Wizard vs. Army


Advice

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Bonus points for the Who reference to Vietnam.

What you describe is a two-edge sword. Let the soldiers win the battles (with help) and the perception will be that there is just an occupying force in the kingdom, which will generate an underground resistance building IEDs (Improvised Evocation Devices) to eliminate the invaders, or to at least destroy their will to remain in-country.

But if the soldiers are merely the temporary peacekeepers while the wizard sets up a better political structure, winning the hearts and minds of the local population through his benevolent and magnanimous leadership, then everybody wins.

As for winning the allegiance of good-aligned organizations, they are going to view the deaths of tens of thousands of their own soldiers as a horrifying result of being conquered regardless of the means by which those soldiers died. Well, that's not true, death by disease, poison, or undead (especially if the soldiers themselves also became undead) would probably be even worse than death by sharp force trauma, so I would stick to the less loathesome and/or more honorable magical means of destruction.

And on a side note, those good factions might even appreciate your willingness to protect the lives of your own soldiers, especially if you can convince them that you'll provide the same consideration for their soldiers now that you've annexed their kingdom.

In the end, it's all how you spin it.

Maybe the best solution is to simply encourage them to surrender. Put insurmountable obstacles in the armies' paths to you - gate in a bunch of shiny bright celestials to defend/obstruct appropriate chokepoints (i.e. bridges or mountain passes) and rely on the goodness of these factions to avoid slaughtering celestials. Once these good people see that you have celestial allies and prefer surrender to slaughter, and they realize they have no choice, then you have successfully pulled off a bloodless coup.


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Xexyz wrote:

The war has to be won in the correct fashion in order to create the desired political climate once the war is over. Can the wizard simply slaughter the enemy armies before they even have a chance to engage with the aggressor army? Sure. But the aftermath creates a more difficult situation for the aggressors once the war is over. The perception will be that the wizard won the war, not the aggressors, which paints a big target on the wizard's back and diminishes the perception of the aggressor.

You are creating an artificial and irrational situation. The wizard only has a target on their back if they remain a public figure. If at the conclusion of the battle they go about their business as a citizen, no one is going to know who was throwing meteors and tsunamis except the leaders of the aggressor force (who are presumably not hostile). It would be trivial for the wizard to hide his identity from everyone else involved, except possibly a caster of comparable power.

As for the 'right way'. This is a fantasy world is it not? This wizard I presume is not unique to the world as the only wizard or other high level caster? The means by which an army wins a war rarely influences perceptions negatively. In fact, big flashy new things often have a positive effect. Do modern armies suffer for having precision strikes from modern aircraft? Casters are the MRLS rocket systems and F-35s of the fantasy world. We still say the United States bombed Iraq, not 32 F18s bombed Iraq. Again, it would be trivial for the wizard to make clear who he is working for.

Also, chances are flashy magic will actually reduce casualties. Shock and Awe exists for a reason. Meteor swarms and tsunamis might kill SOME enemy soldiers depending on placement, but they are also going to demoralize them alot faster then a smaller enemy force would. Dropping a few deadly spells into enemy formations is likely to create a lot less dead people overall, since fighting enemy soldiers, even with unfavorable conditions, is a threat that can be responded to. A near godlike wizard raining hell from above (or from completely out of sight) is more likely to create the shock and awe effect, and get the enemy troops to surrender.

Quote:

Furthermore, there are important factions not directly involved in the conflict whose allegiance must be won. The good aligned faith organizations for starters. Minimizing - which, again, is different than eliminating - casualties and limiting collateral damage shows them that the aggressors simply aren't the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.

The wizards efforts are not likely going to influence this. Again, chances are throwing around some magic into battle formations will actually save lives in the end. A bit of public relations can play off that. Either way, SOME people will have to die, the wizard at least will be more controled and less likely to have collatoral damage then an army.


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@DM_Blake - You're right it is a double-edged sword, or to be more precise walking a very thin line. One thing to clear up is that the wizard isn't the one who be will assuming leadership. She's simply a very close ally of the aggressor army's commander. The commander, however, does intend to be one of the new leaders as she will receive the largest duchy in the kingdom if the aggressors are successful and place their prince on the throne. Once the conflict is over the wizard will return to pursuing more wizardly avenues of interest and hasn't committed to taking an official position in the new regime.

As to the reaction of good-aligned organizations, I disagree. Casualties as a result of an honest and honorable battle are one thing - even if magic is used. Sending the wizard off to slaughter the enemy while they camp and before they even realize what's happening is something else entirely.

That said, once the aggressors size control of the capital, they intend to do exactly what you suggest: offer terms of surrender to the defenders. If the defenders decline and instead march to the capital to oust the aggressors, when the aggressors march out to meet them that's when the wizard gets her restraints loosened and can put on a show of force.

@Kolokotroni - Sure, the wizard can reduce her exposure by keeping a low profile after the conflict is won, but that's only viable if she doesn't do all the work. Otherwise the new rulers are going to have a hard time gaining the respect of the remaining nobility since it would appear as if they simply rode the coattails of the wizard and have little competency of their own. It cannot appear as though the wizard is the sole reason for the aggressors' victory, even if that reduces the odds for victory in the first place.

(Also, from a more practical, meta-standpoint, if the wizard does all the work, that doesn't leave any room for the PCs to participate meaningfully in the conflict.)

I do agree with what you said about shock and awe, and the aggressors intend to utilize the wizard's capability for that if/when the time is appropriate.

Silver Crusade

Despite what people like to think about 20th level wizards. They aren't the end all to be all.

He'd still be pretty beefy though.

Now for evil mechanical stuff.

Army combat rules kind of account for this. ACR for a single 20th level wizard (a fine army) is 12.

On the other hand, with 50,000k worth of troops, you're looking at multiple ACR 9 armies (this is assuming they're untrained and comprised of scrub Warrior 2s instead of Fighter 2s or higher).

He's tough, but not entirely insurmountable if more then say 2,000 soldiers encounter him at one time.

As an arguable PC type, the wizard can probably use spells and shennigans though to give a +4 to the OM or DV of the heroes army. Which might help to balance out the fact the heroes probably are going to have their force broken up into smaller chunks then the defenders.

In open combat you'd probably have the allied advance force consisting of 3-5 colossal armies of ACR 9 and the ACR 12 wizard and the ACR whatever party vs a significantly larger number (up to 25, apparently!) of ACR 9 armies or higher if they have elite units of their own.

Remember that all of the cloudkill, meteor swarm, or whatever shennigans only account for a +4 for allied forces or -4 to the enemy once you hit the army combat button.


Spook205 wrote:


He's tough, but not entirely insurmountable if more then say 2,000 soldiers encounter him at one time.

A wizard can neutralise an area half a kilometer wide with a standard action (Limited Wish->Control winds with wind blowing troops towards centre). They can do this from a quarter of a kilometer away. This is wide enough of an area to deal with several thousand troops.

They can then fly near the centre (from above) and drop a wall of fire, turning this mass no-save-just-lose into a no-save-just-die.

They can do this while invisible, with DR10/evil(Greater angelic aspect) and with an AC high enough to ensure that they can only be hit on a 20. They can also do this while being immune to most forms of magical detection (Mind blank) and incorporeal (e.g. Undead anatomy IV).

The army combat rules have problems.

They really shouldn't be used for things like this.


Snowblind wrote:
Spook205 wrote:


He's tough, but not entirely insurmountable if more then say 2,000 soldiers encounter him at one time.

A wizard can neutralise an area half a kilometer wide with a standard action (Limited Wish->Control winds with wind blowing troops towards centre). They can do this from a quarter of a kilometer away. This is wide enough of an area to deal with several thousand troops.

They can then fly near the centre (from above) and drop a wall of fire, turning this mass no-save-just-lose into a no-save-just-die.

They can do this while invisible, with DR10/evil(Greater angelic aspect) and with an AC high enough to ensure that they can only be hit on a 20. They can also do this while being immune to most forms of magical detection (Mind blank) and incorporeal (e.g. Undead anatomy IV).

The army combat rules have problems.

They really shouldn't be used for things like this.

I just wanna say that it's so wrong that you can combine those two spells...

Silver Crusade

Snowblind wrote:
Spook205 wrote:


He's tough, but not entirely insurmountable if more then say 2,000 soldiers encounter him at one time.

A wizard can neutralise an area half a kilometer wide with a standard action (Limited Wish->Control winds with wind blowing troops towards centre). They can do this from a quarter of a kilometer away. This is wide enough of an area to deal with several thousand troops.

They can then fly near the centre (from above) and drop a wall of fire, turning this mass no-save-just-lose into a no-save-just-die.

They can do this while invisible, with DR10/evil(Greater angelic aspect) and with an AC high enough to ensure that they can only be hit on a 20. They can also do this while being immune to most forms of magical detection (Mind blank) and incorporeal (e.g. Undead anatomy IV).

The army combat rules have problems.

They really shouldn't be used for things like this.

I strongly disagree. Mass army combat is precisely what the mass army combat rules are for.

They're an abstraction. Most of the bigger nastier stuff the mage has available is in the form of stuff of relatively short duration (20 minutes or so for the angelic aspect I believe?)

Army combat doesn't represent block o enemy on a giant featureless plane, it represents them being all over the place, using different methods against you, tactics, feints, sneaking at you, undermining, etc.

And that +4/-4 bonus is a pretty huge one. Keep in mind that your colossal army has like 48hp or so max (the fine army of the wizard would have something like 20 just on his own kip) and its an OM vs DV for what damage gets done. Wizard's still taking a chunk out of their ass.

The thread you link is predicated on the belief that the special guys, by their nature at intrinsically just going to win against normal folks even if those normal folks are operating together, functioning as a whole and have good tactics. Tactics tend to win over talent.

One person, despite what action films like to tell us, has a hard time making a difference against several thousand people all doing their level best to stay alive.

Keeping in mind when it comes to mages in warfare, I cut my teeth on stuff like Black Company and Myth the Fallen Lords where yes the guy can speak the five words that shatter stone like glass and can call forth your nightmares and make them dance and caper for his amusement, but he still has a hell of a time in a protracted battle and gets worn down by throngs of ceaseless grasping undead hands, or relatively easy to defeat enemies pumping him through of arrows in sheer mass.


Xexyz wrote:

@Kolokotroni - Sure, the wizard can reduce her exposure by keeping a low profile after the conflict is won, but that's only viable if she doesn't do all the work. Otherwise the new rulers are going to have a hard time gaining the respect of the remaining nobility since it would appear as if they simply rode the coattails of the wizard and have little competency of their own. It cannot appear as though the wizard is the sole reason for the aggressors' victory, even if that reduces the odds for victory in the first place.

Why? In this case, the wizard is a weapon of war. The president of the US does not himself invade countries. He sends his military to do it. Does the fact that F-35 fighter bombers and attack helicopters do the fighting for him somehow lessen the impact of the president ordering the US military to go blow something up, instead of humping C-4 in himself to do it? Did the fact that the fight of the first Persion Gulf War was over before a single soldier put his feet on Iraqi soil somehow lessen the impact? Honestly, I think people would have more respect for someone who uses the tools at hand instead of needlessly sending his men to slaughter other citizens would be seen as a good leader. Or do you think say, ordering a seal team to take out a group of terrorists holding hostages is a sign of weakness because a full military invasion wasnt sent?

Quote:

(Also, from a more practical, meta-standpoint, if the wizard does all the work, that doesn't leave any room for the PCs to participate meaningfully in the conflict.)

The pcs being involved in an open battle isnt a good idea anyway. Its too big a scale. they should have a specific small scale, him importants, high difficulty task anyway. You know, like a special forces team. If the wizard isnt in the party, he can gate them to a key location to take and hold a gatehouse or something (letting the invasion force into the city for instance). They shouldn't do open battle with an opposing army.


DM_Blake wrote:

You are at odds with yourself.

You don't want to nuke the enemy soldiers due to some kind-hearted but misplaced ideal of reducing casualties. Fine. I'll grant you that. But then you want to create favorable battle conditions so that your soldiers can kill the enemy soldiers. I'm pretty sure that this will create casualties. Probably on both sides.

This is what the USA did wrong in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. They did not commit, and the end result was that the USA lost those wars and a lot of American lives were lost for no reason.

Since when did the US/UN lose the Korean War?


Xexyz wrote:
Blakmane wrote:

Utter wash. Greater teleport:

"You may also bring one additional willing Medium or smaller creature (carrying gear or objects up to its maximum load) or its equivalent per three caster levels. A Large creature counts as two Medium creatures, a Huge creature counts as four Medium creatures, and so forth.

Teleport circle handily gets rid of any size and number worries.

You can't take wagons, but donkeys loaded up with supplies works just fine. Who cares anyway? You're already in the city walls and have all the supplies you can't carry right there available for you.

You could also just either planar bind or even just summon some gigantic creatures (celestial rocs are obtainable en masse) and then send them through the circle with the supplies.

This debate is a moot point. Teleportation circle easily transfers all the soldiers to the capital, although you may need to prepare a few of them to get adequate flow.

I don't think you quite grasp the scale we're dealing with here. I've been doing some research, and according to what I've found the column for a Roman army of approximately 5000 soldiers could be up to 15 miles long.

[...]

If I needed to get the army to the other side of the world, teleportation circles might merit further consideration. But the army just needs to get 450 miles, which when coupled with Lord's Banners of Swiftness is about 15 days march.

A good rule of thumb is that it would take about twice as long to move a train through a single teleportation circle as it would take to move the train its length along a typical Roman military road (so if your train is 30 miles long, it would take as long to travel through a teleportation circle as to travel 60 miles along a road).

This is ignoring that you may not need a lot of the bulkier train goods (such as tents) right away, if you are about to take an undefended city. Go Napoleonic! Liberate yourself from the train!

(Even ancient armies often moved days ahead of their baggage train and did not need it holding their hand at all times. The train was long-term support, not a 24/7 necessity - in the short term it could easily be done without).

So more practically what would likely happen is that you'd get the fighting army through with great speed, and the baggage would continue to filter along afterwards for many hours.

It still seems a fine deal even if you insist on not doing anything with your army till all the tents and toothbrushes have arrived and the general's field barbershop and massage station is set up, though. You're turning a 450 mile march into a 60 mile one. And since you framed this war as a race to the capital - you just won.

If you wanted to speed it up, though, put two teleportation circles. Since we're using Roman military examples, two circles side by side creates a corridor about as wide as an ordinary Roman military highway. A 20th level wizard gets like six 9th level spells per day, or he could use a couple scrolls scribed beforehand if the invading army planned for this.

Scarab Sages

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Why not just cast a merciful Tsunami? It will win the battle in one action, and not kill anyone. (Well it might if the non lethal goes too high.)


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ElterAgo wrote:
Xexyz wrote:

...

First, the aggressor intends to rule the country afterward - and in the process make the defender's armies their own.
...
This is fairly close to impossible. There are very few circumstances where a conqueror can rely on the loyalty of the armies of the person he defeated.

Yes there are. The general idea of racing an army to the capital and using it to seize power is fine.

ElterAgo wrote:
Xexyz wrote:

...

The plan is for the assault to take place in three stages: Stage 1 is for an elite strike team (likely the PCs) to infiltrate into the palace and capture the king. With the king out the way, stage 2 will be to have an advance force eliminate the remaining ruling structure and in the process take control of the city. Stage 3 occurs once the main army arrives and it able to march through the city with the majority of any opposition neutralized and then prepare for an engagement with the defending army outside of the city.

Your stage 1 will pretty much guarantee that the defending armies will always see the PC's and the aggressor leader as the enemy and a usurper.

Stage 2 and 3 will just set that in stone.

I think the only way to get what you describe as wanting for the eventual result is a real coup d'état. Which pretty much doesn't involve large military engagements.

Let's read between the lines of the scenario a little. This is obviously Caesar crossing the Rubicon and capturing Rome before the Senate and Pompey can gather their forces. It's just dressed up in generic terms and flavored with a little special ops action for the PCs. Broadly, it's fine, it's not an impossible series of events and seizing power with an army is not a guarantee that nobody will ever follow you.

The only thing that having a 20th level wizard on board does is make winning the race and the war all but automatic.


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Abraham spalding wrote:
Claxon wrote:

If you take the city in a single day, you don't really need a supply train. You have the city. You have everything you need. All you need is the soldier and their gear.

There is no need for a supply or baggage train. That was to give the soldier a place to sleep and hold their weapons and armor and other supplies while they were on the move. There is no "moving" here.

You are at the battlefield. You either win or die. No need for supplies. And if there is, you will have time after you have taken the city to get the supplies in. It's not as though it needs to be there the moment you invade the city.

... said no general ever.

You need those supplies and they will probably be in use even before the battle starts. Even if you take the town you are going to need those supplies. Most towns/cities don't have a standing pool of supplies to simply start hosting an additional 10k people in them, and even if you do you won't win yourself any friends simply grabbing what you need from the city in this fashion. The only reason you would do this is if you are raiding for the purposes of looting and destroying.

Never leave your supply train unprotected/ without its army

Not the case.

Just a random example from a book on my shelf on the subject, you can see the exact same thing done in a very similar context as the OP's - get the army to the city fast, let the baggage catch up at its own pace:

Logistics of the Roman Army at War wrote:
For example, when Lucius Scipio marched through Thrace to Lysimacheia in 190 B.C., he waited a few days to allow his baggage (impedimenta) to arrive—this is clearly the army train.

(Lysimacheia was the major Seleucid stronghold in Europe during Rome's 192-188 war with Antiochos II the Great).

Moving the army fast to the objective and then allowing the train to slowly catch up was not only possible, it was common and necessary.


Coriat wrote:
DM_Blake wrote:

You are at odds with yourself.

You don't want to nuke the enemy soldiers due to some kind-hearted but misplaced ideal of reducing casualties. Fine. I'll grant you that. But then you want to create favorable battle conditions so that your soldiers can kill the enemy soldiers. I'm pretty sure that this will create casualties. Probably on both sides.

This is what the USA did wrong in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. They did not commit, and the end result was that the USA lost those wars and a lot of American lives were lost for no reason.

Since when did the US/UN lose the Korean War?

Posts like that come from a particular political background, one which tends to STILL carry grudges over, "what the enemy within, the (insert political party/group/ideology) did to make us lose Korea/Vietnam/etc." Engaging that will likely be fruitless, and this isn't a political board.

Limited warfare vs. total warfare dates back a lot further than the 20th century though. One of Sun Tzu's biggest "tricks" in the amazing art of tactics that he was so famous for was abandoning the ridiculous idea that officers and nobles should be killed "politely" with capture and execution or duel on the battlefield between two high-rankers instead of just assassinating the jerk in his tent. Rules on whether or not to burn religious buildings and the people inside have come and gone for millenia. The concept of "rules of engagement" and "honor," and all kinds of limiters and delimiters happened throughout history, and quite frankly, the data continues to be inconclusive. Sometimes a "limited" campaign results in obedient client states, sometimes it results in endlessly rebellious client states. Sometimes total warfare ends a threat for good, sometimes it creates new enemies without and within.

And most times, the decision isn't made based on any of that, it is made because of other factors, like the expectation of foreign invasion during time of weakness or other parties at the border waiting for an excuse to get involved. Nuking the Norks was never an option without the intention of total nuclear warfare.


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Abraham spalding wrote:
Rhedyn wrote:

Teleportation Circle.

You don't need supplies, you use the capital's supplies.
Everyone teleports straight into the capital where all the head officials have been dominated to prevent a proper response.

Rhedyn don't make me repeat myself.

If you're going to repeat yourself, you should make sure you're right :p

There are plenty of campaigns involving sending the troops on ahead without the supply train. Caesar in Britain in 55.

It doesn't always work out and sometimes it can leave the army in a sticky situation. (Caesar at Dyrrhachium in 48). But it's broadly a useful tactic even when implemented at the speed of marching, and if you can expect to capture a lightly defended capital, and all its stores, due to teleportation-enhanced speed, it's a great tactic.

(Even after being burned a bit at Dyrrhachium, Caesar considered moving troops fast to be important enough that when he went on campaign next year in 47 he went with even fewer supplies.)

How it worked out:
Nevertheless, the extremely rapid approach of Caesar in person forced Pharnaces to turn his attention back to the Romans. At first, recognizing the threat, he made offers of submission, with the sole object of gaining time until Caesar's attention fell elsewhere; Caesar's speed brought war quickly and battle took place near Zela (modern Zile in Turkey), where Pharnaces was routed with just a small detachment of cavalry. Caesar's victory was so swift and complete that, in a letter to a friend in Rome, he famously said of the short war, "Veni, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered")


Spook205 wrote:


I strongly disagree. Mass army combat is precisely what the mass army combat rules are for.

They're an abstraction. Most of the bigger nastier stuff the mage has available is in the form of stuff of relatively short duration (20 minutes or so for the angelic aspect I believe?)

Army combat doesn't represent block o enemy on a giant featureless plane, it represents them being all over the place, using different methods against you, tactics, feints, sneaking at you, undermining, etc.

And that +4/-4 bonus is a pretty huge one. Keep in mind that your colossal army has like 48hp or so max (the fine army of the wizard would have something like 20 just on his own kip) and its an OM vs DV for what damage gets done. Wizard's still taking a chunk out of their ass.

The thread you link is predicated on the belief that the special guys, by their nature at intrinsically just going to win against normal folks even if those normal folks are operating together, functioning as a whole and...

How would a mindblanked invisible wizard flying hundreds of feet overhead even be targeted? Even if they fill sky with arrows fickle winds would make him immune to anything besides siege weapons, control weather could even ensure siege weapons would be useless.

Silver Crusade

Trimalchio wrote:
Spook205 wrote:


I strongly disagree. Mass army combat is precisely what the mass army combat rules are for.

They're an abstraction. Most of the bigger nastier stuff the mage has available is in the form of stuff of relatively short duration (20 minutes or so for the angelic aspect I believe?)

Army combat doesn't represent block o enemy on a giant featureless plane, it represents them being all over the place, using different methods against you, tactics, feints, sneaking at you, undermining, etc.

And that +4/-4 bonus is a pretty huge one. Keep in mind that your colossal army has like 48hp or so max (the fine army of the wizard would have something like 20 just on his own kip) and its an OM vs DV for what damage gets done. Wizard's still taking a chunk out of their ass.

The thread you link is predicated on the belief that the special guys, by their nature at intrinsically just going to win against normal folks even if those normal folks are operating together, functioning as a whole and...

How would a mindblanked invisible wizard flying hundreds of feet overhead even be targeted? Even if they fill sky with arrows fickle winds would make him immune to anything besides siege weapons, control weather could even ensure siege weapons would be useless.

They could fall back for a few hours, take the damage he deals out, absorb it or otherwise account for it.

Hell, they might just start randomly catapulting the sky, looking for weird shadows, throwing smoke around, burning things to obscure his vision, banging pots wildly, releasing carrier pigeons or trained bats, or a thousand other things as equally ridiculous as Mr. Invisible McFlyingpants the Wizard who has a limited amount of resources in his quiver.

Also, spell durations. Those flight and invisibility spells will wear out in 20 minutes or so each (or instantly if he throws any heat), less if he's using the greater version. Fickle winds similarly has a time limit on it (another 20 minutes approximately). It'd be like waiting out an artillery bombardment, since our friend the wizard has to be able to see and locate our friendly neighborhood army elements. And keep in mind, every utility spell, every defense spell, every detection spell he has is one less arrow in his quiver. You've already got the guy blowing a fifth level slot for fickle winds, two third level slots for flight and base invisibility (higher if its greater invis), and down an 8th for mind blank.

And I'm not saying its a close thing, his lone ACR is higher then the average 2,000 man army afterall, but its far from 'you are level 2 peons and thus inconsequential to me'.

One 'round' of army combat is more like a day of combat. Our mage is going to end up with his heavy combat spells effectively blown after less than half an hour unless he goes in with back up.

Personally, I prefer the army combat rules for the 'one against ten thousand' situations precisely because it denudes the one of the ability to cite the usual ground level shennigans they use.

Its an element of scale that shows up a lot because in our game, ever since 3.0 rolled out, game design doesn't want higher level guys getting shivved by lower level ones.

A party fights 2,000 orcs individually (their DM's sanity in question the entire time) and effortlessly, although tiringly, rips through the people who can't hit their ACs exempting 20s and who in turn get cut down like wheat.

A party fights 3-10 orc 'troops' and all of a sudden those orcs are much more effective.

A party fights a colossal army and find themselves in a situation where they're fighting for their lives, on the basis of a single die roll.

Quantity has a quality all its own. Army combat rules are abstract to represent this, and to represent that all of your mind blank, airborne, invisible, protection from arrow stuff doesn't help you when you're facing down against veritable seas of enemies.

All that being said.

Fighting the enemy army is not really a good idea, nor is it what the attacking force wants.

Hold monster, mass; weird are better for creating what's far more useful at buying time.

Minefields.

You create situations where the enemy needs to be cautious moving through and you cut their speed, and the speed of others nearby.

If there are any chokepoints the defending forces need to access the capital, he can use a few antipathy spells and basically cause a long bottleneck. And antipathy? Guess what it has for duration? 2 hours /per level

Yeah guys, 40 hours of 'I don't want to go in there.' On a 200 square foot area.

One mountain pass could hold up an enemy advance for like two days and not a single guy gets killed!

Thats a hell of a lot more impressive then some invisible jerk flying around, blowing/freezing/banishing up about three hundred people and having to tottle back home after half an hour like some sort of really angry thunderstorm.


Spook205 wrote:
Trimalchio wrote:
How would a mindblanked invisible wizard flying hundreds of feet overhead even be targeted? Even if they fill sky with arrows fickle winds would make him immune to anything besides siege weapons, control weather could even ensure siege weapons would be useless.
Hell, they might just start randomly catapulting the sky, looking for weird shadows, throwing smoke around, burning things to obscure his vision, banging pots wildly, releasing carrier pigeons or trained bats, or a thousand other things as equally ridiculous as Mr. Invisible McFlyingpants the Wizard who has a limited amount of resources in his quiver.

This sounds like a great way to win the war in exactly the way that the party wants to win it (light casualties). Wizard shows up invisible, casts a long term spell or two just to let them know there is an invisible wizard in the area, laughs and leaves while the other army, not realizing he is gone, spends hours trying to catapult every falling leaf along their marching path and filling every tree where a squirrel drops a nut with fifty thousand arrows.

While the other armies are busy trying to bracket the sky with catapult stones, they aren't making good progress to where they're needed.

Silver Crusade

Coriat wrote:
Spook205 wrote:
Trimalchio wrote:
How would a mindblanked invisible wizard flying hundreds of feet overhead even be targeted? Even if they fill sky with arrows fickle winds would make him immune to anything besides siege weapons, control weather could even ensure siege weapons would be useless.
Hell, they might just start randomly catapulting the sky, looking for weird shadows, throwing smoke around, burning things to obscure his vision, banging pots wildly, releasing carrier pigeons or trained bats, or a thousand other things as equally ridiculous as Mr. Invisible McFlyingpants the Wizard who has a limited amount of resources in his quiver.

This sounds like a great way to win the war in exactly the way that the party wants to win it (light casualties). Wizard shows up invisible, casts a long term spell or two just to let them know there is an invisible wizard in the area, laughs and leaves while the other army, not realizing he is gone, spends hours trying to catapult every falling leaf along their marching path and filling every tree where a squirrel drops a nut with fifty thousand arrows.

While the other armies are busy trying to bracket the sky with catapult stones, they aren't making good progress to where they're needed.

Ha! I didn't think of that! It is brilliant! You don't even need to kill anybody, you could just use illusions.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Coriat wrote:
DM_Blake wrote:

You are at odds with yourself.

You don't want to nuke the enemy soldiers due to some kind-hearted but misplaced ideal of reducing casualties. Fine. I'll grant you that. But then you want to create favorable battle conditions so that your soldiers can kill the enemy soldiers. I'm pretty sure that this will create casualties. Probably on both sides.

This is what the USA did wrong in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. They did not commit, and the end result was that the USA lost those wars and a lot of American lives were lost for no reason.

Since when did the US/UN lose the Korean War?

The Korean War has not ended. It's only in a state of an extended armistice.


Coriat wrote:
Abraham spalding wrote:
Claxon wrote:

If you take the city in a single day, you don't really need a supply train. You have the city. You have everything you need. All you need is the soldier and their gear.

There is no need for a supply or baggage train. That was to give the soldier a place to sleep and hold their weapons and armor and other supplies while they were on the move. There is no "moving" here.

You are at the battlefield. You either win or die. No need for supplies. And if there is, you will have time after you have taken the city to get the supplies in. It's not as though it needs to be there the moment you invade the city.

... said no general ever.

You need those supplies and they will probably be in use even before the battle starts. Even if you take the town you are going to need those supplies. Most towns/cities don't have a standing pool of supplies to simply start hosting an additional 10k people in them, and even if you do you won't win yourself any friends simply grabbing what you need from the city in this fashion. The only reason you would do this is if you are raiding for the purposes of looting and destroying.

Never leave your supply train unprotected/ without its army

Not the case.

Just a random example from a book on my shelf on the subject, you can see the exact same thing done in a very similar context as the OP's - get the army to the city fast, let the baggage catch up at its own pace:

Logistics of the Roman Army at War wrote:
For example, when Lucius Scipio marched through Thrace to Lysimacheia in 190 B.C., he waited a few days to allow his baggage (impedimenta) to arrive—this is clearly the army train.

(Lysimacheia was the major Seleucid stronghold in Europe during Rome's 192-188 war with Antiochos II the Great).

Moving the army fast to the objective and then allowing the train to slowly catch up was not only possible, it was common and necessary.

And it has more regularly left armies without supplies, possibly surrounded and generally screwed over.

You can quote the few times it has actually worked, but even then it's a gamble at best -- and recognized as an extremely risky move that can easily blow up on you.

So yeah -- don't do it.


the wizard won't really need more then a few rounds to clean up the army, a tsunami on either side of the group, if he wants to go the extra effort he can stick around for a few fireballs or maybe just gate in a dragon to do it for him, but anyone left alive probably won't want to be in that army anymore.


LazarX wrote:
Coriat wrote:
DM_Blake wrote:

You are at odds with yourself.

You don't want to nuke the enemy soldiers due to some kind-hearted but misplaced ideal of reducing casualties. Fine. I'll grant you that. But then you want to create favorable battle conditions so that your soldiers can kill the enemy soldiers. I'm pretty sure that this will create casualties. Probably on both sides.

This is what the USA did wrong in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. They did not commit, and the end result was that the USA lost those wars and a lot of American lives were lost for no reason.

Since when did the US/UN lose the Korean War?
The Korean War has not ended. It's only in a state of an extended armistice.

At the exact spot the US/UN said they would go to, extending no further, and only because the other side won't admit it's done.

It's only an armistice because no one wants to clean up NK, which is to say, we've won a 'war' that wasn't a 'war' in all but name except it again can't be 'won' because we aren't willing to total war it.


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Spook205 wrote:

I strongly disagree. Mass army combat is precisely what the mass army combat rules are for.

They're an abstraction. Most of the bigger nastier stuff the mage has available is in the form of stuff of relatively short duration (20 minutes or so for the angelic aspect I believe?)

Army combat doesn't represent block o enemy on a giant featureless plane, it represents them being all over the place, using different methods against you, tactics, feints, sneaking at you, undermining, etc.

I am going to go through the steps for a wizard to wipe out an entire army in detail. Copious, gory detail explaining exactly why you are horribly, horribly wrong and why tactics cannot save you from a level 20 wizard

Step 1 - Find the army
There are so many ways to do this it isn't even funny.

1.
Teleport into the capital, charm/dominate an official, and get them to tell you. Since the location of a 10 thousand man army won't exactly be a state secret, finding someone with that info who is very low level should be trivial. Unless virtually every official is carfully guarded by mid-level casters, this whole step should be close to risk free.

If the wizard wants to cover their tracks, they can either disappear the official (e.g. kill, teleport the official back to the guys he is helping or use trap the soul until the "war" is over) or, alternatively, do the following:
dominate them in the middle of the night
wake them and get the info
command them to go back to sleep
forgetful slumber them.

Now either the official will lapse into natural sleep, or worst case a random low level official wakes up in the middle of the night for no reason(that he remembers).

Nobody will ever know the truth.

2.
Bind some outsiders to do scouting. I can't be bothered searching for the best option here, but quasits wouldn't be a bad choice, with their flight and at will invisibility. Scouts flying over the country 1km off the ground while invisible that don't need to sleep or eat are going to find a group of 10000 soldiers without too much trouble.

If the wizard is worried about the bound scouts taking actions that screw him over, he can geas them before sending them out and forcing them to not screw him over. Since the wizard will have a godlike intelligence, I am sure he can work out an appropriate command for the geas.

3. Abuse contact other plane.

spoilered for length:

First, lets see what the wizard's intelligence check modifier is.

expected intelligence is 18 base+5 level increase+6 headband+5 inherent=34 for a +12 modifier.
Luck stone is +1
Normal and Flawed pale green prism ioun stone is +2
courageous weapon enhancement on a +4 cetus/spiked gauntlet is + 2 to the flawed pale green bonus

that is a total modifier or +17. A natural 1 gets an 18 (nat. 1 doesn't fail for ability checks).

What was the DC. Oh hey, the best option has a DC of 16. We are done.

The wizard can safely spam the spell as many times as needed to get the info he needs and know it is reliable despite the roughly 10% chance of each question being answered wrongly.

As for how he easily turns a single word question/answer into a location, he can do the following.
Get a map of a region that he knows the army is (a map of the world would work).
Acquire a straight piece of metal. Put some paint on the right side of it
Put the metal straight down on the map so the right side of it cuts the map in half.
Use contact other plane to ask roughly the following question:
Is the majority of the troops currently in active service in the standing army under the rule of *ruler* that is *a minor detail or two that can uniquely identify the army from any others* to the east/north of the stretch of land that corresponds to the part of the map within 3 feet of me that is directly above the side of the piece of metal on the map that has paint on it?

Doing this halves the area the army can be in. The wizard can move the metal piece and repeat this until he has a very precise position (swapping the map with one of a smaller region if necessary). Since each question halves the area the troops can be in, determining the position of the center of an army to within around 1 square meter in a country the size of the united states (about 1 million square kilometers) takes about 30 questions (because math). That is 3 castings. Do each set of 10 questions 5 times to eliminate the problem of the 12% non-truth rate before moving on to the next set.

Now the wizard knows the center of the army to within an absurd amount of precision.

4.
Ask his rebel buddies where the armies are. They know the numbers of the armies, so they probably know where they are.

Step 2 - Pre-"battle" scouting
The wizard should fly above the army at a good height under invisibility and pick a spot that is best for him to teleport to using greater teleport for stage 3.

Step 3 - Buff, Buff, Buff the Wizard

spoilered for length:

Just before teleporting, the wizard will do his buff routine. He should be doing this while on his own private demiplane. It would go roughly as follows
1.Use UMD to fake being a divine caster so the karma bead on a prayer strand can be activated. With that and an orange ioun stone, the wizard will have at least a 25 caster level for the next 10 minutes. Note that nobody short of a CL15 caster can possibly dispel him
2.(lesser?) Astral projection, just in case
3.Travel to a secluded place in the material plane
4.Mindblank, Mage armour and Overland flight, if he didn't do them hours ago for some reason.
5.Greater angelic aspect (lol DR10/evil)
6.Winds of vengeance (lol @ ranged weapons)
7.Greater invisibility
8. Undead anatomy IV, turning into something incorporeal (pick something with some good defensive options, I wont give one here because cbf looking through the bestiary)

Throw in any other buffs that you like.

Note that all of the following is a level 20 wizard indulging in excessive preparation. It is pretty much unneeded because of this spell. Add this or the appropriate type of this to taste. The wizard should recast this when the duration is about to run out.

If he runs low on slots, some of this can be scrolled. Note that since meta-magic gems are material components, they can be included in a scroll.

Step 4 - A frightening display of Fantastic Kosmic Power(TM)

The wizard should teleport into the spot they decided on in stage 2.
They should immediately limited wish->control winds the center of the army, using the updraft option to produce tornado force winds (details on exactly why this works below). If the army is spread over too large an area, multiple castings may be needed.

Following this, the wizard should drop walls of fire in the center of the windy zone(s).

Dimension dooring should be utilized in order to only spend 1 round moving between castings. This way it should only take 5 rounds to wipe out over half a square k of area (1st DD,2nd round control winds,3rd wall of fire, 4th refresh maximized time stop,1 round is a spare in case 2 dds are needed to shift position - if unused, the wizard should consider taking time out to practice his evil laugh). The wizard can do this 4 times before his unnecessary rounds/level buffs run out.

The entire army will be pushed into the fire and roasted, or killed by the winds(see below). The wizard can then teleport/planeshift out with the last standard action he has before time stop runs out.

Control winds+firewall trick

spoilered for length...again:

A level 20 wizard will produce tornado force winds using control winds. Wind mechanics here.

A CL25 casting of control winds has a radius of 1000 feet. This covers an area of 3.14 million square feet. Assuming that on average there is one soldier every 20 foot square (400 square feet), a single standard action can cover an area containing roughly 8000 troops

Since troops will be in nat.20 territory I am going to assume the fort save is auto-fail for simplicity.

Assuming the average trooper has a +2 modifier to str, they will pass the "move into winds" check 60% of the time, and the "blown away" check 35% percent of the time. This means that 65% of the time a trooper will start from prone each round, and they have a 60% chance of moving each round.

Each round a soldier can move 30 feet from starting prone, or 120 feet running (which they can do for 12 rounds without risking fatigue, assuming 12 con). By invoking the power of maths, a soldier is pushed an average of 16.25 feet toward the center per round.

The soldier makes 36.9 feet headway against the winds per round average. This means that a soldier moves 20 feet average away from the center per average. Assuming that each solder is a level 3 fighter with 12 con and fcb into hit points, they will have
27ish hitpoints. They take an average of 1d4 non-lethal every 10 feet blown, so the average non-lethal per round is 4.225. Each soldier will stay conscious for an average of 6.39 rounds. Assuming being unconscious prevents them from making strength checks against the wind, each soldier will be dead (non-lethal past limit turns into lethal) in 6.24 rounds after being knocked unconscious.

Note that the wall of fire is probably unnecessary, but there is a concern that the soldiers near the center will pile up in a big heap in the middle. This might prevent some of them from being killed. A wizard letting this happen wouldn't be thorough.

A wizard is nothing if not thorough.

Spook205 wrote:


The thread you link is predicated on the belief that the special guys, by their nature at intrinsically just going to win against normal folks even if those normal folks are operating together, functioning as a whole and have good tactics. Tactics tend to win over talent.

I want you to explain to me, without resorting to mid-high level caster shenanigans, HOW DO YOU TACTICS YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS.

This is not an unusual style of fighting. This is how competent high level casters fight. They figure out, out of the literally thousands of possible strategies, one plan that will work, and they execute it. The opponents/victims could adapt, but they can't, because the caster would have chosen a strategy that they couldn't adapt against.

The wonderful thing about being a high level caster is that they all have enough tricks up their sleeve to be able to pull a wide variety of b*****t out to deal with the "normal" folk. A wizard won't find himself doing the same thing twice for quite a while if he doesn't feel like it.

Normal people cannot keep up.

Side note: correct me if I am wrong, since I have not actually read black company, but from what I have heard black company is filled with strategies and counter-strategies. I also have heard that insane casualty rates were frequent(iirc 80% was the figure I saw). It also has silly bs like people who naturally walk around with mile wide antimagic auras (and mages who stick wings on their flying carpets so they can fly through antimagic fields and drop alchemist's fire) that could severely weaken the capabilities of the magic bs. Having one of these people with them also didn't give the company an overwhelming advantage. It gives them a small hope of success.

Silver Crusade

Snowblind wrote:
(Various In-Depth Descriptions of Caster Capabilities versus an army.)

I have never once stated that they don't have an advantage. That advantage is represented by the wizard's ACR being higher then the 2,000 man colossal army (the entire enemy force is 10,000).

I'll state again that the majority of this 'knowing the location' or 'teleporting into their midst' thing doesn't really work as the army isn't likely to be moving in a giant column. The OP's informed us its spread out, meaning he might show up, blow his wad on a portion of it, and then have to deal with the rest of it being potentially miles away and having to blow more resources on that and then go after the next portion.

And if you want this conversation to stay civil, spare me the 'how competent high level people fight' malarkey. I'd equally argue a competent high level person doesn't go to fight an army by himself. From where I'm sitting that's more what a grandstanding idiot or someone who's desperate does. Presumably someone else thinks a competent high level person is one who goes into his demiplane for like sixty subjective years and comes out with an army of simulacra. I'm not going to compare MtG decks against you.

I stated my rationale further up thread. There are issues of distance and time that aren't reflected with the 'I teleport in, activate my trap card and tap three red mana for a landfall spell' ethos that floats around when people discuss high level mages. Delaying tactics are far more in the wheel house of an actual high level person then showing up, assuming the enemy forces are incapable of harming him, and barfing a bunch of flashy instantaneous spells in all directions. Even with the strategy of times-topping, dimension dooring and control weathering, he'd likely run out of slots first. Particularly if the 10,000 man defender force isn't massed. Also the casualties he'd incur would be spectacular which is against their mandate.

If my choices were to block an army with a few castings of an 8th level spell, as opposed to blowing 20+ spell levels, I'd choose the Antipathy. Hell, I might burn 9th level slots on more antipathies.

The army combat rules are built to simplify things. That's why they exist. The fact they don't take into account spell composition, what color pants you wearing, what the weather is, or how many centimeters of mud on the ground is a feature, not a bug. Also again, that +4/-4 on the OM or DV roll goes a long way.

Nobody's arguing high level people aren't dangerous. I'm arguing that numerical superiority and the discipline represented by having an entire army does indeed represent a method for opposing them. A country needs ways of dealing with monsters besides PCs. The army rules actually support this verisimilitude.

And before we start down the 'superheroes' line and people mistakenly believe I don't think high level guys are supreme badasses...

I don't think it diminishes the prestige of a 20th level mage if it takes four thousand people arrayed for war to just provide a threat to him (that's two ACR 9 armies against Mr. ACR 11 wizard).

Casualty rates in Black Company were high on all sides because of a mixture of death magics (imagine someone dropping cloudkills on a siege) and the fact that even eldritch semi-undead horrors could still be worn down by battle axe, arrow and bolt. Its military fantasy basically. The first one's a cool book. Depressing though.


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Abraham spalding wrote:

... said no general ever.

You need those supplies and they will probably be in use even before the battle starts. Even if you take the town you are going to need those supplies. Most towns/cities don't have a standing pool of supplies to simply start hosting an additional 10k people in them, and even if you do you won't win yourself any friends simply grabbing what you need from the city in this fashion. The only reason you would do this is if you are raiding for the purposes of looting and destroying.

Never leave your supply train unprotected/ without its army

You can leave your supply train in your home fortifications, teleport your army into the enemies fortifications, and teleport the supplies as needed. You'd only ever have to carry a days worth of supplies.

This would also solve the wizard who doesn't want the focus shifted if you can find a secluded-ish spot (maybe the sewers at first, until you can fortify better grounds). Letting the people wonder how you got in without directly pointing to the wizard who may be doing minor fireballs on the battle field just making her presence known away from the teleporting army.

EDIT: Whoops I skipped two pages, ah well.


Spook205 wrote:
I have never once stated that they don't have an advantage. That advantage is represented by the wizard's ACR being higher then the 2,000 man colossal army (the entire enemy force is 10,000)

This in no way invalidates your post, but point of order: the enemy force is 50,000 while the "good" (?) aggressor force is 10,000 plus the wizard. I think you know that, but I'm pointing that out before that becomes the conversation tangent.

Reference the army v. the Mage: that is an awful lot of Perception checks and attack/knowledge/other rolls. While every ten feet imposes a -2 (or is it -1? I don't recall right now), that also hits the point of no one is able to see anything at all beyond ~100 ft or so.

The assertion that a 20th would have those spells is false. The assertion that a 20th could have all those spells is not, nor is it ridiculous.

A 20th level caster really could do this, in theory. In practice, too, but it has to be a very specific practice. That's not a bad thing.

With that in mind, please, all, continue. :)


I'm all for abstractions but not if they end up creating a different game then the one I thought I was playing. If I sat down at a table holding a level 20 wizard and the DM reduced my character to an ACR 11 I would probably just standup and walk out.

The OP of the thread wants to have a setup where armies matter, that's great, do that, but throwing in a level 20 wizard in the mix makes army just not matter, unless the army is going to be filled with mid-level spell casters themselves or moderately powerful outsiders, but if it's mostly juts a bunch of mundanes with pikes, crossbows, and siege equipment, then they have 0 chance in putting up a fight.

Also an army that is spread out over any distance that would matter to a wizard isn't really one large army, it's at best several smaller armies. Casting Tsunami twice or thrice will simply kill the entire clump of soldiers and destroy all of their equipment.

The OP should probably just drop the idea of having a level 20 wizard help one side or the other because if the wizard puts any effort into it whatsoever the war will end before it even begins, make it a level 12 wizard instead, or just have midlevel pcs be the standin for the wizard.

Most level 20 wizards are probably too busy crafting or astral projecting through the mutliverse to much care about whose name is on some castle located in some mundane kingdom on some backwaters corner of the prime because if the wizard wanted to change that he would or he would gate in a solar and have it do it for him so he can go back to crafting another metamagic rod or casting discern location on the next artifact he has his heart set on.

Sovereign Court

what if the 20th level wizard is the halfling squire of the invading king? he signed a pact with some outsiders that he will never seek earthly glory or pursue the acquisition of wealth... he acts like a simple halfling servant who fetches the King's codpiece, shines his armor and empties his chamberpot...

after hours (or while his unseen servants clean the King's junk) he morphs / teleports / scry around the country and DOES STUFF! (he never openly buffs the invading army, but they inexplicably plow through the kingdom on a seemingly endless string of luck)

GO! :)

Sovereign Court

...ok can't help it:

1- Halfling wizard disables all siege weapons for the next three castles, and sabotages all their porticullis / drawbridges by casting polymorph any object "metal chain to gummy bear chain"


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Abraham spalding wrote:
Coriat wrote:
Abraham spalding wrote:
Claxon wrote:

If you take the city in a single day, you don't really need a supply train. You have the city. You have everything you need. All you need is the soldier and their gear.

There is no need for a supply or baggage train. That was to give the soldier a place to sleep and hold their weapons and armor and other supplies while they were on the move. There is no "moving" here.

You are at the battlefield. You either win or die. No need for supplies. And if there is, you will have time after you have taken the city to get the supplies in. It's not as though it needs to be there the moment you invade the city.

... said no general ever.

You need those supplies and they will probably be in use even before the battle starts. Even if you take the town you are going to need those supplies. Most towns/cities don't have a standing pool of supplies to simply start hosting an additional 10k people in them, and even if you do you won't win yourself any friends simply grabbing what you need from the city in this fashion. The only reason you would do this is if you are raiding for the purposes of looting and destroying.

Never leave your supply train unprotected/ without its army

Not the case.

Just a random example from a book on my shelf on the subject, you can see the exact same thing done in a very similar context as the OP's - get the army to the city fast, let the baggage catch up at its own pace:

Logistics of the Roman Army at War wrote:
For example, when Lucius Scipio marched through Thrace to Lysimacheia in 190 B.C., he waited a few days to allow his baggage (impedimenta) to arrive—this is clearly the army train.

(Lysimacheia was the major Seleucid stronghold in Europe during Rome's 192-188 war with Antiochos II the Great).

Moving the army fast to the objective and then allowing the train to slowly catch up was not only possible, it was common and necessary.

And it has more regularly left armies without supplies, possibly surrounded and generally screwed over.

You can quote the few times it has actually worked, but even then it's a gamble at best -- and recognized as an extremely risky move that can easily blow up on you.

So yeah -- don't do it.

Excellent generals could and did do it, sometimes with good results, sometimes with bad. Average generals could and did do it, sometimes with good results, sometimes with bad. Poor generals could and did do it, sometimes with good results, sometimes with bad.

The takeaway is that it should be done whenever it is more important to move with speed than to keep with the train, and that generals sometimes misjudge when this is the case (more often if they are bad generals).

The takeaway is not that it should never be done.

This is a situation where, per the OP, speed is of such essence that it will essentially determine the war. If carefully manicured, well-groomed troops arrive in the capital after the regime's armies do, the chance to end the war at a stroke is gone.

So yeah, better travel at oxcart speed so that the general's jeweled wine case and masseuse don't get left behind?

In other news, I want to make sure you are clear on the nature of the army train which we are discussing. There were two trains associated with the Roman military, which could be simplistically represented as light baggage and heavy baggage.

The first was the troop train (sarcina), representing key supplies that could travel fast right alongside the troops, often on muleback if not simply carried. Tents, spare food, and such. Elements of the sarcina could also be stripped, and were when the general wanted to move much faster than his opponents expected (Even when the mules can keep up with the march, stripping them reduces road clogging in general, as does lightening the soldiers' packs themselves). Leaving it was sometimes a good idea, depending on the conditions of the campaign, the logistic potential of the route, and the need for speed.

The second was the army train (impedimenta), which moved on wagons and pack animals, often separately behind the march of the legion, and was more akin to a moving substitute for a city to take care of long term needs, like barbering, and fixing broken armor, and yes, massaging and annointing the aristocrats in olive oil. That kind of thing. The impedimenta also included siege implements, stores to resupply the troop train, doctors, spare laundry, etc. The army train is the train that the OP brought up and that we are discussing.

Moving ahead of the army train was common practice and often a good idea, because the army train was slow as balls.

In neither case is it correct to say that it is never a good idea to leave the supply train.

The OP's army almost certainly would not need its army train. Not only could teleportation net it a city full of stuff before the other armies can intervene, but due to the circle the train would never be that far behind anyway.


@Coriat - Thanks for the examples from Roman campaigns; I had been doing some research online to help me figure out some particulars (How far can an army march in one day? How large would the army's baggage train be?) and the answers I found were based on Roman armies, so that's what I went with.

@Kolokotroni - I agree with you that the wizard is essentially a weapon of war. However the circumstances in which the president wages war are different than what's going on here. The president is an elected official of limited duration operating within the context of a republic, making decisions on whether or not to initiate conflicts with foreign aggressors. In this situation, we have essentially a civil rebellion against the current ruler. In the case of the commander of the rebellion's army, she's going to be rewarded with a duchy for her service.

It's a totally different political landscape.

@Trimalchio - Regardless of whether or not the wizard could single-handedly destroy all of the defenders armies (and I'm personally of the opinion that it's very doable), it's not going to happen because it's a bad idea. To make a modern comparison, it's not going to happen for the same reason (among others) that the US, despite having nuclear weapons, has never used nuclear weapons in any of the conflicts in which it's participated since WW2, even though none of those countries had nukes themselves. Other nations would take a very dim view of such things, making foreign affairs just that much more difficult for the US, and furthermore by using nukes of it's own volition - without being threatened - would serve as a possible justification for other entities to use nukes against the US.

Shifting back to fantasy worlds, it would mean that even though the enemy armies couldn't fight back, other powerful entities (other high-level spellcasters, powerful monsters such as dragons, etc.) would notice what happened and possibly decide that the wizard must be eliminated because she's obviously a danger on a potentially world-wide scale.

Also, to clear up another thing since I haven't said it explicitly, this is not a theoretical wizard whose appearance in my game is still up in the air. She's an actual NPC (her name is Celina) the PCs have interacted with, to the extent that they know she's at least an 18th level wizard (she's teleported the whole party before, and there are six PCs). So changing things from that end isn't doable at this point.


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I'm just gonna leave this here


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
ElterAgo wrote:
If you get the army there instantly and quickly take over, you don't need the baggage train!

Thank God. I feared no one was going to say it.


Spook205 wrote:


I have never once stated that they don't have an advantage. That advantage is represented by the wizard's ACR being higher then the 2,000 man colossal army (the entire enemy force is 10,000).

I explained in great detail a method a caster can use to eliminate an army of tens of thousands.

Since everything the wizard uses is scrollable and craftable by himself, the only limit is basically money and prep time(barring shenanigans like timeless demiplane+timestop or false focus+fabricate).
Using crafting costs
cl17 time stop with 2000gp maximize gem=3912.5
cl25 limited wish=3687.5
cl10 wall of fire=625
cl7 dim door x 2=700
total cost=8925
As established above, this can eliminate in the region of 8000 men per 9000 gold (1.1 gold per enemy casualty is pretty good), with no risk to the wizard.

Really the only limitation is how much money the wizard is willing to invest in this.

What is the ACR of a level 20 wizard carrying 100 000 gold worth of scrolls. If it is any less than that of around 80 000 troops, then the system fails to accurately model the battle between a large army and a caster.

Also note that if the caster forgoes the unnecessary buffs, they can do this at least 5 times (number of slots a level 20 wizard has, with ability score bonus slots) without resorting to scrolls. That is 50 000 men

Spook205 wrote:


I'll state again that the majority of this 'knowing the location' or 'teleporting into their midst' thing doesn't really work as the army isn't likely to be moving in a giant column. The OP's informed us its spread out, meaning he might show up, blow his wad on a portion of it, and then have to deal with the rest of it being potentially miles away and having to blow more resources on that and then go after the next portion.

I am pretty sure armies on the march didn't collapse on the road at night. They would set up camps. A night attack when they are bunched up works fine.

Tracking an army once you found them is also pretty trivial. A dominated quasit can be used to give a caster an up to date view of the army at any time by using it's senses (and remember, at will invisibility).

Of course the army could not group up as an army, since that leaves them vulnerable to this sort of bs. Of course, when high level casting is on the table standing armies really don't work in general.

Spook205 wrote:
I'd equally argue a competent high level person doesn't go to fight an army by himself. From where I'm sitting that's more what a grandstanding idiot or someone who's desperate does.

I actually agree that this method is a brute force way of solving a problem. It was meant to prove that a caster could kill far more troops than the mass combat system indicates he could. This method is really pretty bad for the OP's purposes though.

To be fair though, you brought up the mass combat rules. I simply said that they were broken and a caster could obliterate far more men than the rules indicated. Doesn't mean that a caster can't do better than that. Just that they can do that.

Spook205 wrote:


I stated my rationale further up thread...

Lets run though them

1. Troops will be spread out. Not true some of the time. Wizard just needs to pick his moment.
2. There will be problems due to the army moving. Trivially solved
3. He will run out of slots. Yes, after 10s of thousands dead. More with scrolls.
4. This is a horribly uncreative,inefficient and brutish way for a wizard to fight. True, but the mass combat rules do not reflect that this does work, and are are still bad (or at least at this).
5. This is a pretty bad way to solve the op's problem. True, but it is a way for the wizard to deal with the armies. The mass combat rules cannot reflect this. Therefore I am justified in saying that they fall apart when dealing with characters like a level 20 wizard
Spook205 wrote:


Antipathy.

Better alternatives. Mass combat rules still don't handle a level 20 wizard abusing timestop+control winds. Regardless if there are even better things the wizard could be doing

Spook205 wrote:


The army combat rules are built to simplify things. That's why they exist. The fact they don't take into account *details* is a feature, not a bug.

The purpose of the army combat rules are to model a fight between potentially thousands of individual creatures without having to roll it out for every single one of them. Implicit in this is that the rules should model combats fairly closely to how they would play out if they were rolled out. If they don't, then the system has problems. I am not surprised that they do - high level casters cause a lot of problems. Nonetheless the army combat rules break down when high level casters are involved.

Spook205 wrote:


Nobody's arguing high level people aren't dangerous. I'm arguing that numerical superiority and the discipline represented by having an entire army does indeed represent a method for opposing them. A country needs ways of dealing with monsters besides PCs. The army rules actually support this verisimilitude.

The army rules say that large numbers of men kill high level casters.

The game mechanics that the army rules supposedly abstract do not say that large numbers of men kill high level casters (if they do their thing properly).

Either putting a bunch of people together and giving them a flag to march around with grants them caster slaying power (and the ability to slay tarrasques, shadows without magic swords etc) that the game mechanics "forgot" to mention, or the army rules don't work in this case.

Spook205 wrote:


I don't think it diminishes the prestige of a 20th level mage if it takes four thousand people arrayed for war to just provide a threat to him (that's two ACR 9 armies against Mr. ACR 11 wizard).
Spook205 wrote:


He's tough, but not entirely insurmountable if more then say 2,000 soldiers encounter him at one time.

If 2000 soldiers actually were a match for Mr wizard, then I would say as much. It's just not true. 100 000 soldiers forces him to spend more than a day prepping, or makes him kill armies over a few days instead of a few minutes.


Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:
I'm just gonna leave this here

Now THAT is more befitting a caster. Brilliant. Just brilliant.


Snowblind wrote:
It was meant to prove that a caster could kill far more troops than the mass combat system indicates he could.

Actually, an archmage army will be far more formidable in mass combat than its ACR indicates, because the spellcasting special combined with 9th level spells gives it an offensive and defensive value way above what would be typical for its ACR.

A 20th level spellcaster NPC statted as an army would get +9 OM/DV added to her base values from her spells alone. The base values for an ACR 11 army are +11 and 21. She hits an ordinary ACR 11 army on any roll; they need a 19 to damage her at all.

(and that's before accounting for any other specials, such as Healing Potions, or Magic Weapons, or Significant Defense, or whatever, which an archmage as an army is more likely to have access to as well).

If you use mass combat rules, the wizard would likely stomp all over the armies.

However, it's not likely to be the kind of low-casualty engagement the OP is seeking.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Glad you liked it.


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So, OP, what questions do you have or what helpful things could we offer right now, besides just talking about ancient armies?


Coriat wrote:
So, OP, what questions do you have or what helpful things could we offer right now, besides just talking about ancient armies?

Everyone's given me enough ideas for spells the wizard could cast, so I think I'm good there. However after reading some of the comments I think I may have to rethink the idea of teleporting the army. Knowing that they could probably leave the baggage train a few days behind makes teleporting the army itself technically feasible, based on some math I did (Celina can cast 5 Teleportation circles per day). If I do decide to have the army teleport, I just need to figure out the opportune timing.

I have to figure out when the defending armies are going to start marching back toward the capital, which defending armies are going to go, the order in which they go, and how long it's going to take for them to get there.


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I would suggest creating some conditions that would cause certain armies either to march to war against the PCs and co, or remain neutral, or defect, etc.

Such as -

If PCs and co capture the capital and behave well towards the inhabitants, the Third Army (with many recruits from around the capital) is plagued by deserters who are not willing to march against their hometown, and loses 50% of its strength. If the PCs manage to convince major pillars of the community (such as church and guild leaders) in the capital to publicly support the new king (most likely Diplomacy challenges, or possibly other routes like bribery or mind control), then the entire army instead defects to the PCs' side upon hearing the news. However, if word leaks out that the PCs and their allies have mistreated the citizens of the capital city, the soldiers of this army instead becomes determined to exact vengeance and marches at double-time to combine with the First Army.

The First Army is largely recruited from soldiers from the same region as the old king and contains many diehard loyalists. Defeating them on the battlefield may be the best option.

The Second Army is lead by a dutiful LN traditionalist. He is loyal to the old king and will try to bring his army to join the First Army, but if the combined army is defeated or the First Army is defeated before he can arrive, he will seek to honorably surrender his men rather than fight to the bitter end.

Etc, Just as examples. Specifics tailored to your nation (and the types of challenges your players enjoy) are best, I imagine.

Then the PCs will probably do something you never thought of (We impersonate the old king and pretend to abdicate peacefully!) that changes the scenario completely, just to throw a wrench in the gears.


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@Coriat - The defenders' armies are currently participating in the invasion of Reece, the country bordering to the southwest. The aggressor army is coming from the far northern part of the country. The capital is 450 miles directly south from where the aggressor army is camped, while the defending armies are spread out in the invaded country and thus between 325 - 535 miles from the capital. The defenders do have a better road to travel on, but the aggressors have an adequate road as well as long as it doesn't rain.

The defender armies are basically divided into three factions:

The armies of the southern duchies are the most interested in the invasion as their leaders see the invasion as an opportunity to expand their holdings. Their forces are mostly concentrated near the regions closest to the border of their country, and number approximately 17,500.

The armies of the eastern duchies number approximately 15,000 and are mostly interested in plundering Reece, so they're farther into Reece.

The armies of the central duchies number approximately 10,000 and are also participating in plunder, and are in the same areas of the eastern armies.

The armies of the northern duchies number approximately 7,500 and are near the border. These armies are actually under the command of the conspiring nobles and will be withdrawn to support the aggressors' existing army.

The allies of the invaded country, Reece, have joined the battle and are currently engaged with the armies on the front, which are mostly the eastern and central armies, preventing them from getting back to the capital quickly.

Given this situation, I realize I was in error when I said it was a race to the capital in my original post. Realistically there's no way for the defenders to get the bulk of their forces up to defend the capital before the aggressors, regardless of whether or not the aggressors teleport their army.


So in actuality, you have 7.500 troops near the enemy that can be used proactively to help the aggressor's cause. That opens up some pretty nifty ways of messing with the enemy.

1) Guerilla tactics/scorched earth tactics. The 7.500 man army is (if I read your post correctly) between the capital and the loyalist armies. They could be used to slow down the loyalists immensely by using hit and run tactics and/or burning down/destroying ressources the loyalists might have need of. (they could hit some of the loyalist army trains for good measure too)

2) Alliance with Reece. Get your PCs to the high-command of the Reece armies and create an alliance with them. Let them know you have a substantial force close by that flanks their enemies and agree with a set of terms that will make Reece a helpful ally in the future (also securing the borders from any future aggression from Reece)

Let the biggest army move north (the 17.500 troop one) while your 7.500 troop army circles around and attacks the eastern or central duchies' armies in concert with the Reece troops. (Make sure to get word to the commoners in the capital that the Reece armies are decimating their loyalist troops and that it really isn't smart of their crazy king to fight a war on two fronts, make sure to mention that the northern armies are only marching on the capital to help free the city from this mad king and his cronies who are only interested in gaining more power for themselves at the expense of the plight of the commoners.

Propaganda is a powerful tool indeed.

If you bisect the loyalist army forces like that, you will have no trouble defending the capital from the southern duchies' armies. They don't even outnumber your forces two to one. If the loyalist army starts to siege their own capital, they will loose the loyalty of the commoners completely. You even have the king and several other high-born as a prisoners

If you play the Game of Thrones, you either win or you die.

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