Siege of Trees spell


Rules Questions


Could someone explain how the spell Siege of Trees works? Because I'm pretty sure that the Druid in my party has been playing it very wrong. The way our GM has been letting the 15th level druid play it, he's literally making 5 Treants for 15 hours.
Yeah, their damage and to-hit are less than normal light catapults, but the fact that they're considered Treants means that they are
1) Sentient and get their own pool of actions, instead of him spending standard actions to aim each one.
2) Mobile; they literally follow us into the dungeon to smash the walls down for us
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that seems way over the top for what a 7th level should be able to do. Could someone can give me a good rundown of how it's actually supposed to work?


Lvl1Druid wrote:

Could someone explain how the spell Siege of Trees works? Because I'm pretty sure that the Druid in my party has been playing it very wrong. The way our GM has been letting the 15th level druid play it, he's literally making 5 Treants for 15 hours.

Yeah, their damage and to-hit are less than normal light catapults, but the fact that they're considered Treants means that they are
1) Sentient and get their own pool of actions, instead of him spending standard actions to aim each one.
2) Mobile; they literally follow us into the dungeon to smash the walls down for us
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that seems way over the top for what a 7th level should be able to do. Could someone can give me a good rundown of how it's actually supposed to work?

No where in the description of the spell does it say they become "treants" or that they gain the ability to move at all. I see where they are getting this at, the word mobility in the first sentence does not refer to land movement but the ability to move its branches to grab rocks and toss them.

The spell description . . .

You imbue inanimate plants with limited mobility and a semblance of life. Each plant targeted acts as a light catapult until the end of the spell’s duration, though you must spend a standard action to aim each of these tree catapults before the first time they fire, and anytime thereafter when you want the trees to fire at a new target. The catapult uses your caster level as its targeting bonus. With a free action, you can command one or all of the trees under your command to stop firing. You do not need to supply ammunition to these tree catapults; they will automatically load themselves with rocks and boulders in the area, digging them deep from the ground if need be. You can supply the trees ammunition if you desire. The tree will not load flaming ammunition, and these catapult trees cannot be affected by energy siege shot if the energy selected is fire.


A Light Catapult does 4d6 damage, which averages to 14 damage. A Treant using its rock throwing ability does 2d6+13 damage, which averages to 20 damage, which is doubled to 40 damage against objects and structures.

Although I guess decreasing the Treant's size from Huge to Large should decrease the damage dice from 2d6 to 1d8 and then The strength bonus would go down by 4 due to having 21 Strength instead of 29 Strength, so it'd be 1d8+9 for 13.5 average damage, 27 versus objects and structures. Though being Large size would also make them more accurate due to having +2 Dex and decreasing their size penalty on attacks from -2 to -1. So they'd be rocking a +9 to hit instead of +7 with their rocks.

Lvl1Druid wrote:
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that seems way over the top for what a 7th level should be able to do.

Making them full (albeit 1 size smaller than usual) treants? That could be a bit over the top, considering Liveoak and Changestaff. Then again, Liveoak is 1 treant for days and is 6th level. I suppose part of that would be whether he was allowing them to do melee attacks and other treanty things beyond hurling rocks good.

Having them be mobile and able to follow the party? That's probably not over the top. Depending upon how mobile, I guess.

Probably more over the top is the fact that smashing through dungeon walls repeatedly is a consistently viable tactic.

I could definitely see a GM ruling that they act as creatures just to streamline running them to a certain extent.

Lvl1Druid wrote:
Could someone can give me a good rundown of how it's actually supposed to work?

RAW I believe it means you animate stationary plants and give them the ability to act as stationary self-loading, self-firing light catapults. The caster has to take 1 standard action per plant catapult to tell them what their target is.

I believe the individual plant catapults make a DC 15 check using the caster's caster level as their bonus on the check. So a 15th level Druid without any gear that boosted their CL would have their plant catapults roll 1d20+15 against that DC 15. So they can't fail except on a nat 1, which causes a mishap, since catapults are an indirect fire siege engine.

Quote:
Rolling a natural 1 on an attack roll or a targeting check made by an indirect-fire ranged siege engine produces a mishap. Usually a mishap applies the broken condition. A non-firearm siege engine with the broken condition takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls, targeting checks, and damage rolls. It also moves at half its normal speed.

Then, any creatures or objects in the square that the plant catapults fire upon have to make DC 15 reflex saves for half damage against 4d6 bludgeoning damage, unless special ammunition is provided for them. But the plant catapults can't use flaming ammunition or benefit from spells that would imbue fire into their ammunition.

On subsequent rounds, the plant catapults should automatically continue firing at the same square they were targeting without having to roll another targeting check, until they're either told to stop firing as a Free Action or are told to target a new square as a Standard Action.

The biggest benefit is that the plant catapult probably shouldn't require strength checks to re-winch the arm down and doesn't require additional actions in order to aim it or prepare it to fire, beyond the Standard Action that the caster has to take in order to tell each catapult what their target is.

Technically siege engines can be moved, so it wouldn't be the most unreasonable thing in the world for the GM to rule that turning the plant into a light catapult conferred the ability to move themselves. Some might or might not waive that it would take a Full Round Action for them to move themselves, due to them acting as their own crew for such a purpose, while some might think that it was silly for them to perform exactly like a crew with a siege engine would.


So, I asked the Druid how he interpreted it, since the DM is pretty much taking our word for things on most of our abilities. This is what the druid had to say:

Druid wrote:

So, 15th level, 5 "trees".

Limited mobility is not numerically spec'd. Spell states they are equivalent to light catapult which is spec'd for 10' movement.

Spell states a standard action to command an individual tree to start firing, so the firing rate is ramping up for 5 rounds and then full barrage.

A full on treant can operate on its own, and has a move rate of 30'.

Due to the fact that assaulting walls is basically un-timed, I do not believe anything has been broken. I can admit to attributing 180' range from treant and I should have used 150' range for light catapult

The biggest thing that was confusing me was how they were getting up and moving around, since nothing says that they can do so. Now that I've asked him about it, though, I can kinda see where he's coming from:

1) the trees act as light catapults, and light catapults have a move speed of 10 ft
2) nothing says that the trees are still stuck in place, therefore they should take all the stats of a light catapult - damage, hp, movement speed, etc
How do you guys feel about that? Cause, if we accept that they can move, the rest stops feeling less like "OMG, I need to bring this up to the GM because it's way above par for the course" and starts feeling like we're just handwaving a few things for the sake of simplicity. (Aside from the part where they had their own pool of actions last combat, and took out a few mooks on their own, but a few extra 2d6 rocks aren't going to make much difference when we're routinely rocking CR 17+ encounters.)


Quote:
Each plant targeted acts as a light catapult until the end of the spell’s duration ...

Part of acting like a light catapult is being able to move as a siege engine at a rate of 10 feet. This normally requires a move action from the engine's entire crew, but as far as I read it the spell is intended to substitute the "limited mobility" imparted by the spell for said crew--hence the ability for the "catapults" to automatically load themselves.

They still aren't treants, though. : )


blahpers wrote:
Quote:
Each plant targeted acts as a light catapult until the end of the spell’s duration ...

Part of acting like a light catapult is being able to move as a siege engine at a rate of 10 feet. This normally requires a move action from the engine's entire crew, but as far as I read it the spell is intended to substitute the "limited mobility" imparted by the spell for said crew--hence the ability for the "catapults" to automatically load themselves.

They still aren't treants, though. : )

Yeah, I'm not sure why he was referencing the treant stats, but that makes sense. Thanks.

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