Official Bastion Rules Summary

A Bastion is a player character’s home base, stronghold, sanctuary, or seat of influence. It is both a downtime engine and a storytelling anchor.

When Bastions Work Best

Bastions work best in campaigns with downtime, recurring regions, travel intervals, political relationships, faction play, or reasons to return home between adventures.

Gaining a Bastion

• The DM decides whether Bastions are available.
• Characters normally gain a Bastion at level 5.
• The Bastion can be inherited, built, conquered, granted as a mark of prestige, refurbished, or introduced retroactively as something developed during earlier adventures.
• Shape and style are narrative: tower, temple, guildhall, fortified keep, inn, ship, demiplane, monastery, grove, laboratory, or similar.

Basic Facilities

A new Bastion starts with two free basic facilities: one Cramped and one Roomy. Basic facilities do not usually provide direct mechanical benefits, but they make the location believable and useful for roleplay.

Space	Maximum Area	Add Cost	Add Time
Cramped	4 five-foot squares	500 GP	20 days
Roomy	16 five-foot squares	1,000 GP	45 days
Vast	36 five-foot squares	3,000 GP	125 days

Special Facilities

Special facilities grant game-facing benefits. They are gained through character level advancement rather than purchased directly.

Character Level	Total Special Facilities
5	2
9	4
13	5
17	6

Each time a character gains a level, they can replace one Bastion special facility with another facility for which they qualify.

Bastion Turns

• Default cadence: one Bastion turn every seven in-game days.
• The DM can slow the cadence if the campaign has long stretches of downtime.
• On a Bastion turn, the owner issues orders to special facilities or issues Maintain to the whole Bastion.
• If the owner is away and cannot communicate with the Bastion, Maintain is assumed.

Orders

Order	Summary
Craft	Hirelings craft items appropriate to the facility.
Empower	The facility grants a temporary benefit.
Harvest	Hirelings gather a resource produced by the facility.
Maintain	Hirelings maintain the whole Bastion; this prevents other orders and triggers event checks.
Recruit	Hirelings recruit defenders, creatures, or specialists.
Research	Hirelings gather information.
Trade	Hirelings buy and sell goods or services.

Events

Bastion events happen when the Bastion is operating under Maintain. Events include peaceful downtime, attacks, criminal hirelings, opportunities, friendly visitors, guests, lost hirelings, magical discoveries, refugees, requests for aid, and treasure.

Losing a Bastion

A Bastion can be lost through voluntary abandonment, long-term neglect, or catastrophic ruin. The player can establish a new Bastion later, using their current level to determine how many special facilities it has.