In my campaign my players play as a cabal of Devils wich of course makess them run afoul of the law very often and i was wondering what i could do to make the town guard in my campaign a true organisation to be reckoned with.
so far i have given my guards more hitpoints and an alarm horn that can attract more guards and on rare occasions the Captain General of the guard who is a level 10 lizardman fighter.
the strategies they use so far are shieldwalls with archer support, flanking maneuvers, pincer attacks and closing off streets and alleyways.
Does anyone have any other ideas to make my feel more threatening?
Because of the narrow range of ACs and DCs in 5e, large numbers and a decent supply of standard over-the-counter adventuring gear (e.g. silvered weapons, holy water, potions of healing) should be all you need to make even the relatively unremarkable guards a threat. That's especially true if you're using the flanking rules. Even low CR guards can score hits and grapple or shove high CR monsters; it's just a matter how many guards you need to get the job done.
You can make them arbitrarily tough, but I'd suggest that rather than making the regular guards tougher, they start bringing in specialists to deal with the problem. That gives the PCs a more interesting variety of foes.
If you want to be mean, give the guards a Beholder as support. Those CR 1/8 guards might look suddenly scary in an antimagic field....
Is there an Adventurer's Guild in the town? Might some adventurers wish to curry favor with the mayor and fight the menace in the town? Then you can have paladins, clerics, wizards, rogues and such show up in the battle, possibly after the players have used a few spells and are down a few spell slots? What armor class are the players? Are they able to just tank the guards regardless of how many HP you give them?
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Specialized Gear. If the guard is running into the players repeatedly, have them get some special gear designed to attack them at their weakness. If they have an elf in the party, suddenly the Sergeant of the guard has borrowed a +1 elf hating sword that does +2d6 damage against elves. If the party loves magic missile, a Brooch of Shielding is borrowed.
If the players are killing guards too often, make it potions, so the players can not benefit from the item.
If you have a "cabal of Devils" causing trouble then eventually someone will hire a group of dedicated Devil-hunters and if those fail they will hire even stronger ones (or larger groups) until the cabal is either dead, leaves, comes to some understanding to leave the folks in town alone or are so powerful they take over the town. If the town has allies then "the devils" might face armies from neighbouring cities or city states since what threatens one city may be a significant threat to the rest. If the town has enough allies then the churches will likely get involved at a higher level to dispose of these devils.
In the long run, being hated by a populace or authorities with the power to respond is a losing proposition which will eventually result in the demise of all of the devils.
As for your town guard, if it is an issue, then feel free to escalate as much as you like but you might want to have one or more of the characters start having prophetic dreams about likely futures if they continue on such a path. :)
Sounds like a perfect time for a Holy Inquisition... by a few high level Paladins.
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Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
Collective Punishment. - I had a sort of facist city-state where if a guard was hurt or killed they would kill ten times the number of civilians from that district of the town. The PCs were forced to comply for fear of a massacre. The PCs were high level and could have made short work of the guards, but they were not interested in killing all the guards, and that would have been more difficult as there were higher level people who would be a bigger challenge.
In the long run, being hated by a populace or authorities with the power to respond is a losing proposition which will eventually result in the demise of all of the devils.
Not necessarily, you can either hide or overthrow the government, but yes, if you're in the practice of getting into fights with the guards, that's essentially a declaration of war and low to mid level PCs don't have the capability to win that kind of fight (high level parties might, but I'm guessing the PCs are not yet at the point of throwing around 9th level spells).
I mean, the way I do it with the Roman Empire is that there are just a LOT of them. Even a small town has a garrison of 100 troops (a Roman "Century"). And larger towns would have thousands. Yeah good luck fighting an entire Legion. I don't care what level you are.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I mean, the way I do it with the Roman Empire is that there are just a LOT of them. Even a small town has a garrison of 100 troops (a Roman "Century"). And larger towns would have thousands. Yeah good luck fighting an entire Legion. I don't care what level you are.
I mean, the way I do it with the Roman Empire is that there are just a LOT of them. Even a small town has a garrison of 100 troops (a Roman "Century"). And larger towns would have thousands. Yeah good luck fighting an entire Legion. I don't care what level you are.
That's why I advise going to the Adventurer's Guild and having real PC-level NPCs take them on. A settlement will either invest in killing them or die trying because if they don't try, they're already dead.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I haven't run my first campaign yet, but all my NPCs will have their own race, class, stats, traits, clothing, weapons etc. Variety, even if one or two of a group of 5 is a higher level, so 4 recruits plus one veteran. Maybe that veteran can provide buffs to his squad.
Also imagine what happens in movies - just one guard that cries out will inevitably be heard by another squad of guards nearby, and the players would only have maybe a minute (or a few rounds) before those new guards show up, who naturally are a higher level than the ones being fought.
I mean, the way I do it with the Roman Empire is that there are just a LOT of them. Even a small town has a garrison of 100 troops (a Roman "Century"). And larger towns would have thousands. Yeah good luck fighting an entire Legion. I don't care what level you are.
Meteor Swarm has a 40' radius (80' diameter). A single Maniple (basic 2-century unit) was 20 soldiers across and 6 soldiers deep. Even shoulder-to-shoulder that would cover 60 feet across by 20 feet deep. The front line was 20 Maniples across, or men (i.e. about 1500 feet wide by 20 feet deep, leaving space between Maniple units). Behind this is another set of 20 Maniples, and then another 10. So you are taking out maybe 3 Maniples deep by 2 across, or 6 total Maniples, i.e. 720 men (that's being generous). That leaves 44 Maniples (~5,000 men) remaining. Yeah, you dented them. I hope you aimed for the ones in the back, with the onagers, because if not, then you're about to take some incoming artillery fire.
I mean... you could escape from a full legion, assuming they were all marching across the battlefield in formation and you had room to hit them as you suggest. But a Roman Legion in formation covers an area of about two acres so unless you are right at the edge of it and can port directly away in a straight line, you're going to be taking some very unpleasant incoming fire. A single Maniple could unleash 120 Javelins/round at you, which is a non-trivial amount, no matter what you AC. Statistically, you're going to be hit at least 6 times for a nat 20 crit, just from that one unit (out of 44 remaining). And again, that's not counting things like cavalry, onagers, etc.
meteor swarm hits 4 spots with a 40' radius for each. But yes, it won't kill the legion on the first try, but does that matter? You'll get them eventually, and you're attacking from out of range, so nat 20 won't matter.
Also consider that leaders of different towns and villages generally communicate with one another.
So the party gets a bit rowdy and breaks a few noses in Town A. Then they leave town, go adventuring, and head to Town B to spend their spoils. But as they approach the main gate, the guards close the gate and a dozen crossbowmen on the wall take aim at the party. The guard captain shouts from the top of the wall, "We've heard of you! F-ck off or we open fire!"
Or maybe as they approach a town they see WANTED posters with their names and likenesses on them.
Or maybe an assassin or two attacks them during their long rest, hoping to collect the bounty that Town A has offered for their heads.
Players often fall into a habit of measuring only the threat that's right in front of them. But sometimes they need to be reminded that heir actions have consequences beyond the immediate scene.
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Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
meteor swarm hits 4 spots with a 40' radius for each. But yes, it won't kill the legion on the first try, but does that matter? You'll get them eventually, and you're attacking from out of range, so nat 20 won't matter.
Even a level 20 Wizard only gets 1 level 9 spell, so just how many Meteor Swarms do you think you're going to cast in a single battle?
There are 5000 of them. Even if you spread the four swarms out really perfectly, more than half of them are going to be alive to return fire. Odds are if you were doing this on an actual battle mat, with 5' squares and one Legionary per square, , you'd only get one or maybe 2 Maniples per swarm. And that's assuming they don't know you might be able to hit them with a spell like that -- if they do, they'd probably use a different formation (there were several that the Romans used to great effect back in the day) that is more spread out. You also seem to be assuming ideal circumstances, i.e., you're in an open field standing on a hilltop (or have the ability, by luck, to be within 500' of such a hilltop) so that you can see them and hit them in the exact right places. What if it's the middle of a city and you don't have clear line of sight? What if they have you surrounded and are closing in? From the center of a Legion, there is no spot 500' away in any direction that would not put you in melee or javelin range of multiple units.
You have the ability to escape the Legion, yes. I already said that.
But in terms of actually defeating them....? Few spells other than Meteor Swarm have a "1 mile range." After you burn MS and kill say 6 to 8 of their 50 units, you'd still have 40+ units to deal with if you want to defeat them. Spells like Fireball (and its level 7 Delayed Blast cousin) have much shorter ranges (150'). Ice Storm is 300'. And so on. You're going to have to keep stopping to cast spells, which means you can't use the Dash action but they can and if you keep casting Dimension Door you're not going to be attacking them on the same round, plus you're burning spell slots to not do damage. If you try to stand and fight them, it might take them a number of rounds, but they're going to get you, eventually. There are just too many of them.
Again, escape is certainly possible. You could cast Dimension Door 3x to get 1500 feet away in 3 rounds, assuming you started on one "edge" of the Legion and not in its midst -- but that mean's you're using spells to flee from the Legion. And if you are running from them, tossing off a single Meteor Swarm behind you to disrupt their formations and then burning all your level 3 spell slots to get the heck out of Dodge, it sounds to mean like you're afraid of them. Which makes the Legion sound like it's, to quote the OP, "threatening."
I'm not saying a single level 20 Wizard couldn't inflict some serious, disproportionate damage to a Legion. But the idea that one mage, even a level 20, could defeat 5,000 Roman Soldiers in a battle is just preposterous.
Even a level 20 Wizard only gets 1 level 9 spell, so just how many Meteor Swarms do you think you're going to cast in a single battle?
My plan is to kill a bunch of them, leave, hide, take a long rest, return, kill a bunch of them, leave, hide, take a long rest, etc, until they give up. There's no particular need to defeat them in a single battle.
However, if you really feel the need to take them out in a single day, cast control weather to produce extreme cold/heat and then determine a way to stay out of reach (this is easier for a druid).
This is, of course, something that can be defended from with magical support.
One 20th level wizard can take down 5,000 Roman soldiers, they just need the right spells. Meteor Swarm is NOT one of them (high damage, instant spell. You want low/moderate damage over a duration)
My plan is to kill a bunch of them, leave, hide, take a long rest, return, kill a bunch of them, leave, hide, take a long rest, etc, until they give up. There's no particular need to defeat them in a single battle.
You seem to be assuming the Legion would just stand there for days waiting for you to kill them off. I'm not sure why they would do so.
But you're still proving my point. Your cowardly nuke-hide-nuke-hide tactic proves that you consider the Legion a threat simply on strength of numbers -- I have not even proposed the likelihood that (as they do in my campaign) the Romans would have units of flying Aarakocra scouts, clerical healers, and wizard "artillery" in addition to all the other stuff real world Legions would have had.
We all know that the "action economy" controls who wins most battles in D&D, and that strength of numbers will tilt the scales toward the side with more individuals. This is why a party of 10 heroes can mop the floor with a single Legendary monster, but those same 5 heroes, facing 1000-to-1 odds, would not be able to win such a fight in any practical sense. The action economy just does not allow it, and hardly any spell effects are strong enough and cover a large enough area to kill thousands.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
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In my campaign my players play as a cabal of Devils wich of course makess them run afoul of the law very often and i was wondering what i could do to make the town guard in my campaign a true organisation to be reckoned with.
so far i have given my guards more hitpoints and an alarm horn that can attract more guards and on rare occasions the Captain General of the guard who is a level 10 lizardman fighter.
the strategies they use so far are shieldwalls with archer support, flanking maneuvers, pincer attacks and closing off streets and alleyways.
Does anyone have any other ideas to make my feel more threatening?
Because of the narrow range of ACs and DCs in 5e, large numbers and a decent supply of standard over-the-counter adventuring gear (e.g. silvered weapons, holy water, potions of healing) should be all you need to make even the relatively unremarkable guards a threat. That's especially true if you're using the flanking rules. Even low CR guards can score hits and grapple or shove high CR monsters; it's just a matter how many guards you need to get the job done.
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You can make them arbitrarily tough, but I'd suggest that rather than making the regular guards tougher, they start bringing in specialists to deal with the problem. That gives the PCs a more interesting variety of foes.
If you want to be mean, give the guards a Beholder as support. Those CR 1/8 guards might look suddenly scary in an antimagic field....
Is there an Adventurer's Guild in the town? Might some adventurers wish to curry favor with the mayor and fight the menace in the town? Then you can have paladins, clerics, wizards, rogues and such show up in the battle, possibly after the players have used a few spells and are down a few spell slots? What armor class are the players? Are they able to just tank the guards regardless of how many HP you give them?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Specialized Gear. If the guard is running into the players repeatedly, have them get some special gear designed to attack them at their weakness. If they have an elf in the party, suddenly the Sergeant of the guard has borrowed a +1 elf hating sword that does +2d6 damage against elves. If the party loves magic missile, a Brooch of Shielding is borrowed.
If the players are killing guards too often, make it potions, so the players can not benefit from the item.
If you have a "cabal of Devils" causing trouble then eventually someone will hire a group of dedicated Devil-hunters and if those fail they will hire even stronger ones (or larger groups) until the cabal is either dead, leaves, comes to some understanding to leave the folks in town alone or are so powerful they take over the town. If the town has allies then "the devils" might face armies from neighbouring cities or city states since what threatens one city may be a significant threat to the rest. If the town has enough allies then the churches will likely get involved at a higher level to dispose of these devils.
In the long run, being hated by a populace or authorities with the power to respond is a losing proposition which will eventually result in the demise of all of the devils.
As for your town guard, if it is an issue, then feel free to escalate as much as you like but you might want to have one or more of the characters start having prophetic dreams about likely futures if they continue on such a path. :)
Sounds like a perfect time for a Holy Inquisition... by a few high level Paladins.
Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
Collective Punishment. - I had a sort of facist city-state where if a guard was hurt or killed they would kill ten times the number of civilians from that district of the town. The PCs were forced to comply for fear of a massacre. The PCs were high level and could have made short work of the guards, but they were not interested in killing all the guards, and that would have been more difficult as there were higher level people who would be a bigger challenge.
Not necessarily, you can either hide or overthrow the government, but yes, if you're in the practice of getting into fights with the guards, that's essentially a declaration of war and low to mid level PCs don't have the capability to win that kind of fight (high level parties might, but I'm guessing the PCs are not yet at the point of throwing around 9th level spells).
I mean, the way I do it with the Roman Empire is that there are just a LOT of them. Even a small town has a garrison of 100 troops (a Roman "Century"). And larger towns would have thousands. Yeah good luck fighting an entire Legion. I don't care what level you are.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Dimension Door out of range, Meteor Swarm, hide somewhere you can take a long rest, rinse, repeat. Other suitable spells include Control Weather (takes hours to kill, but lasts hours) and Storm of Vengeance.
That's why I advise going to the Adventurer's Guild and having real PC-level NPCs take them on. A settlement will either invest in killing them or die trying because if they don't try, they're already dead.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I haven't run my first campaign yet, but all my NPCs will have their own race, class, stats, traits, clothing, weapons etc. Variety, even if one or two of a group of 5 is a higher level, so 4 recruits plus one veteran. Maybe that veteran can provide buffs to his squad.
Also imagine what happens in movies - just one guard that cries out will inevitably be heard by another squad of guards nearby, and the players would only have maybe a minute (or a few rounds) before those new guards show up, who naturally are a higher level than the ones being fought.
To beat a Roman Legion? Yeah good luck with that.
Meteor Swarm has a 40' radius (80' diameter). A single Maniple (basic 2-century unit) was 20 soldiers across and 6 soldiers deep. Even shoulder-to-shoulder that would cover 60 feet across by 20 feet deep. The front line was 20 Maniples across, or men (i.e. about 1500 feet wide by 20 feet deep, leaving space between Maniple units). Behind this is another set of 20 Maniples, and then another 10. So you are taking out maybe 3 Maniples deep by 2 across, or 6 total Maniples, i.e. 720 men (that's being generous). That leaves 44 Maniples (~5,000 men) remaining. Yeah, you dented them. I hope you aimed for the ones in the back, with the onagers, because if not, then you're about to take some incoming artillery fire.
I mean... you could escape from a full legion, assuming they were all marching across the battlefield in formation and you had room to hit them as you suggest. But a Roman Legion in formation covers an area of about two acres so unless you are right at the edge of it and can port directly away in a straight line, you're going to be taking some very unpleasant incoming fire. A single Maniple could unleash 120 Javelins/round at you, which is a non-trivial amount, no matter what you AC. Statistically, you're going to be hit at least 6 times for a nat 20 crit, just from that one unit (out of 44 remaining). And again, that's not counting things like cavalry, onagers, etc.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
meteor swarm hits 4 spots with a 40' radius for each. But yes, it won't kill the legion on the first try, but does that matter? You'll get them eventually, and you're attacking from out of range, so nat 20 won't matter.
Also consider that leaders of different towns and villages generally communicate with one another.
So the party gets a bit rowdy and breaks a few noses in Town A. Then they leave town, go adventuring, and head to Town B to spend their spoils. But as they approach the main gate, the guards close the gate and a dozen crossbowmen on the wall take aim at the party. The guard captain shouts from the top of the wall, "We've heard of you! F-ck off or we open fire!"
Or maybe as they approach a town they see WANTED posters with their names and likenesses on them.
Or maybe an assassin or two attacks them during their long rest, hoping to collect the bounty that Town A has offered for their heads.
Players often fall into a habit of measuring only the threat that's right in front of them. But sometimes they need to be reminded that heir actions have consequences beyond the immediate scene.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
Even a level 20 Wizard only gets 1 level 9 spell, so just how many Meteor Swarms do you think you're going to cast in a single battle?
There are 5000 of them. Even if you spread the four swarms out really perfectly, more than half of them are going to be alive to return fire. Odds are if you were doing this on an actual battle mat, with 5' squares and one Legionary per square, , you'd only get one or maybe 2 Maniples per swarm. And that's assuming they don't know you might be able to hit them with a spell like that -- if they do, they'd probably use a different formation (there were several that the Romans used to great effect back in the day) that is more spread out. You also seem to be assuming ideal circumstances, i.e., you're in an open field standing on a hilltop (or have the ability, by luck, to be within 500' of such a hilltop) so that you can see them and hit them in the exact right places. What if it's the middle of a city and you don't have clear line of sight? What if they have you surrounded and are closing in? From the center of a Legion, there is no spot 500' away in any direction that would not put you in melee or javelin range of multiple units.
You have the ability to escape the Legion, yes. I already said that.
But in terms of actually defeating them....? Few spells other than Meteor Swarm have a "1 mile range." After you burn MS and kill say 6 to 8 of their 50 units, you'd still have 40+ units to deal with if you want to defeat them. Spells like Fireball (and its level 7 Delayed Blast cousin) have much shorter ranges (150'). Ice Storm is 300'. And so on. You're going to have to keep stopping to cast spells, which means you can't use the Dash action but they can and if you keep casting Dimension Door you're not going to be attacking them on the same round, plus you're burning spell slots to not do damage. If you try to stand and fight them, it might take them a number of rounds, but they're going to get you, eventually. There are just too many of them.
Again, escape is certainly possible. You could cast Dimension Door 3x to get 1500 feet away in 3 rounds, assuming you started on one "edge" of the Legion and not in its midst -- but that mean's you're using spells to flee from the Legion. And if you are running from them, tossing off a single Meteor Swarm behind you to disrupt their formations and then burning all your level 3 spell slots to get the heck out of Dodge, it sounds to mean like you're afraid of them. Which makes the Legion sound like it's, to quote the OP, "threatening."
I'm not saying a single level 20 Wizard couldn't inflict some serious, disproportionate damage to a Legion. But the idea that one mage, even a level 20, could defeat 5,000 Roman Soldiers in a battle is just preposterous.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My plan is to kill a bunch of them, leave, hide, take a long rest, return, kill a bunch of them, leave, hide, take a long rest, etc, until they give up. There's no particular need to defeat them in a single battle.
However, if you really feel the need to take them out in a single day, cast control weather to produce extreme cold/heat and then determine a way to stay out of reach (this is easier for a druid).
This is, of course, something that can be defended from with magical support.
One 20th level wizard can take down 5,000 Roman soldiers, they just need the right spells. Meteor Swarm is NOT one of them (high damage, instant spell. You want low/moderate damage over a duration)
Consider these:
1 9th: Invulnerability, True Polymorph (Ancient White/Brass Dragon - both have a burrow speed and a rechargeable breath) or Prismatic Wall (circle form)
1 8th: Illusory Dragon or Incendiary Cloud (limited area, but...
1 7th: Mirage Arcane (limited path so Incendiary cloud takes out ENTIRE ARMY)
You seem to be assuming the Legion would just stand there for days waiting for you to kill them off. I'm not sure why they would do so.
But you're still proving my point. Your cowardly nuke-hide-nuke-hide tactic proves that you consider the Legion a threat simply on strength of numbers -- I have not even proposed the likelihood that (as they do in my campaign) the Romans would have units of flying Aarakocra scouts, clerical healers, and wizard "artillery" in addition to all the other stuff real world Legions would have had.
We all know that the "action economy" controls who wins most battles in D&D, and that strength of numbers will tilt the scales toward the side with more individuals. This is why a party of 10 heroes can mop the floor with a single Legendary monster, but those same 5 heroes, facing 1000-to-1 odds, would not be able to win such a fight in any practical sense. The action economy just does not allow it, and hardly any spell effects are strong enough and cover a large enough area to kill thousands.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.