Ordinary men and common steel

[Yahzi]

Wizardly evocations are normally considered to dominate the battlefield. But is that true? Is it possible to have magic and still field traditional units of hundreds or thousands of men?

For our purposes an army unit will be considered 100 men, in a 50 x 50 ft square. Since they are common soldiers, with 1d4 hit die and no bonuses, we can assume they fail all saves and any damage kills them.

A Fireball has a 20 ft spread. This means it affects a maximum of 52 five-foot cubes. However, fireballs are emanations; they can be blocked by cover. The four soldiers adjacent to the center of the blast have no cover; but the 8 soldiers around them have the bodies of their comrades as Half cover (so a +2 to their save). The men beyond that have at least 2 bodies providing cover, so that counts as Nine-Tenths cover (+3 to their save). All of the rest of the men in the unit have at least 3 bodies between them and the blast, so unless the damage is sufficient to incinerate the corpses (which would require at least five times CON, I would think), they are safe. This means only 24 men will die: only a quarter of the unit.

Suppose the wizard gets clever, and aims the fireball so it is 10 ft off the ground. This air burst denies cover to the men underneath; but it also expends its maximum radius harmlessly in the air. The ideal balance between area of effect and cover comes to the same thing: 24 casualties.

Obviously that is a lot. But a 5th level wizard can only cast 1-3 Fireballs a day; that means that a 100 man pike unit is roughly equivalent to a 5th level wizard on the battlefield. If the wizard is good or lucky, many men will die and the rest will flee; if the men are dedicated and brave, the wizard will run out of spells and then die on their pikes. (Of course smart wizards would cast Fly... but then we would be talking about 100 crossbowmen. And that would be one less Fireball they can cast). Interestingly, higher level fireballs are no more effective, since their radius does not increase.

In a low magic world, with armies numbering in the thousands and only a handful of wizards, this means magic is a powerful force on the battlefield, but not the only force.

Lightning bolts are less effective; although they specifically deal damage to everything in their area, they have a small area of affect. They will only kill 10 men out of the unit (and 10 men out of the next unit, if they are adjacent).

10 foot radii spells like Flame Strike, Freezing Sphere, and Sound Burst are small enough that cover does not matter; but they only slay 12 men.

Higher-level spells that have 20 ft radii and do not allow cover will kill all 52 affected men in a single blast: Ice Storm, Black Tentacles, Unholy Blight, Cloudkill, Song of Discord, Acid Fog, Incendiary Cloud. Effects that can move will likely destroy the entire unit (unless the survivors flee). A Wall of Fire cast in its smallest circular form and facing inward will kill 52 men; facing outward, it will kill 72 men and trap the remaining 28 inside to be dealt with later. In its linear form it will kill the first 2 rows of men along its line of effect (so 20 men from one unit); the rest will have sufficient cover to retreat before the lower-level damage affects them.

The 40 foot radius spells are all centered on the caster: Holy Word, Blasphemy, Dictum, Word of Chaos. These affect 74 men if the caster is in the center of the front line.

A 50 foot radius Bless will affect 2 units.

Spells that create 10 ft cubes will kill 4 men per cube (Summon Swarm, Call Lightning, Spike Growth, Order's Wrath, Spike Stones, Call Lightning Storm, Insect Plague, Wall of Thorns, Fire Seeds, Firestorm, Creeping Doom, Prismatic Wall). These spells kill between 4 and 120 men; those that persist and move quickly will kill more; those that move slowly can be used to shape the battlefield. Reverse Gravity needs to be doubled up to inflict serious damage, so it will only kill 14 ordinary men: hardly worth a 7th level slot.

Cones are better, but require getting close to your target. 15 foot cones like Burning Hands only kill 7 men in an optimal casting; 30 foot cones like Shout and Wave of Fatigue can kill 24 men; 60 foot cones such as Cone of Cold, Greater Shout, Wave of Exhaustion and Prismatic Spray can kill 75 men, assuming they are not blocked by cover. With cover, 30 foot cones only slay 17 men and 60 foot cones only kill 30.

Symbols of Death, Insanity, and so on affect an entire adjacent unit (although the symbol of Death only does 150 hit points before burning out). After that no one will be silly enough to get close to them.

Earthquake affects an 80 foot radius, which might well be 4 entire units if they are adjacent; but it only inflicts 25% casualties. After the ground stops shaking, the troops will count themselves lucky not to have been fireballed.

Meteor Swarm creates 40 foot radius blasts, but these will be blocked by cover, so only 24 men per blast will be affected. The dreaded Storm of Vengeance will kill everything within its 360 ft radius (i.e. 150 fifty-foot battle squares!) but only after the 4th round. This basically means that summoning the storm causes the enemy army to immediately break ranks and flee for their lives (unless they are protected by sufficient fortifications such as a castle or keep).

Summoned monsters, of course, will also be effective; but soldiers are trained to fight monsters. 100 well-ordered pikemen can send a fistful of Dire Wolves packing.

In addition, the use of Tower Shields, or Large Shields and testudo formations can grant Total cover against spells and arrows. A Large Steel Shield, with its Hardness of 10 and Hit Points of 20, could even withstand a Meteor Swarm!

Thus, with careful review of the effects of spells, and appropriate strategic planning (no use letting the wizard fly away to fireball you again the next day), I think the strength of ordinary men and common steel can still decide the fates of kingdoms. Against an 11th level wizard, a thousand men backed up by only a handful of mid-level clerics and armed with a way to trap the wizard into fighting (for example, attacking his home town), may yet see victory.

What do you all think?

(Yes, I just watched The Return of the King again. Why do you ask? :smallbiggrin:)

[Doc Roc]

Chain gate solars using a candle or a scroll or even a favor from a devil. Summoning shadows. A number of plague inducing spells. Control weather for a hurricane or a tornado. Dominate person on the relevant leadership. Improved invisibility + overland flight + rocks. Lots of rocks. I could do this all day. Most of the Test of Spite was 13th level.

I suggest that you return to the dojo and crush walnuts for a while.

[Big Fau]

You are overlooking something:


Soft Cover
Creatures, even your enemies, can provide you with cover against ranged attacks, giving you a +4 bonus to AC. However, such soft cover provides no bonus on Reflex saves, nor does soft cover allow you to make a Hide check.

[PersonMan]

Stuff

Of course, if these soldiers(who are Commoners, probably conscripted) watch one man blast a fourth of their unit to ashes(or at least scorched corpses) they probably won't stick around. Additionally, if you're looking at 'normal' medieval-stasis societies, losing 1/4 of your army in a battle is something you won't recover from for a long, long time, just because your population won't 'grow back' quickly. You might win the battle, but if in the end the enemy had a few hundred soldiers and a dozen wizards that cost you a fourth of your entire army, it's a Pyrrhic Victory.


Thus, with careful review of the effects of spells, and appropriate strategic planning (no use letting the wizard fly away to fireball you again the next day), I think the strength of ordinary men and common steel can still decide the fates of kingdoms. Against an 11th level wizard, a thousand men backed up by only a handful of mid-level clerics and armed with a way to trap the wizard into fighting (for example, attacking his home town), may yet see victory.

You do know this is essentially saying 'these people can win if they have an absurd numerical advantage, magical assistance and somehow keep the wizard from going guerrilla', which is...well, who's going to assemble a thousand men and "a handful" of mid-level casters to kill one man and be able to do so easily? If it's a war, they have to deal with the enemy army, and if it isn't...why are you sending in 1000 troops to kill him in the first place?

[gkathellar]

Two things, above and beyond the trillion combos Doc Roc can throw at you. First of all, you're overlooking the many, many spells like Transmute Rock to Mud (or Lava, later on) which permanently decimate terrain and make it functionally impassible. You're forgetting spells like Mass Charm Monster which will tear a pike formation apart. You're forgetting polymorphing into something big and nasty that no sane soldier would want to enter a close fight with. You're forgetting Symbols of Sleep, Pain and Death which can be laid before a battle and will just sit there, instantly killing or immobilizing anyone who tries to pass. You're forgetting that he can SoD your commanding officers, teleport in to destroy your supplies, and generally wreak havoc on logistics. And you're forgetting that even if the wizard loses, you'll have a hell of a time preventing his escape or ensuring that he doesn't come back for revenge.

Second of all, (echoing PersonMan) how are you motivating these men to actually attack the wizard when he could do these kinds of things to them? Even if they could overwhelm him with numbers, that's a consolation for kings, not common soldiers. If being in an army that attacks a lonely wizard gives you a 25-75% chance of death, you're very unlikely not to desert. And what about the officers, who the wizard will almost certainly take pains to kill? Do you actually think they're going to willingly lead your armies into battle?

No, even if sheer numbers could overwhelm a wizard's battlefield dominance, no one would willingly be the "sheer numbers" in question.

[CTrees]

Heh, Command Undead (2nd level spell, day/lvl duration) + an allip. "Killing those soldiers who have no way to affect you" doesn't trigger the charisma check for things the creature wouldn't normally do. Heck, the wizard can just leave after sending out the allip. Shadows would work, too, but that 60' Babble is just classy.

If it's a caster attacking an entire formation on an open battlefield, though, I think we have to assume Sorcerer, not Wizard. Because why would a wizard not find guerrilla tactics to be lower risk (and more fun!). Sorcerers aren't Int-primary, after all :smallwink:

[Yahzi]

You are overlooking something:
Oh. That's a good one.

OK, well, if fireballs are going to be killing half a unit instead of just a quarter, that's actually kind of bad. The wiz-to-commoner ratio has to go down even further for commoners to matter. (Of course in LotR was 2 wizards and 30,000 commoners. :smallbiggrin: )



Of course, if these soldiers(who are Commoners, probably conscripted) watch one man blast a fourth of their unit to ashes(or at least scorched corpses) they probably won't stick around.
That's what leadership is for. Also, presumably, we are talking about a real contest here (such as the one in LotR) where even the peasants have a stake in the outcome. For traditional territory grabs by faceless aristocrats, you're right.

And yes, you have to have a way to stop the wizard from going guerrilla. Traditionally wizards are pictured as having property that matters: towers and research labs and people they care about.

As for population, that's what Cure Minor Wounds and Remove Disease is for. D&D societies have infant mortality rates of 0%, and no birth control. :smallbiggrin:



hain gate solars using a candle or a scroll or even a favor from a devil. Summoning shadows. A number of plague inducing spells. Control weather for a hurricane or a tornado. Dominate person on the relevant leadership. Improved invisibility + overland flight + rocks. Lots of rocks. I could do this all day. Most of the Test of Spite was 13th level.
Cheese aside, simply dominating the leadership is one major problem (like Saruman did to Theoden). Control weather isn't that much of a deal; tornadoes don't actually kill that many people.

Shadows, of course; but then, no one has ever explained why, by RAW, there are anything but Shadows in the world. There must be some un-explained reason why the Shadowclypse hasn't happened already; whatever that reason is probably excludes limited Shadowbombs too. (I don't know what the reason is, but every DM has to make one up for his own world).



You're forgetting spells like Mass Charm Monster which will tear a pike formation apart.
See, this is what I mean. Mass Charm Monster only charms 2xHD; that's 22 guys. The unit will stop for a few rounds to disable them, at most you should only lose 1/2 the unit. For a 6th level spell.

I did cover the Symbols. They're not that bad; 60 ft radius, and not exactly as easy to conceal as landmines.

And I can't see a high-level wizard teleporting in to blow up supplies. Every time he exposes himself, there is a risk. What if some guys just tackle him? Ok, he's got freedom of movement up; what if one of the mid-level clerics gets lucky and gets off a Dispel that works?

I do agree that the wizard has many, many advantages. I just don't think the advantages are as overwhelming as people typically assume. I thought it would be an interesting discussion (and so far, it is!).

[Zeta Kai]

Of course, if these soldiers(who are Commoners, probably conscripted) watch one man blast a fourth of their unit to ashes(or at least scorched corpses) they probably won't stick around.

I miss 2E's morale system. It wasn't very good, but it was better than nothing. Now, all the little DM's want all the little monsters to fight to the death, no matter what. I can't remember the last time that I scared anything off, even when it was obvious that my party would win. :smallsigh:

[gkathellar]

And yes, you have to have a way to stop the wizard from going guerrilla. Traditionally wizards are pictured as having property that matters: towers and research labs and people they care about.

Smart wizards put their towers and property in places that people can't actually reach. Even at early mid-levels, if you're hanging around in some peasant village you're doing it wrong. The middle of the world's densest forest, the top of a mountain ... those kinds of places.


Cheese aside, simply dominating the leadership is one major problem (like Saruman did to Theoden). Control weather isn't that much of a deal; tornadoes don't actually kill that many people.

But they cause a lot of destruction and kill a lot of people and you can't fight back against them. And when the wizard starts destroying your major urban centers, you are going to back down, or you're not going to have much of a country left to rule.


Shadows, of course; but then, no one has ever explained why, by RAW, there are anything but Shadows in the world. There must be some un-explained reason why the Shadowclypse hasn't happened already; whatever that reason is probably excludes limited Shadowbombs too.

Because high-level casters can fight shadows, and all those various other threats that ordinary men and common steel fail against.


See, this is what I mean. Mass Charm Monster only charms 2xHD; that's 22 guys. The unit will stop for a few rounds to disable them, at most you should only lose 1/2 the unit. For a 6th level spell.

And an extremely unoptimized choice for fighting armies. But it's just another option in a massive train of options.


I did cover the Symbols. They're not that bad; 60 ft radius, and not exactly as easy to conceal as landmines.

They're pretty bad when the guy you're fighting has shaped the terrain so that all three paths to reach him have symbols on them. They're pretty bad when he's got a hundred-page book with a symbol on every page, and he can just run around dropping them in the middle of formations. And most of all, they're pretty bad because they'll just sit there, being impassible barriers that kill or immobilize everyone who enters their radius.


And I can't see a high-level wizard teleporting in to blow up supplies. Every time he exposes himself, there is a risk.

He casts greater invisibility before teleporting.


What if some guys just tackle him?

Then the wizard casts Celerity and blasts the guy to high heaven, or his Contingent Polymorph goes up and he turns into a thirty-foot tall demon bear, or any number of far better options that I'm not naming.


what if one of the mid-level clerics gets lucky and gets off a Dispel that works?

So ... the only solution to fighting a caster is to use other casters? Yes, that's sort of the point.


D&D societies have infant mortality rates of 0%, and no birth control. :smallbiggrin:

Just for reference, effective contraception has existed for thousands of years.

[jbr712]

I hate to say it, but casters really do dominate the battlefield, and for good reason. Assume we're going with a unit of sorcerers of some merit - 10 sorcerers of 6th level with a charisma of 14 with 2 8th level sorcerer NCO's with charisma 16. Let's say you have an army of 4000 men broken up into the proposed 100 man companies - 40 companies, 25 melee and 15 archery. The engagement begins at long spell range with fireballs hitting formations - first casualties will be taken at 640 feet. Assuming no encumbrance and the absence of difficult terrain, archers can get in range in about 4 rounds of running assuming the sorcerers don't move at all; if the sorcerers move back each round then the archers could possibly fire on the 6th round with a -2 penalty for range (yes, even with composite longbows).

Personally, I would target the archers since they are more likely to cause me harm in the near future. So a volley from this group would include 12 fireballs, The archer units are going to be decimated a couple times over I would imagine, since the fireball would likely be detonated over the heads of the formation rather than crashing into the person in front. Archer formations I imagine would be a little different than the 50x50 blocks of infantry, probably closer to 100X25 or possibly even 250x10. The 250x10 is the easiest on the archers, so we'll assume that as a boon. 15 companies of archers in this scenario, 12 fireballs a round, minimum 4 rounds before archers are in range and firing on the 5th. We're looking at about 3 full volleys plus a couple extra from the NCO's, so by the time the archers can fire they may have taken as many as 38 fireballs. So 2 fireballs per unit with the more favorable distribution of forces would lead to an 80x10 area of corpses, 32 archers dead in each unit or 1/3 of their unit.

Let's assume the melee units are about 50' ahead of the archers initially, so by the time the fireball volleys are done they have been running for 3 rounds. I'm going to assume they are wearing some form of light armor since they're conscripts, so they run 120'/round, assuming they started at 590' they would have reached 320' after 3 rounds of running with sorcerers hustling backward 30' each round. 320' is a bit of a distance, which means magic missile volleys don't start yet; instead we use a second level spell from heroes of battle - Molten Strike. 5' radius burst. It will take 2 rounds to get within medium range, so that's two volleys of molten strike from the 10 6th level casters while the 8th level casters are flinging the last of their fireballs at the (likely panicking) archers. 5' radius can hit 4 people at a time, with 10 molten strikes per volley and two volleys before medium range, that's going to kill about 80 men before medium range.

Once they hit medium range, that's when the actual shenanigans begin. Expeditious retreat, and suddenly you'll never catch the group since it'll last for a minimum of 6 minutes. All the while they can pepper you with their remaining molten strikes and once those are gone they can hit you with magic missile for their personal amusement. They will be perfectly capable, in an open field engagement, of getting off all their spells. Even if sub-optimally used as I did here with the fireballs, you lose about 1150 men.

If the fireballs were being used better,then the infantry would have been all but eliminated- 44 deaths per fireball against the infantry if used properly, two fireballs would be enough to cause a unit to route if the first one didn't do the trick. So with a more optimal application of spell resources you're looking at 1584 deaths from the fireball volleys. 1584/2500 is roughly 60% of the infantry, the 8th level casters still have 2 more fireballs each so that would kill another 176 bringing the total death from fireballs up to a nice round 1760/2500.

If you're wondering why it's so efficient, it's because of the nasty habit people have for reforming after artillery strikes. Then we add deaths from lower level spells: 296 from molten strike and 228 from magic missiles and we bring the casualty total up to 2284/4000 - a little over 55% of the army was lost at the hands of sorcerers you likely lost track of since this took about a minute or so of the expeditious retreat duration - leaving them 5 minutes of double your movement speed to escape back to their base of operations/army camp.


So a squad of 12 guys managed to whittle your army down to half strength and the army didn't manage to catch them. Keep in mind, this is without using any of the 8th level casters 4th level spell slots or any of the crazy things that can happen with access to 5th-6th level spells (cloudkill, how a 10th level wizard can kill a brigade with one action).



I can't help but wonder how the conversation's gone since I started typing....

[Novawurmson]

I miss 2E's morale system. It wasn't very good, but it was better than nothing. Now, all the little DM's want all the little monsters to fight to the death, no matter what. I can't remember the last time that I scared anything off, even when it was obvious that my party would win. :smallsigh:

Something I enjoy about Pathfinder AP's is that they usually have a "morale" section. Some fight to the death, some fight until half their unit is gone, some fight until they get poked with a stick and then run away crying.

Regarding the OP: Also, a high level Wizard would be scrying for potential threats (like 100 pikemen marching up to his tower). Unless the pikemen live less than a day away, he's got time to set up lots of nasty spells to protect his tower, teleport to chokepoints along the way and cause havoc, create minions, etc.

[Greenish]

I miss 2E's morale system. It wasn't very good, but it was better than nothing.There's a morale system in Heroes of Battle, I seem to recall.

For OPs "fireball vs. soldiers" comparison, I think it'd be fair to remember that the people live in a world where magic exists. Trained soldiers would probably have "open" or "skirmish" formations instead of being packed tighly in adjacent squares, at least when not facing enemy infrantry.

Still, 1st level soldiers (without their mid-level support) don't stand a chance to a small, organized party of level 10+ PC classes. Even in Eberron (where level 8+ characters are very rare, and fighting forces consist mostly of level 1-2 commoners and warriors), it'll be the mid-level support and higher level characters who decide the battle. Cannon fodder will be cannon fodder.

[Edit]:
The engagement begins at long spell range with fireballs hitting formations - first casualties will be taken at 640 feet. Assuming no encumbrance and the absence of difficult terrain, archers can get in range in about 4 rounds of running assuming the sorcerers don't move at allHuh? A (non-composite) longbow has a maximum range of 1,000 ft. Sure, the range penalties are bad, but the 1st level archers were going to rely on volleys and nat 20's anyway, more than probably.

[Wookie-ranger]

why are we honestly assuming that all the soldiers are in a nice little shooting gallery formation? they could simply spread out and half teir losses.
on a side not npc warriors have 1d8

never the less.
Also: 1)why are talking about a baster? they are one of the weakest builds!
2) what about scrolls? wands? staffs? (metamagic) rods?
3) you mentioned not letting the wizard escape. how exacty do you want to do that? oh, wait, with another wizard...

anyway.
100 pawns against one 5th level wizard might be possible, thats why they have E6 because at level 6 the magic-users are not yet all-powerful.
but at wiz level 11 its whole new ballgame.
even without chain-solar / wraithpocalyps the wizard at that level has far too many options. even 1000 soldiers would not be very challenging.

you mentioned that it would be the army of a country. so it would be fair to assume to have them fight against another army.
then both would have upper-mid level wizards and would probably end up fighting each other while the soldiers are slugging it out.

[tyckspoon]

never the less.
Also: 1)why are talking about a baster? they are one of the weakest builds!


When talking about the typical elite-small-unit-against-big-monster-or-other-(relatively)-elite-small-unit engagements that make up a standard dungeon crawl or other D&D adventure, yes. When you're talking about a situation where a Fireball is near-guaranteed to kill everything it touches? There's not much reason to spend a spell single-target debuffing or doing terrain control when you could completely destroy all the targets in the same area.


Control weather isn't that much of a deal; tornadoes don't actually kill that many people.

Most of the extreme weather conditions you can cause with Control Weather are not immediately fatal, true (although forcing a 2-4 day heat wave or extreme cold front will probably cause significant losses.) However, armies of 'ordinary men' find it extraordinarily difficult or impossible to carry out combat in them. 2 days of fog in a 2 mile area? 2 day continuous hailstorm? Wreck morale, deny vision, potentially damage supplies and injure men.

[Demonic_Spoon]

1)why are talking about a baster? they are one of the weakest builds!

IMO a well optimized baster is superior to all other chefs. :smallwink::smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

[Zale]

Also, what about Metamagic?

I mean, a widened Fireball would cover 40ft in fiery death.

Or, really, a summon monster spell could be devastating on moral. Seeing a demon crocodile rip through the front ranks would make most people rethink this whole "Kill the caster" nonsense.

[Morcleon]

Learn Launch Bolt (SC). Get a few Bags of Holding III, fill each with a single Colossal 9+ crossbow bolt. Assuming a medium crossbow bolt is 4 inches long, these things are half a mile long and deal 205d8 points of damage. Shoot at soldiers. Generally, most people would surrender if threatened by a skyscraper.

How would you get this much metal? Wall of Iron + Fabricate.

[Demonic_Spoon]

Aboleth Mucus(A cheap save or die alchemical item DC 19) works well as well in combination with Launch Item.

[CTrees]

Wall of Fire would actually be really mean against formations. Deployed linearly, it's 20ft wide per CL, and causes damage up to 20ft out. Duration is concentration PLUS 1rd/lvl. Spiritwall in the middle of a formation would be fairly funny, too.

Also, if we're going with a caster with the stereotypical (and stupid) tower that can be reached by mundane troops? Forbiddance is a fantastic defense against anything low level.

[NNescio]

...What do you all think?

(Yes, I just watched The Return of the King again. Why do you ask? :smallbiggrin:)

LoTR wizzies are more like Bards and Truenamers. And are Solars in addition to their class levels, but they are forbidden from using those powers in most cases.

[Wookie-ranger]

Learn Launch Bolt (SC). Get a few Bags of Holding III, fill each with a single Colossal 9+ crossbow bolt. Assuming a medium crossbow bolt is 4 inches long, these things are half a mile long and deal 205d8 points of damage. Shoot at soldiers. Generally, most people would surrender if threatened by a skyscraper.

How would you get this much metal? Wall of Iron + Fabricate.

might as well us 'spell-storing bolts' :smallbiggrin:

[Novawurmson]

On my way to work, I thought of something else: Illusions. Destroy a bridge the army has to cross and make an illusion of the bridge still there. Hilarity ensues. Illusions of dragons, of an squad of battle-wizards...

[Oindoth]

Y'know, I think I want to tell a story.

The first time I ever played D&D, I threw together a mid/low-level ranger. Wasn't very optimized as he was an archery specialist, and his stats weren't spectacular, but he was a good character and I loved him.

His very first battle against a credible threat occurred in the deeps of a dungeon, with moss-covered walls and an underground lake. I chose to start my turn off with my only available Entangle, because this, again, was SRS BUSINESS.

I made the same mistake that you're making now. I didn't realize that, by "40 foot radius circle," it meant "80 foot diameter circle." In other words, "The entire room."

That's what a 20 ft. radius Fireball is to an army of mooks: A 40 foot (read: 8square) instant death machine. It's better with Lightning Bolt. A single one, against a tightly packed, low-level army, is 24 people dead. And those are just 3rd level spells, free to be metamagick'd up the wazoo.

When, in a single round, a Wizard's Kill/Death ratio is that high, you should start to realize that there's a reason that even unoptimized, poorly strategizing blaster wizards are more powerful (in this situation) than most other classes. Make it a buffer/summoner Druid instead, and you've got a bloodbath. Make the Wizard a BFC specialist, and there's not even the beginning of a threat to him against simple numbers.

[Yahzi]

I miss 2E's morale system. It wasn't very good, but it was better than nothing. Now, all the little DM's want all the little monsters to fight to the death, no matter what. I can't remember the last time that I scared anything off, even when it was obvious that my party would win. :smallsigh:
The problem with morale rolls is that creatures that run away warn the creatures in the next room.

if you have a nice little static module with "3 orcs in room A" and "1 giant spider in room 2", morale checks wreck everything.

Static modules are easier to write (and run). Ergo... no more moral checks. :smallannoyed:

But I completely agree with you.



Also, what about Metamagic?
Generally it increases the level of the spell, and I was looking at the lowest levels of magic use.



why are we honestly assuming that all the soldiers are in a nice little formation?
Several reasons: one, I thought they could give each other cover. Two, it is hard to organize and direct 1,000 people unless they are in some kind of formation. In particular you need all those archers firing at the same spot. Three, tight formations defeat loose formations (when it is soldier against soldier).

Still, a dispersed formation would reduce casualties by 25%. Perhaps they advance in skirmish and close ranks to fight.



Also, if we're going with a caster with the stereotypical (and stupid) tower that can be reached by mundane troops? Forbiddance is a fantastic defense against anything low level.
And again we have a wizard who lives in isolation. Never mind asking who grows his food or does his laundry; who does he talk to?



So a squad of 12 guys managed to whittle your army down to half strength and the army didn't manage to catch them.
And herein we have the entire problem with D&D.

Virtually every spell is aimed at offense. The entire spellbook seems constructed to allow a small group of hobos to commit breaking and entering felonies. Having a base of operations, heavy fortifications, a large and loyal following: these things are all deficits in the D&D world. They are liabilities.

I always hated the concept of CR appropriate fights. Why should the players be spoon-fed a steady diet of weaker opponents for them to defeat? Why should the entire spell book be designed to make sure the players win?

Or, to put it another way: imagine if a DM used player tactics against the players. Random monsters teleport in, lob fireballs, and disappear. If the PCS ever so much as talk to any mundane human, that person is killed/dominated/zombified by the next day. The players would rebel; yet they (and the rules) treat the NPCs exactly the same way, and nobody bats an eye.

Anyway, back to your example: If one side can mount whole squads of casters, then obviously the other side gets squads of them too. So rethink your scenario, but with half as many casters on the mundane's side.

The point here is not to show that mundanes can defeat magic on their own; it is to show that they still have a place, that there is still value in raising armies (in a world where 11th level is considered high-level). Or to show that they don't have a value. I think in a world where there is one 17th level for every one hundred 0th levels, then ya, armies are useless.

Maybe the question goes the other way: at what stage of magic use (level and quantity) do armies become completely useless?

[Zale]

Y'know, I think I want to tell a story.

The first time I ever played D&D, I threw together a mid/low-level ranger. Wasn't very optimized as he was an archery specialist, and his stats weren't spectacular, but he was a good character and I loved him.

His very first battle against a credible threat occurred in the deeps of a dungeon, with moss-covered walls and an underground lake. I chose to start my turn off with my only available Entangle, because this, again, was SRS BUSINESS.

I made the same mistake that you're making now. I didn't realize that, by "40 foot radius circle," it meant "80 foot diameter circle." In other words, "The entire room."

That's what a 20 ft. radius Fireball is to an army of mooks: A 40 foot (read: 8 square) instant death machine. It's better with Lightning Bolt. A single one, against a tightly packed, low-level army, is 24 people dead. And those are just 3rd level spells, free to be metamagick'd up the wazoo.

When, in a single round, a Wizard's Kill/Death ratio is that high, you should start to realize that there's a reason that even unoptimized, poorly strategizing blaster wizards are more powerful (in this situation) than most other classes. Make it a buffer/summoner Druid instead, and you've got a bloodbath. Make the Wizard a BF specialist, and there's not even the beginning of a threat to him against simple numbers.



Wow.

I.. honestly never noticed that.


So to revise my last post, Widen gives you an 80ft circle of fiery death.

[Treblain]

Learn Launch Bolt (SC). Get a few Bags of Holding III, fill each with a single Colossal 9+ crossbow bolt. Assuming a medium crossbow bolt is 4 inches long, these things are half a mile long and deal 205d8 points of damage. Shoot at soldiers. Generally, most people would surrender if threatened by a skyscraper.

How would you get this much metal? Wall of Iron + Fabricate.

A Colossal bolt would deal damage as a crossbow bolt of its size, not as an object of its weight. It would hit a single enemy, deal crossbow bolt damage raised to the appropriate size category (around 6-8d8), and have no other effects on the battlefield before transforming into a useless, unusable "expended crossbow bolt".

Silly? Still not as silly than your interpretation.

[Oindoth]

A Colossal bolt would deal damage as a crossbow bolt of its size, not as an object of its weight. It would hit a single enemy, deal crossbow bolt damage raised to the appropriate size category (around 6-8d8), and have no other effects on the battlefield before transforming into a useless, unusable "expended crossbow bolt".

Silly? Still not as silly than your interpretation.

Sillier? They only deal damage as a weapon of their size if you launch them. They're actually *more powerful* when you don't fire them from a crossbow, and instead choose to simply drop them on your enemies' heads.

[SowZ]

Chain gate solars using a candle or a scroll or even a favor from a devil. Summoning shadows. A number of plague inducing spells. Control weather for a hurricane or a tornado. Dominate person on the relevant leadership. Improved invisibility + overland flight + rocks. Lots of rocks. I could do this all day. Most of the Test of Spite was 13th level.

I suggest that you return to the dojo and crush walnuts for a while.

The thing about Pun-Pun tricks and chain gating solars is that before you can reach the power level you want, there is no reason a god or similar super being won't see fit to intervene and destroy you. Plus, in a real world, people don't have/know their stats an so such tactics are not things the vast majority of real wizards would probably try.

Anyway, yeah, smart wizards use teleport and contingency... I still don't see how mundanes can win against a smart wizard without magic of their own.

[Morcleon]

A Colossal bolt would deal damage as a crossbow bolt of its size, not as an object of its weight. It would hit a single enemy, deal crossbow bolt damage raised to the appropriate size category (around 6-8d8), and have no other effects on the battlefield before transforming into a useless, unusable "expended crossbow bolt".

Silly? Still not as silly than your interpretation.

Damage of a crossbow bolt of its size is 205d8. It's Colossal +++++++++. Also, intimidation factor. It's some 2700 ft or so long. :D

[gkathellar]

And again we have a wizard who lives in isolation. Never mind asking who grows his food or does his laundry; who does he talk to?

Maybe he maintains portals into towns he likes (see Howl's Moving Castle). Maybe he has a few apprentices, or a cadre of servants, or has a family. Maybe he and his friends from wizard school have a weekly reading circle, and alternate locations. Maybe all of these. When you have teleportation, living in isolation is entirely different than being in isolation.


And herein we have the entire problem with D&D.

No, I think it's bigger than that.


Virtually every spell is aimed at offense.

Prestidigitation? Scrying? Wall of Iron? Transmute Rock to Mud? Stone to Flesh? Genesis? Plane Shift?


The point here is not to show that mundanes can defeat magic on their own; it is to show that they still have a place, that there is still value in raising armies (in a world where 11th level is considered high-level). Or to show that they don't have a value. I think in a world where there is one 17th level for every one hundred 0th levels, then ya, armies are useless.

Armies are useful for fighting armies. Mid-to-high level casters decimate armies, but that's because they're essentially demigods. And not everyone has a mid-to-high level caster on call.


Maybe the question goes the other way: at what stage of magic use (level and quantity) do armies become completely useless?

I'd say 11th-12th level is probably the breakoff point where characters of this type become engines of long-foretold destruction. Possibly as early as 9th or 10th.

[ScionoftheVoid]

A Colossal bolt would deal damage as a crossbow bolt of its size, not as an object of its weight. It would hit a single enemy, deal crossbow bolt damage raised to the appropriate size category (around 6-8d8), and have no other effects on the battlefield before transforming into a useless, unusable "expended crossbow bolt".

Silly? Still not as silly than your interpretation.

Actually, he's referring to size categories larger than Colossal (which are not officially covered, as far as I remember, since the SRD says there's no size category higher than Colossal in the Epic Dragon entries), which would indeed be absolutely massive and deal huge amounts of damage due to scaling (though it isn't guaranteed to be higher than just dropping it on things, and would probably be more useful in an area). And the only reason expended crossbow bolts don't have a lasting effect on the battlefield is because they're too small to matter. While it would only hit a single target (which is more than a bit screwy) it would be a massive obstacle once fired.

But really, just dropping huge things is more effective against units of weaker creatures, since they won't make any Reflex saves or survive much damage anyway. Swan boats are actually really quite large, they'd probably kill about as many people as a Fireball (well, at least half) and leave a lasting obstacle without preparing beforehand (lay down flammable materials before a Fireball to have it do the same).

Honestly the win condition here is getting a casting of Greater Consuming Field (SpC) and wading into the fray - killing all of them and giving you a massive power boost for the trouble (even the standard Consuming Field will be absurd in this scenario). That spell and its basic version turn massive forces of mundanes into a liability, but do have the drawback of slaughtering your own living low-level forces (though you're still buffed by their deaths). If you aren't familiar with those spells, think Death Knell as an area effect, and then supercharge it for the Greater version.

If you want a nice easy fortification against armies that are literate, create an easily-scaled wall outside of your tower (which is really a convenience rather than a necessity, and can be abandoned and reclaimed easily enough so long as you have access to Teleport - even as a scroll) and put Explosive Runes on the handholds. Either have an invisible wall at the top so that anything that reaches the top can't get past anyway or be in range to cast Shape Stone to create the same situation (basically the wall goes up then juts out horizontally enough to necessitate Spiderclimb or a similar buff). Slaughter the army now bunched up within easy range of your AoE spells.

[Greenish]

Learn Launch Bolt (SC). Get a few Bags of Holding III, fill each with a single Colossal 9+ crossbow bolt. Assuming a medium crossbow bolt is 4 inches long, these things are half a mile long and deal 205d8 points of damage. Shoot at soldiers. Generally, most people would surrender if threatened by a skyscraper.Launch Bolt specifies that the bolt you use costs 1 sp. A bolt larger than medium would cost more.

Also, Launch Bolt uses a bolt as a material component, so it disappears into nothing when the spell is complete, so you have nothing to shoot with.


And again we have a wizard who lives in isolation. Never mind asking who grows his food or does his laundry; who does he talk to?Forbiddance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forbiddance.htm). People with the password can enter freely.

Also, laundry? Prestidigation or Unseen Servant. :smalltongue:

[Bovine Colonel]

And this is why, in my campaigns, the only humanoids above level 6 are the players and major villains.

[IncoherentEssay]

Dispelling Screen from Spell Compendium is a nice enabler for more traditional warfare: it automatically dispels any spell effects attempting to pass through, no checks required or questions asked :smallwink:. Even better, as a 4th level spell you can cram it in a stick and it works just as fine at minimum CL as it would with higher CLs. Though the low (Close) range does limit it a bit.
But as long as you can keep supplying them new wands, even lowbie wizards can shut down quite a bit of high-end artillery.

[Treblain]

Sillier? They only deal damage as a weapon of their size if you launch them. They're actually *more powerful* when you don't fire them from a crossbow, and instead choose to simply drop them on your enemies' heads.

Morcleon said he was using Launch Bolt, which launches a crossbow bolt as if it were launched from a light crossbow, not as if it were a heavy object. Launch Item, a similar spell, has a 10lb weight restriction; Morcleon is avoiding weight restrictions using RAW abuse of Launch Bolt, which is cool and all, but if he wants to use a giant metal bar as a bolt, he has to treat it as a bolt.


Damage of a crossbow bolt of its size is 205d8. It's Colossal +++++++++. Also, intimidation factor. It's some 2700 ft or so long. :D

Standard Bags of Holding have a weight limit; they won't carry your bolt.

And you fire it as you do a light crossbow. That means you take penalties for firing an oversized light crossbow. Also, Launch Bolt uses a ranged attack roll and only has an 80 yard range increment, so the wizard has a good chance of missing the entire battlefield with his massive phallic symbol if he tries to attack a formation full of soldiers.

Also, you're trying to be clever by doing this with a cantrip, but if you're acquiring the bolt through many castings of Fabricate and Wall of Iron, you're expending a lot more spellpower than that. You could be selling the scrap iron and your craft skills to buy your own army.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Here's what happens with mass battles and spellcasters...

DM: Alright, so you can see the first legion marching across the big field.
Wzard: No, they're wading in a swamp.
DM: What? They're in a field.
Wizard: *casts Transmute Rock to Mud* They're in a swamp. They're moving at half speed. I begin launching Fireballs and Widened Fireballs at them.

[Bovine Colonel]

Here's what happens with mass battles and spellcasters...

DM: Alright, so you can see the first legion marching across the big field.
Wzard: No, they're wading in a swamp.
DM: What? They're in a field.
Wizard: *casts Transmute Rock to Mud* They're in a swamp. They're moving at half speed. I begin launching Fireballs and Widened Fireballs at them. *casts Transmute Mud to Rock* And now they're stuck in solid rock.

Fixed that for ya.

[absolmorph]

Learn Launch Bolt (SC). Get a few Bags of Holding III, fill each with a single Colossal 9+ crossbow bolt. Assuming a medium crossbow bolt is 4 inches long, these things are half a mile long and deal 205d8 points of damage. Shoot at soldiers. Generally, most people would surrender if threatened by a skyscraper.

How would you get this much metal? Wall of Iron + Fabricate.
... I'm trying to picture this in my head.


And again we have a wizard who lives in isolation. Never mind asking who grows his food or does his laundry; who does he talk to?
Assuming a level 11 wizard: Create Food and Water trap, Prestidigitation, Pemanency + Telepathic Bond.



And herein we have the entire problem with D&D.

Virtually every spell is aimed at offense. The entire spellbook seems constructed to allow a small group of hobos to commit breaking and entering felonies. Having a base of operations, heavy fortifications, a large and loyal following: these things are all deficits in the D&D world. They are liabilities.

I always hated the concept of CR appropriate fights. Why should the players be spoon-fed a steady diet of weaker opponents for them to defeat? Why should the entire spell book be designed to make sure the players win?
Er... The players get "spoon-fed" opponents (they don't need to be weaker than the players) because they're supposed to have fun as their character gets more powerful.
And the DM (and thus everything trying to kill the players) can make equal, if not better, use of the spells, since the DM can create organizations and have them work together to create things at the lowest cost and as quick as possible.


Or, to put it another way: imagine if a DM used player tactics against the players. Random monsters teleport in, lob fireballs, and disappear. If the PCS ever so much as talk to any mundane human, that person is killed/dominated/zombified by the next day. The players would rebel; yet they (and the rules) treat the NPCs exactly the same way, and nobody bats an eye.
Yeah, I don't do this on either side of the screen. When I played an omnicidal, pyromaniac necromancer, one of the first adventures had us rescuing a girl. She suddenly developed a crush on me after we untied her. We took her back to her father (I think?) and found out she was engaged to some jerk she didn't like.
My necromancer poisoned him just before heading off again.


Anyway, back to your example: If one side can mount whole squads of casters, then obviously the other side gets squads of them too. So rethink your scenario, but with half as many casters on the mundane's side.

The point here is not to show that mundanes can defeat magic on their own; it is to show that they still have a place, that there is still value in raising armies (in a world where 11th level is considered high-level). Or to show that they don't have a value. I think in a world where there is one 17th level for every one hundred 0th levels, then ya, armies are useless.

Maybe the question goes the other way: at what stage of magic use (level and quantity) do armies become completely useless?
A level 9 wizard can cripple an army with 2 5th level spells per 36 soldiers (assuming a 10 foot cube hits 2 soldiers). Transmute Rock to Mud, then Transmute Mud to Rock with those soldiers wading through.
Or you can ensure they have to cross a chasm with a stone bridge, let some men reach the other side and then drop the bridge. Especially fun if their leader is in the front, as you can then take them out.
At level 11, they can plop down a couple instances of Guards and Wards, with a couple Suggestion effects on a chokepoint (in addition to, say, some fog and a Stinking Cloud) and watch as a significant portion of the army (most of however many cross over a 10 foot wide span in a 22 hour period) suddenly decides that attacking this wizard guy is probably a bad idea and they should go home.

[Wookie-ranger]

oh, i just reread the tread.
basically, you are asking: if 100 commoners attack a 5th level wizard at his home-base what chance do they have.

Home-base:
none at all! the wizard has all the time in the world to strengthen his defenses, put up traps, erect walls, cast long-duration/permanent spells, has multiple redundant warning systems, has all his spell books/scrolls/wands.
i don't think even 1000 commoners had a chance here.
an 11 level wizard, has a home base that is better defended then most small kingdoms. with enough preparation even 1.000.000 commoner would have a chance.

now, if for some reason he is not at his home-base its a different matter, but attacking a wizard at home somewhere in between suicide and stupidity.
If someone has enough money to pay/equip/feed/house/transport... 1000 man army they have enough money to hire some adventurers to do the job. and it would probably be cheaper.
and that's where your party would come in. its the point of the game. :smallcool:

[Gavinfoxx]

Here's a 9th level Druid I statted out to take out an entire army, one night at a time:

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=54924

Basically, it's a (relatively low altitude, granted) Stealth Bomber.

[Novawurmson]

Also: Reserve feats. Weathering a few powerful fireballs is hard enough, but what about infinite smaller fireballs?

[Zonugal]

Yahzi, I think you should just throw down some pretty pennies & provide a couple of these for your armies.

The Black Dragon
This 20ft. by 20ft. by 10 ft. apparatus of moving stone walls is one to certainly strike dread into your enemies. Magically crawling at an incredible speed of 88 feet per round (10 miles/hour; 240 miles/day), controlled by whoever sits in the operating seat, this lumbering machine is a once converted barrack maintaining ten simple wooden beds with straw mattresses, an operating seat & control panel at the front, a continual flame effect placed in a central globe and a privy near the back. Able to house ten people it is protected by lead-lined, magical treated hewn stone walls with two arrow slits to the sides and a secret stone door at the rear (protected by an Improved Arcana Lock attuned to five individuals upon creation). Located outside the front of the apparatus is a long cannon with the inside housing a set of controls for activating & maneuvering it. Through a command word (engineered to be a trigger on the control panel) a Fireball spell (CL 5) is shot out the cannon to any where within its 600 ft. range.

The Black Dragon
Basic Model; Huge Vehicle; Profession (Pilot) +0; Spd crawling 88ft.; Overall AC 3, hp 1080 (hardness 16) [112 Break DC, 22 Climb DC]; Face 20ft. by 20 ft.; Height 10ft.; SA fireball cannon (1 standard action, Long Range (600 ft.), 20ft. radius spread area, Instantaneous duration, Reflex Save for Half, Spell Resistance yes, 5d6 fire damage to everyone in the area); Crew 1 (carries 9); $64,028 gp [6.5 weeks to construct/$19,208 wage costs to build]

All of that is constructed via the Stronghold Builder's Guide, so it is fairly legal.

[The Gilded Duke]

A lot of these arguments forget about one very important thing. Spot.
You take a -1 for every 10 feet of distance to spot someone.
Seeing someone who isn't trying to hide is DC 0.
Which means that a character without ranks in spot, a wisdom modifier or racial bonuses can notice people between 10 and 200 feet away.

Most of the army destroying classes mentioned do not have spot.
Wizards do not have spot, and often do not have wisdom.
Sorcerers do not have spot, and often do not have wisdom.
Clerics do not have spot, but do have wisdom.
Druids have both spot and wisdom.

So all this talk about blasting people from 700 feet away? You don't see them. Now a large group of people would give a bonus to that sort of thing, but even then there are limits. A mob of colossal sized would give +16 to noticing, which would make it be visible between 170 and 360 feet away.

The funny thing is... most npc classes get spot as a class skill.
Commoner has spot.
Expert can get spot.
Aristocrat has spot.

Now the wizard still has means of shutting it down (Windwall etc) but I think an army of Elf Commoner 1 would be very annoying for a wizard or sorcerer to deal with.

Nonelite Elf Commoner
10 str
14 Dex
8 Con
9 int
13 wis
8 cha

Spot 4 ranks +1 wis, +2 Tool, +2 racial = +9

Longbow +2 (1d8)

Can see medium sized targets between 100 and 300 feet away.

Get a group of 100 of them, spread them out over several miles, have them shoot at any targets of opportunity.

[Zale]

Hmm..

I wonder how an army would fair against some creatures.

How would an army of, say, 1000 level one commoners/warriors, defeat an actual Black Dragon?

[absolmorph]

A lot of these arguments forget about one very important thing. Spot.
You take a -1 for every 10 feet of distance to spot someone.
Seeing someone who isn't trying to hide is DC 0.
Which means that a character without ranks in spot, a wisdom modifier or racial bonuses can notice people between 10 and 200 feet away.

Most of the army destroying classes mentioned do not have spot.
Wizards do not have spot, and often do not have wisdom.
Sorcerers do not have spot, and often do not have wisdom.
Clerics do not have spot, but do have wisdom.
Druids have both spot and wisdom.

So all this talk about blasting people from 700 feet away? You don't see them. Now a large group of people would give a bonus to that sort of thing, but even then there are limits. A mob of colossal sized would give +16 to noticing, which would make it be visible between 170 and 360 feet away.

The funny thing is... most npc classes get spot as a class skill.
Commoner has spot.
Expert can get spot.
Aristocrat has spot.

Now the wizard still has means of shutting it down (Windwall etc) but I think an army of Elf Commoner 1 would be very annoying for a wizard or sorcerer to deal with.

Nonelite Elf Commoner
10 str
14 Dex
8 Con
9 int
13 wis
8 cha

Spot 4 ranks +1 wis, +2 Tool, +2 racial = +9

Longbow +2 (1d8)

Can see medium sized targets between 100 and 300 feet away.

Get a group of 100 of them, spread them out over several miles, have them shoot at any targets of opportunity.
That's (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/arcaneEye.htm) nice, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/invisibilityGreater.htm) dear. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/solidFog.htm)

[The Gilded Duke]

Invisibility Greater, 1 round a level.
Even Invisibility 1 minute a level.
Solid Fog, if you are casting it on an individual archerer, that is a 4th level spell slot to disable a level 1 commoner. If you are casting it on yourself it only lasts a minute a level.

Arcane Eye could be used to find the location of some of the commoners, but not all of them. And if you use it to try and notice their positions ahead of time, they could defeat that by just moving every once in a while.

Also, if you wanted something a little bit more advanced, give them a 10 int, and points in Handle animal as well. Have them bring a dog with them to help them detect invisible or stealth creatures.

[absolmorph]

Invisibility Greater, 1 round a level.
Even Invisibility 1 minute a level.
Solid Fog, if you are casting it on an individual archerer, that is a 4th level spell slot to disable a level 1 commoner. If you are casting it on yourself it only lasts a minute a level.

Arcane Eye could be used to find the location of some of the commoners, but not all of them. And if you use it to try and notice their positions ahead of time, they could defeat that by just moving every once in a while.

Also, if you wanted something a little bit more advanced, give them a 10 int, and points in Handle animal as well. Have them bring a dog with them to help them detect invisible or stealth creatures.
Greater Invisibility was just to remind you that the wizard can be, y'know, invisible.
Solid Fog was to remind you that he can obscure vision (Fog Cloud works, too).
Arcane Eye allows you to shift your viewpoint around so you're suddenly looking from right behind the enemy, allowing you to pick them off with your spells from outside their sight range. A lack of Spot on their skill list doesn't mean they can't still see things from further.

[Zale]

Solid Fog, if you are casting it on an individual archerer, that is a 4th level spell slot to disable a level 1 commoner. If you are casting it on yourself it only lasts a minute a level.


Why would I cast it on a single person?


Effect: Fog spreads in 20-ft. radius, 20 ft. high

Forty foot, twenty foot high circle of fog to trudge through.

[gkathellar]

size categories larger than Colossal (which are not officially covered, as far as I remember, since the SRD says there's no size category higher than Colossal in the Epic Dragon entries),

Draconomicon covers them. It's pretty cool.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Draconomicon covers them. It's pretty cool.

I think that's the Complete Epilectic Monkeys Immortals Handbook. Unless you're only talking about dragons larger than colossal.

[Yahzi]

24 people dead.
Actually, a fireball is 52 people dead, as I noted.

Tanks and aircraft can kill a lot of people. But infantry is still necessary. The question is when infantry stops being necessary or even useful in D&D.



Maybe he maintains portals into towns he likes
Then those are the targets. If he plays guerrila, the army kills his towns.

Anything that makes him not a hobo is a liability.


Armies are useful for fighting armies.
Why would anyone even have an army, though?

I think 11th level is still manageable; but I agree by 17th you need 10,000 fanatical dedicated troops to concern a wizard.



$64,028 gp
Seriously? That's actually quite cheap compared to the price of a wizard (at 5gp an xp, a 5th lvl wizard costs 75,000 gp if I remember the xp tables correctly).

I don't have Stronghold Builder's Guide, but it sounds like it would create a world that isn't even vaguely medieval.



Assuming a level 11 wizard: Create Food and Water trap, Prestidigitation, Pemanency + Telepathic Bond.
The issue is not food; it is psychological health.



And this is why, in my campaigns, the only humanoids above level 6 are the players and major villains.
No offense, but... yuck. I couldn't bear to play in a game like that. But I do realize it is what D&D is supposed to be like.



Dispelling Screen
That just seems like a cheat.

One wand-maker with a few 1st lvl apprentices can kill soldiers cheaper than any other method. But wands and scrolls ruin D&D as a whole; they make a mockery of the wizard's one alleged weakness.



So all this talk about blasting people from 700 feet away? You don't see them.
Like the drowning rules, this is a case of RAW just being impossible. Any human being that can't spot another human being at 2 football fields is blind. :smalleek:



Forbiddance. People with the password can enter freely.
I am a big fan of Forbiddance. But it's a static defense for a small local, not a way to defend a city (I am assuming the wizard cares about defending a city).

Darn it, maybe that's the question I really want to ask. How would a wizard go about defending his own city against murderous hobos?

[Kenneth]

Wizardly evocations are normally considered to dominate the battlefield. But is that true? Is it possible to have magic and still field traditional units of hundreds or thousands of men?


THis all depends on a few interalted circumstances in your campagin world.

First: is the vast majority of the population (outside of the PCs and the baddies they will be fighting) high level?

Second: Are wizards rare, unusual, or common?

Third: are you wizard the MMO type of wizard where they summon scaries and rain down hurt made of pain, or the hedgemage types who can light candles and make a rope do werid things?


I can;t say what the standard D&D setting is suppose otbe becuase well.. WotC really didn;t have a grasp on that as well. and don't eve get me started with what is going on in Forgotten realms LOL

Actually thats a really great example of a ton of people out side of the PCs 'world' being high level mages being pretty common and able to re create the world.. and even then standard ( and by that i mean armies mediual humans would recognize, knights, foot soldiers, archer. catapults etc etc.. only with griffons and such ) army still meet and fight each other all the time. but then you have to take a HUGE suspension of bleife ( I.E ignore everyting int eh seeting IMO) to thing that these actually happen.

[gkathellar]

Then those are the targets. If he plays guerrila, the army kills his towns.

Anything that makes him not a hobo is a liability.

Kingdoms can't just go around wiping out towns! Not those of enemy powers unless they want a full-fledged war over one wizard, not their own unless they want a coalition of lords to pop up and start a civil war. Killing tons of people isn't something a ruler can just decide to do.

And going after people or places someone cares about just to get at them makes them impossibly dangerous. If you demonstrate that you're willing to level a town just to piss him off, than even the most lawful good of lawful good wizards is going to very quickly come to the conclusion that he should start offing aristocrats.

Your answer is "hit him where it hurts," but this is a man who can and will hit back, and by hit I mean "teleport into his sleeping enemy's room and involuntary plane-shift said enemy to Gehenna." No sane power figure would want to encourage violent hobo behavior.


Why would anyone even have an army, though?

Because not everyone has an 11th-level wizard, and not everyone thinks getting 11th-level wizards involved in wars is actually a good idea.


I think 11th level is still manageable; but I agree by 17th you need 10,000 fanatical dedicated troops to concern a wizard.

By 17th level it doesn't matter how many 5th-level warriors you throw at the astral projection of an astral projection they mistake for a wizard. They will lose. 11th might be manageable with caster support but that sort of undermines the whole point.

[Zale]

I think 11th level is still manageable; but I agree by 17th you need 10,000 fanatical dedicated troops to concern a wizard.


How is an army of 10,000 supposed to do more than annoy a level 17 Wizard?

They could be chillin' on their own Demi-Plane by then.

[Crasical]

Assuming you arm your troops as well as the average orc, that's 100gp in equipment per person. If you have a thousand strong arm, that's 100k. At that cost, it's probably better to just hire an adventuring party to take the tower instead of having your troops do it.

Also, it probably wouldn't be by much, but aren't assassination attempts more likely to succeed rather than a straight-up fight against wizards? a 4th level wizard can put up an Alarm spell that lasts all night, but he's that's one of his three or four 1st level spells a day at that point. A 9th level wizard can Rope Trick long enough to rest and memorize a new set of spells, but at that point he's only a level away from Permenancy and Contingency shenanigans anyway....

[Coidzor]

How is an army of 10,000 supposed to do more than annoy a level 17 Wizard?

They could be chillin' on their own Demi-Plane by then.

That would be part of why the majority of people avoid going near the old towers of Zagyg and similar individuals, lest they become playthings of the ascended when it remembers that it left a particularly nostalgic jigsaw puzzle there.

[Wookie-ranger]

Assuming you arm your troops as well as the average orc, that's 100gp in equipment per person. If you have a thousand strong arm, that's 100k. At that cost, it's probably better to just hire an adventuring party to take the tower instead of having your troops do it.


Kingdoms can't just go around wiping out towns! Not those of enemy powers unless they want a full-fledged war over one wizard, not their own unless they want a coalition of lords to pop up and start a civil war. Killing tons of people isn't something a ruler can just decide to do.

And going after people or places someone cares about just to get at them makes them impossibly dangerous. If you demonstrate that you're willing to level a town just to piss him off, than even the most lawful good of lawful good wizards is going to very quickly come to the conclusion that he should start offing aristocrats.

Your answer is "hit him where it hurts," but this is a man who can and will hit back, and by hit I mean "teleport into his sleeping enemy's room and involuntary plane-shift said enemy to Gehenna." No sane power figure would want to encourage violent hobo behavior.

yup, thats exactly what i was thinking!

[Doc Roc]

yup, thats exactly what i was thinking!

Even a 20th level wizard would probably be tempted by a 100k payout, when the job is to wipe out an 11th level wizard.

[absolmorph]

Even a 20th level wizard would probably be tempted by a 100k payout, when the job is to wipe out an 11th level wizard.
It's a 13% increase to WBL for a PC, so that's pretty good.
Actually... Wow, it's almost twice a level 11 character's WBL.
I think you're doing something wrong if you're using nearly twice a character's WBL to outfit an army to attack them (and just them).

[Tvtyrant]

...If we are going to use 100k, why not just have 100 ballista firing enchanted bolts? Use spell storing AMF bolts once every 10 shots or so and simply fill the region with bolts. It won't work, but its better than a little army of infantry.

[deuxhero]

On my way to work, I thought of something else: Illusions. Destroy a bridge the army has to cross and make an illusion of the bridge still there. Hilarity ensues. Illusions of dragons, of an squad of battle-wizards...

First scout falls, and no one crosses the bridge.

[Oindoth]

First scout falls, and no one crosses the bridge.

Shadow Illusion, wait for many people to get onto it to dispell it?

[ahenobarbi]

I think it's quite impossible to take out wizard who can teleport (or plane shift or in similar fashion run away) with any number of 1st level characters. Because wizard will run away if [s]he feels [s]he can't win (or there is nothing to gain by staying... butchering hundreds of commoners for no gain might not be appealing for many wizards).

Unless you use a trap (like talk to him in public place filled with crowd instructed to throw rock at him once you leave... enough of them will score critical).

Also I don't think it's right to assume army is hundreds of 1st level commoners. Most likely you wouldn't use commoners at all (unless you're desperate) because you're better of if they make money for your kingdom to train a proper army. A proper army meaning mixture of 1st to 4th level warriors (1st level warriors would be fresh recruits 4th level veterans, how many on which level you get depends on your circumstances).

Such army(even if it's smaller) would stand a much better change in (unlikely) case everyone (including wizard) decided not to leave battle field till all opponents drop dead. Especially if "army" side decided to come at wizard[s] from all directions at once in "loose" formation, mixing melee and ranged warriors (so wizard[s] can't take all the ranged enemies at once).

Edit: Also cavemen wipe out astronauts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAAWxDNR2ic).

[JackRackham]

No, even if sheer numbers could overwhelm a wizard's battlefield dominance, no one would willingly be the "sheer numbers" in question.

Ummmm, you should read up on WWI, the civil war, WWII on the Russian front.....wars in general, really. It's insanity, but people can, will and have knowingly run headfirst into a wall of certain death for an abstract concept or to avoid looking like a ***** in front of their buddies.

Otherwise, though, you're right. A decent wizard destroys silly things like 'battles' for breakfast. Besides, it appears from his numbers that he's assuming no bonus spells (right? AFB, so....).

[Hiro Protagonest]

Ummmm, you should read up on WWI, the civil war, WWII on the Russian front.....wars in general, really. It's insanity, but people can, will and have knowingly run headfirst into a wall of certain death for an abstract concept or to avoid looking like a ***** in front of their buddies.

You're comparing well-trained soldiers to a bunch of guys who were probably press-ganged into the army and sent to the fronts once they learned which end of the spear was which.

[Tvtyrant]

You're comparing well-trained soldiers to a bunch of guys who were probably press-ganged into the army and sent to the fronts once they learned which end of the spear was which.

But WWI soldiers didn't have spears... :P

[Coidzor]

Well, a fair bit of those wars did see a rather large number of non-well-trained troops see combat.

Generally though, charging certain death rather than merely likely death still became less popular after they watched what happened to the people convinced to do it as far as I'm given to understand.

[Yahzi]

Kingdoms can't just go around wiping out towns!
I was thinking of a LotR scenario, where it's orcs vs. humans.

Also, strictly speaking, a study of RL will demonstrate that you can, indeed, wipe out entire civilizations. You're focusing on medieval European combat, which was more of a sport of kings than a clash of civilizations. I was thinking more of Cortez and Columbus.

Anyway, the point was to determine just how valuable an army is. As somebody pointed out, the mundane equipment for an army is so much gold that high level wizards would be interested. But then, by standard D&D rules, a major fortress costs the same as a 20th lvl wizard. Which is unspeakably dumb. So that's kind of a problem, too.

Still trying to decide if raising 10,000 men is worth doing under any circumstance, or if "armies" exist solely as step-and-fetch-its for adventuring parties (what adventuring party wouldn't find 20-30 0th level mooks useful for scouting, disabling traps, cooking breakfast, etc.).

A handful of heroes and a fistful of mooks: that describes a war-band. Which is the appropriate model for D&D's Iron Age society. Jason & the Argonauts had a few named heroes and a bunch of nameless rowers.

Is that we are reduced to? The Kingdom of Daxal depends on barons and dukes (high-level types), and the only ordinary soldiers are their retinues? No more Grand Armees, just feudal warbands?

[LordBlades]

I always hated the concept of CR appropriate fights. Why should the players be spoon-fed a steady diet of weaker opponents for them to defeat? Why should the entire spell book be designed to make sure the players win?

Or, to put it another way: imagine if a DM used player tactics against the players. Random monsters teleport in, lob fireballs, and disappear. If the PCS ever so much as talk to any mundane human, that person is killed/dominated/zombified by the next day. The players would rebel; yet they (and the rules) treat the NPCs exactly the same way, and nobody bats an eye.



Been there, done that. That's how we usually play in my group. Anything you use can and will be used against you. The DM adapts the monsters' tactics to the group's level of optimization. If the party uses scry&die, scry&die gets used against the party at some point.

We use level-appropriate in quite a loose way. Most things in the world are what they are, and it's up to the players to make sure they don't step out of their league. If they go to the valley of certain doom at level one, they will meet certain doom. There is usually plenty of warning in-game about stuff like that though.

[Ossian]

I don t think there will be many battles in any given war that filed tens of thousands Vs tens of thousands. It sounds more likely that hundreds, or sometimes a few thousands will charge the fields let swords clash.

Besides, in a low-magic world you have to say what kind of fighters you are fielding. Is this a Howardian low magic world? People are scared witless of magic, but magic is really hard to come by, dangerous, and mostly just mysterious. No nukes.

Plus, in your average 9 meters radius of your average campaign setting, you might have lots of "level 1 warriors" with 8 HP , so save or no save, chances are they are all either dead or so bald wounded by a simple "5d6" fireball that you won t be able to count on them, never mind the formation scattering effect that a big blast like that might have.

Other times (Say, again, Howard) in your small unit of Turanian cavalry (let s make them all level 2 warriors with a few actual Fighters) you are going to have some hardy mercenary from who knows where, a Zamboulan hunter, a Zembabweni spear thrower, a Gunderian lancer. These can be level 3+ fighters, so a fireball might not put them out of commission, but they are still mounted! Last time I checked horses don't appreciate it too much when people act all agitated in their presence, never mind if a ball of fire goes kaboom an arms length from them, sending people screaming and running.

[LordBlades]

First scout falls, and no one crosses the bridge.

On the other hand, spiked pits covered with illusions of nice&flat ground works wonders vs. cavalry charges.

[Toliudar]

Is that we are reduced to? The Kingdom of Daxal depends on barons and dukes (high-level types), and the only ordinary soldiers are their retinues? No more Grand Armees, just feudal warbands?

I'd suggest that armies in a D&D world are less for invading and more for the things that clusters of armed people usually do: deter unwanted people from walking through borders, into ports and into important places like castles and vaults; round up political opponents; attempt to enforce some modicum of personal and property security in public spaces (eg, by fighting bandits, thuggery and raids by Random Encounter type monsters).

There are a hundred jobs that involve the threat of violence, or simply a watchful pair of eyes. These are what you use armies for. All the things for which hiring hobo superheroes is overkill.

[gkathellar]

I was thinking of a LotR scenario, where it's orcs vs. humans.

In which case the human wizard has an army of humans to help him.


Also, strictly speaking, a study of RL will demonstrate that you can, indeed, wipe out entire civilizations. You're focusing on medieval European combat, which was more of a sport of kings than a clash of civilizations. I was thinking more of Cortez and Columbus.

... you realize that despite the horror of his actions, Cortez was a military genius who managed to defeat the Aztecs through technological advantage, disease warfare and sheer political acumen despite being outnumbered more than 1,000-to-1? There wasn't just some instantaneous, bloody battle and then all the Aztecs were dead. It took a while.

Wiping out entire civilizations is never done lightly or simply, and it is never done to piss one guy off. Not to mention that you have now pissed that one guy off, and he will come after you. Cortez wouldn't have lasted long if the Aztecs had been under the protection of a wizard who could kill him in his sleep, scare off his political allies, and kill hundreds of his men in a single engagement.


Anyway, the point was to determine just how valuable an army is. As somebody pointed out, the mundane equipment for an army is so much gold that high level wizards would be interested. But then, by standard D&D rules, a major fortress costs the same as a 20th lvl wizard. Which is unspeakably dumb. So that's kind of a problem, too.

Why is that dumb? A 20th level wizard can create a major fortress. Hell, he can create an entire plane of existence. And he can do it multiple times. Honestly, he should cost more than a fortress.


Is that we are reduced to? The Kingdom of Daxal depends on barons and dukes (high-level types), and the only ordinary soldiers are their retinues? No more Grand Armees, just feudal warbands?

You still need militias or smaller conventional armed forces to manage day-to-day tasks. And again, who says the aristocrats can even get access to the high-level adventurers?


Ummmm, you should read up on WWI, the civil war, WWII on the Russian front.....wars in general, really. It's insanity, but people can, will and have knowingly run headfirst into a wall of certain death for an abstract concept or to avoid looking like a ***** in front of their buddies.

a) These people were rushing out to get killed by an army. And they had a chance of survival, however slim. That feels arguably less futile than rushing out to get killed by one guy who can murder you with his mind.
b) Things change when the officers are under just as much threat as the privates.
c) Medieval warfare and army =/ modern warfare and army structure. Armies weren't recruited or organized in ways that were remotely similar.

[Kaeso]

In a low magic world, OP is completely right. Magic is very useful, but not an end all be all factor on the battlefield. This all changes at higher levels, of course.

In an E6 universe, I imagine military wizards to be the equivalent of real life artillery: they're vulnerable and you want them as far away from the enemy as possible, but they can devestate entire units with a few well placed spells. Of course, if a cavalry unit manages to gallop behind enemy lines and can meet these E6 wizards face to face, they're toast.

[ahenobarbi]

I'd suggest that armies in a D&D world are less for invading and more for the things that clusters of armed people usually do: deter unwanted people from walking through borders, into ports and into important places like castles and vaults; round up political opponents; attempt to enforce some modicum of personal and property security in public spaces (eg, by fighting bandits, thuggery and raids by Random Encounter type monsters).

Also if you're going to war and have an army why not use it? And a group of adventurers can't control a conquered territory even if they would manage to wipe out enemy army.





Anyway, the point was to determine just how valuable an army is. As somebody pointed out, the mundane equipment for an army is so much gold that high level wizards would be interested. But then, by standard D&D rules, a major fortress costs the same as a 20th lvl wizard. Which is unspeakably dumb. So that's kind of a problem, too.

Why is that dumb? A 20th level wizard can create a major fortress. Hell, he can create an entire plane of existence. And he can do it multiple times. Honestly, he should cost more than a fortress.

That's the reason it's dumb. Wizard is a lot under-priced.

[Kaeso]

That's the reason it's dumb. Wizard is a lot under-priced.

At those levels DnD itself is dumb. Wizards and, to a lesser extent, clerics and druids are basically mortal deities, and I'm pretty sure there are ways to circumvent the mortal part.

[CTrees]

But WWI soldiers didn't have spears... :P


Counterpoint: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1905_bayonet)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a7/George_Miner.jpg

WWI (and its trench warfare) was what really killed the use of very long bayonets, but even today, many or most armies have some form of bayonet in official use, which is nothing but an extension turning a rifle into a short spear.

[ahenobarbi]

At those levels DnD itself is dumb. Wizards and, to a lesser extent, clerics and druids are basically mortal deities, and I'm pretty sure there are ways to circumvent the mortal part.

Like becoming a lich :smallamused: There are plenty of ways not to die of old age. I don't think there are any ways to make it impossible to kill you.

[Kaeso]

I don't think there are any ways to make it impossible to kill you.

Being a tier 1 caster with an IQ higher than that of a table :smallamused:
Only the gods can kill you..... sometimes

[LordBlades]

Like becoming a lich :smallamused: There are plenty of ways not to die of old age. I don't think there are any ways to make it impossible to kill you.

But there are plenty of ways to make it almost impossible to kill you. And even if you die, there's the save game trick :smalltongue:

[Kaeso]

the save game trick :smalltongue:

I beg your pardon?:smallconfused:

[LordBlades]

I beg your pardon?:smallconfused:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146470

[Wookie-ranger]

I'd suggest that armies in a D&D world are less for invading and more for the things that clusters of armed people usually do: deter unwanted people from walking through borders, into ports and into important places like castles and vaults; round up political opponents; attempt to enforce some modicum of personal and property security in public spaces (eg, by fighting bandits, thuggery and raids by Random Encounter type monsters).

There are a hundred jobs that involve the threat of violence, or simply a watchful pair of eyes. These are what you use armies for. All the things for which hiring hobo superheroes is overkill.

exactly. there are many reasons to keep an army around other then just attacking ONE single person.
even if a kingdom would have enough money to chose between 1000 trainer soldiers and one 15 level wizard they would probably still chose the army. a smart king would get one 9 level wizard (the stereotypical court magician) and only 500 warriors.

why? well, what if there are 3 orc/bandit raids of about 30 bad guys on opposing ends of the kingdom?
solution army: first of all they would have soldiers stationed there! they would hold them off for a while.
then the king would send out 100 to 150 soldiers to each location. they might not be as fast getting there, but they would get to all three places in more or less the same time, and kick some orc butt. then they would also help in the reconstruction a bit.
15 level wizard: he could teleport (or some such thing) to the first village in an instant and if he is lucky and finds all bandits in the town square standing next to each other in a nice little fireball shaped circle formation he would get them all in a few round (but it probably wot be that easy, will it).
then he might be able to teleport to the next village (IF he happen to have another one prepared). Then he MIGHT have enough spells left for all the orcs but if he does not the squishy little mage is puddle (and the entire kingdom is without defenses!).
IF he has enough spells to get to village one and two, AND IF he has enough spells to get ride or all the orcs/bandits in both villages, then he is simply out of spells and the last village is SOL.

the same thing is true for bigger battles two.
if two big nations are fighting they will both have mages and armies. in a single battle the 1st level warriors are gone be on the ground fighting with each other, while the wizards are flying above fighting with each other.


Wizards would devastate an army of simple commoners. the higher the wizards level the bigger the army he could flatten in the first few rounds; and this progression is increasing exponentially.


Wizards are not like common soldiers with better weapons. neither are they tanks, or even stealth airplanes.
they are the biggest atomic bombs you can think of.

people have been bringing up the WW and modern weaponry.
right now, at this very moment, there are nearly twice as many Atomic nukes around the world (that we know of) then it would take to cover every inch of soil with radiation.
just because a country (kingdom) has the power to Destroy (with a capital D) does not mean that they are going to use it in every engagement. especially is the other side has it too.


edit:

Only the gods can kill you..... sometimes

unless you kill them first.:smallamused:

[LordBlades]

15 level wizard: he could teleport (or some such thing) to the first village in an instant and if he is lucky and finds all bandits in the town square standing next to each other in a nice little fireball shaped circle formation he would get them all in a few round (but it probably wot be that easy, will it).
then he might be able to teleport to the next village (IF he happen to have another one prepared). Then he MIGHT have enough spells left for all the orcs but if he does not the squishy little mage is puddle (and the entire kingdom is without defenses!).
IF he has enough spells to get to village one and two, AND IF he has enough spells to get ride or all the orcs/bandits in both villages, then he is simply out of spells and the last village is SOL.

t

Or he could do the smart thing: wake up in the morning, prepare Planar Binding 3 times (he won't even bother with the greater version, he keeps his 7th and 8th slots for serious problems) and call 3 Olsyluths. He then would send each to take care of a problem. They can get to the target area instantly thanks to Greater Teleport and can look around as much as necessary thanks to Fly and Invisibility. Once they find what they're looking for, I doubt your average bandit/orc raid party has the ability to handle a CR 9 outsider.

He has solved all 3 problems, much more expediently than the 1000 warriors, and without leaving the comfort of his own livingroom personal demiplane

[ahenobarbi]

Or he could do the smart thing: wake up in the morning, prepare Planar Binding 3 times (he won't even bother with the greater version, he keeps his 7th and 8th slots for serious problems) and call 3 Olsyluths. He then would send each to take care of a problem. They can get to the target area instantly thanks to Greater Teleport and can look around as much as necessary thanks to Fly and Invisibility. Once they find what they're looking for, I doubt your average bandit/orc raid party has the ability to handle a CR 9 outsider.

He has solved all 3 problems, much more expediently than the 1000 warriors, and without leaving the comfort of his own livingroom personal demiplane

Yeah that would work. Only someone has to tell the wizard. It's really handier to have an army/ city guards deal with little stuff then to bother your wizard with every single problem in kingdom (problems with asking for raise/ not having time for their own stuff and becoming weak/ making coup d'etat... ).

[absolmorph]

Yeah that would work. Only someone has to tell the wizard. It's really handier to have an army/ city guards deal with little stuff then to bother your wizard with every single problem in kingdom (problems with asking for raise/ not having time for their own stuff and becoming weak/ making coup d'etat... ).
Solution: have a wizard on hand that's not a jerk who's gonna complain about spending an hour here or there in return for access to greater resources for whatever his hobbies are.

Total casting time for 3 Planar Bindings: 30 minutes.
Total casting time for 3 Magic Circle against Evils and drawing the diagram to allow the use of Dimensional Anchor: 30 minutes and 18 seconds.
Total casting time for 3 Dimensional Anchors: 18 seconds.
Total time spent: 60 minutes and 36 seconds.
Assuming that the wizard has a set of permanent diagrams just for stuff like this cuts off 30 minutes.
And then he can go back to researching whatever spell he was looking at, and the kingdom will provide the materials he needs for researching it.

Of course, I'm not sure why you wouldn't keep some men garrisoned at the ends of your kingdom, anyway.

[Tyndmyr]

Wizardly evocations are normally considered to dominate the battlefield. But is that true? Is it possible to have magic and still field traditional units of hundreds or thousands of men?

For our purposes an army unit will be considered 100 men, in a 50 x 50 ft square. Since they are common soldiers, with 1d4 hit die and no bonuses, we can assume they fail all saves and any damage kills them.

A Fireball has a 20 ft spread. This means it affects a maximum of 52 five-foot cubes. However, fireballs are emanations; they can be blocked by cover. The four soldiers adjacent to the center of the blast have no cover; but the 8 soldiers around them have the bodies of their comrades as Half cover (so a +2 to their save). The men beyond that have at least 2 bodies providing cover, so that counts as Nine-Tenths cover (+3 to their save). All of the rest of the men in the unit have at least 3 bodies between them and the blast, so unless the damage is sufficient to incinerate the corpses (which would require at least five times CON, I would think), they are safe. This means only 24 men will die: only a quarter of the unit.

So? Saving is still half damage. They still die.


Suppose the wizard gets clever, and aims the fireball so it is 10 ft off the ground. This air burst denies cover to the men underneath; but it also expends its maximum radius harmlessly in the air. The ideal balance between area of effect and cover comes to the same thing: 24 casualties.

Pfft, that's not clever. Tossing a wall of fire in front of the army is clever. One moderately leveled caster can stop or direct an army about at his will.


Obviously that is a lot. But a 5th level wizard can only cast 1-3 Fireballs a day; that means that a 100 man pike unit is roughly equivalent to a 5th level wizard on the battlefield. If the wizard is good or lucky, many men will die and the rest will flee; if the men are dedicated and brave, the wizard will run out of spells and then die on their pikes. (Of course smart wizards would cast Fly... but then we would be talking about 100 crossbowmen. And that would be one less Fireball they can cast). Interestingly, higher level fireballs are no more effective, since their radius does not increase.

First off, you're forgetting bonus spells. 2-5 fireballs is more appropriate.

Enlarge is core, and means that the hole in your army has gotten ridiculously large.

Fly and Prot against Arrows is pretty good. Toss on mage armor and shield as well. With enough range that increments start stacking up(easy given the range of fireball), a single wizard can take on a very large number of crossbowmen. None of these spells are rare or exotic, and any decent wizard can expect to know of them.

The lower level spells should also account for a few extra kills.

All in all, a level 5 wizard with no particular optimization is quite capable of taking out a hundred man unit of pikes in a day, and probably a good bit more. This is not equality, this is superiority. The wizard is also more flexible, more mobile, has vastly better range, and can take out whichever unit on the battlefield is most dangerous presently.


In a low magic world, with armies numbering in the thousands and only a handful of wizards, this means magic is a powerful force on the battlefield, but not the only force.

They dominate the battlefield and dictate the tactics that must be taken. For instance, if fireball exists, then any close formation of any size should not be used anywhere they can reasonably be targeted by one.


Lightning bolts are less effective; although they specifically deal damage to everything in their area, they have a small area of affect. They will only kill 10 men out of the unit (and 10 men out of the next unit, if they are adjacent).

10 foot radii spells like Flame Strike, Freezing Sphere, and Sound Burst are small enough that cover does not matter; but they only slay 12 men.

These are still fairly low level spells that, in an impressive manner, can slay entire units. While clever tactics can mitigate this somewhat, combat is still caster-centric. Identifying and neutralizing casters rapidly is the key to victory...ideally by having your own(and more/better) casters.


Higher-level spells that have 20 ft radii and do not allow cover will kill all 52 affected men in a single blast: Ice Storm, Black Tentacles, Unholy Blight, Cloudkill, Song of Discord, Acid Fog, Incendiary Cloud. Effects that can move will likely destroy the entire unit (unless the survivors flee). A Wall of Fire cast in its smallest circular form and facing inward will kill 52 men; facing outward, it will kill 72 men and trap the remaining 28 inside to be dealt with later. In its linear form it will kill the first 2 rows of men along its line of effect (so 20 men from one unit); the rest will have sufficient cover to retreat before the lower-level damage affects them.

Wall of fire in a line can split an army in half. The massive pile of casualties is incidental, what's important is that now your army is only fighting half theirs at once. Cloudkill is mobile and persists on the field. Bard songs have an area effect that notably amps up mundanes, as do certain other buffs.

Morale is also a serious problem when facing a caster.


Cones are better, but require getting close to your target. 15 foot cones like Burning Hands only kill 7 men in an optimal casting; 30 foot cones like Shout and Wave of Fatigue can kill 24 men; 60 foot cones such as Cone of Cold, Greater Shout, Wave of Exhaustion and Prismatic Spray can kill 75 men, assuming they are not blocked by cover. With cover, 30 foot cones only slay 17 men and 60 foot cones only kill 30.

When fired from above, cones cover an impressive area without allowing cover. See also, the DFA.


Symbols of Death, Insanity, and so on affect an entire adjacent unit (although the symbol of Death only does 150 hit points before burning out). After that no one will be silly enough to get close to them.

It's not about the kills. It's about the defense. If you can't go there without being incapacitated, you've simply given up control of that objective. Again, the mundanes are engaging in the fight the caster wants them to.

Note that the symbols, as well as fire traps, explosive runes, etc, need not come from the current day's spell allotments, and thus, are useful even with a lower kill/spell slot ratio.


Meteor Swarm creates 40 foot radius blasts, but these will be blocked by cover, so only 24 men per blast will be affected. The dreaded Storm of Vengeance will kill everything within its 360 ft radius (i.e. 150 fifty-foot battle squares!) but only after the 4th round. This basically means that summoning the storm causes the enemy army to immediately break ranks and flee for their lives (unless they are protected by sufficient fortifications such as a castle or keep).

Look, if there are ninth level spells on the other side, you need to run. Maw of Chaos/buffs/walking through the army = death. Or Apocalpyse from the sky. Or whatever...they win.


Summoned monsters, of course, will also be effective; but soldiers are trained to fight monsters. 100 well-ordered pikemen can send a fistful of Dire Wolves packing.

That may be. How well do they do against a shadow or an allip?


Thus, with careful review of the effects of spells, and appropriate strategic planning (no use letting the wizard fly away to fireball you again the next day), I think the strength of ordinary men and common steel can still decide the fates of kingdoms. Against an 11th level wizard, a thousand men backed up by only a handful of mid-level clerics and armed with a way to trap the wizard into fighting (for example, attacking his home town), may yet see victory.

What do you all think?

I think you design a thousand mundane soldiers, five fourth level clerics, and I'll make an 11th level wizard, and we'll do a match-up, eh? Have a neutral party design the battlefield? No leadership or infinite combos, of course, but I'll try to represent a normalish wizard interested in mass combat, and you can whip up what you feel is a fluffy and effective army.

[Zonugal]

I still don't see a Wizard really engaging an army on a battlefield except for aimless enjoyment. The Wizard has the means and resources to tell a kingdom, "If you incite conflict against me or my people I will assassinate every high noble."

That is a credible threat.

[Tyndmyr]

I think you design a thousand mundane soldiers, five fourth level clerics, and I'll make an 11th level wizard, and we'll do a match-up, eh? Have a neutral party design the battlefield? No leadership or infinite combos, of course, but I'll try to represent a normalish wizard interested in mass combat, and you can whip up what you feel is a fluffy and effective army.

Actually...make the clerics level 5, so they can dispel. Good luck with that. =)

[Incanur]

In 3.5, you're potentially better off making an army out of dogs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dog.htm) than human commoners. Warriors (and commoners, I guess, but they're so pathetic) would remain a threat in an E6 world but not much beyond that. Exponential incorporeal undead would be a challenge to stop in such a setting. (I assume most D&D universes have task forces of highish-level characters devoted to preventing shadows and allips from taking over.)

[Wookie-ranger]

I think you design a thousand mundane soldiers, five fourth level clerics, and I'll make an 11th level wizard, and we'll do a match-up, eh? Have a neutral party design the battlefield? No leadership or infinite combos, of course, but I'll try to represent a normalish wizard interested in mass combat, and you can whip up what you feel is a fluffy and effective army.

+1 please make that happen! i want to see it! :smallbiggrin:


edit:
how about the wizard can start at his tower and has 2 weeks time to prepare (there fore he can design the battlefield/his base) and the army can have 10.000 1lvl warriors (infantry), 100 2lvl fighters (sargents), 10 5lvl fighters (lieutenants), 50 5lvl experts (healers, no magic remember), 1 8lvl fighter/2lvl expert (general, eventhough have you ever seen a general slugging it out at the front line) and 1 15 lvl aristocrat (the king).

[Oindoth]

+1 please make that happen! i want to see it! :smallbiggrin:

Won't be as fun as some of the Tests of Spite that I've read about. 13th level Wizard vs. 20th level WBL Fighter was a hilarious thrashing.

[Zonugal]

I think you design a thousand mundane soldiers, five fourth level clerics, and I'll make an 11th level wizard, and we'll do a match-up, eh? Have a neutral party design the battlefield? No leadership or infinite combos, of course, but I'll try to represent a normalish wizard interested in mass combat, and you can whip up what you feel is a fluffy and effective army.

What constitutes a "mundane soldier?"

[Gandariel]

Let's make it more compelling and interesting:

You are an 11th level Wizard and you are the ruler of a castle/small kingdom.
An army of 5000 people is directed at your castle and wants to conquer it.
they're still three days away, but with divinations you managed to learn some stuff:
The Horde is ruled by a Warlord: a level 9 barbarian.
The highest ranks of the Horde is a mass of 500 barbarians (various levels, mostly one or two, max 6-7)
they have more or less 2500 Warriors (60% level 1, the rest is level 2-4)
there are both archers and meleers, but you don't know the exact numbers
and 2000 level one commoners.
They possess several(let's say 15) siege engines, and they have the support of an order of priests (50 level three clerics, 4 level five clerics, one level 7).

You CAN kill the warlord if you can, and it will decrease morale and stuff, but the barbarians will just select another one as leader and go ahead.
Likewise, you CAN Dominate or something the Ruler and have him command the Horde to stop... the Barbarians will kill him instantly and choose another warlord.

it is YOUR castle and you WANT and HAVE TO defend it.
people you can get home in time are 1500: half warriors and half commoners.
it is a castle, but not particularly well fortified (i mean, you DO have an advantage for being in a castle, but not that much. For instance, if you weren't here the enemies would take the city easily)

you have three days, and twice the WBL of a 11th level charachter (considering the resources of the castle).
Warriors are more or less already equipped (a weapon and some sort of armor), the Commoners don't have anything to fight with (they can grab a Club or a Sling, though)

You can't expect to get external help.

no infinite and stupid stuff.
Three days.
GO!


P.s. I threw most of these numbers at random, tell me if they're too easy/hard or broken







EDIT: After we fix the numbers to make it more or less equal, we could have a new thread for this challenge and have people command the two parts and have games ! it would be fun!

[Oindoth]

Frankly? A bunch of Stone Shapes to make your castle only accessible through a couple of routes, and then a couple of strategically placed Cloudkills make this no contest.

[Zonugal]

Let's make it more compelling and interesting:

You are an 11th level Wizard and you are the ruler of a castle/small kingdom.
An army of 5000 people is directed at your castle and wants to conquer it.
they're still three days away, but with divinations you managed to learn some stuff:
The Horde is ruled by a Warlord: a level 9 barbarian.
The highest ranks of the Horde is a mass of 500 barbarians (various levels, mostly one or two, max 6-7)
they have more or less 2500 Warriors (60% level 1, the rest is level 2-4)
there are both archers and meleers, but you don't know the exact numbers
and 2000 level one commoners.
They possess several(let's say 15) siege engines, and they have the support of an order of priests (50 level three clerics, 4 level five clerics, one level 7).

You CAN kill the warlord if you can, and it will decrease morale and stuff, but the barbarians will just select another one as leader and go ahead.
Likewise, you CAN Dominate or something the Ruler and have him command the Horde to stop... the Barbarians will kill him instantly and choose another warlord.

it is YOUR castle and you WANT and HAVE TO defend it.
people you can get home in time are 1500: half warriors and half commoners.
it is a castle, but not particularly well fortified (i mean, you DO have an advantage for being in a castle, but not that much. For instance, if you weren't here the enemies would take the city easily)

you have three days, and twice the WBL of a 11th level charachter (considering the resources of the castle).
Warriors are more or less already equipped (a weapon and some sort of armor), the Commoners don't have anything to fight with (they can grab a Club or a Sling, though)

You can't expect to get external help.

no infinite and stupid stuff.
Three days.
GO!


P.s. I threw most of these numbers at random, tell me if they're too easy/hard or broken







EDIT: After we fix the numbers to make it more or less equal, we could have a new thread for this challenge and have people command the two parts and have games ! it would be fun!

This type of challenge might fall apart if the Wizard asks deeper questions regarding the castle. Did he build it? What does it look like? What components are there and what defenses are built into it.

An easier way might be to give the Wizard a certain amount of gp and tell them to construct a castle using the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guide.

[Crasical]

This type of challenge might fall apart if the Wizard asks deeper questions regarding the castle. Did he build it? What does it look like? What components are there and what defenses are built into it.

An easier way might be to give the Wizard a certain amount of gp and tell them to construct a castle using the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guide.

If you ask then inevitably someone's going to build that flying hikkikomori borg cube of doom that /tg/ created back in '07.

[Zonugal]

If you ask then inevitably someone's going to build that flying hikkikomori borg cube of doom that /tg/ created back in '07.

You bring a very good point but hopefully the practical restraint of, "This castle has to house citizens & act as a legitimate home base for a kingdom," would restrict them to a more traditional castle.

Either way for that type of challenge the Wizard needs to know exact details about his castle...

[Kaeso]

In 3.5, you're potentially better off making an army out dogs than human commoners.

I may be wrong, but I doubt your average commoner has even seen one battle. Medieval lords did not draft men, that practice originated in the French revolution IIRC.

[Oindoth]

If you ask then inevitably someone's going to build that flying hikkikomori borg cube of doom that /tg/ created back in '07.

Hell, even just placing a regular castle in an area with dense forest/on the bottom of a canyon/on top of a bridge would make it trivial.

[NNescio]

I may be wrong, but I doubt your average commoner has even seen one battle. Medieval lords did not draft men, that practice originated in the French revolution IIRC.

Medieval levies.

And while the modern conscription system originated from the French Revolution, conscription of one form of another (including national ones) have existed since way back in the B.C. era.

(cf. Babylon and China)

[tyckspoon]

Eh. If your castle has some choke-point approach, it's a very simple defense: You have access to Wall of Stone and Wall of Iron. Block off the chokepoint with them, Disintegrate/Fireball the siege engines and assassinate/dominate the clerics. At that point the horde has no means of actually getting to your castle, and you can destroy them at your leisure; your city/castle merely needs enough food supply to survive for a week or so while you do so (you'll be coming back later to Disintegrate/Stone Shape/have your unskilled labor force reopen the pass you blocked up.)

If you don't have a single choke, well, it's still the same basic plan; take out the heavy weaponry and the higher-level spellcasters, and your Wall spells mean you can put up fortifications much faster than any of the regular soldiers can possibly hope to knock them down. You can't really lose; you just have a variety of more or less efficient ways to win, barring having a *really* poorly planned castle that can't handle being under siege for a short period.

[Wookie-ranger]

This type of challenge might fall apart if the Wizard asks deeper questions regarding the castle. Did he build it? What does it look like? What components are there and what defenses are built into it.

An easier way might be to give the Wizard a certain amount of gp and tell them to construct a castle using the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guide.

What about the 'cheap keep' in the Stronghold Builders Guide (p. 105)? it also said that this is the keep you get from the Deck of Many Things. that could be the story of how the wizard got his base, too.

[CTrees]

I may be wrong, but I doubt your average commoner has even seen one battle. Medieval lords did not draft men, that practice originated in the French revolution IIRC.

For armies, in Western Europe? Pretty much, to the best of my knowledge (though other regions did it much, much earlier, and more often). Strangely, impressment (for sailors) started in the late seventeenth century in England.

[Zonugal]

What about the 'cheap keep' in the Stronghold Builders Guide (p. 105)? it also said that this is the keep you get from the Deck of Many Things. that could be the story of how the wizard got his base, too.

I honestly think that is a terrific compromise!

Now does the Wizard have additional funds to accessorize it or are we just sticking with what is outlined in the SBG?

What type of citizens exist within it? Is it just 750 warriors & 750 commoners? No experts, magewrights, aristocrats or adepts?

Just laying down some deeper questions.

[Doug Lampert]

You're comparing well-trained soldiers to a bunch of guys who were probably press-ganged into the army and sent to the fronts once they learned which end of the spear was which.

Actually, well trained experienced soldiers were very reluctant to run head first into a meat grinder. It's the raw conscripts that charge machine gun nests.... (And every once in awhile succeed).

It was noted in the ACW that troops who'd EVER defended a fixed position with repeating rifles would utterly refuse to charge accross open fields from then on. Instead they'd go to ground and send forward scirmishers. This was considered an argument against arming large bodies of infantry with repeaters.

First Ypres was notable as one of the only cases, EVER, where well trained, experienced troops simply charged into the meat grinder, and that was because they didn't believe that their officers would order them forward without a better plan than "maybe the enemy will run out of ammunition first". Otherwise the better trained the unit was the more likely it was to simply halt in place (if cover was available) or fallback to cover, and send forward scirmishers with grenades and the like.

Read a few dozen Medal of Honor citations from WWII, about half of them will say something very much like: "Unit pinned down by MG fire, soldier X and one or two companions, at extreme risk of their own lives advanced on the enemy. His companions injured X continued forward under heavy fire, was hit Y times, and destroyed the machine gun nest with grenades. Despite another Z wounds he then continued forward and destroyed # additional machine gun nests thus saving his platoon and allowing the advance to continue." The cases where not everyone in the scirmish team was injured or where there wasn't a second or third MG nest simply weren't considered signficant enough to get the MoH or VC or IC or whatever (they did still get other medals).

[Gandariel]

I honestly think that is a terrific compromise!

Now does the Wizard have additional funds to accessorize it or are we just sticking with what is outlined in the SBG?

What type of citizens exist within it? Is it just 750 warriors & 750 commoners? No experts, magewrights, aristocrats or adepts?

Just laying down some deeper questions.

So we have a castle, perfect!!
Okay then, i'd say he has 130% of his WBL, and he can spend the extra on fortifications.
We can say he gets more or less 50 experts, but not particularly useful (mostly artisans with maxxed profession: what they do)
adepts, hm. I'd prefer avoiding other casters.
there.. are a few aristocrats in the town, but i don't see how should that be helpful.
i'm not sure what magewrights are, but i suppose they're some sort of casters.. see my Adept answer.

to make it make sense,let's give the wizard 24 hours before the army arrives. (otherwise, he can have too much time for mass assassinations / destroying the siege engines)
then.. do you guys think the numbers of people are allright?

[Zonugal]

So we have a castle, perfect!!
Okay then, i'd say he has 130% of his WBL, and he can spend the extra on fortifications.
We can say he gets more or less 50 experts, but not particularly useful (mostly artisans with maxxed profession: what they do)
adepts, hm. I'd prefer avoiding other casters.
there.. are a few aristocrats in the town, but i don't see how should that be helpful.
i'm not sure what magewrights are, but i suppose they're some sort of casters.. see my Adept answer.

to make it make sense,let's give the wizard 24 hours before the army arrives. (otherwise, he can have too much time for mass assassinations / destroying the siege engines)
then.. do you guys think the numbers of people are allright?

What about a breakdown like this?

* 50 experts
* 700 commoners
* 5 adepts
* 5 magewrights (Eberron Campaign Setting)
* 5 aristocrats
* 685 warriors

The aristocrats serve in an auxiliary role and are there primarily for flavor reasons (to provide diversity to those brought in). The adepts function in a way similar to healers/doctors and the magewrights work as magically-aided crafters.

Eh?

[Gandariel]

i don't particularly want the wizard side to have other casters, but so few shouldn't do any harm...
Though they CAN cast Sleep on everyone on sight, proving more effective than dozens of soldiers...
would you mind if we just say the Wizard is the only caster on his side?

Also, the other numbers are okay.
now i'm gonna go sleep, tomorrow i'll be happy to read any response, and possibly start a new thread to create a game using these rules.. bye for now!

[Wookie-ranger]

What about a breakdown like this?

* 50 experts
* 700 commoners
* 5 adepts
* 5 magewrights (Eberron Campaign Setting)
* 5 aristocrats
* 685 warriors



i don't particularly want the wizard side to have other casters, but so few shouldn't do any harm...
Though they CAN cast Sleep on everyone on sight, proving more effective than dozens of soldiers...
would you mind if we just say the Wizard is the only caster on his side?


we could substitute 10 experts in healing + 10 experts in UMD + 10 experts in craft (alchemy) for the 5 adepts.
or we could make a rule that the 5 adepts are some strange religious order and not allowed to cast spells on anyone that would be considered and enemy.
not sure if we should include any warriors at all. since it is wizard vs army. and cut down the number of commoners to 400 for the same reason.
the wizard should do the fighting, we are arguing that the wizard could defend the town, not that he helps a lot in the towns defense. but that's just ihmo

[Coidzor]

Hmm. One thing that's successfully been accomplished by this thread is causing me to wonder what a wizard that was looking to make a career out of war would look like.


It was noted in the ACW

Clarification for the rest of the conversation, please.


An easier way might be to give the Wizard a certain amount of gp and tell them to construct a castle using the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guide.

Problem is, they get a better deal on the composite walls of the repeated combination of wall of stone and wall of iron than actually paying for labor or materials. As a bonus, that frees them up to have spell turrets or nifty traps that act as a convenient source of death for vermin or unwelcome children or level 1 soldiers.

What's a dependable source of about 12-15 damage and low in level range for a trap? Or a double layer of about 6-8 damage a pop, I suppose. A CL 5 burning hands has an average damage of about 12.5 damage (we'll call it 6 if they save) and costs about 2,500 gp and about 200 xp for a level 5 wizard. Could save 500 gp and have 5 CL 4 traps for every 4 CL 5 traps for an average damage of 10, which is set to kill or severely injure most throwaway level 1 characters, especially ones that don't get max HP for their HD at first level. These do a 15' cone burst too. So one could have 3 layers with 1-2 traps each for a relatively modest price of 6K-12K in terms of the traps.

Several concentric rings that the easy way in is through a nice, juicy, unguarded, undefended, uncontested, trapped gate, and the actual path for people who wanted to come in is a small passage that gets stoneshaped in and out of existence with the rest of the wall being ablative stone and iron seem like the kind of really dumb and hamfisted way I'd do things that would be fairly effective. Especially since they'd have to bunch up in order to try to get through the gate, and a nice big, fat wall of fire or fireball behind them would give a good incentive to hurry through the gate without examining it too closely.


You bring a very good point but hopefully the practical restraint of, "This castle has to house citizens & act as a legitimate home base for a kingdom," would restrict them to a more traditional castle.

You don't build a fortress to be a governmental center, however, some governmental centers have to be built with some nods towards fortressing in a pinch.

The Cube is decidedly a fortress, it is not something that one runs a government through, unless one is handing down order from on high in between gallivanting around conquering the entire biosphere and beyond.

Someone who primarily was a ruler would not stay solely in The Cube, unless they were content to not kick back and enjoy the largesse of being titular head of state.

[Zonugal]

So where are we than for the practical purposes of exercise? Are we just supplying a Wizard with a cheap keep and that is it? Are we providing him with a basic staff in tune with what he might have functioning/working within that keep? Where is the castle located geographically speaking? Is its rear protected by natural obstruction?

Just asking questions here...

[Coidzor]

If you wanna actually do something with this, it's at the point where someone declares the full scenario and that either flies, people aren't interested enough to comment on it, or someone has a counter proposal.

[Oindoth]

Why doesn't the Wizard keep everyone in a Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, and disappear them until the threat is gone, instead of bothering with the keep? Or a series of lower level versions of that spell, like Secure Shelter, if he likes? Protecting large numbers of people for a long time is a non-issue for him. And after that, he can use traditional Wizard tactics. Hell, he can do both things, so that breaching the keep accomplishes nothing but wasting resources.

[brann miekka]

okay, i've read probably three pages of this and now i want a chance to flesh out the warriors side. first of all since this is dnd and not based off any actual army, and someone did say barbarians (or atleast this is what im going off of) lets assume the commoners act as infantry and the barbariens act as Norse warriors who were renowned for their hit and run skirmish form of attack. Day one you split your army in three, a third of your skirmishers stay with the main host and act as scouts and runners, due to their increased speed they're good at this, lets also say these barbarians put their ranks into hide and move silently and use "common earthen camo" aka, mud and grass they get a +2 to the check. now since your average commoner has a very low spot and on casual guard take 10 on said spot, these 6 and a half foot warriors-in-the-trees move past your wizards sentries and kill them to let the main host through after someone who can write sends off the normal reports (or plants false positions in the letter) the main host then approaches upon the keep.

in the meantime the 2/3 of the barbarians that left the main host work their way around the flanks of the castle, using the night and surroundings of the land as cover. they then split into three squads each, and harass the country side, burning towns and looting supplies, as they tend to do, then flee back off into the night.

now its been a few weeks by this time and theres two things that might have happened 1)the coward of a wizard is too **** scared to let his troops out to defend the villages that are continually being sacked and hides within his walls, this leads to outcries from the citizens against their lordly wizard who supposed to be protecting them which then turns to a rebellion in his own lands, the people make a treaty with the barbarians to aid them in return for not destroying their land anymore and also cut off supplies returning to the castle. now you have no support and only whats in your stores to feed your fifteen hundred warriors, they now have you in a choke.

2) the wizard sends out patrols to his nearby towns to try and quell the barbarian attacks, now theres only half as many people to defend in the castle. now the barbarians can either take this opportunity to attack the patrols on the road and run, as is their custom, slowly picking off troops one group at a time, with lower casualties due to it being barbarians Vs. commoners.

during this time the main host stays camped a mile away and builds moderate defenses (wooden and hide homes with fire hardened stakes lining the perimeter) and prepares things such as salves and ointments from the land around for the warriors when battle does come.

back to the groups of barbarians.

once they have control of the neighboring villages they finally cut off ALL supplies to the keep period. they now sit and starve out your castle hiding when patrols come (if they do) and ambushing patrols on the roads. this is all i can think of for now, ide be glad to move this to a private discussion if i spammed and anyone actually cares enough for the wizard to try and stop the barbarians from taking his land and his head.

[olentu]

okay, i've read probably three pages of this and now i want a chance to flesh out the warriors side. first of all since this is dnd and not based off any actual army, and someone did say barbarians (or atleast this is what im going off of) lets assume the commoners act as infantry and the barbariens act as Norse warriors who were renowned for their hit and run skirmish form of attack. Day one you split your army in three, a third of your skirmishers stay with the main host and act as scouts and runners, due to their increased speed they're good at this, lets also say these barbarians put their ranks into hide and move silently and use "common earthen camo" aka, mud and grass they get a +2 to the check. now since your average commoner has a very low spot and on casual guard take 10 on said spot, these 6 and a half foot warriors-in-the-trees move past your wizards sentries and kill them to let the main host through after someone who can write sends off the normal reports (or plants false positions in the letter) the main host then approaches upon the keep.

in the meantime the 2/3 of the barbarians that left the main host work their way around the flanks of the castle, using the night and surroundings of the land as cover. they then split into three squads each, and harass the country side, burning towns and looting supplies, as they tend to do, then flee back off into the night.

now its been a few weeks by this time and theres two things that might have happened 1)the coward of a wizard is too **** scared to let his troops out to defend the villages that are continually being sacked and hides within his walls, this leads to outcries from the citizens against their lordly wizard who supposed to be protecting them which then turns to a rebellion in his own lands, the people make a treaty with the barbarians to aid them in return for not destroying their land anymore and also cut off supplies returning to the castle. now you have no support and only whats in your stores to feed your fifteen hundred warriors, they now have you in a choke.

2) the wizard sends out patrols to his nearby towns to try and quell the barbarian attacks, now theres only half as many people to defend in the castle. now the barbarians can either take this opportunity to attack the patrols on the road and run, as is their custom, slowly picking off troops one group at a time, with lower casualties due to it being barbarians Vs. commoners.

during this time the main host stays camped a mile away and builds moderate defenses (wooden and hide homes with fire hardened stakes lining the perimeter) and prepares things such as salves and ointments from the land around for the warriors when battle does come.

back to the groups of barbarians.

once they have control of the neighboring villages they finally cut off ALL supplies to the keep period. they now sit and starve out your castle hiding when patrols come (if they do) and ambushing patrols on the roads. this is all i can think of for now, ide be glad to move this to a private discussion if i spammed and anyone actually cares enough for the wizard to try and stop the barbarians from taking his land and his head.

Cutting off supplies is really not a viable strategy against someone who can teleport.

[zlefin]

d&d just isn't designed for large armies.
The existence of armies is simply due to the medieval setting, rather than to an exploration of the types of military setups that would actually be found in such a setting.
An army for fighting wars doesn't make mcuh sense; the purpose of low level units is as either a) support cannon fodder
or b) low scale force projection; which is more like policing war.

This reminds me of Dr Gero, from dragonball;
he made those high number androids, and cell, because he found out he was in a world where one awesome guy can take out an army (red ribbon army), so it's better to put all your effort into just making one/a few really awesome dudes.
It's really just a question of how much power scales (and how many individuals are capable of scaling thier power);


Hmmm, i wonder if there's any good works which look at how society structures under such a world setup.

[Coidzor]

The Tippyverse and the view of society that Frank and K had in their Tomes series are the two biggest fan works that I know of.

[MukkTB]

I'm pretty sure in D&D if wizards were uncommon but not rare then a 'War' would come down to spellcasters fighting. There probably would be standing armies, but rather than neutralizing each other my guess is the wizards would create tons of collateral damage. Unrestricted magic warfare would probably be a lot like unrestricted nuclear warfare. Wightpocalpyse. Chain gated monsters. Maybe temporal warfare. Actions that would threaten our plane's stability. Most of this stuff would just be to annoy the enemy wizards while you put your serious efforts into killing them. Its got to make it harder to fight a war when your country has turned into a land of level draining undead speckled with craters.

[zlefin]

I was thinking about the game Dominions 3: the awakening
and similar issues come up there, with regular troops becoming outdated and useless after awhile (you gain enough research to summon high level monsters that troops just can't hurt)
One thing that extends their usefulness for awhile is the existence of some powerful army buffing spells.

Since d&d isn't designed for army combat; there mostly just aren't spells with areas of effect suitable for armies; the mass spells still most only affect a party's worth of units. If there were truly mass army buffing spells it'd do a fair bit to make lesser soldiers still useful. (at least I haven't seen any in the books i've read)

Still, since the game is predicated on exponential growth for all classes (regardless of how well it achieves that), that can only do so much.

[NNescio]

I'm pretty sure in D&D if wizards were uncommon but not rare then a 'War' would come down to spellcasters fighting. There probably would be standing armies, but rather than neutralizing each other my guess is the wizards would create tons of collateral damage. Unrestricted magic warfare would probably be a lot like unrestricted nuclear warfare. Wightpocalpyse. Chain gated monsters. Maybe temporal warfare. Actions that would threaten our plane's stability. Most of this stuff would just be to annoy the enemy wizards while you put your serious efforts into killing them. Its got to make it harder to fight a war when your country has turned into a land of level draining undead speckled with craters.

How standing armies can be relevant in a world with reality-bending wizards; cf. Discworld.

(Nobody wants unrestricted thermonuclear thaumaturgical warfare going on, especially after some horrible events in history, so DM fiat the forces in power conspire to keep it from happening.)

[TuggyNE]

(snip)

Uh, this really seems to assume the wizard is doing literally nothing at all. No divinations/scrying, no attacks on the barbarians once he knows they're there, no teleporting for supplies (as was mentioned), no mind control, no traps or walls or Symbols... this isn't even a wizard at all, this is some random Aristocrat NPC.

Maybe try again?

[brann miekka]

Cutting off supplies is really not a viable strategy against someone who can teleport.

yea, but lets be honest, even if your blowing all your 5th level spells (keep in mind that your only lvl 11) you still cant get nearly enough supplies to feed 1500 mouths, seeing as you can only bring one person per 3 lvls and they can only carry up to their heavy load. then its a matter of waiting you out and potential night time invasion, your men will be too weak to defend if the barbarians scaled the wall......come to think if it this is all based on the assumption that your own men don't turn on you. first goes the stocked supplies, then the horses, then the pets and soon the critters in the walls. comes down to classic siege warfare. generally those on the outside win.

[brann miekka]

Uh, this really seems to assume the wizard is doing literally nothing at all. No divinations/scrying, no attacks on the barbarians once he knows they're there, no teleporting for supplies (as was mentioned), no mind control, no traps or walls or Symbols... this isn't even a wizard at all, this is some random Aristocrat NPC.

Maybe try again?
I'de love for you to tell me what the wizard is doing, i'm arguing purely from the invaders point of few.

[olentu]

yea, but lets be honest, even if your blowing all your 5th level spells (keep in mind that your only lvl 11) you still cant get nearly enough supplies to feed 1500 mouths, seeing as you can only bring one person per 3 lvls and they can only carry up to their heavy load. then its a matter of waiting you out and potential night time invasion, your men will be too weak to defend if the barbarians scaled the wall......come to think if it this is all based on the assumption that your own men don't turn on you. first goes the stocked supplies, then the horses, then the pets and soon the critters in the walls. comes down to classic siege warfare. generally those on the outside win.

Bag of holding, teleportation circle (you might want some of these anyway to visit colligues), shrink item, polymorph line, planar binding, stone to flesh (perhaps not so tasty), phantom steed, and that is staying core.

[Yahzi]

Why is that dumb? A 20th level wizard can create a major fortress. Hell, he can create an entire plane of existence. And he can do it multiple times. Honestly, he should cost more than a fortress.
I begin to perceive why you and I have so much difficulty communicating...



It was noted in the ACW that troops who'd EVER defended a fixed position with repeating rifles would utterly refuse to charge accross open fields from then on. Instead they'd go to ground and send forward scirmishers. This was considered an argument against arming large bodies of infantry with repeaters.
I had not heard that one. Just awesome.

Anyway the general consensus seems to be that the war-band approach is the most likely D&D environment. The King's "army" consists of name-level heroes who have their own castles/fiefs; those lesser nobles hire armies to police their estates, guard their keeps (from ordinary threats0, and accompany them on wars.

So rather than develop detailed rules for managing thousands of troops, what would make more sense are guidelines for handling these small-unit strike squads. As someone noted, we should just drop the entire notion of pike squares; military units are merely appendages of hero teams. A kingdom measures its wealth in the number of levels it can call on, not the number of soldiers it can command.

I am not sure Heroes of Battle quite got that; I think that book is still in the mindset of 1,000 man armies. The point was raised that there are no army-buffing spells; arguably, there should be (but then, there are no pregnancy preventing or causing spells either, which seems like a giant oversight in the RW). Again this feeds back into my complaint that the spell book is designed for dungeon crawling, as if that was all that mattered in the D&D world. Meanwhile, we're supposed to believe the usual medieval world is outside the dungeon, without even the changes compelled by the dungeon spells.

This actually fits into the early feudal and Iron Age mileu; and it would make for good adventures. A war is a series of fights between party groups; what makes it different than a dungeon encounter is a) it's outside, and b) there are a fistful of mooks running around on both sides.

So: how many soldiers would the average 5th level group (fighter, mage, cleric, rogue) find useful? What is the balance between "too many to feed" and "gosh I wish I had another mook right now?" I'm thinking its between 20 and 100; what do you guys think? Or am I wrong - is the number actually 0? Would you find any number of mooks to just be a drag?

[absolmorph]

yea, but lets be honest, even if your blowing all your 5th level spells (keep in mind that your only lvl 11) you still cant get nearly enough supplies to feed 1500 mouths, seeing as you can only bring one person per 3 lvls and they can only carry up to their heavy load. then its a matter of waiting you out and potential night time invasion, your men will be too weak to defend if the barbarians scaled the wall......come to think if it this is all based on the assumption that your own men don't turn on you. first goes the stocked supplies, then the horses, then the pets and soon the critters in the walls. comes down to classic siege warfare. generally those on the outside win.


I'de love for you to tell me what the wizard is doing, i'm arguing purely from the invaders point of few.
Buying a trap of Create Food and Water with an automatic reset, activated by a lever.
Minimum CL of 5, so each pull creates enough food for 15 people (or 5 horses). Cost of 500*5*3=7500 gp, plus 40*5*5*3 = 3000 gp from the experience expenditure.
An automatic reset trap of Prestidigitation would add another 350 gp [(500*.5*1)+(40*5*.5*1)=250+100=350], and would make people happier with the taste.
Of course, you could also get a use-activated magic item for about 30,000 gp, if you don't want to abuse the rules quite as much. That still leaves you with about 36,000 gp for knickknacks. Not quite as great of a deal, but still within the limits of a level 11 characters WBL. Also makes a siege pretty laughable, since you can then spend your time either A) ferrying the citizens out to a nation that's willing to take them in, 3 at a time, or B) after spending your week picking up the trap and sealing off all ways to where you're keeping the civilians using Stone Shape and Wall of Stone/Iron, harassing the horde with teleportation, flight and Greater Invisibility. In the middle of the night, fly over their camp while invisible, drop a couple Cloud Kills, maybe open with a couple Enlarged Fireballs centered on the greatest concentrations of them...
Really, there's not much they can do about it.

Actually, if you can reliably get Persisted Lesser Ironguard, you could lure them into an area, trap them with Wall of Iron and just laugh as you walk out. Not a likely situation, but good for a few laughs.

[olentu]

I'de love for you to tell me what the wizard is doing, i'm arguing purely from the invaders point of few.

Well let me see. Probably one of the more cost efficient ways to deal with the barbarians is some castings of shrink item. They wake up covered in lava and you can take the rest of the day off.

[LordBlades]

Well let me see. Probably one of the more cost efficient ways to deal with the barbarians is some castings of shrink item. They wake up covered in lava and you can take the rest of the day off.

Or you can just summon some angels shadows

[Yahzi]

Actually...make the clerics level 5, so they can dispel. Good luck with that. =)
I'm not sure I want to make an army; but I would love to see your wizard. :smallbiggrin: No wands, though; wands just make D&D silly. If we can use wands, I'll take a 5th lvl wizard and 100 1st level rogues, and just fireball your entire kingdom into ash.

So here's my army:

800 Soldiers: Commoner, Hd 1d4, Dex 14, Heavy Crossbow, 100 quarrels, Club, Studded Leather (75 gp). They can fire 1,200 ft, so they totally have range on the wizard, even if he is flying. They also have basic Teamster skills. (60,000 gp)

100 Siege Engineers: Commoner, Hd 1d4, Pick, Light Hammer. Tower shield (35 gp). Between them they have 20 Ballistas with 100 javelins and a horse to pull it (17,000 gp).

100 Knights: Fighter 1st, Hd 1d10, Str 16, Con 14, Light Warhorse, Longsword, Lance, Large Steel Shield, Banded mail (450 gp). Feets: Mounted Combat/Ride By/Spirited Charger. (45,000 gp).

16 Priests: Cleric 1st, Hd 1d8, Heavy Crossbow, 100 quarrels, Club, Studded Leather (75 gp). Disguised to look like ordinary soldiers. Casts Magic Weapon and Cure Minor Wounds, mostly.

4 Bishops: Cleric 5th, Hd 1d8, Heavy Crossbow, 100 quarrels, Club, Studded Leather (75 gp). Disguised to look like ordinary soldiers. Casts Magic Weapon, Cure Minor Wounds, and Dispel.

Baggage Train 100 wagons, 200 horse, food and tools. (75,000 gp)

Strategy:
The army will advance on the keep, where it intends to build catapults and siege engines and tear the castle apart. The primary tactic is to force the the wizard to reveal himself, where he can be subjected to Dispels, hundreds of chances at nat 20 crossbow hits, and 1 nat 20 Ballista hit.

Now that's just shy of 200K I've spent (although I might have overspent on supplies). But then, not all of it will be consumed (assuming anyone survives!).

So, let's say we have a week of the army marching to your keep; another week of building catapults; and another 2 weeks of reducing your castle to rubble.

What's your opening move?

[NNescio]

I'de love for you to tell me what the wizard is doing, i'm arguing purely from the invaders point of few.

Cheating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airlift) egregiously. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare) Con (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_interdiction)ducting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_air_support) modern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_intelligence) war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_%28artillery%29)fare. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe)

[olentu]

Or you can just summon some angels shadows

Nah then you have to figure out something to do with an army of shadows before a bunch of evil clerics of pelor drop by and kill you for trying to take over the world before them.

[Gavinfoxx]

How would your army fight my level 9 Druid who, buffed to the gills and with LOTS of stealth spells up, using the concealment of the night to hide, does stealth bombing runs from maximum range in the air on the entire army, and has various spells which make archery impossible to hit her? And has ways to make it difficult for the army to even make sure they are targeting the right square in which to hit her?

The one I linked to before? Where she has high dex from the form, large bonus to hide checks, and is using huge massive distance to hide? And she can also, you know, just pretend to be a normal hawk and the people might never actually know that it is that particular hawk that is bombarding them with lots of killing magic? And is summoning things that might include a hurricane windstorm in the middle of camp? Who has options that include 'become a burrowing creature, unburrow in a not well seen part of camp, cast a spell to cause chaos, reburrow and pop up elsewhere'?

[Killer Angel]

now its been a few weeks by this time

Basically, your move is to give some weeks of free time to a 11° lev. wizard to decimate your commanders, casters and troops?

[LordBlades]

Possible wizard opening moves:

-prepare planar binding on both 6th level slots 2 days in a row, getting 4 osyluths; One night, they descend upon the enemy army's camp, flying and invisible and start killing. Since nobody in the army possesses any way to see invisibility and the osyluths can easily shrug off the occasional lucky hit, I expect a slaughter

-wizard needs to have Invisible Spell feat for best effect, but works decently without it too: sneak to the enemy army's night camp under cover of Invisiblity and Zone of Silence, then drop a couple Cloudkills. Works much better with Invisible spell, because for all intents and purposes, people will just drop dead out of the blue.

[gkathellar]

I begin to perceive why you and I have so much difficulty communicating...

Because I expect a 20th-level character capable of fighting demigods and demon princes, creating entire planes of existence, stopping time, summoning armies of outsiders, perceiving the past and future and toying with the very fabric of magic should simply be out of the league of mere mortals? What I'm asserting is that at a certain level in this game, casters develop a set of abilities so far above what simple armies and mundanes can manage that pitting the two against each other is a recipe for hilarious disaster. This point is usually reached by the time you acquire 5th-level spells, but some builds manage it when they get 4th-level spells and others not until they get 6th-level spells.

If you want to avoid this, you play E6, where casters never get the kinds of spells that make them into engines of sheer, awful terror.


I'de love for you to tell me what the wizard is doing, i'm arguing purely from the invaders point of few.

Since Teleportation + Bag of Holding and/or Create Food and Water traps cover his supply needs, our 11th-level wizard can really afford to take things slow. The first night, he scribes some Symbols of Sleep on sheets of looseleaf, uses divinations to locate the barbarian camp's caster support, teleports in, and triggers the Symbols to make assassinations quick and easy. Now that the caster support is gone, the barbarian army has no chance, as opposed to very little chance. Every subsequent night, he teleports into the barbarian camp under cover of improved invisibility, and spends the next 9 rounds wreaking havoc with lower-level blasting and battlefield control spells before teleporting back out. He saves his higher-level slots for the possibility of an enemy offensive, or spends them improving his fortifications with various Wall and terrain-shifting spells.

But what if something goes wrong? Well, that's why he took one level of Mindbender (or some other easy one-level dip that doesn't lose casting), delaying his 10th-level bonus feat to 11th-level — when he spent it on Craft Contingent Spell. As he wracks up experience for killing an entire army, the Wizard puts together various Crafted Contingencies to make himself even more invulnerable.

[Doc Roc]

Having killed planets with a 13th level wizard? I'm still not sure what you expect an army to do.

[NNescio]

So, let's say we have a week of the army marching to your keep; another week of building catapults; and another 2 weeks of reducing your castle to rubble.

What's your opening move?

Wait, the Wizard gets one whole week to do whatever he wants before the army even arrives?

[absolmorph]

Wait, the Wizard gets one whole week to do whatever he wants before the army even arrives?
It's like Christmas.
Except instead of presents under a tree there's using invisibility and flight to rain invisible, 80-foot-diameter balls of flame on your enemies.
So, a bit of an improvement.


Having killed planets with a 13th level wizard? I'm still not sure what you expect an army to do.
... They can pray, I guess...

[Doc Roc]

... They can pray, I guess...

That's true! That's definitely true! Gods are markedly difficult to kill if optimized.


So let me get this straight. You've found the Great Corrupter. In his palace of bone and hate. That'd be my Wizard. And you think, you somehow imagine, that he's going to ignore the fact that you marshaled this force against him? When he's got, what, like three weeks before you're even sure he's in the castle you're attacking? While your homeland, or at least a couple of snazzy forts, are left undefended?

If there is a structure in your ______ kingdom made of stone, you will need to render it into dust before you will finally corner me. If there is a law, you will need to break it. If there is a spell, you will need to know it. By the time I am done, you will be made over in my own image.

Yes, come and defeat me. It can only end well.

[Killer Angel]

So let me get this straight. You've found the Great Corrupter. In his palace of bone and hate. That'd be my Wizard. And you think, you somehow imagine, that he's going to ignore the fact that you marshaled this force against him?

"Dear Great Corrupter,
I perfectly know how magical researches can be stressful... you need to relax.
For this reason, given that your birthday is approaching, I assembled this disposable army that I send to you as gift.
Do with them what pleases you more, be creative, have fun, enjoy the killing/torture/enslavement.
My best wishes,
Dad"

[gkathellar]

My best wishes,
Dad"

Their father-son fishing trips must be awesome.

Since his dad calls him Great Corruptor, is Great his given name, or Great Corruptor? Is his full name Great Corrupter Wizardfist, son of Supreme Diabolist Wizardfist and Lucia the Godscourge Wizardfist? ... I have a sitcom idea.

[Wookie-ranger]

"Dear Great Corrupter,
I perfectly know how magical researches can be stressful... you need to relax.
For this reason, given that your birthday is approaching, I assembled this disposable army that I send to you as gift.
Do with them what pleases you more, be creative, have fun, enjoy the killing/torture/enslavement.
My best wishes,
Dad"


Their father-son fishing trips must be awesome.

Since his dad calls him Great Corruptor, is Great his given name, or Great Corruptor? Is his full name Great Corrupter Wizardfist, son of Supreme Diabolist Wizardfist and Lucia the Godscourge Wizardfist? ... I have a sitcom idea.



awesome, love it!



just as a question how on earth do you guys want to guy 1500 people in the 'cheap keep'. :smallconfused:
not including interdimensional spaces and such, there would not be enough square footage to have them all standing shoulder to shoulder. in the stronghold builder's guide it says that there are 14 people on staff. lets start with that, shall we?
not that it matters much, given that the wizard would simply eradicate even 1.000.000 bmx bandits mundane soldiers.

D&D is not about medieval heroes like king Arthur or Robin Hood. its about fantasy Superheros more along the lines of superman, the silver surfer, or Doctor Manhattan (that would be the high level wizard).
normal mortals would not stand a chance against them, its as simple as that.

[Coidzor]

"Dear Great Corrupter,
I perfectly know how magical researches can be stressful... you need to relax.
For this reason, given that your birthday is approaching, I assembled this disposable army that I send to you as gift.
Do with them what pleases you more, be creative, have fun, enjoy the killing/torture/enslavement.
My best wishes,
Dad"

P.S.

Your mother is going to probably
start nagging you again about grandkids.
Why don't you whip up some homunculi
when you get a chance?

[Zale]

Nah then you have to figure out something to do with an army of shadows before a bunch of evil clerics of pelor drop by and kill you for trying to take over the world before them.

"I'm simply defending my helpless subjects against a rampaging barbarian army. It wounds me to the core to be forced to such a thing, but innocent lives were at risk!" :smallfrown: *Rolls bluff check*

[Zonugal]

just as a question how on earth do you guys want to guy 1500 people in the 'cheap keep'. :smallconfused:
not including interdimensional spaces and such, there would not be enough square footage to have them all standing shoulder to shoulder. in the stronghold builder's guide it says that there are 14 people on staff. lets start with that, shall we?
not that it matters much, given that the wizard would simply eradicate even 1.000.000 bmx bandits mundane soldiers.

I think, following getting off work tomorrow, I'll take a crack at this little project. I am going to take an absolute thematic approach to my optimization (which targeted at commoners is actually phenomenal now-a-days). I'll pop out the base 14 staff and than work my way upwards from there.

It would help me though if we could settle on a hard number. I imagine the Wizard, if we are having him assemble a small amount of reserve forces, would be calling them from local lords/barons/dukes who owe him.

Either way, prepare yourself for while his men may be made of mundane flesh.

They are but lion's blood inside.

[Killer Angel]

Their father-son fishing trips must be awesome.


"We were used to fishing, but then we sold our boat to this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQNhBR3Xy4)".


Since his dad calls him Great Corruptor, is Great his given name, or Great Corruptor? Is his full name Great Corrupter Wizardfist, son of Supreme Diabolist Wizardfist and Lucia the Godscourge Wizardfist? ... I have a sitcom idea.

"The Addams Family: now it's grimdark!"

[Gandariel]

Okay then, here's the New Challenge!

Wizard Side
One 11th level Wizard
a Cheap Keep
14 level one experts of Warriors.
Wizard can spend 2k gold to get 50 Commoners (only fifty, though)
(yes, it's much more than what Commoners cost. that's intentional, and the wizard can choose not to take them)
Wizard has 140% of his WBL


Horde side
3000 men, composed of:
1500 level one Warriors
1000 level one Commoners
500 level 1-2-3 Barbarians
one Warlord (level 6 Barbarian)
Thirty siege engines
50 level one clerics
four level five clerics
clerics and warlord have WBL, everyone else only has basic equipment (cheap armor and one weapon, choice of ranged or melee)

the Horde is one full day of march from the city and the Wizard has just become aware of that.

WINNING CONDITIONS:
Wizard wins if every one of his enemies dies.
Horde wins if there are at least 50 of them inside the Keep for a full hour

Basic rules: NO STUPID STUFF. no infinite anything, no stupid exploits (though the Horde side could destroy the Keep with a Commoner Railgun!)
books allowed are all except for third party and dragon.

What do you guys think? if we finish seting it up to be more or less equal we can move it to another thread and have people fight! =)

[Ashtagon]

All this is really going to prove is that a castle can withstand a siege.

Even without magic being involved, the only way they are getting inside the castle is by starving them out. Which, historically, it how such sieges were usually resolved.

[Yahzi]

It's like Christmas.
Except instead of presents under a tree there's using invisibility and flight to rain invisible, 80-foot-diameter balls of flame on your enemies.

That's not going to happen.

Every time the wizard goes out, the clerics get a chance at dispelling his protection from arrows. Now it's not a good chance; but they only need to succeed once.

Then the wizard eats crossbow quarrels until the nat 20's bring him down.

The wizard, being a genius, is not going to take chances like that.

[Doc Roc]

The goal is the keep? I'm in. What books are open?

[Yahzi]

Because
Because when I said that it was stupid that 20th level wizards cost the same as a castle, you told me off for thinking wizards cost too much.

"What we have here, son, is a failure to communicate." :smallcool:

Given that a 17th level wizard can make a fortress in a few weeks (rock to mud, Lyre of building, mud to rock), the fact that you can buy a fortress and a 20th level wizard for the same price indicates something is seriously wrong with the price of wizards. And it's not that they are too cheap. :smallbiggrin:

I fixed that in my world - the xp table doubles every step. A 20 th lvl wizard in the World of Prime costs about 10,485,760,000 gold. Which seems like a more realistic price.

[Yahzi]

The goal is the keep? I'm in. What books are open?
Only CORE!

'Cause that's all I use, and this is all for ME! :smallbiggrin:

[Killer Angel]

All this is really going to prove is that a castle can withstand a siege.

Even without magic being involved, the only way they are getting inside the castle is by starving them out. Which, historically, it how such sieges were usually resolved.

Well, historically castles were defended by some troops, not by a single wizard and 14 soldiers. 'cause in RL (barring extreme conditions) all the 5000 men need is some ladders, without need to bring in siege engines.


That's not going to happen.

Every time the wizard goes out, the clerics get a chance at dispelling his protection from arrows. Now it's not a good chance; but they only need to succeed once.

Then the wizard eats crossbow quarrels until the nat 20's bring him down.

The wizard, being a genius, is not going to take chances like that.

Even admitting that the wizard is doing that tactic...
1 - the low level clerics must see the invisible wizard
2 - the low lev. clerics weren't already killed by wiz.
3 - the low lev. clerics succeed in dispelling invisibility and prot. from arrows.
4 - the crossbowmen (still alive) start shooting the wiz.

at that point, the wiz. casts another prot. from arrows, or wind wall, or again improved inv.

And, BTW, the nat. 20 won't bring him down. It merely do some additional damage to a full HP 11° lev. character.

[Yahzi]

Even admitting that the wizard is doing that tactic...
1 - the low level clerics must see the invisible wizard
2 - the low lev. clerics weren't already killed by wiz.
3 - the low lev. clerics succeed in dispelling invisibility and prot. from arrows.
4 - the crossbowmen (still alive) start shooting the wiz.

Go back and look at my army. The clerics are disguised to look like common soldiers. As for spotting the wizard, once he shoots a fireball you have a good enough location for an area dispel.

And just invisibility isn't good enough. Some of those commoners are going to make their spot checks, and that means the wiz only has a 50% miss chance. True that means only 1 in 800 will statistically hit, but that's not the point; the point is if you roll all those checks, there is a chance that 5 or 6 bolts will hit, maybe one as a crit, and suddenly your wizard is looking 8d10 damage. Unlikely? Sure. Likely enough to keep a sane wizard from doing it every day until his number is up? I think so. :smallbiggrin:

[Doc Roc]

Only CORE!

'Cause that's all I use, and this is all for ME! :smallbiggrin:

Okay, this should be relatively easy then. 11th with 140% WBL? 1 day of prep? Repeat your army for me, and commit?

[Ashtagon]

Well, historically castles were defended by some troops, not by a single wizard and 14 soldiers. 'cause in RL (barring extreme conditions) all the 5000 men need is some ladders, without need to bring in siege engines.


Sans magic, you're looking at a defence force of 15 men, or 65 if the commoners (who are capable of manning a siege weapon) are purchased in the package deal.

The number of defenders actually required to protect a castle varies with the castle size of course. But 65 is certainly enough to challenge most attack forces, given that castles are an incredible force multiplier.

[Doc Roc]

Oh, Yahzi, what season is it in this scenario? Do I choose where my keep is?

Can I get a ruling on how much upward movement you can get out of Move Earth?

[Killer Angel]

Go back and look at my army. The clerics are disguised to look like common soldiers. As for spotting the wizard, once he shoots a fireball you have a good enough location for an area dispel.


What army? the one with 16 first lev. clerics that cannot cast dispel magic and 4 "bishops" of 5° lev.?
If the inv. wiz. shoots the fireball and move, you won't find him, and anyway, an area dispel will target only the highest spell active.
4-8 dispel magic CL 5 Vs Cl 11, if the clerics are all togheter and not scattered through the army, hoping no one misses the area with the dispel (very unlikely).
And you must dispel invisibility and prot from arrows.
Hoping the wizard cannot cast anything else for protection and beeing aware that, in the moment your 4 clerics start casting, they're no more disguised (aka primary target and probably dead meat).

[MukkTB]

How standing armies can be relevant in a world with reality-bending wizards; cf. Discworld.

(Nobody wants unrestricted thermonuclear thaumaturgical warfare going on, especially after some horrible events in history, so DM fiat the forces in power conspire to keep it from happening.)

A Discworld setting makes standing armies relevant, but it also changes the nature of combat to something much more modern. Sure you can have proxy war's and mess with small kingdoms, but any time a large entity's existence is at at stake they're going to pull out their wizards and bring about armageddon.

[gkathellar]

And you must dispel invisibility and prot from arrows.

And any other defensive buffs the wizard has up. And somehow get past his contingencies. And are they going in with any buffs up at all? The wizard can just buzz the army with Detect Magic up to find them.

[Killer Angel]

The number of defenders actually required to protect a castle varies with the castle size of course. But 65 is certainly enough to challenge most attack forces, given that castles are an incredible force multiplier.

65, with 50 commoners? it's debatable... a RL example I know, is about the siege of Mirandola (1551), when 400 soldiers, behind a recently fortified castle, resisted a force of 4000. 400 Vs 4000, not 65 Vs 6000 (in a "cheap keep").
It became famous for the french 'til the point of citations ("imprenable comme une Mirandole"). Don't know if there are other notable examples with huge disparity of forces.

Castles / fortresses are strong, but again, it depends on a lot of factors, including natural position (someone said Masada? :smalltongue:), and so on...

but in a cheap castle, with only 15/65 men, you decisely need magic.

[Doc Roc]

Also, can I PrC?

[absolmorph]

That's not going to happen.

Every time the wizard goes out, the clerics get a chance at dispelling his protection from arrows. Now it's not a good chance; but they only need to succeed once.

Then the wizard eats crossbow quarrels until the nat 20's bring him down.

The wizard, being a genius, is not going to take chances like that.
Or the invisible wizard flies 160-200 feet up, since he's going for large concentrations of people who would be easy to spot, anyway.

Anyway, my tactics: assuming an elf generalist wizard with 22 Int, I can cast 4 Stone Shapes, 3 Wall of Stones and 2 Wall of Irons. With my day of preparation, I start layering the outside of my keep with Wall of Stone, each one covering 11 5-foot squares with 2 inches of solid stone. Wall of Iron to close off the entrances, Stone Shape to make the keep difficult or impossible to climb. Also, as a precaution, I've got an automatic reset Create Food and Water trap (10,500 gp), so siege tactics are useless (each casting provides food and water for the entire group for 24 hours). That leaves me with 81,900 gp.
Cast Guards and Wards with one of your 6th level slots each day. Place a stinking cloud just inside any entrance left unsealed. Use the other slot for a Planar Binding spell (and some 5th level slots for the Lesser version), binding a Large earth elemental (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm#earthElemental), a couple barbed devils (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#barbedDevilHamatula), at least 3 bearded devils (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#beardedDevilBarbazu), and a couple imps (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#imp). Oh, and a couple howlers (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/howler.htm).
The bearded devils can pop about with their teleportation, shrugging off most blows and doing some nasty work with their glaives. The earth elemental can use its earth glide to ambush anywhere. Summon some Yeth Hounds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/yethHound.htm) with Summon Monster IV each night and watch them soar around terrifying the horde and just generally making their nights suck. Note that the howlers can perch on the roof and howl away, forcing any non-outsider within hearing distance of them to make a DC 12 Will save or take 1 point of Wis damage. Assuming 8 hours of night, two howlers can do up to 16 points of Wis damage. That puts everyone but the clerics in a coma, letting your squad of devils walk around coup-de-grace-ing everyone to their heart's content.
Also, the imps will be using that 81,900 gp to get poisons to poison the food and water of the horde.
You can spend the rest of your day playing cards with your Experts. Oh, and you'll want an item of constant Silence. That'll take another 24,000 gp, so there's only 57,900 left to blow on poisons.

I think I've finished.

[Oindoth]

Wait wait wait--someone actually thinks any of this is a threat to the wizard? I'd also gladly take this challenge. Why? Because, with any foreknowledge of when/where the army is coming, simple Cloudkills, which provide *no indication of where they are being cast from* will kill a majority of this army. After that, if the army even manages to get to your castle, you can shove its entire staff into an extradimensional space, then proceed to blanket the fortress with *even more* Cloudkills, Solid Fogs, Walls of Fire, etc., all while entirely invulnerable because none of your opponents have the capability of seeing you!

Edit: And I'm also sure there are even more effective ways of pulling this off, even in core, ony because I know Doc Roc could come up with them.

Edit the second: Also, what point buy is the wizard? I'm gonna start out with a 28 point buy, but if I can get higher that'd only sweeten the deal.

Edit the Third: Additionally, what HP does the wizard get? Standard max at first and average after? Not that HP matters, since none of my opponents will be able to see me.

Edit the Fourth: Also, realisticallly, my Wizard would have at the very least a week's worth of notice, as his Imp familiar would, once per week, use commune to ask something to the effect of "Are there any hostile forces in the world that have the intention to assault our location?" and then follow up with more questions identifying how close they are (using yes or no questions) an estimate as to the size of their army (again, using yes or no questions) and then the composition of their army. This is, of course, without using any of the many other divination spells that would identify this for me.

Edit the Final: And lastly, what kind of XP does the Wizard get for crafting/casting XP costing spells? Again, completely unnecessary, but nice for an even more damning domination.

[olentu]

I'm gonna be super lazy on this one and I mean really really lazy. Bind one or more leonals. Go with some casts of resist energy. They spam at will fireballs killing the army.

[Zonugal]

I don't particularly like the restriction to core only as I feel it predominantly handicaps the mundane forces rather than the Wizard (who gets a lot of their sweetest tools in core).

So I will be presenting a non-core force in good time.

[Oindoth]

I don't particularly like the restriction to core only as I feel it predominantly handicaps the mundane forces rather than the Wizard (who gets a lot of their sweetest tools in core).

So I will be presenting a non-core force in good time.

A non-core force merits a non-core wizard.

I've already PM'd my sheet(s) to Gandariel, with a 28 PB wizard, a corps of 14 nonelite array experts, and a bog-standard Imp. I'd be happy to rework it to include non-core spells, metamagic options, feats, specialization options, etc.

[Coidzor]

I'm gonna be super lazy on this one and I mean really really lazy. Bind one or more leonals. Go with some casts of resist energy. They spam at will fireballs killing the army.

If the majority of the force is not good, then a single astral deva will be able to fly through them and holy word enough of them to death to break the army. Or saunter up and invisibly infiltrate them looking like one of the soldiers and start doing it.

The casters might give it a bit of trouble, but even a magma mephit has DR 20/magic while in lava form. So if it sneaks in at night with its fairly good hide check against the spot of level 1 creatures, it should be able to get close enough to blind a good number with pyrotechnics and capitalize on that by setting fire to the place (or just start a wildfire...) by turning into a mobile puddle of lava and destroying supplies/siege engines/tents/tethered groups of cavalry horses.

Of course, going outside of core makes it really embarrassing, since the caster could just use lesser planar binding to get a horde of simulacrums starting with the services of a single mirror mephit.

[Oindoth]

I mean, hell. I just used Improved Familiar to grab an Imp, who will quite easily ruin the barbarian leader's day by suggesting that he start slaughtering his casters, because they're trying to betray him.

[NNescio]

That's not going to happen.

Every time the wizard goes out, the clerics get a chance at dispelling his protection from arrows. Now it's not a good chance; but they only need to succeed once.

Then the wizard eats crossbow quarrels until the nat 20's bring him down.

The wizard, being a genius, is not going to take chances like that.


Or the invisible wizard flies 160-200 feet up, since he's going for large concentrations of people who would be easy to spot, anyway.

And to clarify Absolmorph's point:

Dispel Magic
Abjuration
Level: Brd 3, Clr 3, Drd 4, Magic 3, Pal 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target or Area: One spellcaster, creature, or object; or 20-ft.-radius burst
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

Also, even if his Wizard is somehow in range of your Clerics, he's invisible, so he can only be hit by the area burst version of Dispel, which lowers the chances of stripping any specific spell immensely, as it uses a different mechanic. The Wizard can also use permanent spells like Magic Mouth and fiddle around with the caster levels of his buffs to pad his buff list with dispel fodder. Assuming, of course, that you can even land an area Dispel anywhere close to him, since both he and his spells are also invisible.

[Zale]

Let's see what I can do with Planar Binding!

I use Planar Binding to obtain the services of two Succubi. They teleport out and find some low-leveled scouts for the army. With their.. seductive abilities, they get close too the scouts and use Charm monster to get information out of them. Once they have obtained a useful amount of information, they kill the scouts.

Then, they shapeshift to look like the scouts and infiltrate the camp. Since they can cast Charm Monster at will, they slowly work their way through the army, spreading Charms everywhere. Once they find the Clerics, they either Charm them or kill them, depending on how the will saves go.

Then the Succubi convince their new found friends that their leader is leading them to certain death, and that they should kill him before they are killed. Since these are mostly level one characters, they'll fail the Charisma check to try and kill their leader.

So you end with most of the clerics dead, a quarter of the army charmed and ripping itself apart, and the succubi have gained more or less all the information the wizard could possibly need


At least, it's a nice idea. No idea if it would work correctly.

[Oindoth]

Let's see what I can do with Planar Binding!

I use Planar Binding to obtain the services of two Succubi. They teleport out and find some low-leveled scouts for the army. With their.. seductive abilities, they get close too the scouts and use Charm monster to get information out of them. Once they have obtained a useful amount of information, they kill the scouts.

Then, they shapeshift to look like the scouts and infiltrate the camp. Since they can cast Charm Monster at will, they slowly work their way through the army, spreading Charms everywhere. Once they find the Clerics, they either Charm them or kill them, depending on how the will saves go.

Then the Succubi convince their new found friends that their leader is leading them to certain death, and that they should kill him before they are killed. Since these are mostly level one characters, they'll fail the Charisma check to try and kill their leader.

So you end with most of the clerics dead, a quarter of the army charmed and ripping itself apart, and the succubi have gained more or less all the information the wizard could possibly need


At least, it's a nice idea. No idea if it would work correctly.

Again, this is just as easily done for free by your Improved Familiar Imp. Mine's got a 27 AC, meaning pretty much no one can hit him without a natural 20. Since he's invisible and has a +17 to Hide, there's virtually no chance of him being spotted. He finds the Barbarian leader, does what a Devil does best, and soon the army is leaderless and down a significant portion of their casters. From there, repeated bombings by the Wizard himself will take care of the stragglers.

[NNescio]

Let's see what I can do with Planar Binding!

I use Planar Binding to obtain the services of two Succubi. They teleport out and find some low-leveled scouts for the army. With their.. seductive abilities, they get close too the scouts and use Charm monster to get information out of them. Once they have obtained a useful amount of information, they kill the scouts.

Then, they shapeshift to look like the scouts and infiltrate the camp. Since they can cast Charm Monster at will, they slowly work their way through the army, spreading Charms everywhere. Once they find the Clerics, they either Charm them or kill them, depending on how the will saves go.

Then the Succubi convince their new found friends that their leader is leading them to certain death, and that they should kill him before they are killed. Since these are mostly level one characters, they'll fail the Charisma check to try and kill their leader.

So you end with most of the clerics dead, a quarter of the army charmed and ripping itself apart, and the succubi have gained more or less all the information the wizard could possibly need


At least, it's a nice idea. No idea if it would work correctly.

The "Planar Binding a Succubus" part might be somewhat hard to do, due to their high charisma. Not that it can't be done with zero risk, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135096) but under time constraints it might be better to bind something easier that can also rip the army apart.

[Flickerdart]

I remember a thread from way back when, where a small party had to defend a fortress against an enormous army. Two tricks spring immediately to mind.

1: Yeth Hounds. Summon Monster V gets the Wizard 1d3 of these guys, and each one had a 300ft radius fear effect in addition to DR and flight, making it a nightmare for low level warriors to deal with. Even one of these can cause an army to break and flee.

2: Wands of Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer. Each one costs a mere 10,500 gp to craft, and contains 150 spell levels. A wizard stocked up on even one such wand runs no risk of finding himself dry on spell slots.

Both methods are core only. Using one or both, a wizard can maximize his ability to affect many troops in a single day.

[Zonugal]

So I am wondering if anyone had the skills to make an 11th-level Wizard who through buffs was able to take on the entire army by himself in battle. I think it'd be pretty cool.

But currently I'm wondering, if a Wizard picked up Arcane Disciple (Winter) and cast Blizzard, how would the "horde" army even react to that. In a period of a minute a a thousand feet radius would be covered in eleven feet of snow. All listen, search and spot checks are impossible as are all ranged attacks. Creatures unprotected by the snow possibly take 1d6 non-lethal cold damage every round (the moment they take any damage they have to start fighting off frostbite). For five rounds everyone suffers movement penalties and for six rounds they may not even have the strength or agility to move at all.

[gkathellar]

Yeah, Blizzard is one of the very few spells that makes wizards stare enviously at clerics and druids. It's basically a "massacre" spell.

[Coidzor]

Yeah, Blizzard is one of the very few spells that makes wizards stare enviously at clerics and druids. It's basically a "massacre" spell.

And then makes the clerics and druids cry when they end up with a ton of snow on top of them due to the writers of the spell forgetting about the rules about a spell's range and a spell's area that it can effect.

[Killer Angel]

Oh, Yahzi, what season is it in this scenario? Do I choose where my keep is?

Can I get a ruling on how much upward movement you can get out of Move Earth?

I believe it can be done even with a bard, instead of a wizard...

[Gandariel]

I received a charachter sheet from one person who wants to make Wizard side.
Anyone willing to use the Army side?

[Gandariel]

Okay, creating a thread and accepting submissions for players (both sides!)
i already have one submission (for the Wizard side)
The first one (or couple ones) will be exhibitions, just to check the numbers and stuff. I would like also someone to DM the matches!


Should i put the thread here or in Recruitment subforum?

EDIT: Also, what is a good name for the game?

[Oindoth]

I like "Crush the Castle" or "Defend the Castle," just for the old-school flash games (oh, god, is there such a thing now?) references.

[Zonugal]

I received a charachter sheet from one person who wants to make Wizard side.
Anyone willing to use the Army side?

I am currently assembling an army for the Horde.

What stat array or point buy did we agree on for this, specifically for the Horde?

Either way I am excited, I have some nasty treats in store for that Wizard.

Edit: Also, have we settled upon the nearby geographical features or terrain?

[Coidzor]

I believe it can be done even with a bard, instead of a wizard...

This is relevant to my interests. Is this still a core-only bard you're thinking?

[Oindoth]

I am currently assembling an army for the Horde.

What stat array or point buy did we agree on for this, specifically for the Horde?

Either way I am excited, I have some nasty treats in store for that Wizard.

Edit: Also, have we settled upon the nearby geographical features or terrain?

I built the Wizard on a 28 Point Buy and his Experts on a non-elite array.

If I had it my way, the tower would be in the middle of a forest, with only one clear path in. However, I'd be fine with having it be a clear plain, with no cover for either groups. Either way works for me.

That being said, I still believe that, realistically, the Wizard would have a week to prepare, given the fact that he has an Imp that can cast Commune once a week just for this kind of situation.

[Zonugal]

I built the Wizard on a 28 Point Buy and his Experts on a non-elite array.

If I had it my way, the tower would be in the middle of a forest, with only one clear path in. However, I'd be fine with having it be a clear plain, with no cover for either groups. Either way works for me.

Tower? We are still using the Cheap Keep correct?

[Oindoth]

Tower? We are still using the Cheap Keep correct?

Eh, the actual keep doesn't make much of a difference to me, if I get even a day of warning.

[Ashtagon]

That being said, I still believe that, realistically, the Wizard would have a week to prepare, given the fact that he has an Imp that can cast Commune once a week just for this kind of situation.

If his imp was his sole source of info, he would have 0-7 days warning, depending on when in its recharge cycle the army starts moving, and how far the army has to travel from.

[Coidzor]

If his imp was his sole source of info, he would have 0-7 days warning, depending on when in its recharge cycle the army starts moving, and how far the army has to travel from.

That's a wizard so bad that it strains one's suspension of disbelief that has an army 0 days from his doorstep though.

[olentu]

If his imp was his sole source of info, he would have 0-7 days warning, depending on when in its recharge cycle the army starts moving, and how far the army has to travel from.

Or the time frame of the question could just be modified.

[TuggyNE]

Perhaps roll a d7 to see how many days of warning? :smallwink:

[Doc Roc]

Perhaps roll a d7 to see how many days of warning? :smallwink:

Every seven days, ask about the next ten days. Seriously.

[Yahzi]

what season is it in this scenario?
The season is whatever is best for the army; they are the invaders, so they get to pick. I imagine summer, since that's when most campaigns were.


Can I get a ruling on how much upward movement you can get out of Move Earth?
The spell directly states "generally too slow to trap or bury creatures," so I don't know why it matters. According to the direct text, you can only go 10 ft deep, so that implies you can only go 10 ft high, although meta magic or repeated castings should change that.


PrC
If you have to PrC, then the army wins by default. :smalltongue: We're out to be a wizard, not a half-dragon half-troll Psuedo Were Lich with one level of Wizard.



Hoping the wizard cannot cast anything else for protection and beeing aware that, in the moment your 4 clerics start casting, they're no more disguised (aka primary target and probably dead meat).
This is an interesting point. I would argue that a wizard flying 400 ft off the ground would not necessarily make his spot check to identify someone casting a spell that has no visible effect, if that someone were in a crowd of people dressed the same and doing other hostile acts.

But this is exactly what this exercise is meant to highlight: the unconscious assumptions that carry over from dungeon crawling to large scale warfare. In a dungeon it's pretty obvious who the casters are (well, not in my dungeons, but that's a different story :smallbiggrin: ).


CL 5 Vs Cl 11,
You present this as if its a bad thing. :smallbiggrin: Armies grow on trees; you can always raise another one if you have cash. But 11th lvl wizards are rare; they only have to have one bad day, and it's game over for them.

The d20 is very randomized - %5 of all efforts are critical failures, and 5% are critical successes. This means the wizard needs to never put himself in a position where a critical can end his career. I think a lot of these strategies being presented are designed with the unconscious assumption that there is a party to bail you out when the dice fail you.



And somehow get past his contingencies
The wizard is only 11th level.



With my day of preparation
Realistically, the wizard has as much prep time as he wants. However, at the end of his preparations, his keep must still be livable by ordinary people. And he can't spend any more money on it (presumably he is spending his money on more important things, like research).

The danger from sieges is siege engines, which will reduce your Wall of Iron pretty quickly. Create food and water traps are absolutely unnecessary; any decent keep can store a year's worth of food for its occupants, and any longer than that is not a siege, it's a living arrangement.

As for the summoned monsters, the teleporting ones are a good point; they can attack at much farther ranges than the spell would otherwise allow. But that begs the question: why doesn't every 11th level wizard spend his days summoning demons and having them teleport off to his enemies?


Cloud kills
These spells are actually kinda lame. People can just move out of the way.


what kind of XP does the Wizard get for crafting/casting XP costing spells
Only the normal amount. This not a wizard specialized in defending keeps against armies; it's just an ordinary run of the mill name-level wizard.

So, WBL, I guess? Keeping in mind that the vast majority of his wealth is "adventuring gear." (No wands, though, as that utterly defeats the purpose. A 1st lvl rogue with 3 wands could destroy the army I presented.)



I don't particularly like the restriction to core only
Well, the exercise is to see what standard D&D looks like. I suspect that adding any of splats changes the flavor a lot (for example, after Tome of Battle, are there any Fighters left in the world?)



I use Planar Binding to obtain the services of two Succubi.
The exercise is vs a wizard, not vs a band of Succubi. It's one thing to summon monsters as attack spells; it's something else to use them as infiltrators (and rely on their initiative and judgment). In this particular scenario, the wizard's entire contribution was to summon two monsters. It makes you wonder how any society exists if it's really that easy to destroy organizations; what stops evil wizards from sending succubi in to destroy towns and cities the same way? 1 wizard could depopulate Europe in a few years at that rate.


Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
The best point in this entire thread.

So far Invisibility and Flight are the wizard's strongest weapons; this leads to the conclusion that a full frontal assault on the keep is the best option. Throw up ladders and swarm over the walls until he's out of spells or you can find him by sheer press of combat.

So after a week of being assaulted by air combat or teleported monsters, my troops hurtle themselves against the castle walls with ladders, resorting to siege engines, rams, and pick axes only when necessary. How does the wizard defend himself against a steady onslaught?


P.S. Great comments, guys! I love this thread.

[Doc Roc]

Planar binding is a spell in your beloved core. Just because you don't like it, or you don't like the fact that shadows are hilariously deadly and wizards can create undead... doesn't mean these aren't things that wizards do.

Also, since you picked summer, I'm stuck with "just" torrential rains leading to flash floods down my carefully constructed earth works. I hope your army loves drowning to death while being kited to death by shadows.

Autumn's probably your best bet, since I'd only have fog and sleet.

[Killer Angel]

This is relevant to my interests. Is this still a core-only bard you're thinking?

Pretty much. For the defence, a couple of Lyre of buildings, even with only one day, can easily make the castle nearly untakeable, and with a so quick rate of work, you can easily undermine any siege engine.
For the offence, leaving aside wizard's tricks ala Summon monster IV (hello yeth hound!), the bard can count on mental tricks, to force fighting between the horde itself, turning the enemies against each other (not that the wiz. can't do the same, btw).
It's not immediate, many details are still undefined.
And "vulgar" tactics could work: if a bored and unimaginative wizard can spam fireballs while invisible and flying, the same can do the bard, with flasks of alchemist's fire and a bag of holding... (:smallyuk:)

Anyway, when the enemy will realize they cannot take the castle (loss of siege engines, terrain too difficult due to the Lyre combined with uses of decander of endless water, creating killing choke points) they'll start a standard siege going for starvation, or gaining time to build new sieges, or try something else. In this way, you'll have the time you need.
Since the first day of siege, you can fly invisible, playing pipes of pain during nighttime, leaving behind you a trail of dead men.
After that, you can wander around their base, with alter self, change self, misdirection, magic aura, then having fun with glibness, suggestion, lesser geas, dominate person and modify memory.

[Doc Roc]

Pretty much. For the defence, a couple of Lyre of buildings, even with only one day, can easily make the castle nearly untakeable, and with a so quick rate of work, you can easily undermine any siege engine.
For the offence, leaving aside wizard's tricks ala Summon monster IV (hello yeth hound!), the bard can count on mental tricks, to force fighting between the horde itself, turning the enemies against each other (not that the wiz. can't do the same, btw).
It's not immediate, many details are still undefined.
And "vulgar" tactics could work: if a bored and unimaginative wizard can spam fireballs while invisible and flying, the same can do the bard, with flasks of alchemist's fire and a bag of holding... (:smallyuk:)

Anyway, when the enemy will realize they cannot take the castle (loss of siege engines, terrain too difficult due to the Lyre combined with uses of decander of endless water, creating killing choke points) they'll start a standard siege going for starvation, or gaining time to build new sieges, or try something else. In this way, you'll have the time you need.
Since the first day of siege, you can fly invisible, playing pipes of pain during nighttime, leaving behind you a trail of dead men.
After that, you can wander around their base, with alter self, change self, misdirection, magic aura, then having fun with glibness, suggestion, lesser geas, dominate person and modify memory.

Or you could just entomb them one by one in rocky earth with the lyre, using the secondary ability to make it indestructible long enough for them to suffocate. Get leader guy first. That'll be nice and demoralizing. Do it while flying out of reach.

[Killer Angel]

The spell directly states "generally too slow to trap or bury creatures," so I don't know why it matters. According to the direct text, you can only go 10 ft deep, so that implies you can only go 10 ft high, although meta magic or repeated castings should change that.


Probably the spell needs only to create defences you cannot bypass (combined with flooded choke points, and so on).
It's the same tactic my bard would use with Lyre of building.


If you have to PrC, then the army wins by default. :smalltongue: We're out to be a wizard, not a half-dragon half-troll Psuedo Were Lich with one level of Wizard.


Those are not PrCs. A simple human incantatrix is a PrC, and another whole matter. (but you don't need it).



This is an interesting point. I would argue that a wizard flying 400 ft off the ground would not necessarily make his spot check to identify someone casting a spell that has no visible effect, if that someone were in a crowd of people dressed the same and doing other hostile acts.


If I'm playing the wizard, I wouldn't be flying so high. 50-100 feet is more than enough... you cannot see me and it's almost impossible to guess where I am, if I cast and move. Adn if's very easy to defend myself from area dispel.



You present this as if its a bad thing. :smallbiggrin: Armies grow on trees; you can always raise another one if you have cash. But 11th lvl wizards are rare; they only have to have one bad day, and it's game over for them.


This is one army Vs one wizard. Your army (as you designed it) can count on 4 fifth lev. clerics.



The d20 is very randomized - %5 of all efforts are critical failures, and 5% are critical successes. This means the wizard needs to never put himself in a position where a critical can end his career.

You have a very limited amount of dispel magic. 8, and I'm being generous.
Let's say you're lucky, you pick the area where I am, and one succeed.
Gosh, my contingency is dispelled... I'm still there, invisible and flying, and you have no more dispel.



The danger from sieges is siege engines, which will reduce your Wall of Iron pretty quickly.


Siege engines are a very easy target for a caster, they'll soon be destroyed
And my bard with a Lyre of building is not impressed by structural damage.



So far Invisibility and Flight are the wizard's strongest weapons; this leads to the conclusion that a full frontal assault on the keep is the best option. Throw up ladders and swarm over the walls until he's out of spells or you can find him by sheer press of combat.

So after a week of being assaulted by air combat or teleported monsters, my troops hurtle themselves against the castle walls with ladders, resorting to siege engines, rams, and pick axes only when necessary. How does the wizard defend himself against a steady onslaught?


The spells modified the terrain and the structures, to the point that it will be a bloodbath. You'll have only choke points, heavily defended by the few warriors I have, in perfect defendable positions, aided by spells and summoned creatures (after you sacrificed hundreds of men to bring a handful of soldiers near melee, a single yeth hound will make half of your remaining attackers running away).

Now I have the imagine of this steep wall, with your horde blimbing on it, then I cast wall of fire at the bottom, and spam grease spells on the wall... :smallbiggrin:

[gkathellar]

If you have to PrC, then the army wins by default. :smalltongue: We're out to be a wizard, not a half-dragon half-troll Psuedo Were Lich with one level of Wizard.

Why are you mentioning templates, when people are asking about PrCs? Even in core-only, by level 11 you could have Loremaster or Thaumaturgist level.


The d20 is very randomized - %5 of all efforts are critical failures, and 5% are critical successes. This means the wizard needs to never put himself in a position where a critical can end his career.

The misconception that natural 1s and natural 20s represent auto-failure and auto-success respectively outside of attacks and saving throws is a common one, but it's still incorrect. A natural 20 on a dispel check does not succeed automatically.


The wizard is only 11th level.

And Contingency is a 6th level spell.

Not to mention that if it's not core only and he sets things up to get a bonus feat at 11th, he has Craft Contingent Spell, which puts us in a whole different ballpark.


As for the summoned monsters, the teleporting ones are a good point; they can attack at much farther ranges than the spell would otherwise allow. But that begs the question: why doesn't every 11th level wizard spend his days summoning demons and having them teleport off to his enemies?

Because most of his enemies are other wizards who use similar tactics? Planar Binding is a really powerful spell, but its uses aren't infinite.


Only the normal amount. This not a wizard specialized in defending keeps against armies; it's just an ordinary run of the mill name-level wizard.

So, WBL, I guess? Keeping in mind that the vast majority of his wealth is "adventuring gear." (No wands, though, as that utterly defeats the purpose. A 1st lvl rogue with 3 wands could destroy the army I presented.)

And many wizards take Crafting feats, to produce their own items. Like Craft Wand. It's sort of a good assumption that if a character takes a feat, they should then get to use it ... so are you explicitly banning the Craft Wand feat?


The exercise is vs a wizard, not vs a band of Succubi. It's one thing to summon monsters as attack spells; it's something else to use them as infiltrators (and rely on their initiative and judgment). In this particular scenario, the wizard's entire contribution was to summon two monsters. It makes you wonder how any society exists if it's really that easy to destroy organizations; what stops evil wizards from sending succubi in to destroy towns and cities the same way? 1 wizard could depopulate Europe in a few years at that rate.

That's the point. You're arguing here what you argued against shadows, that "Z doesn't make sense, because then wizards would be powerful enough to Y" — yeah, that's the point. Wizards are powerful enough to eradicate entire planets, given time. It's mostly other wizards who stop them. All the wizard has to do is cast two spells to summon two minions capable of turning an army inside out. He doesn't even have to turn his head to look at said army. That's at least half of why wizards are scary powerful.

And let's be fair — the standard assumption in a D&D setting is that the only thing stopping evil casters from doing Z is the presence of other casters who might take the fight to them over it.


So after a week of being assaulted by air combat or teleported monsters, my troops hurtle themselves against the castle walls with ladders, resorting to siege engines, rams, and pick axes only when necessary. How does the wizard defend himself against a steady onslaught?

After six days of that, any troops who are somehow still alive are going to arrive to a flash-flooded zone of nightmare-terrain constructed with move earth, surrounded by shadows, allips and yeth hounds, where they'll be boxed in by Cloudkills and Symbols and horribly killed.

They'll never reach the keep at all.

[Acanous]

If I were to construct the army, it would be made primarilly of rogues, rangers and barbarians. They'd start guerilla, and keep spread out. Squads would assault then retreat, letting the next squad attack when the Wizard's spells expired. That'd slowly drain his spells off, and he needs a restful night's sleep and an hour to prepare to refresh spells. Rope trick would do this, but then the keep is raided, the rogues splash oil all over the place, and set fire to the entire structure.

some wizard builds could counter this, but not the blaster or the battlefield manipulator.

[gkathellar]

If I were to construct the army, it would be made primarilly of rogues, rangers and barbarians. They'd start guerilla, and keep spread out. Squads would assault then retreat, letting the next squad attack when the Wizard's spells expired. That'd slowly drain his spells off, and he needs a restful night's sleep and an hour to prepare to refresh spells. Rope trick would do this, but then the keep is raided, the rogues splash oil all over the place, and set fire to the entire structure.

some wizard builds could counter this, but not the blaster or the battlefield manipulator.

How is this army even reaching the keep?

[Killer Angel]

If I were to construct the army, it would be made primarilly of rogues, rangers and barbarians. They'd start guerilla, and keep spread out. Squads would assault then retreat, letting the next squad attack when the Wizard's spells expired. That'd slowly drain his spells off, and he needs a restful night's sleep and an hour to prepare to refresh spells. Rope trick would do this, but then the keep is raided, the rogues splash oil all over the place, and set fire to the entire structure.

some wizard builds could counter this, but not the blaster or the battlefield manipulator.

This could work if the scenario were something similar to "the wizard must defend its country, not merely its keep". With few time at disposal, I don't think you can stop dozens of small squads of raiders striking a large territory at the same time.

But defending a single castle? no way a mundane army, with only minimal magic support, can take the fortress.

[Gandariel]

Dirst of all, i found a perfect name for the game!

It will be called

Keep the Keep!

Also, as for now there are two subscriptions for the Army side (Zonugan and Brann Miekka) and one for the Wizard side (Oindoth)(two if Doc Roc wants to join)

Let's clarify some stuff, and we'll be able to begin shortly!
So... Army stats:
Normal soldiers/Commoners have Nonelite array
Barbarians and lvl1 Clerics have Elite array
Lvl5 clerics and the Warlord have 28 PB
sounds reasonable for all of you?
then... i'd say Army side gets 40k to spend on..whatever they want.

The wizard is assumed to have made some basic defences for the keep
(And BASIC doesn't mean permanent Force Walls all around it!)

The army's composition can be rearranged, but remain within limits.
Wanna change barbarians with fighters or rogues? sure!
Wanna change everyone in the horde with lvl 1 Wizards? no way.
keep it more or less within reason, i chose barbarians because they gave more of a "horde" style (Game of thrones, anyone?)

Other things to clear up?

[absolmorph]

If I were to construct the army, it would be made primarilly of rogues, rangers and barbarians. They'd start guerilla, and keep spread out. Squads would assault then retreat, letting the next squad attack when the Wizard's spells expired. That'd slowly drain his spells off, and he needs a restful night's sleep and an hour to prepare to refresh spells. Rope trick would do this, but then the keep is raided, the rogues splash oil all over the place, and set fire to the entire structure.

some wizard builds could counter this, but not the blaster or the battlefield manipulator.
I cast Fell Drain anything that deals damage.
Enjoy your wights.
And that feat can fit into either of those types of builds (admittedly, it's not core, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm making and not included in the limitations of Gandariel's challenge).

[Gandariel]

I cast Fell Drain anything that deals damage.
Enjoy your wights.
And that feat can fit into either of those types of builds (admittedly, it's not core, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm making and not included in the limitations of Gandariel's challenge).

Your point is that you win thanks to something that "is not really relevant to the point you're making"...
what?

[Killer Angel]

Let's clarify some stuff, and we'll be able to begin shortly!


Recruitment subforum?



Other things to clear up?

Confirm 1 day warning before arrival of the horde?
Wizard's standard WBL?

[Gandariel]

Recruitment subforum?

YES, as soon as we finish deciding the specs

Confirm 1 day warning before arrival of the horde?
Wizard's standard WBL?
I was considering giving them a little more, like 20 or 30% more for fortification upgrades/traps.. whaddaya think?

answers in bold and filler text!

[agahii]

Your point is that you win thanks to something that "is not really relevant to the point you're making"...
what?

Im not sure I understand the point you are making? If you are trying to show that only blasty type spells are crap then we already know that. While blasty spells are better damage dealers than melee, blasting is the wizards worst choice for spells to prepare. My wizards are necromancers. I would just have my army eat the opposing army.... or barring that..

You also keep saying the keep has minimal defenses. IMO as a wizard any keep that I care to actually...keep... would be very well guarded. I also keep a very large (real) orphanage on the grounds. Yes the teachers and young children are prepared to die to defend their homes, so I hope your army is evil aligned, though if thats the case my wizard just contacts the leader and offers his services for some payment.

[Killer Angel]

@ Gandariel
If that 30% is dedicated only to mundane fortress enhancement, i think it's OK.

edit: don't think I'll join, but I'm very interested.

[Lonely Tylenol]

EDIT: I only read the first page, but here's my story.

The first full adventure I ever created as a DM was designed for 5-6 10th level PCs using Pathfinder's rule set, items, limitations, etc., back when Pathfinder was just PF core. The very first encounter of the adventure was outside the front gates of the castle they were trying to storm, where one of the king's elite generals had been stationed to rout any possible threats with the force of her army. I used the Leadership rules to stat out her force, with a leadership score of 35 (level 13 + 6 CHA modifier + 7 levels of Battle Herald was enough). They were, in order:

-135 1st-level Fighters (90 used longswords and spears; the other 45 used short swords and longbows)
-13 2nd-level Wizards (blasty-buffy and minor battlefield controls
-7 3rd-level Clerics (wide radius Channel Energy 2d6 to help the battle-scarred)
-4 4th-level Paladins (a wide array of Paladin abilities, but the Aura, Lay on Hands and Channel Energy were all in play here)
-2 5th-level Rangers (on horseback, with the Hunter's Bond version instead of an Animal Companion, both relaying their Favored Enemy (Humanoid [Human]) +4 and Favored Enemy (Humanoid [Elf]) +2 to everyone around them)
-2 6th-level Cavaliers (on horseback, waving banners and conveying their Tactician bonuses to everyone around them)
-1 11th-level Cavalier/Bard/Battle Herald (dip Bard) cohort, conveying all bonuses to everyone in range and challenging the group as a mid-boss
-1 13th-level Bard/Cavalier/Battle Herald (dip Cavalier) leader, conveying all bonuses to everyone in range and acting as the end-boss of the encounter.

I had statted out and equipped every group individually (so the 90 1st-level spearmen and the 45 1st-level archers had different stats to complement their roles, but all of them had the same stats as any other spearman or fighter), and hand-picked all the bonuses to make them such that, even as 1st-level Fighters, they had a reasonable chance of scoring a hit with flanking and tactics. This first encounter alone took several days to plan, and I had made sure to do everything as intricately and masterfully as possible.

One of the players in the group had rolled a sorcerer and, with standard WBL, bought a flying broomstick (yes, flying around like a witch) and a fully-charged wand of Fireball, CL 10.

It was over before it ever began. The sorcerer floated safely overhead somewhere between 600 and 800 feet above ground and used maybe 7 or 8 charges out of the wand in total (the army, to its credit, was played as being led by a particularly competent leader, and even though they had no chance of reaching the sorcerer, adapted to the new demands of their environment and spread out, closing together only to engage one of the other PCs). The only spell that the sorcerer ever used was a lone Summon Monster spell, which was used to summon... I honestly can't remember. Something Large and capable of killing most mooks fairly effortlessly.

This isn't even a matter of poor spell selection; the sorcerer never even really needed to use a spell that was actually part of the usual spells per day. Assuming you can protect yourself and/or keep yourself at Long range, a single wand of a horribly unoptimized blasty spell will give you enough power and longevity to level entire armies, meaning literally anyone who has even a high enough Use Magic Device score to pretend to be a horribly unoptimized full caster of appropriate level (plus the money to finance this expedition) has enough power at their disposal to render the financing of large armies completely moot.

Really, assuming that such armies exist in a fantasy setting itself requires a willing suspension of disbelief, E6, or even just the simple explanation that "high-level characters are extremely rare in the world", which itself is true.

[Oindoth]

Well, with no crafting XP, that's one of my feats that's getting changed out. Also, I assume that means that XP-costing spells are out?

[gkathellar]

Well, with no crafting XP, that's one of my feats that's getting changed out. Also, I assume that means that XP-costing spells are out?

It's worth asking if you're getting any XP for murdering this army, though. If you spend several days killing them before they arrive, does that give you a little XP to throw into things that get crafted quickly?

[Gandariel]

i don't know, i don't think 1 or 2 K XP would do much harm..

[gkathellar]

i don't know, i don't think 1 or 2 K XP would do much harm..

Oh, it would. The question is whether you think it's justified or not.

[Oindoth]

Yeah, that "1 or 2K XP" is enough to give me my stat boosters for half price, meaning I get that much more money to spend on other magic items, which could either defend my castle or be used to kill the army. It's really not a question. Also, can I get a confirmation as to whether the wizard and/or army is core only or not? I'd like to grab Invisible Spell to replace one of my more useless metamagic feats.

[Gandariel]

How about you can use xp for crafting or such, BUT your starting XP is exactly enough to get to level 11? (so that if you spend even ONE xp you get down a level)?

Also yes, core only

[shadow_archmagi]

How about you can use xp for crafting or such, BUT your starting XP is exactly enough to get to level 11? (so that if you spend even ONE xp you get down a level)?


You never go down a level. A character who reaches level 11 can spend all of his XP and still be level 11. It'll just take a really, really long time to get to level 12, since he'll be at 0/66,000 instead of 55,000/66,000

[Coidzor]

You never go down a level. A character who reaches level 11 can spend all of his XP and still be level 11. It'll just take a really, really long time to get to level 12, since he'll be at 0/66,000 instead of 55,000/66,000

Ah,and here I thought that just meant you couldn't craft anything immediately after leveling up if one didn't exceed the minimum for the level.

[absolmorph]

Your point is that you win thanks to something that "is not really relevant to the point you're making"...
what?
Being outside core wasn't relevant to the point I was making.

[Oindoth]

You never go down a level. A character who reaches level 11 can spend all of his XP and still be level 11. It'll just take a really, really long time to get to level 12, since he'll be at 0/66,000 instead of 55,000/66,000 Wait, really? Sweet! If this is the case (and I'd like confirmation on that) I've got a *lot* more gold to spend.

[ahenobarbi]

PHB says that "A character can not spend so much XP on an item that he or she loses a level" but I think it means "you are not allowed to spend XP on item creation to get below level-limit" not "no matter how much XP you spend you don't delevel".

[Flickerdart]

There's always Thought Bottles.

[Zonugal]

Dirst of all, i found a perfect name for the game!

It will be called

Keep the Keep!

Also, as for now there are two subscriptions for the Army side (Zonugan and Brann Miekka) and one for the Wizard side (Oindoth)(two if Doc Roc wants to join)

Let's clarify some stuff, and we'll be able to begin shortly!
So... Army stats:
Normal soldiers/Commoners have Nonelite array
Barbarians and lvl1 Clerics have Elite array
Lvl5 clerics and the Warlord have 28 PB
sounds reasonable for all of you?
then... i'd say Army side gets 40k to spend on..whatever they want.

The wizard is assumed to have made some basic defences for the keep
(And BASIC doesn't mean permanent Force Walls all around it!)

The army's composition can be rearranged, but remain within limits.
Wanna change barbarians with fighters or rogues? sure!
Wanna change everyone in the horde with lvl 1 Wizards? no way.
keep it more or less within reason, i chose barbarians because they gave more of a "horde" style (Game of thrones, anyone?)

Other things to clear up?

What type of terrain or geographical features surround the keep?

Also I am happy to see we have some flexibility in changing out classes. It allows me to go really thematic in my approach while still using my tricks.

[Flickerdart]

So just to clarify, this is a keep the wizard cares about enough not to let any hostile force in for even a moment, but not enough to adequately defend ahead of time? This is somewhat strange as far as premises go.

[olentu]

So just to clarify, this is a keep the wizard cares about enough not to let any hostile force in for even a moment, but not enough to adequately defend ahead of time? This is somewhat strange as far as premises go.

Hmm perhaps it would be better if the wizard does not actually own the keep but has been hired by the reigning monarch for a lucrative sum in place of an army.

[Zale]

These spells are actually kinda lame. People can just move out of the way.


This spell generates a bank of fog, similar to a fog cloud, except that its vapors are yellowish green and poisonous. These vapors automatically kill any living creature with 3 or fewer HD (no save). A living creature with 4 to 6 HD is slain unless it succeeds on a Fortitude save (in which case it takes 1d4 points of Constitution damage on your turn each round while in the cloud).

No, no they can't. Because they died. The ones over level three, may have lived, but most of the army is level one.




The exercise is vs a wizard, not vs a band of Succubi. It's one thing to summon monsters as attack spells; it's something else to use them as infiltrators (and rely on their initiative and judgment). In this particular scenario, the wizard's entire contribution was to summon two monsters. It makes you wonder how any society exists if it's really that easy to destroy organizations; what stops evil wizards from sending succubi in to destroy towns and cities the same way? 1 wizard could depopulate Europe in a few years at that rate.


Your point? The wizard is being intelligent. Succubi are good at sneaking around and spying. The Wizard knows this. He also knows that he doesn't want to die. It's far safer for him, personally, to send minions rather than go himself.

Not to mention, the Succubi were just to gather information and slow down the army. Once they reported to the Wizard, he would go forth and slaughter the confused army.

It's more of a preliminary plan to gather information than something to defeat the army entirely.

[Flickerdart]

Why shouldn't the wizard be allowed to summon monsters? He is using his class features to win, after all. Those class features just happen to include summoning succubi. Nobody is saying, for instance, that the army should not be allowed siege engines, because it is supposed to be an army vs a wizard, not siege engines vs a wizard.

[Oindoth]

Heck, a Wizard's familiar, if optimized for AC, can't be hit by most of the members of the army.

[Yahzi]

here's my story.
The best kind of story - real table experiences!

Somewhere in the thread I did mention that wands were not allowed, for that very reason: they just make a mockery of the one pretend weakness wizards have. :smallbiggrin:


Really, assuming that such armies exist in a fantasy setting itself requires a willing suspension of disbelief, E6, or even just the simple explanation that "high-level characters are extremely rare in the world", which itself is true.
And yet, virtually every fantasy setting for D&D does assume the existence of large armies. :smallannoyed:

Apparently there are only a few high-level wizards, hiding in their towers somewhere and waiting for their turn to be BBEG (which kinda describes LotR actually).

The problem with assuming that high-level characters are extremely rare, though, is that it removes all restraint from PCs. When the PCs roll into town, they really can murder the king, slaughter his guards, and obliterate the city if they want to, if they're the only 9th level creatures in the civilized world.

So, given a choice between a world with standard armies, or a world where PCs are not unchecked demigods, I choose the latter.


Some general points

Having the wizard summon a monster which then does all the work does not help. It just means the GM has to explain why this hasn't already happened to everything in his world (just like the GM has to invent a reason why there hasn't been a Shadowcolypse). One might argue that requiring DMs to explain why their world still exists at the start of the game is a flaw in the rules as written. :smalltongue:

Equipping an army at the standard prices is too expensive to compete with just making magic items; for instance, a wand of fireballs is 11,500 gp; fifty men with chain, crossbow, shield, and sword is 11,000 gp. That's only one fireball per man to be cost effective!

When magicking up your keep, remember that the wizard has to live there, and so do his servants.

Conclusion:

There doesn't seem to be any reason to design armies larger than what an individual ruler would find helpful for tax collecting, police work, and scouting. Armies never rise above the company level; they're just war-bands.

Like in 2E, Fighters/Clerics who build a castle attract a company of men, who serve for the reward of being fed, housed, armed, and given a chance to boss around a few tax-paying peasants. In exchange they are willing to occasionally throw themselves into the maw of a monster or open an unidentified box once in a while. These mooks should not even count against the WBL of the character; they're just window dressing, or a class feature (like the Druid's animal companion).

Again, we see that this world fits the Iron Age, or even more accurately, The Dying Earth. What it doesn't fit is medieval France.

[Zale]

Having the wizard summon a monster which then does all the work does not help. It just means the GM has to explain why this hasn't already happened to everything in his world (just like the GM has to invent a reason why there hasn't been a Shadowcolypse). One might argue that requiring DMs to explain why their world still exists at the start of the game is a flaw in the rules as written. :smalltongue:


Yes, why hasn't the evil wizard overlord not taken over the world?

Because the Heroes stopped him.

If there's an evil overlord, there's an adventuring party somewhere that will find and defeat him. It's practically a physical law in stories!

Using that as an excuse to deny a valid strategy strikes me as.. odd.

[Tavar]

Also, if that's your justification for denying it, why not deny the other strategies? They pretty much fall under the same complaints.

[Gandariel]

It looks like the only thing left to do is the geographical setting... ideas?
top of a hill?
Big featureless plain?
middle of a forest?
underground?
peak of a mountain?

Also, i confirm the status of applications as of now:
Army: 2
Wizard: 1
DMs: 0
guys, join!
(Or the people in the Recruitment subforum will get to play before you :P)

[Tavar]

Have you actually made a recruitment thread? If so, you should probably link to it.


Also, if needed, I could DM.

[Oindoth]

It looks like the only thing left to do is the geographical setting... ideas?
top of a hill?
Big featureless plain?
middle of a forest?
underground?
peak of a mountain?

Also, i confirm the status of applications as of now:
Army: 2
Wizard: 1
DMs: 0
guys, join!
(Or the people in the Recruitment subforum will get to play before you :P)

Top of the hill is too easy for the wizard, as is the middle of the forest, underground, on the peak of a mountain and on a big, featureless plain. That being said, I think that terrain doesn't really matter, as it's changed so easily by the wizard.

[Gavinfoxx]

*game info*

Can I start with a Druid? I have a level 9 build statted out, I'd like to try with that...

[Yahzi]

Also, if that's your justification for denying it, why not deny the other strategies? They pretty much fall under the same complaints.
There is a difference between a wizard spending days casting spells to defeat an army... or casting a single spell, once, and allowing it to autonomously destroy entire social organizations.

Admittedly, allowing wizards to summon monsters that are smarter and stronger than wizards is a dumb idea in the first place. Really, is there any adventure that can't be solved by Gate?


DM: "The BBEG has captured the princess and locked her..."

PC: "I summon a Solar and have it teleport to her, take her home, then kill the wizard, and also make me some lunch."

DM: "OK, but now a new BBEG..."

PC: "I summon a Solar and tell him to take care of it. Since he's both a super-genius and Good, he'll do it in an effective and humane way."

DM" "OK, but..."

PC: "This is getting annoying. I summon a Solar and tell him to summon Solars whenever something needs done."

Seriously, how does every adventure not end like that? Every DM has to make up an answer for why "I summon a monster" is not the sole answer to every adventure seed. This thread isn't about that answer, though. It assumes the DM already has that answer, and that the PCs can't resolve every session without effort on their part.



Because the Heroes stopped him.
That goes back to a world in which there are the PCs, and there are the BBEGS specifically created so the PCs can destroy them, and nobody else. That's a perfectly viable way to play D&D, but this thread is more about sand-box games and how to construct a society where RAW are actually true all the time, and not just when the players are on the stage.

(Indeed, one way to play is that only PCs have player classes; literally everyone else in the world is an NPC or a monster, with powers that are necessary to the plot but utterly unrelated to what the PCs can do. In which case the army either has Wizardkillerium swords or suffers from social hemophilia (i.e. they bleed to death when you look at them mean), depending on the plot).

[olentu]

There is a difference between a wizard spending days casting spells to defeat an army... or casting a single spell, once, and allowing it to autonomously destroy entire social organizations.

Admittedly, allowing wizards to summon monsters that are smarter and stronger than wizards is a dumb idea in the first place. Really, is there any adventure that can't be solved by Gate?



Seriously, how does every adventure not end like that? Every DM has to make up an answer for why "I summon a monster" is not the sole answer to every adventure seed. This thread isn't about that answer, though. It assumes the DM already has that answer, and that the PCs can't resolve every session without effort on their part.



That goes back to a world in which there are the PCs, and there are the BBEGS specifically created so the PCs can destroy them, and nobody else. That's a perfectly viable way to play D&D, but this thread is more about sand-box games and how to construct a society where RAW are actually true all the time, and not just when the players are on the stage.

(Indeed, one way to play is that only PCs have player classes; literally everyone else in the world is an NPC or a monster, with powers that are necessary to the plot but utterly unrelated to what the PCs can do. In which case the army either has Wizardkillerium swords or suffers from social hemophilia (i.e. they bleed to death when you look at them mean), depending on the plot).

Alternatively you just get a world where the spell casters are in charge of everything they take the time to be in charge of (except when blocked by other casters) and ignore the rest because it bores them. So sure you have armies and they might even fight. The local wizard doesn't care so long as you kids keep the noise down while he is napping and stay off his lawn.

[IncoherentEssay]

My personal solution to the "Why don't the high-level casters just steamroll everyone?" conumdrum is that all stable nations employ a cadre of countercasters. Things like the Inquisition domain, Elven Spell Lore, Master Abjurer or even the psionic Dispel power as-is allow middling casters to shut down stuff above their own weight class.
They can afford such a potentially crippling overspecialization since they don't need to deal with the vast variety of situations adventuring casters run into.
It does break down in the 15+ level range when CL caps cripple most antimagic while CL boosters start to pile up (or earlierdepending on how heavy CL shenanigans are in play), but it should serve as sufficient deterrent for most of the level range.

Edit: i also cap unexeptional NPCs to level 9, actual level dependant on age and quality of training/degree of hardship endured during average day-to-day life, using the "survival for [time unit] equals encounter of CR 1/X". Keeps NPCs from wrecking the balance of power.

[Hiro Protagonest]

There is a difference between a wizard spending days casting spells to defeat an army... or casting a single spell, once, and allowing it to autonomously destroy entire social organizations.

Admittedly, allowing wizards to summon monsters that are smarter and stronger than wizards is a dumb idea in the first place. Really, is there any adventure that can't be solved by Gate?



Seriously, how does every adventure not end like that? Every DM has to make up an answer for why "I summon a monster" is not the sole answer to every adventure seed. This thread isn't about that answer, though. It assumes the DM already has that answer, and that the PCs can't resolve every session without effort on their part.

Because Gate costs XP, and Planar Binding is only good if you have prep time?

You do have a point in that it would be quite easy, however, to just use the Planar Binding line on some celestials, apologize about not having access to Planar Ally, then tell them you'll let them go back to their own plane(s) if they help you defeat a vampire lord and his spawn. If you don't mind waiting a few days for them to agree to serve you, it's even better if you summon some devils or demons, because then you take away a bit of their forces (and if everyone good and neutral aligned with Lesser Planar Binding or better did that, as well as all 1st level good and neutral casters summoning fiendish creatures, it would outweigh any evil casters attempting to do the same, the good guys would win, and there would be endless forests for the elves and eternal beer for the dwarves).

Also see: Angel Summoner.

[Gavinfoxx]

@Incoherent: So most nations have a guy who uses one of these (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871214/Dispelling_38;_Counterspelling_Compilation) builds? And there is a college somewhere in that setting that teaches those techniques?

[Zale]

There is a difference between a wizard spending days casting spells to defeat an army... or casting a single spell, once, and allowing it to autonomously destroy entire social organizations.

You do know that I didn't expect two Succubi to destroy the whole army, right? I just wanted them to gather intel to so the Wizard could go out and destroy the army himself.

Their real purpose was to determine the most threatening targets, delay the army and spread confusion, with the secondary goal of gathering intel on battle plans and killing any casters.

Would you rather the wizard fly out to meet the army without any advance scouting? I'm sorry, but no wizard is stupid enough to do that. Arrogant enough, maybe, but so willing to put himself in danger if their is something there he doesn't know about?



Admittedly, allowing wizards to summon monsters that are smarter and stronger than wizards is a dumb idea in the first place. Really, is there any adventure that can't be solved by Gate?



I think most BBEGs can handle a Solar by the time the party can summon one.

[IncoherentEssay]

@Incoherent: So most nations have a guy who uses one of these (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871214/Dispelling_38;_Counterspelling_Compilation) builds? And there is a college somewhere in that setting that teaches those techniques?

Not quite the full array, just M.Abjurer/Spell Lore/Arc.Mastery, the cleric level would make no sense since they are based in a wizard-run magocracy. They do tend to tag with Spell Thieves* using the caster level penalty alternate class feature, though. Nations without similar traditions of wizardry roll with Inquisition-clerics or domain sorcerers.
Its enough to uphold internal consistency, and my group doens't optimize much so the full bonus would be overkill. Therefore i tone it down a bit so that they can deploy on a zerg-rush-scale if necessary without wrecking plausibility :smallwink:.

*Iron Kingdoms Rifleman + Telling Blow + Pierce Magical Concealment is quite nifty for this.

[Hirax]

Wizards can get domain powers at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level (Complete Champion), so the cleric dip is unnecessary. Planar touchstone could also get it to them, which means the academy would have a mandatory study abroad program with Mechanus. :smallbiggrin:

Also, I can't wait to see how the army gets past a single casting of blizzard. If you use an extend rod and any sort of CL boosting, that's well over 20 rounds of doing whatever you want.

[Zonugal]

Top of the hill is too easy for the wizard, as is the middle of the forest, underground, on the peak of a mountain and on a big, featureless plain. That being said, I think that terrain doesn't really matter, as it's changed so easily by the wizard.

It matters for the mundane army.

It matters a lot.

[Oindoth]

It matters for the mundane army. It matters a lot. Not really. It gets changed by the wizard on a whim.

[Zonugal]

Not really. It gets changed by the wizard on a whim.

It still doesn't matter, the Wizard still has to use spells to change the local surroundings which digs into his limited supply of resources.

Also I acknowledge that 11th-level Wizards are fairly powerful but not powerful enough to reshape the entire geographical area surrounding their keep.

Important questions the mundane army needs to know are what type of terrain is near the keep, what type of environment is it, are their any notable geographical features in the area, what is the natural slop/elevation of the terrain, ect...

All of these are important.

[Oindoth]

Alright, we could just assume that the Wizard has *just* come into control of the keep, and hasn't had time to make the landscape whatever he likes. Not very realistic though.

[Zonugal]

It is beyond that, the attackers & defenders need to have an established framework for the terrain. We need to know if the entire keep is safe-guarded by mountains or if absolutely open in the middle of no-where.

I mean, I can't imagine any of the mundane armies even approaching developing actual tactics/strategies until he get terrain & geography addressed.

[Oindoth]

True. But realistically, if any keep were held by a mid-high level wizard on the material plane for any length of time, its terrain would be exactly as he dictates it, what with Move Earth, Stone Shape, Wall of Stone, etc. So it's really up to the individual wizard.

[Gandariel]

EUREKA!!

Basically, AT THE SAME TIME the Wizard is promised a lot of money to, well, Keep the Keep, and the Army wants to take it.

So the army CAN attack immediately (there's always the 24 hours march time)

OR
they can wait some time and have some spies check what is the wizard doing..
He spends all his slots on Wall of Stone? Perfect, let's attack now!

This gives the whole game a sense, since now we know why the Keep isn't on the top of a mountain enclosed in a maze of walls of stone.
Also, gives a choice to the Army side.

And let's say the Keep is on top of a 200' hill. All ok with you?

[Flickerdart]

OR
they can wait some time and have some spies check what is the wizard doing..
He spends all his slots on Wall of Stone? Perfect, let's attack now!
So the entire army is just hanging out within 8 hours' march of the Wizard? That's the worst idea possible.