Do castles make sense in a world of dragons & spells?

[countgray]

The idea that castles should be "dragon proof" is, IMO, a flawed one. Castles weren't designed for that so it's no surprise that they aren't as effective against dragons.

We both agree that castles were never designed to defend against dragons in the real world. That was in fact my very point.

We disagree that the idea that castles should be "dragon proof" is flawed. Tell that to the lord who wants to protect his daughter and the local population that has retreated into his castle for protection against a raiding dragon! I think it might be a very legitimate concern were a dragon to attack your kingdom.

One may argue that dragon raids are rare occurrences, or that should it happen nothing can be done about it. It strikes me as somewhat cavalier to suggest that a frightened populace should just grin and bear it. It need only take a single dragon attack to strike such fear in the heart of a lord that he becomes driven to build a fortress that would withstand such attacks in future. Regardless of actual frequency of attacks, I can't imagine that some castle-builders would not be motivated to build dragon proof castles out of fear, pride, sense of duty or just for bragging rights.

Anyway, Dragon attacks are quite plentiful in fantasy literature and movies. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a typical fantasy world where dragon attacks are common, or at least frequent enough to be an abiding concern for castle builders. What's frequent? Once a season? Whenever the dragon wakes up from hibernation? Once a decade? Even if it's just once a generation, or once every century! Wouldn't that be enough to spur intensive fortification efforts?

Lets also not forget that D&D dragons are motivated to collect hoards; and castles are where the lords and heroes usually keep their treasure. So the very act of building a castle might attract dragons like putting up a flashing neon sign that says "OPEN HERE TO REMOVE TREASURE"!

That said, your point is very well taken that the best defense may be a good offense and I agree with you that a castle may be well served by garrisoning as many dragon-fighters and weapons that it can muster to "defend" it by taking the fight out to the dragon.

As such, castle architects might focus their efforts on constructing barracks, store rooms for food and weapons, stables and aviaries to house mounts, turrets and lunettes to serve as launch and landing platforms, watch towers to spot foes and bell towers to alert troops and warn civillians to take cover, etc. All those things sound like sensible architectural adaptations to threats unique to a fantasy world.

But I don't think that castle architects would just give up on the idea of making their fortresses impregnable to dragons (and gryphon riders and arch-mages). A castle has got to be more than just a dormitory for dragon fighters. I think they would still try very hard to craft what protections they could, and I think a little ingenuity by motivated stakeholders would produce some interesting solutions.

While I will be the first to admit that I learned almost everything I know about castles from reading David Macaulay's "Castle", and from 30+ years of reading fantasy and gaming sourcebooks, not to mention movies like The Two Towers, Prince Caspian, Troy and Return of the King. My template for castles may well be idealized and unrealistic, no doubt! Although, I have visited a few real-life castles as a tourist, including the Chateau de Chillon he depicted (which, please note, does have 3 inner courtyards). But please note that I never said that "all" castles possess crenelations and large baileys; I merely pointed out that some castles definitely do have such features and those features might be less useful in facing off against fantastic foes.

But Celebrim is perhaps right that I have skewed notions about what castles were "really" like. And I have very much enjoyed reading his comments; he has raised a lot of interesting points and taught me a variety of useful information.

I do want to say that my answer to the question posed as the title of this thread was never meant to imply that my answer was "no". It is not my belief at all that castles make no sense in a world of dragons and spells. I just think they would look somewhat different than those castles depicted in the romanticized cover art of fantasy novels, matte paintings in movies, and comic book illustrations.

My goal in asking the question was mainly to provoke some deep thought about whether fortifications that look more like Moorish, Slavic, or Japanese castles would be more suited to the fantastic threats such peoples would face. Or maybe something entirely new and different. I am now particularly intrigued with the idea of star-forts that evolved in more recent times to deal with the advent of cannons, guns and explosives. Or perhaps Celebrim is correct that medieval style castles (with minimal modifications) would be able defenses for fantastical threats. Whatever the answers, I think the question is at least worth pondering and I think it doesn't hurt to challenge assumptions and try to think outside the box.

I will not, however, admit that my original question was "flawed" in that it has provoked 14 pages (and counting) of interesting and creative discussion, and fostered learning about castle construction techniques, military strategy, logistics, and architectural history. In that sense the question has achieved exactly what I set out to do and I would call that successful by any account.

 

[Hussar]

I think there's a bit of a danger here of focusing too much on a single threat. Sure, dragons are going to be devastating. So are earthquakes and tornadoes, and there are only limited things you can reasonably do against those either. Sure, you can build to resist, but, really, that's about the limit of what you can do.

The big threat isn't likely, IMO, to be dragons, but all the other monsters which are much more common. Giant insects or anything with a climb score, can go over your walls without even slowing down. Giants can fire at an alarming rate with much, much higher accuracy than any siege weapon. Oozes, slimes, molds all make insanely effective siege weapons that really aren't that hard to transport.

And, then, of course, there's magic as well.

From my own gut feeling, I think the idea of the Roman fortification - mostly temporary (or at least, more temporary than a stone castle) with small, extremely well defended strong points, layered in depth towards the strategic center of a kingdom (or whatever state you wish to use) would probably be a reasonable solution.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think there's a bit of a danger here of focusing too much on a single threat.

I think "dragon" is, at this point in the thread, a stand-in for any flying threat.

I know I'm not just looking at dragons- I'm looking at any creature who can go over or attack over a parapet: IOW, anything that can fly, or, as you pointed out, crawl, climb, and of course, throw big rocks.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Ok, after some tootling about on google and Wikipedia I found Rothesay Castle in Scotland which had a simple (albiet atypical) design but it gave the diameter as 43 meters any way this gives slightly over 200 meters of curtain wall.
So lets say 700 feet of curtain wall and this translates into 140 squares as a reasonable size for a small fort.
Now Earthen Ramparts raises 2 squares of earth wall 2 squares high in 10 minutes. Lets suppose that you can do it twice on the same patch of ground to get a 20 foot high wall section. This would have been pretty typical of Roman forts.
So 700ft = 140 sq. = 70 rituals x 2 to get a twenty foot outer wall.
at 80gp a pop that is 11,200gp for a basic curtain wall in about a day.
Hammer in stakes and cut thorn bushes in and you have a pertty good defensive position in a very short time. It is better than what a Roman legion would knock together in a couple of hours but it does cost a bit.
Of course it offers nothing against flyers but it would be pretty good against climbers and earth will absort the impact of giant hurled stones better than stone and with less damage to the defenders.
Quite a few of the star forts were based on earth embankments especially the Dutch ones if memory serves and the outer facing could be stone faces at very little cost or effort.

Now another interesting ritual is Mordenkainen's Joining, it joins two bits of non-living material in a seamless boundary. 50gp per casting and 10 minutes to cast.

So if I was building a fort in D&D land then I would use Earthen Rampards to create a curtain wall 10 feet thick and 20 high with a vertical slope on both sides. Then I would face both sides with large sheets of stone and fuse that together with Mordenkainen's Joining. Against that I would enclose the entire inner area with very think floors making liberal use of arches, columns and barrel vaulting. The roof would have lots of tall stone spikes to make flying difficult near the roof but more importantly to direct any flight close enough to employ the breath weapon along certain paths and then create the defensive openings so that the maximum output of fire would be into those paths.
Also any possible landing area should be kill zones.
BTW, I estimate that you could face the curtain wall for 175,000 gp.

Disclaimer, I did not get much sleep last night and all this is pretty back of envelope stuff but a decent curtain wall for less than 400,000 in less than a month is pretty good value for money.