I am so grateful for the positive responses to the last two posts in this series that I’m continuing without delay, before the deadline doom of the next few months eats my head again. Let’s see how many of these I can get through.
Improving Bastions | Updated Special Facilities pt 1 | Updated Special Facilities pt 2
Workshop
Bastion Facility
Prerequisite: None
Space: Roomy or Vast
Hirelings: 3
Order: Maintain (Roomy 1d6, Vast 2d6), Craft, Research
The Workshop is a space for design and construction of useful goods and objets d’art. The first time you build a Workshop, you receive one Common magic item formula and one Uncommon magic item formula.
Artisan’s Tools. The Workshop is stocked with five types of Artisan’s Tools (Roomy) or eight types (Vast), not including Smith’s Tools.
Craft Options
Adventuring Gear. The facility’s hirelings produce anything on the Adventuring Gear list that can be made with the Workshop’s Artisan’s Tools.
Magic Items. If you have a formula for a magical version of an item on the Adventuring Gear list, you can make a Common item for 20 BP, an Uncommon item for 50 BP, or a Rare item for 100 BP.
Research Options
Magic Item Formula.You can spend 10 BP to develop a formula for a Common item of a type that your Workshop’s Artisan’s Tools can produce, or 25 BP to develop a formula for an Uncommon item. Formulas are not consumed when used. If you have a Smithy, you can research formulas for Weapon, Armor, and Shield magic items at the same BP cost.
Upgrades
As part of a Vast special facility, you can combine a Workshop with an Armory, Barracks, or a Smithy. The combined special facilities count as only one special facility for the number you can have in your Bastion.
If you have a Library or an Archive, you can spend 50 BP to develop a formula for a Rare item of a type that your Workshop’s Artisan’s Tools can produce. If you have at least two of an Arcane Study, Archive, Library, Sacristy, or Sanctum, you can spend 100 BP to develop a formula for a Very Rare item of a type your Workshop’s Artisan’s Tools can produce.
Gaming Hall
Bastion Facility
Prerequisite: None
Space: Roomy or Vast
Hirelings: 4
Order: Maintain (1d4), Trade
A Gaming Hall offers your Bastion a center of social activity for games and entertaining guests. A Roomy facility can entertain up to six guests at a time, while a Vast facility can entertain dozens of guests.
Trade: Gambling Hall. When you issue the Trade order to this special facility, the Gaming Hall hosts guests for higher-stakes games for seven days. At the end of the seventh day, roll d100 and consult the following table. The table’s negative values refer to the Trade: Information action, below.
Below -25: Loss of 5d6 x 10 GP
-25-01: Loss of 2d6 x 10 GP
01-25: Gain 1d6 x 10 GP
26-50: Gain 3d6 x 10 GP
51-70: Gain 6d6 x 10 GP
71-95: Gain 10d6 x 10 GP, or gain no money and receive 10 BP in the form of debts owed to you.
96-100: Gain 15d6 x 10 GP, or gain no money and receive 15 BP in the form of debts owed to you.
Trade: Information. This option can be combined with the Trade: Gambling Hall option above, or you can spend BP directly.
- Take a -20 penalty to your Gambling Hall d100 roll, or expend 10 BP, to learn 1d4 common rumors and 1 uncommon rumor.
- Take a -50 penalty to your Gambling Hall d100 roll, or expend 25 BP, to learn 1d4 common rumors, 1d4 uncommon rumors, and 1 rare rumor. The rare rumor is always true and is highly valuable or sensitive information.
- GM tip: Untrue rumors often add less to the game than one might hope. Consider making all rumors true, but some of them come from an unusual perspective.
Upgrade
You can upgrade the Gaming Hall to Vast and refurbish its décor to attract a higher-class clientele. This costs 4,000 GP and grants a permanent +20 bonus to your d100 rolls for the Gambling Hall.
Laboratory
Bastion Facility
Prerequisite: None
Space: Roomy
Hirelings: 1
Order: Maintain (1d4), Craft, Research
A Laboratory contains an expanded set of alchemist’s supplies. The first time you build a Laboratory, you receive one Common potion formula and one Uncommon potion formula.
Craft Options
Craft: Alchemist’s Supplies. The Laboratory hireling crafts anything that can be made with Alchemical Supplies.
Healing Tinctures. You can expend 25 BP to create a Potion of Healing (Greater). If you also have a Greenhouse, you can create a Potion of Superior Healing for 50 BP.
Other Potions. If you have a formula, you can create a Common potion for 10 BP and an Uncommon potion for 25 BP. If you also have a Greenhouse and a formula, you can create a Rare potion for 50 BP.
Research Options
Reverse Engineer. You can expend one dose of a potion to create a formula for that potion. This costs 0 BP for Common or Uncommon potions, 10 BP for Rare potions, 25 BP for Very Rare potions, and 50 BP for Legendary potions.
Upgrade
By expanding this facility to Vast and adding 2 additional hirelings, you can create Very Rare potions from a formula for 100 BP and Legendary potions for 150 BP.
Sacristy
Bastion Facility
Prerequisite: None
Space: Roomy
Hirelings: 1
Order: Maintain (1d4), Craft, Empower
A Sacristy stores religious vestments and sacred items.
Craft Options
Craft: Holy Water.You direct your hireling to craft a flask of Holy Water. For every 3 Bastion Points you expend on this crafting (up to 15 BP) the damage dealt by the Holy Water increases by 1d8.
Craft: Magic Item (Relic). You direct your hireling to craft a magic item from the Relics table for which you have a formula. You can choose a Common item for 10 BP or an Uncommon item for 25 BP. If you also have a Sanctuary, you can choose a Rare item for 50 BP.
Empower: Veneration of Relics. Prayer and contemplation in the presence of holy relics of the faith grants spiritual favor. Choose one of the following spells: Ceremony, Divine Favor, Sanctuary, Shield of Faith. You can cast the chosen spell once without expending a spell slot. You lose the use of this spell if you use this Empower action again.
Upgrade
If you permanently add two Uncommon Relic magic items or one Rare Relic magic item to your Sacristy, so that the items can’t be used without dismantling this special facility, you can craft a Rare Relic magic item here for 50 BP, or a Very Rare Relic magic item for 100 BP.
Scriptorium
Bastion Facility
Prerequisite: None
Space: Roomy
Hirelings: 2
Order: Maintain (1d6), Craft
A Scriptorium is stocked and organized to make manuscript creation and duplication and bookbinding easier. When you use a different special facility to make a book or scroll, reduce the Bastion Point cost by 25%.
Craft Options
Craft: Book Replica. You can expend 10 BP to direct your hirelings to copy a book in your possession. The book can’t be magical or a wizard’s spellbook.
Craft: Grimoire. You can expend 10 BP x the highest-level spell in the book, plus 100 GP x the highest-level spell in the book, to direct your hirelings to copy a wizard’s spellbook that is in your possession.
Craft: Spell Scroll. You can create a spell scroll of a spell of level 3 or below that you have prepared. This costs 10 BP for a level 1 spell, 20 BP for a level 2 spell, or 30 BP for a level 3 spell. For each of the following that your Bastion includes, increase the maximum spell level of a scroll you can create here by 2: Arcane Study, Archive, Library. Level 4 spells cost 40 BP, level 5 spells cost 50 BP, level 6 spells cost 75 BP, level 7 spells cost 100 BP, level 8 spells cost 125 BP, and level 9 spells cost 150 BP.
Upgrade
If you expand the Scriptorium to Vast and maintain 2 additional hirelings, you can make two choices from the Craft Options list as part of a single Craft action. You pay BP and GP costs for each item separately.
Design Notes
Thirteen down, sixteen to go. Though I might wind up cutting some of the special facilities, because my approach to the Sacristy makes the Reliquary redundant on a narrative level, if not a mechanical one, and I’m not wild about the Reliquary’s mechanical side. I’m not sure the Menagerie accomplishes enough on a mechanical level, and I won’t feel any sense of loss in cutting it completely. I haven’t figured out what I think about the new special facilities described in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer.
I hope you’re still enjoying this series!
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These all look like decent updates to the existing rules.
The Adventuring Gear option of the Workshop does make me wonder if there is any gear on the list that can’t be produced from the existing list of Artisan’s Tools, which is not a criticism or anything, just a thought that struck me while reading.
I really like the idea and story for the Gaming Hall, but I feel like out of all the different facilities, this is the one that should have a definite possibility of a bad outcome for using its main feature. Either the loss of gold or, at the very low end, the loss of BP. While I appreciate the option to upgrade the facility, a bonus that removes most of the possibility of a negative outcome seems boring. Maybe the upgrade just triples all the rewards/losses for the Gambling Hall roll. I dunno, it just seems to me that there should be an element of risk for gambling, and that going bigger with the risk should increase both the potential reward and the potential penalty.
I am not sure why you separated out the Healing Tinctures action from the Other Potions action. The various Potions of Healing cost the same amount in BP for their rarity using either action. I would not be opposed to allowing Healing Tinctures to cut the BP cost of PoH by 5 or 10, depending on rarity. Making healing magic easier to access is good for everyone. I quite like Reverse Engineer as a way to gain new formulas.
I really like the Sacristy and its Craft: Holy Water action. A way to juice up holy water is really nice. This facility did lead me down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what qualifies as a “Relic” in 5e24. I assume you are using the random treasure tables in the DMG as the Relics List. On the one hand, I like this approach because it creates a wide variety of things that might be considered relics. On the other hand, using that list for this facility and not using the Implements list for the Arcane Study feels weird. I do love the idea of permanently using relics to upgrade the facility, though. That should probably be something that more than one facility can do.
The Scriptorium is great, my only note would be about refining the number of BP necessary to make each level of scroll, but I think you had previously said that the BP currency was not set in stone yet. You also need a cost for Cantrip scrolls.
I hope you don’t eliminate the Menagerie from the list. My players started a zoo on their airship as soon as I suggested that it might be possible. They currently don’t get any mechanical benefit from it, and they spent 5,000 gp to retrofit a whole section of the ship (it’s quite a large ship) to magically generate the proper environment for their pets.
I didn’t review the list of Adventuring Gear, tbh, I just carried over the concept from the DMG’s Bastion rules.
I think I generally agree with you about the Gaming Hall being more interesting if it keeps a sense of risk. I expect I’ll adopt your suggestion in a future draft.
The distinction for Healing Tinctures is that there’s no formula required for them – that formula is functionally free and automatic.
The intensified Holy Water comes from the DMG’s version of the Sacristy – it just costs extra GP rather than BP. (I don’t want to take more credit for the idea than I should.) The Arcane Study doesn’t use Implements the way this uses Relics because I didn’t have that idea that the time of writing. 😉 I can’t emphasize enough, this is all first-draft-worst-draft so that I can start having the ideas. And I also like expending magic items to improve your Bastion, as a whole idea.
Right, getting BP math hashed out comes later. One of the people in my gaming group has done some spreadsheet analysis for this and shown me where I need to make some significant changes.
My objection to the Menagerie is mainly in the functions it offers the Bastion in the DMG. “A Barracks… but what gets killed when your Bastion is attacked is your pets” is a terrible concept, to me. If I have an idea that accomplishes something completely different, then I’ll run with that.
Thank you so much for the feedback!
I will be honest, after I determined that I wasn’t going to like the Bastion system as written in the DMG, I only gave it the most cursory of readings, so I likely missed details like the holy water upgrade. Good on you for keeping them.
Maybe the Laboratory or and alchemist supplies-focused Workshop should do something similar for alchemist’s fire or acid?
I agree that the Menagerie’s function in the base system is a bad concept. I was thinking that something more along the lines of a historical Menagerie would work better. It is a status symbol that brings in resources through noble/scholarly tourism, probably represented by BP. Maybe it provides some bonus to various knowledge checks based on the creature types that you keep in the Menagerie. Upgraded forms could give better bonuses or contain more creature types. The other idea that I thought of was using it as the mechanism by which the party can train whatever creatures they have adopted, either just to domesticate them or to make them useful adventuring companions.
Working on this has made me take another close read of the Bastion system. There are good ideas to salvage from it, even if it doesn’t come together into something good on its own. =)
I like that idea for the Laboratory/Workshop a lot!
That concept for the Menagerie – turning the Bastion into an attraction – is similar to what I’m really trying to say with the Gaming Hall. I’ll see if I can do something with that. Thanks!
My thought with the Menagerie is that it could function as the Druid/Ranger equivalent to the Arcane Study/Sacristy.
An Empower move could grant an extra use of Wild Shape, or the ability to switch out your Companion (or empower a companion/familiar in some way)
It could have a Research move that brings information about animals related to the ones held in the Menagerie.
It could have a Craft or Trade move that uses or sells items made from the castoff parts of the animals (wool, antlers, excretions, venom, etc)
Cool ideas! Thank you!
Just brainstorming here of course, some of those options would probably take a lot more word count and thought time than others.