How would an army of regular people fight high level adventurers?

[King of Nowhere]

yes, i know, normally the answer is "can't be done", but there are circumstances.

I am about to try such an encounter: the party is level 16 (though well above the power curve) and they are caught in the middle of a blackshirt coup. The party is trapped into the government palace, unable to teleport out but otherwise unrestrained.
what helps the army is that my world has guns, more or less industrial level. they use some homebrew rules, but they can hurt high level people. they also have as much low level caster help as needed. I'm thinking of dispel invisibility, mostly.

So I'm thinking, I could treat individual platoons like swarms, except with a ranged attack. the troops are going to spread out, surround the palace, try to pin the party in. They are going to enter the palace, lobbying granades - which deal aoe damage for reflexes half, so they will wear the party down.
I'm not sure if they should use smoke bombs; on one hand, it will cover them against the party; on the other hand, it will also cover the party and give them an easier time leaving.

they can also have individually stronger weapons, like heavy machine guns, and they can have golems - advanced versions also with guns. and they also have champions. but i'd like to have the army stand a chance on its own and do something original where muggles get to be useful, not a fight against a bunch of golems where there is an army doing some collateral.

do you think I can make those regular people a credible threat for a high level party? do you have better tactics to suggest? what are the buffs and spells that I'm inevitably forgetting the low level casters should absolutely have to counter some stuff from the high level people?

[aglondier]

They all chip in a couple of gold pieces each and hire some higher level adventurers to beat up the ones threatening them...

[Cortillaen]

Assuming any kind of dimensional transport (not just Teleport but things of the Plane Shift and Shadow Walk variety as well) is already dealt with, the next tasks are going to be preventing flight and tunneling. Flight is the more common one, but tunneling by whatever means is probably the more difficult to deal with since it naturally limits detection range. Assuming functionally infinite low-level casting (incidentally, how low are we talking here?), maybe blanketing the underside of the structure with summoned Xorns or other creatures with unrestricted underground movement could work. Depending on whether you rule Tremorsense can detect creatures using Earthglide (I'm unsure how "nor does it create any ripple or other signs of its presence" stacks up against Tremorsense), you might have to actually fill every square the party could pass through. Communication when the party is encountered is also an issue, as is staying power.

Beyond those three movement types, we're mainly talking modern troop tactics for dealing with a mobile enemy possessing superior firepower. To wit, the troops' objective is not to defeat the enemy directly but instead to fix the enemy in place long enough for reinforcements to arrive. They want methods of impeding movement without saves (aside from difficult terrain, blocking off routes and the like), harrying attacks, denial of places to hide or retreat to (if they can destroy structures in the area, so much the better), maintaining constant pressure so there is no time to pause and recover, things like that. Fake hostiles (illusions if the enemy is unlikely to keep True Seeing up the whole time, but Stone Shaped fake golems and such could work even then) can also serve as a sort of area denial. In addition, superior numbers mean the troops should be trying to set up crossfire once the party is located; target the back lines, deprive them of cover, that sort of thing.

The party's greatest advantage is probably not their superior fighting power per unit or greater magical options, but rather their small size and preventing the enemy from knowing their precise location. Assuming escape is the objective, they will likely want to use this obscurity to force the enemy troops to defend a large cordon, then bring their overwhelming force to bear against a small segment of the enemy troops, break through, and escape the cordon before the enemy forces can converge. If the situation has developed quickly, the troops should probably take the offensive before the party has time to prepare or plan much. In addition, assuming the standard weapons actually are a threat, the troops moving in reduces the area they need to cover and improves the speed with which reinforcements can converge. If they have any way of collapsing the palace (and the will to do so), that would be a good opening move once measures against tunneling are in place.

[Mnemius]

Snag Pathfinder's Troop mechanic to bundle the army pieces into higher cr groupings.

I know my players hated the gun volleys, grenades, and mortars when their magical teleportation hut took them to their next destination, WW1 Siberia...

[Particle_Man]

Maybe the Mob rules in dmg II could help (like swarms but for people)?

[Elder_Basilisk]

It all depends what the adventurers goal is, how high level the adventurers really are, and what the regular people want.

At the most basic level, you get a bard with all the normal boost stuff, a few clerics with scrolls of recitation near squads of their co-religionists, and maybe some greater magic weapon (on arrows) and/or flame arrows doled out a couple to each regular person. If Pathfinder is in play, toss in a cavalier to grant them all volley fire. 100 archers who need a 20 to hit would still average 5 hits per round--and with somewhere between +6 and +12 above their native attack bonus, they could easily hit a lot more often. 1d8+4+1d6 or more per hit will put a hurt on adventurers very quickly and if the "high level" adventurers are really level 12 and the regular people hit on better than a 20--or if there are more than 100 of them, their average results will kill 1 or more of the adventurers per round. Or they could just have 50 first level mages all cast magic missile at one adventurer per round. (Bonus for using scrolls at clvl 5 or so). 50d4+50 will straight up kill a lot of adventurers and I'd they were using clvl scrolls, it's 150d4+150 which will do a number on genuinely in high level adventurers who don't have the necessary defenses. The trick is that the defenses against the large group of ordinary people (spell resistance, damage reduction, etc) are often different from the defenses against high CR does and so adventurers won't necessarily be prepared for the ordinary person tactics. There are things the adventurers can do, but they're not nearly as invulnerable as many people suppose.

Nor is it as easy for the adventurers to actually clear an army of regular people as people often suppose. A lot of people just say fireball and assume that gives the adventurers the win but fireball will only hit four soldiers in a staggered line with five feet between each of them. If there are 100 of them, their arrows will drop the wizard far before the wizard can inflict serious casualties through fireballs. Spells like wall of fire and sunburst are more effective but even they tend to be less effective in the style of combat player characters often optimize for.

But the ordinary people may well take the less risky approach and wait till the high level adventurers wants a shave and slit his throat instead. Or poison their food, or barricade and burn down the inn they are staying in. Or frame the adventurers for some heinous crime and point the local lord/watch in their direction.

[Mechalich]

I am about to try such an encounter: the party is level 16 (though well above the power curve) and they are caught in the middle of a blackshirt coup. The party is trapped into the government palace, unable to teleport out but otherwise unrestrained.

As mentioned, Teleport is only one means by which this party can escape. They can also fly (including fly out in gaseous form via Wind Walk), tunnel, go ethereal, go incorporeal, or Plane Shift out. It is very difficult to keep a party of this level in one place.


what helps the army is that my world has guns, more or less industrial level. they use some homebrew rules, but they can hurt high level people. they also have as much low level caster help as needed. I'm thinking of dispel invisibility, mostly.

This means you're not talking about an army of regular people anymore, you're talking about an army of low level casters versus the group. That's a completely different scenario.


do you think I can make those regular people a credible threat for a high level party? do you have better tactics to suggest? what are the buffs and spells that I'm inevitably forgetting the low level casters should absolutely have to counter some stuff from the high level people?

The value of the army, in this scenario, is the same value as any large number of low-level minions, they can force the party to burn actions and spells to deal with them, for example by mandating the casting of Protection from Arrows[ on everyone, which makes the high level opponents significantly more threatening. If, and it's a big if, the party's movement options are sufficiently restrained that the only way out is to fight through the army, the army can use appropriate defensive tactics to stall, forcing the party to hack through large numbers of characters while being chased by champions and golems.

[King of Nowhere]

Assuming functionally infinite low-level casting (incidentally, how low are we talking here?)

It all depends what the adventurers goal is, how high level the adventurers really are, and what the regular people want.

Ok, some clarifications here. [for my players, please stay clear. minor spoilers ahead, though nothing that won't be revealed before the end of the next session]

There are 8 artifacts, not very powerful individually but they boost each other when used together. they were split among various people, to be united in an emergency. now there is this emergency, and the party is gathering those artifacts to fight the bbeg.
unfortunately, in those nation they are having a fascist-like coup (fascist-like in that it is based on exasperated nationalism and jingoism). they want to take the artifacts - the party has currently three or four of the 8 - and give them to their champions because they think they are better than anyone else and were not properly rewarded the last time they helped defeat a bbeg.
So they do not want to necessarily kill the party; they want them to give up their artifacts. Surrendering them is actually an option (in fact, the bad guys will start by trying to negotiate, and they will even be rather reasonable) but I'm sure no player would take it. and they managed to lure the party in a place where they cannot easily escape, though they can easily hide.
the party is mostly unprepared for this specific situation, they lack some of the spells that may be most useful for such an occasion. they can try to escape, but I think they'll want to stop this coup anyway if they can. the party can also leverage some morale problems among the bad guys.

this is a high magic world, rich enough that it can afford to train their troops well and give them some low level loot. A common soldier in this scenario is level 2 to 4 and has a +1 heavy rifle and a +1 resistance cloack, plus a few grenades and potentially other alchemical stuff. supporting spellcasters provide spells of 1st and 2nd level, assume those are plentyful. some occasional 3rd level spell could be included in this support, and wands and scrolls are a thing. For example, I assume that most squads would have a scroll of mass cure light wounds.
Spellcasting above that, though, is counted among elite squads.

the average war golem is equipped with a cannon or heavy machine gun, which will deal some serious damage to anyone, and a big shield that it used to cover its own troops. some of them will be available. the bad guys have high level champions - they want to give them the artifacts, they are rather competent, though in truth weaker than the pcs - and i could easily turn this into a direct combat between high level pcs and npcs. but i've done a lot of those, and i wanted to bring in the army for a change. especially because i've been describing this world as one where the spread of modern firearms and magic made the common troops relevant again. If I can't avoid bringing the champions in, I'd want the regulars to at least weaken the party significantly first.

as the party didn't came in prepared for this, they are not ready for every avenue of escape. i'm not aware of them having the means to burrow, for example. as for flying, if they can't do it invisibly they are going to take a lot gunfire if they just offer themselves as targets like that. my main hope, though, is that the party will not want to escape - if they really do, i'm sure they can tank a round or two of bullets and leave the no-teleport zone.
gaseous form... i'm not sure if the party has some prepared, but in any case iirc magic weapons can hurt gaseous form, and it's a 1st level spell, widely available. same goes for protection from arrows

[Berenger]

Just threaten to level the palace with artillery and crush the party beneath the rubble.

[Biggus]

There are ways for multiple characters to work together. For example, if several soldiers use Aid Another each round to aid a champion they could get a large bonus to hit, so could endanger the PCs even if they're quite a few levels lower. If you have small squads specially trained to help the champions, they could be equipped with Amulets of Teamwork (MIC p.70) to increase the aid another bonus to +3.

There's a feat called Phalanx Fighting (CW p.103) which enables multiple characters fighting together with shields to gain an AC bonus. Not sure if that'd be appropriate for the tech level of your campaign though.

There's another feat called Formation Expert (CW p.110) which also gives bonuses for team fighting, although it's not that good tbh (and you have to be 6th level to take it).

I think there are others, if I remember any I'll let you know.

[Elder_Basilisk]

From the sounds of things the ordinary people have a pretty good collection of tools to deal with adventurers.

I don't know what kind of firearm rules you use, but being +1 will make them easily cut through protection from arrows and gaseous form and I would argue that bullets would be largely unimpeded by wind wall--maybe -2 to hit but certainly not effected like arrows and bolts. If they operate on some kind of touch attack mechanism, they would probably actually have pretty good chances to hit and even minimal damage will add up quickly--especially if the ordinary soldiers have damage boosts from prayer, bardsong etc. As long as they stay spread out, focus their fire, and actually come in large numbers--depending on the rules specifics, platoon (40) or company sized element (200) will put a serious hurt on the party very quickly.

If one assumes a +4 damage bonus (bardsong, prayer and the +1 gun) and d10 damage die, you only need 15 hits per round to deal 142 damage. If your ordinary soldiers can manage a 35% hit chance--which is probably trivially doable if the guns operate on touch attacks or something like that, that's a platoon sized element. (If they have rapid shot, the platoon could lay the hurt on two PCs per round). If they have to go against regular AC, they probably need a lot more optimization or you might need the company sized element, but a company sized element with rapid shot would land an average of 20 hits (or most likely one dead PC) per round even if they're fishing for 20s.



PCs optimized for fighting more elite encounters might not have a good way to deal with that. Wall of force/ice/fire/stone are likely to be the only hard counter (assuming that the platoon/company packs glitter dust etc to deal with invisibility, fireball/gust of wind to deal with fog, and daylight/etc to deal with darkness) to the amount of distributed offense that a large group of enemies with missile weapons bring to the table. (Stoneskin works too but like protection from arrows (if the ordinary guys didn't have magic weapons) it's a soft counter since the HP cap will usually mean that it only absorbs 1 round of damage before collapsing).

And the average soldier has a couple grenades too? I don't know how they work in your game--some kind of area burst with Ref 1/2 and 3d6 to 5d6 damage may be likely and if so, that's a "got evasion?" Check right now. Even at the low end and assuming 100% successful saves, a mere 20 soldiers tossing grenades would be 60d6 damage. Save for 1/2 but that's still 105 damage in an area. And if the damage is on the higher end? Evasion or you're dead.

The adventures best bet is probably not to get in a fight with a whole platoon/company--and if they have the strategic initiative, they should be able to avoid the kind of open field engagement I discuss above with a combination of scouting, stealth and transportation magic and abilities. But if the platoon/company is coming to them, they are a meaningful threat in a straight-up fight. There is every possibility that a party that doesn't take the ordinary guys seriously will get owned hard.

[King of Nowhere]

From the sounds of things the ordinary people have a pretty good collection of tools to deal with adventurers.

I don't know what kind of firearm rules you use, but being +1 will make them easily cut through protection from arrows and gaseous form and I would argue that bullets would be largely unimpeded by wind wall--maybe -2 to hit but certainly not effected like arrows and bolts. If they operate on some kind of touch attack mechanism, they would probably actually have pretty good chances to hit and even minimal damage will add up quickly--especially if the ordinary soldiers have damage boosts from prayer, bardsong etc. As long as they stay spread out, focus their fire, and actually come in large numbers--depending on the rules specifics, platoon (40) or company sized element (200) will put a serious hurt on the party very quickly.

If one assumes a +4 damage bonus (bardsong, prayer and the +1 gun) and d10 damage die, you only need 15 hits per round to deal 142 damage. If your ordinary soldiers can manage a 35% hit chance--which is probably trivially doable if the guns operate on touch attacks or something like that, that's a platoon sized element. (If they have rapid shot, the platoon could lay the hurt on two PCs per round). If they have to go against regular AC, they probably need a lot more optimization or you might need the company sized element, but a company sized element with rapid shot would land an average of 20 hits (or most likely one dead PC) per round even if they're fishing for 20s.



PCs optimized for fighting more elite encounters might not have a good way to deal with that. Wall of force/ice/fire/stone are likely to be the only hard counter (assuming that the platoon/company packs glitter dust etc to deal with invisibility, fireball/gust of wind to deal with fog, and daylight/etc to deal with darkness) to the amount of distributed offense that a large group of enemies with missile weapons bring to the table. (Stoneskin works too but like protection from arrows (if the ordinary guys didn't have magic weapons) it's a soft counter since the HP cap will usually mean that it only absorbs 1 round of damage before collapsing).

And the average soldier has a couple grenades too? I don't know how they work in your game--some kind of area burst with Ref 1/2 and 3d6 to 5d6 damage may be likely and if so, that's a "got evasion?" Check right now. Even at the low end and assuming 100% successful saves, a mere 20 soldiers tossing grenades would be 60d6 damage. Save for 1/2 but that's still 105 damage in an area. And if the damage is on the higher end? Evasion or you're dead.

The adventures best bet is probably not to get in a fight with a whole platoon/company--and if they have the strategic initiative, they should be able to avoid the kind of open field engagement I discuss above with a combination of scouting, stealth and transportation magic and abilities. But if the platoon/company is coming to them, they are a meaningful threat in a straight-up fight. There is every possibility that a party that doesn't take the ordinary guys seriously will get owned hard.

my homebrew for guns introduced an "armor penetration" (AP) factor: they ignore a part of non-touch armor. For heavy rifles, that's 7 or something like that. A heavy machine gun has AP in the 10-15 range, a cannon in the 30+ and so it's basically a touch attack.
So, factoring in the armor penetration, having a few levels, and some mild buffs, the troops are going to have an effective +15-ish to hit
The pcs are all sporting AC above 40, though, so it's still a natural 20 to hit.
grenades are 3d6, reflex 15 for half.
I was thinking some specially trained soldiers throwing them with slings for increased range

and yes, your analysis is basically the same as mine

[Elder_Basilisk]

Based on the ACs and rules in question, grenades should be the ordinary soldier go to strategy against the PCs. If they're fishing for 20s shooting, then they won't be a threat until they reach company strength, but grenades should make even platoon strength a deadly threat against any PCs without evasion--assuning they don't deal fire damage or something that can similarly be negated by energy resistance spells.

I'm not sure what kind of range you've given your grenades but apparently the standard distance for some real world soldiers is 20 meters and 50 meters is high level army competition standards. So if grenades have a 30 foot range increment, the standard 20m throw would be just over the end of the 2nd range increment at -4 (but with the range increment at -2 if you ignore the meters/yards distinction) and the 50m throw would be the end of extreme range--only possible by ignoring the imperial/metric distinction and only possible with good accuracy if you have far shot/far throw.

But regardless, even a 25 foot range increment would still let the ordinary soldiers deliver their grenades fairly reliably at normal D&D encounter distances without bunching up and compromising their intervals. 30 foot would make it even easier.

[King of Nowhere]

yes, at short distance grenades will be the weapon of choice.
I was thinking the blackshirts besieging the palace, with most of them staying out, using bullets to try and force the party to take cover, while individual squads would go inside and saturate the area with grenades.

[AvatarVecna]

This is the premise for a Pathfinder adventure module. The PCs are a bit lower level I think, and the military isn't specifically prepared for adventurers (the idea of a small squad of superheroes wasn't what they were ready for). With slightly higher level, and a military more prepared for what they bring to the table, I think they could do a decent job.

[liquidformat]

I mean if this is a high magic setting the best case scenario for the troops and worse case for the party especially when they are metaphorically caught with their pants down in the enemy's prepared trap (especially if the firearms are as nasty as you say they are) is to have the whole building be an antimagic field trap and the army trained to operate in said trap. Cut off all the party's magic by activating the AMF then just tell them give up or we will rain hell down on you...


Maybe the Mob rules in dmg II could help (like swarms but for people)?

Don't do this the Mob Rules are bad and actively make a well trained group of soldiers worse.