DnD Bastions explained

A DnD Bastion is a home or stronghold that belongs to one or more players in a campaign. It features several facilities that offer in-game benefits, and you can continue to upgrade your Bastion as your character levels up. This guide explains how Dungeons and Dragons Bastions work, and it offers tips for making the most of the new rules.

For more recent RPG mechanics, here’s how DnD 2024 backgrounds work in the new Player’s Handbook. Or, for something more familiar, here’s everything you need to know about DnD classes and DnD races.

DnD Bastion rules:

Gaining a DnD Bastion

If the DM allows Bastions in their campaign, players can decide to acquire one once they reach level five. Each character can have their own Bastion if they wish, but they can also opt out of ownership. Two players can also combine their Bastions, though each retains its hirelings and still has the same number of special facilities. Bastion Defenders, however, are combined. Even if a player chooses not to own a Bastion, they can still benefit from those that belong to their fellow party members.

A Bastion is available to use as soon as a character decides to gain one. Wizards of the Coast suggests coming up with a story reason for the Bastion appearing, but it’s safe to assume that construction or sale of the Bastion has taken place in the background of your adventures.

DnD Bastion Turns

Every seven days, players with a Bastion can take a ‘Bastion Turn’ to issue orders to their base and gain benefits from its facilities. The players do not have to be present at the Bastion to do so, and the playtest gives DMs free reign to change the time between Bastion Turns to suit their campaign.

What you do with your Bastion turn depends on where your character is and what facilities they currently have in their Bastion. If your character is at home, they can issue an order to as many or as few of their facilities as they wish. Each facility has its own unique order, which can be summarized by the following list:

• Craft – Create an item specific to that facility
• Empower – Give someone a temporary buff
• Harvest – Gather a resource specific to that facility
• Recruit – Recruit creatures to live at your Bastion
• Research – Gather information
• Trade – Buy or sell goods and services stored at or produced by the facility

Characters can also issue a ‘Maintain’ order that applies to all of their facilities. When this order is issued, all other orders are prohibited for that Bastion turn, and the Dungeon Master rolls a random Bastion Event.

If a character is away from their Bastion during a Bastion turn, the Bastion generally operates as if it were given a Maintain order. However, if your character can communicate with their Bastion at a distance (such as with a Sending spell), they can still deliver specific orders for that Bastion turn.

DnD Bastion Facilities

Every Bastion starts with two basic facilities and two special facilities. Players have control over the floor plan of their property and are encouraged to map it out.

Basic Facilities

Basic facilities have no mechanical benefit, but they introduce new roleplaying opportunities and make your Bastion feel more realistic. The basic options include the following:

• Bedrooms
• Courtyards
• Dining Rooms
• Kitchens
• Parlors
• Storage

The playtest version of the Bastions rules also included ‘Washrooms’, but these have been removed in the final printing. Apparently, D&D characters don’t need bathrooms.

The two free basic facilities in a starting Bastion must include one cramped (max area four squares) and one roomy (max area 16 squares) facility of your choice. If you want to expand them (say, to vast, which is 36 squares maximum), you can spend gold and in-game time.

You can also spend gold and time to add further basic facilities:

All this can be done in the background of your regular adventuring.

Special Facilities

Special facilities can only be gained by leveling up your character. At level nine, a player can add two special facilities of their choice to their Bastion. They also gain one special facility at level 13 and again at level 17. Additionally, a player can replace one of their special facilities with another each time they level up.

The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide includes 29 special facilities for a Bastion. In our opinion, though, some are vastly more useful than others. Here’s how we’d rate each of them:

Arcane Study

The Arcane Study has multiple uses, some of which are more situational than others. Finishing a DnD long rest in your Bastion grants you a charm, meaning you can cast Identify without a spell slot or material components. This can be used once in the next seven days.

When you give the ‘Craft’ order to your Arcane Study, you can create:

• An Arcane Focus that takes seven days to produce and costs no money
• A blank book that takes seven days to produce and costs 10 GP
• (Level 9+ only) A common or uncommon magic item from the Arcana category, which follows the usual rules for crafting magic items

That last option is the reason we’ve ranked the Arcane Study so highly. The Arcana category includes useful DnD magic items like the Bag of Holding, Circlet of Blasting, Broom of Flying, Hat of Disguise, Helm of Telepathy, and Wand of Magic Missiles.

Having one of these in your Bastion offers a huge amount of utility – if you’re prepared to wait until level nine to get it. Before that point, we’d rank this facility far lower, as blank books and Arcane Focuses aren’t too campaign-breaking. Our advice is to start with a different facility and swap to this one as soon as your spellcaster reaches level nine.

Armory

When you issue a ‘Trade’ order to your Armory, you can spend 100 GP (plus 100 GP for each Bastion Defender you have) to stock it with armor, shields, and weapons. Mechanically, you don’t have free access to these items – instead, they’re used to make your Bastion Defenders more hardy during an Attack event.

If your DM rolls this Bastion event, they also roll 6d6. Each 1 on a die removes one of your Bastion Defenders – and if none are left, one of your facilities randomly shuts down and can’t be used on your next Bastion turn. Other random events can also reduce your Bastion Defenders.

A fully-stocked Armory allows you to roll 1d8 instead of each d6 that would normally be rolled. This makes a 1 slightly less likely. After the event ends, all equipment in your Armory is used up and must be replaced with another Trade order.

You can make the cost of the Armory cheaper by also building a Smithy, but honestly, it hardly seems worth it. The worst that can happen is that you miss a turn with one facility in your Bastion, after which it’s repaired and returns to normal. If we had to choose between extra magic items and a slightly better Bastion Defender die, we know what we’d choose.

Barrack

Using the ‘Recruit’ order, you can add up to four Bastion Defenders to your Barrack for free. Your Barrack can hold up to 12 Bastion Defenders. If you want more, you’ll need to build a second Barrack or spend 2,000 GP to upgrade to a Vast Barrack, which can hold up to 25 Defenders.

Like the Armory, the Barrack feels a little redundant next to facilities that offer more concrete in-game benefits. We’d rather risk missing a turn now and then to focus on producing items and buffs for our adventuring party.

Garden

Any time you add a Garden to your Bastion, you choose its type. This determines what the Garden produces when you give the ‘Harvest’ order:

If you want to change your garden, your hirelings can spend 21 days to alter its type, during which nothing can be grown. You can also spend 2,000 GP to create a Vast Garden, which can have two types of Garden (the same or two different types).

The output of your Garden isn’t explosive, but free rations, poisons, and healing properties can save your party plenty of shopping trips. This is one of the better options for a level-five adventurer – particularly as the facility has no prerequisites.

Library

When you issue a ‘Research’ order to your Library, its hirelings will spend seven days researching a legend, a known event or location, or a famous object. Once the week is up, the hirelings present you with three accurate pieces of information that you didn’t previously know about the topic. Your DM will determine the details.

We’re not convinced that any good DM would keep campaign-critical information behind a Library-based paywall. This means that the extra details you gain from this facility will be a garnish rather than a main meal. Still, it offers plenty of roleplay opportunities, and it might help you reach your goals slightly faster.

Sanctuary

If you spend a long rest in your Bastion, you gain a charm that allows you to cast Healing Word once in the next seven days without needing to use a spell slot. You can’t gain this Charm more than once at the same time. Alternatively, the ‘Craft’ order instructs your hirelings to spend seven days creating a Druidic Focus (wooden staff) or a Holy Symbol for free.

One free use of Healing Word and an easy-to-obtain Holy Symbol don’t impress us much. Other level-five facilities offer just as much value and come with a magic item printing press at level nine.

Smithy

When you issue a ‘Craft’ order to a Smithy, you can choose to create anything that can be made with Smith’s Tools, using the regular crafting rules and resources. Alternatively, at level nine, you can craft any common or uncommon magic item in the Armaments category. The regular resources used to craft these magic items still apply.

This is far less extensive than the Arcana category given to the Arcane Study. The Smithy can produce 31 kinds of magic item versus the Arcane Study’s 108. However, if you want +1 weapons, Adamantine armor, Bracers of Archery, or a Sentinel Shield, you’ll need a Smithy.

Storehouse

You can issue a ‘Trade’ order to your Storehouse to gain non-magical items that are worth up to 500 GP (you still have to pay for them, though). It takes your hirelings seven days to source these items.

Alternatively, you can order your hirelings to spend seven days selling goods from your Storehouse. The profit on these goods is 10% more than what you originally paid.

The amount of goods you can store and the profit you make from selling them increases as you level up:

This seems like an incredibly fiddly way for your D&D character to passively generate income. When it first introduced Bastions, Wizards of the Coast said it was trying to give players more rewarding ways to spend their gold. If that’s still true, the Storehouse seems to defeat the point.

Workshop

A workshop comes with six kinds of Artisan’s Tools, which you can use to create adventuring gear with the ‘Craft’ order. You can instead use that same order to craft common and uncommon magic items from the Implement category, as long as you are level nine or above. The regular resources used to craft these magic items still apply.

The Implements category is filled with utility-focused magic items, including the Alchemy Jug, Boots of Elvenkind, Cloak of Protection, and Greater Potions of Healing. It’s a solid list to be able to choose from – though many of these items can also be produced by an Arcane Study.

Gaming Hall

Issuing a ‘Trade’ order to the Gaming Hall turns it into a gambling den for seven days. At the end of that time, you roll a d100 to figure out how much profit you made from the endeavor:

Other facilities with the Trade or Harvest order offer more consistent ways to make money. However, that consistency often comes with extra, tedious steps. The Gaming Hall is a fast and flavorful way to make some income, even if you can’t guarantee exactly how much.

Greenhouse

Every Greenhouse contains one plant with three magical fruits growing on it. Eating one of these grants benefits equivalent to a Lesser Restoration spell, provided they’re eaten in the 24 hours after they’re picked. This plant replaces these fruits daily.

You can also issue a ‘Harvest’ order to gain a Greater Potion of Healing for free or one free poison:

• Assassin’s Blood
• Malice
• Pale Tincture
• Truth Serum

The output here isn’t overly impressive, but free healing options and poisons might appeal to a party with a DnD 2024 Rogue (or that lacks a DnD 2024 Cleric).

Laboratory

The ‘Craft’ order has two options in a Laboratory. The first of these lets you craft any one item that could be made with Alchemist’s Supplies. This includes basics like Alchemist’s Fire, but it also includes potions from the magic item list – which should make you pretty popular.

Alternatively, you can craft one application of one of the following poisons:

• Burnt Othur Fumes
• Essence of Ether
• Torpor

You must still pay half the poison’s cost, however.

Sacristy

Issuing the ‘Craft’ order to your Sacristy gives you two possible options. The first prompts your hirelings to spend seven days creating a free flask of Holy Water. However, for every 100 GP you spend (up to 500), you can increase the damage dealt by that flask by 1d8. In campaigns that heavily feature fiends and undead, this could be a game-changer.

Your other option is to craft a common or uncommon magic item from the Relics category, using the regular rules for magic item crafting. This category of magic items is pretty limited compared to our darling Arcane Study, with just 26 options to choose from. However, there are still some sweet picks here, including Potions of Healing, Sending Stones, Spell Scrolls up to level three, and a Wand of Magic Detection.

Scriptorium

When you issue the ‘Craft’ order to your Scriptorium, you can do one of the following:

• Spend seven days crafting a blank, non-magical book
• Spend seven days crafting up to fifty copies of a pamphlet or paper product (1 GP per copy, and your hirelings will distribute them to locations within 50 miles for free)
• Craft a Cleric or Wizard spell scroll of up to level three, following the usual rules for crafting these items

The book isn’t too impressive, and the pamphlet’s value is mainly for roleplay. However, easy access to level three spell scrolls is pretty appealing – just make sure you have a Cleric or Wizard in your party who can use them.

Stable

A Stable comes with one Riding Horse or Camel and two Ponies or Mules. You can fit three Large animals in your Stable, with two Medium animals treated the same as one Large. If you roll an Animal Handling check for an animal that’s spent at least 14 days in your stable, you have advantage.

You can also use the ‘Trade’ order to buy and sell mounts in a manner similar to the Storehouse. You must front the bill, but anything you sell from your Stable goes for 20% more than you paid. This increases to 50% at level 13 and 100% at level 17. You can also enlarge your Stable by spending 2,000 GP to give it room for six large animals.

Also like the Storehouse, the Stable seems like a fiddly way to make money. The Stable, at least, has the added bonus that you can easily procure mounts for your adventuring party. It still remains pretty low on our priority list, though.

Teleportation Circle

When you issue a ‘Recruit’ order to your Teleportation Circle, there’s a 50% chance that a friendly Wizard will appear and cast a spell for you. At level nine, this spell can be up to level four. This increases to level 8 once you’ve reached level 17. If the spell you wish to cast has a material component that costs money, you must pay for it before the spell is cast.

Any spellcaster summoned this way will hang out in your Bastion for 14 days or until they cast a spell for you. They’ll also leave immediately if your Bastion is attacked.

This is an excellent resource for utility spells such as Remove Curse, Divination, Sending, and so on. It’s less useful for spells with a limited duration or an instantaneous control or damage effect – we expect that most adventures won’t be taking place right outside your Bastion, so even a 10-minute duration might be pushing it. Plus, the 50% fail rate of this means we’ve ranked it lower than some more consistent facilities.

Theater

Using the ‘Empower’ order in your Theater means that your hirelings will put on a theatrical event. Preparation takes 14 days, and the performances last for at least seven days.

You and any other party member can contribute to this performance as a composer/writer, conductor/director, or a performer. Composers and performers must be present for the 14 days of rehearsal, and performers must star in at least one of the performances. Conductors need to be present for the entire production.

After rehearsals are over, everyone who contributed to the production makes a DC 15 Performance check. If there are more successes than failures, everyone who contributed gains a Theater die. This is essentially a Bardic Inspiration die that can be added to a D20 test after the performance. It’s a d6 at first, and it changes to a d8 at level 13 and a d10 at level 17.

Spending almost an entire month in your Bastion to gain a handful of Bardic Inspiration dice doesn’t feel like a huge return on investment. It’s nice to have, but we can’t help feeling that crafting usable items would be a better use of our facilities.

Training Area

Each Training Area in your Bastion has one type of trainer, each of which offers a different effect when you issue the ‘Empower’ order:

If you issue the Empower order and spend eight hours training for seven days, you gain the effect above tied to your facility’s trainer. The benefit lasts for seven days.

This is one of the few facilities that offers serious benefits to martial characters rather than spellcasters. Its effects may only be temporary, but they’re pretty darn handy.

Trophy Room

When you issue the ‘Research’ order to a Trophy Room, you can choose to research lore or source a trinket. The first of these commands your hirelings to spend seven days investigating a legend, creature, or famous object. After that time, they’ll have three new, accurate pieces of information to share with you.

Sourcing a trinket also takes seven days, but after this period you roll a die. On an odd number, the hirelings don’t find anything useful. An even result means that your hirelings find a common magic item from the Implements category – you roll a d100 to see which of these items you gain.

Sourcing information and a common trinket (whose usefulness you have no control over) seems like a pretty poor trade-off for a level-nine facility. Sure, you gain information and an item for free, but you could also roll for no trinket at all.

Archive

If you issue a ‘Research’ order to your Archive, you can instruct its hirelings to spend seven days researching. Mechanically, this works the same as if you had cast the Legend Lore spell.

Your Archive also contains a copy of one of the following books (or an alternative agreed with your GM):

• Bigby’s Handy Arcana Codex – You have advantage on Arcana checks to recall lore about spells, magic items, eldritch symbols, magic traditions, and planes
• The Chronepsis Chronicles – You have advantage on History checks to recall lore about historical events, legendary people, ancient kingdoms, wars, and lost civilizations
• Investigations of the Inquisitive – You have advantage on Investigation checks to recall lore about traps, ciphers, riddles, and gadgets
• Material Musings on the Nature of the World – You have advantage on Nature checks to recall lore about terrain, plants, animals, and weather
• The Old Faith and Other Religions – You have advantage on Religion checks to recall lore about deitiies, rites, prayers, holy symbols, hierarchies, and secret cults

If you spend 2,000 GP to enlarge the facility, you can add two extra reference books. Advantage on Intelligence-based rules is pretty neat, but these are some of our least-used DnD skills overall.

Meditation Chamber

Using the ‘Empower’ order has two effects on your Meditation Chamber. The first is that you can roll twice for your next Bastion Event and choose your preferred result. The second is that, if you meditate in the facility for seven days without leaving, you gain advantage on two random saving throws for the next seven days.

There’s always a chance that you’ll roll a dud and have advantage on something unlikely to help, such as Intelligence saving throws. However, the results of a lucky roll can have a staggering impact. Improved Wisdom, Dexterity, and Constitution saves? Yes, please.

Menagerie

A Menagerie can hold up to four Large creatures (with four Small or Medium creatures equaling one Large). If you issue the ‘Recruit’ order, your hirelings will spend seven days sourcing a new creature for the Menagerie. You must pay the cost listed.

The DM’s Guide lists 13 possible creatures for your Menagerie, ranging from a 50 GP Hyena to a 3,500 GP Owlbear. Your DM might also allow other creatures, with their price depending on their Challenge Rating.

Creatures in the Menagerie can count as Bastion Defenders if you choose, but otherwise they act in accordance with their nature. It’s not clear how far their allegiance to you extends, but it doesn’t sound like you can command your animal friends to do too much on your behalf – so we’re not entirely sure what the Menagerie is for.

Observatory

If you take a long rest in your Observatory, you gain a charm that lets you cast Contact Other Plane once in the next seven days, without the need for a spell slot. You can also issue an ‘Empower’ order to command your hirelings to explore the stars for seven nights.

After that time, you roll a die. If the result is odd, you or another creature gain one of the following charms:

• Charm of Darkvision
• Charm of Heroism
• Charm of Vitality

Each of these would be a nice free benefit, but there’s still that pesky 50% chance that you’ll end up with nothing. This stops the Observatory from being a major showstopper.

Pub

A pub (or coffee shop, or tea room – flavor it however you like) can be used to gather information with a ‘Research’ order. Hirelings in the pub will spend seven days gathering information on important events happening within 10 miles of your Bastion. They’ll even be able to tell you the location of any familiar creature within 50 miles that isn’t hidden by magic.

Additionally, a Pub serves one magical beverage, with a unique effect that lasts for 24 hours:

• Bigby’s Burden – “Enlarge” effect of Enlarge/Reduce spell
• Kiss of the Spider Queen – Effect of a Spider Climb spell
• Moonlight Serenade – 60 feet of Darkvision (or extra Darkvision)
• Positive Reinforcement – Resistance to necrotic damage
• Sterner Stuff – Automatic successes on saves against being frightened

If you spend 2,000 GP to expand your Pub, you can have two of these beverages on tap. With the right DnD character build, some of these drinks could be genuinely useful – imagine a Goliath DnD 2024 Barbarian that’s even bigger, for example.

Reliquary

If you take a long rest in your Reliquary, you gain a charm that lets you cast Greater Restoration without a spell slot or material components, which can be done once in the following seven days. You can also issue a ‘Harvest’ order to prepare a free talisman that replaces any one material component with a cost of 1,000 GP or less.

If your DnD spell would normally consume that component, the talisman isn’t consumed. Instead, you must return to your Reliquary and issue another Harvest order before you can use it again.

We’re a big fan of this facility, as we’ve been in plenty of scenarios where we can’t source a diamond for our Revivify spells. Resurrection, Scrying, Raise Dead, Summon Celestial, Heroes’ Feast, Plane Shift, and Hallow are all on the table, too. You only get limited free uses (depending on how often you can visit your Bastion), but it’s still a lovely bit of value for Clerics and Druids.

Demiplane

As the name implies, this facility adds a Demiplane to your Bastion, with a door to it appearing in another facility of your choice. When inside this Demiplane, you can use an action to create a free, non-magical item that’s no bigger than five feet and worth no more than 5 GP, provided it’s made of wood, stone, clay, porcelain, glass, paper, non-precious crystal, or non-precious metal.

You can also issue the ‘Empower’ order to gain temporary hit points equal to five times your level after spending a long rest in the Demiplane. That’s a minimum of 85 temporary HP, which is nothing to be sniffed at.

Guildhall

Your Guildhall comes with about 50 members from nearby settlements. When you issue a ‘Recruit’ order to this facility, your Guild Members will carry out a particular task, depending on what kind of Guild you’ve created:

A Guildhall opens up huge roleplay opportunities for a character. It can be a neat way to source a bit of income, some information, or a key campaign item.

Sanctum

If you long rest in your Sanctum, you gain a charm that lets you cast Heal without a spell slot once in the next seven days. You also always have Word of Recall prepared, and you can choose your Sanctum as the destination of the spell. One creature that reaches your Sanctum via the spell gains the benefit of Heal immediately.

Issuing an ‘Empower’ order to your Sanctum prompts your hirelings to perform a ritual. The target of this ritual (you or another character) gains temporary HP equal to your level any time they finish a long rest. This lasts for seven days. A week’s worth of HP (minimum 85) sounds like an excellent deal to us, along with the other benefits of the Sanctum.

War Room

A War Room comes with two lieutenants that use the Veteran Warrior stat block from the Monster Manual. You can gain extra Lieutenants by issuing a ‘Recruit’ order. While they aren’t Bastion Defenders, each Lieutenant reduces by one the number of dice you roll to calculate how many Defenders were lost in an attack on your Bastion.

More excitingly, the ‘Recruit’ order can also be used to amass an army. For each Lieutenant you have, you can summon one hundred Guards (or 20 mounted on Riding Horses). It costs one gold piece a day to feed each guard and horse, but you can send them into battle on your behalf. You can’t issue another Recruit order until your current army is destroyed or disbanded.

We’ve knocked this capstone facility down a rank for one reason – mass combat rules. Dungeons and Dragons isn’t known for handling battles with huge numbers of participants super well, so while the War Room offers a fun and explosive ability, it could cause some serious headaches for your player group.

Losing a DnD Bastion

There are only three ways that a Bastion can be destroyed:

• You can choose to give it up at any time
• If you issue no orders for a number of Bastion turns equal to your character level, the Bastion is abandoned
• If you draw the Ruin card from the Deck of Many Things, the Bastion is instantly destroyed

For more on the new book, check out our full 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide review. We can also tell you more about the core rules in our 2024 Player’s Handbook review.

Source: Wargamer