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Was just reading over the entry for castle Kornquist in castles of the inner sea and it got me thinking about this. I mean how or why would you siege a castle inhabited and staffed by undead? They don't need food or water so you can't really starve most of them out and many of them can convert you people into reinforcements for their side. So can anyone think of how or why you would do it?
A siege would have to be like an imprisonment, not a traditional siege. As you said, they don't need food or water, so time is on their side.
Look at the Battle of Alesia, when Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix, for an example of what I mean. The Gauls were inside a walled city, and outnumbered the Romans. So Caesar ordered a wall... built around the wall. He encircled the entire city with another wall, defended by the Romans, effectively turning the city into a prison. Of course, the Gauls were forced to action by virtue of their larger army needing more food, but besieging and undead army could be just a safe(er) way to deal with the threat than attacking their castle.
You can't siege an undead city. Sieging, as a tactic, preyed on morale. Undead lack morale. You can't starve them out. You can't shake them with isolation. You can't drive them mad with boredom and repetition and monotony. You can't befoul their water or launch in taint and disease. You can't make them fear the other outcomes enough to surrender.
You'd have to storm the castle, it's the only choice.
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You can't siege an undead city. Sieging, as a tactic, preyed on morale. Undead lack morale. You can't starve them out. You can't shake them with isolation. You can't drive them mad with boredom and repetition and monotony. You can't befoul their water or launch in taint and disease. You can't make them fear the other outcomes enough to surrender.
You'd have to storm the castle, it's the only choice.
I don't know about that. I think you could besiege undead with boredom or monotony it just requires them to be sentient and might take longer. I mean even liches, arguably one of the strongest undead in the game can weaken and can theoretically die if they get bored and no longer have anything to do (i.e. the demi lich). Also some undead could theoretically be sieged that require sustenance like vampires or ghouls. All that being said though I like Jason's idea of turning it into an imprisonment though I don't know how that would work on a lot of undead that can "breed" through murdering their enemies.
Forbiddance might be useful for forcing some undead out, although the range is short and the area is small. Plus, the level needed may also be prohibitive. It's a start, though.
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Forbiddance might be useful for forcing some undead out, although the range is short and the area is small. Plus, the level needed may also be prohibitive. It's a start, though.
My assumption would be that you assault it with in direct fire siege weapons from range to try to pound enemies into dust. Considering that undead do not heal naturally, direct sustained damage could really put the hurt on them, especially if they have few or no sources of healing floating around.
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Holy Water, and an abundance of anti-undead spells.
Another issue with trying to besiege a castle full of undead is that those undead didn't make themselves. There's probably at least one powerful necromancer involved and magic tells conventional tactics to screw themselves.
As for the "we're trapping them inside idea," that doesn't seem like a great solution. As said the undead won't need supplies, get bored, or have their morale broken. How long can whoever ordered the siege of imprisonment afford to keep so many men at that post? How long can they keep the supplies flowing? How are they going to keep their own soldiers from becoming so sick of the situation that they start considering mutiny?
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Another issue with trying to besiege a castle full of undead is that those undead didn't make themselves. There's probably at least one powerful necromancer involved and magic tells conventional tactics to screw themselves.
As for the "we're trapping them inside idea," that doesn't seem like a great solution. As said the undead won't need supplies, get bored, or have their morale broken. How long can whoever ordered the siege of imprisonment afford to keep so many men at that post? How long can they keep the supplies flowing? How are they going to keep their own soldiers from becoming so sick of the situation that they start considering mutiny?
Well lets try and standardize this a little. Lets assume that the castle is infested with undead through natural circumstances and growth, i.e. everyone who was in the castle died of a dark circumstances that caused them to rise from the grave as various intelligent and unintelligent undead. We'll say it was a graveknight ritual where he sacrificed his entire castle to ascend. Second we'll assume that about 1 third of the population is nonsentient undead, another third is lesser sentient corporeal undead like wights and ghouls, 25% are sentient incorporeal undead and greater undead like morghs and ghosts, and the final 5% is high tier undead like said graveknight and his retinue.
Now some questions to ask are what is the average number of soldiers and maintenance staff who are needed to run a castle? Once we know that we can start figuring out what their acutal strength is since every member of the castle solider or staff can now fight pretty effectively. Unfortunately they will also at beast be very light on healing power since traditional healing methods would no longer be effective assuming any of the original medics transformed into something that retained any of its knowledge. With that in mind the biggest issue that an undead castle would face is just keeping everyone moving since they no longer heal naturally, the heal skill doesn't work, and not many undead have the ability to channel negative energy or cast inflict spells.
Now what is
well maybe if there were some zombie lords in the mix, there might be some reasonable defenders. A necromancer lich or vampire might have some some ghosts in their employ as well.
Can you find a flock of giant intelligent Ravens? Ridden by halfling clerics with standard channel energy you have second death from above.
Glen Cook, in one of his Garrett novels, had a besieging force constantly bombard the an undead psionicisist's fortress with carrion-eating insects and rats.
You might have to skin something together as the summon swarm spells specifically target living creatures, but adding "eats carrion" to them shouldn't be to difficult.
You could call it Decompose. The area effect causes remains, animated or not, to rot and attract vermin.
Undead are normally protected by negative energy. In the area of a decompose spell, the living agents of rot are protected from negative energy.
Evil Dhampirs could guard the place in the daytime. There are enough different kinds of them that don't suffer from daylight at all.
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Does your GM allow for custom spells or other discoveries?
Somewhere in a world as diverse as a fantasy one is probably some magical mold which eats at undead [or if there isn't, at a high enough level one could be created], or some way exists to unleash a 'reverse plague' of positive energy.
Easy? Common? Definitely No and No, but as a plot item to a good story teller? Certainly not beyond suspension of disbelief.
Warhammer, if you're familiar with it, tends to use that for "poison" attacks. The reason poisons often work on robot creatures or undead etc is it represents the poisoner using something that would work because he knows his foe. A rust parasite when fighting a metal foe, a holy water gel fighting undead, normal XXXXX on the bottle poison for humans, a rare reptile killing fungus on lizardmen, etc.
Same here, if your GM will play along, and you've invested/quested in the proper skills-abilities/places-ways.
... Good luck. [Billy Crystl voice] Have fun storming the castle!
Giant flasks of Holy Water carried by Rocs, dropped on the castle. That, and a whole lot of Paladins, Clerics, and Inquisitors.
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How would the castle defend itself during the daytime?
Most intelligent undead are averse to sunlight, so they must retreat inside.
I doubt mindless undead (zombies, skeletons) would do a very good job of defending the battlements without any direction, and they probably can't use ranged weapons.
Zombie lords, skeletal champions, wights, ghouls, and mummies are all not worried about light and could very easily command the mindless undead. Ghosts work as well though I always picture them as rare enough that even a "random spawn" doesn't occur without good reason.
@cobalt: I do like the idea of holy water sieging, the question is how much does it cost to enchant that much water and what's the splash radius?
Why on earth would you want to? In metagame terms, a siege is quite boring except as a background for awesome Baron Munchausen exploits. In strategic terms, sieges generally are bad moves in fantasy RPGs as there are far too many spells that negate the value of castles. (For the price of six months wages for my troops, I can simply buy a scroll of Teleportation Circle and walk them into the main bailey. In the length of time it would take for a conventional siege to be successful, I could scribe a library of such scrolls.) In logistic terms, you're literally trying to starve out an opponent immune to hunger.
And in tactical terms, Hide from Undead is a first level spell that I can buy in potion form by the barrel that provides almost perfect commando capacity.
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Was just reading over the entry for castle Kornquist in castles of the inner sea and it got me thinking about this. I mean how or why would you siege a castle inhabited and staffed by undead? They don't need food or water so you can't really starve most of them out and many of them can convert you people into reinforcements for their side. So can anyone think of how or why you would do it?
How: with napalm.
Why: to cleanse the abomination.
Was just reading over the entry for castle Kornquist in castles of the inner sea and it got me thinking about this. I mean how or why would you siege a castle inhabited and staffed by undead? They don't need food or water so you can't really starve most of them out and many of them can convert you people into reinforcements for their side. So can anyone think of how or why you would do it?How: with napalm.
Why: to cleanse the abomination.
Besieging a castle with napalm. That's an interesting use of words. (Insert Inigo Montoya quote.)
You'd have to storm the castle, it's the only choice.You could reduce it. Earthquake does wonders in this regard.
Or bypass it, or take it by stealth. Storming the castle in an FRPG is also generally a second-tier choice.
Was just reading over the entry for castle Kornquist in castles of the inner sea and it got me thinking about this. I mean how or why would you siege a castle inhabited and staffed by undead? They don't need food or water so you can't really starve most of them out and many of them can convert you people into reinforcements for their side. So can anyone think of how or why you would do it?How: with napalm.
Why: to cleanse the abomination.
We approve of this tactic.
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clerics....paladins and inquisitors. They would be quite helpful when dealing with the undead. They often come attached to an organization like a church.....which can send more clerics paladins and inquisitors......
They could be helpful with anything from channeling energy to heal as well as harm. they could also help stem disease in the siege camp, and help provide some food for the besiegers.
Just a thought.
clerics....paladins and inquisitors. They would be quite helpful when dealing with the undead. They often come attached to an organization like a church.....which can send more clerics paladins and inquisitors......
They could be helpful with anything from channeling energy to heal as well as harm. they could also help stem disease in the siege camp, and help provide some food for the besiegers.
Just a thought.
Do you really think that this squadron of specialist God-botherers would be happy just sitting around watching the zombies and ghouls not-starve atop the battlements?
With command undead spells over time, sending your new troops in first.
They have the Channel Grenades... Im sure you could make larger seige versions to toss over the walls. On top of that... any mid to high level cleric or paladin will make short work of the lesser undead. Hide from Undead potions for the rest of your army. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Only your intelegent undead even get a save from what I remember. Let the high level characters kill them in between clearing out the hordes.
As for Seige. It really doesn't work well in PF. With spells like Fly, D-Door, Teleport, Teleportation Circle, Earthquake, Create Food/water, ect... a Castle is little more than a fancy dwelling. It protects you against raids by bandits or savages (Orcs, ogres, goblins, ect)... but against an organized military unit... not so much. They have casters. They dont need to seige a castle. And if they do... it wont work because of the same spells I mentioned. You can bring in food and reinforcements. You can hit the siege from behind their lines in raids. And if all else fails you can create your own food and water. With undead its even easier.
One Wizard with 9th level spells will take out a castle of undead given enough time and gold. He can Gate in Angles that should be more then happy to take on a castle of undead. He can use Fly and Meteor Swarm to clear out large numbers of the lesser undead. He can scry for locations on the more powerful undead and use knowledge checks to figure out what they are weak too. Magic makes alot of old world defenses uneffective.
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They have the Channel Grenades... Im sure you could make larger seige versions to toss over the walls. On top of that... any mid to high level cleric or paladin will make short work of the lesser undead. Hide from Undead potions for the rest of your army. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Only your intelegent undead even get a save from what I remember. Let the high level characters kill them in between clearing out the hordes.
As for Seige. It really doesn't work well in PF. With spells like Fly, D-Door, Teleport, Teleportation Circle, Earthquake, Create Food/water, ect... a Castle is little more than a fancy dwelling. It protects you against raids by bandits or savages (Orcs, ogres, goblins, ect)... but against an organized military unit... not so much. They have casters. They dont need to seige a castle. And if they do... it wont work because of the same spells I mentioned. You can bring in food and reinforcements. You can hit the siege from behind their lines in raids. And if all else fails you can create your own food and water. With undead its even easier.
One Wizard with 9th level spells will take out a castle of undead given enough time and gold. He can Gate in Angles that should be more then happy to take on a castle of undead. He can use Fly and Meteor Swarm to clear out large numbers of the lesser undead. He can scry for locations on the more powerful undead and use knowledge checks to figure out what they are weak too. Magic makes alot of old world defenses uneffective.
Okay I think 2 things need to be addressed here that people seem to be missing.
1.) Though a good point spells like earthquake, teleportation circle, gate, and the other high end level spells require an equally high level caster which, if you're playing most games, are not just sitting around in great preponderance. I mean if we look at golarion there are maybe 10 active in current setting and only a few countries even have one that will actually help defend them. Because of this I think you can rule out most high level casters as an option for most countries unless said castle has become the number one immediate threat to the nation. Otherwise their rulers will prioritize those abilities to other more pressing matters.
2.) On the front of just cold teleporting into a base I feel like that has a lot more problems then the conventional castle. First off the idea of just dropping into any dungeon or hostile area without proper knowledge of the terrain is just asking for trouble. Second one of the upsides of undead is that by their very nature a lot of things you would have to build into a normal castle aren't needed like kitchens, dining halls, and sleeping quarters. This allows any decent undead castle to convert all these spaces into new holding cells and barracks' for their undead legions that wait to be mobilized. Basically if you want to teleport in you have to have a team that is ready to take on overwhelming odds the instant the drop in regardless of entry point since it is more then likely that said entry point is both packed to the gills with opponents and they will kill whatever drops in on sight.
What this thread is looking for is what would be the standard practical solution to handling a castle like this. I mean how many places in Andoran, the River Kingdoms, or Ustalav do you have a lvl 16+ cleric or wizard you can just throw money at and have them fling themselves at a castle like it's a normal Tuesday?
That being said a targeted strike by something like an earthquake or storm of vengeance wouldn't be a bad idea if you could manage to spring for the cash.
Find a dwarf stonelord who dumped intelligence, smack him when he's not looking, blame castle. You also go for a sunder happy barbarian.
Do you really think that this squadron of specialist God-botherers would be happy just sitting around watching the zombies and ghouls not-starve atop the battlements?Like the Knights of Ozem do in Virlych?
or everyone around the nation of geb.
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Direct Assault from the outsides or after you break a wall:
Non magical - Balls of hay and oil (pitch??), tossed from catapults while they are lite on fire.
Cask of alchemist fire?
Volley of blunt arrows against skeleton combatants.
Volley of "raining" (Elves of Golarion) arrows filled with holy water.
Semi magical - cask of Cure X wounds. Catapult.
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Burn it with fire.
Research a high level cleric spell that calls down a rainstorm of holy water to put out the fire.
Then burn it with fire again.
Alternately, or additionally, bottle them in, let the undead that *do* 'feed,' like shadows, ghouls, vampires, wraiths, etc. go without any living creatures to feed upon for a few weeks, and then unleash a bunch of animals that have been 'poisoned' with infusions of positive energy. (Chickens or whatever that have had some variation of Brew Potion used on them or tattooed on them so that anyone that eats them / drains their life-force receives a cure light wounds effect.)
firestrike is already a thing...problem solved.
Earlier topic. A real meteor, pulled down out of the sky, would take out a corner tower or section of wall. The siege is a stall while you get the ritual together.
My friends says "Fight fire with fire, send in undead!". I like the ideas I see here.