D&D General What ever happened to the Cavalier?

[Willie the Duck]

The open topped castle is an anachronism even in the real world and has to do with the fact that in warmer climates in Europe, hoardings were generally made of wood and often constructed only in wartime and neglected otherwise. Thus, the Edwardian castles people are familiar with in ruins are open topped today because the wooden hoardings long ago disintegrated or were purposely dismantled (Edward's castles generally served their purpose of pacifying Wales and integrating it into the culture and economy of England), but which would not have been open topped if the castle was expecting conflict. However, castles in Northern and Eastern Europe tended to have permanent stone and tile hoardings covering the fighting positions atop the walls and towers. And historical castles not only had arrow loops but in their final stages also cannon loops for destroying whatever siege equipment was brought against them, so the whole "ballista" thing isn't entirely without merit either.

I don't think anyone is talking about not having hoardings atop the walls, nor the primary donjon not having a roof. What is being discussed is castles with walls guarding large open baileys, with walls that, for the most part*, are focused on repelling forces concentrated outside -- where major threats being able to fly over and land inside the defenses would be a significant problem against which the general setup was not designed.
*although defending even if the walls were breached certainly would be part of the plan.

Generally speaking, if fantasy air forces are a thing, then fantasy castles are also air bases where fantasy air forces are stored safely. But it's not a given that in a particular setting you have fantasy air forces more common than Bellerophon on his steed.

I would call fantasy air forces rather rare in my experience. However, there is always the occasional dragon or manticore attack. In general and across time, I've tended to see defenses against such occurrences that are more 'here, we're showing we know that flying creatures are a threat' level than actually sufficient to take out dragons or multiple mid-sized flying monsters. 5e making several dozen archers on the wall be a real threat to dragons has probably changed that math.

More often, what you actually see in D&D is fairy tale castles along the lines of Neuschwanstein which represent not castles as they actually were but romantic images of castles as we wished they were or how they appear in our fancy. Certainly, for example, Castle Ravenloft is such a castle.

I'm not prepared to speak to the breadth of D&D in-book fantasy art, nor to 5e adventures, but overall in D&D castles which show up in adventures and have castle maps seem to follow the donjon-in-bailey-surrounded-by-walls model.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think anyone is talking about not having hoardings atop the walls, nor the primary donjon not having a roof.

If you aren't, then your entire line of argument goes away. Because what's not important is whether an enemy force can fly over the walls and land on in the large open bailey. What's important is whether or not the enemy force can fly over and land on the tops of towers. Because in any high middle ages motte and bailey style castle, the bailey itself is designed to become a killing zone if anyone breaches the gate. It doesn't really matter if you breached the gate by going through it or over it, if you end in the bailey you are behaving exactly how the architects that designed those fortifications expected you to behave. A small force commando style entering the bailey doesn't require changing the structure or design of the castle to any large degree. The bailey, whether inner or outer, is still designed to be a killing zone.

The problem with the open topped castles is that castles weren't designed to be defensible from the top down. So if you could land on the roof of the keep, you could put the king in check without dealing with the pawns, castles, and knights guarding him. Or if you could land on the roof of a tower, you could breach the defense in unexpected ways compared to a defense designed to resist attackers attacking from the bottom of the tower up or which assumed individual towers represented "hard points" in the defenses that could command the surrounding area.

Hoardings of any sort inadvertently also resist aerial commando raids of this sort, leaving the baileys as the only place to land and thus leaving the only place to land a prepared killing zone.

However, there is always the occasional dragon or manticore attack. In general and across time, I've tended to see defenses against such occurrences that are more 'here, we're showing we know that flying creatures are a threat' level than actually sufficient to take out dragons or multiple mid-sized flying monsters. 5e making several dozen archers on the wall be a real threat to dragons has probably changed that math.

In general and across time, a couple score archers and crossbowmen in castles always had a better chance against dragon or manticore attack than the same force standing in a field. It's not such attackers that threaten the viability of traditional castles. The real problem with fantasy air forces is that they can bombard the castle with stones from an arbitrary height above which torsion missile weapons and most spells short of weather control can't reach. This is a bit of a problem, but you can handwave around it if you care too, by making fantasy air forces rare, by making them counter each other, and by noting that by the end of the middle ages the outcome of sieges were foregone conclusions because of trebuchet's and cannons anyway, so fantasy high altitude bombing doesn't really change anything. The point of a castle was to force delay on the attackers until defenders could be mustered and arrive, not to resist an attack indefinitely.

Anyway, rant off. Pet peeve of mine, I admit.

 

[James Gasik]

Game of Thrones has a fairly epic example of dragon vs. castle with the flashback of how the Iron Throne was won. It doesn't go well for the defenders.

 

[Stormonu]

What about all the burrowing enemies that could totally destroy a castle? Bulettes and Delvers and Ankhegs and Earth Elementals being just the more well known examples.

Undermining was used, even in the real world. Usually done to collapse a wall to gain entrance, rarely used to infiltrate and do a surprise attack inside. Often there were counter-miner teams whose purpose was to detect and thwart attempts to undermine/burrow into the fortress.

If I recall correctly, D&D came out of an undermining attempt "gone wrong" in Dave Arneson's campaign where they miners found themselves in the strange dungeon of the fortress they were burrowing in.

 

[Andvari]

I think at least all warrior type classes (barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger etc.) should by default be competent at fighting from horseback.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Game of Thrones has a fairly epic example of dragon vs. castle with the flashback of how the Iron Throne was won. It doesn't go well for the defenders.

They were someone's beloved characters. Ten thousand feet of stone and iron could not have protected them from the author's malevolence.

 

[TwoSix]

Honestly, the whole team just fell apart once LeBron left, and they've finally managed to put some good players back together.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If D&D can handwave attacking specific body parts, I can live with not being able to target the mount without a special attack (and essentially give mounts an improved form of Evasion).

Now convince everyone else of that. Because until you do, a majority of players will assume that's what'll happen.

 

[James Gasik]

Treating a mount and it's rider as a single unit really does feel like the best way to handle the problems of mounted combat from a mechanics perspective. But I'm sure ten thousand of us nerds would light the internet on fire because of how that breaks their verisimilitude. We're a finicky bunch; we want solutions to problems, but they have to be the right solutions!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Just never listen to anyone who says 'verisimilitude' unironically.