@@jfelipe1987 Yeah, I dig it. "And now make some noise for - Semantic Satiation !" I would visit their concert, though likely there´ll be loads of hipsters XD
That would be great! Having player bastions spread out across cities opens up some cool strategic options and story possibilities. It gives the group influence in different regions and could lead to fun dynamics with travel, resources, and alliances. Having them all close together creates a strong central hub but both options definitely have their perks!
@@GinnyDi Honestly, I think it depends on the campaign. Crit Role's globe-hopping adventures would definitely benefit from having Bastions all over Exandria, while Drakkenheim would likely benefit more from a central hub-type arrangement. Then again, Vox Machina had Castle Greyskull even without the Bastion system, and it became a place to touch base and refocus
@@GinnyDi I like that idea. Whatever binds players (politically) more tightly to the game world is good. 'Oh no, we have to save some random village from invading marauders !' gets boring for some, or others mights play neutral-asshole type characters, like from an 80´s dark fantasy anime - They. Don´t. Effing. CARE. But with some of their own eggs in this particular fire ? Say hello to universal motivation, without the need to start potentially world-ending events ! Might also be useful to get one of those cursed 'all-evil' grousp to work together properly. The more they have to lose, the less their players have to justify uniting their forces. Just make sure the guards in the player-owned structures are not strong enough to trivialize every threat and you´ll be golden.
@@GinnyDi I'm so glad you pointed out that this has been around forever, though with slightly different mechanics. Actually, in my current campaign the party has what might be considered a bastion. There was a a ruined fortified farmhouse that used to belong to a knight--the players worked out a deal with the local baron and they are rebuilding it to use as their base of operation. What do you do with all the extra gold? Hire mercenaries--workmen, masons carpenters, buy lab equipment for the mages and holy items for the priests to establish a small chapel, and hire henchmen to oversee the works---suddenly the vast sums of money from the treasure hoards drains away very quickly. But there are significant benefits to having a fortified base like this the party can use. Once they reach ninth-12th level and gain followers they might establish freeholds if they want or they can chose to expand the party's stronghold.
9 годин тому
But could you build your level nine rooms on a different location or RAW everything should be in the same place? … bastion…bastion…
I must agree. I've realized my GM has been miserly by this metric because, as of the end of level 12 (and after backing out a few major but completely optional roleplaying flavor purchases), my PC has only accumulated 2.5 thousand. 💸😲💸
Okay, but imagine: Pirate ship. It's perfect for sea faring campaigns and if the DM doesn't want you to be on your ship, there is a number of ways to reason that you can't bring your base everywhere. Not only that, a ship baston would stop you from having to go back to the same area over and over.
This is EXACTLY what I’m going to implement for my steampunk campaign. Just now waiting on the official notes to come out because (balancing homebrew is hard)
This is exactly the kind of thing I love to see homebrewed! You could have a lot of fun with rooms like a navigation room, smuggler’s hold, or armory-they’d fit perfectly on a pirate ship. Yes, please! 🏴☠
That sounds like a blast! And great for added rp moments 😄 I totally get that-my party has had hideouts that were basically glorified storerooms where we didn’t have to spend gold to sleep. Making them mechanically useful kinda forced the DM to get creative, so it’s awesome to now have official mechanics and guidelines to work with!
Love your review of bastions. 3:17 The original D&D and 1st edition had rules for castles and strongholds. The curtain walls and buildings were cheaper, but all hirelings were paid salaries that the players had to track. Much of the rules on interior layouts were left up to the DM. I've run several old-school games where the players used these rules, and it's definitely the best way for high-level characters to spend cash. That and magic research.
Thank you! 😊 It’s so cool to hear how old-school D&D handled castles and strongholds. The added layer of tracking hireling salaries must have been... challenging. Can I hire someone to do my bastion payroll? 😅
I’m so excited for bastions, I love the Trollskull Tavern you get in Waterdeep Dragon Heist because the concept of a home base you can customize is so fun!
Our party fought so hard over who gets which bedroom. I got the little tower on the top, and I had to access it via someone else's room which annoyed them so much.
When I ran Dragonheast I used a couple of third-party PDFs, one of which was basically just how to run the business. Within a month I would have players, at the end of the session, ask "Can we roll on the profits table yet?" and I would have to say "Sorry, it hasn't been a full ten-day yet. Probably at the end of next week." (Seriously, it was just almost three months - and a murder mystery that involved one of the major Waterdeep families - before I even got to the fireball.)
I'm going to brake the rules and give my players the Pub special facility once they complete the renovations (they're level 5 at this point). And I'm excited to see all the other options they'll get to choose from for level 5. I think this mechanic plays so well with Dragon Heist as a way of making the players feel even more at home in the City of Splendors!
As a Sebastian I think the nickname Bastian isn't as commonly used as it used to be (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Also...Never Ending Sstttoooooorrryyyyyy Aw Aw Aw.
@@sebastianevangelista4921 Jup, not very common anymore. Was more like something in the 80´s - so it was on the top of the time ! ^^ By the way, three years ago my best friends named their first born Lysander - the German form of Lysandros. Nope, no Greek heritage there. Just two nerds XD
We started using bastions from a homebrew or playtest version. They haven't really kicked off, yet, but at lvl 13, they are a nice addition to our 5+ year campaign. We've played out less than 6 months in-game time and a lot has happened. We basically do not take down-time and our characters are almost always on the road because the campaign villain is actively working to do evil, thanks to a mistake we made. Our characters believe, and the players understand, that breaks will give the villain time to advance and grow in power. Still cool
That's essentially why we've struggled to take downtime too. Maybe this is the push I need as a DM to actively start writing in more opportunities-or even force some downtime into the story!
Can we as a community agree that we should just call the new stuff 5.5? It’s so much less confusing and so many less syllables than saying 2024 vs 2014. We collectively bullied Wotc about the ogl stuff last year, let’s make it an annual thing and bully them into calling it 5.5
An instant homebrew for me is anyone PC can get any special room, it may cost more or require a permanent or semi-permanent NPC hire, but nothing should be locked. If my 4 int orc barbarian wants an arcane study...he is going to get it despite not realizing he'll need to pay 5x the normal cost for little to no benefit. Great video
I love this! 😂 I can totally picture a martial class PC setting up an arcane study, barely understanding it, but charging the rest of the party to use it. ‘You want to use the magic books? That’ll be 10 gold per hour!'
I know how to balance out Martials for bastions. 1. Make it so that Martials get strong buffs to Defenders and other defensive assets, like they can recruit more, they are stronger, etc. Maybe just give them some for free as they level. 2. Make it so that several of the cooler facilities are VERY attractive to thieves and invaders, and will constantly get rolled while you are gone if you lack sufficient defenses for them. 3. If you aren't/lack a Martial, you could still upgrade your defenses to be strong enough, it would just cost you bonus rooms, so the remaining potential of the facility is lower. This would make it so that running those facilities with a non-Martial character is setting yourself up for constant hassles, and/or you'd want to have one in the party to help defend your stuff.
AD&D had the following for the Fighter class: At level 9, the fighter lord may establish a freehold by building some type of castle and clearing the land in an area of a radius of twenty to fifty miles. The fighter will then attract a body of men-at-arms led by an above average fighter which will serve him as long as he pays reasonably and maintains his freehold, and will collect seven silver coins for every sentient inhabitant of the area through trade, tariffs, and taxes. Considering white box D&D originated from the Chainmail miniature rules, the bastion "scale" has been part of the game since it's inception.
Yep, I was planning on making this point. This does sound like a fun reworking of the 'player follower/base concept, but it is by no means a new thing in D&D. Very happy to see that was touched on in the video.
I could imagine using one of the useless options as a free given. Like "Thank you adventurer for all you've done. We'd like to reward you and there's this old theatre building on the edge of town. It was damaged in a dragon attack some years ago and abandoned, but one or two of the side rooms should be still useable. With work it could be developed further too". That way they get a place with a bit more starting character and, in addition to their useful upgrades over time, they get one that is essentially flair.
Thanks for the thurough coverage. Can't say im very excited about them. I cut my teeth in 2nd edition so as you pointed out strongholds were always there. I always encourage my PC to have a stronghold by 9th lvl preferably roleplaying the creation from earlier levels as, everyone seems to notice, its a great money sink. From there the PC will kinda demand some kind of reward naturally depending on the type of stronghold, a wizards tower with apprentices and library space will obviously identify items and assist in making them, a church can send healing potions, thieves den information, a fortess would have nights to send to wrap up and check in once the pc's move on or send scout ahead, ect. These seem like nice guidelines to get started but in my experience you're 100% right with a standard format this will just get min/maxed to a standard build that the dm will have to account for in campaign balance and the pcs will have to have to match that preemptive balance.
I'm a bit torn - on one side I like that they are acknowledging bases in the rulebook and give rules and guidelines for them, but I don't like how some rooms give way to much of an benefit (especially financially) while basic rooms like a bedroom or a kitchen do nothing. Also I don't like how the bastion events are random. Sometimes certain events just don't make sense, so rolling on an unflexible premade list for events can lead to weird results. Now this could all be salvaged by an experienced DM, but especially new DMs who are playing by the book, could find themselves in trouble when their players are suddenly making thousands of gold from their bastions or when they feel forced to find a way for a friendly visitor showing up in the characters hidden secret hideout nobody knows about.
Holy cow, Ginny's videos are always funny, but this one is particularly hilarious, I've been cackling with it the whole time lol Also, I'm pretty certain that a Bastion is just what Ariel lovingly calls her little crab friend.
At some point, my party needed to travel by ship, and the easiest way to get the captain to take us where we wanted to go was to buy the ship. We now own it jointly, and when we're not using it, the ship transports cargo and passengers through a canal and along the coast of the main continent in our world, just like before. The money the ship makes goes entirely to paying the crew and maintaining the ship. This ship is the closest thing my party has to a home bastion. My own character doesn't have a home bastion of his own, but he maintains a close friendship with a witch like being from the Feywild loosely based on Baba Yaga, who he calls his surrogate grandmother, or simply Granny. And her house, which walks around on duck feet (yes, I stole that from Terry Pratchett), is the closest thing to a home he knows. So I consider it his home bastion.
I remember in one campaign, my brother co-opted some Pathfinder rules to let me and my party run an entire kingdom (after we evacuated our home continent with most of the population because the demons that were trapped on an island hundreds of years ago were breaking free, which was absolutely not the plan for the campaign originally) so I'm very curious how much of the bastion rules will feel similar-ish to what we did there. In any case, the best place to learn about new rules is this channel, so I will enjoy the next 25 minutes immensely. Thanks for making so many videos for us, Ginny! I haven't been able to put all the DMing tips from your videos into practice yet, but I'm already way more excited to run a campaign than I ever was before, and once my brother wraps up running Curse of Strahd I have many plans.
I've always really loved the concept of a "hub town". At early levels it's easy to keep the focus in, and around your town because that's where the story happens, but it's nice to have a way to keep your starting town relevant in the later game.
My DM kind of did that for us when he gifted our party an estate. Difference is that he let each of us (party of 4) to make a facility for the estate. Rogue started a Tavern, Ranger made a Stable, Fighter (me) started a forge, and Cleric made a church. The DM makes us pay for the hirelines running our estate, which he says gives us an incentive to continue adventuring
Anyone who had the AD&D DMG, with its tables of how much different castle bits cost, and who had seen the PBS + David Macauley "Castle" documentary that took you through a castle being built, and then seiged ... we were HYPE to use those rules.
Aaaah no because my current character’s goal is literally to settle down somewhere nice with his brother (entails convincing his brother to stop being an assassin because that’s dangerous, they’ve reunited but his brother is still tempting fate with that dangerous job? No-don’t look for skeletons in his closet. Don’t open the door or else all the skeletons will fall out.) Sending this to the dnd chat because I think I need to play dnd interior design simulator with the party to make a giant apartment or something!!
The fun thing would be to come up with ways to make bastions that don't look like what people would expect, like not just some stone building looming alone on an estate grounds. Druid and ranger bastions might be worked right into the landscape. You could also start out having a little section of a bigger institution, then take on more of it or move up ranks to running the whole place.
I see some people shouting out Troll Skull and 100% with that as a superb spot for a Bastion. I would say don't sleep on Vermillion, the spin off mithril mine from "A Deep and Creeping Darkness" in Candle Keep mysteries. I set it in Exandria just north of Kamordah. Players took it up like cake for home base, and wish Bastions were out then!
“…or having babies.” Thankfully that is pretty safe in my group - the youngest member of our group just turned 47 last week. (Three members of our group have been playing together for over 25 years now. Yes, “having babies” has ended multiple campaigns over the years.)
I like the idea of a mobile bastion! I picture the party as introducing the first Magitech Steampunk trains into the setting, and they’re the ones laying tracks between major settlements. Whenever the next town or city is reached, they inform their Bastion-train via sending stones, and start building a rudimentary station. The train then heads to the next station, and the party gets a Bastion turn when it arrives. Then the group heads off again, dealing with whatever shenanigans the DM throws in their way.
Feel like bastions shouldn't exist outside of the DM's influence any more than the character does, but really like adding this since it adds a layer of either domain play, or just expanding characters to what their physical influence in the world is, and not just what they have in their pocketses
So like the good parts of the 3.0 Stronghold Builder's Guide, and not some of the unnecessary bookkeeping (you don't *really* need to know that building in a remote forest will make wooden walls free but drive up costs of everything else because you're far from a major city, BUT once the Wizard can cast Wall of Stone you can get up to X feet of wall free per day, based on how many spell slots they have and are willing to spend...) Could use some of that book's "bells and whistles" (the extra stuff, like traps, magical architecture, making it mobile, etc). But that could come in an expanded/deluxe Bastion-focused book in the future (hopefully). Also, the Bastion "turns" remind me a lot of the 3.5e DMG2's business rules (which covered things like shops, training camps, mage schools, and thieves' guilds). Like I remember having a roll for the success of the business, and the character's own skills could factor into that (so a Rogue with higher stealth and sleight of hand would run a better Thieves' Guild). There were also things to account for character notoriety, and a variety of encounter ideas and possibilities (like rival stores, or admirers, etc). I bet there's stuff there to pilfer to give more ideas/options with Bastions, depending on how much is functionally in the new DMG to begin with.
0:41 accurate to start with! Running an ongoing calendar for your new campaign may help with encouraging bastion turns. In my current, they PCs only just hit level 4, and over 100 days have passed in game.
I suddenly have this urge to watch The Neverending Story. Also, finding an abandoned bastion while journeying between cities is something my brain is gonna have fun thinking about.
While agree that it sucks that there's only one martial specific facility, I am only so worried about it at the moment. I know the amount of homebrew people will make for bastions is going to be astronomical.
Dungeons and Dragons! The game wherein you can play out any fantastical scenario, from battling dragons to ruling an empire. Now with home ownership. (In this economy? Now that's a fantasy.)
I just wanted to say, I'm really pleased to have stumbled upon your channel. As a "long time ago" player, whose young daughter wants to get started in DnD, I can't tell you how important it is for her to see like minded people getting involved ... and geeking out. Really enjoying just hearing your points of view and ideas!
Though it's not WotC, Acquisitions, Incorporated had a Home Base mechanic and it's 5th Edition compatible! EDIT: The medieval equivalent of white-collar crime is silk glove crime.
Well timed. You uploaded this just as one of my players announced her monk's intention to open up a dojo. Some interesting ideas here. Bastions would have been really useful to have as a mechanic when I was starting my current game (which will be ending before the end of the after going from level 2 to 16). All the action was focussed around one city-state so rules for a home-base would have been a massive bonus.
Bastins seem like something that would really only work with homebrews. while i haven't read deep into them, i'm planing to run Curse of Styrad or Abyss, and I don't see how you can shoehorn bastins into a module.
thanks for the overview! i hope it gets some support in adventures and future books. i could see them easily expanding this in the next xanathar type book. itd be great to see an adventure with built in spots for downtime.
This is unrelated to the topic but I wanted to say i really like the pink lighting over the dark backdrop. It looks really cool and adds a different vibe to the presentation of your videos in a good way i think.
Hey Ginny, Love your content, but i have to ask would you ever do an actual play series. So we can watch you dm for your players, see what your world building looks like and get a peak at what all your advice looks like when its implemented at the game table. I'm sure i can't be the only one that would love to see somethong like that.
Having a home business simulator in D&D sounds fun. With rules laid out for Bastien turns it sounds easier than how I have run home bases in the past. One of my groups took over a fort that was outside an abandoned gem mine. They then hired a group of kobolds to mine gems and guard the fort. They used the profit from the mine to upgrade the fort. They eventually expanded into a small town with a tavern, an inn, and a stable all making more profits. With the money they made adventuring and a dragon's hoard they retired in luxury.
Both the campaigns that my group is planning on using these in involves a college and a town nearby as a homebase where the story takes place and they go out to adventure on missions and then return to sleep and study, so this works for them. Also, I'm writing a novel using D&D and that will let me test this system out. Although, I'm preserving some of the UA stuff that liked better. But can't wait! I'm going on an adventure to get a home theater!
I'm really glad they included some kind of rules for players having a stronghold, but I wish they'd found a way to do it that felt less like a minigame in a 2000s videogame. I think I'll be incorporating the core concept of giving players a stronghold around that level, but making it vary more with the story and making any benefits more dependent on what they DO with it. For example, if they find some rare and awesome thing and use their bastion to become the sole importers of it, the bastion will be far more profitable and if their bastion is in the middle of a very safe city, it probably won't be attacked (without plot reasons).
1) LOVING the Ginnyverse references!! B) You don't allow babies at your table?!? PS: Thank you for running through this in its entirety, much more useful than just talking about or reading through the text without an entertaining example!
3:47 That's something else I want to have two guys discussing in taverns! I've always had this idea of the same two guys right by the door having a lively discussion about D&D concepts that are good jokes out-of-game.
In a 4e campaign, we re-founded a small city that was destroyed by planar forces. We used all our previous characters, background npcs, and 10,000s of gold to make a fully functioning city. This feels like the starter set of that.
My biggest concern is the possible lack of flexibility. For example, my current PC has been planning to found a school-slash-secret-agency with his extra funds (and I've even already begun to design it), but I'm doubtful it would contain the same kinds of things a "stronghold" would.
This was incredibly helpful. It might be the only feature from the new books that remotely interests me. When I hear "Bastion," I think of Neverending Story.
Also, homebrew don't forget DM's and players are likely to homebrew everything from benefits to destruction of a bastion from say a siege that your player may want to come back to defend.
I don't leave enough comments, but thanks Ginny for all your work, you definitely keep my D&D Flame going with lots of good ideas and inspiration. Thank you so much for all you do!
Like many, my group has been getting ourselves home-bases for years. What we've done for stories that involve a lot of travel and we can't return to a static home base is, with a little creativity from the DM, making a boat-bastion, a floating tower, or some other creative way of making a mobile base of operations. It would be nice to have some of those ideas in RAW though for more strictly by-the-book groups. We're likely to continue running a bit more freeform, but it's nice to have the official guidelines for costs and possible perks.
I'm running a pirate themed campaign and I'd love to give using some of this a go for the ship. Have cabins rather than rooms. The 'hirelings' would be members of the crew, etc. Would need a bit of homebrewing to make it work properly. But could be fun!
Bastions sound amazing and it could really tie in to one of my active campaigns. I hope once the new DMG hits the scene I can convince my DM to allow my Aarakocra to turn his family home that we've already used in a few sessions into a Bastion.
I can see the bastions working not only for players but for NPC as well, including those of high level. Can’t stop thinking about making a Boros Headquarter on Ravnica for the final boss of my evil campaign, being an angel general. 🤩🤩
Trollskull worked well in Dragon Heist as a bastion. You had a weaponsmith/armorsmith, carpenter, herbalist, all in the same alley making it really convenient.
OOOHhh, Okay, I've had a campaign idea where I run two campaigns with two different groups of players where they play the opposite faction, a good and evil factions, where both need to protect something while working on assaults to a enemy fortress that has a item that's a threat to their team. Their adventures goal is to get more powerful to assault the enemy team or to help build up their base to protect it better while they adventure out, both teams would be affecting the world that could accidentally help or hinder the enemy team through their adventurers. If the good team accidentally kill Grandma Pastry, the evil team won't be able to buy anything from her any more. Mind you the groups don't know they're fighting against real players until much later (Simply put why: to prevent one team from attacking right away because they'd know the fortress is weak.). So each are getting their own Minions and setting up their own traps/defenses to protect their fortress if it gets attacked. I was originally inspired by the game series "ORCS MUST DIE!" but hay, now I can unironically make this idea happen.
I haven't gotten early access to the 2024 DMG, but this also feels very similar to MCDM's strongholds from strongholds and followers which goes over different options for each class to run, and various boons that come from having them. And the followers you gain along the way.
The idea of a home base or stronghold has always been interesting but I was never sure how to deal with it or not. So this was the thing that I've been most interested in.
Some of our ur players are already talking about a super-facility of interconnected bastions. But we’re all only lukewarm on the idea. If this were around when I was still running my Human Cleric of Deneir, I would have built a sanctuary library with an attached pub.
A way of dealing with not being able to get back to your bastion is to make the bastion mobile somehow. For example in a naval themed campaign your bastion could be a ship, or airship captained by a guy named Cid. Or the bastion exists inside a modified bag of holding.
Bastion is actually the name of my flagship city in my homebrew world. It's entirely on the western side and just outside its borders are sprawling cities that take up soooooooo much space. Generally good place to live as long as shipping isn't too horrible. But the Greenhorn merchant guild is VERY good about their business practices.
the thing where you say something so much it doesn’t sound like a real word is called semantic satiation
The more you know! 💫
You are the internet hero no one knew we needed.
@@GinnyDi Indeed
great band name
@@jfelipe1987 Yeah, I dig it. "And now make some noise for - Semantic Satiation !"
I would visit their concert, though likely there´ll be loads of hipsters XD
When you said "are we having fun yet" i thought i was gonna see a clip of pointy hat yelling that at me 😂
I already sorta did bastions, but like Skyrim where you could have a house in every city. I’m glad WOTC is adding this feature.
That would be great! Having player bastions spread out across cities opens up some cool strategic options and story possibilities. It gives the group influence in different regions and could lead to fun dynamics with travel, resources, and alliances. Having them all close together creates a strong central hub but both options definitely have their perks!
@@GinnyDi Honestly, I think it depends on the campaign. Crit Role's globe-hopping adventures would definitely benefit from having Bastions all over Exandria, while Drakkenheim would likely benefit more from a central hub-type arrangement. Then again, Vox Machina had Castle Greyskull even without the Bastion system, and it became a place to touch base and refocus
@@GinnyDi I like that idea. Whatever binds players (politically) more tightly to the game world is good. 'Oh no, we have to save some random village from invading marauders !' gets boring for some, or others mights play neutral-asshole type characters, like from an 80´s dark fantasy anime - They. Don´t. Effing. CARE.
But with some of their own eggs in this particular fire ? Say hello to universal motivation, without the need to start potentially world-ending events !
Might also be useful to get one of those cursed 'all-evil' grousp to work together properly.
The more they have to lose, the less their players have to justify uniting their forces. Just make sure the guards in the player-owned structures are not strong enough to trivialize every threat and you´ll be golden.
@@GinnyDi I'm so glad you pointed out that this has been around forever, though with slightly different mechanics. Actually, in my current campaign the party has what might be considered a bastion. There was a a ruined fortified farmhouse that used to belong to a knight--the players worked out a deal with the local baron and they are rebuilding it to use as their base of operation.
What do you do with all the extra gold? Hire mercenaries--workmen, masons carpenters, buy lab equipment for the mages and holy items for the priests to establish a small chapel, and hire henchmen to oversee the works---suddenly the vast sums of money from the treasure hoards drains away very quickly. But there are significant benefits to having a fortified base like this the party can use.
Once they reach ninth-12th level and gain followers they might establish freeholds if they want or they can chose to expand the party's stronghold.
But could you build your level nine rooms on a different location or RAW everything should be in the same place? … bastion…bastion…
Wait. Level 9 y'all have 12 THOUSAND gold? *insert "You're getting paid?" meme*
This is just based on what’s in the DMG and Xanathar’s Guide and if you’re not spending pretty much anything 😂
I must agree. I've realized my GM has been miserly by this metric because, as of the end of level 12 (and after backing out a few major but completely optional roleplaying flavor purchases), my PC has only accumulated 2.5 thousand. 💸😲💸
In my current game, we're all level 7, and I just got to 1K gold lol.
To be fair, it is a low-magic setting.
I mean, let’s face it. Not every campaign has magic item shops. Having the PCs drown in gold coins isn’t really necessary.
In the urban game I'm running, my party's level 10 characters have about 25k each. But it is a heist-based game, so that makes a difference...
Okay, but imagine: Pirate ship.
It's perfect for sea faring campaigns and if the DM doesn't want you to be on your ship, there is a number of ways to reason that you can't bring your base everywhere.
Not only that, a ship baston would stop you from having to go back to the same area over and over.
This is EXACTLY what I’m going to implement for my steampunk campaign. Just now waiting on the official notes to come out because (balancing homebrew is hard)
Speljammer pirate ship…. Im in
Or a TARDIS. We all want a mobile stronghold.
Or you could just do like Lindon and make it an airship.
This is exactly the kind of thing I love to see homebrewed! You could have a lot of fun with rooms like a navigation room, smuggler’s hold, or armory-they’d fit perfectly on a pirate ship. Yes, please! 🏴☠
Im in a campain where we are collectively running a tavern thst doubles as our hideout - love that an "official" feature like this is being added!
That sounds like a blast! And great for added rp moments 😄
I totally get that-my party has had hideouts that were basically glorified storerooms where we didn’t have to spend gold to sleep. Making them mechanically useful kinda forced the DM to get creative, so it’s awesome to now have official mechanics and guidelines to work with!
My party has built our little D&D home base in Minecraft and it's super fun to hear that we can easily add mechanical function to it now! 🎉
As one of said players, yeah, it's a blast!
I love this!! I'll definitely be making my base in the Sims. Just need to get a defensive wall mod 😂
The Bastion joke one min in totally gets the like button!
I’m excited to try this feature.
Me too! Let me know how it goes in your game.
Love your review of bastions.
3:17 The original D&D and 1st edition had rules for castles and strongholds. The curtain walls and buildings were cheaper, but all hirelings were paid salaries that the players had to track. Much of the rules on interior layouts were left up to the DM. I've run several old-school games where the players used these rules, and it's definitely the best way for high-level characters to spend cash. That and magic research.
Thank you! 😊 It’s so cool to hear how old-school D&D handled castles and strongholds. The added layer of tracking hireling salaries must have been... challenging. Can I hire someone to do my bastion payroll? 😅
I’m so excited for bastions, I love the Trollskull Tavern you get in Waterdeep Dragon Heist because the concept of a home base you can customize is so fun!
I was just coming to say that!. Troll skull is great.
Our party fought so hard over who gets which bedroom. I got the little tower on the top, and I had to access it via someone else's room which annoyed them so much.
@@theaxer3751that’s a hilarious solution, we solved the bedroom issue by having my wizard move into the study to be with her beloved books
When I ran Dragonheast I used a couple of third-party PDFs, one of which was basically just how to run the business. Within a month I would have players, at the end of the session, ask "Can we roll on the profits table yet?" and I would have to say "Sorry, it hasn't been a full ten-day yet. Probably at the end of next week."
(Seriously, it was just almost three months - and a murder mystery that involved one of the major Waterdeep families - before I even got to the fireball.)
I'm going to brake the rules and give my players the Pub special facility once they complete the renovations (they're level 5 at this point). And I'm excited to see all the other options they'll get to choose from for level 5. I think this mechanic plays so well with Dragon Heist as a way of making the players feel even more at home in the City of Splendors!
I always thought a Bastian was that little kid with the bowl cut from Neverending Story
Why not both??
As a Sebastian I think the nickname Bastian isn't as commonly used as it used to be (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Also...Never Ending Sstttoooooorrryyyyyy Aw Aw Aw.
german accent: sis is se bastion ;-)
@@sebastianevangelista4921 Jup, not very common anymore. Was more like something in the 80´s - so it was on the top of the time ! ^^
By the way, three years ago my best friends named their first born Lysander - the German form of Lysandros.
Nope, no Greek heritage there. Just two nerds XD
@@sebastianevangelista4921 if it helps I play dnd with a Sebastian who we sometimes call Bastian
We started using bastions from a homebrew or playtest version. They haven't really kicked off, yet, but at lvl 13, they are a nice addition to our 5+ year campaign. We've played out less than 6 months in-game time and a lot has happened. We basically do not take down-time and our characters are almost always on the road because the campaign villain is actively working to do evil, thanks to a mistake we made. Our characters believe, and the players understand, that breaks will give the villain time to advance and grow in power. Still cool
That's essentially why we've struggled to take downtime too.
Maybe this is the push I need as a DM to actively start writing in more opportunities-or even force some downtime into the story!
Can we as a community agree that we should just call the new stuff 5.5? It’s so much less confusing and so many less syllables than saying 2024 vs 2014. We collectively bullied Wotc about the ogl stuff last year, let’s make it an annual thing and bully them into calling it 5.5
I swear I see a post like this every single week with a different name that we should all be agreeing on 😂
@@GinnyDi WE WILL NEVER AGREE!!! This fight will rage for eons!
5e24 is super easy plus it's barely a .5 maybe a .2
I just say 2024 🤷♂️. Let the battle continue!!!
We simply call it One D&D at my table.
The "While you were reading the UA I studied the Blade." comment was badass.
I am infact NOT done folding laundry, but I also found it interesting. I'm excited to see how DM's and players will utilize this!
Some say they're still folding laundry to this day...
Thank you!! 🥰
An instant homebrew for me is anyone PC can get any special room, it may cost more or require a permanent or semi-permanent NPC hire, but nothing should be locked. If my 4 int orc barbarian wants an arcane study...he is going to get it despite not realizing he'll need to pay 5x the normal cost for little to no benefit. Great video
I love this! 😂 I can totally picture a martial class PC setting up an arcane study, barely understanding it, but charging the rest of the party to use it. ‘You want to use the magic books? That’ll be 10 gold per hour!'
1:58 wow rlly cool lighting. Please use this location more, it’s so cool
Right? It's so cool, you'd think Straszfilms video "Identity, Gender and VRChat" was watched shortly beforehand lol
But really, I love the lighting!
I know how to balance out Martials for bastions.
1. Make it so that Martials get strong buffs to Defenders and other defensive assets, like they can recruit more, they are stronger, etc. Maybe just give them some for free as they level.
2. Make it so that several of the cooler facilities are VERY attractive to thieves and invaders, and will constantly get rolled while you are gone if you lack sufficient defenses for them.
3. If you aren't/lack a Martial, you could still upgrade your defenses to be strong enough, it would just cost you bonus rooms, so the remaining potential of the facility is lower.
This would make it so that running those facilities with a non-Martial character is setting yourself up for constant hassles, and/or you'd want to have one in the party to help defend your stuff.
I feel like Augury’s version of a “Live, Laugh, Love” poster would be “Live, Laugh, M*rder but Don’t Get Caught” 😂
Live, Laugh, Loot 😂😂
@@GinnyDiOoooo, that one works better, actually! 🤣 Similar: “Live, Laugh, Larceny”
@@GinnyDi *SLOW CLAP*
@@GinnyDi Live, Laugh, Laundering or even Lie, Loot, Launder
@@GinnyDi Always, Be, Closing?
AD&D had the following for the Fighter class:
At level 9, the fighter lord may establish a freehold by building some type of castle and clearing the land in an area of a radius of twenty to fifty miles. The fighter will then attract a body of men-at-arms led by an above average fighter which will serve him as long as he pays reasonably and maintains his freehold, and will collect seven silver coins for every sentient inhabitant of the area through trade, tariffs, and taxes.
Considering white box D&D originated from the Chainmail miniature rules, the bastion "scale" has been part of the game since it's inception.
Yep, I was planning on making this point. This does sound like a fun reworking of the 'player follower/base concept, but it is by no means a new thing in D&D.
Very happy to see that was touched on in the video.
I could imagine using one of the useless options as a free given. Like "Thank you adventurer for all you've done. We'd like to reward you and there's this old theatre building on the edge of town. It was damaged in a dragon attack some years ago and abandoned, but one or two of the side rooms should be still useable. With work it could be developed further too". That way they get a place with a bit more starting character and, in addition to their useful upgrades over time, they get one that is essentially flair.
Thanks for the thurough coverage. Can't say im very excited about them. I cut my teeth in 2nd edition so as you pointed out strongholds were always there. I always encourage my PC to have a stronghold by 9th lvl preferably roleplaying the creation from earlier levels as, everyone seems to notice, its a great money sink. From there the PC will kinda demand some kind of reward naturally depending on the type of stronghold, a wizards tower with apprentices and library space will obviously identify items and assist in making them, a church can send healing potions, thieves den information, a fortess would have nights to send to wrap up and check in once the pc's move on or send scout ahead, ect.
These seem like nice guidelines to get started but in my experience you're 100% right with a standard format this will just get min/maxed to a standard build that the dm will have to account for in campaign balance and the pcs will have to have to match that preemptive balance.
They definitely did this because they saw how well the MCDM Strongholds & Followers book did and decided they wanted a piece of the action
I'm a bit torn - on one side I like that they are acknowledging bases in the rulebook and give rules and guidelines for them, but I don't like how some rooms give way to much of an benefit (especially financially) while basic rooms like a bedroom or a kitchen do nothing. Also I don't like how the bastion events are random. Sometimes certain events just don't make sense, so rolling on an unflexible premade list for events can lead to weird results.
Now this could all be salvaged by an experienced DM, but especially new DMs who are playing by the book, could find themselves in trouble when their players are suddenly making thousands of gold from their bastions or when they feel forced to find a way for a friendly visitor showing up in the characters hidden secret hideout nobody knows about.
The rules don’t seem very well thought out to me either.
Holy cow, Ginny's videos are always funny, but this one is particularly hilarious, I've been cackling with it the whole time lol
Also, I'm pretty certain that a Bastion is just what Ariel lovingly calls her little crab friend.
I loved MCDM's Strongholds and Followers. Great but simple rules and charts for Strongholds that can have party wide buffs.
At some point, my party needed to travel by ship, and the easiest way to get the captain to take us where we wanted to go was to buy the ship. We now own it jointly, and when we're not using it, the ship transports cargo and passengers through a canal and along the coast of the main continent in our world, just like before. The money the ship makes goes entirely to paying the crew and maintaining the ship. This ship is the closest thing my party has to a home bastion. My own character doesn't have a home bastion of his own, but he maintains a close friendship with a witch like being from the Feywild loosely based on Baba Yaga, who he calls his surrogate grandmother, or simply Granny. And her house, which walks around on duck feet (yes, I stole that from Terry Pratchett), is the closest thing to a home he knows. So I consider it his home bastion.
I remember in one campaign, my brother co-opted some Pathfinder rules to let me and my party run an entire kingdom (after we evacuated our home continent with most of the population because the demons that were trapped on an island hundreds of years ago were breaking free, which was absolutely not the plan for the campaign originally) so I'm very curious how much of the bastion rules will feel similar-ish to what we did there. In any case, the best place to learn about new rules is this channel, so I will enjoy the next 25 minutes immensely.
Thanks for making so many videos for us, Ginny! I haven't been able to put all the DMing tips from your videos into practice yet, but I'm already way more excited to run a campaign than I ever was before, and once my brother wraps up running Curse of Strahd I have many plans.
I've always really loved the concept of a "hub town". At early levels it's easy to keep the focus in, and around your town because that's where the story happens, but it's nice to have a way to keep your starting town relevant in the later game.
My DM kind of did that for us when he gifted our party an estate. Difference is that he let each of us (party of 4) to make a facility for the estate. Rogue started a Tavern, Ranger made a Stable, Fighter (me) started a forge, and Cleric made a church. The DM makes us pay for the hirelines running our estate, which he says gives us an incentive to continue adventuring
This could be interesting combined with some organic ellements- Baba Yagas style walking house - turning into Howl's moving Castle!
Anyone who had the AD&D DMG, with its tables of how much different castle bits cost, and who had seen the PBS + David Macauley "Castle" documentary that took you through a castle being built, and then seiged ... we were HYPE to use those rules.
Bonus points if you read Pillars of the Earth and understand how long/hard/disaster prone major construction was.
Not for parties on the go? Time to homebrew Howl’s Moving Bastion.
Or…just a bunch of mini bastion RVs, our party is a trailer park on the go.
Aaaah no because my current character’s goal is literally to settle down somewhere nice with his brother (entails convincing his brother to stop being an assassin because that’s dangerous, they’ve reunited but his brother is still tempting fate with that dangerous job? No-don’t look for skeletons in his closet. Don’t open the door or else all the skeletons will fall out.)
Sending this to the dnd chat because I think I need to play dnd interior design simulator with the party to make a giant apartment or something!!
The fun thing would be to come up with ways to make bastions that don't look like what people would expect, like not just some stone building looming alone on an estate grounds. Druid and ranger bastions might be worked right into the landscape. You could also start out having a little section of a bigger institution, then take on more of it or move up ranks to running the whole place.
2:00 damn the light on the hair is pretty
I see some people shouting out Troll Skull and 100% with that as a superb spot for a Bastion. I would say don't sleep on Vermillion, the spin off mithril mine from "A Deep and Creeping Darkness" in Candle Keep mysteries. I set it in Exandria just north of Kamordah. Players took it up like cake for home base, and wish Bastions were out then!
6:13 that hit a little too close to home. Are you okay? Am I okay? I need a hug.
I was obsessed with the 3.5 Stronghold Builders Guide, and this was THE thing I was looking forward to for the new DMG
“…or having babies.” Thankfully that is pretty safe in my group - the youngest member of our group just turned 47 last week. (Three members of our group have been playing together for over 25 years now. Yes, “having babies” has ended multiple campaigns over the years.)
I like the idea of a mobile bastion! I picture the party as introducing the first Magitech Steampunk trains into the setting, and they’re the ones laying tracks between major settlements. Whenever the next town or city is reached, they inform their Bastion-train via sending stones, and start building a rudimentary station. The train then heads to the next station, and the party gets a Bastion turn when it arrives. Then the group heads off again, dealing with whatever shenanigans the DM throws in their way.
Feel like bastions shouldn't exist outside of the DM's influence any more than the character does, but really like adding this since it adds a layer of either domain play, or just expanding characters to what their physical influence in the world is, and not just what they have in their pocketses
As someone who's about to start a Pirate campaign, this sounds like it would translate pretty well into my party's ship!
So like the good parts of the 3.0 Stronghold Builder's Guide, and not some of the unnecessary bookkeeping (you don't *really* need to know that building in a remote forest will make wooden walls free but drive up costs of everything else because you're far from a major city, BUT once the Wizard can cast Wall of Stone you can get up to X feet of wall free per day, based on how many spell slots they have and are willing to spend...) Could use some of that book's "bells and whistles" (the extra stuff, like traps, magical architecture, making it mobile, etc). But that could come in an expanded/deluxe Bastion-focused book in the future (hopefully).
Also, the Bastion "turns" remind me a lot of the 3.5e DMG2's business rules (which covered things like shops, training camps, mage schools, and thieves' guilds). Like I remember having a roll for the success of the business, and the character's own skills could factor into that (so a Rogue with higher stealth and sleight of hand would run a better Thieves' Guild). There were also things to account for character notoriety, and a variety of encounter ideas and possibilities (like rival stores, or admirers, etc). I bet there's stuff there to pilfer to give more ideas/options with Bastions, depending on how much is functionally in the new DMG to begin with.
0:41 accurate to start with!
Running an ongoing calendar for your new campaign may help with encouraging bastion turns. In my current, they PCs only just hit level 4, and over 100 days have passed in game.
I suddenly have this urge to watch The Neverending Story. Also, finding an abandoned bastion while journeying between cities is something my brain is gonna have fun thinking about.
I'm so happy you went through Bass Djins. I love the Little Mermaid and Aladdin and this just brings it all together.
1:46 The lighting is so good!!
While being a fortress, a Bastion is also one of the best indie video games I've ever played. Highly recommend
While agree that it sucks that there's only one martial specific facility, I am only so worried about it at the moment. I know the amount of homebrew people will make for bastions is going to be astronomical.
I have so much trust in this community thinking up awesome additions! The books practically write themselves 🤩
Dungeons and Dragons! The game wherein you can play out any fantastical scenario, from battling dragons to ruling an empire. Now with home ownership. (In this economy? Now that's a fantasy.)
I just wanted to say, I'm really pleased to have stumbled upon your channel. As a "long time ago" player, whose young daughter wants to get started in DnD, I can't tell you how important it is for her to see like minded people getting involved ... and geeking out. Really enjoying just hearing your points of view and ideas!
Though it's not WotC, Acquisitions, Incorporated had a Home Base mechanic and it's 5th Edition compatible!
EDIT: The medieval equivalent of white-collar crime is silk glove crime.
Well timed. You uploaded this just as one of my players announced her monk's intention to open up a dojo.
Some interesting ideas here. Bastions would have been really useful to have as a mechanic when I was starting my current game (which will be ending before the end of the after going from level 2 to 16). All the action was focussed around one city-state so rules for a home-base would have been a massive bonus.
@2:58 There was also a pretty similar-spunding mechanical function during the Adventurer's League season for Eberron with the Salvage mechanic
Bastins seem like something that would really only work with homebrews. while i haven't read deep into them, i'm planing to run Curse of Styrad or Abyss, and I don't see how you can shoehorn bastins into a module.
Or really any published adventure. It feels like the rules really weren’t very well thought through.
Ginny’s blade skills must be impeccable with how much she has studied it
thanks for the overview! i hope it gets some support in adventures and future books. i could see them easily expanding this in the next xanathar type book. itd be great to see an adventure with built in spots for downtime.
Roleplaying managing an estate/fortress/elaborate series of tree forts over weeks and months sounds delightful
This is unrelated to the topic but I wanted to say i really like the pink lighting over the dark backdrop. It looks really cool and adds a different vibe to the presentation of your videos in a good way i think.
Hey Ginny,
Love your content, but i have to ask would you ever do an actual play series. So we can watch you dm for your players, see what your world building looks like and get a peak at what all your advice looks like when its implemented at the game table. I'm sure i can't be the only one that would love to see somethong like that.
Having a home business simulator in D&D sounds fun. With rules laid out for Bastien turns it sounds easier than how I have run home bases in the past.
One of my groups took over a fort that was outside an abandoned gem mine. They then hired a group of kobolds to mine gems and guard the fort.
They used the profit from the mine to upgrade the fort. They eventually expanded into a small town with a tavern, an inn, and a stable all making more profits.
With the money they made adventuring and a dragon's hoard they retired in luxury.
Both the campaigns that my group is planning on using these in involves a college and a town nearby as a homebase where the story takes place and they go out to adventure on missions and then return to sleep and study, so this works for them. Also, I'm writing a novel using D&D and that will let me test this system out. Although, I'm preserving some of the UA stuff that liked better. But can't wait! I'm going on an adventure to get a home theater!
I'm really glad they included some kind of rules for players having a stronghold, but I wish they'd found a way to do it that felt less like a minigame in a 2000s videogame.
I think I'll be incorporating the core concept of giving players a stronghold around that level, but making it vary more with the story and making any benefits more dependent on what they DO with it.
For example, if they find some rare and awesome thing and use their bastion to become the sole importers of it, the bastion will be far more profitable and if their bastion is in the middle of a very safe city, it probably won't be attacked (without plot reasons).
I'll be running Storm King's Thunder very soon, and it looks like the party's gifted airship is going to get a lot more interesting.
yes i want a lair for my characters and their pets
1) LOVING the Ginnyverse references!!
B) You don't allow babies at your table?!?
PS: Thank you for running through this in its entirety, much more useful than just talking about or reading through the text without an entertaining example!
25:48 just makes me think of The Never Ending Story!
3:47 That's something else I want to have two guys discussing in taverns!
I've always had this idea of the same two guys right by the door having a lively discussion about D&D concepts that are good jokes out-of-game.
In our campaign, we have a (huge) warforged tank friend named Bastion, so I keep getting a dual image of a fortress and him, lol
In a 4e campaign, we re-founded a small city that was destroyed by planar forces. We used all our previous characters, background npcs, and 10,000s of gold to make a fully functioning city. This feels like the starter set of that.
Reasons I love Changeling The Lost 2nd Ed so much. Features like this are pretty much a must do.
I’m excited to implement bastions for the next game I run. Thanks for going through the creation process. 💚
My biggest concern is the possible lack of flexibility. For example, my current PC has been planning to found a school-slash-secret-agency with his extra funds (and I've even already begun to design it), but I'm doubtful it would contain the same kinds of things a "stronghold" would.
This was incredibly helpful. It might be the only feature from the new books that remotely interests me.
When I hear "Bastion," I think of Neverending Story.
SAME!! Every time I hear "Bastion" my mind goes "...Balthazar Bux"!!
Great coverage of the feature! Thanks for doing this!
Bastian - Child's name in NeverEnding Story
Also, homebrew don't forget DM's and players are likely to homebrew everything from benefits to destruction of a bastion from say a siege that your player may want to come back to defend.
I don't leave enough comments, but thanks Ginny for all your work, you definitely keep my D&D Flame going with lots of good ideas and inspiration. Thank you so much for all you do!
Bastian is the main character in "The Neverending Story". I believe it's a nickname for "Sebastian"...
Not for the character. Bastion Balthazar Bux. All those B names. Like the bookseller with all the C names. Carl Conrad Coriander.
Like many, my group has been getting ourselves home-bases for years. What we've done for stories that involve a lot of travel and we can't return to a static home base is, with a little creativity from the DM, making a boat-bastion, a floating tower, or some other creative way of making a mobile base of operations. It would be nice to have some of those ideas in RAW though for more strictly by-the-book groups.
We're likely to continue running a bit more freeform, but it's nice to have the official guidelines for costs and possible perks.
I'm running a pirate themed campaign and I'd love to give using some of this a go for the ship. Have cabins rather than rooms. The 'hirelings' would be members of the crew, etc. Would need a bit of homebrewing to make it work properly. But could be fun!
Bastions sound amazing and it could really tie in to one of my active campaigns. I hope once the new DMG hits the scene I can convince my DM to allow my Aarakocra to turn his family home that we've already used in a few sessions into a Bastion.
I can see the bastions working not only for players but for NPC as well, including those of high level. Can’t stop thinking about making a Boros Headquarter on Ravnica for the final boss of my evil campaign, being an angel general. 🤩🤩
THE SETTTTT 💚💚
Im really early. But that's okay because BASTION
Trollskull worked well in Dragon Heist as a bastion. You had a weaponsmith/armorsmith, carpenter, herbalist, all in the same alley making it really convenient.
OOOHhh, Okay, I've had a campaign idea where I run two campaigns with two different groups of players where they play the opposite faction, a good and evil factions, where both need to protect something while working on assaults to a enemy fortress that has a item that's a threat to their team.
Their adventures goal is to get more powerful to assault the enemy team or to help build up their base to protect it better while they adventure out, both teams would be affecting the world that could accidentally help or hinder the enemy team through their adventurers. If the good team accidentally kill Grandma Pastry, the evil team won't be able to buy anything from her any more.
Mind you the groups don't know they're fighting against real players until much later (Simply put why: to prevent one team from attacking right away because they'd know the fortress is weak.).
So each are getting their own Minions and setting up their own traps/defenses to protect their fortress if it gets attacked.
I was originally inspired by the game series "ORCS MUST DIE!" but hay, now I can unironically make this idea happen.
The idea sounds great for Journeys through the Radiant Citadel.
Charlie's Aasimar... XD Nice.
I haven't gotten early access to the 2024 DMG, but this also feels very similar to MCDM's strongholds from strongholds and followers which goes over different options for each class to run, and various boons that come from having them. And the followers you gain along the way.
The idea of a home base or stronghold has always been interesting but I was never sure how to deal with it or not. So this was the thing that I've been most interested in.
Some of our ur players are already talking about a super-facility of interconnected bastions. But we’re all only lukewarm on the idea. If this were around when I was still running my Human Cleric of Deneir, I would have built a sanctuary library with an attached pub.
This is system is perfect for adding flavor. My bastion keeper would be a golem automaton whose crystal-heart is embedded in the house.
0:25 I don't think Bastion Balthazar Bucks had a mom, so there's that...
A way of dealing with not being able to get back to your bastion is to make the bastion mobile somehow. For example in a naval themed campaign your bastion could be a ship, or airship captained by a guy named Cid. Or the bastion exists inside a modified bag of holding.
4:58 why did you have to burn us like this?!
Bastion is actually the name of my flagship city in my homebrew world. It's entirely on the western side and just outside its borders are sprawling cities that take up soooooooo much space. Generally good place to live as long as shipping isn't too horrible. But the Greenhorn merchant guild is VERY good about their business practices.
Great job explaining all of that, thank you!