Military tactics vs. high-level spellcasters

[painandgreed]

You do know we're talking about wizards, right?

Wizards, in a fortress with meatsheilds is s tought nut to crack. They will be much easier to take down if you force them to attack your defensive postion.

However, seiging wizards over a long time doesn't seem winnable. They can simply fly over every night and dump some AOE spells until they win. If you seige, you have to take them out as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of spells they can apply to your forces. Either you seige and take the castle quickly, or you come in, stay long enough to try and taunt them into a fight outside their castle. Failing that, you destroy the surrounding town and then leave, hoping that enough of the infrastructure has been destroyed to render them less effective. Follow up with frequent raids and naval attacks on ships trading with them until the wizard and his eveil allies win against your country, they sue for peace, or you eventually reduce the castle to the point it is no longer the main threat.

 

[takasi]

Wizards, in a fortress with meatsheilds is s tought nut to crack. They will be much easier to take down if you force them to attack your defensive postion.

Interesting. Could anyone describe the "defensive position" and the blockade, and how you would be better prepared against bombardments from flying invisible high level wizards?

 

[RangerWickett]

Have hundreds of archers on standby to shoot the source of any spell. Having training drills where they try to hit fireball beads right as they come out of the wizard's hand? *grin*

 

[Salthorae]

Interesting. Could anyone describe the "defensive position" and the blockade, and how you would be better prepared against bombardments from flying invisible high level wizards?

I've already said it, though it works just as well for offense as defense (and is a little cost prohibitive)... Antimagic Field items for some or all of the troops. Defended and warded against magic. (only 15,840,000 gp at Market Value for a 3/day 110 min/use AMF device for every 50 troops...more like 66m gp for a continuous AMF for every 20 troops though)

 

[painandgreed]

Interesting. Could anyone describe the "defensive position" and the blockade, and how you would be better prepared against bombardments from flying invisible high level wizards?

Put a skrimish line around the beseiged castle with defensive postions. Place your army about two miles from the castle. Since invisiblity and fly have 1 minute/level duration, given a 15th level wizard your army is pretty much outside his operational range. For the short term, attacks on the skrimishers will not amount to much and will prevent him from sneaking out of his castle before casting said spells. Send small groups to burn the town and pillage the surrounding area. All in all, wizards are pretty nasty in combat against small parties, but in combats with large amounts of troops where distances between forces and travel times are measured in tens of minutes if not hours, wizards are fairly ineffective due to the 3E nerfed spell durations. You might not stop him, but you can minimize losses and prepare to take advantage of a tactical error. If he spends too long fighting he might not be able to fly back to the city. If he doesn't spend enough time flying high enough, he might be targetable to arrows or seige weapons. If he does spend that much time, he'll probably won't ever be able to attack your main force wihtout expending significant spells just getting there.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Set up massive silk tarps some 20' in the air, and have your army make camp under these. This would block line of effect for Fireball spells, which would be the primary long range spell used against your army. They would ofcourse burn down after the first Fireball, but it would take two to get to your men.

Of course, if you are ridiculously well funded, you could make the tarps fireproof.


You could also set up tethered ballons rising high into the air at close but stagared intervals. This would mess up any flyer without perfect manuverability.

 

[takasi]

With rings of invisibility and wands of polymorph (which high level wizards can easily afford) and using scrolls of greater invisibility during the attacks, it really wouldn't matter how far away the army is from the fortress.

Archers could aim at a bead from fireball but first they have to spot it. It would be nearly impossible to spot a bead the size of a pebble that's 800 feet in the air. In fact, the range of fireball would probably make it extremely difficult for the arrows to reach the wizards anyway.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

First of all, back in the real world, the castle if its a modern (post-crusades) type has a significant chance of surviving this sort of assault even without throwing the spellcasters into the mix. A one month journey time, plus muster and such, means that the army is going to be pushing it to last through campaign season. Plus, you camp 10,000 men in a small area and thier will be serious disease and food shortage problems by the beseiging army. (Often besiegers suffered as badly as those they were seiging.) Generally speaking, a well designed castle could hold off numbers of about 20:1 and that's what you've got here.

So, understand that if we are talking realism, this is a hard problem even before we throw magic into the equation.



Harrassment. Instead of marching 10,000 men over to a castle and camping them on an indefensible plain in full view of the enemy, I'd disperse much of my forces into bands of 10-20 each and I'd give them orders to raze the enemy country side for at least 20 or so miles around, taking whatever they could, driving off or enslaving the peasantry, and burning whatever they couldn't take. The idea here is to destroy the economy of the region, and thereby make sticking around in that castle untenable in the long run, while making the distances involved and the difficulties in tracking down any significant band of my people enough to render individual sorties by Wizards problamatic except for the most high level casters. If you send some individual 7th-8th level wizards out to kill bands of 2nd-4th level fighters, sooner or later those wizards are going to fail spot checks, or going to be fatigued by the travel, or be found sleeping, or get intercepted twice in the same day, or otherwise loose initiative and then the low AC's and low hit points are going to be a big problem. Multiple archers with ready actions are very good counters to low level wizards in these conditions.

I'd leave back a reserve force of 4000-5000 of my best cavalry and archers to meet any sorte by the enemies forces, and I'd be doing my best to recruit some high level firepower to counter individual sorties by the higher level spell casters (which at this point are barring some good fortune or mistakes on thier part I can't do anything about). I would do anything I could to avoid giving battle to a massed group of high level wizards who had the ability to retreat to safety. This probably means keeping my camp mobile and sufficiently dispersed that I'm never in danger of losing a large force to a single spell. As long as the enemy spell casters don't exceed about 13th level, this might work.

What I really would need as the commander is some counter punching ability, which I'm desparately lacking according to your description. I either need friendly spell casters of level 5+, or CR equivalent rogues/scouts/rangers, or CR equivalent allied monsters (hill giants, gargoyles, griffons, dragons, whatever) in enough numbers that spell casters can't take them out with a daily alotment of spells.

Agreed. Make this as hard as you can on the people in the town surrounding the castle. Kill many adults, take enemy children back to your homeland to be raised or use them as bait/bargaining tools, infect the populace with a plague/contagion, burn and destroy anything that can't be used by your army. Make it hell on the civilian populace. Force the wizards to leave their compound and take them out piecemeal.
Guerilla tactics and using some of William Sherman's old tricks will even the odds somewhat.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Restating the problem:

Say you've got an army of 10,000 men, most of them 4th level or less. And you want to sack a fortress that has 20 mid- to high-level spellcasters and say 500 soldiers. The fortress is on a peninsula, has high ground, and is the size of a small castle, with a surrounding town. It will take the army a month to arrive.

The mage fortress and the town around it is a nest of opposition against your nation. People go there to plan objective raids against your country, to make alliances, trade information, equip, and train. Basically, it is the base of an enemy army, and if you can destroy the base, while you might not necessarily kill everyone involved, you'll make it harder for them to organize.

What kind of tactics would you use if you were the general of the army? The general is a high level warrior-type class, with mid- to high-level bodyguards, and the necessary protection to avoid a scrysassination attempt.

What kind of defenses and tactics would you use if you were the leader of the mage fortress? Assume you have access to a lot of 3rd level spells, a fair number of 4th, and progressively less of the higher level spells, of different classes.

Hmm... we really need more details on the level and class distribution. Does the army have *any* spellcasters? Are the mages generalists? Transmutation specialists? Etc. It can all have a big impact. Assuming the actual NPC setups look like this:
Mages: 1 12th, 1 11th, 1 10th, 2 9th, 3 8th, 6 7th, and 6 6th; all generalists, with a casting stat of 16.
Army: No spellcasters at all, but plenty of item support. Troops are 50% Warrior 1s, 25% War 2s, 10% War 3s, 5% War 4s, 5% Ftr 1s, 2% Ftr 2s, 2% Ftr 3s, and 1 %Ftr 4s. The sprinklings of 5th+ I'm not going to worry about. All have 13 Con.

I really have to wonder if the General isn't being gotten rid of by his higher ups. Given the time constraints, and the proposed approach, the odds are overwhelmingly tilted against him. Marching down the penisula and beseiging the castle is not a good idea.

Assuming a frontal assault on the castle with massed troops (the attacker's worst case): I can assume the mages can toss 20 fireballs a round (1 each). Each fireball can effect a *maximum* of 44 medium-sized troops (assuming no augmentation). The average fireball does 7.5d6 damage, with a Ref save of 16, or 26.25 hp before saves. My Warriors have 5.5/11/16.5/22 HP, and save 20% of the time. My Ftrs have 6.5/13/19.5/26 HP, and also save 20% of the time. Assuming a single fireball volley catches an even mix, each volley kills 440 War 1s, 220 War 2s, 70.4 War 3s, 35.2 War 4s, 44 Ftr 1s, 17.6 Ftr 2s, 14 Ftr 3s, and 7 Ftr 4s, reducing my army by 848 troops (out of a maximum of 880). In 12 rounds, my Army's gone. Maybe more like 20, given that the later rounds will see fewer fireballs. Basically, if I try to take the castle, I have to be able to swarm the walls in 10 rounds, or I lose.

Ultimately, I've got a few main concerns if I'm going to assault the castle somehow - I've got to get my troops there quickly, mostly intact, and without large clustering.

Trying for all three: Another option is a flotilla of small boats, each fitting in a individual invisibility sphere, and staging a marine assault. And/or fire-proofed troop ships. The problem here is that until I make the assault, the troops are mostly defenseless.

If I'm willing to sacrifice a *large* portion of my troops, I might be able to assault the castle if each assault squad is small enough and can climb the walls quickly enough.

However, given that my objective is to "remove the threat" and not military conquest, and the inability to refuse, I'd be redefining the problem. A better solution is to avoid the need for an assault somehow. One possibility is to use saboteurs/fifth columns to undermine the enemy's willingness/ability to fight. The problem here is that (assumption) if my citizens are fleeing into the mage's country to stage insurrection against me, any infiltrators would be likely to defect.

Another option is a propaganda campaign. A few bards optimized for diplomacy given 2-4 months could probably make a *huge* dent in my enemies willingness to fight. Or if I can't get enough diplobards, I'll bet that one of those 20 mages could probably be turned.

Buy the mages off - for the cost of that army, I could probably buy a number of years of peace. Spellbooks and spell research don't come cheap. On again, just buy (and turn) a few of the mages.

Or, assuming it really is an attempt to get rid of me (the general) assassinate/stage a coup against the leaders who are trying to kill me. Then plan a better war, assuming it's still a problem.

Or heck, as a final attempt, if the mages are claiming a "just war" based on my ruler's actions, sign a treaty addressing/correcting the issues the mages are complaining about, at least the big ones. Even if I don't sign the treaty, I can gain months/years of peace while I negotiate. And if I'm smart, I can even turn the raiding into the mages problem.

 

[painandgreed]

With rings of invisibility and wands of polymorph (which high level wizards can easily afford) and using scrolls of greater invisibility during the attacks, it really wouldn't matter how far away the army is from the fortress.

Archers could aim at a bead from fireball but first they have to spot it. It would be nearly impossible to spot a bead the size of a pebble that's 800 feet in the air. In fact, the range of fireball would probably make it extremely difficult for the arrows to reach the wizards anyway.

Brings up a point. First thing I'd do is hire bards so they can Gather Information and use bardic knowledge to tell me what the wizards are probably capable of and what magic items they own.

Works the other way too. Mage is pretty much attacking figures at random since he's at -80 on spot checks to see what he's shooting fireballs at. If the weather is bad, he might not be able to see anything from that high up. If there's fog, he's going to have to come down within short bow range to attack.