Ah, the long awaited priority mail envelope containing the Stronghold Builders Guidebook, latest in a long line of splat books that have come hurtling out of the presses at Wizards of the Coast. I typically skip purchasing splat books, or indeed any supplemental material, as a student’s income puts large numbers of these beyond my means. But Haveshea, my Elven ranger, has aspirations of her own piece of land, a title and a fortress to call home, so I preordered this particular book from Amazon.com. And like most of the WoTC titles these days, the book is a solid, but not outstanding, product.
The book itself if a soft-cover, 128 page affair that is becoming common on hobby store shelves, and is, as is the norm for Wizards products, well bound and reasonably durable. The cover art is attractive, even if the “floating pillboxes” orbiting the fortress seem a little well…disconcerting. I suppose that may just be this reviewers misunderstanding of their purpose. The interior art is all black and white, and unlike most of the other WoTC splat books, art is not one of the dominant features in the book, having been replaced by neatly done grayscale maps of sample strongholds and rooms. Delving deeper, the book itself is divided into 4 sections, Building Strongholds, Stronghold Components, Strongholds in Your Campaign and Example Strongholds respectively.
Building Strongholds goes over the basics of creating your stronghold, and is well done, covering such topics as local pools of labor and resources, the surrounding land (or water for that matter) and the benefit of having spell-casting characters do your work for you. I could just see Haveshea standing atop a hill overlooking the site of her future tower in a hardhat and a reflective orange vest. The one annoyance however was the sidebar, following the construction of “Brightstone Keep”. The authors skipped ahead a little, addressing exact costs of the castle before this was actually covered in the book, making the sidebar example only marginally useful. Sadly, there is no mention in the section about smart castle building, letting players gather for themselves the basic concepts of fire arcs, kill zones, channeling enemies towards interior strong points, the reason staircases should be spiral, tower independence and so on.
Stronghold Components covers the various types of walls, rooms and enhancements one could incorporate into their stronghold, and takes up the vast bulk of the book. The rooms are on a whole practical, and most of them badly needed, as is the trap making section. Regrettably, where magic is concerned, the quality of the book slips dramatically. The discussion of the possible use of spells and magical items in one’s stronghold is irritatingly obvious, and in this reviewer’s opinion, a waste of paper. It doesn’t take a profound leap of the imagination to realize that Boots of Flying are useful for an aerial stronghold, or that using Alarm all over a stronghold is tricky, but helpful if done right. I’d rather the authors just remove this section, and have the publisher knock $5 off the price. The Wondrous Architecture and Magical Siege Weapons sections returned the book to its useful status, and while none of the potential rooms were unexpected, they will make strongholds infinitely more livable for the inhabitants, and direct assaults will be far more costly. My other main disappointment is that the book essentially presumes you will be constructing a traditional castle. Admittedly, they will let you make it out of coral, but in essence, the book assumes you will be taking a standard architectural approach to stronghold building. There is mention of Elven treetop forts, but if a player like myself envisioned a network of interconnected platforms nestled in trees, not requiring walls, they are pretty much stuck doing an interpretation of the rules, placing them only a little better off than when the book didn’t exist. Additionally, there is no mention of more mundane ways to defend your castle from the magical users of the Dungeons and Dragons world. All kinds of magical ways to detect invisible intruders exist, but the authors do not mention simple things like incense burners or dogs, or using soaked animal hides to lessen the risk of fire. Such touches would have made the book more complete, and added a touch of realism to the game; especially since the books is selling strongholds to characters at all levels of the game, may of whom can’t afford Wall of Force roofs. They certainly don’t lack the references; a look back at Dragon Magazine number 224 would have addressed all these things. For a book that essentially held your hand during the use of magic, the sudden abandonment of this strategy made the entire style feel a little inconsistent.
Strongholds in Your Campaign is arguably the strongest, most straight-forward portion of the book and, simply put, addresses ways to slide strongholds into a campaign, as either a player or a DM. Its helpful, addressing things like turning a profit on the stronghold, and pulling players away from their adventures to defend it. All in all it is a solid section, and when combined with the Example Strongholds, a DM strapped for time can toss a well-designed stronghold into the game immediately. The examples are lacking a little bit in terms of creativity, but help serve as an example for players, pre-built settings, or as a pool of ideas for the creation of a future customized stronghold.
All in all, the Stronghold Builder’s Guide is a useful, solid product. It is well designed, clean and well written, but lacks a certain amount of flair that would have made it truly outstanding, the authors not having quite gone the extra mile. No effort is made in ways to design your castle, the mundane way, to prevent powerful villains from wreaking havoc with Fly and a few well-placed fireballs, nor any discussion of what to do after the walls have been breeched. The book gives you an incredible price list for potential rooms, but falls short in how to use them. Combined with the hefty price for a fairly specialized book of rules that is, for the most part, filler material describing different types of kitchens and the like, makes the book par for the course as far as Wizards products lately.
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