Military Strategies

[Laharl]

[Mr_Praetorian]

[Zanaikin]

a few of DM's notes during the Trelling campaign... it's kinda sporadic:

FENS LOSSES:
23 White Dragonlancers
~185 Siege Weapons
~225 Draconic Mages
~330 Hill Giants
~1850 Bugbears
~4,250 Goblins Lightfoots
~280 Goblin Cavalry

FENS FORCES REMAINING:
1 White Dragonlancers [Retreated]
~15 Siege Weapons [Abandoned]
~75 Blue & White Draconic Mages [Retreated]
~70 Hill Giants [Fled: 20][Retreated: 50]
~150 Bugbears [Retreated: 150]
~750 Goblin Lightfoots [Fled: 700][Retreated: 50]
~220 Goblin Cavalry [Fled: 70][Retreated: 150]


Notes from Opposition Command:
The new Misalin command seems to be afraid of incurring heavy losses, as they seem to refuse devoting troops to the field. Raids have shown that in the event of a commando raid they automatically pull lesser units back and rely upon their command squads. Their strikes also utilize only their command squads.
A possible breakthrough would be available by making several elite-unit strikes. After the enemy pulls back their infantry to minimize losses, push forward and overwhelm the enemy positions before they can be recalled. Entangle their command squads with our own to prevent them from patching the hole.


Opposition Reactions to April20th Strike Operation:
• After Andrei’s air dragons engage, white dragonlance captain and three squads (10 total) heads to engage him. Leaving the slowest dragon squadron maintaining patrol route over the river as a rapid response unit in case anything happens. Communication over for possibly drawing the last squad over depending on Andrei’s attack seriousness and if another attack shows up (Trelling’s defenders have coordinated the dragon attack with that airship during the first day which lead to seriously losses). With Andrei and his dragon’s true capabilities exploited during the fire storm raid, it is unlike that the dragonlance will bring him down easily. Chief will personally head over and use a Shadow Gate to summon forth shadow balors, using their long range spells (like Horrid Wilting) and ability to teleport at will to take during the air dragon’s superior maneuverability. Meanwhile chief will pummel Andrei with a multitude of spells personally.
• After the three distraction squads engage, regional commanders are directed to utilize their ranged troops (lot’s of goblin crossbows and sharpshooters available) guard mages to knock out the steeds/riders. There should be no need for the main squads regarding a threat of this level. However should any of the squads prove particular resistant to attacks a response squad may be called in.
• After the five mage squads engage, the response squads go into full action. The assault squad will directly strike at Kelmik’s squad, the frostmaster squad will engage another, and two other response squads & dragon squad will engage other mage squads. Provide heavy ground support if possible (if the useless goblins aren’t routing already). Teleportation will enter from 200ft+ range as normal to allow medium-spell-range but maximum distance for protection (which also makes the anticipate spells useless). Assault squad however will teleport in directly atop them and hammer away. Simultaneous attacks by multiple smaller squadrons means this may be a second layer distraction, thus the assault, frostmaster, and dragon squads are to be prepared to move to new location at any time.
• Once the tactical-spell charge effect is noticed, the assault, frostmaster, and dragon squads immediately pulls out and re-engage.


For the final attack, I was planning these things:
--The west side of the city was disregarded since the beginning, it was too easy to fortify and bobby-trap. The plan includes freezing the river and then using ramps of stone (stonewall, for non-frostfell troops) and just sheer crossing the ice (frostfell troops). Ramp across the walls in key positions and overwhelm the defense before they can draw reserves from east city.
--Launch a illusionary but partially real attack from the east, with coordinating mage-squad attack on walls as a feint before the main rush, to draw defensive reserves towards the east.
--Teleport the reserve battlerager and berserker units from the west line over (~1500) after dark and use them as the first wave to rush the walls. Hopefully, the defense will not be prepared to handle them...

[Zanaikin]

okay, I know there's some of you who thought yesterday's mission was either too hard, or the complaint that you're always ambushed, or something.

I'd like to point out a few things from the encounter. As I was saying to drew, yesterday's mission wasn't designed to be anywhere as hard as it turned out to be. There were a few assumptions I've made that I thought would have been obvious precautionary measures to take that... you didn't:
(before anyone bring up the point that I could have warned you, and that your chars should have known what they were doing better than the players, or whatever. However, the DM's job is not to think in that perspective, thus it is not the DM's job to remember what your characters should do [or if I should give you WIS/INT checks for hints], because I'm preoccupied enough as it is figuring out what's the opposing response to each action you take)

1. Given that the outpost was hidden underground beneath numerous illusions and covered by automatic defenses, might have it also occurred that the base might have measures of alerting others and calling forth reinforcements? Forget Imperial digital detection systems which your characters do not even have an understanding of, no one even bothered checking for basic Alarm spells which may be linked up to a comm.link somewhere (the comm.rings should tell you they have more than enough magitech for something simple like that), or thought of possibly taking precautionary measures against any Imperial equivalent. There's a reason why Arcane Sight is on infiltration staves, and we went over the procedure during the Blackbog mission.
Also: Telepathic Static also helps in jamming any alert systems, since it blocks all magical communications except spells which expressively state verbal effects (like Whispering Wind, which carries sound rather than pure mental message).

2. Even with wards disabled, once you start destroying stuff you should be able to expect possible alerts to the enemy. Contingency effects are hardly new to D&D, and one can easily tie it to an object (or if you're technical about WOTC sources, an animated but motionless object), to send a message upon destruction. And of course, once again, the Imperials might have the same thing in their high-tech version. I'm not saying you guys didn't prepare yourselves for a fight (which you did), but far as I can tell you didn't notice the time when an attack would have been most likely, or you would have raised (at least the lower lvl ones) 1rnd/lvl buffs. The fact you opponents did, and had buffs like Find the Gap and Arcane Spellsurge out, tipped the scales against you all heavily.

3. Contrary to how Marty complains, Superior Invisibility isn't useless. For pretty much only bosses (or high lvl commando squads) can see Sup Invisi, and then only when they're in True Seeing range, which means they're also in YOUR true sight range. I know it's impossible to put Sup. Invisi. on Drew due to his armor, but you could have done better than have half the party who's not invisi'd standing out in the middle of nowhere with a lack of cover (there's nothing except scattered rocks and shrubs in the area, as I keep mentioning). At least put an illusion (say, a large dirt mound) over them or something.
However, in close-combat between two opposing high lvl squads, Super Invisibility IS useless. But it still provides protection against long range units like spellsnipers, and grants much better chance of avoiding detection in first place (note that those Sup. Invisi'd were not struck during initial rounds of combat).

4. Superior Invisibility's use is common practice amongst high level units, everyone knows this, and it would be foolish to assume the NPCs don't, just as they know the range of True Seeing spells. Thus, certain types of units (assassins, in this case) have good reason to stay outside 120' range of their target when keeping watch on them. Heck, the careful ones might even stay outside 240', but anything more than Enlarged True Seeing is too unlikely.
In the case of yesterday, the lesser can't afford Sup. Invisibility, so they settled for normal invisi + hiding behind rocks. Of course, it's a sheer coincidence that Judson was the only one who went in (this was not planned at all), since he's the only one who had both the See Invisi up and the spot checks to maybe beat their hide at that distance (Drew didnt have the former up atm).
Also: Probably would have been a good idea to leave a Prying Eyes / Greater screen in the area to guard against unpleasantries (not to mention an Anticipate Teleportation).

5. Btw, this usually isn't utilized so I'm not surprised no-one guards against it. But I'd just like to note no-one ever seems to put up any form of Divination detecting/countering effect, like Detect Scrying, Screen, False Visions, etc. Between Greatery Scrying and Scry Location, information detection goes a long way. And anyone with an appreciation of both ancient and modern military tactics should know this: Information is 1st step in achieving victory. Because without it, all tactics are useless. I learned the importance on this myself in a UVA campaign when our DM's BBEG constantly scryed us, and constantly ambushed us with minion whereever we went, until he got annoyed and had a wizard NPC dropped a hint to put up Detect Scrying.

Put all these together and tell me you didn't deserve to get ambushed. Because Jens showed very easily during his round that if you didn't lose surprise round to a bunch of assassin builds (maximize damage output in a small period of time by dumping resources on attack, rather than conserving for defense/long-term fighting), there was no way you would have been anywhere near as badly hurt.
Also... Foresight works wonders.

The morale of the story is. Yeah optimized combat abilities/spells are great and all in a straight fight. But if you don't have utility spells covered, the enemy has more than enough opportunity to gain a circumstantial, informational, and/or tactical advantage against you that eliminates every advantage you once held over him. This is precisely why I consider utility mages one of the most important roles in any party, contrary to typical party-building philosophy (which, after all, is designed for dungeon crawls, not grand adventures and epic battles).
I believe I once (and probably more than once) told you guys that veteran D&D players don't rely on character optimization to win, they rely on knowing how to play, and that a top notch D&D player can kill a typical munchkin even with a normal build.
A good example: last time two lvl13 PCs took on ten lvl10 NPCs in my UVA game, whose builds would have easily overwhelmed us in a normal confrontation. Yet we seized a victory, and the deciding factor had been: caltrops and tall-grass.

[Laharl]

The only thing I'd like to point out about Sup Invis is that as an 8th level spell, I'm not sure if the party has enough slots to get us all Sup Invis, since Judson wasn't in a position to cast it on anyone and Scott's slots are limited. Also, I have See Invis and a solid Spot (About +30 with the buffs we had up). Whether it would have made a difference at that distance or not is another question, though. That said, we got out of it alive and with some serious loot, so it's far from the disaster it could have been.

[Squall255]

Yeah, and now that I think about it, anti-scry stuff should probably be either mine or Kati's job. To be honest, I really haven't been putting the time required into updating this character, and my not being there before we left also left us without a few buffs. While I wasn't there, I would like to point out that we were up against ASSASSINS. Ambushing is what they DO. it's their JOB. I'd be surprised if they ever entered a combat without a surprise round, or an upper hand of some sort. I think that the main issue with the last meet was the differing interpretation of what happens when a Vampire hits 0 HP. Dai misinterpreted the rules. It's ok guys, he's human. We do that sorta thing. I don't think we should have jumped down his throat like that. That's why I didn't say anything and instead went to gather my resources for a logical explanation of WHY I disagreed with his interpretation. Yes, Dai was wrong, but no we should not have come at him that strongly. I don't think he was the only one to blame for why everyone (Aside from me, for reasons I'll explain later) came out of that meet a little disheartened. So yeah, just my feelings on the meet.

(Personal Note: First successful Dispel! and after the AMF, it worked REALLY WELL I might say. also, people please remind me about some of the crazy item abilities, like BoB. I tend to forget about Charge/Day items simply because I normally end up hoarding the charges for the end of the day, and then not using them.)

*Correction: It seems that all the Anti-Scry spells are Arcane, or high level bard spells. I don't have access to them, so it's either Kati or one of the arcanists jobs.

[Zanaikin]

[Mr_Praetorian]

Regardless, we need to start working up contingency strategies. We also need to work on our deployment, because bunching the party up isn't working. Personally, I think we need to start having one of our casters "shadow" the party, so that at least one person doesn't get caught up in the inevitable shitstorm.

Also: ARCANE SIGHT!!!

[Laharl]

That would seem to be in order. The difficulty with a wide-area deployment lies in the fact that we can't go much wider than 20' between or Mass Heal gets tricky, since all targets must be within 30' of each other.

Does anyone even have any illusion spells/scryblockers? I can add...minor image to my spellbook, but the duration and DC will be approximately shit. All the scryblockers are fairly high level, and thus out of reach of my actual casting. Do any of our arcane casters use spellbooks anymore? If not, you guys get to retrain your spells known, I think.

[Squall255]

Yay for Sublime Chord's access to Divine Bard list. I just picked up Detect Scrying, and False Vision. False vision only allows a save if intereacted with, not if scryed upon. though it's only 19 30' cubes. so we'll have to be careful. Detect Scrying is automatic as well, and had a 24 hour duration, and 40' radius emanation from me. Arcanists must handle Teleport prevention though.

[TheDude51]

I thought that overall the battle went very well, considering that the last time we got ambushed like that Samael got killed, even with Foresight. This time, we were able to quickly turn the tables and shut down the enemy offense as soon as we acted. However, it did indeed make clear several areas we are lacking in.

Foresight first. We need it most of all on Ulrich and Kati. If either of you can somehow gain access to the Knowledge or Oracle domain, the Druid spell list, or Arcane spells, you need to do whatever it takes to make it happen. For the rest of the party, it would be handy, but is not vital, although somewhat easier to get. If the healers can act in the surprise round, they can keep the rest of us alive to strike back.

Speaking of healing, the second main problem I saw is healing Derovarr while he is wearing the golem armor. My suggestion would be for drew to drop whatever plans he currently has for items, and buy a custom healing item. Heal a couple times per day, Close wounds several times per day, and Delay Death once a day, all personal only, would allow him to heal himself to a degree while maintaining the stellar defense afforded by the golem armor.

The last thing is the same points dai and eric have addressed. Eric, False Vision is significantly better than you described. Anyone who tries to scry on anything within 40 feet of the target receives a Major Image that you program instead, with no save. Its duration is hours/level, and you can stick it to anyone. The only downside is that it has a 250gp material component, and so is not feasible for a daily buff. I would suggest using it in any situation like this one though. Detect Scrying would also be good.

As to teleportation, I'm going to try to get my hands on a copy of Greater Anticipate Teleport to add to my spellbook, as well as my daily buff list. Anyone trying to teleport to within 90 feet of me will be delayed 3 rounds, while I am alerted of the attempt. If anyone tries this style of ambush on us again, me and scott can burn a few action points to have 4 or so delayed Firestorms waiting for them, and the entire party can ready actions. Dave, keep in mind that this will shut down your shadow pouncing whenever I am near.

[Zanaikin]

[Zanaikin]

Okay, I need a good clue from you guys...

will you be willing to take that mission/request-for-help from Naralan on night of May 8th?

I got a meeting to plan after all, but we sure aren't going to spend X hours trying to roleplay (that'll bore even me to death... sorry I don't go to one of those pure RP websites for a reason).

[Mr_Praetorian]

Presume that Derovarr will insist upon it.

[TheDude51]

Dmitri will also strongly urge the party to go immediately.