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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7742252" data-attributes="member: 4937">That was in fact basically the gist of my question.One of the big questions of a D&amp;D setting is, &quot;Are castles really functional?&quot;&nbsp; And for most objections, I have a way to answer, &quot;Yes.&quot;, which is my desired outcome because I consider the castle so important to the medieval fantasy setting.&nbsp; Minas Tirith is still something I want to exist.&nbsp; But one area that might render that untrue is bombardment by aerial attackers.&nbsp; If you can carry a catapult stone, say 40-80 lbs., up to above the level that a ground attacker can reply by way of a torsion engine of any sort - which isn't that high really.&nbsp; Then you can bomb with impunity.&nbsp; So far that's never been really tested, because no PC has ever hard pressed the idea and had the resources.&nbsp; So far I've mostly said that the time required to load bombs, gain altitude, and return put a hard limit on the utility of bombing a castle, so that really, having an 'air force' and 'air superiority' was no better than gaining engine superiority (meaning your siege weapons had knocked out the castles siege weapons).&nbsp; If you think about it though, if bombing from 20,000 feet up means you might half the time hit a 500' circle, then bombing from 1000 feet up might mean a 25' circle.&nbsp; Much of the difficulty from bombing from altitude was owed to the speed of the bomber combined with upper altitude winds.&nbsp; I figure a civilization that is capable of developing magical space travel is capable of using divination magic - upgraded versions of 'true strike' - to predict the correct release point to deorbit something from with a sophistication equal to or greater than a modern computer simulation.&nbsp; Further, if you are deorbiting something of sufficient size - say a rock the size of a castle - you don't need to worry about city block accuracy.&nbsp; Getting something within a mile or two would probably do the trick.&nbsp; I guess the point though is that you eventually run out of convenient sufficiently sized rocks?Besides which, is the orbital mechanics of Spelljammer really as complicated as the real world?&nbsp; I'm not that familiar with Spelljammer, but I always got the impression they explicitly simplified the physics.Basically, I'm just curious to see if you've had experience with players trying these sorts of things.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7742252, member: 4937"] That was in fact basically the gist of my question. One of the big questions of a D&D setting is, "Are castles really functional?" And for most objections, I have a way to answer, "Yes.", which is my desired outcome because I consider the castle so important to the medieval fantasy setting. Minas Tirith is still something I want to exist. But one area that might render that untrue is bombardment by aerial attackers. If you can carry a catapult stone, say 40-80 lbs., up to above the level that a ground attacker can reply by way of a torsion engine of any sort - which isn't that high really. Then you can bomb with impunity. So far that's never been really tested, because no PC has ever hard pressed the idea and had the resources. So far I've mostly said that the time required to load bombs, gain altitude, and return put a hard limit on the utility of bombing a castle, so that really, having an 'air force' and 'air superiority' was no better than gaining engine superiority (meaning your siege weapons had knocked out the castles siege weapons). If you think about it though, if bombing from 20,000 feet up means you might half the time hit a 500' circle, then bombing from 1000 feet up might mean a 25' circle. Much of the difficulty from bombing from altitude was owed to the speed of the bomber combined with upper altitude winds. I figure a civilization that is capable of developing magical space travel is capable of using divination magic - upgraded versions of 'true strike' - to predict the correct release point to deorbit something from with a sophistication equal to or greater than a modern computer simulation. Further, if you are deorbiting something of sufficient size - say a rock the size of a castle - you don't need to worry about city block accuracy. Getting something within a mile or two would probably do the trick. I guess the point though is that you eventually run out of convenient sufficiently sized rocks? Besides which, is the orbital mechanics of Spelljammer really as complicated as the real world? I'm not that familiar with Spelljammer, but I always got the impression they explicitly simplified the physics. Basically, I'm just curious to see if you've had experience with players trying these sorts of things. [/QUOTE]

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