Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JulesCARV 05-18-06, 08:30 AM	I was thinking that one of the things the warforged would change the most about warfare during the Last War was sieges: warforged don't eat, drink, or get sick, so starving them out would not work. Naturally, the options of bloodily storming the castle walls would still be available. We're assuming a sort of low-to-mid magic warfare, so no assuming that a 15th level druid or cleric with the Earth domain will be around to cast Earthquake on the castle, for example. To be more specific, I want a way of decisively ending a siege that's brutal, and would probably make the commander who ordered the use of it somewhat infamous for committing such an atrocity, but gets the job done.
DarkWarriorKarg 05-18-06, 09:24 AM	Cry havok and unleash the Rust Monsters of War! Probably just starve out the human contingent. It's not as if the WF were recognized as beings before the end of the last war. And it's not as if there are that many of them. A full garrison of WF? NOt worth the trouble of taking. The only ways would be from within or a mass charge.
Sereno 05-18-06, 09:28 AM	Warforged would make the ultimate siege-defenders as they cannot be broken by any of the usual means; lack of food, lack of water, disease (launching diseased animals over the walls), poison (aiming for wells), etc.... A large number of catapults that rain jar after jar of Alchemists' Fire upon them might work. Or, just constant bombardment and then the inevitable bloody "climb the walls" assault. In any case taking a fortification full of WF is going to be hard without higher level magic; at least area of effect spells like Fire Ball and Lightning Bolt.
angellis_ater 05-18-06, 09:43 AM	Capturing and teleporting in monsters - brutal, effective, bloody and non-standard.
(Psi)SeveredHead 05-18-06, 09:59 AM	Break a hole in the walls (magic is good for this). In fact, break multiple holes and use numerical superiority to smash them. You'll need a good commander to match wits with the warforged commander.
MrFilthyIke 05-18-06, 10:02 AM	I gotta agree with the trained Rust Monsters. It'd be like sicing the hounds on a pack of Warforged. :D
yrogerg 05-18-06, 10:32 AM	I was thinking that one of the things the warforged would change the most about warfare during the Last War was sieges: warforged don't eat, drink, or get sick, so starving them out would not work. Naturally, the options of bloodily storming the castle walls would still be available. We're assuming a sort of low-to-mid magic warfare, so no assuming that a 15th level druid or cleric with the Earth domain will be around to cast Earthquake on the castle, for example. To be more specific, I want a way of decisively ending a siege that's brutal, and would probably make the commander who ordered the use of it somewhat infamous for committing such an atrocity, but gets the job done. Given most peoples' attitudes towards warforged both during and after the Last War, if you're going for the sort of brutal tactic that will be seen as an 'atrocity', your best bet is to just storm it and rely on superior numbers. The majority of the casualties would still be on the human's side: maybe something like losing 200-300 humans trying to root out 50 warforged? Nothing is as atrocious as using that many humans as cannon fodder against warforged, in the eyes of much of Korvaire. Unless you were looking specifically for brutality against warforged?
JulesCARV 05-18-06, 10:57 AM	Well, my plan was for the besiegers to be a warforged unit as well.
DarkWarriorKarg 05-18-06, 11:13 AM	Ummm... then why would they be brutal to each other? Kill each other? Sure. Commit atrocities? Why would they do so? I'm not questioning that they couldn't do it, but the motivation would be extreme. WF commanders possessed by spirits from Shavarath? It would be similar to 2 Deneith units, hired on opposing sides. Why would the commit atrocities on each other? Answer "why" it would be done, then "how" it is done will become more apparent.
Euangelion 05-18-06, 11:49 AM	I just don't see anything done to warforged during the war as being seen as an "atrocity" (especially by other warforged), since they weren't widely considered to be sentient beings until the very end of the war. On the other hand, the Lord of Blades may differ on that opinion... "Hey, did you hear about the siege of Darkwood Keep? 20 warforged held out for 3 months against 100 attacking warforged, until the keep was overrun and every defender smashed to pieces!" "Wow, 3 months! That's a long time for so few. Good for them."
MrFilthyIke 05-18-06, 12:33 PM	I just don't see anything done to warforged during the war as being seen as an "atrocity" (especially by other warforged), since they weren't widely considered to be sentient beings until the very end of the war. On the other hand, the Lord of Blades may differ on that opinion... "Hey, did you hear about the siege of Darkwood Keep? 20 warforged held out for 3 months against 100 attacking warforged, until the keep was overrun and every defender smashed to pieces!" "Wow, 3 months! That's a long time for so few. Good for them." Good call, the only people scarred by the brutality are the WF survivors, now haunted by the memories, and with a darkness settled over their souls... :)
Marcus Majarra 05-18-06, 01:26 PM	With low Wisdom scores, warforged are more susceptible to mind-affecting effects and illusions. Routing them through fear-based spells and (shadow) illusions only to slaughter them while they flee is a good way to be remembered (especially since fear-based rumors tend to be exaggerated).
Master_of_Sinanju 05-18-06, 01:31 PM	To be more specific, I want a way of decisively ending a siege that's brutal, and would probably make the commander who ordered the use of it somewhat infamous for committing such an atrocity, but gets the job done. You said the besieging unit is Warforged. What race is the commander? The reason I ask is; the impending attack/ atrocities you are planning for your commander to order serves two purposes 1. to end the siege of course. :P and 2. you want to give your commander a reputation of infamy. To add to what Euangelion said:Originally Posted by Euangelion I just don't see anything done to warforged during the war as being seen as an "atrocity" (especially by other warforged), since they weren't widely considered to be sentient beings until the very end of the war. On the other hand, the Lord of Blades may differ on that opinion... Purposeful Infamy (infamy that is sought by a being for the sole purpose of becoming infamous/feared) is usually directed at a specific group of beings. The reasons vary but it is usually to obtain control through fear. Normally this fear is really truly felt only by a similar group to whom the atrocities happened and to a lesser degree by those who aren't directly affected. If your commander is Warforged and his unit is as well, and the opposing force is Warforged also, then the infamy he seeks has to be truly atrocious to other Warforged and to a lesser degree, if at all the humans and other races of the land. I just don't see humans really getting all bent out of shape about two opposing Warforged forces tearing eachother to oblivion. Most of the sentiment would be "good ridance". :devil: Now, that changes if the commander is Warforged and uses humans in an atrocious way as a tool toward that infamy. ie; captures a small village of humans and then proceeds to set them on fire while still alive and holding jars of alchemists' fire, then catapulting them into the sieged camp. :eek: :devil: This will definitely attract the attention of humans and other humanoids in the land and send a wave of great fear to those in the general area. Like a ripple to a great wave, it will spread to both humanoids and warforged and you will have indeed obtained a rep of infamy throughout the entire land. With this tactic though, you might also attract the attention of a force of angry humanoids (ie: a nations army) who will seekout this commander and his army and execute justice for said atrocities. You might even attract the attention of other Warforged who seek to end someone they see as an instigator of genocide. So you see there are alot of variables to infamy and to end the seige. :)
JulesCARV 05-18-06, 04:09 PM	The rust monster idea intrigues me: I like the style. Is it viable? Obviously, the summon monster/nature's ally spells don't cover rust monsters, but is there some other way? (somehow capturing rust monsters from Khyber and dimension dooring rust monsters into the fort?)
Quoriil 05-18-06, 05:56 PM	The atrocity would likely not be in the way that the seige was made but in the aftermath. I'm not sure what the levels of power required would be but you could have a warforged psion, or enslaved psion of some other race, forcibly mindlink/empathic transfers a group of warforged to a captured group of human villagers and then starves the humans to death. Just as their linked human slips into blessed shock an artificer blows apart thecaptured 'forged's essence.
(Psi)SeveredHead 05-18-06, 09:43 PM	The atrocity might come along and bite you in the @ss, however. Cao Cao (of Three Kingdoms fame) squashed a city in Xu Zhou and slaughtered its population. He was hoping to break the morale of the capital city (which had stronger walls). Instead, it provoked a rebellion within his own ranks, causing him to lose most of his home province and one of his top generals got kidnapped, too (the mighty Xiahou Dun). The commander had better think these things through.
Elderich 05-19-06, 10:50 AM	magebred horrid rust monsters? Commander is a ranger that breeds and keeps them as a quirk, and gets Pi**ed at the garrison and hatches this plan. From then on the rust monsters become part of the warforged culture, their version of vampires?
cancerousmango 05-21-06, 06:51 PM	This is more of an aftermath thing, but I think putting their heads on spikes or using them as projectiles in future sieges would be sufficiently brual. The soldiers could remove the ghulras from the warforged's heads and wear them as necklaces. They could pave the road up to the fort with forged components.
Forged_Fury 05-21-06, 08:17 PM	Hmmm... Well, most of them would probably be Level 1 or 2 Warriors... A few Wild Shaped druids in avian form fly into the castle, cast Heat Metal, and fly out. Spell lasts 7 rounds and requires no concentration. Overall Damage for the spell is 8 hit points mimimum, 32 maximum. Will-based saving throw. 42 seconds total. Main problem is area of effect... (I also don't have the ECS in front of me, so I can't remember if Heat Metal works on them in this way). Combine that with gnome artificer sappers and Rust Monsters and I think you have a winner. Forged_Fury
Aneul 05-22-06, 06:42 PM	What if some Cannith/Vadallis team found a way to create and store the secretion that comes from rust monster antenea, without use of to many of the critters- and used barrals of that as artilery projectiles. Raining the rusting liquid down on a fort full of warforged would be something like dumping napalm or Greek Fire on a human instalation- not pretty at all. It would certainly make the commander feared and hated by any warforged who survived or otherwise got word of it.
Euangelion 05-22-06, 07:19 PM	On one hand, I doubt Cannith would be involved in something like that, since they were so invested in the creation of the warforged. In fact, if there would be any humanoids in the Last War who could be horrified at brutal treatement of the warforged, it might be found among a particular school of thought in House Cannith. Merrix may be LE, but he actually cares about the warforged...
Ellorin 05-23-06, 04:34 AM	Keep them inside. Storm the countryside, burn the crops, send some units to harass less well protected communities(and keep their moirale high)...in short, send their commander the message that they are immobile,trapped inside, while their land remains helpless. Sooner or later they will have to come out.
RaidingPartyGames 05-23-06, 12:13 PM	Keep them inside. Storm the countryside, burn the crops, send some units to harass less well protected communities(and keep their moirale high)...in short, send their commander the message that they are immobile,trapped inside, while their land remains helpless. Sooner or later they will have to come out. Along these lines, while they're trapped, their advantage of terrain is useless. Any sort of total-annihalation plan iz sure to get attention. If there is a mountain nearby, they can cause a landslide. If there izn't, they can build one... or tunnel out from the bottom and sinkhole the whole fort. Since there are more resourcez on the outside than the inside, the siege izn't az urgent az if they needed food, but it'll still get down to attrition. Another horrific idea iz attrition of the warforged themselvez. Send in strike teamz to kidnap the defenderz, and then disassemble (and possibly recycle) them. Because the attacker has more troops, and a theoretically infinite ratio of new suppliez coming in (X/0~infinity), having five attackerz damaged in order to damage one defender, or losing two men to capture one, or other exchangez that wouldn't normally be acceptable, are acceptable in these circumstancez. If you have access to a forge, cannibalism. If you have access to magic, the aforementioned bombardment. If you have access to rust monsterz... yeah (I liked the napalm idea). And if you don't actually need the fort, absolutely levelling it and az such killing everyone inside... while it izn't az flavorful az the otherz, it has a wonderful air of "if I can't have it you can't either... and you're all dead" spite to it. Maybe combine with one of the otherz if you want fantasy added.
(Psi)SeveredHead 05-23-06, 02:31 PM	Hmmm... Well, most of them would probably be Level 1 or 2 Warriors... A few Wild Shaped druids in avian form fly into the castle, cast Heat Metal, and fly out. Spell lasts 7 rounds and requires no concentration. Overall Damage for the spell is 8 hit points mimimum, 32 maximum. Will-based saving throw. 42 seconds total. Main problem is area of effect... (I also don't have the ECS in front of me, so I can't remember if Heat Metal works on them in this way). Combine that with gnome artificer sappers and Rust Monsters and I think you have a winner. Forged_Fury Where do you get all these druids from?
Forged_Fury 05-23-06, 08:08 PM	Eldeen Reaches, I guess... Druids have a pretty long history in Eberron. If the comment was about finding that many high-level druids... I've kind of been of the opinion that there used to be a greater number of higher level folks, but most were killed off during the Last War through a combination of high-level characters dying in the early years in battle and characters that had the potential to be high-level dying through attrition as a War1 on the fields of battle. So yeah, it wouldn't really make sense to have the druids unless we were in the beginning of the Last War... when the warforged didn't exist. You would need a couple of 5th level druids for the Wildshape ability (6th if you wanted to get them back), which would be difficult at the latter half of the Last War. I figure it would be about as difficult to wrangle 4 or more 5th level druids together as it would be to find that many rust monsters. I mean really, I don't think I've seen a Rust Monster since the Red Box Basic Set adventure... :D -Forged_Fury
LionTongue 05-24-06, 03:50 AM	I think that the most atrocious way to fight against those warforged is to use seige weapons, or some other means from a distance to cave their fortress in on itself. As long as there is enough debris that individual warforged cant dig themselves out, they are no longer a threat. Don't bother killing them, just leave them there. And thats the atrocious part. Warforged don't need to sleep or eat or breath. They would be trapped down there, with nobody to talk to, with nothing to do. Sometimes completley alone, sometimes in small groups. To make it an adventure, the pc's could find out about the fortress and try to dig some of the Warforged out. They could encounter either a lone warforged with even more difficulty than normal interacting, or a group of warforged who have developed their own culture over the past 30 years.
Siduakal 05-24-06, 12:57 PM	Just a note about the buried alive warforged and such.. Either in Races of Eberron or the Eberron Campaign Setting it says that the Warforged were tested by being buried alive, and they would go insane from not having anyone to communicate with.
VVill 05-24-06, 02:14 PM	Give your Warforged commander supped up gauntlets of rust, or make him the Druid. The rumour has it that during the siege he single handily scaled the wall and turned half the defender to petrified rust, were they stand. The other half surrendered and where also megicaly rusted to death. Now their is an empty castle with rust petrified Warforged filling its halls. Any Warforged would fear him after that. May be he has Ironwood body and finds his metal laced brethren inferior.
Bluebrush 05-24-06, 03:02 PM	Another suggestion: Go with one of the rusting ideas above. (Rust monsters + Feather Fall Rings + Trebuchet, say) Then, after the battle begin the rains. Thousands of pounds of rust wash from the ruined floors and courtyards of the keep, running down the rocky hill it is based on, staining the stone rust brown. Maybe some of it gets into the local streams, kills off the wildlife and poisons nearby settlements. Perhaps, ironically enough, the invading forces run out of water and cannot use the poisoned stream. Maybe later, it attracts more rust monsters, who then get into the local iron mines...
Rageheart 05-24-06, 11:53 PM	Prepare for a long seige... then about a week into the seige teleport a single (or maybe as much as 4) Rustmonster(s) trained not to attack when outnumbered and wearing enchanted collars which bestow Improved Invisibility and Silence.... Then allow a messenger pigon to be intercepted with a bogus message about sneaking an assassin into the castle, or making a deal with a local spirit/a pact with a demon... Finally allow the castle to worry itself to death as the warforged are picked off slowly and mysteriously. ;)