How to kill a party with an army?

[Eerie]

By now, I have seen several threads describing how a party of PCs can effectively cripple, disperse and destroy a huge army of low-level monsters/NPCs. Mainly it is done by the spell-caster (duh) through a combination of AOE (cloudkill, summons...) and precision (scry and die, invisibility...) spells.

So let`s look at the problem from the other side. Imagine that you are a warlord, commanding a huge army of low-level soldiers. Something akin to the OotS hobgoblin invading army, but without Xykon and Redcloak. You need to conquer a fortress protected by a small regiment of low-level soldiers and a party of adventurers.

What will be the best strategy, apart from "don`t do it"?

[Duke of URL]

Numbers. Sheer numbers.

Eventually, you're going to wear the spellcasters out. You can speed up this process by having your own casters (if any) counterspell and dispel, forcing the opponents to use more resources. You can also play "scry and die", to take out some or all of their spellcasters.

Without casters, look for magic items to offset spells.

Remember, once the magic is minimized or neutralized, you will win on sheer numbers alone.

[Farlion]

1. bring alot of catapults
2. catapult in filthy rats
3. hope some of the rats have pest
4. wait
5. ????
6. wait some more
7. maybe you win

[Eerie]

By now, I have seen several threads describing how a party of PCs can effectively cripple, disperse and destroy a huge army of low-level monsters/NPCs. Mainly it is done by the spell-caster (duh) through a combination of AOE (cloudkill, summons...) and precision (scry and die, invisibility...) spells.

So let`s look at the problem from the other side. Imagine that you are a warlord, commanding a huge army of low-level soldiers. Something akin to the OotS hobgoblin invading army, but without Xykon and Redcloak. You need to conquer a fortress protected by a small regiment of low-level soldiers and a party of adventurers.

What will be the best strategy, apart from "don`t do it"?

[Croverus]

1. bring alot of catapults
2. catapult in filthy rats
3. hope some of the rats have pest
4. wait
5. ????
6. wait some more
7. maybe you win

You must be new to 4chan...

[Eerie]

From the threads I saw, it will take tens of thousands of troops to take out a PC wizard by sheer numbers alone. Can`t we optimise it?

Also, as a warlord, can I fight the "scry and die" tactic somehow?

[Britter]

If you have an army, instead of trying to kill the PCs, perhaps it would be more effective to cause them to lose.

After all, a small group can't be everywhere at once. Create a scenario where the army is striking at more then one place. Burn villages, ruin towns, beseige the city the PCs are in with enough force to hold them there, and force them to watch as you ravage the countryside.

Victory doesn't necessarily mean reducing your enemies hit points to zero.

re: powerful spell casters. Best bet is probably to acquire your own spellcaster of similar power, if possible. Alternately, several casters of moderate power, hitting seperate, diverse targets simultaneously, should drain the resources of the opposition.

[TengYt]

If the party are wandering adventurers hired to protect the city under siege, you could use undercover agents and rogues to try and spread dissident amongst the ordinary enemy soldiers, maybe driving a wedge between the low level mooks and the PCs. If you have a lot of resources, consider "buying" as much spellcasters as possible rather than just going for a mass of infantry. If possible, try a get a higher level army on average even if it means drastically cutting your numbers.
Either that, or just zerg rush and hope you can wear the enemy spellcasters down.

[Eerie]

Britter, it IS an option, but what if the PCs defend a strategic point that you must take?

[Blackjackg]

Let's see...

Spread out, to minimize the effects of AoE spells and Great Cleavage.

Be patient. Every now and then, stop advancing for a few minutes to let spells expire.

To the extent possible, hit them from afar with high-damage payloads like boulders. If nothing else, they will have to expend resources to blow up your catapults that would otherwise be spent killing your troops.

[Farlion]

Maybe lure the PC to a place where you can bury them under the castle walls using catapults or gunpowder to make it crash onto them.

Cheers,
Farlion

[paddyfool]

Depends on timescale, how serious a fortress we're talking about, what level the party are, and how optimised their casters may be. Some ideas, however:

1) Siege weapons are your friend. If you can take down the fortifications, or set them on fire and smoke the enemy out, it'll be much easier to swarm the buggers.

2) Massed archery is also your friend - probably about the only way to get the damage output to seriously concern a mid-level PC. However, any decent caster can obviously stop this quite easily. Reach weapons also work pretty well; think formations of pikemen etc. to bring many to bear against any one opponent.

3) Be careful of assassination attempts against your officers and other important personnel; make them hard to identify, don't let them get over-exposed etc.

4) Tanglefoot bags.

[Lamech]

From the threads I saw, it will take tens of thousands of troops to take out a PC wizard by sheer numbers alone. Can`t we optimise it?

Also, as a warlord, can I fight the "scry and die" tactic somehow?

Teeheehee... Scry and die, good thing there is a fourth level spell that can put a stop to this crap. Divination, just ask when and where people will port into your army with the desire to hurt you or your soldiers. Now, it might be a cryptic message or it might be a clear "in your tent at 0347". Guess who decides? PC's die to 200 alchemists fires. Or a vat of lava, try casting when your mouth is filled with molten rock. Even acid should do the trick, I don't see how one can speak clearly under water acid.

[TengYt]

D&D 3.5 is arguably balanced for parties having four encounters a day. As long as you can keep the enemy party occupied for the entire day without an 8 hour break, you can wear them down provided they are mid level or so. Send out your own spellcasters without counterspells ready to deal with enemy casters, protected by infantry and archers. For Fighters, Barbarians etc, try and get them trapped out in the open and surround them if you don't mind taking heavy losses, and send your troops into the grinder. Eventually, the numbers will prevail. If you don't want to sacrifice vast numbers of your army, just use mass ranged attacks on them. Use siege weapons to blast open bottlenecks. A good plan would be to position your siege weapons near a forest, so when the PCs inevitably go out to destroy them you can spring an ambush. Employ a large numbers of Monks with Stunning Fist. Not only will this cut costs on equipment, but a single failed save could be lethal for a PC against mass troops. Druids are also useful as you basically get a free Fighter for every Druid.

[Britter]

Well, let me be honest. If I am the GM, I would try to avoid creating the conditions for such a "must have" sort of strategic location. If the PCs get ensconced in such a hard point, it can be a real pain to dig them out.

If, either due to your campaign requiring one, or due to the PCs efforts, there is a very valuable, must-have spot in your campaign that is heavily defended, figure out why it is so valuable. Is it possible to go around it? Do the PCs have allies in other kingdoms that you could attack to draw them out of their strategic location? Sure, powerful characters can hole up in a place and just wait you out, potentially for an indefinite period, but if you have the resources, why not take the battle to another "must have" place and force the PCs to choose: Defend our stronghold or allow our enemy to esthablish their own stronghold by defeating our allies.

If you have to attack a very well guarded position, then think in more then one dimension. The PCs will devestate a conventional force that attacks the front gates, sure. But what if you have flying units dropping firebombs at the same time as you have tunnelling units weakening the walls and fortifications, while your riverboats deposit elite troops along the cities docks and your main army bombards the gates with rams and trebuchet?

Force the PCs to choose where they will fight. Make it impossbile for them to be everywhere at once. Force them to make tough decisions, avoid exposing your entire force to their entire force. Don't hand them opportunities to destroy you in detail.

Intelligence gathering will be usefull too. Scrying, of course, but why not employ dopplegangers to infiltrate enemy strongholds, or invisible stalkers to kill minor officers of the PC's army? Kill officers and sergants, in order to demoralize the PCs forces and break down their chain of command.

Think outside the box. If your D and D world follows the rules conventions, then the way war will be fought is not going to look like traditional medevial warfare, but more like modern combined arms forces. A savvy commander is going to deny the PCs an opportunity to devestate his forces in detail by exposing them to the powerful heroes, and will instead try to fight on multiple fronts, and multiple dimensions (perhaps even literally, by using teleport tactics to deposit commandos behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy's supply lines).

Don't let the PCs control the rythym of the fight. Dictate when, how, and where you fight. Attack at night, then attack again an hour after the first battle. Press any advantage you get.

Read some Sun Tsu, or maybe some Clausewitz, and try to get a feel for ways to control the battle, confuse the enemy, and preserve your forces at the same time.

Be devious.

Edit: Another idea, which is not necessarily valuable in D and D due to the hit point system. Fight to wound. That way the enemy has a lot of injured soldiers to deal with. It will spread their resources thin, force their clerics to use more healing magic, and the PCs will be forced to either leave a lot of wounded soldiers to die on the battlefield after every engagement, or risk thier resources by retrieving the injured after every battle.

Now, don't fight to wound the PCs. Engage them with extreme prejudice and wipe them out if you get the chance. But wound their army, reduce the amount of manpower they have.

Maybe poison or disease could be used for this sort of thing, if the mechanics don't support incapacitating wounds or limb-specific damage.

If you are feeling really nasty, booby-trap the wounded so that they damage the stretcher bearers or the healers.

[The_Werebear]

First, as the warlord, unless it is necessary, don't be the guy sitting on the throne in fancy armor. Be a power behind the throne. Preferably an invisible one.

Second, never allow the PC's a break. Always be hitting many points at once. If you are attacking a small garrison and you massively outnumber them, don't worry too much about them. Smash every point you can reach at once, preferably 10 or more points at a time

When it comes to actually attacking the hardpoints, like a keep they are actively guarding, be willing to sacrifice a large amount of men to take it down as quickly as possible. If you give the PC's a chance to rest, it will just cost you more in the long run. Overkill is your friend here. Use Catapults, Ladders, Rams, Tunneling, Aerial Assaults (winged monsters carrying goblins, firing goblins out of catapults with parachutes). The key is overwhelming them so they can't wreck your plan.

[MickJay]

Get some spellcasters (hire if you don't have any) to help you and/or dig a tunnel to bypass the walls (avoiding horrible losses direct assaults would cost you).

[Tsotha-lanti]

You overestimate wizard and underestimate melee types. With AC 24+ (easily achieved at low middle levels by any melee type), they're only hit 1/20 of the time. With an average damage of say, 6.5 (1d8+2), you're talking about dealing 0.325 damage... a fighter will have 14+(9.5*(level-1)) hit points and will one-shot your troops. With Cleave (a non-optimal choice, except in a campaign where you run up against armies of mooks) and Great Cleave, everyone adjacent to the fighter dies every round. Then the fighter takes 2.8 damage when everyone rushes him. Then they all die. That's 32 dead per level of the fighter to wear him down, assuming the fighter gets no healing and is very boring and non-tactical, and assuming the absence of any kind of psychology in your troops (i.e. the natural instinct of people to not get hurt, which means that when multiple combatants attack a single superior combatant, they all want to hang back and let someone else attack, hoping their enemy will be left open for attack without risk).

If you've got a giant army of 10,000 (pretty much staggeringly huge by medieval standards), and are able to entrap the party (i.e. they're too stupid to have teleport), you might be able to wear them down - assuming, again, the complete absence of psychological factors. Unfortunately, once the wizard has slaughtered a thousand men with fireballs and the fighter has killed 200 men in single combat without breaking a sweat, your army will probably rout in disarray. The casualty figures in medieval battles were usually fairly low - maybe even 10%, because by that point your army will likely be routing.

If the party spread out and strike you from several directions, they'll likely start a "cascade rout" - your right flank and left flank collapse simultaneously as your troops run away from the fighter killing machine and the one wizard artillery battery, and the rest of your army follows with them.

And that's just two of the five-man party...


I have a very simple answer for running fight against armies in my games. Since levels represent absolutely nothing concrete in the world, and are simply game mechanics representations of the importance of the enemies, I adjust enemy levels to sufficiently challenge the PCs. Against level 6 PCs, level 1-2 mooks will do fine. Against level 10 PCs, the mooks might even be level 4. The difference keeps getting bigger, and the PCs are able to take on more and more mooks, but the challenge remains. (Obviously this works out way better in 4E with minions.) After a certain level, fights against the rank-and-file won't even be played out. "You cut a path through the throng of orcs. Suddenly, the press of bodies opens up ahead of you, and you see an twenty-foot ogre with plate-armored knights spot-welded to every part of his body striding toward you!"

[Britter]

I agree completely with the scaling of troops to pc levels. And I also agree completely with the signifigant type of encounter you describe. Very good points to make a seige or a major battle interesting for the PCs, as opposed to a rather long and boring excersise in rolling dice.

[TengYt]

Yeah, I agree. If the entire army is made up is 1HD orcs and the party is level 10, for example, then there's not point even running the battle tbh.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Handily enough, melee types get BAB faster than PCs get AC, generally speaking. NPC damage, meanwhile, does not increase that much... so overall, they remain capable of hurting the PCs, but the PCs can take on more and more and more of them (especially when you factor in magic).

[Radar]

War of attrition:
1. Don't lay a frontal siege at all. Stay mobile and divide your forces to push many goals foreward at the same time. Adventurers can't be everywere to stop your minions - that's one of key advantages of having a large army.

2. At the same time it's vital to keep good comunication between task-forces and you have to track the position af the adventurers - you will need someone with scrying abilities and some way to see invisible from longer distance would be helpful. Use familiars, summoned or trained birds for aerial scouting.

3. Cut off all the supplies. Better yet, if anyone wants to sneak into the fortress, strip them from their posession and let them go in (you can force them, if they are not willing). This will add up over time to a lot more people to feed and food shortage will come sooner. To speed this up, raid nearby villages and such - the keep will get crowded and starving very soon. You could try to sneak some spies in, but that's risky - adventurers can Detect Evil easily.

4. If possible poison their water - clerics can purify it, but it probably won't be enough for all people closed in the fortress. Trying to spread a disease is also possible, yet risky.

5. Dig an underground passage - a classic way of dealing with castles and such.

6. They will probably try to sry-and-die you, so scrying prevention will be important - an item of Non-detection will do probably.

7. If it comes to an actual battle, archers are your best type of unit - whatever the odds, 1 shot in 20 will be a critical hit. And there is no limit on how many people can target a single adventurer as long as they see him. It would still be better to avoid any confrontation with the adventurers.

In general it's better to force the defenders to surrender, then fight them up front. It workred in Middle Ages, it can work in D&D. Yet from a certain level of adventurers, it comes down to fighting fire with fire.

[MickJay]

Edit: I've made posts in both threads, which got merged, here's the "double"

Dig a number of tunnels into the the defended place; either invade simultaneously from inside through those tunnels, or blow up/bring down the walls in a few places.

[TengYt]

PCs won't surrender unless they're being railroaded into it by a DM. However, their low level forces can surrender, desert, defect, or be bribed, especially if your army has a reputation for crushing everything in it's path. If you can strip away their meatshields they'll have a much harder time when you start sieging them from ten directions at once.

Also, try and outsmart and outpredict the party. Say you destroy a section of a wall with catapults. If you move troops to storm the hole, the party will certainly try and hold the gap. When they move to engage a portion of your forces (which are only there to distract the party), you can do something sneaky like dig a tunnel or out manouver their fortifications.

[Tsotha-lanti]

War of attrition:
1. Don't lay a frontal siege at all. Stay mobile and divide your forces to push many goals foreward at the same time. Adventurers can't be everywere to stop your minions - that's one of key advantages of having a large army.

The PCs are going to be more mobile. Between overland flight, phantom steed, and teleport, they can effectively be everywhere at once. Inside one hour, they can decimate as many taskforces as they have teleport spells available.

3. Cut off all the supplies. Better yet, if anyone wants to sneak into the fortress, strip them from their posession and let them go in (you can force them, if they are not willing). This will add up over time to a lot more people to feed and food shortage will come sooner. To speed this up, raid nearby villages and such - the keep will get crowded and starving very soon. You could try to sneak some spies in, but that's risky - adventurers can Detect Evil easily.

Create food and water is a third-level spell. Create water (which is more important) is a 0-level spell.

4. If possible poison their water - clerics can purify it, but it probably won't be enough for all people closed in the fortress. Trying to spread a disease is also possible, yet risky.

Clerics again.

3. and 4. will tie up some resources, but both take time to work, and the PCs don't have any reason to sit still and wait. They can just use superior (and usually unpreventable, unless you have high-level casters, which changes the situation entirely and makes your army irrelevant) mobility to strike at you as they please, while you're stuck trying to outlast them.

7. If it comes to an actual battle, archers are your best type of unit - whatever the odds, 1 shot in 20 will be a critical hit. And there is no limit on how many people can target a single adventurer as long as they see him. It would still be better to avoid any confrontation with the adventurers.

No, 1 in 20 will hit. Criticals need to be confirmed. 1 in 400 will be a critical (assuming a 20 on the confirmation is an auto-hit; is it?).

Edit: Incidentally, something as simple as wind wall (always worth memorizing if you're facing a thousand archers!) will defeat this, and stoneskin or any other source of DR will make these mass attack tactics at least partially irrelevant. Beware the fighter with adamantine armor...

[Duke of URL]

I'm actually working on a large-scale combat system that essentially treats a large group of mooks as a single enemy with a higher CR. I've got some playtesting to do, but the basic version as it stands is:

• Assume all individuals within a "unit" are identical stats, feats, class levels, equipment, etc.; a combined unit must exist in contiguous squares to receive unit benefits.
• Calculate the EL for the combined unit (e.g., 20 CR 1 creatures has an EL of 9)
• For offense, treat the unit as a single creature with a CR = EL, advancing the stats, BAB, saves, class levels, feats, etc. of a single individual until it reaches that CR
• The unit gets +1 damage on attacks for each increase in CR over its original CR
• For defense, each unit is still an individual entity and must be attacked separately.
• Troop losses, or separation causing the group to no longer be together, will result in one or more lesser units with a lower CR

Now, a theoretical group of 20 1st-level fighters might act as a CR 9 unit (Fighter 9) when together, but the actual CR is probably lower due to the fact that their equipment will lag their effective "level" and that they lose capability as they get "injured". As I said, still in playtesting. I'm also working on a "leader" mechanic to allow a higher-CR creature to improve the effectiveness of the unit by sacrificing its own individuality/actions to improve the group. (I.e., a "sergeant" or "captain")

[Tsotha-lanti]

I'm actually working on a large-scale combat system that essentially treats a large group of mooks as a single enemy with a higher CR. I've got some playtesting to do, but the basic version as it stands is:

Sounds like the rules for mobs in... DMG2, is it? Good idea, probably.

Incidentally, here is a PDF of Mongoose d20 mass combat system. Great for ideas and adaptation.

[Britter]

It does seem that a lot of tactics will really hinge on the exact levels of the PCs that you are dealing with as well as their classes.

High level casters will of course just hose everything up.

Only way to counter them will be more high level casters.

I still think forcing the PCs to constantly react to the enemy across a lot of locations all at once will be a usefull way to drain their resources. Just be smart about it.

[Aux-Ash]

One thing to remember is that military archers are not marksmen, they do not shoot to hit you. They shoot at your general location. It's not their aim that allows them to turn their targets to pincushions... it's the sheer amount of arrows.

If the archers get the ability to fire they can kill (or at least lock down) pretty much everything by simply raining arrows. Releasing volley after volley after volley every 10 seconds. And they are trained to keep doing that for hours. From a distance of ~300 meters (with longbows/crossbows, a bit shorter with less powerful bows).

There's no way dodging or armour can be used to nullify a rain of arrows (magic might though). The only way to survive being under a rain of arrows (short of magic) is to find cover (shields if nothing else, but that's flawed at best. Arrows aren't particulary thick and easily slip past and hit things like feet and legs, especially if one is moving).

So, that might help give any party some trouble. I am unfamilar how DnD treats archery so I cannot explain how it would work exactly.

But it's important to remember that military archers are used as artillery, not marksmen. Their job is just as much pinning their target as it is killing them.

[Thrawn183]

So it might seem like overkill, but the siege weapons are actually for killing the PC's. You target the square they're in and not their AC. They get an easy save (Ref 15) to take half, but they still take half! If you have a 100 heavy catapults, the moment the wizard shows himself... boom. Assuming the wizard makes all his saves that's still 100*3d6 damage. Yeah, wizard is not coming back from that. Oh, and don't forget that siege weapons can go through that nifty little wind wall.

That level 10 fighter scaring you? He'll be hard pressed to kill more than a dozen of your men a round. Unlike in real world combat, archers don't miss the square they're aiming at, so you can have massed archer fire literally right into the middle of your troops safely. So while that fighter takes on those 1000 soldiers standing in his way? A thousand archers are plinking away every round, one in 20 hitting. 4.5*.05*1000=225 damage a round assuming no DR. This is, of course, assuming that he's not getting hit by the siege weapons as well.

As far as wind wall is concerned, just use thrown weapons. Sure they have another 30% miss chance tacked on, but suddenly wind wall is no longer quite the invincible trick it used to be.

Now, your biggest problems are going to be countering greater invisibility, and a few choice spells that can summon tornado strength winds and such. I don't really know how to help you with those tbh. An archer that's getting buffed with G. invisibility will absolutely tear your 1HD army to shreds given enough time. And how exactly is your army going to find someone when they have crap for spot and listen? *Sigh* massed fire is cool, but it still has some limitations.