Can an army ( low level ) kill big monsters ( CR 20+ )?

[Conradine]

I just finished reading Way of the Wicked modules. It's Pathfinder but it's similar enough to d&d.
One thing that I did not like is that in the final battle, despite armies of thousands soldiers being deployed, the only thing that matters is defeating the Big enemies ( a titan, a silver dragon and a solar ) and that can be done only by the PCs.

Here's my question: in your opinion, a well organized army with siege weapons can kill big monsters?

For example, if 100 heavy catapults or balistas fire at them at the same time?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Depends entirely on the specific monster. Enough damage resistance renders even the heaviest catapults moot (though the largest cannons in Stormwrack could still probably make a mark on most high DR monsters). Sufficient spellcasting can wipe out entire armies with a single spell (or SLA). And special abilities like Incorporeality or even Flight really don't have a mundane counter.

Could an army take down a dragon? Probably, though there's nothing to stop the dragon from simply refusing to engage. Most giants lack those mobility options, but make up for it with Rock Throwing turning them into essentially artillery units, making taking one down easier but also more costly, as they are fully capable of performing a long range fighting retreat. Something like a dread wraith? Not unless your army is packing enough holy water to literally flood the battlefield (in order to make popping out of the ground to abuse Create Spawn trickier).

EDIT: And those are all hovering around CR 12 (assuming it's not a particularly old dragon, which would have enough Sorcerer casting to render the point moot anyway). As you get higher and higher in CR, these problems get worse and worse.

[ExLibrisMortis]

A high-damage crit can hurt a lot of monsters, even those with damage reduction. If you can get enough shots-on-target, you will eventually get enough damage to kill anything not immune to damage. You do need a ridiculous number of ballistas.

For example, under 3.5 rules, a typical siege engine operator needs to roll a 20 to hit a solar angel's AC 35, and that hit will only do 3d8 damage (for a light ballista), which averages to approximately 1 damage--more than 60% of the time the ballista doesn't even scratch the angel (I'm not counting crits--pretend the angel is wearing heavy fortification armour or something). Once every ten thousand shots, you do a whopping nine points of damage, which the angel will heal on its next turn. Clearly, we're going to need a field of ballistas, and we want to take the angel down in one turn, because (a) regeneration is not on our side, and (b) if we don't, we will be on the receiving end of a fairly close approximation of Wrath of God (https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=129808). Also, we have two other monsters to kill.

A light ballista with two loaders and one crew chief takes up four 5' squares (assuming the crew can't occupy the same square or the ballista's square), allowing it to deal one-twentieth of a quarter of a point of damage per round per square. To incapacitate the angel in one round, you need 16 800 squares filled with ballistas and crew, or 4200 ballistas, producing 210 hits for an average of 210 damage, leaving the angel unconscious due to nonlethal damage (it recovers on its turn). Since light ballistas have a range of 1000 feet or 200 squares, and we don't care about range increments (since we only hit on a 20), there is, in fact, enough space to hold all these ballistas, but approximately one-eighth of a thousand-foot circle around the angel is filled with ballistas. Note that the angel is not using any of its spells or SLAs to defend itself.

It takes a few more ballistas, say about 7500, to kill a titan or very old silver dragon (CR 21, conveniently has the same DR 15 as the other two). If you want to kill all three monsters in one round, you're going to have about 76 800 squares full of ballistas, employing 57 600 siege engineers.

In conclusion: Yes, you can do this sort of thing, but the numbers involved are frankly fairly ridiculous.

[Conradine]

Heavy catapults loaded with greek-fire amphoras ( or barrel full of alchemist fire, or similar substances )?

[CIDE]

Is this supposed to be something resembling a classic medieval fantasy generic human type army? Largely mundane gear, not a lot of caster class support, etc?

I just ask because it's not exactly an easy proposition to have high CR entities go against large forces of low CR foes outside of specific circumstances like Tucker's Kobolds. Not too long ago I even posted a thread discussing when a basic human fighter NPC could reaslistically take on a small army of 100+ other npc's. Depending on the sophisitcation of the build it ranged from maybe levels 7-15, if I recall correctly. That fighter wasn't optimized, had relatively poor equipment, NPC WBL, and none of the SLA's and other features that these monsters are going to have.

All that said, I think that sort of design was intentional. If this were 5e it'd be a bit different. But in 5e you're playing adventurers. In 3.X you're playing super heroes.

[Conradine]

Is this supposed to be something resembling a classic medieval fantasy generic human type army? Largely mundane gear, not a lot of caster class support, etc?


Yes, but organized by someone who knows, more or less, what are they fighting.
So, medieval technology but modern-times tactics ( spreading, taking cover, using heavy artillery ecc. ).

[Bovine Colonel]

If it's a silver dragon or solar and the army has enough artillery to actually hurt it, the monster can just decide not to fight. What's the army going to do, push thousands of ballistas and cannons along to chase a 150 ft fly speed?

Between its fly speed and spellcasting, the dragon/solar can choose to engage whenever (and wherever) it wants and disengage whenever it wants. The army doesn't stand a chance.

EDIT: A CR 23 ancient silver dragon also has access to control weather as an SLA, making it effectively immune to siege weapons. The example spell list for a solar also includes storm of vengeance.

[zlefin]

Heavy catapults loaded with greek-fire amphoras ( or barrel full of alchemist fire, or similar substances )?

depends on the damage listed for those, but generally speaking, they won't work. Many of the pertinent monsters have natural resistance to fire, and many also have resist energy, which would easily negate most forms of mundane energy plinking (Which is pretty much all acid or fire).

and of course it's still very hard to hit; only the game allowing nat 20's to hit regardless of modifiers makes it even remotely potentially possible.

[Biggus]

If you are using heavy catapults rather than ballistas (as they don't take AC into account, they just get a Reflex save for half damage) unless they have evasion they're far more likely to take damage. Of the three example creatures, a Silver Dragon may have the spell Ruin Delver's Fortune which can grant evasion as an immediate action, but the others won't normally.

If you don't have the element of surprise you're probably in a lot of trouble. They can all become invisible, or ethereal, or plane shift, and thus can either escape or disappear and reappear right in the middle of your army if you don't kill them in the first round.

[Elves]

Obviously it's going to be harder than in 5e which was designed to be flatter, but a couple comments:

1) It's not really expected that monsters at or near epic HD would ever be in contact with a mundane mortal army, so much that the image of them juxtaposed is kind of comical. Great wyrms are exactly supposed to be kingdom-wrecking ultramonsters, while a solar angel if it appeared before a mortal army would be like a vision from the apocalypse.

2) At the same time, 3.5 has relatively high-fantasy expectations in general. The passage on warfare in the DMG for example describes battles that include knights on dire tigers, hippogriffs and other kinds of monsters. A totally mundane army isn't a realistic expectation. Anyone with enough wealth and power to field an army will also have access to magic in various forms.

For a low magic setting with a completely mundane and low level army, I would say CR 12ish was the better point of comparison.

[RNightstalker]

Here's my question: in your opinion, a well organized army with siege weapons can kill big monsters?

For example, if 100 heavy catapults or balistas fire at them at the same time?

In books, movies and reality: yes. In D&D: no.

[Elves]

Also, try 10 heavy bombards (Stormwrack) manned by 10 low level casters who each know True Strike and have drunk some low level potions. That costs the WBL of a single 12th level character and obviously if you can spend that money freely you could do much better.

[Bovine Colonel]

It's also worth pointing out that the army's win condition is not the same as the monster's win condition. The army wins if the monster runs out of HP or fails a save against a save-or-die effect, but the monster doesn't need to defeat every creature in the army to win. A CR 20+ magical threat can just infiltrate the army, destroy any sources of food or water they may have (including mid-level divine casters) and watch the army disperse.

Or assassinate the general, impersonate him, and order the army to disperse.

Or just charm/dominate the general and have him order the army to disperse.

[CIDE]

It's also worth pointing out that the army's win condition is not the same as the monster's win condition. The army wins if the monster runs out of HP or fails a save against a save-or-die effect, but the monster doesn't need to defeat every creature in the army to win. A CR 20+ magical threat can just infiltrate the army, destroy any sources of food or water they may have (including mid-level divine casters) and watch the army disperse.

I was avoind that for the sake of discussion. But yeah, the Solar or Dragon can likely just take up the form of a soldier and waltz right in and do whatever the hell they want to do without any questions asked. They probably have the resources and/or skill checks to blow right through any obstacles in their way.

There's a reason Solars are one of the best Shapechange forms out there for versatility (even without including the debate about Cleric spellcasting).

[Calthropstu]

Can a paladin smite with s balista? If so' just man each balista with an appropriate paladin type and boom, no more dr.

[Elysiume]

Can a paladin smite with s balista? If so' just man each balista with an appropriate paladin type and boom, no more dr.A vanilla 3.5 paladin (which I assume this thread is for) can't, they're restricted to melee on smites. A PF paladin (which has a way better smite evil) could, though.

[DrMotives]

A vanilla 3.5 paladin (which I assume this thread is for) can't, they're restricted to melee on smites. A PF paladin (which has a way better smite evil) could, though.

A battering ram is a siege engine that is also a melee weapon. So a paladin as part of a ram's team could, if the dragon or angel stayed on the ground, run up and smite it that way. This is still less silly than my first thought, which was "since a ballista is ruled as a Huge-sized crossbow, it could be fitted with a bayonet that would count as a Huge-sized dagger with 2d6 base damage".

[Manyasone]

Being familiar with WotW i can say it's pretty moot, since in this instance the PCs are the villains of the story and it's an all out battle between armies at the end of an adventure (lvl 20 PCs most likely).
The tide of the battle is decided by the performance of the main Evils versus the main Goods.

[Calthropstu]

Being familiar with WotW i can say it's pretty moot, since in this instance the PCs are the villains of the story and it's an all out battle between armies at the end of an adventure (lvl 20 PCs most likely).
The tide of the battle is decided by the performance of the main Evils versus the main Goods.

While true, I believe the op is basically asking "what if it was just the evil army vs the main good? Could the army win?"

Killing the solar is the toughest. The ability to easily escape, heal and come back is tough to beat. The absurd acs and dr of all the monsters makes most conventional attacks worthless.

But it's not impossible.

Firearms would make a win easy against the dragon. At dr 15, you need crits, but since you're looking at touch ac that is easily attained. You're looking at about 50/50 to confirm so 1 in 40 will have a chance to damage. If you don't care about price, thedouble hackbut deals 2d12 and is x4 on a crit. Those will make quick work of the dragon the moment it tries a breath fly by.

The angel wouldn't close the distance though. It has plenty of options available to it and can do wide area destruction from outside the range of any listed firearm. The "at will summon monster 7" alone gives it virtually limitless options.

Solars in pf are ridiculous. The Solar just has too many options to never even come into sight of the army and destroy it. The dragon and titan? Sure. There is weaponry to deal with gigantic brutes.

The Solar would crush the army without ever being seen.