Under Siege Update- How much does a commoner eat per day?

[Thanee]

In a high magic world, a siege like it might have happened in our own past is impossible to take place.

Magic will completely dominate every instance of it. While clerics can create fresh water and food and cure disease and wounds, which cuts down the worst disadvantage of being stuck behind the walls, wizards can tear open a mighty wall with a single spell.

Who needs siege engines, if you have Disintegrates?

Walls can stop mundane soldiers, but they cannot stop wizards. A castle is not nearly as secure in such a world as it was in a world with no magic available.

I suppose the most important defenders of a castle, are the wizards trying to counterspell the attacker's spells.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Make some Soylent Green.

Seriously, try to do something about lifting that siege as soon as possible, or many of these people will simply die. Prolonged sieges are nasty that way - after all, it is their purpose to starve out the defenders...

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Drive the refugees out of the city and into the enemy encampment it will cause mass confusion.
Better to let them die than for them to starve your army and the rest of the citizenry to death.

It'd be useful to know the size of the city and armys and some other details too.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Make some Soylent Green.

Seriously, try to do something about lifting that siege as soon as possible, or many of these people will simply die. Prolonged sieges are nasty that way - after all, it is their purpose to starve out the defenders...

Yes, that is the nasty part of sieges - the people under siege tend to die off, with the weakest going first - elderly & children. If a city knows the siege is coming, they will have had time to stock up on supplies, create some wands as mentioned above, etc - but an extra 200,000 people are a huge burden, unless you're talking a city the size of modern day Shanghai.

However, if it is a prolonged siege, the attacking army may have worries as well. Conscripted types may desert to return home & tend the farm for harvest season, plant crops, etc. Granted, the atttackers problem isn't nearly as dire, but attackers losing men in an extended siege did happen in Medieval times.

 

[Thanee]

Prolonged sieges are nasty that way - after all, it is their purpose to starve out the defenders...

Only in a world without magic...

Bye
Thanee

 

[diaglo]

what size army are the attackers bringing to the table if they have 200K refugees bottled up?

they need to eat, drink, sleep, go to the WC, etc... too.

arm the refugees or have them start making weapons.

use Sim City or other similar program to simulate your scenario.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Only in a world without magic...

Bye
Thanee

Well, if the siege last long enough for the defenders to worry about food for the refugees, then obviously the "direct assault" method didn't work. So the attackers probably do intend to starve them out. I mean, what else are they waiting for?

 

[diaglo]

i'll make a few assumptions here:

the refugees didn't show up empty handed. they brought food, water, and all they could carry with them. livestock, weapons, etc...

they burned, poisoned, and ruined the resources on their way to the city so the enemy wouldn't find anything to use.

it isn't the assaults nor the waiting that is the problem... it is the afterwards.

with no one tending fields or the fields ruined... means no food for probably a year or two later.

with the attackers not finding food, potable water, and such... they too will starve. be suspectible to weather.. (just ask Napolean or Hitler when they invaded Russia)

 

[painandgreed]

Not only magic but also rogues. A world where creepy crawly people can up up and over walls without too much effort would also change things in a seige. Raiding parties could go out at night or, more likely, in over the wall to open the gates. The reason for seiges is because it was too hard to actually take the city over by force. Seiges are expensive for the attacker too as they must keep a force surrounding the siged city that is large enough to keep people from getting in or out while also being strong enough to repel any counter attack that may break that line. That's a lot of money and food for the attacker to keep an army around a city instead of off fighting other armies.

To address how long they can hold out depends greatly on when the seige took place to begin with. If it happened right after the fall harvest and they had time to move everything inside the city, they should have enough food till at least next harvest time (assuming an agricultural basis rather than something like fishing). before the harvest, they might have been able to preform a partial or early harvest and gotten a fraction of that inside the city. Given that seed stock would be about 25% of normal harvest, they have enough for another four months from that which takes them through December. Assuming that livestock make up about 20% of the annual diet and that this involves cullign abotu 20% of the entire stock. If they managed to move all the livestock into the city and butchered it once the seige started, that might give them anothe year of supplies. So, under best possible conditions, if the attackers sieged the city after august and the defenders had plenty of time to move all food stuffs and livestock int the city before hand, they might have enough for the next two years and four months. Of course, starvation would occur immediatly after that even if the siege broke because they would have nothing to grow more food from. In a worst case senario, when the seige happened in summer before harvest, and the weren't able to move livestock into the city, problems would occur almost immediatly come august when last years harvest runs out.

 

[AuraSeer]

Use-per-day items used to be the way to go for cheap effects. An apron of 'Create Food x3 per day', or even a chef's hat of 'Heroes' Feast x3' per day' is worth investigating.

Use-per-day is cheap over time, but still very expensive if you need a lot of uses right now. That apron would only feed 45 people per day; you'd need about 4500 copies to feed the whole city. That would cost a total of more than 7 million gold pieces (if my math is right).

Using heroes' feast would be even worse, because the spell level is higher but it feeds fewer people per casting. You would need more than six thousand copies of the item, at a total cost of 427 million gold.

It's true that a hypothetical create food item with no use limit could offer a solution. It would theoretically cost 27k, and activating it for seven hours nonstop could generate food for the whole city. But that's only if the DM allows arbitrary magic items, and (unwisely) goes strictly by the price guidelines in the DMG. I don't know anybody who actually plays that way.