Nuh-uh. It's a realistic simulation of how a fantasy world with magic would actually work! According to the immutable laws of imagination, it just doesn't make logical sense for a trebuchet to meaningfully damage a dragon!

Could enough trebuchet's hit a mobile dragon to do much damage? I wouldn't imagine they'd that effective against a reasonably mobile target but I'm no expert.

Edit: and wouldn't the fire breathing creature by able to make fairly short work of them once the gig was up?

Quote from: Skarg;9561142000 catapults versus a dragon, and the test for plausibility is how many gp it "costs"?

A 2000-catapult "trap" ?

The game system's power curve clearly broke the universe's logic a LONG time before this point.

Especially if the system allows catapults to hit a fast, high flying target like a dragon.  It's like trying to hit a jet plane with mortars.

There are no penalties to hit moving targets with ranged attacks in 3.5; this is assumed to be bundled into AC and any pertinent Reflex save. And we're trying to lure the dragon into a canyon to make it easier to hit, i.e. we've already targeted the catapults at a given square. To hit a given square with a catapult, you roll your BAB+INT, minus 1 for every 200 ft of distance, vs DC 15. It then does 6d6 (21) area damage to everything in the square. Anything in the square makes a DC 15 reflex save to take half damage.

Our Level Bumblefuck mooks have +0 BAB and +0 INT. As the dragon automatically frightens any mook within 210 feet of it, gotta put those catapults more than 200 feet away from our target, so the mooks must roll a 16 or better. So that's a 25% chance to hit. The dragon has +13 REF save and will therefore take has a 95% chance of saving (I actually messed up earlier and thought he had +14 REF; this changes the result by about a factor of two) . Since he has DR 10, on failed save he takes average 11, and on a success just 0.5 damage.

So the expected value of a trebuchet shot by our mooks is 0.25 * (0.05 * 11 + 0.95 * 0.5) = .26 hp.

253 hp / ( .26 hp per trebuchet ) = 973 trebuchets.

Note that's mean on a normal distribution, so you need 973 trebuchets to have a 50/50 chance of this working on the first shot. If you fail, your crew of Level Fucko sad sacks of crap must succeed on three DC 15 checks to be able to re-arm the catapult, then take a full round to re-aim it as the dragon is no doubt tearing through the catapults you have placed all around the ravine. The chance of even re-arming it is 0.027, so the next shot, you've only got 26 catapults, and that's just assuming the ones that made their checks aren't the ones the dragon is ripping to shreds.

And this is why 3.5 should not be played by reasonable people.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;956173Especially if the system allows catapults to hit a fast, high flying target like a dragon.  It's like trying to hit a jet plane with mortars.

Probably been done too somewhere. All it takes is either timing. or enough rocks in the air that the chance of one hitting goes up. Assuming said target isnt out of range. In which case its a moot point.

There could be a whole adventure about trying to organize the construction of 900-2000 siege engines. Even if everything went smoothly, I wonder how many engineers and carpenters and woodcutters and stone gatherers and smiths and weapon crew and rope and tools and food and other supplies and felled trees and time that would end up taking.

If someone hatches a working scheme that gets you to arrange for a dragon to show up at the right place from the right direction at the right time not having heard anything about the world's largest and silliest engineering project, ... one might hope that clever effort could result in an actually effective outcome, as well.

I hear there's this Stone To Mud spell...

Seems to me the likely outcome of the silly trebuchet barrage encounter would tend to be: Ancient dragon rolls to see if it is smart enough to look before it leaps. Oh look, it is. Dragon looks, peeks, mooks fire 973 rocks, dragon ducks back. Rocks all fly at no available target. Dragon advances to inside minimum trebuchet range before they can reload. Mooks fail morale check. Dragon enslaves mooks he doesn't have stomach room to eat, and has them bring the loot (in industrial-capitalist D&D economy, someone paid for that catapult construction in gold, no?) to add to dragon hoard.

Off topic: More likely the dragon would at this point know the ranges on siege weapons and his or her own breath weapon range and probably do strafing runs, feints, and other tricks. Or even fly over and drop cows on them. Or prep the dragon equivalent of Shield or Protection from missiles and laugh at point blank range. fwoosh.

Back on topic: About the only thing I have a contention with really in point buy is that for some reason the lowest your stats can be tends to be fairly good. Its been 8 in D&D since Rev and 2nd ed.

When I play solo 5th Edition D&D I need a big edge for my loner character, so I also being the DM start with a base line of 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 , sure it's cheating ,but is it really ? Look inside the monster manual, my hero has a lot to defend against, but when I do game with actual groups, I like random rolling best, because figuring out how to play what you roll is also a lot of fun, not saying I would refuse to play if it was point buy characteristics or static characteristics. Hell, it's all in good fun.

Quote from: lacercorvex;960457When I play solo 5th Edition D&D I need a big edge for my loner character, so I also being the DM start with a base line of 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 , sure it's cheating ,but is it really ? Look inside the monster manual, my hero has a lot to defend against, but when I do game with actual groups, I like random rolling best, because figuring out how to play what you roll is also a lot of fun, not saying I would refuse to play if it was point buy characteristics or static characteristics. Hell, it's all in good fun.

Except that 5e is geared around increasing your stats. So starting with such high stats is a bit of a cheat especially when up against relatively balanced foes. Based on your stats the average class youd end up with final stats of 20,20,20,16,14,13. And a fighter will end with a 4th 20.

The more I play 5e the more I think that going point buy or array may be the best route as it forces the player to make some choices and sacrifices.

Though of course the trade off is possibly some cookie-cutter type characters. YMMV of course.

Actually, if you want 5e to be survivable solo, just up the healing.  That's the biggest thing you really need to worry about.  Anything else can be figured out as you go.

Personally, I use  Black Streams Solo Heroes by Sine Nomine Publishing (which is free and a decent preview of their other games), and with a few mods is easy to port to 5e.

Stat wise, 5e is designed to be survivable for 14 in your main stat (including any modifiers to said stat) to start.  Higher is nice, but not necessary.  Just to clarify, a Wizard with a 14 Int is able to handle any level appropriate challenge, a Rogue with a 14 Dex, as well.  So on and so forth.