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Siege-weapon making grants material knowledge of devices designed to break or circumvent castle doors and walls, or enable attacking soldiers to scale walls and attack the defenders; and likewise, to enable defenders to prevent sieges. The ability enables the character to direct unskilled persons in the fabrication of these, so that with the necessary materials it is possible to build trebuchets, catapults, mangonels, ballistae, siege towers, battering rams, portable shields, oil smelters and like machines, including ladders and hooks. These may be made to rest upon castle walls or mounted on wheels, pushed by soldiers or dragged by animals; the amateur ability, however, only enables the character to fabricate the most familiar forms of these engines. Innovation is not permitted, nor is the creation of mystical weapons such as the Chinese cannon.
The details for these specific constructions are found in the links above. The ability grants the character with an apprentice's knowledge, but does not grant competence in managing a crew or firing accurately.
The character will have knowledge of what materials need to be collected, whether purchased or with wood and projectiles either cut or quarried from their source. The character can therefore identify certain trees or stone outcroppings.
See Fortification
I hadn't heard of any "mystical Chinese cannon." You prompted me to look up Wikipedia pages on the development of cannons in China.
ReplyDeleteBy "mystical weapons," it seems you're referring to devices like "the 'orifice-penetrating flying sand magic mist tube' (鑽穴飛砂神霧筒) which spewed forth sand and poisonous chemicals into orifices," or the "divine flying fire crow" illustrated on this page, or perhaps the "fire lance."
I have no idea whether the the "mist tube" existed in any form, and the "fire crow," at least as depicted, seems ludicrous, so naturally none of that matters for amateur weapon-making. I do want to mention, for those unaware, that practically every historical Chinese invention has a similarly strange name, due to the Chinese penchant for metaphor. This includes machines/tools which are certainly known to exist, and which fulfilled the same function as European counterparts with more readily-understood names. For instance, the Chinese word for "movable type" is "living characters" or "living boards."
Imagine the satisfaction of an Expert or Sage siege-weapon maker building a mist tube or fire crow, then having someone with Artillery land its payload square on a bunch of infantry!