high level armies

[King of Nowhere]

periodically, someone asks the forum about handling an army. It is assumed that an army is made by 1st level mooks, with perhaps a low level caster for every platoon, and maybe some more elite resources. It is assumed that an army is not made by high level people, because high level people are too scarce to form an army with them.

then comes my campaign.

events in my campaign have precipitated a global war between a coalition led by the church of vecna, and an alliance of those resisting it. The conflict involves about half the planet. And high level people may be scarce, but if you gather a whole planet worth of them, you can still get good numbers.

So, both sides have roughly 1500 "troops" of level 11 or higher, whith roughly a dozen casters with 9th level spells per side. The vecna side has more casters (due to the church of vecna secretly gathering an army of liches for centuries), the resistance has more mundanes, but it's still high on clerics (as virtually every religion opposes vecna, fearing that they want to impose their religion). both sides also have a few thousand iron golems each.
In my world, for a mix of low optimization, high wealth, and a few bans, casters and martials are rather balanced in a direct fight. however, when high numbers are in play, area effects should give the edge.
To further complicate strategy, my world also has gunpowder. there are also a few heavily defended strongholds that are virtually imposible to attack without severely weakening the enemy first.

Most of the times, I assume that the armies will work as adventuring parties, performing various attacks at strategical objectives. there are a few times when a large scale battle will happen, though, and I am trying to figure out how to handle it, but descriptively and mechanically.

What I have so far

- the armies will live in the strongholds. they will move out only by teleportation for quick strikes. Logistics is absent, and the army can be deployed worldwide on short notice.
- some adventurers are trained in using small cannons, that can be disassembled and teleported inside a bag of holding. they teleport a fair distance from the battlefield (outside range of detection spells), cast a few spells for stealth, and start pummeling the enemies.
- some golems are fitted with a cannon on their shoulder. reloading time only allows to use it once per battle, though.
- golems cannot be teleported in large numbers, so their movements are slow. on the other hand, they can be marched on the bottom of the ocean, and normal divinations don't work on them, so it could be possible to keep them hidden.
- the resistance army may try to have their clerics cast antimagic field en masse, to compensate for the vecnites caster advantage. the vecnites may try to answer that by using archers (their side would get magical buffs), cannons (a shrapnel blast is 20d6 in a line, and works in antimagic just fine. However, reloading times are too slow to use more than once), shrunk poisoned darts and/or golems.
- if I have a large battle, I will focus on the players fighting the higher level enemies. I will prepare a table of random effects that will happen during every turn to simulate the effect of the large army (from "your party gets hit by an empowered fireball" to "an ally cast haste on you" to "an enemy casts dispel magic at you"), and the greater fight will depend mostly on how the smaller fight resolves
-the vecnites will send some of their liches in suicide missions, since they respawn for free. they may try to win by attrition
- the resistance may try to force a fight for vecnite strongholds, using the antimagic field strategy above (i imagine it as visually similar to the gungan army in star wars episode 1). they'll take losses from kiting, but they may be able to breach the defences, as there is virtually nothing the vecnite casters can do to stop them in a short time.
- another option is to teleport in the middle of the vecnites. I banned defensive casting (because it makes no sense), so a caster seeing enemies pop in melee range around him is in trouble.

and that's it. Keeping mostly limited to core (we don't have much knowledge outside of it, and we don't want to turn the game into a contest of looking for advantage in obscure sourcebooks), do you have more ideas on how combat between a large number of mid-high character with plenty of magic may go?

P.S. for the purpose of overcoming a lich damage reduction, would you say that a cannon projectile is piercing, or piercing/bludgeoning?

[TheCount]

I dont know if it counts as obscure, but Complete Warrior has rules for armies as well as magical standards(why they called them that instead of flags, i do not know, but it irks me for some reason). Though some was updated in the magic item compendium.

iirc there are magical siege weapons/defenses in Stronghold builders guide maybe in the handbook too, look up both.

the antimagic field by the clerics is a nice idea, i would also throw in Consecrate and Desecrate, mostly around the strongholds or after battle duties (safety for the rebels, somewhat thouger disposable pawns for the Vecna followers).
there are also domains and a ACF that makes turn undead into destroy undead.

depending how the armies are made up, Controw Weather can be a valuble asset, what with the wind strenght affecting flying and the sun taking out vampires (well, stupid ones anyway).

Bards.

Im sure druids would be welcomed everywhere for battlefield controll, just like earth elementals, though, i imagine them more as a defensive asset.

If we are at elementals, Summoning celestials should also work? no idea what the udneads would summon, but that a possibility for them as well.

hm.... thats it, for now, Good luck for you and your players!

[Hackulator]

How does defensive casting make no sense?

As to your questions.

Unless they are highly magically enhanced, the strongholds are completely meaningless due to teleportation, stone shape, passwall, disintegration and other spells.

Your idea for the random effects table during large battles is cool. I would say make it like, a d20 or d100 roll with half the things good and half bad, then give bonuses or penalties to the roll depending on how the battle is going. If your side is winning, more of your guys are alive compared to the enemies so you are more likely to get good effects.

However, I would shy away from trying to mechanically describe a lot of this stuff, as it will take a lot of time and D&D is not that well suited to modeling large scale battles. Describe things narratively, and maybe have a map with troop locations where you can keep track of things and move the armies around. The mechanical aspect should be the party's actions and as you said, have what they do greatly affect the outcome of the battle as a whole.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

I assume that "armies" happen because it's easier to buff groups of soldiers if they're in a formation, because it's easier to fight together en masse if you're organised in formations, and because

Therefore in my settings where armies fight on-screen each formation has some sort of Cleric (and weak a Dragon Shaman or Marshal, usually) to provide buffs and healing auras. The Cleric also has Divine Defiance (and if possible the Inquisition Domain) to counterspell whatever mighty spell is being thrown at the formation to kill them all. This works even better if there are several lv5 or so Clerics per formation, to give themselves extra chances of Counterspelling successfully. This lets a unit be moderately effective in battle AND not all die at the hands of whatever powerful spellcaster decides to kill them.

A proper unit of soldiers that isn't useless rabble is probably entirely made up of level 3 warriors, trained to fight in formation and have specific feats (for example, the shield feats that give +AC to your neighbor). They'll be bringing down enemies through weight of numbers or cutting through lesser forces like orc hordes that don't have these cooperative fighting builds and minor buffs to spread around.

Everyone also tries to use army-wide buffs like Magic Army (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/magic-army) before a battle, and of course they try to avoid far fights if possible (set-up Control Weather to cause a hurricane over the enemy camp during the night, assassinate or poison enemy leaders or armed forces, etc).

Obviously, PC strike teams remain extremely important. Anyone wanting to fight a war has to worry about supply lines, managing troops and managing "elites" capable of fending off a CR 11+ Charmed Monster without letting it kill a whole lot of normal soldiers before falling to numbers.


This kind of setup lets PCs be important, but doesn't make infantry utterly irrelevant. Of course this means that the infantry has to be well-equipped (low-level alchemical items), well supported and well-trained. But it can happen when wealthy kingdoms go to war, and I like it that way.



Now of course once the PCs have a level 16 wizard or Druid or something, this all becomes quite irrelevant and armies are chaff. But for most of the game, this works well enough.

[King of Nowhere]

How does defensive casting make no sense?

The idea of the attack of opportunity is that casting leaves you open. The opponent sees you chanting and moving your hands, and strikes. And it makes sense.
But if you cast defensively, you change... what, exactly, do you change?
I never found a satisfactory answer.
Plus, casters already have lots of things they do well. But if they get caught in melee unprepared they suffer, right? No, because they can cast defensively. So, i wanted them to have to rely on the meat shields for protection some more.


As to your questions.

Unless they are highly magically enhanced, the strongholds are completely meaningless due to teleportation, stone shape, passwall, disintegration and other spells.


They are extremely enhanced. Force walls encased in antimagic, teleporting wards strenghtened with wish to specifically counter the wish clause of bypassing teleporting wards, wishes and miracles liberally sprinkled to block anything that would work. The only way in, running a gauntlet under cannon fire. They take a large nation syphoning resources for decades to build one, and so there aren't many of them. But if you can afford one, you don't have to fear pesky adventurers popping into your treasury or anything, and the spells last forever, so it's a good investment.

[zlefin]

you could crib pathfinder's mass battle rules; they scale so that they'll work fine with high levels; and they're pretty simplistic, so while it may be a bit inaccurate, it's easy enoguh to work with.


for dr purposes, I'd say a cannon is bludgeoning (unless they're using an alternate system like grapeshot)


past that it's hard to say how a battle would go, as it varies so much depending on optimization. I'd expect there to be a lot of snipers though; using spells and weapons at maximum range, and trying to get enemies to reveal themselves so you can snipe from long range.

I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up rather like WW1 western front at times; with drawn lines of battle, and a no-man's land that anyone entering gets fired on and killed, with many of the casualties being due to long range artillery, or from trying to push; well, it probably won't be like that due to teleport, but it reminds me of it.

I'm not sure what the buff suite is; but when you have the time, a lot of strike forces will be densely covered in a dozen buff spells each, or more.

I'd expect some methods to be prepared to prevent lich's respawning.

[Daefos]

The idea of the attack of opportunity is that casting leaves you open. The opponent sees you chanting and moving your hands, and strikes. And it makes sense.
But if you cast defensively, you change... what, exactly, do you change?
I never found a satisfactory answer.

Spellcasting is hard. It demands your attention. That's where the attack of opportunity comes from: for a brief moment, you're paying attention to casting your spell and not the guy standing beside you with a sword. And because D&D assumes all combatants are fully aware of their surroundings, that guy sees you get distracted and swings for you. Defensive casting is trying to perform those complex hand gestures, manipulating your material components, and speaking the incantation with the proper tone and timing, and doing it all while you're only paying half-attention because you're watching to make sure that sword-guy doesn't try to pull anything. It's safer, but it's harder.

Eating an AoO while casting is like writing calligraphy and getting punched in the face because all your attention was on crafting that perfect brushstroke. Defensive casting is like trying to craft that perfect brushstroke without looking because you've turned around to watch the jerk who punched you the first time.

[Hackulator]

The idea of the attack of opportunity is that casting leaves you open. The opponent sees you chanting and moving your hands, and strikes. And it makes sense.
But if you cast defensively, you change... what, exactly, do you change?
I never found a satisfactory answer.

Casting defensively means you are continuing to dodge and weave while you perform the spell, thus not opening yourself to a free attack. It requires a concentration check because performing complicated verbal and somatic components while dodging and weaving is quite difficult. This is why if you fail your concentration check you lose the spell but do not provoke. You continued to move about instead of just standing there to cast so you don't provoke, but you failed to properly perform the spell components while doing so.

Now if you got rid of it purely for balance purposes I can understand that, but I think it totally makes sense as described above.

[King of Nowhere]

Spellcasting is hard. It demands your attention. That's where the attack of opportunity comes from: for a brief moment, you're paying attention to casting your spell and not the guy standing beside you with a sword. And because D&D assumes all combatants are fully aware of their surroundings, that guy sees you get distracted and swings for you. Defensive casting is trying to perform those complex hand gestures, manipulating your material components, and speaking the incantation with the proper tone and timing, and doing it all while you're only paying half-attention because you're watching to make sure that sword-guy doesn't try to pull anything. It's safer, but it's harder.

Eating an AoO while casting is like writing calligraphy and getting punched in the face because all your attention was on crafting that perfect brushstroke. Defensive casting is like trying to craft that perfect brushstroke without looking because you've turned around to watch the jerk who punched you the first time.

Casting defensively means you are continuing to dodge and weave while you perform the spell, thus not opening yourself to a free attack. It requires a concentration check because performing complicated verbal and somatic components while dodging and weaving is quite difficult. This is why if you fail your concentration check you lose the spell but do not provoke. You continued to move about instead of just standing there to cast so you don't provoke, but you failed to properly perform the spell components while doing so.

Now if you got rid of it purely for balance purposes I can understand that, but I think it totally makes sense as described above.

Those explanations are good, but they look more like casting should give you an AC penalty because you are distracted. And casting defensively should negate the penalty. I even considered having cast defensively letting you use the "fighting defensively" action while casting, but decided it would be too much of a hassle to keep track.

Anyway, i like also the balance. Especially since i allow swapping places with an adjacent ally, so the wizard can take cover behind a fighter to avoid the aoo. It encourages teamplay (or minionmancy, but i also allow taking a 5 foot step in the middle of a full attack, so if your minion goes down in two hits, you eat the remaining attacks)

[Calthropstu]

For point of reference, I direct you to the planes. The planes are described as being infinite. This means infinite angels, infinite azatas, infinite archons, infinite demons, infinite devils, infinite daemons, infinite inevitables, infinite kytons.

So infinite star archons could fight infinite balors. Both are high level.

Such a fight would be difficult to simulate as high level spells of all kind fly in every direction. But such armies would be uncontrollable without a single unifying authority, otherwise the result would be pure unpredictable chaos.

This applies here. Organizing strike forces would be the first step. A primary strike group consisting of the full might of either side, then numerous small strike forces to perform needed tasks and harass enemy interests.

Espionage wpuld be the winning factor in such a war.

The one who successfully destroys the other's main strike force is the one who wins. Neither side would want a even strike force batlle, instead they would lay numerous traps for it.

Traps vs diviniations vs new traps vs more divinations... The whole thing becomes convuluted as divinations counter divinations to create thought chains too complex to comprehend.

The first side to blink loses.