How Bastions Work in 2024 D&D
How D&D 2024 Bastions work: facility slots by character level, giving orders each turn, defenders, stash, and random events. Includes a free Bastion planner to track your own.
The Bastion Turn
A Bastion advances on a fixed clock: every 7 in-world days is one Bastion turn. On that turn you look at what each special facility was doing, record its result, and decide what it does next. Nothing about the calendar is optional busywork here; the turn is the whole rhythm of the system, and everything else (orders, events, upkeep) happens inside it.
The Bastion Planner keeps that rhythm for you: it timestamps each turn, keeps a running history of every order and result, and never rolls or advances anything until you tell it to.
Facility Slots by Character Level
A Bastion can hold basic facilities freely, but special facilities are limited by slots, and your slot count is tied to your character level, not to the Bastion itself. Below level 5 you have zero special slots. At level 5 you get 2, at level 9 that grows to 4, at level 13 it reaches 5, and at level 17 it caps at 6.
That means the same character can outgrow their own Bastion just by leveling up, and a Bastion built while low level often needs a second look once new slots open. Our planner tracks used slots against your allowed count and shows a plain warning if you are over the limit; it never deletes a facility or blocks you from playing, it just tells you where you stand.
Giving Orders: The Seven Verbs
Each turn, every special facility gets exactly one order from the same set of seven: Craft, Empower, Harvest, Maintain, Recruit, Research, and Trade. Which orders make sense for a given facility depends on what that facility actually does, but the verb list itself is fixed and shared across the whole system.
The Bastion Planner lets you set and change the order on each special facility every turn, and keeps a free-text result next to it so you can record exactly what happened, in your own words, without forcing it into a rigid outcome field.
Facility Sizes
Every facility, basic or special, has a size: Cramped, Roomy, or Vast. Size is mostly a matter of scale and cost rather than function; a bigger facility of the same kind tends to hold more, produce more, or cost more to build and keep, while still taking the same kind of orders as its smaller version.
Random Events
On any turn, you can choose to roll for a random event: a d100 roll checked against a table of possible outcomes, good or bad, tied to that roll's number. Rolling is optional, so a run of quiet turns with no event at all is completely normal.
The Bastion Planner ships with its own original homebrew event table (and an original homebrew facility library to match), not a reproduction of the book's tables, so you can roll seeded events and get a real result the moment you open the tool. Both tables are fully editable if you want to swap in your own.
Defenders and Stash
A Bastion also tracks a defender count and a stash of gold and free-text items, separate from the facilities themselves. Neither one is tied to an order; they sit alongside the facility list as the Bastion's standing resources, updated whenever a turn or an event changes them.
The Bastion Planner keeps defenders and stash on the same screen as your facilities and turn history, so you are never flipping between sheets to see the whole picture. Set up a roster of Bastions across your table, one per character, and each keeps its own facilities, orders, defenders, stash, and event table.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How often does a Bastion take a turn?
- Every 7 in-world days. A Bastion turn is when you assign orders to your special facilities, resolve last turn's results, and optionally roll a random event.
- How many special facility slots do I get?
- It scales with your character level: two slots at level 5, four at level 9, five at level 13, and six at level 17. Below level 5 you have zero, so every facility you hold before then is basic.
- What are the seven orders?
- Craft, Empower, Harvest, Maintain, Recruit, Research, and Trade. You assign one order per special facility each turn, and its result depends on the facility and what you told it to do.
- What sizes can a facility be?
- Cramped, Roomy, or Vast. Size mostly governs how much a facility can hold or produce and how much it costs to build or upgrade, not what orders it can take.
- Do events happen every turn?
- Only if you choose to roll one. A Bastion event is a d100 roll against a table, and plenty of turns pass with no event at all.
- Do I need the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide to use this?
- No. This guide states only the cadence, slot counts, and order names as game facts in our own wording. For the actual facility list and full event tables, you still want the book; our planner ships its own original homebrew facilities and events so you have something usable without it.