Mass Combat

[Wrathzog]

This is not a traditional medieval method of warfare.

Exactly. Trying to mesh together military concepts and principles of Our World with D&D World is not going to work. We do not have Magic in our world (OH SHIT) and how we fight wars has evolved to reflect that. D&D is a highly magical setting and their military strategies would evolve differently from ours.

How about this? Let's run through a scenario. We have two Kingdoms, each ruled by a King. Kingdom A has a Horde of Orcs. Kingdom B has a single level 9 Wizard as its military. Kingdom A mobilizes its horde to Invade Kingdom B for its... vast... something.
Their Kingdoms are approximately 500 miles apart separated by Grassland.

The Horde has a level 6 Fighter as its Warlord, a handful of level 3-4 Fighters as various officers, maybe another handful of level 3-4 Cleric or Shaman types, and then a hundred thousand level 1 Warriors. The majority of the horde is unmounted. Google tells me most armies of this type could march like 20 miles a day but these guys are Orcs and they don't give a fuck so they can do like 40 a day.

The Wizard knows the bare minimum of spells that he would get just by leveling up (and Teleport) and spends most of his free time creating Scrolls.

Now, please convince me that this war lasts for more than 3 days.

Alternative Scenario:
Same as the above except that Kingdom A has its Horde plus the Wizard. How does the Horde contribute to that war in a meaningful manner?

[Dean]

Several issues, the first being your distance is completely absurd. No one in the bronze age fought a war against someone 500 miles away from them, that's insane. That would be like picking a fight with someone the entire way across the UK, the long way. No one would do that. So I will assume a distance of 100 miles at most.

An important question is how is Kingdom B gaining the services of a level 9 Wizard as a permanent feature. A thousand orcs can be paid, fed, given homes and in that way retained. What do you give a man who can make money and alter reality at will. If he is working for friendship or on request then you will likely get very spotty work out of him as anyone who's ever employed a friend will know. If it is instead his Kingdom, as is likely, then he would indeed have reason to defend it. But even then I would give it to the orcs. The wizard can skirmish them and launch fireballs into their ranks and kills dozens of orcs per blast, probably hundreds by the time the orcs reach the city. But if the orcs reach the city it is theirs, because the Wizard has no army other than himself and the moment the orcs enter the town limits they own it by default. All the Wizard could do at that point would be to pop in every day to sow death and discord about the town but the most likely result of that is that the orcs just take everything of value, rape and pillage the town and then burn everything behind them. By the time the orcs get to their home they will have tons of booty and valuables at the cost of a few hundred lives and the Wizard will have nothing. The Wizard could continue to haunt King A's city forever, constantly appearing and killing whoever he can before teleporting away but that's hardly a victory. The Orcs can win and the Wizard can, at best, create a mutual destruction pact.

The ultimate plan of course would be for the Wizard to ALSO have an army. If the wizard has an army he can have more days to fight the orc horde since they can't literally walk into town and instantly own it. A fighting force could slow down and hold off the orc army allowing more days for the Wizard to deplete the enemy force considerably. It could also mean that the Wizard would have the ability to march on the enemy lands and actual count as beating them, giving someone for those people to pay taxes too and enforce the Wizards will.

Tl:dr Wizards and armies are better than either wizards or armies.

[Sigil]

The Horde has a level 6 Fighter as its Warlord, a handful of level 3-4 Fighters as various officers, maybe another handful of level 3-4 Cleric or Shaman types, and then a hundred thousand level 1 Warriors.

Assuming we're using D&D logic, this horde shouldn't even exist. A 6th level fighter doesn't have the clout to actually control such an army, because he's a fighter and fighters suck, as we all know. It may be a trope of the D&D novels, but the novels don't accurately portray a world governed by the rules of D&D. A more likely scenario would be that the horde is led by a 6th level Shaman or Cleric, and his henchmen would be a handful of 3-4 level wizards and samurai and druids. I find it plausible that such a crew would have a decent chance of winning against a 9th level wizard if prepared well, though the chances are not great. This is to be expected, as they are the weaker force, and are in an offensive role.

[Ice9]

The scenario isn't "a high-level Wizard vs a horde of Orcs" though. It's "a high-level Wizard plus a horde of Orcs, vs a high-level Wizard alone". And in that scenario, the horde would be quite useful.

And for that matter, the original scenario was more like "A Balor alone, vs a Balor with a whole spectrum of other creatures going from Mariliths down to Orcs", which is even more lopsided.

[Chamomile]

Alright, in order to keep this simple I will only use the top three tiers of the battle, and trust my readers to be smart enough to realize how this can be extended downwards to the lowest CRs available. Granted, assuming my readers are capable of any sort of logic that does not support their own position has proven unwise in the past, but whatever, explaining things in full didn't work either so we're going with the simplified version.

If two Balors show up to a fight, they will each have perfectly even odds of winning. If one Balor shows up to the fight with a pack of Mariliths, he's going to have very good odds of winning, because given a numerical advantage, Mariliths totally can kill a Balor. Now, for example purposes let us assume that there is no amount of Storm Giants that can kill a Balor. I'm not sure if this is completely true, but it is definitely true that you would require an incredibly large number of them, so that's close enough. Thus, when a Balor is trying to kill an enemy Balor on his own and he's given a choice between bringing just his three Mariliths or bringing his three Mariliths and his nine Storm Giants, it actually makes no difference which one he takes because the Mariliths are the only ones who matter against a Balor, and besides the enemy Balor is alone so the Mariliths should be tipping the scales in the attacking Balor's side plenty already.

However, if the enemy Balor also has a couple of Mariliths on his side, those Storm Giants are now useful. Even though they are essentially incapable of defeating the enemy Balor, they can defeat the enemy Mariliths, which frees up your Mariliths to help the attacking Balor kill the defending Balor. Thus, Storm Giants are helpful not because they can kill Balors, but because they can kill Mariliths which can kill Balors.

And if you follow that all the way down to the bottom of the CR chart, there is no number of Orcs that will ever stand the slightest chance of killing a Balor, but Orcs are still helpful because they can kill Ogres which can kill Bearded Devils which can kill Mind Flayers which can kill Storm Giants which can kill Mariliths which can kill Balors.

[Dean]

The scenario isn't "a high-level Wizard vs a horde of Orcs" though. It's "a high-level Wizard plus a horde of Orcs, vs a high-level Wizard alone". And in that scenario, the horde would be quite useful.

I don't know what your talking about. The scenario presented immediately above is one wizard vs a horde of orcs. With no second wizard mentioned.

[tussock]

So something the orc horde can do is split up and march through your villages at night killing, burning, and raping, probably in that order on account of the stupid. They don't have to attack the high level PCs or enter any "you must be level 7" areas to cause very real problems.

No, it seriously doesn't matter. An Orc Horde is completely inconsequential in a High Level War. While that Horde is just starting to mobilize, the actual participants in the war have already Teleported to any strategically valuable locations, and resolved whatever Combats they need to get out of the way.

It happens within minutes and the orcs haven't even packed their tents up yet. Anything without teleportation capabilities is too slow to matter.

This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've read in a long time, and I've been reading tussock arguing with Shadzar.

You've actually said that 90% of the population is inconsequential and food is not strategically valuable. Which implies High Level means you watch the world burn and make smores, settling down into your little "points of light" existence afterward.

It's like saying because the real world has nukes and fighter planes we don't need infantry. Of course we need fucking infantry, and of course your game world needs human peasants. So while you're playing teleport-tag against a guy with infinite teleports, maybe that reduces how much teleport you've got left to save the peasantry? Fuck!

[MGuy]

I'm going to assume, and I'm going to be assuming a lot here, that Wrath is saying that the higher level players in the war can get more done than the army and do it faster. We have fighter planes yes, but fighter jets =/= a wizard. A fighter jet pretty much just does one thing. A wizard does many and doesn't need other people to point out targets for them. What's more old style medieval armies are slower and the farther they go from base the more heavily dependent they are on supply chains. Not so for the high level wizard who's effective range is 'any place they know about' and who requires no support from the marching armies.

I believe it was said in another thread or at some point on these boards that logically what low level armies are good for is controlling other low level people/things while the actual movers and shakers are doing other stuff. If it came down to war, yes the only people that 'matter' between low level infantry and high level casters are the high level casters because after one side loses their high level caster the other side has an advantage so extreme that the remaining low level mooks might as well just give up lest they can find someone else who actually matters.

If you need it spelled out high level casters can: destroy large swaths of the opposing army at little/no personal risk. Destroy/capture key resources rapidly. Assassinate/mind control/take the place of/have sex with/etc the leaders of the other side with ease. I could go on. If pressed the only thing I could say that an army of mooks could do better than a high level caster on their lonesome is to control large swaths of area.

I mean the wizard of course is just one person and while the caster could decimate an army's chances of winning a war the clean up work and running the territory actually does require more hands.

[Wrathzog]

your distance is completely absurd. No one in the bronze age fought a war against someone 500 miles away from them, that's insane. That would be like picking a fight with someone the entire way across the UK, the long way. No one would do that. So I will assume a distance of 100 miles at most.

This is almost a fair point, but let's be real here, no one in the Bronze Age could cast spells either. Teleport has a range of 900-2000 miles and Greater Teleport has no range limitation. In D&D world, it is entirely plausible that someone from the other side of the world decides to enter into a conflict with you and completely fucks you up because they can project power onto your front lawn while you have no ability to reciprocate.

An important question is how is Kingdom B gaining the services of a level 9 Wizard as a permanent feature.

Most likely King B is the Wizard because D&D supports political systems where the guy in charge is also the most powerful guy in the kingdom.
But I think that it complicates the scenario so I left it out.

The wizard can skirmish them and launch fireballs into their ranks and kills dozens of orcs per blast, probably hundreds by the time the orcs reach the city.

And this is exactly what the Wizard would not do. If the Strategic Goal here is to Stop the Army, he's going to go straight for the Head. He doesn't even have to kill the guy. He can Mind Control him or replace him with Illusions or something.
Now, he might have to go after the casters within the horde before he contronts the Warlord and that may delay him for a day or two. Other tactics might be to target supply trains or to drop cloudkill on officer tents, but I don't see those as being necessary.
The point is that the Horde has almost no way to stop the Wizard from completely running or ruining its shit within a couple days.

The scenario isn't "a high-level Wizard vs a horde of Orcs" though. It's "a high-level Wizard plus a horde of Orcs, vs a high-level Wizard alone". And in that scenario, the horde would be quite useful.

I don't know what your talking about. The scenario presented immediately above is one wizard vs a horde of orcs. With no second wizard mentioned.

It's actually both. I outline the first scenario (Horde vs. Wizard) and then followup with the second scenario as a slight variation of the first (Horde + Wizard vs. Wizard).

You've actually said that 90% of the population is inconsequential and food is not strategically valuable. Which implies High Level means you watch the world burn and make smores, settling down into your little "points of light" existence afterward.

No, it actually implies that high level Wars have less collateral damage than low level wars. Peasants aren't forcibly conscripted into Armies, just to be slaughted en masse by Officers all Dynasty Warriors style. No one gets raped and nothing gets burnt down because there aren't any large troop movements that plow through farmlands.
Unless your goal is genocide, in which case there will be a lot of that stuff.

If it came down to war, yes the only people that 'matter' between low level infantry and high level casters are the high level casters because after one side loses their high level caster the other side has an advantage so extreme that the remaining low level mooks might as well just give up lest they can find someone else who actually matters.

Exactly. The closest real world analogue to this is Air Superiority. But like you mentioned above, Magic is ridiculously more versatile than Air Power so whether or not it can win a conflict by itself isn't really debatable. Magic also requires far less overhead in terms of resources and manpower. It's also less vulnerable because there are no magical parallels to SAM Sites or Early Warning Systems. Hard Counters to high level magic also tends to be very expensive or impractical. It also provides itself with Intelligence via the Divination school of magic so there's that too.
-e-
TL;DR: Magic is fucking overpowered. We Know This.

[ishy]

The wizard can skirmish them and launch fireballs into their ranks and kills dozens of orcs per blast, probably hundreds by the time the orcs reach the city.

And this is exactly what the Wizard would not do. If the Strategic Goal here is to Stop the Army, he's going to go straight for the Head. He doesn't even have to kill the guy. He can Mind Control him or replace him with Illusions or something.
Now, he might have to go after the casters within the horde before he contronts the Warlord and that may delay him for a day or two. Other tactics might be to target supply trains or to drop cloudkill on officer tents, but I don't see those as being necessary.
The point is that the Horde has almost no way to stop the Wizard from completely running or ruining its shit within a couple days.

Well if he wanted to, he'd just turn himself and his familiar into a shadow (two casts of Shadow projection).
Then teleport into the orcish horde, pretty much none of them can hit the wizard. So he'd just melee them all to death.

[Krusk]

You've actually said that 90% of the population is inconsequential and food is not strategically valuable. Which implies High Level means you watch the world burn and make smores, settling down into your little "points of light" existence afterward.

No, it actually implies that high level Wars have less collateral damage than low level wars. Peasants aren't forcibly conscripted into Armies, just to be slaughted en masse by Officers all Dynasty Warriors style. No one gets raped and nothing gets burnt down because there aren't any large troop movements that plow through farmlands.
Unless your goal is genocide, in which case there will be a lot of that stuff.

Its a fantasy setting. That is oftentimes explicitly the goal. See most of the racial hatred wars that are so common they are basically a given if you ask anyone to describe a race.

[Dean]

Teleport has a range of 900-2000 miles and Greater Teleport has no range limitation. In D&D world, it is entirely plausible that someone from the other side of the world decides to enter into a conflict with you and completely fucks you up

Greater teleport is out of your wizards range and you have now just changed your scenario. Your scenario was the orcs attack the wizard, not the wizard picks a fight with some distant orcs that have never heard of him for no imaginable benefit. I consider this second scenario uninteresting for two reasons the first being the wizard can't gain nearly as much from a town separated from his home by a thousand miles as he can from neighbors, and secondly because no matter how far he can teleport there will always be some orcs that ARE neighbors. Sometimes the neighboring orcs are giants and sometimes they are kobolds but either way, lets focus on the orcs that will actually bother you. Which are the orcs next door.

And this is exactly what the Wizard would not do. If the Strategic Goal here is to Stop the Army, he's going to go straight for the Head.

But their head is bullshit and can't really affect them. If you start the war with "Head forth horde, kill everything in the wizards town including the wizard and never accept any command that counteracts this order, as this is a tricksy wizard who will try to trick you" then you are done with chain of command. This group was described as a literal horde, they are one step above animals and I think a Wizard could definitely kill the enemy king but I don't think, as stated, that that would stop the Wizard from losing all of his own shit. Bringing us back to the shitty notion that the Wizard can at best make both sides lose, but can't win himself.

This is not a debate on whether or not magic is powerful, it is. But it is not unlimitedly powerful. If you define your variables enough there is a number of orcs that can oppose you and win. At 9th level, with a city to defend to be able to declare victory, and a 50 mile march between aggressors and your castle, that number is less than 1000 orcs. All this proves is what some people have been saying, that while troops are not particularly useful in the wizard wars you can't just not have them. There are jobs they can do that you cannot and vice verse. You actually compliment each other well because you are POWERFUL while they are NUMEROUS and together you can get most things done, because individually they are WEAK and you are ACTION STARVED.

Shadow Projection

I don't accept any non D&D or non SRD spell as a part of this exercise. I don't consider that any more legitimate than me using ghost templated orcs and declaring that those are in fact orcs. Lets stick with the variables we have because there's plenty already.

[ishy]

Shadow Projection

I don't accept any non D&D or non SRD spell as a part of this exercise. I don't consider that any more legitimate than me using ghost templated orcs and declaring that those are in fact orcs. Lets stick with the variables we have because there's plenty already.

I like how you keep shifting the goal posts of someone else's scenario.
But sure. I magic jar a spectre. Then teleport and murder the orcs, I now need more time though, since I can't turn my invisible familiar carrying the jar into a shadow, I guess.

[Wrathzog]

Greater teleport is out of your wizards range and you have now just changed your scenario.

I haven't changed anything. You said "No one in the bronze age fought a war against someone 500 miles away from them," and I am saying how little that actually means when we're talking about D&D World. The actual aggressor is irrelevant, the outcome doesn't change.
Yes, conflicts between two low level kingdoms will happen and on a smaller, more local scale and sure, they're going to look very similar to real world wars from our history. But I don't give a fuck about those. I'm here to talk about how high level kingdoms participate in wars and how utterly alien it would be to most people's expectations.

But their head is bullshit and can't really affect them. If you start the war with "Head forth horde, kill everything in the wizards town including the wizard and never accept any command that counteracts this order, as this is a tricksy wizard who will try to trick you" then you are done with chain of command. This group was described as a literal horde, they are one step above animals

Yes, it's completely plausible that some dude with negligible mental stats is going to come up with a way that would totally outsmart someone with an 18+ intelligence (no it's not). I'll grant that maybe one of the Casters in the horde brings it up at a pow wow but good luck getting an order that would completely destabilize the entire horde to go through.
But sure, let's let this filter out through a population of creatures that are "one step above animals." I'm sure that every single one of these Barely-Beasts will fucking march their happy asses all orderly and single file into Kingdom B for a sacking. And they'll do it without the horde utterly imploding because you've guaranteed that No One is in Control anymore (this is incredibly unlikely).
Sidenote: good job reading into the word horde.

I think a Wizard could definitely kill the enemy king but I don't think, as stated, that that would stop the Wizard from losing all of his own shit. Bringing us back to the shitty notion that the Wizard can at best make both sides lose, but can't win himself.

And if the Wizard deals with the king, the War Ends. Riders go out to the Warlord of the Horde and inform him that the war is over.
Maybe he decides to say Fuck That, I'm the New King, and he continues pushing towards Kingdom B. The Wizard teleports to him and attempts to persuade him to stop. If he can't be persuaded, the Wizard deals with him too.
And if the Horde decides to just ignore all military convention and decides on their own initiative to sack Kingdom B while ignoring orders from their chain of command, I'm pretty sure that that's something the Wizard can deal with before it gets too damaging.

And this is ignoring the wide array of options available to Kingdom B to trample all over Kingdom A's sovereignty prior to the war.

[Dean]

I like how you keep shifting the goal posts of someone else's scenario.
But sure. I magic jar a spectre. Then teleport and murder the orcs, I now need more time though, since I can't turn my invisible familiar carrying the jar into a shadow, I guess.

The only goalpost I've moved is the distance for reasons I have elaborated and will elaborate again. If you cannot demonstrate a wizard's ability to beat an Orc horde using the entire SRD then you haven't demonstrated "the D&D Wizard's" power. If there is a spell in Drow of the Underdark that can, through repeated application, kill a hundred balors in a day then you have demonstrated the high power level of that spell, or Drow of the Underdark's spell options, not the Wizard or Sorcerer. The SRD lists the parts of the D&D line that are universally owned and accepted and if you can't win with the 300 pages of spells you have to work with there then I don't think your claim has much merit. The challenge was about wizards beating orcs. The wizards weren't written as "The Wizard using only the SRD" and the horde was not written as using "Untemplated Orcs". But anything other than that is uninteresting and trying to wring power and new directions out of the words like some angry fucking genie will deliver no interesting responses that I care about.

The original claim is this, for further reference

No, it seriously doesn't matter. An Orc Horde is completely inconsequential in a High Level War. While that Horde is just starting to mobilize, the actual participants in the war have already Teleported to any strategically valuable locations, and resolved whatever Combats they need to get out of the way.

It happens within minutes and the orcs haven't even packed their tents up yet. Anything without teleportation capabilities is too slow to matter.

The claim is that statement and the more formalized challenge at the top of this page. Now lets move on.

I haven't changed anything. You said "No one in the bronze age fought a war against someone 500 miles away from them," and I am saying how little that actually means when we're talking about D&D World. The actual aggressor is irrelevant, the outcome doesn't change.

First of all, you did change the scenario and that's not debatable. Kingdom A moves out and attacks B is different from it's opposite and they are not the same. The aggressor is relevant because the mechanics and victory conditions of attacking a city and defending a city are wildly different and again; not the same. At the moment I am talking about your claim of orcs attacking a city they are moving out to kill. Now as to the distance, again I reference every point I've already brought up compared to your eloquent "Nuh uhs". Your Wizard being able to beat up some people who are an unlimited distance away from him while living in an iron box is accepted. His ability to own and defend a city is not. If he does have a city and he is trying to defend it it will be from relatively local threats because people 500 miles away have never heard of him. Also while he is beating people up somewhere he's never heard of there will be neighbors who want his stuff who actually are the ones who attack him. So yes I am reducing the distance because for your wizard to HAVE a kingdom with which to fight distant orcs he must be able to keep it through the week from local orcs. This might not be the "High level warfare" you envisioned but we can't talk about high level warfare because your Wizard can't participate with balors and mariths and shit because he is still fucking murderable by a horde of roving fucking orcs. So until he levels his game up we are talking about local fucking orcs.

Yes, it's completely plausible that some dude with negligible mental stats is going to come up with a way that would totally outsmart someone with an 18+ intelligence (no it's not).

Hey, that's what I'm doing!
His intelligence doesn't matter, he has certain resources (his spells) and he will apply them as best he can. The Orcs have certain resources (numbers and swords) and will do the same. What I'm saying is that with optimal play, as far as I can figure, Orcs win. Your post is very strange honestly in that it says the orc horde is going to operate by rules that only benefit it's opponent. You are stuck in the very mindset you are trying to argue against. Thinking about war as a person who has never had to worry about wizards and magic and things. In the world you are talking about there would be anti-wizard tactics just like in our world there are anti-cavalry tactics. There are ways you would play the game that would minimize their strengths and benefit yours. As a possessor of an Orc horde it would seem normal and even likely standard strategy when fighting a Wizard that you set up measures that do not allow mind control to lose you the battle. That would not be a genius move, that would be a standard move. Time and time again you are thinking too small. Your two teleports a day do not destroy the Orc camps, they do not claim strategically valuable locations, they do not save your city. Your Wizard is better than any 10 orcs, unargued. But the other thousand will still burn your city down.

The difference in the strength of your Wizards position in your normal and alternate claim clearly illustrate the use of manpower even in high level warfare. Wizard VS Horde is a bad proposition with a city on the line and it is one you will lose but Wizard with a horde vs horde is a fucking blowout. That's obvious. The stark difference between the two is a clear demonstration of the value of keeping a bunch of low level assholes around to die for you when people come to burn your stuff.

[ishy]

The only goalpost I've moved is the distance for reasons I have elaborated and will elaborate again. If you cannot demonstrate a wizard's ability to beat an Orc horde using the entire SRD then you haven't demonstrated "the D&D Wizard's" power. If there is a spell in Drow of the Underdark that can, through repeated application, kill a hundred balors in a day then you have demonstrated the high power level of that spell, or Drow of the Underdark's spell options, not the Wizard or Sorcerer. The SRD lists the parts of the D&D line that are universally owned and accepted and if you can't win with the 300 pages of spells you have to work with there then I don't think your claim has much merit. The challenge was about wizards beating orcs. The wizards weren't written as "The Wizard using only the SRD" and the horde was not written as using "Untemplated Orcs". But anything other than that is uninteresting and trying to wring power and new directions out of the words like some angry fucking genie will deliver no interesting responses that I care about.

No the other goal post you shifted was: SRD only.
I did demonstrate the wizard beating an Orc horde using only the SRD.
No see, the power of a wizard is in the spells. Thus you need to show the spells to show how powerful the wizard actually is.
Different spells will do different things, thus spells from non core options usually allow wizards to do more and more specific things.
While using templates on orcs is changing what the orcs actually are.

You might not find it interesting, but I was not talking to you in the first place, I was referring to a scenario posted by someone else, so kindly fuck off unless you actually add something interesting.

[Dean]

No the other goal post you shifted was: SRD only.
I did demonstrate the wizard beating an Orc horde using only the SRD.

If you believe that the best way to find the Wizard's power level in D&D is to measure it based solely on the inclusion of a power from a different game then I will absolutely take your offer to fuck off and stop talking to you.

If you want to believe that Shadow Projection, the Pathfinder spell from the supplement "Advanced Players Guide" wins this challenge for the Dungeons and Dragons Wizard then fine. Congratulations. You're the best. Now fuck off.

And finally you demonstrated nothing. Your suggestion was to Magic Jar into a Spectre and declare victory. Lets talk about that. You are a Wizard in a castle and there are Orcs coming to burn your stuff. Somehow you know about this ahead of time through undetermined means. Deal. The Orcs are 50 miles away and can travel 40 miles a day so they will be here tomorrow. That means you have whatever spells you happened to have today and a completely customizable set of spells tomorrow, if you use the Frank Trick you can sacrifice a lot of time to customize your shit early.
They are coming tomorrow. Before then how are you finding a Spectre? If you find it what are the odds that it fails the ONE save, it's strongest, you get per day (and potentially forever based on the wording of the spell) before it is immune to Magic Jar. If the Magic Jar fails what are the odds of you beating a CR 7 Spectre as a CR 9 Wizard without spells specifically prepared and with your lifeless body laying there? If you win the fight with the Spectre how many less spells will you have to deal with the army? If you find a Spectre, fight it, succeed in Magic Jarring it on the first try and then divine the location of the orcs assuming you have prior knowlege of their invasion and then teleport to them HOW DO YOU BEAT THEM!? You don't have the ability to use any of the Spectre's awesome supernatural powers so all you have is a +7 attack for 1d8 damage and sunlight powerlessness. Even if you are attacking at night a basic orc can survive two of your attacks on average assuming they both hit. You are also not even immune to harm from the orcs as magical weapons can hurt you and any orcs with magical weapons, few though there would likely be, can chop at your shitty wizard hp and even if killed they leave the thing that can hurt you still useable by others on the field. The group you are attacking also has a small group of Clerics who besides owning a magical weapon all have anti-undead abilities and magic weapon the spell as staples which means not only does your strategy rely on a series of unlikely events to be able to even come to fruition but when it DOES it lies somewhere between suicide and severely underwhelming.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Wow. Deanruel87, you have convinced me that there is way more value than I thought in having archmages keep private armies. Thanks for broadening my perspective.

[Wrathzog]

I've been trying to stick with SRD spells because using non-core stuff just makes the situation even more unbalanced.

What I'm saying is that with optimal play, as far as I can figure, Orcs win.

Which is completely different from what's plausible or what's most likely to happen, which is where I'm coming from. And it still doesn't matter. There is no situation where the orcs ever actually win the war. From what you've been saying their most Optimal strategy ends with them LOSING THEIR ENTIRE GOVERNMENT. How the fuck is that a win?

Your post is very strange honestly in that it says the orc horde is going to operate by rules that only benefit it's opponent.

Not really. The universe is running 3E D&D mechanics in the background, so no fucking shit the Wizard seems to have the advantage. This combined with the fact that the Wizard is one guy with a lot of power while the horde is a lot of guys with negligible power means that the Horde is far more Vulnerable in ways that are seriously crippling while it's arguable that the Wizard is ever really vulnerable at all (in terms of the scenario).

I'm coming back to this later.

[Wrathzog]

Continuing On...

Thinking about war as a person who has never had to worry about wizards and magic and things. In the world you are talking about there would be anti-wizard tactics just like in our world there are anti-cavalry tactics. There are ways you would play the game that would minimize their strengths and benefit yours.

Yes, this entire thing is an exercise in Armchair Generaling fake militaries in their fake world. I completely understand that. So, yeah, none of this is actually meaningful. Which is a dead-end for this discussion for either of us, so I recommend dropping it.

But help me out here, correct me if I'm wrong, I suppose I need more information about what's going on. Do the following statements make sense to you:

The Orcs are a Bronze Age Civilization with a highly professional and autonomous military numbering one hundred thousand troops. They possess a keen understanding of Mid to High Level Magical Spells and while they don't possess any wizards capable of casting any of those spells, they have developed a rich system of countermeasures against them.

Kingdom B has allowed Kingdom A, which I guess are now within literal walking distance of each other, to actively develop and maintain a massive horde while respecting its sovereignty to do so all the way up to the point where they start marching on Kingdom B's capital. The Wizard in Kingdom B has never scribed a scroll in his life because fuck it.

Time and time again you are thinking too small.

Yes. That's exactly what's happening. As that is the case, can you please educate me as to what you think the actual strategic objectives of each Kingdom are? I'm going to guess and say that this is what you think:
Kingdom A: Burn down Kingdom B
Kingdom B: ALL ORCS MUST DIE!

Am I close?

[Whatever]

Skimming this thread, the only wizard strategies I've seen are "take out the leadership" and "a bunch of fireballs". That's kind of terrible. Here are some level 5 spells:

Wall of Stone
Cloudkill

If you can't kill an unlimited number of orcs when you have access to those two spells (and some advanced notice), then I don't know what to tell you. And note that "having a city to protect" counts as advanced notice for Wall of Stone--those walls are an instantaneous conjuration, they don't expire.

[fectin]

What does either side even think "winning a war" even means?

None of you is dense enough to fall for believing that war means HURR DURR WE FIGHT NOW!!!1!, so what, exactly, do you think the wizard/the orc army actually accomplishes?

[Avoraciopoctules]

What does either side even think "winning a war" even means?

None of you is dense enough to fall for believing that war means HURR DURR WE FIGHT NOW!!!1!, so what, exactly, do you think the wizard/the orc army actually accomplishes?

I was going under the assumption that victory is achieved when one state either stops being a significant political force or starts doing what the other state says for the time being.

So, taking out leaders doesn't mean much if rulership passes to the noble with the next-biggest castle. If the orc horde or wizard destroy/pillage enough villages, mines, and warehouses, kingdom revenue is impacted enough that agreeing to a treaty or giving annual tribute starts looking pretty appealing.

And farms and mines can totally be producing stuff wizards care about if we're talking mandrake roots and mana gems, stuff convertible to useful magic.

[Dean]

From what you've been saying their most Optimal strategy ends with them LOSING THEIR ENTIRE GOVERNMENT. How the fuck is that a win?

Well they don't lose their entire government they lose whoever is currently in charge and then the power vacuum fills in. What we've been talking about is that the Wizards hunt and kill power is actually relatively low when extended to the kingdom scale. In the one day he has he can kill the king and the queen but not also the prince, the general, and the advisor (or whatever). By the end of the day there will be dead leaders but there will almost certainly be next in lines.

the Horde is far more Vulnerable in ways that are seriously crippling while it's arguable that the Wizard is ever really vulnerable at all (in terms of the scenario).

The central point; The Wizard is not vulnerable, and never has to be if he has self preservation in mind. His Kingdom however is massively vulnerable. The Wizard will live if he wants to, his Kingdom will not. This is the value of an army, to diffuse the power of the powerful thin enough that you can succeed at your mission despite them.

But help me out here, correct me if I'm wrong, I suppose I need more information about what's going on. Do the following statements make sense to you:

No but your strawman of my statements is a strawman and you know that. But I'll go through my assumptions one at a time anyways. Kingdom A has a military numbering 1000 troops, they know as much about magic as people would if they existed in a world where it was the defining technology and military source forever. They have as many countermeasures as you would make for your society if you planned your society around PHB spells existing.

Kingdom B is within 50 miles of another Bronze age kingdom, absolutely. This is represented in this case by Kingdom A. Kingdom B and A came into existence for this exercise simultaneously, neither allowing the other to come to be. If you desire to run a 9th level Wizard vs 100 orcs starting to govern themselves say so and we'll do that. The Wizard in Kingdom B can have scribed as many scrolls as you want to say he did since coming into power, I'll accept your call.

The objectives in this war are, in this exercise
Kingdom A: We will sack Kingdom B, possibly destroying it in the process if we believe their is nothing to gain by leaving it
Kingdom B: We will defend ourselves from Kingdom A's attack, possibly destroying their Kingdom in the process if possible.

Wall of Stone
Cloudkill

I'm actually really curious about this. How would you do this do you think? Wall of stone's area is really unimpressive on the scale of covering a city but you could work on it every day. Each day you could cover 20 more feet with a half inch thick wall and a cloudkill beyond it. They are both coming out of the same spell slot and your least available one at that but lets assume you had nearly unlimited time. How would you do it? Size of wall, length of cloudkill, how are you getting people and goods in and out, etc.

[TheFlatline]

GM: "Your armies are going to battle, what do you do?"

So this is how that would actually go down:

DL: I summon my Balor and tell him to Greater Teleport into the enemy General's Tent and kill everyone and then I tell him to Greater Teleport into the enemy Ruler's castle and kill him too.

Armies do not exist solely for people to throw them against each other. Armies exist because they are a Political Tool used to Force your neighbors to do what you want them to. If you can SUMMON BALORS, then you don't actually need an Army.

Jesus christ why does everyone assume only the PCs are capable of gaming the system?

In this scenario:

DM: Okay you have to scry to find out where the general and the king are.

You: *rolls* Okay I scry.

DM: There's a ward up against scrying.


OR

DM: Scry to find the general's tent

You: *rolls* I scry

DM: He's on the plane of Law, using a gate to observe the battlefield from 10,000 feet with a wall of force immediately in front of the gate and he's guarded by a dozen Solars whose services he's bartered for. Your balor teleports in and is shredded in about 10 seconds. Next?


And let's be doubly honest: If we're going to play teleporting magical assassins killing you in your sleep making all war and adventuring pointless, your PCs better come up with some really fucking interesting places to hide and sleep every single night- because whatever you can do the DM can do better. Escalation sucks.

By this measurement, society in D&D is impossible, because as soon as someone decides they want to rule, someone who can teleport, gate, or just roll stealth really well will eventually whack them. And that person has to sleep sometime as well, and will inevitably die if they ruffle someone's feathers the wrong way.

Your plan only works if one side is "playing by the rules".

History is chock full of society deciding to pass on perfectly legitimate forms of war and violence for cultural reasons. Sure I could call parlay and then stab the dude in the throat, but that just isn't done because then I couldn't call parlay at all.

How's this for not summoning a balor? Balor kills the general, then summons a bunch of his friends, waits a day, and they all summon their friends, and come back to kill you in your sleep for having the audacity to actually force them to do something? Or how summoned balor decides that you'd make a shitty ruler and that he'd make a better one? Or how about it's generally considered, even among evil clerics, incredibly terribad to summon the most powerful devils and demons you possibly can for petty terrestrial war due to the idea of unintended consequences?

Even psycho dictators who want nukes want them more for bargaining chips than to actually *use* one.