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[Girlinhat]

Presumably, any castle worth bringing that high ranked of magic to bare, will have anti-magic means.  I can't think of anything off hand, but I'm certain there's something that can auto-cast Dispel Magic on anything in range.

[Neonivek]

Well it is nearly outright impossible to take down castle walls through damage even with magic (mind you magic has several spells that don't do damage they just carve up walls)

Heck even with Siege weaponry can end up spending long periods of time trying to take down a wall. Sieges are resolved in minutes or hours rather then rounds.

Though outside dispell magic Girlinhat you can also magically treat the walls, though I don't think Pathfinder has rules for that.

[Neonivek]

Well, IRL, you'd spend a long time with that ram battering a gate down. Castles and walls were designed to keep invaders OUT.

Yep it just sometimes feel weird that you can, for example, kill a Trent (a living tree) in perhaps a minute. Yet it would actually take a while to cut down a tree (Trents have the HP of a 1 foot thick tree).

Mind you that is easily explained by that being the force you need to "Kill" or deanimate the creature. While object is the damage you need to "destroy" the thing.

[Girlinhat]

Most sieges were done in weeks.  That's the point of a siege.  Forget the walls, the people starve eventually!

For taking down walls, then it's slow going.  When they say "the barrage lasted for days" it's usually literal.  Trebuchets firing stones and just impacting walls.  For days.  Stones are cheap.

As far as strictly magical siege engines go, I imagine something similar to a cannon, that would slowly aggregate power and throw weak disintegration balls to chip out an inch or a half an inch of stone at a time.  And to keep this up for days at a time.  You don't have to take down a wall very quickly, it's not going anywhere.  You can afford to make your equipment underpowered and 'slow and steady'.

For more psychological warfare, something that fires a constant, roving beam would be fun...

Also, there are rules for magically treating structures.  Generally pricy, and doubles the Hardness and HP.  Also makes it resistant to certain magical abilities, like you cannot cast Passwall through magically fortified stone, and most instant-ruin abilities, like Disintegrate, are also nerfed by magic walls.

[Neonivek]

Stones are cheap

Admittingly my estimate is that it would cost over 1500 gold to break down a 6 inch wall section with a huge Trebuchet.

[Girlinhat]

Houserule - stones are virtually free, you've just got to haul the suckers.

[Neonivek]

Houserule - stones are virtually free, you've just got to haul the suckers.

If you want Improvised stones

Though I admit it would be funny if you chose not to haul stones or gather them in advance and you run out of ammo.

[Yoink]

Damn. So instead of using the halfling as an improvised throwing weapon, you use the largest party members?!
IT'S ALL UPSIDE DOWN

[Neonivek]

Damn. So instead of using the halfling as an improvised throwing weapon, you use the largest party members?!
IT'S ALL UPSIDE DOWN

Well the reason why the ammo for the Trebuchet is so expencive is because it is a HUGE weighted stone and weighs several tons.

[Girlinhat]

Weight does not intrinsically mean value.  The economics of DnD are built around player-oriented combat only.

[Cthulhu]

You can still fly over the walls potentially.  And yes, applying any kind of logic beyond combat to D&D prices is futile and will make you mad.

A lot of fantasy staples get wonky in a fantasy world, which is interesting.  The omnipresent graveyards would never exist in a fantasy world for the same reason graveyards are such popular adventuring locales:  Fucking necromancers.  In low magic you'd expect cremation to be the only corpse disposal method used, no point burying him if he's gonna crawl out and attack you in a couple weeks.  High magic settings might use fancier stuff like extradimensional sepulchres and such. 

Speaking of which, if you're in a high enough magic setting the teleport problem could be solved by creating some kind of teleport anchor that forces teleports within a certain range to show up at a specific point.  If you don't have the credentials (Some kind of item certifying you to use that kind of magic?) it blocks the teleport or perhaps shunts you somewhere unpleasant like a dungeon cell.

[Girlinhat]

That's the core point, I believe.  If you've got enough magic to do something, then they have enough magic to stop you.

[Neonivek]

Weight does not intrinsically mean value.  The economics of DnD are built around player-oriented combat only.

Well it is a lot like why wood for ships was so expencive. You cannot just glue a bunch of rocks together and get good stone.

You actually have to go out of your way to get this stone and transport it in big chunks.

[Leatra]

Most sieges were done in weeks.  That's the point of a siege.  Forget the walls, the people starve eventually!

There was a siege in real life that started in 1648 and ended in 1669, with success. Soldiers surrendered because of boredom.

[Naryar]

Most sieges were done in weeks.  That's the point of a siege.  Forget the walls, the people starve eventually!

There was a siege in real life that started in 1648 and ended in 1669, with success. Soldiers surrendered because of boredom.

This... is really awful tactics from the attacker, but the very awfulness gives it some kind of quality on it's own, I guess. although, a town, lasting for 21 years of siege ? Pretty impressive.

also sieging is boring. If we are to attack a town, artael and I will crush the door and we will fight in the streets !

Besides sieges are pretty irrelevant in a high magic world. Fly troops around ? Teleport them inside ? Stone shape a wall ?