Greetings!
mmu1:
Well, others have made some excellent commentary and offered some good advice. I would say the following:
(1) Good Intelligence/Aggressive Scouting Operations
The party should be using their magical intelligence and information gathering abilitites at all times. The party needs to deploy a system of aggressive scouting, with scouts always to the front, rear, and flanks, scouting out ambushes and enemy positions. Armed with this knowledge, the party can take evasive action as necessary, or set up ambushes of their own. As a corallary to this, the party should use camoflauge, subterfuge, and deception to the best of their abilities. The enemy should be dealing with fog, smoke, unusual sounds, mirrored images, and forces that appear to be going in one direction, then doubling back and setting up ambushes. The enemy should be somewhat in the dark about exactly how many of the party there are, where they are at any given moment, and where they might be going.
(2) Tactics/ Advanced Training
The party should rehearse their main tactical deployments, spell menus, and formations. They should have choreographed routines that kick in with machine-like precision at the sight of various enemy formations and situations. The players need to have drills down as to who ambushes, who attacks spellcasters, who attacks/delays the enemy fighters, and so on, and have it down so that the party maximizes their available firepower at precise points. For example, have several archers in the group all agree to concentrate their archery fire--all of them--against one enemy spellcaster at a time, until the spellcasters are dead. Imagine four archers firing three or four arrows per round at *one* enemy spellcaster, each and every round. In general experience, enemy spellcasters are going to go down pretty fast under such a deluge of fire. Once the spellcasters are eliminated, the party's own spellcasters can also focus on enemy heavy forces, and the party's archers can now also shift their fire against enemy fighters as well, in focused, concentrated barrages that dish out punishing damage that just can't be avoided or healed fast enough. Party clerics should be at the ready to cast available healing spells at their own friendly fighters and wizards as needed. The clerics need to heal and move, heal and move. The clerics should not stay in any one place too long, and should also be invisible and mirror imaged where possible, as they move about healing their own party members. In addition, the clerics should have a few Flame Strikes and Blade Barriers ready to cast in combat in between healing missions, as well as being aware of any opportunities where they might be able to double up on an enemy and make a decisive strike.
(3) Recruit Additional Forces
The party should at this level, have appropriate resources to hire or attract numerous cohorts, followers, mercenaries, and animal companions. Having several Dire Wolves, Dire Lions, or Dire Tigers constantly moving about and pouncing on enemy forces can be surprisingly effective!
In addition, even if the cohorts and followers are say, 6th-10th level, they can be effective. Make sure the party equips them as good as possible, and use them aggressively! That doesn't mean of course that they throw their lives away, but deploy them aggressively! Send columns of heavy infantry against enemy formations; use groups of well-equipped archers to serve as mobile tactical artillery, showering enemy positions and important characters with dozens of arrows; deploy several squads of plate-armoured, halberd wielding soldiers, to form hedgehogs and porcupine defenses for the enemy fighters to get cought up in, as your groups of archers and wizards pummel them with archery fire and magic atacks, relentlessly killing them.
The use of dogs, leopards, boars, as well as even small ballistas can be useful. In addition, make sure the party also uses lots of mundane equipment in their operations. One alchemist globe may not be very effective. Try throwing a sack of twenty of them at the enemy, or a bag of holding filled with razor sharp caltrops, or develop a sack loaded with a few alchemist globes, a Blast Orb, and several pounds of sharpened nails. Such simple weaponry, used en masse, and aggressively, can provide the enemy forces with a much bloodier experience. The players should organize their forces, and make ruthless raids into the enemy encampments, slaughtering and terrorizing the enemy at every opportunity. The Drow must be taught what it means to know FEAR. Strike and move, strike and move. The party must use manuever warfare principles against the enemy--by using fly, dimension door, teleport, swimming, or simply by marching at the double, with little rest. The goal is to keep the enemy reacting to what the party did *last* leaving the party free to attack somewhere new and in a new way somewhere else. This aggressive tactic sets up a rhythm where the enemy is always kept off balance, and reacting. If the enemy is always *reacting* they can't be in the position of *acting* on their own, causing the party to react to *them*. This lack of initiative can be pressed against the enemy in many different ways, which all add up to the party leveraging against the enemy, and ultimately defeating the enemy or causing them to retreat from the field of battle in detail.
Furthermore, the party needs to coordinate the recruitment and concentration of reinforcments on a constant basis--troops and cohorts will die, and the party needs to set up a force-deployment system where they have a constant flow of reinforcments and troops arriving, and then deploying these forces in both concentrated assaults, but also in diversionary and decpetion operations, keeping the enemy dispersed and spread out trying to deal with several different threats, and being prevented from acting in a decisive manner against any one threat.
Does this help?
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Thanks all the same, though.
