Stronghold Builder's Guidebook--a second opinion

[Lago_AM3P]

Anyone remember this shit?

Or really, I'll give this book a first opinion.

Why do you earholes gotta do this to me?

It seems to me like Dungeons and Dragons should be ENCOURAGING characters to get their own strongholds. I mean, nothing encourages player input and participation like letting them build their own headquarters. It makes things easier on the DM, too. Adventures involving the player's homes will almost always generate interest. It doesn't even have to be things like 'a horde of orcs want to invade your castle!'. I know from experience that people will be interested by things like 'people from the countryside are abandoning their vassals and running to your castle because you don't abuse peasants' or 'a bunch of powerful merchants decide your place is the bee's knees and in exchange for making your place a bastion of trade they'll give you a seat in their guild'.

And yet... this book seems to want to do everything in its power to prevent players from acquiring the lush, well-staffed strongholds people thing about when characters get castles.

I mean, Jesus, look how expensive everything else! There's some really cool ideas in here, such as castles at the center of a hurricane or having a centralized heating system through the use of wall of fire. But you will never, ever be able to get them unless you either abuse the wealth creation rules or cripple your character in equipment.

What's the deal? Is it the fact that the game designers were worried that if strongholds were cheap-as-free players might be trying to weasel power they shouldn't have out of it? Is it because they want strongholds to be strictly an NPC thing? Simple sadism? Throw me a friggin' bone here.

[Catharz]

1166295788[/unixtime]]
What's the deal? Is it the fact that the game designers were worried that if strongholds were cheap-as-free players might be trying to weasel power they shouldn't have out of it? Is it because they want strongholds to be strictly an NPC thing? Simple sadism? Throw me a friggin' bone here.

I'd guess it's both, plus a misguided sense of 'realism.' The main 'weaseling' they're probably scared of is massive cashflow increase due to taxes.

On the up side, any character capable of defending his castle in D&D can already use Stoneshape, Wall of Stone, Wall of Force, Unseen Servant, Planar Binding, Planar Ally, Animate Dead, Stone to Mud to Stone, Major Creation, or whatever else. And anyone can use a Lyre of Building.

So as long as you ignore the guidebook, stronghold building is actually quite simple.

[Lago_AM3P]

If it's out of realism, they should've introduced some kind of second currency. Like Build Points.

You know, as you gain experience, you get build points for no reason that you can use to purchase stronghold stuff. You can use it to pay staff, buy puppies, blah dee blah.

I mean, while you can make pretty much any damn stronghold you want with polymorph any object, basic spells still have some of their own failings. Like I want to make a flying castle. How do I do that shit?

[Imban]

Yup, this book's rules for actually having characters build strongholds are pretty bad. I just use it for ideas on building awesome strongholds, a resource on how much damage it takes to level great sections of a stronghold, and Obdurium.

[bitnine]

Wow. Apparently the people who wrote this book are retarded or hate players. Okay, maybe that's not really the case, but at the least they seem to be doing a very good impression of people that have no clue whatsoever how money impacts play.

There's a reason that there's a concept of character wealth. Despite what people may think or nods to realism, it has very little to do with spending money like this. Your character should have a certain percentage of their character wealth in things that apply a substantive effect to their power, and smaller percentage of things that flow.

Something like 70% in gear, 20% in flowing consumables, 10% liquid and providing miscellaneous abilities. There may be a reason that the core rulebook mentions having lifestyle being an upkeep and d20 modern has wealth check DCs. 'Cause those miscellaneous things really say "I have devoted character resources - probably a percentage of my wealth, maybe a feat or class ability - to have the ability to bribe, arrange transportation, and meet other noncombative challenges using wealth in an effective manner."

Gold that you spend on things that don't make a difference to your character's performance isn't character wealth. Most times, it's a waste. If your stronghold provides you a benefit, it should have allocated to it an amount of character resources proportional to the benefits its providing. Seriously. You got 5% wealth invested into that fancy sword, 5% invested into bribing people and gaining information, and 5% invested into your stronghold. With thatm each one of those elements should have an impact that's in the same league as each other.

Even if the big castle obviously takes more gold than that in the game world, it can't take more of my character wealth in the game.

And if you're going to write a book focusing on this crap, how about you actually find a way to make this work and smooth out the issues of upkeep, aquisition, and liquidation? Because that's sorta important to having this stuff, you know, actually work.

[Imban]

Well, rules like this worked back in 2nd Edition, when having a few million pounds of gold meant you could buy a fvcking awesome castle, but didn't really make your character that much stronger. Sure, it helped if your character just had a traumatic experience like having every single one of his items permanently disenchanted by a disenchanter (snuff-snuff-snuffle) and then eaten by its friend the rust monster, because he could shell out for minor crap that would help get him back on his feet, but now, gold is directly equivalent to power.

So yeah, spending most of your gold on stuff that is at best a play complication? Useless.

[Maj]

Besides making pointlessly expensive strongholds that don't ever do what you really want them to, the SHBG is missing one glaring building component: the roof. When I realized that it was possible to make a fortress that was constantly surrounded by wonderfully mild weather, but not possible to build a conservatory for those evenings at Boddy Mansion, I scrapped it.

I still do pull it out on occasion when I need to remember what rooms to build in a larger than livable house, though.

[User3]

My favorite bit of stronghold stupidity actually comes from Frostburn. It actually has a stronghold in the back of the book that has millions of GP in blue ice covering the walls, floors, and ceilings (which does nothing more than be really strong and chill everything inside).

They actually make a note saying something like "don't let the PCs tear the walls apart and sell them for magical swag."

Lame.

[RandomCasualty]

1167510743[/unixtime]]My favorite bit of stronghold stupidity actually comes from Frostburn. It actually has a stronghold in the back of the book that has millions of GP in blue ice covering the walls, floors, and ceilings (which does nothing more than be really strong and chill everything inside).

They actually make a note saying something like "don't let the PCs tear the walls apart and sell them for magical swag."

Lame.

Yeah, that's actually the problem with 3rd edition's concentrated focus on the value of GP. You really can't have PCs selling dungeon dressing at all.

[Judging__Eagle]

Yeah... I've never been a big fan of how the SHBG works.

Especially since I've got a campaign that's centered around the PCs and a keep that they bought and claimed very early in the campaign; at level 1.

I used the Keep for Sale adventure out of a 2ned ed based dungeon magazine.

The players bite, and hard, then they proceeded to accidentally (really, accidentally) sneak in, kill the goblin boss and become the new bosses.

So, now I have them fighting a genocidal war against troglodytes for them to get all the free stone that they need from fiend-worshiping gnomes. Of course, the players haven't realized this, although the fact that the Gnomes use mining stone golems covered in glowing fiery red infernal writing (that they can identify as infernal) should have tipped them off.


In any case...I'll probably just hand wave the costs away.


Although, I could set up an alternate 'resource' gp system; equal to twice a characters gold, that could only be spent on non-character-gear related stuff.

Like a home, donating to charity, buying land, establishing a business or network of contacts.

Perhaps magical reasearch for wizards/archivists, but not buying scrolls. Ugh, I hate saying that though.