Can sieges withstand magical assault?

[mikebr99]

Have fun storming the castle!


Mike

 

[rounser]

Actually, you're in for a long seige so you could just cast at random times on the order of one and hour average, so that the defenders never get a decent target because you effecticly have surprise. In a few days the wall is down.

Again, this is a case of good for goose, good for gander. Subtract 95 acid balls worth of casualties from the attacking army by the time this has happened, which is enough to almost completely wipe out a small army by my reckoning.

 

[Epametheus]

Collosal weapons don't cost any more to enchant than tiny weapons, so I doubt seige engines would cost more to enchant than conventional weapons. Unless there's rules for it that I'm completely oblivious to.

 

[Derren]

Siege weapons don't fall under the normal weapon categories, so there is no way to enchant them.

The Stronghold builder guide has magical ammunition for them, but they are expensive.

 

[painandgreed]

Again, this is a case of good for goose, good for gander. Subtract 95 acid balls worth of casualties from the attacking army by the time this has happened, which is enough to almost completely wipe out a small army by my reckoning.

There's obviously only one way to settle this. We'll have to arrange multiple PvP games where one person runs the siegers and one person runs the sieged with a neutral DM. We'll post detailed accounts of the games and see who actually manages what in theory and practice.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I've run an assault, defenders won.

As a DM I've actually run an assault on a castle using 3rd edition rules in painstaking detail. I accounted for everything, wounds, dying, dead, stabalised. The castle was designed with dark ages technology in mind but the players were allowed to use their 20th century brains to try and improve on the castle in the months of preperation they had before war.
The assault took over 4 game sessions (a full month) to run and we didn't even finish it - we played until a clear victor emerged and the rest was left as is.

Here's the breakdown of the abilities of both sides at the time of battle:

The ennemies: 2000 orcs. One 11th level lich. One 16th level barbarian. 30 5th and below level spellcasters.
Charmed young adult red dragon. Charmed purple worm. Dominated ranger cohort of the allies. Planar binding of Hezrou and 4 elementals one of each type. Veiled troops posing as commoners inside the castle. 6 Charmed hill giants.
60 catapults. Too many ladders.

The heroes: 350 1st level warrior humans. 250 1st level warrior elves. 400 commoners (equiped as levy but would not fight beyond 1 hp damage). One 11th level wizard, druid, cleric and elven archer. One 12th level barbarian. Three cohorts, one rogue, one ranger and one paladin all of 10th level.
10 Awakened trees and a few friendly treants.
1 Awakened giant squid moat monster. Planar ally Astral deva.
5 catapults. 5 ballista.

The heroes and lich had skirmished before, and a rather unfortunate run in with illithid led to highly decimated defender commoners (and rebuilding some of the castle).
The elven troops barely made it into the castle before the orc forces arrived because they were mislead by hallucinatory terrain and went off track.

Major Spells that actually did things:

The ennemies:
Control weather - fog. Miss chance against archers was invaluable. D&D archery with a 1 in 20 auto-hit will decimate troops really quickly. Not to mention elven troops with masterwork bows and arrows (the elf's elite force of 50 did a LOT of damage).
Veil - caused chaos in the castle. Things were set on fire and troops needed to be diverted at the critical moment. Was painful.
Dominate - caused chaos among the heroes. Ranger almost assasinated the wizard, wizard could not dispel it for many crucial rounds.
Wall of fire - burning huge groups on the battlements and setting fire to everything in a line is much much better than a fireball.
Confusion - nice range, very very upseting results to defenders.

The allies:
Hallow - aid effect tied to it effectively doubles all defender's hp. Magic circle effect nullifies summoned creatures very quickly.
Forbiddance - avoids the horrible idea of the lich teleporting in and trashing everything.
Continual flame - critical when fighting orcs at night. Enough to go everywhere.
Fabricate - supplied oil and other quickly needed substances in a jiffy.
Arcane lock - held the gates in place agains the veiled soldiers who tried to lower them.
Wall of force - last ditch to hold the gates together.
Wall of fire - permanent, guards against most attacks.
Greater magic weapon on arrows - 50 one shots is actually quite worth it and long duration.
Move earth - Huge area huge range, makes things smooth. Takes time but it's not worth runing out to get them at the thousand foot mark when they have 2000 arrows per round.

Spells that didn't do things:
Passwall: Wall of iron blocks a passwall in it's tracks and it's free to make tons of them.
Teleport: Forbiddance blocks it so does hallow with dimensional anchor tied to it.
Summonings: Often useless in hallowed radius.

Things that weren't effective:
Siege weapons, not surprisingly. 60 catapults die really pretty quickly against treants and animated trees.
Giants are more mobile, fire much faster and more accurately even with trained crews.
Summoned monsters. Summoning doesn't last long enough to be effective and has very short range.

Things that were disproportionately effective:
Permanent spells.
Wands. You burn through your spells faster than a magic missile flies in an assault.
Lyre of building.
Bardic music.

Total battle lasted 6 min game time. All called and charmed monsters died except for Inky the awakened squid (who fought the purple worm in a battle of the titans).

 

[Oberton]

If you take a look at our current wars, technology would certainly seem magical to some... Anyway, small low tech groups can resist countries like ours for much longer than most would have believed. So if you take that lesson and apply it to your game.. Yes, a low magical force could resist a high maigic force, but they would have to change the way they fight, and staying in one spot like a castle would be their death... So no, a castle is not a great place to be stuck when you have an enemy with over powering technology, oh.. magic I mean....

 

[azmodean]

Obviously if you are overpowered in any way then holding ground is not a good option, then guerilla tactics may be better (but only if you have good cohesion and mobility). The question though, was wether holding a position against a similar force would be effective.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Now, if your city has no mages, and the attacking force has tons? Could be a problem. But then, of course, we must remember that mages are hardly the heartiest of soldiers. A well-placed bowshot and it's all over...

One well placed bowshot? Maybe from an Arcane Archer or the like, but theres any number of low level Core spells that make it very difficult to impossible for anyone to hit a mage, and these could easily be improved--making Protection from Arrows never run out for example.

If you take a look at our current wars, technology would certainly seem magical to some... Anyway, small low tech groups can resist countries like ours for much longer than most would have believed. So if you take that lesson and apply it to your game.. Yes, a low magical force could resist a high maigic force, but they would have to change the way they fight, and staying in one spot like a castle would be their death... So no, a castle is not a great place to be stuck when you have an enemy with over powering technology, oh.. magic I mean....

It's tactics, not technology that matters, really.
And even better, your enemies might have wasted money on things that are useless against the guerrilas. Like Trident nuclear submarines and A-10 Thunderbolt "tank killer" support planes and M1A2 Abrams tanks.
But anyway.

 

[The_Universe]

One well placed bowshot? Maybe from an Arcane Archer or the like, but theres any number of low level Core spells that make it very difficult to impossible for anyone to hit a mage, and these could easily be improved--making Protection from Arrows never run out for example.



It's tactics, not technology that matters, really.
And even better, your enemies might have wasted money on things that are useless against the guerrilas. Like Trident nuclear submarines and A-10 Thunderbolt "tank killer" support planes and M1A2 Abrams tanks.
But anyway.

I was actually referring to archer's and mages of near equivalent levels (or, as is much more likely) having more higher level archers than higher level mages - in relative terms, it's easier to train an archer than a wizard or sorcerer.

Now, if the power levels are drastically unequal...well then yes, I suppose a number of high level mages vs. a few low level archers is not going to turn out well for the archers - but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about sieges in general terms.

Anyway, if the attackers have an arch-mage, why can't the defenders have an arcane archer?