High level charecters in battle: the Air Power analogy

[philreed]

Get your remaining mage to open a Gate to hell. Leave it open and see what wanders in.

Always fun for a Saturday night!

 

[Staffan]

Druids, flying? Unlikely. They'll probably want to wildshape into an elemental and beatdown eventually.

It's not like druid's can't fly. Just wildshape into a bird - or at high levels, an air elemental.

 

[Snowy]

If you've got a high level druid, they don'y even need to be flying, with control weather being a 3 mile radius you can have most of the enemy army dead of exposure/lightning/drowning in flash floods before they can even get near enough to see you.

The point about the limitations of teh comparison between a high level character and air support is true, high level characters can do so much more! A high level caster with some prep time can be their own army every slot set out for summoning (plus some buffs to protect you as always) and you've got an army of critters. Again be a druid and you don't even need the prep time, spontaneous armys of elementals, mmmm tasty goodness.

 

[TerraDave]

All very interesting.

I should note the airpower analogy is quite broad. It does include intelligence gathering (the original use of aircraft in battle) and troop delivery at key points. But it is also a question of the extent to which HLC is a compliment to ground (or sea) forces, and to which point is it a replacement.

A few things. One is "cost effectiveness". E.g. what is going to be the ratio of high level druids to wariors. I could imagine campaigns where a kindgom might be able to call up one 14th level druid, and several thousand warriors...And given that, how do you want to use that druid?

The other is counter measures. Lets say your are a party of PCs with an army cobled togther to stop some advancing horde. You know that the other side has some casters, what do you do to stop them?

 

[A'koss]

I should note the airpower analogy is quite broad. It does include intelligence gathering (the original use of aircraft in battle) and troop delivery at key points. But it is also a question of the extent to which HLC is a compliment to ground (or sea) forces, and to which point is it a replacement.

"Air power" is just an ill-fit IMO... Air power cannot dominate enemy forces to do your bidding, control the weather, sneak into enemy encampments, read people's minds, etc... Running straight out with an "army" is viable so long as at least one side cannot bring HLers into the battle. If at least one side can, then go win the war first before bringing in the slow-moving army.

A few things. One is "cost effectiveness". E.g. what is going to be the ratio of high level druids to wariors. I could imagine campaigns where a kindgom might be able to call up one 14th level druid, and several thousand warriors...And given that, how do you want to use that druid?

Is that 14th level Druid the only HLer the entire kingdom can muster to defend it? There are no other HLers in the service of the kingdom or in it's cities? No other heroes in the land to defend it?

The other is counter measures. Lets say your are a party of PCs with an army cobled togther to stop some advancing horde. You know that the other side has some casters, what do you do to stop them?

IMO, your targets are the same, no matter how you go about it - kill/neutralize the opposing HLers, then stomp the army into the dirt. However, part of your plan against enemy HLers might begin with attacking supply lines, etc. to draw them out. Investigate/Isolate/Eliminate is often a good way to approach it. How you go about it of course will depend on a host of factors including what you got, what they got and how much time you have.

Again, IMO, you wouldn't see the army in a real war until the HLers have effectively won it. Armies are for peace-keeping. Travelling with an army, HLers are actually more vulnerable to attack, they have to defend a lot more than just themselves...

 

[kigmatzomat]

I think this is the reason IMC I keep the kingdoms small. Any HLC can take and reasonably hold a couple dozen square miles. So you end up with all these little pocket kingdoms with two or three quite distressingly powerful entities and the couple of hundred villagers that they've gathered in some small area.

Think of Baba Yaga, Koschkei, Dracula, the Oracle Delphi, Morrigan, and the dragon (of Dragonslayer). Each had a domain that was mostly inviolate because it was too expensive to fight over the small amount of land involved.

Kings only fight these creatures when they take land or when they are exceptionally good and have nothing better to do than pick fights with monsters.

It's apparently a brutal, harsh world I run.

 

[S'mon]

Sounds cool, Kigmat - you ever seen the Fist of the North Star anime? That had exactly this setup, with lone HLCs commanding small kingdoms with mook 'show armies' there merely to cheer them on as they duelled the neighbouring kingdom's HLC.

 

[A'koss]

I think this is the reason IMC I keep the kingdoms small. Any HLC can take and reasonably hold a couple dozen square miles. So you end up with all these little pocket kingdoms with two or three quite distressingly powerful entities and the couple of hundred villagers that they've gathered in some small area.

Cool... This is a lot like how civilizations have grown IMC. The major hubs are city-states which are located in easily defensible regions and ruled over by individuals/groups intelligent & powerful enough to hold them. Outposts and caravans are well-defended and you won't find isolated villages scattered across the countryside - too dangerous, even in my scarce-magic world.

 

[gizmo33]

What about medium and low level characters? Is it just about mooks vs. 20th level? Maybe a unit of 100 horse-archers is attached to a group of low level characters that moves ahead of them, finds the enemy wizard, and sets off a flare. A few medium-level fighters on griffons with glitterdust bombs? I would think a goblin army of 50,000 is not just a bunch of standard 1st level goblins.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Well, I don't want to have an army of 50,000 anything marching anywhere. They would be locusts, devouring everything they came across and leaving a wake of devastation that would take years to recover from. The economic damage from an army that pays for its food is horrific enough just from the inflation, let alone if they were pillaging, looting goblins. 50,000 goblins would be the kind of invasion that would have Baba Yaga and Koschei fighting next to the cossacks, assuming they didn't just up and leave.

And no, for the record, my armies are not 1st level fighters. They average peasant2/wr1 or peasant3. Armies are generally conscripts. In lands with decent militias they are peasant2/wr1, otherwise adult farmers are peasant3. This accounts for about 75% of the army. The remaining 25% are the trained guards (wr4-8) and knights (f3-12) who spend several months a year as professional soldiers.

Of course by the SRD an army of 50,000 goblins is more than 50,000 warrior1s. The official breakdown would be about 47000 wr1, 2000 wr3, 500 wr5, 200 wr7 with the other 300 sprinkled in there. It would be reasonable to say there's also 10 wr9, 5wr11, 2 wr13 and 1wr15, but that's extrapolation and not official rules.
I'd take that 300 and turn at least half of them into casters (clerics and adepts) with quite a few of the rest being rogues.