It's a you gotta kill this guy in his castle quest

A forest that doesn't have occasional forest fires is a forest getting choked to death by underbrush.

If you're gonna build something in a forest you need a better plan than "gee I hope all this flammable shit never catches on fire". Like, say, building your castle out of stone which isn't flammable.

I really don't see the problem. They light the forest on fire, great, wow, now the castle has better line of sight to everything around it.

Whatever was in the castle sallies forth en masse. You could've defeated them in detail, but now face the whole horde. Good luck.

I mean your first mistake was making a castle in the forest and throwing away every tactical advantage that they give you.

Villain: "From up here we can see the enemy from miles away and we have a much stronger line of fire."

Minion: "But there are trees in the way. We can't see anything let alone attack them."

Villain: "... damn."

Honestly if they burn down the forest they're actually doing the bad guy a huge favor by making the castle useful. Have the guy utilize his walls to the fullest extent. He can expect an attack now and have guards posted all over to annihilate anything dumb enough to show their face.

Not exactly a castle but it's meant to be a hideout for the villain hidden in the forest so nobody finds it

Who the fuck such an idiot that puts his main base right in a forest? Encamping in enclosed and perilous terrain has been eschewed by military strategists since ancient times.

Maybe it's a decoy. Get all the heroes and your enemies to expend their resources taking on your forest fortress only for it to end up being a diversion for your real armies to come and steamroll over them.

True
But at the same time the trees do obstruct it from getting hit by siege weapons.

As always with murderhobos, you ask the question "Why doesn't every member of this class do this all the time?"

The answer is usually town guards or druids

>forest catches fire
>the castle doesn't catch fire because castles are made of non-flammable stone
>the party now has to figure out a new plan to go kill the guy in the castle, which is now conveniently defended by miles or raging forest fire

Oh well thats easy
Forest burns down making it easier to find the hideout now they just need to do the fighting they were gonna have to do anyway.

All they have done is skipped the search

Unless the hideout was highly flamable i suppose what is the villan would he be able to protect the building from the fire

>a hideout for the villain hidden in the forest so nobody finds it
And you didn't expect the players to burn the forest down? Did you not see the Dark Knight/somehow miss one of co/TV's shittier memes?

>doesn't know that castles can burn due to many different reasons
>pleb detected

Hey the guy's looking for ways to complicate things for the players. Just because a castle CAN burn doesn't mean it's guaranteed to burn. The point is the castle could conceivably not catch on fire, and now they've just created a massive obstacle between them and the dude they need to assassinate.

Now, if they go to the castle through the forest fire, they could still potentially use it. Finding a way to make the fire spread to the castle, kicking the dude off the castle into the raging inferno below, lots of stuff. Helps the players not feel neutered, like the fire did something in the end, even if things got out of hand.

Have innocent people live in the forest.

Or nature spirits.

Or just have the Forest and the rights to harvest the lumber part of why the Castle is contested. Watch them 180 when they realize they basically are burning down loot.

So I'm a complete pleb, but how exactly do you march a standard army through potentially miles of treacherous forest and remain a cohesive fighting force? How do you get a siege engine through a thick wood with trees it might not fit between with any sort of speed?

Legit question, I have no idea how this works.

>Uh-oh, looks like there were ents in that forest
>Now it looks like an army of pissed of Ents are attacking you while on fire

Though depending on the system, calculating fire damage can be a pain

Vengeful Unicorns.

I propose a NEW answer. Magical fire does not persist beyond the duration of the spell. A low level mage can't sustain an inferno. Have fun burning the forest down the mundane way, or magically over the course of months.

You'd clear a path, I would think.

The monsters inhabiting the forest flee the fire and ravage nearby towns.

Krupp Steel

fire DAMAGE? You mean fire TEMPLATE:
Enraged Fire (base creature)
+40%hit points
deals an additional 50% damage as fire damage
Special abilities: at 50% health and below, gain an additional 3 attacks per round.

>Forests do not burn easily. Forest fires are usually the result of several factors - dry, hot weather, swamps drying up, wind spreading fire. You can't just throw a match and watch things burn, you'll need a dedicated effort of at least several wizards, at which point dude in a castle can just send in his legbreakers to deal with faggots in dresses torching his trees.

This. If it was that easy to destroy forests, we wouldn't have any left.

>Dude knows damn well he lives in a forested area.
>Has watchposts on top of the Castle to lookout for exactly that scenario.
>Security patrols more at night with lots of torchlight with convenient firewood for torches and illumination.
>Nightvision potions from the alchemical sap from the trees on scouting patrols outside the castle.
>Leaves for secure location in underground bastion as soon as fires start, understanding the likelihood of it being a distraction to break in.
>Begin immediately investing counter-intelligence assets to find out who is trying to kill the dude in the castle and why.

Your PC team is now under investigation for arson related to attempted assassination. They may not know who they are yet, but there are investigators, inquisitors, rangers or the like en-rout and backtracking all sources. Even if they don't find the PCs themselves, their contacts, friends, frequented locales and the like will soon be compromised.

Time to find out what they're willing to do to deal with this. Do they come forward and sell out their patron? Do they double down and invest more into making sure they get it right this time? Do they go to ground or get out of dodge?

Do they have anything they've hidden from each other that they have to come clean about unless they're alright with the party being blindsided by it?

Was there anyone relying on their success? Did the one who gave them that quest have a stick to go with the carrot that had them going to do this in the first place that now comes into play because they failed?

If i had to guess you would leave the siege equipment behind and make it on site, after all if your seigeing a place you're not in a rush, and while i'm not sure the standard practice for marching a army though uncharted forests i would suggest looking at how the Romans did it or Hannibal on his path over the Alps.

>Implying

Why is that too easy? A fucking castle is made out of stone and if he is not half incompetent he didn't let the forest grow up to his walls. Why the fuck can't he just sit it out in his castle and just let the servants stand around with water buckets to protect the stables and other wooden structures from flying embers? I fail to see how a forest fire would get him out of his castle? If it was that easy, nobody would ever have put castles in forests dude.

Also, is it summer? If this is fantasy Europe, a forrest fire is nigh impossible in spring, fall or winter. Do you have any idea how wet it is here? And unless it is a California or Hispania type of region, you might not be able to start a forest fire regardless. Do you have any idea how hard it is to burn fresh wood? You would have to de-bark every tree and light them up individually with enaugh initial fire that it gets itself dry enaugh to burn.

Let 'em.
And then let them deal with the fuckton of seriously hacked off fae and forest spirits whose home they just wrecked.

>Now, if they go to the castle through the forest fire, they could still potentially use it. Finding a way to make the fire spread to the castle, kicking the dude off the castle into the raging inferno below, lots of stuff. Helps the players not feel neutered, like the fire did something in the end, even if things got out of hand.
This

>thinking you can just set a forest on fire
It's like you never tried it before. Shit has to be dry and weeks without rain with strong wind to just start smoking.

> Players: "We burn down the forest!"

> DM: "Okay, the blaze begins spreading, consuming large tracts of woodland. Eventually, the fires die down enough for you to continue onwards."

> Players: "Okay, we head towards the castle."

> DM: "The castle stands out against the scorched wasteland of the forest, there is no movement on the walls as the party approaches. You are about 60 yards from the castle wall when an arrow whizzes just past your head, it came from behind you. You spot four longbowmen set up on a smoldering ridge roughly 100 yards behind you, roughly five foot soldiers are rushing across towards you from the same direction."

> Players: "What the hell DM! How did they survive the forest fire."

> DM:"Roll INT/knowledge/history/whatever."

> Player rolls high: "The castle was built in the forest, it is reasonably safe to assume that the architects anticipated that enemy armies might try to burn down the forest to smoke of the castle's defenders and set up counter measures against such a possibility. Given the current circumstances, it is also likely that the castle was built with features to take advantage of the surrounding forest, such as a subterranean network, or a secret passage of some kind. The defenders noticed the attempt to burn them out, deciding to play possum then catch you off guard. It doesn't help that you burned down most of your cover.

> Player rolls low: "~Fucking witches!~"

> Depending on the size of the castle, and how well manned it is (Use your best judgement) set up more ambushes around the castle trigger them when you need them or when the players run into them, top it off by spawning some bowmen on the walls.

> The players will either run, surrender, do something interesting, or die. Harass them with spawns until one of these things occurs, but don't go too far overboard.

>Cover
That's a good point to bring up; any fortification with archers would defoliate the area around the fort out to bowshot anyway. So burning down the forest wouldn't really touch a castle.

>Castle has a moat so it's not a problem for the castle
>guy is kind of pissed, but now can summon fire elementals

>castles are made of non-flammable stone
but those stones are expensive....

>forest had some tree ents that are mad af
>had some druid communities that are also pissed
>every township around the forests edge is both on fire and pissed because they got their wood and game from those woods

The forest is connected to multiple kingdoms. Said kingdoms used the forest a lot for supplies and as a way to buffer the other kingdoms. Forest fire also spreads into the other kingdoms, now many barons, lords, kings are pissed. Kingdoms learn the players are the once who started the fire. All hell breaks loose, with the possibility of the kingdoms waging war on each other, but each kingdom is going to send their own kit squad to find, and either bring back alive to be hanged, or kill the players right there.

>accidentally plunged a whole region into strife

*hit not kit
>pulls out tanto and performs seppuku

Most informed post here T B H

not really. Prescribed burn advocates are demonized even within a society that's had the idea for a couple decades. Even with modern technology, prescribed burns can get out of hand and fuck up property really hard.
I imagine that public reaction would be even worse in a feudal, pre-industrial society where the vast majority of people make their living off the forest.

Let them.

Later on, have malicious fey upset by their arson trap then back time in said burning castle. They have to team up with the villain whom they thought they'd killed to escape getting poetically oven'd.

Anyone who isnt an idiot would have an area of clearing around the castle, the tree line wouldn't be 5ft away from the gate.
So they burn the forest only to now have no cover to approach the castle at all and will be spotted from miles away.

It was an enchanted piss forest all along!

Listen, I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started, all I had was swamp! Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em! It sank into the swamp, so I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. I built a third one. It burned down, fell over, and then it sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up! And that's what you're going to get, lad--the strongest castle on these islands!

If you're in the center of a massive, sustained inferno, it doesn't have to be in hugging distance to kill you in a variety of ways.

It's raining.

Now find a proper fucking solution.

Google wildfire and defensible space for me.

google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&client=ubuntu#q=wildfire and defensible space

fuck meant to quote

Well, forest fires are extremely subtle. So its not like the villian would see it from miles away, and be able to plan for an attack or escape to better defended position or anything.