The party IS fighting.... It's one party, not ten parties.

BEN WE NEED TO TALK, WE LOOK VERY SIMILAR

In my Out of the Abyss Campaign, Juiblex consumed most of the other Demon Lords (I ran a Demon Lord Free-for-all with experimental war game mechanics for a bunch of friends. Lord of Lies : Fraz-Urb'luu used Modify Memory on Juiblex to make the Ooze Lord their ally, and then won the game.) Empowered by the energies of other Demon Lord avatars, Juiblex has become the Demonic Sea after first dissolving an entire continent. This was the design of my Dwarven party, who intentionally summoned the demon Lords to the capital city of a hostile Human empire. That empire is no more. Their ritual worked a little too well. Juiblex remains even after the Campaign, and the Merfolk are desperately containing the Demonic Ocean with magical Abjuration storms. A new Level 20 oneshot will be all about the greatest heroes of the World plunging into the Demonic Ocean's heart to kill Juiblex.

I would yes, pray to the eldritch horror

I could see there being a story about a stop being put to this, or possibly twins being preserved

For Zombies I added something they are in a swarm they have the chance to drag down a player with 1 HP and instant kill them. But it requires a set number of zombies for it to happen.

For Zombies I added something they are in a swarm they have the chance to drag down a player with 1 HP and instant kill them. But it requires a set number of zombies for it to happen.

Is this an April Fool's Day joke?

My pathfinder setting has the Gods being dead like Grim Hollow, but unlike Grim Hollow the death of the Gods is basically the centerpiece of the entire setting, as the whole affair that lead to the Gods dying also caused the collapse of civilization, and the setting is actually a post post-apocalyptic setting where the world has managed to rebuild and re-establish functional civilizations after being a post-apocalyptic hellhole for quite some time, and managed to build back by actually taking the flesh, blood, muscle, sinew, bones etc... from the gigantic corpses of the dead gods that littered the surface of the world and using the potent magic within to create magitech that let them rebuild civilization in the form of city-states that formed around the massive corpses of the gods, and whom to this day still strip those rotting god-husks for the magical resources they need to sustain themselves. Clerics and Champions (Pathfinder Paladins) exist in this setting, but are exceptionally rare, and get their power from the few celestials and fiends that survived the events that killed the gods, who where once their masters. These celestials and fiends on their own are too weak to grant divine magic, so they have to essentially pool their collective power to do so, and even when all the surviving celestials and fiends pool their power, its still only enough to empower a tiny handful of followers...to the point the number of clerics and champions in the world at any given time can typically be counted on one hand and can fluxuate anywhere from a lonely one to five. That being said, divine magic itself is actually exceptionally common in the setting because Pathfinder unlike D&D has divine spellcasters that don't require a god to have divine magic. In this setting in particular consuming blood from one of the dead gods is actually a guaranteed way to become an Oracle (the primary divine caster class that doesn't require a God), so Oracles are actually way more common here than in other pathfinder settings since drinking God blood is a surefire, guaranteed way to become an Oracle and so most "healer" NPCs thus tend to be Oracles rather than Clerics as typical.

Here's a good story hook for Bastions: Frequently, 'heist' campaigns are about the party pulling off the heist. What if the heist was pulled on the *party* at their Bastion(s) while they were away on a throw away adventure? Give the party a valuable item in a previous adventure, they then store in their Bastion and then they have to figure out how the theft was accomplished and get the treasure back.

Getting witcher vibes.

I like the idea of a tattoo shop that does arcane tattoos and enchanted jewlery on the down low. They have a code word that is spread by word of mouth to prevent the Arcanist inquisition or anti-magic state from becoming wise to their activities. It remolds the whimsy magic shop into something more grimey and underground befitting a setting where magic is not allowed.

Yup, please do a whole vid. And support doc, pointy hat style :)

I think I may be selfish with my bastion. I want a New York style brownstone in Waterdeep for my half Drow noble Bronze Draconic sorcerer Arcane Archer which is at 11th level currently. So it will have a arcane study. Training area archery range in the basement. A greenhouse on the roof. The teleportation circle either in the primary bedroom or sub basement. Since my bastion will be in Waterdeep the chances of an Orc raid will probably not happen.

I am craving more Aetherial Expanse content. A video focused on bastions and events for that style of campaign would be awesome.

What if the PCs have ownership of bastions at lvl1? At the start of the campaign? As part of the character creation you are choosing your species, class, background - and one bastion facility at the city of X? Maybe the PCs are living in the same city. Each PCs have some property in this city. And have some "hirelings" - fellow neighbours, collegues, etc. Maybe you introduce your setting, the campaign starter - but the players are responsible for figuring out the starting location. How much more could be the players could be invested in the campaign's starting area if they have somekind of ownership in this location?

Cool stuff

Do a whole PDF!

You should put these ideas in the Grim Hollow revised.

I play-tested the UA Bastion rules in my campaign and really liked how much my players enjoyed interacting with and creating NPCs and dealing with my own bastion events. I would love to hear more of your ideas!

Please do more, love your ideas

Your videos invariably leave me with more ideas than I know what to do with! Thank you for the inspiration you provide. I am running an entire campaign more or less based off something that sprung to mind from an old video of yours (don't ask me what, the origins are lost to the mists of time!) Reskinning bastion rules is great, and I look forward to hearing more. My thoughts are for different flavours - urban bastions that are inside existing cities, rural bastions that could be an entire town, or a keep that overlooks a town, and remote bastions fortress of solitude-style, with different events and rules for each. Trading from the fortress of solitude is hard, but the place is much, much safer, for example.

Come on, make the video! I love GH and I love the idea of Bastions, so a GH Bastion is a definite sale!

Fantastic video, Ben & GG Team! Super inspiring, great ideas, can’t wait to add these into my game. Keep the bastion ideas coming!

These concepts are great! Thanks for the amazing ideas about bastions!

I'm planning my third campaign after playing with my friends for about 10 years now and before I knew bastions were going to be such a big thing in the new DMG I knew I wanted my players to have a space of their own while still allowing them to travel across this European like continent without feeling like they had to spend so much time traveling back to get things done. In a sort of session zero I spit balled the idea of a personal train that they could use to travel but also have their space nearby and have cool scenarios like some horrible flying creatures attack them while traveling to a new country. They immediately went nuts over the idea and just kept chanting train over and over again. I couldn't even get to the more horror aspects of the campaign lol. It's nice to see that they'll have some rules in the book that will help me flesh out this idea even further to add some fun mechanics to it!

Have you considered integrating the Advanced Backgrounds from the Campaign Guide with Bastions? It looks like there's a lot of overlap, particularly with Holdings as Facilities and Progressions standing in for Bastion turns.

Re: moving bastions at 10:15 - I always wanted to set up a storyline around an adventuring party doubling as a traveling actor's troupe and the wagon for the troupe is mechamagical transforming stage complete with foley effects and trap doors and other fun automatons (like an orchestra), all accessories that be added as the party (now bastion) levels up, and the video clip at 12:00 was it! what was that from?

In my current campaign a party ally was just gifted a barony as his fief by the Emperor. Party will be helping him develop it, but soon a rival lord and guild master will be marching an army against them, so building the bastion is part of preparing for a war arc.

I wanna dm a saltmarsh campaign with ships using bastion mechanics

Bastions have always been a part of the games I have been a part of since 3.5 e we just called it our base. I love building on these ideas

OOh some dark fantasy options for bastions? Don't mind if I do~

The moving bastion ideas are awesome!

Love your event ideas! Thanks for the kind mention!

Please do a video with your custom bastion ideas/facilities

As much as Bastions is interesting I have been using something similar to this for the last 40 years. A tavern, a Shop or a fortress you know those money sinks that we need to spend that gold on lol

I do love the idea of ending a session, saying - 'take a bastion turn; let me know what the result is, and let's pick up next time.' That gives plenty of room to offer the player a self-chosen narrative, allow it to be a simple mechanical benefit, or - as you say - plan an encounter, or even a whole session+ based on the result. Also re: moving bastions, we can definitely look to the 5e Planescape adventure Turn of Fortune's Wheel and the moving castles of the Outlands.

Yes, I would love to see more homebrewed bastion options!

I love your bastion events. I’m DMing a Ravenloft campaign, but I decided to put the Deck of Many Things into it. One of the PCs drew the Throne card, which gives you a keep that you first need to clear the monsters out of. I decided to make it so the keep is in its own private domain, which only follows some of the rules of the other domains, and they can access it through a magic tattoo that appeared on the character who drew the card. They finished clearing it out in our last session. I’m planning to let them use it as a bastion.

How about a Monster Hunter Bastion advanced facility such as a Vivisectorium? You can bring cadavers or body parts from monsters you have fought and bested back to the Vivisectorium in order to dissect them yourself, or have hirelings do it for you, to further advance your understanding of that type of creature (Undead, Fiend, Aberration and so forth) and garner extra benefits from your Monster Hunter's grimoire when you face that sort of creature in the future. You might need to dissect a certain number of a particular creature type before you are able to add it to your selection of types of monsters you are skilled at hunting as part of your class progression process. You could even tie it into quests by having the ability to learn information about the origin or nature of a creature from its remains (or the remains of one of its victims) from study in the Vivisectorium that could lead the party to a new quest.

So Ben I take it you going to be giving us new Bastions rules in the 2024 Grim Hollow books? Awesome video by the way and thank you for your hard work.

this might be something worth looking into from Oned&d

Will love one vid of idias

I would love to have another video for a bunch of suggestions for events and the like! If I could, I would subscribe more than once!

His name's Bastion. He's my brother's dog. Well I guess he's mine now.

Want more of your bastion events! :)

I hadn't really looked into the Bastions, but this video made me realize that I've been using these already. Having mechanics might make my players more interested in the creation. This is a very inspiring video. Thank you.

I am a huge fan of the opinion in this video that GMs should make Bastions bespoke to the setting. It'll help embed them much more. I hadn't considered that concept, but I think it could make the system sing for me

This was a great suprise. Amazing! <3

Been missing the videos :)