Castles are worthless against armies with mages?

[Dannyalcatraz]

In order for those feudal societies to make sense, the world they occupy has to be built on similar assumptions. Armies exist and castles exist because they are adequate defenses against what kings regularly need to defend themselves from: 1 and 2 HD humanoids with minimal spellcasting ability. PCs are as awesome and terrible as the monsters they fight, and the existence of the setting hinges on the fact that both are exceedingly rare and more inclined to focus on each other than on changing the world.

If this were true, we'd still be building castles, since the ratio of civilians to soldiers has shifted greatly in favor of the non-combatants. And the typical castle still provides ample protection from modern firearms up to small man-portable rockets and a certain amount of artillery. But beyond that? Modern military firepower has essentially rendered the castle obsolete. A single smart bomb through a window of the keep would wipe out the royal line of a monarchy relying on a castle to keep them safe today.

You don't build a strongpoint to fend off the civilians, you build them with the resources of an attacking force in mind. Why spend hundreds of thousands of GP and years of construction work on a castle when a saboteur with heat Metal, Warp Wood or Stone Shape can ruin it's integrity? Etc.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

You don't build a strongpoint to fend off the civilians, you build them with the resources of an attacking force in mind. Why spend hundreds of thousands of GP and years of construction work on a castle when a saboteur with heat Metal, Warp Wood or Stone Shape can ruin it's integrity? Etc.

I'm not talking about civilians. I am talking about the military forces that oppose them. And that's exactly my point. Castles exist because the people who build them don't have to worry about these things on a regular basis; they are not a part of the resources of the forces that typically attack them. There are no castles in worlds built to accommodate PCs.

The problem isn't Wizards. The problem is that you cannot have a coherent feudal society in a world with 10th level characters, because there is no way to control 10th level characters. Everyone wants to have these nice pseudo-medieval kingdoms in their game, but then they want a world full of 15th level NPCs and wonder why such insignificant, low-level characters are capable of destroying everything. The problem isn't the game rules, it's the fashion in which the rules are being applied.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If this were true, we'd still be building castles, since the ratio of civilians to soldiers has shifted greatly in favor of the non-combatants. And the typical castle still provides ample protection from modern firearms up to small man-portable rockets and a certain amount of artillery. But beyond that? Modern military firepower has essentially rendered the castle obsolete. A single smart bomb through a window of the keep would wipe out the royal line of a monarchy relying on a castle to keep them safe today.

We still do make strongholds, though, no matter what we call them. Ft. Knox is a watchword for security in the western world, specifically the Gold Bullion Depository.

And it's a castle:

(And yes, the US military absolutely designs with the idea that someone might engage in a land war in the United States. It's happened repeatedly, after all.)

While there are obviously things that can get into a castle in a fantasy game, it stops a lot of the low level riff-raff -- who always outnumber everyone else, thus eliminating the largest percentage of the threats -- and, at the end of the day, without genre-busting, having some sort of stronghold is the most reasonable place to hole up, even if it's not impregnable.

 

[Dandu]

Isn't the United Stated Bullion Depository operated by the Treasury Department? Correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that the Bullion Depository was constructed from the beginning as a vault for valuable materials and never as a military installation.

 

[TanisFrey]

I am think that most castles in a fantasy setting will look more like classical Greek city-state walls (very thick, 15 to 20 feet thick) or more modern like the star forts of Napoleonic war era.

If you look at the the mid-level wizard (5th level) as an equivalent of a cannon, you should find the forts designed to deal with cannons being used, meaning the star forts. They look like stars when you look down upon them. They had sloped outside walls that were very thick. The slop wall would often cause cannon shots to deflect upwards and/or adsorb the hit by being back by an earth embankment that was 15 to 20 feet thick. They had cannon ports built into them to fire back, you install arrow slits instead and placed archer or wizards to shoot out them.

 

[kitcik]

Near the end of a 5-year, 3-5 games per week campaign in 1E (i.e. 7th-11th grades), one of my characters constructed a pyramid. I found this greatly more defendable than a castle and greatly more cutomizable than a cliff dwelling or under-mountain fortress. I was able to withstand sieges, frontal assauls, stealth and magic. Of course, it helped that my character was a 33rd level cleric - the highest level character (PC or NPC) in the campaign world - but that was also a magnet for challenges.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Isn't the United Stated Bullion Depository operated by the Treasury Department? Correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that the Bullion Depository was constructed from the beginning as a vault for valuable materials and never as a military installation.

The United States Bullion Depository was constructed by the United States Treasury on land owned by the U.S. Army. Security is provided by the United States Mint Police with additional support from the U.S. Army. At the time of its construction it was a vault for valuable materials on a military installation. Today, much of the surrounding land has been developed for other uses.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We still do make strongholds

I never said we didn't. I said we don't build castles.

Though the walls of Ft. Knox are reinforced, they are not built the same way old casles were. The walls are not 30' thick at the base, tapering upwards. You won't find open battlements. You won't find concentric rings of earthworks & battlements. It's primary defense against anything heavier than man-portable armaments is using the forces stationed there to take out anything too threatening, not static defenses. A few, well placed artillery rounds on that structure would render it useless for quite a while.

Besides, if you want to look at a modern, aboveground strongpoint, look at the Pentagon. It has special bulkheads to contain blasts and fires. It has thick walls. Etc. Again, it does NOT have berms or other earthworks, open areas from which to retaliate against attacking forces...nor does it house significantly dangerous standing forces of it's own.

And we know that structure's recent history.

 

[RainOfSteel]

[...] if the DM is now just changing the rules because someone knows how to zone their enemy [...]

There isn't any such thing as "just now changing the rules" for a GM. The GM is the first and last call on the rules at any point in time.

If players extend the game into areas not covered by the rules, the GM has to make stuff up to handle it. Calling BS on a GM when he is working to handle non-standard situations is just ingratitude. GM's aren't perfect. If things go badly for a player as a result of an off the cuff GM call, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

There is difference between random decisions on existing rules and needing to make up rules that didn't exist until that point in time.

And the second or third time a boulder appears in midair,

The spell being mentioned is Invisibility. The moment you roll the attack to hit when you drop the "shrunken boulder", then as long as there are any foes down below, which seems likely during a siege, the attacker becomes visible. You would need Greater Invisibility to get past that, which requires a higher-level caster. Higher altitudes introduce ever-greater winds for extra to hit penalties.

The SRD's array of spells really have little or nothing to do with siege warfare. While there are plenty of spells that appear to cleverly aid an attack, there are few that appear to assist in defense, at least for long enough to cast ahead of time and without xp expenditures.

This subject has been debated going back many years. What if your enemy builds not traditional medieval castles, but cubes ala Barbara Hambly's Time of the Dark? Dropping rocks on that is going to be pointless. The entire structure is enchanted. You say that is difficult and expensive? Yes. It also laughs in the face of its enemies. In a magical world, the castles are going to be enchanted to one degree or another in my opinion.

Then there is the old "city of illusions" trick. The enchantment that goes up makes it so that people who approach the castle cannot find it unless they are guided in by the inhabitants.

There would probably be a whole sub-profession of Wizards that works on fortifications.

Walls of Force (the spell) can only be cast vertically.

There were interpretations where older edition versions could be cast horizontally.

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In 3.5, a Wall of Force is 10' x 10' per level and a Permanency requires 2,500 xp per spell. To cover a castle (or what comes to mind when I think of castle) would require a huge amount of xp. That amount isn't going to be readily available for any amount of money. So, even beyond there being no horizontal casting in this edition, it seems unlikely it would be used to defend a castle, at least to me.

Bah! See invisibility has a range of personal, your town watch would have to be composed of 10th level wizards

What does a range of personal have to do with being a 10th level character? In 3.5, See Invisibility allows: "You can see any objects or beings that are invisible within your range of vision [...]" The spell has a range of personal, not the vision granted.

See invisibilty doesn't come up till the rocks start falling.

The falling rocks have no bearing on See Invisibility, unless they have been made invisible somehow, in which case See Invisibility will allow them to be seen.

Why not just teleport over the target with a shrunken mountaintop,

By what means is the mountaintop being shrunk? The Wish spell?

 

[PoorHobo]

What does a range of personal have to do with being a 10th level character? In 3.5, See Invisibility allows: "You can see any objects or beings that are invisible within your range of vision [...]" The spell has a range of personal, not the vision granted.

I was actually replying to myself, where I had suggested wizards casting both see invisibility and permanancy on several of the watch so that a city could have someone watching both the sky and city for invisible intruders. Range personal means that the wizard can't cast it on a member of the watch he must cast it on himself and function as the watch himself. Level 10 is required for permanancy, If you wanted a watch with permanant see invisibility like I had suggested earlier they would have to be 10th level wizards.

And when I said see invisibilty comes up when the rocks start falling I meant that unless you have 10th level wizards as your town watch that you aren't likey going to see an invisible wizard above your city before he start dropping rocks. So when boulders start apearing from the sky then its time for someone to cast see invisibilty to find out what the threat is.