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.

 

[Hussar]

Or heck, how loyal would npc’s be to the guy who has actually raised a retainer from the dead?

But, of course, that couldn’t possibly inspire any loyalty.

Again, I just will never get this attitude to the game that every single thing absolutely must be under the DMs thumb or it will be abused by players.

 

[Micah Sweet]

AD&D PHB p 20:

When a cleric achieves 8th level (Patriarch or Matriarch) he or she automatically attracts followers if the cleric establishes a place of worship -a building of not less than 2,000 square feet in floor area with an altar, shrine, chapel, etc. These followers are fanatically loyal and serve without pay so long as the cleric does not change deities and/or alignment.​

AD&D PHB p 32:

When a monk player character attains the 8th level of experience, he or she will gain a number of monks as followers upon defeating the monk which held the 8th level position that the player character has now gotten. . . . Note that monk followers require no support, upkeep, or pay of any sort.​

I assume that a ranger's followers, a fighter's mercenaries, and a thief or assassin's gang/guild members, have loyalty calculated in the normal fashion, but the rules don't really specify. (The text for fighter's was already quoted upthread, I think (PHB p 22): "These men will serve as mercenaries so long as the fighter maintains his or her freehold and pays the men-at-arms".)

As to why these various NPCs turn up to serve the PC, the DMG addresses that:

AD&D DMG p 16:

Your players know that upon reaching certain levels and doing certain things (such as building a stronghold) they will be entitled to attract a body of followers. These followers might be fanatically loyal servants of the same deity (or deities) in the case of clerics, stalwart admirers of fighters, or whatever.​

I know that it is common for posters to assert that the D&D GM is not subject to any rules, and that the GM can make up whatever fiction they like that they think makes sense as coming downstream of some PC action; but the text just quoted is yet another counter-example to that contention: once the PC reaches the requisite level and the player has them do the relevant thing, then the GM is obliged to create fiction which includes the appropriate followers turning up to serve the PC in the appropriate fashion.

The fact that the cleric followers are loyal so long as the cleric remains faithful and the same alignment is hardly 100% loyalty, will never betray. There's a built-in escape clause.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As per my post just upthread, it is the GM who is being forced - by a rule of the game. There is no "forcing" in the fiction.

Of course there is. How can an NPC betray anyone if no one has them do it? The prime mover is forced, so the fiction is forced.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And you and others who don't like the system say that the DM must have absolute authority over the Bastion, or the player's will act like psychopaths with no regard for morality or decency and hide behind the rules mocking the DM as they cry tears of powerlessness in the face of "but the rules say"

Not something I have ever said. I want stuff like that to be possible. I never suggested we need absolute authority to guarantee it.

Your endless hyperbolic style is beginning to grate.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If my player started going on about how they beat and demean their butler for giggles, I'm not addressing that as a rules problem. Just like I wouldn't address it as a rules problem if they decided to do that to anyone else.

Yeah, reality allows for monsters. That doesn't mean I am going to accept those monsters are my table and spend 4 hours a week playing nice with them.

That's your choice, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather have a game where such things aren't prohibited by the rules.

You see how I responded to you by acknowledging the validity of your point of view and then presenting my own?

 

[Micah Sweet]

We absolutely disagree. Those two things are very different.



Zone of Truth is trivially easy to compromise with even a modicum of effort. And yeah, do you know how long it would take to RP needing to get references (Which you can't trust) and getting to know them before you hire them (which you can't trust) would take? All of that time and effort in the game devoted to merely reducing the chances of something terrible happening... no one is going to bother with that for more than a single NPC per campaign. It's exhausting.



Games are not reality. You are not honorbound to make every PC who wants to have a supporting cast act as a paranoid hiring manager, in real time, at the table, just because people lie in real life. You even said in your aside about your history it was 2 out of 60, that is 3%. That is a margin of error in most statistics, so... why not round it to 0% the majority of the time? Because reality? That's a pretty poor reason to make a game less fun and more hostile.



Ah yes, traps. Classically never a thing that has ever caused any problems, debates, or dozens upon dozens of articles about how they are poorly used, poorly thought out, and are likely harming the game from misuse. As long as it is like traps, then there should never be any discussion about whether or not it is the right thing to do.

Which, also, just wanting to point out. This isn't an "all NPCS" thing. This is literally a sub-set of NPCs. Just like you hopefully don't trap the doors to an inn, why would we need to have our personal maids vetted to make sure they aren't traitors?



Why should every single NPC in your entire house have the potential to slit your throat while you slept? Why can't that just... not be a thing, because it would make for a terrible game experience to actually have that happen?

Oh, and lets say they did slit your character's throat. How long would it be before you decided to take a leap of faith on trusting a goblin again? After all, you were proven that you were wrong to trust them, so why trust them in the future?



And at that point, as I said, you can exclude every single Bastion NPC, and still have 5% of all NPCs in the game be potential traitors. You don't need to also include Bastions.

You simply want a different game from some of us. Can we just accept this and move on? I really don't see what you're trying to accomplish here. There's nothing wrong with what you want. We just don't all agree with you.

What will it take for you to get to the same place as the above paragraph?

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I think that is fine, and I don't think the rules are designed to prevent this. I also think if the player (who wouldn't be playing a wild magic sorcerer at that point) came to you said "I don't want all this random stuff happening to my character's house, it is exhausting and I just want it to be a calm place she goes to relax" then it should be perfectly fine to respect that and let it be that. Because it doesn't harm anyone to let the player have the majority say in that.

For me the answer to that would depend on what the "house" actually represents in the world. If it's actually just a private home with no political or military value I'd very likely be fine with leaving it alone. Otherwise I don't want to promise that. Either way I prefer it be my call to make, because it's a thing in the world that's not the PC.

And if you want to always honor that request under all circumstances, that's fine too.

 

[Epic Meepo]

you mean that thing nobody uses anymore?

More people use randomized setting elements than use the non-existent AI DM you've mentioned several times now. When discussing practical matters, I prefer to reference things I've seen in the here and now. I save hypotheticals for abstract discussions. But that's just me.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

More people use randomized setting elements than use the non-existent AI DM you've mentioned several times now. When discussing practical matters, I prefer to reference things I've seen in the here and now. I save hypotheticals for abstract discussions. But that's just me.

Ad hominem won't take you far, but let me rephrase my point: GMs do not roll on these tables. If they use these tables at all, they preselect the result and adjust it to be able to prepare the encounter early because rolling during the game may result in wasted time to try to prepare an encounter on the spot, which is a hassle in VTT or in real life.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ad hominem won't take you far, but let me rephrase my point: GMs do not roll on these tables. If they use these tables at all, they preselect the result and adjust it to be able to prepare the encounter early because rolling during the game may result in wasted time to try to prepare an encounter on the spot, which is a hassle in VTT or in real life.

I used a random encounter table last week in my Level Up game. Just as suggested.