He can't feed himself through a hood......or hoods.
-O
Maybe a mask that just covers the eyes. I wonder was the man in iron mask an eladrin.
Do castles make sense in a world of dragons & spells?
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Maybe a mask that just covers the eyes. I wonder was the man in iron mask an eladrin.
Mark Chance
Boingy! Boingy!
Invisibility's utility for infiltration can be thwarted by closed doors and guard dogs.
But Dungeons do 
- It is Dungeons and Dragons, not castles and dragons.
As others have said, it all depends on your view of the game world and what you have put into it. With magic, there is a counter for every foe or attack, if you think long and hard about it. Is this a failure of game building? No, it is just too many veriations and options to be addressed in a game.
One of the easiest of spells can cause all sorts of interesting effects for defence & security, animate object. Just think on it.
- It is Dungeons and Dragons, not castles and dragons. As others have said, it all depends on your view of the game world and what you have put into it. With magic, there is a counter for every foe or attack, if you think long and hard about it. Is this a failure of game building? No, it is just too many veriations and options to be addressed in a game.
One of the easiest of spells can cause all sorts of interesting effects for defence & security, animate object. Just think on it.
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That's why all th ehigh level NPCs have to call on lowly adventurers to get the mcguffin. The NPCs have to stay and protect the castle!
Celebrim
Legend
Invisibility's utility for infiltration can be thwarted by closed doors and guard dogs.
That was my suggestion.
celebrim said:
Guard dogs are an available low level solution. Additional hardening of the access to gate houses and internal checkpoints using techniques similar to those used to control the flow of prisoners help but also increase the time required to shift defenders to defend a breach. These technique are more along the lines of 'make do with what we have' rather than really good solutions. Once you have a serious security breach into internal living spaces, having gaurd dogs and checkpoints everywhere reduces live ability to the point that it no longer seems appropriate simulation. Large doors that see high traffic are breached fairly easily except during a seige, and the whole point of the invisible approach is to try to achieve surprise. Truly succesful defense then involves having invisibility countermeasures and alarms at major corridor intersections and important gates, and an anti-infiltrator task force (guard dogs, low level wizards with glitterdust, fighters trained in blindfighting, high-ish level NPC's, etc.) ready to respond to threats.
The main thrust of my comments is that if you want to minimize the impact invisibility has on defensive design, that you need to make those magical countermeasures relatively cheap, long duration, and available at relatively low caster level. I think there is some justification for this. Magic Mouth provides a template for what can be done in terms of duration (triggered spell that is permanent until discharged at 2nd level, 1st level for Bards), and Faithful Hound provides a fairly high level example as a cap on how effective a lower level countermeasure may be. Alarm doesn't have the nice 'permenent until discharged' or 'trigger' effects, but it isn't fooled by invisible creatures either. See invisibility is a 2nd level spell, so detecting invisible creatures shouldn't be particularly high level. Glitterdust provides an effective countermeasure to invisibility as a 2nd level spell. Put this all together and its suggests that spell based invisibility counter measures with all the desired properties ought not to be more than 3rd or 4th level.
Permenent until discharged 'Alarm': This could be a 2nd level spell, and while you couldn't defend trafficed corridors with it, its an effective countermeasure in ventilation, pipes, and sewers.
'Magic Mouth' with 'see invisibility' feature, triggered to go off when an invisible creature comes in range: Probably 3rd level, and is an excellent counter measure for internal intersections and large halls where you can station sentries but doors aren't practical.
'Glitterdust' with 'permenent until discharged' duration: This would be about 4th level, and is an excellect countermeasure at large entry points where at least some of the gaurds are shielded behind fighting positions. Can also be combined with any of the above to summon additional help, so a castle which has a 7th level mage dedicated to its defense (which even most 'grim and gritty' sorts of campaigns usually won't balk at too much) can still make a major hastle without spending alot of XP.
'Arcane Lock' with specified trigger: At 3rd level you could have an improved arcane lock, where the pass trigger can be specified by the caster to be something other than 'self'. For example, the tigger might be, "Pass only humans wearing this uniform and holy symbol, and who speak the word XYZZY". This provides excellent access control while still allowing freedom of movement for the inhabitants.
Faithful Hound: Available at 5th level, but doesn't have the 'cast it and forget about it' feature that so important in a defensive spell. High level characters might have this spell available (probably on scrolls) to guard leaders, wells, and other critical points of the defence. Also, at 9th level and higher, you can start making at least some of the above effects permenent, which has a high up front cost but means you don't generally have to replace the spell once it is triggered.
After that, consideration must be made to locking down a castle from teleportation attack...
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The simplest way to foil invisibility, with minimal impact to livability, is with a bag of flour, powdered chalk, or similar substance, deployed at each entrance to the castle and perhaps at checkpoints inside. For the cost of some chalk, a pail of water, and a towel (so guests can wipe the chalk off their feet once inside), you can make life very difficult for invisible intruders. Moreover, you can deploy this defense as needed and mop it up when the threat recedes.
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Steel_Wind
Legend
As many have mentioned, it depends upon the nature and scale of magic and flight, generally, in your campaign world.
This dependency in the verisimilitude of the campaign world is, I might add, one of my principal complaints about 3.xx. The extremely high powered nature of the game and the default assumptions in the Rules as to the ready availability of magic items (which 3.xx treat as a simple commodity) within the game world is, without doubt, at odds with the supposed medieval feel of the game world when evaluated on a logical basis.
So, are castles consistent with the sheer power in 3.5 and magic items which are bought and sold as a commodity? Nope. They are not. If verisimilitude is your aim, it's not even remotely close.
There is no law of FRP gaming which ways that this must bother a DM or the players. If everybody is perfectly comfortable with the inconsistency, and you want to say it works, go ahread.
But on a rational basis, these structures (and indeed, much of the underlying social/political system in a medieval society) just does not make sense within the uber_powered default assumptions in the 3.5 rule system.
Gameist design principles certainly won out over simulationist world building when considering this aspect of 3.xx. For most this is fine and is just hand-waved away; for a minority it is not fine and requires significant re-thinking the assumptions in order to make some sort of supposed "sense".
Where an individual stands on the Gameist/Simulationist spectrum is a matter of personal preference. There is never a right and wrong to a person's preferences. I would argue, however, that there most definitely can be a right and wrong when trying to justify a gameist design principle and pass it off as reasonable simulation.
If the logical inconsistency does not bother you, then it doesn't; however, if it does, then you will need to adjust the default assumptions in the 3.xx Rules system (or, alternatively, adjust the socio-political and military structures in your game world). *shrug*
This dependency in the verisimilitude of the campaign world is, I might add, one of my principal complaints about 3.xx. The extremely high powered nature of the game and the default assumptions in the Rules as to the ready availability of magic items (which 3.xx treat as a simple commodity) within the game world is, without doubt, at odds with the supposed medieval feel of the game world when evaluated on a logical basis.
So, are castles consistent with the sheer power in 3.5 and magic items which are bought and sold as a commodity? Nope. They are not. If verisimilitude is your aim, it's not even remotely close.
There is no law of FRP gaming which ways that this must bother a DM or the players. If everybody is perfectly comfortable with the inconsistency, and you want to say it works, go ahread.
But on a rational basis, these structures (and indeed, much of the underlying social/political system in a medieval society) just does not make sense within the uber_powered default assumptions in the 3.5 rule system.
Gameist design principles certainly won out over simulationist world building when considering this aspect of 3.xx. For most this is fine and is just hand-waved away; for a minority it is not fine and requires significant re-thinking the assumptions in order to make some sort of supposed "sense".
Where an individual stands on the Gameist/Simulationist spectrum is a matter of personal preference. There is never a right and wrong to a person's preferences. I would argue, however, that there most definitely can be a right and wrong when trying to justify a gameist design principle and pass it off as reasonable simulation.
If the logical inconsistency does not bother you, then it doesn't; however, if it does, then you will need to adjust the default assumptions in the 3.xx Rules system (or, alternatively, adjust the socio-political and military structures in your game world). *shrug*
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DiCaprio's a good actor at least 
This has been my experience in Dwarf Fortress (in which the primary enemies are goblins). A lot of times, they come in sneaking - invisible for all purposes. I solve this by chaining dogs up at the entrance.
Another solution is to trap the hell out of all entrances... but that's less fun, and if the enemies can avoid traps, it doesn't work so well.
A possible solution for light with less risk of teleportation in a subterranean fortress is to use glass ceilings in large caverns. Enemies teleport to the other side, and then plummet to their deaths.
Another possibility (which requires a bit more realism) is to consider that medieval glass is not like modern glass. It's all melty and you can't really see through it. I would argue that you can't use that sort of glass for line of sight, but that it still provides lighting.
Something else to consider is multi-racial dwellings - a human castle on top of a dwarven fortress. Humans worry about aerial attackers, and the dwarves have got the burrowers covered.
This has been my experience in Dwarf Fortress (in which the primary enemies are goblins). A lot of times, they come in sneaking - invisible for all purposes. I solve this by chaining dogs up at the entrance.
Another solution is to trap the hell out of all entrances... but that's less fun, and if the enemies can avoid traps, it doesn't work so well.
A possible solution for light with less risk of teleportation in a subterranean fortress is to use glass ceilings in large caverns. Enemies teleport to the other side, and then plummet to their deaths.
Another possibility (which requires a bit more realism) is to consider that medieval glass is not like modern glass. It's all melty and you can't really see through it. I would argue that you can't use that sort of glass for line of sight, but that it still provides lighting.
Something else to consider is multi-racial dwellings - a human castle on top of a dwarven fortress. Humans worry about aerial attackers, and the dwarves have got the burrowers covered.
What inconsistency? What, specifically, is inconsistent? As many here have pointed out, castles still make sense in a high-magic world, just as fences and trenches still make sense in a world of jet fighters and ICBMs.
(You know what doesn't make sense in a high-magic world? Polearms. Polearms are utterly unwieldy weapons except when used in close formation, and in a world where fireball-slingers are common, close formation is suicidal. While castles might still exist, I would expect battles in the open field to look a lot more modern than medieval.)
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