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Message: <blockquote data-quote="darious777" data-source="post: 3102473" data-attributes="member: 34926">Okay... let me preface my section with "All other things being equal..." 25,000 men is gonna mop the floor with 15,000 men backed with 10 mages who have fireball. I guess my point is that fireball in of itself is not that significant in massed battles.  I would guess that it's main effect would be to open up holes in enemy lines so that charging troops could exploit the disorder.But if you have 10 wish capable mages on your side, then who the heck knows what's going to happen - aside from total dominance barring your opposition having something equivalent.  A few other points:I still think that defensive positions would be useless, outside of the occasional strategic valued building, ie a building so important that it would warrant the expenditure of the funds/magic to make it proof against well - everything.  Assasins - would be invaluable if not mandatory in this kind of warfare, but they couldn't replace the traditional combatants.  They can sure make it tough for the enemy to use it's best assets to fight back with, but Assasins, like snipers, just can't take and hold territory. Create Food and Water - might be useful but at 3 men/level you would need 3334 cleric levels to feed a 10,000 man army.  Given that the min level for said cleric is 5th, that's 667 clerics casting CF&W daily.  Assume some higher level clerics in there and the ability to cast the spell multiple times and you need, what - 300 or so clerics cranking out create food and water.  I don't see that being a factor in DnD warfare unless it's a very desparate situation.      Simply put, that's 300 clerics that could be sitting on dispel magic, animate dead, invisiblity purge, wind walls, etc. etc.Which reminds me - healing... nothing more than heaaaling... given the way that most troops have 5-10 hitpoints, it would make sense to load up with only cure light wounds for the medical tents.  This is with the assumption that you are in a situation where the number of clerics is far greater than the number of soldiers.  Say 100 vs 10000.  Spend just enough magic to keep a handful of soldiers from dying and use the rest of it preventing the injuries in the first place (prayer, dispel magic, augury, etc).Divinations, augury et al - oy vey.  I knew there was a reason I didn't want to think about the cleric spell list.  The idea of a fantasy general planning his order of battle using risk management decision theory is too painful to contemplate.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It's a fun exercise but I have to say again that there are too many variables to contemplate.  Supply, intel, mobility, firepower, stealth, psyops (will save or be my puppet),terrain - all are radically changed from anything we can contemplate.  We might be able to hold to one variable and work out the results, but throwing everything into the mix like this - who knows what will come out at the end.  And that's not throwing in new things like illusions or instant healing or extra-planar support.And the whole hit point thing. There are a number of historical battles that have hinged on a lucky shot taking out an enemy leader (Hastings and Lutzen come to mind). In DnD - well - I'm just not going to bring that old argument back up.  But.  It is sure fun to try and figure just what might happen.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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