UPDATED! A custom version of "Strongholds" - now with Wilverley Hall!

keterys said:

Labs could defray the cost of doing rituals

Temples should probably depend on what type of temple (Vecna vs Pelor...) - but you want something more like a good bonus to a healing surge spent and/or affliction removed, rather than an extra second wind (unless you expect fights inside the temple often, while you don't have clerics around throwing healing words that are better than second winds)

Library is trickier - guessing act like divination powers, but, hmm. It'd be nice to get a Buffy vibe out of it, to be honest. Like it gives you a hefty bonus to a task you set out to do, or a bonus against a specific monster, or whatever.

Click to expand...

Actually, I don't want these powers to only apply when in the room in question (that makes them largely worthless). I'm trying to think of dailies which can be used while out adventuring which you have access to because of your ownership of the room.

The rooms already have in-room bonuses (Library gives bonuses to skill checks, lab reduces component cost of rituals, temple restores dead soldiers). But in-room bonuses will be used fairly rarely, so probably aren't worth the expenditure.

I'm coming round to the idea that I'm going to have to stat out the rooms as magic items with levels like in the DDI article.

I love the idea of having rules for strongholds and armies, but I don't want to give my players access to even more bonuses. My savvy players would use them to pimp out their already impressive stats, while my more casual players would end up with even more scattered character sheets.

Stating rooms as magical items might work out better, but what I'd really like to see is strongholds and mass combat as their own minigame. An arena entirely separate from D&D's usual small-scale skirmish game, where paragon groups can occasionally spend a session. It's beyond the scope of a short and sweet pdf, but I just thought I'd put that out there.

Morrus said:

One of my issues is - why would someone spend their money on this rather than a shiny sword or suit of armour? For the same expenditure, therefore, a player should expect to get equal or greater benefit from the stronghold. Otherwise they'll just buy a new sword instead.

I don't believe I've addressed that adequately yet. The benefits in the PDF are not equal to the same value in magic items. So there's still work to do.

Click to expand...

One of the adventure path ideas in the DMG2 suggests granting PCs an entirely separate pool of wealth to spend on stronghold- and nation-building stuff. So PCs would have their usual magical bling, and their usual gp loot to buy more, but they'd also have a second wealth rating/pool that they can use to upgrade strongholds and whatnot.

An elegant solution, I think.

I sort of did that in one game by requiring residuum for magic items - which leaves normal gold as being only really useful for ritual components, bribes, and building up home stuff.

Anyhow, I see what you mean now on something to take away with them... in that case, you might want to consider it the equivalent of a skill power or utility? Perhaps having a temple allows you to prevent yourself from dying in some fashion. Not going to come up a lot, but a game changer when it does. Lab allows you to be more prepared for rituals, so you can do a 10 minute or less ritual as a standard action. Library allows you to make a monster vulnerable to attacks or remove a resistance.

So from some of the ideas in this thread, I'm toying with the following Dailies:

Library - reduce one resistance of a monster by 5 points ("You pull out a book from your backpack and leaf through it, discovering the monster's weakness to garlic coated weapons").

Temple - recover one encounter power ("You pray to your god who, pleased with the devotion displayed by building a temple, grants you extra reserves of divine energy").
OR - free healing potion ("You grab a spare healing potion from your backpack, recently blessed in your temple").

Laboratory - use a ritual as a standard action ("Having prepared the ritual in advance in the safety of your laboratory, you quickly complete the final step").

These kinda need to scale somehow with extra library/lab sections and stuff. I'm liking the costing scale suggested above by @keterys; perhaps making the first Heroic, the second section Paragon and the third Epic, with the Dailies scaling appropriately. For example, the free potion from the Temple could be a potion of healing/vitality/recovery as applicable, and the resistance reduction for monsters from the library could be 5/10/15 as applicable. Hmmm - what then for the lab?

Man, if it's this hard to think of 'em for just these three rooms, it's gonna be a bitch coming up with them for Elven Archery Ranges, Dwarven Blacksmiths, Halfling Taprooms, Rogue's Gaming Room, training grounds, Druid's Sacred Groves, Monk's Dojo, ballrooms, and the other million possibilities!

OK, here is another stab at the library. I made the skill bonuses +1/+3/+5 - this is quite high, but this is a 3rd/13th/23rd level item and, more importantly, that bonus only applies in the library. So it's of limited use.

I like the idea and I think it will fit into many of my campaigns. After I read Tequila Sunrise's comment above about rooms like magic items I first thought that it would look like another set of trading cards.

I picture a card for each room with cost and benefit for each. Some you need, and others would require a "tree" to be able to get access to. Great Library requires Basic Library first, or as a magic item you would need to buy each of the basic level before upgrading, ie- the level 3 library before you can buy the level 13 or 23 library. The bonuses could also be tiered like +1,+3, +5. Heck, you can have one of those 3-ring binder sheets for baseball cards, I mean Magic cards, and start in the middle with the Hovel card a level 1 item and build around it with towers and moats and smithy, etc.

The more I write about it, the more it sounds like a workable idea.

OK, this is the current version with major updates.

Added are the Storeroom (designed to encourage stronghold building), the Training Ground, (requirement for different types of soldier/guard recruitment) and the Sacred Grove (an example of a class-specific structure - I don't plan to add more in this article, but it's an example of what the sequel will focus on).

Other changes: costs and sizes drastically changed to heroic/paragon/epic tiers. Free daily powers added for most structures.

The Sacred Grove does not yet have a daily power. Needs one. Any ideas?

That looks nice, thanks. And sacred grove - the whole party can reroll an initiative check in a wilderness environment?

Any news on Strongholds II?

Oh, it's a while off yet. I need a break!