I’m thinking about doing a siege in a game I’m running, anyone have ideas for tactics for either side? The characters are on the invaders side. I was thinking launching halfling Barbarians in barrels using trebuchets over the walls to kill archers.
this is a well equipped castle with plenty of defenses and supplies. Walls are 10ft thick and they have a dome underground to keep the invaders from digging under the walls that is the same thickness
In a magic world, walls mean little. A caster with 2 stone shapes can make a hole in the 10’ wall in as many rounds (give them invisibility and since they aren’t making an attack, they stay that way while they walk up to the wall and do it, or tunnel underneath and don’t have to worry about being seen). A disintegrate probably does it in one round from 60’ away. A few shatters might also do the trick. Passwall, transmute rock, just some straight damage spells to blow a hole in it. Probably even more spells than I’m thinking of could work. There’s got to be a dozen ways to fly over the walls or teleport to the other side of them, invisibly, and open the gates from the inside. Why fling people over the wall and then force them to fight their way back onto it when you can summon an elemental (or whatever you like) right next to those archers. (And use that distraction to get your stone shaper close).
You almost have to think of D&D sieges in modern terms, with spellcasters taking on the role of the cannons and airplanes that made castles obsolete.
One of my favourite series of fantasy novels were the Krynn novels, particularly Kender, Gully Dwarves and Gnomes. I loved how the Gully Dwarves completely misunderstood the catapult and built a cattle-pult instead, You guessed it - they fired cows and bulls over the walls at the enemy. It was hilarious,
The standard genre trope for fantasy RPGs is 'medieval with magic'. Any significant amount of magic renders that trope ridiculous; massed armies simply cannot coexist with Fireball. Fortifications remain a bit longer, while Spider Climb is plenty to get one person over a wall, getting a tactically relevant force over is tough until you get fifth level spells (Passwall, Transmute Rock; you can dig through with Stone Shape but it's relatively easy to prevent).
Look up books and videos on siege/castle warfare. Build your castle from a realistic perspective (an underground dome? Really?), and enhance it from there. It takes time to move large forces - 20 miles/day was considered pretty quick for a large army - so defenders could have up to a couple of weeks to prepare defenses and outer fortifications. Castle walls can be enchanted to resist spells if you apply or modify some of the rules in the PHB & DMG. Earth and water elementals could be bound to protect the foundations or inhabit the moat.
I was in a game where we had to defend a castle during Princes of the Apocalypse. We were a big group so the DM split us up randomly and one of the other players sat out the encounter and DMed it. It was great. One group had to hold the tunnels underneath and my group had to hold different sections of the walls at different times. We had hired some soldiers to guard it in our absence so the DM assumed they could hold for awhile but depending on rolls we might have to pull away and move. They did punch a hole in the wall but in the end we were able to hold them off. One of the high points of the campaign.
Cool! Any ideas for breaching walls specifically? (Scrapping the dome, it was definitely overkill) also any ideas for defenses for the castle the pcs are trying to breach? The defenders will have wizards on the walls (guarded of course) warding the walls from spells that would compromise the walls
And if this helps, it’s the pcs home base kingdom they are breaching, they are coming back from a side quest to find that the king was overthrown and the guards were driven out by the revolters. The siege was started a week before the pcs arrived
The recommended way of making it interesting for the PCs is that the plan is to infiltrate a small elite force (i.e. the PCs) who have to open a hole in the defenses of some type (open a gate, clear an area of wall and let down ladders, w/e) and keep it open for long enough for the forces outside to break in.
If you want to do a general assault on the walls, there's the Siege Equipment in the DMG, plus various monsters that can break walls pretty easily, such as an Earth Elemental.
For wall defenders you can have wizards-whether PCs or NPCs, as well as things like ballista or even trebuchet/catapult type things inside to lob stuff over the defenders. Or things like oil to dump on battering rams. For attackers, you could do something Elemental in nature—PofA has these devastation orbs that are kinda like an elemental bomb. Or spells like earthquake could help. Anything really to disrupt the defensive efforts. Including attacking from multiple compass points at once. Waves of attackers of different types or with different abilities would definitely keep it from getting boring and forces the defenders to save resources or run out at a bad time.
I’m thinking about doing a siege in a game I’m running, anyone have ideas for tactics for either side? The characters are on the invaders side. I was thinking launching halfling Barbarians in barrels using trebuchets over the walls to kill archers.
this is a well equipped castle with plenty of defenses and supplies. Walls are 10ft thick and they have a dome underground to keep the invaders from digging under the walls that is the same thickness
How gritty or rule of cool are you running this game? Also why do you specify there’s a dome preventing tunneling?
In a magic world, walls mean little. A caster with 2 stone shapes can make a hole in the 10’ wall in as many rounds (give them invisibility and since they aren’t making an attack, they stay that way while they walk up to the wall and do it, or tunnel underneath and don’t have to worry about being seen). A disintegrate probably does it in one round from 60’ away. A few shatters might also do the trick. Passwall, transmute rock, just some straight damage spells to blow a hole in it. Probably even more spells than I’m thinking of could work.
There’s got to be a dozen ways to fly over the walls or teleport to the other side of them, invisibly, and open the gates from the inside.
Why fling people over the wall and then force them to fight their way back onto it when you can summon an elemental (or whatever you like) right next to those archers. (And use that distraction to get your stone shaper close).
You almost have to think of D&D sieges in modern terms, with spellcasters taking on the role of the cannons and airplanes that made castles obsolete.
One of my favourite series of fantasy novels were the Krynn novels, particularly Kender, Gully Dwarves and Gnomes. I loved how the Gully Dwarves completely misunderstood the catapult and built a cattle-pult instead, You guessed it - they fired cows and bulls over the walls at the enemy. It was hilarious,
The standard genre trope for fantasy RPGs is 'medieval with magic'. Any significant amount of magic renders that trope ridiculous; massed armies simply cannot coexist with Fireball. Fortifications remain a bit longer, while Spider Climb is plenty to get one person over a wall, getting a tactically relevant force over is tough until you get fifth level spells (Passwall, Transmute Rock; you can dig through with Stone Shape but it's relatively easy to prevent).
Rule of cool and just to make sure any tunneling ideas new they needed to get past that
Look up books and videos on siege/castle warfare. Build your castle from a realistic perspective (an underground dome? Really?), and enhance it from there. It takes time to move large forces - 20 miles/day was considered pretty quick for a large army - so defenders could have up to a couple of weeks to prepare defenses and outer fortifications. Castle walls can be enchanted to resist spells if you apply or modify some of the rules in the PHB & DMG. Earth and water elementals could be bound to protect the foundations or inhabit the moat.
Carrion
I was in a game where we had to defend a castle during Princes of the Apocalypse. We were a big group so the DM split us up randomly and one of the other players sat out the encounter and DMed it. It was great. One group had to hold the tunnels underneath and my group had to hold different sections of the walls at different times. We had hired some soldiers to guard it in our absence so the DM assumed they could hold for awhile but depending on rolls we might have to pull away and move. They did punch a hole in the wall but in the end we were able to hold them off. One of the high points of the campaign.
Cool! Any ideas for breaching walls specifically? (Scrapping the dome, it was definitely overkill) also any ideas for defenses for the castle the pcs are trying to breach? The defenders will have wizards on the walls (guarded of course) warding the walls from spells that would compromise the walls
And if this helps, it’s the pcs home base kingdom they are breaching, they are coming back from a side quest to find that the king was overthrown and the guards were driven out by the revolters. The siege was started a week before the pcs arrived
Also help for running a siege without it becoming boring?
The recommended way of making it interesting for the PCs is that the plan is to infiltrate a small elite force (i.e. the PCs) who have to open a hole in the defenses of some type (open a gate, clear an area of wall and let down ladders, w/e) and keep it open for long enough for the forces outside to break in.
If you want to do a general assault on the walls, there's the Siege Equipment in the DMG, plus various monsters that can break walls pretty easily, such as an Earth Elemental.
For wall defenders you can have wizards-whether PCs or NPCs, as well as things like ballista or even trebuchet/catapult type things inside to lob stuff over the defenders. Or things like oil to dump on battering rams. For attackers, you could do something Elemental in nature—PofA has these devastation orbs that are kinda like an elemental bomb. Or spells like earthquake could help. Anything really to disrupt the defensive efforts. Including attacking from multiple compass points at once. Waves of attackers of different types or with different abilities would definitely keep it from getting boring and forces the defenders to save resources or run out at a bad time.
BTW, I just discovered that some monsters have "Siege Monster" tags. Search for those here to add some ideas for both attack and defense.