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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5129423" data-attributes="member: 18253">Agreed on your general points in your post. It gets me thinking, though, regarding teleportation, it is an interesting exercise to imagine how teleportation portals would affect fortifications. If one could create a reasonable number of portals then one could move small strike forces extremely rapidly, within the time necessary to respond to a surprise invasion of a castle by an adventuring group perhaps. Permanent teleportation magic is very expensive but it is permanent in most of the rule systems IIRC and rapid movement is so valuable one could imagine someone investing a huge amount in creating the portals and then protecting them. Such portals would justify stone fortifications as part of a layered, multi-faceted defense. One would want a strong enough garrison to allow a relief force to arrive but with the teleportation magic, the relief force could potentially arrive in minutes rather than weeks. A militaristic society might keep a strong, central reaction force available at all times, 24 hours a day. The castle itself would be structured around the portal defense but also have to provide some ability to move larger amounts of troops should you decide to push through an army with all its baggage, transport, siege equipment, etc. Permanent teleport magic is usually the highest level magic out there so one could certainly say it just isn't available in what you consider a reasonable setting, of course. Just thinking, if it was available, I think you would find massive stone castles, and kingdoms maintaining "crack" response teams. You get your castles we all like and you get your emphasis on small, high level teams, i.e., our adventuring parties. The fortification would probably look more like state military forts and not lordly residences we often think of when we think of castle but otherwise have a lot of the characteristics we think of in castles.</blockquote>

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