I need help coming up with a some nations, and their reasons for taking part in a war

[TheHighWayMan]

yes, I used them once and then I completely forgot about them before you asked.
they are tribal, scarcely intelligent and living in the wilderness. they are not important to the world at large.
I guess if somebody somehow managed to recruit them it would provide a nice amount of decently-powered melee types; just like with the orcs, actually.
So, "persuade giants to fight for you" could make for a good plot hook.

Ooooooh now that is an epic image - Giants fighting dwarves.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Ooooooh now that is an epic image - Giants fighting dwarves.

what if you hit a dwarf with lots of enlarge spells?

[King of Nowhere]

Question: What were to happen if someone went and opened a Portal to the Abyss and just started dropping demons on the fortress? Or alternatively go with a giant horde of undead and swarm the fortress? Surely the very fact of having these fortresses around makes them key targets for any hostile nation. Would it not make more sense to instead use secrecy and hide ones leaders rather than stick them in (an albiet imposing) in a fortress.

Going out on a limb here how do the leaders manage to get in these fortresses?

we're getting offtopic, but who cares. I already got more than I expected.

So, demons. If you are making demons inside, you must be inside already, so you must have already conquered it.
If you are making a few demons outside, they are no more powerful than high level people, so it doesn't change much.
If you are making tons of high level demons, how exactly are you controlling them? are you sure they won't turn on you eventually? I had demons trying to "get hired" by the party with that trick, incidentally.

As for a massive undead horde, that could work. The most straightforward way to open one such fortress is to knock down a fortfified door in an antimagic field while cannons shoots at you through small holes. Enough undead could tank the damage until the cannons run out of ammunition. Alternatively, a few artifact weapons are strong enough that they keep working in those antimagic fields, and they can destroy a door in a few minutes; you still need something to tank the cannons, though.

Ultimately, while an hostile nation would certainly see them as primary targets, they can only be taken down if you already have a strong advantage, or if the other side has been weakened enough.
But there has not been that kind of large scale war in over a century. the neat thing about golem armies is that they never rust, don't need to eat or get paid, so you can stockpile them for a long time. Same goes for magic items and permanent spells. Actually committing to war would mean losing all that stuff you took decades to gather.
Plus, the contract between nations and adventurers is something like "we pay you and other fringe benefits, you keep doing your business as usual, but we call you in case of need". In times of peace, it is convenient for adventurers to get hired, because they get benefits (like getting resurrected, access to information, and such) and they are rarely asked to do really dangerous stuff. If you get a reputation for warmongering, not so much.
So, the world's economics favored peace. Compare to the real world, where recruiting a new army of paesants isn't really all that expensive, feeding and paying the army is the greater expence, and if you don't use it, you are still going to discharge your men when they get old; in that situation there is incentive to using an army.
Finally, all the most influential individuals were pulling strings for peace. None of them was good, they all had selfish reasons for peace (peace is actually good for business), but it worked.
All this, plus the formation of extensive networks of alliances, created a state of cold war; small conflicts were frequent, but they were never allowed to excalate.

As for why I went with fortifications and not for secrecy; the problem is that there are enough high level divinations (not to mention crazy modifiers to gather informations) that it is damn hard to hide something. Especially to hide something for a prolonged time. Especially when you need people to access your treasure on a regular base.
I could have used that as a premise for a campaign world, if I wanted, but it would have been a different world.

[TheHighWayMan]

what if you hit a dwarf with lots of enlarge spells?

Now you're talking

we're getting offtopic, but who cares. I already got more than I expected.

So, demons. If you are making demons inside, you must be inside already, so you must have already conquered it.
If you are making a few demons outside, they are no more powerful than high level people, so it doesn't change much.
If you are making tons of high level demons, how exactly are you controlling them? are you sure they won't turn on you eventually? I had demons trying to "get hired" by the party with that trick, incidentally.

As for a massive undead horde, that could work. The most straightforward way to open one such fortress is to knock down a fortfified door in an antimagic field while cannons shoots at you through small holes. Enough undead could tank the damage until the cannons run out of ammunition. Alternatively, a few artifact weapons are strong enough that they keep working in those antimagic fields, and they can destroy a door in a few minutes; you still need something to tank the cannons, though.

It sounds to me like undead and demons could then also feasibly serve as part of Vecna's army.

You already have Liches so undead hordes aren't all that much of stretch, and demons tend to be more than happy to destroy anything they can get their hands on. Although undead hordes are far more easily controlled than demons, even if the demons get out of hand (rampaging through the countryside) it's not really your problem as they are inside an enemy country. Any collateral damage you deal is bonus.

In the battle for the world who cares if you turn Mirna into the 66788th layer of the abyss

[noob]

the cult of vecna is an evil cult and would not have a problem deciding "I am going to bring all those 50000 people from varied poor countries and make them go through a hall riddled with traps then make the survivors fight each other in a tournament"
So minor powers can provide high power people provided you are evil enough.(and you might resurrect/undeadify people who died in the last matches to get some extra mid to high level people)

[TheHighWayMan]

the cult of vecna is an evil cult and would not have a problem deciding "I am going to bring all those 50000 people from varied poor countries and make them go through a hall riddled with traps then make the survivors fight each other in a tournament"
So minor powers can provide high power people provided you are evil enough.(and you might resurrect/undeadify people who died in the last matches to get some extra mid to high level people)

Interesting idea. However it probably would not be able to bring people past level 5 - 7. Anything beyond that usually takes years to achieve (especially Level 15+), this means that the Vecnites would probably be better off spending these resources on equipment for their (already) high level people.

Also as a side note: Would you really want to fight for a group that abducted you and made you fight to the death in an arena?

[noob]

Interesting idea. However it probably would not be able to bring people past level 5 - 7. Anything beyond that usually takes years to achieve (especially Level 15+), this means that the Vecnites would probably be better off spending these resources on equipment for their (already) high level people.

Also as a side note: Would you really want to fight for a group that abducted you and made you fight to the death in an arena?

Maybe with the right brainwashing.
Hypnosis is a level 1 spell after all and so within the reach of any level 1 wizard.

[Sparky McDibben]

Regarding the superfortresses, what protection do they have against tunneling? If you got enough engineers and people with Mold Earth pointed in the same direction, couldn't they burrow right in? If you're really nuts (like the Vecnites?) maybe you clone an army of umber hulks and equip them with psionic controls, then unleash them upon your unwitting foes! Or earth elementals. (Mold Earth is used here as an example. If you don't like the spell, substitute Move Earth, Transmute Rock to Mud, etc.)

Also, it occurs to me you wouldn't need to burrow inside the fortress. If you excavated a suitable amount of earth under the fortress, it would collapse under its own weight.

Who controls the golems? Like, if the golems were given contradictory orders, which would they follow? Because what if you were able to co-opt like a drone-pilot (the person controlling some of the other guys golems)? What failsafes are in place there?

That could be a fun adventure: Mole Hunt! "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a traitor. We have reason to believe someone in Fortress Vecna Droolz has been suborned by the enemy. Find them. Extract them into our custody. And convince the Vecnites we're not onto them. Good luck."

[Sparky McDibben]

To loop this back to your initial post, cracking one of these bunkers would definitively realign power structures in the area, pulling people away from the Vecnites. What if there was one under construction, but everyone else is tied up doing other things, and this fortress isn't a threat yet...but it will be.

So the High Command sends in a strike team to take this thing out, but what if it's a trap?! Maybe it's not necessarily a trap for the PC's specifically, but for any adventuring party that gets sent. The whole thing is more of a meat-grinder designed to draw PC's in, chew them up, capture them, and interrogate them for information!

Alternatively, there is a fortress that got softened up by meteor swarms but the forces trying to take it got wiped out when the Vecnites counterattacked. So the Vecnites are badly understrength, with holes blown straight through their defenses - but reinforcements are on the way! The High Command wants to take this fortress so bad, but they don't have anybody close enough to make a play. Nobody, that is, but your PCs. So your PCs need to take the fortress and then hold it against the reinforcement column. This could get real fun. Do your PC's drop in behind the fortress and try to slow down the reinforcements, then attack the fortress? Do they try to infiltrate it? Do they go for an all-out assault?

Man, this sounds like fun.

[TheHighWayMan]

To loop this back to your initial post, cracking one of these bunkers would definitively realign power structures in the area, pulling people away from the Vecnites. What if there was one under construction, but everyone else is tied up doing other things, and this fortress isn't a threat yet...but it will be.

So the High Command sends in a strike team to take this thing out, but what if it's a trap?! Maybe it's not necessarily a trap for the PC's specifically, but for any adventuring party that gets sent. The whole thing is more of a meat-grinder designed to draw PC's in, chew them up, capture them, and interrogate them for information!

Alternatively, there is a fortress that got softened up by meteor swarms but the forces trying to take it got wiped out when the Vecnites counterattacked. So the Vecnites are badly understrength, with holes blown straight through their defenses - but reinforcements are on the way! The High Command wants to take this fortress so bad, but they don't have anybody close enough to make a play. Nobody, that is, but your PCs. So your PCs need to take the fortress and then hold it against the reinforcement column. This could get real fun. Do your PC's drop in behind the fortress and try to slow down the reinforcements, then attack the fortress? Do they try to infiltrate it? Do they go for an all-out assault?

Man, this sounds like fun.

Totally in agreement. I would love to play a quest like this. Giving the PCs good tactical challenges like this can be really enjoyable for everyone, it can almost turn into a sort of war game whee the DM is directly trying to out scheme the PCs with the (limited) resources that the enemy has available. Of course you must be fair, but giving your PCs quite a tactical mission can be a great time. Do they conduct guerrilla warfare? Do they ambush? Do they just go all out for a full on assault of the fortifications to prevent the reinforcements from being successful? Having an open, yet highly tactical mission can make for a nice change from the traditional dungeon crawl style hack and slash adventure. Especially if the PCs cannot win just by waltzing up to the enemy and making a couple of dice rolls and instead need to think strategically if they are to win.

[noob]

ps: It might become an attrition war until the world runs out of diamonds(or that all the souls gets eaten) where people just ignore the bunkers: high level people are explicitly said to be insanely hard to create(so True resurrection is the way to go until it does not works) and so might be more valuable than the bunkers