Strongholds

Many player characters, upon reaching higher levels, choose to settle down and build a stronghold. Generally this is allowed when a character reaches 9th level or higher. The player character must obtain land on which to build. In some lands, frontier territory may be made available to any freeman (or freewoman) who can tame it; in others, land may be available for someone with enough gold; while in other cases the character will need to petition the local Count, Duke or King for a land grant. Usually, Fighters build castles, Magic-Users build towers, Clerics build temples and Thieves build guildhouses, but this is not always so. Any character who builds a stronghold suitable to their class will attract 1st level followers of the same class as follows: Class Number of Followers Fighter 3d6 Magic-User 1d8 Cleric 2d8 Thief 2d6 These followers will assist the character, but will not go on adventures away from the stronghold in most cases (especially dangerous dungeon adventures). Their living comes from the income generated by the stronghold. The primary sources of this income are taxes on peasants for castles, fees for magical services and students' tuition for towers, tithing from the faithful for temples, and criminal activities for guildhouses. A stronghold must have 200 square feet of living space for each follower, as well as quarters for guests, stables for horses, and so on. A player who wants to build a stronghold should draw its floor plan. Each story is usually 10 feet tall. The construction costs for the stronghold are determined by the square footage of its walls, floors and roofs, the materials used, and the thickness of the walls. Make sure not to double-count corners on walls that are 5' thick or thicker; count the length of only one face. When determining wall length for round walls and towers, approximate pi by 3, since the inner face of the wall has a shorter circumference. The table below gives costs in gp for each 10 foot square section of wall. The number by the material is its Hardness which is deducted from damage to the wall, just as with Attacking a Vehicle as explained on page 60. Also note that a building over 40' high must have a solid foundation, and if over 60' high, it must rest on bedrock. Wall material 1' thick 5' thick 10' thick 15' thick Maximum height 40' 60' 80' 100' Wood (H 6) 10 gp n/a n/a n/a Brick (H 8) 20 gp 50 gp n/a n/a Soft stone (H 12) 30 gp 70 gp 200 gp n/a Hard stone (H 16) 40 gp 90 gp 260 gp 350 gp A 1' thick wall is made of solid pieces of material held with mortar (or pegs and ropes for wooden walls); such walls may be at most 40' tall. A 5' thick wall consists of two 1' thick walls sandwiching 3' of earth and rubble; such a wall may be at most 60' tall. A 10' thick wall consists of a 4' thick outer wall and a 2' thick inner wall sandwiching 4' of earth and rubble, and may be built up to 80' tall. A 15' thick wall consists of a 6' thick outer wall and a 2' thick inner wall sandwiching 7' of earth and rubble; these walls may be built up to 100' tall. To attain the maximum height, thinner walls can be used on upper stories. For example, an 80 ft. tower must have at least 20' of 10' thick walls at the base, but more could be used. The character will have to pay engineering costs for designing the stronghold, and tall structures are more difficult to design and to build. For each portion of the stronghold (wall, tower, and so on), each 10' of height adds 10% to the costs in both time and money. The GM should feel free to add a multiplier to reflect the difficulties of building in a remote area, obtaining materials, etc. In particular, if materials need to be transported, they require 1 ton of cargo space per 5 gp of wood or stone construction. (The increased weight of stone compensates for its compactness compared to wood.) A stronghold requires one worker-day of construction labor for every gp it costs to build. Adding more workers reduces construction time, but the time cannot be reduced below the square root of the time for one worker to build the stronghold. Assume that there are 140 working days per year (seven months of 20 working days each) in temperate climates. Floors and thatched roofs cost as much and take as long to build as it would take to build the square footage of their bases of 1' thick wood walls. Woodshingled roofs cost twice this amount and take twice as long to build, while slate-shingled roofs cost four times as much and take four times as long. (You don't need to calculate the greater surface area of a pitched roof, since the increased height increases construction costs enough to cover this.) These costs include normal features such as stairs, doors and windows. Interior walls are not included; they are usually 1' thick. Parapets, which provide cover for defenders atop castle walls and towers, are usually 1' thick and 5' high (so they are half-cost). Note that guildhouses are almost always built in cities and thus are usually built with 1' thick exterior walls, but they cost twice as much to build due to the traps and secret passageways that are designed into them. A Magic-User's tower costs three times as much to build, due to the need for ancient books, alchemical equipment, and other supplies for conducting research. For example, Sir Percy, a 9th-level Fighter, desires to build a 60' tall square keep (50' walls with a 10' peaked slate-shingled roof) that is 50' square. The keep will have four stories and an attic, and the first story, which will contain the great hall, will be 20' high. Sir Percy wishes his keep to be strongly built, so he tells his architect to build with hard stone and use 10' thick walls for the first two stories and 5' thick walls for the rest. The first and second floors will thus be 30' square or 900 square feet, and the third and fourth floors will be 40' square or 1,600 square feet. With a total floor area of 5,000 square feet, Sir Percy's keep will house him and up to 24 other people (or animals such as horses, which during an attack may be stabled in the great hall!) in acceptable comfort. Its floor plans are shown on the next page. The first floor has 30 (= 5 [for 50' length] x 2 [for 20' height] x 4 walls, minus 8 sections double-counted at the corners and 2 sections for the entrance) 10' square sections of 10' thick hard stone walls, which cost 7,800 gp, and 9 10' square sections of floor, which cost 90 gp, for a total cost of 7,890 gp. The second floor is the same as the first, except that the walls are 10' high and there is no deduction for an entrance, giving a cost of 4,250 gp. The third and fourth floors each require 18 sections of 5' thick hard stone walls, costing 1,620 gp, and 16 sections of floor, costing 160 gp, for a total of 1,780 gp per floor. The 50' square roof costs 4 x 25 x 10 = 1,000 gp, and the 40' square attic floor adds 160 gp. The design calls for a total of 770' of 1' thick interior walls and doors, which would cost 30,800 gp if made of hard stone; Sir Percy uses wood, which costs only 7,700 gp. These costs total 24,560 gp, but since the keep is 60' high, its cost is increased by 60% to 39,296 gp. The keep will require 39,296 worker-days. Sir Percy may employ up to 198 workers to build the keep, in which case it will take 198 working days to build, or a year and three months' time. Keep in mind what might happen in this time, given that the area is dangerous enough to warrant building a castle. Dungeons: A stronghold may also have a dungeon excavated under it. A dungeon is an excellent place to store perishable supplies, a good shelter if the castle is overrun, and often incorporates an escape route if all is lost for the castle's defenders or a secret way out for when a raid is desired. Magic-Users sometimes encourage monsters to take up residence in their dungeons, as they provide a convenient source of supplies for magical research and help keep away unwanted guests. Use the following figures for skilled workers, such as dwarves or goblins, to create dungeons; double the times for less skilled miners. Material Time for one worker to excavate a 5' cube Earth 5 days (supports are required) Soft stone 10 days Hard stone 20 days Structural strength and breaches: A section of stronghold wall has as many hit points as its base cost in gp (for example, a section of 10' thick soft stone wall has 200 hit points). Stone and brick walls only take damage from crushing blows, while wood walls are also affected by fire and chopping attacks. If a given section of wall loses all of its hit points, it is breached, allowing attackers to pass through. If a breach occurs on a lower course of wall, there is a 40% chance that the 10' section above it will be breached by collapse, and a 20% chance that the section below it will be breached. These secondary breaches have the same chances of affecting the next 10' section above or below them, and so on until the top or bottom course of wall is reached. If a breach occurs on a right or acute corner (90 degrees or less), the chances of breaches double in each direction. Attacking a Castle: Siege engines (as listed on page 14) are difficult to aim, but as castles don't dodge around, each successive shot by a given siege engine with a given crew has an increasing chance of hitting. To reflect this, the first attack on a castle's walls is made against Armor Class 20; each subsequent attack by that weapon, fired by that crew, at that same point in the wall, is made against an Armor Class one lower than the previous shot, to a minimum AC of 11. Attacks on a castle's defenders are at -4 on the attack roll if they are standing on the parapets, and at -10 if they are behind arrow slits. Since characters defending the castle do move around, the odds of hitting them with a siege engine do not improve from shot to shot. There is an additional -2 on the attack roll for missile attacks if the defenders are more than 20' higher than the attackers; this is not specifically due to altitude, but rather because the defenders can use more of the wall for cover. The defenders can take advantage of their height by dropping objects on attackers near the castle's base; these missiles do 2d10 points of damage, but they have a -2 attack penalty if dropped from a height of 30' or more. Siege engines can damage several adjacent characters; roll damage separately for each character in the 10' square hit by the missile. Of course, the attack roll must be high enough to damage each one; a roll of 19 against characters having Armor Classes of 18 and 20 would hit the former but not the latter. A castle may also be attacked by mining. This method of attack involves tunneling under the castle wall, then setting fire to the supports of the tunnel to cause the wall to collapse. It is also slow, and if the castle has a