Better question. What kind of army? What size? What kind of technology does this army have? How strong is this army's morale? There's a lot of factors to look into. If its well-equipped, trained and discipline, likely only the intelligent caster classes that use not just their magic, but their brains to win the fight... BUT, if the army is questionably vulnerable, then several classes could. If the army is scrubby, I'd put my vote to Barbarian.
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Enjoy your slop. I'll be enjoying good products elsewhere.
Firestorm doesn’t effect a big enough area, storm of the century is actually kind of weak in combat and requires concentration. Tsunami could be a crusher though.
Storm of the Century is actually more than strong enough for this situation. Most creatures in an army are going to be low enough level that taking 3d6 damage with no save (the 2nd and 4rth round effects) are likely to be lethal. The full duration is going to easily deal with almost everything inside the radius. And since its range is "sight," it lets you lay down the destruction from well beyond their ability to retaliate before you make your escape.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A thousand archers will kill any class in an instant. If they win initiative, some classes may have a chance to take out a fraction of those archers before they die.
A thousand archers will do exactly zero damage to a wizard behind a wall of force, to pick one of the many option casters have to shut down ranged attacks
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
(unless it was an army of CR 0 or 1/8th schmucks).
You do realize that this is supposed to represent the average soldier. Right?
I think this exhibits fairly well why there would a pretty big problem with a single player fighting a 2,000 strong army. At CR 1/8, a Guard deals an average of 8 damage on a crit (thus bypassing armor). If 1/20 of your guards manage to crit, that is some 800 damage. And this does not even count the fact that most armies are going to have a large contingent of archers (CR 3) and probably a few wizards and more elite units thrown into the fray. Sure, some of them will die before they get to attack--but, even if you are killing 100+ per round (which is not sustainable--you'll run out of spell slots), eventually enough crits will occur to kill a player, regardless of what resources they might have available at the fight's start. It does not matter how many Walls of Wind or shield spells you cast; eventually you will be out of spell slots and there will still be hundreds upon hundreds of troops left, all happily waiting their 1/20 chance of bypassing whatever AC you have remaining.
In a game involving dice and critical hits bypassing armor class, huge numbers are always going to have the advantage. Without something like Meteor Swarm (and, even then, you're looking at 201 soldiers per circle, five circles, leaving 995 soldiers left to deal with and that is assuming armies in a world where Meteor Swarm exists stand in tight formations ready for a meteor swarm to hit them), the math just does not work out too well for a player, even with the smallest monsters available.
(unless it was an army of CR 0 or 1/8th schmucks).
You do realize that this is supposed to represent the average soldier. Right?
I think this exhibits fairly well why there would a pretty big problem with a single player fighting a 2,000 strong army. At CR 1/8, a Guard deals an average of 8 damage on a crit (thus bypassing armor). If 1/20 of your guards manage to crit, that is some 800 damage. And this does not even count the fact that most armies are going to have a large contingent of archers (CR 3) and probably a few wizards and more elite units thrown into the fray. Sure, some of them will die before they get to attack--but, even if you are killing 100+ per round (which is not sustainable--you'll run out of spell slots), eventually enough crits will occur to kill a player, regardless of what resources they might have available at the fight's start. It does not matter how many Walls of Wind or shield spells you cast; eventually you will be out of spell slots and there will still be hundreds upon hundreds of troops left, all happily waiting their 1/20 chance of bypassing whatever AC you have remaining.
In a game involving dice and critical hits bypassing armor class, huge numbers are always going to have the advantage. Without something like Meteor Swarm (and, even then, you're looking at 201 soldiers per circle, five circles, leaving 995 soldiers left to deal with and that is assuming armies in a world where Meteor Swarm exists stand in tight formations ready for a meteor swarm to hit them), the math just does not work out too well for a player, even with the smallest monsters available.
Well, the range on a spear isn’t that great, so only so many of the soldiers will be able to attack each turn, and most of them will have disadvantage. So while the odds are waayyy less than 1/20 (more like 1/400) for most of them most of the time, your point still stands.
Well, the range on a spear isn’t that great, so only so many of the soldiers will be able to attack each turn, and most of them will have disadvantage. So while the odds are waayyy less than 1/20 (more like 1/400) for most of them most of the time, your point still stands.
This is no longer really my discussion, nor do I proscribe to the notion that random guards are anything but 5hp mooks - but to my mind, archers do the killing. Disperse to the most spread out 'formation' - to limit deaths by fireball - outwait any annoying buffs and defensive spells. Then pepper the poor fool with arrows until dead. Just let them spend their mojo, then kill.
In my games, if it ever comes up, PC's will discover there are squads of specialists specifically tailored to make sure one angry wizard doesn't eff up the kingdom. So, like, slingers with Silence missiles, grapplers, counter magic mooks (I suppose they'll have scrolls and a fail chance?), and so on. All just because the King - 5hp mook that he, too, is - was clever enough for foresee this problem, and come up with a solution.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
(unless it was an army of CR 0 or 1/8th schmucks).
You do realize that this is supposed to represent the average soldier. Right?
I think this exhibits fairly well why there would a pretty big problem with a single player fighting a 2,000 strong army. At CR 1/8, a Guard deals an average of 8 damage on a crit (thus bypassing armor). If 1/20 of your guards manage to crit, that is some 800 damage. And this does not even count the fact that most armies are going to have a large contingent of archers (CR 3) and probably a few wizards and more elite units thrown into the fray. Sure, some of them will die before they get to attack--but, even if you are killing 100+ per round (which is not sustainable--you'll run out of spell slots), eventually enough crits will occur to kill a player, regardless of what resources they might have available at the fight's start. It does not matter how many Walls of Wind or shield spells you cast; eventually you will be out of spell slots and there will still be hundreds upon hundreds of troops left, all happily waiting their 1/20 chance of bypassing whatever AC you have remaining.
As I said previously, the key to winning this is to not fight fairly: don't stand out in the open and think you've got to take down the entire force in one go. Use hit and fade tactics. If they follow you, lure them into traps. Don't think of the fight as an encounter, think of it as a campaign.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
(unless it was an army of CR 0 or 1/8th schmucks).
You do realize that this is supposed to represent the average soldier. Right?
I think this exhibits fairly well why there would a pretty big problem with a single player fighting a 2,000 strong army. At CR 1/8, a Guard deals an average of 8 damage on a crit (thus bypassing armor). If 1/20 of your guards manage to crit, that is some 800 damage. And this does not even count the fact that most armies are going to have a large contingent of archers (CR 3) and probably a few wizards and more elite units thrown into the fray. Sure, some of them will die before they get to attack--but, even if you are killing 100+ per round (which is not sustainable--you'll run out of spell slots), eventually enough crits will occur to kill a player, regardless of what resources they might have available at the fight's start. It does not matter how many Walls of Wind or shield spells you cast; eventually you will be out of spell slots and there will still be hundreds upon hundreds of troops left, all happily waiting their 1/20 chance of bypassing whatever AC you have remaining.
As I said previously, the key to winning this is to not fight fairly: don't stand out in the open and think you've got to take down the entire force in one go. Use hit and fade tactics. If they follow you, lure them into traps. Don't think of the fight as an encounter, think of it as a campaign.
Eventually at least one of the 2,000 is going to pass a perception check to find you—either because they roll well or you roll poorly. Eventually you will run out of resources for hiding. Eventually the numbers on a d20 will fail you, and then it is over.
This is not really a tactics thing—it’s a simple matter of statistics. Not one class in the game can go up against 2,000 foes en masse and win an outright victory.
This tracks how one might expect reality to work—there’s plenty of historical stories of mighty heroes who took on entire armies… but those stories almost never end in victory. The hero tends to either be a thorn in the enemy’s side, but not the ultimate force for victory (Sweden’s White Death, a famed sniper who harassed Russian troops) or they die because someone on the enemy finally “crits” and figures out out how to win (Battle of Stanford Bridge, where one Viking held a bridge, slaying 40, before someone thought to just float under and stab from below).
Realistically, the only real hope for victory would be “Cha character who ignores the army and does well in a conversation with the leader of the army.” But I don’t think that’s really what OP is asking.
Even if the army is camped out on a salt pan, there's no way they're going to be able to arrange themselves in a way that lets every single one of them get a perception check against me at the same time. And frankly, if an entire army of 2000 troops is arranging itself on a salt pan to avoid leaving itself vulnerable to one person, that right there is a victory in and of itself. As a 14th or 17th or 20th level character, you have a lot of resources at your disposal, as long as you make sure that you're allocating enough towards escape whenever they realize you're there and have a safe place to rest and recover, you can whittle away at their numbers with near impunity.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Even if the army is camped out on a salt pan, there's no way they're going to be able to arrange themselves in a way that lets every single one of them get a perception check against me at the same time. And frankly, if an entire army of 2000 troops is arranging itself on a salt pan to avoid leaving itself vulnerable to one person, that right there is a victory in and of itself. As a 14th or 17th or 20th level character, you have a lot of resources at your disposal, as long as you make sure that you're allocating enough towards escape whenever they realize you're there and have a safe place to rest and recover, you can whittle away at their numbers with near impunity.
No one said anything about them doing a check at the same time--when they roll is irrelevant to thane outcome. If each is doing their own check over the course of a campaign, the numbers dictate eventually someone will roll well when you roll poorly--that's what happens when you start looking at dice with only 20 options on them and start working on a scale of thousands. And, as anyone who has a basic knowledge of statistics knows, it does not matter if your roll 2000d20 or 1d20 2,000 times.
That is what you keep ignoring--the scale and how it interacts with math. Two thousand is a big number and 1-in-20 are pretty big odds. Eventually those odds are going to catch up to you--that's just math.
Yes, but the effects of a few bad rolls over a long period of time is not cumulative. No time frame was put on this hypothetical situation, which means that you can afford to escape (which depending on your class could include using Planeshift!) and only come back when you're back at full. It's like the old joke about how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
Sometimes, things won't go well for you. So don't stick around when that happens. You want to be playing Assassin's Creed, not Dynasty Warriors.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The other thing is what preparations have you made? If this is an ooopppsie - you walk over the hill and are suddenly faced with a 2000 strong army your probably toast or running quickly to rebuild for the campaign. On the other hand if you become aware in plenty of time to prepare a high level mage with plenty of time to prepare should be able to toast the army without too much trouble. A bag of holding filled with scrolls and spell gems dropped/cast from a flying mounted mage should take out the army while staying out of range of the vast majority of missile weapons and spells. 10-11 scrolls of meteor swarm should saturate the army wiping out even noncoms and officers. 2000 men in battle formation take up an area of about 50,000 square feet, a meteor swarm with slightly overlapping areas (5 ft overlap on areas - 70’x70’ area each) add in elemental gems being activated as well as spell gems with fireballs and other AoE spells would allow the mage to wipe out all but the highest level officers (and possibly even them) without ever using their spellslots for that day.
The other thing is what preparations have you made? If this is an ooopppsie - you walk over the hill and are suddenly faced with a 2000 strong army your probably toast or running quickly to rebuild for the campaign. On the other hand if you become aware in plenty of time to prepare a high level mage with plenty of time to prepare should be able to toast the army without too much trouble. A bag of holding filled with scrolls and spell gems dropped/cast from a flying mounted mage should take out the army while staying out of range of the vast majority of missile weapons and spells. 10-11 scrolls of meteor swarm should saturate the army wiping out even noncoms and officers. 2000 men in battle formation take up an area of about 50,000 square feet, a meteor swarm with slightly overlapping areas (5 ft overlap on areas - 70’x70’ area each) add in elemental gems being activated as well as spell gems with fireballs and other AoE spells would allow the mage to wipe out all but the highest level officers (and possibly even them) without ever using their spellslots for that day.
This assumes that anyone has that sort of ressources - and that no one else has. Or at least, that the guy with a 2000 man army doesn't also have at least one ally with similar powers to call on. Or hire for a day. It also assumes that anyone would be foolish enough to pack 2000 men in battleformations when expecting large scale AoE. It assumes things like line of sight - which can easily be denied. It assumes the mage is the only one flying. It assumes no counterspells. And so on.
Basically, you're basing this on the assumption that no one prepared for this situation.
Which is obviously the opposite position from mine, where I basically assume the king (or whom so ever else has the 2000 troops) planned for pretty much every scenario. Which is also somewhat unrealistic. As a GM, I want my players to know that nations - and maybe a few individuals - are actually stronger than they are. So when we move into thought experiment territory, that's the position I argue from =D
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Really the issue here is defining an "army". 2000 1/8 CR mooks? You've got a shot with a 4th tier full caster, if you can start the engagement from a couple hundred feet off. If they've got a corps of a couple dozen Archer units from VGtM/MotM, you're gonna have a much rougher time of it with that 600 ft range and extra d10 to hit, even factoring in disadvantage.
Really the issue here is defining an "army". 2000 1/8 CR mooks? You've got a shot with a 4th tier full caster, if you can start the engagement from a couple hundred feet off. If they've got a corps of a couple dozen Archer units from VGtM/MotM, you're gonna have a much rougher time of it with that 600 ft range and extra d10 to hit, even factoring in disadvantage.
i feel "who is attacking" comes in as issue #2 behind "how close are they" and just ahead of "how motivated are the grunts"
with the assumption that this is a (2000*1/8=)250 CR army and you've access to level 7 spells (player level 14), the real issue is preparation. any caster with access to Glyph of Warding, a few naps, and a hill to die on is going to have a huge advantage. Hallucinatory Terrain isn't concentration and would certainly mess with positioning to funnel them through your up-cast glyphs to trigger cloudkill, conjure walls of fire, summon fiends/elementals, etc to sew chaos in the ranks. if morale wasn't already dribbling away down every leg, you'd want to gift officers with something like a phantasmal killer and plop Whirlwind on the general. most armies don't fight to the last man and you might find their motivation evaporates as early as 10% losses if you make you really sell the showmanship with illusion and charm. and this isn't even assuming you're buttoned up in a wizard's fortified tower or a druid's grove, in which case they're certainly in for additional guards and wards as well as mundane hirelings with rocks. and all this assumes you don't just leave a cardboard cutout at the top of the hill to manage things while teleporting back to their fort to plant a few Symbol spells on the drawbridge, stables, privy, etc to really show them who's boss.
honorable mention to an army chasing a mounted ranger with a magic quiver through their chosen terrain or a forward-thinking rogue who knows where the general's family lives. oh, and depending on your dm's interpretation of "each creature that can hear you...", entire armies (with soldiers under 30hp each) could crumble at a single divine word.
heck, even the fighter/barbarian/paladin of the 14th level probably has a contingency item to escape before death or simply to let them pop up amongst the decision makers in the back for an expedited solution.
bards and warlocks should probably defeat the army by getting on a boat and being far away.
Meteor Swarm could only hit a fraction of the hypothetical force and can only be cast once a day. Despite the sound of it, it’s not actually much of an answer to an army on its own.
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Better question. What kind of army? What size? What kind of technology does this army have? How strong is this army's morale? There's a lot of factors to look into. If its well-equipped, trained and discipline, likely only the intelligent caster classes that use not just their magic, but their brains to win the fight... BUT, if the army is questionably vulnerable, then several classes could. If the army is scrubby, I'd put my vote to Barbarian.
Enjoy your slop. I'll be enjoying good products elsewhere.
Storm of the Century is actually more than strong enough for this situation. Most creatures in an army are going to be low enough level that taking 3d6 damage with no save (the 2nd and 4rth round effects) are likely to be lethal. The full duration is going to easily deal with almost everything inside the radius. And since its range is "sight," it lets you lay down the destruction from well beyond their ability to retaliate before you make your escape.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I just feel that, once fighter classes are surrounded by 9 enemies, they're not going to last.
A thousand archers will do exactly zero damage to a wizard behind a wall of force, to pick one of the many option casters have to shut down ranged attacks
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
You do realize that this is supposed to represent the average soldier. Right?
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I think this exhibits fairly well why there would a pretty big problem with a single player fighting a 2,000 strong army. At CR 1/8, a Guard deals an average of 8 damage on a crit (thus bypassing armor). If 1/20 of your guards manage to crit, that is some 800 damage. And this does not even count the fact that most armies are going to have a large contingent of archers (CR 3) and probably a few wizards and more elite units thrown into the fray. Sure, some of them will die before they get to attack--but, even if you are killing 100+ per round (which is not sustainable--you'll run out of spell slots), eventually enough crits will occur to kill a player, regardless of what resources they might have available at the fight's start. It does not matter how many Walls of Wind or shield spells you cast; eventually you will be out of spell slots and there will still be hundreds upon hundreds of troops left, all happily waiting their 1/20 chance of bypassing whatever AC you have remaining.
In a game involving dice and critical hits bypassing armor class, huge numbers are always going to have the advantage. Without something like Meteor Swarm (and, even then, you're looking at 201 soldiers per circle, five circles, leaving 995 soldiers left to deal with and that is assuming armies in a world where Meteor Swarm exists stand in tight formations ready for a meteor swarm to hit them), the math just does not work out too well for a player, even with the smallest monsters available.
Well, the range on a spear isn’t that great, so only so many of the soldiers will be able to attack each turn, and most of them will have disadvantage. So while the odds are waayyy less than 1/20 (more like 1/400) for most of them most of the time, your point still stands.
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This is no longer really my discussion, nor do I proscribe to the notion that random guards are anything but 5hp mooks - but to my mind, archers do the killing. Disperse to the most spread out 'formation' - to limit deaths by fireball - outwait any annoying buffs and defensive spells. Then pepper the poor fool with arrows until dead. Just let them spend their mojo, then kill.
In my games, if it ever comes up, PC's will discover there are squads of specialists specifically tailored to make sure one angry wizard doesn't eff up the kingdom. So, like, slingers with Silence missiles, grapplers, counter magic mooks (I suppose they'll have scrolls and a fail chance?), and so on. All just because the King - 5hp mook that he, too, is - was clever enough for foresee this problem, and come up with a solution.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Gloomstalker or Assassin to pick them of one by one in the night
Druid, huge AoE damage spells with insane reach.
Zealot Barbarien.
Any Caster with Glyph of Warding and enough time and money to set up.
As I said previously, the key to winning this is to not fight fairly: don't stand out in the open and think you've got to take down the entire force in one go. Use hit and fade tactics. If they follow you, lure them into traps. Don't think of the fight as an encounter, think of it as a campaign.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Eventually at least one of the 2,000 is going to pass a perception check to find you—either because they roll well or you roll poorly. Eventually you will run out of resources for hiding. Eventually the numbers on a d20 will fail you, and then it is over.
This is not really a tactics thing—it’s a simple matter of statistics. Not one class in the game can go up against 2,000 foes en masse and win an outright victory.
This tracks how one might expect reality to work—there’s plenty of historical stories of mighty heroes who took on entire armies… but those stories almost never end in victory. The hero tends to either be a thorn in the enemy’s side, but not the ultimate force for victory (Sweden’s White Death, a famed sniper who harassed Russian troops) or they die because someone on the enemy finally “crits” and figures out out how to win (Battle of Stanford Bridge, where one Viking held a bridge, slaying 40, before someone thought to just float under and stab from below).
Realistically, the only real hope for victory would be “Cha character who ignores the army and does well in a conversation with the leader of the army.” But I don’t think that’s really what OP is asking.
Even if the army is camped out on a salt pan, there's no way they're going to be able to arrange themselves in a way that lets every single one of them get a perception check against me at the same time. And frankly, if an entire army of 2000 troops is arranging itself on a salt pan to avoid leaving itself vulnerable to one person, that right there is a victory in and of itself. As a 14th or 17th or 20th level character, you have a lot of resources at your disposal, as long as you make sure that you're allocating enough towards escape whenever they realize you're there and have a safe place to rest and recover, you can whittle away at their numbers with near impunity.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
No one said anything about them doing a check at the same time--when they roll is irrelevant to thane outcome. If each is doing their own check over the course of a campaign, the numbers dictate eventually someone will roll well when you roll poorly--that's what happens when you start looking at dice with only 20 options on them and start working on a scale of thousands. And, as anyone who has a basic knowledge of statistics knows, it does not matter if your roll 2000d20 or 1d20 2,000 times.
That is what you keep ignoring--the scale and how it interacts with math. Two thousand is a big number and 1-in-20 are pretty big odds. Eventually those odds are going to catch up to you--that's just math.
Yes, but the effects of a few bad rolls over a long period of time is not cumulative. No time frame was put on this hypothetical situation, which means that you can afford to escape (which depending on your class could include using Planeshift!) and only come back when you're back at full. It's like the old joke about how you eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
Sometimes, things won't go well for you. So don't stick around when that happens. You want to be playing Assassin's Creed, not Dynasty Warriors.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The other thing is what preparations have you made? If this is an ooopppsie - you walk over the hill and are suddenly faced with a 2000 strong army your probably toast or running quickly to rebuild for the campaign. On the other hand if you become aware in plenty of time to prepare a high level mage with plenty of time to prepare should be able to toast the army without too much trouble. A bag of holding filled with scrolls and spell gems dropped/cast from a flying mounted mage should take out the army while staying out of range of the vast majority of missile weapons and spells. 10-11 scrolls of meteor swarm should saturate the army wiping out even noncoms and officers. 2000 men in battle formation take up an area of about 50,000 square feet, a meteor swarm with slightly overlapping areas (5 ft overlap on areas - 70’x70’ area each) add in elemental gems being activated as well as spell gems with fireballs and other AoE spells would allow the mage to wipe out all but the highest level officers (and possibly even them) without ever using their spellslots for that day.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
This assumes that anyone has that sort of ressources - and that no one else has. Or at least, that the guy with a 2000 man army doesn't also have at least one ally with similar powers to call on. Or hire for a day. It also assumes that anyone would be foolish enough to pack 2000 men in battleformations when expecting large scale AoE. It assumes things like line of sight - which can easily be denied. It assumes the mage is the only one flying. It assumes no counterspells. And so on.
Basically, you're basing this on the assumption that no one prepared for this situation.
Which is obviously the opposite position from mine, where I basically assume the king (or whom so ever else has the 2000 troops) planned for pretty much every scenario. Which is also somewhat unrealistic. As a GM, I want my players to know that nations - and maybe a few individuals - are actually stronger than they are. So when we move into thought experiment territory, that's the position I argue from =D
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Really the issue here is defining an "army". 2000 1/8 CR mooks? You've got a shot with a 4th tier full caster, if you can start the engagement from a couple hundred feet off. If they've got a corps of a couple dozen Archer units from VGtM/MotM, you're gonna have a much rougher time of it with that 600 ft range and extra d10 to hit, even factoring in disadvantage.
i feel "who is attacking" comes in as issue #2 behind "how close are they" and just ahead of "how motivated are the grunts"
with the assumption that this is a (2000*1/8=)250 CR army and you've access to level 7 spells (player level 14), the real issue is preparation. any caster with access to Glyph of Warding, a few naps, and a hill to die on is going to have a huge advantage. Hallucinatory Terrain isn't concentration and would certainly mess with positioning to funnel them through your up-cast glyphs to trigger cloudkill, conjure walls of fire, summon fiends/elementals, etc to sew chaos in the ranks. if morale wasn't already dribbling away down every leg, you'd want to gift officers with something like a phantasmal killer and plop Whirlwind on the general. most armies don't fight to the last man and you might find their motivation evaporates as early as 10% losses if you make you really sell the showmanship with illusion and charm. and this isn't even assuming you're buttoned up in a wizard's fortified tower or a druid's grove, in which case they're certainly in for additional guards and wards as well as mundane hirelings with rocks. and all this assumes you don't just leave a cardboard cutout at the top of the hill to manage things while teleporting back to their fort to plant a few Symbol spells on the drawbridge, stables, privy, etc to really show them who's boss.
honorable mention to an army chasing a mounted ranger with a magic quiver through their chosen terrain or a forward-thinking rogue who knows where the general's family lives. oh, and depending on your dm's interpretation of "each creature that can hear you...", entire armies (with soldiers under 30hp each) could crumble at a single divine word.
heck, even the fighter/barbarian/paladin of the 14th level probably has a contingency item to escape before death or simply to let them pop up amongst the decision makers in the back for an expedited solution.
bards and warlocks should probably defeat the army by getting on a boat and being far away.
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Wizard because you can just use meteor swarm to destroy everybody.
Meteor Swarm could only hit a fraction of the hypothetical force and can only be cast once a day. Despite the sound of it, it’s not actually much of an answer to an army on its own.