Finishing off a castle [PF]

[Alanto]

Hey, as above, I'm DMing for a short Pathfinder game and my party's going to be coming to a castle in the next session (hopefully, best-laid plans and all that), and I was just wondering if anyone could help me flesh it out a bit?

I've copied a real castle in Yorkshire as the basic model, but I'd like to add in a bit more stuff for, well, fantasy I suppose.

Is there anything anyone would suggest gets put in?

Cheers in advance if so :smallbiggrin:

(For reference if y'know it, the castle's in Cheliax in the standard PF setting, and belongs to a noble family on pretty hard times)

[VoxRationis]

Well, I've thought about the difficulties of fortifying things in a fantasy setting, and here's what I have come up with:
1) Lose the baileys. In a world where dragons and demons and wizards and soldiers on hippogriffs all exist, leaving the interior of your fortress open like that is a Bad Idea. Either move the walls inward until they abut the next-innermost level of fortifications or put some sort of roof over that.
2) Have staggered walls of stone and moats of sand or water surrounding the castle to stymie miners or burrowers.
3) Put a roof over the wall walk and over the ramparts of all the towers, and make sure there are arrow slits. Build these sorts of structures in pairs to provide overlapping fields of fire.
4) Lead. The walls of a castle are 8' thick; even if the setting knows lead is poisonous, they can make lead inserts into the walls of the keep at least without causing any problems, while preventing anyone from using scry-and-die on them (I think; I forget which divination spells exactly get blocked by lead).

[docnessuno]

Some times ago me and some of the players of my circle put some actual toughs on war in a fantasy setting and defensive structure. What we came up with is that the best possible defensive structure is built on a Pyramid/Ziqqurat chassis.

Regardless, you might want to take a look at the "Stronghold Builder Guidebook" for inspiration.

[Lightlawbliss]

Honestly, I have found inside the mountain to be the best location for a castle in dnd, especially if using stronghold builder's guide. It may not look as cool from the outside but it is many times cheaper and stronger.

[VoxRationis]

Wouldn't the mountain be very passive? Difficult to take, but incapable of really commanding the countryside?

[watchwood]

4) Lead. The walls of a castle are 8' thick; even if the setting knows lead is poisonous, they can make lead inserts into the walls of the keep at least without causing any problems, while preventing anyone from using scry-and-die on them (I think; I forget which divination spells exactly get blocked by lead).

Pretty much all of them can be blocked by sufficient quantities of lead.

[Gwaednerth]

I recommend using readily available fun terrain features- y'know, big windows for defenestrating people, chandeliers to swing from, you get the idea. Also, for fantasy purposes, there is a reason flying towers are classic.

[VoxRationis]

This reminds me of something I was thinking about: What physical structure, as opposed to private demiplanes or the like, is best suited as a wizard's abode, with regards to both defense and utility? A wizard often has far fewer troops available than a castle lord, but is more personally powerful.

[Jack_Simth]

I forget which divination spells exactly get blocked by lead.Core? Basically all of them except Discern Location, Contact Other Plane, Commune, Commune With Nature, Legend Lore, Divination, and Augury. The Scrying ones are all blocked by lead as part of the school definition, most of the rest either explicitly mention lead as blocking them, or are line-of-sight / Line of Effect divinations that would be blocked by pretty much any solid barrier anyway.


This reminds me of something I was thinking about: What physical structure, as opposed to private demiplanes or the like, is best suited as a wizard's abode, with regards to both defense and utility? A wizard often has far fewer troops available than a castle lord, but is more personally powerful.
Taste, mostly. With few troops, you want something low access by most means so you can force your opponents to go through basically all of your defenses before getting to you - a simple tower with a smallish number of rooms to traverse (ground-based opposition has to go through all the rooms to climb up inside), a 'reverse tower' that's basically the same but going down instead of up, a flying room (wrapped in a simple path so they have to go through all your minions) et cetera. You do, of course, want some form of easy exit for the wizard - a balcony that you can fly away from in the case of a 5-6th level Wizard, teleportation in the case of a 7th+ level wizard. Yes, this puts something of a hole in your defences, but if you do it right it requires special knowledge (all but one five-foot square is teleport-blocked) or require that the attacker have similar movement modes to you (e.g., can also Fly). Someone with a lot of troops wants to be able to have most of them attack a nearby enemy - hence tall walls and arrow slits everywhere - but that doesn't apply in your specific scenario.