Wall-Breaching Spells

[AslanCross]

What arcane spells can be used to bring down fortified walls? I thought transmute rock to mud would work, but apparently the spell description says it only works on unworked stone and the foundations of the wall wouldn't be undermined if the base is turned into mire.

[Skjaldbakka]

Energy substituted (acid or sonic) Lightning Bolts are good. I think there is a feat somewhere that allows your spells to ignore hardness of objects. Cast the lightning bolt at the gate, and it carries through to hit the men bracing the gate.

[Dhavaer]

Disintegrate and it's little brother, Concordant Disc of Opposition.

[Cruiser1]

If you just want to get past the wall:

Cast Wall of Stone (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wallOfStone.htm) to create a ramp leaning against the stone wall that you can climb up.
Cast Passwall (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/passwall.htm) or Phase Door (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/phaseDoor.htm) and just climb through the wall.
Cast Stone to Flash (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneToFlesh.htm) then chop through the meat and climb through the hole in the wall.

[Sinsie]

If you just want to get past the wall:
Cast Stone to Flash (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneToFlesh.htm) then chop through the meat and climb through the hole in the wall.

Ugh. . . how would that, I mean, look? I'm getting very disturbing images in my head and I don't know if it would be worth casting the spell for that result.

[Ramos]

Polymoprh any Object the wall into a 15 HD demon that you let loose against the defenders. :smallbiggrin:

[AslanCross]

Polymoprh any Object the wall into a 15 HD demon that you let loose against the defenders. :smallbiggrin:

That sounds so broken but so awesome. Noted.

Anyway, to clarify, I want to be able to make the wall collapse wide enough for an assault platoon (say 50 soldiers) to get through. Disintegrate would definitely ruin enough of a wall to send it well on its way to falling apart.

[kpenguin]

If you have the time, you can spend 10 minutes using major creation to change the stone wall into something useful to you or ineffective for your enemy.

[Skjaldbakka]

Major Creation? Doesn't that create things? How does that turn the wall into something else?

[kpenguin]

Major Creation? Doesn't that create things? How does that turn the wall into something else?

You use the entire wall as the material component.

[Skjaldbakka]

That would work with Fabricate. The material component for major creation is a tiny piece of the thing you want to create.

[kpenguin]

That would work with Fabricate. The material component for major creation is a tiny piece of the thing you want to create.

Tiny is relative.

[Skjaldbakka]

Now you're just being silly. Admit it, you meant Fabricate.

EDIT- come to think of it, Tiny isn't relative in D&D. It is a size category, and thus objective. Which is splitting hairs, but if that isn't what you were just doing, I don't know what is. :smalltongue:

[kpenguin]

Now you're just being silly. Admit it, you meant Fabricate.

I concede. Fabricate. Coincidently, how long would it take to turn a wall into statues using fabricate?

Although, I suppose you could try to take out a dam with major creation.

EDIT: Fabricate wouldn't work very well, because fortified walls tend to be very thick, a lot more thick than what you can transmute with fabricate. If you can convince your DM that tiny is relative, major creation would work better.

[Skjaldbakka]

At 20th level, 20 rnds/casting, at 20 cubic feet of stone/casting.

A wooden barricade would hit 200 cubic ft/casting.

EDIT- I like Fabricate. It lets my BBEG do things like make a lawnchair out of a fresh dead corpse. Hehe, blatant evil.

[mostlyharmful]

Actually fabricate would work wonders as the spell discription says that the material component has to be present and it just changes that into the desired product, it doesn't say that you cann't choose what part of the raw material gets changed. So with the classic medieval wall all you need to do is take the bottem four feet of the wall to a depth of about two feet and turn it into marbles. The wall is composed of two mortered stone walls filled in with rubble and some joiner. It's stability and ability to resist large stone impacts from siege equipment is based on the flexibility of the internal structure. When you remove the bottem of one half of the structure the weight of the wall will tear it apart. Undermining the wall doesn't require that you vaporize the whole foundation, just that you cut away the frount support.

[Dervag]

I don't know how, but I'd give the wall a saving throw of some kind against that sort of precision destruction.

[merrja666]

Polymorph any Object on a Stone Wall would turn it into a Greater Stone Golem permanantly.

Also - Symphathetic Vibration in good as is Earthquake.

Personally, my favorite is casting Transmute Rock to Lava on the wall, or, failing that, Sphere of Ultimate Destruction + Cometfall. Combined!

[mostlyharmful]

I don't know how, but I'd give the wall a saving throw of some kind against that sort of precision destruction.

An inanimate object? an magical one only gets a saving throw if it's attnded.

also because fabricate isn't an attack you can do it while invisible, and at level 9 you can do it from 45 feet away so listen checks should get a big negative for being a long way off and up a bit in the wind. This is the reason castles and defensive instalations become tricky once a campaign world has wizards in it. The amount of time and money gone into building it without magic would be astronomical compared to one casting of one spell, and there are far better things to be building if you have acsses to enough magic to do the job without mundane labour

[Ninja Chocobo]

Polymorph any Object on a Stone Wall would turn it into a Greater Stone Golem permanantly.

Can't PaO stuff into Constructs, or creatures with more than 15 HD.

[Blanks]

This little trick is from 2E but should still work:

Summon a earth elemental

Tell it to burrow from your location to just beneath the wall

start smashing

advantages:
Summon is easy to get (relatively speaking ;) )
you can be far off when it starts attacking
they will have a hard time hitting your elemental as it is below ground.



Could i please have a 3.rd ed. geek check on my suggestion ? )

[Indon]

"Sir, the wall is turning into marbles!"

"Have the sorcerors teleport to the area and blanket it with poisonous clouds."

[Chronos]

This little trick is from 2E but should still work:

Summon a earth elemental...Nah, titanium elementals are better.

And I wouldn't recommend using Polycheese Any Object to turn the walls into monsters, of any sort: There's nothing in the spell description to suggest that you would have any measure of control over the creature so created. The only way I'd do it would be if I were a cleric with the Earth and Trickery domains, so I could turn it into an earth elemental and then command it with my domain power.

Stone Shape (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/stoneShape.htm) and Shrink Item (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shrinkItem.htm) would both work on small sections of wall, though both require touch. Shout (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shout.htm) (or the greater (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shoutGreater.htm) version) will blast through walls, and while Move Earth (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/moveEarth.htm) can't affect the walls themselves, it can sculpt the surrounding terrain into a gentle hill which covers the wall. And if you're willing to branch out into magic items, a Horn of Blasting (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#hornofBlasting) would probably do well, too.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Disintegrate, man. It's the spell for anything. Tactical attack against enemy leaders, making an impromptu pit trap in front of the charging army, taking out walls, flyswatter...

[Dervag]

An inanimate object? an magical one only gets a saving throw if it's attnded.I know that's the rule.

What I'm saying is that if you want to perform a delicate operation like that with such a great reward for success, there ought to be at least some chance of failure (especially since there's no penalty for failure). So I'd be inclined to houserule that your spell has some chance of not working as intended, just so that this doesn't become the be-all and end-all of wallbusting spells.

[CrazedGoblin]

Get a battering ram and enlarge it??

[Keld Denar]

Black Blade of Disaster(SC)....Its a continuous disintegrate that attacks 1 target per round. It'll chop through your wall in moments. Of course, it IS a 9th level spell, and the duration IS concentration (nothing a little Sonorous Hum(SC) can't fix). Even if their fortress is made of permanent WALLS OF FORCE, this thing cuts through em like a hot knife made of pure disintegration. If you run out of walls to hacknslash, there are always castle defenders....

[kemmotar]

even better...how about a globe of destruction...invisibility, fly and use it like a bigger badder version of flaming sphere!!Plus it cannot be destroyed in any way so you can just rampage through the castle as a one man army while the general shouts from behind"leave some of the castle intact for us to conqueeeeeeeeeer"

[TranquilRage]

Although it wouldn't bring down the walls, a long thin wall of stone cast in the air and along the length of the battlements would be might nasty once gravity takes hold.

Also, why cant you just use Dig to undermine the walls?

[Swooper]

Disintegrate, man. It's the spell for anything. ...flyswatter...
You just gave me an awesome mental picture of a cranky wizard.

[Mr. Friendly]

Druid + Awaken = Treant

Treant smashes wall.

Mattock of the Titans, Maul of the Titans


Nobody has mentioned Shatter? It's only 2nd level and does the job just fine...

[Toliudar]

True, but Shatter only works on ten pounds per level of the material. You MIGHT be able to squeeze someone through the opening.

[Keld Denar]

Well, shatter busts up 10 lbs/caster level....

Granite has an average density of 2.75 g/cm^3 (thanks Wikipedia)

That converts to 172 lbs/ft^3 (we'll call it 170 for math sakes)

So, a 17th level caster could blast out 1 cubic foot of granite per cast.

To blast a 5 foot tall by 2 foot wide by 4 ft deep hole in a wall to fit a man sized creature through (although in game mechanics terms, it would have to be 5ft x 5ft x 4ft) would be 40 casts (or 100 castings with strict adherence to game mechanics). A single disintegrate would burn you a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft hole in the wall, good enough to send in 2 men at a time.

If you are gonna be burnin up 9th level spells on Black Blade though, there is always the ever fun Summon Elemental Monolith (SC). Nothing says "open says me" like a garganuan earth elemental. This guy could litterally pick up the castle and punt it like a gnome.

[Aquillion]

Well, shatter busts up 10 lbs/caster level....

Granite has an average density of 2.75 g/cm^3 (thanks Wikipedia)

That converts to 172 lbs/ft^3 (we'll call it 170 for math sakes)

So, a 17th level caster could blast out 1 cubic foot of granite per cast.A bored Warlock, on the other hand, could eventually talk his way through a wall using the Black Tongue. Not the fastest way to do it, but it doesn't cost you anything but time.

If you want to destroy the wall... hmm, what happens if you passwall repeatedly in a way that compromises structural integrity? The spell description doesn't say, but I find it hard to imagine a wall 'floating' even as its bottom half has been chopped to wormwood by passwalls.

[Naihal]

Although it wouldn't bring down the walls, a long thin wall of stone cast in the air and along the length of the battlements would be might nasty once gravity takes hold.

Won't work, Wall of Stone has to be connected to existing stone. You can't just create one in midair.

Sphere of Ultimate Destruction works great, it can get 30 feet of a wall down in a round. Gate also works great; gate to the Abyss and watch as demons appear and destroy anything in sight. Disintegrate also works wonders, as mentioned.

[Aquillion]

Curiously, this is one of the few cases where divine casters have the advantage, at least in RAW; Earthquake is probably more suitable to doing this than any other spell. It's sort of odd, when you think about it. Why would divine casters be better at destroying buildings?

[mostlyharmful]

Curiously, this is one of the few cases where divine casters have the advantage, at least in RAW; Earthquake is probably more suitable to doing this than any other spell. It's sort of odd, when you think about it. Why would divine casters be better at destroying buildings?

Act of God:smallbiggrin:

[martyboy74]

Won't work, Wall of Stone has to be connected to existing stone. You can't just create one in midair.

Make a ramp of stone about a foot wide with a inch wide groove down the center on the end of the front wall. Use the rest of the available stone to create a giant stone disc at the top of the ramp in the groove, but firmly connected. Hit the ramps with a disintegrate, and watch and laugh. At 20th level, that's about 15 tons of rock rolling down the wall.

[Cruiser1]

Curiously, this is one of the few cases where divine casters have the advantage, at least in RAW; Earthquake is probably more suitable to doing this than any other spell.
Earthquake (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/earthquake.htm) isn't guaranteed to bring down a wall. The spell description says: "Any structure standing on open ground takes 100 points of damage, enough to collapse a typical wooden or masonry building, but not a structure built of stone or reinforced masonry." It seems fitting that a Divine 8th level spell should be able to do something that lower level Arcane spells like Passwall or Disintegrate can do in one round.

[AslanCross]

Well, typical masonry walls have 90 HP. Reinforced (fortress) masonry has 180 HP, so two Earthquakes should do the job.