Walls are odd in fantasy land as all the great threats can fly / magic.
So, there's an illogic to the idea that, since some things can fly, we should not use the simple defenses against the majority of things that cannot fly.
Walls are odd in fantasy land as all the great threats can fly / magic.
Those cities are old, usually centuries old - when they were constructed, there was a more credible threat of semi-conventional mass attack.
They're there mostly to stop land-bound monsters. Trust me, you'd want a wall too if aI've been flipping though Forgotten Realms maps and reading through the 3.5 and 5 lore...and I can't figure out why most of cities have fortified walls, especially those on the Sword Coast.
Not if all the walls are equipped with anti-dragon ballistas, of course you would expect to have a more angled breastwork, casements and civilian domesWalls are odd in fantasy land as all the great threats can fly / magic.
To keep safe you should live underground in " dungeons".
Walls are odd in fantasy land as all the great threats can fly / magic.
To keep safe you should live underground in " dungeons".
But the walls in most of the art and maps look contemporary of a civilization with a 15th - 16th century sensibility. They're either updating their defenses for offenses that don't exist...or cities in Faerun in the late 1400s looks the same as they did centuries ago.
I suppose you're right. This may be rolled into a gripe of mine that a setting that doesn't reflect the passage of time in it's culture, architecture, clothing, etc., is basically a dreamscape or theme park. It's more of an IP than a compelling world.Faerun has never really mapped cleanly to European architectural history. Indeed, the fantasy world generally doesn't seem to advance signifcantly, not unlike the Star Wars Old Republic, lasting thousands of years essentially unchanged. I'm not convinced there's any value in using Earth as the standard for comparison..