Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Just spread out. Won't stop them from being killed/affected but it WILL stop them from being "devastated" by them.dcollins said:
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Protecting Troops from Fireball
- Thread starter dcollins
- Start date
orbitalfreak
First Post
Also, why would the defending wizard necessarily have fireball prepared? If he has fireball, then the attacking wizard will have dispel magic to counterspell the defender. But, the defender doesn't know what the attacking wizard has prepared, so may prepare a generic dispel magic to counter whatever the attacking wizard is throwing his way.
Reminds me of a quote from Raymond E. Feist's "Serpentwar Saga" series: (heavily paraphrased)
"Why don't armies employ wizards? Because the first wizard casts a spell, then the second counters that spell, so the first one tries to counter the second, and so on, until the army marches up and kills the wizards." -- Nakor.
Reminds me of a quote from Raymond E. Feist's "Serpentwar Saga" series: (heavily paraphrased)
"Why don't armies employ wizards? Because the first wizard casts a spell, then the second counters that spell, so the first one tries to counter the second, and so on, until the army marches up and kills the wizards." -- Nakor.
Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
Twowolves said:
Shows up in the second of Gygax's Greyhawk Adventures novels (later to become the Gord the Rogue series), Artifact of Evil.
An army besieges a castle; the defending spellcasters use lots of super-big area effect spells to crush it. Then the smoke clears, and instead of tens of thousands of bodies, there are only hundreds... and the real army shows up...
-Hyp.
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
One more commentary on this:
Assuming a fairly double tight line formation, and a clvl 5 fireball with a save DC of 15, and warriors with 10 hp each (12 con and Toughness), you will only kill about 6-12 soldiers per fireball and 2-5 will be severely wounded. In general, you will probably be able to save at least half of the wounded soldiers if your men are trained to act quickly. So, each fireball on the other side is going to take out a fair portion of your 100 man army of 1st level warriors.... but if your army is 500 men, you can probably take a 5th level evoker's entire arsenel of fireballs and still have taken only moderate casualties. (All things considered). If you're fielding 2nd level warriors with 16 hp or so, it won't be unusual to have no deaths from a fireball.
The next question is this: why are you fielding 100 first level warriors and what other resources do you have. For that matter, what resources does your enemy have?
I would imagine that your enemy can probably hire 100 first level warriors with bows or crossbows for the same price as his 5th level wizard, so maybe you're not too worried. After all, the wizard will run out of spells before the archers run out of crossbow bolts. And it's easier to take out one wizard with your archers/wizard than it is to take out 100 archers. If economics are the determining factors in force composition, you may well find it easier to defeat the fireball tosser than ordinary troops that would cost a similar amount of money. Fireball rules low-level, small unit skirmishes (of course, so would a 5th level fighter/barbarian with whirlwind attack or great cleave). As the troop numbers increase, however, it becomes less and less significant unless you field units of mages who each toss a fireball. The spells that will change a battle are ones like sunburst, firestorm, and summon monster VII (huge elementals--especially air elementals in whirlwind form).
Other tactics: For every hundred men in your army, assign ten as spell disruptors: readying actions to fire their bows/crossbows at the enemy spellcaster. (This can be defeated by protection from arrows which can, in turn be defeated by greater magic weapon).
Assuming a fairly double tight line formation, and a clvl 5 fireball with a save DC of 15, and warriors with 10 hp each (12 con and Toughness), you will only kill about 6-12 soldiers per fireball and 2-5 will be severely wounded. In general, you will probably be able to save at least half of the wounded soldiers if your men are trained to act quickly. So, each fireball on the other side is going to take out a fair portion of your 100 man army of 1st level warriors.... but if your army is 500 men, you can probably take a 5th level evoker's entire arsenel of fireballs and still have taken only moderate casualties. (All things considered). If you're fielding 2nd level warriors with 16 hp or so, it won't be unusual to have no deaths from a fireball.
The next question is this: why are you fielding 100 first level warriors and what other resources do you have. For that matter, what resources does your enemy have?
I would imagine that your enemy can probably hire 100 first level warriors with bows or crossbows for the same price as his 5th level wizard, so maybe you're not too worried. After all, the wizard will run out of spells before the archers run out of crossbow bolts. And it's easier to take out one wizard with your archers/wizard than it is to take out 100 archers. If economics are the determining factors in force composition, you may well find it easier to defeat the fireball tosser than ordinary troops that would cost a similar amount of money. Fireball rules low-level, small unit skirmishes (of course, so would a 5th level fighter/barbarian with whirlwind attack or great cleave). As the troop numbers increase, however, it becomes less and less significant unless you field units of mages who each toss a fireball. The spells that will change a battle are ones like sunburst, firestorm, and summon monster VII (huge elementals--especially air elementals in whirlwind form).
Other tactics: For every hundred men in your army, assign ten as spell disruptors: readying actions to fire their bows/crossbows at the enemy spellcaster. (This can be defeated by protection from arrows which can, in turn be defeated by greater magic weapon).
nittanytbone
First Post
One cheap and easy solution -- tower shields. Troops can take cover behind them for Full Cover which helps a lot vs breath weapons and area effect stuff, as well as ranged attacks.
The historical analogue would be pavisse crossbowmen. They carried a large shield and used it to hide behind while reloading heavy weapons. They also would take turns hiding and moving to cover ground safely (albeit slowly), limiting exposure to enemy fire.
The historical analogue would be pavisse crossbowmen. They carried a large shield and used it to hide behind while reloading heavy weapons. They also would take turns hiding and moving to cover ground safely (albeit slowly), limiting exposure to enemy fire.
Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
nittanytbone said:
Though not, as noted earlier in the thread, against spreads like a fireball.
The cover bonus to Reflex saves specifically does not apply against spreads, and the improved evasion only applies against effects that the bonus to saves applies to.
-Hyp.
dcollins
Explorer
Elder-Basilisk said:
Just following the core rules here.
- "Most soldiers are 1st-level warriors" (DMG, "World Building: War and Other Calamities").
- Human warrior, "typical bandit or soldier", has 4 hp (PHB, 2000 Survival Kit, p. 9; feat is Weapon Focus, similar to warriors in MM for dwarves, elves, etc.)
- Consider 11th-level wizard versus archers at 800 ft. range. My DMG says he's got a wand of fireballs (9th caster level). Fireball automatically hits; typical soldiers need natural 20 to hit wizard. Possibly wizard is invisible or hidden. Wand can't be counterspelled.
At any rate, the original post was assuming you know in advance that your troops are definitely going to have fireball cast at them, is there any magical protection you can use in advance? The D&D rules have surprisingly slim pickings.
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