How to take out Siege Weaponry?

[Coidzor]

So, we're a APL 9 party with an Archivist, an 8th level Wizard, a Wizard-based gish that has 7th level casting(me), a Healer/Favored Soul, a Monk 10, a Kineticist Psion, and a Scout that has Skirmish that works with mounted movement and a Warbeast Tiger.

We've got an enemy army coming at a city we're defending, and we know they have a fair amount of siege equipment they're taking with them. We kinda want to limit their ability to breach our walls and were unable to think of anything really in particular that would take out their siege equipment en masse aside from maybe the effects of dropping 90 feet of snow on the siege equipment from a blizzard spell messing with the workings or if dropping that much snow on top of them didn't work, melting the snow so it flooded the mechanisms and such.

What spells will set things on fire from a good distance away other than Fireball? Is there anything we could do from a range or en masse that would make them more susceptible to fire in the first place or be an alternative means of destroying them or otherwise rendering them inoperable pending repairs?

Alternatively, any strategems for luring out the caster support that the army has so that we can whittle it away somewhat before they arrive.

Or even just something we can do so that the army is bogged down a whole lot to buy a bit of time to plan or annoy them enough in order to draw their casters out. They do have a river to cross over still that we were discussing doing something with, that they'll have to either find a place out of their way to ford/swim across or ferry themselves across since there's no bridge AFAIK.

No undead-based apocalypses though, despite the DM ruling that summoned shadows and wights could create spawn for some sinister reason, on pain of the campaign ending unceremoniously.

[Eldariel]

Control Winds is available to an Archivist; couple of castings or just ~15 CL would allow you to turn calm into a Tornado. Which destroys all non-fortified structures. Should include Siege Engines.

[mostlyharmful]

Control Winds is available to an Archivist; couple of castings or just ~15 CL would allow you to turn calm into a Tornado. Which destroys all non-fortified structures. Should include Siege Engines.

So long as you're then ok with the DM using control winds back at you, letting that genie out of the bottle's probably more risky for the guys with the city than the attacking army.

How high is their security? Do they travel as a single massive attack force, do they have access to high level magic, are you ok leading comando style raids?

[J.Gellert]

Do you (or the other wizard) have Polymorph Self? Could turn into something that burrows, dig below the siege engines, then blow everything to bits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_(military)).

Otherwise Fireball is plenty good. Long enough range, never misses, each hit takes out a siege engine. Even if they have 100 of them, just craft two wands :smalltongue:

I'd worry more about the casters. Scry-n-die? Burrowing would work, again. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0139.html)

But if you want, just put your main caster on your highest tower and let him lob fireballs on the siege. That will draw out the enemy casters, because otherwise there will soon be no siege. So you kill two birds with one stone.

[Coidzor]

So long as you're then ok with the DM using control winds back at you, letting that genie out of the bottle's probably more risky for the guys with the city than the attacking army.

How high is their security? Do they travel as a single massive attack force, do they have access to high level magic, are you ok leading comando style raids?

They travel as a massive horde with a vanguard of mounted scouts and camp as one big camp at night, their security is probably as high as the DM is able to make it given at least several 7th level wizards with more 5th level ones and some similarly distributed clerics and what I'm assuming will be a couple of 11th level casters.

Perfectly fine with commando style raids. Had actually proposed the idea to teleport in while invisible, drop several walls of fire from the wizard, psion, archivist, and myself, maybe conjure up some illusions to mess with them and cause some chaos and then teleport out again, though that seems like the least effective thing we could do other than try to engage the entire horde in a straight-up fight and being smeared by massed fireballs.

Trying to come up with something that we can do, that the DM will let us have any kind of impact on events whatsoever, and that isn't going to just kill everything but the PC-classed NPCs of the horde.

That second bit is the hardest part, really. Especially since there's no RAW for breaking their spirits by having it rain on them every day until the battle so they're soaked and miserable.

[Eldariel]

So long as you're then ok with the DM using control winds back at you, letting that genie out of the bottle's probably more risky for the guys with the city than the attacking army.

Control Winds can be countered with CW of your own, though. Also, it sounded like the attacking army doesn't have Druid/Archivist of that high level.

[Coidzor]

They might. They had a Storm Lord-type capable of summoning an Elder Elemental or whatever the spell is from the Spell Compendium. From the way it was being discussed by the people who rolled spellcraft for it, it sounded like it was Druid only.

[Shadowleaf]

They might. They had a Storm Lord-type capable of summoning an Elder Elemental or whatever the spell is from the Spell Compendium. From the way it was being discussed by the people who rolled spellcraft for it, it sounded like it was Druid only.Notice CW's 10 minute casting time. Even if they want to counter it, you'll have at least 10 minutes of playtime.

[Coidzor]

Notice CW's 10 minute casting time. Even if they want to counter it, you'll have at least 10 minutes of playtime.

This Control Winds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlWinds.htm)? It says it has a 10 minutes/level duration, but the casting time seems to be a standard action.

Now, control weather (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlWeather.htm), we do have a staff of, though the DM determining where any tornadoes caused by that would form and what path they would take is kind of a damper on that idea.

I can see using control weather to make the winds more intense and then using control winds to make them tornado-level in certain areas...

[Tetsubo 57]

Fire is your friend. Siege engines are made of wood after all. Also, if you can get someone near them, a dagger will work. Just cut a *few* strands of the ropes or 'bow' strings holding the things together. When used the tension will do the extra work and maybe kill the crews in the process.

[Thurbane]

Archivist = Warp Wood, Wood Shape, Rusting Grasp and all other sorts of useful spells in wrecking the materials that make up siege engines.

Depending how much realism your DM allows for, spells that caused a downpour of rain would have a decent chance of rendering useless siege engines that depend on rope or sinew torsion devices to function. The wet material doesn't usually allow for the correct tension needed to fire the weapons.