City protection

[Dadoman7]

I'm a new dnd player and my dm started my party of three off with the responsibility of protecting a city from a siege any advice is welcomed

[AlexanderML]

First I got to ask who are in the party, what resources does the city have, and who is the enemy if you know.

I imagine that you'll want to keep your moral up as well as try to stop disease that comes with a siege. Water is important that you have access to, as well as guards at where the food is just in case of thieves.

[Sagetim]

get the priests to prepare create food and water to extend your food stores by supplementing it with magic food.

If your city is all one alignment, for some reason, you could potentially get the clerics to cast Forbiddance in the perimeter of the city to force anyone who tries to get close and isn't that same alignment to take damage, making actual sieging very difficult. Forbiddance can get pretty expensive though (and deadly if the guys on your side aren't all the same alignment as the caster).

If you have time, make sure that the area around the city for a long distance is cleared of all debris and cover. If necessary/possible, ensure that your city is at a vertical advantage to the surrounding area, possibly with a moat full of pungi sticks. No, you don't need water, that can be swam across, frozen, etc. Just a deep pit with a bunch of pointy, **** covered sticks at the bottom. You know, to encourage festering for anyone that survives the fall and impaling.

Get cauldrons of boiling oil, in case they decide to fill your moat with bodies, so you can set the bodies on fire and keep them out longer. Boiling oil is also a traditional anti siege technique, and useful for getting people to stop climbing your wall by dumping some on them and killing them.

If you can get away with it, use that fourth level illusion spell (fifth level? whatever). Hallucinatory terrain, I think it's called. Use that to hide the fact that you have a pungi stick filled moat around your city, so that the enemy can come charging up and falling into it.

If your targets are undead, clerics with turn undead can hide in the arrow slit locations within your walls and turn undead when they get close enough to the walls and en mass. If you have high enough level casters, you can have them drop Undeath to Death as well, which forces a will save and destroys up to 1d4 hit dice of undead per caster level (and no, turn resistance doesn't count for the purposes of that spell).

You can potentially slap forbiddance in to the moat itself, and some feet above it, to force targets falling into it or trying to cross without a good siege tower to take the alignment based damage. The upshot of doing this is that you can potentially put your draw bridge higher than the forbiddance, or the forbiddance in that particular area lower than the rest, to allow normal trade to continue through the official entrance/exit of the city. While all other entrances/exits can become quite deadly to try to achieve.

If you have time and high enough level casters, have them cast wall of iron and fabricate on that to give the city walls a layer of steel with spikes on it. You'll need a supply of coal for this as well, to be used in combination with the wall of iron as raw materials. Alternatively, leave out the coal and steel bit and just have the wall of iron be super smooth with no spikes to prevent ease of climbing.

If you have access to a wizard willing to blow xp on it, have him fill your moat with a wall of magma and permanency it. Or, if you have that solar simulacrum that I mentioned in the other thread that I think is by you as well, have it cast permanency as a spell like ability 3/day until you have a wall of magma going around the town in the moat.

[NevinPL]

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has a load of things that might help you.

In real world siege, you would worry about:

breaches in the defenses,
fire, diseases,
food, and water.

[daremetoidareyo]

Is there an escape plan?
Prepare for the siege and all, but a secret way to evacuate/launch commando attacks is very helpful.

Have you called for reinforcements?
Send your fastest messenger to a nearby military settlement to attack the army laying siege. If there isn't an escape plan, this is necessary.

Do you know who the field leaders/command structure are?
Use flying familiars and animal companions as scouts about the invaders to find the leadership. If you kill these figures off, the siege becomes disorganized. If you kill the replacements off, not only is new leadership now scared, but the disorganization is compounded: Few organizations have a talent pool more than a single leader deep. The vice vice siege captain has likely never led an army of this size before.

What is the armies sight capabilities?
If they have darkvision and the townies do not, you are going to need some slots for light spells.

Do you have fell drain?
cuz fell drain magic missile is a thing that can turn an organized force into a rambling undead wight horde that you can turn with a few clerics.

Does the opponent know the size of the resistance?
Post archers on the city walls and silent image more archers between them. It is important to continually deceive the opponent about your numbers. Especially if you want them to concentrate force on a single facet of your city's defense. If you make them believe that one part of the city is more protected than another, they will attack the weaker side. If you have a big ole trap on that side, you can capitalize on that.

Did you take the forum advice and neglect blasting spells on your wizard?
That advice was not helpful in this particular situation. But you will likely have some divinations prepared, which will be helpful for planning courses of action.

Do you have alter self and a few folks with high charisma?
Infiltrate their lines and deflate courage by talking of desertion. Diplomancy and bluff your way in getting people to make a "desertion pact" in which they all leave the fight together. Get them into a fight with their compatriots. This is especially effective if you've managed to kill their leadership at least once.

Is this town worth protecting?
* You could gather all of your townsfolk in the courtyard, and then fell drain magic missiles them. The new wights will make them all wights. This will turn level 0 commoners into 4HD energy drain monsters.

[Vrakk]

Have all the bards in the city sing Justin Bieber songs at all times - guaranteed to scare away any invading army.

[Nibbens]

If we're talking PF - alchemical pellet grenades (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateEquipment/gear/alchemicalWeapons.html) are cheap for the explosion they create - good for taking out rabble in a large area too. Each grenade is 1 lb, so a mage hand dropping a bag of these things make for great clusterbombs!

[Flickerdart]

get the priests to prepare create food and water to extend your food stores by supplementing it with magic food.
That's not a very good use of 3rd level slots - the amount of people fed is insignificant compared to the population of a city. Those slots would be put to better use for stone shape to repair fortifications damaged by enemy siege weapons (or raise new ones), or glyph of warding to set up traps for invaders. You could also use contagion to spread disease in the enemy camp during the night, or animate dead to raise fallen defenders after a sortie or breach.

[Hecuba]

I'm a new dnd player and my dm started my party of three off with the responsibility of protecting a city from a siege any advice is welcomed

What is your army's magical capacity and how does it compare with that of the forces laying siege?
If the scope of magical aid is small enough that you can imbalance it in your favor, it will likely be beneficial to do so.

[Rubik]

That's not a very good use of 3rd level slots - the amount of people fed is insignificant compared to the population of a city. Those slots would be put to better use for stone shape to repair fortifications damaged by enemy siege weapons (or raise new ones), or glyph of warding to set up traps for invaders. You could also use contagion to spread disease in the enemy camp during the night, or animate dead to raise fallen defenders after a sortie or breach.You're better off crafting a resetting trap of Create Food and Water in the form of a vending machine that activates whenever someone steps on the panel in front of it. Then just have everyone line up, run across the panel, and pick up the food on their way past.

[Flickerdart]

You're better off crafting a resetting trap of Create Food and Water in the form of a vending machine that activates whenever someone steps on the panel in front of it. Then just have everyone line up, run across the panel, and pick up the food on their way past.
If that was a possibility, surely such a trap would already exist in the city?

[Xerlith]

For actual food, I'd go with the morbid route and sustain on the bodies of the fallen. Purify Food and Drink and Create Water are both orisons, and these+dead bodies = food. Prestidigitation to make it taste not-like-human-flesh.

[Draco_Lord]

For actual food, I'd go with the morbid route and sustain on the bodies of the fallen. Purify Food and Drink and Create Water are both orisons, and these+dead bodies = food. Prestidigitation to make it taste not-like-human-flesh.

Just be careful that no Wendigos show up from something like that.

[NevinPL]

Prestidigitation to make it taste not-like-human-flesh.
I'm not even gonna ask, how do you know that human flesh tastes "funky"...

[Sagetim]

If that was a possibility, surely such a trap would already exist in the city?

Such a trap in a normal situation would **** with the local economy. If the area is anything like a medieval set up, then the vast majority of commoners are peasant farmers. If you can just step on a plate and get food to feed something like 15 people per step, then you don't need peasant farmers to be farmers.

That said, it would be a useful method for dealing with siege situations, where you don't have the ability to farm. Kept in a properly defended area, you could keep it from being used in non-siege situations and in times of need use it to keep the people from starving. But you generally want your peasant farmers to be farming, because it seems unlikely that you could sustain a population of mostly craftsmen without resorting to more magical crutches to hold your system up.

Also, purifying the dead doesn't make cannibalism okay. And turning peasants into wights is awful. That said, we've been assuming that the party is good. If they aren't, then turning some of the less useful peasants into wights to send at the enemy is a sound tactic. It's very evil, but it could work out really well for demotivating them during a siege. Especially if you send the wights out during the night.

[Xerlith]

I'm not even gonna ask, how do you know that human flesh tastes "funky"...

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

We're in the same country, wanna find out?

[Flickerdart]

Such a trap in a normal situation would **** with the local economy. If the area is anything like a medieval set up, then the vast majority of commoners are peasant farmers. If you can just step on a plate and get food to feed something like 15 people per step, then you don't need peasant farmers to be farmers.
Which is a problem because...?

[elonin]

I don't see the problem with free basic food. There would still be a need for artisan farmers for the rich in society. I imagine it might be like the time in the real world in which fewer people needed to be farmers and more people became tradesmen.

[NevinPL]

Also the food created is more likely the "snot" from "Matrix", than your (grand)mother's turkey dinner, so while it would help the helpless, etc., I doubt if would be popular.

[Dadoman7]

The city as little to no magic help with in it has a mages guild that was just started recruiting members not to long ago
The city also has a handful of allies on their way to help but it will take a week game time for them to arrive

[Dadoman7]

From what my party was told the attacking force is made up of demonic and other evil creatures

[Rubik]

I want to know how a settlement of ANY size has managed to survive without a sizable contingent of high level spellcasters.

[Dadoman7]

From what my party was told the attacking force is made up of demonic and other evil creatures

[Hecuba]

The city as little to no magic help with in it has a mages guild that was just started recruiting members not to long ago
The city also has a handful of allies on their way to help but it will take a week game time for them to arrive


From what my party was told the attacking force is made up of demonic and other evil creatures

Taken together, this sounds to my that the enemy will have magic enough to prevent you from sickly breaking the siege. If their magical resources are primarily demonic, that probably also means that they are primarily SLA based and this may lack the flexability to directly destroy your fortifications.

This is likely intentional: such a setup directs the conflict such that it stays in the traditional idea of a locked siege. I doubt, given the setup, that you will be able to alter the strategic fioting of the conflict: this will remain a siege and will be decided on whether or not you last unroll the allies arrive.

That makes the decisions we have to examine tactical in nature.
You have a two basic goals:

create a capacity to break their attacks.
maintain your fortifications


Because the forces are demonic, it's a fairly safe bet that dispell magic is on the menu. This means you probably want to avoid ongoing effects. You're also likely out of luck for cold, fire and acid.

Additionally , I'm assuming going forward that you have walls and that they will not have significant access to magic that would outright make those walls irrelevant.

The pass of boiling oil ideas from above is a good start, but with a primarily demonic force holy water will be more reliable if you can get it in sufficient bulk.

Any effects that will male the area outside your walls difficult terrain will give you more time to react to charges. Plant growth comes to mind. Your primary target when breaking their charges should be siege weaponry and any caters that might be able to damage a wall. Any spells used against them should be instantaneous.

If you have any capacity to repair fortifications (ex: wall of stone), you'll want them available.

[Scheming Wizard]

Heroes of battle has some cool stuff like siege weapons and even magic items that work like mines.

The main thing when defending is to take into account all vectors if attack. There is the air which needs to be defended via ranged attacks like archers on the wall or someone manning a ballista.

Then you have ground level which is defended by the walls and the gates. Make sure the enemy doesn't break down a wall and if they do be ready to defend the breach helms deep style. Also watch out for traitors that open the gate while everyone is asleep. A moat is a good idea. Invest in crocodiles.

Finally you need to watch out for things that can dig under the walls or use tunnels that go under the castle. The best way to keep the underground safe is to collapse tunnels before the enemy can use them to get in. This kind of sucks though if you lose the siege and then need to get out. As far as digging monsters you really need to get down there and fight them. Traps like flooding chambers that get dug into might be a good idea.

There is also teleportation, but you need magical wards to fend that off.

[frost890]

Ummm... What level are we talking? Do you have time to prepare anything? Do you have a way to sneak out side the city and strike quietly? How did you hear about the siege coming your way? do you have access to flying by mount or spell? Find an alchemist and have them make things for you. It is a siege, holy smoke that gives negatives to evil creature in an area are great. Arrows of slaying are great if you know the types of creatures you are facing. (hint. hint. Demonic and evil creatures) also I want to say that silver bypasses their DR. The city should be able to round up all the silver coins if they know important facts like that. (knowledge skills are powerful if used right). As for the comment about wasting a spell to create food/water for that number, it is meant to supplement not replace supplies. So still useful for keeping moral up. To me it sounds like your GM will be taking that in to account. you do not have to beat the army, just hold them off. Siege weapons are good for this. Find an old war veteran or a engineer or a book on warfare. A catapult can throw some of the flammable debris. liberally coated in oil of course. Any Army will need supplies. Find a way to destroy them.