I'm working of an adventure that involves a siege and I can't figure out how long each "turn" is during a siege. Is it a day, and hour, a week? I'm sure it's listed somewhere, but it's Avoidance is higher than my Hunting. Can anybody clue me in?

I'm working of an adventure that involves a siege and I can't figure out how long each "turn" is during a siege. Is it a day, and hour, a week? I'm sure it's listed somewhere, but it's Avoidance is higher than my Hunting. Can anybody clue me in?

As long as it narratively needs to be, I'd say.

GPC had only this to say (p. 17):
"A siege is a long, time-consuming event in which
disease is the most likely outcome for the besiegers. To
avoid such a long and potentially tedious part of the
game, the siege of a castle is made into a single die roll
using this skill."

So there are no 'rounds', just one roll.

If using the GPC system, I would tie it into the DV of the castle somehow, like:
Use all of your siege equipment = DV/2 weeks.
Get half benefit of your siege equipment = DV days.
Do a Leroy Jenkins -assault on the castle, no siege equipment = a day.

In our campaign, the actual length of the siege is played out narratively, and the assault itself has been played out as an extended melee. By the way, the players have learned to HATE assaulting castles/walled cities. As they should. It isn't and shouldn't be easy. Now if there is a breach, then it gets easier, but still not fun.

I'm not sure how well one roll actually works out. Especially with castles having layers of defense. If someone fails but still has siege equipment, couldn't they try again? Plus it doesn't allow the defenders to give up on a siege partway, if they feel it is taking too long.

As a idea, and a variation of your thought for time, how about each Siege turn takes: (DV+Area) days plus 1 per point of Siege Equipment invested.

With a multiplier based on the size of the Battle, based on the Number of troops involved:

Small x1/2
Medium x1
Large x1.5
Huge x2

Probably with a cap on how much Siege equipment an army can use per day, say 30L multipled by it's Size multiplier (so at small battle 100 attackers can operate 200L of siege gear or some such.

The more stuff the attacker has to set up the longer it is going to take to do so, and that way someone who commits 1L of equipment won't go any slower than someone who commits 1L of equipment, but has more.
After each Siege turn you could check for supples and disease, starting form a base value with the difficult increasing each turn.
.

I 'm starting to think that Siege equipment is way too effective. For the price of a Destrier, you can get enough siege equipment to knock down most modest holdings. If you have the money, its very easy to just buy enough to ensure an "autokill". And since it is used on a 1 for 1 basis it gets cheaper the larger the castle, relative to the castle. It reaches the point where the price becomes negligible compared to the cost of the troops.

Keep in mind that the main cost of the equipment will be in the transport and assembly, which includes sourcing the timber and constructing it on site. The equipment is just too bulky and awkward to be carried around on a fleet of trucks, so the harness and metal fittings would be taken apart. Some techniques for smaller items (ballista, for example) could be put on carts or disassembled into animal packs, but the bigger stuff that would take out walls: rams, towers, and catapults/trebuchet would be built from available timber. Mining gear would have to be carried, of course, as would any fire equipment.

So there's a lot that goes into a siege train that shouldn't be part of the up-front money, but still costs in time or resources to put to use.

I dunno. Consider this an argument for a more complex system? Am unsure.

--Khanwulf

Take a seat on the unsure train.
Sure, there is probably a lot more costs that the upfront stuff, but I think the whole idea is to keep the game simple.The same would hold true for an army on the battle field. Rather that having to figure out how many pack horses it takes to transport things, how much rope a trebuchet needs and so forth, wouldn't it be easier just to factor that into the upfront costs? Especially since, as far as KAP goes it doesn't matter if it's 10L of arrows or 10L of catapult - it works the same.

I think if we factored it into the time taken. For example, a single archer with 1000L of arrows (that 50,000 arrow per Noble's Book) might be able to shoot them all, but it going to take him a lot longer to go through them all than it would take 500 archers. And there is probably a certain point where it shouldn't matter anymore. For instance just how many catapults can someone bring to bear against a wall? Probably depends on how big the wall is, wouldn't you say. So maybe a limit based on Area? Say 30L+the Area?

I think theres enough info available to make it work better without getting into much detail.

I 'm starting to think that Siege equipment is way too effective. For the price of a Destrier, you can get enough siege equipment to knock down most modest holdings. If you have the money, its very easy to just buy enough to ensure an "autokill". And since it is used on a 1 for 1 basis it gets cheaper the larger the castle, relative to the castle. It reaches the point where the price becomes negligible compared to the cost of the troops.

Oh, I agree with you there. You could pump up the price to £10 per point, at which point it becomes very expensive to reduce castles by siege equipment.

Oh, I agree with you there. You could pump up the price to £10 per point, at which point it becomes very expensive to reduce castles by siege equipment.

I think that helps, but only to a point. Basically, if you are high enough in status to be able to besiege a place, you can afford the equipment to do so, and probably afford to buy an extra 40 points of siege equipment to ensure the autowin. Especially compaired to the cost of the army needed to use it. IMO the problem is that the bonus for siege equipment is linear, where as everything else in battle and siege isn't. For example, in a battle, having an extra 40 men, or an extra 400, isn't an autowin. With defenses tyou can only squeeze so much DV into in a building or wall, but you can throw an infinite amount of siege equipment at the wall to bring it down.

Siege equipment is the only place in Pendragon where, if you have the libra, you can buy a win. In every other aspect of the game there is some sort of limit to the modifiers. I think that either there needs to be some sort of limit as to how much siege equipment can be brought to bear against a given section of defense, or some sort of diminishing returns similar to the odds table in battle.

Oh, I agree with you there. You could pump up the price to £10 per point, at which point it becomes very expensive to reduce castles by siege equipment.

My understanding of the technology and the point of castles was that they traded space for time, giving the defenders the chance to be reinforced, for the attackers to run out of food and health (winter or wet weather could be devastating) and etc. Who wants to sit around digging ditches and waiting for people to starve in there? Certainly not expensive fighting-class men who've scared off all the women and food for miles!

Even an unbacked wood palisade takes a while to remove and needs certain types of attacking technology. Ballista didn't throw enough weight and were primarily used as long-range weapons (which were hella accurate, we should note!), so you were going to smash a fort by bringing in rams, heavy stone-throwing devices, or mining. These are... hard to move solutions.

Or you built ladders in quantity, mobile shields against rocks and arrows, and stormed the castle. That wood wall? Can be hacked through with enough time, provided by the shields and your own archers keeping the walls clear above.

So the attacker pays: in men injured or employed, in materials (including up-front costs: ram heads should be fabricated, e.g.), or in time. With these considerations a GM has tools they can use to bring home the costs to the players. Maybe they have plenty of oxen and can borrow them from the fieldwork to haul carts with lots of siege supplies? Maybe they can afford to move a strong peasant levy and fell woods (that belong to the king, BTW) to build on-site? Maybe they have the archers and the men to carry the walls in an extended melee? It's about decisions that matter, after all.

--Khanwulf

I think we all agree as to how tough a siege was, and also that the thicker and heavier the wall the bigger the equipment needed to breech them, or the greater number of men, ladders, etc needed to storm them. It's just seeing how to handle that in KAP. Anyone know what the state of the Book of Castles? It was supposed to cover this?

But I think that we could improve upon what we have in the GPC, and I do think we need to place some sort of limit to how much of a bonus someone can get with siege equipment, just so rich Knight can't just buy a win by bringing an extra 40L in siege equipment.

Hey I think I got it! What if we adapted the odds from battle table?


Commit Siege Equipment equal to or less than 1/5 DV -10
Commit Siege Equipment equal to or less than 1/2 DV -5
Commit Siege Equipment equal to or greater than 2xDV +5
Commit Siege Equipment equal to or greater than 5xDV +10

This would be reflexive, and lets us take the actual DV and Siege Equipment values out of the die rolls. That lets it scale in both cost and effectiveness with the size of the siege, and put an practical upper limit on how much siege equipment you can use against a given structure.


EDIT-Okay, hold the messenger pigeon. Looks like the Book of the Warlord addresses a lot of this.