D&D 5E (2014) Why do cities in Faerun have fortified walls?

[Bolares]

I doubt that normal ballistas can shoot as high as a dragon can fly.

Haven't you watched that documentary? Season 8 of Game of thrones.

 

[Umbran]

because no one has in the 50 years of D&D has made a campaign world with first thought to be how the world would evolve with magic...

It is a fantasy adventure game, not a sociological simulation.

 

[Bolares]

because no one has in the 50 years of D&D has made a campaign world with first thought to be how the world would evolve with magic...

Have you ever heard of Eberron? That's literally it's whole schtick

 

[Tonguez]

But the walls in most of the art and maps look contemporary of a civilization with a 15th - 16th century sensibility. They're either updating their defenses for offenses that don't exist...or cities in Faerun in the late 1400s looks the same as they did centuries ago.

I doubt that normal ballistas can shoot as high as a dragon can fly.

No not normal ballista but magical artificer enhanced Anti-dragon ballista might.

And as to walls maybe they are primarily status symbols, used to show that a True City has The wealth and power to build and maintain real high stone walls, and are thus more important than those backwater towns who just have palisades or worse are forced to live in dungeons like goblins!

For analogue, consider the Great Wall of China’s, the initial long wall was low and unimpressive but later dynasties added and reinforced it, so now it is a status symbol More than a defensive structure

 

[Stormonu]

It keeps the Realms-shaking events out - and Volo.

It's mostly a nod to ancient real-world cities, with the idea of keeping the "barbarians" out - whether they are Tuingen Horde, Orcs & goblin hordes or organized bandits, Zhents, Netheril flying shade-cities or Fallen Star pirates.

 

[steeldragons]

They're there mostly to stop land-bound monsters. Trust me, you'd want a wall too if a giant penis century worm suddenly showed up outside your door.

At least without buying me dinner first.

 

[Demetrios1453]

If we're talking about the Sword Coast, because cities have been besieged by orc and human "barbarian" hordes quite often. Waterdeep has had numerous such seiges. And beyond that, if your city state doesn't have a wall, what's to keep the army of the neighboring city-state from just marching in and taking over?

In areas further south and east, which have been all but ignored this edition, there are loads of actual nations which go to war on a fairly regular basis. And to bring the two together, if cities in the southern Sword Coast like Baldur's Gate didn't have walls, the nation of Amn just to the south would happily relieve them of their independence in a heartbeat...

 

[Seramus]

To complicate matters, Faerun is populated by cultures and gods from many planes and places, including Earth itself from multiple different time periods. And there's literally a God who restricts/changes technological innovations and laws of physics... unless you happen to live in a certain gnomish city.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

coughmythalscough

 

[squibbles]

If you don't have walls, how are you going to collect taxes when people come in, or check to see if the Zhentarim are trying to slip past.

wouldn't the walls also be useful on a day to day basis for things like security (the guards see who is entering) and taxes (merchant caravans, etc.)? Restricting access to several gates seems like it would be a lot easier to keep track of such things. Again, it wouldn't help with powerful magic/etc,, but there's a lot of ordinary business going on most of the time...

This is the fundamental answer to the OP's question. Walls are useful for a variety of purposes other than security. Wooden palisades would do a lot of those things, but they also need to be replaced every several decades, can be set on fire, lack useful features like parapets, can't be built as tall, and, if you're a prosperous city that cares about its image, don't look as impressive.

Walls are odd in fantasy land as all the great threats can fly / magic.

To keep safe you should live underground in " dungeons".

Yes, that's a canny observation. A while back I tried to game out the consequences of a world that had prevalent 5e magic. What I came up with was wizard-run police states (surveillance by arcane eyes and rat familiars, everything perma arcane-locked, perma big brother-esque magic mouths everywhere) that keep all of their important personnel in secure underground facilities, with lots redundant passageways to mitigate passwall and permanent mordenkainen's private sanctums everywhere. Otherwise, it's just too easy for the leadership to get assassinated by flying or teleporting enemies.

Standing armies were generally not a thing until relatively recent times. People hired mercenary armies, used conscription to raise armies and required the populace to be ready to go to war but otherwise were farmers or held jobs. [...]

Well, that's true if you skip the period of western military history from Assyrians to Romans that did have standing armies (or ignore Chinese history since the Han dynasty).

On the other hand, most D&D is a mish-mash of imagery of a world that never existed.

Yeah, D&D's medievalisms are just an aesthetic, and FR is nonsense in a lot of ways beyond just architecture.