Entry 2: Creating & Customizing a Bastion

With the release of the Dungeon Master's Guide (2024) a feature called Bastions were added to the rules for 2024...2025? Who knows.

What is a Bastion?

In case you didn't know, a Bastion is a place for the players. It's pretty much a home base for them. Each player can have their own Bastion, and players can even combine their Bastions.

Based on my reading of Chapter 8: Bastions in the DMG (2024), when players combine their Bastions, they can share Bastion Defenders, but each player is still ultimately responsible for giving commands to their respective Bastions.

I really like the idea of Bastions, and in my very first campaign as a GM I gave my players a home base that they spent money on and customized. They even went so far as to taxidermy a Adult Green Dragon Skull to put in their base. As far as Bastions go in the 2024 DMG, I think there are some interesting facilities, which by the way are the rooms in the Bastion.

Bastion Facilities:

The Bastion is made up of facilities...which are just rooms with special names. There are two types of facilities, basic facilities and special facilities. Facilities have three different sizes: Cramped, Roomy, and Vast.

A cramped facility occupies a space of 4 squares on a grid, a roomy facility is 16 squares, and a vast facility is 36 squares.

The three different sizes of facilities in a Bastion.

Basic Facilities:

Basic facilities include rooms such as a kitchen, bedroom, parlor, dining room, courtyard, and storage areas. You can add more basic facilities to your Bastion by spending both time and gold to do so. The DMG lists a cost and time required for adding or expanding your basic facilities. So, if you would like to take that cramped bedroom and make it roomy, you can do so, it only takes 500 GP and 25 days.

Special Facilities:

Special facilities are granted when players obtain a set level in your game, specifically at levels 5, 9, 13, and 17. The DMG has a table that displays the number of special facilities a player can have based on their level. It caps at 6 for level 17.

Some of the special facilities have requirements and a specific level needed before they can be built. They also come with hirelings! The hirelings are provided orders to help maintain the Bastion or even create things for you.

Bastion Map:

The DMG encourages players to map out their Bastion and keep track of information about it. You can also customize the layout of the Bastion as you see fit. In addition to facilities, there are other features that can be added to the Bastions:

• Closets (including washrooms) - You can pretty much add as many closets as you like if there is space within a current facility to house it. Meaning you can't tack on a closet to another room but you can place it within a room.

• Corridors, Ramps, and Stairs - You can add these features to connect your facilities.

• Defensive Walls - These are self-explanatory, but you can add a wall around the perimeter. They are 20 feet tall and have a walkway and a way to access it. The downside is that you build them in 5 feet sections and each section costs 250 GP and takes 10 days to build.

• Doors & Windows - You can add doors and windows to your Bastion. Pretty much as many as you would like, including things like secret doors.

Bastion maps bring me to the entire point of this post (other than explaining my thoughts on Bastions). Soon, I will be releasing facility map squares that can be added to online-tabletop platforms and printed.

Each facility will be hand drawn by me and will come with and without a grid. I'm hoping that it will make visualizing and customizing your Bastions easy and fun!

Well, that's all for now, and check back soon for a post about bastion facilities!