Dungeons and Dragons Blog

The Stronghold Builders Guidebook is an older supplement, but it’s still worth looking at.  The name says it all.  The book basically walks you through the steps of building a stronghold.  Whether it’s your players who want to build a fortress for themselves or a dungeon master who wants to build that floating castle while also coming with an idea as to how much it would cost, this is the book that gets you there.

Chapter 1 takes you through the basic steps of building a stronghold.  The stronghold’s location, size and basic components are chosen and then extras and wondrous architecture are touched on.  It also talks about mapping your stronghold and finishing things up.

Chapter 2 is the largest chapter and it starts with an extensive menu of room options and components.  Do you want a basic library or a luxury library?  If you choose the latter, don’t forget you need to hire a librarian.  If you’re a wizard who dabbles in potions, do you go with the basic alchemical laboratory or do you go with the fancy one?  You also get six different choices for bedrooms and you can even throw a tavern in for good measure.  Costs are provided for each, along with how much space each component takes up.

There’s also a detailed section on the walls that make up your stronghold.  Do you want mithral walls?  Then expect to pay through the teeth.  You can also add augmentations to your walls.  You can add magical blades or a fog veil if you’d like.  Along with walls comes some description on the door, windows and locks located through the stronghold.  Like the components, everything has a price.

There’s also an extensive section on extras.  These are basically magical items that don’t take up space in your stronghold but most are fixtures of some sort.  If you want a Decanter of Endless Water, expect to pay up 9,000 gold pieces.  Also discussed are moats and trenches and if neither of those provide the security you want, there’s a discussion on mobile strongholds.  There’s a section on permanent spells and if you don’t want magic to guard your treasure hoard, good old fashioned traps are also discussed.

The final section of this chapter talks about wondrous architecture.  These are basically spell like effects attached to components.  If you don’t think prison bars will keep your prisoners locked up, you can spend 14,000 gold pieces to turn it into a prison of fire.  And if you don’t want to pay for help by the month, you can drop 1,500 gold pieces for an invisible helper to make the bed.

Chapter 3 discusses how to bring strongholds into your campaign.  If discusses the construction of strongholds and how they’re run.  And then there’s sections on protecting and assaulting strongholds.

Chapter 4 provides some sample strongholds and I thought this was the worst part of the book.  The cheap keep is very generic and I wouldn’t find myself using the underwater coral castle.  There’s a floating tower and then the one I could see myself using is the Dwarven Redoubt. 

Outside of chapter four, which is basically just a throw in, I thought the Stronghold Builders Guidebook is a quality supplement.  It’s probably not completely neccesary, but I think it provides a good foundation for players and DMs that want to design their own dungeons and fortresses.  And it also gave me some great ideas that I know I’ll be throwing into my campaign.

Wizards posted the first of a two part series centered around Pact Magic, which was introduced in one of their newest hardcovers, Tome of Magic.  Without giving too much away, Pact Magic centers around the players ability to communicate and bargain with entities called Vestiges, which are remnants of creatures trapped between life and death.

This first installment discusses how players and DMs can design their own vestiges.  Great stuff, and the next installment will be a web enhancement with the actual vestige that the design describes.

Ed Greenwood is starting what looks to be an excellent series on the Border Kingdoms.  He said he couldn’t fit it into Power of Faerun, so it looks we’ll get it in installments on the official site.  Great stuff as always from Mr. Greenwood.

My Tome of Magic came today and I’m quite impressed.  I skimmed through the introduction and then immediately jumped to the Shadow Magic portion of the book, which was the most interesting subject to me.  The core class is quite impressive, as are the prestige classes.  I wasn’t too keen on the encounters, but I plan on putting together a half elf shadow mage with a forest stronghold.  That’s usually the approach I take to learning a new class like this.  Start them at first level, then work them up through the levels.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to getting into the details of the book.

These are some of my favorite posts on Wizards.com.  The latest in the Design and Development series was posted yesterday and it’s a good one.  Although they stole my thunder because I was going to do a bit on what happened to electrum, which they address here.  This one is on the interface of published adventures and how they’re different or similar to older modules published under previous versions.

Also, I3 Pharoah is one my favorite adventures to run.  I love the Desert of Desolation series with one minor problem.  My friend who I always played D&D with never cared for it.  So we’d start it, he’d get bored and we’d move on.

I was in Borders today, and while I didn’t have much time, I flipped through Tome of Magic.  The color of the book is unique so it really sticks out and it’s also a lot thicker then the other books.  I’ll be picking this up pretty soon.

This interview with Ed Greenwood on Power of Faerun was very informative.  I had some misconceptions about what this Forgotten Realms supplement was all about and this sheds a ton of light on its contents.  Before reading this, I was 50/50 as far as buying it.  Now I’m leaning towards picking it up.  I’ll say 65/35 although I’ll have to flip through at the store.

Wizards.com has posted some excerpts from the upcoming Tome of Magic.  This is the one product I’ve been looking for since the Spell Compendium and some of the info. in this excerpt is very encouraging.

Goodman Games is allowing people to download their fifth Dungeon Crawl Classic, Aerie of the Crow God, for free.  It’s just for a limited time, but if you wanted to get a taste of these very cool adventures, I highly recommend you download it and check it out.  I reviewed their first Dungeon Crawl Classic, Idylss of the Rat King, last month.  I plan on adding to my collection of these at a later date since they appeal to a group of my players.

The latest installment of the Return to Undermountain series was posted on the Wizards.com website.  This is a larger section of the caves and it’s really more of a short series of battles then one encounter like most of the other rooms are.