A How-To Guide for Defending a City

[Tonguez]

One Very High level Druid

-Army of Flyers = Control Winds, Chain Lightning, Air Elementals
-Army of Burrowers = Stone to Mud, Any earth moving spell, Earthquake, Earth Elementals
-Army of Giants = Elementals, Entangle
-Long range siege engines = Chain Lightning, Storm of Vengenace, Fire Elementals

 

[nittanytbone]

1) Have the phone number for a party of PCs. "How convenient! A well balanced party of four heroes capable of taking on nearly any threat!"
2) Use dungeons. Traditional castles are highly vulnerable to magic, just as medieval castles were highly vulnerable to gunpowder weapons. Complexes underground, which restricts line of sight, prevents Area of Effect blasting magic from being super effective, allows defenders to easily take cover behind every corner and arrow slit and trap, and neutralizes the mobility of flying monsters and the like, are much more defensible for low level human warriors.

 

[Darklone]

Agreed. As soon as you have flying, castles on the surface are senseless.

 

[Tonguez]

Agreed. As soon as you have flying, castles on the surface are senseless.

Yes and hence the reason that following the air raids London was rebuilt underground beneath a mile of reinforced concrete and steel as a warren of interconnected tunnelways

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The problem with this issue is that you have a limited amount of resources and an unlimited (or undefined) number of possibilities for attack. You can never defend against everything. If you know of specific threats, you can try to defend against those. But trying to turn your city into a fortress against any potential threat is going to bankrupt your city in no time at all.

If you don't know the specifics of the threat(s) you face, you're better off hiring as many high level adventurers as you can who are well equipped to face a variety of challenges. Better to pay 100,000 gp to an adventuring party than to spend 100,000 gp on a wall that is easily breached/bypassed.

 

[lukelightning]

If you're playing an Eberron campaign (or just using the artificer class), artificers would be essential for city defense; even without their item creation abilities, their infusions can buff lots of rank-and-file soldiers' weapons; they can make a bunches of arrows bane and give each archer a few.