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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That sounds like the old, "Let's assume the DM is a jerk and stop them before they start" argument. Not a fan personally.

I think you get this because some players have experience of DMs who were jerks. For D&D to work there needs to be a trust relationship between the players and the DM.

But you can't fix jerk DMs by trying to tie their hands with rules. The only thing you can do is walk away.

 

[Sulicius]

I think you get this because some players have experience of DMs who were jerks. For D&D to work there needs to be a trust relationship between the players and the DM.

But you can't fix jerk DMs by trying to tie their hands with rules. The only thing you can do is walk away.

Yeah, that's why the "hands off DM's!" comment puzzles me. How antagonistic are other tables?

 

[NaturalZero]

The thing is, as a DM, I love the fact that it's the players' responsibility. They get more invested in the world, they do some world building that I can springboard off of, and I don't have to do the heavy lifting of managing personalized hirelings for 4 other people on top of what I'm already working on. The fact that it's player-centric is an absolute boon to DMs.

I feel like people are taking one phrase- "off limits to DMs" -and blowing it out of proportion. The players make decisions for their base, just like they colored the whole background history of their character, and the DM still has just as much a final say as they always had.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

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.

Wow, that really sucks about your Dark Sun game. What it reminded me of was a short story in Dragon called Water and Ashes, where one of Tyr's most ruthless templars, known as the Sleepless One because of his relentless nature, put on a magical helm for power. Surprise - Helm of Alignment Change.

It led to the creation of the Veiled Alliance as he began to 'hunt' wizards for the slave mines, where they'd suffer terrible accidents... only to have that be the cover to smuggle them out. I've always remembered that the identifying code was "My father was a templar," with the reply, "My mother was a gardener."

Great story I feel, but one key, cool piece was... while he was building the secret society, he taught them to silently communicate. So, when inevitably, he was turned back and betrayed them, some wizards stayed behind to ask him questions while the rest of the Alliance there slipped away to the desert.

To bring it back on topic, I feel like bastions could be very cool in the right campaign, and 5th level feels like a level where people are starting to push towards the forefront of their classes/name recognition, but before they hit their lordship levels. Maybe your bastion is the home base of a secret society.

I do like that they address players combining bastions into one unified home, but that each player retains control of THEIR bastion and its turn, like city districts.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

The thing is, as a DM, I love the fact that it's the players' responsibility. They get more invested in the world, they do some world building that I can springboard off of, and I don't have to do the heavy lifting of managing personalized hirelings for 4 other people on top of what I'm already working on. The fact that it's player-centric is an absolute boon to DMs.

I feel like people are taking one phrase- "off limits to DMs" -and blowing it out of proportion. The players make decisions for their base, just like they colored the whole background history of their character, and the DM still has just as much a final say as they always had.

I felt like it was also geared towards players who want to create stories, but also geared towards characters who want to have a research library and a poison garden to provide resources for their PCs, so it's never butting heads with the DM about 'Well, where are you going to get astral belladonna?' Now, they have an out where, on a turn, the master gardener can start working on cultivating a specific item, or researching a specific topic, crafting specific weapons. etc

 

[NaturalZero]

I felt like it was also geared towards players who want to create stories, but also geared towards characters who want to have a research library and a poison garden to provide resources for their PCs, so it's never butting heads with the DM about 'Well, where are you going to get astral belladonna?' Now, they have an out where, on a turn, the master gardener can start working on cultivating a specific item, or researching a specific topic, crafting specific weapons. etc

It also makes for a separate "character" that a player controls and can equip with magic furnishings. The party could always adventure for magic items to equip on their persons, but now there's a reason to for adventuring for magical tapestries, mystic wardrobes, animated statues, etc. It opens the door for a whole other category of treasure that is worth going on an adventure for.

 

[Horwath]

The thing is, as a DM, I love the fact that it's the players' responsibility. They get more invested in the world, they do some world building that I can springboard off of, and I don't have to do the heavy lifting of managing personalized hirelings for 4 other people on top of what I'm already working on. The fact that it's player-centric is an absolute boon to DMs.

I feel like people are taking one phrase- "off limits to DMs" -and blowing it out of proportion. The players make decisions for their base, just like they colored the whole background history of their character, and the DM still has just as much a final say as they always had.

this.

the side of PCs mean that players decide how and what their bastion will do, same as they decide what skills, feats, classes will they character have(some restriction always can apply).

players design bastions same way they design their PCs, but DM controls the events around them.

 

[Horwath]

It also makes for a separate "character" that a player controls and can equip with magic furnishings. The party could always adventure for magic items to equip on their persons, but now there's a reason to for adventuring for magical tapestries, mystic wardrobes, animated statues, etc. It opens the door for a whole other category of treasure that is worth going on an adventure for.

not to mention having all your guards equipped with +1 weapons and +1 armors.

 

[Wolfram stout]

Yeah, that's why the "hands off DM's!" comment puzzles me. How antagonistic are other tables?

How antagonistic? Take a gander even here on Enworld at some of the Warlock threads where a few DM's feel it is their right (nay responsibility?) to mess with Warlock PCs on a level undreamt of since the days of the 1st ed Paladin.

While I think the wording maybe a bit over the top, I think that at most tables that will use bastions will be even-tempered enough for it to work (if the rules are otherwise sound). Maybe they were trying to head off situations where the PC's spend a month away on adventure and come back and the bastion is destroyed issues.

 

[Milieu]

As far as I can tell, every single detail mentioned in the video is identical to the playtest, except:

• James Wyatt says that the bastion does the Maintain order when the player isn't there and can't communicate with their hirelings. The playtest simply said it happens if the player isn't there, which definitely seemed odd when the Sending spell exists.
• Chris Perkins says that if you draw the Ruin card from the Deck of Many things, you lose your bastion. The playtest specifically said the only two ways it can be destroyed are by issuing no orders for a number of consecutive turns equal to your level or voluntarily giving it up. (He doesn't specifically mention those in the video, but he does vaguely say it's unlikey you'll lose it if well maintained, which is probably referring to the former.)
• They spend quite a bit of time talking about the possibility of adding custom bastion options for campaign settings.
• Bastion Points are not mentioned in the video at all. It's the only section in the playtest not to get at least a brief mention. That could be merely an oversight, but the absence feels conspicuous. In the playtest, these points accumlated each bastion turn and could be spent to buy magic items, spread your fame in the region (giving advantage on all Charisma checks within 50 miles for the next 7 days), or bring your character back to life.

As for the comments "Off-limits for DMs" and "Can't be used as a knife against players by design": the playtest doesn't have language this strong, but it does say

Bastions are intended to be havens for the characters who own them. Although random events might test a Bastion from time to time(see the “Bastion Events” section), the Bastion can be destroyed in only two ways (see “Fall of a Bastion” section).
Most importantly, a Bastion is a creative playground for a player and a shared storytelling space in the campaign. DMs should be as permissive as possible with the stories players tell in their Bastions, but players should know their control goes only as far as the campaign’s larger story, which the DM strives to make fun for everyone.