Can sieges withstand magical assault?

[kigmatzomat]

If it takes 95 Acid Balls to destroy a castle wall -- thats what 2 wands ? Not that much magic for alarge army -- Just get 10 or 20 wands and punch holes through the wall or use disintegrate to tunnel under the castle

To fire that off you'd need either 2 wizards and 5 minutes or one wizard and 9.5 minutes. During those minutes the defender's archers and siege engines are going to be pouring arrows into your mage. Sure, they're at -16 so they need 20's but since you'll be standing there for 48 or 95 rounds they'll each get several hits on you. The wands would be at 10th level caster and cost 2250gp each. That's 4500gp to make a single hole in a 10' thick wall. Since many castles had rings of walls, that would get you through the outer wall.

Realistically it doesn't even do that. Unlike kinetic weapons like siege engines, an (element)ball does not displace mass. So the attackers forces will be wading through a soup of dissolved stone on par with mud. Sounds like treacherous terrain. Using fire/ice/electrical spells and you have a huge pile of sand. Still not an open door way.

And while your groundpounders are going through that single rubble-strewn doorway, the defenders will be shooting the crap out of them and likely using their casters to whittle down the attacker's force either directly (fireball) or indirectly (bardsong, bless weapon, etc).

Or if the enemy is holed up in the castle teleport your elites into the countryside and trash the crops -- The Chauche (sp?) is likely to be very effective -- No you can't get the king and his knights but a fewof you teleport squads can destroy every forest and crop in the kingdom

If you weren't aware, most defenders would take everything they could carry and torch their own countryside when they retreated to the fortresses. It means the attackers have to cart in their own food and supplies while the locals live off the fortress's reserves. It also helps demoralize the troops when they get no loot and find themselves in a charred countryside with no shade or protection from the elements.

 

[The_Universe]

One of Raymond Feist's books described sieges in a magical world very well - I'm paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect of "Sieges never really get different, despite the presence of mages. One side casts spells, the other side counterspells, and on it goes throughout the battle, while the soldiers fight it out as they normally would.

Now, if your city has no mages, and the attacking force has tons? Could be a problem. But then, of course, we must remember that mages are hardly the heartiest of soldiers. A well-placed bowshot and it's all over...

Siege, in my game at least, remains a viable tactic.

 

[painandgreed]

To fire that off you'd need either 2 wizards and 5 minutes or one wizard and 9.5 minutes. During those minutes the defender's archers and siege engines are going to be pouring arrows into your mage. Sure, they're at -16 so they need 20's but since you'll be standing there for 48 or 95 rounds they'll each get several hits on you. The wands would be at 10th level caster and cost 2250gp each. That's 4500gp to make a single hole in a 10' thick wall. Since many castles had rings of walls, that would get you through the outer wall.

Actually, you're in for a long seige so you could just cast at random times on the order of one and hour average, so that the defenders never get a decent target because you effecticly have surprise. In a few days the wall is down.

Of course, you could always use rogues with Use Magic Device instead of actual wizards. The wizards could be in the back making and recharging wands while specially trained troops who look like all the other troops are mixed in with the army using wands. They could sneak and hide then use the wands in hit and run tactics only to fade back without present themselves as a target.

This begs the question of do fantasy world kingdoms train their own "special forces"? Either as an adventurer party or as rogues who can hide, climb walls, use magic items, and backstab? When they need such people in the wars they fight, do they rely upon the people who happen to join their army or do they train career soldiers with such skills? Even a small force of five to ten people with such skills could have good uses in large combats either in infiltrating inside the fortifications or by acting as fire support with wands. "Your mission, should you choose to take it, is to swim up the Denang river and into the castle. There you will identify the wizard Kurtz and neutralize him, with extreme predjudice."

 

[Andre]

Actually, the Germans just end-arounded the Maginot Line because the French "learned" that their money would be better spent on non-military expenditures before the line was completed.

By the end of WW2 the Line was essentially useless because its guns were too small to be effective against tanks at long range. But one could make a strong case that a completed Maginot Line in accordance with the original specifications would have effectively stopped any land war prior to 1942. With comparatively inexpensive upgrades, it would have remained serviceable into the '60s at least, barring nukes.

-end tangent-

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. IMO, the Maginot Line would have been breached at some point, just as the Siegfried Line was, just as the Japanese defenses on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and other islands were, and so on. And once breached at any point, the rest of the line becomes effectively worthless. In fact, I can't think of a single 20th century example of fortifications stopping an opponent more than temporarily. In warfare, both sides adapt and fortifications can be overcome.

Overall, I agree with Elder Basilisk. Mundane defenses, designed with a reasonable consideration toward magic, can stop most spellcasters dead in their tracks. With defensive spellcasters along for the ride, it's simply no contest.

At low levels of magic, I agree. However, that won't matter much since a siege can conquer a fixed location without ever breaching the walls - you just need to control the terrain around the fortress. We're pretty much back to real-world examples of sieges, which always succeeded if a relief force couldn't break the siege (either through combat, or by threatening another location, forcing the besieging army to leave).

At medium levels, if the defenders are passive, they'll still lose for the reason listed above (control of terrain). If they actively try to disrupt the siege, then I'd argue that a superior force would be needed to maintain it - otherwise it would be too easy to break the siege at times to get in supplies and reinforcements. And the walls will make a decent defense against this level of magical power. The only real weakness is the oft-mentioned kill team that sneaks into the fortress, taking out the most important individuals.

At high levels, the goal stops being a siege and becomes an attempt to destroy the fortress. With the spells available to high-level casters, I'd have to give the advantage to the attacker, as he will have the initiative and gets the first blow. Imagine several earthquake spells hitting that massive fortress guarding an important mountain pass, screen hiding the approach of several powerful creatures, a small army of fiends teleporting into the fortress, and so on. Defending a fixed location actually places the defenders at a disadvantage, IF enough firepower can be brought to bear on that location.

 

[Tonguez]

of course at High levels the defenders can call a Storm of Vegeance or Elemental Swarm over the assembled masses of attacking troops (or theri camp etc etc) which will absolutly obiliterate the attackers even as the earthquakes shake the city - mutual destruction is always a wonderful thing

Pretty much the only conclusion that can be drawn from all the above is that mass army tactics don't work when magic comes into play. The only effective strategy is that of the small elite squad otherwise known as the Party of Adventurers

(of course mass army's will be used - but thats just politics)

 

[Janx]

I think there's some room for clarification in definitions..

As I see it:

Siege = stand outside the castle and keep the enemy inside. Only fight when they come out or people try to go in.

Assualt = Helm's deep style, the attackers are actively trying to get into the castle with many troops

Stealth = this is assassination and sneaky stuff. A few guys sneak in and try to whack the leader.

Aerial Attack = new category which did NOT exist in medieval times. Can't fly. Didn't have beasts that flew and could drop in people and attackers. I'm excluding catapults and such as Aerial, because those are traditional Assault weapons. Aerial means anything beyond throwing rocks.

Stealth tactics are NOT sieges or Assaults and are available to both sides. Basically they are not valid for discussion on what the impact of magic. It's inherently obvious that both sides would be trying these tactics in addition to Siege or Assault tactics and would use any magic they had. Basically, what keeps leaders from getting assinated has nothing to do with being in a castle or not. Therefore castles aren't relevant (though a castle might be a little harder to get into...).

That leaves Sieges and Assaults. Based on my definitions, the siege style is intended to starve the defenders out. It disrupts supply lines for cities, etc. Having create food spells inside weakens the effect of a siege. Since you're not actively spending resources (other than sitting outside the castle out of range), it's cheap and may work. You might throw nasty spells at the castle (or feces) to demoralize and make the defenders expend resources, but this is a waiting game.

That leaves Assaults. Assuming a traditional castle build, it's true that many spells can do some nasty stuff to stone. But many of them are higher level. That means you have less access to them and the quantity is reduced. From the defender's stand-point, doing nasty stuff to the enemy is pretty easy with magic. Stinking Cloud is cheap and effective to force the enemy away from certain areas. The attacker is more exposed than the defender, so the defender always has the advantage. Ultimately, the only reason to Assault a castle is because you have MORE resources than the defender. And by resources, I mean spells or men. If you don't have more, the defender has the same things you do, AND a better position to use them from.

Lastly, we cover Aerial attacks. In reality, we're talking about attack vectors that were not available in medieval times. Some people touched on this with the discussion of castle evolution in response to cannons. But even with cannons, the attacks were launched from the ground. Thus, by controlling the shape of the ground, you could limit the effectiveness of attacks from the ground. The air changes all that. Assuming the attacker can get some aerial resources and the defenders can't, they can make bombing runs from high altitude and do a lot of damage for little risk. Get a Roc or other trained "flying thing with payload capacity" and start dropping rocks and dung on the enemy. Castles may have decent roofs to protect from catapults and such, but most areas are open. They were designed to protect from missles flying along a horizontal plane. Dropping stuff straight down really messes all that up. At best, the defenders might have a squadron of flyers themselves to dogfight the attackers. And that would be a cool scene. But due to space limitations to house those flyers, the attacker can likely bring in more flyers than the defender has in total. But then again, smart attackers ONLY attack when they think they have the advantage. And that advantage is usually I have more XYZ than they do.

And yeah, Wizards are likely to make more spells to help in sieges. To be honest, why pay to make special walls. Why not write a spell "Protect Walls" that gives walls a bonus to their numbers for a duration. Far cheaper, and you only need to use it during an attack.

In the same vein, Walls of Force could be placed as an aerial shield to protect from bombing runs.

So to sum up: If the attackers are the same as the defenders, the attackers lose. Combat always works that way. It's when the attackers have something extra that gives them the edge.

Janx

 

[Janx]

another important question: how many spell casters and what levels?

We could play the "I'll do this, and if you do that I'll do something else" game forever. With the unlimited resources of our mind, I think they call that arm-chair quarterbacking.

D&D tends to have stats on how many mages in the total population, etc. Using that info and then assessing what's the best both sides can come up with would be needed information.

Given a defense force of X, how would you defend the castle
Given an attacking force of Y, how would you attack the castle

As I said before, given the ability to assassinate, we'd all probably choose that over doing a full war. But that's outside the bounds of actually attacking a castle.

I think the core question is, what is the least change a defender must adopt to defend a castle from attack? Basically, at what extreme do things change where the scene no longer resembles a castle assualt?

 

[kigmatzomat]

Actually, you're in for a long seige so you could just cast at random times on the order of one and hour average, so that the defenders never get a decent target because you effecticly have surprise. In a few days the wall is down.

The problem is that you have troops in bow range and, IMO, the defenders are on watch and have a chance based on range to spot you casting. Disguising the caster will come at the cost of other troops that are chewed up by the archery or siege engines.

Except during a charge the attacker should pull their troops outside the effective weapon range of the defenders. Fortresses are generally located on high ground because it extends the range of the defenders weapons and decreases that of the attackers.

Strategically, the slow destruction of a wall is bad since it means the defenders will have troops prepared to defend the gap. That's where they'll start tossing other rubble either on the inside or outside of the wall to reinforce it. Caltrops will be sowed, traps set up on the inside of the wall.

And if you notice, I'm using mostly mundane techniques with little magic from the defenders so they're at a bias. If the defenders have magic the holes will be healed roughly as quickly as the attacker can make them.

 

[Epametheus]

Since someone didn't have a right numbers for this -- acidball is an acid-substituted fireball, which is a 3rd level spell. A wand of acid ball cast at 10th level costs 3x10x750 gold (22500). It takes 23 days and 11250 just to make one of those, which is then expended in 50 shots.

It that respect, it'd be much better to make a catapult that bestowed acidic or the like on it's ammunation (assuming you can protect your 8K gp catapult). Kind of like the catapults that Baal's army uses in Diablo II.

Heh. Think of the effects that Hallow or Unhallow could have on a fortress. The area on the spell's big enough...

 

[azmodean]

Heh, a catapult that does +1 magic damage and +1d6 acid damage? More effective to just make catapult "stones" that actually contain acid. (produced by either magical or mundane means) How much damage would several gallons of acid do?

Then again, what about the +1 trebuchet of distance? Doubled range incriment on a siege engine, niiiice. (This is mostly joking, it would cost far more to enchant a siege engine than a hand weapon, though it would be do-able)

How about a magically reinforced covered battering ram? If made of wood the hardness is upped to 10, which negates the damage from most ranged weapons, and it could be additionally enchanted to be proof (or at least resistant) against fire.

And then the one word no castle defender wants to hear, golem.

And then there is the floodgates of monsters, trolls, giants, dragons, wyverns, skeletons, zombies. I can't wait for my campaign to progress to a siege situation (probably in a game or two.) Or rather a castle assault as Janx said. (I don't think my players have the patience for an actual siege)