You’re a powerful wizard asked by your country’s government to end a costly war. You’re able to cast a single spell on half of the enemy country’s army the day before an upcoming battle. You’re asked to not only permanently incapacitate those affected by the spell but intimidate the enemy leadership in an attempt to force them to come to terms and end the war. The enemy leadership doesn’t know you can only use the spell once due to its sheer scope and scale. Your government will claim responsibility for the spell once it’s performed and the enemy government will believe them.
Which of the three following spells do you think would have the best chance of working?
1: The enemy soldiers turn to stone
2: The enemy soldiers turn to flies
3: The enemy soldiers become paralyzed from the waist down
The first two are, in all practical senses, the same as just killing them all. Maybe there’s a defense bonus to the enemy crew by having all the stone statues around but, functionally, there’s not a big difference.
The half paralyzed men are going to cause a lot more chaos. Armies don’t magically pull food and transportation from the air. You still need to feed all these people, get them out of the region and back home, explain them to the people back home, and try to keep them from talking to all the people who aren’t affected, demoralizing them.
First, I’d map out a corridor that my army can take to the enemy’s capitol. Then I’d have the wizard make every enemy soldier within that corridor burst into flame and die horribly and publicly. I’d have the wizard reserve the rest of his half-army’s power to cause any soldier who tries later to enter my attack corridor also to burst into flames.
I think the enemy will quit sending troops into the corridor before the half-army spell is completely used up.
With any of those three if there is no way to duplicate the enemy will not immediately surrender…but they will bomb you into Pre-Flintstone stone-age in retaliation (and just to make sure). If they don’t, BTW, if you pull a stunt like that the rest of the world will bomb our ass just to make sure we don’t pull the same trick on them.
I’d take option 1, turn half to stone.
The rest will shit bricks and run but unlike option 2 with Flies, their story is verifiable. The stone soldiers remain as a permanent reminder.
Once those who ran get word around, good luck for the enemy getting new troops to attack, especially if they have to go past the stone soldiers.
Yeah, that’s why some conventional weapons have been designed to maim rather than kill outright - if you kill one soldier, you deplete the enemy force by one; if you maim one soldier, two other soldiers have to carry that one out on a stretcher; you deplete the enemy force by three.
I would cast spell X, where half of the enemy’s army become conspiracy theorists and distract the unaffected half by engaging them in continual inane argument.
If you could do that without making it obvious to the enemy that you’d cast an offensive spell at all, that would be superior, because they wouldn’t
If that’s not possible, i disable few enough soldiers that i can do it a couple times, a few days apart, so it looks like i can keep doing it indefinitely.
I will turn half the soldiers to stone from the waist down.
All the army is neutralized, bigger work to care of the soldiers and more impact on morale.
Plus they may be able to literally shit bricks
Can I choose which half of the army to affect, down to the individual level if necessary?
And do Commanders-in-Chief count as part of “the army”"? Also, do air force and navy count as “the army”?
Given the OP’s choices, the third option is the best - doesn’t kill anyone, maximises logistics and morale effects, etc - all the good stuff others have mentioned.
If I get to choose who to target, it’s going to be the brass, from the top down, then it’s going to take out all the aviators and missile/UAV/tank people first, and ignore plain old grunts and seamen.
I’m not a military guy, but I’m assuming all the officers are < 1/2 the total forces in any military, and as I understand it pilots, tank commanders etc are usually officers (NCOs/WOs and up) , so taking out the top half by decreasing rank will have by far the greatest impact.
I think finding yourself in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag is going to “intimidate” the leadership way more than turning the front-line mooks into lawn decorations.
Is the parylization permanent, or can it be fixed by available medicine?
Still leaning to 3, but might go with 1 if it’s essentially now working like a theatre-limited AOE weapon with no targeting, if there’s a possibility enemy losses would only be temporary.
Oh, and before my spell, at this particular battle are our armed forces basically equivalent strength?
With that clarification, the question is less “Which one, if used once, is most likely to cause total surrender?”, and more “Which one is least likely to cause everyone else to screw my country up royally?”.
