Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Can sieges withstand magical assault?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="argo" data-source="post: 1980259" data-attributes="member: 5752"><p>Well, lets look at what happened to castles in the real world. When the cannon was first introduced it did not mean the immediate end of massive defensive positions, instead castles changed and adapted to the new weapons while sieges focused on slowly approaching the walls under cover (trenches) to attack at point blank range. The outcome was much the same as before: a castle besieged by superior forces with no relief will fall given enough time.</p><p></p><p>But castles did eventually go out of style. Once fierarms became plentiful enough and portable enough governments eventualy decided that it was better to mantain a standing army (which can also be used in attack as well as defense) and try to take the initative away from the enemy by meeting him in battle at a place of your choosing to destroy him. Now stationary defenses are used mostly to protect the most vital locations and to control the shape of large scale manuvers: force the enemy to approach your country from a particular angle or suffer the ranged fire of your castle battery.</p><p></p><p>Then we get to modern warfare and two factors make all static defenses, even fire-support batteries, useless. The first is mobility, the power to either close on your defenses and overwhelm them before they have time to prepare or else to bypass them and attack from the rear or attack the command/supply centers. The second is the overwhelming power of offensive weapons: no castle design could withstand a sustained high-level bombing let alone a singel nuke.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Since there is no problem in standard DnD with the portability of magic I think it comes down to how plentiful the magic is. If all we are talking about is a lot of 3rd and a few 4th level spells then I think you could build castles that adapt to that level of force and sieges would just have a lot of additional fireworks. However, if we are talking about spells of about 6th level or higher then the attackers are going to start having a massive advantage in terms of mobility and firepower. Even if the defenders have equal magic it isn't going to do them much good against "bombing raids" unless they want to go out and hunt the mage and then we are back to open field fighting again. So yes, I do think that there comes a point where static defenses become less cost-effective than a well equiped standing military and that is the point when castles will start to dissapear.</p><p></p><p>Of course none of this mentions stealth attacks, but I guess that is where the king goes out and hires a party of adventurers right? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> </p><p></p><p>Later.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="argo, post: 1980259, member: 5752"] Well, lets look at what happened to castles in the real world. When the cannon was first introduced it did not mean the immediate end of massive defensive positions, instead castles changed and adapted to the new weapons while sieges focused on slowly approaching the walls under cover (trenches) to attack at point blank range. The outcome was much the same as before: a castle besieged by superior forces with no relief will fall given enough time. But castles did eventually go out of style. Once fierarms became plentiful enough and portable enough governments eventualy decided that it was better to mantain a standing army (which can also be used in attack as well as defense) and try to take the initative away from the enemy by meeting him in battle at a place of your choosing to destroy him. Now stationary defenses are used mostly to protect the most vital locations and to control the shape of large scale manuvers: force the enemy to approach your country from a particular angle or suffer the ranged fire of your castle battery. Then we get to modern warfare and two factors make all static defenses, even fire-support batteries, useless. The first is mobility, the power to either close on your defenses and overwhelm them before they have time to prepare or else to bypass them and attack from the rear or attack the command/supply centers. The second is the overwhelming power of offensive weapons: no castle design could withstand a sustained high-level bombing let alone a singel nuke. Since there is no problem in standard DnD with the portability of magic I think it comes down to how plentiful the magic is. If all we are talking about is a lot of 3rd and a few 4th level spells then I think you could build castles that adapt to that level of force and sieges would just have a lot of additional fireworks. However, if we are talking about spells of about 6th level or higher then the attackers are going to start having a massive advantage in terms of mobility and firepower. Even if the defenders have equal magic it isn't going to do them much good against "bombing raids" unless they want to go out and hunt the mage and then we are back to open field fighting again. So yes, I do think that there comes a point where static defenses become less cost-effective than a well equiped standing military and that is the point when castles will start to dissapear. Of course none of this mentions stealth attacks, but I guess that is where the king goes out and hires a party of adventurers right? ;) Later. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Can sieges withstand magical assault?
Top