Castles are worthless against armies with mages?

[JamesonCourage]

LOL! Where did this come from? I haven't read anything offensive in anyone's posts.

@ Whizbang...
In fact, all your arguments make considerably more assumptions then any other poster so far... you want to make your arguments a bit more viable by cutting down those assumptions? Maybe justify the statements you make, hmm?

This is obviously personal, and extremely dismissive, if not condescending.

Just curious, but do you know anything about the logistics of warfare, military strategy, or anything of the sort, or are you just going off of Hollywood tactics?

Of course, I don't know anything about military tactics, so if you feel this to be an issue, we can both admit we're talking out of our rears on this issue and discount it.

This is making assumptions of what somebody else has said to make them look worse. It's also a bad tactic to use, as it's not productive. Disagreements are fine, but dismissing someone else is not.

Sorry, I was assuming a basic familiarity with the Players Handbook and Monster Manual. Mea culpa.

Again, incredibly dismissive and condescending. That's not productive to a discussion.

Please cut way back on the passive aggressive stuff.

Ok, that was unfair of me. I will apologize and cut back on it. I would like to ask that you do the same, if that's ok.

Looks like other people participating in this thread see aggression.

Let's try to keep talking about the OP, not snipe at one another.

 

[Pergentile]

Perhaps it is because English is not my first language, but I read all of your quotes without finding them "dismissive" or "condescending". =D Wouldn't that be assuming intent behind them that is not obvious, since people like me cannot pick it up? =D Things you find obvious seem like things that are strongly altered by the perception of those reading them. =D If you find there is something wrong with said posts, report them. =D Don't try to be a moderator, because your posts are just confusing, and slightly annoying me. =D Especially when you say that something I have posted is personal. =D LOL! =D Regardless, you and I are dragging the topic further off course then any "possibly slightly offensive, assuming certain intent" posts. =D Put it in a PM or start reporting. "=D" is a smiley face. If it affect how you read this post in any way, you know you are biased.
Planechase is a very good Moderator, let him do his job, instead of attempting to do his job for him, and doing so poorly (IMO).

 

[JamesonCourage]

I'd really rather not have to report posts. If people in this thread, or others, begin to make posts that I feel are inappropriate, even after I ask them to tone down the aggressive rhetoric, then I will.

However, as an adult, I'll ask others to tone down discussion first. It's common courtesy, and I'm giving people some respect by asking that everyone have a civil discussion.

However, if you want to pretend that the above posts are not aggressive on any level, I'd suspect that you're being disingenuous. Perhaps you aren't though. I certainly might be incorrect on that matter.

I think you should be able to agree with me that things should be kept civil. That's all I asked for.

I'm not a moderator. I'm not pretending to be one. However, from one adult to another (I assume, but even if you aren't, from one adult to another mature poster), I think it's only courteous to ask everyone to stop sniping before going to the moderators myself.

 

[Piratecat]

Guys, please try to make sure you're being polite to one another. Insinuating that someone hasn't read the PH and thus doesn't know what he's talking about really is insulting. We're far better off with you holding the discussion without that additional baggage.

Also? Smiley faces after being rude don't actually help. When you're this annoyed, walk away from the keyboard instead.

It's also worth noting that after a polite word it's better for folks to report posts instead of stepping in themselves when there's a problem. We especially don't want people to try to use moderation as a club, saying "please shape up or I'll report the post." While we appreciate the intent, the execution often gets awkward.

Thanks.

 

[ThatGuyThere]

Based on my experiences -

Castles can be appropriately defended by magic because both players and DMs want castles around.

I'd agree with those arguing from the position that, RAW, castles don't seem very functional. Unless you're introducing a giant ton of new rules, yeah, high-level wizards ruin castles.

That said, I'd agree with the other side, too - how many high-level wizards want to blow up castles? If the answer isn't 'not many', then yeah, you have to explain why there are castles.

This is, truthfully, one of those, "I've never had this problem", problems. I run high-level D&D not-infrequently, and have a lot of fun. But I've never had players (not characters, players) who didn't 'get' that one of the big reasons you don't do stuff like this (blow up entire castles, live in inaccessible demi-planes, other 'high-level trickery') is because it ultimately doesn't suit the genre of the game.

To me, Genre Busting like this is a lot like someone in a sci-fi game asking to play a wizard, or someone in Call of Cthulu game asking to play Superman. It's not impossible; it's not that it can't be fun. It's that it's not, er, exactly what one might ... y'know, anticipate.

 

[aboyd]

That aside, what really makes airdrop attacks silly is the range increments. A thrown or dropped rock is an improvised weapon with a range increment of 10'. From that 200' height, you are looking at -44 to hit.

To be fair, if you're going to enforce the range increments, then you have to enforce the size increments, too. Inanimate objects have a base AC of 3, and then you figure in the size modifier, too. A colossal object has -8 to AC, and is 30' wide. The keep in Into the Wilds, for example, is equal to about 90' by 90'. That's larger than the chart for size adjustments even shows. However, if we just extend the pattern they've been using, something that big has a size modifier of -32. Total AC for hitting the keep: -29. According to the rules about hitting inanimate objects, you can get a +5 to hit if you're willing to take a full attack action to line it up. So without any dexterity bonus or BAB bonus, it's -39 to hit an AC of -29. A 10 or better on a d20 is a strike.

 

[Ydars]

I also want my games to remain as 'pseudo-medieval' as possible and so use some home-brewed mundune non-magical materials to achieve this.

1) Weaveshatter powder is a non-magical explosive material (worth 4000 gp), made from a number of uncommon components, that when ignited results in a loud sonic boom that rips a temporary hole in the magical weave in a 1d6 x 500 foot radius centered on the blast. This blast immediately dispels/ends ALL non-permanent magical effects in its radius and results in a dead magic zone that lasts 1d4 rounds (ending all permanent magical effects) before the weave re-establishes itself. Repeated uses of the powder in the same area can result in a permanent dead magic zone. There is also a chance that any spellcaster in the blast radius loses the ability to cast spells for 24 hours (DC14 Fort save)

2) Kervor is a soft stone, mined from deep underground, that creates local antimagic/dispel effects, centered on the stones location. For Kervor to work, at least 500lbs of material is required. The presence of this amount of material creates an antimagic zone of 50 radius, that interrupts all permanent and non-permanent magic effects below 4th level spells.

Cities and towns in my world are often cited near concentrations of Kervor, because it is safer; the humans who live their don't rely on magic for defence whereas most of the monsters that might attack them do.

So some castles in my world will have 1-2 vials of Weaveshatter powder to deal with mages who want to attack whilst flying and will also have Kervor incorporated into their walls. Indeed, by ancient custom, before any massed battle, weaveshatter is used. Hence castles become a viable defensive structure again and major battles rarely include mages.

PCs are free to use these items, although they rarely do so since they tend to be placed at a greater disadvantage by their effects than many of those they are fighting. One common usage is that Kervor is always incorporated intp door arches and gateways into the PCs' strongholds.

Indeed, because of these materials, Mages themselves hunt down anyone of their ilk using magic to gain temporal power because they fear another war with the mundane folk; one that they would most likely lose because of their small numbers.

Let me be clear though; Kervor is not present everywhere. In fact it is rather rare, but because it could be present it is something the PCs have to take account of. I don't use it to 'foil' the PCs; it is a tool to allow mundane societies to exist in a world where magic is real. It is also a tool to balance magical classes out at higher levels.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That said, I'd agree with the other side, too - how many high-level wizards want to blow up castles? If the answer isn't 'not many', then yeah, you have to explain why there are castles.

To be fair, as I've pointed out, it's not just the wizards, it's any spellcasting class, any elemental, any flyer, most undead, any burrower, any shapechanger, any teleporter...totaled up, that's a LOT of different things for an expensive, complex, slowly-built structure to be not good at dealing with.

And a good portion of them WOULD see a castle as something worth destroying, or at least, attacking.

 

[Dandu]

most undead

How wright you are.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I'd agree with those arguing from the position that, RAW, castles don't seem very functional. Unless you're introducing a giant ton of new rules, yeah, high-level wizards ruin castles.

Really, this applies to any high-level character. People focus a lot on magic, and what high-level Clerics and Wizards can do, but the feudal societies we want to emulate in our high-fantasy settings evolved in a world that not only had no functioning magic, but in which the limits of human achievement were in the neighborhood of 5th-6th level NPC classes.

In order for those feudal societies to make sense, the world they occupy has to be built on similar assumptions. Armies exist and castles exist because they are adequate defenses against what kings regularly need to defend themselves from: 1 and 2 HD humanoids with minimal spellcasting ability. PCs are as awesome and terrible as the monsters they fight, and the existence of the setting hinges on the fact that both are exceedingly rare and more inclined to focus on each other than on changing the world.

The problem comes in when we give the PCs this level of power and then expect them not to use it to change the world. We want the setting to stay the way it was when the campaign started, the way it was written down, so we look for ways to nerf the PCs and prevent them from using the powers we've given them, all in order to protect the "integrity" of a fictional setting we're using as the backdrop for a game.

I understand this mindset when writing shared-universe fiction, because you need a relatively stable setting to maintain consistency between the stories of different authors. I understand why the publishers of campaign settings do this.

What I cannot understand, for the life of me, is why we insist on doing this when we're playing. There's only one continuity at our table and we don't have to preserve it for anyone else-- so there's really no reason to go to all these great lengths to protect the sanctity of our settings from the depradations of our PCs.

I think the best example of this is Sepulchrave's Wyre story hour. It showcases perfectly what the existence of high-level PCs would do to a "traditional fantasy" setting.