Castles are worthless against armies with mages?

[Dandu]

If you're equipping an army of level 5 wizards with rings of counterspells, you're spending far more resources on this than would be required to hire an insanely huge army of humanoids to do the same, with less accountability.

I'm not a historian, but wasn't hiring and maintaining a large army to engage in a siege very expensive since you'd have to wait the enemy out?

Your smarter enemy won't be using magical supergeniuses as super-catapults -- they'll be using them to infiltrate the command structure and wipe it out. You've destroyed their castle -- they've killed all your generals and taken the ruling family hostage, other than the ones they let "escape" who are under their control, in one way or another.

So now the enemy has wizards defending the castle and going after the command structure, while "my" side is incapable of doing such?

Why is it not possible to split "my" wizards between offense and defense, considering that "your" wizards have done exactly that?

Also, I can't help but notice that your attack wizards are using what appears to be higher level spells to kill, dominate, and capture the enemy chain of command. Of course, as with the Shrink Item example above, I may be overestimating the amount of power needed to infiltrate and assassinate the enemy commanders. Can you provide some concrete details and strategies? Not that I doubt it could be done - I'd do it myself if I was running a battlegroup with wizards - but you were previously arguing that higher level spells would be uncommon.

And you don't need an army of wizards equipped with expensive magical items to do it, either.

A ring of counterspells isn't very expensive for a 5th level character and, moreover, is only one of the ways I suggested for countering enemy dispellers, the other being to stay out of range of a medium range spell cast at CL 5 (150 foot range).

The equivalent of an adventuring party could do it.

Aren't adventuring parties usually made up of classes which include... wizards?

 

[frankthedm]

Yes, dispel magic can be a problem. That's why I highly suggest keeping distance from the target

Yes, dispel magic's medium range really sets the stage to make long range spells perfect for high flying zoning techniques.

 

[airwalkrr]

I've been reading through the 3.5 Eberron book Forge of War recently which describes in great detail the tactics of armies which have immense magical resources at their disposal. But still, characters capable of using spells are vastly outnumbered by characters who are merely mundane. You can take a look at the DMG guidelines for how many wizards there are in a city, but if you then compare that number of wizards to the mundane population you quickly see how much of a minority all spellcasters are.

Anyway, it seems the assumption in Eberron is that many of the highest-level casters during the Last War were primarily occupied in magical research or more clandestine operations that wouldn't expose them to the dangers of combat. At the end of the day, most spellcasters are still fairly low on hit points. The most effective magical units in the Last War tended to be those who relied on wands, which were expensive, even the eternal variety. Still, it is not a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that the few powerful spellcasters on both sides were generally glad to avoid situations in which, the round after casting fireball, they would immediately be subject to the wrath of an entire brigade. At the very least, the few high-level casters that do engage in battle probably effectively cancel each other out with their actions if you are thinking on a grand scale. While the attacking army sends a couple wizards with shrink item and fly to drop boulders on the fortress, the defending army's wizards are doing equally devastating things to the attackers. I'd think it would be in the best interest of characters like warmages to be constantly readying actions to counterspell things like fireball that could devastate an entire squad.

Anyway, I like Eberron's approach. It seems to make a modicum of sense that there are a lot of low-level casters around, but that they are still far less numerous than the peasant levies, standard warriors, and even the hardened veteran fighters. Actually the most perplexing thing to me is how many regents were assassinated during the Last War and apparently unable to be risen from the dead. Even though Eberron doesn't have a lot of high-level characters around, you'd think you could convince one of the handful of clerics in your kingdom capable of raising the dead that expending resources on a king or queen is worth it.

 

[Jack Simth]

Actually the most perplexing thing to me is how many regents were assassinated during the Last War and apparently unable to be risen from the dead. Even though Eberron doesn't have a lot of high-level characters around, you'd think you could convince one of the handful of clerics in your kingdom capable of raising the dead that expending resources on a king or queen is worth it.

The problem being that you have to want to return for Raise Dead (or any variation thereof) to work, and you'd be asking someone to return in a weakened state when they'd already been killed at least once for being who they were....

 

[airwalkrr]

The problem being that you have to want to return for Raise Dead (or any variation thereof) to work, and you'd be asking someone to return in a weakened state when they'd already been killed at least once for being who they were....

I know this is off-topic, but given that everyone in Eberron goes into the bleak plane of Dolurrh when they die I can't imagine many people wanting to remain there. From its description I imagine its kinda like purgatory, but with absolutely nothing to work towards. That's not an existence I think many would like to continue. It seems any chance at getting life back would be welcome. In Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms you get to go hang out in your deity's realm (if you were a good follower) which might be all hunky-dorry if you ended up in the Seven Heavens of Celestia. But Dolurrh doesn't seem like its all sunshine and rainbows.

 

[Animal]

"Anyone can write a book about a world with a green sun, but it takes skill to make it seem credible."

i always remember this quote when i build my D&D campaigns. so your players adventure in a magical world where even a mid-level spell-caster can wreak havoc on entire communities. but the world is not destroyed in magical wars yet and not thrown into anarchy. states, governments, royal bloodlines, peaceful villages - all this exists in your world and somehow people still build castles.

you have to ask yourself how does it work in my world? take your time to think this over, after all, as a DM, you're not only a rules judge, but a story-teller.

in my campaign, for instance, the influence of mages on the world is kept in check by the more powerful spellcasters. the most powerful ones usually wish to maintain the status quo - when you reach the top, that's the most logical thing to do. you don't want to stir the pot - not much gain, but can lose everything if you stumble. you also don't like the bold and resourceful troublemakers because in time they might actually be able to overthrow you.
this is where the idea of Cornerstones came to me. epic mages create these powerful artifacts, that scan the mage's domain for all magical activities and can try to thwart the unwanted magic partially, entirely or even destroy the rogue mage based on CL of the host mage and the intruder (so that epic mages can still try to storm other mages' strongholds, but they do it very very seldom of course. because the risk is rarely worth the gain).
castles are usually built within the domains of powerful spellcasters to block the non-magical interventors. cities are scarce and they usually serve as the sits for the most powerful wizards (who can control vast territories and maybe even multiple Cornerstones). this actually brings along many interesting roleplay opportunities: powerful wizards very rarely leave their seats of power so they often hire adventuring parties. in such setting Adventurers' guild doesn't seem to be silly or far-fetched idea.

to sum it up, look for the solutions not only in the rulebooks, but in your own imagination.

 

[AuraSeer]

I'm fascinated by how many exploits are made possible by shrink item. IMC, I have house ruled it so that shrunk items retain 10% of their normal weight. It's still really useful for hauling treasure, but it stops armies from airdropping mountains or carrying infinite supplies.

That aside, what really makes airdrop attacks silly is the range increments. A thrown or dropped rock is an improvised weapon with a range increment of 10'. From that 200' height, you are looking at -44 to hit. Even if your DM still lets you auto-hit on a 20, you've got to drop a whole hell of a lot of boulders before you manage anything useful.

And the second or third time a boulder appears in midair, large numbers of the city's own wizards are going to have readied actions waiting for it. Forget boring old dispel magic. You're going to be dodging fireballs, and every other long-range spell in the book. A Wiz5 has so few hit points that it's easier to kill him with area attacks than it is to reveal his position.

 

[Dandu]

You can fly a lot higher than 200 feet.

Yes, I know hitting things gets harder. To circumvent this, I suggest we have an archer with shrunken stone arrowheads do the actual firing. Maybe a halfling archer with the Far Shot feat? He can hit things up to 1100 feet away, which is nicely out of range of Fireballs.

 

[AuraSeer]

Do you have any interesting tactics that do not involve shrink item? Because it still sounds to me like your problem is with that spell and not with castles.

 

[SuperJebba]

Which spell allows a mage to carry a boulder aloft and drop it? Fly won't do it -- and it certainly won't give you time to do it twice. (Especially if an enemy mage casts Dispel Magic on you while you're in mid-air.) What level do they have to be to cast it? And how many such wizards do you really think exist in the world?

Most D&D worlds don't have the magical equivalent of Green Lanterns running around in sufficient numbers to do what's being suggested here. The rare wizards who could pull off what you're suggesting are probably not interested in exposing themselves to hundreds of archers and who knows how many enemy spellcasters to pull this off.

Much easier and safer to just dominate someone else into invading, old-Aschool.

Whizbang makes a great point. You're absolutely right, Dandu, that a castle can easily be overcome by wizards, but in most kingdoms, barring those like Greyhawk, Waterdeep and Silverymoon, the "archmage" of the kingdom will likely be less than 10th level.

That means that situations like this won't come up all that often. Wizards with power like that are running mad under mountains and dueling with Boccob for funsies.