Siege Warfare

[Berand]

Can anyone suggest a good book or other source for technical information on putting a D&D group through a battle at a castle? I'm talking battering rams, catapults, ballistas, boiling oil, archers shooting from battlements, laddermen, siege towers, etc.

I've been searching around, but nothing has come up.

Thanks!

[Fax Celestis]

Try the Heroes of Battle supplement.

[Lord Tataraus]

Try the Heroes of Battle supplement.

that and possibly arms and equipment guide for some more siege machines and such.

[Kaelik]

The biggest problem with Siege Warfare is that it shouldn't exist according to the rules. Wizards make it somewhat unlikely. Teleportation Circle automatically negates all starvation problems. Wizards can stand on the Battlements and Fireball your Siege Engines for fun. Walls are easily passable/destroyed. And superpowerful individuals (not to mention Cloudkill) make all the level 1 Warriors obsolete and heavily casualtied.

[rankrath]

yea, except for the fact that if one side has it, the other side can counter it. Cast cloudkill? an enemy wizard sticks it (or you) in a force cage. teleport? dispell it, or attack while the wizard is away gathering food. Guy behind the wall fireballing your engines? counter spell them or fireball him in return.

[AslanCross]

Heroes of Battle has actual stats on Siege machines. Heavy Trebuchets are complete beasts at 7000 HP.
Complete Warrior also gives some hints on how warfare works. A no/low magic world would probably have traditional medieval warfare, while with high magic and fantasy creatures it would be a lot closer to what we have now.

[BRC]

Heres a way I imagine large-scale fantasy warfare working.
First of all, powerful casters are very rare, so an army isn't likely to have a wizard capable of limited-wishing your army out of existance or anything like that. Positions (like seige engines) that would be very vulnerable to casters and protected by casters who do some mumbo-jumbo to protect said seige engines from the enemy. Most casters would be level 1 or 2, which means they won't be capable of doing much more than lending firepower to squads. So powerful casters duke it out in endless rounds of spell/counterspell while weaker casters fight alongside the grunts throwing spells around.

[Prometheus]

I think the principle of a siege is somewhat rendered meaningless when 1/2 level and 1st level adepts, clerics, druids, can cast create water, purify food and drink, and mending as cantrips.

[Alleine]

Well, siege weapons would still be useful. After all, that mountain-fortress won't be reduced to rubble all by its lonesome self.

[Jack Zander]

Purify Food and Drink still requires you to have the food in the first place. Like was stated before, depending on how your world works, not every army has a 20th level wizard leading the charge. Most characters never get past 3rd level and the most elite of all people (aside from truly epic heroes) only reach level 5. So your army might have one or two 5th level wizard's casting fireball twice that day. Real effective against an entire army there. Army's really don't have the truly epic heroes fighting for them because the truly epic heroes are out doing truly epic stuff, not fighting in some trivial political war.

[Agraham]

Level 5?

All wars last less than 2 and 1/2 months, because thats how long it takes for a level 1 ZERO to become a level 20 HERO, with constant fighting in a level appropriate enviroment; and an Army is a level appropriate challenge for a Level 20 Hero.

All that doesn't even matter, because the next day after a war is declared, divinations are prepared and cast, and all the heroes from one side teleport to all the heroes of the other side and nail all the heroes from the other side to a tree, then go on to headhunt the leadership of whichever side they want to.

[Alex12]

Actually, there's a few abilities (read: spells and powers) that would be critically helpful with the problem of teleportation. Divert Teleport is the easiest to get at level 13 for Psions, followed by Dimensional Lock at level 15 for Clerics, Wizards, and Sorcerers. To solve the problem of how they can have those effects without having a bunch of high-level casters around, they all died.
To clarify, the devices were created a long time ago by really powerful casters, and would automatically trigger and project the relevant effect around the location in the event of war.

[Darkxarth]

Level 5?

All wars last less than 2 and 1/2 months, because thats how long it takes for a level 1 ZERO to become a level 20 HERO, with constant fighting in a level appropriate enviroment; and an Army is a level appropriate challenge for a Level 20 Hero.

All that doesn't even matter, because the next day after a war is declared, divinations are prepared and cast, and all the heroes from one side teleport to all the heroes of the other side and nail all the heroes from the other side to a tree, then go on to headhunt the leadership of whichever side they want to.

A decent DM fixes this problem by saying, "NPCs gain XP at 1/2 the rate of PCs." Or by simply saying "That's stupid, it isn't the way this is going to work."

As far as divinations and heroes, heroes ARE the PCs. NPC heroes are generally few and far between, at least in most games I've played in. So, if the PCs are high enough level to be teleporting from place to place and taking out leaders with ease, why are they participating in such trivial wars? Why aren't they off fighting the Demons, Devils, and other fiends that (by a similar line of logic) should've already taken over the Material Plane.

D&D doesn't work like the real world, it works however the DM/players say it works.

[Riffington]

Well, siege weapons would still be useful. After all, that mountain-fortress won't be reduced to rubble all by its lonesome self.

But the mountain fortress isn't useful in the first place, if armies can magically obtain food/water. The point of the fortress was that an invading army would need a constant supply of food, and the forces in the fortress can destroy those supply lines. But if food is easily obtained, then an invading army can just march right past that mountain fortress, telling its defenders that if they would really like to fight they'll have to come out from behind those walls.

[kemmotar]

Well...firaballing the siege engines can be solved with one spell...Area dispell magic centered on the siege machine...

As for high level NPCs...it depends on the world...for example in FR you have Drizz't elven queens even some monsters can be viewed as NPCS...for example the wild hunt from MM5 is pretty much an elf possessed with hunting anything worth hunting and is 22CR...

Not to mention kings and queens of the elves who are all exceptional magicians, the archamges and other NPC PrC givers who have have all the requirements for the class+ all the levels of the class in order for them to teach you the PrC etc

[elliott20]

*waits for someone to jump in and start writing Gary Stu magical armies, completely painting this thread's conversation into a small narrow corner, with extremely specific resource designation and dubious usage of statistics*

[Matthew]

Yeah, I agree with Elliott20, let's try and answer the question helpfully and not let this devolve into another 'D&D doesn't work like that' Thread.

Berand, you may want to provide additional information as to what the sides are like. What Levels, Races and Classes are the Player Characters? What kind of resources and allies are they expected to possess? How many opponents are there going to be and what are their Levels, Classes and Races?

[Kaelik]

Well...firaballing the siege engines can be solved with one spell...Area dispell magic centered on the siege machine...

How does that help against an Instantaneous duration spell? Oh, it doesn't, unless you counterspell, which requires knowing a spell is cast from 500ft away.

[TempusCCK]

Meh, one can assume that if an army is even considering using Seige Weaponry they don't have the ability to defeat their opponents in more efficient manner.

I.E: We are not dealing with an army of super-powered wizards.

Again, it would probably be safe to assume that if an army is marching against a position with siege engines you should be relatively sure that a seige engine is going to work. They are expensive, intricate, and therefore very hard to work/get ahold of in a setting where you don't have a super powerful caster doing whatever a super powerful caster might do.

Therefore, we can assume that there is probably also no uber-powerful magic users on the defenses side either.

Of course, this could all be wrong, and you all could be making very valid points if we're talking about a campaign full of level 20 Wizards.

But the issue I see here is that everyone is making the assumption that this man is playing the same way you always do, which is, in all probability, not the case.

[Matthew]

Maybe they have Magical Siege Machines?

Actually, that reminds me. I'll recommend Cry Havoc as an alternative to Heroes of Battle or the Miniatures Handbook.

[PaladinBoy]

Quick point. Any weapon used in warfare will soon be either reverse-engineered by the enemy, or have a counter developed by the enemy. Actually, probably both. Enemy wizards posing a threat to your siege engines with fireball? Why doesn't that nation enchant their siege weapons with SR, or keep spellcasters around to instantaneously repair the damage? Also, siege weapons have a much greater range than spells, unless the enemy has very powerful wizards, or is spending reasonable amounts of money on metamagic rods. In the first case, the powerful guys have much better things to do than destroy siege engines, like fighting their counterparts in the enemy army. In the second case, what has the other army been doing with their money? They could be buying the same things, but then, if they're protecting/repairing their siege weapons....... the enemy's going to waste some spells.

As for the OP's question, I'd say you could use Heroes of Battle. It has siege engine stats, rules for volley fire, sappers, etc.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Note: Wars pretty much don't exist in FR, 'cause innkeepers are epic, so level 20 wizzes are a moot point. Everywhere else, wars might break out.


I'd go with Aslan, here. If you can get anything with the HP of a heavy trebuchet, siege weapons can be useful. Hmm, idea for a supermech....

[Ulzgoroth]

Creating food is not going to negate logistics unless either the magic level is high enough that an army is a pointless encumbrance, or you're using such questionable items as the Field Provisions Box (Miniatures Handbook) and have a great deal of money to throw around. If you somehow can get teleport circle but still actually want to use armies, it works much better for the defender than the attacker and pretty much forces you to reduce and storm fortresses since they never run out of food or personnel.

Blowing the fittings off the gates with shatter and infiltrating with sleep, invisibility, silence, and spider climb seem like they'd be useful tricks to add to a relatively normal siege.

[GoC]

*waits for someone to jump in and start writing Gary Stu magical armies, completely painting this thread's conversation into a small narrow corner, with extremely specific resource designation and dubious usage of statistics*

The Book of Armies thread had some very good rules like limiting the creatures/NPCs to 9th level and making them very expensive.
Of course I used those rules and got a gnome artificer in a flying tank (it used a 182,000gp item of reverse gravity) that would destroy all of them combined...

PaladinBoy: SR is expensive and unreliable and you'd need 4 Repair spells for each Fireball to keep up.

[PaladinBoy]

PaladinBoy: SR is expensive and unreliable and you'd need 4 Repair spells for each Fireball to keep up.

I just posted whatever came to mind; those two seemed like the most obvious. The point was that effective defenses will quickly be developed, even if those aren't it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Fire resistance would perhaps serve better. But you don't really need either if your siege engines can have thousands of hit points. They can't afford all that many fireballs anyway. 2000 caster levels worth is going to take longer to get cast than the wall will stand up.

[Stormcrow]

Note: Wars pretty much don't exist in FR, 'cause innkeepers are epic, so level 20 wizzes are a moot point. Everywhere else, wars might break out.

Thats a relatively close minded and sterotyped look on the Forgotten Realms. Not only was the place founded on wars but there has been at least two fought in the last fifty years. Canon.

They even have a god of Millitary tactics and a God of Battles. :P

[GoC]

I just posted whatever came to mind; those two seemed like the most obvious. The point was that effective defenses will quickly be developed, even if those aren't it.

How much does a catapult cost?
An infite use item of Sound Lance costs 56,000gp and does 7d6 damage (bypassing hardness).
If the catupult costs less per point of damage then it might make sense to use it even if they get destroyed.
Though once you can get items of Disintegrate they become meaningless.

EDIT:Oops. An energy substituted Fireball has longer range and a massive AoE. So yeah, catapults suck.

[AslanCross]

A Heavy catapult costs 800 GP and does 6d6 damage with 200 ft. range increments.

The weakest siege engine apart from the light ballista has 400 HP. A heavy mangonel has 1350 HP and only costs 800 GP; the Heavy Trebuchet is a colossal object that has over 7000 HP and deals more damage than a fireball. I still don't think Wizards would be able to deal enough damage to slow down something like that unless they were epic and dropped apocalypse from the sky or something.

Of course, they could just kill the crew. :P Then again I still don't think a single wizard could neutralize an army equipped with two or more heavy trebuchets, not to mention its own casters.

[osyluth]

Magic takes the place of most siege technology in a typical D&D setting, but oddly enough there are still some rules for siege equipment in the Dungeon Masters Guide