Strategic Challenge

[RUMBLETiGER]

Alright, a few tactical questions:

-Any burrowing ability amongst your forces?
-What's the caster level of the Wall of Fire wands?
-If you were to go into the enemy camp in disguise (Magical or mundane), what are the odds the enemy will detect you from what you know of their resources and skill?
-If you were to go into the enemy camp, are there any teleport/fly/quick-get-the-hell-out-of-there options available to you if you got discovered?
-Does the enemy have access to teleport/fly/pretend-the-walls-aren't-there options?
-Is the enemy more likely to:
A. Mount a full assault on one side?
B. Mount an assault on multiple sides?
C. Infiltrate the city with a few spies/saboteurs?

My general advice would be to hit them before they hit you. Are they still in the woods? what would be the repercussions if a handful of individuals set the forest on fire from all sides at the same time? would you have the means to extinguish the flames before it went further then needed to drive away or destroy your enemy?

I think Wands of Wall of Fire are going to be the trick to defeating a single, massive enemy assault if they come at you before you can get to them. If they're inclined to form up into ranks and march close to the wall (Meaning clustered close together), Wall of Fire can be used to bisect the force. As a level 4 spell, you're looking at caster level 7 minimum, meaning the wall can originate at a range of 170' from the caster (Caster standing upon the top of the wall and then some distance away) and the wall will stretch 140' long. 2 casters making a line front to back in round 1, than a second line diagonal in round 2 (Like this: |X| over the enemy army) will break up whatever formations they have, deal serious damage in those lines, and deal damage along the side you designate.

Round 3 and on have 3 people casting Ice Storm with it's 400+40' per level into the bisected, fleeing masses in 20' circles.

Have the Barbarian/Wizard on the ground doing 120' lines worth of (at least 5d6 of) electric damage from the wand of Lightning Bolt. He can Invis. up to get into position beforehand.

If the army divides into 2 large masses, split the Wall of Fire, have one group have 2 Ice Storms and the other have one Ice Storm and one Lighting Bolt.

All of this assumes the enemy does not have casters that can counteract what you're doing. It also assumes the bulk of the enemy forces will die to a few rounds of 5d6 damage. If this really is damage dealing magic items vs. a mundane army, you can do massive area damage and end this within a few rounds.

 

[Binho]

Well, you really need a spy. You have to answer the following questions:

-Who is the leader of each army force (one sister for each group perhaps?)???
If the leadership of the army is strong and unified, you are in trouble. If the army is divided by four, you can make gossips between armys, making them think that one force is plotting against the other to betray as soon as they take the city.

-Who is the magical source?
Killing them would make your life easier.

-What they are waiting to attack?
Obviously, they need something to start the attack. Maybe reinforcements, maybe just an order of the great boss. You don't want to handle all the four armies at same time. So, you need to kill/stop communications between the group forces and you want to slow three of them, while you fight one.

-How fast can you run?
You should ensure that the armies do not sleep or feed up. To do this, I suggest little ambushes during the night, destroying supplies and disturbing the camp of them. You could use the wand of wall of fire to initiate natural fire in the jungle and getting out of there as quickly as possible. Teleport, dimensional door, anything can help.

-Can you make traps?
Make fake retreats. If the enemy do not know how much fighters they are facing, you can split your man using the fasters to be the first line of resistance, that will run after a few rounds of combat just to lead the enemy to a local full of traps and with reinforces prepared to ambush.

-Are you likely to call for reinforcements?
You know where your enemy are. With this information, you can send an SOS to the neighbor kingdom, pointing where the enemy are. So you can take them for surprise and from the back. Of course, the barbarian would not be happy to show this kind of weakness...

-Is it winter?
If it does, learn some tricks from Arthur:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6yKEheFp9Q&feature=related]King Arthur Epic Battle Scene - YouTube[/ame]

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

I'm assuming this is one of this situations where you can kill them in the hundreds/thousands, cause they're bad guys, and there's no larger morality/social politics that factors in?

 

[Greenfield]

General answers:

We don't know if the Sisters are present, or even involved. That part is just a theory.

Yes, we have a Druid and a couple of casters who can shift to burrowing forms.

Fake or fighting retreats don't work too well when your goal is to hold a set piece of ground.

If I can find containers, we have a spell called Metamorphos Beverage that can produce fairly large amounts of any beverage we have a sample of (Non magical, of course), so getting them drunk doesn't cost any more than some well water, and a few 1st level spell slots.

Taking out leaders is a good idea. Taking out supplies will force their hand and trigger the all out assault. When that happens, all the games end.

Wall of Fire is a good containment spell, but not so much for damage. The wands are 7th level, but they tie up the user, since they need to maintain concentration to keep the walls up.

Neither Wall of Fire nor Ice Storm does a lot of damage, and while the Orcs will fall easily enough, the Ettins and bigger critters will be able to breach the walls. We might need a better solution.

 

[Dandu]

How much money do you have on hand? Bribery is one of the oldest and dirtiest tricks in the big book of war.

 

[Empirate]

Some thoughts:

1. Assuming you still have some time left before the assault, maybe you could train a few of the accompanying soldiers to become magic-users of sorts? Maybe Adept 1 instead of Warrior 1? That would already help a TON since all of a sudden, your standard actions are free to do whatever you feel like, while your level 1 grunts become feasible threats, given the boatload of powerful battle wands you have.

2. Your wands scream "area damage to masses of Orcs", but that won't work too well out in the open. After all, a city is a huge place, and in a fantasy world, armies don't really have an incentive to stay huddled close together. Warfare is probably more like modern war, with minimum distances between individual soldiers carefully kept, in order to minimize the impact of area effects.
So you need to clump up the Orc army. This can be done using lures (groups of defenders fleeing along carefully prepared paths, while others lie in wait to make use of chokepoints), traps (seal the entrance and the exit to a road the Orcs must take, then proceed to cook them), and mass psychology (stop the front lines, and the ones in the back will likely move up, creating a bigger mass to fire your Ice Storms into).
You'll still need to clean up the leadership yourselves, though.

3. Divide and conquer might be your game. IF you can take out the four camps one at a time, you're good. Obviously, that depends on how far they are from each other, how well you can keep up the pretense that your city is still relatively well guarded, and how good communication between the Orc camps actually is.

4. In a strategic challenge, one side completely destroying the other side is unlikely. If you can make it costly enough (or make it look costly enough) for the Orcs to gain the city, they might just say "ah, crap, let's just get out of here", and that's that. Obviously, attacking the rank-and-file, while easier, won't do it, while destroying expensive equipment and valuable assets (siege engines, leveled NPCs, magic support, supplies etc.) might work. Note that simply capturing stuff will likely make the Orcs want to get it back from you, while destroying it will frustrate them.
I said killing lots of the simple grunts won't help in this regard - but it might just lower morale enough that the captains fear their troops' loyalty might be lost if the keep it up.

5. Shock can be very useful, even if it doesn't do too much outright damage. Showing off your best moves all at once, burning a lot of resources just to show that you can, using lots of high-level magic might convince the Orc leadership that they're in for more than they've bargained for. This is a bit of a con act, just like the empty fort strategy. But if you couple the deterring shock with some actual damage to valuable assets...

6. Is single combat between champions an option? I think Orcs would love to do this kind of thing. Maybe even a 4v4 (one Orc champion from each camp, plus four of your best). You'd probably have to impress them beforehand, though. If they think taking the city would be a piece of cake, there's not much incentive of accepting the single combat gambit. But delivering huge shock first, coupled with the realization that attacking you might be very costly, would probably make the enemy leadership more receptive to an offer of single combat.

7. Can you find any timely allies? Maybe if you can teleport somewhere else and bring some powerful guys along (even if it means you owe them some in the future), you'd stand a better chance all in all.

8. What about the hellholes and hauntings in your city? You probably have a pretty good idea where the trouble zones are - any chance of luring the enemy there and making use of your old problems to fend off your new problems?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Rebecca419
has no status.

Registered User

Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 8
Novice (Lvl 1)

Reported

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Wall of Fire duration is Concentration + rounds/level. It's a fire and forget battlefield control for 7 rounds in your case.

Not going to finish the battle right off, but would make a great opener, IF the armies are clumped together.

Are the Orcs first level warriors straight from the MM? If so, they're falling quickly to your fire and ice. The rest will take damage and become scattered, allowing you to mop up with additional stratagies afterward.

 

[Greenfield]

Don't know the levels of the opposition. And yes, the scale of a battlefield makes AoE spells less than effective.

If, however, we open the city gates (not all at once) and let them inside, they'll be contained and constrained by the city itself. Lure them into a plaza near the gate, then close off the exits with Wall of Fire and bombard the hell out of them.

This fits nicely into the "Empty Fortress strategy" It may not take out the spell support, but if they have nothing left to support then we're back to a more manageable problem, scale wise.

 

[Binho]

2. So you need to clump up the Orc army. This can be done using lures (groups of defenders fleeing along carefully prepared paths, while others lie in wait to make use of chokepoints), traps (seal the entrance and the exit to a road the Orcs must take, then proceed to cook them), and mass psychology (stop the front lines, and the ones in the back will likely move up, creating a bigger mass to fire your Ice Storms into).
You'll still need to clean up the leadership yourselves, though.

That's my fake retreat strategy (in better words, I must admit ).

3. Divide and conquer might be your game. IF you can take out the four camps one at a time, you're good. Obviously, that depends on how far they are from each other, how well you can keep up the pretense that your city is still relatively well guarded, and how good communication between the Orc camps actually is.

Good points. I have suggested something similar earlier, but you make it better.
But the main question for this work is why they didn't attack? The defense position behind the walls is one of your few advantages. You want them to attack you, but one at a time. If they were ready, why in heaven they hadn't attack yet? You want one of the orc forces to be ready (or think they are ready) to attack, while the other 3 can't. But if the orc's leaders are wise enough, they will coordinate the attacks. That's why intercepting the communication of the enemy is important. If you just destroy the supplies of 3 of the armies, they will just wait until they all get ready again. You have two options:
1- Destroy the supplies of 3 armies after they send a "READY" to the others; or
2- Destroy the supplies of 3 armies, intercept the communication and make a fake message saying they are READY.

7. Can you find any timely allies? Maybe if you can teleport somewhere else and bring some powerful guys along (even if it means you owe them some in the future), you'd stand a better chance all in all.

That's the shame for the barbarian prince. Well, if I were the Barbarian, asking for help would just show weakness, proving that i'm not strong enough to defend a kingdom from just orcs (attack of orcs to villages is a common thing in fantasy medieval worlds).

General answers:

We don't know if the Sisters are present, or even involved. That part is just a theory.

That's why you need a spy or divinations.

Fake or fighting retreats don't work too well when your goal is to hold a set piece of ground.

That's true if you are not willing to sacrifice part of that ground. You have a whole city and still can regroup in the castle, don't be selfish!

Taking out leaders is a good idea. Taking out supplies will force their hand and trigger the all out assault. When that happens, all the games end.

I don't think that's true. When saying supplies, i don't mean only food and water. I mean food, water, arrows, bolts, shields, armors, mounts... If you burn the warehouse of weapons and armors, they will delay the attack for days, until they get other weapons and armors. If you set the mounts free, they would manage to re-catch them in one or two days.
I do advice to burn 3 camps. The forth you should sabotage. Let's say, you want the army you will face to think that the siege is intact, but at the moment they use one time, it will break.

Also, i was wondering: why a troop of orcs/ettins want to invade a empty city? The orcs' thing is go to the town, kill the man, rape the woman, drink the wine and eat the food, then call it a day and go back to their home at dawn when the party is over. Actually, based on the previous owner, i think they would fear such a place.
The next question is why they didn't attack yet. Maybe, the sisters want something that the demon left behind. Maybe, the demon let something dangerous behind! Maybe they are just waiting the barbarian/wiz troop to fall in the hand of the demon's legacy or attack the survival of the confront. Maybe...

My last advise: use divinations and scouts. You need to know how magical your enemies are (for not be spied too). You need to control when they must attack. Remember, knowledge is power.