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Bastions inDungeons & Dragonsare a way for players to invest their hard-earned money in a cozy home, filled with facilities that can aid them on their adventures. These facilities, however, can also be used to make even more money, since there isn’t such a thing as enough gold.
If you want to know how to turn your bastion into a merchant’s empire, or you’re just looking to create a hoard for your dragonborn, then this guide is for you. We’ll cover what facilities work best for making money, the investment you’ll have to make, and how your party members can help you.
Bastion Level Five
Bastions areunlocked at level five, letting you choose two basic and two special facilities.Basic facilities don’t do anything, and while you can spend money to make more of them, we won’t cover them here; we want to make more gold, not spend it.
You also have to consider how tokeep your investment safe, and we recommend havinga different player focus their bastion on defense, and the two of you joining your bastions. That way, they can focus on hiring defenders whileyou make the profit.
Special Facilities
The main facility you will focus on isthe storehouse, one of the few special facilities thatgets upgraded each time you expand your bastion.When you issue the trade order to the storehouse, you may eithergive it up to 500 gold and the hireling will spend seven days buying that much worth of goods. Once you have those goods, you can makeanother trade order to have the hireling sell them, makinga ten percent profitwhen seven days pass.
You need toissue the trade order yourself, but once you put the initial 500 gold,all the following orders essentially pay for themselves.Assuming that you make every single trade order you can during a month, you’ll be making around00 gold per month; and that’sa roleplay month, not a real life one.
For your second facility, it depends on what you want to focus on.Facilities that create items are a possible source of income, as long asyou can sell the items they make.That will be completely reliant on the setting of the campaign and if your character cantake the time offto do the sales.
7 days
50
200
100
10 days*
300
125
7 days**
375
*If both hirelings work together.
**The workshop has three hirelings, but whether they can all help each other depends on the DM.
This is all assuming thatyou focus all your efforts into making money.If you need to protect your bastion, you may considerchoosing the barracksas your second facility, being able to hire bastion defenders to keep your gold safe.
Recommended Spells
A bastion canonly be attacked in two ways:due to narrative reasonsdecided by your Dungeon Master, which should rarely happen if at all, and due toa roll on the bastion event table.The bastion event table is only used whenyou don’t issue orders to your bastion, so if you keep the orders coming, the chances of attackare basically none.
If the campaignhappens near your bastion, then this isn’t an issue, but there are certainspells that canhelp you keep in touchwhen you aren’t around.The Sending spellin particular is fantastic for this purpose, and one that you’re able to use forthe entire duration of the campaignsince it also works forextraplanar communication.
The Sending spell is available to bards, clerics, wizards, and aberrant sorcerers.
If you are only afew towns away from your bastion, other spells likeAnimal Messenger can work, or even payinga literal messengerto get the order across. Having allthe party’s bastions near one anothercan help make the messages more cost-effective.
Bastion Level Nine
Level nine isa big boost for money-making bastions, since you get the second facilitysolely dedicated to making money.A lot of previously available crafting facilities now gainthe ability to make magic itemsof common and uncommon rarities, giving you access to rarer goods to sell.
Your storehouse now lets you spendup to 2,000 goldandearn 20 percent back, making the possiblemonthly profits go up to 800.You are now making enough money that building walls around your bastion is a feasible endeavor, but only if you have bastion protectors to protect.
The cheapest way to wall off your bastion is to have all rooms stacked on top of one another, with none being bigger than 4x4 squares. Walling off such a tower would cost you 3,000 gold.
A must-have at this point isthe gaming hall, since you canturn it into a gambling hallfor seven days at no cost. It can makefrom ten to 600 gold per week; not exactly a reliable margin, but since it costs you nothing,everything earned here is a net positive.
Since you can add two facilities at level nine, the option of adding another crafting facility andselling what they produceis still there. Exactly how you will sell it is up to you, sincefacilities like the laboratorycan makeexpensive poisons for free, but those can be difficult to sell.
400
1600
800
600
2,400
If you arealready using a smithy or a workshop, you may nowcraft uncommon magic items and sell them, so you can consider it a free upgrade.If you had the garden, you shouldreplace it with a greenhousesince it is basically the same but better.
Should you consider thatyou are already making enough money, thenthe teleportation circle facilityis ideal for you, letting yougo back to your bastion and cash in the profit.This circle doesn’t need to be in your bastion, but it should be in its vicinity.
The Teleportation Circle spell can be learned by bards, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards.
Bastion Level 13
Level 13 ismuch less dramaticin terms of what your bastion earns, at least when it comes to earning money. You can now gainone additional special facility, but if you want more money-making ones, you shouldlook at the ones available at earlier levels.
The storehouse gets upgraded once again, letting youinvest up to 5,000 goldandearning half of it in profit, making the monthly earnings go up to 5,000. If you ever have a time skip in your bastion, you’ll end up with enough money to buy nearly any item.
There are two new facilities unlocked at level 13 that can help youprotect your earnings in unforeseen ways.The meditation chamber lets youroll twice on bastion eventsand choose the result, while the pub lets youkeep tabs on everything going onaround your bastion.
At this stage, your adventures will take youfar away from your bastion, so having spells to go back quickly is a must. Druids with theirTransport via Plantsand clerics with theirWord of Recallcan cover travel in the material plane, whilePlane Shift(available to several classes) can aid you when you areadventuring outside the material plane.
Bastion Level 17
It is about time to stop making money andstart spending it, but there might not be enough equipment on the planes to make youempty your coffers.Believe it or not, even at this stagethe storehouse continues to upgrade.
The storehouse now makes back100 percent of the money you invest, althoughthe limit continues to be 5,000. If you want to getinto black market trading, thenbuilding a thieves' guildwith the guildhall special facility might be the way to do it, althoughyou will need to have expertisein a skill to do so.
The best way tospend your money, at least as far as your bastion is concerned, is inthe war room. You need to have a fighting style or unarmored defense feature to unlock it, but once you have it, you can spend your vast wealth onbuilding an army to conquer the realms.
