I imagine a mix of area effects. This is a day in the park for the wizards, so they're going to have fun trying out different ways of massacring these losers. So, fireballs, cloudkills, rain of stones, walls of iron toppling down, summoned monsters etc.
The aftermath of the battle will include scores of dominated and magic jar'ed knights going back to their masters to send a message. Maybe with a legion of zombies in tow.
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Out of curiosity, I build armies with the mass combat rules from Kingmaker (which will also be in Ultimate Combat) with these numbers.
On the one side you would have 5 units of peasants with an Army Challenge Rating of 8 (28 hp each) and 1 unit of knights also with an ACR of 8 (44 hp) and +3 to offense and defense, equal to an ACR 11 army.
The wizards would be a single unit with an ACR of 13 (45 hp) and gain a +5 bonus to both offense and defense, which gives it the offense and defense values of an ACR 18 army.
Now armies don't have an AC but defense works a lot more like Damage Reduction. To harm the wizards, an attacking army would have to make an offense roll of at least 28 with an attack bonus of +8, or +11 for the knights.
On the other hand, the wizards would only have to make an offense roll of 18 or 21 while having an attack bonus of +18.
In short: The peasants can't harm the wizards and the wizards will always hit the peasants. On average it should take the wizards three rounds of battle to whipe out a unit of peasants while not being at any real risk.
That leaves the knights vs. the wizards, and a 5th level fighter for every 10th level wizard does not stand a chance.
Strategy, Tactics, Terrain, and dice rolls could possibly lead to a defeat of the wizards, but it seems very unlikely.
If you have a near equal number of wizards vs anything else, the wizards will probably win, especially if they're high enough level to have spells that will allow for them to withdraw from battle if they need (teleport, dimension door, etc). Making the wizards level 10 and 500 of them at that doesn't reflect the game world of Golarion very well. In Golarion, level 10 characters are the grandest heros of the world. Above that, thats the stuff of legends. You're basically asking what happens if you put 500 of the greatest arcane masters in one spot? Its a silly question. More likely is maybe a couple dozen wizards in one spot, and more likely to be level 5 or below.
One high level wizard could decimate that army by casting planar binding and choosing the right creature. An earth elemental of proper size could probably deal with it. Follow up with some summon monsters if you're feeling froggy.
To return to your earlier question though, what would it look like?
A slaughter.
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Your numbers are way off. 500 1th level characters of any class will decimate 10,000 commoners. Even 500 10th level rogues will win. assuming that only 1 in 20 rouges has UMD that will still be 25 fireballs going off every round. Before this happens the other 475 rogues will start taking out the knights. Each rogue has goggles of sniper, a ring of invisibility, and potions of haste and invisibility. Using short bows that is going to be 1425 attacks doing 6d6 the first on is almost guaranteed to hit, and more than likely the second one as well. So after the first round you will have maybe 25 knights facing down 500 rogues that are twice there level.
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But I just can't picture 500 10th-level wizards in any one place in any reasonable setting.
Thay
@Mysterious Stranger: the rogues would probably just assassinate the army leaders.
Also, with disguise self, bluff and sleight of hand the army camps might as well be open season for a few resourceful individuals with poisoning skills.
500 10th level wizards vs completely mundane warriors of any kind? It would actually be rather amusing. Since I am pretty sure ALL of those wizards would be flying and have greater invisibility up. I imagine all sorts of creative death flinging around from unknown sources in the sky and behind veils or lines of summoned creatures. Big gaping spiked pits oppening up in front of charging cavalry lines, lines of 'wizards' fading into non-existance like the illusions they are when the enemy actually manages to close with them, only to find themselves encircled by sets of writhing horrible black tentacles. basically it would be rediculous, varied as the styles of the wizards themselves, and totally fruitless and hopless for the army.
Say you had a army of 10,000 conscripted peasants (levels 1-2) backup by 500 mounted knights (5th level average) vs about 500 hundred elite wizards (level 10) sent to teach the world that it is a very bad idea to mess with the collegia magica what would the fight look like? would the wizard rain fireballs, summon scores of monsters, choke the battle with poisonous mist etc?
I am planning a Locke Lamora based setting and want to hammer home the point that messing with the bonds mage is a very bad idea so I want to describe a massacre to the party but I am having trouble imagining it myself.
This.
This post assumes that the wizards would even allow an army to approach. If you have a diviner or two who figures out what's going on, it only takes a few enchanters/illusionists to mess with any organizers.
Nah, if you're going for flavor...
Army gathers on the designated field of battle, all in formation, shining spears and shields and all that.
A lone wizard strides out across from them.
He gestures to the left, then the right. The entire army is encircled by a continuous wall of fire, trapping them inside (along with the lone mage).
The wizard smiles at the terror in their eyes as they make a single attempt to kill him. Arrows bounce off, lances splinter against his bare flesh.
He rises up into the air and hovers over the masses as thick green smoke passes through the flame wall, slowly collapsing into the middle, ensuring that no one makes it out alive, and they all have a few precious moments to consider where they went wrong.
<How it works>
500? No. I'd have to math out the area to be affected, but I imagine 30-40 10th level wizards could do it.
Wizard Roster:
Head mage, buffed fully with nothing but protection spells and fly. (Protection from Arrows, Stoneskin, Greater Mage Armor, Shield, Barkskin Potion)
Everyone else. Greater Invisibility, Fly, Wall of Fire, Cloudkill.
The mages coordinate ahead of time, waiting for the Head Mage's signals, then they let loose with the appropriate spells.
If this is about making a statement... make one, and do it right.
I rather like this answer. It's clear the peasants would die, but why not do it with style?
Say you had a army of 10,000 conscripted peasants (levels 1-2) backup by 500 mounted knights (5th level average) vs about 500 hundred elite wizards (level 10) sent to teach the world that it is a very bad idea to mess with the collegia magica what would the fight look like? would the wizard rain fireballs, summon scores of monsters, choke the battle with poisonous mist etc?
I am planning a Locke Lamora based setting and want to hammer home the point that messing with the bonds mage is a very bad idea so I want to describe a massacre to the party but I am having trouble imagining it myself.
Actually an army of 10,000 1-2 peasants and 500 5th level knights can be destroyed by a single wizard of 17th level. Probably lower (like 13th even).
Given their levels, the likelihood of the army being armed with lots of magical items beyond a few low level potions. The wizard would likely know of their coming and would have taken some time to create some duplicates of himself via simulacrum. Say about 10 duplicates (giving you a head wizard plus 10 8th level mini-mes).
That's enough. Each cast fly (or in the case of the head wizard overland flight) and begin raining down fire and brimstone from the heavens, spreading cloudkill across the armies, preventing enemies from retaliating with wind wall, etc.
If the wizard has money to spare he can be a douche and have an unseen servant run up to enemy commanders and generals and stuff a portable hole into a bag of holding and sucks all of them within a 10 ft. radius into the astral plane with no save, tossing them out into the endless expanses of planar-space.
If the wizard really didn't like them, he could have a bound Glabrezu dismantle the army for him. Its DR against non-blessed weapons pretty much stifles any attempt to fight it effectively with peasants, and it has peerless mobility and can just keep slaughtering the soldiers en mass with chaos hammer which will devastate any non-chaotic members of the army (likely nearly everyone).
Seriously there are so many ways only a single high level wizard could slaughter this army that he could sit back and file his nails while watching the wholesale slaughter.
500 high level wizards means they insult their enemies by meleeing them to death and never casting an offensive spell.
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Either the wizards win quickly, or they run quickly. Or else they die.
It is just the nature of the system. This is a game built around a small party of adventurers who have 'five minute work days'. One side is only expected to have 4-6 at a time, and fights are expected to last less than a minute (at most two).
The game isn't balanced around completely shutting out thousands of small threats for hours on end. Buffs are great, but the really, really good ones only last for 'minutes'. And it is hard to overcome action economy. Even a CR 11 Juvenile Red Dragon can be killed by a few dozen level 1 characters using rays of frost. It is just the law of action economy- even if the effect is minor, having way, way more actions than your opponent gives you a major advantage.
So the wizard would need to kill/drive off the army quickly using AoEs and the like if they want to win, or at least teleport away and stay alive. As noted in Order of the Stick- even if the enemies lack the bonus to hit your AC, they can still get an auto hit on a natural 20. With thousands of enemies... you get thousands of arrows (although they might just be 1d6's with no bonus). It eventually ads up in terms of damage. And yes- there are spells to ward off attacks like that... but a lot of those are minutes/level. In a several hour long siege, you will eventually feel pressure. Time is just on the side of the people with more action economy- if the wizard doesn't want to die, then they need to deny the other side time.
Of course, there are oddly classes with builds well suited for large, long conflicts. An earth element kineticist is strangely suited for killing thousands of low level opponents once they hit high levels themselves. They have infinite use AoEs with their blasts (earth has a nasty long lasting one that can deny charges), they can move about 55 mph with the ride the blast talent for hit and run, they have enough DR to just ignore the little people (sure, adamantine arrows... but those are costly to give an entire army; mostly just for elites), and they can go underground and run if they get hurt by someone actually strong. Add aether or air on top to provide some more defense, and they are near impossible to fight using a regular army.
An earth kineticist have a knack for fulfilling a very particular narrative purpose- they are mechanically gifted with the ability to PERSONALLY murder hundreds of people in a cruel and all out war. That makes for a great villain. And they are still reasonable when facing the party in the 'five minute workday' environment of the actually game. A small team of elites doing an ambush is far more effective than using an army of common soldier to defeat such a character- and that is why the kingdom would ask for your help.
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If I were a 10th Lvl Wizard, I'd leave a note telling them where I was and then teleport away to that location.
I'd do that every day.
Let them walk around to find me, marching, using resources and dying of all the problems that foot soldiers die of on the regular.
Wanna kill me?
Come get me.
Good luck with that.
Walls of fire, cloudkill, mass confusion (both the spell and the general effect), earthquake, control weather, and I think I remember some wave-making spells from the APG or UM that affect a huge area for moderate damage.
Put about 10 high end rings of wizardry on a table with a sign saying "A tribute for the most powerful of the wizards." You should have no real trouble mopping up the survivors.
Obviously no one on your planet has ever come up with strategies to deal with wizards.
bah, powerful adventurers slaughter evil wizards all the time... opposing a poweful wizard with a conventional army is an exercise in futility.
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Given that a level 12 druid with mages tattoo and spell specialization can do it with one casting of control winds I think the wizards probably have it.
I mean 500 fireball at level 10 is is 5000d6 damage, and they can cast at least 4 of them per day.
Plus its not like you are getting the jump on the wizards, they have divination magic and teleport. The Wizards do not even need to show up as a formation, they can teleport in (only 15 don't show up assuming the Wizards are familiar with the area) and ambush the foes literally anywhere along their journey.
Honestly I doubt 500 wizards who get along would even bother all using the same spell. Sure there would be fireballs, but also lightning bolts, black tentacles, control winds, cloud kill (combos great with control winds), aggressive thunderclouds, walls of fire, ice storms, Summoned Monsters, Bloatbombs, Undead, and other area spells.
Even if only 350 or so Wizards arrived on spot from Teleporting to an area they have seen once, they can still ambush the enemy army and destroy it in under one round.
Power draws power. A group of wizards might be able to have a field day slaughtering an unprepared army, but that's going to send a huge message to the other major players of the world. You might as well put a massive target on your head.
Now, if the wizards are the only high level characters in the world, then yeah, they're going to stomp.
I expect in a world with strong magic most armies would consider mages and clerics to be vital resources, and mages would be used to counter other mages, buying the peasant horde time to reach the other side. Such battles would also be highly lethal, but that's why we have high level clerics to prevent as many injuries as possible.
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The wizards take the time to scribe alter summon monster into their spellbooks. Casting communual mount gives them a long duration summon that they can turn into earth elementals. The earth elementals kill the army while the wizards are untouched.
Thats just one way.
You could have like 5 go in at night and dominate the leaders. Then have them go around killing their own men.
Yet another would be necromancers just sending in roving death sqauds of creatures.
The possibilities of slaugther are endless.
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My transmuter, Haylannar, slew approximately 700 foes in approximately 5-10 minutes at 10th-level.
With the right prep, I have little doubt he could have annihilated your peasants and knights singlehandedly.
Widened Cloudkill. Widened Acid Fog. Widened Fireball. Widened Freezing Sphere. And, if you can afford greater widen rod, widened meteor storms would kill a whole lot of people in a single turn.
Against those mooks? Just use a single widened sunburst. That's a 160-foot radius of dead peasants. Cast it just once, leaving a graveyard of charred corpses 320 feet across, then see if the survivors have the heart to fight on.
How many medium creatures can you fit in a 320-foot diameter? What if they were all troops, how many then?
Power draws power. A group of wizards might be able to have a field day slaughtering an unprepared army, but that's going to send a huge message to the other major players of the world. You might as well put a massive target on your head.
Now, if the wizards are the only high level characters in the world, then yeah, they're going to stomp.
I expect in a world with strong magic most armies would consider mages and clerics to be vital resources, and mages would be used to counter other mages, buying the peasant horde time to reach the other side. Such battles would also be highly lethal, but that's why we have high level clerics to prevent as many injuries as possible.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. The message that it sends to the other major players of the world is really just going to be "don't f--- with us."
There's no way that an army of 10,000 peasants spontaneously self-assembled and just happened to be marching on the wizards' college, nor is it plausible that the wizards attacked first and there happened, coincidentally, to be an infantry division that just happened to be lying around. Someone put a lot of effort into amassing a huge army of peasants here. Realpolitick says that the wizards are almost certainly on the defensive here. If they're not on the defensive, then they've engaged [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall]in the final mopping up stages of a war that the peasants have already lost.[url]
Which means that either a) the peasant army is run by morons, or b) the peasant army is desperately ill-equipped (which probably implies a) as well). Yes, most army commanders would consider mages and clerics to be vital resources, and most army commanders would also consider high-level characters to be vital resources. But the way the tactical problem is posed, these resources aren't available.
How does this "put a massive target" on the mages? Anyone who would be in a position to stop the mages either can't or won't.
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The target comes because you have someone has enough power to field an army of 500 mages who has so little restraint that he will take them out into the field, unsupported, to teach a lesson to an obviously ill-prepared and poorly led blowhard. In short, you have a short tempered bully with incredible power, and no restraints. The calculation here is not "IF" but "WHEN" he gets around to going after you. The powers that be really have no choice but to take the idiot out if they can't put a leash on him.
Now the serious question here is why 500 10th level wizards would have put up with any of this. Heck, why would any army of 10th level characters of any classes put up with this. If they are being dominated somehow, that is an even better reason to take out "Fearless Leader".
Baba Yaga might be able to field a force like that but of witches, potentially higher level though. She has been collecting daughters for years and thats just Golorian.
Since it has been established that a cat can beat up a Commoner, another possible strategy is to summon 10000 cats to dispense with the peasants. Actually, due to the way the Summon Monster works, and the fact that Summon Swarm only does bats, rats, or spiders, this is difficult, but if you want to do this with style . . . If that doesn't make the Knights run away, then you do your other nasty tricks to them.
I feel like there's got to be a really good reason for this to happen, since "An army besieges a wizard tower" really doesn't make a lot of sense for either party, particularly in a world like Pathfinder's.
Which is to say, why is the country that felt like these wizards absolutely need to die, electing to send a large and unwieldy army? Sending a small group of higher level specialists who have a chance of passing undetected to sabotage/assassinate seems a lot more sensible.
Why does the wizard, when faced with this sort of army not just, leave. "We use magic to move our entire organization hundreds of miles away across a border in a rival power with whom we have forged a relationship, good luck marching your troops there" seems to get the point across a lot better, and doesn't have the same problematic ethical implications for good-aligned wizards as "slaughtering a whole lot of peasants who really don't pose you any threat."
I would honestly prefer to run this as "a monarch is sufficiently stupid to march an army against some wizards, the army finds the wizards aren't where they expected them to be, and the next morning everybody who signed off on this military action is discovered atomized/torn apart by demons/whatever and there's a pointed note left for that person's successor."
The way you keep high level wizards in check is with other high level wizards who oppose each other's agendas.
The target comes because you have someone has enough power to field an army of 500 mages who has so little restraint that he will take them out into the field, unsupported, to teach a lesson to an obviously ill-prepared and poorly led blowhard.
I assumed that the wizards are/were an existing group. Five hundred people isn't actually that much for a faculty at a medium-sized university. Oxford University (which of course is a large university) has roughly 2000 faculty and 5000 research staff; Colgate University (which is a small university) has 2000 students and roughly 300 faculty.
I'm not sure how large Korvosa's Academae is, but it "attracts students from as far away as distant Geb" and students will routinely take ten years to graduate, so it's going to take a lot of faculty. I suspect the Arcanamirium is comparable, if not actually larger.
It seems to me that the "target," if any, is the person fool enough to draft an army of peasants into attacking a group of wizards.
I feel like there's got to be a really good reason for this to happen, since "An army besieges a wizard tower" really doesn't make a lot of sense for either party, particularly in a world like Pathfinder's.
First off, Pathfinder isn't a "world." Golarion is a setting/world, where as Pathfinder is a game with rules and mechanics that someone can use to create their own setting with, like many other games. Not every person cares to use Golarion, either. It's entirely up to the GM what goes and what doesn't. If there happens to be 500 10th level wizards like some kind of Hogwarts army on steroids, then you simply just have to accept that.
Okay, if you're going to be pedantic- "A world which has the physics/metaphysics implied by the game rules of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game."
A world where the power level of magic at the high end is more limited is sort of needed for these "wizards vs. soldiers" conflicts to make sense for either party. Just look at the 5th level spells a 10th level wizard can cast; they can end this real quick in a wide variety of ways.
The people living in a game world should have some sense of how its physics/metaphysics work; enough, at least, to realize things like "marching an army against wizards is a bad idea."
Consider the following: killing that many people would undoubtedly lend motivation to further insurrection as the families of the dead vow vengeance. Not only that, but your flashy displays have given any survivors valuable intel on your capabilities and tactics. Even if you succeed you'll make more enemies in the process.
Instead, disable the enemy armies. Cripple their ability to fight you with non-lethal spells and CC that doesn't leave lasting impact on them. Be flashy in your presentation, but refrain from causing any permanent damage. Now the enemy knows that you're not just strong enough to effortlessly incapacitate enemies, but you're strong enough to do it while holding back - this leaves them questioning just what the limits of your strength are. Your show of mercy makes many question their commanders and their own motives for fighting you, and rather than motivating the families of the lost to seek vengeance you show that you are merciful enough to spare their loved ones. In one fell swoop you defeat the enemy, showcase your strength without giving away your true potential, and crush any motivation to fight you.
But yeah, if that's not really the style you're looking for, the above posters have said just about anything I could come up with.
Okay, if you're going to be pedantic- "A world which has the physics/metaphysics implied by the game rules of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game."
A world where the power level of magic at the high end is more limited is sort of needed for these "wizards vs. soldiers" conflicts to make sense for either party. Just look at the 5th level spells a 10th level wizard can cast; they can end this real quick in a wide variety of ways.
The people living in a game world should have some sense of how its physics/metaphysics work; enough, at least, to realize things like "marching an army against wizards is a bad idea."
Sorry, but I just see that being said so many times that it's just nails on chalkboard, to me.