Defend the Castle!

[Redshirt Army]

The Scenario: Our DM wants to run a level 15 campaign, the set piece of which will be defending a castle from attack. As the primary caster of the group (an archivist), I figured I should solicit some suggestions on how to deal with any pesky intruders.

My main plan is currently to lay down a whole bunch of Symbols (of Sleep, Pain, Fear, etc.), and make judicious use of Control Winds, but I'm not sure how to deal with enemy magic.

Any recommendations?

I recall there being a bunch of threads on here with suggestions for this very scenario, but my google-fu has failed me, so any links to those would be appreciated as well.

[Mutazoia]

Well, not being familiar with the Archivist, all I can recommend are standard Sorcerer/Wizard spells so here goes... (the effectiveness depends on the level of the attacking units, natch) (kind of long btw)

Hold portal - good for locking the front door
Charm Person/Hypnotism - make your enemy work for you
Tenser's floating disk - load it to max capacity with rocks, float it over the attackers and dispel.
Protection from arrows - a must if your standing on the walls
Glitter Dust - blind the enemy archers
Summon Swarm - nothing like a swarm of rats to the nads while your trying to scale a wall
Flaming sphere - for those pesky siege engines (or just roll it around in the infantry
Hypnotic Pattern - stop attacking and watch the pretty lights
Scare - great for those 0-1st level units (not all armies are made up of 10th level warriors)
Levitate - pick up the siege engine, drop it
Pyrotechnics - for after you light those pesky siege engines on fire
Sleet Storm - who likes to attack in a sleet storm
Stinking Cloud - can't attack if your barfing up a lung
Deep Slumber - you look tired from all that attacking...why don't you take a nap
Shrink item - cast on a crap ton of boulders, load said boulders to capacity on your Tenser's floating disk, hover over enemy, dis-spell both simultaneiously
Evard's black tentacles - 'nuff said
Solid Fog - cast between the walls and attacking units or even better, in the middle of the attacking units
Ice Storm - same as sleet storm
Wall of [any] - walls are always good to break a charge
Hallucinatory Terrain - really..there's no shark infested moat...I swear...
Rainbow Pattern - as per hypnotic pattern
Animate Dead - You'll never run out of defending units again
Reduce Person, Mass - you all look like ants from up here...oh, wait...
Stone shape - useful for mending castle walls
Cloud kill - 'nuff said
Rary's telepathic bond - in battle, communication is the key to victory
Seeming - make the enemy look like YOUR units
Waves of Fatigue - can't....charge wall....too.....tired....
Telekinesis - play catch with siege engines
Rock to mud - slow that pesky charge
Mud to rock - once they're stuck in the mud..make them stay there
Permanency - Make them ants for ever and ever and ever
Guards and wards - really shouldn't have to mention this one...
Acid Fog - it burns!
Suggestion, Mass - Duh...stop fighting..go home
Contingency - SO much fun with this one..would almost deserve its own thread
Circle of death - middle of the drawbridge
Create undead - as per animate dead
Control Weather - make sure there is plenty of mud for your mud to rock spell
Move earth - nothing like a new moat when and where you need one
Hold person, mass. - duh
Power word, [all] - duh
Delayed blast fireball - wizard version of a mine field
Finger of death - for those pesky generals
Waves of exhaustion - same as waves of fatigue
Reverse gravity - LOVE this one on mass units...nothing like watching a line charge suddenly fall off the planet
Incendiary cloud or any damaging cloud... low level units usually go bye bye
Sunburst - blind/damage those pesky archers
Clone - always good to have when fighting a horde....you never know...
Symbol of death - duh
Polymorph any object - siege engine to tinker toy
Bigby's crushing hand - only YOU can prevent castle fires (splat)
Meteor swarm - nothing like a little fire and brimstone to liven up some ones castle onslaught
Wail of the Banshee - just kill a bunch of people
Time stop - do multiple of the above nastiness seemingly all at once

and that's just the BHP list :smallamused:

[Redshirt Army]

Whoa, thanks for the list, I'll see how many of those I can get as divine spells.

[Mutazoia]

Whoa, thanks for the list, I'll see how many of those I can get as divine spells.

No problem :) One of our "one shot game" sessions my old group would do between campaigns was to split into two teams, one attacking, and one defending and see who could take Waterdeep :) I got pretty good at "siege magic"

I could do a Cleric list if ya like lol

[Savannah]

I recall there being a bunch of threads on here with suggestions for this very scenario, but my google-fu has failed me, so any links to those would be appreciated as well.

Well, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59107) isn't defending a castle, but it starts with defending a village (make sure you read far enough to when she reports what they did; they had some pretty clever stuff) and is worth reading anyway :smallwink:

[holywhippet]

Are you defending against strong opponents or an army of weak ones (more likely a few strong ones leading the weaklings).

Wait until the enemy camp is at rest, then teleport/dimension door some wights with improved invisibility into the camp. Hilarity ensues.

Black tentacles are good for dealing with enemy spellcasters - most won't be set up to handle the grappling. Then while they are trying to get free, drop a blade barrier on their head. Hours of fun!

[tiercel]

It's a good point that you want to know what/who it is you need to be trying to defend from -- if you know in advance, you can tweak your build that direction. If you *don't* know, then divinations are highly indicated (as well as more mundane intelligence gathering/guards/ears in the local city/guard towers/etc).

There is a big difference between an invading army, an elite strike force (NPC adventuring party and/or high-CR monsters), and elite stealth (as either assassins or thieves). Figure out your objectives and you can plan better.

If you do have to face an army, either as a primary threat or as a significant distraction, you should be checking out the *druid* list for large-scale control. Lowly entangle, with its 40' radius, can significantly disrupt enemy formations/charges by itself. Plant growth can alter the battlefield -- not just on the tactical scale you're used to for PC adventuring, we are talking about 150' radius semicircle of speed-drops-to-5', no save.

See also: control water (150'x150'x30' volume of water, shapable), control winds (600' radius, winds go from zero to hurricane-force), wall of fire (300' long), wall of thorns (15 ten-foot-cubes, shapable), control weather (2 mile radius), fire storm (30 ten-foot cubes, shapable), sunburst (80' radius).

For really big areas of effect, its hard to beat the druid list. (Note these are are just Core spells too.)

If you're up against stealth/infiltration, then that's where you worry about traps/magic traps. Just make sure you don't have traps in isolation so an unlucky intruder doesn't take damage, shrug, heal, and move on -- have plenty of alarms/noisy traps, traps backed up by other traps and/or guards. (Also, do you get to choose/optimize any guards/minions you might have? Having even a low-level bard and dragon shaman make a difference for your minions... and if you can shop from the Stronghold Builder's Handbook, that helps too.)

If you are up against elite strike force, then you're into more standard D&D fare -- facing challenges of EL of your party level + few, and regular character optimization covers this.

[JaronK]

The Locate City Bomb would take out the invaders of course...

Anyway, during setup consider making a bunch of pits (a Lyre of Building could do this, as could a few spells), filling them with water, hiding them so as to make Pit Traps, then putting Ghoul Glyphs in them. Now anyone who falls in is paralyzed with no save and drowns. Neat. Since Ghoul Glyphs are permanent until discharge, you can use up unused slots that day during prep.

Definitely use divinations to find the enemy first and take out their commanders before they get close. It's even better if you then raise them as Dread Warriors to fight against the army.

JaronK

[Gwendol]

Check out real life castle defences and develop from that. A mote can help in halting advances from several directions. Prepare vats of hot tar/molten led/burning oil at likely points of attack (see use of mote above). Use magic to further enhance castle defences (web, entangle, etc). Play a bard? and use inspire courage to raise the effectiveness of local troops. Bard 15 can IC to at least +3. Summon monster to create confusion behind enemy lines (use Guardinals and/or flying monsters).

But, best defence is a good offence! Find out who/what you're up against and go for the jugular!

[ILM]

Black tentacles are good for dealing with enemy spellcasters - most won't be set up to handle the grappling. Then while they are trying to get free, drop a blade barrier on their head. Hours of fun!
Or Streamers, if you have sadistic tendencies :smalltongue:.


Here's (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=11689.0) a somewhat related topic dealing with the problem of enemies scrying the castle and bypassing all your defenses by teleporting in.

Here's a few other spells (from a sorc/wiz's point of view, I'm afraid you'll have to check if any of these are on your list). They should all be 1 hour/CL or longer, so what I'd count as passive defenses:
- Phantom Trap: makes an object appear trapped. Lay them down everywhere, with real traps sometimes.
- Arcane Mark: make everything have a magical aura. Paranoia!
- Explosive Runes: for the lolz
- Major Arcana: create illusionary terrain, can be permanencied
- Detect Scrying: detect scrying attempts, opposed CL checks to see the scryer - have a teleport and a small strike team at hand to teach him a lesson
- Shadow Guardians (RoD): instant army!
- (Greater) Anticipate Teleportation: gives you a few rounds to prepare, but unfortunately has a short range
- Secret Chest: if you need to hide stuff
- Mage's Private Sanctum: prevents scrying in the area
- Wall of Stone/Iron (Forcecages can also block passages)
- Wall off the entire place and move only through Phase Doors
- Shadow Trap (CoR): another trap
- Genius Loci (CM): the mother of all traps
- if you're Evil and they're Good, Utterdark (LoM)
Those last two would probably not be within your power since they're level 9 spells anyway.

Not as passive:
- Build lots of huge iron boulders, reduce them to the size of marbles, create a trap that releases them (say, when people step in a corridor). Drop an AMF in the right place.