Are castles obsolete?

[pblackcrow]

Tactical advantage.

[eliakon]

They will deter those that don't have magic just fine. They also are psychologically reassuring to civilians. And while small forces can easily bypass castles its harder (not impossible, just harder) to get large forces past them. All of this though is less important than the primary reason. Rule of Cool. This is Medieval Fantasy, ergo there will be castles, just like most 'dungeons' have little realistic design value, they are staples of the genre.

[Jerell]

Where else would you hang all those portraits of your long dead family members?

Also sometimes I get the feeling, that depending on the GM, there are widely different levels of magic and magic item available on Palladia. Either way, it usually takes more effort to kill a guy behind a wall verses one in a open field.

[Nightmask]

Tactical advantage.

Which is what?

That the majority of people don't have magic and it's tactically better having a nice walled city or castle than having it where anyone can just walk in. If nothing else you're forcing them to use up magical resources to bypass the walls somehow so that they don't have them available later on. It's generally a good idea tactically to force your enemy to use up as many resources as possible trying to get at you and give you a terrain advantage to put the odds of success in your favor.

[Jefffar]

There are anti-tank missiles - we still have tanks.

There are anti-aircraft missiles - we still have combat planes.

Just because there is a counter to a weapon system, that doesn't make it obsolete. It's when that counter routinely, easily and efficiently negates a weapon system to the point that the weapon system provides no more advantage to possess that it is rendered obsolete. In the above cases the counters have been improved armour and anti-missile systems added to tanks while combat planes received electronic warfare and stealth.

So, the castle maker and user would look to counters for the unique challenges of the Palladium world, including, but not limited to - magic users on staff to counter magic, unique construction methods or materials to limit the effects of magic, developing rapid fire, high elevating balistas for thwarting aerial attacks and similar.

[The Immortal ME]

I actually kind of figure that magic amplifies the advantage of the castle.

A "big wall" in the way is always an advantage. It may not look like it to a casual observer but, even in modern warfare, walls of various kinds are used. An example would be scatter mines: scattering land mines over an area by artillery or air drop provides some of the same benefit of building a wall, and the effort to deploy it is low enough compared to the effort to breech it that they are useful. The question always comes down to the balance of how hard it is to build vs how hard it is to tear down.

Building castles fell out of favor when every Tom, Dick, and Harry had mobile field artillery capable of knocking the walls down. Having a bellmaker cast a mortar and hauling it to the field is much easier than spending ridiculous man-hours quarrying stone, hauling it around, and stacking it. Even so, castles that already exist are still occasionally used.

So, let's consider. There are basically three ways to get around a castle:

1. Wait for attrition.
2. Knock holes in the wall to get in and do the killing yourself.
3. Various kinds of special forces raids to speed up 1 and 2.

There isn't too much magic can do (from outside the wall) to make people starve faster or diseases more virulent, and, Castleraker aside, it isn't spectacular at knocking army sized holes in walls. Sure, there are a few "Stone to..." spells but, IIRC, they require getting dangerously close and affect anemic quantities at a cast.

What magic can do is get limited numbers of people inside. This can be the mage himself--which is a hell of a risk for such a valuable asset--or more expendable operatives. Once inside, they can basically destroy supplies, capture gates to let the army in, or conduct assassinations. Most of these could be limited with good internal defenses. Don't leave important things unguarded, duh. Sure, the mage could increase the chances of circumventing any internal defenses, but he could also get stuck with a pointy stick.

So on the offensive, magic can get some people inside, but if defenders operate (or build) under the assumption that some people will periodically show up inside (which they should), there is only so much damage that can be done. The big wall still confers significant advantage to the defender.

How about the defensive.

There are a lot of magical options for healing, negating poison, and curing disease. The defenders could even hold daily PPE ceremonies for everyone's daily ration of magic bread and milk, reducing the dependance on food stores that are vulnerable to raid. Attrition, the historic bane of the besieged, can be effectively silenced.

With magic little able to make army sized holes in the walls, the attackers may resort of siege engines. Made of wood. Wood doesn't like fire. Mages do like fire. In the event that unburnt siege engines do manage to breech the wall, all the attackers need to flood through the breech. This fatal funnel is ripe for a mage to apply the multitude of AOE effects. COA? Cloud of Slumber? Various "Wall of..." spells? Whatever you choose, it spells bloodbath. Then consider that there are a whole bunch of "... to Stone" spells. Magic can aide the repair of the breech overnight. Pile an appropriate material in the hole and, voila, a stone barrier in the breech. Maybe not be as good as new, but still an improvement.

Speaking of new, consider how much cheaper, faster, and easier would it be to make a castle when you do not need to quarry stone. Finding useful quarry sites, dragging it across the country, hoisting it into the air are all unnecessary. Your workers can carry convenient bucket sized loads of readily available dirt (or whatever) up into place, hold a PPE ceremony and, voila, a new course of huge stone blocks.


The way I see it, magic only moderately increases the effectiveness of the offense, while significantly hardening the defense and making the construction much cheaper. Not obsolete.

[Jefffar]

Castles are essentially offensive weapons actually. They allow you to position a strike force closer to where you want to attack. They provide that strike force with security and shelter, place have the necessary facilities to maintain that strike force at peak efficiency.

[pblackcrow]

True...Magic is a force unto itself. However, it can also be taken away with anti magic cloud. And also it can be used to defend a castle.

[Grug]

Here's a question for you. If both armies have 1,500 soldiers and only 20 of those soldiers are mages of some sort. What side of the wall would you want to be on?

Oh and the number 20 out of 1,500 is out of the western empire book. Cause when you think about it only .0133 percent of the western empires army are mages of some sort. So out of an army of 500,000 roughly 6,600 are mages. Yes a large number but not crazy high. And the imperial army is the largest and most magic heavy in all of the known world.
P.s. The number of mages should actually be a little lower, cause it's 10-20 of every 1500 are mages. I just went with the highest.

[Grug]

Nope I meant both armies are 1500 strong and out of those 1500 only 20 are mages of some sort. So both sides are equal. One side is besieging the castle and the other is defending it.

Would you rather have the castle or not?

[Jerell]

Failing having the army mounted in Wolfen Longships, With equal numbers, I'd easily take the castle every time. Hel, I'd probably take the castle with equal magic users and 1/4 the troops most of the time, as long as I'm not fighting Vikings. Of course if you don't have a proper war council(/staff officers, or healers), including field sanitation and preventative medical, the attacking army is likely to have casualties before the battle is even starts, due to disease and non battle injuries, especially if traveling far over land. To each their own.

Magic user you say? It's a trick. Get an axe. I've always found that a trusty axe is your best friend on Palladia.

[Tor]

Magic being able to bypass castles doesn't make castles useless, just not impregnable. Armor can be bypassed too, doesn't mean armor is now obsolete.

If anything, it adds time and resources needed to get in, and limits the numbers that can do so simultaneously. It gives you some warning, more time to read, longer for the opponent to get the crosshairs on you, etc.

[Vrykolas2k]

I can see the value of having a large wall around a city to prevent maurading orcs or wolven from just walking in, but with magic it seems to me that large-scale castles are obsolete.

Mystic Portal, Teleport Self, Teleport Superior, Pass Through Walls, and such seem like spells that would allow attackers to bypass any structural defences the castle may have.

Fly, Fly as The Eagle, Walk The Wind, and such could also easily bypass defences as well as allowing attackers to rain destruction on enemies on the ground.

Invisibility, Invisiblity Superior, Metamorphosis, and such would also help attackers slip through defences.

There must be some reason that castles are still built. What am I missing?

A lot.
Including the fact that likely, the castle has at least one mage. Not to mention other defenses, traps and so on.
As well, the garrison would be on a continual rotating watch, and the castle's mage has probably cast various spells to go along with that.

[Library Ogre]

I don't think they are, but I also think that castle-makers are going to consider a lot of anti-magic defenses as part and parcel of building a castle. Wards that defend from magic would be a big one. Alchemical building techniques that increase resistance or block out certain kinds of magics. Heck, I could picture a circular castle, in the form of certain protection circles, as being popular.

[Jerell]

That totally makes sense to me. I could at least see circle towers having circles of protection if nothing else.

[ronekiln]

Catapults and trebuchets did not instantly make fortifications obsolete. Nor did cannons.

Fortifications may not stop a large team of high level wizards, but those aren't the most common. They will stop bandits, regular troops, and even if you bring along mages, castles are still one more impediment for you to deal with. They shelter my troops, give them an advantage against superior numbers, and buy time. Castles don't stop you or beat you, they just slow you down and require more firepower to take apart. While you're risking your expensive and rare mages as though they're navy seals, the rest of my nation is mobilizing. While you're pissing off your largely older and out of shape mages by telling them you're going to use them as shock troops, mine are devising just as many tricks to ward their hometown and torment your invading troops.

Castles aren't much of an impediment to small teams of high level adventurers intent on slipping in and out. Good thing for the rest of the world that high level adventurers are the rare heroes and villains that epics are made of. If such people were all over the place in every single pub and stable, WE WOULDN'T BE PLAYING HEROES! We'd be playing normal people in a world where everyone is a badass.

Modern security measures don't do much to stop an elite special forces team with ample time to prepare. They still make a huge difference when slowing or stopping an angry mob, insurgents or aiding in the defense against large determined forces. They don't win the fight now any more than ancient castles did, but they are a valuable tool for many operations, even if they don't stop a highly trained and prepared special forces team. Castles are no different.

[Dark]

I find the Special Forces comparison apt.

Fortifications also are valuable in the front-loading of resources towards security that they represent. Why have your forces and/or uber-mage constantly worried about maintaining security? Especially of an otherwise indefensible location? This isn't sustainable or desirable.

The fortification is valuable, beyond the immediate tactical sense of how it plays out in a direct fight, because it frees up your resources day to day to focus on other things. You build as good of a fortification as you can manage ( and afford ). You include as much anti-magic/psi things in it as you can manage within said constraints. Then your forces can defend it with fewer men, and your uber-mage only worries about it when adding something to the arrangement or actively assisting a defense against a looming threat.

This is a huge burden of security/social control that is lifted from you having to maintain by active force 'all the time'. The resources spent on the fortification are well spent, from the simple perspective that it pays for itself with how it otherwise empowers you to then concentrate on other things.

[kiralon]

I find that castles just hold the enemy forces closer together to make them more susceptible to area effect spells.
chances are 20 lvl 1 priests of RA could fill a castle to the walls with lava.

The main problem is the castles are based on real world castles, so they didn't have to defend against magic in their evolution, so they don't have protections against magic that come from people trying to stop you from filling the walls to the brim with lava. As mentioned in the elf dwarf wars, the elves ruled the sky, so the dwarf above ground forts would fall, but the underground ones were mostly fine.

[Tor]

I thought you had to cast lava on the ground, would that even hit people on higher levels? If you cast it from the outside wouldn't it have to burn through the outer walls first before hitting them?

Would it be that hard for diabolists to incorporate some fire-resistant wards into teh infrastructure?

[kiralon]

I thought you had to cast lava on the ground, would that even hit people on higher levels? If you cast it from the outside wouldn't it have to burn through the outer walls first before hitting them?

Would it be that hard for diabolists to incorporate some fire-resistant wards into teh infrastructure?

Cast it on the inside. 1 flight potion and one invis potion (or spells) and the castle is on fire as river has about 120ft range

The problem with wards and circles is the area and whats effected.
So I have used wardstones, a stone at the centre of the keep that you cut a chunk off and put it in the walls and streets as you build etc, and usually those of the blood can activate certain effects that than also effect areas around the bits that were removed

I have used tallix crystals, and used them as a protection for the castle/keep and have various effects

the most effective power of them both is spells wont go through the protective fields (stop at edges) and entering the field negates any currently active powers with a duration, and once the fields are active certain combinations of spells/wards/runes can be cast on them to strengthen them even more, or to repair or heal throughout the castle.

These are usually remnants of the time of 1000 magics

[pblackcrow]

tallix crystals?

[kiralon]

Ye Olde Majik Crystal from the days of yore. Part Psionic, Part Magic. Dampens hostile magic, Enhances healing. The big ones could reduce the range of hostile spells to 1/10 of what they are normally, which is usually a fatal surprise for enemy spellcasters. Would also let normal weapons hurt creatures that can only be hurt by magic weapons. In my games demons and devils can only be hurt by Blessed Iron (not steel) or magic weapons.

[Lukterran]

I would imagine that since Castle construction is such a major undertaking and expense that the kingdom would be willing to pay for all kinds of magical protections as well as stuctural ones.

An alchemist probably would be hired to weave in mystic protections and defensive magic into the structure and are probably placed at important locations on the castle. Things like Mystic Energy drains, protection circles, etc....

Ward defensives would probably by something like a Condition as Magic as the Trigger + Protection by Infliction + Mystic Energy Drain / (or any other condition) + Area Affect + Power + Permanence Ward.

Circle Magic would probably be defensive and could be combined with ward or other spell magic with permanency. Protection from Elemental Forces or Magic. Power circles like "Force" could be good to place into the design of the castle (the castle is the circle, activate when needed!).

Spell magic that could be permanently attached to the stucture would could be spells like; See the invisible, Impervious to Fire, Sanctum, Impenerable Wall of Force, and the most powerful of all Barrier of Thoth or Sanctuary to those kingdoms with the knowledge and resources. I would have to imagine that Caer Ithoma has a Barrier of Thoth disguised beneath the stone walls.

[kiralon]

I would imagine that since Castle construction is such a major undertaking and expense that the kingdom would be willing to pay for all kinds of magical protections as well as stuctural ones.

An alchemist probably would be hired to weave in mystic protections and defensive magic into the structure and are probably placed at important locations on the castle. Things like Mystic Energy drains, protection circles, etc....

Ward defensives would probably by something like a Condition as Magic as the Trigger + Protection by Infliction + Mystic Energy Drain / (or any other condition) + Area Affect + Power + Permanence Ward.

Circle Magic would probably be defensive and could be combined with ward or other spell magic with permanency. Protection from Elemental Forces or Magic. Power circles like "Force" could be good to place into the design of the castle (the castle is the circle, activate when needed!).

Spell magic that could be permanently attached to the stucture would could be spells like; See the invisible, Impervious to Fire, Sanctum, Impenerable Wall of Force, and the most powerful of all Barrier of Thoth or Sanctuary to those kingdoms with the knowledge and resources. I would have to imagine that Caer Ithoma has a Barrier of Thoth disguised beneath the stone walls.

The problem with wards is they either hit too many things or not enough, its fine for a wizards tower where you don't have a massive range of people coming in, but using magic as a trigger would be triggered by all sorts of things/creatures, and having it permanent means you would need to destroy the ward to turn it off if you needed it off, and if people names are put into it they tend to die or leave so becomes ineffective, and replacing permanent wards constantly would be prohibitively expensive. Palladiums magic system isn't really made to defend structures used by more than a few people.