One of my players is building a stronghold, and he’s twisting the rules for saving money. He has asked me for two particular “hacks”:
Instead of building a moat filled with water (800 gp per 20 squares), he wants to build it empty (400 gp per 20 squares) and fill it with water from an adjacent river, so the river covers the back of the stronghold and the moat the front. He also wants to use the equivalent of a drawbridge to open and cut the flow from the river to the moat. What do you think?
Also, he wants to attach some buildings to the defensive exterior stone walls of the stronghold, so he can save money making only three walls of every building. Apart from having less shp, what other problems can provoke this?
I would have the moat fill with silt over the course of a few months, requiring a small amount of upkeep until eventually they have paid off the initial “filled” cost at which point all the structure is in place to make dredging it part of typical stronghold upkeep.
The exterior wall buildings will provide cover to attackers.
One of my house rules is that the “duration modier” p484 RR also applies as a cost modifer, so a castle constructed on a river is 2x as defensible but also 2x as costly.
I’m sorry, I think I did’t explained myself correctly.
The player wants to attach buildings from inside the walls to the walls themselves. So one piece of the stone wall is at the same time the wall of the granary of his castle.
I think I’m going to establish a difference between dry moat (400) and fillable moat (800). If you fill the dry moat, it requires the 1mp/100’ upkeeping cost like the crude moat. Building a fillable moat is a rational decision if you plan to keep your stronghold safe at least ten years (theoretically you want your stronghold to last forever, so I think it’s a good investment).
On the other hand, my question about the buildings was more focused in the defensibility of the wall. How practical is having arrow slits every 5’ in the wall of a granary or an hospital? Should the player let that outerr wall section without defense, or should he inhabilitate that part of the building? (Can’t imagine soldiers shooting arrows in the space between beds in an hospital).
A granary could have removable covered arrow slits (so vertical wooden shutters that clip in place) to stop vermin getting in - as long as everything is stored in sacks (not piles of grain) the sacks could be moved and the arrow slits uncovered as part of getting ready for battle.
With the hospital - since attacks only happen rarely and a lot of patients may be only recuperating (especially in a lower magic setting so everything isn’t instant magical healing), patients could be moved elsewhere or even just to the opposite wall during an attack. Like a ship of the line where the wardrooms or captains’s cabin becomes the surgery in battle.
Assuming ‘wizard regiments’ aren’t usual, so you aren’t risking a fireball into the hospital, this doesn’t seem that dangerous - stone walls aren’t going to be breached by catapults very quickly so the patients should still be safe.