Castles in a D&D/Fantasy setting

[tomBitonti]

Should it be assumed that there would be no air defenses?

Allowing such fliers as griffons breaks normal physics severely enough that, with similar breakage, countermeasures that can shoot out to several thousand feet ought to be available. If a griffon can fly, a ballista (strung with griffon tendons) should be able to shoot quite a bit further.

Also, would shorter range active countermeasures be possible? Either, counterbatteries against thrown or dropped rocks, or something more akin to reactive armor?

Thx!
TomB

 

[Tony Vargas]

To be honest, while you raise several questions in your blog you don't really answer any of them.
And in your article about flying threats I disagree with your notion that creating anti-air guns would be easy. Imo it would actually be impossible without magic.
Bow and ballista designs have a very low range which gets even shorter when you fire them upwards. Every flyer out there can fly higher than how high medieval weaponry can shoot. You can of course try to build a bigger ballista which could shoot higher, but it quickly becomes gigantic and thus hard if not impossible to aim and very complicated to construct. And all fliers have to do is to just fly upward a bit and your new ballista is useless again.

Anytime you pit the fantastic against the mundane, the fantastic is going to have an unfair advantage. Most D&D fliers wouldn't be able to get off the ground, if they had to show the same respect for the laws of RL physics as you are putting on ballistae. Heracles shot arrows at the sun, and got him (the god Helios) to back off and give him a break from the heat. Maybe look to his example, not Newton's, when trying to deal with fantasy fliers.


(and I see Tom already made that point)

 

[Derren]

Should it be assumed that there would be no air defenses?

Allowing such fliers as griffons breaks normal physics severely enough that, with similar breakage, countermeasures that can shoot out to several thousand feet ought to be available. If a griffon can fly, a ballista (strung with griffon tendons) should be able to shoot quite a bit further.

Also, would shorter range active countermeasures be possible? Either, counterbatteries against thrown or dropped rocks, or something more akin to reactive armor?

Thx!
TomB

Replace griffons with hot-air baloons then...

The problem with superpowered ranged weapons is that there is no reason to restrict their use to anti air duties. What can fire accurately one mile upwards can also fire accurately one mile sideways. So the existence of such guns would change the entire way wars are fought right into WW1 trench warfare.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Replace griffons with hot-air baloons then...

Can't control their direction and have trivial payload, so not really the threat griffon cavalry or invisible flying wizards raining fireballs & lightning bolts would be.

The problem with superpowered ranged weapons is that there is no reason to restrict their use to anti air duties. What can fire accurately one mile upwards can also fire accurately one mile sideways.

Given a clear field of fire, sure - which might help make castles relevant, gain, since providing a clear line of sight from high ground is part of the point.

So the existence of such guns would change the entire way wars are fought right into WW1 trench warfare.

It's not hard to picture a D&D battlefield, scorched by fireballs, with cloudkills crawling over it, and dragons making strafing runs, looking very much like a WWI no-man's-land.
Hey, I just flashed to Bakshi's movie "Wizards."

Take trenches a step further and you have - Dungeons!

 

[Derren]

Can't control their direction and have trivial payload, so not really the threat griffon cavalry or invisible flying wizards raining fireballs & lightning bolts would be.

Given a clear field of fire, sure - which might help make castles relevant, gain, since providing a clear line of sight from high ground is part of the point. It's not hard to picture a D&D battlefield, scorched by fireballs, with cloudkills crawling over it, and dragons making strafing runs, looking very much like a WWI no-man's-land.
Hey, I just flashed to Bakshi's movie "Wizards."

Take trenches a step further and you have - Dungeons!

You have to wait for the right wind, but you can control baloon. After all, how are they controlled today? And their payload isn't all that small. You can put a lot of arrows in there or greek fire etc. if you have access to that.

You also forget that when the castle has a clear sight to something, that something has a clear sight to the castles tower. So basically it comes down to artillery duels.
And dungeons, as already mentioned, have very few ways to affect the outside so their military use is rather low and they are as likely to become a death trap than being a fortification.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You have to wait for the right wind, but you can control baloon. After all, how are they controlled today? And their payload isn't all that small. You can put a lot of arrows in there or greek fire etc. if you have access to that.

Just not that threatening. I mean, when balloons were developed, they were used for observation, not aerial assault for many good reasons. You need a significant wind to get over the target quickly, but then you can't stay over it to drop that greek fire or whatever, and you can't carry much of it, and you can't do it accurately from a great height (and the wind you need may not be at a convenient altitude, either), and you're just not going to be very fast, so the enemy has ample time to shoot at you.

Once your fliers are conforming to low-tech physics, too, the threat drops off to just about nil.

You also forget that when the castle has a clear sight to something, that something has a clear sight to the castles tower. So basically it comes down to artillery duels.

If the fantasy triple-A is powerful enough to drop the fliers, but not knock down castle walls, it shouldn't be too major an issue.

And dungeons, as already mentioned, have very few ways to affect the outside so their military use is rather low and they are as likely to become a death trap than being a fortification.

Yeah, but they have the advantage of being in the name of the game, so any chance to circle the discussion around to them...
;P

 

[Derren]

Just not that threatening. I mean, when balloons were developed, they were used for observation, not aerial assault for many good reasons. You need a significant wind to get over the target quickly, but then you can't stay over it to drop that greek fire or whatever, and you can't carry much of it, and you can't do it accurately from a great height (and the wind you need may not be at a convenient altitude, either), and you're just not going to be very fast, so the enemy has ample time to shoot at you.

Once your fliers are conforming to low-tech physics, too, the threat drops off to just about nil.

If the fantasy triple-A is powerful enough to drop the fliers, but not knock down castle walls, it shouldn't be too major an issue.

Yeah, but they have the advantage of being in the name of the game, so any chance to circle the discussion around to them...
;P

Shoot them down with what?
And the "super AAA" does not need to destroy a wall, just to kill anyone standing on it. When it is accurate enough to combat high flying threats then it is also accurate enough to do that.
And just because "Dungeons" is in the name does not make them any more useful.

 

[Wangalade]

To be honest, while you raise several questions in your blog you don't really answer any of them.
And in your article about flying threats I disagree with your notion that creating anti-air guns would be easy. Imo it would actually be impossible without magic.
Bow and ballista designs have a very low range which gets even shorter when you fire them upwards. Every flyer out there can fly higher than how high medieval weaponry can shoot. You can of course try to build a bigger ballista which could shoot higher, but it quickly becomes gigantic and thus hard if not impossible to aim and very complicated to construct. And all fliers have to do is to just fly upward a bit and your new ballista is useless again.

When I said it would be easy I didn't mean that it would be physically easy for them to do, but that it's easy to see a solution that based medieval tech that might be somewhat comparable to modern solutions to the problem. As the goal is to stop the flyer from becoming a threat, and not necessarily to kill it; if the ballista can cause a flyer to retreat to a higher altitude where its attacks are no longer efftective then it served its purpose. The ballista doesn't have to be capable of killing the flyer; it just needs an effective range greater than the range of any of the attacks that the flyer can make.

Even a rider on a pegasus can just drop sharpened rocks from high above and will likely injure someone eventually while a dragon or other large flyer can drop trebuchet sized rocks which would easily smash through ceilings or buckets of shrapnel down there. And if the flyer is part of a more advanced army they can drop down jugs of greek fire and similar nasty things. Or you can simply drop down torches to see if something catches fire.

It is extremely difficult to hit a specific target by simply dropping an object from a high altitude, and the greater the altitude, the more the object is affected by wind and other variables. A rider on a pegasus might employ these tactics, but I don't see a dragon or any of the other really big flyers dropping rocks. A dragon has its breath weapon and wing buffet and melee attacks, just because they are intelligent doesn't mean they would resort to the "optimal" strategy; personality plays a role in this just as much as physics.

I also have some ideas of how defenses against such attacks might be strengthened. Defending from high velocity objects from above would not be greatly different than from a horizontal plane. You might see the roofs of fortifications piled high with earth and timber to defend against falling rocks in a manner similar to how walls transitioned from stone to earth and timber to diffuse the impact of cannonballs. without explosive shells, falling rocks can be just as easily defended against as early cannonballs.


I just want to emphasize that I started this thread for suggestion of possible threats unique to the fantasy world, and not suggestions on how to defend against those threats. It's important to look at the problems defenders might face and analyze those problems before proposing solutions. I do think something at least partially underground might be a major portion of the final solution to fight off all the threats,but that's not really what I'm looking for at the moment. Having said that, all of these comments are appreciated and have given me some good ideas.

 

[Shasarak]

Replace griffons with hot-air baloons then...

The problem with superpowered ranged weapons is that there is no reason to restrict their use to anti air duties. What can fire accurately one mile upwards can also fire accurately one mile sideways. So the existence of such guns would change the entire way wars are fought right into WW1 trench warfare.

In my opinion machine guns had a lot more to do with WW1 trench warfare then artillery did.

 

[Derren]

When I said it would be easy I didn't mean that it would be physically easy for them to do, but that it's easy to see a solution that based medieval tech that might be somewhat comparable to modern solutions to the problem. As the goal is to stop the flyer from becoming a threat, and not necessarily to kill it; if the ballista can cause a flyer to retreat to a higher altitude where its attacks are no longer efftective then it served its purpose. The ballista doesn't have to be capable of killing the flyer; it just needs an effective range greater than the range of any of the attacks that the flyer can make.



It is extremely difficult to hit a specific target by simply dropping an object from a high altitude, and the greater the altitude, the more the object is affected by wind and other variables. A rider on a pegasus might employ these tactics, but I don't see a dragon or any of the other really big flyers dropping rocks. A dragon has its breath weapon and wing buffet and melee attacks, just because they are intelligent doesn't mean they would resort to the "optimal" strategy; personality plays a role in this just as much as physics.

I also have some ideas of how defenses against such attacks might be strengthened. Defending from high velocity objects from above would not be greatly different than from a horizontal plane. You might see the roofs of fortifications piled high with earth and timber to defend against falling rocks in a manner similar to how walls transitioned from stone to earth and timber to diffuse the impact of cannonballs. without explosive shells, falling rocks can be just as easily defended against as early cannonballs.


I just want to emphasize that I started this thread for suggestion of possible threats unique to the fantasy world, and not suggestions on how to defend against those threats. It's important to look at the problems defenders might face and analyze those problems before proposing solutions. I do think something at least partially underground might be a major portion of the final solution to fight off all the threats,but that's not really what I'm looking for at the moment. Having said that, all of these comments are appreciated and have given me some good ideas.

Considering that you can simply drop things from up high there is no possible way that a mundane ballista can match the range of flyers. And if it can you still have the problem that you now have superballistas which would change how warfare in this setting is fought (more WW1, less medieval/renaissance).
Sure, hitting a specific target is hard ir even impossible. Carpet bombing on the other hand isn't. Especially when you can employ chemical weapons like alchemist (greek) fire or just have enough shrapnel or stones to eventually hit something.
The argument that intelligent beings would not always use the optimal strategy often gets used in a way meaning that you do not have to consider that strategy at all as no one uses them like you do here. But that is false, someone will use it and when they start having great successes with it many others will copy it. The more intelligent someone is the more likely that is the case.
And especially a red dragon has very good tools for firebombing. Simply collect stuff that burn well, fly over the castle, ignite it and drop it. That is basically how firebombing worked in the world wars and would equally be effective with medieval castles. Or if the dragon somehow can acquire a large cauldron it could fill it with water (or naturally occurring tar or other substance if that happens to be nearby), lug it over the castle, heat it and then spill it down. Believe me, a shower of boiling hot water is quite painful and can put someone out of action if he gets a good dose of it.).

There are passive defences, but they at best only delay the inevitable. The most simple and reasonable are wooden roofs on the walls and other areas were people usually are. But that still leaves many areas open where fires can be spread. Building a roof everywhere is not really practical as the more roofs you build, the less you are able to shoot low flying flyers who then can deploy troops on the roof and do other bad things without you being able to stop them.

Going underground protects you from aerial attacks, but also removes any offensive capacity you have. As soon as you retreat underground you have basically lost as the enemy can now operate with impunity. The best compromise would really be something like a hollowed out pyramid which I have already mentioned but that would be extremely expensive and only really useable together with a normal castle next to it for people to live in during peace time.