Help Me Crush A Nation!

[Cwymbran-San]

As for weakening the garrisons, an especially dishonorable (but very efficient) tactic is poisoning their water supply. The absence of magic to create water on the fly makes this viable. No need to buy or craft poisons, a bucket of dead animals (rats in particular) in a well could do it.
Also, when targeting their food supply, remember that pigs burn quite well (lots of fat). Set them on fire (tar? pitch? easy to come by) and let them run havoc in the settlements and garrisons you want to take next. Lots of stealth work but better than to face an overwhelming enemy in the open field.

Stick to guerilla, subterfuge and manipulation, hit them where they are weak. The best defence against a smashing blow is not being there when it falls.

[Florian]

@JBarca:

The whole exercise was simply about showcasing how things can be relegated to the background and still be part of actual play, like hiring "Teams", giving them commands via Profession (Soldier) and receiving results later on.

I think the question about seasons'll be clear now, too, as in a more plausible setting they'll dictate what kind of actions are availlable then and there.

@glitterbaby:

Do that and write a campaign diary about it. I would be interested on reading how all worked out.

@Cwymbran-san:

Problem with all that stuff is, that it could be counted as being "evil" actions.

[Cwymbran-San]

[QUOTE=Florian;20140958

@Cwymbran-san:

Problem with all that stuff is, that it could be counted as being "evil" actions.[/QUOTE]

Sure thing, but we were talking about crushing a nation, wreaking havoc with ist stability, taking down soldiers, raiding farms, villages...
When you have decided to do bad things, you might as well do them properly. Waging war is nasty business, no matter which way you do it.

Disclaimer: This is in no way my personal opinion on how people should behave, i am just looking at it from your proposed perspective (Art of War, The Prince, possibly a little von Clausewitz mixed in). Hurting People is bad with a capital B.

Edit: i can simply not make this quoting work properly, my apologies...

[Florian]

Mostly, I prefer Discorsi to The Prince, as the later focus more on stop-gap meassures right now and the former is in for the long haul, with all consequences.

[Âmesang]

What with the passing holiday and all my mind immediately went to Guthrie:

"You want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug."

[Florian]

What with the passing holiday and all my mind immediately went to Guthrie:

"You want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug."

Maybe that's because of where I'm from, but I do have high moral prerequisites on professional soldiers. Anyone willing to commit such acts should be in prison, not being part of an army.

[Cwymbran-San]

Maybe that's because of where I'm from, but I do have high moral prerequisites on professional soldiers. Anyone willing to commit such acts should be in prison, not being part of an army.

Well, the objective of each and every war is to impose your will upon your opponent. What is neccessary to achieve this is very subjective, based on your will, the strength of your forces, troop morale and of course the condition of your opponent, his troops etc.pp.

Modern professional soldiers "should" not behave this way, but sadly, this is not always the case. Give a man power and see it corrupt him. A soldier fighting in a foreign country in a war he does not understand feels utterly powerless. Then he realizes, he has a weapon in hand. So he has the ultimate power, the power over life and death. If he already has killed during the fighting, he already knows how it feels like and this might compell him to do it again, depending on his education, his values etc.

Now, in any armed engagement, it is the side that acts "less" humane that is more likely to impose ist will on the opponent since he is willing/able/ready to do things the other side "just won't do".

Is it morally correct to commit those things? A heartfelt, distinctive No. Will it cause your opponent headaches, send shivers down his spine, make him angry and less likely to act rational? Most certainly yes.

War is hell, never forget that.

[Florian]

Allow me to give you another perspective on that. The view you express is heavily biased on things that are happening in our lifetime, meaning regular vs. irregular warfare and that we don't have any good answers to it so far. (I'll come back to this point a bit later, to keep this tangent at least a bit relevant to the original topic)

Both views, von Clausewitz "War is continuation of diplomacy by other means" and your expressed view of imposing your will fail in nearly all types of (armed) conflict we have seen after the end of the Cold War.

That is because we talk about vastly different goals here. Especially in the irregular vs. regular situation, one side has already reached their goal by enforcing their will on the enemy, namely starting the conflict in the first place.

Your proposal borders on meeting the enemy on equal terms or allowing the situation to degrade to a level that equals that. This may be further accentuated by how we tread our soldiers lives, especially in media coverage.

I do not have an answer for that. I can only propose to look at what we expect of police units like SWAT or GSG9, especially on being willing to sacrifize themselves for hostages, and go on from there.
The moment we lose the moral high ground, we have already lost and that has to be averted at all cost, if necessary in lifes.

Now coming back to the topic full circle, it is really easy to throw the moral high ground away, just to expedit reaching ones own goals. Yes, we do know that certain things are effective and simply work, but do we want to lower ourselfs to that level?

[Yahzi]

The country boasts a population of about 200,000 with a standing army at about 70,000. All men 17-45 are in the military and some of the older ones stay.

Who grows the food? In medieval societies at least 75% of the population had to be engaged in food production.

You don't need to do anything to disrupt this nation. They will stave to death in a few days.

EDIT: Argh! How could I have missed that Dire_Stirge said exactly the same thing? Anyway, what he said.

[JBarca]

Who grows the food? In medieval societies at least 75% of the population had to be engaged in food production.

You don't need to do anything to disrupt this nation. They will stave to death in a few days.

EDIT: Argh! How could I have missed that Dire_Stirge said exactly the same thing? Anyway, what he said.

Those population numbers are not accounting for, as I mentioned earlier, slaves. Slaves grow the food. Slaves build things. Slaves create garments, assemble materials for war, gather raw materials, mine, carry goods for trade, etc.

Yes, this means that the enslaved population far outnumbers the free population.

[Cwymbran-San]

Well, in that case...what measures are used to control these vast legions of slaves? Lack of education? That is a point your characters could help with. Educating the masses usually causes them to stir, at least thats what historically happened in many societies (and in fiction as well. Stargate, anyone?).

[JBarca]

Well, in that case...what measures are used to control these vast legions of slaves?

Fear, overwhelming brutality in the face of insurrection, fear, living conditions that aren't actually that bad, fear, protection from outsiders, and fear, primarily.

[Cwymbran-San]

That sounds pretty solid. Should take a great deal of effort do do the slave-uprising move.

What would happen if you removed the ruler of the nation? Will he/she (it?) simply be replaced or is there a level of aristocracy that will fight each other over the throne?

[Florian]

That sounds pretty solid. Should take a great deal of effort do do the slave-uprising move.

I call that a dubious move.

Most of the slaves will be commoners or experts, so basically noncombatants, and only a cold-hearted bastard will count on them beating a regular army by sheer numbers alone. The losses will be horrifying.
Sure, it can be done and it will be effective. But if I was serious about playing one of the good guys here, I wouldn't do it, not without serious backup of a real army.

[Flickerdart]

I call that a dubious move.

Most of the slaves will be commoners or experts, so basically noncombatants, and only a cold-hearted bastard will count on them beating a regular army by sheer numbers alone. The losses will be horrifying.
Sure, it can be done and it will be effective. But if I was serious about playing one of the good guys here, I wouldn't do it, not without serious backup of a real army.

Well, if they fight head-on, of course they'll lose.

Consider Napoleon's experience in Russia - serfs in occupied zones spent most of their time wrecking his supply chain rather than taking up arms in a traditional manner. Bullets stolen, wells poisoned, food spoiled, saddles slashed, messengers killed, bridges burned, officers sniped by hunters from the woods, and so on.

The slaves don't need to lift a single sword to defeat their masters.

[glitterbaby]

I call that a dubious move.

Most of the slaves will be commoners or experts, so basically noncombatants, and only a cold-hearted bastard will count on them beating a regular army by sheer numbers alone. The losses will be horrifying.
Sure, it can be done and it will be effective. But if I was serious about playing one of the good guys here, I wouldn't do it, not without serious backup of a real army.

Oh don't get me wrong we want to end the xenophobia but we're not exactly the good guys. The party consists of a knowledgeable/bard/archer, a man-child sorcerer, a ruthless zhentarim mercenary, a deranged alchemist, and finally my character, the ruthless factotum//monk/swordsage. The archer is rather Good but excuses himself through "bardic neutrality." The sorcerer is naive.

The rest of us? Well the alchemist harvests tongues of fallen enemies because he's running an experiment about how people taste. My character, while combating a terrorist organization that had abducted his sister, would remove their heads from their shoulders after killing them. The organization called themselves the Beardless (they hated dwarves and really anyone that wasn't human, they're a manifestation of everything that's wrong with the country) and so my character wanted to make a myth of himself, "they're going to be the Headless when I'm through with them!" And our merc had us kill the man we hired as a driver because he overheard the rest of the party talking about the torture my character did to get information out of some of the terrorists and he would have got us into legal trouble.

My character probably wouldn't bat an eye at taking a ton of slave casualties if it were the better option. He's all about efficiency.

[Florian]

Well, there is "efficient" and there is " efficient". The difference is between short and long term.
A failed slave revolt will cost some lives but cement the hold that nation has on the slaves even deeper. They propably won't try again because they witnesses what happened the last time.
Using the slave revolt to supplement an invading force, though, is pretty different.

[glitterbaby]

Well, there is "efficient" and there is " efficient". The difference is between short and long term.
A failed slave revolt will cost some lives but cement the hold that nation has on the slaves even deeper. They propably won't try again because they witnesses what happened the last time.
Using the slave revolt to supplement an invading force, though, is pretty different.

Another thought I just had: wouldn't being conquered by a force of not humans only serve to reinforce the anti-nothuman sentiment? Do I really want to get troop support from the dwarven nations?

[Florian]

Another thought I just had: wouldn't being conquered by a force of not humans only serve to reinforce the anti-nothuman sentiment? Do I really want to get troop support from the dwarven nations?

That _is_ a hard one.

Ok, let us go to the deep end here: Notice that, so far, I use a very moral stance on the whole thing. If I really want to eff anything up, promisse stuff, get spirits high and crush them later on, I would use as many racial foreigners as possible and blame the whole stuff on them afterwards.

"Dude, sorry you lost your balls, not our fault, the dwarves blew it..."

[antoin]

Playing in this campaign as the "deranged alchemist" that glitterbaby mentioned. Referring to the water supplies: while a great idea, the capitol is sitting on a river. Any good ways to poison a river? While this is likely impossible, any suggested ways to interfere with this (flooding, trade blockade, mass fish deaths? I dunno), could be a major help to this cause. For what it's worth, my character has outstanding Craft(Alchemy) and (Poisonmaking) skills and is capable of making virtually anything rather quickly, if those would be helpful. While he considers himself a good guy, he has no moral qualms about Poison use if used "for the right reasons." If this helps at all.

[Flickerdart]

You'd need loads of poison to make sure it doesn't get diluted into nothing. A better bet is disease; just park a huge herd of cows upstream and let them work their poopy magic.

[Quertus]

As for 20 peasants feeding 18 people, that's why most peasants are farmers and not hunter-gatherers.

RAW, they could never have survived their (historic) hunter-gatheter period to become farmers. ;) Not could most of the non-farming living creatures in the monster manuals survive RAW.

[Florian]

Playing in this campaign as the "deranged alchemist" that glitterbaby mentioned. Referring to the water supplies: while a great idea, the capitol is sitting on a river. Any good ways to poison a river? While this is likely impossible, any suggested ways to interfere with this (flooding, trade blockade, mass fish deaths? I dunno), could be a major help to this cause. For what it's worth, my character has outstanding Craft(Alchemy) and (Poisonmaking) skills and is capable of making virtually anything rather quickly, if those would be helpful. While he considers himself a good guy, he has no moral qualms about Poison use if used "for the right reasons." If this helps at all.

Time frame and acceptable losses, really.
Stuff like poisoning a well is the solution for a siege situation that needs to be cleared right now.
If you have the time and no moral qualms, you poison the food stockpiles and wait for winter to set in. In both cases, accept that you will hit more people than just your intended targets.

[Flickerdart]

RAW, they could never have survived their (historic) hunter-gatheter period to become farmers. ;) Not could most of the non-farming living creatures in the monster manuals survive RAW.

The Survival DC is only for foraging while moving at half base speed. A hunter-gatherer tribe could stop and forage, and then continue after a few days.

It's also DC 10, so almost everyone would be more than capable of foraging for themselves just by taking 10. And others, in the case of people with Self-Sufficient, Skill Focus (Survival), nonelite/elite Array, Wisdom prodigies, trained animals that know the Hunting skill set, etc.

[stanprollyright]

Time frame and acceptable losses, really.
Stuff like poisoning a well is the solution for a siege situation that needs to be cleared right now.
If you have the time and no moral qualms, you poison the food stockpiles and wait for winter to set in. In both cases, accept that you will hit more people than just your intended targets.

Poisoning/destroying food/water supplies isn't about targeted killing, it's about creating unrest and disrupting the economy. Food shortages will mainly be taken out on the slaves, which will destroy the nation's productivity and give the slaves ample motivation to revolt. Yes, some soldiers will die from disease, and get weakened by severely rationed food, and lose morale, but the real prize is that this creates good motivations for desertion. Food prices go up, which makes crime go up, which gives you cover to perform your terrorist duties while the law enforcement is dealing with all the crime. People stop trusting each other and trusting the government, which puts you in a good position to assume leadership.

[Âmesang]

You'd need loads of poison to make sure it doesn't get diluted into nothing. A better bet is disease; just park a huge herd of cows upstream and let them work their poopy magic.

Makes me wonder how feasible it would be to craft and attack with an army of manure golems.

"It was devastating…"

[Quertus]

Those population numbers are not accounting for, as I mentioned earlier, slaves. Slaves grow the food. Slaves build things. Slaves create garments, assemble materials for war, gather raw materials, mine, carry goods for trade, etc.

Yes, this means that the enslaved population far outnumbers the free population.

The slaves greatly outnumbered the free in Rome. Just don't let the slaves find out, else a large portion of the work force might die off in yet another failed slave rebellion.

Unless, off course, killing off the work force was your objective all along.

[Deadline]

Just to clear some things up. "Low Magic" in this setting is mostly for feel. Spellcasters are rare, magic items are rare, magic is weak. A few concrete changes that will matter for this discussion, I think: spells above 4th level basically don't exist. There are few exceptions, based somewhat closely on Incantations. Mind Rape? Probably not in existence at all. There aren't magic marts, either. magic items above CL ~6 or so are considered "artifacts." Ancient relics of bygone days. If you want a magic item, you'll be doing some research to find someone who owns one, then bartering with them. Gold is great and all, but a magic item is all but priceless. It's rare that they're just bought and sold.

Many spells in the Divination school are raised a level (the info gathering ones, primarily (including Detect Magic, Augury, and the like. Divination, the spell, doesn't exist. Calling spells don't exist, except as Incantations. Noncore spells are rare and require permission to access (not likely to matter much; most of the party is Mundane-ish).

Caster Level slows down drastically at 8th level. So people with CL 9+ are incredibly rare. People with 12+ levels are legends; almost nonexistent.

Well, you've got a Sorcerer in the party. Do the spells Fireball and Fly exist in this setting? Because liberal applications of both will be remarkably effective in such a setting.

[glitterbaby]

Well, you've got a Sorcerer in the party. Do the spells Fireball and Fly exist in this setting? Because liberal applications of both will be remarkably effective in such a setting.

They do. The only thing is that these kinds of spells really are overrated in my opinion even in this kind of a setting. Spontaneous were given prepared spell level progression but even at level 5 they have like 3 3rd level spell slots. Three fireballs isn't really going to do a ton. In the next round all the guys drop their swords and shoot the sorc with longbows or something. Even if we only count the auto-hitting natural 20's, the sorcerer is going to drop rather quickly.

Edit: I forgot about Long range, my bad. Fly 600 feet up and then rain hell, got it.

[JBarca]

That sounds pretty solid. Should take a great deal of effort do do the slave-uprising move.

What would happen if you removed the ruler of the nation? Will he/she (it?) simply be replaced or is there a level of aristocracy that will fight each other over the throne?

Quote from the Wiki for this campaign: "government is a autocratic monarchy, supported by an oligarchic senate of 300 men. The throne, along with senate seats, is ostensibly chosen by senatorial election, but in practice the succession is almost uniformly hereditary."

The current "heir" is on campaign in the east, leading two legions against the barbarians.

Referring to the water supplies: while a great idea, the capitol is sitting on a river. Any good ways to poison a river? While this is likely impossible, any suggested ways to interfere with this (flooding, trade blockade, mass fish deaths? I dunno), could be a major help to this cause.

A while back (back when magic wasn't so weak), a Necromancer decided to mess up the city. So he just made a bunch of zombies, ordered them into the river well upstream of the city, and had them hold on to rocks and the like. Several hundred rotting corpses (and at least one or two of those Plague Blights from The Book of Bad Latin and other disease-focused Undead) later, the water was both undrinkable and devoid of fish.

The slaves greatly outnumbered the free in Rome. Just don't let the slaves find out, else a large portion of the work force might die off in yet another failed slave rebellion.

Very true.

Well, you've got a Sorcerer in the party. Do the spells Fireball and Fly exist in this setting? Because liberal applications of both will be remarkably effective in such a setting.

Yes and yes. The party just leveled up to 4, so it'll be a bit before he's got access to them. And they are incredibly powerful spells in this setting, yes. There are, though, in-game reasons that armies are still relevant despite this, though. The reason are currently unknown to the players, I believe, so I'll leave it at that for now.