D&D and war

[TerraDave]

Point re high level Fighters - in high level D&D it seems to always even out that every mook gets on average 1 blow before dying, so you can easily calculate how many mooks the Fighter will kill in melee before he has to withdraw, based on his hit points. If the mooks do average 6 damage, hit on a 20, and Fighter has 240 hp, he will kill 800 before they reduce him to 0hp.

Hmm. Its going to be a lot easier to find 800 warriors then one 20th level fighter

 

[A'koss]

I think some of you aren't really taking into consideration the amount of magic even a fighter can bring to the war. When I was running high level 3e games, the Fighters-types typically had access to Improved Invisibility, flight, healing, displacement, DR, fear, teleportation and more all on thier own. When you go up against an army you put the right people to the right task. Out in the open, let the spellcasters attack them at night with invisibility, flight and indirect attacks so as not to reveal their location. Isolate groups of soldiers for the fighter-types to wipe out (Walls of X are good for this, even Web in certain areas).

A powerful wizard with improved invisibility, flight and attacking by night (out of range of infravision) can use all kinds of magic on armies with utter impunity so long as none of it originates from his location. Wand of Cloudkill perhaps? Earthquake? Weather Control? Summoned Monsters? Gate in some uber beastie to do the work for you? The possibilities are endless.

And remember that you have to actually get the armies from point A to point B and without HL support of their own, it would likely be a futile effort.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I held a large tract of land all by myself last night.

IYKWIMAITYD.

Just one?

 

[S'mon]

I think some of you aren't really taking into consideration the amount of magic even a fighter can bring to the war.

I'm well aware of this - in my experience a group of high level PCs with a mix of classes can defeat a mundane army of a couple of thousand in a single day, if the army is the attacker. They could probably defeat an army of 8,000 in 3-4 days tops. That assumes the high level PCs are defending against eg an orc incursion. It's completely different if the PCs are attacking the orcs in their home caves though; a well dug in orc host of even 500 in their home lair can give 20th level PCs pause for thought, 8,000 with a reasonable smattering of leaders, low-level spellcasters and guard beasts (trolls, dire wolves etc) could well kill the PCs if they were incautious, as high level PCs tend to be when facing such 'trivial' threats.

 

[S'mon]

Hmm. Its going to be a lot easier to find 800 warriors then one 20th level fighter

In practice though you need another 800 behind the first 800 to stop the guys in front running away... If you're the mooks, Power Attack is definitely your friend here. Eg Orc War-1 STR 17 w great axe and power attack does 1d12+6 on a hit, average 12.5 + 10% for x3 crits is about average 14 damage! 10 hits or 200 attacks to kill a 140 hp Fighter, and when he's below about 40 hp the chance of an instant-kill is so high he'll probably want to withdraw. Make the orcs War-4 STR 18 and they do 1d12+14 per hit, average 20.5+10% is about 22 damage per hit!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

And let us not forget that the other side is likely to have high level characters as well - the two sides may well cancel each other out hero wise. Wizards in particular might spend a goodly amount of time counterspelling each other. The Scarred Lands even has a (somewhat broken) War Mage prestige class that specializes in such.

The Auld Grump

 

[Hussar]

See, that's the trick. People keep talking about entire parties of 20th level characters. This is something that should be seen maybe once every few centuries or so. Yes, if your campaign is really high level, then masses of 1st level warriors aren't going to be very effective. But, then again, if your campaign is really high level, then you don't get masses of 1st level warriors, you get masses of 5th level warriors. The whole balance shifts upwards if the campaign is set that way.

I wouldn't be so worried about the high level characters anyway. As I said, they should be extremely rare in practice. However, monstrous troops should be seen fairly often. It wouldn't take a tactical genious to realize the advantage of a giant over a catapult. Much higher rate of fire, far greater accuracy and much more mobile. Open up the treasury and hire half a dozen stone giants and you have a pretty effective artillery unit.

Or, within a very short time, a kingdom could build itself a fairly decent array of beasties to use. Remember, these don't take any technical knowhow to create, just some animal husbandry skills. Griffin cavalry, or hippogriff which would be faster and cheaper to assemble, should realistically be fairly standard in any larger country. Anything with a breath weapon becomes a prime candidate for a breeding program as well.

All of these things would not be overly costly to maintain within a kingdom. Hrm, self replicating, intelligent war machines. Every warlord's dream.

 

[S'mon]

Here's a suggested make-up for a typical mundane army of 8000, as you might find IMC. This would be eg an orc horde, not a professional Roman Legion type body.

Spellcasters: 400 (5%)
80 Sorcerers & Wizards: 40 1st 20 2nd 10 3rd 5 4th 3 5th 2 6th
80 Clerics or Druids: Same
240 Adepts: 120 1st 60 2nd 30 3rd 15 4th 8 5th 4 6th 2 7th 1 8th

Warriors/non-spellcasters: 95% - 7600
3800 1st 1900 2nd 950 3rd 475 4th 238 5th 119 6th 59 7th 29 8th 14 9th 7 10th 4 11th 2 12th 1 13th

Around 95% of the non-spellcasters will be Warriors (plus possibly a few Experts), but higher level ones will be increasingly Fighters, Barbarians etc - I reduce level by 1 if PC class, so eg the "59 7th" could be either War-7 or eg Ftr-6.

In practice many armies of 800 will have higher-level PC class spellcasters, if the army warlord is Ftr-12 with good CHA he may well have eg a Sorc-10 cohort. This army may not win against 4 20th level PCs but it will probably be more than a speed-bump.

 

[S'mon]

I agree about monstrous troops - IMC human armies will rarely hire giants, being too afraid of them - stone giants IMC are reclusive and don't normally hire out as mercs. I do have aerial cavalry though; since I nerfed the Fly spell recently it has regained its traditional prominence! Popular mounts IMC are pegasi, hippogriffs, griffins, wyverns and war-dragons (non-spellcasting dragons with increased SR). An orc army of 8000 might well have a small corps of wyvern-riders.

 

[S'mon]

See, that's the trick. People keep talking about entire parties of 20th level characters. This is something that should be seen maybe once every few centuries or so. Yes, if your campaign is really high level, then masses of 1st level warriors aren't going to be very effective. But, then again, if your campaign is really high level, then you don't get masses of 1st level warriors, you get masses of 5th level warriors. The whole balance shifts upwards if the campaign is set that way.

Masses of 5th level warriors aren't actually much more effective vs very high level PCs; they still commonly die in 1 hit & usually only hit on a 20, their main benefit is increased damage via Power Attack. Low-level spellcasters supporting the Warriors make a much bigger difference in my experience - I still recall fondly in my 1e game where 20 1st level orc shamans cast "Command" on Thrin (a virtual demigod) and he rolled a '1' on his 19th save...

In a setting like Greyhawk using the old demographics (eg 1983 boxed set), parties of 20th level will be vanishingly rare*, but parties of 9th-10th level quite common, an army will need to be prepared to deal with such.

Gygax's "Artifact of Evil" has at least 1 battle where Mordenkainen's forces take on Iuz's hordes and you see how mundane troops die in droves before Archmage type power.