Trench Warfare Mages Pathfinder/3.5

[Airway]

I am making a custom setting, with a section of the world being in constant trench warfare. Instead of bumping the technology up, I wanted to use mage spells, and wands, to simulate the same kind of affects. Clouds of poison gas, MG nests full of Magic missile users, Medics with Cure light wounds wands, Fireball artillery.

So what spells would anyone recommend?

[John Longarrow]

First don't use trenches. Use fox holes with 2-4 in each. This avoids the tightly packed groups that would die horribly due to accurate fireballs. Second use LOTS of cover/concealment. They know all about AOE and LOS attacks and they know that normal weapons are almost useless. They are much more concerned about long range touch spells than riflemen did in WWI.

For spells, anything direct damage and AOE is high on the list. Next would be spells like acid arrow and magic missile. See invisible is a must, since a flying, invisible spell caster can rain down AOE from above. Likewise teleport is going to be a major issue to protect against.

What made trench warfare possible was large numbers of troops all using long range weapons. Look to spells, especially low level, that are long range and either ignore SR or have large areas.

Defense will include illusions, Wall of spells, and anti-magic type spells (globe of invulnerability set).

In all, its going to be really hard to replicate a true trench warfare situation without LOTS of very low level troops using wands.

[D.M.Hentchel]

Make a 1st level spell that have a long range and deals 4d6 damage on a successful ranged touch attack.

In the early stages of the war wizards and magus were used to fight the war, but the first targets for attack were naturally the arcane schools. Neither side has had the time or resource to train new wizards, so instead they train conscripts to use wands. High level wizards serve as the artillery, but are irreplaceable and must be kept safe. So sorcerers being born at higher rates due to arcane pollution serve as lieutenants.

Because magic is the primary method of fighting each side begins manufacturing golems as line breakers. The cheapest and most readily available which would be flesh golems.

In order to hold thier positions the soldiers begin using mundane traps and snare to slow down and stop the golems.

[Airway]

Wands were actually gonna be the "rifle" of the guys in the trenches, even made a homebrew feat that lowered the DC of UMD on wands to 10 (OP probably but idc). I'm also going for spells that fit more thematically than anything else. Cover and concealment would be a big part of the battle ground as magic missile always hits unless it gets blocked (Like by diving behind a berm). My players aren't going to be soldiers in the fighting. This whole thing is just so solidify the backstory of it.

[John Longarrow]

Rather than wands, have both sides raise lots of warlocks?

[Airway]

So sorcerers being born at higher rates due to arcane pollution serve as lieutenants.

Because magic is the primary method of fighting each side begins manufacturing golems as line breakers. The cheapest and most readily available which would be flesh golems.

In order to hold thier positions the soldiers begin using mundane traps and snare to slow down and stop the golems.

I like, I like a lot. I was wondering how to get those awkward tanks of WWI to fit in, and golems would be perfect. The Sorc LTs are a nice touch also.

[Airway]

Rather than wands, have both sides raise lots of warlocks?

Might have the opposing enemy be primarily warlocks, now that you mention it.

[Fizban]

The problem with trenches/foxholes is that they don't actually protect against fireballs or stinking clouds:

A spread spell spreads out like a burst but can turn corners. You select the point of origin, and the spell spreads out a given distance in all directions. Figure the area the spell effect fills by taking into account any turns the spell effect takes.
This means that anything less than full cover (as in: completely closed box) is no protection at all. What you actually need is so many holes and trenches and tunnels that you can move after every shot. That way if you win initiative, you can fire and move before they have a chance to ready an action to hit you when you pop up. No surprise rounds on an active battlefield, but if combat has cooled down you'll be rolling initiative for the new combat and whoever goes first has the option of either firing on whoever they've managed to spot or readying their action to hit a group that pops up (the latter case being more likely if they make a listen check but either fail the spot check to notice the enemy peeking up or the enemy just hasn't peeked up yet).

As for spells, Heroes of Battle has a useful 2nd level spell in Molten Strike, which exists for the sole purpose of being a 2nd level spell with the full Long range.

Before either of those concerns however, you need to decide what you're really going for. In order for anything to make sense you first have to define what an "army" is in dnd. Some people (including printed modules) think it's thousands of 5th+ level NPCs with thousands of gp worth of gear each, and with those parameters you can make up whatever type of war you want- but it's not consistent with any of the rest of the rules.

DMG p147 has the rules for generating cities and towns. Those rules clearly define the standard levels of NPCs on the whole, not counting individual DM placements but as a baseline, and also give the appropriate percentage of the population that will be standing army and militia. Alternatively there are the "organization" entries for various humanoids in the Monster Manual, which use a different sort of tribal structure that counts up but is otherwise pretty much the same for every humanoid. There's no rules for determining how much money a government should have, though you can extrapolate some (based on community weath or income into taxes or affiliation capital etc, but it's better to just work with NPC WBL or CR based treasure if you expect PCs to interact with the system.

It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of combatants in such an army will be 1st level non-elite warriors (average 4.5hp) and 1st level non-elite commoners (average 2.5hp). This means that in order to have tons of people wielding long range weapons (as a noted requirement leading to trench warfare), you need long range weapons tons of people can wield. This would normally be bows, but bows can't be used while prone or squeezing in trenches, so you'd want either crossbows or guns. Guns that aren't garbage will also deal more damage on the all important first shot, making them more likely to drop an enemy in one hit, in the 2d6-2d10 range (Sorcery and Steam is the only book I've seen that has good guns, Iron Kingdoms is close but still not there and everything else is garbage). Do note that even well-written guns are still reasonably expensive, and will cut into budgets for armor and magic, at which point you can start optimizing each army based on their preferences/"availability" of gear.

You could also invent a "magic" weapon that takes the place of guns. Basic Bangstaff: 1d8/x3 80', martial piercing , 80gp, fires 100 shots and costs 5gp to recharge. Does that look familiar? It should, because it's a basic longbow with arrows built in, dressed up as a "magic" item.

If you want the real magic in the hands of the common solider and not restricted by daily limits, you're gonna need a lot of magic items, and since full wands are expensive and single-shot items are overpriced, you need a "hack." This is the general conceit of basically any setting with magitech/steampunk/whatever: some advancement that makes magic as easily transferable as handing someone a grenade or rocket launcher. I find the solution to be quite simple: single-shot instantaneous spells are reduced to the same cost as a single wand charge, 750/50= 15, formula is 15*spell level *caster level, less than 1/3 of potion/use-activated cost. That makes your standard prices 15gp, 90gp, and 225gp for 1st/2nd/3rd, which is low enough you can fit multiples into even 1st level NPC WBL or CR 1/2 treasure. You can then either give all soldiers the Arcane Schooling (PgtF) feat so they can activate spell trigger items, or just remove the spell trigger requirements and let anyone use them (meaning soldiers have more room for Toughness, making them much more durable).

Aside from mind controlling the right person/place/time, damage spells will always be more efficient than even BFC, because against low level targets they just kill the target. The exception is Entangle thanks to its insane area and duration, but you can easily rule that the trenches are cleared of vegetation for this exact reason.

If you want an air force, there are a couple printed versions of Pterodactyls with official domesticated prices that aren't insanely expensive, and you can extend similar prices to Hippgriffs if you want (as an int 2 magical beast they're plenty domesticable, I've priced them at 1,000gp myself).

With the most effective method of magical killing being direct damage fire spells in Burning Hands, Molten Strike, and Fireball, important people will be protected by fire resistance. Which means that each side will be packing energy substituted versions of those spells, which don't cost any more than normal since it's a +0 metamagic. What energy types your foes have in reserve/what resistances they have becomes a simple but important piece of intel you can play up. Special mention goes to Magic Missile of course, no-miss medium range and can still one-shot soldiers, but once again any important assets will be wearing Brooch of Shielding.

Back to creatures, a War Elephant is 4,000gp (Oriental Adventures, not the MM2 Warbeast template which is insanely under-costed) and makes a mighty fine tank once equipped with some barding and a few types of energy resist. The riders get cover against those below from riding the howdah (Arms and Equipment Guide) and the elephant can carry a ton of weight so they're also wearing heavy+cheap banded mail or halfplate and tower shields- or just make the whole thing a closed box with shutters that someone readies an action to close if a fireball shows up. Note that a standard minimum power fireball doesn't deal squat to wooden objects: average 17.5 damage, /2 for objects to 8, -5 for wood to 3 points. At least for fire/lightning, while cold deals practically nothing at 1/4 before hardness, while acid and sonic are better at full damage before hardness. Which adds another dimension to the energy/resist xanatos roulette.

Golems are. . . potentially feasible, as the crazy expensive doom weapon deployed in an area that has no counter. A Flesh Golem is 5 times the cost of a War Elephant. In exchange for that it has built in armor, DR, and magic resistance, but it's much less lethal, can't carry gunners or heavy weapons, and is virtually guaranteed to go berserk at some point, which may or may not end on it's own (1 minute resets the berserk chance, but doesn't say that berserk ends). It beats soldiers, but not as fast as an elephant would and it loses to the elephant. Being healable by electricity is offset by the cold slowing, and adamantine ammo is cheaper than even 1st level spell items. The Dread Guard from MM2 is more feasible as a scary shock troop, with a price of 5,000gp in the 3.5 update, int 6, 47hp, and built in fire+cold resist 10.

Animate Dead is dirt cheap and would absolutely be used by any sane side with access to the black onyx to raise them, unless you make their religious convictions to be strong enough to stop this. All soldiers will know about their blunt/slashing DR, skeleton cold immunity and zombie partial actions, and have appropriate weapons/tactics.

People will try to make a big deal about divinations ruining everything, but unless you're adding dozens of 7th+ level NPC Clerics and forcing your players to play spy vs spy against you it's simply not true. Targeted divinations (Scrying, Clairaudience/voiance, Locate Object/Creature) are easy to disrupt, blocked by lead and saving throws and lower level spells, and can be resolved as they are actually used. The hard hitting Divination and Commune are restricted to higher level casters and you can simply assume that both sides are tied up in trying to out-predict each other such that the results are meaningless. On the other hand, the lowest levels of Augury and Omen of Peril can absolutely be used to avoid catastrophic failure on individual assaults, as long as you trust the percentile roll.

Edit, re warlocks: this is a pretty common one. And you could just say the enemy army is warlocks, but at that point you have to make your own rules for everything. If there's armies of 1st level PC classes, why not clerics or wizards or warmages or incarnates? Why even have NPC classes at all? Eldritch Blast and Eldritch Spear aren't very long range at all, and don't deal enough damage to threaten one-shots on most targets. An army of clerics with crossbows will annihilate them with raw cure spell endurance and other classes aren't at a significant disadvantage either: the most threatening thing a 1st level warlock can do is Summon Swarm, which is Close range and also insanely lethal against 1st level targets. So warlocks are the exact opposite of trench warfare, even if it made sense to have armies of them.

[Serafina]

Trenches were necessitated by accurate rifles, and by machine guns.
Those basically made it impossible to advance towards the enemy without getting mowed down - you would easily be picked off by a rifle, while machine guns could sweep down dozens very quickly.
Trenches then happened because you couldn't advance towards the enemy anyway - so you went for fortifications. However, since artillery of the day would easily crack any raised fortifications, and trenches were quicker to build anyway - you got trenches.


Do note that there's a notable difference between a foxhole, the trenches you so often imagine, and the trenches we actually had.
Unlike a foxhole, a trench allows safe movement along it. This was rather important so that you wouldn't just get overrun locally if the enemy ever managed to advance onto your position (which was possible, with heavy artillery fire and losses). Also, the trenches had multiple connected layers, which you could walk through towards the front-most trench - to actually circulate out your soldiers.
This was important because a human really can't stay in a wet, soddy hole in the ground for long without bad consequences. So you did two things: rotate out your soldiers, and actually make the trenches as comfortable as possible. By digging out barracks, even reinforce them with wood, metal or concrete, and make it possible for soldiers to live there for at least some time.


So anyway: Is there a low-level method to replicate the rifle? Is there a low-level method to replicate the machine gun?
Well, in many ways damage just scales way too badly - what rapidly takes down a first-level fighter would barely scratch a 7th-level character, never mind a high level one.

But you can get around that in one way: Concentrated fire. If you have a hundred soldiers fire a ranged touch attack, half of them should hit - and then with even just 1D4 damage, you'd get ~125 damage.
That's your rifle - it prevents even tough targets from charging your battle lines. Everyone should have it, and it shouldn't run out of ammunition quickly.
You ought to have at least medium range - and it can't quite be magic missile, because that's too easily negated by shield. Elemental damage is bad too, because it's too easily negated by elemental resistances. You could go with a sufficient number of Bolt Ace (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/gunslinger/archetypes/paizo---gunslinger-archetypes/bolt-ace) Gunslingers (using Crossbows, not guns) - they'd have limited Grit, but do get the job done.
If you want it to be magic, all you need is the following: Give everyone a racial spell-like ability for Recharge Innate Magic (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/recharge-innate-magic), and a medium range (100 + 10 ft/level) touch-attack no-SR spell that doesn't deal elemental damage, or is otherwise easily stopped by spells.

Magic Rifle Spell
School: Evocation; Level Sorcerer/Wizard 1, whatever else 1
Components: S, V
Range: medium (100 ft. + 10ft./level)
Target: One Creature
Duration: instantaneous
Saving Throw: no Spell Resistance: no

With a loud crack, this spell flings magical energies at a target over significant distance. With a succesful ranged touch attack, this spell deals 1D3 force or sonic damage, with an additional 1D3 damage per three caster levels (up to a maximum of 5D3).This is pretty bad spell for an adventurer, doing barely any damage. But if everyone has it, and can use it every second round, and you have hundreds of soldiers - then you get no mans land you can't cross.

Soldier of the Magic Trench Wars: Whether through birth or training, you have learned the most basic of magics that can bring down even mighty heroes when used en masse. Once per day each, as a spell-like ability, ou can cast Magic Rifle Spell and Recharge Innate Magic.

That's our rifles. Our machine guns are spells like sleep, colour spray and other such basic area of effect spells. Here at least, we have plenty of options that can take down low-level combatants en masse, and the high-level ones will be taken care off via our magic rifle spell.


The one element lacking is a way to prevent teleportation into our trenches. After all, if that's possible, then you can't concentrate fire anymore. Flight isn't an issue since it doesn't prevent concentrated fire (it actually makes it easier), while invisibility and illusions can be countered more easily. Mundane traps, razor wire, muddy terrain and plenty of spells take care of that.
No, to prevent teleportation you need to protect the trenches against teleportation. Simply having soil contaminated by arcane magic works, though there's of course also spells that can do that job. "Hallowed" ground that is kept so by the spilled blood of your soldiers, or something to that effect. Even a great working like Wardstones can work, which also prevents them from teleporting behind your lines.


Voila - with this being a racial trait, you've fundamentally changed the nature of warfare. A level 1 anything still isn't a threat to a level 10 anything - but a hundred of them are. Meaning nations who have the population for it can now face off on a battlefield where almost no one can advance towards the enemy, so their only choice is to dig in and wait for a win through attrition.

[Airway]

This means that anything less than full cover (as in: completely closed box) is no protection at all.

Well that makes a lot of sense. I do love your reskin of a bow idea. There is so much good information in this. I'm gonna have to study it for a bit. Thank you very much for your help. Would you have a replacement for a fireball as a suggestion? The main part I'm working for is a logical trench war, in a d&d world without guns.

Edit: I think having "fireball bunkers" dug into the deeper parts, would be a decent way to do it. I believe there were rooms and such in actual western front trenches.

[Airway]

Soldier of the Magic Trench Wars: Whether through birth or training, you have learned the most basic of magics that can bring down even mighty heroes when used en masse. Once per day each, as a spell-like ability, ou can cast Magic Rifle Spell and Recharge Innate Magic.

This is the first time I have used this site, and I am blown away by how helpful you guys are. You just made this so much easier on me. I definitely like how you changed the machine guns into effect weapons. May your dice forever roll high!

[Fizban]

While making a feat that puts a gun in everyone's hands works (and can be done both more gracefully and at-will by making a low level vestige or a soulmeld which can be acquired through the existing Bind Vestige or Shape Soulmeld feats), it's only one step better than making them all warlocks, requiring every single soldier to have the exact same feat (and any daily limit is going to prohibit a proper battle where people fight for more than 2 shots, focusing entirely too much on damage against a single target). What about non-career soldiers? What about conscripts? You can't have a large scale war that depends on the specialized skill of individual soldiers: the capability of a large scale army depends on weapons that can be put in the hands of as many people as possible. Even martial weapons are rather suspect as commoner conscripts get only a single simple weapon proficiency, but even without proficiency a pile of peasants firing at -4 is still a pile of d20's waiting to come up 20 and deal whatever your base damage is.

Not that you need 20's or touch attacks, as the existing massed fire rules (Heroes of Battle under volley of arrows) already allow you to force reflex saves against wide areas or allow a single leader to roll vs AC 20 to force a 1-2 hits out of their 5-10 person unit, regardless of the target's AC or the attack bonus of the rest of the unit. And once again (unless you're bringing in monsters or golems or whatever for free), there just aren't any targets that need 125 points of damage in a single round. There are a handful of 7th level guys on each side at best and they wouldn't be marching straight into the open anyway. Elephants are basically the king of reasonable battlefield creatures and only have 104 hp themselves. Meanwhile being limited to 2 shots per solider means it'd be laughably easy to to say, throw up a quick illusion or a pile of peasants to make them waste their shots. Unless you're imagining that the hundreds of soldiers all take their turns exactly in initiative order and no one wastes a single shot more than is necessary, which is absurd. And 1d3 damage isn't enough to one-shot or even two-shot an average non-elite warrior, so shot for shot an evenly matched army could rush through taking maybe 1/4 losses if fire was concentrated properly. So they need crossbows anyway.

Giving every soldier a forcebolt doesn't do anything a mass of crossbows or bangsticks couldn't already do, but it does restrict your options further by requiring actual magic immunity for your tanks and thus mindless melee-only golems, rather than allowing elephants with magic items and gunners that provide an array of weapons and tactics and counters (unless what you wanted was to explicitly remove anything without magic immunity or hardness from the battlefield). Actually the 1d3 forcebolt is more easily countered: it's incapable of penetrating a tower shield's hardness or arcing over it, so a shield wall blocks it completely, where a volley of arrows could arc over the shields and firearms can shatter them through raw damage (I'd say firearms deal full to objects, but even 1/2 is enough with 2 dice per shot and a lot of shots for luck).

Regarding artillery: Molten Strikes and Fireballs and catapults should already cover this, especially if you pull some more hacks and allow the 1st level Ghostly Reload (Races of the Dragon) to work on ballistae ("huge crossbows," as DMG), for faster firing, plus some folding or transportation properties to make it easier to move. There's actually a big problem with counting fireball as the artillery: standard cl5 fireball is only 700' range, which is less than the 1,000' maximum range of a standard longbow (I put 80 on the bangstick to match crossbows because it doesn't have bow restrictions now that I remember), not counting any extra you might be granted for having the high ground. Minimum fireball is super precise napalm launcher, not an artillery piece. For stopping fireballs, you just need an overhang big enough that if someone across the field throws a fireball at the top edge of the open part at the back, there's 20' from the edge of the overhang where no one is sitting, which is a pretty ridiculous structure so instead you'd probably just go with an extra 20' of tunnel before the sleeping area and/or a nice sturdy door.

If you want a "machine gun" slot that's not going to be the 15' range Color Spray (especially not when Burning Hands is guaranteed damage that could kill them outright), 15' is point blank range: Snowball Swarm (Spell Compendium) is the in-between option, 2nd level Medium range with a 10' burst. Sculpt Spell can be applied for +1 level to get a 40' cone, and depending reading you might get to choose the shape on casting rather than construction of the wand, allowing a bunch of shapes to cover your "machinegun" needs at the drop of a hat. You could also do it with a ballista if you go a little outside of Heroes of Battle and allow ballistae that fire stones/shot instead of bolts, since shot does an AoE and ballistae fire quickly.

So to recap, we need long range massed fire coupled with artillery that can destroy non-trench fortifications from a longer range than that (else you'd just shoot people before they set up the artillery) and something that slaughters people at closer ranges if they charge. That's crossbows, catapults, and Burning Hands/Snowball Swarm/Fireball. The only tech problem I see is that mortars are much easier to move and faster to fire than catapults or ballistae, but this is solved easily with magic (Shrink Item, or even better +1 Hideaway, plus Ghostly Reload, or Servant Horde for most of a day of crew and a Bag of Holding full of ammo).

Regarding Cure Light Wounds: this one's a doozy. First level is basically the only level where healing is bigger than harming, and a wand of Cure Light will beat a wand of Magic Missile shot for shot. Where normally you'd have to roll a skill check to stabilize and drag them off the field for days until they healed up, one 15gp charge puts the soldier back into combat-ready state unless they took one heck of a shot (depending on damage of main weapon: a 2d8 rifle is enough that Cure Light is only 50/50 on getting them back up). The actual effect is highly dependent on how many people can use them and how the wounds are actually being taken: with volley shots and AoE spells to play cleanup, it's already extremely hard to get anyone actually into the enemy trenches, your medics can only heal so many so fast, and in a world where the medic can put a soldier back in the fight immediately they are priority target (unlike real-world, where I'm given to understand at least some militaries leave them alone out of courtesy). Basically, if you're deploying Cure Light wands then anyone trying to play medic will immediately be shot, and rather than ignoring unconscious foes as no longer an immediate threat, they'll be executed before moving on. In short, while you'd think cure spells would make war less bloody, they actually make it worse.

Regarding Teleportation: not a significant problem, same as Divination. Dimension Door is the same range as Fireball ie: not any more dangerous, while being higher level and more expensive, and Teleport is of course higher still. The only reason to fear teleport is if you fear one elite foe personally killing your entire army in their trenches, which either means your army sucks because they failed to dogpile a medium foe, or they were screwed anyway because they had no high level guys to counter the enemy's high level guys. More relevant is high speed troop movement through Teleportation Circles, Portals, Teleporting with Portable Holes, and stealth Elephant tanks via cl 12 Teleport. All of which is the purview of high level NPCs that are not found in quantity; because they are so few, their movements and actions should be tracked individually, as this is where the PCs will be getting involved as well.

[gorfnab]

You also might want to consider using some War Spells (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?306567-War-Spells!-Discussion-and-Application).