Most effective anti-army spell?

[GoC]

What's the best spell or combination of spells to use against a standard medieval army (consisting of just warriors/fighters/barbarians)?

Situation is one 20th level caster vs. an army of 10,000 men that's trying to get to and invade another country. Caster would prefer to remain anonymous.

[Yami]

Entangle.

Level 1, area effect. You've now got a series of archery targets, huzzah!

[FlyMolo]

Disease and contagion and those ones. Assuming you have a week or so.

Otherwise, Spells that deal negative levels. You only need to turn a few of the enemy into wights before there's a runaway effect, leading to total annihilation.

[PirateMonk]

Depending on tactics, Cloudkill can be utterly devastating or only occasionally useful.

[Lokey]

What level?

Probably something in the weather control line or cloudkill if you can hit a big chunk of them at once (and it'll insta-kill a big chunk of them). Need more specifics.

[GoC]

Entangle.

Level 1, area effect. You've now got a series of archery targets, huzzah!

It only affects a small area (and thus a small number of soldiers).
I'm going more for a single high level caster vs. an army.

[Bryn]

For low-level armies, Cloudkill is pretty effective, causing instant death on a failed save to anyone with 3 or less hit dice. However, you are limited by the fairly small area of effect (since the enemy could easily scatter away from it as it only moves at 10ft per round), and you need to be fairly high level to cast it.

It seems I've been subject at least two ninjas.

[bugsysservant]

Isn't there a spell called "Blackfire" which spreads from person to person if they don't make their saves, dealing either negative levels, or negative energy damage (I forget)? Because that would pretty much wipe out a low level, low save army in one go.

[JeminiZero]

If they are low level enough, any sort of long lasting damage wall should kill most of them (Like the Psion Energy wall, lasts as long as the Psion concentrates).

If you have a mid-level warlock, you can get him to fly around invisible while spamming deadwalk on their corpses.

[PirateMonk]

For low-level armies, Cloudkill is pretty effective, causing instant death on a failed save to anyone with 3 or less hit dice. However, you are limited by the fairly small area of effect (since the enemy could easily scatter away from it as it only moves at 10ft per round), and you need to be fairly high level to cast it.

It seems I've been subject at least two ninjas.

About a year ago, Emperor Tippy suggested spamming Cloudkills at the camp when everyone was asleep, making them harder to avoid.

[Laurellien]

Locate City, or find a corpse and use create greater undead to make a wraith.

[FlyMolo]

If you have a mid-level warlock, you can get him to fly around invisible while spamming deadwalk on their corpses.

If you have a high level warlock, you can fly around invisible spamming Utterdark/Eldritch cone blasts. Everyone who's level one and all level two people who fail their saves in a 30-foot cone become wights through negative levels. The wights then make more wights, and so on and so forth.

[RTGoodman]

Well, if you're high enough level and really care about killing them, spend 5,000 XP for a miracle (since you said any caster, not just arcane).

It gives an example of a powerful request as "Protecting a city from an earthquake, volcanic eruption, flood, or other major natural disaster." I assume that you could do the opposite for the same price (assuming you have a god that would support it), sending one of those disasters or a plague or something against the opposing army.

Also, I don't have it, but I'm betting that there's a spell for this situation in BoVD.

[GoC]

No wraith/shadow cheese please.

Isn't there a spell called "Blackfire" which spreads from person to person if they don't make their saves, dealing either negative levels, or negative energy damage (I forget)? Because that would pretty much wipe out a low level, low save army in one go.

That's a very good one but are there any non-evil anti-army spells?

[Quietus]

No wraith/shadow cheese please.


That's a very good one but are there any non-evil anti-army spells?

So you're basically looking for a good(ish) way to kill an entire army?

Control weather is a good one, not many people enjoy having to camp out in freezing sleet or whatever. Contagion, while slow, is effective - though it's also debatable on the evilness. Cloudkill while everyone's sleeping has been mentioned. If you have access to it, Call Lightning would work, only one per round, but still enough to kill some people good.

Then there's the old favorites like fireball and lightning bolt, if the army is tightly packed together. Also, cone of cold.

[Mephisto]

If you were a cleric or druid I'd suggest Storm of Vengeance. Big area (360-foot radius circle) and deals 6d6 damage with no save by the 4th round. Otherwise, what people have been saying about disease and undead.

[kamikasei]

If you have a high level warlock, you can fly around invisible spamming Utterdark/Eldritch cone blasts. Everyone who's level one and all level two people who fail their saves in a 30-foot cone become wights through negative levels. The wights then make more wights, and so on and so forth.

That's very effective at destroying an army, but not at protecting the thing the army was threatening, which presumably was your aim. Replacing one threat with an equally-sized threat made of more dangerous individuals who still don't like you (though granted, are no longer motivated specifically to seek out and kill you over anyone else) isn't a win long-term.

[Saph]

Anything you like. Honestly, you're a 20th-level character. It really doesn't matter what spells you use, or even what class you are. Any halfway competent 20th-level character can defeat an infinite number of level 1 warriors. Actually, even an incompetent 20th-level character can defeat a near-infinite number of level 1 warriors.

I mean, what's to stop you just sitting there and killing them all with melee attacks? 10 rounds a minute is 600 rounds an hour. 600 rounds an hour is 14,400 rounds in a day. D&D characters don't suffer from battle fatigue, and a 20th-level character's defences are far too good for a 1st-level warrior to hurt them. You should be able to get rid of all 10,000 in a day or so of steady fighting, assuming they even try to fight rather than scattering or running away once they realise they'd have a better chance against the Tarrasque. The only reason to use spells or special tactics is if you're on a schedule and want to finish things up quick.

- Saph

[VanBuren]

You could dominate a few of them and have them attack each other, thus sowing confusion into their ranks and lowering moral while you pull a couple of other tricks.

[mostlyharmful]

That's very effective at destroying an army, but not at protecting the thing the army was threatening, which presumably was your aim. Replacing one threat with an equally-sized threat made of more dangerous individuals who still don't like you (though granted, are no longer motivated specifically to seek out and kill you over anyone else) isn't a win long-term.

No high level caster would just let an army of mooks wander up to whatever they're protecting. And Firestorm is a nice spell for large area highly disheartening spell smashing. Remember your magic doesn't have to kill them all at once, just kill enough of them loudly enough and the rest will wet themselves and leg it.

[GoC]

So you're basically looking for a good(ish) way to kill an entire army?

Control weather is a good one, not many people enjoy having to camp out in freezing sleet or whatever. Contagion, while slow, is effective - though it's also debatable on the evilness. Cloudkill while everyone's sleeping has been mentioned. If you have access to it, Call Lightning would work, only one per round, but still enough to kill some people good.

Then there's the old favorites like fireball and lightning bolt, if the army is tightly packed together. Also, cone of cold.

Yes.
The army is highly disciplined and evil and will kill anyone infected by desease.
Cloudkill would take ages to kill 10,000 people.
Call Lightning, fireball and lightning bolt only affect ~20 people per casting. It would take quite a whle to kill them all.
Cone of Cold is a good one but suffers from similar problems.

Saph: The officers might give him trouble though.

Fire storm at 100+ kills per casting is one of the best so far but it'll still take several days to kill them all.
Storm of vengeance is very effective but the soldiers might try to avoid it once they see it forming. Probably in the 500-1000 kills per casting range.

[bugsysservant]

That's a very good one but are there any non-evil anti-army spells?

Well, Storm of Vengeance springs to mind, though thats probably overkill. What level is the average soldier?

Hell, any area effect cast by a level 20 caster will kill an army if they are low enough level. Or, as someone else pointed out, a few walls of flame will keep an army in one place and the caster could then just spam fireballs to wipe it out.

Summon Swarm is good, since melee types are really weak against swarms. Warlocks are a bit better though, since there's no limit on the number of times it can summon a swarm.

A somewhat less effective, but more fun thing would be to summon a djinni, and make it transform into a whirlwind, then run rampant through the army. Laugh as thousands of barbarians and fighters get sucked into the air.

[Parvum]

War Spells, specifically designed for grand-scale murder.

I can't recall all spells, but two are 'teleport legion' and 'create undead army'. Expensive, but a simple answer to 'how to fight an army'.

[kamikasei]

No high level caster would just let an army of mooks wander up to whatever they're protecting. And Firestorm is a nice spell for large area highly disheartening spell smashing. Remember your magic doesn't have to kill them all at once, just kill enough of them loudly enough and the rest will wet themselves and leg it.

...Yes? So you agree that chain-reactioning the army into wights isn't a good idea, then?

[Jack_Simth]

Shapechange.
Turn into something Large, tough, flying, and with Regeneration, and you're pretty much set.

Gate or Greater Planar Binding:
Call a Pit Fiend. It flies, has Fireball as an at-will spell-like ability, and it regenerates. Have it zap away from a thousand feet up. Should do the job, sooner or later.

Elemental Swarm:
Eh, not really the best, but it can get the job done.

[FinalJustice]

Blackfire (SC). It's not THAT effective, but it is awesome in many levels. Its duration is round/level, you make medium ranged touch attack against some one, setting it on a black fire that will cause 1d4 con damage and nauseate him, a Fort negates the damage and makes the subject sickened instead of nauseated, three consecutive successes end the fire for that person. Every round, everyone adjacent to the subject that fails on a Reflex save catches on fire too. For an 8th level spell, it sucks hard, for an army of mooks, badass. Overfly them, invisible, and drop three extended Blackfires on the points the troops are most close to each other. Chances are, if the army marches really packed, half of the army engulfed in badass black flames of doom, the ones whose con drop to zero turning into piles of ashes. Screams badass to me.

[Saph]

Oh, all right, if you want to do it with spells:

20th-level druid. Cast Shambler. That summons 1d4+2 shambling mounds, which last seven days each. You should be able to cast it five times or so per day, so spend a couple of days before the army arrives getting yourself ten castings worth of the spell, which should give you 40-50 shambling mounds.

Then unleash then on your opponents and watch the slaughter. You can buff the mounds to make them unkillable if you want, but it's probably not necessary. To speed things up, cast Shapechange as well, turn into a giant dragon of your choice, and wipe them out.

Should only take an hour or so to get them to break and run. There are faster ways to do it, but this one's core-only, and like I said, it really is like shooting fish in a barrel - you have to try hard to lose.

- Saph

[AslanCross]

Fire storm has a pretty massive area of effect, though it's a divine spell.
Cloudkill might also be very good, as it "drifts." Once it hits the frontline, the people there will either drop dead or start running away (and tripping over the dead bodies). The army would definitely start panicking especially if they've never faced magic before.

If you really want to be evil (vile), use BoVD's apocalypse from the sky. It only deals 10d6 damage, but the area of effect is several miles and it harms vegetation (which fire storm may or may not do)

[GoC]

War Spells, specifically designed for grand-scale murder.

I can't recall all spells, but two are 'teleport legion' and 'create undead army'. Expensive, but a simple answer to 'how to fight an army'.

Very interesting. Where are these from?

Jack_Simth: I banned Gate and houseruled Shapechange to be like polymorph so I don't want to break my own rules.

Saph: Against 10,000 troups (and all the officers) I'm not sure 20 shamblers can do the trick... I'll mark this as a possible.

[Pronounceable]

What's the best spell or combination of spells to use against a standard medieval army (consisting of just warriors/fighters/barbarians)?

Geas their liege. There, it's your army now...