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Message: <blockquote data-quote="krbrunn" data-source="post: 2009152" data-attributes="member: 4657">I've been interested in building a stronghold when playing D&D ever since I started playing back in the days of 2nd edition.  The thought of a mage holed up in his tower, researching new spells, or a great warlord watching over his serfs from a vast castle have always appealed to me, but I never had the know how of how to make one.  And now I have a book that makes it easy to do everything I have always wanted to do.Chapter One takes you through all the determining steps one must take in order to build a stronghold, including location, stronghold size, and time of construction.  Everything is laid out nicely, and is easy to read.Chapter Two has a listing of all sorts of different rooms that you can build, with set costs, which makes it rather easy to create a building.  If you want a fancy room, just check out the price, drop it in, and you are good to go.  Also, no rooms have a set size, just an average, so you can make it smaller or larger to suit your needs, though for larger increases you are required to purchase the same building twice.  The system is nice and flexible.Also in chapter 2 there is a section for using existing magic items in new and different ways.  My personal favorite was the alternate use of a Bag of Devouring for a waste disposal system in a kitchen or bathroom.  But the best of chapter 2 is the section on new wondrous architecture, which are basically stationary magical items.  There are some really impressive ideas in here, and each item has a price as well as what spells are needed to create them, just as normal magic items have.Chapter 3 is all about how strongholds fit into your campaign.  There is discussion of taking over strongholds as well as refurbishing them or razing them to the ground.  Not much in the way of rules in here, just ideas to think about.Chapter 4 has 5 example strongholds, from the mundane "Cheap Keep" to the very interesting "Citadel of the Planes" that is basically 10 strongholds spread out over the various planes, connected by portals.  All are nicely described, and have the price they took to create.  The Cheap Keep costs only 70,000 GP, while the Citadel costs 2.6 million.All in all this book is exactly what I was looking for, rules for building fortresses.  My only gripe about the book is the poor editing throughout.  It's not that the book is riddled with errors, it's just that when they appear they are very jarring.  And none are more jarring than the appearance of the gender bending Iconic builder by the name of Karlerren, the female turned male, gender swapping wizard.  How that error managed to sneak through editing is beyond me.Also a down point for the book is that there is absolutely no Open Gaming Content in it, so there is no standard to use when creating new Wondrous Architecture.  But that's a rather small problem.I give this book 4 out of 5 when not taking into account the editing errors.  With them, I give this book a 3.5</blockquote>

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