Fantasy warmachines magical and mundane

[Gundark]

Been thinking about my homebrew. I'm thinking of creating dragon mounts for the setting. It got me thinking what would fantasy world warmachines look like with flying mounts, giants, spell casters etc. What city defences would be put into place given a fantasy world, with fantasy armies?

for example I'm thinking of a big ole harpoon style weapon. The weapon is designed to take down large flying creatures. The harpoon's got a barbed point and attached to a large chain. When it hiits it's target counterweights are set into motion that "reel" the flyer in where it can be deal with "up close and personal".

What are your ideas?

 

[Gundark]

*bump* anyone? Must be a slow day

 

[phindar]

I remember years ago there was a long debate in Dragon magazine's Forum about fantasy fortresses and the changes that had to be made to make them viable in a heroic fantasy environment like D&D. (I started reading Dragon in high school, so let's say this would have been late 80's when this was going around.) The crux of the argument being that its hard to have a castle for very long with bulettes, umber hulks, dragons, Meteor Swarms, Earthquakes, and the like. A lot of the magic and monsters of D&D function a lot like modern technology (or better), and there's probably a reason most militaries have stopped building castles and moved on to other methods of defense.

My feeling is that as long as those elements are sufficiently rare (every visiting army doesn't have an 18th level Sorc, Wiz or Clr), castles in D&D are even more viable than their historic counterparts. Because real people only had to deal with other people and the occasional bear, but in D&D you have people, orcs, goblins, kobolds, hobgoblins, gnolls, ogres, trolls, bears, dire bears, bugbears, owlbears and that's just from the first MM.

I was discussing the idea of fantasy war machines with a friend of mine not too long ago, and I thought a psionically-controlled brontosaurus covered in yuan-ti archers and casters would make for a pretty good bit of death and destruction. I've always liked dinosaurs though. Might just be me.

If dragon-riders are going to be a major component of your game world, for fortresses to be viable they're going to need major air defenses, even if its just dragon-riders of their own. (Axis and Allies players will recognize the benefit of loading your territories up with fighter planes.) I would think the dragons would be most useful for aerial recon; if every strafing run brings you in range of 400 archers, its probably not worth it.

Perhaps in addition to harpoons, the ballistae could fire bolas or nets meant to ensnare flyers or tangle their wings.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

*bump* anyone? Must be a slow day

It's a holiday in America.

Patrick Younts has a PDF of nothing but fantasy siege engines. I don't have it, but I love his Pumpkin Patch PDF from the same line.

(Man, it's hard finding the PDF you want nowadays with the dueling PDF store jazz going on.)

 

[Land Outcast]

Hum...

bunkers instead of castles

sapping teams (and burrowing summoned creatures) become important

any 1/2 important fortification will have a way to cast Heroes' Feast

important troops have SR in some way (Nice cavalry charge... Wall of Fire! Roasted Horse)

battlefields can become minefields from one day to the other (a stone trapped with fireball)

Summoned Big Spiders to bring down the flying enemies through webshots

 

[philreed]

(Man, it's hard finding the PDF you want nowadays with the dueling PDF store jazz going on.)

I'm sorry but we had no choice.

 

[Gundark]

It's a holiday in America.

Really? What day?

 

[Korgoth]

Really? What day?

President's Day. The Post Office celebrates it by not doing anything.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A space alien landing today would think it was Discount Mattress Sale Day. Alas, poor Washington and Lincoln ...

 

[Tonguez]

I like to equip my fortified walls with Lightning Generators and the elite troops carry portable versions known as Lightning Spears. These consist of power-rods wrapped in silver coils.