Help me defeat an army

[Melnir]

Hi, yesterday me and my party came to a turning point in the campaign we're playing and I need some suggestions on how to handle the situation we're facing.
We're a party of 4 9th level pseudo-gestalt characters (we're basically gestalt, but we keep skill points, BAB, saving throws and so on of the main progression instead of choosing the better ones) and after defeating a 15th level cleric, we have to face an army of 10k orcs with 3 sorcerers as chiefs.
I'm telepath 9//wizard 5/escalation mage 4, the others are warblade 9//wizard 9, crusader 9//cleric 9, swift hunter//cleric 9 and we have no way to deal with the army atm, but psichyc reformation may be our solution.
I was thinking on the quickest way to handle the army (since once it's dealt with we should be able to defeat the sorcerors) without the use of locate city bomb. What can we do? Feel free to suggest anything (I can reform anyone, we have enough time) but keep in mind that flash frost spell+fell drain might be rejected by my GM, while area spell that deals damage+fell drain is definitely allowed and we don't have any restriction on what we can do as long as it's not too cheesy.

[Blackhawk748]

Cloudkill is your friend, im willing to bet that most of those Orcs are under level 6, just catch them when they are in a a canyon or other similar tightly confined space and unleash cloudkill on the front, rear and middle and just watch them all die. Similarly triggering a rockslide using earthquake (which you're gonna need from a scroll) could do wonders too.

[ExLibrisMortis]

What level are the orcs? If they're not too high-levelled, you might be able to stack a few CL boosters on control winds and kill them all with a tornado.

[Melnir]

Cloudkill is your friend, im willing to bet that most of those Orcs are under level 6, just catch them when they are in a a canyon or other similar tightly confined space and unleash cloudkill on the front, rear and middle and just watch them all die. Similarly triggering a rockslide using earthquake (which you're gonna need from a scroll) could do wonders too.

These are definitely nice suggestions, but I forgot to specify one thing (my bad): they're besieging a wall we're supposed to defend, the location is an open field (so cludkill would be ineffective, since it doesn't cover a huge area) and they're fighting in a 900m (aproximately) row.


What level are the orcs? If they're not too high-levelled, you might be able to stack a few CL boosters on control winds and kill them all with a tornado.

They should be low level, nice call, that's something we can try.

[Chronos]

Summon Monster IV for a yeth hound is the lowest-level army-killer I know of, since their fear effect is huge, and they have the move speed to basically hit everyone on the battlefield with it. The DC is low enough that many of them will make their saves, but an army that has a third of its members fleeing has lost so much cohesion that it's not an army any more.

Wall of Fire is another one that has a nice, big area. And you can cast Illusory Script on a big silk banner* that's visible across the battlefield.


* The weight limit for Illusory Script is 10 pounds. Medium-weight silk weighs 20 pounds for a strip 45 inches wide by 100 yards long, meaning that a 10-pound piece could be, say, 90 inches by 25 yards. That should be readable from quite a distance away.

[J-H]

Wall of Fire is 20' long per level... at level 9, that's 180' long. 5 of those will cover the 900' frontage.
It can be made Permanent with a Permanency spell, which is only 5th level. A Permanent Wall of Fire can only be extinguished by cold; you can counterspell anyone who tries to extinguish sections of it, or drop Cloudkill on the extinguished sections.

Mix with Widened grease, Stone Shape, Rock to Mud, and the like.

But the best option...

Confusion targets every creature in a 15' radius burst. Widen it and it's a 30' radius. That's an area of 2827 sqft; at 25 sqft/square, that's 113 squares. Assuming the orcs are in a checkerboard pattern (every other square), you're forcing them to roll 56 saving throws at each casting. 50% of those who fail their saves will either run away or attack whoever's nearest. This will do a great deal to reduce the number of orcs you have to fight at a time, while disrupting their formation and causing some "friendly fire", hopefully around their leaders.

[Melnir]

Wall of Fire is 20' long per level... at level 9, that's 180' long. 5 of those will cover the 900' frontage.
It can be made Permanent with a Permanency spell, which is only 5th level. A Permanent Wall of Fire can only be extinguished by cold; you can counterspell anyone who tries to extinguish sections of it, or drop Cloudkill on the extinguished sections.

Mix with Widened grease, Stone Shape, Rock to Mud, and the like.

But the best option...

Confusion targets every creature in a 15' radius burst. Widen it and it's a 30' radius. That's an area of 2827 sqft; at 25 sqft/square, that's 113 squares. Assuming the orcs are in a checkerboard pattern (every other square), you're forcing them to roll 56 saving throws at each casting. 50% of those who fail their saves will either run away or attack whoever's nearest. This will do a great deal to reduce the number of orcs you have to fight at a time, while disrupting their formation and causing some "friendly fire", hopefully around their leaders.

The front is a bit wider, it's 900m, not 900', so it's around 3000'. Confusion might be an option (and widen spell is for free), I might try that way as well, but it will require a lot of casts.

[Blackhawk748]

I feel dumb. Widened boreal wind. Say hello to a 40 foot wide 40 ft high 1520* ft long line of freezing wind, doing 9d4** points of Cold damage and pushing everything in it 27** feet down the line upon a failed Fort save. The best part is is that everyone in your party can at least cast a normal boreal wind. And the cherry upon this delicious cake of death and destruction, is that it last for 1round +1/2levels, and:

A boreal wind can do anything a sudden blast of wind would be expected to do. It can create a stinging spray of sand or dust, overturn tents and blow down small huts, scuttle a small boat, and blow gases or vapors to the edge of the range. The wind can change direction if you actively direct it (a move action for you); otherwise, it merely blows in the same direction.

So for best results hit the enemy in their flanks where they arent as wide.

[John Longarrow]

Do you have access to DMM Persistent spell? If so, persist silence on a stone. Then use DMM persistent monster summoning IV to get a howler. DC 12 will save or -1 to wisdom. Check each hour the enemy can hear the howler. Orcs have a low wisdom to begin with. You hide out in a silenced area while all the orcs that can hear (no range given) the howler start going down and down and down in Wisdom.

This could drop the entire army with two spells. One to deal with the army, one to protect you from the fall out. Depending on where their spell casters are, they may have to make saves to...

[MisterKaws]

You should keep in mind that armies over 1k troops usually have 70% of them made up of level 1 warriors, so a normal flash frost locate city would do, no need to use the bomb version.

[Melcar]

I would do either large AOE spells... But that will only get you so far. Summons would be a good idea too... but again unless you can get level 9 summons they won't help much either. I suggest that you try to kite the army... possibly an impossible task, but its sounds like you are screwed.

Disregarding level and what not, I would personally try gate some nasty thing in. Solars for instance. And let them deal with it, while I was inside telekinetic sphere (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/telekineticSphere.htm). oveseeing the carnage!!!

Maybe spells like: Abyssal Army, Armageddon, Abyssal Rift or Apocalypse from the Sky

[John Longarrow]

OP

What books / special spells do you have access to?

[Jormengand]

Get everyone who can cast it to spam cloudkill and confusion into the army, as well as a few fireballs (though not in the same place as the confusions). Pyrotechnics can make large sections of the army blind, making it impossible to maneuver them. Add to this a load of ghost sounds to throw the army into disarray. Your clerics can set insect plagues, giant vermin and summoned creatures on them while you do this.

Your main advantage is that trying to move around 10,000 orcs is going to be a pretty amazing feat of leadership, and is going to go from impressive to impossible when there are rolling clouds of death, entire squads fighting among themselves, and swarms of invulnerable locusts raining down on them, especially when most of your army is blind and thinks it's being eaten by a dragon.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Blackhawk748 has hit upon one of the more efficient ideas, I think. Boreal Wind.

Or any wind spells, really. Along with Cloudkill. Also J-H's Walls of Fire.

Basically, you want to forget about protecting the wall, that's not important. What IS important, is getting out there and killing the orcs. By casting Invisibility, walking fairly close to the front lines, and casting Cloudkill... Not ON them, since that would end the invisibility, but right in FRONT of them (though not so close that the edges would touch the army), and then casting Boreal Wind to push the cloud over the army.

Cloudkill lasts pretty long, and Boreal Wind will last you a few rounds, and more importantly, allow you to change the direction it's blowing. This means with a little creative use of walls (fire, stone, iron, whichever) and whatever terrain altering spells you can employ, you can literally push around both the army AND the Cloudkill banks. Having lots of little summoned monsters will help greatly, when they're too busy trying to stop your casting party from throwing down the hurt on them.

Don't overlook the usefulness of Mirror Image in these situations, as well as things like darkness, regular fog cloud, and throwing AoE roughly where you know the enemy is/was.

And everybody loves Grease.

[Jormengand]

Another thing you can do is to set a natural fire, or use slings to lob oil (alchemist's fire is too expensive unless you have Call Item) into the enemy ranks, hitting 9 orcs per shot and setting one of them on fire. If any of you is a good enough shot, you may be able to hit something important that isn't actually an enemy combatant.

Also, how is anyone getting 10k orcs over to you without a metric boopton of supplies? Your best bet may not be to take on the orc army directly at all. An army like that is going to have loads of supply carts, and possibly be taking deliveries from supply runners. How far are they travelling? How much food do you eat in that time, and how much food does an orc warrior who's spending most of his time marching eat in that time? How much do you drink? Trying to maneuver ten thousand orcs with three commanders is one thing - with proper delegation of sergeants, it should be relatively easy - the hard part is feeding ten thousand orcs with not a cleric in sight (no create (food and) water for you!).

Your best bet is to steal or blow up all of your enemies' food. An overland flight'ing wizard comes down and lobs a fireball into a cart. A psion drags that fire into another one. A cleric floods a storage pit with water. A crusader drops the bloody carcasses of three orcs into another storage pit. A hundred orc-days of rations go up in flame, another hundred drown in blood and water. The camp is on its feet immediately, but finds itself assailed by vermin. They look to their leaders for guidance but all three of them are already dead or dominated; the one who's still alive confounds many of the orcs' sense motive scores with orders to flee, while those who realise the truth are still left without leadership. Many of the orcs are blinded by smoke, and don't notice as another supply tent goes up in flame, and another, and another. By the time the orcs have driven the invaders back with some hastily-made arrow shots, they've lost the next week's rations for the entire army. They only have a few days' rations left, and their next supply line isn't due for a week. They already begin to suspect it may never arrive.

If the orcs have infinite food by DM fiat, that still doesn't mean you have to fight them all at once. There are 10k of them, and you say you have long enough for retraining which is, what, a few weeks? Well, if you can teleport near them, launch some cloudkills/insect swarms at them, kill a couple of hundred (even a fireball will kill twenty or so per shot, and even so much as manifesting an energy wall, let alone having it stay existent for several rounds, kills 12 per manifester level and seriously injures 8 more per level) and then run away, and try again tomorrow, that will reduce their numbers. If you have 50 days, and kill 200 orcs each day, you should be able to finish them off before they even reach your gates. In reality, you can probably take out a lot more than that. If you took a feat to get an astral construct, dropping it in there with heavy deflection is a possible way to hold off any orcs that try to make a break towards you, otherwise you'll need to rely on summoned monsters and your tome of battle friends.

Of course, you could always sneak in and assassinate the commanders, assassinate the sergeants (divinations to find out who they are might be useful), and then set the place on fire before the orcs have a chance to get their hands on anyone they trust to lead them. Even humans, with their comparatively high mental stats, have trouble pulling themselves together in such a situation. Orcs? Not a chance in hell.

[Chronos]

Neither Silence nor Summon Monster can be persisted, since they both have variable range.

[Platymus Pus]

Starmantle cloak, just wade into them and kill them the old fashioned way if you had the option.
But since fly is an option, ever consider shrinking boulders into pebbles and dropping it onto them?
Best option is to cause infighting in the army, kill the head, use mind magic so they all kill each other.

[Alex12]

Note that anything killed by negative levels rises as a wight unless the effect says otherwise. Fell Drain may not be the best solution, unless you can control hordes of wights. And if you can control hordes of wights, dropping a couple of Summon Undead 5 wights into the middle of a bunch of level 1 warriors has the potential to be hilarious and can't possibly go horribly horribly wrong in any way.

Personally, I'd suggest assassinating the sorcerers and then using disguise magic and bluffs to usurp control of the army and have it go elsewhere (is there anyplace you really don't like?), but that's just me.

[ben-zayb]

Psychic Reformation to put some UMD ranks, then use Scrolls of Lesser Spirit Binding to bind Ghosts, preferably ones with Malevolence. Watch as the army slaughter themselves.

[Vizzerdrix]

Neither Silence nor Summon Monster can be persisted, since they both have variable range.

What about using Halaster's Fetch? That could get some long lasting summons out on the field.

Also, what about tossing a casting of Black Sand into those wind spells for extra chaos? Damage and darkness among the ranks.

[Albions_Angel]

My go to answer for unleashing incredible power on the world? UA Rituals. Get the party members to cast a ritual of you have constructed with the DM. Rip open the gates to hell and let their armies flood out. Tare open the walls between this and a negative energy plane. Or mind control EVERY SINGLE ORC AT ONCE. I love rituals.

[Chronos]

What about using Halaster's Fetch? That could get some long lasting summons out on the field.
Do the Fetches go up to IV (where all the really potent army-killer summons are)? If so, is it at an accessible spell level? And you don't maintain control of the monster that way, either, which could be dangerous.

To the OP, is there another army helping you mop up (which you could potentially buff into badassitude)? Or do you have to do every little detail yourself?

[Jormengand]

Do the Fetches go up to IV (where all the really potent army-killer summons are)? If so, is it at an accessible spell level? And you don't maintain control of the monster that way, either, which could be dangerous.

They go to VI, but the party can only cast II so that's not very helpful. You're better off using long-duration summons like Insect Plague (which has the benefit of being immune to the orcs' attacks).

[SangoProduction]

Well, this is perhaps a little too simple, but...you should have access to something that grants Damage Reduction by your level - maybe even a pet werewolf. Plop it on a summon. Boom, it is virtually indestructable to the army, as getting magic weapons for all the soldiers is a monumental task. Let it do its thing.

Your best hope is to summon something that already has DR and Cleave.

Alternatively, summon something that is discrete, and have it work by attrition - killing them off slowly, or attacking their supplies.

The next option is to just sow chaos and confusion....unsurprisingly by casting a bunch of Confusions. Good luck getting an army to march when they can't even trust their comrades to not go berserk and stab them in the back.

[Jormengand]

Well, this is perhaps a little too simple, but...you should have access to something that grants Damage Reduction by your level - maybe even a pet werewolf. Plop it on a summon. Boom, it is virtually indestructable to the army, as getting magic weapons for all the soldiers is a monumental task. Let it do its thing.

This is why I suggested Insect Plague - immunity to weapon damage is fun!

[Melnir]

Hi guys, thanks for the ideas so far!

A little briefing on the situation: we don't have time to wait for them to starve, they're alredy attacking the wall and threatening to destroy it with siege weapons (it's the first thing we want to take care of, time hopping some part of those seems the quickest idea). We misjudged some in-game happenings and arrived too late onto the battlefield (the siege has been going on for a few days alredy). We faced a 15th level cleric and killed him so we need to rest a bit (we have to decide actually, we use a different system to recover spells since we recover half of our slots of each level after every encounter) and now we have to destroy the army before it destroys the wall. The orcs are treated as swarms, so they automatically deal damage to us with every attack without needing an attack roll (so AC is useless), DR might be a solution, but we came up with ironguard lesser, so the party should be safe. Boreal wind will probably be our pick, it seems the quickest and cleanest way by now. I think we'll go for the 3 bosses first (they're flying over the army, that's why we decided to use ironguard) then take care of the siege weapons and kill the mobs last.

We don't have an army available to us, so we have to do all by ourselves and we have access to all 3.5 books including magazines and 3.0 material that wasn't updated plus TDO's martial disciplines.

[Jormengand]

Okay, first, you need to take down the siege weapons. Time Hop seems like a decent idea, but Control Flames could be useful too, as it will also take down a bunch of orcs. I do still think that pyrotechnics, confusion, and other spells that make an army impossible to control are your best bet.

I don't suppose, by sheer coincidence, either of your clerics has the air domain? You can use control winds to cause all orcs within a 360 foot radius circle to become Knocked Down if they fail a DC 18 fortitude save, and the spell description states that it destroys "Light wooden structures". If you can somehow cast at +3 CL, you can instead blow them away on a failed DC 20 fortitude save. Either way, with a single spell, you can be rendering something in the region of a thousand orcs inoperable.

[Platymus Pus]

The orcs are treated as swarms
If taken literally it's pretty funny, you're being attacks by tiny orcs! :smalleek:

Distraction (Ex)

Any living creature that begins its turn with a swarm in its space must succeed on a DC x Fortitude save or be nauseated for 1 round. The save DC is Constitution-based.

Swarms never make attacks of opportunity, but they can provoke attacks of opportunity.

Unlike other creatures with a 10-foot space, a swarm is shapeable. It can occupy any four contiguous squares, and it can squeeze through any space large enough to contain one of its component creatures.

immune to weapon damage

[Jormengand]

If taken literally it's pretty funny, you're being attacks by tiny orcs! :smalleek:

Swarms of tiny creatures actually only take half damage from slashing and piercing, rather than being immune to weapons. No word on swarms of medium creatures. :smalltongue:

[John Longarrow]

If you can, drop a Haboob on each of the siege weapons. Should sandblast them to pieces pretty quickly. Also would tear anyone trying to move them away apart. How many siege weapons are there and what type(s)?

[Inevitability]

Swarms of tiny creatures actually only take half damage from slashing and piercing, rather than being immune to weapons. No word on swarms of medium creatures. :smalltongue:

I believe the Mob template from Cityscape is being used here. At least, it seems most probable to me.

[Jormengand]

I believe the Mob template from Cityscape is being used here. At least, it seems most probable to me.

In that case, it's possible to drop confusion spells which will inflict enough negative levels (due to the weird ways mobs work) to disband the mob. Also, all area spells are empowered, so Control Flames is even funnier than usual. Or energy wall/wall of fire.

Also, because mobs' aptly-named mob attack deals 5d6 to anyone whose space they share, try running one mob into another and watching the ensuing massacre. This is especially useful if you try blinding orcs near the back and preventing the movement of those at the front.