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.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Ok, got around to watching it.

Basic info:

Get Bastion at level 5

Bastion Turns take place every 7 days or so in game, although this is flexible

The orders that can be given during a Bastion Turn are: Craft, Empower, Harvest, Maintain, Recruit, Research, and Trade.

29 special facilities available. A bastion gets two at level 5, a third and fourth at level 9, a fifth at level 13, and a sixth at level 17.

The special facilities are: Arcane Study, Armory, Barracks, Garden, Library, Sanctuary, Smithy, Storehouse, Workshop, Game Hall, Green House, Laboratory, Sacristy, Scriptorium, Stable, Teleportation Circle, Theater, Training Room, Trophy Archive, Meditation Chamber, Menagerie, Observatory, Pub, Reliquary, Demi Plane, Guild Hall, Sanctum, War Room.

Some special facilities are customizable - they mention the Garden as one of these.

There are examples of guilds (for the Guild Hall), like Adventurer's Guild, Thieves' Guild, etc.

There will be a Bastion tracker sheet available for players.

 

[Stormonu]

As with the UA, the concept sounds fabulous. I'm hungry to incorporate some sort of system into my own game, whether it's WotCs or whatever tweaks DM's Guild comes up with.

 

[dave2008]

Watching the video now and one thing is clear. These are optional PC rules. It is in the DMG, but bastions are a player facing system. It is only in the DMG to silo it off and make it clear it is optional.

I don't think I like that. My approach is all rules are optional and I would rather player facing rules, optional or otherwise, be in the PHB.

Alternately, a separate book of optional and variant rules for both DMs and PCs.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm curious. Many of us old timers spent quite the hour with the 1e DMG creating our own strongholds and keeps and such. However, I'm a bit alerted to the statement "completely off limits by the DM." The game world is the DMs. To have a world feature that the DM can't influence? Seems a bit off to me. Note; I'm not saying DMs need to be jerks, but only that typically it's a collaborative things rather than the player "I'm doing this in your world and nothing you can do about it."

 

[NaturalZero]

I'm curious. Many of us old timers spent quite the hour with the 1e DMG creating our own strongholds and keeps and such. However, I'm a bit alerted to the statement "completely off limits by the DM." The game world is the DMs. To have a world feature that the DM can't influence? Seems a bit off to me. Note; I'm not saying DMs need to be jerks, but only that typically it's a collaborative things rather than the player "I'm doing this in your world and nothing you can do about it."

I took this as "off limits" in the same way that building your character is off limits. You pick your parents, the village you grew up in, your past trauma, you hair color, your race, your class, your starting spells, etc, but the DM is going to work with you so that it fits with the campaign. They did mention finding ways to make the bastion dangerous.

 

[Cruentus]

I'm curious. Many of us old timers spent quite the hour with the 1e DMG creating our own strongholds and keeps and such. However, I'm a bit alerted to the statement "completely off limits by the DM." The game world is the DMs. To have a world feature that the DM can't influence? Seems a bit off to me. Note; I'm not saying DMs need to be jerks, but only that typically it's a collaborative things rather than the player "I'm doing this in your world and nothing you can do about it."

Yeah, I don't really get why this is in the DMG. I don't get the feeling, right out of the gate, that the DM is being helped here. Even if they are "optional", they take that part of the DMG out of the DMs hands, and limit them. WOTC clearly is looking to help DMs with this book.

(1:04) Players being invested in the setting by saying "this piece of the setting is mine."
(1:12) "Yeah, its a turning the tables thing where in the Bastion the player has creative control. The Bastion is not a knife the DM can use to hurt the player, by design."
"Yeah"

Uh huh. I wonder how much more "help" this DMG will provide new DMs. I was going to buy it, and it was likely going to be the only WOTC 2024 book I would buy, but with this, I might reconsider.

Players in my campaigns, and myself as a player never needed "something to be mine" or something I had strict narrative control over in order to be "invested". If you're not invested in the game, why are you playing?

 

[Cruentus]

I took this as "off limits" in the same way that building your character is off limits. You pick your parents, the village you grew up in, your past trauma, you hair color, your race, your class, your starting spells, etc, but the DM is going to work with you so that it fits with the campaign. They did mention finding ways to make the bastion dangerous.

Then why put it in the DMG? Its clearly player facing. And they were very clear - see my quotes from the video above, about the DM not being allowed to touch it, even though they give lip service to "narrative" in the setting.

Some of the discussion around danger was using bastions in, say, ravenloft, but I didn't get the feeling at all that the standard bastion rules were anything but a boon to players, unless the player wanted, for some reason, to make it dangerous.

 

[NaturalZero]

Then why put it in the DMG? Its clearly player facing. And they were very clear - see my quotes from the video above, about the DM not being allowed to touch it, even though they give lip service to "narrative" in the setting.

Leaving it out of the PHB is the right move, IMO, because most groups won't use it. Players often assume that everything in the PHB is fair game, and there really wasn't any room to add a whole bastion chapter anyway. Keeping in the DMG clearly telegraphs to new players that it's an optional thing.

Besides, magic items are mostly player-facing options in practice, and they've been in the DMG for awhile.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Then why put it in the DMG? Its clearly player facing. And they were very clear - see my quotes from the video above, about the DM not being allowed to touch it, even though they give lip service to "narrative" in the setting.

Some of the discussion around danger was using bastions in, say, ravenloft, but I didn't get the feeling at all that the standard bastion rules were anything but a boon to players, unless the player wanted, for some reason, to make it dangerous.

It's optional in that it's definitely something the DM decides if they want it in the campaign or not. Bastions are even less expected to be available in a game, than all species and subclasses in the PHB.