfare HAD men grouped so close together? Because of communications. And getting order from the HQ to a flank took minutes, when it could already be too late. No, having efficient communications improves the functionality of a military force by a ton.

That was true in the medieval times and is true now; now we have decent communications but magic still does it better. You need to be able to coordinate the actions of each individual unit for grandscale strategic maneuvers and you need efficient communications to enable small units (large units are easier to command but ultimately extremely impractical when artillery exists), which in turn cuts down your casualties vastly.

You don't seriously think it's all meaningless, do you? How much have you studied warfare?


You're thinking modern warfare, where warzones may span continents, and hundreds of thousands of troops may need sattelite communication and computers just to coordinate the battlefront. That's not what this is - or, as I said, the more you use magic to turn it into this, the less interesting it becomes.

You don't need communications for continents, you need them to get commands across the friggin' battlezone! You have a combat zone spanning a kilometer or two, how long do you think it takes from an order from the HQ to be actually implemented?

How practical do you then think any level of strategy actually is? You cannot really change anything on the fly so you have to have a plan and when that plan is shot to Hades, you pretty much just have to watch as your men get slaughtered, their morale gets broken and they break into a run. Army simply cannot function without efficient command and the better the command structure is, the more efficiently the units play together and the less likely to fall to surprises the whole army is.


Also - 'a hundred times more efficient' - that's just a figure you're totally conjuring out of thin air. I'll grant you tho, dependent on circumstances, it may make the troops more efficient.

I also don't see any reason to claim a wizard has the firepower of a few hundred men. The ability to do massive amounts of hitpoint damage to soldiers with 6 hp is largely irrelevant. Archers will be every bit as efficient - and it doesn't take anywhere near 'a few hundred men' to cover the same area as a fireball. Also, they can keep firing long after the wizard has used up his spells.

Archers can't target a bunch of men with one hit. That's the big difference; Wizard's AoE effects can destroy entire platoons while a single archer shoots a single man and hits or misses (Wizard doesn't miss). Wall of Fire, Cloudkill (let alone Widen spell), etc. will destroy tons of people. Then when you run out of spells of mass destruction (provided you haven't routed the enemy yet)? Pick up your Wand of Fireball or whatever and blast away. You're still killing a dozen men per 6 seconds (plus the lingering damage from any effects like Cloudkill and Wall of Fire) while an individual archer has a ~50% or worse chance to damage on target (the probabilities dictate, one hit isn't going to be enough to kill them).


And then again, you completely disregard my main point: Making wizards dominate (which, yes if you want to, you can), is just boring bordering on the pain threshold.

You didn't really elaborate; why is implementing magic in combat as logical boring? Why is medieval combat with close-knit units, poor strategic options due to the lack of efficient command chain and basically 4 types of units in cavalry, archers, melee and siege engines so much more interesting than one implementing more than a dozen auxillary ways of fighting (illusions, enchantments, summoning, area-effect damage, etc.) and types of effects? And why wouldn't it be used to its maximum efficiency? It doesn't obsolete normal troops, but it DOES change the way combat is fought entirely.

Aedilred
2009-07-29, 06:56 AM
You didn't really elaborate; why is implementing magic in combat as logical boring? Why is medieval combat with close-knit units, poor strategic options due to the lack of efficient command chain and basically 4 types of units in cavalry, archers, melee and siege engines so much more interesting than one implementing more than a dozen auxillary ways of fighting (illusions, enchantments, summoning, area-effect damage, etc.) and types of effects? And why wouldn't it be used to its maximum efficiency? It doesn't obsolete normal troops, but it DOES change the way combat is fought entirely
Well, the problem here is that as soon as you start including all the auxiliary effects, they become the most important element. The rest of the army doesn't become totally irrelevant, but it does become little more than additive to the spell effects. As Swordguy says on the first page, it comes down to who has the best/most casters.

Wizards perform a role that in real-life warfare was and is played by increasing technology, starting with stuff like Greek Fire, moving on through artillery, gunpowder, and in modern times stuff like smart bombs, spy satellites and drones, stealth technology, and so on. If you're at a disadvantage- technologically or magically- you can hold back the tide for a while but really it's a foregone conclusion. Those without said resources- well, they'll have to react in the way that modern opponents to western armies do, by refusing to engage in a traditional war... but even that won't work, because spells like Scrying render a guerilla approach untenable too.

In fact, high-level wizards in the service of the state would function almost exactly like ICBMs, rendering warfare largely irrelevant in the first place.

This doesn't seem to be what the majority of people want from a fantasy game. In reality, a high-magic setting would look disturbingly similar to a modern one, no matter what time period it was supposedly set in, because magic can replicate everything our society has. The whole point in playing a pseudo-medieval setting is surely for the pseudo-medieval bit, and for most people what that means is a pseudo-medieval military, too.

Saph
2009-07-29, 07:03 AM
Archers can't target a bunch of men with one hit. That's the big difference; Wizard's AoE effects can destroy entire platoons while a single archer shoots a single man and hits or misses (Wizard doesn't miss). Wall of Fire, Cloudkill (let alone Widen spell), etc. will destroy tons of people. Then when you run out of spells of mass destruction (provided you haven't routed the enemy yet)? Pick up your Wand of Fireball or whatever and blast away. You're still killing a dozen men per 6 seconds (plus the lingering damage from any effects like Cloudkill and Wall of Fire) while an individual archer has a ~50% or worse chance to damage on target (the probabilities dictate, one hit isn't going to be enough to kill them).

Bear in mind, of course, that in this kind of environment the Wizard isn't going to be killing entire platoons with his Fireballs and Cloudkills, because no soldiers with any sense of self-preservation are going to bunch up that much in the first place.

Instead, you're going to get something that looks like a modern battlefield - at first glance, it looks completely empty, because every living thing is hiding behind cover and concealment (preferably total, if they can get it). When soldiers pop their heads up, it'll be for one round maximum, and they're going to be doing everything they can to make themselves difficult targets. Any soldiers that don't do this are quickly weeded out by natural selection.

The typical footsoldier in this kind of war is going to look more like a Ranger than a Fighter. Stealth skills, high move speed, and their primary weapon will be a ranged one. They'll make heavy use of sniping, and by preference they'll engage enemies from as far away as possible, so as to make it as hard as possible for the enemy big guns (spellcasters and monsters) to get a fix on their position. Basically, a modern light infantryman, with worse equipment.

- Saph

Eldariel
2009-07-29, 07:14 AM
Bear in mind, of course, that in this kind of environment the Wizard isn't going to be killing entire platoons with his Fireballs and Cloudkills, because no soldiers with any sense of self-preservation are going to bunch up that much in the first place.

That's precisely my point; if tactics aren't adapted to a Wizard's presence, he's going to slaughter hundreds single-handedly and confuse and frighten the hell out of the rest. Acromos suggested a few even mid-level casters would be wholly trivial; I'm trying to point out that's not at all the case.

Magic forces and enables modern tactics, so in a world with a relevant amount of magic, tactics should resemble modern warfare much more than medieval warfare.

Johel
2009-07-29, 07:20 AM
@Eldarin : Agree with you on most points.

@Acromos : to say " 100 archers can do the same as 1 wizard" sounds kinda weak. Let's take two figures, here.

Fig 1 :
a regiment (A) of 1.000 archers
against
a regiment (B) of 1.000 archers

Fig 2 :
1 wizard (C), 20th level, D&D 3.5-style
against
a regiment (B) of 1.000 archers

Fig 1:
That's basically down to who has the most accurate and disciplined archers, the most efficient communication logistic and the best equipement.

It also depends what formations (A) and (B) are using.
Scattered skirmishers on both sides means a lenghty battle with low casualties, where individual skill matters more than tactical control of the regiment.
Thick formation on both sides means a short, bloody battle, where tactical control (communication) is critical so that fire can be concentrated on a specific part of the enemy regiment.
Scattered skirmishers for (A) and Thick formation for (B), that's basically (A) slowing down (B). If (B) knows his troops are more skilled, he'll scatter his formation. If (B) knows his troops are less skilled and therefore wants to keep them under control, he'll just march through and ignore (A), use concentrated fire to root (A) or retreat to wait cavalry.

Fig 2 :
(B) doesn't even know (C) is there.
If (B) assume anything close to thick formation, (C) only needs a few spells.
To help him get on target :
Overland Fly, Greater Invisibility and a few optionnal protection spells.
1nd combo :
Symbol of Insanity
2nd combo :
Mass Hold Monster, Incendiary Cloud, Wail of the Banshee
3rd combo :
Symbol of Sleep, Fireballs

In less than 2 minutes, the mage can cast his spells and run away undetected. Behind, there are only three types of soldiers : dead soldiers (90%), insane soldiers (9%), deserters (1%).

The 1st combo is basically to shatter all discipline.
(The area is wide enough to affect 400 soldiers at least)

The 2nd combo is deadly against anything but people with a high Willpower because, once you are under the "Hold Monster" spell, you don't get to move...so you are dead because you can't move for about 2 minutes in a living hell.

The 3nd combo is only there to mop up those who run away from the Incendiary Cloud.

Cost wise, it would be 6.000 gp per battle, + the wizard's fee.
The wizard can do about 3 battles a day.
Calculate what it costs to equip and feed 3 regiments and I'm sure it's costeffective to enlist a 20th level wizard as retainer.
Of course, the enemy can just swarm your kingdom with hundred of thousands of men but that's more a organized suicide than a invasion at that point, since your lone wizard can basically kill 3.000 men a day without breaking a sweet.

Saph
2009-07-29, 07:29 AM
Johel, bear in mind that 20th-level wizards are the movers and shakers of the entire world. They're busy researching, plane-hopping, and fighting demigods. The chances that one of them is going to fight for you for a "retainer" are . . . slim. You'd better have something REALLY good to offer him. Paying him a few thousand GPs is not gonna cut it.

A king having a few 10th-level casters available, I can see. 20th-level ones . . . not so much.

Johel
2009-07-29, 07:38 AM
Well, worst scenario, you only need 1 of them for the week. And even if it costs hundred of thousands gp, that's still worth it, as you won't have to maintain a large army or anything. You just have to make sure the wizard is confortable and has everything he might desire.

Just keep a few thousands men as "Elite Royal Guards" or something, plus a good assassin training program. First is to protect your kingdom of any petty threat. Second is counter wizards from opposing nations...or simply to off your wizard if he get too ambitious. :smallwink:

Also, as you wrote, large armies wouldn't exist exactly because of the destructive power of wizards. We fear ICBMs and other WMD because they have lasting effects. Wizards can choose to have but they can easily adapt the scale of their strikes.

Saph
2009-07-29, 07:51 AM
Uh . . . I'm not sure you grasp just how powerful a level 20 wizard is. Or a level 20 cleric, or a level 20 druid, for that matter. You don't tell them what to do. They tell you what to do. The idea that you can control one of them like a unit in a RTS is very questionable.

You'd still have large armies, they'd just be expendable. Kobolds, say. You can breed a few thousand kobolds without even trying. You send them in as cannon fodder. If they die, you don't care. (This is a tactic the drow use in Forgotten Realms - when attacking a heavily defended target, they send in waves of thousands of slaves first as mine detectors.)

Calmar
2009-07-29, 08:50 AM
A lot of the stuff that is possible in D&D is quite similar to modern or even futuristic weapons the way it works.

But then, I do play D&D because I like knights and men-at-arms and stuff like that. If I wanted to play or DM the Hell of Verdun, Stalingrad, Iwo Jima, the Battle of Klendathu, or other such stuff, I'd play a modern times - or science-fiction - RPG. :smallsmile:

Johel
2009-07-29, 09:24 AM
I'm not sure you grasp just how powerful a level 20 wizard is. Or a level 20 cleric, or a level 20 druid, for that matter. You don't tell them what to do. They tell you what to do. The idea that you can control one of them like a unit in a RTS is very questionable.


It's not so much "you tell him to do X" than "you ask him to do X".
He isn't "RTS unit" but more like a safety measure or a powerful ally.
You provide him with goods and services, take care of all the "boring" stuff he would have to do himself without you (Laundry, material components, cooking, cloths, house cleaning, firewood, feed the pets, keep the records clear, provide concubines, search for the artifacts he askes, ect... You keep his House clear and well supplied, you don't botter him with mundane detail like prices or human concerns) so that he can focus on what really matters for him : his researches.

In peace time, the fact that the wizard's tower/manor/castle is inside a kingdom and that said kingdom provide to his every desires is enough to make foreigners think twice before attacking.
In war time, well, I guess the wizard won't like the idea of having his private library and his generous benefactor threaten.


You'd still have large armies, they'd just be expendable. Kobolds, say. You can breed a few thousand kobolds without even trying. You send them in as cannon fodder. If they die, you don't care. (This is a tactic the drow use in Forgotten Realms - when attacking a heavily defended target, they send in waves of thousands of slaves first as mine detectors.)

Well, you've spotted a problem : when both sides have high-level wizards, they hesitate before attacking each other. But if one does attack with wizards and a meatshield army, what happens ?

The meatshields are basically there only to expand the enemy's magical ressources so both sides would probably try to beat each other without using too much magic, just because they fear that it would open a gape in their defenses for the enemy wizards to jump in. Note that the use of low-level magic isn't a problem. That's the high-level spellslots and scrolls that must be kept ready to counter the opponent.

Dervag
2009-07-29, 11:07 AM
Anyway, I'm not really talking about specific ways to use fantasy stuff in battles per se; I'm talking about what would magic/fantastic warfare look like, in a basic concept.Everything depends on what kind of fantasy you have and what kind of magic.

Arthurian legend is technically fantasy warfare, but the fantastic elements are limited- wizards aren't good for much more than illusions, divination, and target specific curses. Monsters are rare. So the actual warfare doesn't change all that much from what it would be without the magic.

D&D warfare has so much magic (or at least the possibility of so much magic) that magic becomes vastly more important than conventional tools in every way. For every task- hand to hand combat, ranged combat, destroying strongholds, gathering intelligence- there are magic tools far superior to nonmagic tools. Therefore, magic utterly dominates the setting.


The whole opposing force hardly has the capability to teleport; just small, strong strike squad, much like paratroopers.Unlike paratroopers.

Paratroopers are lightly armed because of the limits on what they can carry to battle. When paratroopers fight an equal number of heavies on equal terms, they tend to lose. By contrast, in a fantasy setting with godlike heroes and teleportation, there's no reason not to send your best elite army-crushing badass along with the strike team... which means that the strike team is stronger than almost any other force it might encounter.

That makes them much harder to counter than airborne troops.
_______


A lot of the stuff that is possible in D&D is quite similar to modern or even futuristic weapons the way it works.

But then, I do play D&D because I like knights and men-at-arms and stuff like that. If I wanted to play or DM the Hell of Verdun, Stalingrad, Iwo Jima, the Battle of Klendathu, or other such stuff, I'd play a modern times - or science-fiction - RPG. :smallsmile:The key, then, is to restrict the magic. If it's sloshing around the landscape everywhere, you get a mutant version of modern warfare (see Turtledove's Into the Darkness series). If it's rare, you get something more like Arthurian legend, where the weirdness is at the edges of the world and t here's plenty of room for normal stuff.

shadow_archmagi
2009-07-29, 11:16 AM
I'm told that warfare is pretty tricky business, such that many people devote their entire lives and careers to figuring out how the hell it works, and that even the greatest and most successful leaders occasionally got bjorked by minor details.

I think it's entirely possible that there are simulationist forums where people debate endlessly on what/how things should/would work in "medieval" settings. I feel it would be a safe assumption to guess that even as technology changed the battlefield, the battlefield changed itself as over the course of centuries, generals slowly, very slowly, worked out what the best tactics were.

I'm a guy doing this on weekends.

...

Realism, or logic, or even just SENSIBILITY is not going to have a place on my battlefield.

Lamech
2009-07-29, 11:27 AM
The source of Hit Points is spells, too. Slot-sourced healing is easier to replace with magic items, but in the end it's still an expendable limited resource, and the caster who blows all his slots and all his expendables is still almost certain to have done more to determine the fight than the HP-limited character who is almost dead.


The source of HP is spells? Tome of Battle? Shadow Sun Ninja, and a undead? Dread Necro? I do believe there are other sources of out of unlimited out of combat healing. One can most certainly get infinite out of combat healing. Sure you need magic, but its still unlimited.

HamHam
2009-07-29, 12:44 PM
Dread Necro?

Cast magic spells.

shadow_archmagi
2009-07-29, 01:01 PM
Continuing on my own rant, consider historical events like, say, the civil war, or world war one, etc, wherein a handful of technological changes suddenly completely revolutionized the battlefield and tacticians were unable to adapt, often requiring more than a decade before any meaningful new techniques or strategies appeared.

In fact, in the case of WWI, the main reason trench warfare became out-dated was because of MORE new inventions and war-vehicles to use. And trench warfare was mostly just the result of "Hey what if our guns shot even faster."

I really don't think it's possible to imagine the full ramifications of things like Weather Control and Rope Trick and Wall Of Force.

Lamech
2009-07-29, 01:14 PM
Cast magic spells.

... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Yes, yes they do. I was listing example's of things that could heal with out casting spells. Dread necro is one of them.

Oslecamo
2009-07-29, 01:46 PM
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Yes, yes they do. I was listing example's of things that could heal with out casting spells. Dread necro is one of them.

Only if your DM allows tainted soul.

Eldariel
2009-07-29, 01:53 PM
Only if your DM allows tainted soul.

Or Necropolitan.

Kemper Boyd
2009-07-29, 04:51 PM
The downside of magical warfare is that it's like an attack helicopter: it's good on the offense but not too good on defense. Wizards and sorcerers eventually run out of spells to cast.

Dr_Emperor
2009-07-29, 04:52 PM
I see a few tactics coming out of a fantasy warfare thing and still think it would resemble WW1, mostly.

To the people saying the high level wizard won't be involved I agree there won't be a lot, but he could be the King or the guy the king used to adventure with. Or, he could be the High priest of a religion thus clerics would have to be part of the war.

I see war being diverged into squads for the low level people. Infantry fights scattered probably from foxholes. Types available probably include:
Expendable: commoner just brought into battle, undead
chain trippers: Would be really effective against expendable forces and cheap to equip
Archers: have been discussed in detail, but probably a few have cross-class ranks in spellcraft and ready their actions to fire at people casting spells
Behind tower sheild:could use any fighting style, each tripper could have one of these who readies his action to move in front, if wizards are rare each wizard is going to have a group of dudes to be with him

The nobility, if not class leveled, probably knows these tactics to, so we likely end up with a reclusive nobility because they don't want to be scryed and died, and want the plusses on the saving throws.

HamHam
2009-07-29, 04:59 PM
The downside of magical warfare is that it's like an attack helicopter: it's good on the offense but not too good on defense. Wizards and sorcerers eventually run out of spells to cast.

I'm pretty sure being able to turn yourself into an unkillable juggernaut of death makes you good at both offense and defense.

Unless by defense you mean defending other people who are not you, in which case stuffing them into Rope Tricks and bags of holding is probably the best idea. :smalltongue:

Johel
2009-07-29, 05:14 PM
The downside of magical warfare is that it's like an attack helicopter: it's good on the offense but not too good on defense. Wizards and sorcerers eventually run out of spells to cast.

...yes and no.

They will run out of spells, yes.
They are good on the offense, hell yes !!
They are not too good on the defense, please expose further.

If you mean that they are few in numbers and therefor easy target for the thousands of conventionnal warriors, you are right for low-level spellcasters. High-level spellcasters (at least arcane) are just invisible.

If you mean that they aren't enough of them to actually hold a vast army of conventionnal warriors, then I'm sorry but the spells they can cast while attacking are as much lethal (if not more) when defending.

Better, low level spells whose effects are too small to really matter in the offense are god's gifts for defenders during a siege.

Create food and water : Yes, we know we are under siege. Keep waiting.
Alarm : no surprise attack because of sleepy sentries.
Grease : this ladder is useless, now.
Sleep, Color Spray, Burning Hands, Cause Fear : to break enemy breaches.
Enlarge person : see Oots. Though you might prefer to use Ogres for this.
Feather Fall, Jump : reinforcement can be mass-dropped from the dungeon.
Silent Image : to make a door look like a wall...or make a gap look like a bridge.
Symbols (yes, I love them...) : THE defense. Can be easy to cancel if you know their location before the assault but otherwise, you're going to need kobolds to clear the way.

Kemper Boyd
2009-07-29, 05:15 PM
I'm pretty sure being able to turn yourself into an unkillable juggernaut of death makes you good at both offense and defense.

Consider the difference between an infantry battalion and a tank battalion. Which one is better at defending a static position?

The wizard might scatter the first probe of the enemy, take out their skirmish line and maybe even fight back one of the enemys main force. After that, he's out of juice and vulnerable. Sure, he can stuff himself inside a rope trick to get some rest but the enemy probably won't be resting.

In Bakker's "Prince Nothing" trilogy the magical schools have immense firepower but rarely use it openly for a variety of reasons. One reason is that when you have committed your mages to do something, they become quite vulnerable to magical counterattack.

Johel
2009-07-29, 05:18 PM
Tanks aren't good in defense because they are easy to spot, are big targets and we have weapons who can actually damage them.

Wizards can cast invisibility and other cloaking spells, are human-sized (mostly...) and will probably have something handy in case you DO locate them (a scroll of teleportation for low-level, a contingency of teleportation for high-level)

EDIT : the part about "magical counter attack" is, however, right. But that depends how you use magic, again. If you can teleport back into a heavily warded place to rest, then it's pointless to restrain.

Kemper Boyd
2009-07-29, 05:37 PM
Wizards can cast invisibility and other cloaking spells, are human-sized (mostly...) and will probably have something handy in case you DO locate them (a scroll of teleportation for low-level, a contingency of teleportation for high-level)

The problem with relying on magical items is that especially stuff like scrolls or potions might end up being hard to replace, especially in a war. Tactically good, strategically maybe not so good. Even with various magical forms of travel logistics aren't easy, and everyone should know that amateurs study tactics but professionals study logistics :)

Personally, I also see it to be more interesting to have wizards on the sidelines of battles most of the time, and only really joining battle when it's either absolutely necessary or hugely advantageous.

warrl
2009-07-29, 05:46 PM
The wizard might scatter the first probe of the enemy, take out their skirmish line and maybe even fight back one of the enemys main force. After that, he's out of juice and vulnerable. Sure, he can stuff himself inside a rope trick to get some rest but the enemy probably won't be resting.

Ever heard of tactics?

If your (high level) wizard even interrupts his breakfast over a probing attack or a skirmish, either you're desperately undermanned for the fight or you're desperately poorly commanded. Otherwise, armsmen and low-level casters handle it.

Your wizard gets involved and really stretches his power to either gain a MAJOR victory, or prevent a MAJOR loss. And if he's picked his spells cleverly and uses them creatively, each such occasion should take at most two spells from his top two or three levels (plus perhaps some additional low-level spells - and if he runs out of those, well, that's why you have low-level spell-casters). He holds the high-power stuff in reserve until one of those situations arises, because he never knows when he's going to need it - perhaps in response to a high level wizard on the other side.

Johel
2009-07-29, 05:53 PM
The problem with relying on magical items is that especially stuff like scrolls or potions might end up being hard to replace, especially in a war. Tactically good, strategically maybe not so good. Even with various magical forms of travel logistics aren't easy, and everyone should know that amateurs study tactics but professionals study logistics :)

Personally, I also see it to be more interesting to have wizards on the sidelines of battles most of the time, and only really joining battle when it's either absolutely necessary or hugely advantageous.

Yes, I took the scroll as example because I'm not motivated to search a low-level spell that can take you out of danger. Nothing came to my mind.

You're right for logistic...but a kingdom can stockpile wands and potions(maybe not scrolls...they tend to be fragile) during peace time. In fact, given the cost of a 5th level wand, they better create Ring of Spell Storing to get "cheap" polyvalent contingencies for low-level wizards.

Wizards do remain on the side, much like the Air Force does : you strike when you are sure about your target. You don't let your aircrafts fly around, waiting for a opportunity (well... they sometimes do exactly that but that's only when enemy AAA defense are out of the equation).

Dr_Emperor
2009-07-29, 06:18 PM
Hey, I see a new use for the army in these recent posts, its all a ploy with advanced communications and teleportation attacking any part of one army will tell the other sides wizards exactly where the opposing sides other high level wizard is, so Team A wizard 17 runs amok killing thousands on team B. Team B identifies threat the then Team B wizard 17 buffs stops time and teleports close to Team A wizard and destroys Team A wizard.

Winning the conventional war makes it so that the other guy screws up and reveals his position first.

HamHam
2009-07-29, 06:32 PM
Consider the difference between an infantry battalion and a tank battalion. Which one is better at defending a static position?

The wizard because he has spells that can deny the enemy access to the area for a couple of hours (one example being Symbol of X, but anything with duration 10 min/cl or 1 hour/cl and a desired effect will work) or conjure up some kind of monster to do the defending for him.

Anyway, I think a good parallel would actually be Battletech, crazy as it sounds.

Basically, your normal troops are infantry and vehicles. Useful backup for combined arms tactics, but not the main players on the battlefield.

Your Rogues and Scouts and stuff are light mechs. Useful for recon and other specialized roles, but usually no more than an annoyance for heavier units.

Your other non-casters are medium mechs. The basic work-horse of the army, and a significant threat in groups.

Your ToB classes and lower level casters are heavy mechs. Can do a lot of damage and take a beating.

And your high level wizards and codzillas are the assault mechs. Wading through the battle with little need to fear anything that isn't another assault mech.

Johel
2009-07-29, 06:33 PM
@Dr_Emperor : that's so sick that it's genius. :smallsmile:

Better make sure your timing is right when letting that one out, though.
If the enemy wizards can teleport back before your wizards arrive... well, you just lost 1.000 men. Please try again !!

This said, the idea is good.

Corvus
2009-07-29, 06:33 PM
I've actually started contemplating this concept in some of my writings of late. Though given they range from stone age fantasy where hitting people over the head with a stone club is the height of tactics, through to gunpowder fantasy, there is a great deal of scope there.

By gunpowder fantasy I mean a setting where the technology has advanced beyond the normal pseudo-medieval setting to the equivalent of the Napoleonic era, of muskets and cannons and men marching in bright coats to blaze away at each other, and the 72-gun ships of the line clash on the high seas. Think of the time of Richard Sharpe and Jack Aubery but with some magic and monsters thrown in.

It is a fairly low magic setting; not as low as LotR but not epic like D&D magic. You won't find dragons and other exotic beasts rampaging around the battlefield either, but more mundane humanoid species, like minotaurs and hobgoblins, while the magic itself is more mindwork; trying to gauge the position of the enemy units while masking you own, and trying to break the morale of enemy soldiers while stopping the same happening to your own. Healing is likewise fairly limited, basically just speeding up the natural healing process of the body. No repairing of damaged or destroyed limbs.

Gives it the feel of a magical setting without having to totally rewrite how battles were fought.

Renrik
2009-07-29, 07:15 PM
For the reasons I listed earlier, I doubt that wizards would entirely revolutionize the battlefield, and lots of its applications would be of a defensive nature, for reasons pointed out by another poster.

Let's consider, then, the adaptation of infantry tactics to defensive magics.

I'll start with a conjecture on area affect spells, infantry, and cavalry interplay. Now, infantry in the feudal battlefield tended to consist, in addition to the dismounted man at arms, the mercenary troupe, and, later, even the professional soldier, of conscripted infantry. For the sake of cost (remember: wars are fought with money, not people), these conscripts tend to be lightly armored and equipped with spears, which are of course a cheap, easy to train with weapon that is effective in group formations against both infantry and cavalry. These groups, however, are effective only in close formation. As such, they are vulnerable to area affect spells. Spreading out to minimize the spell effect makes the unit effectively useless on the battlefield. As such, a fantasy tactic of note would be to target pike squads with area effect spells, then charging with cavalry before the unit can regroup, and cutting them down.

Exarch
2009-07-29, 07:42 PM
I'm pretty sure Robert Jordan isn't exactly well received on these boards. However, towards the middle of the series there was a massive battle at somewhere like Dhamon's Well, having two armies fight each other. One were tribals, Aiel, who are supposed to be amazing soldiers and the other were...more Aiel and some regular soldiers, I believe. I forget the details other than that, but the highlight was when a group of 100-300 Asha'man teleport in from nowhere and begin blowing up people left and right. The result was a massacre that shocked the world.

A group of people, the Seanchan, also keep magic users on leashes that prevent them from using their magic unless dictated otherwise. Well, they also use their magic to unleash terrible direct damage. When they first appeared, they beat armies left and right.

Now, that's not too like D&D magic, but it's one example of how magic changes the face of the game. Magic is rarely so directly damaging.

Another place to look upon to see how magic effects battle would be the Black Company series. The "common" wizards do a lot more illusion, misdirection and summoning. The really powerful wizards don't do much logistical stuff, as that's beneath them, instead choosing to do direct-damage spells. In a world where magicians are extremely rare, and the ones you do see aren't exactly powerful. So while the Taken (the most powerful wizards) don't destroy as much as a D&D wizard could with oodles of Sleep or Walls, the spamming of Fireballs causes damage and has a distinctly negative effect on morale.

HamHam
2009-07-29, 07:50 PM
I'm pretty sure Robert Jordan isn't exactly well received on these boards. However, towards the middle of the series there was a massive battle at somewhere like Dhamon's Well, having two armies fight each other. One were tribals, Aiel, who are supposed to be amazing soldiers and the other were...more Aiel and some regular soldiers, I believe. I forget the details other than that, but the highlight was when a group of 100-300 Asha'man teleport in from nowhere and begin blowing up people left and right. The result was a massacre that shocked the world.

A group of people, the Seanchan, also keep magic users on leashes that prevent them from using their magic unless dictated otherwise. Well, they also use their magic to unleash terrible direct damage. When they first appeared, they beat armies left and right.

Now, that's not too like D&D magic, but it's one example of how magic changes the face of the game. Magic is rarely so directly damaging.

It's DnD magic if all your wizard used nothing but Evocation + Teleport. So Warmages, basically.

But yeah. Once you involve channelers who haven't gimped themselves with the stupid Three Oaths, battles just turn into massacres for unprepared troops. On the other hand, if you can get within bow shot without being blown to pieces, an arrow through the head will still kill them. Unless they have a wall of air in place anyway, but that presents it's own problems.

Note also the number of times Rand just bypasses armies and just teleports himself plus a bunch of maidens into the opposing sides palace. Scry-teleport is a going to be a powerful strategy in DnD warfare, and if you don't counter it you will lose very quickly.

Dr_Emperor
2009-07-29, 08:21 PM
These groups, however, are effective only in close formation. As such, they are vulnerable to area affect spells. Spreading out to minimize the spell effect makes the unit effectively useless on the battlefield. As such, a fantasy tactic of note would be to target pike squads with area effect spells, then charging with cavalry before the unit can regroup, and cutting them down.

This is true for history, but the discussion changed to D&D, and soldiers in D&D receive no benefit for standing next to each other. The only formation that might work well is more of a roman legionary form with a tower shield because then you can form a circle of tower shields and fire missiles out the top of it. I once tried to send a phalanx like unit against PC's it was a ridiculously easy battle for them.
D&D though is trying to be a squad based adventuring game so I think it supports that better.

Other thoughts on war, alchemical items like tanglefoot bags, and flasks of alchemist fire can be used to slow the advance of most monsters or scary nonflying wizards.

I think instead of commanders, being loud and easily noticed, the higher level guys are still sitting in their foxhole destroying whatever gets to it.

Cavalry still works mostly but it might be spread out too
Also wizards can use move earth+fabricate to create a very basic fort. Instantaneous forts are not something seen ancient warfare.

Johel
2009-07-30, 02:34 AM
This is true for history, but the discussion changed to D&D, and soldiers in D&D receive no benefit for standing next to each other. The only formation that might work well is more of a roman legionary form with a tower shield because then you can form a circle of tower shields and fire missiles out the top of it. I once tried to send a phalanx like unit against PC's it was a ridiculously easy battle for them.
D&D though is trying to be a squad based adventuring game so I think it supports that better.

Other thoughts on war, alchemical items like tanglefoot bags, and flasks of alchemist fire can be used to slow the advance of most monsters or scary nonflying wizards.

I think instead of commanders, being loud and easily noticed, the higher level guys are still sitting in their foxhole destroying whatever gets to it.

Cavalry still works mostly but it might be spread out too
Also wizards can use move earth+fabricate to create a very basic fort. Instantaneous forts are not something seen ancient warfare.

About the spear and the formation :
Try lining up 1st level warriors or even 1st level commoners in a single block.
Equip them with pikes. They can ready an action against an incoming foe to double the damages. If somebody charge the front of the formation, he'll be dealt 3 attacks by first rank, at double damage, before even setting his first blow, then 3 by the next rank, at double damage, when he reaches melee. At this point, the first rank decide if they shift to short swords (if they only face a few enemies trying to break the formation) or if they keep using the pikes (if they face a whole formation of enemies). For 1st level commoner, the possibility to inflict 2d8 damage without being hit in return is a bonus. The fact that his buddies will inflict 2d8 damage soon before he is hit by the enemy is also a bonus.

The spear only provide the "double damage" effect, not the reach, but that's still something. And the fact that you are in formation also means you cannot be attack from many direction so it's somewhat easier to defend.

Saph
2009-07-30, 02:48 AM
Hey, I see a new use for the army in these recent posts, its all a ploy with advanced communications and teleportation attacking any part of one army will tell the other sides wizards exactly where the opposing sides other high level wizard is, so Team A wizard 17 runs amok killing thousands on team B. Team B identifies threat the then Team B wizard 17 buffs stops time and teleports close to Team A wizard and destroys Team A wizard.

Winning the conventional war makes it so that the other guy screws up and reveals his position first.

That's actually a perfectly viable tactic.

You hold your big guns in reserve and attack with your weak units. Once they start making enough of a nuisance of themselves, the enemy sends in their high-level characters to slaughter your mooks. Once they've exposed themselves, they're vulnerable, and you kill them with your own high-level characters.

Just like in real battles, victory often goes to whoever's got the most reserves.

- Saph

mint
2009-07-30, 05:38 AM
Before the fairly recent advances in medical science, didn't more soldiers die to diseases and poor logistics rather than actual fighting?
Clerics and wizards would probably use most of their magic to keep everyone fed and capable of fighting.
I don't know that I'd employ casters in actual combat unless I had to, losing too many of them would be such a huge logistical blow.

Dr_Emperor
2009-07-30, 08:01 AM
About the spear and the formation :
Try lining up 1st level warriors or even 1st level commoners in a single block.
Equip them with pikes. They can ready an action against an incoming foe to double the damages. If somebody charge the front of the formation, he'll be dealt 3 attacks by first rank, at double damage, before even setting his first blow, then 3 by the next rank, at double damage, when he reaches melee.

I was going to argue against this but my arguments were predicated on two things, one being better more expensive equipment (tower shields), the second based on ignoring your line and shooting it, so the tactic works for warriors and it effectively for some period owns the ground its standing on, I'm not sure how it advances using D&D rules, but it literally owns the ground its on. Well, unless it attracts the attention of PC like classes with larger wealth. Commoners may use it but are only proficient with one weapon so no sword drawing.

Mint what you say is really true, but if we win the battle in a day all we need are logistics up to that day then we raid the other dudes camps, agreed the idea could be suicidal to imply we'll win the battle then use the other guys stuff, but it might be worth it if you were the defending army, and the other guy was moving quick.

Also quick question, I heard there were mob rules in DMG2 would those be easily adapted to formations, so like the PC's could fight a 100 man phalanx?

Eldariel
2009-07-30, 09:29 AM
Before the fairly recent advances in medical science, didn't more soldiers die to diseases and poor logistics rather than actual fighting?
Clerics and wizards would probably use most of their magic to keep everyone fed and capable of fighting.
I don't know that I'd employ casters in actual combat unless I had to, losing too many of them would be such a huge logistical blow.

Yes. This is what I've been saying all along... Not to mention, troops lost in the battlefield because they have no orders and get left behind the line of battle and slaughtered, the ones that receive the withdrawal orders too late, the ones that think the battle is lost and surrender because of no other allied units in sight and so on.

Casters' indirect support is much huger than their indirect support (which is considerable) for medieval warfare, making things much more like they are nowadays.

GoC
2009-07-30, 11:11 AM
Warfare would involve mostly really epic constructs. Using The Stronghold Builder's guide I made a 800K gp flying fort that would decimate arbitrarily large armies (or ignoring them as anything under level 9 couldn't hurt it at all and anything under level 17 could do very very little) and it didn't even require casters of over level 13 to make!
The only problem is if Disjunction is available. And if that's available then obviously your DM/overdeity cares nothing about balance and you can expect those two 17th level wizards fighting to call in all the armies of heaven, hell, mechanus AND limbo to aid them.

Also, see The Book of Armies thread.
It's actually cheaper to make the flying fortress than it is to make a tiny 10,000 person army.

Saph
2009-07-30, 12:24 PM
So you think it's fair to abuse a splatbook to build an indestructible construct fortress, but unfair for the DM to allow the one spell that would threaten it? Interesting definition of balance. :)

I think I was making a D&D army, it would be a mixture of medieval and modern. You'd have the cannon fodder (advance guard of thousands of mooks whose purpose would be to trigger the enemy's traps and overload his ability to process information), infantry (ranged units, reasonably intelligent, mixed in with the cannon fodder), tanks (big tough monsters), close air support (dragons and similar), and your reserve force of high-level characters whose main target are going to be their enemy counterparts.

GoC
2009-07-30, 01:02 PM
So you think it's fair to abuse a splatbook to build an indestructible construct fortress, but unfair for the DM to allow the one spell that would threaten it? Interesting definition of balance. :)
It is generally assumed that there is an agreement between DM and players that neither use disjunction. Otherwise the players end up itemless and that's no fun for anyone.

Saph
2009-07-30, 01:10 PM
It is generally assumed that there is an agreement between DM and players that neither use disjunction. Otherwise the players end up itemless and that's no fun for anyone.

Well, yes. It's also generally assumed that there's an agreement between DM and players that neither abuses the item crafting rules. If you break an agreement, you shouldn't be surprised when the DM does the same.

Eldariel
2009-07-30, 01:20 PM
It is generally assumed that there is an agreement between DM and players that neither use disjunction. Otherwise the players end up itemless and that's no fun for anyone.

Eh, Disjunction rarely leaves players itemless since each item gets the character's Will-save. Although I guess some players frown upon losing WPL, but hey, Rust Monsters are a fair game! Bleh, with a bit more versatile non-casters (say even just ToB), people get by without items just fine anyways.

The bigger reason Disjunction is frowned upon is the huge amount of work it takes to figure out which items have what modifiers and go through resolving it (it's probably ~100 or so rolls) in addition to being able to remove any spells other than AMF regardless of their caster level, so deities' non-epic effects are perfectly Disjunctionable by level 17 Wizards.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-07-30, 02:21 PM
Eh, Disjunction rarely leaves players itemless since each item gets the character's Will-save. Although I guess some players frown upon losing WPL, but hey, Rust Monsters are a fair game! Bleh, with a bit more versatile non-casters (say even just ToB), people get by without items just fine anyways.I've played in an AMF before. Itemless is no fun when your enemies aren't. ToB can survive, Arcanists and Druids can prosper, and non-zilla Clerics can buff just fine, but sneaks and most melee gets hosed.

Lamech
2009-07-30, 03:02 PM
Eh, Disjunction rarely leaves players itemless since each item gets the character's Will-save. Although I guess some players frown upon losing WPL, but hey, Rust Monsters are a fair game! Bleh, with a bit more versatile non-casters (say even just ToB), people get by without items just fine anyways.

The bigger reason Disjunction is frowned upon is the huge amount of work it takes to figure out which items have what modifiers and go through resolving it (it's probably ~100 or so rolls) in addition to being able to remove any spells other than AMF regardless of their caster level, so deities' non-epic effects are perfectly Disjunctionable by level 17 Wizards.

If your fine with things that break WBL, there is this little spell called fabricate. Makes the players non-item less, in fact makes them very rich. No more WBL loss. Unless of course, your the DM and your fine with spells that break WBL as long as you control them which as far as I'm concerned is shaddy. Anyway if disjunction might be used get all the magic toys in a numbered list, tell the players what they need to make the save. Go to a dice roller program and BOOM! You know what is left. Not much worse than losing items from a AMF.

AstralFire
2009-07-30, 03:16 PM
He's saying that you have to pause the session for thirty minutes or more when they get out of the field to recalculate stats most of the time.

Johel
2009-07-30, 04:11 PM
I was going to argue against this but my arguments were predicated on two things, one being better more expensive equipment (tower shields), the second based on ignoring your line and shooting it, so the tactic works for warriors and it effectively for some period owns the ground its standing on, I'm not sure how it advances using D&D rules, but it literally owns the ground its on. Well, unless it attracts the attention of PC like classes with larger wealth. Commoners may use it but are only proficient with one weapon so no sword drawing.

Mint what you say is really true, but if we win the battle in a day all we need are logistics up to that day then we raid the other dudes camps, agreed the idea could be suicidal to imply we'll win the battle then use the other guys stuff, but it might be worth it if you were the defending army, and the other guy was moving quick.

Also quick question, I heard there were mob rules in DMG2 would those be easily adapted to formations, so like the PC's could fight a 100 man phalanx?

I blame my bad english for not understanding what you meant here. So, sorry if I misunderstood what you said.

About the commoner's second weapon :
I somewhat rushed the thing when writting the part about commoners drawing swords for close combat. Commoners aren't meant to engage in close combat anyway (they are basically redshirt holding a pike).
If the general is a pragmatic type, he won't mind them having a -4 penalty on their attack if they can slow down the enemy for one round with their body. This way, the rest of the "phalanx" can attack with the pike for one more turn.
If the general is a humanist type, he'll spend sometime to train them to get the Simple Weapon Proficiency and then provide clubs. It's a cheap, easy to make, easy to use weapon than can even be thrown. It cost nearly nothing (the SRD says zero gp but I guess so much wood would cost something if a whole army had to be equipped with clubs).

About movement, shooting and stuff :
D&D rules says shooting at a mob of 1.000 is the same as shooting at 1.000 individuals : 5% will touch because of natural 20', the rest depends of the archer's skill and the target's AC. Rules SHOULD concider thick formation as one single creature with AC size penalty, to be realistic.
D&D rules says movement of a mob of 1.000 is the same as 1.000 individuals moving : 9m (6 cases) per round on normal ground. Rules SHOULD slow them a little, to be realistic.
They don't.
I know they are ways to defeat a phalanx-like group but listing them is moot here, as many spells can do this better, faster and for a lot cheaper.
My point was to show that, in D&D, formation gives advantages to troops when they fight other troops who don't use formation.

About the logistic :
Mint's point is more about medicine. Magic or not, your army must still walk/ride from home to the battlefields. That takes time and a huge mass of people traveling together with little to no hygiene means diseases spread fast. Hunger, exhaution and wounds weaken soldiers over time and they easily fell sick as a result. Priests with magic could avoid that, especially during sieges.

@other people :
About disjunction :
Also, with or without agreement with the DM, players don't use disjunction simply because they want the loot. They are (for the most part) greedy adventurers who risk their lifes to get wealth, power and fame. If a giant flying fortress of doom goes zapping thousands of your buddies, you don't exactly ask yourself if there's a way to simply disarm it so you could drive it. You try to dispel whatever magic it's using to rain death !! Then, maybe, in the ruins of the crash *something* shiny can be salvaged.

Eldariel
2009-07-30, 04:17 PM
If your fine with things that break WBL, there is this little spell called fabricate. Makes the players non-item less, in fact makes them very rich. No more WBL loss. Unless of course, your the DM and your fine with spells that break WBL as long as you control them which as far as I'm concerned is shaddy. Anyway if disjunction might be used get all the magic toys in a numbered list, tell the players what they need to make the save. Go to a dice roller program and BOOM! You know what is left. Not much worse than losing items from a AMF.

Eh, there's a reason I don't use standard D&D economy since it's broken by default. I use something closer to F&K's economy, because that's what Core pretty much forces, even if you ban Planar Bindings and Wish chains; money and materials is easy to generate for free for higher level casters.

That said, Disjunction...yeah, what Fire said.

Kemper Boyd
2009-07-30, 07:11 PM
So you think it's fair to abuse a splatbook to build an indestructible construct fortress, but unfair for the DM to allow the one spell that would threaten it? Interesting definition of balance. :)

I think that someone doing that kinda abuse would be subject not to Disjunction, but the DM casting the "Get out of my game" spell.

Yahzi
2009-07-30, 08:15 PM
So, I ask you - what would war really look like in a fantasy world?
It would look like chapter 37 of my novel, Sword of the Bright Lady.

Well, minus the firearms.

:smallbiggrin:

Have you ever noticed that monsters/foes never retreat in D&D? There's a reason for this. Most people don't die right away; they bleed out or succumb to infection. But healing magic prevents this - if you win. The victorious side gets to heal their wounded, raise their dead, and loot their foes to pay for it all. The losers get nothing. So everyone in the D&D world fights with incredible morale, often standing to the last man, hoping for a miracle to turn the tide of battle, because that's the best way to survive.

One overlap between tech and magic is area-effect spells; pike squares and shield walls are much less common in D&D. However, this works to the hero's advantage, because it means he usually faces a few foes at a time instead of a mass of men who could grapple/flank/overwhelm him.

Forbiddance becomes a virtual necessity - it's the cheapest way to plane-lock a large area. Castles are still built, because they're still useful against wandering tribes of orcs.

One interesting aspect is that there is plenty of low-level combat. In D&D, he who wins initiative usually wins. Low-level troops have one and only one function: to probe the enemy lines until they reveal the high levels. Thus you send your lowbies into the field to fight, while your high-levels hide. Whoever's lowbies start getting pwned eventually has to step in to save them, thus revealing their position, and thus getting jumped by the other high-levels. (Edit - I see Saph & co. have already noted this)

Never once have I seen a DM have an army march around for months, totally lost, unable to find the enemy army or even the enemy towns. D&D magic (and game practice) prevent this, although in real-life medieval warfare it was positively common. It's easy to get enough long-distance communication magic to actually come to battle.

Set-piece battles would be even more common than they were in real life, as each side wants to buff up maximally before engaging. Tactical or magical surprises would be less common, as anybody with any sense would use divination magic to forewarn them of the enemy's strengths.

Potions and wands break battles, in the same way they break D&D. A wand of fireballs in the hands of a 1st level apprentice is the equivalent of an artillery piece. 10 of them and the battle seems more like science-fiction than modern warfare. Also, my goblins have giant animated statue battle-bots, which converted gold + 1st level NPC into a challenge for 5th level characters.

There's an old thread I started years ago, called The Book of Armies, that had a bunch of different military build-outs.

Dr_Emperor
2009-07-30, 08:20 PM
I blame my bad english for not understanding what you meant here. So, sorry if I misunderstood what you said.


If the general is a pragmatic type, he won't mind them having a -4 penalty on their attack if they can slow down the enemy for one round with their body. This way, the rest of the "phalanx" can attack with the pike for one more turn.
If the general is a humanist type, he'll spend sometime to train them to get the Simple Weapon Proficiency and then provide clubs. It's a cheap, easy to make, easy to use weapon than can even be thrown. It cost nearly nothing (the SRD says zero gp but I guess so much wood would cost something if a whole army had to be equipped with clubs).


I know they are ways to defeat a phalanx-like group but listing them is moot here, as many spells can do this better, faster and for a lot cheaper.
My point was to show that, in D&D, formation gives advantages to troops when they fight other troops who don't use formation.

About the logistic :
Mint's point is more about medicine. Magic or not, your army must still walk/ride from home to the battlefields. That takes time and a huge mass of people traveling together with little to no hygiene means diseases spread fast. Hunger, exhaution and wounds weaken soldiers over time and they easily fell sick as a result. Priests with magic could avoid that, especially during sieges.



I was agreeing with you mostly. I just think the same things that are good against those mages are good against large grouped units. (range combat, smaller mobile units, cover)

Yea disease from low hygiene, this thread had me read the rules on that, I think disease will come up more for my PCs.

I think another good question that might come up in this is how all the different races fight war. I mean halflings and elves are not built for melee against orcs. I mean humans are very much the same even if they are from different regions and fought differently.

GoC
2009-07-30, 09:11 PM
Well, yes. It's also generally assumed that there's an agreement between DM and players that neither abuses the item crafting rules. If you break an agreement, you shouldn't be surprised when the DM does the same.

It's entirely RAI, takes a very long time to make and is outside the budget of a PC. These are war machines for countries not the personal toy of a PC.
I was just saying that things like disjunction, timestop, celerity, shapechange, ect. are generally on the banned list while these rules are not because the PCs themselves can't abuse them.

Johel
2009-07-31, 05:53 AM
I think another good question that might come up in this is how all the different races fight war. I mean halflings and elves are not built for melee against orcs. I mean humans are very much the same even if they are from different regions and fought differently.

The Orcs :

High birthrate
High melee bonus (+4 in strenght)
Poor equipement (mostly primitive tribes)
Usually poor in magic (-2 in all mental stats...)


The "probing" battles are just deathtraps for them, as their high-level spellcasters will probably be less powerful and less numerous than the other side so what's the points of luring the enemy if you can't beat him ?
Large invasions are just suicide if the enemy has high-level spellcasters. A gathering of thousands of orcs in the same place is like calling for punishement.
So, more like hundred of small bands using guerilla tactics and scrotched ground. In a skirmish in the open, low-level orcs have the upper hand on low-level humans. They would win wars by breaking the enemy's food economy, forcing them to spread their forces thin to insure production and supply.
This doesn't have to be a collective effort, just the result of individual bands of pillagers having fun. After all, even an orc commoner is a potent threat for 1st level human warriors.

The Elves :

Low birthrate (ecology + late maturity)
Above-average range, dodge and stealth bonus (+2 Dexterity)
Below-average hit points (-2 Constitution)
All proficient with longbows.


The "probing" battles would be costly for a race already less than prolific. But it can be done, though.
Large invasions are out of question : they don't have the manpower and can't risk a direct battle, where there be plenty of melee.
Guerilla tactics where bowmen act like snipers or commandos are good. Druids can be a massive help, here. Basically, they would win a war by making it too costly for the enemy to advance into their territory.

The Halflings :

Above-average range, dodge and stealth bonus (+2 Dexterity and size)
Below-average melee bonus (-2 Strenght and size)
Good saves
Good with throw weapons


Laugh if you want but they are the perfect assassins and an efficient counter to spellcasters. So, "probing" battles are actually perfect for them, as they will better resist the spells with area of effect while being actually able to sneak on the high-level spellcasters with something else than a spellcaster (a team of high-level rogues, under "Greater Invisibility" spell" and "Fly" spells, with slings and "Greater Dispel" scrolls).
However, since they would probably LOSE the "probing" melee battles without their own spellcasters stepping in, it might be down to sheer luck.

Set
2009-07-31, 07:57 AM
About the spear and the formation :
Try lining up 1st level warriors or even 1st level commoners in a single block.
Equip them with pikes. They can ready an action against an incoming foe to double the damages. If somebody charge the front of the formation, he'll be dealt 3 attacks by first rank, at double damage, before even setting his first blow, then 3 by the next rank, at double damage, when he reaches melee. At this point, the first rank decide if they shift to short swords (if they only face a few enemies trying to break the formation) or if they keep using the pikes (if they face a whole formation of enemies). For 1st level commoner, the possibility to inflict 2d8 damage without being hit in return is a bonus. The fact that his buddies will inflict 2d8 damage soon before he is hit by the enemy is also a bonus.

It would be even easier to convince the first rank to take the Total Defense action, and hide behind tower shields, and allow the 2nd rank to stab through them with longspears or whatever. Third and later ranks can have replacement shield and spearmen, ready to rush up and replace fallen men, as well as archers. Those shieldbearers not under immediate attack can use Aid Other actions to assist those near them that are under attack (giving them another +2 AC), or Aid Other the spearman behind them (giving him a +2 to attack). Combined with some affordable protection (at least studded leather), these low-level Warriors (Commoners, whatever) have a snowballs chance in hell of keeping tougher opponents at bay long enough for the spearmen and archers to perforate them.

There are quite a few third-party feats that benefit the phalanx fighter style, and even peasant levies could be trained using the DMG2 rules for teamwork benefits, without having to blow a feat, or benefit from some sort of defensive command aura benefit from Heroes of Battle (both of which would require a higher level sergeant or whatever to coordinate their actions, but that sort of thing would be fairly expected in most military units, anyway).

Aid Other, especially against lower level foes, can be extremely effective, and if a 1st level evil cultist Cleric has his two otherwise fairly unimpressive Rebuked Skeletons stand adjacent to him with shields and using Aid Other to provide him an AC bonus, he gets a very frustrating (for the 1st level PCs trying to kill him) +4 to AC. At higher levels, losing an entire action to give someone a pathetic +2 to attack or AC is hardly worth considering, but when your army consists of 1st level Warriors who would only get one mediochre action anyway, Aid Other can be pretty helpful. It's also great for those gangup attacks by angry Kobolds, Goblins, Halflings, etc. who are trying to bring down and overbear larger foes.

Triaxx
2009-07-31, 09:07 AM
Robert Jordan: Dumai's Well's. And in a seperate instance, he did teleport into an enemy city where the opponent was prepared for him and his allies were slaughtered almost to the man. (They got better.) Proving that anticipating teleportation is a hell of a tactic.

Mercede's Lackey came up with some good implementations. Yes, Wizards are very powerful when confronting armies, but unlike D&D wizards they get tired from casting, but can protect themselves from spells. However with time, or combination, opposing wizards can batter down their defenses. So while a well placed wizard can turn the tide of a battle, having one on the other side is sufficient to counter-act the first. Plus when a spell is broken, it snaps back on the wizard, another effect that would be deadly in D&D, but not on a grand scale of warfare.

On the other hand, the low level wizards are only capable of drawing on their own reserves for combat. Higher levels get to draw on outside, natural resources of magic to fight. Which definitely changes the nature of the field.

---

I have thrown together a world based around the idea of using magic in war. At first, it seems that wizards are the single defining feature of a battle. Until one side develops the ability to shield against that magic. Either absorbing, reflecting, or merely turning it aside. At that point two arms races take place. One is attempting to find non-magical means of delivering magical attacks, and the second is a magical arms race to find a way to punch through those defenses. Constructing a magical shield out of pure energy is great, until someone overloads it and turns your wizard into a pile of ashes because his spell backed up on him.

On the other hand, a crossbow bolt, or arrow with a tip that bursts into a fireball on impact is a massive advantage. Having low level wizards sitting back and focusing on churning them out is definitely an advantage. This means of course that cavalry becomes important, particularly those units that have their mounts enhanced to let them close before the archers can get off more than one or two shots and kill them so they can't use those nasty spells. Which means you need pikes to counter the horses. Which means melee to counter the pikes by attracting their attention and getting them away from the horses. Which means archers to stop the opponents from doing the same to yours. And this all assumes a two-dimensional battlefield.

The same setting added airships, which don't operate efficiently below three thousand feet, but have full cannons, as well as their own magical shields capable of deflecting both magic and cannonfire. However defending against both means that either weakens the targets. Cannons can do a great deal of damage to enemies, but don't need to rest like Wizards. On the other hand, Wizards can do far more damage, but get tired. Then there are fighters, which are small, fast and piloted either by wizards, archers, or melee fighters who can get inside the shields on big ships, and can't really be hit with cannons, but are something wizards and archers can fight. Fighters range from small, single man ships, to four man flying tanks, to boats that can hold perhaps a dozen men to board an enemy ship. Including a Wizard to defend any of these just makes sense. And unlike the big ships, fighters can manuever under that three thousand foot ceiling, which makes them deadly, both to the pilots and to anyone that gets in the way. Having the ability to move dozens of men in those boats rather than having to march them to the battlefield is definitely a bonus over having them arrive tired and hungry.

Under siege conditions on the other hand, not only can you prepare for the enemy to arrive, both with spells to block any sort of teleportation within range of the castle or strong point, but you can also use magic to reinforce the walls of the castle. They might have cannons, but once those cannons are found not to even dent the walls, they'll have to try a new tactic. Scaling ladders become much more effective when you send a handful of elite troopers flying to the top of the wall to clear a space for the ladders.

Johel
2009-07-31, 03:27 PM
It would be even easier to convince the first rank to take the Total Defense action, and hide behind tower shields, and allow the 2nd rank to stab through them with longspears or whatever...

Aid Other...

I like it.
I've just check to be sure but you're right : "Aid Another" bonus stack !!

The "D&D Cheap Phalanx"


1st Rank : Commoners (1d4 hp) with Leather (+2 AC) Towershields (+4 AC) Total Defense (+4 AC)
AC 20 = 15% to be hit by a 1st warrior with Strength 13.
2nd Rank : Commoners (1d4 hp) with Leather (+2 AC) Longspears
3rd Rank : Commoners (1d4 hp) with Leather (+2 AC) Longspears
...
Last Rank : Warriors (1d8 hp) with Scale Mail (+4 AC) Longsword and Javelines.


That would work, yes.
When 1st Rank is attacked, 2nd Rank hit until 1st Rank breaks.
When 2nd Rank is attacked, it uses "Aid Another" to give a +2 attack bonus to the 3rd Rank, which hit.
When 3rd Rank is attacked,...
And so on, until the enemy's second line is in range for the javelines.
Then the warriors throw the javelines and move by the flanks to kill as many enemies as they can, releasing pressure from the commoners while adding some on the attackers. Hopefully, the enemy panicks and flee.

Let's add some warrior with crossbow to play skirmishers, so that the enemy won't just sit and wait for us (the longspears have to stand still for one round to prepare the attack so we can't charge the enemy). It will be polyvalent enough to face most non-magical threat. For the latter, a low-level spellcaster with a Antimagic Field scroll should do the trick for a small-sized phalanx and protect it for about 2 hours. Another low-level spellcaster with a wand of fireball, by going just out of the AMF, can bombard the enemy to force a charge or a retreat.

Other idea :
The Magic Air Force
1 wizard "Commander" (7th level or higher) for up to 7 squadrons
1 wand of Polymorph for up to 7 squadrons

1 squadron :
1 wizard "Leader" (6th level or higher)
6 wizards "Wingmen" (1st level or higher)
7 wands of Fireball
1 wand of Greater Invisibility
Tactical manual :
Round 1 to 7
"Commander" casts Polymorph on the squadron's members.
They all look like Pixies. They can fly and so take off immediately.
The spells will last 70 rounds.
"Leader" cast 1 "Message" spell on its whole squadron.
The spells will last 60 minutes
"Leader" cast 1 "Message" spell on "Commander"
The spells will last 60 minutes
"Leader" cast "See Invisible" on himself
The spells will last 60 minutes
Round 7 to 19
"Leader" arranges the squadron in formation through the "Message" spell. He's at the center, the "Wingmen" form a circle around him, each 100 feet away from him.
Round 20 to 26
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Leader", who see the invisible and can communicate telepathically with the "Wingmen", keep the formation, locate the first targets and assign them to individual "Wingmen".
"Wingmen" cast "Fireball" on the first targets.
Round 27 to 33
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 34 to 40
The Squadron turns back.
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the remaining targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 41 to 47
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the remaining targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 48 to 54
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the remaining targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 55 to 61
"Wingmen" stop casting and lower altitude.
Those who can probably cast "Feather Fall", just in case the timing is wrong.
"Leader" contact "Commander" to ready the "Levitate" wand and report any casualties.
Round 62 to 70
Landing
IF PROBLEM :
"Levitate" can be cast on anybody whose Polymorph spell runs out.
"Leader" has a "Fireball" wand to deal with flying threat.
"Wingmen" can fly higher to counter ground threat.

Effective expanse for one offensive mission : 102.750 gp
6 wands of "Fireball" = 78.750 gp
1 wand of "Greater Invisibility" = 21.000
1/7 of a wand of "Polymorph" = 3.000

Potential but non-effective expanse for the whole war : 15.750 gp
1 wand of "Levitate" = 4.500 gp
1 wand of "Fireball" = 11.250 gp

If we suppose that each wand of fireball (50 charges) allow its user to hit an average of 500 soldiers (10 hits per fireball), that gives us a maximum 3.000 hits per mission.
102.750 gp / 3.000 hits = 34,25 gp per hit (best estimation).
Most people will die if hit.

If we suppose that each wand of fireball (50 charges) allow its user to hit an average of 50 soldiers (1 hit per fireball), that gives us a minimum 300 hits per mission.
102.750 gp / 300 hits = 342,5 gp per hit (worst estimation).
Most people will still die if hit.

Eldariel
2009-08-02, 12:48 PM
I like it.
I've just check to be sure but you're right : "Aid Another" bonus stack !!

The "D&D Cheap Phalanx"


1st Rank : Commoners (1d4 hp) with Leather (+2 AC) Towershields (+4 AC) Total Defense (+4 AC)
AC 20 = 15% to be hit by a 1st warrior with Strength 13.
2nd Rank : Commoners (1d4 hp) with Leather (+2 AC) Longspears
3rd Rank : Commoners (1d4 hp) with Leather (+2 AC) Longspears
...
Last Rank : Warriors (1d8 hp) with Scale Mail (+4 AC) Longsword and Javelines.


That would work, yes.
When 1st Rank is attacked, 2nd Rank hit until 1st Rank breaks.
When 2nd Rank is attacked, it uses "Aid Another" to give a +2 attack bonus to the 3rd Rank, which hit.
When 3rd Rank is attacked,...
And so on, until the enemy's second line is in range for the javelines.
Then the warriors throw the javelines and move by the flanks to kill as many enemies as they can, releasing pressure from the commoners while adding some on the attackers. Hopefully, the enemy panicks and flee.

Let's add some warrior with crossbow to play skirmishers, so that the enemy won't just sit and wait for us (the longspears have to stand still for one round to prepare the attack so we can't charge the enemy). It will be polyvalent enough to face most non-magical threat. For the latter, a low-level spellcaster with a Antimagic Field scroll should do the trick for a small-sized phalanx and protect it for about 2 hours. Another low-level spellcaster with a wand of fireball, by going just out of the AMF, can bombard the enemy to force a charge or a retreat.

Other idea :
The Magic Air Force
1 wizard "Commander" (7th level or higher) for up to 7 squadrons
1 wand of Polymorph for up to 7 squadrons

1 squadron :
1 wizard "Leader" (6th level or higher)
6 wizards "Wingmen" (1st level or higher)
7 wands of Fireball
1 wand of Greater Invisibility
Tactical manual :
Round 1 to 7
"Commander" casts Polymorph on the squadron's members.
They all look like Pixies. They can fly and so take off immediately.
The spells will last 70 rounds.
"Leader" cast 1 "Message" spell on its whole squadron.
The spells will last 60 minutes
"Leader" cast 1 "Message" spell on "Commander"
The spells will last 60 minutes
"Leader" cast "See Invisible" on himself
The spells will last 60 minutes
Round 7 to 19
"Leader" arranges the squadron in formation through the "Message" spell. He's at the center, the "Wingmen" form a circle around him, each 100 feet away from him.
Round 20 to 26
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Leader", who see the invisible and can communicate telepathically with the "Wingmen", keep the formation, locate the first targets and assign them to individual "Wingmen".
"Wingmen" cast "Fireball" on the first targets.
Round 27 to 33
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 34 to 40
The Squadron turns back.
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the remaining targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 41 to 47
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the remaining targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 48 to 54
"Leader" casts "Greater Invisibility" on the squadron.
The spells will last for 7 rounds.
"Wingmen" keep casting "Fireball" on the remaining targets, according to the instructions of "Leader"
Round 55 to 61
"Wingmen" stop casting and lower altitude.
Those who can probably cast "Feather Fall", just in case the timing is wrong.
"Leader" contact "Commander" to ready the "Levitate" wand and report any casualties.
Round 62 to 70
Landing
IF PROBLEM :
"Levitate" can be cast on anybody whose Polymorph spell runs out.
"Leader" has a "Fireball" wand to deal with flying threat.
"Wingmen" can fly higher to counter ground threat.

Effective expanse for one offensive mission : 102.750 gp
6 wands of "Fireball" = 78.750 gp
1 wand of "Greater Invisibility" = 21.000
1/7 of a wand of "Polymorph" = 3.000

Potential but non-effective expanse for the whole war : 15.750 gp
1 wand of "Levitate" = 4.500 gp
1 wand of "Fireball" = 11.250 gp

If we suppose that each wand of fireball (50 charges) allow its user to hit an average of 500 soldiers (10 hits per fireball), that gives us a maximum 3.000 hits per mission.
102.750 gp / 3.000 hits = 34,25 gp per hit (best estimation).
Most people will die if hit.

If we suppose that each wand of fireball (50 charges) allow its user to hit an average of 50 soldiers (1 hit per fireball), that gives us a minimum 300 hits per mission.
102.750 gp / 300 hits = 342,5 gp per hit (worst estimation).
Most people will still die if hit.


And here is the result for how Aid Another works. (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=458721)

Johel
2009-08-02, 03:49 PM
And here is the result for how Aid Another works. (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=458721)

...
To imagine that is to be a really creative mind
To conceive the final application is being a nolife genius.
To actually use it in a game is a garanteed life-long ban.

Still like, though :smallamused:

Altima
2009-08-03, 07:23 PM
When considering D&D armies, there are just about an endless amount of variables.

Pretty much most sources agree (even in extremely heavy magic settings, like Forgotten Realms) that the ability to use magic or pseudo-magic is extremely rare. If your nations have millions of people, yes, they may have a good staple of spellcasters they can hire of impress into service. However, smaller nations, with populations in the tens or maybe hundreds of thousands, they may only have a couple dozen spellcasters.

After that, consider the levels involved. In most D&D settings, level 7 is considered extremely accomplished. It wouldn't be out of the question to have most spellcasters as level 3-5. Able to handle NPC classes, sure, but not invincible (especially mages).

With that in mind, what happens when you're lucky enough to get a high leveled spellcaster? Personally, I wouldn't want to waste her in anything but an extremely important battle. So there may be a few pre-battle spells, like control weather or something, but I wouldn't think a high level character would actually be on field.

Especially if the opposing forces know about said spellcaster and respond by keeping in reserve a small core of individuals (like, say, an adventuring party...or demons) capable of locking in on said spellcaster, popping up, and blowing her to hell. Even if said spellcaster isn't on field, these people can also be used to gut the general of said army.

More to consider are the actual races involved in the conflict. Humans may go for big, wasteful assaults because they breed like rabbits, but what about other races? Elves would certainly be fearful, as they have higher percentages of adventurer-style individuals, fight on their home turf, and their mega-casters don't die of old age for a looooooong time, allowing them to approach truly scary abilities to the average footsoldier.

And, let's face it, fantastical racism should be in full effect in most cases. I don't see your typical orc or ogre working with, say, humans or halflings without a really, really good reason (like lots and lots of gold--but even then, it'd cause conflicts within the army, anyway). On the other thing, an actual full army composed of orcs, ogres, giants, goblins, and so on, would probably be one of the most powerful forces in the region, given that they breed like rabbits AND are superior individual warrios when compared to your average human. Traditionally, most medieval and pre-medieval armies are mostly composed of laymans, and not professional fighting people.

Plus, you know, wizards can very rarely slaughter an army by themselves. Sure, they can give an inferior army a crushing advantage, but warriors are still needed to get some kills.

And then there's the other variables. Undead, for example, don't need to eat or sleep (mostly). They can be force marched over long distances, don't suffer penalties for fighting at night, and so on.

Creatures like older dragons and maybe some near-epic mages could probably be considered nations in their own right. I could see a kingdom having a treaty with such beings to allow trade to move through the region in exchange for a small tithe rather than risk upsetting something that would probably be more trouble than they're worth.

Yahzi
2009-08-03, 11:04 PM
Pretty much most sources agree (even in extremely heavy magic settings, like Forgotten Realms) that the ability to use magic or pseudo-magic is extremely rare.
Every source except the DMG, which clearly states you can find magic-users in every small town.


After that, consider the levels involved. In most D&D settings, level 7 is considered extremely accomplished.
At 5th level you can start crafting Magic Missile wands. While 15 gp per shot is expensive, one shot will down most unleveled people; three shots will usually drop a 1st level fighter (and they never miss!). 45 gold to kill a knight? That's a fraction of the cost of his (useless) armor.

Imagine 100 1st level wizards with INT 11 and a wand of magic missiles. They could insta-kill 5th level parties, if they weren't prepared.


So there may be a few pre-battle spells, like control weather or something, but I wouldn't think a high level character would actually be on field.
There are a lot more than a few pre-battle spells. But you're right, fielding your mage is a sign of desperation.


On the other thing, an actual full army composed of orcs, ogres, giants, goblins, and so on, would probably be one of the most powerful forces in the region, given that they breed like rabbits AND are superior individual warrios when compared to your average human.
The humans still have an chance. Greater cooperation among the humans = better equipment for their soldiers, and at low levels the difference between leather and chainmail is significant.


Plus, you know, wizards can very rarely slaughter an army by themselves.
Your wizards need to go back to cheese school. :smallbiggrin:


Undead, for example, don't need to eat or sleep (mostly). They can be force marched over long distances, don't suffer penalties for fighting at night, and so on.
Which explains why, in any realistic army, the undead are all horses. A form of powered transport that doesn't require rest or food? Sounds like a half-track to me. :smallbiggrin:

Johel
2009-08-04, 06:26 AM
At 5th level you can start crafting Magic Missile wands. While 15 gp per shot is expensive, one shot will down most unleveled people; three shots will usually drop a 1st level fighter (and they never miss!). 45 gold to kill a knight? That's a fraction of the cost of his (useless) armor.

Imagine 100 1st level wizards with INT 11 and a wand of magic missiles. They could insta-kill 5th level parties, if they weren't prepared.

Could be even worse during siege :

1st CL Magic missile trap, with an auto reset every round, a lock to disable it, and installed somewhere down the walls.
Cost : 500 gp and 40 XP for a 100% accurate autogun which target any incoming intruder ? Go for it.
1st CL Sleep trap, with an auto reset every round, a lock to disable it, and installed somewhere down the walls.
Cost : 500 gp and 40 XP for a soporific grenade launcher that block whole waves of climbing footmen ? Go for it.
5th CL Summon Monster III with an auto reset every round, a lock to disable it, and installed somewhere down the walls.
Cost : 7.500 gp and 600 XP for a unlimited supply of Huge-sized fiendish centipedes with damage reduction, staling the enemy ? Go for it.



Which explains why, in any realistic army, the undead are all horses. A form of powered transport that doesn't require rest or food? Sounds like a half-track to me. :smallbiggrin:

That's it, if they are skeleton horses. Otherwise they either rot under you and simply shamble instead of going fast. I love the idea, though. :smallwink: