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.

 

[hopeless]

Sorry I need to go through this thread again, but does this sound like a set up for a PVP campaign?

So DM's can't interfere with bastions but players can?

So whats stopping the DM handling such idiotic actions in game rather than letting their game devolve into a PVP mess?

The two examples I've been thinking about the first involves a Feyborn Cleric who eventually manages to consecrate their first shrine linking it to their Feywild home.

This consists of Sanctuary and a Garden.

So the Sanctuary is what links this bastion to the game world and is the literal shrine itself.
The garden is the current interior of the Bastion until it develops enough to expand further.
Now due to the cleric being a herbalist she can make use of her garden to harvest crops to sell or provide for the locals should the need be that dire.
When not needed she can refocus that to herbs thus being able to brew potions, elixirs that are more needed though it takes time to make this change.
So if the Sanctuary is desecrated that seals away the garden until she can reconsecrate a new shrine and start again.
She has another exit should this happen, but until reconsecrated her access is limited and anyone else trying to enter her domain unlike her can end up anywhere within the Feywild as there's a reason why she can only access that part.

The second is an old abandoned Ranger outpost hidden within the forest.
This is the tricker one as I picture the character being a particularly short elf who keeps getting mistaken for a halfling due to where they were raised.
I'm thinking Barracks and Armoury and he's one of a number of rangers, druids and the like who man this base to help protect the area and often the membership changes as they move around other bases to remain in contact and keep up to date on whats going on.
This character is the rookie he goes out to forage for supplies and occasionally gest missions to guide group to locations where their adventure takes place.
He's not required to join in though has helped in an effort so they can survive that area and upon returning he heads home to report in.
As far as the other adventurer's are concerned they think he's a henchman when he isn't and if they try to play silly beggars will learn about his true profession as his group is more widespread and their behaviour will backfire on them as a result.

Neither are murderhobos and are both based around helping their local communities and also explain where one can be transferred to another area but has access to their bastion of that area so might mean a complete change in personnel or a recurring npc they've met before so it makes sense.

In the first case when I ran that character when she could she consecrated a shrine to her god and thus gained access to her bastion at each village, hamlet and city where they were established.

The only difference between them would be the hireling who maintained the sanctuary, whilst the garden has a trio of hirelings who are more of a superior to the Fey Cleric.

Using that campaign that ended after the DM decided his game was set on Exandria when it wasn't and despite the option to ask he decided he didn't give a darn about either game so yes the bad DM I was referring to.

Anyway by the end of that failed series of one shots there were three shrines, the one at the hamlet of Treefoil run by an aspiring acolyte who probably wouldn't even serve the same deity as her, the second at the Marsh Town of Gimble was run by a halfling child as a way of apologising for almost poisoning the settlement.
The third was intended to be located at a Fort on the outskirts of Bottlequay, located near the Hissing Brazier Tavern where she had been staying until she managed to consecrate her shrine.
When that DM crapped himself my view is that his effort to merge his world with Exandria failed as the gods of that world said no.
However there were three shrines dedicated to Kestra who despite being a vestigal deity managed to rewind time and the group had to redo their adventures again this time without the aid of the Fey Cleric who was banished because of the DM's stupidity.
So dying multiple times to highlight how badly that DM ran his games they eventually insisted on a cleric cue the DM npc and this time they barely reach Treefoil and learn about the three shrines and their need to reach all three before it was too late to save their world.
So repeated twice and barely reaching the third shrine in time they witness the destruction of their world and Bottlequay but they had managed to get word out and evacuated as many of the people via those three shrines so they survived their move to Exandria.
Although Bottlequay was destroyed its people were saved and so they could rebuild their lives anew.

Sorry been looking for a way to get that mess off my chest and my point is those Bastions are the reason they survived that mess and whilst they would no longer exist on their new homeworld I doubt that DM will ever admit this was a good idea!

Thank you for this you've given me alot to think about I'm hoping this inspired you to come up with your own ideas and hopefully you will share them here so we can all learn how to handle this properly!

 

[M.L. Martin]

Or at the very least not going to come to any sort of agreement, even about "what it's like to play DnD"

At this point, I'm convinced that the only way to play D&D is to play it 'wrong', at least according to some authority on the subject.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I see a potential conflict about the level of control by the different players. Let's imagine the DM telling your buttler was killed and replaced by a dopplegänger or your little children were abducten by the feys when they were babies and replaced with Welchselkind (a Pinocho-like PC specie from Grimm Hollow).

Some "rooms" or facilities could be separate because these are shops or business in the center of the city.

The survivor classes from Ravenloft 5e are only three levels. The three sidekick classes are 20 levels.

* Sorry, maybe I am not talking coherently but when I think about a D&D bastion my mind starts to imagine a D&D videogame style "Noble Fates".


The players don't want to lose their companions only because fault of a bad dice rolling or because the DM wanted some plot style "Red Wedding" (Episode "Rain on Castemere" of "Game of Thrones"). The players don't want their assistants/grogs to be sacrificed by the plot without any opportunity to be saved.

* Other point is the money not only to build but also to rebuilt after defending a stronghold against an ememy siege. Not only the spent medicines but also replenish ammunition and supplies.

* Now I am thinking Hasbro should publish a D&D licenced version of the asymetric boardgame "Root" (by Leder Games) but one the factions is a group of heroes building a bastion and working like the Vagabond.

* There is not a wrong way to play D&D when everybody is having fun, even when little children are only roleplaying without dices or PC sheets.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One thing I’d like is better rules for a “party bastion.” My group of players has been playing together for years, mostly with the same characters, and if they are going to set up a bastion, they’d likely do it together and not build their own individually.

In fact, they already have one, having come into ownership of Trollskull Tavern.

Level Up's stronghold rules allow you to easily combine individual player strongholds into one large compound. Each player gets the specific benefit of one of them, but some things can be shared, and of course the whole stronghold exists in the setting as a group home, with all the consequences (positive and negative) that that implies.

 

[Chaosmancer]

One thing I’d like is better rules for a “party bastion.” My group of players has been playing together for years, mostly with the same characters, and if they are going to set up a bastion, they’d likely do it together and not build their own individually.

In fact, they already have one, having come into ownership of Trollskull Tavern.

The original UA rules essentially had it work in that each player controlled their section of a shared bastion, but all the rules were the same.

I imagine that, beyond some special facilities that work with other facilities, that any party bastion rules would essentially boil down to that same idea.

 

[Yenrak]

Where do I find the Level Up stronghold rules?

 

[Demetrios1453]

Sorry I need to go through this thread again, but does this sound like a set up for a PVP campaign?

So DM's can't interfere with bastions but players can?

So whats stopping the DM handling such idiotic actions in game rather than letting their game devolve into a PVP mess?

[Lots of cut text]

Since the DM has the ability to remove poorly-behaving players from their campaigns (or just end the campaigns themselves) - remove the characters, remove the bastions. Done and dusted!

Because that's basically the answer here to all the ridiculous "what if" scenarios that have been bandied around here in various threads like this. If a player's or players', or the DM's for that matter, behavior gets to the point where these what ifs come into play, the offending person or persons should have already long ago been removed from the table, and/or the campaign shut down altogether.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Since the DM has the ability to remove poorly-behaving players from their campaigns (or just end the campaigns themselves) - remove the characters, remove the bastions. Done and dusted!

Because that's basically the answer here to all the ridiculous "what if" scenarios that have been bandied around here in various threads like this. If a player's or players', or the DM's for that matter, behavior gets to the point where these what ifs come into play, the offending person or persons should have already long ago been removed from the table, and/or the campaign shut down altogether.

But what if the player misbehaves at the table and then runs to their Bastion in real life?????? The DM can't do anything about it!

 

[Yenrak]

Has anyone done bastion/stronghold rules for ships? My players bought a ship and are currently traveling the world, making converts to their religion, establishing trade routes, and killing things. Would be cool to have rules for the development of the ship over time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Has anyone done bastion/stronghold rules for ships? My players bought a ship and are currently traveling the world, making converts to their religion, establishing trade routes, and killing things. Would be cool to have rules for the development of the ship over time.

Level Up added ships as a possible stronghold type in one of the online rules supplements for their Patreon.