A whole chapter of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide is dedicated to Bastions, a new system where players can build their own base of operations and run it with the help of hirelings. Whether your player characters are clearing out an ancient fortress so they can move in, renovating an old wizard’s tower, or pitching in to buy a tavern together, they’ll find countless possibilities for customizing their stronghold.

Let’s take a peek through the window of the new rules for Bastions in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide!

• What Is a Bastion?
• Acquiring a Bastion
• Building and Renovating a Bastion
• Bastion Hirelings
• Bastion Turns

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is Now Available

Prep your adventures with invaluable tools and expert advice in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide! Encompassing 400+ magic items, new rules for Bastions, a Greyhawk campaign setting, and more, this trove of tools will help you weave epic tales for your table and save you time on your prep.

If you want all three core rulebooks, you can save $60, get exclusive digital bonuses, and immediately access the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide and 2024 Player's Handbook when you pre-order the Digital & Physical Core Rulebook Bundle.

What Is a Bastion?

Artist: Noor Rahman

A Bastion can be any structure that a character could use as a base of operations, and it doesn’t have to be your typical fortified castle—the possibilities are endless. A Fighter may turn an abandoned barracks into their Bastion, whereas a Rogue may opt for an underground cellar connected to the sewer. Or they can join them together and control their own portion of the Bastion.

A character’s Bastion is more than just a place for them to call home, set down their swords and staffs, and kick back. It offers a selection of mechanical benefits based on what special facilities your players choose to construct.

For example, spending a Long Rest in your Arcane Study grants a magical Charm that allows you to cast Identify without expending a spell slot or using Material components. This Charm lasts 7 days or until you use it. You can also get your hireling to craft various arcane tools such as blank books to use as spellbooks, an Arcane Focus, or even Common and Uncommon magic items if you’re a high enough level. On the other hand, the Greenhouse allows characters level 9 or higher with a green thumb to grow various magically infused plants that have healing and restorative powers or even farm dangerous poisons.

Each special facility has its own features and functions, granting anything from magical enchantments to special items and services.

Benefits of a Bastion

A Bastion offers a plethora of mechanical and roleplay benefits. In addition to each special facility’s various mechanical perks, the Bastion allows players to create their own home base for their adventures. This can be a great way to anchor them to a town, city, or some other important location and give them breathing room to set down roots and engage with the world around them.

This, in turn, creates a location that is safe and secure, opening up the possibility for more roleplay without the threat of encroaching foes. The ability to expand and modify a Bastion also gives the players the opportunity to express themselves by making a permanent mark on the world, both through the various modular options a Bastion has, as well as the description of the base and how they flavor its appearance and the personalities of the various hirelings that live and work there.

Acquiring a Bastion

The rules for Bastions assume each character will receive one once they reach level 5, although it is possible to award one later. Bastions can be acquired individually or combined into a single structure. Below are four examples of ways your players' characters can gain a Bastion:

• Reward: A Bastion can be awarded to a character as a reward for successfully completing a mission or quest or for entering into an agreement with a powerful patron.
• Built: Players can elect to build their own Bastion from scratch. This should usually be initiated at an earlier level, so it’s ready to go when their characters hit level 5.
• Captured: You can present a Bastion as a secondary benefit if you have an enemy force occupying a location that a character can claim for themselves once they’re victorious.
• Rebuilt: Rebuilding a Bastion combines the three previous options and allows the player to turn a less-than-typical location into a stronghold of their own making.

Combining Bastions

Bastions are awarded and expanded on a per-character basis. Each character can maintain their own Bastion, giving the party a network of safe houses and strongholds that they move between, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Players can choose to combine their characters' Bastions into a single structure.

Combining Bastions doesn’t share resources or change how a Bastion works in terms of issuing orders or controlling hirelings; each Bastion functions as if it were completely separate. However, combining Bastions does change how Bastion Defenders work during Bastion events as part of Bastion turns, allowing one character to commit their resources to assist in defending another character's Bastion.

Building and Renovating a Bastion

Artist: Noor Rahman

When a character acquires a Bastion at level 5, they can decide its initial layout, including what basic facilities and special facilities it contains. Their Bastion starts with two basic facilities, one Cramped and the other Roomy, and two special facilities for which the character qualifies. Characters can build more basic facilities by spending gold and time, whereas special facilities are gained when characters reach certain levels.

Facility Space

There are three facility space sizes: Cramped, Roomy, and Vast. Each type of facility space has a maximum area described in 5-foot squares: a Cramped space has a maximum area of 4 squares, Roomy has a maximum of 16 squares, and Vast has a maximum space of 36 squares.

These squares can be spread across multiple floors of a building.

When adding a basic facility, Cramped, Roomy, or Vast facility spaces each have an associated cost and time requirement. You can also enlarge your Cramped and Roomy basic facilities by spending gold and time.

Special Facilities

Special facilities are a type of facility within your Bastion that provides a direct mechanical benefit. This could be anything from allowing you to craft magic items to researching a location or historical event. Unlike basic facilities, special facilities do not cost gold or time to construct and are available immediately once you reach the appropriate level. When a character creates a Bastion at level 5, they get two special facilities immediately. They then acquire another two at level 9 and one more at levels 13 and 17.

While special facilities do not require time and gold to construct, they do have a minimum character level, and some have more specific requirements. For example, a Reliquary is a level 13 Bastion facility that requires the character who owns the Bastion to be able to use a Holy Symbol or Druidic Focus as a Spellcasting Focus.

Each special facility also has a default space. Some special facilities can be enlarged to increase their offerings.

Whenever a character gains a level, they can replace one of their Bastion’s special facilities with another that the character qualifies for.

Special Facility Rewards

Each special facility specifies an order that you can give to the facility’s hirelings during your Bastion turns.

When a character is present in their Bastion or can communicate with their hirelings in some capacity, they can issue an order to a special facility. These orders can yield various benefits depending on the facility in question. Some special facilities confer additional benefits that don’t require an order to be issued.

Here are three special facilities from the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide and the rewards you can gain from using or issuing orders to them:

Demiplane (Level 17). When you issue the Empower order to this special facility, you activate the Arcane Resilience empowerment for 7 days. If you spend a Long Rest in the Demiplane while the empowerment is active, you gain Temporary Hit Points equal to five times your level. The Demiplane also gives you access to the Fabrication benefit. This ability allows you to use the Magic action to create a nonmagical object out of nothingness. This object can’t be bigger than 5 feet in any dimension, can’t have a value over 5 GP, and must be made from certain mundane materials.

Meditation Chamber (Level 13). Issuing the Empower order to your Meditation Chamber gives your hirelings the Inner Peace empowerment. This boon allows you to roll twice for your next Bastion event and choose which result you want. Additionally, you gain access to the Fortify Self benefit. To use this benefit, you must perform 7 days of continuous meditation in your Meditation Chamber. Completing this time without leaving the Meditation Chamber grants you Advantage on two different saving throws, determined at random upon completing your meditation, for the next 7 days.

Pub (Level 13). With the Research order issued to your Pub—whether it’s a tavern, inn, or coffee house —you task your hirelings with Information Gathering. Your bartender (or barista) acts as a spymaster and collects information for you on any important events happening within 10 miles for the next 7 days, as well as the location and movements of any familiar creature within 50 miles (provided they aren’t hidden by magic or confined to an area inaccessible to spies). If spycraft isn’t what you’re looking for, why not try another kind of craft? You can partake of your Pub’s Pub Special benefit. This magical beverage on tap grants a magical effect, such as the “enlarge” effect of the Enlarge/Reduce spell or Darkvision out to (or extended by) 60 feet for 24 hours. You can change which Pub Special you have on tap every 7 days and expanding your Pub to a Vast facility grants you two Pub Special options instead of one.

It should be noted that basic facilities don’t provide any mechanical benefits, so you can’t issue orders to them. But this doesn’t mean they’re without value. Having a bedroom where your character retires after a long, arduous adventure, or a parlor where they entertain an emissary of the villain in barbed banter and cutting wit can provide wonderful opportunities for roleplay and immersion.

Mapping Out a Bastion

A sample Bastion built using Project Sigil, which is currently in development.

As the players build out their Bastions, you can encourage them to design their own map or make a map for them, using the maximum area the room occupies as a guideline. Because Bastions describe the size of facilities using 5-foot squares, mapping one out is quite intuitive.

Above is an example of a simple Bastion your characters could discover, built using Project Sigil. Each basic facility within the Bastion has its own associated cost. This example would cost 6,500 GP if built from scratch. The example also provides four special facilities: an Arcane Study, a Barracks, a Pub, and a Teleportation Circle, making it appropriate for a level 9 adventurer.

Map Your Bastion in Project Sigil

Project Sigil is an immersive 3D sandbox that allows you to design and run games in stunning set pieces. This software is perfect for building Bastions that can in turn be used for exploration, social interaction, or even encounters! Sign up to be part of Project Sigil's closed Beta coming Fall 2024!

Bastion Hirelings

While having an impenetrable stronghold or the twisting spire of a Wizard’s tower might be an impressive sight to behold, a Bastion is no good without the staff to run it. The characters can’t be stuck at home all the time doing housekeeping, so that’s where hirelings come in.

How Your Hirelings Work

Each time a character constructs a special facility, it comes with a number of trained hirelings. These nonplayer characters work in the facility and execute any orders they’re issued by the character who owns the facility. It’s assumed each special facility generates enough income to pay the hirelings who work there, so you don’t have to worry about payroll!

Bringing Your Hirelings to Life

Players are encouraged to give names to the various hirelings loyal to their character and even bring them to life with personalities and backstories. Chapter 3 of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide includes tools for creating NPCs that can be used for this purpose.

Hirelings can be tracked on the Bastion Tracker sheet included in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. You could also build your Bastion in Project Sigil when it releases in closed Beta this Fall or upload its floorplan to D&D Beyond's Maps tool to move your hireling's tokens around in real time!

Stalwart Defenders

During Bastion turns, your Bastion can come under attack as the result of a Bastion event. This is where Bastion Defenders come in. Some special facilities provide Bastion Defenders who can defend against hostile forces. You can also use the Recruit order to gather more Bastion Defenders if a special facility provides access to the order.

In the event of an attack on your Bastion, a number of d6s are rolled. For each die that rolls a 1, your Bastion loses that many Bastion Defenders. If you don’t have any Bastion Defenders or lose them all in an attack, a random special facility is shut down for your next Bastion turn.

This is why it can be beneficial to combine Bastions, allowing other characters’ Bastion Defenders to protect your special facilities.

Bastion Turns

Artist: Noor Rahman

Once your players have their Bastion up and running, they can start taking Bastion turns. A Bastion turn is where the characters manage what is happening at the Bastion either while they’re out adventuring or between adventures. On a Bastion turn, each character can issue one or more orders to their special facilities or their Bastion as a whole.

Typically, a Bastion turn happens once every 7 in-game days and can be played out regardless of whether the characters are in their Bastion or out adventuring. One or more Bastion turns can be taken in various ways:

Bastion Orders

There are seven different types of orders that can be issued to a special facility, and what orders can be issued will depend on the facility in question. The orders are Craft, Empower, Harvest, Maintain, Recruit, Research, and Trade. Maintain is a special order that is issued by a character to their entire Bastion, typically when their character isn’t actually present at the Bastion. When a Maintain order is issued by a character, the DM rolls for a Bastion event.

Bastion Events

Bastion events are represented by a table of random events that range from a hostile force attacking to a magical discovery. Because these events are typically resolved when a character is away from their Bastion, it presents a fantastic roleplay opportunity for the players to take on the roles of the various hirelings that run their Bastion.

This can be done as a one-shot adventure, a cut scene-type event, or a roleplay discussion between the players and DM, deciding the outcome and consequences of the event. Some of these events can even create hooks for side quests and further adventures.

Request for Aid

Your Bastion is called on to help a local leader. Perhaps there’s a search on for a missing person, or brigands are plaguing the area. If you help, you must dispatch one or more Bastion Defenders. Roll 1d6 for each Bastion Defender you send. If the total is 10 or higher, the problem is solved and you earn a reward of 1d6 x 100 GP. If the total is less than 10, the problem is still solved, but the reward is halved and one of your Bastion Defenders is killed. Remove that Bastion Defender from your Bastion Roster.

Home Is Where the Bastion Is

Using the Bastions chapter in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, you can give your players the tools they need to build the home base of their dreams. The Bastions system can seamlessly integrate into almost any campaign, thereby opening opportunities for roleplay, mechanical benefits, and gameplay.

Combined with the selection of tools available in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, DMs can bring a new level of immersion and depth to their games. Pick up the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide now to start building your Bastion.

Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including his daughter Willow (well, one day). The three of them live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in south of England.