An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature's location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
Your position might be revealed when you attack, but you are no longer at that position by the time the other side acts. Unless you are saying it's RAW for creatures 300 feet away to hear you move on a noisy battlefield or see your tracks, your location will not be known when you finish moving
You might no longer be in that position when it is the other side turn but an army alert for a dangerous spell caster will be ready to instantly attack as soon as they know your location before you have had a chance to move (held action).
An army can't just stay alert with held actions for hours at a time, waiting for an attack that may or may not be coming.
If the PC casts a destructive spell then the army would hold there next actio, depending on what the wizard does he may or may not reveal his location.
After casting a destructive spell, the PC's next action is to either hide or leave. They have nothing to gain from sticking around to fight, I've made this abundantly clear. They don't have to attack again that day. They don't even have to do so that week. They can get away with waiting, launching shots when the army is not paying attention, and escaping to attack again at some indeterminate time in the future. Those kind of tactics can be devastating, not only is the army losing troops, the lack of ability to fight back and constant anxiety of never knowing when another attack will come is horrible for morale.
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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 couple sentries with see invisibility on them (either through potions or items so they can keep it up) covers off that, though
I always giggle at stuff like this. You have items that grant unlimited see invisibility, and you're going to hand them to rando sentries rather than, say, the king's private bodyguards?
For that matter, why the heck wouldn't those sentries just desert with the items, sell them a few towns over and make more money in one shot than they'll ever see in their lifetimes?
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If the army is that under-equipped and under paid, they would have staged a coup already. The argument seems to be that any hick wizard with invis can pick them off hit and run, completely safely. Wouldn't such a massive increase in vulnerability make it hard to maintain troops at all?
That's the funny part to me. You think magic is so common that an average soldier without magic items is "under-equipped", and a 14th-level spellcaster is just a "hick wizard"
That's beyond absurd
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Why would you need 100 sentries with it? Vision in 5e is 360 degree and either there is limited cover with good visibility, in which case you do not need so many sentries, or there is relatively heavy cover with much shorter spotting ranges, in which case you can use animals as well as conventional traps and alarms. In that second case, you can also conserve potions for when animals or other alarms sound a warning.
If you think that two sentries are sufficient, you have badly underestimated just how much space a camp for an army 2000 strong takes up. Two people are absolutely not going to cut it when it comes to seeing every possible approach to the camp and you can have all the trained animals and traps you want because they're not going to do you any good against someone who has no reason to ever actually try to enter the camp. Unless you're proposing that the camp be surrounded by a ring of trained dogs 500 feet away, which might honestly be even sillier than the number of potions of See Invisibility you'd need.
And all of that only applies if the army stays in camp. If the army actually has to move anywhere, it's definitely going to take a hell of a lot more than two sentries to keep watch for ambushes and it's not going to be able to use the dogs or alarms/traps at all.
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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.
Why would you need 100 sentries with it? Vision in 5e is 360 degree and either there is limited cover with good visibility, in which case you do not need so many sentries, or there is relatively heavy cover with much shorter spotting ranges, in which case you can use animals as well as conventional traps and alarms. In that second case, you can also conserve potions for when animals or other alarms sound a warning.
If you think that two sentries are sufficient, you have badly underestimated just how much space a camp for an army 2000 strong takes up. Two people are absolutely not going to cut it when it comes to seeing every possible approach to the camp and you can have all the trained animals and traps you want because they're not going to do you any good against someone who has no reason to ever actually try to enter the camp. Unless you're proposing that the camp be surrounded by a ring of trained dogs 500 feet away, which might honestly be even sillier than the number of potions of See Invisibility you'd need.
And all of that only applies if the army stays in camp. If the army actually has to move anywhere, it's definitely going to take a hell of a lot more than two sentries to keep watch for ambushes and it's not going to be able to use the dogs or alarms/traps at all.
An army of 2,000 soldiers would take up a gimongous footprint. People only think about the soldiers themselves, but then there’s the supply train and all the logistics personnel, plus all the camp followers too. In medieval times there would have been almost as many camp followers as there were soldiers and logistics personnel. That’s not even including all the horses and oxen and wagons that would be needed to haul all the supplies needed to sustain an army of 2,000 soldiers. Figure 2k soldiers, another couple dozen officers, at least another 200 logistics personnel, another 1,500 camp followers, plus figure around another 500 animals…. That’s a lot, and it’s entirely realistic.
Why would you need 100 sentries with it? Vision in 5e is 360 degree and either there is limited cover with good visibility, in which case you do not need so many sentries, or there is relatively heavy cover with much shorter spotting ranges, in which case you can use animals as well as conventional traps and alarms. In that second case, you can also conserve potions for when animals or other alarms sound a warning.
If you think that two sentries are sufficient, you have badly underestimated just how much space a camp for an army 2000 strong takes up. Two people are absolutely not going to cut it when it comes to seeing every possible approach to the camp and you can have all the trained animals and traps you want because they're not going to do you any good against someone who has no reason to ever actually try to enter the camp. Unless you're proposing that the camp be surrounded by a ring of trained dogs 500 feet away, which might honestly be even sillier than the number of potions of See Invisibility you'd need.
And all of that only applies if the army stays in camp. If the army actually has to move anywhere, it's definitely going to take a hell of a lot more than two sentries to keep watch for ambushes and it's not going to be able to use the dogs or alarms/traps at all.
An army of 2,000 soldiers would take up a gimongous footprint. People only think about the soldiers themselves, but then there’s the supply train and all the logistics personnel, plus all the camp followers too. In medieval times there would have been almost as many camp followers as there were soldiers and logistics personnel. That’s not even including all the horses and oxen and wagons that would be needed to haul all the supplies needed to sustain an army of 2,000 soldiers. Figure 2k soldiers, another couple dozen officers, at least another 200 logistics personnel, another 1,500 camp followers, plus figure around another 500 animals…. That’s a lot, and it’s entirely realistic.
Plus you've got all the sleeping tents, the mess tents, the smithies, the supply storage, the healers' tents for the wounded (because they are not going to have enough divine casters to keep up with healing battlefield injuries), the latrines... You need a lot of latrines.
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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 best thing about sending in a Bard is that most buttoned-up military types will not take a flute flinger/banjo swinger seriously. (How many players on this thread have taken the Bard option seriously.) I mean, a Bard's job is to entertain, right? So a Bard can walk into the army camp, unarmored and unarmed, using only Expertise, a high CHA, and maybe Enhance Ability: Eagle's Splendor. Convince the generallissimo to go down the path of Least Resistance (there are even signs!) and right into a Purple Worm nest. If any organized units of soldiers make it out alive, a well-placed Mass Suggestion or Animate Objects will finish the job.
The best thing about sending in a Bard is that most buttoned-up military types will not take a flute flinger/banjo swinger seriously. (How many players on this thread have taken the Bard option seriously.) I mean, a Bard's job is to entertain, right? So a Bard can walk into the army camp, unarmored and unarmed, using only Expertise, a high CHA, and maybe Enhance Ability: Eagle's Splendor. Convince the generallissimo to go down the path of Least Resistance (there are even signs!) and right into a Purple Worm nest. If any organized units of soldiers make it out alive, a well-placed Mass Suggestion or Animate Objects will finish the job.
I love how everyone else is screaming mass murder and your just vibing with a guitar, a convincing song, and your own army of murderous tin cans.
Good luck keeping your troops from deserting if your only order to them is to stand there and wait to die while a spellcaster picks them off
Are you aware of a thing in the real world called artillery - and what you do about it?
Please, can we please keep in mind that I'm arguing that even in the absolute worst, you'd-have-to-be-utterly-ludicruously-stupid-to-fight-this-way, the army still wins. If that could be possible, that would be just astonishingly cool. Because I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt to outwait Invisibility - but it would certainly hurt the caster more. In terms of expendable ressources, if he keeps casting fireballs for the duration, he's even more dead when invisibility runs out than if he doesn't.
And it's 100%, totally doable for an infantry army to resist artillery and keep morale up while doing it.
And then, the caster dies. Like I've said, propably in a single round.
Why one on one? Hit supply. Hit moral. Do these things from hiding, just putting up posters. Hide in plain sight, perhaps even joining the army.
Surrendering would likely just result in your swift demise. Macpherson's Lament, eloquent as it was, did not save Macpherson
See, that was a joke? Even so, it's a bard. The point is that if you give the bard a few hours, he'll turn the army against it's masters.
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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.
Good luck keeping your troops from deserting if your only order to them is to stand there and wait to die while a spellcaster picks them off
Are you aware of a thing in the real world called artillery - and what you do about it?
Absolutely nothing because artillery was a nonfactor in medieval warfare. Pre-cannon siege weapons like trebuchets, onagers, and ballistas were too big, too cumbersome, and too inaccurate to aim at anything smaller than a large formation of troops or a castle. You couldn't aim them at single targets. Same goes for cannons, field artillery didn't become a factor in warfare until the 14th-15th centuries, and it was still inaccurate enough that you could only aim it at massed formations. Even with modern field artillery, which does have the accuracy needed for that kind of fire, the act of spotting a target, aiming, firing, and having the projectile impact takes more than a single combat round's worth of time.
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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.
Sorcerer. Greater Invisibility and Take distant spell and launch AOE’s from as far away as you can. And move away as far as you can each round.
And/or Subtle Spell if you want to avoid giving away your position for even a brief moment
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Please, can we please keep in mind that I'm arguing that even in the absolute worst, you'd-have-to-be-utterly-ludicruously-stupid-to-fight-this-way, the army still wins.
You keep saying this, and then keep ignoring all the flaws people point out in your suggestions on how the army would win
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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)
Please, can we please keep in mind that I'm arguing that even in the absolute worst, you'd-have-to-be-utterly-ludicruously-stupid-to-fight-this-way, the army still wins.
You keep saying this, and then keep ignoring all the flaws people point out in your suggestions on how the army would win
What did I ignore? Just ... you're the guy who thinks a minute of invisibility is going to shift things, right? That's 10 fireballs, propably resulting in as much as ...... an astonishing number of 10 deaths. Then you die to 1990 longbow shots. Congratulations, you've proven my point. You can spice that up with one Meteor Swarm, and rank up - and let's be generous here - another 6 deaths. So, more like 1984.
In the absolute worst case scenario, where I let my army of mooks march into the open and assault your wizard directly, you lose on round 11, to sudden and instant death, having inflicted neglibile losses. You cannot win. There is no way.
But you can teleport out on round 10. That you can do.
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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.
In the real world, where there is no magic. Again, why the assumption that the army has no magic support of its own?
I think that's on me. My claim is that 2000 classless mooks can beat any single character of basically any level - maybe up to 20. Multiple castings of 9th level spells might become problematic. I'm trying to show that 2000 mooks - who use intelligent tactics - will always beat any caster, simply because of numbers.
It's always possible to construct a scenario with a different outcome. My baseline is that any army is intelligent enough to spread out, making AoE ineffective. But it's difficult for 2000 men to march from A to B in such a spread-out fashion, meaning the wizard might be able to hit and run, reducing their numbers before they arrived at the agreed upon battlefield.
But that's inane, not because it's untrue, but because anyone can construct any set of circumstances to suit them. Just like the wizard could hit and run, so could the mooks. I made the example (I think, my memory is rather unreliable) of the wizard coming to town to buy a fancy hat - and walking out of the hat store into a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid scenario.
And that can just go around and around forever, each side spouting Self-invented scenarios that would ensure victory.
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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.
The best spells for doing this are, unfortunately for the OP, 8th and 9th level spells, namely control weather, tsunami, and storm of vengeance, all of which cover quite large areas and can be cast from well outside of counterattack range. If you're using lower level spells, there isn't much which gives you sufficient range to be unattackable, so we're mostly stuck with battlefield shaping (spells such as hallucinatory terrain, mirage arcane, move earth, plant growth, transmute rock, and wall of stone will not actually stop an army, but they'll slow it down by a lot) and trap spells (again, spells like spike growth, glyph of warding, and symbol won't actually stop an army, but it doesn't take walking into too many of them to slow the army down by a lot because they start spending time searching for them). If you're willing to take the risk of being potentially attackable, there's wind wall to keep arrows away, then rain down destructive spells and teleport or tree stride out.
Most of these are on the druid list, and the druid also has good abilities for approaching undetected (wild shape, pass without trace), so I'm inclined to go with a druid, though any full caster has some options.
If you're more interested in subtle options rather than combat, that's more bard and wizard territory; magic jar is high risk but potentially very effective.
If you want a more martial option, I would go with a gloom stalker ranger 5/rogue 9 with sharpshooter -- cast pass without trace, ambush, bonus action hide, rinse, repeat (you likely have a stealth bonus of +25...). Each ambush probably only kills one target, but their ability to do anything about you is very limited and sniper hunting is going to slow them down a lot.
The math was the damage rate versus recovery rate on a high AC melee who has healing options. Particularly the survivor ability. The "that's not strictly RAW, but..." is ignoring any options the melee character has while at this point the goal post has moved to guards sacrificing themselves in a mass of flesh. It's very disputable that will eventually happen. What you seem to be describing at this point is soldiers sacrificing themselves so the melee doesn't even need to kill them while the melee starts making climb checks to stay on top of the pile instead.
PC's can move without magic. Just saying. ;-)
Who's sacrificing themselves? Suffocating someone does not automatically entail also suffocating yourself.
And Pc's surrounded on all sides can move - but not far.
Can we ... cut this? I'm being nice, and playing into the worst case scenario. I would never, ever, in a bajillion years, ever - ever - argue that my 2000 mook army would be wise to face our PC caster on a field of their chosing. What I'm saying is that even if they were so monumentally idiotic, they'd still win.
A fighter surrounded on all sides can move 15' by dropping weak opponent 1, moving 5' into that space, dropping weak opponent 2, moving 5' into that space, dropping weak opponent 3, and then moving into that space. They only move 10' if they fail to drop one of those weak opponents. A high level melee is capable of forcing their way through a mob. I'm using game mechanics, rules, and statistical hit ratios and damage between both sides. In a battle of attrition, a melee with high AC and enough healing can withstand the attacks of the mob. The higher the AC the less healing is needed.
They only reason to believe the mob would suffocate the melee is to support the narrative the DM chooses to force based on personal perception of those melees.
You can cut this if you want, lol. No one is making you respond. ;-)
If it really is just an army of 2,000 level 0 'mooks,' they do lose due to hit and run tactics. But the, I would argue that any such army would not stand against any other local nation's army either.
Please don't take it out of context.
I'm saying an army of 2000 classless mooks can defeat a single PC of any class, and mostly any level, any day of the week. Not that 2000 mooks can defeat, for instance, 2000 level 1 characters.
And in personal terms - as I've stated somewhere much earlier - my homebrew worlds do not feature classed NPC's. Mostly, everyone everywhere forever will be a classless mook. Guards, knights, nobles, kings, the kings advisor - all of them, classless mooks. It's a simple way of keeping PC power levels high, while on the same time keeping it controlled. A level 1 fighter can propably fight 3-5 mooks and win. Meanwhile, even at level 18, no PC's can actually just take over the world - because 2000 mooks will kill even a full caster, given a bit of thought and caution. IMO.
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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.
The best spells for doing this are, unfortunately for the OP, 8th and 9th level spells, namely control weather, tsunami, and storm of vengeance, all of which cover quite large areas and can be cast from well outside of counterattack range. If you're using lower level spells, there isn't much which gives you sufficient range to be unattackable, so we're mostly stuck with battlefield shaping (spells such as hallucinatory terrain, [Tooltip Not Found], move earth, plant growth, transmute rock, and wall of stone will not actually stop an army, but they'll slow it down by a lot) and trap spells (again, spells like spike growth, glyph of warding, and symbol won't actually stop an army, but it doesn't take walking into too many of them to slow the army down by a lot because they start spending time searching for them). If you're willing to take the risk of being potentially attackable, there's wind wall to keep arrows away, then rain down destructive spells and teleport or tree stride out.
The spell which might end up being the big winner here is whirlwind, which doesn't have a huge AoE but can be moved and controlled by the caster
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After casting a destructive spell, the PC's next action is to either hide or leave. They have nothing to gain from sticking around to fight, I've made this abundantly clear. They don't have to attack again that day. They don't even have to do so that week. They can get away with waiting, launching shots when the army is not paying attention, and escaping to attack again at some indeterminate time in the future. Those kind of tactics can be devastating, not only is the army losing troops, the lack of ability to fight back and constant anxiety of never knowing when another attack will come is horrible for morale.
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 always giggle at stuff like this. You have items that grant unlimited see invisibility, and you're going to hand them to rando sentries rather than, say, the king's private bodyguards?
For that matter, why the heck wouldn't those sentries just desert with the items, sell them a few towns over and make more money in one shot than they'll ever see in their lifetimes?
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)
That's the funny part to me. You think magic is so common that an average soldier without magic items is "under-equipped", and a 14th-level spellcaster is just a "hick wizard"
That's beyond absurd
Active characters:
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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)
If you think that two sentries are sufficient, you have badly underestimated just how much space a camp for an army 2000 strong takes up. Two people are absolutely not going to cut it when it comes to seeing every possible approach to the camp and you can have all the trained animals and traps you want because they're not going to do you any good against someone who has no reason to ever actually try to enter the camp. Unless you're proposing that the camp be surrounded by a ring of trained dogs 500 feet away, which might honestly be even sillier than the number of potions of See Invisibility you'd need.
And all of that only applies if the army stays in camp. If the army actually has to move anywhere, it's definitely going to take a hell of a lot more than two sentries to keep watch for ambushes and it's not going to be able to use the dogs or alarms/traps at all.
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.
An army of 2,000 soldiers would take up a gimongous footprint. People only think about the soldiers themselves, but then there’s the supply train and all the logistics personnel, plus all the camp followers too. In medieval times there would have been almost as many camp followers as there were soldiers and logistics personnel. That’s not even including all the horses and oxen and wagons that would be needed to haul all the supplies needed to sustain an army of 2,000 soldiers. Figure 2k soldiers, another couple dozen officers, at least another 200 logistics personnel, another 1,500 camp followers, plus figure around another 500 animals…. That’s a lot, and it’s entirely realistic.
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Plus you've got all the sleeping tents, the mess tents, the smithies, the supply storage, the healers' tents for the wounded (because they are not going to have enough divine casters to keep up with healing battlefield injuries), the latrines... You need a lot of latrines.
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 best thing about sending in a Bard is that most buttoned-up military types will not take a flute flinger/banjo swinger seriously. (How many players on this thread have taken the Bard option seriously.) I mean, a Bard's job is to entertain, right? So a Bard can walk into the army camp, unarmored and unarmed, using only Expertise, a high CHA, and maybe Enhance Ability: Eagle's Splendor. Convince the generallissimo to go down the path of Least Resistance (there are even signs!) and right into a Purple Worm nest. If any organized units of soldiers make it out alive, a well-placed Mass Suggestion or Animate Objects will finish the job.
thank you all for your opinions no the question and i have to say i like how open mind most people are to answer with way to they think it could go
He who fight and runaway live to fight another day
I love how everyone else is screaming mass murder and your just vibing with a guitar, a convincing song, and your own army of murderous tin cans.
Are you aware of a thing in the real world called artillery - and what you do about it?
Please, can we please keep in mind that I'm arguing that even in the absolute worst, you'd-have-to-be-utterly-ludicruously-stupid-to-fight-this-way, the army still wins. If that could be possible, that would be just astonishingly cool. Because I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt to outwait Invisibility - but it would certainly hurt the caster more. In terms of expendable ressources, if he keeps casting fireballs for the duration, he's even more dead when invisibility runs out than if he doesn't.
And it's 100%, totally doable for an infantry army to resist artillery and keep morale up while doing it.
And then, the caster dies. Like I've said, propably in a single round.
See, that was a joke? Even so, it's a bard. The point is that if you give the bard a few hours, he'll turn the army against it's masters.
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.
Absolutely nothing because artillery was a nonfactor in medieval warfare. Pre-cannon siege weapons like trebuchets, onagers, and ballistas were too big, too cumbersome, and too inaccurate to aim at anything smaller than a large formation of troops or a castle. You couldn't aim them at single targets. Same goes for cannons, field artillery didn't become a factor in warfare until the 14th-15th centuries, and it was still inaccurate enough that you could only aim it at massed formations. Even with modern field artillery, which does have the accuracy needed for that kind of fire, the act of spotting a target, aiming, firing, and having the projectile impact takes more than a single combat round's worth of time.
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.
Sorcerer. Greater Invisibility and Take distant spell and launch AOE’s from as far away as you can. And move away as far as you can each round.
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And/or Subtle Spell if you want to avoid giving away your position for even a brief moment
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 keep saying this, and then keep ignoring all the flaws people point out in your suggestions on how the army would win
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)
What did I ignore? Just ... you're the guy who thinks a minute of invisibility is going to shift things, right? That's 10 fireballs, propably resulting in as much as ...... an astonishing number of 10 deaths. Then you die to 1990 longbow shots. Congratulations, you've proven my point. You can spice that up with one Meteor Swarm, and rank up - and let's be generous here - another 6 deaths. So, more like 1984.
In the absolute worst case scenario, where I let my army of mooks march into the open and assault your wizard directly, you lose on round 11, to sudden and instant death, having inflicted neglibile losses. You cannot win. There is no way.
But you can teleport out on round 10. That you can do.
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.
I think that's on me. My claim is that 2000 classless mooks can beat any single character of basically any level - maybe up to 20. Multiple castings of 9th level spells might become problematic. I'm trying to show that 2000 mooks - who use intelligent tactics - will always beat any caster, simply because of numbers.
It's always possible to construct a scenario with a different outcome. My baseline is that any army is intelligent enough to spread out, making AoE ineffective. But it's difficult for 2000 men to march from A to B in such a spread-out fashion, meaning the wizard might be able to hit and run, reducing their numbers before they arrived at the agreed upon battlefield.
But that's inane, not because it's untrue, but because anyone can construct any set of circumstances to suit them. Just like the wizard could hit and run, so could the mooks. I made the example (I think, my memory is rather unreliable) of the wizard coming to town to buy a fancy hat - and walking out of the hat store into a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid scenario.
And that can just go around and around forever, each side spouting Self-invented scenarios that would ensure victory.
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.
The best spells for doing this are, unfortunately for the OP, 8th and 9th level spells, namely control weather, tsunami, and storm of vengeance, all of which cover quite large areas and can be cast from well outside of counterattack range. If you're using lower level spells, there isn't much which gives you sufficient range to be unattackable, so we're mostly stuck with battlefield shaping (spells such as hallucinatory terrain, mirage arcane, move earth, plant growth, transmute rock, and wall of stone will not actually stop an army, but they'll slow it down by a lot) and trap spells (again, spells like spike growth, glyph of warding, and symbol won't actually stop an army, but it doesn't take walking into too many of them to slow the army down by a lot because they start spending time searching for them). If you're willing to take the risk of being potentially attackable, there's wind wall to keep arrows away, then rain down destructive spells and teleport or tree stride out.
Most of these are on the druid list, and the druid also has good abilities for approaching undetected (wild shape, pass without trace), so I'm inclined to go with a druid, though any full caster has some options.
If you're more interested in subtle options rather than combat, that's more bard and wizard territory; magic jar is high risk but potentially very effective.
If you want a more martial option, I would go with a gloom stalker ranger 5/rogue 9 with sharpshooter -- cast pass without trace, ambush, bonus action hide, rinse, repeat (you likely have a stealth bonus of +25...). Each ambush probably only kills one target, but their ability to do anything about you is very limited and sniper hunting is going to slow them down a lot.
A fighter surrounded on all sides can move 15' by dropping weak opponent 1, moving 5' into that space, dropping weak opponent 2, moving 5' into that space, dropping weak opponent 3, and then moving into that space. They only move 10' if they fail to drop one of those weak opponents. A high level melee is capable of forcing their way through a mob. I'm using game mechanics, rules, and statistical hit ratios and damage between both sides. In a battle of attrition, a melee with high AC and enough healing can withstand the attacks of the mob. The higher the AC the less healing is needed.
They only reason to believe the mob would suffocate the melee is to support the narrative the DM chooses to force based on personal perception of those melees.
You can cut this if you want, lol. No one is making you respond. ;-)
Please don't take it out of context.
I'm saying an army of 2000 classless mooks can defeat a single PC of any class, and mostly any level, any day of the week. Not that 2000 mooks can defeat, for instance, 2000 level 1 characters.
And in personal terms - as I've stated somewhere much earlier - my homebrew worlds do not feature classed NPC's. Mostly, everyone everywhere forever will be a classless mook. Guards, knights, nobles, kings, the kings advisor - all of them, classless mooks. It's a simple way of keeping PC power levels high, while on the same time keeping it controlled. A level 1 fighter can propably fight 3-5 mooks and win. Meanwhile, even at level 18, no PC's can actually just take over the world - because 2000 mooks will kill even a full caster, given a bit of thought and caution. IMO.
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.
The spell which might end up being the big winner here is whirlwind, which doesn't have a huge AoE but can be moved and controlled by the caster
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)