Designing a Castle for Defense Against Dragons

[Ghen]

We're playing 3.5, and our players have strong reason to suspect that dragons will be attempting to level the castle that we're constructing.

Setting aside the inevitable argument that a castle is not the best defense against dragons, how can we do our best to dragon-proof the place? I love story time, so feel free to share any past experience you have with fortifications designed with dragons in mind (bonus points for in-character perspectives, :)).

[StevenC21]

Make it underground.

And add lots of ballistas.

And magic.

[Doc_Maynot]

Make it an underground dwarven stronghold

[Kayblis]

Echoing the above suggestions, underground anything neutralizes a big advantage dragons have - flight is annoying to deal with in any ciscumstance, but specially if you're defending a stationary position. It'll probably outmagic your group unless you guys have a moderately optimized full-caster, so general protections against common effects are good. This includes not having dirt exposed(pave the open areas) and having the foundations made out of hard stone with some metal skeleton to avoid transmutation effects like Stone to Mud, as well as not having wood as a structural component on any room. If you can force a dragon into close-quarters it's easy to pelt it with arrows from afar, so have a couple windows that archers can fire from into the main halls without exposing the inner rooms.

Also, have some heavy chain nets hanging from the ceiling in one or two rooms. Make them very solidly held in place by a lever-pulley system. If you can get a dragon under it and entangle him, you win.

[Jack_Simth]

We're playing 3.5, and our players have strong reason to suspect that dragons will be attempting to level the castle that we're constructing.

Setting aside the inevitable argument that a castle is not the best defense against dragons, how can we do our best to dragon-proof the place? I love story time, so feel free to share any past experience you have with fortifications designed with dragons in mind (bonus points for in-character perspectives, :)).
You've got your work cut out for you. Start with "Get as much information as you can".

The more information you have on what will likely be attacking, the better. Dragons vary from "no casting" (the youngest core dragon with any casting at all is "Young", and the White doesn't pick up casting at all until the Adult stage) to having 9th level spells available (Great Wyrm Red, Brass, Bronze, Copper, Gold, Silver, of the core set). Many have Cleric and domain spell access. "How do I use a castle to defend against an arbitrary spellcaster with 9th level spells" is a tough one, and that might be your question, depending on your opponents. Even the half-casters are problematic: Polymorph, Invisibility, and Misdirection is a nice little core combination that's VERY good at getting folks where you don't want them to reach (consider a mouse that doesn't register as magical for a moment, then add invisibility on top of that... while still not registering as magical).

Also keep in mind that there's a very wide range of special abilities among dragons. Some can burrow, some can swim, some can change shape, some can walk up walls, et cetera. If you can narrow down what colors will be after you, you can narrow down what you'll need to prepare to face.

Also consider your resources, and how much leeway you have with what and where. You're constructing the castle, and that's a good time to be thinking about it. But where is the castle? Burrow doesn't work through solid stone (there's exceptions, but dragons with those exceptions are uncommon). Yes, putting it inside a mountain is a very good step.

[Karl Aegis]

Put a throne in the treasure vault. Use that room as bait. It might work versus the shapeshifting variants.

[Blackhawk748]

Everyone is bringing up spells (which are an issue) but they seem to be forgetting something: Dragons are big. There is nothing stopping that behemoth from just landing on the wall and literally knocking it over by just pushing it. Hell, we already do this with Huge Monstrous Centipedes. Add the spells, its flight and its breath weapon and you need a bunker.

Basically, stop thinking that this is fantasy and pretend that its WWI or WWII. Be the Japanese on Okinawa.

[Fearan]

Start with a solid foundation. Build it underground. Build it underwater. Build it on a back of a tarrasque

[Maat Mons]

What resources do you have to build this castle? Is it going to be an ordinary stone castle crafted by mundane laborers? Or are we talking exotic substances and magic, here?



Hmm, lets see. The stone wall created by a Wall of Stone spell has a break DC of 20 + 2 per inch of thickness. A great wyrm gold dragon has Strength 47. So, in order to make sure the dragon can't pull a Kool Aid man through your wall even on a natural 20, it needs to be 10 inches thick. That's not too bad.

I'm not really clear on how hard a wall is to tip, but maybe if you build it right there will be no way to tip it without breaking it.

Dealing damage to the wall is a much easier prospect for the dragon. It only has hardness 8, after all. that same dragon above will probably take off 7 or 8 inches-worth of wall HP per round, if I didn't mess up my figures. So, I guess, 8 rounds to make a hole, if the wall is 5 feet thick. But I think that's only a 5-foot wide hole.



I should probably point out that many castles had wooden roofs, which is probably not the best defense against a dragon attack. Stone ceilings were sometimes done too though, which should probably be your goal.

[Troacctid]

"Don't piss off any dragons" seems like a good start. Failing that, I might try automated laser turrets on the rooftops.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

You want lead in the walls, weirdstone...

And note that Dragons can burrow : you want the toughest foundations possible. Take care during the building. I suggest either using a hardening spell, or a whole lot of some super-durable material.

[Telok]

8000 skeleton archers, 8000 +1 ammo, 8000 doses of poison, large enclosed spaces about 200 feet across that are well lit.

Assuming each skelly only gets one attack and the dragons only fail on natural 1s, assuming average rolls on a 1d4 dex poison... You should be able to kill about 3 dragons.

[RNightstalker]

While I would echo the archery thing, I've got a different twist with a few other options, which totally depends on what your party is already outfitted for:
-Slaying Arrows from a bow with Splitting, even dragons are bound to roll a nat 1 sometime.
-If 3.0 that wasn't updated is allowed, same thing with Arrows of Disintegration (AEG).
-Have some crazy character teleport above the dragon with an appropriately sized net and True Strike Gauntlets.
-Control Weather: with a good network of lookouts and communication, the weather can be appropriately changed to make flying impossible.
-Have Feather Fall handy in case a dragon decides to play "Let's bomb the castle" with boulders and other unpleasant things.
-A Lyre of Building can protect inanimate construction from some spells and siege attacks.

Try to do your homework and see if you can get some intel on the supposed dragons coming your way: favored spells, tactics, breath weapons, allies/cohorts, etc.

[Stoic]

Multiple nets made of chains of Riverine (if you can have Riverine chainmail why not Riverine chain nets?), each end would have a heavy weight attached that has shrink item on it.

If the nets connect then give the command for the attached weights to unshrink.


On a side note, it's too bad we don't have an Iron Chief contest to see who can build the most well defended castle, it would be interesting to see what everyone comes up with.

It could have different themes: floating castle, underground cavern castle, underwater, back of a gigantic sea creature, elemental plane etc...

[jdizzlean]

really,

putting aside the castles are bad against dragons thought, that leaves you w/ just, don't build one.

sure it can be underground, but water to flood, earth to mud to bury, or just a burrow takes care of that.

underwater? maybe, but waterbreathing, alter self or PAO cancels that out.

the best thing you can do is build a trap, not a castle. or make it a castle sized trap. explosive runes, contingency's galore, etc.

[Biggus]

Perhaps more important than the castle itself are the watchtowers you have for miles around, with a clear and definite way of signalling when dragons are coming. Giving your elite defenders a couple of minutes warning could make all the difference...

[RedMage125]

Gonna take a page from Age Of Worms, here...

Build on a mesa in the middle of a giant canyon. The canyon walls should be significantly higher than the castle's.

Now criss-cross the canyon with giant chains, this makes any flying creature hesitant to assault your castle, because it's going to get clotheslined. They're easy to see during the day, but a DC 25 Spot check to see at night. This does 1d6 of damage per 10 ft of movement speed when they hit it, followed by DC 20 Reflex save or lose the rest of their movement, and if it doesn't have hover, it falls.

Man the walls with Ballistae. Each ballista bolt is a harpoon attached to a giant boulder. When you hit a creature, it must make a Reflex save (DC=10+damage dealt) or have the harpoon lodged in it (move at half speed, DC 15 Concentration check to cast spells. Now, these 10,000 lb boulders are designed to break free when something tugs on them (like a harpooned dragon), which is going to further encumber the dragon's already-reduced fly speed. It takes a full-round action to remove the harpoon, which deals as much damage as the harpoon did going in.

[John05]

A lot of these suggestions sound obscenely expensive. How much wealth / power does your party have?

If they have access to 9th level powers or spells, then perhaps they could make just this castle in their own demiplane via 9th level spell or power Genesis.

Honestly, castles never did make sense to me for people with CR 9+ enemies.

[Jack_Simth]

A lot of these suggestions sound obscenely expensive. How much wealth / power does your party have?

If they have access to 9th level powers or spells, then perhaps they could make just this castle in their own demiplane via 9th level spell or power Genesis.

Honestly, castles never did make sense to me for people with CR 9+ enemies.

Castles enhance your defenses vs. certain forms of attack (the mostly mundane stuff they were built against in real life - archers, massed infantry, melee folks on horseback, and that sort of thing). So they're useful... provided the expected attacker is using one of those forms of attack. Vs. a Wizard after about level 5, a Shadow, or a host of other things... not so much.

[Segev]

On the subject of Shadows, while Strength isn't exactly a weak point of dragons, Shadows' incorporeality and ability to drain strength on an incorporeal touch attack makes them able to siphon it at an alarming rate. Go with the underground fortress-castle, forcing dragons to burrow or otherwise enter an enclosed space to gain access, and bind a bunch of Shadows to your defenses. Create accessways at various layers for Shadows to be able to pass through, and line the areas designed for normal traversal with them. When the dragons come, lash out at them with this.

For anti-teleportation tactics (because fighting dragons is fighting mages), have a number of duplicate rooms for every real room. These should be trap-filled horrors, preferably with dexterity-draining poisons and the like. Anything you can do to cause them to appear off-target in a room that will splinch them is all the better. Veil will help keep scrying from seeing what you're really doing, and can further disguise some chambers to look like the trapped ones.

Keep the interior spaces small - no larger than needed for whoever is supposed to be there. Low ceilings work when narrow halls and small rooms do not. Any space big enough for a dragon should be prepared as a killzone, with built-in ballistae and worse. Force the attacking dragons to shift to smaller forms to negate their physical advantages.

[Melayl]

Make it a sphere of adamantine? Failing that, a sphere of 15 foot thick stone, with a 10 foot thick coating of iron over it. Reinforce those walls with Walls of Force... Small doors on long tunnels that make several 90 degree turns (so breath weapons can't get through). Many very small ports to shoot ballista out of. In that canyon full of chains RedMage suggested...

[unseenmage]

Multiple nets made of chains of Riverine (if you can have Riverine chainmail why not Riverine chain nets?), each end would have a heavy weight attached that has shrink item on it.

If the nets connect then give the command for the attached weights to unshrink.


On a side note, it's too bad we don't have an Iron Chief contest to see who can build the most well defended castle, it would be interesting to see what everyone comes up with.

It could have different themes: floating castle, underground cavern castle, underwater, back of a gigantic sea creature, elemental plane etc...
Wires would be better than nets. And if they're Riverine threads would work.

String them over your base mechanically so Detect magic etc doesnt reveal them.

Kills birds and raptors (birds of prey) so should certainly work on dragons.

Alternatively build it on a private demiplane just like you would against any enemy spellcaster.

[Tvtyrant]

We're playing 3.5, and our players have strong reason to suspect that dragons will be attempting to level the castle that we're constructing.

Setting aside the inevitable argument that a castle is not the best defense against dragons, how can we do our best to dragon-proof the place? I love story time, so feel free to share any past experience you have with fortifications designed with dragons in mind (bonus points for in-character perspectives, :)).

The best way to defend a castle from a dragon is to get something to kill the dragon. Go make friends with surrounding tribes/dragons and kill the beast with an army.

If you want to be really proactive the Book of Vile Darkness has sacrifice rules which with the Cleric spell Guidance of the Avatar can easily be cheesed into a Wish spell or a Greater Planar Binding Spell. At very low levels this nets you a Pit Fiend to kill the Dragon, or a Staff of Summon Monster IX or similar high level item you can use to kill it. Sure you are evil now but the castle is saved.