D&D (2024) Dungeon Master's Guide Bastion System Lets You Build A Stronghold

The Dungeon Master's Guide's brand new Bastion System has been previewed in a new video from Wizards of the Coast.

Characters can acquire a bastion at 5th-level. Each week, the bastion takes a turn, with actions including crafting, recruiting, research, trade, and more.

A bastion also contains a number of special facilties, starting with two at 5th-level up to 6 at 17th-level. These facilities include things like armories, workshops, laboratories, stables, menageries, and more. In total there are nearly thirty such facilities to choose from.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Then why put it in the DMG?

Beyond the reasons others have mentioned, presumably because the PHB was running out of space and the DMG had more room.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I took this as "off limits" in the same way that building your character is off limits. You pick your parents, the village you grew up in, your past trauma, you hair color, your race, your class, your starting spells, etc, but the DM is going to work with you so that it fits with the campaign. They did mention finding ways to make the bastion dangerous.

Even all of that has to go through the DM. For example, if there are no aarakocra in the game, the player wouldn't be able to create one as a PC.

 

[Scribe]

Maybe its meant to be off limits in the way of 'the DM cannot send in a comet to nuke the it from orbit' kind of off limits?

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Bastions are all I’ve been talking about with my online counterparts.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Little bit worried from how they were talking, all of this sounds VERY close to the UA (nearly identical). The devil is in the details.. but I would have preferred him lounging outside with a billboard instead

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Bastions make sense in the DMG cause it's an optional system that can heavily alter how a Campaign will work, so the DM should decide if they want to include it or not for a Campaign.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I took this as "off limits" in the same way that building your character is off limits. You pick your parents, the village you grew up in, your past trauma, you hair color, your race, your class, your starting spells, etc, but the DM is going to work with you so that it fits with the campaign. They did mention finding ways to make the bastion dangerous.

I agree. Also, they seem to want the intent to be that the player decides the NPCs in the Bastion, and what they are doing. So, taking the family example, it is like the player expounding on their father working in the fields and what their mother is cooking for dinner as a cut-away scene.

And, if you have players who are willing to collaborate, then the DM still can do things there. It just isn't the default.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Having missed the UA, what were the main complaints people were having with the system? From this preview, it definitely looks like an interesting and fun thing for players to customize their little part of the world.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Thinking about the "off limits to the DM" part a bit more, I do usually do this with personal NPCs anyways, and I think I can trace that back to a specific game.

4e, Dark Sun, first campaign that lasted more than a few sessions. Brand new group. Through plot, my character ended up highly influential in the city, basically a prince. He was also an escaped slave. So, during our time skip, I told the DM that I was using my wealth and influence to buy slaves, train and take care of them, then smuggle them out of the city towards freedom. I was very invested in that idea, and had written multiple NPCs who were former slaves, and before our final battle I wrote a bunch of letters to them all so they could be prepared if things turned bad for us.

The DM revealed after the campaign, which had reached level 30 where my character was a legendary demigod, that the man who I had been using to smuggle the slaves had just been selling them back into worse slavery the entire time. Sure, sure, Dark Sun is a terrible place and trying to be a good person is a stupid decision. I got that most sessions where my character tried to be a good person, but... even now over a decade later that feels like such a betrayal from the DM. Nothing my character ever did mattered, and all the good that he had taken pride in was just a naive facade that showed how truly stupid and powerless he was.

So, I can see the designers thinking about how DMs are likely to try and work in betrayals and twists and all that, and giving the players the leeway to say "No, my trusted butler Alfred is not a secret Yuan-Ti spy sent by the cabal to poison the party and take us captive." Because it is a little too predictable how many DMs take any NPC as an excuse to hurt the players.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Having missed the UA, what were the main complaints people were having with the system? From this preview, it definitely looks like an interesting and fun thing for players to customize their little part of the world.

1) The system for the bastion being attacked and destroyed was pointless to engage in. There was a single roll for events, and on a 10 you were attacked. Being attacked took out two rooms. The only way to defend was to have a barracks, which takes up a room, meaning that you would only lose one room... and have a useless second room that allowed that.

2) Many of the rooms that created wealth (such as creating items) were... really really pathetic. I think one of the religious rooms allowed you to make a 10 gp Holy Symbol (which does nothing if you already have one) with 1 week's worth of work. I did the math for the general crafting room, and showed that you could (as a player) make every single thing on the list in a single week per the 2014 crafting rules, in the time the room's "benefit" made a single item.

3) Walls were super expensive and not worth it, because they did nothing until you purchased enough of them.

4) Personally, I also hated that the basic rooms cost money and time, but did nothing. Which it sounds like they didn't change. Yeah, sure, having a dining room is just "aesthetics" but it also means I have no incentive to make sure the place I am working and staying at has bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bath room.

There were other things as well, this was off the top of my head.