So, I have this world that was perfectly at peace, until the party came around. Now, It’s basically MWW (magical world war). And my players are looking foward to some trench warfare in dnd.
Why trench warfare? Because mold earth is a cantrip and it is always better to have cover. I have a couple of basic ideas.
The bullet points are:
Scrolls, rare magic items and more than lv5 npcs are hard to come by, because they are strategical game changers froom both sides.
There is gunpowder in the world and the spell detect traps actually detects traps (location of all in an area), so, landmines are a thing.
Someone as figured out ballista machine guns, so charging is unadvised.
I’m looking for tactics and general suggestions.
If you want to GM some real trench warfare, I highly recommend, listening to Dan Carlin’s “Blueprint for Armageddon” 5 parter on WWI, especially the descriptions of the Battle of Verdun. As a GM, you could LITERALLY lift language from his story telling to really bring the horror of the environment alive for your players. Also, if this world is mostly used to peace, the reality of trench warfare is going to be shocking, traumatic and horrifying to your entire world, from the nobility all the way down to the peasants. I would really lean into this in the story telling (also, perhaps some stuff like this happens).
As for tactics and fighting, there is a lot of media to draw inspiration from, as others have said. Things that occur to me are
- The battle of Ba Sing Se from Avatar: the Last Air Bender.
- Shadow and Bone (show is on Netflix, haven’t read the books) has a world with late 1800s / early 1900s tech combined with magic users. At the end of season II there’s some intense “squad of magic users vs squad of gun powder soldiers” events.
- Also, you can’t go wrong with this kind of stuff.
As with real trench warfare, some of your major factors are going to be
- Artillery bombardment
- Air power
- Mechanized armor
Your fantasy equivalents of this stuff are going to be cool and endless (dragons are always an obvious one, but far from the only option). If a dragon is a fighter / bomber, a gryphon rider with a lance is an interceptor (but without any strafing ability). A number of big D&D monsters could play the role of mechanized armor (especially if someone’s actually put armor on them). Regardless, the goal of artillery is going to be to bombard the battle field indirectly (and hopefully mostly hit the enemy and keep them pinned down and unable to advance safely), the goal of air is going to be to kill soldiers from above, the goal of anti-air is to stop the enemy from killing your soldiers from above and the goal of mechanized armor is to plow through bombardment and advance anyway. Just look the the Monster Manual and the spell descriptions and you’ll see all kinds of stuff that could fill these roles in interesting ways.
Speaking of interesting roles, the excellent podcast Our Fake History has a 3 parter on the Seige of Vienna, which is a battle not really taught in American high school history that was REALLY cool and involved extensive use of sappers (you know, people who tunnel under defences). There are stories from the Siege of Vienna that squads of sappers tunnelling under the city defences ran into squads of sappers tunneling out into the battle field and the two sides would end up fighting with pick axes under ground. Sebastian (the podcaster) has some great speculation about what this kind of fight would be like. Do you hear them coming? What’s it look like when they finally punch through into your tunnel? What’s it like to be fighting in a low oxygen environment, lit by torches, while the room rocks from the blasting of other sapper parties and the ceiling could collapse on you in any minute?
Speaking of sappers. what would a bullette be like in sapper warfare? How about Earth and Water elementals? How about just fricken fighting some dwarves in those kinds of conditions?
Also thinking of trench warfare, I think of the German’s use of gas in WWI. This leads me to think about potions / alchemy that could potentially be stuck into a cannon and shot out to explode and scatter amongst the enemy. Magical gasses / vapors could do much more than just kill the enemy. I’m envisioning gryohon riders dropping slowness potions tied to small charges, exploding in the air to rain down a slowness mist on an army right before the other army charges.
D&D bards could also have interesting affects on battles in a more technological or technomagical setting.
Man this is serious stuff, these are some really good references
Thank you, you are going to be the indirect cause of the nightmares the characters of my playersThank you, you are going to be the indirect cause of the nightmares the characters of my players
Then I have done my work well. :D
- Familiars, invisible beings, things on the ethereal plane as spies (information is critical in war)
- Organized battalions of mages, conflict between the I-have-my-own-opinions-about-things nature of magic users vs. the do-what-the-leader-says necessities of organized warfare
- Magical superweapons developed in secret, catastrophic consequences when they’re unleashed
- Wild things happen in war. All the rules are suspended. People make sudden fortunes, rise to incredible power, important people die suddenly, pivotal cities get destroyed. All the consequences of everything get turned up to 11, or to 111.
So there’s a book called “The Road to Stalingrad” by Benno Zieser that’s one of the best war books I’ve ever read in terms of the day-to-day reality of war for the little person on the ground. One of the more terrifying parts of it is Zieser talking about the experience of being in a trench with fighting going on between planes and tanks and artillery up above the trench-level, and feeling just totally powerless to influence events in any way, like a little vulnerable flesh-blob with invulnerable metal monsters duking it out to determine his fate.
If my players started MWW, I think I would try to put them into that state. Have some enterprising wizard produce a few hundred (thousand) fireball wands and train an organized battalion to use them tactically in a massed group to accomplish a strategic objective which involves where the players are standing. Have ethereal spies everywhere, learning the details of how things the party depends on as safe home base are defended, and then have all the pivotal pieces explode in magical fire all at once at 4 in the morning, and then the shock troops roll in. Etc etc. It’s like, if y’all want to suspend the rules and create a hostile world, then you’re going to be in a hostile world with suspended rules. We can have some fun and some exciting times (behind the scenes I’d be rooting for a good outcome for them), but some of the parameters you’d been relying on to be able to control your fate are going to be suspended 'cause you guys broke the seal.
I like the idea of familiars as spys, perhaps demons make pacts not with individuals, but with batalions to get eldritch blast and some imps in an effort to gain the upper hand. Also, the idea of a magical superweapon arms race seems like another good excuse to “why do we have so few wizards on the batallion”, magical Openheimer is doing its thing.
Right, high demons would thrive in war. Maybe the demons make pacts with various warring factions, the magical weapons and fiendish allies come to “help” start getting turned up to 11, cities explode and burn, or just disintegrate away to some entire other reality, hell comes to earth, and by the time the people realize that they’re not even theoretically in control of the forces they’ve unleashed, it’s almost too late to even unify and save the wreckage that’s left from being dragged down to hell continent by continent. Great mute devils, a mile in height, are already screwing into the earth long chains with links the size of villages, fixed to winches, down at the other end.
Maybe a little roving squad of high-level wizards begins traveling around, once their study is complete, and wherever they stop to concentrate for an hour, a city flickers and fades and becomes a place where no sound can be emitted or heard, where thousands of long animate shadows hunt any living thing that enters. We have to do it, because they’re working on the same thing.
One other lore-building thing for your consideration: Fire on the Velvet Horizon has an awesome little slice-of-life of one possibility of what a magical war and the soldiers in it might have been like, as part of the lore for “Hex Dragoons.” I can recommend it 1,000% for that among any number of other reasons. If you wanted ideas for doomsday weapons for different factions to be working on, it also has a number of top-notch possibilities to pick from for those.
Also, necromancy would become a must for both sides, after all, a the death of a legion may generate revenants or wraiths. The idea of mass destruction magical weapons or crazy magical creations has been explored somewhat in earlier editions. I’m talking about things like the frostforged wyrm, or the crazy nethereese spells of levels above 9. There is literally a “conjure volcano” spell that a wizard just made for flexing and no one actually casted, until now of course, until now.
I have downloaded the pdf of FotVH, man this is gold. I have read like three monsters and these things are a wild ride. Thank you kindly for the recomendation.
Yah. It is hands down my favorite sourcebook; nothing even comes close. I find I have to insert stuff from it in severely reduced and partial form, because if they’re inserted as-is, they’re too vivid and wild and they wind up taking over the adventure. You have to apply it sparingly, in extremely diluted form, and even then it’s great stuff. It’s just too powerful to be used as written (or I’m not capable enough or my games not wild enough to apply it that way.)
I would watch Tanya the evil for creative inspiration. You pretty much just described the show.
As far as tactics, I would watch a lot of YouTube videos on mob tactics in DnD. Mob tactics can be really hard to get right for the specific context of scenario, so you’ll have to watch a few videos before finding a method that works for you. I’ve personally found a mix of roll together and individual plays can be good, like squad based turns pretty much. But that was for a Melee war scenario I did. IDK how to make it work when long range is something everyone on the battlefield has.
Maybe look into how Warhammer 40k is played, could give some inspiration for home brew rules to make the combat smoother.
Mass wizardry level 1 in the opposing militaries, all using fire bolt cantrip. 120 foot range and 1d10 damage, anyone walking into no man’s land is instantly a crispy critter.
No need to reinvent the wheel for a lot of this stuff. Check out the Eberron setting and a ton of the stuff that Keith Baker puts out about “The Last War”. The central and defining aspect of the Eberron setting is that it is generally played in the reconstruction period of a century long magical world war and goes into great detail about different countries motives and means to fight in said war and how it changed over time.
Try a book called ‘The Bloody Red Baron’ by Kim Newman. It’s the second book in the ‘Anno Dracula’ series. The premise is that Dracula killed Van Helsing et al and made Queen Victoria his bride [Book 1] It’s now 1916 and WW1 is going on. Both sides of the battle have humans and vampires working together. Might spark some ideas. Also, I can’t recall the exact title, but Harry Turtledove did a dragons in WW1 novel. Good luck shifting through that guy’s booklist!
I’ve read this saga on the napoleonic wars, but with dragons called “Temeraire” by Naomi Novik. It depicts an amaicing array of ways in wich diferent cultures interact with dragons. India, Turkey, England and specially China have diferent ways to interact with the lizards and the book also goes into detaio regarding the tactics andadvantages that dragons bring to the table.
But vampires would be the kings of the night if dragons are the kings of the day. The relative implications of mass vampirism are much less concerning than winning the war after all. Also, you can make vampire-spawn by the docen and turn the promising ones into full fledged vampires, as vapire-spawn are under the absolute control of their master, they cant revolt or refuse to charge. This also opens the door to vamping any prisioners you get to extract information from them.
Another fun read is ‘The Guns Above’ by Robyn Bennis. No magic, except for the idea that people in the Napoleonic era have access to hydrogen and helium. She does a great job of designing and fighting airships.
If you don’t have a very happy necromancer somewhere repeatedly sending the same undead to attack them over and over (in growing numbers as the fighting continues), I’ll be sad. This is their time to shine!
Necromancers would also be high priority target to kill or protect (if they’re… maintaining effective combat strength… on your side)
I’m thinking, wouldnt an undead be, by definition of not having a brain or even being alive, be the perfect suicide assasin/canon fodder. But, you would need a method to keep the enemy side from recycling the boys a second time. If you dont, its like playing pingpong with a massive undead horde. A sport I’m sure many necromancers would enjoy playing. Also, hig lv clerics and paladins wold be able to, literally bless the rain, killing undead left and right.
On a side note, would the ghost of a soldier still want to fight? If so, the necromancer just got the posivility of more complex tactics and strategies, thanks to these ethereal aides.
Trenches? you mean unfinished canals. Fling water bombs and cast Control Water to flush enemy troops out and ruin their powder.
Thats a good point, but gunpowder horns are wateproof and being underwater still beats death. On a side note, control water is a lv4 spell, so ti would be a good example of “and then we knew that they had a powerfull caster, because, you know, ten feet underwater things like that become obbious”.
Thanks for the tip.
Create Water, on the other hand, is level 1 ♥
