Protecting Troops from Fireball

[Infiniti2000]

Well, there's mass resist energy (elements), but not protection from energy (elements).

(hijack)Personally, I find the mass resist energy to be totally out of balance. It should be at least sixth level. As a comparison, mass cure moderate wounds is sixth level and mass invisibility is seventh. I guess they lowered the level due to the spell effect (being entirely defensive in nature), but 3rd level (for a cleric/druid) is still way too low. It should be a minimum 5th IMO.

 

[NimrodvanHall]

This is a reasonable (and not uncommon) analysis, but I come at it from the other direction. Any common fantasy-world depiction of war uses standard medieval formations, regardless of the presence of wizards. This is how it appears in Lord of the Rings, in the illustrations in any D&D books (like the 3.0 DMG), in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk novels, etc., etc. I'm assuming there should be some reasonable way to replicate these fantasy swords & sorcery battles in D&D, with wizard magic flying overhead while armies in formation battle it out.

IMHO your goal is quite archivable, with some cultural norms on war.
from the wars during the reformation, up and unltill the wars of the industial area, wars in europe were regulated strongly by cultural norms, WW I is the bench mark here. During the time of regulated wars, civilians were mostly left alone, they were not the target of militairy action. If you have curltural (or divine) conventions on how wars are thought, its easy to depict the folowing rules:
1 War has to be declared.
2 within a month the chalenged side choses the site of the battle; this has to be an area within 2 miles of the borders of the chalenger. in the province the chalenger states in his declaration of war.
3 battle will only be engaged between 2 hours after dawn and 2 hours befor dusk.
4 there will be no assasinations and or sabotage actions before or after the hours of battle.
5 the day after the battle there will be negotions, if there is surrender the war is over. if not the Impartial Druids(? or whatever suits you) descide who won the battle, if the warring parties cannot descide.
6 if the defender wan the battle the war is over a new chalenge has to be issued.
7 If the offening party wins the battle, and its demands will not be granted it can issue to press the attack.
8 If the attack is pressed, the chalenging party can attack any target it desires, such as a city.

for sieges count the city and 2 miles around it as a warzone, day and night rules do not aply but the custom is that the city will not be attacked during night unless there has been a break out attemt that day, or night.

for mages (and other casters such as clerics and Psions but we count them as mages for now) this ancient cusom excists:
dressed in white: only defensive, buffing and healing magics
Dressed in red Take to the air and fight the offening army from there only if the sky is red you may take on the oposing army itself
Dressed in black Take to the air and fight the offening army from there only if the sky is black you may take on the oposing army itself

Archers may attemt to take out any visible enemy mages

if you want to use called outsiders:
Outsiders may not be called prior to the battle. they may only be called during the battle, and the summoners ARE a legal target for all, both ariborne and grounded. called outsiders, that can fly count as mages, those that cant still are legal targets for mages.

Dragons always count either as red mages or as black mages.

the red/black can be exchanged for national colors.

Mindaffecting spells are to be dismissed at the and of the day of war.


these rules as far as i can see now, can and should be tailored to your campeign if used, but prevent the fantasy equivalent of a nuclear war, and thus we have a reason why they are followed.

maybe this helps (a bit)

In short, the flavor of magical combat is, and will always be, setting specific. Arguing it beyond any specific, well defined setting is an exercise in frustration.

True
One of the problems for this discussion is that D&D 3.x has no single defined setting, and the demographics of the DMG can be read any way the DM wants to read them. Another problem is that play styles vary immensly.

 

[lukelightning]

I don't think this is possible, unless the flying fire creature had some sort of devoted defender type ability to throw self in harm's way.

Alternately, you could summon a flying creature with the Fire subtype, and have it ready an action every turn to intercept the fireball en route before it reaches the infantry - cause an early detonation.

 

[dcollins]

Yep, mass resist energy, CA, Clr3, Drd3, Sor/Wiz4, Wu Jen 4, 1 creature/level. With fire resistance 20 at 7th level, they get a good chance of surviving...

Cool, thanks for that! Now I really wish CA was OGC.

 

[nittanytbone]

Much of it depends on how rare/common magic is in your world. Remember, the PCs are like the Starship Enterprise, they always run into the weirdest/most powerful stuff out there; typical NPCs (like city guards, noble's footmen, etc) deal with unruly beggars, petty thieves, or other NPC class types for the most part.

In a relatively low-magic world, standard "historical" men at arms will work just fine for 99% of encounters. The worst magical opponent they will probably ever face is an adept who maybe has second level spells, so that shouldn't affect their tactics a whole lot.

Additionally, few nations/nobles would want to bring out the wizards. First, having a retainer wizard of high level is expensive, and most of the time probably less useful than having a cleric retainer. Also, as soon as you get a wizard, then the other fellow gets a wizard, and soon its MAD (mutually assured destruction) as the big damage spells start flying and the only people who win are the wizards themselves.

Races with a more magical background (the elves spring immediately to mind) might have more specialized infantry trained to deal with magical attacks. Because wizardry is common and available in that culture, they might train with light infantry skirmisher type tactics. I can even imagine custom zero level cantrips for training purposes that are basically "paintball" versions of common battlefield damage spells like magic missile, burning hands, and fireball. That way a fighter 1/wizard 1 elvish seargeant could conduct effective training for his troops.

So, the "cheapest" solution is probably to hire an elvish seargeant major or find a fighter/sorcerer who is willing to share his expertise and conduct some light infantry training. Of course, assuming a light infantry style of combat could be detrimental in some more conventional situations; light infantry has worse AC and will be equipped with lighter weapons than your polearm phalanxs. They're likely vulnerable to cavalry and heavy foot troops.

 

[Lord Wyrm]

One can only hire so many wizards, and when the PC rogues and rangers kill the lead enemy wizard, skin him, and put his head on a pike it gets even harder to hire wizards.

Somewhat more on topic, fire arrows with silence cast on them into the enemy ranks. Not only will this shut down most enemy spellcasting but will disrupt the lines as they will not be able to effectively relay orders in formation.

And as for war golems and such they draw al sorts of fire, yeah airships are cool but when the trebuchet stones start to hit them they go down fast.

 

[dcollins]

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but I finally scoured up a good core-rules answer to this question:

Rod of flame extinguishing. Usable by anyone, can be readied against an instantaneous area-effect fire attack (fireball specifically mentioned). 10 charges/day, 15,000 gp.

Ah, sweet relief.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Ah, sweet relief.

That's what the troops said!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

This is a reasonable (and not uncommon) analysis, but I come at it from the other direction. Any common fantasy-world depiction of war uses standard medieval formations, regardless of the presence of wizards. This is how it appears in Lord of the Rings, in the illustrations in any D&D books (like the 3.0 DMG), in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk novels, etc., etc. I'm assuming there should be some reasonable way to replicate these fantasy swords & sorcery battles in D&D, with wizard magic flying overhead while armies in formation battle it out.

I figure the best bet on beating wizard magic is have one more wizard than the other side, so that the wizards can keep each other busy but you still have at least a one wizard advantage. In this case, wizards end up being units of value in an arms race.

Or, you can do what they did in Sepulchrave II's story hour, and have a code of noninterference that prevents wizards from interfering in temporal matters like politics and wars.

 

[Twowolves]

One idea I didn't see mentioned is the use of illusions. Make several illusionary units of soldiers, and let the opposing wizard waste fireballs on empty air.

As to the nature of warfare in a fantasy setting, wizards can be seen as artillery. Nasty and devestating to massed troops, but also very high value targets for your own artillery and soldiers. In the Moonshae trillogy, the wizards in those battles basically hid most of the time, knowing they had a huge bullseye on their backs the minute they made their presence known. Sure that wizard might get off that fireball, but then every archer on the battlefiend just marked their target, as well as any "special forces" the allies may have.