Seige Weapons Are Pointless.

[Devigor]

The ballista does 3d8 damage.
The heavy catapult does 6d6 damage.
The cannon does 6d6 damage.

At level 1, a crossbowman fighter with Dex 14, deadly aim, rapid reload, and a heavy crossbow will deal an average of 8.5 damage (4.25 against objects) on a hit. A ballista will deal an average of 16.5 against anything (it shares the +1 from readied actions that the heavy crossbow gets, since it is just a huge-sized one). The catapult remains much more useful (not just for damage) at an average of 23, though difficult to aim, but the ballista is already lagging behind, since it takes so long to reload. This is assuming they're using it in a siege, where they didn't have to pay for the actual machines.

At level 6, a crosssbowman fighter with Dex 17 (+2 Enhancement +1 from level ups), deadly aim, rapid reload, point blank shot, precise shot, weapon focus, weapon specialization, vital strike, and a magic heavy crossbow will deal an average of 20 damage (10 against objects) on a hit. A magic ballista will deal an average of 33 against anything (firing a ballista is an attack action, so it qualifies to use with vital strike, as does the catapult). The magic catapult is still good, at an average of 47, but it loses out on rate of fire and the consistency of hits. The ballista is completely out-classed by itself, built at two sizes smaller.

What gives? Siege weapons deal full damage against objects, but they're so difficult to utilize and have such a slow rate of fire, they're not even much more useful in a siege over the same amount of gold's worth in warrior-class NPC soldiers with basic gear. The amount of damage against a wall by a few warriors with warhammers is better than a catapult (when compared with the damage they'll do to everything else before and after the wall breaks down).

Is there any way to get better damage on siege weapons besides houserules?

[Jon_Dahl]

Siege weapons are anything but pointless in a siege. You have the distance advantage, so your mundanes can fire without be fire upon. City walls can make it difficult to use siege weapons, so that doesn't make things any easier for the defenders, you know, siegees. A siegee is the opposite of a sieger, right?

Ballistas seem pointless, that has to be admitted. I see nothing useful in it.

[Devigor]

Siege weapons are anything but pointless in a siege. You have the distance advantage, so your mundanes can fire without be fire upon. City walls can make it difficult to use siege weapons, so that doesn't make things any easier for the defenders, you know, siegees. A siegee is the opposite of a sieger, right?

Ballistas seem pointless, that has to be admitted. I see nothing useful in it.

The distance is certainly great, but a scroll or casting or what have you could be bought instead of the siege weapon.

As for particulars, I think siegee is the word. :smallbiggrin: You made me smile early in the morning. Thank you much.

[Florian]

Is there any way to get better damage on siege weapons besides houserules?

Why would you? Use siege weapon during a siege, everything else is pretty much pointless, even spells.

[Ashtagon]

Seige weapons do a bit better once you factor in the Hardness and consequent damage reduction of the targets they are typically used against.

[Jon_Dahl]

The distance is certainly great, but a scroll or casting or what have you could be bought instead of the siege weapon.

As for particulars, I think siegee is the word. :smallbiggrin: You made me smile early in the morning. Thank you much.

Some of us run low-magic worlds and sometimes even the PCs lack magic. In my campaign, casting a fireball is a Major Thing and you rarely see one in battles or sieges. But I see your point.

[Florian]

Some of us run low-magic worlds and sometimes even the PCs lack magic. In my campaign, casting a fireball is a Major Thing and you rarely see one in battles or sieges. But I see your point.

Things can even be more concrete by looking at the rules for using different scales.
For example, staying at the individual scale, a bunch of knights stand no chance to take down a dragon.
Using the siege or kingdom scale, these knights will vanquish the dragon easily and without greater losses.

The underlying problem here is translating the efficiency of a thing from one scale to another. A Fireball is devastating on the individual scale but rather lackluster on a higher scale. Similar things happen with siege weapons, lackluster performance on the individual scale, high performance on the other scale levels.

[Zancloufer]

Okay few things first:

1) The heavier catapults have 200-400 range increments vs a maximum of 100-120 for (cross)bows. Just hide back a good ~500 ft, eat that -2 to hit and you can fire upon a castle with impunity. As in the defenders have to LEAVE their castle to even have a chance of hitting your siege engines. Also after like 2-4 shots you actually have a better chance to hit because of that cumulative +2 to hit from sustained fire. The highest 'AC' a castle has (well DC to hit it with siege weapons) is 25, and that includes the BaB + Stat mod + 2 for every shot that you fire. Also catapult crews are 4 man, use that aid another for more bonuses.

2) Heavy catapult does 8d6 damage on average, IGNORE hardness AND has a 5% chance to crit for 2x damage (Siege weapons explicitly can critical against objects/constructs!). Makes for an average 25 damage per shot, though that's only every 3 rounds.

3) Your war-hammer wielding warriors. Even with 14 Str and 2d6 damage per hit that's only 9 points of damage on average. Wait no it's only 1 because of hardness. You would need 9 of them attacking the same part of a wall to do the damage damage that a catapult does. 9 level 1 warriors cost more to equip than than the catapult costs to buy, oh not to mention that they will quickly be mowed down by enemy archers!

4) Okay so you have a Wizard. They still have to get within firing range of the enemy archers and your average level 6 wizard is actually going to be doing less damage with fireballs than the catapult rocks do (6d6 fire damage divided by 2 isn't much). Also wizards would be expensive to use in an army.

So Siege engines area actually really good for armies when it comes to sieges. At least if you assume that anyone past level 6 isn't exactly common place in a D&D/PF army.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

They're also useful for ships. Bypassing hardness is a real boon when destroying things that aren't creatures.

[Lord Vukodlak]

One should also remember that when aiming at a Castle or a City Wall its a fairly massive unmovable object. A bunch of trebuchets could fire from a thousand or even three thousand feet away. As an Indrect fire weapon its targeted with skill checks and each successive shot makes the team more accurate at hitting the spot they want. A team of adventurers by passing or fighting through an army in order to reach the Trebuches and take them out

Your also ignoring the fact that most people are level 1 and aren't optimized like a player character.

[Darth Ultron]

It's a bit odd to compare a creature to an object. It might be better to compare your crossbowman fighter to an animated siege weapon with fighter levels.

Siege weapons are for sieges, but they don't really ''translate'' into D&D well. They are more for a slow type war game RPG. A siege can last a long time, day and night, while you just fire away and do damage. It's not ''fun and exciting''.

[Vizzerdrix]

Then we must MAKE them fun and exiring! Im pitcuring something akin to Deathrace, but the party is on tricked out animated seige weapons. And have to kill each other.

[JNAProductions]

Then we must MAKE them fun and exiring! Im pitcuring something akin to Deathrace, but the party is on tricked out animated seige weapons. And have to kill each other.

Genius. Bloody genius. You are winning the internet, good sir.

[Mato]

If there were D&D I'd tell you siege weapons are over powered. Necomantic (heroes of battle) animates up to 20hd of corpses within 60ft of the target and they attack the the nearest living targets for ten rounds.

So build a flying ship & store all your corpses you make/find in a bag of holding. When you feel like cleaning a town with a zombie apocalypse just flip the back inside out and start firing. The zombies even drop dead after a minute for risk free looting and corpse restocking.

[Devigor]

The low-magic and the optimization actually made me reconsider. Most people aren't optimized like PC's, true, and low-magic changes things. The point about dragons and other monsters also brings the value of siege weapons up.
Besides those, though, I ran the math for a 10 round damage period, including hardness into the calculations. Most warrior builds with medium optimization from levels 2 to 4 are better than siege weapons.
Altogether, not a bad idea to drag a few around with the army I'm creating for this kingdom-building thingy. Cool beans.

As for the Deathrace with siege weapons: that's totally happening in one of my games, now. Thank you tons for that idea!

[Yahzi]

Besides those, though, I ran the math for a 10 round damage period, including hardness into the calculations. Most warrior builds with medium optimization from levels 2 to 4 are better than siege weapons.
Standing next to a wall and hitting it with a hammer is an invitation to be killed. The real point of a siege engine is that you can attack the walls without being attacked back. Also, even though D&D doesn't have rules for exhaustion, common sense tells you they can't hammer every round for 12 hours a day. That's combat speed. But operating siege engines is just like work; crews can run all day at it.

Also, back in the day, ballistas used to ignore AC. I still rule that they ignore AC for any size class smaller than they are (so a Huge crossbow doesn't care about your puny Medium plate).

Basically they should only be used against Huge or larger targets (ships, castles, entire army units). Against really big monsters (especially flying ones) they are the only effective mundane defense.

[Mr Adventurer]

In 3.5, objects don't take piercing damage from normal weapons, IIRC.

[Asmotherion]

Siege weapons are highly unrealisticly designed.

They should have a huge lot more dammage output with a huge lot more penalty to accuracy.

Reguardless of edition, I always made the dammage output x5 wile making it a whole lot more dificult to aim.

For example, if you're targeted by a catapult, you get a reflex save (no half dammage if you pass it), after the catapult is being fired at you (attack roll against your AC with a -10 penalty). If you get crushed by a boulder you most probably die from 30d6 dammage. But it probably won't hit you.

An other way to resollve the dammage is not to make it into weapon dammage rather than falling dammage. For example, the catapult's bulder weights let's say 100 pounds. To reach the target it travels (hypothetically) 150 feet. The target takes 1d6 dammage per 10 pounds of the bulder, so 10d6 + 1d6 per 10 feet the falling object traveled, thus an aditional 15d6. However the cap for falling dammage is 20d6, thus, someone hit by a catapult would take 20d6 falling (blugeoning) dammage

[Mr Adventurer]

Siege weapons are highly unrealisticly designed.

They should have a huge lot more dammage output with a huge lot more penalty to accuracy.

Reguardless of edition, I always made the dammage output x5 wile making it a whole lot more dificult to aim.

For example, if you're targeted by a catapult, you get a reflex save (no half dammage if you pass it), after the catapult is being fired at you (attack roll against your AC with a -10 penalty). If you get crushed by a boulder you most probably die from 30d6 dammage. But it probably won't hit you.

An other way to resollve the dammage is not to make it into weapon dammage rather than falling dammage. For example, the catapult's bulder weights let's say 100 pounds. To reach the target it travels (hypothetically) 150 feet. The target takes 1d6 dammage per 10 pounds of the bulder, so 10d6 + 1d6 per 10 feet the falling object traveled, thus an aditional 15d6. However the cap for falling dammage is 20d6, thus, someone hit by a catapult would take 20d6 falling (blugeoning) dammage

Do you do the same with giants' thrown boulders?

[SorenKnight]

Siege weapons are anything but pointless in a siege. You have the distance advantage, so your mundanes can fire without be fire upon. City walls can make it difficult to use siege weapons, so that doesn't make things any easier for the defenders, you know, siegees. A siegee is the opposite of a sieger, right?

Ballistas seem pointless, that has to be admitted. I see nothing useful in it.

A sieger doesn't exist. The verb form of siege is besiege making the people doing it besiegers. The defenders would be besiegees, as they are being besieged.

On another, less nitpicky, note I actually had someone play a siege weapon focused character once. Amusingly, he was frequently out damaged by a halfling who'd been shrunk down to Tiny size. Meaning the massive ballista bolts failed to be as devastating as tiny needle sized arrows.

[Florian]

A sieger doesn't exist.

Check your facts before trying to be witty. In german-based languages "Sieger" means "Victor".

That is based on the fact that the besieged, a term that means "vanquished", only chose to engage in a delaying action and it´s not in the besiegeds power to dictate the terms of engagement. It´s only up to the party conducting the siege if its successful and at what cost.

[Agincourt]

A sieger doesn't exist. The verb form of siege is besiege making the people doing it besiegers. The defenders would be besiegees, as they are being besieged.

On another, less nitpicky, note I actually had someone play a siege weapon focused character once. Amusingly, he was frequently out damaged by a halfling who'd been shrunk down to Tiny size. Meaning the massive ballista bolts failed to be as devastating as tiny needle sized arrows.

Both of my dictionaries list "sieger" and "besieger" and neither "segiee" nor "besiegee." They also both list siege as a possible verb. (Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (1993) and Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Fifth Edition (2002)).

[Gildedragon]

Check your facts before trying to be witty. In german-based languages "Sieger" means "Victor".

That is based on the fact that the besieged, a term that means "vanquished", only chose to engage in a delaying action and it´s not in the besiegeds power to dictate the terms of engagement. It´s only up to the party conducting the siege if its successful and at what cost.

Different etymologies. Siege as the military act is derived from the Latin for seat; Siege as the German verb "to win" is derived essentially from from an old germanic word of the same meaning

[Florian]

Different etymologies. Siege as the military act is derived from the Latin for seat; Siege as the German verb "to win" is derived essentially from from an old germanic word of the same meaning

Derived from "to unseat".

But that´s not relevant when someone tries to pull off a "+1" based on language and is simply wong at that.

[Asmotherion]

Do you do the same with giants' thrown boulders?

Preciesly. I just make the boulders a lot easyer to hit and less heavy

[Albions_Angel]

Back on topic

My personal view is to look at siege engines less as weapons and more as constructs that need constant direction. Im not talking in terms of mechanics, but from a mental perspective. If you do that, then you will notice that they did a TON of damage back when everyone was new to the game, only core existed, 24pt buy was king and people played standard level and magic worlds where the players were the most power creatures by level 5. If you see that, and the power creep of the game, then increasing their damage makes sense. Double down and increase the hitpoints of walls too.

What people forget until threads like this (and its sort of come up in this one) is that sieges are not one sided. The walls of the castle are manned, often covered, and certainly crenelated. The archers on top, probably hundreds, if not thousands (hundreds for siegeing a castle with an army of 500 men, thousands for siegeing a city with an army of 10,000 men) are in at least partial cover, probably more (+4 to ac and with a 50% miss chance at least). Sure, a group of warriors with hammers (in reality, spades, sappers were very effective, much more effective than throwing rocks) could do major damage. Thats ok. That happened in real life. They also get 4 or 5 vollies before they reach the walls, then have rocks dropped on them from 60 feet up (I believe thats 6d6 per rock?), boiling oil, burning pitch, urine, knives, severed heads.

What siege engines bring isnt usually a way to breach the walls. A trebuchet might strike a lucky hit on the walls and bring down a tower. But these rocks arnt going to do much against a direct hit on a 20 foot think wall. They instead keep the defenders heads down. They sap moral. They provide covering fire, or artillery, or biological warfare. The treb might not breach the walls. It WILL make a mess of the wooden coverings, force everyone inside the buildings, keep the ramparts clear, poison the water well, etc. Meanwhile your troops can go up with a ram and open the gates without fear, or dig under the walls, or just sit and wait for surrender.

Also, get adventurous with the projectiles. So throwing a rock isnt very much damage. What about throwing one that shatters (they did that)? Basically its a non magical fireball, throwing stone fragments scything through the castle courtyard. What about throwing heads of captured enemies? That should impose a moral penalty. Or throwing diseased cows, 10% chance to inflict a disease on the inhabitants. Throw jars of pitch with burning rags, cover rocks in sheep fat and hurl them at night, throw live animals that you set on fire to make them scream. Your DM will need fair warning so he can stat up these projectiles and what they do, but dont just rely on brute damage during a seige. Until the age of cannon, far more sieges were lost through surrender, starvation and last ditch attempts to break the siege than were lost to actually breaching the walls within a day of setting up.

[Blackhawk748]

Then we must MAKE them fun and exiring! Im pitcuring something akin to Deathrace, but the party is on tricked out animated seige weapons. And have to kill each other.

I've done something similar. I had a goblin that used a Ballista that was mounted to an armored wagon and pulled by Axebeaks. Hilariously you can sneak attack with it. So one Snipers Shot later me and the human thug are sneak attacking a green dragon with a ballista. Good times.

[SorenKnight]

Check your facts before trying to be witty. In german-based languages "Sieger" means "Victor".

That is based on the fact that the besieged, a term that means "vanquished", only chose to engage in a delaying action and it´s not in the besiegeds power to dictate the terms of engagement. It´s only up to the party conducting the siege if its successful and at what cost.

I don't speak German and even if I had decided to check my facts, the first five results for sieger on my search engine are all browser games that would have done nothing to change my views. And I wasn't trying to be witty, I made the correction because that was what I thought was true, and I made the joke about made up words to soften the annoyance of a grammatical debate.


Both of my dictionaries list "sieger" and "besieger" and neither "segiee" nor "besiegee." They also both list siege as a possible verb. (Merriam-Webster Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (1993) and Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Fifth Edition (2002)).

Sieger comes up as wrong on spellcheck, which was enough evidence for me to post. But spellcheck is outweighed by Meriam-Webster, so I apologize. I tried to correct someone's grammar, which is never really a good thing to bog down a discussion with, and I did so incorrectly, which is even worse.

Now the siegee and besiegee stuff was entirely a joke. I know those aren't real words.


Derived from "to unseat".

But that´s not relevant when someone tries to pull off a "+1" based on language and is simply wong at that.

What's a +1 refer to in this context?:smallconfused: Some forums have a system where you can add points to a members reputation when you like a post, but GiTP doesn't. And even if it did do you really believe that I thought people where going to like a quibble over grammar? I posted because I thought I was correct and the incorrect use bothered me. A mistake, yes, but a sincere one.

[Florian]

@SorenKnight:

I mainly interjected at that point because certain words have a different meaning based on language and when delving deeper, the root of that meaning becomes clear.

The "+1" I used here means that you can always delve one step deeper into the root meaning of a word and prove you´re "right", which still does not help us, right now, at dealing with communication.

We could simply make up word on the fly if it helps with communication and fosters the ability to transfer concepts, a thing we actually do all the time, it just rankles me when someone tries to use the actual definition of words to prove a point.

(And no, I´m no native english speaker. I would not try to use that language to prove a point)

[Max Caysey]

What about the balistic arc that these weapons fire. You can effectively hit peops behind a wall!

[frost890]

You are also talking about using the basic ammo. If they use tat/pitch you have a flaming ball launched over the wall. or for the alchemical inclined a glass ball filled with alchemists fire. shatter damage plus a barrel full of flame. the fire can keep the defenders busy allowing everyone to move up. There are also enchantments that can be placed on them. Animated, auto reloading and so on. I think you can walk up a s first level magic trap spell on the ammo. I would have to check my books first but I think you can set a condition of impact on it. you can also do things like load a few small creatures in to a hollowed out ballista bolt (think bobsled) or catapult and shoot it behind enemy lines. Cast feather fall and you have an infiltration unit to open the gates or sabotage from the inside. it is not always what you have but how you use it.

[Pugwampy]

I find siege weapons for basic DND game to be unfeasible . I play lots of castle sieges and usually there is always a defensive "Balistae" for a player to control .

If it wont fire once per round the players wont touch it .
If one player has to be ammo boy , players wont touch it .

My balistae fires off 1 shot per round , 3d8 Dam at low levels but scales at higher levels , an NPC to load ammo. Players use their attack bonus for it .

Simplified for fun and games

[AslanCross]

I think it's highly dependent on the campaign world, but most of this can really be solved by NOT having high-level crossbowmen. Most of the army is going to be Lv 1 Warriors.