How to cripple a fleet and survive to tell the tale... [3.5]

[phaedrusxy]

I have a mid-level wizard, with access to 4th level spells, and he wants to destroy or cripple a massive fleet of ships before it sets sail, hopefully without dying in the process. He has access to allies of various classes, some a bit higher level than himself, but likely can't take many with him as he has to Teleport to a distant location to conduct this attack. There are hundreds of thousands of enemies in this fleet, and they no doubt have their own spellcasters, some higher level than my own. This fleet is currently within a harbor, and I have about 1 week to prepare if needed, for that's when they plan to set sail.

What's the most reasonable way to approach this? I'm thinking weather-based magic, but they will be able to counter/dispel that almost as soon as it is deployed.

Another option I've considered is a wraith/shadow/wight-apocalypse... and conveniently my own character's city just happens to be suffering an attack by undead at the moment, some of which are incorporeal. Of course, if this plague hasn't destroyed my own city yet, and indeed the odds look good that our own clergy will contain it, then it likely won't destroy them before it can be stamped out by their casters, either...

It's likely a hopeless endeavor, but I thought I'd pick your collective brains about it. It's a 3.5 game with moderate optimization, and most materials available, even some homebrew and pathfinder. I don't expect to defeat this army myself of course, just slow them down. I'd rather not give more details about my character as there is at least the possibility for PvP in this game, and it's possible that some of the other participants might frequent this board.

[Solo]

Shrink item. Boulders. Flight.

[phaedrusxy]

It's a good idea... and I even have the spell and have used it, but I fear I'd be a pincushion long before I could take out enough ships to matter...

Still... I might try it. I have quite a few defensive measures in place, including a Contingency upon death...

[Chemus]

How tightly spaced are these ships in harbor? Fire has been a bane of wooden ships forever, and if spaced well, with good wind control, you might get lots of ships burning. The only real trouble is the trouble it'd take to simulate a harbor fire.

[Amechra]

How's your Diplomacy score? 

Too bad you don't have access to Wall of Stone/Iron - just cage in the harbor.

Are there any nearby settlements of sea-dwelling humanoids/monstrous humanoids that can help you scuttle ships?

[phaedrusxy]

His diplomacy is non-existent, but he does have an ally who has a very good score. Still... I doubt it would help. The army is made up of lizardmen who ate the previous inhabitants of the city they're setting sail from.

I have no idea about sea-dwellers in the area, or anyone else. I just happened to go there by "accident" using a magic item, and saw this army getting ready to set sail to invade my continent.

Yeah... fire is certainly an option. I don't know how tightly spaced they are, but I'd guess quite, since there is a ridiculous number of them.

[Solo]

It's a good idea... and I even have the spell and have used it, but I fear I'd be a pincushion long before I could take out enough ships to matter...

Still... I might try it. I have quite a few defensive measures in place, including a Contingency upon death...

Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[geniussavant]

Water breathing to get you under the water, followed by repeated castings of battle field fortification for HoB across the mouth of the harbour, by the time anyone notices, the berm should be high enough that it can't be sailed over easily. Follow that with as many castings of water to acid (storm) as possible. That should eventually eat through the ships.

It won't hold them forever, but might buy you some time.

[geniussavant]

Ridiculous quantities of dust of dryness...

[phaedrusxy]

Water breathing to get you under the water, followed by repeated castings of battle field fortification for HoB across the mouth of the harbour, by the time anyone notices, the berm should be high enough that it can't be sailed over easily. Follow that with as many castings of water to acid (storm) as possible. That should eventually eat through the ships.

It won't hold them forever, but might buy you some time.

Hmm... this is an interesting idea. I have Heart of Water, so water breathing isn't a problem. The nice thing about Battlefield Fortification is that it is instantaneous in duration. It would probably take an unreasonably huge number of castings for this to work, though...



Since Control Winds is a standard action to cast, has a very large radius, and doesn't have the "ramp up" time that Control Weather does, it looks like to me that this spell could do quite a lot of damage before the enemy had time to dispel it. I have a handful of druids that I think I could get to go with me to cast this.

Maybe between this, and my character dropping boulders (shrank with Shrink Item), we could actually take out enough boats to make a difference before they could mount a defense. I could shrink a LOT of boulders in a week... I wonder if it would be worthwhile to start dropping boulders first, to try and draw the spellcasters away from the fleet, and THEN have the druids start throwing out Control Winds spells... or to launch both attacks simultaneously....

[altpersona]

swimming undead attacking the boat hulls?

air elementals attacking sails?

[geniussavant]

Water breathing to get you under the water, followed by repeated castings of battle field fortification for HoB across the mouth of the harbour, by the time anyone notices, the berm should be high enough that it can't be sailed over easily. Follow that with as many castings of water to acid (storm) as possible. That should eventually eat through the ships.

It won't hold them forever, but might buy you some time.

Hmm... this is an interesting idea. I have Heart of Water, so water breathing isn't a problem. The nice thing about Battlefield Fortification is that it is instantaneous in duration. It would probably take an unreasonably huge number of castings for this to work, though...

Depending on the size of the ship and depth of the harbour, and how your dm rules stacking them, using s pyramid shape, 3 castings would give you a ten ft wall and in a shallow harbour, that would be enough.

[Braininthejar]

1 if any of your allies can do lesser planar binding, go for a fire mephit. A single flying creature, properly directed, can do a lot of damage.

1a a typical tactic for causing a fire in the harbour are so called branders - ships loaded with something flammable and then set on a course to cause a pile-up, and spread fire to other ships. Doing so would probably require taking over one ship though - and the guys you teleport would have to be sailors, to control it.

1b remember, stones are not the only things you can use shrink item on. How about a barrel of oil?

2 Alternatively - is the fleet already loaded, or still in the process of supplying? Setting fire to the warehouses might be easier, and a huge army becomes a huge logistics nightmare if it can't get all the planned food.

2b if you can taint the food somehow, its even better - then they'd get the logistical nightmare half way through the sea. - ask a friendly druid if he can get you some parasites, or sources of disease.

3 using shrink item to drop some heavy objects into the harbor could cause a delay - a single ship getting stuck, or better sinking in the middle of the path will be a big problem if the bay is full of ships.

 

[phaedrusxy]

Shrunken, flaming barrels of oil... I like it. It's like a Molotov cocktail on steroids. I have actually carried around all kinds of insane shrunken things on my character, including a bonfire, a barrel of water (sans barrel), and a giant "basket" worn as a hat (to unshrink and hide inside for temporary cover, block AMFs, etc). I once used the "basket" as a makeshift boat. The DM thought that was hilarious.

The druid NPC ally that I discussed this with did suggest poisoning their food and warping some of the boards on their ships, rather than an all-out assault. He thought it would be more difficult to detect, and harder to counter once in place. Since this was basically the DM making a suggestion, maybe I should go with that... It's just that curing diseases and making/purifying food and water seems so trivial in D&D that I didn't know if it would actually be worth risking our necks for.

[Samwise]

How "direct" does your sabotage have to be?

You have a druid NPC ally.
Can you overwhelm the ships with barnacles (slowing them down) and shipworms (eating weak points in the hull)?

For that matter, is there a coral reef near the harbor?
Could the druid grow it at the right time and tear up the ships?

With food sabotage, how about the druid setting up some extra weevils and rats on the ships?

How about mechanical sabotage of rudder cables?
Combine that with a control currents spell from Stormwrack, and the fleet can sail into collisions before leaving the harbor.

Also, its a harbor.
An enclosed harbor?
With any defenses?
Can you capture them and turn them on the fleet?
Just get in long enough, raise a defense cable, then lock it in place as the fleet is trying to exit. That can buy you enough time and distraction to go firebombing.

[Chemus]

The druid NPC ally that I discussed this with did suggest poisoning their food and warping some of the boards on their ships, rather than an all-out assault. He thought it would be more difficult to detect, and harder to counter once in place. Since this was basically the DM making a suggestion, maybe I should go with that... It's just that curing diseases and making/purifying food and water seems so trivial in D&D that I didn't know if it would actually be worth risking our necks for.

1: Who else here completely forgot that ships are what warp wood was essentially made to counter? Being uncivilized, and usually neutral, lizardfolk should have druids too. If your NPCs are higher level than the LF druids, then as long as the object warped is larger than the LF druids can warp, warp wood can't be reversed. Try to find a way to boost the CL for warping, if you use it.

2: The issue with disease is much like that of fire: it's a pain in the ass to simulate on a large scale. Setting one ship on fire or poisoning/infecting one ship's crew takes a lot of time to adjudicate. Making a close to accurate extrapolation out to thousands of ships seems... bothersome.

The harbor chain should slow the ships down enough to get the bar up, but recall that lizardfolk are good swimmers (+4), and can hold their breath for a looonnng time. Sinking their ships will delay, not defeat, them. Disease or poison would seem to be optimal choices; especially if they're underway when the sabotage 'matures.' Performing the sabotage in harbor looks like the best way to get the most widespread result, it's just that the efficacy of the poisoning/infection will still be hard to simulate.

[ketaro]

I did a Ctrl-F to check first but why hasn't Control Water been mentioned?

Spam Control Water. You'll either 1) Drain the harbor, dropping the ships below sea level where they'll then get demonlished when the tide comes back in or 2) If the harbor is deep enough, create a bunch of whirlpools and demolish all the ships as well.

If you have multiple casters of your level on hand, spamming it becomes that much easier and quicker with less worry about it being dispelled before the full effects hit.

*shrugs*

[Braininthejar]

It's just that curing diseases and making/purifying food and water seems so trivial in D&D that I didn't know if it would actually be worth risking our necks for.

'trivial' still takes spell slots - how many clerics per soldier does the fleet have?

[SorO_Lost]

1. Swim out and just saw a hole in the ship.
2. Buy a +1 Necromantic Ballista, it auto-animates everything in like 30ft for a minute and the zombies attack any living creatures nearby and is pretty much the staple of anti-siege warfare.
3. Carpet bombing, kind of already suggested a dozen times.
4. Misleading fortifications, you actually want to keep the water levels normal and any sandbars out of sight to lure them into a trap like Stone Shaped spikes to ram into and tear their hull to shreds.
5. A line of Forbiddenance against the Chaotic Evil Alignment, pirates for as chaotic as the Internet thinks they were actually were signed into contracts and if it's a fleet of trained soldiers they were probably all trained and whipped into discipline anyway. Benefits include they all take immediately 12d6 damage upon entering the harbor.  No wight apocalypse can ever happen. The harbor is immune to orcs, trolls, goblins, and other other stupid cliches of invading murderers. Added safety of knowing every ship coming in is here for none-stolen profits.
6. Oil, it floats and can be lit on fire. Boats are also made out of flammable material covered in waterproof petrolatum products.
7. Hallucinatory Terrain & Silent Image paintings to nudge them into doing a 360 and slamming back into the port they came from.
8. Employ awakened warlock sharks because they come with lasers.
9. Get a Scroll of Consumptive Field and kill a bunch of animals then use Fly & Friendly Fire to float around immune to their tiny Dispel numbers and reflected ranged attacks as you pelt them with feces to decrease their moral and prompt unhealthy sailing.
10. Sneak in and kill the captain to gain control of the ship. Fire upon another yelling "For the_last_king's_name" then teleport out.

[phaedrusxy]

OK thanks for all the suggestions. I have a bit more info:

1) There are about 1200 ships in total, spread out over 4 locations, with a total of about 360,000 troops...
2) I've ran some of these ideas by the Archmage of our city, and the Council. It sounds like ships in this world are frequently treated alchemically to resist fire. Acid or other substances might work, though.
3) The Archmage favors hitting all of the ships at once, after they're loaded and at sea, with some kind of devastating and rapid attack. (Nothing specific, just his general idea for how he'd like to conduct the attack).

(click to show/hide)

He's at least capable of casting 9th level spells, and maybe Epic. I doubt he'd personally participate, and if he did it would likely be "off screen" or something... You know how it is... You can't have a guy like that fighting right next to the lowbies, because they'll all die instantly due to collateral damage... He might throw up a Teleportation Circle or something, though.

However, the DM is definitely not shy about throwing shit at us that is much more powerful numerically than the PCs (Not long ago we took out a deepspawn that was casting at least 6th level cleric spells... and yes, it had a bunch of clones defending it, and some of them were even higher level than the PCs...). If we engage this army, I have no doubt that it will be absolute suicide without some really good planning. My character definitely borders on the paranoid, and has backup plans for his backup plans, so I think he'll at least survive... even if he dies.

4) We don't know about their demographics, but we're going on the assumption that they have a similar distribution of casters to our own. Their army outnumbers ours by 10 to 1, and is even greater than our whole population...
5) There is also some kind of very powerful caster/creature that has blocked Scrying (and teleportation?) over the entire inner continent that they are setting sail from (likely an Epic/Deific effect). Luckily this didn't cover the Northernmost tip, which is where my character happened to wind up and witness this massive army and fleet.

My latest suggestion is to attack from beneath the sea, and try and just structurally damage the ships, either mechanically or via Warp Wood or something. The water will provide concealment and cover, and if we're subtle enough we might be able to pull the whole thing off and get the hell out before we're detected. I'm wondering if he'll treat the entire ship as the target for Warp Wood, of if we can go after individual boards... Since Warp Wood has a short range, I'm thinking of using Chain Spell with it... although given how big ships are, and how short 30 feet is, that might not be worth the trouble (I'd have to retrain to learn it, or go on a quest to Rainbow Falls or whatever...)