How Would You Defend A Mountain Fortress?

Use the vampires as a night-time recon and hit and run force. They can move nearly unseen in mist form and small forces of them can shift out and ambush the enemies scout parties.

Make sure that one of your high level generals is a druid. Druids are the masters of army killing spells, creeping doom, fire storm, enlarged poison vines, and the list goes on. Plus the druid can sneak in and with natural spell and eschew materials cast as a tiny animal. No one expects the thrush/camp rat to drop hordes of insects and torents of flame on the troops.

The druid can also change into an elemental creature and burrow tunnels to help fend off an attack from dwarves/gnomes coming up underneath the fortress. The vampires can also fight effectively underground even if it is daylight above.

Make sure to have a contingent of clerics tasked with casting create food and water to feed your troops, also try to get a decanter of endless water for even more water supplies.

Greetings!

Cool stuff! I should also note that the cities each have a great deal of farmland to their north, and east. Geographically, the cities are to the north/north-east of the fortress. The river is to the east, flowing south/south-west, then turning to flow horizontally to the fortress due west.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

SHARK said:

Commander: 50th level. (You)

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What class am I? Do I have access to teleport or wish? Epic spells?

Barring all else I'd drop a anti-magic field around my attackers. My forces sound like they could wipe the floor with un-augmented humans. Or I could just drop some flux-slime from the ELH on the opposition.

I'd also pick up one of those scrying Mirrors (I forget the name offhand). It lets you scry a person or location and then teleport to and from that point. Nasty, nasty tool for sudden strikes.

Greetings!

Whatever class that you think is best. Write it up! Epic spells, Epic feats, custom magic items, whatever.

Though I didn't expressly note it, according to population figures in the DMG and ELH, the 100,000 humans will have various dispositions of different levels, including leaders, special troops, veterans, and so on.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Given a dozen shadowdancers with their shadow companions, start turning the rank and file Valloreans into uncontrolled shadows. Make use of the terrain and strike from below, night after night.

Big scale combats...I live for this stuff...

Never underestimate the power of teleports. I should hope that I've utilized the SHB's Guide, or at least a few permenant dimensional locks to ward against the enemy simply scrying our fortress, opening a teleport circle inside, and sending in a few thousand soldiers that could give a rat's eye about our night attacks and defenses. Leave one heavily defended room unLocked for the purposes of the our own teleports and summonings.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, but luckily for me, I strongly doubt my foes have the resources to drop dimensional anchors all over their armies every day. I would take advantage of that and my giants', vampires', and werewolves' darkvision to absolutely run amok in the enemy camps at night. Bring along one of those 20th level cloud giant wizards to teleport circle us back and voila, the enemy will never sleep well again. Don't forget those handy druids and clerics with their mass army-slaying spells.

That done, I would then have a series of Move Earths cast around the fortress to create a terrain that divides the enemy's ranks and leaves them open to aerial assaults in the form of either hails of arrows from the battlements, and/or spells from Flying casters. I'm thinking deep, rolling ravines that lead out from the fortress that are about 50-100' wide.

Yet it's all for naught if a single caster manages to get close enough to cast Earthquake, Storm of Vengence, or Control Weather. So invest in some of the Eye Golems from the BoEM2 and place them liberally in a grid around the fortress. *Slay all Wildlife* in the area. Our manticores and chimeras should always be on the wing in rotating shifts to take down any birds that happen to fly over. Or use permenant Control Winds in the skies to keep flying creatures out entirely.

That still leaves the glaring weakness of underground assaults. I'd have the high level clerics use a few Planar Ally spells to Call up an army of earth elementals or perferably Elder Xorns. They can live in the ground beneath and surrounding the fortress, but are instructed to kill *anything* that is burrowing, and inform the clerics of the enemy's presence. But I wouldn't envy the cost those clerics would pay for such a service.

Use Sendings, Whispering Winds, and Messages when appropriate to keep up communication. The upper lords and elite guards should be Mindlinked or Rary's Telepathic Bonded during sieges (assuming the enemy gets that far).

An army as huge as my enemy's can teleport circle right inside the city and no number of defenses can keep them out. I pity cities in D&D for that very reason. However, if I were to have agents who could speed word back the fortress should happen, my regular standing army could teleport circle into their midst and the battle would be joined in the streets without ranks or order. No commander wants that, but such a situation favors the defender and I am confident that my forces could outmatch theirs in such a confrontation. Not to mention Koben-Charrak ought to have its own city guard who could fend the intruders off for a few minutes.

A few Wishes might be able to foil enemy Commune and Augery spells if my cause is favored by my cleric's dark gods.

I'm sure there are innumerable things I have yet to think of, but these are the things that immidiately come to mind. If I think of more, I'll post them for ya. War in D&D is so overly complicated. It's convoluted enough IRL, but bring magic into it and it still comes down to the same thing as high-level combat: Who strikes first (specifically, who wins init). It may be an entirely poor idea to be on the defensive at all. The plethora of options available to an army of these sizes is ridiculous and no defender can think of everything, much less adequately defend against it. That said, good luck to you sir!

summon creatures are your friends

In regards to the air force, the epic spell dragon swarm (or some such thing) would work wonders. 10 large adult dragons could do a great deal of damage from their air with flyby attack and dragonbreath, while the inherant dragonfear would likely create vast amounts of chaos in the grunt troops.

Large flights of dragons are a hellish force to be reckoned with.

I also suggest setting up several (dozens) teleport circles inside the compound that lead to stragetic points outside the castle. You could create a vast number of these, easily making pre-determined (and totally undetectable) kill zone. Things to port in include iron golems, antimagic fields, delayed blast fireballs, darkness spells, silence spells, various symbol spells on piece of rock, LOTS of vampires, tactical nukes, etc. You get the idea.

-Femerus

I really liked the creativity that my friend mmadsen inspired about a band of Goblins.

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Thank you, SHARK. I guess we covered "malicious ingenuity but not much else"; now we're looking at "malicious ingenuity and the kitchen sink"!

Well, suppose that you are the commander of a powerful fortress.

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"Powerful" is an understatement -- a 50th-level commander, a dozen 30th-level aides, two dozen 20th-level lords, oh, then the high-level Wang-Liang and Giants!

You must be prepared for commando raids by groups of 15-40 powerful adventurers, as well as raids by enemy cavalry forces, and ultimately--a showdown with an invading Vallorean army composed of 350,000 Legionnaires!

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I would think that the commander, his aides, and his lords could easily handle the "powerful adventurers" -- unless they're also all 20th- to 30th-level. That's assuming he ready and waiting when the commando force strikes -- and with high-level Divinations, he should know all.

If our evil overlord is defending a mountain stronghold, I don't see mundane cavalry or heavy infantry having much effect. Perhaps you can clarify what you expect them to do, even with siege engineers, against a great stone citadel atop sheer cliffs.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what a mountain stronghold does for our evil army when the magical attacks hit. (I was going to comment that you're just waiting for an Enlarged Cloudkill to wipe out your garrison and work its way into the mines below, but everyone's over 6 Hit Dice...)

The fortress also features a magma lake deep underground, as well as extensive ruby, silver, and iron mines.

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Hmm...how can this be used against our evil army? Those damnable Vallorean wizards might summon elementals within our own mines... (I could've sworn elementals were easier to summon and more powerful near large bodies of their own element. Can't find anything though...)

The fortress also guards two large cities...

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This seems to be the real issue. We can't sit back and defend our mountain fortress. We have to sally forth and defend our lands.

Greetings!

Yes, mmadsen, those *damnable* Valloreans! I might also explain that this is an upcoming scenario for the group in one campaign I'm in. This group have characters that they have been playing for over three years of *Real* time. They were originally characters using the Rolemaster system, and when 3E came out, I decided to change systems, and we converted the characters over to 3E D&D. It was imperfect for quite awhile, but we have since started several other campaigns.

These player-characters are, now that Epic Level Handbook is out,--able to be properly worked up. These are characters that began the "Going Down The Road To Hell?" episode that I described years back, here in a huge thread. I think it was somewhere near 200 posts. Thus, as may be recalled, the evil kingdom ruled by a terrible Vampire King, Lord Mallenar, who is thousands of years old, and incredibly powerful--invaded several southern provinces in the Vallorean Empire. The party led and orchestrated a four-year campaign that led to the invading Galleran armies being defeated, and thrown out of Vallorea. The party then led the assault forces of the Vallorean Empire that began a great invasion of the Kingdom of Galleran. From that point on, the Valloreans proceeded to conquer perhaps 12 enemy cities, and a vast area of territory. Each city had a population of at least 500,000 people. Several had over one million people. The slaughter and death was everywhere.

Gradually, over the next ten years, the Valloreans have established a strong presence in the Occupied Territories. However, Lord Mallenar is a patient foe, and even now has led armies to recapture two cities that had been under Vallorean occupation for over four years. His power is growing, even as the Valloreans recruit more armies themselves.

The party are composed of characters that are between 30th and 60th level, with numerous cohorts and followers from 15th to 20th level. Thus, the Player-characters can certainly expect to be formidable. In addition, as some may recall, the Vallorean Legions are the best trained, most disciplined, and perhaps the best equipped army anywhere in the West. They have enchanted communication helmets, as well as excellent weapons and equipment. The Valloreans have also spent a great deal of energy, wealth, and resources into equipping the Legions with effective enchanted resources to allow for greater food, water, and healing supply. As many suggested in the time when the Vallorean Empire first invaded this evil, wicked land, the Valloreans and the various players have invested in detail for anti-vampire operations, as well as anti-lycanthrope forces. The Valloreans have special assault groups that specifically track and hunt down vampires wherever they are. Likewise, every Company in a Vallorean Legion have access to various supplies and equipment to detect, see, pursue, and fight invisible and undead attackers.

As for aerial forces, the Valloreans can expect to field units of Pegasus-cavalry, as well as Griffon-Assault troops. There are also enchanted Giant Eagles that have been known to land groups of flying commandos who often soften up the landing area with several Meteor Swarms, followed by globes of exploding Daylight. They also have enchanted globes of Holy Water, as well as specially prepared equipment.

Thus, here is I hope some more details.

This is great!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

At some point there will be a huge battle involving lots of epic spells, etc. Most of the action will be spent leading up to this epic battle. Where is the enemies wizards o' death and where are mine, etc. I think softening up the enemy with small assults over a long period of time will be pretty useful.

Well, each Vampire can call forth 3d6 (call it 10) Wolves 1/day. If there are 600 vampires you can realistically summon 6,000 wolves every day to attack and invade the enemy. Different times from different directions, but still lots of harrasement every day. The Werewolves would make great wolf captains with their empathy. Anyhow, a suicide force of 6000 wolves every day can wear down the rank and file - heck it can wear down anyone. Granted, they'll make short work of them but it's still precious arrows, spells, and occasionally men that are wasted. Even if they can fight Vampires I'm going to assume that their coffins are well protected, so that's even more forces that don't need to be as careful.

Lets say a group of 10th level wizards have secreted themselves in a hidden part of the fortress that's well guarded. It's reasonable to assume they have some powerful ritual that they all need to concentrate to maintain. None of them can memorize any spells for the day, but they all concentrate on maintaining the one spell. They could affect weather over the whole of the nation, blizzards, massive fog clouds, rain, etc. This should slow down enemy movement, and make it harder to communicate. Even if they have communication equipment, if you only see 20 guys next to you because of heavy fog hearing a thousand wolves in the woods will be MUCH scarier. A higher level group could use similiar spells to make the whole woods under the effect of an entangle spell, which would similiarly slow down the campaign.

How high is your technology level? Landmine type objects or spells might be nice. Explosive runes triggered to go off when people pass or disturb and object (like a stone in the road) are nice.

A repeating Symbol (the spell) of various effects on paths leading to town are nice.

Personally I like massive spells that affect the whole region, it's my cup o' tea and it exists in my campaign. Ritualistic magic is nice. If it doesn't exist in your world then figureing out why it's happening (once you determine it's more then a control weather spell) and stopping it can become the focus of lots of nice campaign hooks.

Heavy use of illusions are good, sure the captains might have true seeing and be yelling orders, but the common soldier still sees an army of giants coming after him along with wolves and might break.

If they have "unlimited" reinforements ruining the morale of the enemy might be your best bet.

As far as defending the town, you said they're situated behind your citadel right? Are they loyal to you? You could always use the higher level monsters and humans to defend the Citadel with magic, etc. Hide an elite group of your humans in the towns, if the enemies try to take the town then wait until they're in town and pull a Stalingrad on them and never let them out. If the town is well defended use Hobgoblins in town to be the anvil, and a large portion of humans to sweep down from the moutain as the hammer. They should be decimated.

If you could do up a quick MS Paint map it would be helpful...