Fortressess in Tippywerse?

[Balor01]

Well, not exactly. Level cap for the world is 8, and I assume at this level, fortresses may still be good as nexus of trade/protection/area control. At least goblin/Orc hordes will have SOME troubles scaling walls.

But! At lvl 8 there are a lot options available, for example:

- Polymorph (climb, fly, burrow)
- Fly
- Invisibility+Silence
- Glibness

On getting info about place:

- Divination
- Speak with dead
- Scrying

So. How do you set up the fort in order for enemy just not
- climb/fly/burrow into it?
- fly in there unpolymorphed
- walks by the guards with invisibility and Silence on
- Lies his way in
- Divines and Scrys the f... out of the place before attacking

thanks playground

[JaronK]

First of all, Unseen Crafters are available (level 2 spell). So that's plenty of labor to do what you want. As such, I'd imagine fortresses would be mostly buried in the ground, with stone walls inside to keep out burrowers. Enough stone and perhaps lead keeps out most divination. Walls are used just to keep back siege weapons, while the main structure has a domed top to keep out fliers. Weather control from casters can provide effective defense against most forms of flying too.

To deal with invisibility, the entrance ways are kept wet and muddy, so invisible people leave obvious footprints. Guards have a double gate system... the outer gate opens first to let in the visitors, and then closes once inside. Now the new people coming in have their vehicle searched. Finally, the inner gate opens to let them in. Dogs with scent are trained to bark if they smell any creature they can't see.

Visitors to the king/prince/whatever are always brought to their chambers first where a servant helps them bathe and gives them new visitors clothes. On the surface this is incredible hospitality. This has the secondary purpose of making disguise and concealed weapons very difficult to work with, as the visitor's clothes are well understood by the guards and the bathing process can remove makeup. Someone refusing this hospitality is treated with extreme suspicion, and may be checked out with Detect Magic and other spells.

Guards are required to address each other by name upon first greeting, every time. All guards know each other, and face masks are kept up any time the fortress is not under high alert. This makes it really hard to sneak around as a guard in disguise, and promotes better unit cohesion anyway. The same is true of the servants... they must address the other servants as "Master Butler James" or similar when they see other servants.

Standard weaponry for guards includes Longbows for dealing with ranged threats, and a team of Bards is on hand. Each Bard has a different Dragonfire Inspiration type, so when they all begin playing their war drums they grant a +3d6 (or so) bonus to fire, cold, electricity, sonic, and acid damage on all attacks, making everybody extremely deadly. Playing of these war drums is also a method of alerting everyone... and when someone's weapon doesn't burst into flame, you know they're an enemy.

JaronK

[Asrrin]

Someone using levitate and Invisibility combined with the darkstalker feat to roll hide checks against scent. User alter self and Nystul's aura once in to disguise yourself, and your divination of choice to lift names from people's minds. Or charm person.

[rockdeworld]

What JaronK said is fine, but actual real-life-style forts can be bombed, sieged, and scaled before magic comes into play. Tippyverse is a setting where the rules are taken as given, and the forts we know of have no effective defense against a character with Blink, much less Stone Shape or Dimension Door.

Instead of a "fort," I recommend this (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Dungeonomicon_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Constructanomicon#Dungeons:_By_the_Gods.2C_Why.3F) :

...here is what we suggest: dungeons have an actual magical purpose. By putting anything behind at least 40’ of solid, continuous material (like solid walls of dirt, stone, ice, or whatever, but not a forest of trees or rooms of furniture), the area is immune to unlimited-range or "longer than Long Range" spells like scry and transportation magic like teleport, greater teleport, the travel version of gate, and other effects. You can use these magics inside a dungeon, but you are also stopped by a 40’ solid, continuous material in a Line of Effect; this means you can use these effects inside a dungeon to bypass doors and walls, but entering and leaving the dungeon is a problem, and parts of the dungeon that have more than 30’ of material in the way between your position and the target of your effect will be effectively isolated from your position.
The rest of that page goes on to talk about how to effectively defend such a dungeon, with some tips similar to what JaronK said. It seems to me it will work better for your purpose.

[Rubik]

Anyone at mid levels or higher would buy a scroll of Genesis and invest in some way to enter the plane while simultaneously preventing Plane Shift and the like. Designing the plane explicitly for Fine-sized creatures (while blocking entrance from anything larger by dint of there simply being no room) would stymie even Wish from working...unless the caster in question knew about the size restrictions. If the only place in the plane capable of holding a Small-or-larger creature was a lake of Quintessence, anyone who entered the plane without being Fine sized would coalesce in the lake and be automatically locked out of the time stream (and there's no resistance or immunity possible, period). It's a good, cost-effective defense, really, assuming you can pony up the money for the scroll and the Quintessence.

Now you just need to find a way to keep the fact that you must be this --><-- tall to enter a secret, and you're set.

[edit] Oof! Didn't realize there was a level cap. Well, try researching a spell or power that reduces you to Fine size for 2 days/lvl, and use it on yourself after you construct yourself an underground lair. This could make spells like Fabricate your friend, since you can get a lot of economy out of very little space.

[ZeroNumerous]

Playing of these war drums is also a method of alerting everyone... and when someone's weapon doesn't burst into flame, you know they're an enemy.

While getting around your other defenses is pretty easy for someone who honestly wants to get in the castle and has the spells available to do so: I would like to point out that this isn't really applicable.

When you define who is a given bard's ally you wouldn't pick "this exact number of people the bard knows of out of hand" because that'd be plain inefficient. A bunch of bards couldn't possibly know the names and faces of a fortress of six hundred or more people. So when these war drums go off, and all of the guards who don't know one of the bards out of hand are murdered for being a traitor... Well, it certainly upsets people to murder their countrymen.

It'd be better to pick something more reasonable like: "Anyone in my uniform", which means that Disguise Self'd into a guard or being invisible negates this. So either the fortress regularly murders guards who are antisocial, or this line of defense is completely ineffective aside from adding a ton of bonus damage.

[JaronK]

While getting around your other defenses is pretty easy for someone who honestly wants to get in the castle and has the spells available to do so: I would like to point out that this isn't really applicable.

When you define who is a given bard's ally you wouldn't pick "this exact number of people the bard knows of out of hand" because that'd be plain inefficient. A bunch of bards couldn't possibly know the names and faces of a fortress of six hundred or more people. So when these war drums go off, and all of the guards who don't know one of the bards out of hand are murdered for being a traitor... Well, it certainly upsets people to murder their countrymen.

It'd be better to pick something more reasonable like: "Anyone in my uniform", which means that Disguise Self'd into a guard or being invisible negates this. So either the fortress regularly murders guards who are antisocial, or this line of defense is completely ineffective aside from adding a ton of bonus damage.

Here's the thing: Bardic Music doesn't target based on any one thing the Bard is thinking about. It just hits allies. And allies has a specific definition. That definition, IIRC, is actually pretty useful. But just in case they don't just murder random people for whom it doesn't work. Instead, they imprison them until things can be sorted out.

But the primary use is making sure the guards are a credible threat, due to suddenly dealing an extra 10d6 damage per attack.

JaronK

[rockdeworld]

And allies has a specific definition.
Off-topic: where and what is that definition? Does it allow you to use White Raven Tactics on yourself?

[Lightlawbliss]

Off-topic: where and what is that definition? Does it allow you to use White Raven Tactics on yourself?

by RAW, you are an ally to yourself. the issue with white raven tactics as it has been described to me is if you drop your initiative back to right after you: it's still your turn when the ability finishes so all you did was drop your initiative by 1.

[Karnith]

Off-topic: where and what is that definition? Does it allow you to use White Raven Tactics on yourself?
Per the 3.5 glossary (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary&term=Glossary_dnd_ally&alpha=A):

A creature friendly to you. In most cases, references to "allies" include yourself.
Since it says "in most cases," the reasoning is that references to allies default to including yourself, unless specified otherwise.

[rockdeworld]

Thanks. That makes sense.

[Telok]

It should be noted that in real life the historical fortresses and castles were not designed to be sieged or to defeat sieges. They were political and military bases from which to project power and a fortified defensive position that you could retreat into until help arrived.

Fortressess are never expected to defeat spies or armies. The active defenders within the fortress are supposed to make spying difficult and hopefully unprofitable. Likewise any fixed defensive position cannot defeat a mobile army (this does not include total incompetence and it's consequences). Fortressess and castles were never designed to operate independently, they are part of a larger political and military strategy to provide staging points within and across your lands. They also force invading armies to either slow down and take every castle in thier path or to split off forces from the main body to siege those castles. If they ignore the fortressess that they pass then the invaders just left a force of armed enemies behind them and on thier supply routes.

TLDR: A fortress is a defensible supply depot from which a military force (and/or regional political administration) operates and dominates the local region. Using a castle as a static defense misses the point of having it there.

[Turion]

I would have said Weirdstone to block dimension door and blink, but the crafting requirements flat out say that you have to be 20th level to craft one. Maybe you can find a Midgard Dwarf?

-snip-

[edit] Oof! Didn't realize there was a level cap. Well, try researching a spell or power that reduces you to Fine size for 2 days/lvl, and use it on yourself after you construct yourself an underground lair. This could make spells like Fabricate your friend, since you can get a lot of economy out of very little space.

There are already two spells with similar effects: Minute Form (Wu Jen 8) and Compression (PsyWar 1). The closest you can get at 8th level is compression on a tiny character, and it would only last 9 minutes total. Really don't think it's possible to justify what's essentially an extended persisted Minute Form as a 4th level spell. (as to whether it *should* be that high? Meh.)

[unseenmage]

It should be noted that in real life the historical fortresses and castles were not designed to be sieged or to defeat sieges. They were political and military bases from which to project power and a fortified defensive position that you could retreat into until help arrived.

Fortressess are never expected to defeat spies or armies. The active defenders within the fortress are supposed to make spying difficult and hopefully unprofitable. Likewise any fixed defensive position cannot defeat a mobile army (this does not include total incompetence and it's consequences). Fortressess and castles were never designed to operate independently, they are part of a larger political and military strategy to provide staging points within and across your lands. They also force invading armies to either slow down and take every castle in thier path or to split off forces from the main body to siege those castles. If they ignore the fortressess that they pass then the invaders just left a force of armed enemies behind them and on thier supply routes.

TLDR: A fortress is a defensible supply depot from which a military force (and/or regional political administration) operates and dominates the local region. Using a castle as a static defense misses the point of having it there.

Just a note, the OP did mention the Tippyverse in the title and the Tippyverse is about Post-scarcity civilization, and in a post-scarcity civilization potentially every settlement is self sufficient.

Meaning, that in a world of magic with the ability to create something from nothing there are no such things as supply lines. Heck, in a Tippyverse, there's no such thing as invading armies either. There's just places you can teleport, the wilds, and places you can't teleport, the cities (or in this case the cities and fortresses; which would wind up being very city-like without suplyline issues I'd suspect).

Just a thought.

[Lightlawbliss]

tippyverse supply line: item of create food and water on command and an item of fabricate on command.

[Turion]

tippyverse supply line: item of create food and water on command and an item of fabricate on command.

Actually from what I remember the basic concept only needs teleportation circle. Most people live in the cities because it gives them easy access to food and supplies; they're essentially trade hubs with a large number of teleport circles. Even without the create food traps, citizens could teleport out to farms every day, send the crops back, and teleport home in the evening. The create food and water traps are nice to have because they're cheap and easy food sources, but not required. If you do have them, farm grown/raised food becomes more of a luxury item. May be mistaken on this, but that's what I remember from the original thread.

[Telok]

I obviously failed to communicate my point in a sufficently clear manner.

Castles and fortressess don't exist in a vaccum, they evolved over time to meet a need and when they could no longer fufill that need they were abandoned. When you want to impede armies of invading swordsmen you build castles, when you want to stop airplanes and ballistic missiles you build radar networks and hardened bunkers. When you want to stop spies and infiltrators you build a counter-intelligence corps and your own spying agency.

Fortressess don't exist as defensive structures in a full on Tippyverse, they are historic relics that magi-tech had rendered obsolete (alternate option, they are traps for stupid invaders). But the OP isn't running a full Tippyverse, he's capping at level 8 and the rulers are still worrying about low tech barbarian armies. At that point a normal medieval fort staffed by normal people and one adventuring party is prefectly functional. Auto-traps of Cure Light Wounds, Minor Creation: Arrows and Alchemist Fire, and food and water account for most of the troops needs. Add a lead lined room or three and Consecreate or Hallow the whole thing and you're good. Anything more magical or dangerous (like a smart dragon) isn't something for the fort to handle, it's for the adventurers to handle while the commander uses a Sending item to alert nearby allies and the main army.