Stronghold Builder's Guidebook

[diaglo]

it isn't worth the trees that they killed to make it.


you can find much better reference material on real castles and architecture at your local library for free. all you need is a library card.

as for the magic...well that is in the PHB. it didn't add anything you couldn't already come up with on your own.

save your money.

edit: i wrote a very long review for this supplement. it mysteriously vanished from this site.

 

[Kirowan]

Hmm, doesn't seem like that great of a buy. Is there anything else like it 3rd party? I know the Book of Strongholds and Dynasties has construction rules, but a lot of people aren't too keen on that either.

Nick

 

[kigmatzomat]

Despite popular opinion here on ENWorld, I think it's an ok book. ..... but the prices are expensive. Just keep in mind that that's how much it would cost if you were paying for everything straight up and that no one would have done that as they would have used their standing in the community, etc. An adventurer plonking down some cash to buy a castle isn't mobilising the community in the same way a church or the king would...

Lol. I'm actually using this scenario in reverse. A town has received permission by the local lord to erect some basic defenses but no funding. So the town has scraped together what it can and has hit the players up for a loan. The town isn't explicitly paying the list price in gold, but they are exerting that much in resources. The inns, smith, and local alchemist/craft-mage are paying for the majority of the job mostly in barter. The inns are providing workers with a tab to pay for food & drink, the smith is providing the tools (which the workers get to keep) and the alchemist is covering most of the hard-coin expenses. The local temples are providing healing and some limited spell support as their contribution.

The town will recoup the money over the next few years by raising some of the fees for their annual fair.

As a side note, I think of the "high" cost as an "expedite fee." Castles were normally built over years, if not decades. SBGb structures are built in player-friends amounts of time (i.e. maybe a year or so) meaning you have tons of crews and are virtually monopolizing the local resources causing inflation.

 

[Li Shenron]

Actually, the daffy-high prices were very close to our own world's history. Fortifications were monumentally expensive. However, this was a period in our own world where the incomes of the ruling class were identical to the income of a government--the ruling class wasn't "in" the government, the government was their private property--even in countries we are indoctrinated to see as "good".

It may be accurate with history, but it's IMHO too expensive for a PC to build since even a bunch of minor magic items bought for the price is more useful.

 

[ichabod]

As a DM I find it to be a very useful book every now and then. That is, when I have an adventure where a fortification or other structure plays a big role, I find it very useful. However, that happens maybe one in every five adventures I run.

I also don't calculate everything exactly. I generally figure out what sort of resources the owner has, then what sort of quality they are going to be interested in. Then I figure out a rough estimate of the per space cost, use that to determine the size, and then flesh out the building.

Then when the PCs actually go through the building, I have all the descriptions and details handy in the SBG. And I'm still using it as is in my 3.5 campaign so I wouldn't worry about converting.

Now it's certainly not the best supplement I've bought, but I've bought a lot of worse ones. If your money is tight, I'd pass. Of course, if your money is tight, I can only think of three supplements you should buy beyond the splat books. It's certainly a DMs book, and I think it depends on your DMing style. I mean, I'm the exact opposite of Psion, because I like this book, but I thought the Book of Challenges was a complete waste.

 

[Kirowan]

Of course, if your money is tight, I can only think of three supplements you should buy beyond the splat books.

What supplements are you refering to?

Nick

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'd suggest getting Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. It has construction rules that are less of a "shopping list" feel, as Psion puts it, and it also includes lots of good info on running the small estates that crop around castles, so you can add in good info about that sort of thing too. A much more widely useful book covering much of the same territory.

 

[alsih2o]

join me! i wish to start a letter writing campaign to get jgbrowning and suzi yee to write MMS:castles and fortifications.

we can do, just flood them with requests.

 

[Silveras]

Hmm, doesn't seem like that great of a buy. Is there anything else like it 3rd party? I know the Book of Strongholds and Dynasties has construction rules, but a lot of people aren't too keen on that either.

Nick

The Stronghold Builders' Guidebook is not bad if you want a very Fantasy-feeling stronghold. Its emphasis is on simplicity, in many ways, at the cost of realism.

As much as Psion dislikes the "shopping list" feel, I do like it. The book offers dozens of modular rooms/chambers, some of which are magical. The base costs are already worked out. All you have to do is choose which combination you like (and can afford) for your stronghold. The lengthy "lists" just covers many, many variations and options.

BoSD, on the other hand, goes much more into the building process, and into the resource gathering process. The prices come out a little high, but the PCs also have the option of getting their workers to cut the wood from the nearby forest themselves. It also has a variety of standard "building designs" listed. Some are more complete than others, though (the "Industrial Building" is a generic building for any industrial use, from Mills to Warehouses, with no internal floorplan, for example; while there are separate floorplans for various sizes of round and square towers).

MMS:WE's building rules are similar to those in BoSD, but more streamlined. Fewer example buildings are given, but the effects of choosing different materials are more concisely explained (BoSD does not cover building materials other than wood and stone, until you get to fantasy materials like ice and crystal).

It may come down to this:
If you and/or your players are more comfortable sitting down and looking through a "catalogue" of options than drawing a floorplan from scratch or using a historical floorplan, the Stronghold Builders' Guidebook may be your best bet.

 

[Katerek]

join me! i wish to start a letter writing campaign to get jgbrowning and suzi yee to write MMS:castles and fortifications.

we can do, just flood them with requests.

If the first MMS is a watermark, then I will buy anything they produce from here to eternity, and yes, I think they would do a wonderful job on a castles publication.

As to Strognhold Builders Guidebook...eh...my response was tepid at best. I could complain incessantly about it, but I won't, because all of my disgruntlements are a matter of taste. I don't think I have opened it since I purchased it.

For my money, when DMing, if the players want a castle I just pick some random price that I think fits, draw a map for it, and then watch the hijinks ensue over the course of the campaign as it is getting built (another randomly decided factor).

Wacky stuff.