Let's assume we're a 5th-level wizard, and we're facing off against a well-situated but magically-poor city. The simplest way to gain military advantage throughout history has been to take the high ground, and the simplest way to do that is with the Fly or Levitate spells. (We will assume access to both, since we are 5th-level). We don't want to be seen. This is fine; we can cast Alter Self on ourselves before we begin. We can also cast Invisibility, to ensure that our attack begins as a complete surprise.
Now, let's create our siege weapon; a ball of lead. We can easily make this with a mold. The lead itself can be bought in the form of sling bullets, which cost 1 sp per 5 pounds of lead. All in all, we're going to end up with a sphere of lead 10 cubic feet in volume, weighing about 7000 pounds. It will cost 142 gp. I'm also assuming that we have a Rod of Lesser Metamagic (Extend); it's only 3000 gp, and well within our expected item prices.
By amazing coincidence, this is just about the largest object we can target with a Shrink Item spell. We end up with a little ball of lead two inches in diameter, which will return to its former size in five days, or when tossed onto a solid surface, or when a command word is spoken.
Now, according to Tome of Battle, dropped objects have a range increment of 50 feet, with a max of 5 range increments before indirect fire starts happening. (It doesn't define indirect fire that I can tell. Let's ignore this for now). If triggered and dropped at an altitude of 250 feet, our lead sphere will fall the 200 feet required to rack up the maximal 20d6 of falling object damage, and in addition also deal another 35d6 damage for being so damn big itself. Now, the attack roll to hit what we're aiming at with this puppy is no joke: we're taking a grand total of -14 to our attack roll between our improvised weapon and our massive range. Thankfully, we only need to hit AC 5 to target a 5-foot square, and even more thankfully, we can cast True Strike the round before we begin our assault.
We've now expended about 150 gp in lead costs, cast Shrink Item (the day before), Invisibility, Levitate, Fly, and True Strike, and made an attack roll with a 95% of success. The end result of this will be to deal enough destructive power to shatter a 10 ft. by 10 ft. by 20 ft. block of stone, or ruin any other object.
For comparison, a large trebuchet can do 14d6 damage with a 150 lb. rock. Even if we don't feel like fiddling with lead spheres, a wizard can still drop a number of Shrunk rocks equal to his 3rd-level slots times his caster level - 1 at a time. (Days 1-4: shrink 3 rocks. Day 5: drop 12 rocks on target in rapid succession. Retreat for another 4 days.)
Our enemies aren't going to be sitting idly by while we demolish their architecture, of course. We may want to lead with a Wind Wall as our second 3rd-level spell of the assault, or pre-buff with a Protection from Arrows. We might also get a lot of mileage out of Gaseous Form; once we get a company of archers shooting back at us, that DR 10/magic and immunity to crits will make things much less painful for us. In any case, we should still have plenty of Fly duration left, and we can re-cast Invisibility.
To re-cap, we cast Shrink Item beforehand. We cast Fly, and Invisibility. We attack with our ball of lead on the surprise round. We endure a maximum of one round of attacks from whoever is nearby and can both see and target us (possibly no one, if we attack at night), then cast Invisibility again. We flit off to a place as far away from the scene of our crime as we like, then cast a Rod-extended Rope Trick. We sleep for 8 hours, prepare another Fly and Invisibility, and continue to work our way away from hostile territory.
If we really want to be clever, we bring forth a Rope Trick within close range of where we will attack, and just drop previously-Shrunken, Invisible boulders on our target. However, this method has the risk of tying yourself down very near your target area.
Finally, although the mechanics would take a bit of work, it should be noted that light horses, such as the ones summoned by the Mount spell, weigh about 1500 pounds. If nothing else, invisibly opening a series of Rope Tricks, filling them with Mount-horses, and then creating rains of spontaneously-vanishing horses should endear you to the Slaadi. On a more serious note, you can also use Rope Tricks as time bombs, to drop previously-Shrunk objects onto targets when the Rope Trick expires.
Getting around in the city is no problem. A Hat of Disguise means that no one will see the same person performing any action more than once. We can also make use of Fly, Invisibility, and Rope Trick to move into position invisibly and nigh-silently, use a Rod of Silent Spell to bring off our nastiness, and then leave to a previously-cast Rope Trick.
With this power, our ability to destroy a town is incredible. We can conjure acid into the city's wells, poisoning the groundwater and rendering it undrinkable and lethal to most plant life. Alternately, we can simply send Small earth elementals to smash the linings of the wells, letting the water leak out. A river-based city will be harder to poison, of course. We can summon creatures and let them wreak general havoc; the repeated summoning of swarms of rats will spread disease, and swarms of bats will inflict casualties on any that are wounded and do not receive prompt healing. With good use made of Rope Trick, Invisibility, Fly, Silent and Extend Spell metamagic rods, and Summon Swarm, we can create a hidey-hole with Rope Trick, leave it invisibly, summon a swarm to harry and harass those in the city, retreat to our lair, and either summon more creatures or rest, all without ever becoming visible.
In the biological (or perhaps necrological)-warfare department, our wizard can also create an army of wights. Our wizard will first need to identify his target; a one hit-die humanoid. There should be no shortage of these in an urban setting. Our wizard will now incapacitate his target, perhaps with a Sleep spell, and then target this creature with a Fell Drain-ing cantrip. As a one-HD creature with one negative level, the target will die, and rise again as a Wight as per the rules on negative levels. A Command Undead as the undead awakens should ensure that it will go along with your scheme to supply it with as many living victims as you can drum up. Let the infection spread from there. You can do a similar trick without requiring the Fell Drain metamagic by isolating a victim, dropping his Con to almost nothing, and summoning a Ghoul with Summon Undead III. Sadly, this method is not terribly likely to unleash a city's worth of self-replicating undead on the world, but a pack of ghouls can and usually will cause significant casualties.
Finally, there is everyone's favorite elemental energy damage source: fire. A Wizard5 can summon Small fire elementals with Summon Monster III, and judicious use of rod-Extended zones of Raging Flame will ensure that the fires set burn nice and hot. Web can summon a fuel-source where it's needed, to ensure that your inferno can reach where it's needed.
I think that I've now adequately demonstrated that if an attacking force has modest amounts of magic and the defending force has none, the attacking force will win. Please, DMs, take this into account when you design your world. Cities will need more than walls to be secure from outside invaders.
In addition, you may well want to simply eliminate spells such as Shrink Item or Rope Trick. Likewise, the ability to summon a procession of deadly creatures without revealing your own identity (natively possessed by psions with Astral Construct, and easily achievable by the casting classes) means that unless a city can sweep its population for detected magic, a magic-user can simply ablate away the population of a city at no risk to himself.
One final defense to consider is other adventurers. If a city reports that monsters are appearing and eating their populace in a manner consistent with stilled, silenced Summon Monster IIIs, it is not unreasonable for a party of 8th-11th level adventurers to show up. There is (or should be) limits to how often NPC adventurers will attempt to sweep in and save the day, however.
- summon 1d4+1 augmented wolves behind enemy lines
- sudden widened sudden maximized fireballs (30 damage, 40 ft burst)
to call a few lvl 3 spells cast at lvl 5.
I don't have Tome of Battle, but:
- Your 'rock' costs 150 gp. do you know how much that actually is? of that money you can buy yourself a small squadron of mercenaries (see DMG, hiring NPCs).
- With the rod of lesser metamage (3000gp), you could put a price on the head of the leaders of the community, or even get a small army
The fact is that adventurers (even at lvl 3 or higher) get obscene amounts of money, compared to the rest of the world.
According to the DMG, any Small Town or larger, that is, any community with more than 900 or so people will, on average, have at least on of each Class, (Wizard, Sorcerer and Cleric). Indeed, the DMG's example community has only 200 citizens, but one Wizard and three Clerics.
It is worth asking why this is. Wizards are the hardest class to account for. Wizards need training, they need teachers - or, at the very least, one who wants to be a Wizard needs some sort of arcane material to get started. This means that Wizards are more likely to be found in pairs or more.
That said, a Wizard who already knows his stuff may well find it very profitable to reside in a community without another Arcanist. Nobody looking over his shoulder, pinching his secrets, or standing in his way. Nobody competing for business with the citizens who are able to pay for magical aid.
Sorcerers operate under an entirely different set of rules. The baseline probability of a Sorcerer living in a given community is essentially the same as any given child being born with sorcerous power. One assumes that Sorcerers move town from time to time, but the chances are that this mobility doesn't affect overall distribution.
Sorcerers gain nothing from exposure to other Sorcerers, but, like Wizards, could find profit in residing in a town without another Arcanist.
Clerics are nearly universal. Adventurers aside, Clerics do not go where they please, they go where they are told to go. Nearly every permanent settlement of more than 100 people will have a Cleric, probably more than one.
So, what does this mean for our Wizard with hopes of conquest. Well, one is tempted to look at this thing through the lens of Darwinism, to say that there are no towns without magic, because any such town would not last the week. It's a fairly convincing argument, too. However, the OP makes his best point last. Adventurers.
The fact of the matter is this: Good adventurers (a category that includes Neutral sorts who fight Evil) significantly out-number evil ones. If it became known (and it almost certainly would) that a Wizard was attacking a magically defenseless town, such a Wizard should expect to have to contend with a party of adventurers within a month at most. This is not to say that the Wizard would not have time to destroy or pillage the town - likely he would, but to point out that he could probably not pull the same sort of stunt twice.
Let's consider the counter attack. Let's give them the same funding, 426 gold per day + the initial 3000 spent on the Rod of Extend. All services must be mundane.
Trained Hireling cost = 3 sp per day
Light crossbow = 35 gp each
Bolts = 1 sp each
Using the 3000 gp, we purchase 85 crossbows for troops and 250 bolts. Now, we hire 1000 trained hirelings, using 300 gp each day. The remaining 126 goes to further equipment, allowing us to add 3 crossbows and 210 bolts per day. Now, of these 1000 men, only a decent percentage should be mercenaries, say 300. The remaining force consists of trained workers for repair. The construction of 700 men versus the destruction of 1 wizard. I lack the stronghold builder's guide, so I cannot give a precise answer here.
Now, let's talk about counterattack. The wizard strikes every five days. He's got 4 L1, 3 L2, 2 L3 spells. 1 L3 slot goes to fly, 1 L2 to Rope Trick, and all his level 1 slots go to True Strike. 2 L2, 1 L3 spells for defense. Invisibility has been included in your description, therefore we will assume he uses that as his pre-buff. Gaseous Form will make him unable to attack, therefore he can't throw his other boulders. Wind Walls must be vertical, therefore will not easily prevent attacks from below. For the moment, therefore, I will simply examine Protection from Arrows.
Wizard, invisible, attacks with his shrunken boulder. Below him, 100 hired guards are waiting with light crossbows. To avoid fatigue, the 300 are working in shifts, handing off weaponry. Upon attacking in the surprise round, the wizard becomes visible.
Now comes the bane of all those who attack a mob: the natural twenty. The mercenaries are biting on a huge penalty to attack: -6 to account for the range increments. However, due to DnD combat mechanics, probability allows for at least 5 to hit per round. It does not sound like much, but with an average damage of 3.5, that means the wizard takes 17.5 damage per round he is exposed. If he is to drop his entire payload of 12 boulders over as many rounds, attacking once per turn, he will take an average of 210 damage, well over the capabilities of Protection from Arrows. The mercenaries will fill him full of holes while the workers repair any damage he can produce.
Therefore, the wizard must be defensive. The 1 boulder per day option is must less costly or risky, although it means he only destroys one 10'x10'x20' foot section of building every 24 hours. Therefore, the town in this hypothetical scenario gets much less funding per day.
How to they defeat him? Mundane counters. Beyond the usual approach of mercenaries, who will be less effective with fewer attackers, there are a number of weaknesses to wizards that the town can exploit. They hire an expert, specifically one with Knowledge Arcana, who can tell them all about the various spells the wizard is using. Analysis will show various battle plans, strange as they may sound.
Party all night long. Wizards require a quiet area of study to rest and recover spells. Loud noises, continuous revelry, and any disturbing sources will lock down the wizard's arsenal. Sure, the townsfolk will get little sleep, and someone will have to beat the giant gong at all hours of the night, but it will be well worth it.
Call in the winged races. Flight is only special if you are the only one who can do it, and not all methods of flight are magical. Take away the wizard's advantage of height and he's vulnerable. Finding such races might be a bit difficult, though, as most require either high hit dice (raptorans), or level adjustment. With 3000 gp plus 142 per day, however, the bounty on the wizard should attract some powerful allies.
Think about logistics. Where on earth is the wizard getting all this lead? Somewhere close by, someone is forging sling bullets into a very large mold. The wizard cannot be carrying this around, obviously. Therefore, a number of rangers, employed via the 142 gp per day, could sweep the area, find the source, and destroy it. No lead means no siege. Every time a lead ball drops, the town should dispose of it to prevent recovery. The wizard runs out of ammo and is left without any means of attack. The summoned mount method is slightly impractical. Rope Trick is not especially good at describing how one leaves the extradimensional space. Either the window is permeable, and therefore the horse must be pushed through a 3x5 window, not completely impossible, or the only method of exit is to climb the rope. Permeability of the window seems unlikely, as spells and area effects cannot cross it. Therefore, good luck attempting to get a horse to climb down a rope.
Trebuchets do less damage than your wizard, true. The significance, however, of the trebuchet is that it can fire a few shots per hour in the heaviest models, several times per minute in the smallest. In addition, rocks are easy to get. The other problem with the wizard in question is that he doesn't really accomplish anything. Siege engines destroy walls to allow the army to attack. Surgical strikes might take out significant locations. All a single wizard can do is attempt to level the town or ransom it. Complete destruction of the community will take a ridiculous amount of time and money via lead. For the single cost of the 3 per day block barrage, a far more powerful army of 1420 mercenaries could be brought in to attack the town. Ransoming the town might work, but again, an army could accomplish it better.
Never underestimate the power of the common folk working as one. United, humanoid races can be extremely potent, even with the simplest of tools and methods.
In the biological (or perhaps necrological)-warfare department, our wizard can also create an army of wights. Our wizard will first need to identify his target; a one hit-die humanoid. There should be no shortage of these in an urban setting. Our wizard will now incapacitate his target, perhaps with a Sleep spell, and then target this creature with a Fell Drain-ing cantrip. As a one-HD creature with one negative level, the target will die, and rise again as a Wight as per the rules on negative levels.
Hwuh?
Wights create wights, dude, not negative levels.You can do a similar trick without requiring the Fell Drain metamagic by isolating a victim, dropping his Con to almost nothing, and summoning a Ghoul with Summon Undead III.
I'm pretty sure anything created by a summoned creature disappears along with it when the duration expires.
I think it might be fun to go with the Fell Animate route. Rent an empty warehouse and drop all your zombies inside. Eventually you'll start losing control of all but the latest, but seeing as how they are Int-less and directionless, they'll just be shambling around and moaning a bit. Then, when you're ready to invade, cast a simple Hide from Undead spell on yourself and let them loose. The town guard will be so busy dealing with the undead invasion that they won't be able to focus on you dropping boulders on them.
Aside from those points, great post. I love the rules for aerial assault best.
The OP's statements are still entirely valid. Good thread. Thank you sir.
Actually the OP's statements are based on a faulty assumption that his "creative" tactics cannot be countered by an equally creative DM.
Now, let's talk about counterattack. The wizard strikes every five days. He's got 4 L1, 3 L2, 2 L3 spells. 1 L3 slot goes to fly, 1 L2 to Rope Trick, and all his level 1 slots go to True Strike. 2 L2, 1 L3 spells for defense. Invisibility has been included in your description, therefore we will assume he uses that as his pre-buff. Gaseous Form will make him unable to attack, therefore he can't throw his other boulders. Wind Walls must be vertical, therefore will not easily prevent attacks from below. For the moment, therefore, I will simply examine Protection from Arrows.
Wizard, invisible, attacks with his shrunken boulder. Below him, 100 hired guards are waiting with light crossbows. To avoid fatigue, the 300 are working in shifts, handing off weaponry. Upon attacking in the surprise round, the wizard becomes visible.
This is certainly a possibility. One way to avoid it would be to attack entirely at night. Another would be to attack only just outside your Rope Trick, and 5' step inside immediately. The simplest way, of course, would be to drop (not attack with) the rocks. You lose a lot of accuracy that way, but there's nothing in the rules stating that dropping an object dispels invisibility. Plus, if it's that much of a concern, you can move to the low-altitude summoned swarm. A bat swarm will tear the heck out of your party of crossbowmen before it is beaten to death with torches, and the caster can bring out a lot of swarms.
Now comes the bane of all those who attack a mob: the natural twenty. The mercenaries are biting on a huge penalty to attack: -6 to account for the range increments. However, due to DnD combat mechanics, probability allows for at least 5 to hit per round. It does not sound like much, but with an average damage of 3.5, that means the wizard takes 17.5 damage per round he is exposed. If he is to drop his entire payload of 12 boulders over as many rounds, attacking once per turn, he will take an average of 210 damage, well over the capabilities of Protection from Arrows. The mercenaries will fill him full of holes while the workers repair any damage he can produce.
Therefore, the wizard must be defensive. The 1 boulder per day option is must less costly or risky, although it means he only destroys one 10'x10'x20' foot section of building every 24 hours. Therefore, the town in this hypothetical scenario gets much less funding per day.
I said that this was the maximal amount of damage that he could do. Our wizard can destroy a lot of other things than building. Mercenaries, for instance. I would suggest that hiring a person to stand around with a crossbow and be crushed by falling boulders or eaten by bats would grow problematic after the first few days.
How to they defeat him? Mundane counters. Beyond the usual approach of mercenaries, who will be less effective with fewer attackers, there are a number of weaknesses to wizards that the town can exploit. They hire an expert, specifically one with Knowledge Arcana, who can tell them all about the various spells the wizard is using. Analysis will show various battle plans, strange as they may sound.
This is certainly a possibility. Let's examine the possible plans that can be used.
Party all night long. Wizards require a quiet area of study to rest and recover spells. Loud noises, continuous revelry, and any disturbing sources will lock down the wizard's arsenal. Sure, the townsfolk will get little sleep, and someone will have to beat the giant gong at all hours of the night, but it will be well worth it.
Add the price of a bit of wax to the wizard's starting equipment. Wizard plugs ears before holing up in his rope trick. Wizard is doomed if anything manages to find the Rope Trick, but that was a given in any case.
Call in the winged races. Flight is only special if you are the only one who can do it, and not all methods of flight are magical. Take away the wizard's advantage of height and he's vulnerable. Finding such races might be a bit difficult, though, as most require either high hit dice (raptorans), or level adjustment. With 3000 gp plus 142 per day, however, the bounty on the wizard should attract some powerful allies.
Flight would be a significant advantage for the defenders, yes, but they still need to find and access the wizard's Rope Trick. How do you plan on this happening without magic?
Think about logistics. Where on earth is the wizard getting all this lead? Somewhere close by, someone is forging sling bullets into a very large mold. The wizard cannot be carrying this around, obviously. Therefore, a number of rangers, employed via the 142 gp per day, could sweep the area, find the source, and destroy it. No lead means no siege. Every time a lead ball drops, the town should dispose of it to prevent recovery. The wizard runs out of ammo and is left without any means of attack. The summoned mount method is slightly impractical. Rope Trick is not especially good at describing how one leaves the extradimensional space. Either the window is permeable, and therefore the horse must be pushed through a 3x5 window, not completely impossible, or the only method of exit is to climb the rope. Permeability of the window seems unlikely, as spells and area effects cannot cross it. Therefore, good luck attempting to get a horse to climb down a rope.
Lead is useful because it is heavy and cheap, but boulders work just as well. Moreover, there are going to be a lot of them as the siege wears on. Finally, the point of the Mount spell is that you can cast it inside the rope trick. As you point out, the horse is not likely to leave on its own, so it will plummet to its death and prompt unsummoning when the Rope Trick duration expires.
Trebuchets do less damage than your wizard, true. The significance, however, of the trebuchet is that it can fire a few shots per hour in the heaviest models, several times per minute in the smallest. In addition, rocks are easy to get. The other problem with the wizard in question is that he doesn't really accomplish anything. Siege engines destroy walls to allow the army to attack. Surgical strikes might take out significant locations. All a single wizard can do is attempt to level the town or ransom it. Complete destruction of the community will take a ridiculous amount of time and money via lead. For the single cost of the 3 per day block barrage, a far more powerful army of 1420 mercenaries could be brought in to attack the town. Ransoming the town might work, but again, an army could accomplish it better.
Never underestimate the power of the common folk working as one. United, humanoid races can be extremely potent, even with the simplest of tools and methods.
You seem to be unduly focused on the amount of property damage that can be inflicted and repaired. Our wizard can also target the populace of the town quite easily. While trained stonemasons can repair damage in a relatively short time, replacing the trained stonemasons after they've been hit takes a bit more effort. Moreover, your examples assume that the city will be able to keep a war chest indefinitely. How can it be expected that a city could retain a population when they are under assault that can't be predicted, stopped, or countered?
I'd also like to hear how to deal with a wight-horde without magic, as well as the other listed methods of assault.
Bill Bisco and AegisShade: Thank you for the positive feedback. With this article's score hovering at 40%, I was curious if I'd missed something obvious in my study of the wizard's capacity.
Write lots and lots of explosive runes on the lead boulder and when the boulder stops moving, cast an area dispel magic on it and fail all the rolls on purpose. The explosive runes will go off.
Or, better yet, cast the dispel magic when the townspeople are trying to move the boulder out of city hall, to catch a bunch of people inside the area.
If you are going to use summon monster in the siege, summon fiendish dire rats and spiders. Have the rats bite as many people as possible to inflict disease; and use the spiders to make giant webs all over town to be set on fire.
On a side note the wizard does have a lot of advantages over the magic-less town. If he had a small band of bandits backing him up he could easily cave in a wall or gate in the middle of the night and let them in. Alter self would allow him to infiltrate and find weak spots and chart guard shifts. Charm person could even allow the guards to open the gate at night to let the hobgoblin army in. Invisibility could create the illusion of the whole place being haunted as buckets overturn and doors unlock themselves.
Not sure if you can 5' step while under the fly spell. I'd have to verify that. So surprise round then have to take a move action get back into the rope trick.
Other options out of Tome of Battle is the arrow volley which allow groups of archers to attack squares.