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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6114382" data-attributes="member: 4937">Some previous discussions that might be relevant:<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?132021-Castles-and-DnD&p=2248051&viewfull=1#post2248051" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?132021-Castles-and-DnD&p=2248051&viewfull=1#post2248051</a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?273197-Do-castles-make-sense-in-a-world-of-dragons-amp-spells" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?273197-Do-castles-make-sense-in-a-world-of-dragons-amp-spells</a>It sounds like the castle is mostly serving as a seat of government, with little need to face peer level threats from rival nations.   It's going to be designed to appear imposing and important, to thwart basic attacks, to serve as a refuge in the event of attack by city threatening monsters, and to allow the process of governance to continue without interruption.   As a low level campaign, you don't have to worry about fending off high level magic (and don't have the ability anyway), but many of the biggest problems are 3rd level or less.As such, I think it will most likely have magical defences, but not ones geared to resisting seiges or assaults.  Infiltration, assassination, and espionage or the threats that it will be geared to protect against.   As such, it probably has a suite of rooms lined with lead and possibly enchanted to resist scrying.  Lead lined safes or vaults for storing secrets and treasure are also likely.   It likely has one or two access points which are trapped with invisibility purges, and has permenent alarm spells in places where someone might try to covertly enter.   It doesn't seem likely at your power level, but spells which detect shapechangers in choke points would be desirable.   The beds of the major government officials will have permenent circles of protection around them or equivalent sorts of defences, to gaurd against mind control, possession, or attack by conjured monsters in their sleep.  There will be a kennel for watch dogs, and multidoor interior guard posts at points that access the main living and working suite(s) of the houssehold to protect against charm spells, invisible attackers, ect.   There will likely be some sort of poison detecting magic item in the household, and a variaty of minor magical resources - poison antidotes, potions of cure minor wounds, etc. - available.   Most of this has little impact on a siege, but I'd consider it nice color.  I always like to show that NPCs are fairly compotent and intelligent.   There will almost certainly be ballistas in roof top fighting positions.  Dragons and similar mauraders are probably a bigger worry in the national interior than invaders.  Heavier weapons are probably unlikely.  In fact, more likely is smaller weapons that fall between seige weapon class and handheld weapons.  You don't necessarily need to be able to knock down walls, but you do need to be able to hit large mobile targets with lots of natural armor.  Two person crewed crossbows designed to peirce armor are I think a likely innovation in a setting with monsters - something like a mini-ballista.  The way I generally stat them is they are unwieldy and thus inaccurate (-1 to hit) but reduce armor/natural armor bonus by 5-6 and do 2d6+4 damage (built in strength bonus, needs two wind bow unless you have an 18 str or better), firing rate every 3rd round.  Otherwise, like a heavy crossbow.</blockquote>

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