How would you siege an undead town?

[SangoProduction]

In medieval warfare, sieging was pretty much the best way to take towns, as it was relatively low risk to your own manpower. It worked by basically pressuring the defenders to surrender or face starvation, or other vital resource deficit.

But undead have no need for food, water, or many of the necessities of life (save for a few), and so it would seem as though siege warfare wouldn't work. Is this true, or is there a way where it would be viable to siege a necropolis?

[ColorBlindNinja]

I don't think a traditional siege would work because of the reasons you've laid out.


What sort of undead are we talking about? It is a broad category.

[Man_Over_Game]

There's not really any kind of long-term solution. On the flipside, there'd be little benefit to waiting while your army gets hungry, gets picked off, or as members desert.

Unless you had some kind of means to cleanse the town of undead slowly (maybe some kind of holy aura/light), it'd probably be best just to raze it or just mop it up.

Alternative solution: Use your own necromancers to take over your own undead and separate the town from their resources. With no new corpses or bodies, and by removing the undead from the town's necromancers, the town will slowly lose their resources while you take their undead to assist you in other labors.

[Jowgen]

Rather than starve them out, siege by making the city uninhabitable to them.

Get yourself a sacred vessel (BoED) and a decanter of endless water to make endless holy water. Dig a moat around the city and fill it with holy water. Then start flooding the town with even more Holy Water. Get jugs of holy water and air-bomb the city from above using flying summons or trebuchets, so you can get the roofs of buildings as well.

Once all the outside space is basically lava to the undead, you can have your guys break in and walk the streets with sprayers (A&E) full of holy water to basically flame-thrower cleanse all the undead out house by house. If you're allowed to use Dust of Dryness on holy water, you can add a nice nuclear flash-flood option to all this.

[Karl Aegis]

Why would you siege a town when there are hardly any ways of preventing a small, elite force from just storming the place? Dragons can take fortresses by themselves and the Corpse Tearer, the dragon most likely to have an army of undead in its lair, can probably defeat a siege force by itself.

[SLOTHRPG95]

This really depends on what type of undead you're talking about here. If these are hordes of zombies and skeletons being led by a few lich/necropolitan casters, then there isn't a lot you can do except annoy the few sentient beings inside. Even then, as high-level casters, there's a decent chance that they can bypass your siege via teleporation or the like. If this is a city of ghouls, ghasts, wights, vampires, etc. (intelligent undead that need to feed), the name of the game is still starvation. It's just made harder by the fact that besieging them with a living army is somewhat like besieging a normal medieval city with soldiers made of three-course meals. The best counter for this is probably your own army of mindless undead, or of constructs. If this is a city primarily inhabited by low-ish level, intelligent undead with no need to feed (e.g. the average necropolitan), then your best bet is to siege normally. Sure you won't starve them out, but you will shut down all trade and cripple their finances, which should eventually result in them suing for peace.

[GrayDeath]

Enclose it in Walls of Force, then Summon Positive Energy Elementals inside that area and wait for their destruction. Repeat as needed (since that will take days if the numbers are worthy of being called Town it kind of qualifies as Siege ^^).


More serious: I would not, for the reasons stated by others already, if one uses a more serious definition of Siege. At most I would still barricade them in a workable magical "Cage" and be done.

[Slayer Lord]

If you have access (geographically or magically) to a large body of water, you could put up barricades or earthworks to enclose the town then divert the water to drown the place, then use divine magic to create a lake of holy water.

[redking]

An undead town? How about paying bards to go into lands nearby to stir up an anti undead crusade?

[Mechalich]

This is, generally, a point where the game breaks. Specifically, by the time you're throwing around enough magic to have a 'town' (meaning thousands of individuals) with an undead populace, you're throwing around enough magic that all the typical assumptions of quasi-medieval warfare stop mattering and you basically have to start over. Conventional walls are going to basically useless given the level of magical demolition and flying/spider climbing troops available and even besieging a city of the living is going to be awfully hard with Create Food and Water in play. It is absolutely unclear how anything resembling 'warfare' is supposed to function in the context of even moderately optimized 3.X D&D, so you simply can't consider questions like this in isolation.

[Malphegor]

Get a shovel and a pick and either 100 hirelings or one bard with a lyre of building, and reroute a (pressurised via dams) river to carve through the town. (maybe bless the water as it goes through to create blobs of holy water in the mix)

Undead are now either floating or at the bottom of a river, buffeted by the force and magical holiness of the water. This will kill vampires at least if nothing else even if not blessed, I think, since they have the 'undead can't cross running water' thing.

Next, send a crack team of clerics of pelor, and let them know what it means to PRAISE! THE! SUUUUN!

Ooh, also set the place on fire. Magical fire that bypasses resistances.

[Zaq]

Find something they care about that they’ll be increasingly unhappy to not have, then cut off (or restrict as heavily as possible) their access to it. If you can’t do that, it’s not a siege. It’s a lot harder when your targets don’t have the physical requirements that most living targets do, but that’s really the core principle of a siege.

[Andor13]

This is the kind of thing that D&D handles really, really poorly. Having said that, sieging the undead is generally a terrible idea. Historically speaking sieging armies suffer high losses from disease during prolonged sieges, and that's only going to get worse in the presence of undead.

As other have said, it depends on exactly what kind of undead you're looking at, and what pressures you can bring to bear, but generally the only reason to lay a seige would be as a form of containment while you prepare some other mode of attack.

[Necroticplague]

Most undead need to feed on something, so you can seige them like normal. The ones that can truly just sit there forever are a minority’s. Just deny them access to the living they need to feed off of, and they’ll either get desperate enough to sue for peace if it lets them feed (like normal), or they’ll start self-destructing in disorganized suicidal charges ordered by their hunger.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, the only way is to build creative "siege engines" as outlined in this thread. Akin to poisoning their water supply but less morally problematic with some views of undead. In short, the siege has to just be intended to protect the weapons with which you can attack the enemy without entering the city (again, pumping the city full of something harmful to undead). A very "total war"-sort of approach but about the only one you've got available.

[zfs]

If it's a town of mostly bog standard undead, get some Druids and keep blasting the town with Rain of Roses. Has the added benefit that it won't harm any good or neutral aligned allies caught behind enemy lines. A town of helpless undead won't put up too much resistance.

[Telonius]

If an undead army is camped in a fortress, that's good news for you: they aren't out in the countryside getting new "recruits." The fortress walls aren't keeping you out, they're keeping the undead in, corralled.

In this situation, I wouldn't try to breach the walls right away. You'll want fast-moving troops, cavalry if you can get it. Don't ring the place entirely; give them a weak point where they think they can get out, and converge on them if they try to break out. Pick them off as you can; their numbers are only going to decrease as long as you're quick about it. The really key thing is to make sure to recover any of your casualties. The supply of dead bodies for their necromancer is the one supply line that you can cut.

[Necroticplague]

If an undead army is camped in a fortress, that's good news for you: they aren't out in the countryside getting new "recruits." The fortress walls aren't keeping you out, they're keeping the undead in, corralled.

Maybe some of the corporeal ones, sure. But you still have shadows, wraiths, and their ilk go undetectably right underneath you feet at night to go on that hunting trip.

Which only makes the seige much harder, because it brings about the very real possibility of ending up stuck between a line of incorporeal undead behind you and the city’s corporeal defenders in front of you.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Nuke the entire site from orbit with epic magic. It's the only way to be sure. :smallwink:

[Crichton]

Get yourself a sacred vessel (BoED) and a decanter of endless water to make endless holy water. Dig a moat around the city and fill it with holy water. Then start flooding the town with even more Holy Water. Get jugs of holy water and air-bomb the city from above using flying summons or trebuchets, so you can get the roofs of buildings as well.

Once all the outside space is basically lava to the undead, you can have your guys break in and walk the streets with sprayers (A&E) full of holy water to basically flame-thrower cleanse all the undead out house by house. If you're allowed to use Dust of Dryness on holy water, you can add a nice nuclear flash-flood option to all this.

This is hands-down the best suggestion in the thread. Endless holy water, or as I like to call it, a firehose of divine death spray. And at just 6500gp each, they're a bargain, compared to some other ideas we've seen.

First step: contain - Jowgen's moat would do just fine.
Second step, bombard. I don't think I'd use jugs, just the 20' geyser spray of the decanters up and over the wall. Might need some PaO shenanigans to get the sacred vessels to be shaped properly into 'barrels' for your holy water firehoses. But get a few of them running, and eventually your whole undead town is literally flooded with holy water. Might perhaps need to, counter-intuitively, reinforce the walls of the town to act as a dike to hold the water in. At 30 gallons a round from the decanters, that's 432000 gallons per day per decanter/vessel setup. Get a few of them running together, and bam! No more undead.

[ColorBlindNinja]

This is hands-down the best suggestion in the thread. Endless holy water, or as I like to call it, a firehose of divine death spray. And at just 6500gp each, they're a bargain, compared to some other ideas we've seen.

First step: contain - Jowgen's moat would do just fine.
Second step, bombard. I don't think I'd use jugs, just the 20' geyser spray of the decanters up and over the wall. Might need some PaO shenanigans to get the sacred vessels to be shaped properly into 'barrels' for your holy water firehoses. But get a few of them running, and eventually your whole undead town is literally flooded with holy water. Might perhaps need to, counter-intuitively, reinforce the walls of the town to act as a dike to hold the water in. At 30 gallons a round from the decanters, that's 432000 gallons per day per decanter/vessel setup. Get a few of them running together, and bam! No more undead.

This does fall apart if the undead can fly, though.

[SangoProduction]

This does fall apart if the undead can fly, though.

Unless you yourself can have flight, and can deny such escape paths.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Unless you yourself can have flight, and can deny such escape paths.

How would you go about doing that?

[Psyren]

Get yourself a sacred vessel (BoED)

How do you plan to do that?

"Like artifacts, relics cannot be manufactured, bought, or sold."

[Efrate]

Use a wish or a miracle. It is so within the purveyance of miracle if your diety is anti undead. You could likely borrow one from celestia or the analog in your campaign setting as well. Or make a custom magic item that copies the relics effect/alter a decanter to use holy water, its not horrifically expensive.

[Psyren]

If you're bringing in miracles and custom items though, what's to stop the undead in the city from petitioning their own deities for similar aid though? Certainly someone like Nerull, Velsharoon or Urgathoa would want there to be an undead city somewhere (and in fact, all these settings have at least one.)

[PunBlake]

If you actually want to lay siege in a traditional way to an undead town, consider using the Magic Siege Weapon rules in Heroes of Battle. A Disrupting trebuchet throwing either regular or Holy Stones would kill a lot of low-level undead. I don't think that's as effective as the Sacred Vessel / Endless Decanter of Holy Water plan, but it can augment it.

[ColorBlindNinja]

I will point out that a large sized chunk of these tactics don't work if the undead are incorporeal and fly.

[Stormwolf69]

Well how I would deal with a town full of the undead first.

Set up a palisade around the town just out of there artillery range. Then set up two more palisades that I can set up defences of my camp.

Part two I would set up some long-range artillery (prefer a lot of trebuchet’s and Greek fire.) start lobbing that at the city. In an attempt to clean the city with fire.

[PunBlake]

Disrupting is a siege weapon property that can be applied to any siege weapon, including ballistae. Projectile impact causes a turning check as if turning undead.

The rules I mentioned can also allow traditional weapon properties, like Ghost Touch, to be applied to siege weapons. It just starts to get expensive, as Disrupting is +2 and Ghost Touch is +1 price, on top of at least a +1 base siege weapon. It would have to be a rich, specialist army sieging this proposed incorporeal undead city.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Disrupting is a siege weapon property that can be applied to any siege weapon, including ballistae. Projectile impact causes a turning check as if turning undead.

The rules I mentioned can also allow traditional weapon properties, like Ghost Touch, to be applied to siege weapons. It just starts to get expensive, as Disrupting is +2 and Ghost Touch is +1 price, on top of at least a +1 base siege weapon. It would have to be a rich, specialist army sieging this proposed incorporeal undead city.

It might be easier to hire a group of adventurers to do the job.

[Stormwolf69]

I still think buring the town to the ground will work faster.

[Crichton]

I will point out that a large sized chunk of these tactics don't work if the undead are incorporeal and fly.


This does fall apart if the undead can fly, though.


Hmm. How about raining the holy water down from above, perhaps using floating disks or some such to fly the decanters overhead? With a massive flow from a great height, it would basically split into rain as it fell, especially if the decanters were pointed up like big fountains, thus increasing the dispersion area until it could cover the whole city.

Seems all you've offered in this thread are critiques instead of suggestions. How would you go about it? (Not a dig at you. I've seen your other threads and you have a lot to add, typically. I'm genuinely interested to hear your suggestions.)

[ColorBlindNinja]

Hmm. How about raining the holy water down from above, perhaps using floating disks or some such to fly the decanters overhead? With a massive flow from a great height, it would basically split into rain as it fell, especially if the decanters were pointed up like big fountains, thus increasing the dispersion area until it could cover the whole city.

That could work, as long as the undead don't live in some sort of underground catacombs or something similar.


Seems all you've offered in this thread are critiques instead of suggestions.

Mostly because the OP never clarified what type of undead they are.


How would you go about it? (Not a dig at you. I've seen your other threads and you have a lot to add, typically. I'm genuinely interested to hear your suggestions.)

The simplest solution would be to hire a group of adventurers to wipe them out. Bonus points for being an adventure hook.


Otherwise?

Apocalypse from the Sky could work (50/50 shot of killing incorporeal monsters).

As would many epic spells.

One could also cast Planar Binding to gather an army of outsiders to attack the town.

[PunBlake]

It might be easier to hire a group of adventurers to do the job.

It would be cheaper (as you would not have to pay the adventurers that die), but maybe not easier. 60' radius turn undead as 5th level cleric from range + siege weapon damage can kill a lot at once.

It depends a lot on what undead you are facing which tactics are best. The moat and drown in holy water works best against vampires (they can't cross water), while a mob of zombies / skeletons are best dealt with by siege weaponry AoE removal, and incorporeal undead are probably best handled by a group of specialist paladins and clerics.

[Crichton]

That could work, as long as the undead don't live in some sort of underground catacombs or something similar.


They'd flood, eventually.




Mostly because the OP never clarified what type of undead they are.

Good point. That information, and a GP budget, would help define our parameters here.

[Stormwolf69]

half the problem is I have little ideas of how the undead defenders are. Is it just zombies and skeleton or is it more advanced undead

because my idea of making a defensive position of my camp and just burning them out with artillery is sound.

[ColorBlindNinja]

It would be cheaper (as you would not have to pay the adventurers that die), but maybe not easier. 60' radius turn undead as 5th level cleric from range + siege weapon damage can kill a lot at once.

But a level 21 Cleric could nuke the site from miles away.

Overkill? Probably, but we still don't know what we're fighting.

EDIT: Admittedly more expensive, though. :smallsmile:


It depends a lot on what undead you are facing which tactics are best.

QFT.


They'd flood, eventually.

That's a lot of water. :smalleek:

Also, being able to fly through walls affords them a lot of escape routes.



Good point. That information, and a GP budget, would help define our parameters here.

Indeed they would.

[zlefin]

I'm inclined to think that sieging an undead town simply wouldn't be the most effective way, better to have a high level assault group than to siege. of course it depends on what resources you and they have available.

DnD already favors high level assault groups rather than traditional sieges and fortifications; that would be even more true when facing undead (depending on undead composition ofc, as noted some just can't be starved out at all).


on a more practical note, one might simply build fortifications near the town, to serve as a staging point for raids and to harass/hunt down any that try to escape. that is, the sieging force is mostly about providing a safe resting location for the higher level raid groups.


one side note: some undead towns I've pondered the design of are near impossible to siege with low-level forces, because they're placed in locations that are inhospitable that regular forces can't maintain well. i.e. the sieging group itself may need food/supplies. If the undead town is placed in deep desert, very high mountain, or arctic tundra, it might simply be too hard to keep a sieging army fed for long enough to effectively siege (or even to effectively attack fortifications that well).

[SangoProduction]

Hmm. How about raining the holy water down from above, perhaps using floating disks or some such to fly the decanters overhead? With a massive flow from a great height, it would basically split into rain as it fell, especially if the decanters were pointed up like big fountains, thus increasing the dispersion area until it could cover the whole city.

Seems all you've offered in this thread are critiques instead of suggestions. How would you go about it? (Not a dig at you. I've seen your other threads and you have a lot to add, typically. I'm genuinely interested to hear your suggestions.)

Critiques are useful.

As for populations, let's say 30% have some form of intelligence, and while it would be nice to control them (as you would dogs or Orcs), it is not strictly required, and 10% are the whole hog intelligence of humanoids. All are corporeal, save maybe a few, counted on a single hand. And let's say it's got a total population of a small D&D town (around 1500-2000 individuals). And highest level is...7th Oracle Vampire.

[Crichton]

Critiques are useful.

As for populations, let's say 30% have some form of intelligence, and while it would be nice to control them (as you would dogs or Orcs), it is not strictly required, and 10% are the whole hog intelligence of humanoids. All are corporeal, save maybe a few, counted on a single hand. And let's say it's got a total population of a small D&D town (around 1500-2000 individuals). And highest level is...7th Oracle Vampire.

Wait, you're trying to subdue and subjugate them? That's not a siege! All our strategies involved ways to destroy them all.

That said, with no(or very very few) incorporeals, I'm sticking with my raining millions of gallons of holy water per day on them after trapping them inside. Flood them to death(redeath?)


Also, what's the budget for this siege?

[gkathellar]

You probably wouldn't, at least not with the expectation of winning. Even against the living, sieges were incredibly costly and difficult to maintain, and frequently failed or were abandoned, in part because a well-stocked town or castle could hold out for seasons or sometimes even years. But you might lay siege to neutralize the town's ability to project military power while allied forces seized control of another objective.

And of course, some sieges ended not with starvation, but with a bang. If you could reasonably expect to break through the walls, you might lay siege. That usually wasn't a reasonable expectation in real life, but ... fantasy.

[ColorBlindNinja]

And of course, some sieges ended not with starvation, but with a bang. If you could reasonably expect to break through the walls, you might lay siege. That usually wasn't a reasonable expectation in real life, but ... fantasy.

I question the idea of having large walls to protect anything of importance in D&D.

Too many creatures can fly, or teleport, or pass through solid objects.

[gkathellar]

I question the idea of having large walls to protect anything of importance in D&D.

Too many creatures can fly, or teleport, or pass through solid objects.

I agree. Unless you have suitably deadly disincentives behind those walls, you may as well not even bother.

[Mechalich]

Critiques are useful.

As for populations, let's say 30% have some form of intelligence, and while it would be nice to control them (as you would dogs or Orcs), it is not strictly required, and 10% are the whole hog intelligence of humanoids. All are corporeal, save maybe a few, counted on a single hand. And let's say it's got a total population of a small D&D town (around 1500-2000 individuals). And highest level is...7th Oracle Vampire.

So the most potent opposition is a CR 9 individual. Okay, let's do some math here. Call it 2000 individuals. 70% are unintelligent - meaning basic skeletons and zombies. Figure 1400 undead of CR 2 or less. The intelligent undead will also be primarily Skeletal Champions, Zombie Lords, Wights, and other weak undead of CR 2-4. Call that 500. That leaves you 100 undead of higher potency. Hypothetical breakdown: 1 of CR 9, 5 of CR 8, 15 of CR 7, 30 of CR 6, 50 of CR 5. Considering this, this town would be hard-pressed to put together an elite response team of even CR 12.

A single party of level 10-12 adventurers can march through this town and slaughter all of the undead in an afternoon. Your besieging army just has to prevent them from escaping. A single appropriately equipped monster - like an Adult Gold Dragon - could also accomplish this, and would be highly motivated to do so.