I am making a 15th-level elven evoker (prohibited illusion/transmutation) who is custom designed to fight whole armies.
I'm looking for suggestions on which spells to add to his spell repertoire. In particular I'm looking for ones that are ideal for mass warfare (be it for defense, destruction, reconnaissance, or some other war-related use).
(Many advanced thanks!)
I am making a 15th-level elven evoker (prohibited illusion/transmutation) who is custom designed to fight whole armies.
I'm looking for suggestions on which spells to add to his spell repertoire. In particular I'm looking for ones that are ideal for mass warfare (be it for defense, destruction, reconnaissance, or some other war-related use).
(Many advanced thanks!)
Battlefield Control and AoE spells is what I would go with thematically. The battlefield control spells should work well mechanically also.
*starting at 8th level spells and working down:
Symbol of Insanity
Greater Prying Eyes (for scouting)
Incendiary Cloud
Horrid Wilting
Waves of Exhaustion
Prismatic Ray
Mass Hold Person
Freezing Sphere
Wall of Iron
Acid Fog
Repulsion
Guards and Wards
Globe of Invulnerability
Mind Fog
Cloudkill
Fear
Contagion (long term attack for preemptive strikes)
Crushing Despair
Black Tentacles
Confusion
From the core spells, any battlefield control spells of course. Also, careful use of the Widen metamagic feat could be very useful when dealing with that many targets.
By 'army' I'll assume a large number of low level creatures, generally of the same racial type but not necessarily so.
You knocked out some good spells from transmutation though. I'll list illusion/transmutation spells anyways.
Some possible spells:
8th lvl:
Prismatic Wall
Greater Shout
Incendiary Cloud
Horrid Wilting
Antipathy (can be used to cause an opposing army to flee a specific area)
7th lvl:
Reverse Gravity (the area is shapeable so can be made into a long stretch of what would be impassable terrain to most armies not capable of flight)
Control Weather (make any forthcoming battle take place in the weather most favorable to you, or send a tornado/blizzard/hurricane against an enemy army)
Waves of Exhaustion
Prismatic Spray
Mass Invisibility (this can affect a whole army of allies)
6th lvl:
Move Earth (for setting the terrain just the way you want)
Control Water (for potentially causing floods, harassing enemy ships, or drying out enemy watering points)
Circle of Death
Chain Lightning
Acid Fog
Repulsion (keep those armies out of your face)
5th lvl:
Overland Flight (for yourself to have excellent tactical position and visibility)
Transmute Rock to Mud/Mud to Rock
Waves of Fatigue
Mirage Arcana
Wall of Force
Cone of Cold
Wall of Stone (a must have)
Cloudkill (another must have, a widened one can wipe out whole armies of low level creatures on its own, this would be your bread and butter spell)
4th lvl:
Fear
Wall of Ice
Wall of Fire
Ice Storm
Confusion
Solid Fog
Black Tentacles
3rd lvl:
Slow
Windwall
Fireball
Stinking Cloud
Sleet Storm
Phantom Steed (if you dont want to cast fly spells on yourself)
2nd lvl:
Pyrotechnics (if widened, can be used to temporarily blind creatures in a massive area)
Darkness
Darkvision (so you can see when they can't)
Gust of Wind
Web
Glitterdust
Fog Cloud
1st lvl:
Grease
Cloudkill will be your big army-killer. 3rd lvl or lower creatures will instantly die with no save. Widen it to affect a 40ft radius area (i.e. its 80ft wide!). And it moves away from you each round by 10ft. Use terrain modifying spells to make the terrain difficult to maneuver in so that the army can't flee from the cloudkill, or use some Walls of Stone or Reverse Gravity to prevent retreat. A few widened cloudkills will drop hundreds of enemies.
Another option would be to sow chaos among an army with things such as fear, confusion, mirage arcana, and then polymorph into a dragon (or something else quite terrible) and use the breath weapon to take out large swaths of enemies.
You could also employ harassment tactics. Use invisibility + flight to harass the army while on the march while remaining undetected. Dry out their watering points with control water. Slow down their movement with terrain altering spells. Use control weather to cause constant terrible weather. Theres a lot a lone wizard could do to a large army to make their lives miserable and drop morale.
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Horrid Wilting is glorious. It's probably supposed to have some sort of limit on how many creatures it can effect, but, not so much.
Black Tentacles has potential as well (more so if Widened).
Acid Fog, Cloudkill and Incendiary Cloud have nice ranges and effects.
Confusion is worth a laugh, also fun to Widen.
Chain Lightning isn't bad, but Cone of Cold, while potentially affecting a lot of people requires one to get right into the middle of the enemy formations, which is not really where a wizard wants to be (barring Project an Image).
Control Weather can be fun, to call down those tornados, season permitting (although hailstorms and blizzards also have potential, pretty much any season but autumn works nicely).
If you've already made the battleground muddy via control weather rainstorms, you might as well capitalize on that muddy ground by casting a few mud to rock spells into the enemy formations (particularly near their cavalry). Those legs get stuck in boot-deep *solid rock* and that's gonna slow 'em down. (Horses will likely just suffer immediate broken legs, and need to be put down. Cruel, but effective.)
Not the usual 'battlefield' spell, but Create Greater Undead makes a shadow. Shadows beget more shadows, unto the last generation of man is wiped from the earth, in thy mercy.
Form of the Dragon III comes with free 50 ft. breath weapon cones every 1d4 rounds, but, IMO, are too risky, as you have to get a lot closer than the Medium or Long range of some of the above spells. Elemental Body IV for the whirlwind is just not worth it, at all.
Ice Storm isn't a terrible choice, although you might be able to more effectively damage a bunch of people with a well-placed Wall of Fire.
Summon Monster has some potential. In the right circumstances, an Elder Earth, Fire or Air Elemental can do quite a bit of damage, and, if there happens to be a moat handy, few things beat a Giant Squid for taking out eight hapless goons a round. Few things break up an infantry formation as quickly as 1d4+1 triceratops bearing down on them in full charge / trample mode, which can get even funner if you've got a few scrolls of animal growth ready to enhance them further.
Against the right foes (good or lawful) a Hezrou spamming unholy blight / chaos hammer can be quite effective, as well as shooting off his blasphemy, while protected by his aura of nausea and immunities / DR / etc. Succubi, with their at will charms, can wreak havoc at night on encamped armies, as can Shadow Demons, with at will deeper darkness and fear, utterly routing soldiers in advance of a surprise assault (best to spam fear near the cavalry, as the horses will saves are the soft target of opportunity, and the stampeding horses may trample a bunch of drowsy soldiers). If the enemy are good, 1d4+1 Erinyes (from an 8th level spell) will be even better at spamming unholy blight than a single Hezrou.
Kytons can pretty much walk through mundane troops, although it's more work than just throwing spells, and I'd probably want to stick to summoning critters that will cast spells.
Sadly, most of the sexy Cleric / Druids spells are out of the reach of your Limited Wish (no Blade Barrier, no Firestorm, no Earthquake, no Storm of Vengeance), but you *can* Limited Wish up a Control Winds, which is like sex, with twins. Spike Growth / Spike Stones are also neat, for crippling great numbers of people, but hardly worth a Limited Wish.
Sunburst has long range (about 1000 ft. at 15th level), hits an 80 ft. radius area (wow!) and does 6d6 plus possibly permanant blindness. Amazing troop-killing (or crippling) potential there.
If the GM doesn't make his saving throw (being you, thrown out the window), Polymorphing Any Object to turn a portable hole full of beer, upended over the enemy army, into green slime (or yellow mold, or russet mold, or brown mold, or rot grubs, or kyuss worms), has potential. Minor and Major Creation can't be used to cheap out on this tactic, as they only create unliving plant matter, and 9 out of 10 GMs agree that unliving green slime is just smelly, not deadly.
Note that green slime (whether created by spell or found elsewhere and Shrunk for convenient portage) is best to drop during the aforementioned rainstorm you've called up with control weather, so that the foes afflicted are less likely to be able to use torches to save themselves from immiment slimeage.
If you can find similarly deadly / damaging materials, such as vast quantities of hot lava or burning oil or radioactive 'underdark minerals' or level-draining 'black sand,' feel free to cast Shrink Item on them, and turn them into harmless cloth outlines, to be dropped upon one's unsuspecting foes from a great height.
While not a battlefield spell, per se, Repulsion has decent defensive applications, when walking onto a battlefield. (Not that you aren't planning on flying over it under cover of invisibility or greater invisibility, via Wings of Flying / Carpet of Flying and / or Dust of Disappearance, right?)
Simulacra is very much not a typical battlefield spell. But whose tactics wouldn't be improved by half-strength (7th level) versions of themselves to sit back and throw fireballs, walls of fire and other boring crap that you are too busy to deal with? Disposable evokers!
And that's assuming that you can't find something notably larger than yourself to create a Simulacrum of. Pick some beastie up to 30 HD, and make a 15 HD little version to be your boo. At 7500 gp, save this option for critters that are pretty sexy at 15 HD, like a green dragon.
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what buffs and protection does this War wizard need?
It's generally a popular choice to use some combination of flight and invisibility to rain destruction down upon armies. If you know that the enemy doesn't have any high level wizards, globes of invulnerability could prove useful. If you expect conjurers to be an issue, protection from X spells will help keep summoned critters away (flights of summoned dire bats are one way of dealing with flying invisible attackers, for instance).
I assume the army horde is non magic, but what if they have some magic what are his best anti caster defenses?
A mantle of spell resistance is handy against low-level casters (and pretty much junk, otherwise), and the aforementioned minor / major globe of invulnerability or protection from X spells to keep out mind control effects / summoned creatures.
If you have done some research, and know what sort of spells the enemy casters like, such as metamagic enhanced scorching rays, you can prepare specific elemental resistance spells, Spell Immunity, or, in the case of Magic Missiles / Argent Savants / etc., just keep a Shield spell or Brooch of Shielding handy. In the case of a military squad, most likely they'll have fielded their 'war wizards' before, giving you a better than average chance of knowing what sort of magics their battle mages use.
Necromancer types, for instance, leading armies of undead, like to use spells that don't affect their minions, like negative energy effects, mind-affecting spells, poison clouds, cold effects, etc., for instance.
Specific Rings of Counterspells might also be useful, especially if the spell you've prepared it to counter is Dispel Magic (which can pull you right out of the sky or strip one of your vital defenses).
Not being near the enemies! however Globe of Invulnerability is always a good choice, as is repulsion with a magic circle of protection.
EDIT: An interesting note is that the OP specifically mentioned that his prohibited schools are Illusion and Transmutation -- he can still cast them but he loses quick and easy use of several good battle spells due to this choice.
What prohibited schools would you have recommended for a (evoker) war wizard?
What prohibited schools would you have recommended for a (evoker) war wizard?
For what you are doing?
Divination and probably enchantment.
Enchantment has a good number of useful spells at higher level, but not as many as necromancy (the school for schoolin peeps in large numbers), and illusion has too many useful bluff spells. Conjuration has many of your wall and cloud spells that are great at killing, and transmutation has things like haste, slow and disentigrate which is great for forming the battlefield.
Between Illusion and Transmutation you can have the enemy not trusting the earth itself. They'll not know if the terrain is real and when it might completely shift on them. That would throw an army in disarray and completely mess with the command structure.