The Warlord I

The warlord is a belligerent individual who sets his organization up along military lines. This villain’s activities focus on the assimilation or destruction of large areas of land and groups of people. He may wish to take over a particular land, race, or geographic area — or he may aim at nothing less than the entire world. If undead, this villain might try to regain the lands he ruled or controlled when alive. Since villains do not necessarily declare war or restrict their attacks to military targets, they are often thought of as brigands or pirates until they gain considerable power.

Most warlords do not often enter combat personally. If a party were to infiltrate the army surrounding him, he would assume that it was through subterfuge or powerful magic rather than through military force. His scouts and wizards would have detected an army nearby, but maybe not a handful of spies. If a party does find its way to the warlord’s presence, he immediately attacks, regardless of the circumstances.

The enemies are first subjected to an area-affecting spell, to disrupt spellcasters and identify opponents with special immunities. Those who look like wizards are showered with missiles, magical ones if possible. Warriors have their movement restricted so that they can be dealt with individually, by ranged attacks, since a powerful fighter’s combat advantage is often lessened if he can be attacked at a distance. Priests’ spells are slow to cast and therefore difficult to use in combat, so they are a secondary target during the initial battle. They are engaged in battle by weaker opponents and separated from the rest of the party so that their cure wounds spells (which must be delivered by touch) will be useless. The military master always assumes that there are hidden attackers — an ambush is something he never falls for on the battlefield. Troops are dispatched to find and neutralize Invisible or hidden enemies. If he must enter battle personally, the warlord is the ancient villain most likely to have multiple levels of specialization or special talents. No penalty when attempting a disarm, for example, means that the PCs lose their precious magical weapons early in the battle. The ability to behead an opponent on a natural “20” with an axe or two-handed sword might not affect every combat,, but even once might be enough to force the survivors to reconsider their motivation for staying around.

This is a common profession among Villains: rakshasas, stone giants, vampires, liches, mummies, dragons, cambions, mariliths, nalfeshnees, amnizu, cornugons, and drow all have the ability to become crafty generals. Possibly the greatest of all are balors and pit fiends, who command unimaginable numbers of troops in the endless Blood War. Fortunately, these vile creatures, spend little of their precious time developing their tactics on the prime material plane.