The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide forDungeons & Dragonsincludes a new feature for players called bastions. These places can be unlocked at level five and work as bases of operations for players who want them, giving them a place to stay between adventures and a source of useful items or enchantments.
Players make Bastions their own, and the facilities they choose will shape how they use them. You get special facilities when you first unlock your bastion and then again at levels nine, 13, and 17, but you’ll need to know which facilities shine above the others if you want your hideout to be the best it can be.
9Arcane Study
Level Five Facility For Characters With An Arcane Focus
The useful facilities at level five will highly depend on the type of campaign and character you are playing, but you should always pay attention to facilities with a requirement. The arcane study might not seem like much at first glance, but it can be surprisingly useful if your adventures happen near your bastion, since you can gain free uses of Identify when long resting there.
The real use of this facility comes at level nine, since it lets you issue a crafting order to makea common or uncommon magic item. This opens up your build strategies significantly, since you may scour any sources allowed by the DM to create niche items to aid you in future strategies.
8Barrack
Level Five Facility That Protects Your Bastion
Sometimes, a bastion event can lead to your base of operations being attacked, destroying one of your facilities temporarily. To avoid this, you’ll need a barrack, a facility that can house up to 12 defenders to protect your bastion from any outside assailants.
Since players can join their bastions as one, you can have one player focus on defense while the other focuses on research or resources. If you are building a bastion that focuses solely on protection, then you should combine the barracks with the armory, letting you better prepare your defenders for the perils ahead.
7Library And Trophy Room
Level Five And Level Nine Facilities That Serve Similar Purposes
If you are playing a campaign filled withmystery and intrigue, having a library can be very useful. You can have your hireling research a topic for you, and in seven days, they will have found out three pieces of knowledge you didn’t previously know, no roll needed.
Information is power, after all, but once you hit level nine, you should consider replacing the library with a trophy room. It does pretty much the same thing, but you may also use the facility to gain a random common implement for free, like a potion of healing or a mystery key.
6Greenhouse
Level Nine Facility That Offers Useful Plants
The greenhouse might seem like somethingrangers or similar characterswould want for roleplay purposes, but it is actually a place that can be of use to everyone. For starters, if you are in your bastion, you can consume a magical fruit from your greenhouse that works like the Lesser Restoration spell once per day.
The real use comes from the harvest option, since your hireling can craft a greater potion of healing or some form of poison after seven days of work. The poisons, in particular, can be very useful, like a blinding powder for combat or a truth serum for your interrogations.
5Teleportation Circle
Level Nine Facility That Offers A Quick Way Back
An important part of having a bastion is being able to go back to it, and having a permanent Teleportation Circle in it is an easy way to do so. Even if your party isn’t joining their bastions, they are all likely near one another, so only one bastion needs to have the Teleportation Circle for everyone to benefit.
Now, as a level nine facility, this area of your bastion offers another neat service. You have a chance of inviting a friendly spellcaster that can cast a wizard spell for you (up to level four, or eight if you are a level 17 character), letting you hatch plans revolving around Polymorph even when you don’t have a wizard in your party.
4Meditation Chamber
Level 13 Facility That Prevents Danger
The best way to defend your bastion is to have nothing bad happen to it, to begin with. The meditation chamber offers a chance of just that, since it allows you to have your hirelings meditate, letting you roll twice on bastion events and choosing whatever result you want.
If your character has some downtime for whatever reason, spending seven days meditating gives you advantage on two kinds of saving throws for a week, so even when you are not playing, your character is getting ready for the challenges ahead.
3Pub
Level 13 Facility For Players That Want Control
If your adventures take you to places far away from your bastion, the pub is largely useless, but it becomes crucial in campaigns happening within a single city. The pub’s research ability sends spies that make you aware of everything happening in a ten-mile radius of your bastion, making it the perfect safe space in a corrupt city filled with backstabbing politicians.
Now, since it is a pub, you’re able to also serve drinks in it, all of them magical. You can benefit from these magical beverages, gaining varied effects like spider climb, darkvision, or a near immunity from the frightened condition.
2Sanctuary, Reliquary, And Sanctum
Level Five, 13, And 17 Facilities For Religious Characters
Characters that can use either a holy symbol or a druidic focus get access to these religious facilities that offer very similar benefits but at vastly different levels of play. You could have all three of these facilities in your bastion, but we recommend swapping one for the other once you are high enough level to do so.
Below, you’ll find the benefits of each facility, all of them including a charm. To gain the charm, you just need to spend one long rest in your bastion, and you’ll gain access to a spell for the following seven days without expending a spell slot.
Other benefits
5
13
Greater Restoration
Create a talisman that can be used in place of material components for spells.
17
Heal
Give a creature temporary hit points equal to your level regardless of location, and you have the Word of Recall spell always prepared.
1Demiplane
Level 17 Facility For Characters With An Arcane Focus
The demiplane is an interesting area, although only useful if you long rest in your bastion often. Doing so gives you temporary hit points equal to five times your level; it might not seem like much, but a low health wizard preparing to face the final boss of the campaign would always find 100 temporary hit points useful.
You can also fabricate a non-magical item out of nothing, as long as it isn’t bigger than five feet and doesn’t have a value above five gold pieces. Clever players will always find ways to break the game in a multitude of ways, so depending on the campaign, this object creation tool could lead to any number of results.
