D&D General What do you do for housing?

There was no big mention of bastions and the new rules for them. I wonder ho many people use them and if so, for their intended purpose.

I am using something close right now, but it is not something the players are that interested in. They do not care for the rules around them and only care so much as having a place. I threw out some rooms and NPCs that come with them and it is meh. I'm planning to have it attacked which is not something in the rules for them, but what the hey.
 

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My dm has said we're going to use the bastion rules to upgrade our airship but that hasn't happened yet.

I do have the same overall experience as most people here: parties move arund too much. Even if they have a permanent home, they tend to be away too much for it to matter.

Airships are probably the most elegant solution to this. I'm usually on the lookout for some sort of portable home when I'm playing but there aren't a lot of options in most games. DnD really only has the Instant Fortress, and PF2 has a self-pitching yurt as a 10th-level item.
 

My last game was Spelljammer snd they all just lived on the ship.

Before that, it was a magical school game and they lived in dorm rooms or grad student rooms most of the time. While on the road they stayed at inns or usually had some sort of magical abode to camp in. In cities, they used inns or stayed with important people as they were important people on school business doing important things. They did eventually move off campus to an abandoned inn they bought, restored, added some things to, and populated with all the NPCs they had adopted along the way*. Bastion rules didn't exist then, but probably would have worked.

ETA: In future games, besides bastions, it will probably be decided by Lifestyle costs and payments I will require and that will determine their housing. I'll also have mechanical benefits or penalties for the extremes, which will have some significant requirements on the high end when on the road as inns probably won't cut it.

ETAA: More to the OP, most housing are single units. The better lifestyle, the bigger and better they are. In rural areas such as village, they are typically of very sturdy stone construction, as they may have to act as panic room if some of the local megafauna wanders into town. In cities, it goes from tenements to apartments, and then multistory row houses with the business being on the lowest floor and housing above. Nobility and the really rich get mansions and castles. Wizard can get a tower, whose traditional shape goes back to when teleport could result in a higher or lower elevation, thus wizards usually teleport to the second or third story of their tower.

*In one case, they ran across a dwarven stone smith that had been fired by a noble. Only existed in the module to provide information, but they interacted with and adopted him and eventually hired him, gave him three years pay, a bunch of loot that he could also take money for equipment out of, and whole bunch of letters including one explaining to the other NPCs that he was there to build out the new additions to the inn that they wanted, and sent him off back to their home.
 
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My modest experience with this is that housing (whatever shape it takes) tends to be engaged with more when:

  • Obvious benefits are clear e.g. rather than paying 50 gp each time to utilize your neighbor's Library to take a Research action, you build your book collection and construct your own library instead.
  • Adventures/campaigns that have defined downtime periods e.g. season, like winter.
  • One is quirky/creative with overlooked or underutilized features. e.g. In my game, I provided a build option for the party to renovate privies inside their tavern, which were unusable. Doing so encouraged customers to stay longer, bc they didn't need go outside repeatedly to a latrine/ditch. Because they stayed longer, the party received a bonus on Gathering Information checks.
 

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