Prepare for war! Fun/clever war strategies

[Snappy]

In the spirit of sharing and collaboration, I'm making this thread so we can pool ideas for creative strategies in a war. At one point, I'm planning on having war break out in my game, and this has made me think about clever tactics to gain the upper hand in battle. Even if playing out large-scale battles is hard to do, this is more of a thinking exercise to use resources in creative ways.

I'll be posting as I come up with stuff, and I encourage others to do the same. Feel free to use any ideas you find interesting.

- Snipers firing crossbow bolts that have silence cast on them into a group of casters. Bonus points if they wait until they begin casting, wasting their attempts.

- Groups of rogues under cover of an invisibility sphere. They can sneak around the battlefield, only revealing one or two at a time when they need to take out a high-priority target.

That's what I have for now. Let the collaboration commence!

[SkeeveTheGreat]

Halfling cavalry charge with mass invisibility, and zone of silence. Silent invisible cavalry ducking under the spears of the spear wall.


A cadre of archers outfitted with one or two use true strike items maybe?

[Traitoreous]

A book filled with explosive runes can be used as a mine and detonated by an invisible wizard with dispel magic. The wizard also has bestow curse cast upon him so that he automatically fails the dispel check. It gets even better if you can hide a necklace of fireballs nearby so it gets in the blast radius but not in the dispel magic.

[Yahzi]

We all know that whoever gets initiative wins. So the point of ordinary soldiers is to give your high levels initiative.

A battle is a screen of commoners with the high levels in hiding behind them. Both sides watch the commoners fight, until one side starts losing so badly that their principals have to intervene. Of course the instant they do so, the enemy principals know where they are and get to strike first. Consider: 20 1st lvls with wands of Magic Missile, standing in the back row. As soon as an enemy hero does anything visible, he gets hit with 20d4+20 damage. And that's not even expensive.

Look for things heroes can do that don't expose them to the enemy - but also leaves them ready to strike when the enemy is exposed.

[Bobby Baratheon]

I've always been fond of getting immunity to an element, then using the aoe spell doing that damage type as a melee spell.

One cool tactic could be use silent image to create the illusion of trenches (assuming you lack the magic/manpower/effort level to actually dig them) with spikes at the bottom, or use it make a field of caltrops, or whatever. Use your imagination! It would be kind of funny to use a silent image to make it look like a gate is open when it is not, and watch enemy guys charge into it. Them running into the gate isn't the funniest part, either. The funny part is when you gank them in that moment of surprise.

I wonder if you could inscribe a Sepia Snake Sigil onto the shields of the frontline, then use it to take out the frontline of the other guys.

If you have an eldritch theurge, you can combine any aoe spell with an eldritch blast, which can open up some interesting possibilities when combined with eldritch spear. Color spray, for example, is surprisingly useful when you can chuck it at a group of mooks two hundred feet away rather than have to wait until they get up close.

[Hiro Quester]

Before battle, a druid in wildshape as an innocent animal gets near the enemy troops, and casts control weather for 10 minutes, then has ten minutes to leave the area before the effects begin.

For 12-48 hours, depending on the season, a hurricane (or a series of tornadoes, or hailstorms, blizzards, sleet storms) destroys buildings, siege engines, fortifications, and weakens and demoralizes troops (and everything else in three mile radius).

In most non-hurricane seasons the weather can alternately be used to deny rest to the enemy (as long as the caster also does not rest). Every 10-20 minutes take a standard action to change the weather from absurdly hot to frigidly cold, so the enemy can't rest or get comfortable.

You invade as soon as the weather stops.

[Gildedragon]

Shatterable urns full of inhaled poisons borne into battle by constructs.
Move Earth to raise fortifications overnight (lyre of building)
Fields of Black Sand
Contingent revivify or create undead on the soldiers so that if they are killed they get up and go at it again