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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack Simth" data-source="post: 5531721" data-attributes="member: 29252">Are mundane fortifications completely useless?No.  They let you do some tricks with line-of-effect that let your soldiers shoot arrows or whatever at the oncoming army while denying your opponents access to most direct magical attacks against your soldiers (arrow slits; if that four-foot tall arrow slit is less than three inches wide, it does not pass line of effect).  And if a few of your soldiers are Arcane Archer-2's with some actual casting, this lets you do quite a few nifty things.  And it'll also slow down the mundane portion of an occupying force. Can mundane fortifications be destroyed, bypassed, or otherwise neutralized with good magical tactics?Yes, absolutely.  Castles do not make a perfect defense, not by a long shot.  Of course, anything specifically done to neutralize the castle costs some amount of resources.  As offense is cheaper than defense, the defender will probably lose in an equal-resource game if the defender depends on the fortifications (especially if you use DMG pricing on the castle...).  But they can serve a purpose.Are Magical Fortifications completely useless?No, they can cause the attacker to must have certain classifications of resources available - if the entire exterior is built out of Walls of Force (including the gate) per Stronghold Builder's Guide (3.0, granted, but the only source of it's type that I'm aware of), then your opponent must have either teleportation magic, Disjunction, or Disintegrate available.  If you add a Forbiddance inside, then teleportation magic is out.  If you use some wonderous architecture to put permanent Antimagic Fields just outside your walls of force (again, Stronghold Builder's Guide), then Disjunction is iffy, Disintegrate doesn't work without cheddar, and while you can have a trapfinding rogue remove it, well, that's what guards are for ... and they can use the aforementioned trick that was noted for attacking the castle, that of making use of Shrink Item on heavy objects.Can magical fortifications be destroyed, bypassed, or otherwise neutralized with good magical tactics?Yes, absolutely, they just require the attacker have certain things at his disposal to get past them.  They're just expensive and tricky to bypass, and leave you playing an expensive game of chess with the defender - although as the attacker, you probably have some advantages.Does this mostly cover it?</blockquote>

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