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Archaic Siege Weapons & Primitive Artillery:

A

archhealer

SOC-12
I was wondering if anybody else has batted around the idea of catapults, ballistae, trebuchet and the like for T20? If so, have you found any other D20 products that included decent stats for these devices?

The Against Gravity TA combined with the optional rules for muscle power in Through the Waves, includes a wide variety of options, even so far back as allowing one to built Civil-War era horse-drawn cannon, but anything older fashioned than that breaks down.

I mean, what effect would a catapult have if they actually managed to hit a Tank with it?
 
Originally posted by Archhealer:
I mean, what effect would a catapult have if they actually managed to hit a Tank with it?
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[BONK!]

Grav Tank Crewmember: "Hey Fred, did you hear something?"

Fred: (Aims and fires the fusion gun once. An explosion and screams are heard) "Yep."

Grav Tank Crewmember: "What the hell was that?"

Fred: "Speed bump."
 
Catapults fall down on accuracy to some extent.

Some of the direct fire seige engines (I am thinking of the heavier ballista) would be about as effective as light medieval cannon.

Accuracy is about the same
Time between shots is far greater
Velocity is lower but in the same ballpark

A 10 kg rock travelling at 100m/s is still not terribly scary to a TL10 Tank. Point defense will pluck it out of the air to start with. Lighter and lower tech vehicles would certainly have a moment of pause though.

I'd start with the lightest and most primitive cannon and back engineer it. Lower the range, increase the firing time, lower the damage. For Trebuchet and similar the damage and range would be similar to a cannon, but whether you hit becomes more a statistical issue (massive penalties to hit come to mind).

If a Tank is hit by a larger trebuchet...

Well, a 200 kg rock at terminal velocity is something you want to avoid.
 
Heh heh. I kind of assumed they wouldn't be terribly effective against high tech vehicles, but still, it's a situation that might actually arrise now and again. And at the ranges such things had, particularly for ballistae, point defense would get tricky. They don't move like most incoming missiles would, after all.

Though, the reason I asked, is I recently watched Star Wars, the one with the Ewoks (I'm not a huge Star Wars fan), but I was intrigued watching the Ewoks take out the AT-STs and stuff. Just wondering if there were ANY way a low-tech population could present even a significant impediment to a high tech force
 
Somehow immobilise. Say a rockslide.

Send infantry at them until they run out of ammo or fuel (for energy weapons). Go to work with chisels and sledgehammers to open up the tank.

One place primitive seige engines would be useful is disabling specific weapons. Once the anti-personel weapons on a vehicle are disabled then you can swarm the vehicle. Means you can get to step 2 so much faster.

With enough numbers and time these things can be solved


Against well designed and disciplined high tech opponents you will be looking at abject failure except in specific lucky cases when facing them in the feild. Much better to just poison their food and water and spread STD's to their troops.
 
Originally posted by Archhealer:
*snip*

Though, the reason I asked, is I recently watched Star Wars, the one with the Ewoks (I'm not a huge Star Wars fan), but I was intrigued watching the Ewoks take out the AT-STs and stuff. Just wondering if there were ANY way a low-tech population could present even a significant impediment to a high tech force
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Concealed pit traps. A tank can´t climb out of a hole it fell into, even if the hole is relatively shallow, say two meters or so.
If you fill the hole with water (before the tank comes), it would knock out the electronics (unless the tank is watertight/airtight) and probably drown the crew unless they bail out fast enough.
If you fill the hole with something flammable (oil, pitch) and keep someone with a match nearby... well you can imagine...
 
The tricky bit is to even finish building your siege weapons before they get taken out by an air strike ...
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During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, one of the methods the mujahidin used against the Soviet armor was to climb up into the mountains above the road and hurl [free] rocks down on the [expensive] T-72's and T-80's. They operated above the altitude ceiling for the Soviet helicopters, and fixed-wing attacks [given Soviet targeting technology at the time] were ineffective.

The rock attacks [see veltyen's post about 200 lb rocks and terminal velocity...
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] were pretty effective, not to mention the landslide possibilities.

Making the occupation too expensive to maintain, despite Afghanistan's relatively rich oil reserves, was a key factor in the Soviet military withdrawal from the country (although they maintained a political and economic presence there until the fall of the Soviet Union).

But in general, even TL7 tanks should be able to annihilate huge numbers of Medieval technology foes, if only by running them over with the tank once they run out of ammunition. So long as they don't throw a tread or run out of fuel, they're unstoppable by muscle-powered weapons.
 
I don't own these but the Encyclopedia of Exotic Weapons and the Encyclopedia of Weaponary are both third party d20 supplements that have rules on siege weapons. I think the basics are in the DMG.

Mike
 
What this really comes down to is the fact that what makes a weapon dangerous is the mind directing it, not the weapon itself. This is the basic idea drilled into all elite fighting units.
 
Originally posted by Archhealer:
Though, the reason I asked, is I recently watched Star Wars, the one with the Ewoks (I'm not a huge Star Wars fan), but I was intrigued watching the Ewoks take out the AT-STs and stuff. Just wondering if there were ANY way a low-tech population could present even a significant impediment to a high tech force
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Vietnam War, the.

The low-tech population will suffer horrendous casualties (I believe the final count was something like ~50'000 allied dead, and over 3 million Vietnamese), but where there's a will there's a way.

When it comes to severe tech disparity, the gap in casualties suffered by either side will increase. Vietnam might not be a good example if you're talking about medieval style armies going against grav tanks... but I always found that to be stupid anyway. In an age of space ships and ray guns why would you want to use catapults? My scenario falls within the 'backward colony struggling for independence against the Big Bad Guvment' category.

Oh, and the Ewoks were getting massacred by the Empire's equivalent of a humvee. The AT-ST walkers are unarmoured. Han Solo's blaster would more than likely put a ripping dent into it (it was after all capable of ripping huge chunks of concrete off the walls of Mos Eisley spaceport).
 
Originally posted by Archhealer:


Though, the reason I asked, is I recently watched Star Wars, the one with the Ewoks (I'm not a huge Star Wars fan), but I was intrigued watching the Ewoks take out the AT-STs and stuff. Just wondering if there were ANY way a low-tech population could present even a significant impediment to a high tech force
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Oh its easy as long as the indigs are in league with the writer. After all if you really think about it even if you strip the Imperials of all their armored/mechananized forces what do you get? A fight between a blaster armed 6ft tall armored human versus a 3ft oversized unarmored teddybear with a sharp stik. Now who would you put your money on?
 
All things being equal, the soldier will win over the teddybear.

But here's the thing: all things are rarely equal.Any honest appraisal of ROTJ - if you read the novelisation, which is canon, as well as view the film - will show that the Ewoks had superior numbers, the element of surprise, and ingenuous traps, but the Stormtroopers still massacred them. It really took Chewie commandeering the AT-ST, and Han Solo's desperate impersonation, and the incompetence of one officer that bought it, that won that battle.

The Ewoks provided a distraction for the people who won the battle, and paid a heavy toll in casualties. That's par for the course for these kinds of conflict, like I mentioned in my previous post. Just because your opponent is technologically inferior to you doesn't mean a poison arrow can't kill you, or punji sticks can't cripple you, or a catapult can't squash you.
 
Unless you can forsee where it is going to be when you launch your attack and it lands, medievel seige weapons are not going to be anywhere near dangerous. While such things as ballistae and the like might be dangerous to exposed personnel, which is where most Russian casualties occurred. I cannot see a 200kg rock doing enough damage to rip open even 1 inch of plate armor. There might be damage from the concussive effects, rip off a radio antennae but those are not going to be totally dangerous. Now a rockslide, that is dangerous, especially on a limited roadway but then it isn't goind to do diddly on a tank with anti-grav.
Now a trebuchet with a 2 ton or more rock, would be dangerous but your chances of hitting a modern tank would be next to nothing but a tl9 tank, no way.
 
But lattitude could be left for special cases. Some sort of alien flechette javelin thrower would put the hurt on your average PC party in an opentopped airraft with a good hit.

Likewise, a glob of Greekfire... lucky hit, but with a siege engines, who knows...

On the last on planet I ran , The TL 3 Natives used poisons and sheer numbers as weapons. Each Taught was taught to fire an atlatl from birth.
THe crew equipped 200 with ACRs and Vacc Suits, and also left the King a TL 4 Machine Gun. "CArgo Cults" could mean trouble.

Then theres the Crew Factor. Good crews have a lot of skill from constant use/training.

But, you could have an entire planet's siege engine capacity go up against 1 Grav APC and be a pile of sticks. One guy in Battledress could do it. High Tech Materials would make all the difference.
 
^ Doesn't matter what kind of armor a PC is wearing, if they get hit with a big enough projectile, they will likely be injured severely. Hit a vehicle with a big enough projectile and it's going to break something; hull, suspension, turret, etc. Hit a starship with a big enough projectile and you can expect it to never lift off again.
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It doesn't matter the TL difference, mass imparted with enough kinetic energy is always an equalizer.

Now add fire and things get even more fun!
 
I'll put a spoiler warning here if any of you haven't read the extremely excellent Honor Harrington series. Please skip the rest of the post of you haven't and don't want a spoiler.

<begin spoiler>


And then, of course, you have what happened in On Basilisk Station in the Honor Harrington series. You arm the indigenous low-tech population with weapons that can penetrate modern armor (in that case, skinsuits; they weren't a serious threat to the combat armored Manty marines) and cause yourself a surprise insurrection.

This works best if you have long-term political or diplomatic goals that are served by such chaos, of course.

And works even better if you're not facing a young Manty officer named Honor Harrington...or player characters, who are wont to throw a monkey wrench into the best laid plans of Game Masters and their villanous NPCs.

</spoiler>
 
Actually in Afganistan Rocks were used to take out a few Hind Helicopters. Granted from above and in large numbers but it did happen. However, a helicopter is much more fragile than a Tank of any tech level. Rocks, given musclepowered tech, are unlikely to do real damage to a TL5+ tank. Remember that unlikely is not the same as impossible, but once you get to TL7+ forget about taking on armor with medieval tech. Just ask the Poles, that used Horse Calvary and lances against TL5 tanks in 1939. Or look at what early machineguns did in places like Verdun in WWI.

Granted there are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people and superior tactics can win out. Now superior training, superior range and some superior weapons did not, long term, help Custer. (Though in all fairness Sitting Bulls people had a bunch of Repeaters and Custers people had single shot breach loaders.) Though Custer and his Cav unit, even with an inferior position, did exact a truly devasting kill ratio in that fight.

But generally with higher technology also comes superior training and tactics. And that combination is generally unbeatable.
 
^ I am no way a proponent of Ewok anti-armor tactics but there is much to be said about the sutiable application of low tech solutions to high tech problems in war fighting. The cheap and plentiful often counters the high tech and expensive point for point. Case in point, the Viet Cong and now the Iraqi insurgence.

The Poles were defeated because they chose frontal assault; dramatic, heroic, what have you, but in the end, stupid. If instead, they had chose to pick away at the Nazis, with deviously simple methods like indiscriminate bombings and snipers, the Nazis would have likely wound up holed up in their bunkers firing at every errant shadow or loud noise. The Russians and French did it to some success; the Viet Cong and Afghans were very good at it.
 
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