I want to run a 5e campaign that occurs entirely within the walls of a massive keep that is under siege.
The party will live and sleep under the threats of war, deal with resource management and repelling the invaders, slip out on recon missions, etc.
My questions is, what sort of tactics would enemy forces be most likely to use during this siege? How might they try to draw out the people from the castle, how would they best try to break in?
they dont necessarily. waiting out a siege ,while the defenders slowly starve is very viable. if you have seige engine superiority you could simple rain dead animals and rocks all day. put up small barricades and build a dirt bridge up the wall. etc. infiltrators at night to take gate controls etc too of course.
>Breaking in
Conventional: Towers, typical ranged siege equipment undermining walls, rams on doors, bribing someone inside or having spies planted ahead of time
Magic: Anything that involves troop buffing, invisibility, teleportation, flight, magic missile variants, anything that can degrade stone
>Drawing people out
Conventional: Have a valuable hostage that lives outside of the walls, fein a weakness to draw out a charge
Magic: anything illusion related
Bump, this seems interesting
But remember, most armies before the 1800s or so were self-sufficient and carried all their food with them and scavenged or rendezvoused with allied suppliers for more food. It was very frequent that the defenders of a siege would have access to more food than the attackers, especially considering that the attackers would have to bring significantly more men in order to ensure that the defenders can't simply sally forth and beat them in a pitched battle, and the defenders would typically sieze all of the countryside food stores and burn the fields and poison the wells before retreating to the fortress, leaving nothing for the attackers to scavenge. Also, the defenders may have a relief army coming that would be able to destroy the tired besieging force. All this combines to mean that the attackers may need to assault the fortress directly or otherwise ensure it falls sooner than it would by mere starvation.
forts win wars, squidward
Why?
That doesn't play to D&D's strengths of exploration and zero to hero journey.
>'scavenged'
lawl
Sounds like a lame campaign if the players are fighting to not lose rather than fighting to win
>That doesn't play to D&D's strengths of exploration
explore the castle
explore the wilderness around it looking for a way to break the seige
explore the battlefield itself for ways to stop siege equipment
there are a million things to do as defenders of a siege, they didnt just sit there and rely on the walls
> and zero to hero journey.
you start out as level 1 dudes caught in the middle of the siege, by bad luck or seeing a chance to make a name for yourself
you end up taking your first steps to greatness
sudden war is a good chance for no name adventurers to get some real action
This. I'm not a fan of the "don't play D&D" meme but in this case you should try another game, OP.
en.wikipedia.org
The most epic siege in history IMO. A bit later than the period you're looking at and it's an island fortress but still extremely interesting and gives some insight into how these things go. Also worth looking at en.wikipedia.org
To directly answer your question:
Sappers would tunnel under the walls and destroy foundations via explosives or direct chipping away (assault via troop movement through tunnels was extremely rare, I know only of WWI examples).
Battering rams at the gates
Siege towers and ladders (siege towers often also had rams built into their bases, so that the attacker could batter down the gate and attempt to seize the gatehouse at the same time)
Diseased animals and stones flung *over* the walls (rock-flinging was fairly ineffective at taking down a well-built wall and does better at destroying buildings within that support the defenders, especially where it's a fortified city rather than a castle that's being attacked)
Earthen ramps for extreme defensive locations, check out en.wikipedia.org
Attackers would typically build up fortifications facing both inwards and outwards around the town, to defend against sallies and relief. For the most extreme example, check out en.wikipedia.org
Attackers would try wherever possible to incite riots and discontent within the civilians protected by the defenders, and of course pre-place spies to open the gates or bribe defenders
It was not unusual to offer very favourable terms to defenders and actually stick to them (the Ottomans typically did not stick to the terms of surrender and were widely reviled for it). This makes sense because it costs far less for the attacker to let the defenders leave with their arms, armour, banners, and dignity than it does to seize the fortress by force.
Lastly:
en.wikipedia.org
t. Veeky Forums
What do you mean by this? They do (or ta least did) win wars, nothing I said contradicts that.
Kek I know, the history books do love euphemisms though. As a kid I wondered how whole armies survived on berries and hunting.
I kind of see your point, but the fact is that that's simply how sieges work. If the attackers have no reason to feel a sense of urgency then there is absolutely no reason they'd do anything other than just leisurely waiting around for the defenders to starve. It is typically vastly more costly to assault a fortress than wait around outside it. However, this does not mean that the defenders cannot break a siege on their own, read the very first example I gave. The last surviving defenders of Malta broke the siege with the last charge of powder they had for their last cannon, a few hours before the relief force arrived. The last example as well also has the defenders win without relief, but the threat of relief meant that the attackers had to assault directly and win quickly. Else they would just wait for the defenders to starve, in both cases.
The examples I gave here I mean
its a line from spongebob
where they assert that forts win wars
squidward eventually gets the biggest fort
Does he win?
Don’t use 5e
He does. But it was more because he could throw a barrage of snowballs with his many limbs than his fort.
Bump
Bless you, user. Good stuff.
>explore the castle
It's your castle, you know the vast majority of the layout
>Explore the wilderness
This doesn't seem like it has self-evidently interesting things to do
>Explore the battlefield
Going on a sortie is not the same thing as exploration, ala hexcrawling
>you start out as level 1 dudes caught in the middle of the siege, by bad luck or seeing a chance to make a name for yourself
Unless you're just arbitrarily leveling people up, it's going to be quite tedious RAW.
I don't hate a siege.
I hate the idea of a siege as an entire campaign. The sad thing is; there's an easy way to not make this a boring campaign. The PCs have been sent out from a besieged castle to get aid from other lords before their castle is defeated. There's your exploration, there's a nice time crunch, and there's an opportunity for player expression in how they try to convince lords to provide aid.