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.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

It’s even worse when you consider artificers and forge clerics can’t even have a smithy.

wow. that's. comical.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Probably because they haven't played with actual decent DM's who value collaboration and treat them as adults. It takes a while to learn that bad D&D < No D&D.

too bad the new rules do not value collaboration but literally forbid it and roleplay to reduce things to cheap mechanical powerups. They literally wrote the fun out of the game.

 

[CaptainRelyk]

How do you know they didn't take feedback on this? Did you get an early release of the DMG somehow?

Look at the official post on dndbeyond where WoTC talks about the bastion system

It literally confirms here that bastion facilities have nonsensical class feature based prerequisites

A zealot barbarian or monk or eilsitrseen swords bard can’t have a relinquary because they can’t use divine or primal spellcasting focuses for spells

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Look at the official post on dndbeyond where WoTC talks about the bastion system

It literally confirms here that bastion facilities have nonsensical class feature based prerequisites

A zealot barbarian or monk or eilsitrseen swords bard can’t have a relinquary because they can’t use divine or primal spellcasting focuses for spells

It seems WotC thinks every single temple or chapter in the world must be set up by a Cleric and only Cleric.

 

[Lanefan]

The rules for the bastion seem to expand the definition of a "character" to include the home and business venture of the character. In the same way a player decides what kind of player character to create, the player also decides what kind of nonplayer characters populate the bastion. They might be family relatives, or hirelings, apparently even "recruited" monsters are possible. The player decides how to build and populate the bastion as part of the character concept.

The arena for conflict there is "who controls those NPCs". As in, sure the player can decide what kind of NPCs populate the bastion but the specific personalities, motivations, goals, etc. of those NPCs would, one thinks, remain within the purview of the DM.

Which ideally means the player is free to recruit some hirelings for the bastion but the DM is still free to, for example, make one of those hirelings a spy or thief or other form of nuisance.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It seems WotC thinks every single temple or chapter in the world must be set up by a Cleric and only Cleric.

I don't think that's it. More like the setting and the PCs have only a vague, in-passing relationship with each other, mostly focused on combat mechanics.

 

[Lanefan]

Hmm. Reminds me of the player group who ragequit the campaign when an orc horde threatened their stronghold. Yeah, no.

If they ragequit just because their stronghold got threatened I'd be glad to be rid of 'em.

In the game I play in, we've built our stronghold on the assumption that not only will it be attacked at some point, but that we're probably going to have to draw attacks toward it (and all its high-powered PC defenders!) in order to protect other places. And so the place is defended to the nuts, or will be once we finally (if ever!) get done renovating and tweaking it.

 

[MarkB]

The arena for conflict there is "who controls those NPCs". As in, sure the player can decide what kind of NPCs populate the bastion but the specific personalities, motivations, goals, etc. of those NPCs would, one thinks, remain within the purview of the DM.

Why? That's kind-of the selling point of this system - the player is creating this little world, and the stories of its inhabitants.

Their degree of control will still be limited, not by the DM but by chance - random events drawn on a stronghold turn can result in some of these NPCs coming or going.

 

[Lanefan]

Because there's a distinct worry that new dms will see a stronghold and think "the only interesting way to use this is to take it away from the players."

If it's an individual PC's stronghold, it shouldn't be messed with too much.

But if it's a stronghold or base for the whole party (which IMO is by far the better way to go with these things) then the players/PCs should have to give a thought to its defense as - being powerful hero types - they're going to have enemies and they're collectively giving those enemies a perfect target.

A really clever party could even use this to their advantage: build a very public and well-defended - and fake! - stronghold here while also building a second, much more secret, stronghold somewhere else which becomes their real base. Then they sit back, see who attacks the fake one, and take 'em out.

 

[MichaelSomething]

The arena for conflict there is "who controls those NPCs". As in, sure the player can decide what kind of NPCs populate the bastion but the specific personalities, motivations, goals, etc. of those NPCs would, one thinks, remain within the purview of the DM.

Which ideally means the player is free to recruit some hirelings for the bastion but the DM is still free to, for example, make one of those hirelings a spy or thief or other form of nuisance.

This is just a thinly veiled excuse to have a session where the Party spends the whole time interviewing quirky NPCs played by the DM! Which is prime Critical Role material! Can we ever escape the shadow of Matt Mercer??