Castles are worthless against armies with mages?

[Dandu]

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.

Well, there's the part where you drop objects with Explosive Runes etched on them all over the enemy's territory....

Fireball + Pyrotechnics also works well if you want to blind the defenders for a short period of time.

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 running mad under mountains and dueling with Boccob for funsies.

I may be misunderstanding your point, but didn't the two posts right underneath Whizbang's address that issue?

 

[Ranger19k]

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.

Wouldn't a few permanent walls of force worked in several layers above the castle help prevent the "shrunken-boulder-kill-drop"? I would think that would be a pretty typical fantasy castle defense: maybe with a couple known but unmarked holes for the defending griffin riders to fly in and out. Just need to work it to make it difficult to dispel....

 

[Dandu]

Walls of Force (the spell) can only be cast vertically. Both it and Permanency are higher level spells (5th and 6th respectively). This may be an issue as several posters have previously stated that they object to the idea of such high level spells on the battlefield.

However, the Stronghold Builder's Guide may make provisions for purchasing or creating a horizontal walls of force, which would work to provide shelter.

 

[Pergentile]

It is interesting watching Dandu logic down a half dozen other posters. Especially when those posters only argue specific and sometimes irrelevant details since everything else is so flawlessly stated. Only if one could give experience to a single person infinitely. . .

On to the topic at hand though: Any 10th level charisma based character with Leadership, Extra Followers, an Admirals Bicorne, and some renown, could have themselves an Army of at least 500 and a very nice Divine General. If the group pooled resources from an early stage, it is perfectly viable that the group could besiege a city-state with the spell-casting of their own party and realistically expect that city-state to have next to no magical capabilities. In such a case, even a single "Rock dropper" could rack up hundreds of kills, which is HUGE assuming a City-State with a population of 20k and about 5% of that being combatants (1k). If the players were besieging such a City in the intent to convert the entire city-state to one devoted to a single god, the outside support they could gain would only compound their advantageous position. The group wouldn't even need to besiege the city. Simply move a few hundred people into the city individually, then initiate a coup d'etat.

Where do you live Dandu? I want to move there and be part of a Campaign you DM.

 

[Dandu]

I'll likely either end up in DC or Orange Country. Ask again in a month.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Armies went away from strongpoints built like castles for 2 main reason: the armaments of the day too easily bypassed the protection they offered- which was obtained at great cost in time, effort, and money- and an increased emphasis on force mobility.

Such concerns led to trench-building and partially or completely subterranean bunkers.

If you look at the creatures and magic of the game, those factors are multiplied.

Too many creatures have abilities or access to powers that:

1. Bypass walls- teleports, dimensional shifts, burrowing, intangibility, earthglide, flight
2. Destroy or breach walls- rock to mud, disintegrates, etc
3. Manipulate defenders- charms, illusions, enchantments, shapechanging/polymorphing
4. Conceal, transport, or enhance weapons or special units: reduction, shrink item, etc.
   

Yes, they all have counters...but consider the time it takes to build a castle vs. how much time it takes to dig trenches & a bunker. Sure, walls still have a purpose, but you're not going to find it cost effective to spend huge amounts of money and loads of time making them 30' tall and 40' thick at the base when trenches & bunkers can go up in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, for essentially the same protection.

 

[PoorHobo]

permanancy see invisibility on a few lookouts throughout the city. Maybe 5 or so total so at least one watch with it on at all times. These watch are kept out of combats, there sole job is to look for invisibility. Not just mages, It's something a city might want anyways.

Once an invisible intruder is spotted, an audible alarm is sounded the city knows its about to be attacked and the attacking mage(s) know their cover is blown this may be enough to just have the turn back.

Once the alarm is sounded city mages (of 3rd level) cast see invisibility, and use enlarged acid arrow wands to engage the target. These are also expensive but they will last much longer than the encounter and likewise have other uses. They have a range of 1040 feet. If attacking mages have managed to outdistance that before the wands can be brought to bear then a 5th level wizard begins casting flight on the 3rd level mages to send them up.

1st level wizards, or more likely sorcerers, stand on the ground looking for boulders and falling friendly mages, when one appears they move to its intended drop point and cast feather fall on it when it is 10 feet from the ground.

 

[Dandu]

Feather Fall is a good idea, though the Close range may require a great deal of spellcasters on the defensive.

One thing I do want to point out, again, is that Permanency is a 6th level spell, and apparently spellcaster capable of casting it are rare.

Also, you might want more than just 5, considering that they need to rest sometime or in case the enemy starts blinding the ones on duty.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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?

I don't know, if my goal was to overrun a kingdom, and not to engage in some sort of spectacular set-piece of "let's wtfpwn this castle," I'd say getting the barbarian/orc/hobgoblin horde to sweep across the kingdom and raze it to the ground would be a lot more practical than spending the same amount of resources to fight it out with the wizards of the enemy over one small area.

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

Uh, no, they presumably would do the same thing -- since screwing around with aerial magic shows over the castle is about the least productive way to use magical geniuses, which at least one of them would eventually point out.

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.

Uh, we're not engaged in any sort of battle here.

I just think the notion of staging some sort of superhero battle with wizards is unlikely. The Mage: The Awakening style of wizards, liches and the like acting with a great deal of advance planning, surgical strikes and with a ridiculous escalation of counter-measures and counter-counter-measures is a lot more likely. If I've learned how to even do something as relatively simple as fling a fireball, I'm going to know that being the target of such a thing is something I want to avoid at all costs. Anyone who tells me "hey, take this boulder, shrink it, cast Protection from Normal Missles, Fly and Invisibility and go drop it on a bunch of idiots in a castle" is getting turned into a frog.

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.

A single NPC adventuring group doesn't require wizards willing to do the equivalent of the sort of adventures PCs go on all the time to be anything more than uncommon. A battalion of flying invisible boulder-droppers is a lot more wizard-intensive.

A ring of counterspells isn't very expensive for a 5th level character

It is for an army, since that 4,000 gold piece for each ring could buy a whole lot of foot soldiers. Heck, that'd probably be enough to get a whole tribe of Easterlings/neanderthals/gnolls or whatever tearing up the countryside. Because, remember, you'd need one of those rings for each of your wizards and the wizards would cost more besides.

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).

It's still a very showy and not terribly productive way to wage magical war. You can get a lot more bang for your gold piece in countless other ways.

Will there be nations that wage war in such a way? Sure. They'll be the ones that have all those ruins scattered all over the place and who were conquered by the winners who played smarter.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Armies went away from strongpoints built like castles for 2 main reason: the armaments of the day too easily bypassed the protection they offered- which was obtained at great cost in time, effort, and money- and an increased emphasis on force mobility.

Such concerns led to trench-building and partially or completely subterranean bunkers.

If you look at the creatures and magic of the game, those factors are multiplied.

Absolutely true. The reason that there are castles in D&D isn't because castles make sense in what D&D has evolved into. (3E being the most magical default baseline of all, of course.) It's because people are trying to emulate, in theory, fantasy fiction, which has castles.

In a world with the 3E-baseline level of magic, rulers would probably put a lot of effort into concealing their real name, their real location and all the rest, and then living in what amounts to some sort of magical black box as a fallback.

Since that sort of setting doesn't at all resemble what most people want to adventure in -- although the PCs themselves will likely do it when the reach a sufficient level of power notoriety, once they get tired of drow hit squads and the like -- we're back to castles and the OP's original problem.