Basically, full casters at max level have the theoretical capacity, but they need favorable circumstances and trying to determine just how likely those circumstances are is not something we can effectively model in an internet forum.
I would argue that a full caster, in several cases, has the capacity to easily withdraw and return under favorable circumstances moreso than the army.
Repeat assaults over time favor a caster under that premise.
That's covered under "kiting" in the paragraph above. But that requires you to get your first shot in from too far out for a response; technically both Wizards and Druids have spells for that, but that requires encounter crafting rather than just player crafting, and thus again falls outside of anything we can actually model as consistent or typical components of the thought exercise. You punch out several hundred enemies but have several hundred more winging an arrow volley back at you before you can run away, then as noted above you get dead. And there's enough fractional CR enemies alone that get longbows on their base block that the bandit example is the low end of the potential damage range, not the median or mean.
Warlocks' only effective "I pop in/out instantly at vast range" spell is Gate (Plane Shift is only reliable for a consistent landing zone if you have a permanent teleport circle at both ends, which is not something that can be a given), which also eats up their highest spell slot. And they don't get nearly strong enough AoE.
Meteor Swarm would literally destroy a condensed army.
It's not really a large enough area; it's probably only going to hit in the hundreds. That's why you use tsunami or storm of vengeance; they don't do as high damage but they cover an absurd area. At level 14, there's decent options for slowing them down by turning terrain nearly impassible with spells like plant growth, transmute rock, move earth, and mirage arcane, but actually killing the army is probably going to require things like wind wall to avoid arrows, lobbing a few damaging spells, and using some sort of escape spell, and might well require weeks of killing a hundred people a day.
Circle of death would wreck a lot, 60 foot radius is pretty huge, over double the size of meteor swarm. 11,000+sq feet(I do not square the circle) vs tsunamis 15,000. For tsunami though even though its slower than a full retreat in practicality a army wont be able to maneuver well enough to turn around and run away en masse and many more would get killed as it moved. But circle of death is only a 6th level spell. And a 60 foot radius will put most of the survivors in the disadvantage on a shot ranges vs the wizard. Its main flaw is its range is fairly short.
Both though would technically only kill a few hundred unless you got a lot while tsunami moved. My money is still on the caster as most of the army even if they can target the caster will be at disadvantage due to range given how much of a area you clear with a single spell which will give them plenty of opportunity to flee and kill more another day if needed. With storm of vengeance i don't think they need to flee. plant growth to hedge them in and then tsunami would also wreck them. A wizard would probably need hit and run over a couple days though.
Disadvantage only counts for so much when you've got several hundred attacks coming your way. Law of averages says you're gonna look like a pincushion either way by that point. And 1d8+3 damage is gonna eat way at 20d6+40 HP pretty fast once we're talking dozens if not hundreds of return shots.
1 in 400 odds means around 5 hit. They are all crits, but only 5 or so will hit. That hurts but its not a pincushion in one round.
That's covered under "kiting" in the paragraph above. But that requires you to get your first shot in from too far out for a response; technically both Wizards and Druids have spells for that, but that requires encounter crafting rather than just player crafting, and thus again falls outside of anything we can actually model as consistent or typical components of the thought exercise.
Well, the entire army being able to fire is making pretty atypical assumptions about the encounter as well; fights on huge flat plains aren't terribly common, and when they do occur, the combatants know about each other from miles away. Most realistic scenarios will start with the higher level character encountering a couple scouts, or at worst a reconnaissance-in-force of a few dozen. On the opposite, outside of some odd situations like zombie apocalypses (which don't generally have ranged attacks and are thus fairly easy for a high level character to hold off indefinitely) an army probably has a mix of higher level or specialized units.
I guess it depends on what they are fighting , what number constitutes an Army and what rank the PC is. There is also the issue of weather and terrain. An Army by human standards consists of multiple divisions. A division is roughly 10,000 men. So an Army could be 20,000+. Who are the 10,000 troops? Are they Kobolds? Ogres? Fire giants? Elves? Humans?
Depending on the Army they could have mundane weapons like Kobolds, or heavy hammers, clubs or axes for the Giants and Orgres. Humans would have various artillery and well trained archers, not to all of the groups would have their heroes/champions and spell casters also.
PC's are powerful, but they still aren't gods. A spell caster could probably fly/hover in the air and start firing off Fire Balls, meteor storms and a bunch of other things and cause a lot of deaths and destruction, but still not dent that Army due to terrain, space and what's coming back at them (spells, range weapons etc.)
Basically, full casters at max level have the theoretical capacity, but they need favorable circumstances and trying to determine just how likely those circumstances are is not something we can effectively model in an internet forum.
I would argue that a full caster, in several cases, has the capacity to easily withdraw and return under favorable circumstances moreso than the army.
Repeat assaults over time favor a caster under that premise.
That's covered under "kiting" in the paragraph above. But that requires you to get your first shot in from too far out for a response; technically both Wizards and Druids have spells for that, but that requires encounter crafting rather than just player crafting, and thus again falls outside of anything we can actually model as consistent or typical components of the thought exercise. You punch out several hundred enemies but have several hundred more winging an arrow volley back at you before you can run away, then as noted above you get dead. And there's enough fractional CR enemies alone that get longbows on their base block that the bandit example is the low end of the potential damage range, not the median or mean.
Any spell that Wizards or Druids might have access to so do Bards at that level. Just pointing that out.
The typical range of an encounter is sight or hearing, whichever is in range first. Armies aren't typically quiet or hard to see.
Not all of the army fits within range of an attack unless they are all packed tightly together. 2000 bandits (as per an example) in one solid formation would be 40ish wide by 50ish deep. A 5' sq each is 200'x250' in a tight formation.
Encountering the front ranks is what happens first at that range. That's nowhere near 2000 attacks in the first round before the caster can cast a spell. Those bandits have +1 to initiative. Most casters have +2 or +3 and will go first in initiative more often as well.
A Dance Bard likely has +4 DEX bonus and another +d10 using a BI die at that level but it doesn't matter who goes first. The number of attacks at that range don't drop a caster who spends their first turn using a spell to gain distance and prepare for the encounter.
Preparing by using Invisibility or something else to infiltrate the camp and take out the leadership then disappearing again.
The example I would use is a Druid who Wild Shapes into a bird to escape, a spider when they infiltrate, throws up a Wall of Thorns or Wall of Fire around the area when they attack the leadership, and then back to a spider to sneak out.
That army becomes disorganized without leadership, and honestly any large group within range can be quickly dispatched as well with Reverse Gravity.
Sorry I'm joining this late, and interjecting! Myself, I was presuming an army with a hierarchy of 'classless mooks' to fill its ranks up to somewhat more powerful leaders, like an Orc chieftain...
Also, if you are wielding Blackrazor, and at 14th level, would this not greatly increase your chances of beating such an army?
The wizard is inexplicably only allowed starting equipment.
And more inexplicably is banned from using any sort of asymmetrical warfare tactics.
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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.
Sorry I'm joining this late, and interjecting! Myself, I was presuming an army with a hierarchy of 'classless mooks' to fill its ranks up to somewhat more powerful leaders, like an Orc chieftain...
Also, if you are wielding Blackrazor, and at 14th level, would this not greatly increase your chances of beating such an army?
The wizard is inexplicably only allowed starting equipment.
And more inexplicably is banned from using any sort of asymmetrical warfare tactics.
And apparently the army is banned from having anti-magic countermeasures or units, laying ambushes, or deploying in ways to mitigate a Wizard's ability to drop AoE's on them from the horizon.
Which is my entire point; neither side can actually be decisively said to be the one who will win, because either side's win condition is all about preempting what the other can do. If you point massed weapon attacks in the tens to hundreds at a caster for 1-3 rounds, they die regardless of level. If a max level caster can kite an army that has no way to prevent or mitigate the effects of their AoEs, the army dies. And that's before we get into the composition of the army; by CR 1 you've got units that can multiattack with a longbow, which completely rewrites how much margin there is compared to the bandits previously used. How either situation will actually obtain is not a clear-cut issue, people can spin scenarios of what conditions lead up to this hypothetical conflict ad nauseum. Ergo, there is no clear winner. High level casters have the theoretical potential to kill large numbers of mooks in one go, but they don't have the staying power to do it with impunity, so it would be somewhere between reductive and oversimplistic to outright misleading to simply say "a wizard can solo an army". Victory is conditional to the scenario, and given that there have historically been successful ambushes involving thousands of troops, it cannot be taken as a given that the only way the army's win conditions will obtain is deus ex.
The wizard is inexplicably only allowed starting equipment.
And more inexplicably is banned from using any sort of asymmetrical warfare tactics.
It's a baseline, ok? It's really not all that terribly complicated. 2000 mooks with bow and sword vs 1 high level character. No. Further. Conditions. What. So. Ever.
You can posit some other set of conditions, but then it's no longer a baseline. Then it's your preferential conditions for having one side or the other win.
And anyways, I don't even think it matters. In principle - and I can't be sure, I haven't thought through every single possibility and scenario - but in principle, I think 2000 mooks intelligently used will win under absolutely any set of circumstances you can think of. You want Fly, and Invisibility, and so on? Frankly, even so I don't think the high level character has duration, range and spell slots enough to actually win.
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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.
It's a baseline, ok? It's really not all that terribly complicated. 2000 mooks with bow and sword vs 1 high level character. No. Further. Conditions. What. So. Ever.
Other than the part where everyone meets up on an infinite flat plain and yet somehow don't notice each other until they're fifty feet apart.
Sorry I'm joining this late, and interjecting! Myself, I was presuming an army with a hierarchy of 'classless mooks' to fill its ranks up to somewhat more powerful leaders, like an Orc chieftain...
Also, if you are wielding Blackrazor, and at 14th level, would this not greatly increase your chances of beating such an army?
The wizard is inexplicably only allowed starting equipment.
And more inexplicably is banned from using any sort of asymmetrical warfare tactics.
And apparently the army is banned from having anti-magic countermeasures or units, laying ambushes, or deploying in ways to mitigate a Wizard's ability to drop AoE's on them from the horizon.
Which is my entire point; neither side can actually be decisively said to be the one who will win, because either side's win condition is all about preempting what the other can do. If you point massed weapon attacks in the tens to hundreds at a caster for 1-3 rounds, they die regardless of level. If a max level caster can kite an army that has no way to prevent or mitigate the effects of their AoEs, the army dies. And that's before we get into the composition of the army; by CR 1 you've got units that can multiattack with a longbow, which completely rewrites how much margin there is compared to the bandits previously used. How either situation will actually obtain is not a clear-cut issue, people can spin scenarios of what conditions lead up to this hypothetical conflict ad nauseum. Ergo, there is no clear winner. High level casters have the theoretical potential to kill large numbers of mooks in one go, but they don't have the staying power to do it with impunity, so it would be somewhere between reductive and oversimplistic to outright misleading to simply say "a wizard can solo an army". Victory is conditional to the scenario, and given that there have historically been successful ambushes involving thousands of troops, it cannot be taken as a given that the only way the army's win conditions will obtain is deus ex.
Actually, I questioned the definition of 'army' before I did the wizard's lack of gear.
I've played a lot of solo D&D with my DM, and DM'd for them in turn. I have played literally every single class at least once. Easily the best ones were Paladin and Ranger because of their flexibility and survivability. All classes work just fine though, the only non-starter is Rogue (except Swashbuckler) because you can't get sneak attack https://mobdro.bio/ .
On a lark I decided to run up a Fighter vs a Barbarian for this. Both lvl 20, no magic items, 2024 rules. I'm also assuming that the enemy are a smaller race like Goblins or Kobolds but otherwise 2000 to 1 is just silly. I'm also willing to assume that the solo character is totally surrounded with 8 melee combatants and the rest will be shooting shortbows. This way, you can imagine one guy holding a bridge or a pass or something. The Species I picked is Goliath.
The Berserker Barbarian is INSANE at dishing out damage. With Great Weapon Mastery, he's going to be swinging with +13 to hit so essentially only 1s will miss and no Reckless attacks needed. Every hit will do 1D12+7 (assuming 24 Str) +4 (Rage bonus) + 6 (PB from GWM) or 1D12 + 17. Every hit will kill. Every. One. This means guaranteed 3rd attack from Hew and a guaranteed kill from Graze (1D12+10). On average, 4 dead per round, every round he doesn't roll a 1 to hit. His AC is 18 so he'd get hit 10% of the time. That's 200 arrows for 1D6+4 each, halved because the Barb is Raging...and he's dead.
The Fighter would be more of a fair fight. The one I made wears Plate armor, has a 20 Str, 16 Con, and is a Battle Master. He also has several Feats like Heavy Armor Master, Great Weapon Master, and Defense bringing his AC to 19. He brings a Great Ax to the show for 4 attacks of 1D12+5+6 or 1D12+11. As with the Barb, every hit is a kill. Hew grants him an additional attack for 5 per turn without Action Surge. On the defensive side, he has fewer HP than the Barb (224 vs 285) but he gets hit half as often so 100 arrows a turn for 1D6+4 MINUS 6 from Heavy Armor Master. That's right...the Fighter will take about 1 point of damage from every other attack per turn or about 50 points in all. Sure, he's still dead in under a minute, but he lasts a lot longer than the Barb.
Lets do Orcs (another staple 'horde' enemy) but instead of 2000 let's make it more sane...say, 200. Orcs will still die in droves (15 HP each), get hit a lot (AC 13), but will hurt more when they hit in melee (Great axes for 1D12 + 3). Their ranged weapon from the MM is a Javelin which has a Short Range of 30' This means if we use our 'holding the pass/bridge' scenario, only about 18 can throw without Disadvantage. 18 throws at +3 vs AC 18 is about 25% hitting. Figure another 25% in melee. Figure 2 hits for 1D12+3 plus 4 hits for 1D6+3 plus another 20 Javelins from the rest of the horde at Disadvantage for 20x 1D6+3 = 19+26+130 = 175/2 for Raging = about 47. Let's say 50 points a turn. The Barb would kill close to 4 per turn so let's call it 4. In 5 turns the Barb is hurting and there are 20 fewer Orcs. Assuming the Barb makes 2 Relentless Rages Saves, that's another 80 HP so two more turns. If you take Stone Giant with Stone's End that another 80 or so points you can reduce as a Reaction so two more turns. In the end, the Barb falls and the Orcs lose about 30.
The Fighter will fare better because the minimum damage for the Orc's bows is one less so Heavy Armor Mastery will deflect more shots.
The big issue with the Barb is that his damage is better-suited for killing BIG things, or at least things with 20+ HP. Also, the Resistance from Raging is great but as you can see, death by a thousand pointy things is real. Heavy Armor Mastery is the Fighter's big equalizer.
A lot of people have spoken about Wizards and other full-casters but how many Fireballs does a lvl 20 Wizard get? About 10, right? Casting them at higher levels doesn't get more enemies, it just makes everyone inside the radius MORE dead. 10 Fireballs killing 64 critters each is a LOT of critters...but it's not 2000 or even close.
I would be more interested in seeing how many HP worth of damage that each Class can do. As shown, the Barb and the Fighter can do ridiculous damage round over round. Up-cast area spells even more so. Now that would be an interesting thought experiment.
A lot of people have spoken about Wizards and other full-casters but how many Fireballs does a lvl 20 Wizard get? About 10, right? Casting them at higher levels doesn't get more enemies, it just makes everyone inside the radius MORE dead. 10 Fireballs killing 64 critters each is a LOT of critters...but it's not 2000 or even close.
I would be more interested in seeing how many HP worth of damage that each Class can do. As shown, the Barb and the Fighter can do ridiculous damage round over round. Up-cast area spells even more so. Now that would be an interesting thought experiment.
Wizards would be hard as their area of effect spells aren't massive enough 60 foot radius at their peak and their mobile area of effect spells are really slow. But druids(bards if they take the spells as well) have some ridiculously huge area of effect spells, earthquake(cleirc, druid, sorcerer), tsunami(druid), storm of vengence(druid). Heck a moon druid using wild shape to hide with moonbeam going would devastate an army over time. 9 rounds of a 10 foot wide beam of death darting 60 feet will chew up an army when its cast on repeat. Add in conjure animals moving around when you work up to 3rd level spells and then it can get ugly since the druid can be basically undetectable. Especially when you can hem in vast numbers of them with earthquake. Then they can eventually work up to bigger spells.
Wizards would need to hit and run. Though with enough prep time which they aren't allowed in this scenario and they could obliterate and army.
A lot of people have spoken about Wizards and other full-casters but how many Fireballs does a lvl 20 Wizard get? About 10, right? Casting them at higher levels doesn't get more enemies, it just makes everyone inside the radius MORE dead. 10 Fireballs killing 64 critters each is a LOT of critters...but it's not 2000 or even close.
It doesn't matter how many times the Wizard can cast Fireball when Shatter does enough damage. Circle of Death has a much larger radius than Fireball. Fireball isn't the only spell on the Wizard list.
Shapechange has become rather epic under the 2024 rules when it becomes available. Now the caster gains temporary hit points of the new form's hp all the Bard, Druid, or Wizard needs to do is shape-shift to forms with a lot of hit points and when running lower becomes a concern spend a Magic action to shape-shift again. Or if they're being more tricksy shape-shift into a big hit point creature first then to an insect or something because that gives them the choice of keeping the first thp pools or changing it to the second.
An hour of shape-shifting to 300+ hp monsters while retaining spellcasting ability done once per minute is 18000 thp that army is trying to whittle through. They need to find a way to break concentration on the spell.
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That's covered under "kiting" in the paragraph above. But that requires you to get your first shot in from too far out for a response; technically both Wizards and Druids have spells for that, but that requires encounter crafting rather than just player crafting, and thus again falls outside of anything we can actually model as consistent or typical components of the thought exercise. You punch out several hundred enemies but have several hundred more winging an arrow volley back at you before you can run away, then as noted above you get dead. And there's enough fractional CR enemies alone that get longbows on their base block that the bandit example is the low end of the potential damage range, not the median or mean.
Warlocks' only effective "I pop in/out instantly at vast range" spell is Gate (Plane Shift is only reliable for a consistent landing zone if you have a permanent teleport circle at both ends, which is not something that can be a given), which also eats up their highest spell slot. And they don't get nearly strong enough AoE.
1 in 400 odds means around 5 hit. They are all crits, but only 5 or so will hit. That hurts but its not a pincushion in one round.
Well, the entire army being able to fire is making pretty atypical assumptions about the encounter as well; fights on huge flat plains aren't terribly common, and when they do occur, the combatants know about each other from miles away. Most realistic scenarios will start with the higher level character encountering a couple scouts, or at worst a reconnaissance-in-force of a few dozen. On the opposite, outside of some odd situations like zombie apocalypses (which don't generally have ranged attacks and are thus fairly easy for a high level character to hold off indefinitely) an army probably has a mix of higher level or specialized units.
I guess it depends on what they are fighting , what number constitutes an Army and what rank the PC is. There is also the issue of weather and terrain. An Army by human standards consists of multiple divisions. A division is roughly 10,000 men. So an Army could be 20,000+. Who are the 10,000 troops? Are they Kobolds? Ogres? Fire giants? Elves? Humans?
Depending on the Army they could have mundane weapons like Kobolds, or heavy hammers, clubs or axes for the Giants and Orgres. Humans would have various artillery and well trained archers, not to all of the groups would have their heroes/champions and spell casters also.
PC's are powerful, but they still aren't gods. A spell caster could probably fly/hover in the air and start firing off Fire Balls, meteor storms and a bunch of other things and cause a lot of deaths and destruction, but still not dent that Army due to terrain, space and what's coming back at them (spells, range weapons etc.)
Any spell that Wizards or Druids might have access to so do Bards at that level. Just pointing that out.
The typical range of an encounter is sight or hearing, whichever is in range first. Armies aren't typically quiet or hard to see.
Not all of the army fits within range of an attack unless they are all packed tightly together. 2000 bandits (as per an example) in one solid formation would be 40ish wide by 50ish deep. A 5' sq each is 200'x250' in a tight formation.
Encountering the front ranks is what happens first at that range. That's nowhere near 2000 attacks in the first round before the caster can cast a spell. Those bandits have +1 to initiative. Most casters have +2 or +3 and will go first in initiative more often as well.
A Dance Bard likely has +4 DEX bonus and another +d10 using a BI die at that level but it doesn't matter who goes first. The number of attacks at that range don't drop a caster who spends their first turn using a spell to gain distance and prepare for the encounter.
Preparing by using Invisibility or something else to infiltrate the camp and take out the leadership then disappearing again.
The example I would use is a Druid who Wild Shapes into a bird to escape, a spider when they infiltrate, throws up a Wall of Thorns or Wall of Fire around the area when they attack the leadership, and then back to a spider to sneak out.
That army becomes disorganized without leadership, and honestly any large group within range can be quickly dispatched as well with Reverse Gravity.
And more inexplicably is banned from using any sort of asymmetrical warfare tactics.
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.
And apparently the army is banned from having anti-magic countermeasures or units, laying ambushes, or deploying in ways to mitigate a Wizard's ability to drop AoE's on them from the horizon.
Which is my entire point; neither side can actually be decisively said to be the one who will win, because either side's win condition is all about preempting what the other can do. If you point massed weapon attacks in the tens to hundreds at a caster for 1-3 rounds, they die regardless of level. If a max level caster can kite an army that has no way to prevent or mitigate the effects of their AoEs, the army dies. And that's before we get into the composition of the army; by CR 1 you've got units that can multiattack with a longbow, which completely rewrites how much margin there is compared to the bandits previously used. How either situation will actually obtain is not a clear-cut issue, people can spin scenarios of what conditions lead up to this hypothetical conflict ad nauseum. Ergo, there is no clear winner. High level casters have the theoretical potential to kill large numbers of mooks in one go, but they don't have the staying power to do it with impunity, so it would be somewhere between reductive and oversimplistic to outright misleading to simply say "a wizard can solo an army". Victory is conditional to the scenario, and given that there have historically been successful ambushes involving thousands of troops, it cannot be taken as a given that the only way the army's win conditions will obtain is deus ex.
It's a baseline, ok? It's really not all that terribly complicated. 2000 mooks with bow and sword vs 1 high level character. No. Further. Conditions. What. So. Ever.
You can posit some other set of conditions, but then it's no longer a baseline. Then it's your preferential conditions for having one side or the other win.
And anyways, I don't even think it matters. In principle - and I can't be sure, I haven't thought through every single possibility and scenario - but in principle, I think 2000 mooks intelligently used will win under absolutely any set of circumstances you can think of. You want Fly, and Invisibility, and so on? Frankly, even so I don't think the high level character has duration, range and spell slots enough to actually win.
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.
Other than the part where everyone meets up on an infinite flat plain and yet somehow don't notice each other until they're fifty feet apart.
Actually, I questioned the definition of 'army' before I did the wizard's lack of gear.
I've played a lot of solo D&D with my DM, and DM'd for them in turn. I have played literally every single class at least once. Easily the best ones were Paladin and Ranger because of their flexibility and survivability. All classes work just fine though, the only non-starter is Rogue (except Swashbuckler) because you can't get sneak attack https://mobdro.bio/ .
warlock ez
Or barbarian they both are extremely strong
Also is it just me who hates wizards
I hate them because there so basic
i don't think warlock could win this
He who fight and runaway live to fight another day
On a lark I decided to run up a Fighter vs a Barbarian for this. Both lvl 20, no magic items, 2024 rules. I'm also assuming that the enemy are a smaller race like Goblins or Kobolds but otherwise 2000 to 1 is just silly. I'm also willing to assume that the solo character is totally surrounded with 8 melee combatants and the rest will be shooting shortbows. This way, you can imagine one guy holding a bridge or a pass or something. The Species I picked is Goliath.
The Berserker Barbarian is INSANE at dishing out damage. With Great Weapon Mastery, he's going to be swinging with +13 to hit so essentially only 1s will miss and no Reckless attacks needed. Every hit will do 1D12+7 (assuming 24 Str) +4 (Rage bonus) + 6 (PB from GWM) or 1D12 + 17. Every hit will kill. Every. One. This means guaranteed 3rd attack from Hew and a guaranteed kill from Graze (1D12+10). On average, 4 dead per round, every round he doesn't roll a 1 to hit. His AC is 18 so he'd get hit 10% of the time. That's 200 arrows for 1D6+4 each, halved because the Barb is Raging...and he's dead.
The Fighter would be more of a fair fight. The one I made wears Plate armor, has a 20 Str, 16 Con, and is a Battle Master. He also has several Feats like Heavy Armor Master, Great Weapon Master, and Defense bringing his AC to 19. He brings a Great Ax to the show for 4 attacks of 1D12+5+6 or 1D12+11. As with the Barb, every hit is a kill. Hew grants him an additional attack for 5 per turn without Action Surge. On the defensive side, he has fewer HP than the Barb (224 vs 285) but he gets hit half as often so 100 arrows a turn for 1D6+4 MINUS 6 from Heavy Armor Master. That's right...the Fighter will take about 1 point of damage from every other attack per turn or about 50 points in all. Sure, he's still dead in under a minute, but he lasts a lot longer than the Barb.
Lets do Orcs (another staple 'horde' enemy) but instead of 2000 let's make it more sane...say, 200. Orcs will still die in droves (15 HP each), get hit a lot (AC 13), but will hurt more when they hit in melee (Great axes for 1D12 + 3). Their ranged weapon from the MM is a Javelin which has a Short Range of 30' This means if we use our 'holding the pass/bridge' scenario, only about 18 can throw without Disadvantage. 18 throws at +3 vs AC 18 is about 25% hitting. Figure another 25% in melee. Figure 2 hits for 1D12+3 plus 4 hits for 1D6+3 plus another 20 Javelins from the rest of the horde at Disadvantage for 20x 1D6+3 = 19+26+130 = 175/2 for Raging = about 47. Let's say 50 points a turn. The Barb would kill close to 4 per turn so let's call it 4. In 5 turns the Barb is hurting and there are 20 fewer Orcs. Assuming the Barb makes 2 Relentless Rages Saves, that's another 80 HP so two more turns. If you take Stone Giant with Stone's End that another 80 or so points you can reduce as a Reaction so two more turns. In the end, the Barb falls and the Orcs lose about 30.
The Fighter will fare better because the minimum damage for the Orc's bows is one less so Heavy Armor Mastery will deflect more shots.
The big issue with the Barb is that his damage is better-suited for killing BIG things, or at least things with 20+ HP. Also, the Resistance from Raging is great but as you can see, death by a thousand pointy things is real. Heavy Armor Mastery is the Fighter's big equalizer.
A lot of people have spoken about Wizards and other full-casters but how many Fireballs does a lvl 20 Wizard get? About 10, right? Casting them at higher levels doesn't get more enemies, it just makes everyone inside the radius MORE dead. 10 Fireballs killing 64 critters each is a LOT of critters...but it's not 2000 or even close.
I would be more interested in seeing how many HP worth of damage that each Class can do. As shown, the Barb and the Fighter can do ridiculous damage round over round. Up-cast area spells even more so. Now that would be an interesting thought experiment.
Wizards would be hard as their area of effect spells aren't massive enough 60 foot radius at their peak and their mobile area of effect spells are really slow. But druids(bards if they take the spells as well) have some ridiculously huge area of effect spells, earthquake(cleirc, druid, sorcerer), tsunami(druid), storm of vengence(druid). Heck a moon druid using wild shape to hide with moonbeam going would devastate an army over time. 9 rounds of a 10 foot wide beam of death darting 60 feet will chew up an army when its cast on repeat. Add in conjure animals moving around when you work up to 3rd level spells and then it can get ugly since the druid can be basically undetectable. Especially when you can hem in vast numbers of them with earthquake. Then they can eventually work up to bigger spells.
Wizards would need to hit and run. Though with enough prep time which they aren't allowed in this scenario and they could obliterate and army.
It doesn't matter how many times the Wizard can cast Fireball when Shatter does enough damage. Circle of Death has a much larger radius than Fireball. Fireball isn't the only spell on the Wizard list.
Shapechange has become rather epic under the 2024 rules when it becomes available. Now the caster gains temporary hit points of the new form's hp all the Bard, Druid, or Wizard needs to do is shape-shift to forms with a lot of hit points and when running lower becomes a concern spend a Magic action to shape-shift again. Or if they're being more tricksy shape-shift into a big hit point creature first then to an insect or something because that gives them the choice of keeping the first thp pools or changing it to the second.
An hour of shape-shifting to 300+ hp monsters while retaining spellcasting ability done once per minute is 18000 thp that army is trying to whittle through. They need to find a way to break concentration on the spell.