RSS
Giant weapons are just cool, of course. In a fantasy game you are missing out if you don't get to play with siege engines at least once. An actual siege of a castle is an epic level event that can be a lot of fun to run and play, if you focus on character moments. Think how the siege scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies focused on what the main characters were doing, rather than just the overall battle. That's a good model to use if considering running a siege.
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Ooooooookay? And how are they supposed to do this while being chased across the star system? I get that this running away is lasting longer than should be reasonable, but there are still limits to what I think could fit into it. Not every movie has a wonderful GM that allows crazy actions to be compressed into tiny chunks of time.
Wait, no, better question. Where's this trebuchet going to be mounted? Having a really long lever and something to move it with is great and all, but unless there's a fulcrum as well, it's not really a lever and that asteroid ain't going anywhere. It's just a really expensive stick with some incredibly heavy decorations at that point. Really, the more impressive thing would be making use of a small black hole. Exploding planets is a truly impressive amount of energy, but working with black holes rather than just around them? I think that might actually be a step above planet killing.
Transcript
Poe: We build an enormous trebuchet—
Admiral Holdo: Surely something more... blastery would be better.
Poe: Ah, no! We leverage the simplicity of the archetypal machine, the lever!
Poe: We build a long rail of beskar, super stiff, and use a small black hole as a counterweight.
Poe: It should easily be able to fling a giant asteroid at close to lightspeed.
GM: You want to build a trebuchet... railgun??
Poe: Cool, huh?
GM: I mean, you can try, but fair warning: a high-tech siege engine is patently ludicrous.
Admiral Holdo: A first order lever to level the First Order?
Poe: Exactly!
BB-8: That sentence was the best thing about this idea.