Café de Nuit

Has anyone taken the Wotc Stroghold Builders Guide and done the math on any famous ravenloft structures? I guess that the maintenance costs might give some idea ast to the taxes collected in, oh say, Darkon

On the other hand, as was said on the Malhavoc forum

I actually worked out the value of the Keep in The Keep on the Borderlands. Using the listed scale & cutting corners everywhere I could, leaving lots of empty spaces and paying only the minimum, it was still a quarter-million G.P. keep.

I found that book awfully bads. Better check *Seven Strongholds* from Atlas Games.

Yeah I would have to agree that the Stronghold builders guide book is about as bad a product as you can find and yu are much better off going elsewher to find this information.

I disagree. The stronghold's builders guide is IMO on of the best and most useful products from WoTC I have bought.

It is not suited for Ravenloft, I give you that, but for the generic D&D world with magic being a common tool, the rules are:

Efficient, realistic, simple

It has many very useful tables and it gave me very good ideas. I have used the book repeatedly with success from the moment it came out. And a last thing: It covers most of the possibilities. From a castle that flies over a raging volcano to a multi-dimensional stronghold.

Well, I must confess that I never used the book for creating a fortress so far, but I own it and read it through and I must say that I definitely didn't like what I saw - and that was in a time when I used more magic heavy campaign worlds.

I recommend *Seven Strongholds*, because it supplies one with a load of good ideas and 7 well-developed fortresses.

However, I know Alhoon is an experienced gamer, so one may as well trust his judgement as one may trust mine.

Don't forget that the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook is not going to designed for realism. It's going to be balanced for how much money you're supposed to get for dungeon crawling. A quarter of a million gold pieces by ordinary D&D standards means that by level 8 or so, a party pooling their resources could probably get one, if they were sufficiently determined. That is about the level that normal D&D characters would have their own castle built, and so it is built around that.

Since I have no truck (or at least, little truck) with ordinary D&D now, and haven't for quite a while, I would see no use in this product. If your players want a castle, by all means let them have access to one, as long as you're prepared to do the DMing around it. 'Castle', however, should not just feature on their inventory sheet. If they're inhabiting a castle, then they're challenging you. As DM, you should react with all the composure such a situation demands - namely, dragons.

I'd be wary of letting a D&D group get their hands on a castle, and not just because you'd be honour-bound to send dragons at it. Castles are built for the purpose of defence, and so if they owned a castle somewhere, they'd have to firstly defend it, and if not by themselves, when you do send dragons at it, they'll feel cheated that they lost their expensive castle because their footmen couldn't handle a dragon, and secondly, have to owe allegiance to whoever owns the land, and I'm still sceptical of D&Ders in-game loyalty.

Again, I'm not sure of the use of the book in Ravenloft either. There is little in the way of warfare, and since no one is really building any castles, what need do you have of calculating costs? The Gothic feel is very much about the decay of old things, so castles are decaying, abandoned, filled with vampires and so on. Even Falkovnia shouldn't be building castles.

FavouredEnemy wrote: As DM, you should react with all the composure such a situation demands - namely, dragons.

FavouredEnemy wrote: By all means let them have access to one, as long as you're prepared to do the DMing around it. 'Castle', however, should not just feature on their inventory sheet. If they're inhabiting a castle, then they're challenging you. As DM, you should react with all the composure such a situation demands - namely, dragons.

Dragons against a castle? ! ?
And in fact honor-bound to send dragons against a castle? Why?

Most of the time I have my players build a stronghold, a castle, a manor etc. While I have once or twice sent dragons against them, I NEVER felt challenged or intimidated by the thought that my PCs built a castle.

We had many memorable sessions in the castle/tower/stronghold of the PCs. Interaction with common servants, that look to the PCs as heroes/protectors etc. Interaction with the footmen that looked to the PCs as ideals/employers etc.
For a player of 9th level to have a castle is to have a microworld, a haven where he/she can relax in comfort, hear the everyday problems of people that work for him, and generally be in touch with the world. While I may threaten the haven once in a while it is never something as devastating as dragons.

It may be someone steeling from the servants, something killing the animals, a vampire stalking the countryside (remember it cannot enter the Fort uninvited) or recently . . .
Shadow fey. Yes, I use shadow fey in other worlds.

In my last campaign, we had a whole non-combat session of 8-9 hours with the Tower-owner trying to explain to the fey living in his house the rules. Another very memorable session was when he had to protect these fey from angry mages that happened to visit him.
On another campaign we had . . . intrigue. How a very minor lord used bluff and manipulation to slowly rise in power without challenging the wrong people and when to move against them to take their lands.
He started with 2 villages under his rule and ended up . . . With an astounding population of 6000, being the most important and powerful man in a minor barony after the baron himself. Yeah, I know but it seemed much more important back then. . .

FavouredEnemy wrote:Don't forget that the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook is not going to designed for realism. It's going to be balanced for how much money you're supposed to get for dungeon crawling. A quarter of a million gold pieces by ordinary D&D standards means that by level 8 or so, a party pooling their resources could probably get one, if they were sufficiently determined. That is about the level that normal D&D characters would have their own castle built, and so it is built around that.

An important note: I agree with this! When I said realistic I meant D&D way of realism.
Also if your players want a castle, get them prepared to loose a lot of money. Usually I advise my players to re-opperate a castle they seize or a tower.
In fact I did this to my recent campaign with my sister, where the reward for getting rid of the ghost in that old manor . . . was the manor itself. A manor that needed about 20000 gold in repairs and furniture however.

alhoon wrote:The stronghold's builders guide is IMO on of the best and most useful products from WoTC I have bought.

It is not suited for Ravenloft, I give you that, but for the generic D&D world with magic being a common tool, the rules are:

Efficient, realistic, simple

It has many very useful tables and it gave me very good ideas. I have used the book repeatedly with success from the moment it came out. And a last thing: It covers most of the possibilities. From a castle that flies over a raging volcano to a multi-dimensional stronghold.

I'm with you alhoon.
SBG has helped me as a DM to built "reasonable" strongholds for villains and adventuring sites and as a player to built my haven.
As a player I began building a stronghold upon attaing 12th level. It's construction though finished after I had reached the 16th. Meanwhile I had to complete several adventures/quests created by my own wish to build a castle; finding/aquiring the land, cleaning it from its former inhabitants, stoping attacks on the supply routes, avoiding invasions...

Anyway, when magic is available, SBG can be used quite efficiently. In RL this is not the case and that's a good reason why it's a generic product.

Sunstar

16th level eh, Let me just ask you one thing. . .

How many adventures you did to find money instead of magic items to build this castle?
My players tend to invest much in their strongholds . . . So they went dragonhunting or made quests just to make contacts with Guilds that would and could pay 20000 gold for magic items.

alhoon wrote:16th level eh, Let me just ask you one thing. . .

How many adventures you did to find money instead of magic items to build this castle?

You hit a spot there!

I can tell you this: the largest amount of concentrated money I've managed to find at once was 5000gp, treasure of a Hextorian warlord. Still, now I've managed to be able to operate even as a bank - not that I want to, you know I'm hording like a dragon myself (level is epic 21 with this char now!). Anyway, let him be - not RL, not for this forum.

Sunstar