Well realism can be taken to far, I have always wondered how much value fortifications have within a fantasy world.
PCs spend the early portion of the game using various skills showing how pointless is the security of fortified bases but when they reach "name" they surrender vast sums to build one for themselves.
Given the means available; thieves, spells, magic items and fantasy monsters to name a few, how effective are fortifications?
We are told in various sources the months and years to take various castles and the rebuilding effort to repair damage but no one asks why.
Most PCs tend to use the experience to build a super fortress with magic and traps everywhere. The places tend to have golems, monsters and magical armouries as well.
I tend to disallow such ambitious designs; why should the monarch or even local lord allow social climbers to construct a fortified base more secure then they have?
Just curious, how others deal with the value and use of fortifications...
Crag, good point, but fantasy related...its a medieval genra and castles with huge fortifications are apart of it. I run a very low magic game myself and find the contrary...but that's just me.
As for the PC's building a castle/keep in a Kingdom...well, lets just hope they have the graces and permission to do so. Without it...it won't get built....unless its "magically" created...then the PC can answer to the local lord/baron/king/what have you, for his actions/establishment and his/their intensions.
Usually, once PC's reach the level they want to/can create/build such structures, they usually have earned the graces of the king to do so or they've been paid with land (vice 50,000 gp) for a service(s) done and are allowed to build a keep, as long as they're allegence is true to the kingdom/king and any taxes collected, an agreed upon % would be given to the king/kingdom...or something to this effect.
Then again, it could be conqured land or unclaimed territory, but then they have to consider enemies (or allies) of the conqured territory or claims of "we were here first" from a tribe of bugbears (or whatever) in this "unclaimed" land.
This is just my approach, you may not agree with it, but maybe you get an idea or two from it. Look at history, specificly medieval European history, France/England/Germany... really good examples of heros being awarded lands and labour to build a castle to help defend the kingdom.
Throw in a dash of magic and watch it get interesting....
Cheerz
AncientGamer aka BusterBudd.... a Greyhawkian in London! _________________ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTb1Gpa-N7U&feature=related">
This has always been the Achilles heel of the magic-medieval/dark ages setting match-up. I remember reading in a 1st edition book-can't remember which one-that this was the justification for there being so many large dungeon complexes around; so much easier to defend against magical incursions.
It's not just fortifications either. Imagine using dark age or medieval battlefied tactics in a fantasy setting. Would you want to be part of a sheild wall when some fellow's flying around dropping fireballs all over?
Very similar to BusterBudd, I run a very low-magic campaign, so traditional fortifications and tactics apply most of the time. There's just not enough wielders of battle magic to make a huge difference to how cities and nations defend themselves.
This is an excellent topic for a thread, Crag. I'm looking forward to hearing other folk's opinions and I'm surprised this subject hasn't come up before.
I take the approach that what we experience as Dm's or players isn't the norm. Magic and pcs will appear to be the norm because that is the emphasis of many campaign worlds.
My view is that the magic wielding community is in actual fact the tiny minority of such worlds, and adventurers/magic users above say 6th level are exceptional people, the majority of most worlds population being comprised of farmers, blacksmiths and every other profession you might expect to find in a medieval setting. To them magic will appear to be Just that....magic, and castles/large strongholds exist to further awe such ordinary folk, aside from defence its probably their second most important function.
Strongholds are repaired the traditional way for the same reason. The level you would need to be to build permanent magical fortresses is very high, very expensive and also very rare, so down to the quarry you send your workforce. (you can't dispel a real stone building very easily either)
If you add busters point about political power in a given region you can expect that the local lord most likely also has a magic trick or two up his sleeve along with the manpower and resources to give any trespassing adventurer pause for thought. If your players want to build a fortress let them, you might want to point out that it makes a great target for others. As for dungeon dwellings, lets face it who really wants to live underground (evil cultists and the underdark races notwithstanding)
If you go with the above hypothesis, there arent really that many magic wielding folk who should have the capability let alone the desire to risk personal injury or death attacking any such fortification that your players or anyone else might build. they generally have other things to be getting on with, unless your stronghold owner poses a serious risk or a really tempting target.
As an aside, one trick I learned early on the hard way is this: in the next fortification your players take on put plenty of guard dogs in it, you'll be suprised how this simple non magic addition to any fortification can really tax your players, often neutralising the usual break-in spells, fly, invisibility etc.
The original DMG made a point of suggesting how many characters of a particular level should appear in any given area. According to those numbers, spellcasters capable of taking on armies and fortresses should be almost nonexistent. I've tried to stick pretty close to the old-school (pre-1e) philosophy in my campaigns, and I find that it works out predictably: Most castles are perfectly adequate for defending against most intruders. Adventurers and others with significant personal power are rare in the extreme. Against such characters, castles fold with ease.
The old-school way of thinking also works pretty well concerning PCs building their own castles, if you apply a little common sense. High-level building magic simply isn't available unless the character can do it himself. Peasants and laborers aren't willing to travel into the wilderness to build some stranger's castle unless they can be assured it's safe. Local lords won't allow adventurers to build on their lands unless they've earned the right. Fortunately, following the pre-1e version of the Points of Light Doctrine, there are lots of available building sites even in "civilized" lands.
Difficulties with "reality" only arise when a campaign becomes populated with mid- to high-level characters. If every other person one meets is a 9th-level sorcerer, then mundane castles and such just don't make much sense. Then again, neither does having a world full of 9th-level sorcerers. With these points in mind, even when dealing with ultra-high-level PCs I try to keep everything rooted in the mundane. For example, in my recent Age of Worms campaign, the 18th level PCs still spent their downtime relaxing in the pub with 1st-level commoners, getting involved in social situations with peasants and tradesmen, and such pastimes as farming. One of the most memorable moments of the entire campaign concerned a halfling cohort's ongoing feud with a rabbit raiding his vegetable patch. The players expended more resources and magical power trying to keep out the rabbit than they did fighting Kyuss himself, eventually turning an entire 10-acre area around the garden to ash and starting a major wildfire - while still failing to kill the rabbit. (Yes, I borrowed the idea from that old John Travolta movie.)
I don’t remember exactly which product I read this in, but it might be the original 1st edition DMG that points out that dungeons are the real fortress in the face of flying creatures (but even then, what about burrowing ones…). Perhaps it was a Dragonlance product telling about Knights holding up in the dungeons under the ruins of a castle destroyed by dragons…no matter.
The point is that yes, traditional castles are less useful in a world with magic and flying creatures. I use three basic techniques to counter this to some degree in my campaign.
The first is to ignore it. Not very satisfying, I know, but as mentioned above, castles are part of the genre of the game, and most players don’t complain about this any more than about why high level heroes can be shot by a dozen arrows and still function just fine. That being said, I do make some attempt to justify fortifications (which are what the second and third techniques I refer to above cover).
The second technique is to keep magic and supernatural features fairly rare. I wouldn’t even say I have a low magic campaign, but not every army has a contingent of dragons or a unit mounted on griffons. Wizards powerful enough to cast teleport or passwall are relatively rare. Sure, it only takes one, and most rulers/warlords would make securing such a castle breaking force a priority (far more of a priority than assembling relatively ineffective catapults and the like), but limiting the supernatural helps with the logic of the genre (and has the added benefit of making magic/supernatural encounters more special).
The third technique is to make sure fortifications take fantasy situations into account. The builders of castles will make every attempt to get magical (or mundane, if possible) protection against magical entry. They will use all manner of magical and mundane traps and alarms. They will make use of covered buildings with few and small entrances. They might build into the side of a mountain, or be mostly underground, or whatever. Like limiting supernatural elements in a campaign, this doesn’t totally fix the situation (“Damn it! Drow are attacking from below with charmed xorn!”), but it offers some justification for the existence of castles.
The proliferation of high level NPCs in 3e is a good topic for another thread. The 3e rules are well thought out and solid, but one of the bigest things I dislike about it is that CR for encounters are supposed to match the players. This means in most suplements and computer games, when a high level party enters a town, all the guards are 10th level warriors that have nothing better to do than break up bar fights and challenge the occasional 12th level party that comes through.
Fortifications are certainly useful in a fantasy world where only a few folks have the skills that adventurers do. Despite that, there are many things to counteract good characters, those being monsters, magic, and evil characters.
All of the non-character schlubs have to attack fortifications in the conventional manner, usually. The thing I always find rather amusing is that all these good guys are assaulting the evil guys' lairs but the evil guys don't ever seem to return the favor, instead coming up with some suitably vile and complex master plan to bring down good on a massive scale. For that reason, I recommend that every dm have their players run a group of evil characters within the main campaign, and let those evil pc's run amok in the same way(though not directly counter to the players good characters). This juxtaposition works very well, and for me it has resulted in some great campaign moments.
It is funny that characters desire to build their own bases of operation. When they do so, those places are ripe for some reverse treatment. It is the turn of a group of evil NPCs to take the place down, if there is a good reason to do so in the first place. In my campaign for instance, the pc's who went through the Temple of Elemental Evil are already feeling the effects of Iuz's wrath, with the paladin pc's castle in northern Furyondy overrun and still in the hands of Iuz, and the witch pc almost assassinated by agents of Iuz(and maybe his mother).
I've had the group of evil PCs in my campaign take down the Ghost Tower of Inverness, kill Duke Lorinar of the Duchy of Urnst using the Soul Gem, and nearly kill the Seer. They have also destroyed two bastions of good indirectly linked to the good pc's and killed lots of common folks(mainly laborers working on one of the fortress sites), soldiers, etc. They are a plague to the good guys of the world, just as the good PCs are a plague to the evil guys of the world.
I do like to use fortifications in my games, especially when conducting special siege scenarios. Back to the usefulness of fortifications, if PC’s were so easily able to overcome or destroy fortifications there wouldn’t be any, but that is obviously not the case. Fortifications still mess with characters of high level (10+ level), even if they begin to be more of an obstacle at that point. Not all characters can climb walls or turn into a mist to flit through arrow slits or through a portcullis. However, it only takes one character to do that so that they can open the gate or lower the drawbridge to allow regular troops to attack the breach. There is still conventional war in a fantasy world like Greyhawk, so fortifications do serve a purpose. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Fortifications are of almost no use in a campaign where a dragon can be reasonably be expected to show up now and again, to say nothing of enemy spell casters, monstrous or human. Still, they are part of the melieu and I can't do without them. Even with dragons and casters regularly showing up etc., I use the old line that such are "rare" and that conventional warfare is the norm and that the fortifications work just fine for this non-norm "norm." _________________ GVD
The core problem is that D&D's magic "System" is solely developed around the needs of a particular subset of spellcasters: those that engage in skirmish level commando operations. The spell lists and, to some extent, the entire casting mechanics bear little resemblance to what would actually be out there if this were a "real" world and not a playground for PCs.
Ritual spells, arcane architecture, and similar disciplines get short shrift in D&D. Counter spells and defenses beyond a few minor ones (Guards and Wards, for instance) are ignored. So are all the craft applications of magic.
Whether or not a castle is the right defense, there would be fortresses in Greyhawk. And, since we have castles, its "obvious" that they are useful. The how is simply not addressed by the game rules, which are only concerned with the needs of that tiny fraction of people who operate as commandos. Since castles do exist, either they are super cheap and the fact that they are sometimes useless is irrelevant or, rather more likely, since they exist and are expensive its necessary hat something currently undefined makes the obvious weaknesses less of an issue.
...last time I checked, D&D was a game, and the rules are "guide lines". In "the old days", we would research an issue and develop our own answer(s), as closely as one might get so as to give a plausible explaination and ensure game mechanics and "fun" for the game were met.
I enjoyed researching such, it was a level of self education.
The best advise is do for "your" game what you think is best, so if you want castles with an anti-magic field around them, build 'em... and afford a "resonable/logical" purpose, however it fits in...just have fun.
Cheerz
AncientGamer aka BusterBudd ....a Greyhawkian in London. _________________ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTb1Gpa-N7U&feature=related">
D&D does take into account of fortifications. The example that first comes to mind concerns a type of ritual magic that involves mixing gorgon blood into mortar used in the construction of a stone structure as a means of preventing ethereal and teleporting creatures form entering the confines of the area unless such things have a special talisman keyed to the place.
Another example of this regards the transmute rock to mud spell, which states that only unworked stone or natural uncut or unworked stone can be altered by this magic. A simple stoneshape spell uis enought to make natural stone immune to this effect.
I agree that this type of thing is not given the due it deserves, however stone fortifications rataken into account in the game. It requires powerfuil magic to significanatly damage fortifications. I'd say most fortifications will be safe from dragons and arch-mages dismantling them, as those tyeps of attackers are very rare. I'd worry more about massive enemy armies with siege equipment(Furyondy), or an invasion of giants(Geoff) instead. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
I agree that this type of thing is not given the due it deserves, however stone fortifications rataken into account in the game. It requires powerfuil magic to significanatly damage fortifications. I'd say most fortifications will be safe from dragons and arch-mages dismantling them, as those tyeps of attackers are very rare. I'd worry more about massive enemy armies with siege equipment(Furyondy), or an invasion of giants(Geoff) instead.
I don't think it's so much Dragons or Arch-mages dismantling fortifications as simply bypassing defenses. Dragons would serve better clearing the walls with their breath to allow attackers to gain the walls, or carrying attackers over the walls rather than actually trying to reduce the walls to rubble. A Passwall spell or two would do much more than Meteor Swarming the walls. Or creating a Wall of Stone over the moat to quickly allow troops and siege towers to access the walls, or Disintegrating the gates, or invisibly flying (or dimension door, gaseous, etc.) into the gatehouse to open the gates, etc. Any flying troops can get over the walls and engage defenders on equal terms, negating much of the advantage that fortifications give. Something like greater devils or demons that can teleport at will and are immune to normal weapons would be devastatingly effective at taking out gatehouses, towers, etc. Basically any flying, burrowing, climbing, teleporting, or phasing/incorporeal/ethereal being could bypass normal stone walls; any area effect attack could clear walls allowing attackers a foothold.
You do realize that all of the spells but one you just mentioned are of 5th level or higher, yes? I'd assume that in most Greyhawk campaigns, regardless of rules edition, 9th or higher level casters are not that common. Besides, all of those spells are susceptable to being dispelled/countered as they are being cast in 3.5 at least so they can be considered a non-issue. Otherwise you'd see fortifications exhanging hands all the time as one side or another got the right mage or cleric in on the job. As that is not the case, I'd say that pretty much confirms that such instances of magic castle highjacking simply don't happen. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
One of the more interesting things about EGG's Gord the Rogue series to my mind was the battle he had between Mordenkainen's forces and those of Patch from the Boneheart. It was pretty clear that the bulk of the spellcasters had only a minor effect on the battlefield. It was only the few really potent ones who did and they neutralized each other for the most part. It was only the involvement of the entire circle of eight that gave a meaningful magical edge to M's forces in the battle.
I tend to think that is the case across the board. Magic does affect battles, but only if one side has a real advantage in it for some reason. Whether you address the issue by having wizards assigned to castles the same way that castellans are or by not having that many high level spell casters around or by having ritual/arcane architecture stuff that negates the most obvious magical issues, it seems clear that magic does not just blow through castles and other fortifications easily.
The same mutual magic neutralization is also apparent in the Gord books during the Spinekeep siege, where the dwarf allies spend weeks tunneling into the dungeons below the keep and enter that way. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
You do realize that all of the spells but one you just mentioned are of 5th level or higher, yes? I'd assume that in most Greyhawk campaigns, regardless of rules edition, 9th or higher level casters are not that common. Besides, all of those spells are susceptable to being dispelled/countered as they are being cast in 3.5 at least so they can be considered a non-issue. Otherwise you'd see fortifications exhanging hands all the time as one side or another got the right mage or cleric in on the job. As that is not the case, I'd say that pretty much confirms that such instances of magic castle highjacking simply don't happen.
Yes, I do agree high level casters are rare in many campaigns, mine included, and that defenders would use their own spell casters to counter them (those were two of the points I made in my first post, above), but I still have to point out that while rare, they still exist, and considering their potency attackers would make every effort in securing one for a siege. All sorts of fantasy creatures are out there too, and not as easily dispelled. (And as minor points, Invisibility, Fly, and Dimension Door are under 5th level, and I still play 1st edition as far as the counter-spell thing goes.) I think these types of justification helps, but doesn’t solve the problem. If we were to play the situation out along logical lines, fortifications would be changing hands a lot more in a fantasy world than in the real world.
Which, again, comes down to the fact that this aspect of the magic rules is simply not fleshed out. It really is up to the DM to either work out something that limits the effectiveness of "siege" magic or to devise fortresses that are less susceptible to it for other reasons. Unless he has so few high end mages and wierd creatures that mundane warfare is overwhelminglythe norm.
In our games, since 1st ed, we have always assumed that there are different types of magic and casters who work on fortifications. We have fleshed it out in the past, and it takes weeks/months, and multiple casters in order to achieve significant effects. Each time, as we worked it out, it has proven fairly uninteresting to the PCs, so it is a story element only, and a rules supplement for it has not been necessary.
For 3rd ed, there are several supplements that have come out that address some of these concerns, and they have proven useful when PCs want to build their own towers/castles/homes.
The otherway that I address this in our games is that I use a age system where npc's gain npc classes as they age. Thus every village has a few higher level personages, even if that person is a 7th level commoner. The old wisewoman of the village could be a 12th level adept. THough this seems odd to us after decades of dealing with 1st level commoners, it has worked well for us, and stopped the silliness of a 4th level party rampages that kill entire villages. Using this, the Archmage would find that he is arrayed against a 12th level adept, several 9th level warriors, a couple of dozen 4th level warriors, and multiple 1st, 2nd and 3rd level villagers. Though he could generally still destroy them, a few buffing spells, reasonable tactics, and the cover provided by a fortress can level the field fast. Particularly when you start having opponents in multiples of 20. Once this occurs, the CL/EL scale starts to break down, because the odds of someone rolling a 20 and auto hitting goes up.
THis can be a cumbersome system, but it works well for me, with the town guard and such. After going through a huge cumbersome battle with 1,000 harmless villagers, and getting their butts handed to them, I have found that my PCs dont require I do it again. With the risk increasing from low level personages, I have found that the PCs respect castles, towers, and even buildings more. In turn they play smarter, not as uber characters.
90% of the poplulation lives in Thorps, Hamlets and Villages where you generally find fortified manors, border towers and the occassional keep.
Using the average DMG standard demographics fortifications are pretty good with dealing with most common threats. Normally need a level 5 wizard to fly or cast fireball.
Demographically flying wizards should be very few and far between with a 1D4 for generation and a -3 for a Thorp, -2 for a Hamlet, -1 for a Village, +0 for a Small Town. According to standard demographics there should be none until Large Towns, where they are probably affiliated with the local power structure in some fashion. Consider Furyondy doubtful it has much more than a dozen to two dozen population centers of Large Town size or greater.
Don't forget the status symbol of a castle in a fantasy setting, the owner has the wealth and power to not only afford one, he actually possesses one something few others can do according to suggested game mechanic wealth guidelines.
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good point, but fantasy related...its a medieval genra and castles with huge fortifications are apart of it. I run a very low magic game myself and find the contrary...but that's just me.
aka BusterBudd.... a Greyhawkian in London!
