Blog (A5E) Build A Stronghold

[Morrus]

One of Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition’s new features is the availability of simple-to-use stronghold rules. A stronghold is — at its core — a special feat which you can buy with gold. Here’s a quick look! (Ignore the page numbers — those are placeholders).

The core rulebook contains 14 different stronghold types (castles, farms, groves, libraries, laboratories, guildhouses, temples, and more), each of which can be customized by size category and luxury level, meaning that a large frugal farm is very different to a small luxurious guildhouse.

Build A Stronghold — Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)

One of Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition’s new features is the availability of simple-to-use stronghold rules. A stronghold is — at its core — a special feat which you can buy with gold.

www.levelup5e.com

Don't forget, the Level Up Kickstarter launches in under 2 weeks. Click here to make sure you get notified when it launches!

 

[Faolyn]

Awesome! I'm still not quite convinced about the sizes, at least for the lowest levels. Level 1 is a 10x10 room room, which as we all know is exactly big enough for one orc and one chest. It seems like the encampment is the smallest stronghold at a minimum of 100 square feet. I know that those two pages don't list all the stronghold types, but I can't imagine any of the other Grade 1 strongholds being much smaller. Maybe the chart should start at that level, and Grade 1 is 100-500 square feet?

If I wanted my stronghold made of really awesome materials, should I just use the Furnishings list as a guide? Like, cheap wood would be Squalid but marble would be Luxurious? And is the Furnishings multiplier a one-and-done or is it added for every major thing--like, if I wanted Average furniture but Luxurious traps, what would I do?

Nevertheless, this looks really awesome and I'm glad to see these rules.

Edit: another question. The level 4 Encampment means you don't have to be at a haven to recover from fatigue or strife. Is that anywhere, or is that if you're resting at that encampment? Because if it's the former, then all you need is 5,001 gp (for a half-cost frugal encampment) and you're basically able to recover anywhere. That's doable for many groups at low levels. If it's not too late, you might want to address that--maybe you can recover when you're sleeping outdoors, but not inside because you're not used to such civilized accommodations. Maybe it's only in that type of wilderness, so if you built your encampment in a forest, you're good for all forests, but not for deserts, swamps, or mountains.

 

[tetrasodium]

with the manor is that short rest made long 1x per week for any short rest or for a short rest taken at the manor? From the wording it would seem any short rest 1/week but locally I could see a case for restricting it to a rest taken at the manor & have seen GMs who would interpret it that way

 

[Kinematics]

Awesome! I'm still not quite convinced about the sizes, at least for the lowest levels. Level 1 is a 10x10 room room, which as we all know is exactly big enough for one orc and one chest. It seems like the encampment is the smallest stronghold at a minimum of 100 square feet. I know that those two pages don't list all the stronghold types, but I can't imagine any of the other Grade 1 strongholds being much smaller. Maybe the chart should start at that level, and Grade 1 is 100-500 square feet?

I like the scaling much better than the original list (x10 every level), but I agree that the bottom end of the scaling could use some extra wiggle room.

Currently the top end size for a house is 1000 sq ft. That's really rather small for a house. The average size of newly built 2-bedroom apartments over the last decade was about 1100 sq ft, though other data suggests 800 sq ft as a reasonable average. Either way, we're sitting around the 1000 sq ft range, and we're not actually up to a full house.

Most modest houses today are about 1250-1500 sq ft, with larger houses pushing 2000 or so. I could see 2500 sq ft as being a reasonable cap for a house size (fitting the prefix digits to the rest of the scaling), while going above that puts you in the range of an actual manor. It also fits better for a guildhouse or temple, which have a reasonable need for more room for dealing with a moderate number of people.

After that I'd go with raising tier 1's max size to 500 sq ft. Given the expected wealth by level from other posts, players will very quickly move out of the range of tier 1 strongholds at 100 sq ft (so 100 gp to start with), to the point one might wonder why you even have that tier.

A 100 sq ft area would be 4 grid squares. A tavern is supposed to fit within that space. If I were to imagine my office area (11' x 20' — a bit over 200 sq ft, so not very large, but enough for two people to have desks and work) as a bar, I could figure space for the bartender, drink shelves, and stools for about a half dozen people. I could imagine that as a cubbyhole tavern. Cutting the room size in half? I could see that as a drink/breakfast bar in a larger house, but not enough to be an actual tavern.

A range of 50-500 sq ft for tier 1 seems like a reasonable amount of wiggle room. Some stronghold types would still fit within 100 sq ft, but constraining some types to that size feels like a disconnect.

Same for the low end of tier 3. 1001 sq ft for a keep or manor strains credulity. 2501 sq ft feels far more believable.

 

[Kinematics]

I should add, I really like the general concept, even without the full info. However the external grounds stuff confuses me.

In particular, the Farm has a minimum size of 10,000 sq ft. Most of that is likely to be fields/pastures/etc. Is that purchased at 1 GP/2 sq ft, or 1 GP per 1 sq ft? Or do you split it? If you want a farmhouse/stable/etc, would a Farm be 10,000 sq ft of fields (at whichever price), combined with a House of whatever size you wanted (possibly on grounds, or maybe on external grounds?)? Or is the housing part of a farm implicitly included?

Edit: Honestly, the combination of strongholds is getting me to think more that that is the true intended use, and the reason that tier 1's are so small and cheap. Have one large manor with attached workshop and stables and gardens and library and so on, where each additional piece is small and cheap.

Edit2: Also, do you have to pay for the unusual environment multiplier in a sub-stronghold? If you have an underwater manor, and add a library to it, does the library also have to be paid for as underwater? Or has that cost already effectively been paid by the main stronghold having to cover that space with its larger size? Especially when having to consider minimum costs.

Edit3: The section on Furnishings and Staff says you can't change the quality of a single room within the stronghold, but only describes that with respect to the stronghold itself. However, how does that interact with combining strongholds? If I put a library in a manor, do both the library and manor share the same quality, can the library be bought at a different rate?

Edit4: How do staff get counted when you combine strongholds? Do you only count the area provided by the main stronghold, or do each of the sub-strongholds each get their own staff? Since staff is determined by sq ft area.

Edit5: There feels like there might be some squirrelly-ness with staff sizes as you scale up in quality. A Legendary 1000 sq ft House ends up with 100 staff. That's the minimum requirement to get a follower, but just feels strange.

 

[Morrus]

I like the scaling much better than the original list (x10 every level), but I agree that the bottom end of the scaling could use some extra wiggle room.

Currently the top end size for a house is 1000 sq ft. That's really rather small for a house. The average size of newly built 2-bedroom apartments over the last decade was about 1100 sq ft, though other data suggests 800 sq ft as a reasonable average. Either way, we're sitting around the 1000 sq ft range, and we're not actually up to a full house.

Most modest houses today are about 1250-1500 sq ft, with larger houses pushing 2000 or so. I could see 2500 sq ft as being a reasonable cap for a house size (fitting the prefix digits to the rest of the scaling), while going above that puts you in the range of an actual manor. It also fits better for a guildhouse or temple, which have a reasonable need for more room for dealing with a moderate number of people.

After that I'd go with raising tier 1's max size to 500 sq ft. Given the expected wealth by level from other posts, players will very quickly move out of the range of tier 1 strongholds at 100 sq ft (so 100 gp to start with), to the point one might wonder why you even have that tier.

A 100 sq ft area would be 4 grid squares. A tavern is supposed to fit within that space. If I were to imagine my office area (11' x 20' — a bit over 200 sq ft, so not very large, but enough for two people to have desks and work) as a bar, I could figure space for the bartender, drink shelves, and stools for about a half dozen people. I could imagine that as a cubbyhole tavern. Cutting the room size in half? I could see that as a drink/breakfast bar in a larger house, but not enough to be an actual tavern.

A range of 50-500 sq ft for tier 1 seems like a reasonable amount of wiggle room. Some stronghold types would still fit within 100 sq ft, but constraining some types to that size feels like a disconnect.

Same for the low end of tier 3. 1001 sq ft for a keep or manor strains credulity. 2501 sq ft feels far more believable.

All building types can be any size. The examples column is just examples. You want a 250K sq ft house, you can have one if you can afford it. You’d probably call it a palace or something, but it’s basically a big house.

 

[Stalker0]

Really neat stuff, definately a new and exciting gold sink

Right now my eyebrow is on the 250 GP manor that lets my party take a long rest as short once a week. I think a lot of parties will want that. If it was 1 person per week that would be one thing, but the whole party getting to do it is a really nice benefit.

 

[Stalker0]

Lets look at a few other "optimizations" to see what parties might try to milk:

Follower: Looks like 500 gp is the minimum for a free follower (100 square foot luxurious house/encampment). So basically luxury is the way to go for followers. I like that because it makes some of the other benefits more expensive, so it looks you like you can only optimize followers at the expense of other things....sounds good.

Ability bump: 500.5 GP for Con (1001 sq ft frugal encampment), 25,000 gp for a +2 (but the fact it increases your max is awesome).

So effectively for 25,500.5 gp you can do a +3 to a stat, and theoretically have a 22. Very expensive but that is cool and I could absolutely see players with that goal.

The farm is a decent buy as your "main stronghold". For 5k you get the farm benefits and now pretty much can add on every other type as a substronghold to get as many stronghold feats as possible.

 

[King Brad]

Do the feats apply to the whole party or just the owner/purchaser?

 

[Faolyn]

Since "each type of strongholds grants a stronghold feat"... how do feats work in LU? Do you get them every four levels like in o5e? Because that would make those "prestige class feats" really hard to get, especially if they compete with stronghold feats and who knows what else. Or do you get them more often than that? Or are feats obtained in a completely different way now?

Edit: @Morrus, is there a reason why Libraries don't allow for an attribute increase? I'm tagging you just in case that's an actual omission that needs fixing.