I like that the archetype exists, but I'm also having a hard time coming up with when you'd want to use it. At best, the mage can solo-fire a seige engine with a +9 bonus to the attack and +21 to the damage. If he could actually imbue a spell onto the ammo, to go off when it hits, then it would be more beneficial.
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A pirate gunman (Izrael Hands type) followed by his favourite cannon through the dungeon (could be in extradimensional compartment perhaps, or just rolling behind you or someone could help moving). Summon Monster II or III can give you all the hands you need to reload on time and suddenly you have a 6d6 damage per round capacity (of course it would be hell of a noise and ammo would cost you, but it could be fun anyway).
An orcish inventor from Steel Eaters Tribe with one of his inventions in trail...
Do I understand it correctly that Siege Bond lets you move the weapon without actually touching it?
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If I were on the walls of a city or fortification I'd be happy to see a mage wasting his time on a siege engine as opposed to what else he could be doing.
I like the archetype a lot thematically, but I have to agree with you there.
What it needs to make it useful is the ability to bond to more than one siege engine at a time. Even if they all had to be of the same type, or the same move action applied to all of them, or something else.
One mage manipulating a single cannon from 30' away is not really that great. One mage and a line of cannons all moving as one to aim at you is much more intimidating. Maybe one engine at 1st level and one more at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th? Or one at 1st and one more every 3 levels, but it requires two bonds (and minimum 10th level) to do away with the crew?
With Master Siege Engineer you use move actions to reload and aim. With two medium creatures (two lemures summoned) you can reload a canon every round and use your own move action to aim it. Now I'm not sure if you require any action to fire when you're aimed. If not you are casting every round AND firing with the canon every round.
I think a siege archetype for the fighter would be really cool. I find the image of a character hopping in the siege engine and breaking through a fortress inspiring. It just seems more like something a fighter do flavor wise.
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Maybe but I can't ever remember using a siege engine in any game I've ever played.
Tunneling under the walls, flying over invisibly, teleporting in is more what pc's usually do.
Just seems like using a siege engine is a very rare thing.
You have never played a game where the DM is a logistics nerd who really likes his wargames.
That said being a 15th level characters assaulting a standard standing army was actually surprisingly difficult. Those little bastards hit sometimes and it starts to hurt :(
That said I was a transmuter and was busy buffing and using area control/denial spells left and right. The enemy guys in there countering and dispelling my magic weren't helping either
Maybe but I can't ever remember using a siege engine in any game I've ever played.
Tunneling under the walls, flying over invisibly, teleporting in is more what pc's usually do.
Just seems like using a siege engine is a very rare thing.
You have never played a game where the DM is a logistics nerd who really likes his wargames.
That said being a 15th level characters assaulting a standard standing army was actually surprisingly difficult. Those little bastards hit sometimes and it starts to hurt :(
That said I was a transmuter and was busy buffing and using area control/denial spells left and right. The enemy guys in there countering and dispelling my magic weren't helping either
There's a reason that the CR of a one-person army is 8 lower than their normal CR in the mass-combat rules. It's doable, but really, really hard.
The archetype is pretty much 100% terrible, and any effort to fix it would involve starting from scratch, unfortunately.
Not that bad, although as a DM I'd get much more shoof for my buck here.
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Thought I'd raise this thread from the dead instead of starting a new one...
I too count myself as liking the concept is this archetype, and I think it could actually be playable, except for a couple of weird things in the actual siege engine rules section.
The first is that they seem to have changed a light ballista from medium-sized / taking up a 5ft square (which it has always been, in the Core book, and back in 3.5), to being large sized / taking up 4 squares. The second is a lack of weights for the various siege engines. Especially considering the existence of the Siege Mage archetype, you'd think that having weights for the things (so you can have some idea how much magical effort it takes to move the damn things) would be helpful. There's other faq-bait in the section too of course (what is a 'targeting platform'? How tall is a siege tower? Etc...), but those two are biggies for the potential Siege Mage.
Now, if we take a light ballista / arbalest as being medium-sized and weighing 400lbs (based on the Pathfinder Core book's '5ft square' area, and the weight from the 3.5 book Heroes of Battle) we actually have a siege engine which is a little more practical to take dungeon-bashing. Mount it on a caster level 4+ floating disc, for example, and you're golden.
Reloading shouldn't be a problem - unseen servant is a level 1 spell, and there's no Strength limits for acting as a siege engine loader.
Our Siege Mage needs to focus on spells which can be cast on / effect weapons and ammunition to maximise his chosen area of expertise. Apart from unseen servant and floating disc helpful level 1 spells are stuff like true strike, magic weapon, and possibly enlarge person or ant haul (to aid in lugging stuff about).
From Ultimate Combat, abundant ammunition looks like a must to keep costs down, but the level 2 spell reloading hands is the real prize (unlimited ammo and the weapon auto-reloads every round!).
Eventually you get to the dizzying heights of flame arrow and keen edge.
Your big advantage over a vanilla 'blaster mage' is range, seeing as siege weapons tend to have a far greater range than all but the highest level blasting spells, but damage is going to be pretty good too - especially at low levels (where a 3d8 light ballista shot still looks impressive). At a bare-bones minimum level with two unseen servant spells running (to both wheel your ballista around the dungeon after you, and so that they can both take full-round actions to load the thing for you every round) you should be able to fire off one such shot every round of combat.
At first level the cost of even your 'dungeoneer's ballista' is a huge hinderance. Since (unlike any class which has anything at all to do with guns it seems...) you don't start with a siege weapon for free, you going to need Rich Parents (the trait that is...) to get you started in your new life of adventure. It's probabaly worth investing in a yak (24gp from the Adventurer's Armory, looks like it'd use the stat block of a bison) and a wagon to cart your gear around in too (plus the rest of the party will like you from the get-go, 'cos you're the dude with his own 'car'... ;) ). In general, if the DM is using the vehicle stuff, then you'll want to be looking at that too (for lugging purposes, is nothing else).
For your three (seriously? Three?) opposition schools, I'd choose enchantment, necromancy, and illusion... mostly because you'll need all the others to optimise your siege engine's effectiveness. On the other hand, if you're into the evils, then undead make pretty good crew... And hiding yourself and your siege engine via illusions seems like a nice tactic too... (Seriously? THREE?!)
All in all, I think it could work... with a sympathetic DM, and the right sort of campaign. Open-air is going to be better for you than dungeon-bashing, for example. You'll be great at stuff like hunting huge monsters rampaging across the countryside, or as a gunnery chief on a pirate ship, or... you know... in actual sieges...
It's tempting to give this guy a shot... only I do really love my cantrips... (I guess there's always a 1-level dip into Sorcerer to gain some cantrip-luvin'...). :)
this is one of those archetypes that seems useful for npcs and followers. I can't see it being great for a pc, but for a flavorful ally of an enemy, or a party ally in siege situation it would be pretty cool. Also useful in a game focusing on mass combat, as a cohort or a unit of them as followers for a character with leadership.
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Yes, it's true that our poor Siege Mage isn't getting much back for what he loses. At the end of the day who's gonna' spend a 9th level spell to gain a +9 bonus to hit (and +27 bonus to damage), when he can cast a 1st level true strike and get a +20 bonus to hit? Remote firing the thing is nice, but hardly that nice (especially at a mere 30ft range, needing line-of-sight, that never improves), and as mentioned above, with spells like unseen servant available, what sort of Wizard is worrying about a crew in the first place? Reloading via just the Siege Engine Bond Class Feature actually slows him down (a lot).
The wording of the Siege Engine Bond Class Feature seems to imply just ranged siege weapons, but can the Siege Mage actually bond with other siege weapons too? A battering ram doesn't need to be reloaded, which is technically all the Siege Mage needs a crew for even at low levels. Could the guy magically smack things about with Siege Engine Bonded 'improvised ram' logs? I'd guess that RAI would be a 'no'... but at least it'd help the guy out a little.
Use summoned monsters to run your siege engines for you.
Use possess object and run the siege engine that way.
Get the Craft Construct feat and turn all of your siege weapons into an army of animated objects.
Or don't waste your actions on inferior complex siege engine attacks and just cast your (much more awesome and effective) spells.
I would never take this archetype. No scribe scroll (one of a wizard's strongest abilities), no specialized school or bonus spell slots, THREE prohibited schools, no arcane bond, NO CANTRIPS, etc.
What do you get in return? The ability to remotely control ONE siege engine at high levels (something a normal wizard can do already) with a few bonuses.
If I was going to do that with a cohort or follower, I would just make them a siege engine focused fighter. The overall bonuses they would get would likely surpass that of the siege mage.
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OK guys,
I have a player who is a Cavalier (Luring Cavalier / Musketeer archetypes) and he is on a pirate ship (Skull & Shackles AP) who has just levelled to level 2 ... hoorayyy
He has taken Siege Mage archetype ... one thing you are all missing I think ... you can wear ARMOUR as a siege mage as you don't cast spells.
He can fire off his musket, have the crew load the ballista and aim and fire it in his heavy armour.
As he is bonding with the siege weapon, there are no spells to cast, he isn't interested in "becoming a wizard", he's added it to his thematic Soldier build (well, marine as he is now on a pirate ship).
I agree with all you've said above about having to dump three schools, losing blah de blah ... but I think in this case, he now has what he wants ...
A soldier who can aim and fire a ballista (on a ship, he is likely to be within 30' of the ballista even if he boards another ship ...)
I'm pretty sure he is then going to stay Cavalier for the rest of his levels ... though my players do the strangest things :)
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This one's useful for NPCs. It's one of the ones that I plan to test out for a PC one day, but that the wizard's not gonna be able to do by himself, especially at low levels when they need the cooperation of party members (or maybe some hirelings to help work the cannon).
I've gotten decent mileage out of it once. An evil siege wizard and some hirelings inside a custom-made firedrake siege engine. I built the engine to count as a relatively heavily-defended vehicle, and seated the enemies inside it, and it resulted in the PCs essentially fighting against a big wooden dragon in the middle of city streets. It was interesting stuff (and very cool when the party alchemist managed to ready an action to throw a bomb into the enginge's cannon at close range when it opened its mouth to fire). It was a big explosion, killed all the hirelings by bypassing the siege engine's armor, and left the enemy siege wizard all alone for a very satisfying curb-stomp after the trouble he'd dealt them from inside his wooden dragon.
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Why would a wizard want to use a siege engine when transmute rock to lava is available?
I'm sure the archetype sounded neat on paper, but I cannot see any practical application.
As for walking through a dungeon with cannons. One day I'm going to make a necromancer and do just that. An army of skeletons hauling several cannons, blasting everything. Who cares about the noise (or locked doors), any intelligent monster is going to start running when they hear cannon fire.
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This one really intrigued me for use in a Skull & Shackles campaign.
Nope. It's still a terrible archetype and not good at the one thing it's supposed to do.
Maybe but I can't ever remember using a siege engine in any game I've ever played.
Tunneling under the walls, flying over invisibly, teleporting in is more what pc's usually do.
Just seems like using a siege engine is a very rare thing.
Burning it all down is more like what the PCs do. KILL THEM WITH FIRE!
Use it for the NPC Mage in charge of castle defense or assault?Just scratching my head on this one. Does anyone have the slightest idea what you are supposed to do with this archetype?
That's a pretty good idea if you want to reduce the challenge of the encounter by about 75% actually.
The Siege Mage firing his cannon instead of doing something useful. Kinda hurts verisimilitude a bit though.
Mass warfare scenarios DO run differently than dungeon crawls.
But the fact remains that a 10d6 (or even a 5d6) Fireball from 400+ feet away hitting like 20 people simultaneously > 6d6 damage to a SINGLE TARGET, requiring an attack roll.
There is absolutely no logical reason why a Siege Mage would exist with the abilities it has.
You can look at a lot of other archetypes and go "Yeah, I can see why an NPC would have that, even if it is suboptimal".
But this is like an NPC military commander who has no ranks in Profession: Soldier, who you're supposed to take seriously.
It doesn't make any sense.