KrazyHades
First Post
How about this: sacrifice all the 10,000 people in the army to summon a ton of Balors 
EDIT: as in, cut a deal with them for the 10000 lives
EDIT: as in, cut a deal with them for the 10000 lives
Military tactics vs. high-level spellcasters
painandgreed
First Post
KrazyHades said:How about this: sacrifice all the 10,000 people in the army to summon a ton of Balors
EDIT: as in, cut a deal with them for the 10000 lives
Because I think that's like offering Trump 10,000 pennies to drop what he's doing and become your personal accountant.
"Excuse me all of you incredible powerful creature likened unto demi-gods, could you ingore the armies you're commanding and your plane invading schemes to come be my person lacky for table scraps?"
Tzarevitch
First Post
Here are some possibilities for the assault.
1. Weather control: Low clouds are what you need. Ground fog is even better. You need to reduce visibility so that airborne mages aren't a problem.
Wind works too as long as debris can be kicked up to obscure visibility. Rain is bad. It cuts the wizard's visibility but it cuts the army's mobility too and invites disease. Range is not your friend as much as it is his. You don't need to see that well to find the castle walls.
Battlefield smoke is the low-tech version. Burn everything you can find. You wand thick oil or coal fires if you can get them. Burn the town surrounding the casle. Start your fires upwind of the castle if possible but make sure your army is under it as much as possible.
Also, nighttime is your friend. Unless they have low-light vision, they won't be able to see nearly as well in the dark. It's not much but every bit helps.
2. Sappers: The tunneling idea that people have suggested is even better than weather control but more expensive. If you come in underground the enemy has no easy way of preventing you from approaching. You need some relatively rapid way of tunneling though (umber hulks, purple worms etc.). You can either undermine the walls or tunnel straight up into the castle.
3 Assassination: If you don't have assassins of decent level, don't try this. You want rogue-types who can be stealthy (not simply invisible). Mages can deal with the invisible just fine. Simple spot checks are difficult. Unless they are all sleeping in fortified communal barracks you should be able to get at least a couple of wizards. The trick will likely not work more than once or twice but it will force them to sleep lightly and take better precautions.
4. If it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander: The army may not have as many high level casters as the castle does but it must have some. Faerie Fire is worth its weight in gold. If a mage uncloakes to shoot, it may the last thing he does. It is also a 1st level spell with long range. Use your magic to rain destruction into the castle. You may not have as much, but you are also aiming at a static position and he has fewer defenders.
If you have a budget for a high-level scroll or 2, I recommend Earthquake. The spell will wreak havoc on the walls.
5. Combat Air Patrol: Have patrols fly CAP over your force. Make the air dangerous for his wizards. Air elementals are great for this. Invisible stakers are even better as they are naturally invisible AND can naturally fly.
Non magical airborne cavalry is also good (griffon-riders, wyvern-riders etc.) for CAP. Due to wingspan, they won't ever be close enough together for more than 1 or 2 to be hit by a fireball. They should also use heavily poisoned arrows (use a sleep or incapacitating poison). Manticores are wonderful cap due to the volley of spikes they can fire. Creatures with range attacks generally are better (assuming they are intelligent enough to follow orders).
6. Special Forces: Fliers, Umber Hulks, invisible stalkers and manticores have already been mentioned.
Golems are wonderful as well. Wizards have to come to ray spell range to engage them because of their magic immunity. Stone golems have a difficult spell vulnerability for the enemy to employ. Iron and flesh golems can be incapacitated by simple elemental attacks so beware of using them.
Earth elementals can simply earth glide into the castle unless it is very well sealed, and they are very tough.
7. Disease: This one is historical. Lob or fly diseased animals and corpses into the castle. Force the wizards to expend resources to do something about it. Note, they WILL do something about it and note that disease works both ways. You however can move. He can't. If you can find the water source or food storage, take it out.
Hope those give you ideas.
Tzarevitch
1. Weather control: Low clouds are what you need. Ground fog is even better. You need to reduce visibility so that airborne mages aren't a problem.
Wind works too as long as debris can be kicked up to obscure visibility. Rain is bad. It cuts the wizard's visibility but it cuts the army's mobility too and invites disease. Range is not your friend as much as it is his. You don't need to see that well to find the castle walls.
Battlefield smoke is the low-tech version. Burn everything you can find. You wand thick oil or coal fires if you can get them. Burn the town surrounding the casle. Start your fires upwind of the castle if possible but make sure your army is under it as much as possible.
Also, nighttime is your friend. Unless they have low-light vision, they won't be able to see nearly as well in the dark. It's not much but every bit helps.
2. Sappers: The tunneling idea that people have suggested is even better than weather control but more expensive. If you come in underground the enemy has no easy way of preventing you from approaching. You need some relatively rapid way of tunneling though (umber hulks, purple worms etc.). You can either undermine the walls or tunnel straight up into the castle.
3 Assassination: If you don't have assassins of decent level, don't try this. You want rogue-types who can be stealthy (not simply invisible). Mages can deal with the invisible just fine. Simple spot checks are difficult. Unless they are all sleeping in fortified communal barracks you should be able to get at least a couple of wizards. The trick will likely not work more than once or twice but it will force them to sleep lightly and take better precautions.
4. If it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander: The army may not have as many high level casters as the castle does but it must have some. Faerie Fire is worth its weight in gold. If a mage uncloakes to shoot, it may the last thing he does. It is also a 1st level spell with long range. Use your magic to rain destruction into the castle. You may not have as much, but you are also aiming at a static position and he has fewer defenders.
If you have a budget for a high-level scroll or 2, I recommend Earthquake. The spell will wreak havoc on the walls.
5. Combat Air Patrol: Have patrols fly CAP over your force. Make the air dangerous for his wizards. Air elementals are great for this. Invisible stakers are even better as they are naturally invisible AND can naturally fly.
Non magical airborne cavalry is also good (griffon-riders, wyvern-riders etc.) for CAP. Due to wingspan, they won't ever be close enough together for more than 1 or 2 to be hit by a fireball. They should also use heavily poisoned arrows (use a sleep or incapacitating poison). Manticores are wonderful cap due to the volley of spikes they can fire. Creatures with range attacks generally are better (assuming they are intelligent enough to follow orders).
6. Special Forces: Fliers, Umber Hulks, invisible stalkers and manticores have already been mentioned.
Golems are wonderful as well. Wizards have to come to ray spell range to engage them because of their magic immunity. Stone golems have a difficult spell vulnerability for the enemy to employ. Iron and flesh golems can be incapacitated by simple elemental attacks so beware of using them.
Earth elementals can simply earth glide into the castle unless it is very well sealed, and they are very tough.
7. Disease: This one is historical. Lob or fly diseased animals and corpses into the castle. Force the wizards to expend resources to do something about it. Note, they WILL do something about it and note that disease works both ways. You however can move. He can't. If you can find the water source or food storage, take it out.
Hope those give you ideas.
Tzarevitch
Military tactics
The issue appears to be one in which we would benefit from a comparison to modern day warfare tactics.
Your clear tactical advantage is numbers.
Your tactical disadvantage is arms/firepower.
I believe in D&D terms you must either escalate your firepower like an arms race, or you must resort to unconventional warfare tactics.
Some random examples:
Use magic missiles and fireballs like anti aircraft. The best defense is a pre-emptive and effective offense.
Use untradional tactics to gain access and set the battlefield terms, such as tunneling, teleportation, gates, trickery (gain audience by invitation!), misdirection (invisibility, illusion, cover).
Use untradional armed forces, think small groups of assassins or special forces running very quick in/out missions to pick off their firepower one at a time.
Or, depending on the alignment of the army, use far more sinister r tacics, such as blatant terrorizing and fear mongering. Turn their subjects against them through domination, poison, disease, or turn them into your own undad strikeforce!
I hope these ideas helped. Good gaming!
The issue appears to be one in which we would benefit from a comparison to modern day warfare tactics.
Your clear tactical advantage is numbers.
Your tactical disadvantage is arms/firepower.
I believe in D&D terms you must either escalate your firepower like an arms race, or you must resort to unconventional warfare tactics.
Some random examples:
Use magic missiles and fireballs like anti aircraft. The best defense is a pre-emptive and effective offense.
Use untradional tactics to gain access and set the battlefield terms, such as tunneling, teleportation, gates, trickery (gain audience by invitation!), misdirection (invisibility, illusion, cover).
Use untradional armed forces, think small groups of assassins or special forces running very quick in/out missions to pick off their firepower one at a time.
Or, depending on the alignment of the army, use far more sinister r tacics, such as blatant terrorizing and fear mongering. Turn their subjects against them through domination, poison, disease, or turn them into your own undad strikeforce!
I hope these ideas helped. Good gaming!
Monstrosity
First Post
Ankhegs could be trained to create tunnels. Iron Golems, while expensive, would be devastating.
Okay, you don't care about salvaging/looting anything from the fortress, but you do need to eliminate it as a resource.
Earth Elementals and Water Elementals. Put the Earth Elementals to work deep beneath the Fortress, in the bedrock the Fortress sits on. Have them riddle that area with cracks and cavities. Then have the Water Elementals get to work adding to the damage the Earth Elementals are doing.
Ideally, summon a few Thoqqua as well and send them into the same area... when the red-hot Thoqqua hit those water pockets, there'll be a lot of high pressure steam, which will further weaken the bedrock.
Your spellcasters can do this and still be close enough by the simple expedient of being fishermen... the mages won't really pay attention unless the summoning is really flashy.
You do this during the month that your army is marching to the fortress, distracting the wizards.
If the wizards notice what's going on underneath, they'll be distracted from hitting your army. If the wizards focus on the army, they'll be ignoring the undermining attempt. If they try for both, then you've got a great opportunity to pick off some of the mages as they attack the army without sufficient numbers.
Send some of your army by sea; this can serve as another distraction. However, the sea-borne groups will probably be more vulnerable, so this might not be a great idea.
Earth Elementals and Water Elementals. Put the Earth Elementals to work deep beneath the Fortress, in the bedrock the Fortress sits on. Have them riddle that area with cracks and cavities. Then have the Water Elementals get to work adding to the damage the Earth Elementals are doing.
Ideally, summon a few Thoqqua as well and send them into the same area... when the red-hot Thoqqua hit those water pockets, there'll be a lot of high pressure steam, which will further weaken the bedrock.
Your spellcasters can do this and still be close enough by the simple expedient of being fishermen... the mages won't really pay attention unless the summoning is really flashy.
You do this during the month that your army is marching to the fortress, distracting the wizards.
If the wizards notice what's going on underneath, they'll be distracted from hitting your army. If the wizards focus on the army, they'll be ignoring the undermining attempt. If they try for both, then you've got a great opportunity to pick off some of the mages as they attack the army without sufficient numbers.
Send some of your army by sea; this can serve as another distraction. However, the sea-borne groups will probably be more vulnerable, so this might not be a great idea.
HeavenShallBurn
First Post
I know it may seem arrogant to quote yourself but these are very important points that don't appear to have been considered.
To reiterate it seems almost everyone is either assuming a stance of either purely local defense around the castle itself or defense through intercepting fist techniques against the advancing army. These are only a tiny portion of the strategic and tactical options available to the wizards who are all mid-high level and can be assumed to be extremely intelligent. They will not focus solely on the obvious and ignore these other options.
This is the most crucial advantage they possess over the advancing force. Even assuming an ideal TOC and command structure commanding 10,000 soldiers as a single operation is extremely difficult even in relatively close quarters read some accounts of civil war battles for an idea what the unwieldiness is like. Even at optimum the opfor will react and plan at a disadvantage due simply to size.
Whereas the wizards in question are assuming a flattened average 20 spellcasters of 11th level. There are only a few of them and they all presumably have access to basic communication spells that effectively mimic the abilities of modern communication devices. They are small in number with massive individual resources and extremely high intelligence. Operating as a small dispersed unit using the advantage of their command of magic this force modify and implement plans almost instantly.
This is only one of a myriad possible strategies available to the wizards, the key is the flexibility of response their individual power and small numbers give them. To reiterate the castle is not a static defensive position, not even a base, it's a LURE.
Any defensive position may be reduced given the proper resources and time. Especially with the resources available in a fantasy setting. The purpose of the castle and its defenses is that gathering the resources required to bring offensive action against it will be a visible effort that cannot be hidden from an alert high-level wizard looking for signs of enemy activity. By focusing attention on the means to attack them a hostile reveals his intentions to watching eyes.
The wizards themselves are a highly mobile threat. With the time lag even assuming they only have that month to prepare all non-expendable resources can be distributed across a range beyond the ability to directly assault. Now that castle is nothing more than a means of bleeding resources from a hostile force. The question is not how they will stop the army, by now they don't particularly care about the army, it's a non critical target. But the enemy has now expended huge resources in offense at the expense of maintaining a defensive force. Every soldier marching out to attack is no longer available for defense. Now with their own resources well distributed and the castle to serve as a lure for the marching army and its support forces the wizards will themselves take the offensive against the heavily committed enemy heartland.
While your army is marching toward a lure they will blight your crops, spread disease. Attack high profile targets for shock effect. In short they will ruin the nation sending the force behind it both cutting off future support of the mobile force and removing the imminent threat. All the time using their magic-assisted mobility and firepower to rapidly bounce around causing chaos, panic, and disorder on a widespread basis then smashing valuable targets using the disruption caused by earlier strikes as a force multiplier.
After having destroyed the offensive capability of the hostile power behind the attack the wizards will probably only harass the enemy columns sparingly. Why? Because they WANT the enemy to spend lives like water assaulting a fixed defense on negligible value to them. They will allow the enemy to successfully destroy or take the castle after inflicting the highest practical causalties for the minimum acceptable loss.
Now the enemy will eventually have to make a choice. Do they attempt to occupy the land surrounding the castle or do they return home. If they occupy the lands surrounding the castle their name is meat. Cut off from support from home(which is now largely destroyed behind them) they will be ground down in a magic driven insurgency, a far more troublesome phenomena than the mundane kind. Assuming they return home harassment will likely be the minimum necessary to avoid creating suspicion in command circles (and with their resources they will likely have a way to know what is being said in those circles that doesn't involve scrying). But the army will find its home in tatters behind it and be forced to dispurse in order to put the kingdom back into order. At which point it once again becomes an insurgency but in this case an offensive rather than primarily reactive insurgency.
Even assuming a seige is carried out and is succesful in destroying the castle and slaughtering its inhabitants those will be the expendable inhabitants and resources. Meanwhile in the process the high-level wizards will inflict non-sustainable casualties that will cripple your future ability to defend yourself. In a short time the nation that tries this tactic will have ceased to exist.
In short any conventional threat of this sort is just plained. It's like the D&D version of Napoleon's Russian Invasion.
HeavenShallBurn said:
To reiterate it seems almost everyone is either assuming a stance of either purely local defense around the castle itself or defense through intercepting fist techniques against the advancing army. These are only a tiny portion of the strategic and tactical options available to the wizards who are all mid-high level and can be assumed to be extremely intelligent. They will not focus solely on the obvious and ignore these other options.
This is the most crucial advantage they possess over the advancing force. Even assuming an ideal TOC and command structure commanding 10,000 soldiers as a single operation is extremely difficult even in relatively close quarters read some accounts of civil war battles for an idea what the unwieldiness is like. Even at optimum the opfor will react and plan at a disadvantage due simply to size.
Whereas the wizards in question are assuming a flattened average 20 spellcasters of 11th level. There are only a few of them and they all presumably have access to basic communication spells that effectively mimic the abilities of modern communication devices. They are small in number with massive individual resources and extremely high intelligence. Operating as a small dispersed unit using the advantage of their command of magic this force modify and implement plans almost instantly.
This is only one of a myriad possible strategies available to the wizards, the key is the flexibility of response their individual power and small numbers give them. To reiterate the castle is not a static defensive position, not even a base, it's a LURE.
Any defensive position may be reduced given the proper resources and time. Especially with the resources available in a fantasy setting. The purpose of the castle and its defenses is that gathering the resources required to bring offensive action against it will be a visible effort that cannot be hidden from an alert high-level wizard looking for signs of enemy activity. By focusing attention on the means to attack them a hostile reveals his intentions to watching eyes.
The wizards themselves are a highly mobile threat. With the time lag even assuming they only have that month to prepare all non-expendable resources can be distributed across a range beyond the ability to directly assault. Now that castle is nothing more than a means of bleeding resources from a hostile force. The question is not how they will stop the army, by now they don't particularly care about the army, it's a non critical target. But the enemy has now expended huge resources in offense at the expense of maintaining a defensive force. Every soldier marching out to attack is no longer available for defense. Now with their own resources well distributed and the castle to serve as a lure for the marching army and its support forces the wizards will themselves take the offensive against the heavily committed enemy heartland.
While your army is marching toward a lure they will blight your crops, spread disease. Attack high profile targets for shock effect. In short they will ruin the nation sending the force behind it both cutting off future support of the mobile force and removing the imminent threat. All the time using their magic-assisted mobility and firepower to rapidly bounce around causing chaos, panic, and disorder on a widespread basis then smashing valuable targets using the disruption caused by earlier strikes as a force multiplier.
After having destroyed the offensive capability of the hostile power behind the attack the wizards will probably only harass the enemy columns sparingly. Why? Because they WANT the enemy to spend lives like water assaulting a fixed defense on negligible value to them. They will allow the enemy to successfully destroy or take the castle after inflicting the highest practical causalties for the minimum acceptable loss.
Now the enemy will eventually have to make a choice. Do they attempt to occupy the land surrounding the castle or do they return home. If they occupy the lands surrounding the castle their name is meat. Cut off from support from home(which is now largely destroyed behind them) they will be ground down in a magic driven insurgency, a far more troublesome phenomena than the mundane kind. Assuming they return home harassment will likely be the minimum necessary to avoid creating suspicion in command circles (and with their resources they will likely have a way to know what is being said in those circles that doesn't involve scrying). But the army will find its home in tatters behind it and be forced to dispurse in order to put the kingdom back into order. At which point it once again becomes an insurgency but in this case an offensive rather than primarily reactive insurgency.
Even assuming a seige is carried out and is succesful in destroying the castle and slaughtering its inhabitants those will be the expendable inhabitants and resources. Meanwhile in the process the high-level wizards will inflict non-sustainable casualties that will cripple your future ability to defend yourself. In a short time the nation that tries this tactic will have ceased to exist.
In short any conventional threat of this sort is just plain
ed. It's like the D&D version of Napoleon's Russian Invasion.BTW an interesting conflict might be ONE Wiz-11 defending a castle with his 500 men against the 10,000-man invasion. That's the kind of scenario I might run IMC. 20 Wiz-11s is just silly, in reality it's unlikely the enemy would ever have been able to muster against them in the first place because the Wizzes would already have wiped them out! Even sillier that it takes a MONTH to reach the castle! That kind of thing - march 500 miles, siege & capture a castle with 500 guards - would be a huge logistical feat for the army accomplish even without a single wizard to deal with.
Kestrel
Explorer
The only way to make it feasible for the large army to be a threat is to place some severe restrictions on the wizards. Maybe they are protecting something within the castle that requires constant upkeep? (Im suddenly thinking of the Hatch in Lost). This would focus thier attention inwards and keep them from reacting to the army until its too late. Even when the army arrives, they will be too tired from devoting energies to the MacGuffin to fully engage the forces. The stationary nature of the MacGuffin would require them to stay in the castle as well, keeping them from simply fleeing.
Joshua Randall
Legend
I really like this idea from an adventure design point of view. You could put the players on either side, and it would be a challenge.S'mon said:
In fact, the single-Wiz-plus-500-troops is a much more interesting scenario than either the original one (20 mid-to-high level Wiz plus troops) or the second one (ditto, but big army also has Wiz). In either of those cases, the normal troops are essentially irrelevant, and it becomes a battle of the mages.
Reduce the number of spellcasters involved to the bare minimum, and the troops can actually play a role in the outcome.
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