D&D (2024) Dungeon Master's Guide Bastion System Lets You Build A Stronghold

Build your bastion, choose its facilities, and give it orders every week.

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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.

 

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Tales and Chronicles

Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
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.
There's rules for upgrading ships parts in GoS, but they don't include running the ship as a downtime homebase. I think you could extrapolate prices for upgrades to create various rooms on the ship to allows more Downtime activities from XGtE. ie; build a mess room to allow the Carousing or Gamble Downtime activity, or a map room to do the Research etc
 

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Sorry, but nobody has that kind of plot armour.

I'll open a can of worms with this, most likely, but to me that sort of thing is just a different form of railroad.
I'm not sure why you would jump to accuseing me and my friends of railroading... it doesn't take any choice away from the player and in the case of all the people I have met irl who have seen it in play have found quite the reveres... it frees you to make ANY type of character you want.

"my wife is back home with the kids running the bar and they visit there grandparents 2 settlements over every now and then at my parents farm" is not a background most would be willing to play if the DM could just murder said family...
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I'm not sure why you would jump to accuseing me and my friends of railroading... it doesn't take any choice away from the player and in the case of all the people I have met irl who have seen it in play have found quite the reveres... it frees you to make ANY type of character you want.

"my wife is back home with the kids running the bar and they visit there grandparents 2 settlements over every now and then at my parents farm" is not a background most would be willing to play if the DM could just murder said family...
But they could do that. The problem as I see it is operating under the assumption that the DM must never be allowed to have that power because they would murder the PCs family if they could. If anything in modern D&D is adversarial, it's that.
 

The staff of the bastion could be used for parallel stories, someones more focused into comedy, and the reward wouldn't be the classic XPs but "storytelling points", a different leveling up system. For example the staff of the tavern is hired for the to organize the wedding banquet of a couple of gnomes. The players only had to telling, without dice rolls, or the players should improvise when bizzare facts start to happen (for example a pranker with illusory magic).

Other point is about possible damage suffered by underage nPCs. This could be a taboo we should avoid. PCs can face against hags, but if children of PCs' families are kiddnapped by some hag, then you may not imagine the level of distress for players who are parents in the real life, or when those nPCs have been created with a lot of love by the players.

If the civilian hirelings have been slavered by a raid of khaasta (planar-traveling lizardfolk) then the PCs should enjoy the opportunity to go toward those khaasta to kick them ass and the staff return to home safe and sound.

Or a "tricker" player could ask dead hirelings could return as friendly ghosts, something like the minisetting "Ghostwalk" but for sidekicks. These ally ghost could be too good as spies.

A bastion in a Ravenloft campaign could become a true torture if "weaker" sidekicks are the target by supernatural predators. Let's imagine one of the sentinels being bitten by a wererat. In the next full moon there will be troubles, and nobody realised the warning signs.

* And bastions could suffer natural disasters, for example earthquakes.
 

But they could do that. The problem as I see it is operating under the assumption that the DM must never be allowed to have that power because they would murder the PCs family if they could. If anything in modern D&D is adversarial, it's that.
I saw it as a chicken and the egg issue... something that I have found was true in the 90s and as I brought in new players...

The player had 1 or 2 bad experiences, then ALL the players just refused to give families... when one DID step up with a family or friend or lover then the DM would 'pounce' cause when else would they get the option to put a loved one in harms way... followed by the whole table being reinforced 'no connections'.

Doing what we have "Hey, your background is safe, unless you agree otherwise" means if a player wants they can say "Hey DM wouldn't it be cool if syndrome went after baby jack jac?" but the DM couldn't just 'spring ' that...

in doing so leading to some of the best stories and games we ever ran.



I am just so surprised how often here on enworld "We all talk, and treat each other as equals at the table" gets turned around????
 

Tales and Chronicles

Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
I saw it as a chicken and the egg issue... something that I have found was true in the 90s and as I brought in new players...

The player had 1 or 2 bad experiences, then ALL the players just refused to give families... when one DID step up with a family or friend or lover then the DM would 'pounce' cause when else would they get the option to put a loved one in harms way... followed by the whole table being reinforced 'no connections'.

Doing what we have "Hey, your background is safe, unless you agree otherwise" means if a player wants they can say "Hey DM wouldn't it be cool if syndrome went after baby jack jac?" but the DM couldn't just 'spring ' that...

in doing so leading to some of the best stories and games we ever ran.



I am just so surprised how often here on enworld "We all talk, and treat each other as equals at the table" gets turned around????
That because a segment still reference the founder of the game as the leading authority on DMing even though his treatment of the human interactions-part of DMing wasn't is forte, to say the least. They still view the game as a player vs DM thing.
 


Chaosmancer

Legend
I saw it as a chicken and the egg issue... something that I have found was true in the 90s and as I brought in new players...

The player had 1 or 2 bad experiences, then ALL the players just refused to give families... when one DID step up with a family or friend or lover then the DM would 'pounce' cause when else would they get the option to put a loved one in harms way... followed by the whole table being reinforced 'no connections'.

Doing what we have "Hey, your background is safe, unless you agree otherwise" means if a player wants they can say "Hey DM wouldn't it be cool if syndrome went after baby jack jac?" but the DM couldn't just 'spring ' that...

in doing so leading to some of the best stories and games we ever ran.



I am just so surprised how often here on enworld "We all talk, and treat each other as equals at the table" gets turned around????

Yeah, there are times I want to have a character in the backstory who is raising death flags left and right, or who I intentionally want to have a massively antagonistic relationship with (made a character whose abusive father was a hero for the organization the party was a part of) but I feel like that sort of thing should be the player's choice. In part, because sometimes you don't know what is going to trigger someone's trauma (had a player who absolutely refused to deal with adultery as a plot point for their characters, because he'd been in MULTIPLE toxic relationships) or when you are just going to suck all the actual enjoyment they have out of the situation. Again, relationships highlight this in my games. I've had one or two happily married characters, and I wanted to explore a happily married character because that was something I just don't see, compared to "And now she's DEAD! Don't you want a rage-filled vengeance quest like 80% of all action media?"
 

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